Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a tearaway and former reform school boy, on a series of journeys that takes them from New York to San Francisco, then south to Mexico. Hitching rides and boarding buses, they enter a world of hobos and drifters, fruit-pickers and migrant families, small towns and wide horizons. Adrift from conventional society, they experience America in the raw: a place where living is hard, but ‘life is holy and every moment is precious’.With its smoky, jazz-filled atmosphere and its restless, yearning spirit of adventure, On the Road left its mark on the culture of the late 20th century, influencing countless books, films and songs. Kerouac’s prose is remarkable both for its colloquial swing and for the pure lyricism inspired by the American landscape – ‘the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy’. This Folio Society edition is illustrated with evocative photographs of Kerouac and the landscapes of 1950s America. Now acknowledged as a modern classic, On the Road remains a thrilling and poignant story of the road less travelled.

Totally rewritten 19th May 2013.Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, this book describes corruption and imperial bigotry. Although this was Orwell's first book and no doubt based in part on his experiences in his first job as a policeman in Burma, his talent is already fully developed, the writing is superb, the characterisations rounded and lively. Another of his stories from this time and location is also a favourite of mine, Shooting an ElephantBurmese Days is essentially all about a load of unlikeable, vapid people who belong to an extremely boring club where nothing happens except occasional arguments and a lot of drinking. Now why would anyone want to be a member of a club like that? Because it is a colonial society where the whites run everything and the native people, no matter what their status in the local community, have no overt power and can't even get into a club full of stupid men whose only attribute is that they are white, the ruling class. But if they could get in, then they would have power by association.The club is told they have to elect one local member. Two men try to get in. One, the honest and straightforward Dr. Veraswami, tries to get his good friend, John Flory, an English timber merchant and the main character, to use his influence on the club members. But Flory, a rather unattractive character who isn't prejudiced but is weak and so won't support the good doctor against the club members he so thoroughly dislikes but, because of race and class, identifies with. The other man, the slimy, sociopathic U Po Kyin,is prepared to wreck Veraswami's character and livelihood and see many lives be ruined and people die just in order to put himself in such a position that he becomes the only possible candidate. Then there is the love interest, another shallow, dislikeable character who can't attract anyone back home so she's been sent husband-shopping into a place where any single white woman is a rare orchid. Even her. I read the book very tongue in cheek because I also live in a colonial society (but I am either beyond the pale or have the right credentials depending on what side you are on, as I married into a local, black family. A top political family at that). The thing for locals to get into is the yacht club and the local rescue association, neither of which admit locals unless they are top politicians or lawyers and therefore useful or at least, best not offended. But as political power on the island is all in black hands, the snobbery of the yacht club is ignored but the racism noted.A while back, one of the islands, a private island resort, the sort you can helicopter into, wouldn't let blacks in as guests. The only ones there were the workers, none in managerial or even supervisory positions. A government minister sailed his very impressive 60' yacht there, anchored and dinghied to the beach. The beach staff (black, of course, but from poorer islands, so they didn't recognise him) wouldn't let him stay, told him it was against management policy, didn't believe he owned the yacht and threw him off.The following week, the island was quite suddenly sold to a company with quite different policies. Result! Now we can all sail up for free on their guest ferry for Sunday lunch (reasonable price, but the price of the drinks...) or a very pleasant, if expensive dinner, hanging out with the millionaires and pretending to be one for the day. Everyone is welcome.But what happened to the club in India, to the service organisations in the Caribbean? They are all run by posh locals now who apply their own rules for membership. Sometimes they are generous and everyone is welcome, but sometimes they continue the inherited snobbery and racism of the club founders, just from the other side not being any more liberal than their predecessors. We have the girls who come husband-shopping too. Admin staff and secretaries they are looking for white guys far from home who might go out with but would never marry a local girl and so they are the rare orchids with a two year plan contract in which to snag their man and a modified version of Jane Austen's first line in Pride and Prejudice as their mantra, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a banker or accountant in possession of an obscenely large salary must be in want of a white wife."Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose*.Read 2012. Review rewritten 2013 and 2015. Maybe next year too. *(view spoiler)[The more things change, the more they stay the same (hide spoiler)]

