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Customer Reviews (36)

Get on the Bus with Peter Conners!
If you've ever wondered why someone would follow the Grateful Dead or why someone would need 125+ versions of the same song... then you gotta read this book.Likewise, if you followed the Dead or have 125+ versions of the same song, you gotta read this book.Oh heck, everyone should read it!

In Growing up Dead: the Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead, Conners tells the story of coming of age in the suburbs in the 1980s and discovering the music of the Grateful Dead.Starting in high school, Conners followed the Dead, learned to dance without inhibition, and discovered the joys of living a creative life through making music and writing.Those first Dead shows started a lifelong romance that has permeated every aspect of Conners' life.

I love Growing up Dead.Not just because Conners and I are the same age and not because we went to some of the same Dead shows.I love Growing up Dead because it is so beautifully written -- Conners has a poet's grace, a seeker's heart, and a musician's ear.

Maybe, too, I've been carrying this book around with me so much lately because Conners answers the question a lot of Deadheads, myself included, have struggled to answer over the years - why the Grateful Dead?Why do we love this music so much?Why do we self-identify as Deadheads?And how have our experiences with the music informed our lives?

As a writer, Conners moves around a lot, from project to project, genre to genre.He writes poetry, fiction, non-fiction.There are rumors that he has two music-based novels hiding in his desk drawer.But right now, right here, you've got to read this book, his memoir of his adventures listening to and following the Grateful Dead.(Then read his others!)

If you've read this far, get off the fence and onto the bus and find out what Conners has to say about life as a Deadhead.Conners is a pro.He's one heck of a writer.He's a visionary offering you a chance to take a ride on the bus -- yeah, that bus, the one with Cowboy Neal at the wheel -- and he'll even let you borrow his window seat for a few hundred pages.

Grate, entertaining read
I am 20 years old, about the age Peter, the author was when he was engulfed in the world of the Grateful Dead and touring. And though I never saw the Grateful Dead with Jerry, I found myself on multiple occasions relating to his experiences both at shows and on the road, and laughed to myself many times just thinking about what it would have been like experiencing what he experienced and seeing what he saw. A good portion of the book is centered around his time on the road, in his buddies van, where fond memories were made. There are also many stories from specific shows, both inside the venue and in the parking lot which provide lots of entertainment as well as insight as to what exacctly went on at a Grateful Dead. To readers who dont really understand the music as well as the culture of the Grateful Dead, this book may seem unappealing and hard to follow. But for anyone, old or young, who enjoys the Grateful Dead and their considers themselves a "deadhead", this book is a must-have, as it describes in detail what "it" was all about. This book may be a nostalgia-trip for some, or a way of learning for other, younger heads. The Grateful Dead and their fans truely were unique, and there is nothing else like "it." So I'd suggest this book to you! "Believe it if you need it, or leave it if you dare."

See you all on the road this summer! Time to go Furthur :)

"If you get confused listen to the music play."
Truly a great read.Read it once, twice, read it over and over again.Peter gets you there.. you can smell it in the air.

Highly Recommended
This is a must read for anyone that is a fan of the Grateful Dead or wants to learn about the world as seen from a new perspective. I highly recommend it.

A book about what it was like to get on the bus in the 80s
Pick up just about any history or memoir of the Grateful Dead and you'll hear about bluegrass, the Acid Tests, Live/Dead, Europe in `72, the hiatus, and the Pyramids in excruciating detail. Then the years start to fly by, punctuated by the occasional happening: hit song and tour with Dylan in `87, return to Europe in `90, and then all of a sudden Jerry is dead and we're into that nebulous post-Grateful period that continues to this day. This is understandable, but for Dead fans like my self who got on the bus in the 1980s, this leaves out a big important part of the story.

During the long period between album releases, when perhaps various bandmembers' rebellious proclivities were beginning to catch up with them, the Dead scene experienced something of a third wind. Perhaps it was the advent of the "just say no" years and the growing need for a refuge for the disaffected youth of that era. Garcia famously called the Dead tour the last remaining great American adventure. Certainly my own experience when I stumbled into the parking lot in 1984 was a stiff sense of incredulity: how was this through-the-looking-glass society existing in parallel with the malls and office parks of the Reagan 80s? How were we getting away with this? How could it possibly last?

