Recommendations based on "Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different"

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet.Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

Learn chess from International Master and top Youtube chess teacher GothamChess in this accessible and fun guide for beginner and mid-level players packed full of game-winning strategies and entertaining wit.Clever and informative, How to Win at Chess teaches beginner and intermediate players the art of the game, including all the important chess moves and strategies to keep you thinking several steps ahead.Teeming with Rozman's signature charm and humor, the first half introduces aspiring players to four key areas to consider when playing chess—openings, endings, tactics, and strategies—while the second builds upon these core skills. How to Win at Chess brims with 500 instructional game play illustrations to help you better visualize the board and QR codes to exclusive educational videos on the GothamChess website.Whether you want to become a recreational chess player or a Grandmaster, How to Win at Chess is the perfect interactive introduction to the world of chess!

For anyone who has ever wanted to take an acting class, "this is the best book on acting written in the last twenty years" (David Mamet, from the Introduction).This book describes a technique developed and refined by the authors, all of them young actors, in their work with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet, actor W. H. Macy, and director Gregory Mosher. A Practical Handbook for the Actor is written for any actor who has ever experienced the frustrations of acting classes that lacked clarity and objectivity, and that failed to provide a dependable set of tools. An actor's job, the authors state, is to "find a way to live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the play." The ways in which an actor can attain that truth form the substance of this eloquent book.

Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.

This box set of the 50 books in the new Penguin Modern series celebrates the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics list and its iconic authors. Including avant-garde essays, radical polemics, newly translated poetry and great fiction, here are brilliant and diverse voices from across the globe. Ground-breaking and original in their day, their words still have the power to move, challenge and inspire.

This 6-volume set of Bakers covers all musical genres, with entries written by a distinguished group of area specialists as well as the original articles of Nicolas Slonimsky. More than 15, 000 biographies span the medieval ages to the present.This work continues the tradition of offering the most comprehensive and authoritative information on the musicians, along with interesting and insightful evaluations of their contributions to the musical world.Bakers remains the most affordable, comprehensive and readable of all music reference works, providing everyone from the student to scholar a one-stop resource for all their music biographical needs.Some of the artists featured include: Louis Armstrong Johann Sebastian Bach The Beatles Ludwig van Beethoven James Brown John Cage Maria Callas Johnny Cash Miles Davis Claude Debussy Marvin Gaye Philip Glass George Frideric Handel Charlie Parker Luciano Pavarotti Arturo Toscanini Tom Waits And many more

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER, NOW FEATURING NEW INTERVIEWS WITH DASHBOAD CONFESSIONAL, CURSIVE, LESS THAN JAKE, AND MORE."Ozzi's reporting is strong, balanced and well told...a worthy successor to its obvious inspiration, Michael Azerrad's 2001 examination of the '80s indie underground, 'Our Band Could Be Your Life.'"--New York Times Book ReviewA raucous history of punk, emo, and hardcore’s growing pains during the commercial boom of the early 90s and mid-aughts, following eleven bands as they “sell out” and find mainstream fame, or break beneath the weight of it allPunk rock found itself at a crossroads in the mid-90’s. After indie favorite Nirvana catapulted into the mainstream with its unexpected phenomenon, Nevermind, rebellion was suddenly en vogue. Looking to replicate the band’s success, major record labels set their sights on the underground, and began courting punk’s rising stars. But the DIY punk scene, which had long prided itself on its trademark authenticity and anti-establishment ethos, wasn’t quite ready to let their homegrown acts go without a fight. The result was a schism: those who accepted the cash flow of the majors, and those who defiantly clung to their indie cred.In Sellout, seasoned music writer Dan Ozzi chronicles this embattled era in punk. Focusing on eleven prominent bands who made the jump from indie to major, Sellout charts the twists and turns of the last “gold rush” of the music industry, where some groups “sold out” and rose to surprise super stardom, while others buckled under mounting pressures. Sellout is both a gripping history of the music industry’s evolution, and a punk rock lover’s guide to the chaotic darlings of the post-grunge era, featuring original interviews and personal stories from members of modern punk’s most (in)famous bands: Green Day Jawbreaker Jimmy Eat World Blink-182 At the Drive-In The Donnas Thursday The Distillers My Chemical Romance Rise Against Against Me!

Every book has a story of its own, a path leading from the initial idea that sparked it to its emergence into the world in published form. No two books follow quite the same path, but all are shaped by a similar array of market forces and writing craft concerns as well as by a cast of characters stretching beyond the author.Behind the Book explores how eleven contemporary first-time authors, in genres ranging from post-apocalyptic fiction to young adult fantasy to travel memoir, navigated these pathways with their debut works. Based on extensive interviews with the authors, it covers the process of writing and publishing a book from beginning to end, including idea generation, developing a process, building a support network, revising the manuscript, finding the right approach to publication, building awareness, and ultimately moving on to the next project. It also includes insights from editors, agents, publishers, and others who helped to bring these projects to life.Unlike other books on writing craft, Behind the Book looks at the larger picture of how an author’s work and choices can affect the outcome of a project. The authors profiled in each story open up about their challenges, mistakes, and successes. While their paths to publication may be unique, together they offer important lessons that authors of all types can apply to their own writing journeys.

Most of what you think you know about writing is useless. It’s the harmful debris of your education—a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you’ll find here isn’t the way to write. Instead, you’ll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write.Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it’s also a book full of unlearning—a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed.An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.

Unprecedented in scope, The History of American Graffiti is the definitive story behind the most influential art form of the last one hundred years. Tracing the evolution of the medium from its early freight-train days to its big-city boom on the streets of New York City and Philadelphia, and to its modern-day influences, this volume is a compelling look at the key moments, places, and players in an art form distinctly American in flavor yet global in its reach.Featuring behind-the-scenes stories and profiles gleaned from more than four years' worth of interviews with graffiti's most prominent names, as well as its lesser-known pioneers, authors Roger Gastman and Caleb Neelon provide an insider's perspective on the history of the medium. Not only do they reveal the most popular trends and styles that have dominated the scene for the last fifty years but they also provide a thorough examination of the regional differences among major American hubs—New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Chicago—and under-the-radar scenes in cities like Washington, D.C., Boston, and Miami. All told, more than twenty-five American cities are profiled, making this one of the most comprehensive volumes on the subject.With more than one thousand photographs—the majority of which are seen here for the first time—from more than two hundred photographers, most of whom also created the artwork, The History of American Graffiti captures the look and feel of a genuine American art form with exceptional clarity and detail. An instant classic, this book is the ultimate resource to which aficionados of the art form will turn again and again, and which the uninitiated will regard as the definitive tutorial of all that is graffiti.