This volume collects H.P. Lovecraft's three major works on fantasy fiction: "Supernatural Horror in Literature" -- his survey of the weird and supernatural in fiction; and "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" and "Notes on Writing Interplanetary Fiction" -- his how-to essays on crafting solid, aesthetically pleasing works in those genres. An essential volume for scholars, writers, and those interesting in the history and craftsmanship of the fantasy genre.

How close did the Bureau of Reclamation come in the 1960s to building two dams in the Grand Canyon? Exactly what is going on with those birds and their songs? The desert Southwest is supposed to look all dry and dusty...isn't it? And remember those silly Paul Bunyan tall tales you read as a kid? Not worth giving a second look, you say? Michael O'Rourke's essays explore natural world topics that aren't likely to spring to mind when you think "nature" or "environment." From urine-filled Dr Pepper bottles at a trashed-out campsite in Tennessee, to the almost universally mis-reported Tellico Dam/snail darter controversy in the 1970s, to El Tule, the tree with the largest trunk girth in the world, you'll find O'Rourke's essays as fun to read as they are eye-opening.

Between the Acts is the final novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1941 shortly after her suicide. This is a book laden with hidden meaning and allusion. It describes the mounting, performance, and audience of a festival play (hence the title) in a small English village just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Much of it looks forward to the war, with veiled allusions to connection with the continent by flight, swallows representing aircraft, and plunging into darkness. The pageant is a play within a play, representing a rather cynical view of English history. Woolf links together many different threads and ideas - a particularly interesting technique being the use of rhyme words to suggest hidden meanings. Relationships between the characters and aspects of their personalities are explored. The English village bonds throughout the play through their differences and similarities. (wikipedia.org)

The Waves, first published in 1931, is Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel. The 21st Century author and critic Becky Nordensten has described The Waves as a "beautiful novel with language and imagery unmatched in 20th Century English literature." In 1996, Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi released a solo piano album "Le Onde" based upon the novel.

Sean Ingrams style reminds me of The Palmwine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, one of the pioneers of African literature in Anglophone West Africa. His very witty use of symbolism is reminiscent of Beaudelaires Albatros and Les Fleurs Du Mal (Flowers of Evil). In fact, this collection challenges conventional thinking and writing, with its lexicon and syntax interestingly provocativeto put it mildly. Seans book, I strongly believe, must be carefully taken and read for what it truly is: A Beautiful Piece of Art! Dr. Dsir Baloubi, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English & Linguistics, Department of Humanities, Shaw University

A Clergyman's Daughter is a 1935 novel by English author George Orwell. It tells the story of Dorothy Hare, the clergyman's daughter of the title, whose life is turned upside-down when she suffers an attack of amnesia. It is Orwell's most formally experimental novel, featuring a chapter written entirely in dramatic form.

The chief object of this volume is to exhibit, in a manner acceptable to readers who are not specialists, the application of the principles and methods which guide investigations into popular traditions to a few of the most remarkable stories embodying the Fairy superstitions of the Celtic and Teutonic (Germanic ) peoples...

Flush: A Biography, an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933. It was Written after the completion of her emotionally draining The Waves, the work returned Woolf to the imaginative consideration of English history that she had begun in Orlando: A Biography, and to which she would return in Between the Acts...(wikipedia.org)