As we know, it couldn't last. It was a bubble of sorts, but its surface tension held for a crucial stretch of years, long enough to sustain this pocket of the counterculture until reinforcements could arrive, tune up, plug in, and rock out.

Peter Conners is a bit younger than I am, but he got on the bus just before the tidal wave of a "hit song on MTV" crashed into the parking lot scene of 1987 and his memoir, Growing Up Dead, represents the first holographic capture of exactly what it felt like at just that time. He limns the road, the buses, the parking lots, and most importantly the shows, the music, and lyrics of the Grateful Dead in the 1980s. He described growing up in a suburban middle class enclave and falling in with a stoner crowd and eventually finding himself in the world of the Deadheads.

Perhaps most importantly, he finds his muse and toward the end of the tale, when he comes off the road, he finds that he has become a poet. The language of the Dead spoke to him and brought something out of him that his teachers and his day-to-day life did not manage to reach. As Conners said in an interview conducted on the Well's public Inkwell conference:

"When I was growing up, I didn't have any friends who connected to language on that same level. I still remember sharing my first poems with friends. To their credit, they were openly enthusiastic. No one in our group, myself included, knew anything about poetry or literature outside of what we were fed in school. We all bonded over lyrics, singing them, writing them on our notebooks, etc., but that was more about our love of the bands and reinforcing our bonds with each other."

His is not the tawdry tale of excess and destruction and repentance that we've been hearing since the opium eaters but one of enlightenment, joy, self-discovery and, ultimately, graduation into adulthood and self-possession.

Conners is a gifted storyteller and delivers his tale not as a series of banal or hyperbolic generalities but in a well-knit sequence of anecdotes and portraits. The book moves along swiftly and sweeps you up in the life path of this young person questing in search of fun and liberty and friendship and love.

The story of the Grateful Dead from the viewpoint of the musicians and the Peninsula milieu in which the coalesced has been told to death (and I've devoured with pleasure each telling and re-telling of those days) and to some extent the personal stories of the extended community rooted in those early days and into the 1970s has at least begun to be told, but Growing Up Dead crucially fills a gap in the story without which my own experience lacks a literary context, and for this I am, dare I say it? grateful. ... Read more

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Fiction. Poetry. EMILY ATE THE WIND tells the story of the drinkers, gamblers, lifelong friends, and frustrated lovers whose lives revolve around The Bar. Told in a series of vignettes, love letters, question and answer formats, newspaper clippings, short stories, and prose poems, the familiar dramas of these characters' lives unfold with deft, poetic strokes. From sweeping lyricism to gritty realist scenes, Peter Conners follows these characters from childhood to adulthood, from marriage to war, through loyalty and the shock of betrayal. "Sparks of brilliant images light up the compressed worlds Peter Conners creates with words. Music is made with whispers and curses, belches and laughter, pronouncements and asides and sly retorts. Startling lists transform into unsettling truths. The performances in EMILY ATE THE WIND are dazzling"--Joanna Scott. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

I'm not in the writing industry
Forgive me if my review isn't quite as sharp as the previous two, but I'm not in the writing industry.I just happen to really like Peter Conners' writing.Stylistically, I really love this novella.It floats between a novel and Peter's own unique, recognizable prose style in a way that isn't like most "novellas" that I've come across.If there were a bigger market for novellas, I'd say this is his jam because it seems to allow him to really flex his strengths.By that I mean, he has great strengths in his prose/poetry style, but that can't necessarily translate over the course of a full novel.But he also has a great strength in relaying these very real characters that can't be done necessarily as well in the shorter prose/poetry setting.So this hybrid novella medium seems to be able to play to both of those strengths.It took me a couple of passes to fully appreciate each of the characters - which is a good sign as far as I'm concerned. There are things going on just under the surface that Peter doesn't hit you over the head with, but put's just enough information out there so you can guess as to some of the underlying action and underlying personality traits of the characters.What impresses me most here is the crafting of the book.It just strikes me as being so well crafted that every word and every chapter plays a vitally important role and is perfect in that role.Once again, Peter has written something that I think is truly fantastic.