The most important philosophical work of the 20th century, and a text whose influence will still be felt for some centuries to come, I am willing to reckon. Even if you are one of the many detractors, the fact remains that it is simply an outstanding monument to man's ability to think deeply, freshly, terrifyingly, and poetically about himself. Heidegger's main focus is on Being ; what does it MEAN to be? This is of course an old question, stemming from the days of Aristotle, but Heidegger is foremost a phenomenologist (i.e. 'To the phenomena themselves') and therefore refuses any recourse to anything that is outside the scope of what is immediately apparent in the one thing that human beings often overlook, that is to say, human existence itself. This means that the scope of ambition of Heidegger's project is staggering ; he intends to determine WHAT a human being IS, by HOW it is ; and this means that he not only takes on a nearly 2000-year-old philosophical tradition, but also a nearly 2000-year-old deeply embedded conception of what a human being is (and by extension, what a human being should be). It is a provocative assault, which may account for the polarizing reactions that Heidegger seems to evoke. But this also means that Being and Time is a primordially 'humane' book, for it was Heidegger who truly brought the existentialist consciousness to the fore of our developing consciousness as a species. Make no mistake, this is still hard-core philosophy, but it is a book about the many banalities of the average human life, and thus, about the many hidden profundities of the average human life. Appreciate Heidegger's phenomenal (see what I did there) insight into the human condition, and you will never look at life, time, the world, concern, other people, a hammer, language, reality, and death in the same way again. Now for the mandatory words of warning. This book is DIFFICULT. But it is difficult in the way the ending stages of a hard-fought chess game is difficult ; Being and Time' may be difficult, but it is NOT 'boring'. Stick with it, make the effort, and you will not be disappointed. You may even (as happened to me) slowly neglect the other distractions of your life and set aside a solid block of time to tackle the text (for me, 3 months), and not even be aware of anything like a sacrifice being made. You just feel like you've decided to venture a few steps deeper into the rabbit hole, is all. And with regards to the language, I actually love the language in 'Being and Time', leave alone finding it something to rail against. It has a kind of an austere beauty to it, a kind of 'mathematical poetry' if you will. For those who complain that Heidegger could have said what he wanted to say in 'easier' language, the answer is that, NO he could not have. Since his project was a radical rethinking of the nature of human existence, he needed a radically new vocabulary to describe the stages of his project. The usual words like 'soul', 'consciousness', and even 'human being' are too embedded in the tradition he is attacking, and have too much baggage. Once you appreciate this, and read the text with 'fresh eyes', then you appreciate the hidden intricacies of his language, as well as to the depths he takes these new terms too. And finally, this is most definitely not a book that a casual reader can 'dip into' ; this is hardcore philosophy that was meant to overthrow another philosophical tradition. So, these would (in my opinion) be the absolute prerequisites before any reader wishes to pursue 'Being and Time' ; 1)A general knowledge of philosophy and the history of philosophy, and at least a surface-level knowledge of what the major philosophers of the Western tradition had to say about life, the universe and everything. This is important, because this tradition represents 'substance metaphysics' or 'the metaphysics of presence' which Heidegger attacks throughout the entire text ; (these terms simply mean the positing of some kind of unit of 'stable timelessness' that 'stands behind' or 'hangs over' human existence, be it the 'soul', 'consciousness', 'God', 'Atman', 'Will', 'Forms' or what have you). A good introductory book on philosophy should do the trick, and in my knowledge, Will Durant's 'The Story of Philosophy' is still the best way to go, though of course, any equivalent book which goes over the main 'theme' of Western philosophy should do the trick2)An intuitive understanding of Nietzsche. His influence is present throughout the text of 'Being and Time', because he is the 'bad boy' cousin of Heidegger's who sounded the death knell of traditional philosophy ; a project which Heidegger systematizes, enhances, and pursues. Since Nietzsche is primarily a poet and a cultural critic rather than an actual philosopher (in addition to being a superb writer) a quick crash course of reading his main works (The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, and if you can stomach the overblown prose, Zarathustra) would do you good here. 3)A good guide to Being and Time ; predictably, for a work of such complexity and importance, several guides have sprung up of varying quality. The one I used was Gelvin's 'Commentary' which is clear, friendly, excited, and straightforward. Everything that you need. 4)A surface understanding of phenomenology ; a Wikipedia search should do the trick, or any such introductory article. If you're seriously gung-ho then 'An Introduction to Phenomenology' by Sokolowski will ground you more than you strictly need to be grounded. And that's it, you're ready to go. This is not a book that you can read once, and I wonder if 'read' is even an appropriate word. For the same reason that you do not 'read' Finnegans Wake, but 'experience' it as if it wasn't a book but a sentient entity which would get insulted if you labelled it as a book, I think the same would go for 'Being and Time'. It is a profound exploration of the most primordial questions a man can ask about anything, and as such, it demands a steady commitment of your time, energy, your curiosity, and the latent profundities that lie within you and which will be awakened as you thumb through the master piece that is 'Being and Time'.

