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Ball of Confusion: Puzzles, Problems and Perplexing Posers
by Johnny BallTV maths star Johnny Ball presents brain-teasers from his regular slot on his daughter Zoe's Radio 2 show. Ball of Confusion is designed to twist your brain into enjoyable knots of empuzzlement, from puzzles solved in a twinkling of an eye to some that will knit your brow for hours. From how to cheat in a coin toss to why it is that some parts of a high speed train travelling at 125mph are actually going backwards, Ball of Confusion will bend your mind in places it's never been bent before. 'This is a lovely compilation of puzzles including many classics, and Johnny Ball's legendary enthusiasm and humour jump out of every page.' Rob Eastaway, co-author Maths for Mums & Dads.
Ball & Other Funny Stories About Cancer (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Brian LobelUnexpected, quirky and provocative, BALL & Other Funny Stories About Cancer is a unique collection of performances about illness and the changing body over time. Documenting a trilogy of Brian Lobel’s monologue performances from 2001-2011, this collection challenges the inspirational stories of survivors and martyrs that have come before, infusing the ‘cancer story’ with an urgency and humour which is sometimes inappropriate, often salacious and always, above all else, honest and open.Published together for the first time, this collection of performances goes beyond the chemotherapy to include reflections on politics, sexuality and gender, providing cancer – and cancer narratives – with a much-deserved kick in the ball(s).
The Ball Pit (Oxford Reading Tree Biff, Chip And Kipper Decode And Develop)
by Roderick Hunt Alex Brychta Annemarie Young Nick Schon Liz MilesBiff, Chip and Kipper Stories: Decode and Develop are exciting new titles in the Oxford Reading Tree series. The stories continue to provide storylines full of humour and drama, with familiar settings and characters. They also support children's transition from fully decodable readers, such as Floppy's Phonics, to a richer, wider reading experience with high-interest vocabulary. Books contain inside cover notes to support children in their reading. Help with childrens reading development is also available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk.
The Ballad and the Folk (Routledge Library Editions: Folklore)
by David BuchanThe ballad is an enduring and universal literary genre. In this book, first published in 1972, David Buchan is concerned to establish the nature of a ballad and of the people who produced it through a study of the regional tradition of the Northeast of Scotland, the most fertile ballad area in Britain. His account of this tradition has two parallel aims, one specifically literary – to investigate the ballad as oral literature – and one broadly ethnographic – to set the regional tradition in its social context. Dr Buchan applies the interesting and important work which has recently been done on oral tradition in Europe on the relationship of the ballad to society to his study of this particular part of Scotland. He examines a nonliterate society to discover what factors besides nonliteracy helped foster its ballad tradition. He analyses the processes of composition and transmission in the oral ballad, and considers the changes which removed nonliteracy, altered social patterns, and seriously affected the ballad tradition. By demonstrating how people who could neither read nor write were able to compose literature of a high order, David Buchan provides a convincing explanation of the ballad’s perennial appeal and an answer to the ‘ballad enigma’. His book is also a valuable study in social history of this culturally distinct region, the Northeast of Scotland.
The Ballad and the Folk (Routledge Library Editions: Folklore)
by David BuchanThe ballad is an enduring and universal literary genre. In this book, first published in 1972, David Buchan is concerned to establish the nature of a ballad and of the people who produced it through a study of the regional tradition of the Northeast of Scotland, the most fertile ballad area in Britain. His account of this tradition has two parallel aims, one specifically literary – to investigate the ballad as oral literature – and one broadly ethnographic – to set the regional tradition in its social context. Dr Buchan applies the interesting and important work which has recently been done on oral tradition in Europe on the relationship of the ballad to society to his study of this particular part of Scotland. He examines a nonliterate society to discover what factors besides nonliteracy helped foster its ballad tradition. He analyses the processes of composition and transmission in the oral ballad, and considers the changes which removed nonliteracy, altered social patterns, and seriously affected the ballad tradition. By demonstrating how people who could neither read nor write were able to compose literature of a high order, David Buchan provides a convincing explanation of the ballad’s perennial appeal and an answer to the ‘ballad enigma’. His book is also a valuable study in social history of this culturally distinct region, the Northeast of Scotland.
