Showing results for "My Studio" in Entertainment & Celebrity

Rajiv Surendra was filming Mean Girls, playing the beloved rapping mathlete Kevin Gnapoor, when a cameraman insisted he read Yann Martel's Life of Pi. So begins his "lovely and human" (Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy) tale of obsessively pursuing a dream, overcoming failure, and finding meaning in life.

Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant Career when she was only 16, intending for it to be the Australian answer to Jane Eyre. This thinly veiled autobiographical tale of a young girl hungering for life and love in the outback was so beyond its years when first released in 1901 that Franklin insisted it not be published again until 10 years after her death. My Brilliant Career is a coming of age story for all of the ages.

Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard exotic stories of the sophisticated life her mother, Nancy, led aboard cruise ships and in Australia. Nancy’s world of furs, jewels, cigarette holders, and handsome men seemed miles away from the west-coast hamlet of Cordova Bay, where Marion lived with her aunt and uncle, running wild on the beach with her friends and enjoying weekend visits with her devoted father. But things changed the year she entered her teens. First, a package from Nancy arrived in the maila gift of sexy lingerie.

Founded in 1960, the Denver Broncos took 13 years to achieve their first winning season. But since then, this indomitable team has catapulted to excellence. In this newly revised edition of Game of My Life - Denver Broncos, fans of past and present will relive the greatest moments of Mile High football through the eyes of the players themselves. Floyd Little shares the pride and joy of scoring a touchdown in his last game as a Bronco, and John Elway describes the glory of leading the Broncos to their first Super Bowl victory in 1998....

As a woman used to traveling and living the high life in Bangkok, Leanne Shirtliffe recognized the constant fodder for humor while pregnant with twins in Asia's sin city. But in spite of deep-fried bug cuisine and nurses who cover newborn bassinets with plastic wrap, Shirtliffe manages to keep her babies alive for a year with help from a Coca-Cola deliveryman, several waitresses, and a bra factory. Then she and her husband return home to the isolation of North American suburbia.

In 1990, the avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra arrived at Dartmouth to collaborate with the school's jazz band, where Michael Lowenthal - an anxious, 20-year-old senior - played trumpet. As rehearsals got underway and two musical worlds collided, Lowenthal struggled with the improvisation that Sun Ra's sparse, yet spiritual, melodies demanded. In this essay, Lowenthal recounts his "otherworldly" experience with the famous jazz star who claimed to be from Saturn.

David Morrell is best known for his acclaimed thrillers, including The Brotherhood of the Rose, Creepers, Murder as a Fine Art, and his debut novel, First Blood, in which Rambo first appeared. But Morrell is also a master of nonfiction. Twenty of his essays about iconic writers, actors, and singers are collected in Stars in My Eyes: My Love Affair with Books, Movies, and Music.

Bernard Malamud - the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such acclaimed works as The Fixer, The Natural, and The Assistant, peer to Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and an enduring literary influence - was a very private man. In this candid, loving, and beautifully written memoir, Malamud's daughter explores her renowned father's life and literary legacy, drawing from her own memories as well as from her father's letters and journals. An indispensable companion to Bernard Malamud's fiction, My Father Is a Book offers unique insight into the relationship between an author's life and art.

Pamela Des Barres, celebrated “queen of the groupies,” chronicled her adventures with rock stars in her bestseller I’m with the Band. This book picks up where that one left off, with Pamela embarking on marriage and motherhood, all the while sharing quarters and making friends with stars. But this is a survivor’s story about the anguish of coping with loved ones’ addictions, about suffering divorce, about the joys and terrors of raising a gifted son.

Alice Cooper is an American rock star whose career has spanned more than four decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, boa constrictors and baby dolls, Cooper has pioneered a grandly theatrical and violent brand of hard rock designed to shock.

Barely out of film school, Rob Long struck the jackpot and landed a job on the phenomenally successful TV sitcom Cheers. However, with the demise of the show, Long was faced with the question, "Is there life after Cheers?" Mercilessly witty about the daunting process of setting up a new series and getting it on air, these two audiobooks tell the absurd tale of what came next.

Growing up in a large Nigerian family in South London, Stephen K. Amos learnt early on to find the humour in every situation. Raised by his parents and extended family of 'aunts' and 'uncles', I Used to Say My Mother was Shirley Bassey tells the story of Stephen's chaotic upbringing in the carnival atmosphere of the late '70s and early '80s. Stephen describes his awkward beginnings as the only black kid in his class, where he told everyone his mum was Shirley Bassey to break the ice.

Nancy K. Miller describes her friendships with three well-known scholars and literary critics: Carolyn Heilbrun, Diane Middlebrook, and Naomi Schor. Their relationships were simultaneously intimate and professional, emotional and intellectual, animated by the ferment of the women’s movement. Friendships like these sustained the generation of women whose entrance into male-dominated professions is still reshaping American society. The stories of their intertwined lives and books embody feminism’s belief in the political importance of personal experience.

My Old Neighborhood Remembered is a lyrical remembrance of neighborhood life that has vanished from the culture. Best-selling author Avery Corman vividly recreates the vibrant, colorful neighborhood where he grew up - in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s. He recalls candy stores and bookmakers, egg creams and double feature movies, street games like stickball and Johnny- on-the-pony, school days of a different era, social mores that have disappeared.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal's Penses to Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Renata Adler's Speedboat to Proust's A Remembrance of Things Past) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his "ridiculous" ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs.

Warning: This book makes jokes about the Third Reich, the Reign of Terror, World War I, cancer, Millard Fillmore, and Chernobyl. When advertising legend Jim Riswold is stricken with leukemia and prostate cancer, he quits the business that made him famous to become a "fake artist", creating a controversial body of work with a controversial cast of characters, from Hitler to Mao to Kim Jong-Il. It was a decision that would save his life.

Jon Landau, the Academy Award–winning film producer behind Titanic, Avatar, Alita: Battle Angel, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and Dick Tracy, knew two things well: how to tell an unforgettable story, and how to find solutions. So, when he found himself confronting his fate, a diagnosis of improbable odds, he began to problem solve, ensuring that everything he learned behind the camera would live on after he was gone.

Born in 1940, one of eight children, Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America. Her father, a scholar in China, ran a laundry business and a gambling house in California; her mother, a doctor in China, helped with the laundry and worked in the fields. Maxine won scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley, where she returned to teach as Senior Lecturer in the Department of English.

At some point in our lives, most of us have been affected by caring adults whose advice, guidance, and example made a difference. In The Person Who Changed My Life, individuals who have distinguished themselves in their fields write about the men and women who served as their mentors.

This hilarious, startling biography of Phil Proctor, cofounder of the legendary satirical comedy group, the Firesign Theatre, is read by Phil and includes sound elements illustrating his work in comedy recordings, TV, film, and even the Broadway stage - with new moments recorded by Phil and added to the audiobook edition. Listen as Phil shares the unique moments of his life that led to these Grammy-nominated comedy albums, being a regular on the Rugrats, and a nightclub entertainer.