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Cockeyed
On his 18th birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity. Knighton learns to drive while unseeing; has his first significant relationship—with a deaf woman; navigates the punk rock scene and men's washrooms; learns to use a cane; and tries to pass for seeing while teaching English to children in Korea. Stumbling literally and emotionally into darkness, into love, into couch-shopping at Ikea, into adulthood, and into truce if not acceptance of his identity as a blind man, his writerly self uses his disability to provide a window onto the human condition. His experience of blindness offers unexpected insights into sight and the other senses, culture, identity, language, our fears and fantasies. Cockeyed is not a conventional confessional. Knighton is powerful and irreverent in words and thought and impatient with the preciousness we've come to expect from books on disability. Readers will find it hard to put down this wild ride around their everyday world with a wicked, smart, blind guide at the wheel. .
Price: $1.49
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David Feherty's Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup: A Hardly Definitive, Completely Cockeyed, But Absolutely Loving Look at Golf's Most Exciting Event
The New York Times and Booksense bestselling author of A Nasty Bit of Rough and Somewhere in Ireland, a Village Is Missing an Idiot teams with golf uber-editor James A. Frank to concoct the most potent elixir of narrative history and behind-the-scenes drama of the Ryder Cup. "As hard-bitten as we all get, the Ryder Cup is still the measure of intestinal fortitude." -David Feherty, 1991 What began in 1927 as a friendly competition between the best golfers from the United States and Great Britain has evolved into the most action-packed, gut-wrenching, and nail-biting event in the game-and possibly in all of sport. For three days every two years, twenty-four of the world's best battle both as partners and as individuals, vying not for prize money but for national pride. It is an experience that makes them weak in the knees, and more than one grizzled veteran has admitted to spending the moments before teeing off exorcising his demons into the toilet. This "history" of the game's most exciting tournament looks beyond the team lineups and final scores to uncover the personalities and stories that made every playing of the biennial matches a war of wits. From the practical jokes in the locker rooms to the strategic decisions that won (and lost) crucial matches, Feherty-who played on the 1991 Ryder Cup team for Europe-provides an insight and an outlook that no one else can match. Or would dare try. .
Price: $1.86
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Cockeyed
On his 18th birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision and, eventually, total blindness In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity. Knighton learns to drive while unseeing; has his first significant relationship—with a deaf woman; navigates the punk rock scene and men's washrooms; learns to use a cane; and tries to pass for seeing while teaching English to children in Korea. Stumbling literally and emotionally into darkness, into love, into couch-shopping at Ikea, into adulthood, and into truce if not acceptance of his identity as a blind man, his writerly self uses his disability to provide a window onto the human condition. His experience of blindness offers unexpected insights into sight and the other senses, culture, identity, language, our fears and fantasies. Cockeyed is not a conventional confessional. Knighton is powerful and irreverent in words and thought and impatient with the preciousness we've come to expect from books on disability. Readers will find it hard to put down this wild ride around their everyday world with a wicked, smart, blind guide at the wheel. .
Price: $11.25
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A Cock-Eyed Comedy
In A Cock-Eyed Comedy, Father Trennes is like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, a spirit of the age moving through several centuries of Spain's history His most recent incarnation is as an Opus Dei religious leader in present-day Spain, whose conformity Goytisolo delightfully savages. A cast of real people and invented characters, including Roland Barthes, Jean Genet, and Manuel Puig, are mixed up in a literary and historical melting pot. A Cock-Eyed Comedy is a transgressive dark comedy with a significant message about religion and sexuality. Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931. In 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Juan Rulfo Award for Literature. His most recent books are State of Siege, The Garden of Secrets, and Landscapes of War. .
Price: $6.80
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The Big Enchilada: Campaign Adventures with the Cockeyed Optimists from Texas Who Won the Biggest Prize in Politics
Six years ago he owned a baseball team. Now he's the leader of the free world. The Big Enchilada is a comic anthem to the wild and improbable crusade that propelled George W. Bush into the White House and to the close-knit group of Texans who made it happen, written by "the Bush campaign's Renaissance man" (Time magazine). Writer and political strategist Stuart Stevens has been hailed by Martin Amis as "the perfect companion: brave, funny, and ever-watchful," and The New Yorker has praised him for having "a wonderful eye for the curiosities of human behavior." Here he tells the surprisingly funny, adrenaline-fueled story of the Bush campaign the public never saw -- from the Austin coffee shop where Stevens watched Karl Rove sketch out the Republican master plan on a napkin to the small Methodist church in Crawford, Texas, where the blue-jeaned future president prepared for the make-or-break debates that no one expected him to win. He offers the inside view of the rise and flameout of maverick John McCain; the struggle to come up with a message that could be heard over a booming economy ("Times have never been better. Vote for change," campaign aides joked); and the fierce debates over the upside and downside of "going negative" against a vulnerable adversary. Above all, Stevens turns the familiar political tale of disillusionment on its head. From the moment he arrived in Austin to join the campaign -- "Stevens, get in here and let's bond!" the governor said -- he discovered the peculiar pleasure of working with people who not only respected and admired their candidate but actually liked him. They faced formidable obstacles, from a nation surfing a vast wave of peace and prosperity to an experienced opponent whose seasoned advisers bragged that the campaign would be "a slaughterhouse." But Texans, as Stevens learned, are a confident bunch, and the Bush crowd remained convinced they would win the biggest prize of all -- even on the brink of losing. This is the story of what it was like as only an insider could tell it..
Price: $6.63
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