Other books that might interest you

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  Paint my Name in Black and Gold...

  Mark Andrews

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  Leeds, 1980. Amid the violence and decay, the city was home to an extraordinarily vibrant post-punk scene. Out of that swamp crawled the Sisters of Mercy. Over the next five years, they would rise from local heroes to leading alternative band, before blowing apart on the verge of major rock stardom.
  Their path was strewn with brilliant singles, astonishing EPs, exceptional album tracks and legendary live shows. Two classic line-ups were created and destroyed: Andrew Eldritch on vocals, Craig Adams on bass, Gary Marx and Ben Gunn – later replaced by Wayne Hussey – on guitars, and a drum machine called Doktor Avalanche.
  Hussey and Adams styled themselves as the Evil Children and played hard both on and off the stage; neither Gunn nor Marx were natural rock 'n' roll animals, but the latter performed with such abandon that it was hard to believe he also wrote the Sisters' most delicate and beautiful music. Eldritch was the most peculiar and compelling of them all, a singular and mesmerising amalgam of T. S. Eliot and David Bowie who staked a powerful claim to be the greatest rock star of his generation. 
  Drawing on dozens of interviews with band members and key figures in the Sisters' journey, Paint My Name in Black and Gold is the most complete account yet of how – against the odds and all reasonable expectation – these young men came to make transcendent and life-changing music.

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  Bohemians - A Very Short...

  David Weir

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  The Romantic myth of Bohemia originated in the early nineteenth century as a way of describing the new conditions faced by artists and writers when the previous system of aristocratic patronage collapsed in the wake of the Age of Revolution. Without the patron system, the artist was free to move around, to seek an audience wherever fortune beckoned. This marketing model likening the artist's vagabond career to the "gypsy" life helps to explain part of the bohemian myth, but not all of it. Most bohemians have scant interest in commercial gain and are not so itinerant after all, confining their movements to down-market urban neighborhoods where the rent is cheap and the morals are loose. 
   
   
   
  This Very Short Introduction traces the myth of Bohemia through its various fictional manifestations, from Henry Murger's novel Scenes of Bohemian Life and Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème to Aki Kaurismäki's film La vie de Bohème and Jonathan Larson's musical Rent. It goes on to examine the history of different bohemian communities, including those in the Latin Quarter of Paris and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York. David Weir also considers the politics of Bohemia and traces the careers of the artists Gustave Courbet and Pablo Picasso and the great chanteuses Yvette Guilbert, Fréhel, and Edith Piaf in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris.

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  The Written World - Essays &...

  Kevin Power

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  Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even – perhaps especially – when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivation is disappointed idealism. Critics are people who love art and who hate to see it traduced. Hence the critic's sempiternal cry: You're doing it wrong. What the critic wants is for you to do it better.
  Since 2008, acclaimed novelist Kevin Power has reviewed almost three hundred and fifty books. Power declares, 'Even now, cracking open a brand-new hardback with my pencil in my hand, I feel the same pleasure, and the same hope. That's the great secret: every critic is an optimist at heart.'
  Art that thinks and feels at the same time – 'good art' – requires explication. The writing of criticism in response to such art is an activity that has taken place since Aristotle first sat down to figure out what made tragedy work. It is in the pursuit of this question – what makes good art 'good' – that Kevin Power found his vocation. During a ten-year stint as a regular freelance reviewer for the Sunday Business Post, Power fell in love with the writing of criticism, and with the reading of it, too, particularly by talented novelists who review books on the side. His conclusion is that criticism is absolutely an art. But it is never more so than when practiced by an actual artist.
  These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning of Greta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, represent a decade's worth of thinking about books; a record of the author's attempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinks criticism is. It begins and ends with a long personal essays, 'The Lost Decade', written especially for this collection, about his mental and writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and his decade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Power are connected by a theme – this is a book about writing, seen from various positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.

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  The National's Boxer

  Ryan Pinkard

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  We all know the Boxer. The fighter who remembers every glove but still remains. That grisly, bruised American allegory who somehow gets up more times than he’s knocked down. This is the fight that nearly broke The National. The one that allowed them to become champions.Released in 2007, The National’s fourth full-length album is the one that saved them. For fans, Boxer is a profound personal meditation on the unmagnificent lives of adults, an elegant culmination of their sophisticated songwriting, and the first National album many fell in love with. For the band, Boxer symbolizes an obsession, a years-long struggle, a love story, a final give-it-everything-you’ve-got effort to keep their fantasy of being a real rock band alive.Based on extensive original interviews with the fighters who were in the ring and the spectators who witnessed it unfold, Ryan Pinkard obsessively reconstructs a transformative chapter in The National’s story, revealing how the Ohio-via-Brooklyn five-piece found the sound, success, and spiritual growth to evolve into one of the most critically acclaimed bands of their time.

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  Botanical Prints in Linocut - An...

  Laura Sowerby

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  This practical guide is for lovers of plants, colour, design and print. Richly illustrated, it explains the full process of making a linocut, from sketch to finished print. It shows how to design with native hedgerow plants or lush garden favourites, whether for small intimate prints or impressive large-scale wallpaper. Written with the author's natural passion and illustrated with her beautiful work, this book is an inspiring guide for all printmakers whatever their experience or ambitions.

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  Fears

  Disney

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  Growing Up Stories brings together beloved Disney characters and a ton of fun, providing a new way to teach kids about positive traits. These simple stories highlight social-emotional skills like bravery, responsibility, and honesty, making it easy for young ones to grasp these important lessons.  Fear is a natural instinct for humans, but what's important is knowing how to face it and take control. That's exactly what Goofy will teach his nephew.

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