Ballad and the Plough: A Portrait of the Life of the Old Scottish Farmtouns
by David Kerr CameronThe era of the great farms of Scotland is over now. They flourished for nearly eighty years from the mid 19th century, and those years are renowned for the strength of their characters and the legendary status of their stories. Probably the finest and richest aspect of bothy life was the ballad. Often sentimental, sometimes simplistic, they nevertheless give unrivalled detail about a vanished way of life and work. Quoting generously from the ballads, David Kerr Cameron has written a book rich in anecdote and insight. The working day was hard and long, and mealtimes consisted mainly of porridge and potatoes. Yet laughter and generosity of spirit were commonplace. For these communities, horses were as important as people, and tens of thousands of noble Clydesdales helped to cultivate the land. Ploughmen, dairymaids, bailiffs and shepherds all appear in the pages of this unique testament to the Scottish countryside. Together with Willie Gavin, Crofter Man and The Cornkister Days, this volume forms a remarkable trilogy on life in rural Scotland.
The Ballad And The Source: A Novel (Virago Modern Classics #57)
by Rosamond LehmannThe tale of the unlikely friendship between and an old woman and a young girl, this is one of Rosamond Lehmann's finest novels Ten year old Rebecca is living in the country with her family when Sibyl Jardine, an enigmatic and powerful old woman, returns to her property in the neighbourhood. The two families, once linked in the past, meet again, with the result that Rebecca becomes drawn into the strange complications of the old lady's life - with her husband, her errant daughter and her grandchildren. Through the spellbound eyes of the young Rebecca we enter into an intricate and scandalous family history and slowly the story of the passionate, stormy life of Mrs. Jardine unfolds.
Ballad of a Happy Immigrant
by Leonardo Boix'It isn't often that one encounters a sensibility so interested in our world - and so compelling in its powers of attentiveness. Leo Boix's poetry has a wide tilt and scope. It sings the doors open' Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic'They are sailors from another century, stalwart / captured on daguerrotype, casually masculine, tender of heart.'In the middle of the last century, the SS General Pueyrredón from Buenos Aires deposits Leo Boix's paternal grandfather on English soil for the first time. In the two years he spends there, he acquires a taste for his new homeland: from taking his tea white - muy blanco - to plunging into unfamiliar sensual worlds.So begins the poet's own journey, arriving in the United Kingdom as a young queer man. Ballad of a Happy Immigrant tells of the life he makes there: a dazzling collection of what it means to live, love and write between two cultures and traditions. Effortlessly moving between the English imagination and Spanish language, it is a boundless exploration of otherness and home, and the personal transformation that follows between 'loss / and a life / that starts anew.'*A Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice*
The Ballad of a Small Player
by Lawrence Osborne‘I waited patiently for the next hand to be played out, and I had a feeling it was going to be a Natural, a perfect nine.’His name is Lord Doyle. His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau. His game: baccarat punto blanco -- 'that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.'Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money – and himself – up in smoke. So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, another naughty lemonade and an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyle’s way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater. The Ballad of a Small Player is a sleek, dark-hearted masterpiece: a ghost story set in the land of the living, and a decadent morality tale of a Faustian pact made, not with the devil, but with fortune’s fickle hand.
The Ballad of Abdul Wade: The Incredible True Story of Australia's unsung Pioneering Heroes - The Afghan Camelleers
by Ryan ButtaWhen Afghan entrepreneur Abdul Wade first brought his camel trains to the outback, he was hailed as a hero. Horses couldn't access many remote settlements, especially those stricken by flood or drought, and camel trains rode to the rescue time and time again.But with success came fierce opposition fuelled by prejudice. The camel was not even classed as an animal under Australian law, and, in a climate of colonial misinformation, hyperbole and fear, camel drivers like Wade were shown almost as little respect. Yet all the while, for those in need, the ships of the desert continued to appear on the outback horizon.After his interest was piqued by a nineteenth-century photo of a camel train in a country town, Ryan Butta found himself on the trail of Australia's earliest Afghan camel drivers. Separating the bulldust from the bush poetry, he reveals the breadth and depth of white Australian protectionism and prejudice. Told with flair and authority, this gritty alternative history defies the standard horse-powered folklore to reveal the untold debt this country owes to the humble dromedary, its drivers and those who brought them here.
