Charley Owens is content with her life. She has her super-organized job, her super-clean apartment, her long-time friends, and her cats. That’s all she needs after the crumbling of her twenty-five-year relationship, even if her friends keep trying to set her up with someone new. But when she meets the handsome and aloof Joanna, she’s forced to reevaluate what it is she wants, and maybe what’s been missing... Everything seems to be going well until Charley’s ex-wife, Tricia, calls with devastating news and Charley’s hope for a quiet life is overturned. While trying to take care of Tricia, Charley is determined to get Joanna to take a chance on her. But is she ready to take one herself?
The slime mould Physarum polycephalum was a source of explosive growth of bioengineered hybrid sensing and computing devices in the past decade. Being in its vegetative state, the plasmodium, the slime mould configures its protoplasmic network to optimize its geometry with relation to patterns of attractants and repellents.The slime mould’s adaptability, polymorphism and aestheticism inspired artists and architects. The slime mould has been seen as a self-conscious liquid form continuously changing its shape in response to external stimulation and due to interactions of thousands of micro-oscillators in its body. Elusiveness is a magic feature of the slime mould. One moment the slime mould gives you a solution to a mathematical problem by a shape of its body, next moment it changes its shape and the solution ,disappears.Slime Mould in Arts and Architecture presents a set of unique chapters written by leading artists, architects and scientists, which resulted from creative translations of the slime mould behaviour into forms and sounds, unconventional investigations and sensorial experiences and the slime mould ability to remove boundaries between living and artificial, solid and fluid, science and arts. The book gives readers unique tools for designing architectural forms and creative works using the slime mould, understanding how pro-cognitive living substrates can be used in everyday life, it sparks new ideas and initiates further progress in many fields or arts, architecture, science and engineering.
This book allows philosophers, literary theorists, and education specialists to come together to offer a series of readings on works of children's literature. Each of their readings is focused on pairing a particular, popular picture book or a chapter book with philosophical texts or themes. The book has three sections--the first, on picturebooks; the second, on chapter books; and the third, on two sets of paired readings of two very popular picturebooks. By means of its three sections, the book sets forth as its goal to show how philosophy can be helpful in reappraising books aimed at children from early childhood on. Particularly in the third section, the book emphasizes how philosophy can help to multiply the type of interpretative stances that are possible when readers listen again to what they thought they knew so well. The kinds of questions this book raises are the following: How are children's books already anticipating or articulating philosophical problems and discussions? How does children's literature work by means of philosophical puzzles or language games? What do children's books reveal about the existential situation the child reader faces? In posing and answering these kinds of questions, the readings within the book thus intersect with recent, developing scholarship in children's literature studies as well as in the psychology and philosophy of childhood.
In October 2003, Patti Digh's stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later. The timeframe made an impression on her. What emerged was a commitment to ask herself every morning: What would I be doing today if I had only 37 days left to live? The answers changed her life and led to this new kind of book. Part meditation, part how-to guide, part memoir, Life is a Verb is all heart. Within these pages—enhanced by original artwork and wide, inviting margins ready to be written in—Digh identifies six core practices to jump-start a meaningful life: Say Yes, Trust Yourself, Slow Down, Be Generous, Speak Up, and Love More. Within this framework she supplies 37 edgy, funny, and literary life stories, each followed by a “do it now” 10-minute exercise as well as a practice to try for 37 days—and perhaps the rest of your life.
'Glorious – funny and wry and wise, and utterly its own lawmaker' Robert Macfarlane 'A rich, strange, oddly glorious brew' Guardian Longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018 21st-Century Yokel is not quite nature writing, not quite a family memoir, not quite a book about walking, not quite a collection of humorous essays, but a bit of all five. Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox's loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties – the ancient kind and the everyday variety – as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects. Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever. Tom's writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk; it's bewitched by fresh air and big skies, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless and prone to a few detours, but it always reaches its destination in the end.
Breaking down the traditional structures of screenplays in an innovative and progressive way, while also investigating the ways in which screenplays have been traditionally told, this book interrogates how screenplays can be written to reflect the diverse life experiences of real people. Author Jess King explores how existing paradigms of screenplays often exclude the very people watching films and TV today. Taking aspects such as characterization, screenplay structure, and world-building, King offers ways to ensure your screenplays are inclusive and allow for every person’s story to be heard. In addition to examples ranging from Sorry to Bother You to Portrait of a Lady on Fire, four case studies on Killing Eve, Sense8, I May Destroy You, and Vida ground the theoretical work in practical application. The book highlights the ways in which screenplays can authentically represent and uplift the lived experiences of those so often left out of the narrative, such as the LGBTQIA+ community, women, and people of color. The book addresses a current demand for more inclusive and progressive representation in film and TV and equips screenwriters with the tools to ensure their screenplays tell authentic stories, offering innovative ways to reimagine current screenwriting practice towards radical equity and inclusion. This is a timely and necessary book that brings the critical lenses of gender studies, queer theory, and critical race studies to bear on the practice of screenwriting, ideal for students of screenwriting, aspiring screenwriters, and industry professionals alike.
Winner of the 2021 Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Non-fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize "I knew in every bone of my body, in every fibre of my being, that I had to report what had happened, not only for myself but to help stop anyone else having to go through what I did. I knew I could not remain silent, or still, I could not stop walking through the world." A journey of reclamation through the natural landscapes of the North, brilliantly exploring identity, nature, place and belonging. Beautifully written and truly inspiring, I Belong Here heralds a powerful and refreshing new voice in nature writing. Anita Sethi was on a journey through Northern England when she became the victim of a race-hate crime. The crime was a vicious attack on her right to exist in a place on account of her race. After the event Anita experienced panic attacks and anxiety. A crushing sense of claustrophobia made her long for wide open spaces, to breathe deeply in the great outdoors. She was intent on not letting her experience stop her travelling freely and without fear. The Pennines - known as 'the backbone of Britain' runs through the north and also strongly connects north with south, east with west - it's a place of borderlands and limestone, of rivers and 'scars', of fells and forces. The Pennines called to Anita with a magnetic force; although a racist had told her to leave, she felt drawn to further explore the area she regards as her home, to immerse herself deeply in place. Anita's journey through the natural landscapes of the North is one of reclamation, a way of saying that this is her land too and she belongs in the UK as a brown woman, as much as a white man does. Her journey transforms what began as an ugly experience of hate into one offering hope and finding beauty after brutality. Anita transforms her personal experience into one of universal resonance, offering a call to action, to keep walking onwards. Every footstep taken is an act of persistence. Every word written against the rising tide of hate speech, such as this book, is an act of resistance.
