Strange Fascination

Strange Fascination

Author: David Buckley

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 1448132479

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The Sunday Times bestseller. David Bowie was arguably the most influential artist of his time, reinventing himself again and again, transforming music, style and art for over five decades. David Buckley's unique approach to unravelling the Bowie enigma, via interviews with many of the singer's closest associates, biography and academic analysis, makes this unrivalled biography a classic for Bowie fans old and new. This revised edition of Strange Fascination captures exclusive details about the tours, the making of the albums, the arguments, the split-ups, the music and, most importantly, the man himself. Also including exclusive photographic material, Strange Fascination is the most complete account of David Bowie and his impact on pop culture ever written.


The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

Author: David Arnold

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-05-21

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0425288870

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"As he did in his fantastic debut Mosquitoland, David Arnold again shows a knack for getting into the mind of an eccentric teenager in clever, poignant fashion." —USA Today This is Noah Oakman → sixteen, Bowie believer, concise historian, disillusioned swimmer, son, brother, friend. Then Noah → gets hypnotized. Now Noah → sees changes: his mother has a scar on her face that wasn’t there before; his old dog, who once walked with a limp, is suddenly lithe; his best friend, a lifelong DC Comics disciple, now rotates in the Marvel universe. Subtle behaviors, bits of history, plans for the future—everything in Noah’s world has been rewritten. Everything except his Strange Fascinations . . . A stunning surrealist portrait, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is a story about all the ways we hurt our friends without knowing it, and all the ways they stick around to save us.


The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor

The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor

Author: Amy Alznauer

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 1592703437

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“I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” —Flannery O’Connor When she was young, the writer Flannery O’Connor was captivated by the chickens in her yard. She’d watch their wings flap, their beaks peck, and their eyes glint. At age six, her life was forever changed when she and a chicken she had been training to walk forwards and backwards were featured in the Pathé News, and she realized that people want to see what is odd and strange in life. But while she loved birds of all varieties and kept several species around the house, it was the peacocks that came to dominate her life. Written by Amy Alznauer with devotional attention to all things odd and illustrated in radiant paint by Ping Zhu, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor explores the beginnings of one author’s lifelong obsession. Amy Alznauer lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog, a parakeet, sometimes chicks, and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Ping Zhu is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients big and small, won some awards based on the work she did for aforementioned clients, attracted new clients with shiny awards, and is hoping to maintain her livelihood in Brooklyn by repeating that cycle.


The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things

Author: Michel Faber

Publisher: Hogarth

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0553418858

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A monumental, genre-defying novel that David Mitchell calls "Michel Faber’s second masterpiece," The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents. It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us. Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.


David Bowie

David Bowie

Author: Eoin Devereux

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1317754492

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David Bowie: Critical Perspectives examines in detail the many layers of one of the most intriguing and influential icons in popular culture. This interdisciplinary book brings together established and emerging scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds, including musicology, sociology, art history, literary theory, philosophy, politics, film studies and media studies. Bowie’s complexity as a singer, songwriter, producer, performer, actor and artist demands that any critical engagement with his overall work must be interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in its scope. The chapters are organised around the key themes of ‘textualities’, ‘psychologies’, ‘orientalisms’, ‘art and agency’ and ‘performing and influencing’ in Bowie’s work. This comprehensive book contributes a great deal to the study of popular music, performance, gender, religion, popular media and celebrity.


Savage Appetites

Savage Appetites

Author: Rachel Monroe

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1501188895

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A “necessary and brilliant” (NPR) exploration of our cultural fascination with true crime told through four “enthralling” (The New York Times Book Review) narratives of obsession. In Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe links four criminal roles—Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. From a frustrated and brilliant heiress crafting crime-scene dollhouses to a young woman who became part of a Manson victim’s family, from a landscape architect in love with a convicted murderer to a Columbine fangirl who planned her own mass shooting, these women are alternately mesmerizing, horrifying, and sympathetic. A revealing study of women’s complicated relationship with true crime and the fear and desire it can inspire, together these stories provide a window into why many women are drawn to crime narratives—even as they also recoil from them. Monroe uses these four cases to trace the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. Combining personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the 20th and 21st centuries, Savage Appetites is a “corrective to the genre it interrogates” (The New Statesman), scrupulously exploring empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of crime.


Fascination

Fascination

Author: David Hinds

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2016-02-08

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1909394246

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May 1968. Paris is awash with violence and public unrest. In a small cinema, where a surreal film is showing, another riot is taking place. Here, the enraged audience smashes up the auditorium, tear out the seats, and chase the film’s director onto the street. This is the premiere of Jean Rollin’s feature debut, The Rape of the Vampire. An outsider of French cinema, Rollin’s films are unique and dreamlike. They offer tales of mystery and nostalgia, obsolescence and seductive female vampires with a thirst for blood and sex. It is a cinema at once strange, evocative and deeply personal. Funding his own projects, Rollin defiantly made the films he wanted to make and in so doing created a fantastique genre unlike any other. The Nude Vampire, The Living Dead Girl and The Grapes of Death are among those films now celebrated as the work of an auteur, one who confounds preconceived notions of ‘Eurotrash’ cinema. This book is devoted to the director and all his work, across all genres, including a nascent French hardcore pornographic film industry. Written with full co-operation from Jean Rollin, shortly before his death in 2010, it contains exclusive interviews and archive material.


Fascinate

Fascinate

Author: Sally Hogshead

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-01-21

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0061966169

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A newly revised and updated edition of the influential guide that explores one of the most powerful ways to attract attention and influence behavior—fascination—and how businesses, products, and ideas can become irresistible to consumers. In an oversaturated culture defined by limited time and focus, how do we draw attention to our messages, our ideas, and our products when we only have seconds to compete? Award-winning consultant and speaker Sally Hogshead turned to a wide realm of disciplines, including neurobiology, psychology, and evolutionary anthropology. She began to see specific and interesting patterns that all centered on one element: fascination. Fascination is the most powerful way to capture an audience and influence behavior. This essential book examines the principles behind fascination and explores how those insights can be put to use to sway: • Which brand of frozen peas you pick in the case • Which city, neighborhood, and house you choose • Which profession and company you join • Where you go on vacation • Which book you buy off the shelf Structured around the seven languages of fascination Hogshead has studied and developed—power, passion, innovation, alarm, mystique, prestige, and alert—Fascinate explores how anyone can use these triggers to make products, messages, and services more fascinating—and more successful.


Strange Magic

Strange Magic

Author: Syd Moore

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-05-04

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1786070995

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Rosie Strange doesn't believe in ghosts or witches or magic. No, not at all. It’s no surprise therefore when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money and run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There’s the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for old bones, those of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. And there’s curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can’t decide if he’s tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating. It all adds up to looking like her plans to sell the museum might need to be delayed, just for a while. Finding herself and Sam embroiled in a most peculiar centuries-old mystery, Rosie is quickly expelled from her comfort zone, where to her horror, the secrets of the past come with their own real, and all too present, danger as a strange magic threatens to envelope them all.


Bowie

Bowie

Author: Christopher Sandford

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2009-08-05

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0786750960

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Based on interviews with family members, colleagues, lovers, and the previously silent William Burroughs, this unsparing yet evenhanded biography guides the reader through the many personas, crises, and musical metamorphoses of David Bowie—also known as Davy Jones, the Laughing Gnome, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, a drug-addled grandfather of punk, actor, art aficionado, political activist, one of rock's most resonant icons, and a totem of modern pop culture. Nowhere else is the man and musician so convincingly deconstructed and so compellingly humanized.