When we write, we also engage in conversations with other writers. The writers are expressing ideas, sharing opinions, working through problems, agreeing, and disagreeing. The writers of Why White Rice? embrace this idea fully but also move past just saying it: they demonstrate it through a book that is a conversation on writing---distinct and honest voices contending with one another, responding to each other, and working through problems. This book on writing comes from four community college teachers with different backgrounds and training (with contributions from students, as well) in a collection of voices that speaks directly to students and writers. It drops the pretense of traditional textbooks and talks honestly with students in a way that has them reading and responding in some surprising ways. Reading this book is like sitting down with that teacher who cared enough to tell it to you straight---to be honest with you. Even if it stung a little, you knew she was right and you listened. About the Authors The book features four authors---all community college teachers, all writers, but each with different training and backgrounds. Eric DeVillez holds an MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University, Tom Dow has a PhD in literature from Loyola University, Michael McGuire holds an MA in rhetoric and composition from Northeastern Illinois University, and Troy Swanson holds a PhD in community college leadership from Old Dominion University and holds a Masters of Library and Information Science from Dominican University. This blend of academic training and experience brings very different (and often competing) perspectives on writing, which adds to the lively conversation of the book itself. Pedagogy The book teaches by example. It models effective writing in a variety of ways while addressing the subject of writing itself. It models writing and research, quite literally, through a conversation of ideas. The text also features chapter summaries, focus boxes to highlight key points, and a comprehensive index to make it easy for readers to locate typical (and less typical) topics in writing as they are addressed throughout the conversation of the text. The book can be read in sequence from beginning to end, by chapter (in any order), or by writing topic as located through the table of contents and index. The brief response pieces are quite effective for classroom teaching as they seem to predict many questions, comments, and challenges raised by students. These response pieces are short enough to read in the classroom and offer a springboard to rich conversation.

From Augustine's "Confessions" to Augusten Burroughs's "Running with Scissors," from Julius Caesar to Ulysses S. Grant, from Mark Twain to David Sedaris, the art of memoir has had a fascinating life, and deserves its own biography. "As Yagoda says: 'Memoir has become the central form of the culture: not only the way stories are told, but the way arguments are put forth, products and properties marketed, ideas floated, acts justified, reputations constructed or salvaged. How did we come to this pass? The only way to answer that question is to go back a couple of thousand years and tell the story from the beginning, '" which is just what Yagoda does in this "excellent" history ("The Washington Post").

Fasten your seat belt for a crash course in careful usage.... Just like automobile accidents, accidents of style occur all over the English-speaking world, in print and on the Internet, thousands of times every day. They range from minor fender benders, such as confusing" their" and "there, " to serious smashups, such as misusing "sensual" for "sensuous" or writing "loathe "when you mean "loath."

Charles Harrington Elster shows you how to navigate the hairpin turns of grammar, diction, spelling, and punctuation with an entertaining driver's manual covering 350 common word hazards and infractions, arranged in order of complexity for writers of all levels. Elster illustrates these surprisingly common accidents with quotations from numerous print and online publications, many of them highly regarded---which perhaps should make us feel better: If the horrendous redundancy "close""proximity" and the odious construction "what it is, is" have appeared in "The New York Times, " maybe our own accidents will be forgiven. But that shouldn't keep us from aspiring to accident-free writing and speaking.

If you want to get on the road to writing well, "The Accidents of Style" will help you drive home what you want to say.

Professors Newell and Peterkin deal thoroughly with fundamental grammar skills often overlooked in legal writing textbooks. The chapters in this text cover everything that students should learn in legal writing from spotting issues, to finding and interpreting the law, to writing either an objective or persuasive document for their client or the court. Each chapter provides exhaustive treatment of the topic. The text also provides useful examples and exercises for the reader to test his or her understanding of the topic. The Journey to Excellence in Legal Writing not only contains a thorough explication of legal writing for first-year law students. Upper-level students, practitioners, and judges will also benefit from the instruction contained in these pages. Therefore, this book is the perfect tool for all who wish to learn and improve their legal writing skills. Through The Journey to Excellence in Legal Writing students and other readers will: Learn the differences between primary and secondary law, the doctrine of stare decisis, and the distinction between statutory law and case law. Become skilled at outlining rules in order to identify issues and craft issue statements properly. Gather knowledge to interpret statutes and apply case law to different factual scenarios. Use synthesis to compare court holdings and reasoning in fashioning a general legal principle. Be taught how to develop organizational skills and use grammatical rules appropriately. Be able to apply effective techniques in writing memoranda. Study the importance of ethics in correspondence to clients. Comprehend the power behind mediation and negotiations. Study the best ways to answer examination questions.