Voices that Cut Form that Sing Their Own Stitches
Peter Conners has long been one of my favorite writers.Known for his "brief prose," or as he has termed his PP/FF, Conners here instead stitches together a collage of voices that exist, or near exist in a fictional place, room, hall of stories, known only as The Bar.In these brief composities, texts, news articles, monologues, sketches, stories that resist becoming not quite a novel emerge, whose absences speak more about the struggles to simply "be," than many novels with twice as many pages attempt to convey.As the pages accumulate, slowly, the sheer impact of solitude vs communion begins to argue, in voices often blurred by the fragemented text, it seems, so they become painfully unaware of the fractured nature of their existance. But all is not pathos here, as the book is full of frightfully funny and ironic moments.Perhaps it is all allegory?Read this book, and somewhere in its pages, I swear, you will find a shard of yourself in it, weeping, or perhaps even singing.

A complex, occasionally iconoclastic, sometimes heartfelt, and always engaging work
There are some works of literature that simply don't fit within the usual categories of genre fiction but stand alone as seminal and unique. Such is the case of "Emily Ate The Wind" by Peter Connors. Told in a series of vignettes, love letters, questions and answer formats, newspaper clippings, short stories, and prose poems, "Emily Ate The Wind showcases a series of drinkers, gamblers, lifelong friends and frustrated lovers whose lives intersect at The Bar. Peter Conners tells these stories with a deft skill that ranges from gritty realism to an almost surreal lyricism as the characters mature from childhood to adulthood, experiencing marriage, war, loyalty and betrayal. Of special note are the entries "Some Thoughts about Money'; 'Headlines from Tomorrow'; and 'The Regular and the New Bouncer'. "Emily Ate The Wind" is a complex, occasionally iconoclastic, sometimes heartfelt, and always engaging work of sophisticated storytelling that is highly recommended for readers who appreciate sophistication and originality.
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Photographs by Bruce Conner. Edited by Joan Rothfuss. Contributions by Kathy Halbreich, Bruce Jenkins, Peter Boswell. ... Read more

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The Most Beautiful Artist Book/Monograph I've Ever Seen
This book is so well done...from the linen hardcover, to the perfect representations of Conner's works, to the immaculate printing...even the essays and commentary throughout the book are great! Anyone interested in Bruce Conner...this is the best publication on him and his work so far. Also, anyone interested Assemblage, Collage, American Film, or the Avant-Garde in general...I would highly, highly recommend looking at Bruce Conner's work...this book is the best place for that (...outside of looking at actual work itself...of course...!). In my opinion, Bruce Conner is one of the most important artists of the whole "Beat Generation" era...and I feel that his films are among the very best of all Avant-Garde film. Please see for yourself, and please try to look at his actual work (by that I mean to physically go see some of the Assemblages, Collages, and try to get ahold/go see a few of his films)! The book is great, one of the best I've seen of all art books, but viewing art in books should always be ancillary to viewing art 'in the flesh'.

Visionary Artist
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at this incredible catalog of the world's greatest living artist!

A Review: One man show and tell
This beautiful publication makes you feel fortunate to live in an era when hardbound books filled with juicy pictures printed on quality paper stock are still here for the wonder of our minds and hands. For some reason themultifaceted brilliant artist Bruce Conner is not very well known outsiderarefied circles of experimental film-o-philes or assemblage art fans, andthis book should go a long way to correct such an egregious oversight. Theessays are substantive, intelligent, and lure readers into discoveriesabout the works of this compelling character, and the design of the book isa joy, filled with many cinematic touches and liberally sprinkled withgorgeous color reproductions. Highly recommended. ... Read more

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Superb Legal Source for Artists
"The Artist's Friendly Legal Guide (Artist's Market Business Series)." I had a pending art sale that required a different legal form from what I had previously been familiar with this book offers superb samples that can be used by an artist. Easy to understand written in plain English. This book is a wise investment that could save any artist a bunch of headaches and misunderstandings. I highly recommend this book. ... Read more

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From one of the world's most respected sailors-the knowledge and secrets every sailor needs

Peter Isler, two-time America's Cup winner, has sailed in and won hundreds of races over the last forty years. In that time, he has acquired a vast array of knowledge about sailing techniques and tactics, not to mention a boatload or two of entertaining stories along the way. In this book, he brings them all together into a single guide to help you make the most of your time on the water, whether you're going for a leisurely sail with friends or competing to win.

