Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against philistinism and against ethical shallowness and indifference.

 Benjamin’s famous 'Work of Art' essay sets out his boldest thoughts--on media and on culture in general--in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought. This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin's explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.  This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the 'Work of Art' essay the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin's observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin's best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays--some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin's media theory can be fully appreciated. 

Benjamin, Walter Jennings, Michael W. Doherty, Brigid Levin, Thomas Y. - 2008

One of the world’s most celebrated art writers, John Berger takes us through centuries of art in this distinctive history that will enlighten and inspire. In Portraits, Berger connects art and history in revolutionary ways, from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to Randa Mdah’s work about contemporary Palestine. In his penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about art history, and artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. A beautifully illustrated walk through many centuries of visual culture from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.

From one of the most esteemed American poets of the twenty-first century comes a celebration of poetry and an invitation for anyone to experience its beauty and wonder.Full of fresh and exciting insights, Making Your Own Days illuminates the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry for those who read it and for those who write it—as well as for those who would like to read and write it better. By treating poetry not as a special use of language but as a distinct language—unlike the one used in prose and conversation—Koch clarifies the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens to the heart and mind while reading a poem. Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works from poets past and present. Lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery; each selection is accompanied by an explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text and to put pleasure back into the experience of poetry.

An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality” precisely because we experience hardly any.Most artistic movements are attempts to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. So, too, every artistic movement or moment needs a credo, from Horace’s Ars Poetica to Lars von Trier’s “Vow of Chastity.” Shields has written the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media who, living in an unbearably manufactured and artificial world, are striving to stay open to the possibility of randomness, accident, serendipity, spontaneity; actively courting reader/listener/viewer participation, artistic risk, emotional urgency; breaking larger and larger chunks of “reality” into their work; and, above all, seeking to erase any distinction between fiction and nonfiction.The questions Reality Hunger explores—the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real—play out constantly all around us. Think of the now endless controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the “real”: A Million Little Pieces, the Obama “Hope” poster, the sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, Robert Capa’s “The Falling Soldier” photograph, the boy who wasn’t in the balloon. Reality Hunger is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about “truthiness,” literary license, quotation, appropriation.Drawing on myriad sources, Shields takes an audacious stance on issues that are being fought over now and will be fought over far into the future. People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year.

In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."

The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"—not to mention an official Genius—a trade paperback original and his first nonfiction collection ever. George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is composed of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.

One of David Foster Wallace's most famous essays, now available as an eBook short.Beloved for his keen eye, sharp wit, and relentless self-mockery, David Foster Wallace has been celebrated by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. In this hilarious essay, originally published in the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, he chronicles seven days in the Caribbean aboard the m.v. Zenith. As he partakes in supposedly fun activities offered on the luxury tour, he offers riotous anecdotes and unparalleled insight into contemporary American culture.

In her lecture at M.I.T. in 1991, Camille Paglia remarked at the outset that she faced a dilemma on the occasion of that appearance. She was unsure about whether she should conduct herself as a lady or just be herself, since she undoubtedly had both friends and enemies in the audience. She reckoned that nobody came to see her perform as a lady so she would just be herself, as she put it, "...which is, you know, abrasive, strident, and obnoxious. So then you all can go outside and say, 'What a bitch!'"To which I would add, "What an erudite, mordacious, sexy and wonderful bitch; I am totally smitten." There are some mystic elements to her view of life but they pale in comparison to the complete intellectual package she so effectively presents to the culture.Like all truly serious intellectuals she has a historical perspective which she applies to her particular interests in art, sex and culture. She abhors, as many of us do, the degraded system of education in the United States from public school to the ivory towers of career academia. Paglia earned her chops by spending her time in libraries rather than schmoozing in faculty lounges or "sucking up" to the already tenured radicals and administrators.Camille Paglia makes a case for reform in education which would in the long run improve the field of aesthetics, which I personally find appealing. With a call to personal responsibility and ethics she also smacks down modern feminists with several deftly applied blows.There is much more in this collection of essays. If you are a fan of Madonna or Elizabeth Taylor this book will interest you. If you like rock music or remain confused about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy during the former's confirmation hearings you will appreciate Paglia's scathing comments. Her discussions of rape and the so-called "date-rape" issue, which so infuriated the feminist establishment, are so practical and tied to the reality of a sexually charged species that you may wonder why more writers do not have the guts to say it.I recommend this book of essays for the pleasure of erudition.

