Elena Rainn

KRKY Y

Kyrsten Iris

Fede Bonino

_ eshago@uw.edu

Watashi Wa Jigabudesu

Roman Bryzhatiy

Karl Halmos-Westram

Timothy Galvin

Ljsly Bernard

Ruby Brown

Dimitri Nuri

'An act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief.'From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year's Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. A mother to two small girls, she started out as a blogger and has quickly built herself into a confidence-driven brand. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night. Seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, a security guard at their local high-end supermarket accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right.But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

'Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

A housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physique--which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon--until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room--and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face--to match her own.In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and, through it, find a way to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

This past week I was asked to read Gregory Michie's Holler if You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students for my Teaching of English in Diverse Social and Cultural Contexts course. Yes, it's a mouthful, but it's a great class!For those of you who haven't read it, Holler if You Hear Me is a series of anecdotes from Michie's 10 years teaching in inner-city Chicago, predominantly Mexican-American schools and the struggles he and his middle school students face: poverty, gang life, teen pregancy, and understaffed, unprepared schools--Michie originally applied for a position as a substitute and was offered a full-time position within a week, despite having no credentials. Right away, it probably conjures up images of Dangerous Minds, a correlation Michie and others have been quick to point out. However, where Holler sets itself apart from the Hollywood teacher-as-savior stories is in his failures as a teacher. His students don't all graduate, resist the call of the streets, and go to college. In fact, most of them don't.The purpose of Holler isn't to affirm budding teachers like me that we can "change the world"; it isn't even to show us what we're up against, though, arguably, it can do both of those things. It's purpose is give his students a voice. Each chapter begins with a short anecdote (usually a teaching moment but sometimes just a story) about his students, his school, or a fellow teacher. But each ends with an interview with a single-student related to that story. And it's here we learn about who these students are, their goals, where they're going, what they think about this or that. These are invaluable perspectives when our society is so often sold on "The Single Story" of inner-city schools. "They're all gang-bangers, drug-dealers, promiscuous, can't-be-taught-and-don't-want-to-learn"--when so often, the opposite is true. The result is that teachers, schools, and entire cities often give up on them before they've even been given a chance. So many of these children end up turning to the only lifestyle they're told they're suited for. And the cycle reinforces itself.As I mentioned earlier, this isn't a teacher-as-savior story, though it does have those moments. In an early chapter, Michie discusses an idea he has for teaching Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street to his Language Arts class, in hopes that the voice will capture his Latino students' attention. To help them get through it, he gets a group of older girls to record a dramatic reading for his class. What starts as one girl reading one excerpt becomes five girls recording multiple chapters for themselves in a kind of after-school book club. By the end of it, they're all so moved they decide to let Cisneros know in a letter, also inviting her to stop by the school if she's ever in town. And she does.I read The House on Mango Street at a time in my young adult life when I still didn't really know Mexican-Americans could be authors--Chicano literature would remain largely foreign to me until I started my Masters degree at New Mexico Highlands University. So, as for the "Mango girls", one line always stood out to me: "When you leave you must remember to come back for the others." It's appropriate then that one of those girls went on to college, became a teacher, returned to Michie's school, and sent students of her own off to college, too. So the book isn't devoid of hope, and if anything, it's a call to action.In the end, I'd recommend Holler if You Hear Me to any teacher. As my professor noted, it's also simply about the teacher as "other" to his students and how bridging that gap can make all the difference in an effective classroom.Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

A dachshund passes from oddball owner to oddball owner, whose radically dysfunctional lives are all impacted by the pooch.

A fable of innocence: thirteen-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a 'mom'. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibility. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it's hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again.

Things aren't going so well for Tommy Basilio. He lost his job because he "borrowed" money from the register, his girlfriend left him for his boss and is now pregnant, and he can't find work because of the incident. His life revolves around the Trees Lounge, a neighborhood bar over which he lives, full of the colorful eccentrics one finds in such places, like the estranged husband, or the old boozer drinking himself to death. He drunkenly wanders through his life, still in love with his ex, desperate for some sort of meaning beyond the bar, some sort of meaning to his life.

