Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. In The Stone Diaries, one of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, Carol Shields weaves the strands of Daisy’s life together in a rich, sensuous, and poignant work that delivers lasting insights into the nature of life—and fiction.
The Al-Batin Diaries are the intimate record of a year spent by William Bryant in a remote military base in Saudi Arabia where he was assigned to produce basic medical texts for Saudi students. King Khaled Military City is a world without women populated by young Third World construction workers whose lives and desperate sexual practices are described in detail, along with those of Saudis and other Arabs. The journals are full of notes for the comic erotic novel that Bryant is writing at the same time, the text of which is included in the second part of the book.
When he turned sixty-five, playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary in which he reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Bringing together the four parts of The Smoking Diaries (The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette, and Coda) this beautiful volume is filled with comedy and serious reflection, sharp observation and painful self-disclosure. A brilliant and moving account of life's unsteady progress, it takes the reader to the heart of one man's brilliant struggle towards some kind of personal truth.
When he turned sixty-five, the playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary: not a careful honing of the day's events with a view to posterity but an account of his thoughts as he had them, honestly, turbulently, digressively expressed. The Smoking Diaries was the result, in which one of Britain's most beloved and original writers reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Few diarists have been as frank about themselves, and even fewer as entertaining.
What dangers do runaway demigods Luke and Thalia face on their way to Camp Half-Blood? Are Percy and Annabeth up to the task of rescuing stolen goods from a fire-breathing giant who doesn''t take kindly to intruders? How exactly are Leo, Piper, and Jason supposed to find a runaway table, dodge a band of party-loving Maenads (who just might be a little psychotic), and stave off a massive explosion...all in one hour or less? With his trademark wit and creativity, Rick Riordan answers these questions and more in three never-before-seen short stories that provide vital back-story to the Heroes of Olympus and Percy Jackson books. Original art, enlightening character interviews and profiles, puzzles, and a quiz add to the fun in this action-packed collection.
Hermann Ludwig von Löwenstern (1777-1836), as a younger son of the landed gentry in Estonia, had no prospects of being given an estate, i.e. a means of livelihood in his homeland. Therefore, at the age of 15 he entered Russian naval service. In 1797 while in England, he began keeping detailed diaries during the English sailors’ revolt and continued them until leaving the Russian navy in 1815 to marry and take over estates in Estonia. From England in 1799, he sailed to Gibraltar, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, and the Crimea. He describes how the Russians saved Turkish sailors in Palermo and suggests that the Russians might have caught Napoleon fleeing Egypt if the Russian admiral had acted. In 1801, he traveled overland from the Crimea to St. Petersburg to obtain the Tsar’s permission to leave Russian service and try to enter French service. Since he was no sycophant like others he met in Napoleonic Paris, he gave up trying to enter French service and spent his time visiting the sights of Paris, including Napoleon inspecting his troops, and had a love affair with his innkeeper. He then returned to Estonia by way of Berlin, where he learned of the coming Russian voyage around the world. (A translation of his diary from this voyage has been published by the University of Alaska Press). Therefore, this translation is of his diaries from before and after the voyage around the world. His diaries were never submitted to Russian censorship so they contain his personal feelings and impressions of events around him. He wrote freely without censoring himself and seems often to have used his diaries as a relief value for his frustrations and anger with his government, superiors, fellow officers, and the citizens of the various ports where he served.
Two days before Christmas 2013, former MP Denis MacShane entered one of Europe's harshest prisons. Having pleaded guilty to false accounting at the Old Bailey, he had been sentenced to six months in jail. Upon arrival at Belmarsh Prison, his books and personal possessions were confiscated and he was locked in a solitary cell for up to twenty-three hours a day. Denis was the latest MP condemned to serve as an example in the wake of the expenses scandal. Written with scavenged pens and scraps of paper, this diary is a compelling account of his extraordinary experiences in Belmarsh and, later, Brixton. Recording the lives of his fellow prisoners, he discovers a humility and a willingness to admit mistakes that was conspicuously lacking in his former colleagues at the House of Commons. Woven into the narrative are thought-provoking reflections on a range of important topics, from the waning of public confidence in MPs - and the high-profile termination of his own political career - to the failings of the British judicial system. Above all, Prison Diaries reveals what life as a prisoner in Britain is really like, addressing issues such as rising inmate numbers, dehumanising conditions, high incarceration rates, lack of rehabilitation and an endemic political disinterest. This honest and fascinating diary is both a first-hand insight into the current prison system and a report on how it simply does not work.