• Filled with tips and secrets every sailor craves, from the international competitor to the weekend dinghy sailor
• Includes wisdom and advice gleaned from Peter's time spent sailing with top international sailors, from America's Cup veterans Ted Turner, Dennis Conner and Russell Coutts to and three-time Olympic gold medalist Ben Ainslie
• Covers a range of important sailing topics, including understanding the inner game, leading a team, reading the wind, preparing your boat (and yourself), and much more

Filled with information that will help you become a better sailor, Peter Isler's Little Blue Book of Sailing Secrets, Tactics, Tips, and Observations is an invaluable source of guidance you'll rely on every time you set sail. ... Read more

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The need for power ministry is as strong today as it was when Jesus and the apostles walked the earth.The need for demonstrations of God s powerful love, exhibited through His church, will demolish strongholds of unbelief and relativism, as well as tear down cultural barriers that may bring confusion when only the words of the good news are shared, but its power is neglected. When Jesus and the apostles proclaimed the good news of salvation to people,works of power accompanied them.Today, the entire church needs mentored in how to bring God s word to the world in power. This book is a prophetic call to engage the mission of bringing God s radical love to this hurting world through power ministry. ... Read more

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Great little book
This is a great little book on a timely subject.We all need to experience God's power today.

Wonderful!
I loved this book, very nice "sampling" of some of the best teachers around today. Doug Addisons' section is absolutely wonderful, and Bill Johnson shines as always. Cream of the crop from each author. A lot of diverse but very good stuff in here! Having it in sections makes it a great book to take along with you. Highly recommend!

power
Great book about how God wants His power to work through each of our lives and let people know He loves them.God wants us to be obedient in every thing He tells us to do. He wants us to be willing to be used. ... Read more

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Looking Deeper...
(Peter Conners read as part of the visiting author series at the Writer's Voice on December 7, 2007.This is from my introduction to his reading)

Peter Conner's poems in "Of Whiskey and Winter" have a wonderful way of communicating strangeness, displacement, through precise yet unorthodox choice and placing of words within each poem.His poems often have a remarkable stillness to them, giving the reader time to look around once inside their world, and really breathe the poems in.He has a way in finding beauty in struggle, and at the same time celebrating being in the moment, whether in trying to survive a northern winter, or coming to terms with our own mortality.In "Certified Alive" he combines the two, and writes of a year's passing "each spring I emerge thicker with bear weight.My hair grows, my waist, my growl a truer lament."

Here, as elsewhere in "Of Whiskey and Winter," he writes of our direct, oft-unrealized connection to the natural world, to being something that like everything else we come in contact with, is terribly impermanent.

And he approaches it all with a sense of wonder, of delight.This is reflected both in his language, with its lovely mis-directions, questions becoming answers and then turning back on themselves, and even in celebrating the clarity of madness, of absolutely not having yourself grounded, prepared for what's next.Peter has a way of placing us immediately in the moment, and then being perfectly willing to disorient us, to explode the familiar, to use the strangeness and odd juxtapositions within these poems to alter our sense of where we are.

"Of Whiskey and Winter" grapples with the distance between our reach--our dreams--and our grasp--our hard realities.Like the title of the poem "The Thing Behind the Other Thing," Peter's poems invite us to look a little deeper, consider a little more, identify that which is not readily apparent, but requires our utmost involvement.Both is these poems, and in our lives.

Need more from this author
Peter Conners unique voice is both bold and sensitive.You get taken into a tender moment of a father with his young son; but you'll also bust out laughing at his unique take on a trip to the doctor for an annual physical; and in the end you'll feel his unspoken realizations about what small things can mean in the larger sense.What I love the most is that this isn't just a collection of individual poems.They fit together and guide you through seasons of nature and life.I can't wait to read more.

