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Books > Biography > Film, television, music, theatre
Mike Love is a founding member, lyricist and vocalist of The Beach Boys, considered to be the most popular American band in history, with 13 Gold Albums, 55 top-100 singles, and four number 1 hits. Love has been the lead singer of the group one of its principal lyricists since its inception in 1961.
In Good Vibrations, Mike Love tells the unique story of his legendary, chaotic, and ultimately triumphant five-decade tenure as the front man of The Beach Boys, from their Californian roots to international fame.
The Hollywood screen legend brings his wit, insight, entertaining
stories and wisdom to answer questions about every aspect of his long
life - inspiring us all to Be More Michael Caine.
I'm always asked questions - by fans, by other actors and friends, by
my grandchildren. They want to know how I've lasted so long, how I
handle fame, why I chose to do some of my films, which films and actors
I like best and so forth.
They also want to know what makes me tick, what makes me get up in the
morning in my 90s, and whether I'll ever retire. (The answer to that
one is "No!")
Over a long life, I've learnt a lot and had the opportunity to reflect.
I've seen a new generation grow up, among them my own grandchildren,
facing the world with all its challenges and problems.
I hope they'll find Don't Look Back, You'll Trip Over: My Guide to Life
helps them to be optimistic - and shows that anyone can blow the bloody
doors off.
An iconic book, from one of our best-loved actors: this is Michael
Caine at his very best.
'People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know
now, would you change anything? I'm like, f*** no. If I'd been clean
and sober, I wouldn't be Ozzy. If I'd done normal, sensible things, I
wouldn't be Ozzy.'
Husband. Father. Grandfather. Icon.
1948 - 2025
At the age of sixty-nine, Ozzy Osbourne was on a triumphant farewell
tour, playing to sold-out arenas and rave reviews all around the world.
Then: disaster.
In a matter of just a few weeks, he went from being hospitalised with a
finger infection to having to abandon his tour - and all public life -
as he faced near-total paralysis from the neck down.
Last Rites is the shocking, bitterly hilarious, never-before-told story
of Ozzy's descent into hell. Along the way are reflections on an
extraordinary life and career, including his marriage to wife Sharon,
and what it took for him to return to the stage for the triumphant Back
to the Beginning concert, streamed around the world, where Ozzy
reunited with his Black Sabbath bandmates for the final time.
Unflinching, brutally honest, but surprisingly life-affirming, Last
Rites demonstrates once again why Ozzy transcended his status as 'The
Godfather of Metal' and 'The Prince of Darkness' to become a modern-day
folk hero and national treasure.
Most unusually among major painters, Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was
also an accomplished writer. His letters provide both a unique
self-portrait and a vivid picture of the contemporary cultural
scene. Van Gogh emerges as a complex but captivating personality,
struggling with utter integrity to fulfil his artistic destiny.
This major new edition, which is based on an entirely new
translation, reinstating a large number of passages omitted from
earlier editions, is expressly designed to reveal his inner journey
as much as the outward facts of his life. It includes complete
letters wherever possible, linked with brief passages of connecting
narrative and showing all the pen-and-ink sketches that originally
went with them. Despite the familiar image of Van Gogh as an
antisocial madman who died a martyr to his art, his troubled life
was rich in friendships and generous passions. In his letters we
discover the humanitarian and religious causes he embraced, his
fascination with the French Revolution, his striving for God and
for ethical ideals, his desperate courtship of his cousin, Kee Vos,
and his largely unsuccessful search for love. All of this, suggests
De Leeuw, demolishes some of the myths surrounding Van Gogh and his
career but brings hint before us as a flesh-and-blood human being,
an individual of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Perhaps even
more moving, these letters illuminate his constant conflicts as a
painter, torn between realism, symbolism and abstraction; between
landscape and portraiture; between his desire to depict peasant
life and the exciting diversions of the city; between his uncanny
versatility as a sketcher and his ideal of the full-scale finished
tableau. SinceVan Gogh received little feedback from the public, he
wrote at length to friends, fellow artists and his family, above
all to his brother Theo, the Parisian art dealer, who was his
confidant and mainstay. Along with his intense powers of visual
imagination, Vincent brought to the
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Alex
(Hardcover)
David Lyons
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Discovery Miles 6 360
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A hilarious, poignant memoir from comedian Todd Glass about his
decision at age forty-eight to finally live openly as a gay
man--and the reactions and support from his comedy pals, from Louis
CK to Sarah Silverman.
Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1970s was an easy life.
