Bøger udgivet af Nine-Banded Books

For the better part of a decade, Anita Dalton's Odd Things Considered website has served as a unique outpost where sundry odd notions and odd creations-but mostly stacks upon stacks of odd books-are not merely considered, but treated with a kind of earnest analytical attention that's rarely encountered in contemporary cultural discourse. This massive anthology collects the most memorable and provocative examples of Dalton's conversationally-intoned counter-criticism, with insightful discussions of overlooked literature, anthropodermic bibliopegy, serial killer memoirs, outsider manifestos, and conspiracy theories (among many other outré subjects) converging to illuminate a vast and volatile pyscho-literary topography that has been ignored or deplored (but seldom explored) by our reigning arbiters of taste and culture. When you're ready to put down that Jonathan Franzen doorstop, consider picking up a copy of Anita Dalton's TL;DR - The Best of Odd Things Considered. You'll see what you've been missing.

Who wrote the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare? This simple yet provocative question has long bedeviled Shakespearean studies. According to traditional scholars, the canonical texts can only trace to the singular genius of a glover's son from the small town of Stratford-on-Avon. But dissident voices have disrupted this consensus for more than 150 years, and while skeptics who engage the "authorship question" have often been dismissed as marginal cranks or elitists (or, in contemporary parlance, as "deniers"), their ranks have included such luminaries as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Sigmund Freud-as well as such acclaimed Shakespearean actors as Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance. The counterweight to the claim that "Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare" typically hinges on the promotion of a single alternate candidate. Popular contenders have included Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and more recently, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. In Willam Fortyhands, Samuel Crowell argues that this is the wrong way to approach the problem. The real problem, according to Crowell, rests in our fundamental perspective on the First Folio-the inaugural collection of Shakespeare published seven years after his death. Drawing on the history of Shakespearean scholarship, literary criticism, philosophy, and even science fiction, William Fortyhands seeks to show not only how our understanding of Shakespeare has been distorted, but how analytical tendencies have allowed the plays to be parceled out to other authors, only to find Shakespeare's hand, even today, throughout Elizabethan literature. William Fortyhands is also a memorial-without a tomb-for Shakespeare's many gifted and highly educated peers, whose contributions have been scanted in favor of simplistic narratives pitting the Bard of Avon against some single rival claimant. Among those profiled are the prolific bohemian Robert Greene, the brilliant satirist Thomas Nashe, the learned sailor and doctor Thomas Lodge, the outrageous and supremely poetic Christopher Marlowe, the whimsical and humane Thomas Dekker, the encyclopedic Michael Drayton, and the earnest historian Samuel Daniel. William Fortyhands throws a light on the creative efflorescence that was Elizabeth's London-but from which only one name has emerged.

Millions of years ago, humans just happened. Accidents of environment and genetics contributed to the emergence of sentient beings like us. Today, however, people no longer "just happen"; they are created by the voluntary acts of other people. This book examines several questions about the ethics of human existence. Is it a good thing, for humans, that humans "happened"? Is it ethical to keep making new humans, now that reproduction is under our control? And given that a person exists (through no fault or choice of his own), is it immoral or irrational for him to refuse to live out his natural lifespan? Sarah Perry answers these questions in the negative--not out of misanthropy, but out of empathy for human suffering and respect for human autonomy. "Every Cradle Is a Grave undertakes a difficult task-to write on discomforting matters from a perspective that is socially unsanctioned. Strange as it may seem to some of us, there are scads of volumes that praise the abuses we endure in our lives. Such works have always been well thumbed, though they are only prayer-books for the purpose of worshiping misery. Sarah Perry is more honest and less perverse on the subject of suffering, treating pain as both a philosophical and a practical problem to which, it is admitted, there is no ultimate solution. Nonetheless, in her view there still remains intelligence and compassion as a means for confronting the insoluble. That is what makes this book as much a necessity as it is a rarity." --Thomas Ligotti, author of The Conspiracy against the Human Race Meaning. Value. Birth. Death. Sanctity. These subjects and others are reexamined through the lens of suicide rights and procreation ethics in Sarah Perry's Every Cradle Is a Grave. If you're at all fond of asking the truly Big Questions, this is the read you've been waiting for. Why are we here, and why do we stay? Prepare to have your assumptions dissected and turned on their heads. It's a bumpy ride, but then, so is this little journey we're on as we spin aimlessly around a sun that's destined to burn out, just as surely as each individual life will one day fall back down into the mud from which all life arises. Asking the hard questions is one thing, but hearing answers that might shake us to the core can be something else again. --Jim Crawford, author of Confessions of an Antinatalist "In this eminently rational, clear and serious book, Sarah Perry is courageous and strong enough to confront the forbidden truths of human life. Every Cradle Is a Grave should be mandatory reading for anyone who plans to have children." -Mikita Brottman, author of Thirteen Girls