The Ballad of Beta-2
by Samuel R. DelanyThe Star Folk were an anachronism. Living in their cluster of giant ships far out in space, cut off from contact with their fellow humans, they were shrouded in mystery. Through the allegory of an ancient song, Joneny, an anthropology student, set out to unravel that mystery - and found a truth stranger than any allegory . . .
The Ballad Of Black Tom
by Victor LaValleOne of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break? LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do. -- Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All [LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction. -- Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days "LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft's Dagon... [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending." - Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction
The Ballad of Britain: How Music Captured The Soul Of A Nation
by Will HodgkinsonIn 1903, the Victorian composer Cecil Sharp began a decade-long journey to collect folk songs that, he believed, captured the spirit of Great Britain. A century later, with the musical and cultural map of the country transformed, writer and journalist Will Hodgkinson sets out on a similar journey to find the songs that make up modern Britain. He looks at the unique relationship the British have with music, and tries to understand how the country has represented itself through song. He visits remote pubs in the West Country where families have been passing down local songs for generations, monasteries in Oxfordshire where monks use plainsong to commune with God, sits in with Hindu devotional singers in the suburbs of Birmingham and learns an ancient folk tune from a Sussex farmer. Will goes from the heart of the mainstream music scenes to the very fringes as part of his quest, visiting in turn remote musical heartlands and great urban musical cities. London (The Kinks, The Who and Blur), Liverpool (The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Beatles), Manchester (Joy Division, Stone Roses, Oasis) and Sheffield (Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Pulp and more recently, The Arctic Monkeys) all feature prominently as the respective homes of clusters of great bands that have helped shape the British musical landscape. An engaging blend of humour and musical scholarship, The Ballad of Britian is as much a portrait of Britain as an adventure into lyric and melody. The project forced the author into an itinerant life, scouring the length and breadth of the country for singers and songwriters in an attempt to discover whether songs still travel the way they once did, to find out whether folk music still exists in a meaningful sense, and to see how regional variations contribute to a collective musical ''Britishness''.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
by Joel Coen & Ethan CoenDeath is always the issue-in life, and in the Western. Joel and Ethan Coen's The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a movie of six Western stories. In each, our common destination is approached by a different road. Through each, diverse characters hurry for their final appointment: Oregon Trail-travelers, a gold prospector, a motley crew of stagecoach passengers, a high-plains drifting bank robber, even a singing cowboy. These six stories escort them with a care that either respects, or mocks, the dignity of all.The film stars Tom Waits, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tim Bake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and is shot with the harsh grandeur of the classic John Ford westerns.
The Ballad of Dixon Bell: At The Carolina Diner (At the Carolina Diner #2)
by Lynnette KentHe's always loved her.
The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life
by Frances WilsonThe prize-winning biography of Wordsworth's beloved sister, champion, muse who was at the heart of the Romantic movement in Britain - reissued to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Dorothy's birth.'Genius ... Its own kind of heaven.' New York Times 'A most beautiful, deep, and humble study of incredibly complex people.' Oliver Sacks Dorothy Wordsworth is an enigma. William's beloved sister was his muse, champion, and most valued reader. She is mythologised as a self-effacing spinster and saintly amanuensis, yet Thomas De Quincey described her as 'all fire and ardour'. Dorothy sacrificed a traditional life to share in her brother's world of words. In her Grasmere Journals, she vividly recorded their intimate life together in the Lake District, marked by a startling freedom from social convention. The tale that unfolds in her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between siblings, culminating in Dorothy's collapse on William's wedding day - after which the woman who once strode the hills in all weathers retreated inside the house for the last three decades of her life.In her magisterial biography, Frances Wilson uses the compressed emotion of Dorothy's journals to evoke the rich interior world of a woman determined to live on her own terms - one who deserves her own place in the history of the Romantic movement. 'Intelligent and intriguing ... A portrait of a peculiar, passionate, yet meticulous woman which is hauntingly strange.' Sunday Telegraph'Passion is the keynote of Wilson's fine biography ... Brims with the personality of [an] extraordinary woman ... Thrilling.' Sunday Times'This beautiful, wise biography draws Dorothy from her hiding places. She emerges as a passionate figure.'Daily Telegraph'Gripping ... Bold, witty, scholarly and speculative.' Margaret Drabble
The Ballad of Emma O'Toole (Mills And Boon Historical Ser.)
