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The area has been marked out for 'urban regeneration' and soon the faded glory of the bookshop, the small local theatre, the unique shops and small cafes will face the bulldozers and urban planners...  Brilliantly original and richly allegorical, Firmin is brimming with charm and wistful longing for a world that understands the redemptive power of literature and treasures its seedy theaters, one-of-a-kind characters, and cluttered bookshops.  'A wonderful celebration of the way reading enriches your life. Firmin may be a rat - poisoned by people he thinks are his friends - but his imagination soars as high as that of any human.' GUARDIAN  'Surprising and moving meditation on the advantages (and disadvantages) of an entirely fictional life. Eloquent and witty, Firmin speaks for the book-loving rodent in all of us.' 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Surviving on a diet of fried Spam and vodka, Andrew Whittaker is the editor of a small and slightly dingy literary magazine - SOAP: A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS. Through this journal, he hopes to fan the flames of literary excellence, publishing such debuts as THE TOILETS OF ANNAPURNA and the intriguing mirror poetry of Miriam Wildercamp. But life is not simple. His tenants are tiring of their blocked drains and killer-mice, his ex-wife wants money, and he is pursued by a frustrated Canadian. Having fallen out with the local arts community he decides to set up a literary festival in order to save his failing journal - but will this be Andrew Whittaker's moment of glory or his Waterloo?  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When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the first line of Ford Madox Ford's \u003ci\u003eThe Good Soldier\u003c\/i\u003e 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.'\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo begins the remarkable tale of Firmin the rat. Born in a bookstore in a blighted 1960's Boston neighborhood, Firmin miraculously learns how to read by digesting his nest of books. Alienated from his family and unable to communicate with the humans he loves, Firmin quickly realizes that a literate rat is a lonely rat. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollowing a harrowing misunderstanding with his hero, the bookseller, Firmin begins to risk the dangers of Scollay Square, finding solace in the Lovelies of the burlesque cinema. 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A negligent landlord, small-time literary journal editor, and aspiring novelist, he is—quite literally— authoring his own downfall. From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, this novel is a collection of everything Whittaker commits to paper over the course of four critical months.  Beginning in July, during the economic hardships of the Nixon era, we witness our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, and tormented by his ex-wife. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him. As his hold on reality weakens and his schemes grow wilder, his self-image as a placid and slow-moving sloth evolves into that of a bizarre and frantic creature driven mad by solitude.  In this tragicomic portrait of a literary life, Sam Savage proves that all the evidence is in the writing, that all the world is, indeed, a stage, and that escape from the mind’s prison requires a command performance.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50108302164241,"sku":"CIN1566892317G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037352853777,"sku":"NIN9781566892315","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51417341165841,"sku":"CIN1566892317VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52683817419025,"sku":"NLS9781566892315","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1566892317.jpg?v=1750926675"},{"product_id":"flaw-of-averages-book-sam-l-savage-9780471381976","title":"The Flaw of Averages","description":"A must-read for anyone who makes business decisions that have a major financial impact.  As the recent collapse on Wall Street shows, we are often ill-equipped to deal with uncertainty and risk. Yet every day we base our personal and business plans on uncertainties, whether they be next month's sales, next year's costs, or tomorrow's stock price. In  The Flaw of Averages , Sam Savageknown for his creative exposition of difficult subjects describes common avoidable mistakes in assessing risk in the face of uncertainty. Along the way, he shows why plans based on average assumptions are wrong, on average, in areas as diverse as healthcare, accounting, the War on Terror, and climate change. In his chapter on Sex and the Central Limit Theorem, he bravely grasps the literary third rail of gender differences. Instead of statistical jargon, Savage presents complex concepts in plain English. In addition, a tightly integrated web site contains numerous animations and simulations to further connect the seat of the reader's intellect to the seat of their pants. The  Flaw of Averages  typically results when someone plugs a single number into a spreadsheet to represent an uncertain future quantity. Savage finishes the book with a discussion of the emerging field of Probability Management, which cures this problem though a new technology that can pack thousands of numbers into a single spreadsheet cell.  Praise for  The Flaw of Averages \"Statistical uncertainties are pervasive in decisions we make every day in business, government, and our personal lives. Sam Savage's lively and engaging book gives any interested reader the insight and the tools to deal effectively with those uncertainties. I highly recommend  The Flaw of Averages .\" - William J. Perry , Former U.S. Secretary of Defense \"Enterprise analysis under uncertainty has long been an academic ideal...In this profound and entertaining book, Professor Savage shows how to make all this practical, practicable, and comprehensible.\" - Harry Markowitz , Nobel Laureate in Economics","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50172111421713,"sku":"CIN0471381977A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50206738645265,"sku":"CIN0471381977G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50302360584465,"sku":"GOR003535205","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52153420087569,"sku":"CIN0471381977VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0471381977.jpg?v=1751260890"},{"product_id":"orphanage-of-dreams-book-sam-savage-9781566895309","title":"An Orphanage of Dreams","description":"Praise for Sam Savage:     \"Savage's is a book of the heart as much as the head. Which is itself an accomplishment of no small note: to recognize the arbitrary, degraded thing that is memory, and allow it its loveliness for all of that.\" —New York Times Book Review \"A Southern childhood in duskier, Tennessee Williams times, offering an aphoristic scattering of  memories—one-  and  two-sentence stand-alones that spill isolated down the page like little gems . . . showing  us how memory works and how we make sense of our lives, drip by drip and sensation by sensation.\" —Library Journal \"With paragraphs as rich as koans, this is as powerful a meditation on living life—and facing its end—as you are likely to read anytime soon.\" —Booklist An Orphanage of Dreams is a collection of stripped down visitations-flash fictions of smoke breaks and long drives and friends who finally stop showing up. The acidic tang of disappointment is here, and sparks of biting insight, in portraits of people and animals, in all our absurdity and failed attempts at meaning. As Sam Savage says, \"what a life.\" Sam Savage is the best-selling author of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, The Cry of the Sloth, Glass, The Way of the Dog, and It Will End with Us. A native of South Carolina, Savage holds a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University. He was a finalist for the Barnes \u0026amp; Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the PEN New England Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award. 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Day by day pages of seemingly random thoughts fall from her typewriter. Gradually taking shape within the mosaic of memory is the story of a remarkable marriage and of a mind pushed to its limits.  Is Edna’s memoir a homage to her late husband or an act of belated revenge? Was she the cultured and hypersensitive victim of a crass and brutally ambitious husband, or was he the caretaker of a neurotic and delusional wife?  The reader must decide.  The unforgettable characters in Savage's two hit novels Firmin and The Cry of the Sloth garnered critical acclaim, selling a million copies worldwide.  In Edna, once again Sam Savage has created a character marked by contradiction--simultaneously appealing and exasperating, comical and tragic.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50922737041681,"sku":"CIN1566892732VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51037742268689,"sku":"NIN9781566892735","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51454812553489,"sku":"CIN1566892732G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1566892732.jpg?v=1751374813"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-sam-savage.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}