Austerlitz, the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by “one of the most gripping writers imaginable” (The New York Review of Books), is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, one Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, the fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, he follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.

In reasoned progression he outlined core psychoanalytic concepts, such as repression, free association and libido. Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey.Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions.Newly designed in a uniform format, each new paperback in the Standard Edition opens with a biographical essay on Freud's life and work —along with a note on the individual volume—by Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History at Yale.

Why are we here, what's it all about? The Monty Python team is trying to sort out the most important question on Earth: what is the meaning of life? They do so by exploring the various stages of life, starting with birth. A doctor seems more interested in his equipment than in delivering the baby or caring for the mother, a Roman Catholic couple have quite a lot of children because "every sperm is sacred". In the growing and learning part of life, Catholic schoolboys attend a rather strange church service and ditto sex education lesson. Onto war, where an officer's plan to attack is thwarted by his underlings wanting to celebrate his birthday, and an officer's leg is bitten off by presumably an African tiger. At middle age, a couple orders "philosophy" at a restaurant, after which, the movie continues with live organ transplants. The autumn years are played in a restaurant, which, after being treated to the song "Isn't It Awfully Nice to Have a Penis?" by an entertainer, sees the arrival of an extremely fat man. He can eat a lot, but also throw up quite copiously. The Grim Reaper brings for the final stage of human life, death, a visit to a mansion, where the people are rather interested in him. But life doesn't stop at death. It's onto heaven, where it's always Christmas.

1983 musical-sketch comedy film by the Monty Python team

College student Jeffrey Beaumont returns to his idyllic hometown of Lumberton to manage his father's hardware store while his father is hospitalized. Walking though a grassy meadow near the family home, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear. After an initial investigation, lead police Detective John Williams advises Jeffrey not to speak to anyone about the case as they investigate further. Detective Williams also tells Jeffrey that he cannot divulge any information about what the police know. Detective Williams' high school aged daughter, Sandy Williams, tells Jeffrey what she knows about the case from overhearing her father's private conversations on the matter: that it has to do with a nightclub singer named Dorothy Vallens, who lives in an older apartment building near the Beaumont home. His curiosity getting the better of him, Jeffrey, with Sandy's help, decides to find out more about the woman at the center of the case by breaking into Dorothy's apartment while he knows she's at work. What Jeffrey finds is a world unfamiliar to him, one that he doesn't truly understand but one that he is unable to deny the lure of despite the inherent dangers of being associated with a possible murder. Still, he is torn between this world and the prospect of a relationship with Sandy, the two who are falling for each other, despite Sandy already being in a relationship with Mike, the school's star football player.

A two-segment look at the effect of the military mindset and war itself on Vietnam era Marines. The first half follows a group of recruits in boot camp under the command of the punishing Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. The second half shows one of those recruits, Joker, covering the war as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, focusing on the Tet offensive.

1987 war drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick

Recidivist hold-up man H.I. McDonnough and police woman Edwina marry, only to discover they are unable to conceive a child. Desperate for a baby, the pair decide to kidnap one of the quintuplets of furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona. The McDonnoughs try to keep their crime secret, while friends, co-workers and a feral bounty hunter look to use Nathan Jr. for their own purposes.

Beyond being in the same class at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, Claire Standish, Andrew Clark, John Bender,

1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino

Set in 1882 in the American west, Albert is a lowly farmer with a nice girlfriend. But when she leaves him for the more successful and handsome owner of a moustachery store, Albert returns to his lonely daily life of trying to avoid death. Then the mysterious Anna rides into town and captures Albert's interest and heart, but with her deadly husband in town, Albert is going to have to become the western gun-slinging hero he never was. It won't be easy because there are a million ways to die in the west.

This movie follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer for Capitol Pictures in the 1950s, who cleans up and solves problems for big names and stars in the industry. But when studio star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears, Mannix has to deal with more than just the fix.

Thirty years after the events of Blade Runner (1982), a new Blade Runner, L.A.P.D. Officer "K" (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former L.A.P.D. Blade Runner, who has been missing for thirty years.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the 1960s, as a young boy and girl fall in love they are moved to run away together. Various factions of the town mobilize to search for them and the town is turned upside down - which might not be such a bad thing.

