Vanity Will Get You Somewhere

Vanity Will Get You Somewhere
Author: Joseph Cotten
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2000-03-24
Genre: Motion picture actors and actresses
ISBN: 0595091334

Joseph Cotten’s story begins in Tidewater, Virginia, moves on to an episode as a Miami ‘potato salad’ tycoon and then brings us to his first big break as an actor, in the New York theatre. Cotten describes how he met the flamboyant Orson Welles- at a radio audition at which Welles set a wastepaper basket on fire- and their involvement with the Mercury theatre. This led to Cotten’s first film role, as Orson’s co-star in Citizen Kane, quickly followed by parts in The Magnificent Ambersons and The Third Man. Orson- perhaps the only man to use Churchill as a stooge while trying to set up a film deal- was a lifelong friend of Cotten’s, and this autobiography was one of the last works he read before his untimely death in 1985. Cotten takes us behind the scenes of his stage plays and films, recalling amusing and intimate stories of his adventures with Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, David Niven, David O. Selznick, Alfred Hitchcock and many others. Sensitive to his own motivations, frank about his marriages and warmly revealing about himself and his friends, Cotten has written much more than the usual film star biography. His skills as an actor have made him a master of character and dramatic momentum, and he brings the same talents to his writing. Vanity Will get You Somewhere is a generous, loving and humorous portrait of a man without a shred of vanity in his nature- and of his friends and colleagues in the larger-than-life world of show business.

Somewhere Towards the End

Somewhere Towards the End
Author: Diana Athill
Publisher: Yayasan Obor Indonesia
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780393067705

An esteemed memoirist and one of the great editors in British publishing examines aging with the grace of Elegy for Iris and the wry irreverence of I Feel Bad About My Neck.

Sex and Vanity

Sex and Vanity
Author: Kevin Kwan
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385546289

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • The author of the international phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians takes us from Capri to NYC, where a young woman finds herself torn between two men—and two very different cultures. "Another riveting tale of privilege, culture and romance ... extravagant fashion and deceit, resulting in one truly modern love story." —CNN On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte. The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and, ultimately, herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world—and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.

All Is Vanity

All Is Vanity
Author: Christina Schwarz
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2002-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385508271

At once darkly comedic and moving, this witty exploration of female friendship, envy, and misguided ambition by the author of the number-one bestseller Drowning Ruth, deliciously satirizes the desire to shine in the world. In All is Vanity, Margaret and Letty, best friends since childhood and now living on opposite coasts, reach their mid-thirties and begin to chafe at their sense that they are not where they ought to be in life. Margaret, driven and overconfident, decides the best way to rectify this is to quit her job and whip out a literary tour de force. Frustrated almost immediately and humiliated at every turn, Margaret turns to Letty for support. But as Letty, a stay-at-home mother of four, begins to feel pressured to make a good showing in the upper-middle-class Los Angeles society into which her husband’s new job has thrust her, Margaret sees a plot unfolding that’s better than anything she could make up. Desperate to finish her book and against her better nature, she pushes Letty to take greater and greater risks, and secretly steals her friend’s stories as fast as she can live them. Hungry for the world’s regard, Margaret rashly sacrifices one of the things most precious to her, until the novel’s suspenseful conclusion shows her the terrible consequences of her betrayal. Widely celebrated for her debut novel, Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz once again proves herself to be a writer of remarkable depth and range. Like Drowning Ruth, All is Vanity probes into the mysteries of the human heart and uncovers the passions that drive ordinary people to break the rules in pursuit of their own desires.

The Every

The Every
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593320875

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Circle comes an exciting new follow-up. When the world’s largest search engine/social media company, the Circle, merges with the planet’s dominant ecommerce site, it creates the richest and most dangerous—and, oddly enough, most beloved—monopoly ever known: the Every. Delaney Wells is an unlikely new hire at the Every. A former forest ranger and unwavering tech skeptic, she charms her way into an entry-level job with one goal in mind: to take down the company from within. With her compatriot, the not-at-all-ambitious Wes Makazian, they look for the Every's weaknesses, hoping to free humanity from all-encompassing surveillance and the emoji-driven infantilization of the species. But does anyone want what Delaney is fighting to save? Does humanity truly want to be free? Studded with unforgettable characters, outrageous outfits, and lacerating set-pieces, this companion to The Circle blends absurdity and terror, satire and suspense, while keeping the reader in apprehensive excitement about the fate of the company—and the human animal.

The Home Place

The Home Place
Author: J. Drew Lanham
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2016-08-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1571318755

“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. “When you’re done with The Home Place, it won’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.”—Star Tribune “A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.”—National Geographic

Verity

Verity
Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 153872474X

Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.

My Brother's Book

My Brother's Book
Author: Maurice Sendak
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780062234896

Fifty years after Where the Wild Things Are was published comes the last book Maurice Sendak completed before his death in May 2012, My Brother's Book. With influences from Shakespeare and William Blake, Sendak pays homage to his late brother, Jack, whom he credited for his passion for writing and drawing. Pairing Sendak's poignant poetry with his exquisite and dramatic artwork, this book redefines what mature readers expect from Maurice Sendak while continuing the lasting legacy he created over his long, illustrious career. Sendak's tribute to his brother is an expression of both grief and love and will resonate with his lifelong fans who may have read his children's books and will be ecstatic to discover something for them now. Pulitzer Prize–winning literary critic and Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt contributes a moving introduction.

In the Weeds

In the Weeds
Author: Tom Vitale
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0306924072

**Nominated for the 2022 BookTube Prize in Nonfiction** Anthony Bourdain's long time director and producer takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the insanity of filming television in some of the most volatile places in the world and what it was like to work with a legend. In the nearly two years since Anthony Bourdain's death, no one else has come close to filling the void he left. His passion for and genuine curiosity about the people and cultures he visited made the world feel smaller and more connected. Despite his affable, confident, and trademark snarky TV persona, the real Tony was intensely private, deeply conflicted about his fame, and an enigma even to those close to him. Tony’s devoted crew knew him best, and no one else had a front-row seat for as long as his director and producer, Tom Vitale. Over the course of more than a decade traveling together, Tony became a boss, a friend, a hero and, sometimes, a tormentor.In the Weeds takes readers behind the scenes to reveal not just the insanity that went into filming in some of the most far-flung and volatile parts of the world, but what Tony was like unedited and off-camera. From the outside, the job looked like an all-expenses-paid adventure to places like Borneo, Vietnam, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya. What happened off-camera was far more interesting than what made it to air. The more things went wrong, the better it was for the show. Fortunately, everything fell apart constantly.

Bettyville

Bettyville
Author: George Hodgman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0698158458

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “A beautifully crafted memoir, rich with humor and wisdom.” —Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club “The idea of a cultured gay man leaving New York City to care for his aging mother in Paris, Missouri, is already funny, and George Hodgman reaps that humor with great charm. But then he plunges deep, examining the warm yet fraught relationship between mother and son with profound insight and understanding.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself—an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook—in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can’t bring himself to force her from the home both treasure—the place where his father’s voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict: Betty, who speaks her mind but cannot quite reveal her heart, has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay. As these two unforgettable characters try to bring their different worlds together, Hodgman reveals the challenges of Betty’s life and his own struggle for self-respect, moving readers from their small town—crumbling but still colorful—to the star-studded corridors of Vanity Fair. Evocative of The End of Your Life Book Club and The Tender Bar, Hodgman’s New York Times bestselling debut is both an indelible portrait of a family and an exquisitely told tale of a prodigal son’s return.