Well, easy as long as you didn't have dyslexia or ADD, or were a
Jew. And once you added gay into the mix, life became more
difficult. So Todd Glass decided to hide the gay part, no matter
how comic, tragic, or comically tragic the results.
It might have been a lot easier had he chosen a profession other
than stand-up comedy. By age eighteen, Todd was opening for big
musical acts like George Jones and Patti LaBelle. His career
carried him through the Los Angeles comedy heyday in the 1980s, its
decline in the 1990s, and its rebirth via the alternative comedy
scene and the explosion in podcasting. But the harder he worked at
his craft, the more difficult it became to manage his "situation."
There were the years of abstinence and half-hearted attempts to
"cure" himself. The fake girlfriends so that he could tell
relationship jokes onstage. The staged sexual encounters to burnish
his reputation offstage. It took a brush with death to cause him to
rethink the way he was living his life; a rash of suicides among
gay teens to convince him that it was finally time to come out to
the world.
Now, Todd has written an open, honest, and hilarious memoir in an
effort to help everyone--young and old, gay and straight--breathe a
little more freely. Peppered with anecdotes from his life among
comedy's greatest headliners and tales of the occasionally insane
lengths Todd went through to keep a secret that--let's face it--he
probably didn't have to keep for as long as he did, "The Todd Glass
Situation" is a front-row seat to the last thirty plus years of
comedy history and a deeply personal story about one man's search
for acceptance.
This stunning book showcases the bold and original work of Royal
Designer Tony Meeuwissen. The artist also writes about his life at
the drawing board and the inspiration and ideas behind his imagery.
From the foreword by Peter Marren: Welcome to this gallery of the
work of a most individual and lovable artist. Many will have seen
Tony Meeuwissen's work without knowing the artist, for it has
appeared in so many decorative forms from books to playing cards,
from magazine and sheet music covers to postage stamps. His work
was described by the designer Mike Dempsey as 'inventive, intensely
detailed and full of wit and beauty'. Penguin Books art director
David Pelham praised him as an artist with the eye of an
illustrator and the mind of a designer, one able to solve visual
problems with 'remarkable originality, skill and panache.' To my
eye Tony's work is always affi rmative even in its darker moments.
It is playful but not saccharine, clever but not conceited. It
always wears a wry smile. Tony learned his craft in the market
place of commercial art. He learned how to handle a wide range of
media to develop graphic ideas while also discovering the beauty of
typefaces. In the process he evolved his very distinctive artistic
language, his own way of seeing the world: colourful, eye-catching,
beautifully executed, his work is a product of his unique vision.
He loves drawing animals, birds, insects and natural phenomena, but
usually with a characteristic twist: shape-changing fantastical
animals, a nuthatch hatching from a nut, a praying mantis in
bishop's vestments saying grace over a butterfly. On the memorable
Christmas stamps he designed for the Royal Mail in 1983, the Three
Kings are represented by chimney pots and the continents of the
world by melting snow slipping from an umbrella. His is a universe
where nothing is quite what it seems, where proverbs morph into
pictures and names turn out to have diff erent meanings. Words and
rhymes increase this pleasurable sense of an alternate world with
its own logic and rules. Tony Meeuwissen eschews computer-aided
methods preferring his drawing board, his pencils and his paintbox.
He has managed to inhabit the world of commercial art for more than
half a century without ever becoming commercial himself. His work
is always uncompromisingly his own: the product of a unique
imagination coupled with the skills and standards of a
perfectionist. Here for the fi rst time the full range of his work
is presented. Like the door to the magical garden in Alice, turn
the golden key and enter.
From the moment RoseMarie Terenzio unleashed her Italian temper on
the entitled nuisance commandeering her office in a downtown New
York PR firm, an unlikely friendship bloomed between the
blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.
Many books have sought to capture John F. Kennedy Jr.'s life. None
has been as intimate or as honest as "Fairy Tale Interrupted."
Recalling the adventure of working as his executive assistant for
five years, RoseMarie portrays the man behind the icon--patient,
protective, surprisingly goofy, occasionally thoughtless and
self-involved, yet capable of extraordinary generosity and
kindness. She reveals how he dealt with dating, politics, and the
paparazzi, and describes life behind the scenes at "George
"magazine. Captured here are her memories of Carolyn Bessette, how
she orchestrated the ultra-secretive planning of John and Carolyn's
wedding on Cumberland Island--and the heartbreak of their deaths on
July 16, 1999, after which RoseMarie's whole world came crashing
down around her. Only now does she feel she can tell her story in a
book that stands as "a fitting personal tribute to a unique boss .
. . deliriously fun and entertaining" ("Kirkus Reviews").
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