by Elizabeth LaneAfter he shoots a man, the stakes for gambler Logan Devereaux have never been higher. On trial for his life, he’s offered a shocking alternative form of restitution… marriage to his victim’s pregnant sweetheart!
Ballad of Favour
by Monica DickensThe summer is over and Rose Wood leaves the Wood Briar Hotel for school. Rose misses the summer buzz and her freedom from school, and with several weeks passing by quietly since her magical adventure with the Great Gray Horse she worries that her mission as the messenger of this ancient, brave horse is over.But when the mysterious composer, Mr Vingo, returns to the hotel, Favour, the Great Gray Horse reappears and Rose is summoned for another mission. This time she travels to an abandoned house in a town nearby where a forlorn family tries to survive their hardships. Will Rose and the horse be able to help them? Will Rose resist the temptation to share her secret with her friends, Abigail and Ben? She can only stay the messenger of the horse if she is brave and works undiscovered… The Ballad of Favour, is the second book in the four-part fantasy adventures series about Rose and the magical Great Grey Horse.
The Ballad of HMS Belfast: A Compendium Of Belfast Poems
by Ciaran CarsonThis compendium, made from Ciaran Carson’s previous collections, reveals one of the most remarkable and sustained tours de force in contemporary poetry: the poet’s reimaginign of his native city of Belfast. Carson introduces the reader to a city as full of surreal narrative and imaginative possibility as Borges’ Buenos Aires or Calvino’s Venice; at the same time he never shirks from taking a hard look at the city in all its political and cultural complexity. In its refusal to simplify or romanticize, The Ballad of HMS Belfast is an indispensable guidebook to a city few will know exists. ‘He is the master of the long line; these poems are manic, frightening and funny, and somehow manage to catch the tone of life in modern Belfast’ John Banville, Irish Times ‘It is about Belfast past and present and is full of surprises, savage and witty, human and extravagant. His voice is truly original, both intelligent and passionate’ A. S. Byatt, Sunday Times Books of the Year
The Ballad of John Latouche: An American Lyricist's Life and Work
by Howard PollackBorn into a poor Virginian family, John Treville Latouche (1914-56), in his short life, made a profound mark on America's musical theater as a lyricist, book writer, and librettist. The wit and skill of his lyrics elicited comparisons with the likes of Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, and Cole Porter, but he had too, noted Stephen Sondheim, "a large vision of what musical theater could be," and he proved especially venturesome in helping to develop a lyric theater that innovatively combined music, word, dance, and costume and set design. Many of his pieces, even if not commonly known today, remain high points in the history of American musical theater. "A great American genius" in the words of Duke Ellington, Latouche initially came to wide public attention in his early twenties with his cantata for soloist and chorus, Ballad for Americans (1939), with music by Earl Robinson-a work that swept the nation during the Second World War. Other milestones in his career included the all-black musical fable, Cabin in the Sky (1940), with Vernon Duke; an interracial updating of John Gay's classic, The Beggar's Opera, as Beggar's Holiday (1946), with Duke Ellington; two acclaimed Broadway operas with Jerome Moross: Ballet Ballads (1948) and The Golden Apple (1954); one of the most enduring operas in the American canon, The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956), with Douglas Moore; and the operetta Candide (1956), with Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman. Extremely versatile, he also wrote cabaret songs, participated in documentary and avant-garde film, translated poetry, adapted plays, and much else. Meanwhile, as one of Manhattan's most celebrated raconteurs and hosts, he developed a wide range of friends in the arts, including, to name only a few, Paul and Jane Bowles (whom he introduced to each other), Yul Brynner, John Cage, Jack Kerouac, Frederick Kiesler, Carson McCullers, Frank O'Hara, Dawn Powell, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams-a dazzling constellation of diverse artists working in sundry fields, all attracted to Latouche's brilliance and joie de vivre, not to mention his support for their work. This book draws widely on archival collections both at home and abroad, including Latouche's diaries and the papers of Bernstein, Ellington, Moore, Moross, and many others, to tell for the first time, the story of this fascinating man and his work.