This anthology includes 19 essays about writing fiction, drama, nonfiction, and poetry, and on translation, editing, and many related topics, by Ardath Mayhar, Victor J. Banis, Charles Allen Gramlich, W. C. Bamberger, Charles Nuetzel, Robert Reginald, Y. Du Bois Irvin, Elliott D. Hammer, Damien Broderick, Michael R. Collings, Brian Stableford, John Howard Weeks, William Maltese, Francis Jarman, and Frank J. Morlock.

Titled De rerum natura in Latin, On the Nature of Things, written by Titus Lucretius Carus and translated by John Selby Watson, is an epic poem and philosophical essay in one. Written with the intent of explaining Epicurean philosophy to the Romans, the original poem was divided into six books and written in dactylic hexameter. The overarching principle in the book explains the human role in a universe ruled by chance. Notable is the absence of the gods the Romans depended upon; though LUCRETIUS invokes the goddess Venus in the poem's opening lines, he uses her merely as an allegory for sexual and reproductive power. Other themes throughout the poem include the nature of the soul and mind, why we sense and feel and think, principles of the void and atomism, the creation and evolution of the world, and celestial and terrestrial phenomena (and their differences). It tries to explain human life and purpose in a nutshell, or the nature of the Universe--a way for people to cope and understand in a confused and terrifying world. TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS (c. 99 BC - 55 Be was a Roman philosopher and poet. Very little is known about his life, and his only known work is the epic poem on Epicurean philosophy, On the Nature of Things. He dedicated the work to the famous Roman orator and poet Gaius Memmius, who may have been a friend, and it is thought that he may have died before he finished editing the poem, as it ends rather abruptly. The book's translator, JOHN SELBY WATSON (1804-1884), was a British translator and writer, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife in 1872.

Gene Minshall was born in Saco in the northeastern quadrant of Montana, a place that National Geographic has defined as "The Last Real America." Minshall claims that his birth home gave him an untainted perspective of the different cultures he would encounter and the business communities in which he would eventually live and work. After service in the Navy and a degree from the University of Montana, Minshall worked in television stations in Montana and Washington State, before ultimately landing at KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah. Serving as a reporter and producer as well as the writer and director of a score of documentaries exploring issues and interests of the day, he eventually became the news director of a rival station. There he directed the daily flow of information and worked with media consultants and management to increase ratings and viewer interest. Minshall is now an independent producer of highly acclaimed corporate videos and documentaries examining public issues and concerns. He is an honored Knight's Fellow for the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., and has accepted several lead foreign assignments. Because of his work with political and communication leaders Minshall was asked by the State Department to work with Third World media centers in order to help them be respectful and responsive to a public anxious to receive news without bias and propaganda. Minshall's goal is to help close the gap between what TV stations are promoting and what exactly is presented to their viewers. He laments media practices that work against fully informing the public and yet is the first to recognize the incredible contributions progressive news departments havemade. He admits his bias is in favor of the viewers and is anxious to have them receive news that is beyond the hand of management and consultants and more in tune with the nature and competent side of journalist. Gene hopes that his ideas as stated in this text may become a catalyst to encourage news departments to develop a guiding philosophy about their work and public obligations.