Three grown prodigies, all with a unique genius of some kind, and their mother are staying at the family household. Their father, Royal had left them long ago, and comes back to make things right with his family.

When a bumbling pair of employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to re-animate as they go on a rampage through Louisville, Kentucky seeking their favorite food, brains.

1985 American black comedy/zombie film directed by Dan O'Bannon

When Earth passes through the tail of Rea-M rogue comet, the machines come to life and start to kill mankind. A group of survivors is under siege from fierce trucks at the Dixie Boy truck stop gas station and they have to fight to survive.

Jake Scully comes home to find his girlfriend with another man and has to find a new place. In between his acting workshops and his job in a vampire B-movie, he scans the paper looking for anything. He happens to meet Sam Bouchard, a fellow actor who needs a house sitter. Both are pleased with the arrangement that will have Jake staying in the house and for a sweetener, Sam shows him his favorite neighbor, a well-built woman who strips with her window open each night. Jake becomes obsessed with meeting her and is able to help recover her purse from a thief, but shows his own phobia, he is incapacitated by claustrophobia when the thief runs through a tunnel. When Jake witnesses a murder, he finds out that the police love to pin crimes on peeping Toms. Jake discovers that here are just too many coincidences but must hunt them down himself without the police.

Obsessed with the idea of overcoming the obstacle of death and determined to vindicate himself by backing up his theory, the ambitious medical student, Herbert West, arrives in New England, after the horrific incident at the Institute of Medicine in Switzerland. Before long, Herbert will pick up where he left off--at first, experimenting with dead feline tissue, and then, with fresh human cadavers--talking his sceptic roommate, Dan Cain, into joining his audacious project. Inevitably, as the two young scientists burrow deeper and deeper into uncharted territories, the campus will start brimming with West's reanimated corpses, catching the eye of his arch-nemesis, Dr Hill, who yearns to take credit for this astounding discovery. The dead will rise again, even with a bit of help; however, can the young re-animator harness the power of his phosphorescent green reagent?

A mother and her two sons move to a small coast town in California. The town is plagued by bikers and some mysterious deaths. The younger boy makes friends with two other boys who claim to be vampire hunters while the older boy is drawn into the gang of bikers by a beautiful girl. The older boy starts sleeping days and staying out all night while the younger boy starts getting into trouble because of his friends' obsession.

1987 film by Joel Schumacher, Richard Donner

It's the last day of school at a high school in a small town in Texas in 1976. The upperclassmen are hazing the incoming freshmen, and everyone is trying to get stoned, drunk, or laid, even the football players that signed a pledge not to.

The real story behind the world of sales. This is a realistic portrayal of what it is to try making a life in high pressure sales with all its highs and lows; promises of fortunes and deliveries of dross. Red-leads and dead-leads are to blame for life's outcomes. Living with "Objection, Rebuttal, Close".

Halley lives with her six year old daughter Moonee in a budget motel along one of the commercial strips catering to the Walt Disney World tourist clientele outside Orlando, Florida. Halley, who survives largely on welfare, has little respect for people, especially those who cross her, it an attitude that she has passed down to Moonee, who curses and gives the finger like her mother. Although the motel's policy is not to allow long term rentals, Bobby, the motel manager, has made arrangements for people like Halley to live there while not undermining the policy as he realizes that many such tenants have no place to go otherwise. Halley, Moonee and Moonee's friends, who live in the motel or others like it along the strip and who she often drags into her disruptive pranks, are often the bane of Bobby's existence, but while dealing with whatever problem arises, Bobby has a soft spot especially for the children and thus, by association, their parents, as he knows that Moonee and others like her are just children acting like a children under whatever guidance they have, Moonee who has less guidance than most. Although there are some lines which he will not tolerate to be crossed, Bobby lets most of the disruptive things that they do go, largely as long as it does not affect the bread and butter of the motel, namely the tourist trade. The summer in this collective is presented, when Moonee and her friends, such as Scooty, are out of school and are left largely to their own devices while self-absorbed Halley does whatever she wants, often just staying in the room watching TV. Halley is supposed to look after Scooty, the son of Halley's friend Ashley, they who live in the unit immediately underneath Halley and Moonee's, while Ashley is at work at a local diner. In turn, Ashley pilfers cooked meals from the diner to feed Halley, Moonee and Scooty. Over the course of the summer, Halley systematically begins to alienate one by one the people who are her unofficial support by responding with that disrespect to anything she feels is against her. As such, Halley begins to take more and more extreme measures to maintain the life she leads with Moonee.

