Other books that might interest you

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  It's a Wonderful Life - (stage...

  Mary Elliott Nelson

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  'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.'
  Christmas Eve, 1946, Bedford Falls. Down-on-his-luck banker George Bailey feels life has passed him by, and he's at the end of his rope.
  But when George's guardian angel pays him a visit, he's amazed to discover what life in his beloved town would be like without him. Maybe it's a wonderful life, after all?
  Based on the critically acclaimed Frank Capra movie, Mary Elliott Nelson's reimagining is a joyful story of love, hope and community.
  Commissioned by New Perspectives Theatre, It's a Wonderful Life has been produced around the UK, including a revival in 2023 at Reading Rep Theatre. Written for four actors, but suitable for many more, it offers other theatre companies a heartfelt adaptation of a much-loved classic to charm and delight audiences – at Christmas or any other time of the year!

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  Venus and Adonis - One of the...

  William Shakespeare

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  Despite William Shakespeare being regarded as the most significant figure in the Western literary canon, relatively little is known about his early life and his later ‘lost years’.  Even the exact date of his birth is uncertain. 23rd April generally accepted to be the date of his birth, could be a scholarly mistake amplified by the coincidence of it also being the date of his death.  
   
  What is known for certain is that Shakespeare was born to middle class, but probably illiterate parents, John and Mary, in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1565 and baptised there on the 26th April.  He was the third of eight children and the first and eldest surviving son of the remaining five.  
   
  It’s assumed he attended, King’s New School the nearby grammar school, but no records from the time still exist.  However, information on the standardised curriculum that did exist, introduced the young Shakespeare to the disciplines of mathematics, Greek, law, classical history and Latin which greatly influenced his writing. 
   
  At 18, in some haste, he married Anne Hathaway, his senior by 8 years and pregnant with their first child Susanna who was to be followed by the twins, Hamnet and Judith.   Little else is known until in 1590 Shakespeare probably comes to London as by 1592 he becomes relatively well known – first as an actor and then, of course, as a playwright despite some early criticism for having a writing style of his better educated contemporaries and not of his own lower status.  
   
  His iconic status now spans global literature and stems directly from the magnitude of his plays, both tragedies and comedies, and his poetry which is often cited as some of the greatest love poetry ever written.  His legacy endures despite the passing of centuries. 
   
  William Shakespeare died at Stratford-upon-Avon on the April 23rd, 1616.  He was 52.

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  The Snow Globe

  Jenny Pagdin

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  The Snow Globe is Jenny Pagdin's powerful, sensitive and stark debut collection. Written from first-hand experience, under the glass dome of postpartum psychosis, her poetry depicts a fearsome, glittering inner storm of severe mental illness during new motherhood, moving through illness, through snow flurry and sunshine, to a place of recovery and love.
  Threaded through this book are illuminating and courageous poems that settle and unsettle in equal measure. They cluster moth-like around spiritual and mythical figures, unravelling and remaking themselves with needlework and yarn, threaded along shorelines and under starry night skies. Jenny Pagdin's skilful and attentive use of a variety of forms reflects multiple and jarring realities – with poems dancing their own chaotic, fragmented and strange glinting beauty towards resolution.

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  170 Chinese Poems

  Arthur Waley

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  A selection of the very best of Chinese poetry over the course of a thousand years, from 100 years before Christ was born up of the middle ages. Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese poetry are still the benchmark by which such translations are held, nearly two hundred years after he introduced the west to the wonder of classical Chinese poetry.Includes Waley's interpretations of poems originally by Altun, Fu Hsüan, Ch‘U Yüan, Ch’ēn Tzŭ-Ang, Ch’ēng-Kung Sui, Ch’ien Wēn-Ti, Ch’in Chia, Ch’ü Yüan, Chan Fang-Shēng, Chang Tsai, Chi K’ang, Hsieh T’iao, Hsü Ling, Li Fu-Jēn, Li Po, Liu Hsün’s Wife, Lu Yu, Lu Yün, Miu Hsi, Ou-Yang Hsiu, Pao Chao, Po Chü-I, Po Hsing-Chien, Su Tung-P’o, Sung Yü, T’ao Ch’ien, Tao-Yün, Ts’ao Chih, Ts’ao Sung, Tsang Chih, Tso Ssŭ, Tzŭ-Yeh, Wang Chi, Wang Chien, Wang Wei, Wei Wēn-Ti, Wu-Ti, Yüan Chen, Yüan Chieh, &Yüan-Ti

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  The Sun Also Rises

  Ernest Hemingway

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  The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. However, Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work", and Hemingway scholar Linda WagnerMartin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print. 
    
  The novel is a roman à clef: the characters are based on real people in Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events, particularly Hemingway's life in Paris in the 1920s and a trip to Spain in 1925 for the Pamplona festival and fishing in the Pyrenees. Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation"—considered to have been decadent, dissolute, and irretrievably damaged by World War I—was in fact resilient and strong. Hemingway investigates the themes of love and death, the revivifying power of nature, and the concept of masculinity. His spare writing style, combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, demonstrates his "Iceberg Theory" of writing. 
   

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  Slow Sailing

  Uroš Zupan

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  Uroš Zupan (1963) is one of Slovenia's most prominent contemporary poets and he has made his mark on Slovenian poetry of the past 30 years. Slow Sailing presents the author's own selection of the best of his best. This collection, which covers a period of more than two dozen years, is both personal and stern, since the author deals with his own poetry. From his delving into the golden age of his individual past to a sensuous hymn to soft summer light and the miracle of life that does not exist without the arts, Slow Sailing invites us to discover and re-discover one of post-independence Slovenia's most distinctive poetic voices, while also offering a unique insight into Slovenian poetry at the turn of the millennium.
  
  The greatest Slovenian poet of the middle generation, his work has not been translated much (and not at all into English); the book is already part of the Slovenian canon and contains Zupan's own selection of his finest poems. He is already included in school literature curricula.

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