A book by G. K. Chesterton detailing a popular theme both in his own philosophy, and in Christianity, of the 'holy fool', such as in Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Cervantes' Don Quixote. This is a book in two parts. The first, "The Enigma of Innocent Smith," concerns the arrival of a new tenant at Beacon House, a London boarding establishment. Like Mary Poppins, this man (who is tentatively identified by lodger Arthur Inglewood as an ex-schoolmate named Innocent Smith) is accompanied by a great wind, and he breathes new life into the household with his games and antics. During his first day in residence the eccentric Smith creates the High Court of Beacon; arranges to elope with Mary Gray, paid companion to heiress Rosamund Hunt; inspires Inglewood to declare his love for Diana Duke, the landlady's daughter; and prompts a reconciliation between jaded journalist Michael Moon and Rosamund. However, when the household is at its happiest two doctors appear with awful news: Smith is wanted on charges of burglary, desertion of a spouse, polygamy, and attempted murder. The fact that Smith almost immediately fires several shots from a revolver at Inglewood's friend Dr. Herbert Warner seems to confirm the worst. Before Smith can be taken to a jail or an asylum, Michael Moon declares that the case falls under the purview of the High Court of Beacon and suggests that the household investigate the matter before involving the authorities or the press. The second part, "The Explanations of Innocent Smith," follows the trial. The prosecution consists of Moses Gould, a merrily cynical Jew who lives at Beacon House and considers Smith at best a fool and at worst a scoundrel, and Dr. Cyrus Pym, an American criminal specialist called in by Dr. Warner; Michael Moon and Arthur Inglewood act for the defense. The evidence consists of correspondence from people who witnessed or participated in the exploits that led to the charges against Smith. In every case, the defendant is revealed to be, as his first name states, innocent. He fires bullets near people to make them value life; the house he breaks into is his own; he travels around the world only to return with renewed appreciation for his house and family; and the women he absconded with are actually his wife Mary, posing as a spinster under different aliases so they may repeatedly re-enact their courtship. Smith is, needless to say, acquitted on all charges. Movie adaptation Dale Ahlquist (president of the American Chesterton Society and host of the EWTN series, G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense) is the executive producer of a motion picture version of Manalive. In 2006 he teamed up with screenwriter/producer/director, Joey Odendahl. They eventually formed Moonhunt Productions, and Manalive is to be their first feature. It will star Mark Shea as Innocent Smith and Kevin O'Brian as Professor Eames. As of 2009, the movie has completed filming and is in the post-production phase. (Wikipedia)

"The Writing Skill Builder for College Freshmen" is a one-of-a-kind hands-on student's companion to better collegiate writing. In comparison to other rhetorical pedagogy, it is a reader-friendly helper that targets specific weak areas of writing to help alleviate the frustration that a number of students encounter in college writing. It is specifically written to help learners who prefer a simpler book to improve their writing. Furthermore, the exercises provide a sense of familiarity to ensure immediate connection with phrasings. Brief lectures are included before each set and accompanied by a questioning approach to foster better understanding in correcting repetitive, fundamental errors crucial to success in academic writing. The passages included are selected with care not only to accommodate practice but also to teach valuable lessons in writing clearly to connect to real-world experience. To be also teacher-friendly, a few essay assignments are linked to certain exercises to correlate with Composition 101 course requirements.
Workbook Features:
- Targeted coverage of specific areas of weakness that are troublesome for students such as fragments, cliche comma splices, run-on sentences, noun-pronoun parallels, trite expressions, particular areas of grammar, etc.
- Minimal lecture with clear examples and explanations preceding each section
- A wide range of brief exercises with interesting assignments
- Answer keys with suggested revisions for all exercises
- On-the-spot A to Z access to informal words in standardized dictionaries that should be avoided in formal writing in and out of college
- An A to Z list of formal words and terminologies often misused
- A complement of present tense synonym replacements for "say" in alphabetical order to improve repertoire of words for more advanced usages, especially in literary and research essays
- Works Cited page in Modern Language Association format with 2009 updates
- A light-weight text that teachers will enjoy, too
Joy F. Beckford is an English teacher who writes from years of experience teaching in Caribbean and American classrooms. She is also a Sigma Tau Delta scholar with a Master's degree in English from State University of New York College at Brockport. Her forte is helping students become more comfortable with writing as they develop mastery of writing skills. Her passion and love for English are further reflected in another workbook entitled "Grade Nine Achievement Tests in English," which challenges high school students to prepare for college-level work. She has taught at all levels, including Monroe Community College in New York, and now teaches at Palm Beach State College in Florida.