American guitarist, singer and songwriter (1942–1970)

An English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor

New Zealand singer-songwriter (born 1996)

German-Canadian-British singer-songwriter

What would it be like if the Allied Powers had lost WWII, and Japan and Germany ruled the United States?

American dystopian alternate history television series

A nightly talk show, hosted by various presenters, featuring interviews with celebrity guests, comedy sketches and highlights from the news.

Comedy drama about the final days of mankind. Mild-mannered Slough Bank Manager Jamie (Mathew Baynton) is in a rut - albeit a very organized one - consumed by grief for his missing wife. All of that soon changes, however, when he's arrested on suspicion of cyber terrorism and realizes that, somehow, he must have an identical twin, and that his mum Paula (Pauline Quirke) has some serious explaining to do. Halfway around the world in New Mexico, unassuming librarian Rhonda (Jenna Fischer) enters a maximum-security prison for a crime she didn't commit, and reluctantly falls under the wing of unhinged white supremacist Leanne (Megan Mullally). At the Vatican, meanwhile, foul-mouthed rebel Priest Father Jude (Rob Lowe) interviews the beautiful Sister Celine (Gaia Scodellaro) for a role in his office of the Devil's Advocate. These are just some of the eclectic and seemingly unconnected characters whose lives will start to intersect in the most unexpected ways as news breaks that a comet is on an unavoidable collision course towards Earth and will hit in just thirty-four days. Some of them are destined to make it to a bunker deep beneath the suburbs of Slough and, as a result, will become the hugely unlikely (and, frankly, somewhat unsuitable) future of mankind.

British-American science fiction comedy-drama miniseries

Stephen Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of THE LATE SHOW on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015. The comedy-variety-talk show is broadcast five nights a week from the Ed Sullivan theater in New York.

One of the most unique and visible comedic voices on television is coming to TBS in Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Breaking up late-night's all-male sausage fest, this new show from the longtime Daily Show correspondent will feature Samantha's nuanced view of political and cultural issues, her sharp interview skills and her repartee with world leaders.

American late-night talk and news satire television program that airs on TBS

Series is based on what Maria has accepted to be "her life." The occasionally surreal episodes, refracted across multiple periods of the actor/comedian's life, tell the story of a woman who loses - and then finds - herself.

An actress raises her three daughters while juggling the pressures of working in Hollywood and being a single parent.

In this weekly show, the former Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj brings his unique comedic voice and storytelling skill to explore the larger grim trends shaping our fragmented world.

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.

Starting on CNBC in 1997 and changing to MSNBC in 1999, Chris Matthews asks the tough questions in gut-renching political and social debates with celebrity and non-celebrity guests.

A sketch-comedy series that parodies life in Portland, Oregon.

All In with Chris Hayes is political television program hosted by

Jerry Seinfeld stars in this television comedy series as himself, a comedian. The premise of this sitcom is Jerry and his friends going through everyday life, discussing various quirky situations, to which we can all relate (especially if we live in New York City). The eccentric personalities of the offbeat characters who make up Jerry's social circle contribute to the fun.

The curious, adventure-seeking, fourth grade group of 10 year old boys, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, all join in in buffoonish adventures that sometimes evolve nothing. Sometimes something that was simple at the start, turns out to get out of control. Everything is odd in the small mountain town, South Park, and the boys always find something to do with it.

Meet the wildly dysfunctional Bluth family. This family was once at the height of real estate development in Orange County, California. But when the family business - the Bluth Company - goes bust, they're suddenly found penniless with their assets frozen. They move into their last remaining asset - the model home left over from their latest housing tract. Their luxury vehicles are replaced with a reminder of the family's former wealth: 'the stair car that accompanied their private jet'. The patriarch of the family is George Bluth - he's now in prison, and loving every minute of it. His wife Lucille and daughter Lindsay are spoiled socialites who can't handle getting kicked out of family restaurants. His son Buster is in his mid 30's and lives at home. His son George Oscar Bluth is a magician who started a group to get magicians to be taken seriously, and gets kicked out when his own tricks are revealed. Lindsay is married to a man named Tobias Funke, once a psychiatrist, who decides to become an actor. The only sane member of the family: Michael Bluth, along with his son George Michael, want nothing to do with the family business. But one bizarre circumstance after another keeps Michael and George Michael from leaving their eccentric family.

music

movies

shows

books

games

Active tastebuds