English Essay

In One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi deploys her razor-sharp humour to share her fears, outrages, and mortifying experiences as an outsider growing up in Canada. Her subjects range from shaving her knuckles in grade school, to a shopping trip gone horribly awry, to dealing with Internet trolls, to feeling out of place at an Indian wedding (as an Indian woman), to parsing the trajectory of fears and anxieties that pressed upon her immigrant parents and bled down a generation.

As former tutor and adviser to Emperor Nero, philosopher and statesman Seneca was acutely aware of how short life can be - his own life was cut short when the emperor ordered him to commit suicide (for alleged involvement in a conspiracy). And Seneca proved true to his words - his lifelong avowal to Stoicism enabled him to conduct himself with dignity to the end. During his rich and busy life, Seneca wrote a series of essays that have advised and enriched the lives of generations down to the present day.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of all Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.

The story of NASCAR's legendary racer - newly revised Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s name virtually assured that his life would not be ordinary. Over the past decade, he has fulfilled that destiny. His father, one of the most successful drivers in the history of international motorsports, gave his son more than his name. Dale Earnhardt Sr. placed Dale Jr. in position to follow the footsteps and tire tracks he had left from Darlington to Daytona, from coast to coast, from one championship to the next.

From bestselling and Booker-nominated author Colm Tóibín comes a beautiful collection of essays ranging from personal memoir to brilliantly acute writing on religion, literature and politics.

“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)

As an adult, Lauren Hough has had many identities: an airman in the US Air Force, a cable guy, a bouncer at a gay club. As a child, however, she had none. Growing up as a member of the infamous cult The Children of God, Hough had her own self robbed from her. The cult took her all over the globe - to Germany, Japan, Texas, Chile - but it wasn't until she finally left for good that Lauren understood she could have a life beyond "The Family."

In her brand-new collection, Phoebe shares stories that will make you laugh, but also plenty that will hit you in the heart, inspire a little bit of rage, and maybe a lot of action. That means sharing her perspective on performative allyship, White guilt, and what happens when White people take up space in cultural movements; exploring what it’s like to be a woman who doesn’t want kids living in a society where motherhood is the crowning achievement of a straight, cis woman’s life; and more.

Mental illness is the great isolator - and the great unifier. Almost half of us will suffer from it at some point in our lives; it affects everybody in one way or another. Yet today, Australia’s mental health system is under stress and not fit for purpose, and the pandemic is only making things worse. What is to be done? In this brilliant mix of portraiture and analysis, Sarah Krasnostein tells the stories of three women and their treatment by the state while at their most unwell.

Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.

What will it take to stop gendered violence?What went wrong? Australian governments promised to end violence against women and children in a single generation.

For Cazzie David, the world is one big trap door leading to death and despair and social phobia. From shame spirals caused by hookups to panic attacks about being alive and everyone else having to be alive too, David chronicles her life’s most chaotic moments with wit, bleak humor, and a mega-dose of self-awareness. In No One Asked for This, David provides listeners with a singular but ultimately relatable tour through her mind, as she explores existential anxiety, family dynamics, and the utterly modern dilemma of having your breakup displayed on the Internet.

Within this essay, Orwell criticises the 'ugly and inaccurate' written English of his time and examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, 'is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind'. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology.

In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and poet Elisa Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all kinds: dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and clichėd, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind them―chance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction.

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.

Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.

Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other?

Credited as the Father of Liberalism and revered for his ground-breaking theories, John Locke left behind a legacy which has radically shaped political and philosophical thought for over 300 years. His writings continue to inspire and educate people to this day, from founding our central ideas of consciousness and knowledge to creating a framework for society which greatly influenced America’s founding fathers.