Namedropper

The story of Viva Cohen, a London teenager who is so entranced with old silver-screen legends that she and her two best friends head for Los Angeles, searching "for love, experience, and Jack Nicholson."--Cover.

Confessions of a Name Dropper is an insider's account of some of the most significant men and moments in American history. Veterans will be especially drawn to Nichols' revealing look at the heroic exploits of the 10th Armored Tiger"" Division...from their ""days of white hell"" to the nights in ""bloody Bastogne"" and beyond. Nichols also writes of his contact with notable figures like General Patton, Roy Rogers, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Robinson, and Vice-President Ted Agnew. Contents include a special tribute to the work of organizations like the American Red Cross, the Kentucky Hotel-Motel Association, and the Kentucky Heart Association.""

On December 8, 1980, twenty-something rock journalist Laurie Kaye entered the legendary Dakota apartments in New York to interview her longtime idol John Lennon. It was the last interview Lennon would ever give— just hours later, outside that same building, Lennon was shot dead by a twenty-five-year-old man (Kaye refuses to name him) whom Kaye herself had encountered after finishing the interview and stepping outside. Kaye has beaten herself up ever since over her failure to recognize that the assassin posed a danger and should have been reported. Here Kaye recounts not just her unfortunate brush with history, but also her turbulent early years growing up in LA and her fascinating, star-packed journey from radio intern to acclaimed writer/producer. Plus interviews with such titans of the music industry as Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Talking Heads, the Ramones, David Bowie, and Mick Jagger.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering, and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2009, held in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, in October 2009. This book includes revised and extended versions of a strict selection of the best papers presented at the conference; 27 revised full papers together with 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 369 submissions. According to the three covered conferences KDIR 2009, KEOD 2009, and KMIS 2009, the papers are organized in topical sections on on knowledge discovery and information retrieval, knowledge engineering and ontology development, and on knowledge management and information sharing.

Aby was a normal girl. And then an accident--a fatal one--made a society columnist out of her. But it takes a special kind of person to track the lives of the beautiful, the famous and the merely rich. They are the partying set--extravagant, bitchy, amoral, and always in your face. You mess with them at your own peril. Dazzled and disoriented, Aby follows overrated designers, narcissistic models, aging beauty queens, second-rung politicians and jealous fellow hacks through five-star Delhi. Somewhere along the line, she becomes a stranger to herself--till heartbreak sets her right again. Almost. Among the Chatterati marks the arrival of a spunky, intelligent and tremendously entertaining voice in Indian fiction. '...this is an important book. Society journalism is here to stay and a record of its development was long overdue. Gahlaut has done just that through this obviously personal account. Without any apparent agenda, she has written about the Page Three People (PTP) with tongue firmly in cheek--always remembering to take potshots at herself too.' -- The Indian Express 'Kanika Gahlaut's debut novel, Among the Chatterati...bowled me over with its spontaneous wit, its caustic irony identity, and steps into the realm of faction. Although it is at one level a real page-turner, it also looks deeper and more reflectively at the neuroses and anxieties of the famous and wannabe famous. The desperate narcissism of the partying set makes for topical social comedy.' --Namita Gokhale, The Times of India 'This is a book written breathlessly on the speedkeys, an artful ruse by a ruthless young debut writer who has managed to portray an airhead's passage through parties she was not born into with self-deprecatory sophistication and endearing cynicism...Aby, the hack and main protagonist of Among the Chatterati, is an endearing creature, with her hormones going berserk at the sight of Raghavendra Rathore's (renamed Ramendra Pratap Singh) royal chest hair at one party and chilling out with Feroze Varun in a dusk-filled backgarden in verdant Pilibhit...The action moves with deft speed--hotel rooms of lechy film producers, glitzy dos at megahotels full of inane models and wannabe actresses, exclusive drawing rooms of the self-confessed elite and the Jaipur Polo Ground are all Aby's wonderland.

John Graham shares his stand-up magic routines.

The mesmerizing bestseller that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock—A New York Times Ten Best Book of the Year Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit. At the center of the novel is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with visual aids drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.

At last: The much-anticipated sequel to My Life: Everything but BUY THE BOOK! Part 1 is here! Read what some notable personalities had to say* and youll want to rush to plant your bottom on your favorite recliner, couch or commode and rip into the potpourri of subject matter youll find in Part 2: Jaw-Dropping! -Peter Benchley, author of Jaws Out of this world! -Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon Sure to make your head spin. -William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist Could it possibly be any more fascinating? -Chandler Bing, one of NBCs Friends But dont take their word for it. BUY THIS BOOK and see for yourself! *Notable personalities may or may not have been referring specifically to this book at the time of their quote. Its difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty so lets just assume they were. That way nobody gets hurt.

From Ross Mathews, the nationally bestselling author of Man Up!, judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and alum of Chelsea Lately, comes “a delightful mix of sweet and sour celebrity experiences” (Shelf Awareness) in this hilarious and irreverent collection of essays. Pretend it’s happy hour and you and I are sitting at the bar. I look amazing and, I agree with you, much thinner in person. You look good, too. Maybe it’s the candlelight, maybe it’s the booze. Either way, let’s just go with it. Keep this all between you and me, and do me a favor? Don’t judge me if I name drop just a little. Television personality Ross Mathews likes telling stories. He was always outrageous and hilariously honest, even when the biggest celebrity he knew was his favorite lunch lady in the school cafeteria. Now that he has Hollywood experience—from interning behind the scenes at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to judging RuPaul’s Drag Race—he has a lot to talk about. In Name Drop, Ross dishes about being an unlikely insider in the alternate reality that is showbiz, like that time he was invited by Barbara Walters to host The View—only to learn his hero did not suffer fools; his Christmas with the Kardashians, which should be its own holiday special; and his news-making talk with Omarosa on Celebrity Big Brother, which, as it turns out, was just the tip of the iceberg. Holding nothing back, Ross shares the most treasured and surprising moments in his celebrity-filled career, and proves that while exposure may have made him a little bit famous, he is still as much a fanboy as ever. Filled with “charmingly told” (Booklist) tales ranging from the horrifying to the hilarious—and with just the right “Rossipes” and cocktails to go along with them—Name Drop is every pop culture lover’s dream come true.

"The unbelievable life and times of Hugh Millais, great-grandson of Sir John Everett Millais PRA. Every recipe tells a story. Ernest Hemingway, Ava Gardener, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, Susannah York, Warren Beatty, to name but a few, all knew Hugh."--Back cover.