Ah, ma bon Camille...I stumbled across this title when I was reading other reviews on this site and I was charmed to find that I could glimpse, grunt a bit, and quietly murmur in that way known to the freakishly bookish "I read that."It was in undergrad. Such an undergrad type of book. Her style is all meathooks and dynamite. Not to say it wasn't salient- I still shudder and remove myself from engaging with the more dense and sci-fi sterile tomes of Frenchified Filosophy- "gunk" was the fun and bracing and refreshingly colloqial term she used. I have always enjoyed her insouciance. She's a whip-smart cultural critic when she's not trying to be uber edgy, provacative, obsterperously outrageous. It was exciting to read back when I was 18 or so, on a very radical, if solicitous and self-righteous campus, just coming into some buildungsroman awareness of the political myself, after painfully shedding religious terpitude. Paglia was the jolting breath of life to me, at that tender age when sex is more in the head than anywhere else. And it was a lot of fun, energizing indeed, to read her one woman kulturkampf against the squares and the prudes and the persnickities. She gave me a jolt of sugary, near-lucidating brain energy, maybe a really cold fanta for the burgeoning belletrist. It made me want to at least dream of being a provocative intellectual myself one day (one day! one day!) and stun the moneyed, literate booboise by talking about orgasms, Balzac, Bergman, and Led Zeppelin on a daytime talk show. I used to have a crush on her. Now she's more like a kooky old aunt I remember hanging out with before I left for summer camp. When I found out she was in Yale in the 70's in Bloom's class I asked a teacher I knew could be placed in the same milieu if he knew of her at all and he said with a certain kind of poky nonchalance that he did- he sat next to her in class, in fact. Wow. What was she like?"Wimpy little kissass."

During a vacation in Dinosaur Land, Princess Toadstool gets kidnapped, and a spell is cast on the inhabitants of the island. When they stumble upon Yoshi, a you...

Super Mario Galaxy 2, the sequel to the galaxy-hopping original game, includes the gravity-defying, physics-based exploration from the first game, but is loaded...

Rebirth is a randomly generated action RPG shooter with emphatic Roguelike elements. Following Isaac on his journey gamers discover bizarre treasures that chang...

Spelunky is a platformer with randomized levels that offer a unique and challenging experience each time you engage it. Journey deep underground and explore fan...

When Isaacs mother starts hearing the voice of God demanding a sacrifice be made to prove her faith, Isaac escapes into the basement facing droves of deranged e...

Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages...

Valve is working on a full-length sequel to its award-winning, mind-bending puzzle action game for the Xbox 360 and PC....

The game involves players creating and destroying various types of blocks in a three dimensional environment. The player takes an avatar that can destroy or cre...

Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox. Unlike regular games there aren't any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play. You spawn obje...

Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map. TF2 delivers new gametypes, a signature art style pow...

After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart.

In 2008 while rehearsing for a charity event, actor Joaquin Phoenix, with Casey Affleck's camera watching, tells people he's quitting to pursue a career in rap music. Over the next year, we watch the actor write, rehearse, and perform to an audience. He importunes Sean Combs in hopes he'll produce the record. We see the actor in his home: he parties, smokes, bawls out his two-man entourage, talks philosophy with Affleck, and comments on celebrity.

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.

Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time.

In German-occupied France, young Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the slaughter of her family by Colonel Hans Landa. Narrowly escaping with her life, she plots her revenge several years later when German war hero Fredrick Zoller takes a rapid interest in her and arranges an illustrious movie premiere at the theater she now runs. With the promise of every major Nazi officer in attendance, the event catches the attention of the "Basterds", a group of Jewish-American guerrilla soldiers led by the ruthless Lt. Aldo Raine. As the relentless executioners advance and the conspiring young girl's plans are set in motion, their paths will cross for a fateful evening that will shake the very annals of history.