The Ballad of John Latouche: An American Lyricist's Life and Work
by Howard PollackBorn into a poor Virginian family, John Treville Latouche (1914-56), in his short life, made a profound mark on America's musical theater as a lyricist, book writer, and librettist. The wit and skill of his lyrics elicited comparisons with the likes of Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, and Cole Porter, but he had too, noted Stephen Sondheim, "a large vision of what musical theater could be," and he proved especially venturesome in helping to develop a lyric theater that innovatively combined music, word, dance, and costume and set design. Many of his pieces, even if not commonly known today, remain high points in the history of American musical theater. "A great American genius" in the words of Duke Ellington, Latouche initially came to wide public attention in his early twenties with his cantata for soloist and chorus, Ballad for Americans (1939), with music by Earl Robinson-a work that swept the nation during the Second World War. Other milestones in his career included the all-black musical fable, Cabin in the Sky (1940), with Vernon Duke; an interracial updating of John Gay's classic, The Beggar's Opera, as Beggar's Holiday (1946), with Duke Ellington; two acclaimed Broadway operas with Jerome Moross: Ballet Ballads (1948) and The Golden Apple (1954); one of the most enduring operas in the American canon, The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956), with Douglas Moore; and the operetta Candide (1956), with Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman. Extremely versatile, he also wrote cabaret songs, participated in documentary and avant-garde film, translated poetry, adapted plays, and much else. Meanwhile, as one of Manhattan's most celebrated raconteurs and hosts, he developed a wide range of friends in the arts, including, to name only a few, Paul and Jane Bowles (whom he introduced to each other), Yul Brynner, John Cage, Jack Kerouac, Frederick Kiesler, Carson McCullers, Frank O'Hara, Dawn Powell, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams-a dazzling constellation of diverse artists working in sundry fields, all attracted to Latouche's brilliance and joie de vivre, not to mention his support for their work. This book draws widely on archival collections both at home and abroad, including Latouche's diaries and the papers of Bernstein, Ellington, Moore, Moross, and many others, to tell for the first time, the story of this fascinating man and his work.
The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small
by Neil JordanFrom multi-award-winning author and film director Neil Jordan comes a thrilling reimagining of a turning point in Irish, American and European history. 'A masterwork from one of the most inventive artists of our day' John Banville 'A writer of uncommon talent' Irish Times 'An expertly spun ballad defined by themes of belonging, illusion and fidelity' RTÉ CultureEutaw Springs, South Carolina, 1781, the American War of Independence. A runaway slave saves the life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a British army officer and the younger son of one of colonial Ireland's grandest families.The tale that unfolds is related by Tony Small, the slave who becomes Fitzgerald's manservant and friend. While details of Lord Edward's life are well documented, little is known of Tony Small. In this gripping narrative his character considers the ironies of empire, captivity and freedom, mapping Lord Edward's journey from being a loyal subject of the British Empire to becoming a leader of the disastrous 1798 rebellion.This powerful new work of fiction brings Neil Jordan's inimitable storytelling ability to the drama of real events and a long-forgotten chapter in Ireland and Britain's history.
The Ballad of Never After: the stunning sequel to the Sunday Times bestseller Once Upon A Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart)
by Stephanie GarberThe Ballad of Never After is the fiercely-anticipated sequel to the #1 New York Times bestseller Once Upon a Broken Heart, starring Evangeline Fox and the Prince of Hearts on a new journey of magic, mystery, and heartbreak.After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she'll never trust him again. Now that she's discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed.Jacks isn't the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.Instead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline's life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts.Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she's not sure she can.