The Watcher: Poems is the first collection of poetry from Agnes Eva Savich. In it you will find themes of urban alienation, mortality, love, motherhood, sensual eroticism, psychedelic journey & synaesthesia, music, and much more. The author states: "Welcome to my world, I hope you find some of your world in it."

Women, Writing, and Soul-Making: Creativity and the Sacred Feminine moves the reader to quiet depths, affirming what it is to embody and then write down one's truth. At once informative and inspirational, the book reveals its wisdom in layers, inviting the reader to return to it again and again. Millin delivers the profound message that women have access to a feminine approach to writing, one that differs from what they have been taught. When employed, this approach frees them from the fears and "shoulds" that have restrained their creativity. Although written primarily about the feminine and a woman's journey, men and women alike will find the book a guide to writing as a journey of the soul.

“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut

“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le Carré

Nothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can’t get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel García Márquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop belongs on every writer’s shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way.

Critics shudder at mixed metaphors like 'that wet blanket is a loose cannon', but admire 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player', and all the metaphors packed into Macbeth's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' speech. How is it that metaphors are sometimes mixed so badly and other times put together so well? In Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse, Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects. Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.

Winner of the MLA's Mina P. Shaugnessy Prize for an outstanding work in the fields of language, culture, literacy, or literature with strong application to the teaching of English.

Focusing largely on the controversial website Wikipedia, the author explores the challenges confronting teachers of college writing in the increasingly electronic and networked writing environments their students use every day. Rather than praising or condemning that site for its role as an encyclopedia, Cummings instead sees it as a site for online collaboration between writers and a way to garner audience for student writing.

Applying an understanding of Commons-Based Peer Production theory, as developed by Yochai Benkler, this text is arranged around the following propositions:

-- Commons-Based Peer Production is a novel economic phenomenon which informs our current teaching model and describes a method for making sense of future electronic developments.

-- College writers are motivated to do their best work when they write for an authentic audience, external to the class.

-- Writing for a networked knowledge community invites students to participate in making knowledge, rather than only consuming it.

-- A plan for integrating networked writing for an external audience helps students understand the transition from high school to college writing.

-- Allowing students to review and self-select points of entry into electronic discourse fosters "laziness," or a new work dynamic where writers seek to better understand their own creativity in terms of a project's demands.

"Lazy Virtues" offers networked writing assignments to foster development of student writers by exposing them to the demands of professional audiences, asking them to identify and assess their own creative impulses in terms of a project's needs, and removing the writing teacher from the role of sole audience.

Winner of the MLA's Mina P. Shaugnessy Prize for an outstanding work in the fields of language, culture, literacy, or literature with strong application to the teaching of English.

Focusing largely on the controversial website Wikipedia, the author explores the challenges confronting teachers of college writing in the increasingly electronic and networked writing environments their students use every day. Rather than praising or condemning that site for its role as an encyclopedia, Cummings instead sees it as a site for online collaboration between writers and a way to garner audience for student writing.

Applying an understanding of Commons-Based Peer Production theory, as developed by Yochai Benkler, this text is arranged around the following propositions:

-- Commons-Based Peer Production is a novel economic phenomenon which informs our current teaching model and describes a method for making sense of future electronic developments.

-- College writers are motivated to do their best work when they write for an authentic audience, external to the class.

-- Writing for a networked knowledge community invites students to participate in making knowledge, rather than only consuming it.

-- A plan for integrating networked writing for an external audience helps students understand the transition from high school to college writing.

-- Allowing students to review and self-select points of entry into electronic discourse fosters "laziness," or a new work dynamic where writers seek to better understand their own creativity in terms of a project's demands.

"Lazy Virtues" offers networked writing assignments to foster development of student writers by exposing them to the demands of professional audiences, asking them to identify and assess their own creative impulses in terms of a project's needs, and removing the writing teacher from the role of sole audience.