Empfehlungen basierend auf "Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner"

The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family. It struck me that they had better be collected together, if not deliberately paired off, in something of a hurry, if I mean them to avoid unduly or undesirably close contact with new material in the series. There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along ? waxing, dilating ? each in its own way, but I suspect the less said about them, in mixed company, the better. Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years. I can't say why, though. Not, at least, outside the casino proper of my fiction.

“Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther.” –Los Angeles Times Book ReviewIn what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, woman, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D.H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

'... a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food...' Swift's devastating short satire on how to solve a famine Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Swift's works available in Penguin Classics are Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal and Other Writings.

For every Terry Pratchett fan, an absolute must-have, giftable book—favorite quotations from his beloved Discworld canon. Gleaned from more than two decades' worth of Discworld tales, here is an essential compendium of insightful musings, witty commentary, and sagacious observations by New York Times bestselling author Terry Pratchett, compiled by Pratchett expert Stephen Briggs. • In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find... • All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed. Filled with wonderful bon mots, double entendres, not to mention breathtaking insights, The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld is a compendium of the wittiest, pithiest, and wisest quotations from Terry Pratchett’s madcap universe—a place that looks, sounds, and smells suspiciously like our own. “Pratchett has created an alternate universe full of trolls, dwarfs, wizards, and other fantasy elements, and he uses that universe to reflect on our own culture with entertaining and gloriously funny results. It’s an accomplishment nothing short of magical.”—Chicago Tribune

If puritanism is, as H.L. Mencken once said, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy, then this glorious, monumental collection by one of England's most popular humorists is a puritan's nightmare. Focusing primarily on the 19th and 20th century, but with material dating back to Columbus, Frank Muir has packed this volume with enough joy and laughter to sink the Mayflower.The range of comic material is amazing--from the gentle, charming comedy of manners, to biting satire, to outrageous parody. There are excerpts from the novels of Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse and Mark Twain, complete short stories by O. Henry and Frank O'Connor, classic tall tales from Australia (including one by "Banjo" Patterson, who also wrote "Waltzing Matilda"), passages from Groucho Marx's correspondence with Warner Brothers, newspaper columns written by Art Buchwald and Myles na Gopaleen (the novelist Flann O'Brien), a selection of Samuel Johnson's comic definitions, plus a sprinkling of egregious puns, witty sayings, and even the clever names of stores (such as the New York restaurant "Just for the Halibut" and the London beauty parlor "Curl Up and Dye"). Muir has gathered work from over two hundred writers and from every English-speaking country. Virtually all of your favorites are here: Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Laurence Sterne, Anita Loos, Ring Lardner, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman, Damon Runyon, Fran Lebowitz, Joseph Heller, Evelyn Waugh, Garrison Keilor, Erma Bombeck, Tom Wolfe, and countless others. In addition, there are comic pieces from writers you wouldn't expect to find--such as Thomas Hardy or Lawrence Durrell--and many many writers you may not have discovered yet, such as Jerome K. Jerome or Daisy Ashford (who wrote an unintentionally hysterical novel at age nine, which she published in her thirties).Frank Muir is one of Britain's best-loved humorists, the host of a highly popular television show and the prolific author of dozens of hilarious books, including the best-selling The Frank Muir Book. Here he provides not only a painfully funny collection, but also generous introductions to each writer, which are comic gems in themselves. Except for the occasional puritan, this is a book that everyone will enjoy.

"Outlandish fun. . . . Making Money balances satire, knockabout farce and close observation of human — and non-human — foibles with impressive dexterity and deceptive ease. The result is another ingenious entertainment from the preeminent comic fantasist of our time.” — Washington PostThe hero of Going Postal returns in the 36th installment of Sir Terry Pratchett's beloved Discworld series! Moist von Lipwig, condemned prisoner turned postal worker extraordinaire, is now in charge of a different branch of the government: overseeing the printing of Ankh-Morpork’s first paper currency.Amazingly, former arch-swindler-turned-Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig has somehow managed to get the woefully inefficient Ankh-Morpork Post Office running like . . . well, not like a government office at all. Now the supreme despot Lord Vetinari is asking Moist if he'd like to make some real money. Vetinari wants Moist to resuscitate the venerable Royal Mint—so that perhaps it will no longer cost considerably more than a penny to make a penny.Moist doesn't want the job. However, a request from Ankh-Morpork's current ruling tyrant isn't a "request" per se, more like a "once-in-a-lifetime-offer-you-can-certainly-refuse-if-you-feel-you've-lived-quite-long-enough." So Moist will just have to learn to deal with elderly Royal Bank chairman Topsy (née Turvy) Lavish and her two loaded crossbows, a face-lapping Mint manager, and a chief clerk who's probably a vampire. But he'll soon be making lethal enemies as well as money, especially if he can't figure out where all the gold has gone.The Discworld novels can be read in any order, but Making Money is the second book in the Moist von Lipwig series.

"Maupin's San Francisco saga careens beautifully on." —New York Times Book Review The fourth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga. When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there’s more to making a baby than meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first piece of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS.

The classic book that inspired Kes, the famous film, now published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the key British films of the sixties. Billy Casper is beaten by his drunken brother, ignored by his mother and failing at school. He seems destined for a hard, miserable life down the pits, but for a brief time, he finds one pleasure in life: a wild kestrel that he has raised and tamed himself.

Also known as Dulcimer Street, Norman Collins's London Belongs to Me is a Dickensian romp through working-class London on the eve of the Second World War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ed Glinert, author of The London Compendium. It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mr Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Boon, whose foray into stolen cars descends into something much, much worse... Norman Collins (1907-1982) was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who was responsible for creating Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, and became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. In all Norman Collins wrote 16 novels and two plays, including London Belongs to Me (1945), The Governor's Lady (1968) and The Husband's Story (1978). If you enjoyed London Belongs to Me, you might like Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'One of the great city novels: a sprawling celebration of the comedy, the savagery, the eccentricity and the quiet heroism at the heart of ordinary London life' Sarah Waters, author of The Night Watch

Head Over Heels in the Dales is the third volume in Gervase Phinn's bestselling Dales Series 'Could you tell me how to spell "sex" please?' Gervase Phinn thinks he's heard just about everything in his two years as a school inspector, but a surprising enquiry from an angelic six-year-old reminds him never to take children for granted. This year Gervase has lots of important things on his mind - his impending marriage to Christine Bentley (the prettiest headteacher for miles around), finding somewhere idyllic to live in the Yorkshire Dales, and the chance of a promotion. All of which generate their fair share of excitement, aided and abetted as usual by his colleagues in the office. In Head Over Hells in the Dales, join Gervase Phinn in the classroom where he faces his greatest challenge: keeping a straight face as teachers and children alike conspire to have him laughing out loud. 'Gervase Phinn's memoirs have made him a hero in school staff-rooms' Daily Telegraph Gervase Phinn is an author and educator from Rotherham who, after teaching for fourteen years in a variety of schools, moved to North Yorkshire to be a school inspector. He has written autobiographies, novels, plays, collections of poetry and stories, as well as a number of books about education. He holds five fellowships, honorary doctorates from Hull, Leicester and Sheffield Hallam universities, and is a patron of a number of children's charities and organizations. He is married with four adult children. His books include The Other Side of the Dale, Over Hill and Dale, Head Over Heels in the Dales, The Heart of the Dales, Up and Down in the Dales and Trouble at the Little Village School.