Put your headphones on, close your eyes. Embrace the possibility of the life-changing power of music. And perhaps one of these songs will change your life too. Music can inspire our greatest creations, salve our deepest wounds, make us fall in – or out of – love. It can also be a window into another’s soul. Based on the popular live storytelling series, OneTrackMinds is a collection of twenty-five compelling answers to the question, ‘What was the song that changed your life?’ Featuring pieces from a stellar cast of contributors including Peter Tatchell, Inua Ellams, Cash Carraway, Rhik Samadder, Ingrid Oliver and Joe Dunthorne, alongside some of the UK’s most exciting new voices, the book compiles many of the standout stories from the live show so far. Just as rich and varied are the songs themselves, by artists ranging from Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell to Aphex Twin and the Replacements via Tupac, Prince and the Spice Girls. The result is an entertaining, enlightening musical guide to the best of what makes us human.

Deems Taylor wrote in 1953, "In a Paris bookshop about twenty-five years ago, I ran across a volume entitled "Anthologie Libertine, ou La Fleur Francaise de la Satire Galante," a collection of upwards of two hundred pieces of light verse devoted mainly to that subject so dear to the Gallic heart, l'amour. . . . the majority were written during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries." "Those were the times of Henry IV, of Louis XIV and Louis XV; of Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard; of Pompadour and du Barry. Society centered about Fontainebleau and Versailles. It was an era not much more dissolute than our own, but very much more outspoken. Marriages were generally contracted for any but sentimental reasons, and it was taken almost for granted that husbands and wives would cheerfully cuckold one another. "The love poems of the day might be low on morality, but they abounded in imagination and good humor. Their day ended when nineteenth-century romanticism wiped the smile from the face of l'amour.. . .I have chosen what seemed to me the best fifty-odd out of the two hundred. The translations are as literal as I could make them, and for those who would like to check their degree of literalness, every English version accompanies the French original--including the archaic French spelling.""

the unexpected psychology of the internet

(LINDY WALL)A Musical Parody. It's dusk, and predators and prey animals meet at the water hole. Percival 'Possum sets out on his nightly food forage, as he ponders his solitary life. His story unfolds ... one of love found and lost and found again. Meanwhile, predators brag of their prowess and lineage, provoking a lively discussion of genealogy among all the animals. The would-be prey lament their lot as snack fare, and all consider the general wickedness of humans. Dogs roll in smelly things, cats toss up furballs, and a night and day pass. As evening again approaches, the lonely male opossum is reunited with his lady love and their new babies. The animals' story is told in original, humorous lyrics set to familiar music, pop and show tunes, operatic arias, and bits of classical works. 40 songs, with libretto; cast of 28 animals.

One night they can’t forget… Tess McMann lives her life according to the secrets she's sworn to keep: the father who won't acknowledge her, the sister who doesn't know she exists, and the mother who's content playing mistress to a prominent businessman. When she meets distractingly cute Dylan Kingsley at a prestigious summer program and falls in love, Tess allows herself to imagine a life beyond these secrets. But when summer ends, so does their relationship -- Dylan heads off to Canton College while Tess enrolls at the state university. One love they can’t ignore… Two years later, a scholarship brings Tess to Canton and back into Dylan's life. Their attraction is as strong as ever, but Dylan has a girlfriend…who also happens to be Tess's legitimate half-sister. Tess refuses to follow in her mother's footsteps, which leaves her only one choice: break the rules she’s always followed, or allow Dylan to slip away for a second time. …And only one chance to get things right. NA New Adult College Contemporary Romance

By the middle of the 1970s, Bob Dylan’s position as the pre-eminent artist of his generation was assured. The 1975 album Blood on the Tracks seemed to prove, finally, that an uncertain age had found its poet.Then Dylan faltered. His instincts, formerly unerring, deserted him. in the 1980s, what had once appeared unthinkable came to pass: the “voice of a generation” began to sound irrelevant, a tale told to grandchildren.Yet in the autumn of 1997, something remarkable happened. Having failed to release a single new song in seven long years, Dylan put out the equivalent of two albums in a single package. in the concluding volume of his ground- breaking study, ian Bell explores the unparalleled second act in a quintessentially american career. it is a tale of redemption, of an act of creative will against the odds, and of a writer who refused to fade away.Time Out of Mind is the story of the latest, perhaps the last, of the many Bob Dylans.