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Basil Street Blues: A Memoir

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393343138
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book Review Renowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past—guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives—gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccentric characters: a slow decline from English nobility on one side, a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry on the other. Fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of an Indian tea fortune permeate this wry, candid memoir, "part multiple biography, part autobiography, but principally an oblique investigation of the biographer's art" (New York Times Book Review). "[A] perfect example of a memoir that entrances me."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "[O]ne of the few [biographers] who can convey what makes ordinary as well as extraordinary mortals live in our minds."—Los Angeles Times

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir

Basil Street Blues: A Memoir PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393343138
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
"A wonderful offbeat memoir.... Holroyd has written perhaps his best book yet."—Ben Macintyre, New York Times Book Review Renowned biographer Michael Holroyd had always assumed that his own family was perfectly English, or at least perfectly ordinary. But an investigation into the Holroyd past—guided by old photograph albums, crumbling documents, and his parents' wildly divergent accounts of their lives—gradually yields clues to a constellation of startling events and eccentric characters: a slow decline from English nobility on one side, a dramatic Scandinavian ancestry on the other. Fires, suicides, bankruptcies, divorces, unconsummated longings, and the rumor of an Indian tea fortune permeate this wry, candid memoir, "part multiple biography, part autobiography, but principally an oblique investigation of the biographer's art" (New York Times Book Review). "[A] perfect example of a memoir that entrances me."—Katherine A. Powers, Boston Sunday Globe "[O]ne of the few [biographers] who can convey what makes ordinary as well as extraordinary mortals live in our minds."—Los Angeles Times

Basil Street Blues and Mosaic

Basil Street Blues and Mosaic PDF Author: Holroyd
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 009954895X
Category : Biographers
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Book Description
Michael Holroyd is one of the finest biographers of our time yet he wasn't interested in exploring his own family's history until the death of his parents.'Basil Street Blues' is part detective story, part family memoir & part an oblique voyage of self-discovery. In his follow-up volume, 'Mosaic', he delves deeper into his family history.

Basil Street Blues

Basil Street Blues PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393321746
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
Michael Holroyd is a distinguished biographer, but was never interested in exploring his own family's history until his parents died in the 1980s. This encouraged him to find out more about his parents, their stories, and their origins.

Basil Street Blues Book Club

Basil Street Blues Book Club PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: Orbit Books
ISBN: 9780356216621
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description


A Book of Secrets

A Book of Secrets PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429969210
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
A Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction book of 2011 A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction title for 2011 On a hill above the Italian village of Ravello sits the Villa Cimbrone, a place of fantasy and make-believe. The characters that move through Michael Holroyd's new book are destined never to meet, yet the Villa Cimbrone unites them all. A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West—these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world. Also on the margins is the elusive biographer, who on occasion turns an appraising eye upon himself as part of his investigations in the maze of biography. In A Book of Secrets, Holroyd gives voice to fragile human connections and the mystery of place.

Mosaic: A Family Memoir Revisited

Mosaic: A Family Memoir Revisited PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344304
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
A love story, a detective story, a book of secrets, a beautifully written journey into a forest of family trees. After writing the definitive biographies of Lytton Strachey and George Bernard Shaw, Michael Holroyd turned his hand to a more personal subject: his own family. The result was Basil Street Blues, published in 1999. But rather than the story being over, it was in fact only beginning. As letters from readers started to pour in, the author discovered extraordinary narratives that his own memoir had only touched on. Mosaic is Holroyd's piecing together of these remarkable stories: the murder of the fearsome headmaster of his school; the discovery that his Swedish grandmother was the mistress of the French anarchist Jacques Prévert; and a letter about the beauty of his mother that provides a clue to a decade-long affair. Funny, touching, and wry, Mosaic shows how other people's lives, however eccentric or extreme, echo our own dreams and experiences.

Memoirs of a White Pimp

Memoirs of a White Pimp PDF Author: Robert Kramer
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 9781413440003
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A White Pimp In this exotic and one-of-a-kind tale, Robert Kramer relates the story of his career as a White Pimp, one of few in the "Secret Society" underworld of whores and pimps where sex is exchanged for money. Sharing his story in intimate detail, Mr. Kramer begins with his childhood, when he is adopted by a controlling and self-centered woman and her husband whom thought they were unable to have children. He quickly comes to realize he is not wanted when they are surprised by the birth of their only son and makes his escape to Atlantic City, where he gets his start in the salacious and glamorous life of pimping. Traveling from Atlantic City to New York City and then to Philadelphia in the '70s and '80s, Mr. Kramer tells of his brushes with unstable or drug-addicted hookers, revenge-bent pimps and johns, and his constant dogging by law enforcement as he manages to keep himself and his girls one step ahead of being killed or jailed. Outlandish? Exaggerated? Impossible in today's world? You decide!

1,000 Books to Read Before You Die

1,000 Books to Read Before You Die PDF Author: James Mustich
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 1523504455
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 961

Book Description
“The ultimate literary bucket list.” —THE WASHINGTON POST Celebrate the pleasure of reading and the thrill of discovering new titles in an extraordinary book that’s as compulsively readable, entertaining, surprising, and enlightening as the 1,000-plus titles it recommends. Covering fiction, poetry, science and science fiction, memoir, travel writing, biography, children’s books, history, and more, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die ranges across cultures and through time to offer an eclectic collection of works that each deserve to come with the recommendation, You have to read this. But it’s not a proscriptive list of the “great works”—rather, it’s a celebration of the glorious mosaic that is our literary heritage. Flip it open to any page and be transfixed by a fresh take on a very favorite book. Or come across a title you always meant to read and never got around to. Or, like browsing in the best kind of bookshop, stumble on a completely unknown author and work, and feel that tingle of discovery. There are classics, of course, and unexpected treasures, too. Lists to help pick and choose, like Offbeat Escapes, or A Long Climb, but What a View. And its alphabetical arrangement by author assures that surprises await on almost every turn of the page, with Cormac McCarthy and The Road next to Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings, Alice Walker next to Izaac Walton. There are nuts and bolts, too—best editions to read, other books by the author, “if you like this, you’ll like that” recommendations , and an interesting endnote of adaptations where appropriate. Add it all up, and in fact there are more than six thousand titles by nearly four thousand authors mentioned—a life-changing list for a lifetime of reading. “948 pages later, you still want more!” —THE WASHINGTON POST

Life Writing

Life Writing PDF Author: Sara Haslam
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100015937X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
Life Writing offers the novice writer engaging and creative activities, making use of insightful, relevant readings from well-known authors to illustrate the techniques presented. This volume makes use of new versions of key chapters from the recent Routledge/Open University textbook, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings for writers who are specializing in life writing. Using their experience and expertise as teachers as well as authors, Derek Neale and Sara Haslam guide aspiring writers through such key writing skills as: writing what you know, investigating biography and autobiography, using prefaces, finding a form, using memory, developing characters, using novelistic, poetic and dramatic techniques. The volume is further updated to include never-before published interviews and conversations with successful life writers such as Jenny Diski, Robert Fraser, Richard Holmes, Michael Holroyd, Jackie Kay, Hanif Kureishi and Blake Morrison. Concise and practical, Life Writing offers an inspirational guide to the methods and techniques of authorship and is a must-read for aspiring writers.

The Arvon Book of Life Writing

The Arvon Book of Life Writing PDF Author: Sally Cline
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408124181
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Essential reading for anyone interested in writing biography or memoir, with practical advice from successful biographers and creative writing teachers.