The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.

When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's disfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age.

Jane is a night club singer out of work. Robin is a quirky real estate agent looking for a ride-share to accompany her to Los Angeles. Her advertisement is answered by Jane, who at first was uncertain about her. A stop in Pittsburgh picks up a third, Holly, escaping a violent and drug dealing partner. Girls on the road, reaching understanding, respect, and care for each other. But this trio is different - Jane a lesbian, Robin suffering with AIDS, Holly running from her past, seeking one night stands, and a good man.

A man about forty years of age tells the story from when he was a teenager in upscale suburban Detroit of his and three of his friends' fascination with the mysterious and doomed Lisbon sisters. In 1974, the sisters were seventeen year old Therese, sixteen year old Mary, fifteen year old Bonnie, fourteen year old Lux, and thirteen year old Cecilia. Their fascination still remains as they try to piece together the entire story. The sisters were mysteries if only because of having a strict and overprotective upbringing by their father, who taught math at the girls' private co-ed school, and overly devout Catholic mother, who largely dictated the household rules. The story focuses primarily on two incidents and the resulting situations on the girls' lives. The first was an action by Cecilia to deal with her emotions over her life. And the second was the relationship between Lux - the sister who pushed the boundaries of the household rules most overtly in doing what most teenagers want to do - and Trip Fontaine, he who could have any girl he wanted but wanting solely Lux.

1999 American film directed by Sofia Coppola

A talented American graduate of Oxford, using his unique skills, and audacity, creates a marijuana empire using the estates of impoverished British aristocrats. However, when he tries to sell his empire to a fellow American billionaire, a chain of events unfolds, involving blackmail, deception, mayhem and murder between street thugs, Russian oligarchs, Triad gangsters and gutter journalists.

A regular girl, Veronica, tries to survive the social jungle of high school by sticking with the three most popular girls at school who are all called Heather. As she meets a sociopath named JD, her life spirals into a continuous cycle of hate, unintentional murder and indifference, as she exacts revenge on her enemies, also known as her best friends.

Canadian singer, songwriter and filmmaker (born 1945)

Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Within the course of one hour 5 stories are shown. None of these stories have any logical explanation, and some of them actually occurred. You are left to decide which of these stories, if any are fact, and which are fiction.

Similar in format to Serling's much more famous "Twilight Zone" series. Each week we get a new tale, represented by a painting in an old museum. Whereas the tales in "Twilight Zone" were more science fiction, these tales have a darker, more horrific edge.

The comedic story of middle school seen through the eyes of two 7th grade girls dealing with the awkwardness of being a teenager.

Follows the journeys of multiple characters over one term in an average Australian high school. Starring writer and performer Chris Lilley, the series documents the daily lives of teachers, students and staff. The characters take us through the seemingly huge traumas of friendship, staff politics, schoolwork and relationships that are the fabric of life in the school universe.

Jerri Blank is a 46-year-old "boozer, user and a loser" who tries to put her life back together again. The reformed runaway and addict returns to high school as a freshman, where she tries to fit in and act hip with girls 1/3 her age. Unfortunately, she hasn't quite shed her immoral background or acquired any ethics, and her bizarre family and frustrated schoolmates have trouble interacting with her.

Mark and Jez are a couple of twenty-something roommates who have nothing in common - except for the fact that their lives are anything but normal. Mayhem ensues as the pair strive to cope with day-to-day life.

