Bøger udgivet af Catapult

""Life is not a dress rehearsal." -- Rose Tremain""It's easy saying what things are not. Life is not a bed of roses, God is not an old man sitting in a cloud, winning isn't everything. Some negations, however, are more informative than others. Thinking about why an egg is not an elephant won't get you very far, whereas realizing life is not a dress rehearsal might. It's a reminder that this life is a one-shot deal, and if you mess it up, there's no second try."In "Should You Judge This Book by Its Cover" philosopher Julian Baggini examines the meanings behind a host of everyday expressions. Is it really always better to practice what you preach? To do as the Romans do? To be safe, not sorry?In his quest for clarity in everyday language, Baggini leaves no saying behind as he considers such expressions as "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" and "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Far from a reference book, this entertaining collection is full of short, stimulating capsules of defiantly clear thinking that are meant to fuel thought and conversation.

Two lovers accidentally create a love potion while making a batch of Jell-O. An apartment is filled with water as an act of gravity-defying devotion to an acrobat. At turns blissful, absurd, sexy, and devastating, Marisa Matarazzo's stories don't just push the boundaries of love--they show how very boundless it is. These interconnected shorts take love to a new level--another world, where a sex fever can sweep a town and where sex acts are performed tied to the raised mast of a sailboat. Falling into love, swimming, and drowning in it, the characters often exist in places where land and water collide and morph. A girl without hands is rescued from the sea by an oil-rig worker. A boy transplants a fish into the body of a menacing neighbor. A woman on the rebound has an unexpected encounter with an otherworldly water engineer. Fusing magical realism and fantasy with the heart of the here and now, Matarazzo has established a singular style. As she shifts effortlessly among startling plotlines and peculiar characters, she celebrates the fluid sorcery of love--in its ardor, its ugliness, all of its uncanny and magnificent manifestations, proclaiming love the most wondrous magic of all.

The music industry's mighty players have been asleep at the wheel since Napster revolutionized the way music was distributed in the 1990s. A veteran industry reporter tells of the current state of big music, how it got into such dire straits, and where it's going.

The crisis of meaning is the issue of our time. The old beliefs that guided the West have faded, without credible replacement. Who lives well? What characterizes the good life? More particularly, what may we in the modern West claim about ourselves? And, ultimately, does how we live and what we do make any sense? Concerned for today's society and its problems as they relate to meaning, faith, belief, morale, moral attachment, and social direction, John Carroll surveys these questions in "Ego and Soul." He examines how people in their ordinary and everyday lives grope unconsciously for direction, casting lines into the transcendent in the hope of a catch. He focuses on the main areas of modern life--work, sport, popular culture, family, friendship, intimacy, shopping, tourism, computers, cars, do-it-yourself renovation, our democratic temper, and the retreat into nature. He also examines high culture, the upper-middle-class elites, and the universities, tracing why they have lost their way and failed to provide a language that might help modern people understand their condition. "Ego and Soul" offers a surprising and compelling new look at the way we live today, and the way we try to make sense of our lives.

In this collection about life as a twentysomething in the twenty–first century, Kathleen Rooney writes with the finesse of someone well beyond her years, but with fresh insights that reveal a girl still making discoveries at every turn. Varied and original, the tales in For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs recount the perils of falling in love with the unlikeliest of people, of visiting the New York apartments of a vanished poet, and of touring an animal retirement home with her parents. Of getting a Brazilian wax, and of chauffeuring a U.S. senator around town. Of saying good–bye to a cousin who's joining a convent, and of trying to convince herself that she's not wasting her life. This is a book about love and longing, poetry and plagiarism, death and democracy, mountain floods and Midwestern cicadas. Here is a young woman struggling to find her place as an adult and a citizen in an America that rarely manages to live up to Whitman's dream of it. With this book, Rooney sings—yes, in fact, she trills—loud and clear.

With little more than a run-down Jeep and their newborn baby in tow, author Micah Perks' parents set out in 1963 to build a school and a utopian community in the mountains. The school would become known as a place to send teens with drug addictions and emotional problems, children with whom Micah and her sister would grow up. This complex memoir mixes a moving celebration of the utopian spirit and its desire for community and freedom with a lacerating critique of the consequences of those desires -- especially for the children involved. How could the campaign for a perfect home and family create such confusion and destruction? The '60s, for many, became a laboratory of hope and chaos, as young idealists tested the limits of possibility. Micah Perks has cast her unflinching and precise eye on her own history and has illuminated not only those years of her childhood, but a wide-open moment that marked our culture for all time.

In this free-spirited collection of essays, Page Stegner weaves natural history, conservation polemic, ecology, and wilderness adventures on a number of the West's major white-water rivers. Stegner moves effortlessly from his own experiences on the Colorado, Yampa, Green, San Juan, Dolores, and Missouri rivers to first explorations by historical figures such as Lewis and Clark and John Wesley Powell, to modern controversies that threaten the continued unspoiled isolation of these special places. From its opening essay -- recalling a hilarious, albeit hazardous, journey down the Owyhee River in southeastern Oregon -- to the final episode on Lake Powell, Stegner's narrative is rich in vivid detail, laced with sardonic humor, and always grounded in a passion for the West -- both its past and the promise of its future.

Combining on-the-slopes experience with off-trail research, author Charlie English follows in the footsteps of the Romantic poets across the Alps, learns how to build igloos with the Inuit on Baffin Island, examines snow-patches in the Cairngorms to detect signs of global warming, and tests his mettle on some of the most perilous peaks on Earth. Along the way, he meets up with a flurry of fellow enthusiasts, from avalanche survivors and resort operators to climate scientists and champion skiers. English is obsessed with snow, and has collected for our enjoyment an amazing array of not-so-random facts about the hexagonal substance that fills the human imagination with wonder. In this "snow handbook," he describes how snow is created, how to build an igloo, how avalanches occur, and (more importantly) how to survive an avalanche. His glossary is filled with snow terms that will delight, such as "coulior," "hoarfrost," "firn," and "sastrugi." Fresh and fun and infused with the adrenaline of adventure, "The Snow Tourist" is a fascinating account of one man's pilgrimage through the world's blanketed fields, ice-capped rooftops, cozy igloos, and snow-covered mountain peaks.

In 1989, Bill Porter, having spent much of his life studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts, began to wonder if the Buddhist hermit tradition still existed in China. At the time, it was believed that the Cultural Revolution had dealt a lethal blow to all religions in China, destroying countless temples and shrines, and forcibly returning thousands of monks and nuns to a lay life. But when Porter travels to the Chungnan mountains -- the historical refuge of ancient hermits -- he discovers that the hermit tradition is very much alive, as dozens of monks and nuns continue to lead solitary lives in quiet contemplation of their faith deep in the mountains. Part travelogue, part history, part sociology, and part religious study, this record of extraordinary journeys to an unknown China sheds light on a phenomenon unparalleled in the West. Porter's discovery is more than a revelation, and uncovers the glimmer of hope for the future of religion in China.