Since birth, a big fat lie defines the well-organised but humdrum life of the kind-hearted insurance salesman and ambitious explorer, Truman Burbank. Utterly unaware of the thousands of cleverly hidden cameras watching his every move, for nearly three decades, Truman's entire existence pivots around the will and the wild imagination of the ruthlessly manipulative television producer, Christof--the all-powerful TV-God of an extreme 24/7 reality show: The Truman Show. As a result, Truman's picturesque neighbourhood with the manicured lawns and the uncannily perfect residents is nothing but an elaborate state-of-the-art set, and the only truth he knows is what the worldwide television network and its deep financial interests dictate. Do lab rats know they are forever imprisoned?

Nineteen year old Andrew Niemann wants to be the greatest jazz drummer in the world, in a league with

Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and animal lover and pet store clerk Lotte Schwartz are just going through the motions of their marriage. Despite not being able to earn a living solely through puppeteering, Craig loves his profession as it allows him to inhabit the skin of others. He begins to take the ability to inhabit the skin of others to the next level when he is forced to take a job as a file clerk for the off-kilter LesterCorp, located on the five-foot tall 7½ floor of a Manhattan office building. Behind one of the filing cabinets in his work area, Craig finds a hidden door which he learns is a portal into the mind of

Much to his surprise, timid Joel Barish is shocked to discover that the love of his life, sparky Clementine, has had him erased from her memory. To pay her back in the same coin, poor Joel summons up the courage to undergo a painless but intricate medical procedure to do the same, utterly unaware that darkness is an essential part of the light. Now, as hurt and angry Joel's ugly recollections of Clementine gradually fade away, giving way to a soulless black void, suddenly, he begins having second thoughts, toying with the idea of stopping the irreversible process. In the end, is ignorance really bliss?

When "the dude" Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.

This movie recounts the adventures of M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune - all against the backdrop of a suddenly and dramatically changing continent.

Drowning his sorrows after that botched mission during WWII, the traumatised former fighter pilot with a fear of flying, Ted Striker, still hasn't got over his old flame and flight attendant, Elaine Dickinson. Determined to win her back, Ted boards a domestic flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, only to come face-to-face with a severe case of in-flight food poisoning that is threatening everyone's lives. Now, with most of the passengers and the entire cockpit crew down with the food-borne illness, Striker has no other choice but to confront his inner demons and take over the control of the ungovernable aircraft with the help of a gruff air-traffic controller and his former commander. Can Ted land the plane and save them all?

1980 film directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker

The lead character, called 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, who, on the day of their wedding rehearsal was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill (with the assistance of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad). Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby. The saga of Kill Bill Volume I begins.

The murderous Bride is back and she is still continuing her vengeance quest against her ex-boss, Bill, and taking aim at Bill's younger brother Budd and Elle Driver, the only survivors from the squad of assassins who betrayed her four years earlier. It's all leading up to the ultimate confrontation with Bill, the Bride's former master and the man who ordered her execution!

Max Fischer is a precocious 15-year-old whose reason for living is his attendance at Rushmore, a private school where he's not doing well in any of his classes, but where he's the king of extracurricular activities - from being in the beekeeping society to writing and producing plays, there's very little after school he doesn't do. His life begins to change, however, when he finds out he's on academic probation, and when he stumbles into love with Miss Cross, a pretty teacher of the elementary school at Rushmore. Added to the mix is his friendship with Herman Blume, wealthy industrialist and father to boys who attend the school, and who also finds himself attracted to Miss Cross. Max's fate becomes inextricably tied to this odd love triangle, and how he sets about resolving it is the story in the film.

Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can't get a moment's peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea. While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left. An autobiographical film of Fellini, about the trials and tribulations of film making.

A love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

"2001" is a story of evolution. Sometime in the distant past, someone or something nudged evolution by placing a monolith on Earth (presumably elsewhere throughout the universe as well). Evolution then enabled humankind to reach the moon's surface, where yet another monolith is found, one that signals the monolith placers that humankind has evolved that far. Now a race begins between computers (HAL) and human (Bowman) to reach the monolith placers. The winner will achieve the next step in evolution, whatever that may be.