Hank Hill, a propane gas salesman in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas, is often besieged by the idiosyncrasies of society, but finds some serenity in his home life with his wife, substitute Spanish teacher Peggy, his awkward son Bobby, and his live-in niece-in-law Luanne Platter. Adding flavor were Hank's friends, divorcé military barber Bill Dauterive, paranoid Dale Gribble (with an obsession with government conspiracy theories), and gibberish-spouting Boomhauer.

TV series about the life of Brendon Small, an eight-year-old visionary who, using his friends Jason and Melissa as actors, have managed to direct over a thousand homemade films. His parents are divorced, but it doesn't feel strange since so many other kids' parents are divorced. His friend Jason actually feels upset because his parents are still together. At school, he is taught soccer by his coach John McGirk, or as he calls him, "that weird Irish guy".

American adult animated television sitcom

A series of scary anthology stories based on the children's books by R.L. Stine. Series one was hosted by R.L. Stine for twelve episodes. The series covered many different types of scary tales, including ghosts, giant creatures, zombies, haunted houses, and much more. The success and popularity of Stine's books and this series, saw two feature mores in 2016 and 2018.

Canadian-American horror anthology television series.

Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time.

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SweetButthole

The professional and personal lives of those who work in advertising on Madison Avenue - self-coined "mad men" - in the 1960s are presented. The stories focus on those at one of the avenue's smaller firms, Sterling Cooper, and its various incarnations over the decade. At the heart of these stories is Donald Draper, the creative genius of the company. That professional creative brilliance belies the fact of a troubled childhood, one that he would rather forget and not let anyone know about except for a select few, but one that shaped who he is as an adult and as an ad man in the need not only to sell products but sell himself to the outside world. His outward confidence also masks many insecurities as evidenced through his many vices, such as excessive smoking, drinking and womanizing - the latter despite being a family man - and how he deals with the aftermath of some of the negative aspects of his life.

It's the 1980s and at McKinley High, there's two different groups of teenagers, the Freaks with cool and charismatic Daniel Desario and tomboy Lindsay Weir and the Geeks with Lindsay's shy younger brother Sam, gentle Bill Haverchuck, and self-proclaimed ladies' man Neal Schweiber. The show chronicles the normal teen/adolescence problems any teenager goes through including acceptance, drugs, drinking, and bullying.

American teen comedy-drama television series

HBO television sitcom about Larry Sanders, a talk-show host. This show goes 'behind-the-scenes' to reveal Larry's humorous interactions with the producers and guests.

tv show

A semi-fictionalized account of the early career of

A US research station, Antarctica, early-winter 1982. The base is suddenly buzzed by a helicopter from the nearby Norwegian research station. They are trying to kill a dog that has escaped from their base. After the destruction of the Norwegian chopper the members of the US team fly to the Norwegian base, only to discover them all dead or missing. They do find the remains of a strange creature the Norwegians burned. The Americans take it to their base and deduce that it is an alien life form. After a while it is apparent that the alien can take over and assimilate into other life forms, including humans, and can spread like a virus. This means that anyone at the base could be inhabited by The Thing, and tensions escalate.

Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like "Stay Asleep", "No Imagination", "Submit to Authority". Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued.

At the prestigious Mayflower Dog Show, a "documentary film crew" captures the excitement and tension displayed by the eccentric participants in the outrageously hilarious satire Best In Show. This biting send-up exposes the wondrously diverse dog owners who travel from all over America to showcase their four-legged contenders. Mild-mannered salesman Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy) and his vivacious wife, Cookie (Catherine O'Hara), happily prepare their Norwich Terrier, while shop owner Harlan Pepper (Christopher Guest) hopes his Bloodhound wins top prize. As two upwardly mobile attorneys (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock) anxiously ready their neurotic Weimaraner and an ecstatically happy gay couple (Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins) dote on their tiny Shih Tzu, inept commentator Buck Laughlin (Fred Willard) vainly attempts to provide colorful tidbits about each breed.

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