American singer-songwriter and actor (born 1949)

British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

American singer-songwriter, author and poet

British musician and lead guitarist of the Beatles (1943-2001)

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Ignatz Mouse

So, lately I’ve been in a bit of an aggressive, combative mood... like I’ve been picking fights, or hoping that someone will instigate an argument so I can verbally “cut a bitch.” I’ve even gone so far as to go out in public* with the hope that someone will be rude to me, so I’ll have an excuse to lash out. I know I probably sound like a lunatic, and maybe I am. I probably need to be in Rageaholics Anonymous (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkQ9uy...) or at the very least, I should be sedated. Anyway, none of my usual victims have been willing to engage with me... so I sought refuge in a trashy book I suspected I probably wasn’t going to like. I hate it when I’m right. (OK, not really, but for once I wanted to be wrong.)This book originally piqued my interest because of its purported similarity to the HBO TV show Girls, and also because Mary Gaitskill is scheduled to appear at a local college in a couple of weeks for a reading/book signing. For these reasons I decided to step outside of my admittedly narrow comfort zone, and give this a try. So, what started out as a mild distaste with a pinch of schadenfruede eventually devolved into a full on hate-read. For the uninitiated, the hate-read, which is analogous to its more ubiquitous and slutty cousin, the hate-fuck, is an activity wherein one disseminates written content with the distinct objective of deriding it. (http://jezebel.com/5876891/the-art-of...) For me, this activity is normally limited to certain websites I peruse on the internet (e.g., xojane, jezebel, the NY Times style section, obscene chewing, the comments in Above the Law). Thus, I have never hate-read an actual book, until this one.So let’s get to a substantive discussion of the stories, shall we? Gaitskill is perhaps best known for her short story Secretary, which is featured in this collection - and was made into a movie starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenahaal. I don’t have anything to say about that story, because I didn’t actually read it. I got about half way through the collection, and couldn’t escape the feeling of déjà vu. I realized that the same two stories kept repeating themselves interchangeably. Dig it: depressive, college-educated, bohemian, aspiring writer, becomes a prostitute and her favorite client falls in love with her. Hilarity ensues. Then there’s its inverse: depressive, married, middle class, john falls in love with his favorite prostitute. Tragedy ensues. Then there’s also, the depressive, college-educated, bohemian, aspiring writer in an abusive relationship with a total prick, disguised as an S&amp;M relationship. Humiliation ensues. You get the idea. Even in those descriptions, I feel like I’m giving Gaitskill too much credit. The stories were dull, trite, and meaningless. And I feel like the elements of promiscuity, drugs, sex, S&amp;M, were all included merely as a gimmick;** or to provide some shock value as a distraction from what amounts to truly bad writing. To wit: 	“I love you,” said Sara.	“It’s not real,” he said. “It’s puppy love.”	“No. I love you.” She nuzzled his cheek with her nose and lips and her tenderness pierced him.	The image became tiny and unnaturally white, was surrounded by darkness, then faded like the picture on a turned off TV.	Come back.I can’t emphasize enough how contrived the above referenced elements felt. I couldn’t escape the feeling that Gaitskill’s intention in adding the S&amp;M, prostitution, etc. elements, was for attention,*** because few women writers were addressing these kinds of themes at the time (this was published in 1988). Twenty-four years later, these themes fail to raise an eyebrow, (although they did elicit many an eyeroll), leaving the stories feeling flat and meaningless. So I didn’t finish. Not even the shreds of gratification received from hate-reading could save this. These stories left me feeling empty and mean.* a rarity for me -- I rarely leave the house willingly. I find the outside world too depressing.** the entire time I was reading this, this song was in my head on a loop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFRSaw...*** and Gaitskill loves attention. Any woman that shows up to read an excerpt from one of her books, braless, is dying for attention. Not that I haven’t done that in the past. But the difference is I was 19 years old when I would pull those cheap stunts. OK... maybe 23. My point is, although some women may be susceptible to stooping to such vulgar bids for attention, most have the sense to grow out of it.

In these ten glittering short stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its living wrestling alligators in a theme park; and little girls sail away on crab shells. Filled with stunning inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduces a radiant new writer.

Composed in the last two years of Bolaño's life, 2666 has been greeted as his greatest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness,beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters include academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student caring for her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the desert sprawl of Santa Teresa--a fictional Juárez--on the US-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared. Audacious, impassioned and profoundly inspired, 2666 is Roberto Bolaño’s masterwork.

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