TOP CURRENT WORKS OF ART
This book is fantastic, I just got my copy last week and I've been just engrossed! If you're looking for something special, this will do it! Peter Conners writes with such a unique flare and vibrancy that I can't say enough about it- I can't wait to read more from him!!!

AMAZING BOOK!!!
This new work by Peter Conners is stellar! Just an incredible collection of Poetry and Prose that is gripping, neccessary, and beautiful. Strongly reccommend!!! ... Read more

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the poetry of peter conners. ... Read more

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Imagine...dining tonight atone of Manhattan's most popular restaurant -- and doing it without making reservations! @ the bar is an 80-page, pocket-sized guide to dining at the bars of much-loved restaurants in Manhattan.The first and only guide of its kind, it features overviews and color photos of 30 restaurants offering outstanding bar dining.@ the Bar gives readers a snapshot of each bar:the décor, the ambiance, the service, the type of food and drink, and the number of bar seats available. @ the bar lets you know if the mood is serene or spirited and whether the bar draws mainly couples or is a more casual place where singles and doubles feel very comfortable.In addition to the featured bars, the guide recommends nearly 40 other restaurants that offer exceptional bar dining. @ the bar satisfies the demands of savvy diners who are always looking for ways to avoid the month-long waits for reservations at Manhattan’s culinary hotspots.New Yorkers—as well as people traveling to the city—are starting to appreciate the fact that bar dining allows you to be spontaneous when deciding where to eat.They’re also discovering and enjoying the friendly atmosphere and highly personal service you get at restaurant bars. ... Read more

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A one-of-its-kind anthology, PP/FF: An Anthology is an attempt to investigate, delineate, and play with the territories in-between prose poetry and flash fiction.To this end, we have collected work from 61 of today’s top innovative writers – work that pushes boundaries, plumbs interstices, and redraws the lines of what we think of as fiction, poetry, and writing genres themselves.The resulting book is both a great read, anywhere you open it, and a wonderful text for teachers of creative writing. PP/FF: An Anthology brings today’s writing avant-garde to the people, without sacrificing the concerns of art. ... Read more

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"Which way to live?" and other perpetual questions
Once again feisty little Starcherone Press runs in and scoops the field, ensuring PP/FF a long life in bookstores, in classroom use and for course adoption at programs sympathetic to the daring and experimental.Peter Conners, one of the most noted US prose poets, here takes on a gigantic challenge, as he struggles to produce a solid critical mass of what he considers the exciting "flash fictions" and "prose poems" of today.Wearing the heroic flippers of the editor, Conners has waded through the dregs of this material and pulled out a whole variety of plums of different sorts.His biggest challenge, of course, is in re-defining "flash fictions" and "prose poems" so that the different, some would say diametrically opposed, genres seem to meet in a place where boundaries dissolve.

For example, Ed Taylor's cunning monologue, is it a prose poem or a flash fiction?I would answer, both.No wonder Conners has created a title (PP/FF) in which only a slash mark separates the two acronyms he's trying to shake up like a bottle of root beer in one hand, a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in the other.Now, shake!As Conners points out, "strict adherence to given definitions of form and genre (prefabricated marketing boxes) are debilitating to a writer's creativity and do a disservice to readers."Look at the way the DA VINCI Code became a publishing sensation.It isn't only that readers like an exciting mystery, but in Dan Brown's novel they felt they were transgressing genres and actually finding out something about Christ's real life too, thus creating a dual appeal that torques up the action both at the cash registers and within the reader's brains.From Stuart Dybek's spooky "Fedora," with its strange images of an assassin's face revealed in blue flare, to Kenneth Bernard's grotesque tale of a nun whose antiquated sense of good and evil warped generations of child charges, you get a wide range of human emotions, -- and these are only the two first stories in the collection, and not even the best ones at that.

Some of the pieces are more clearly prose poems than flash fictions, such as Noah Eli Gordon's poem in which ampersands dot every line like Christmas ornaments on a tree of blue spruce.Daryl Scroggins invents the "flash novel" in his ambitious, Lawrentian salute to the bildungsroman modernism perfected.Lists and quotes dominate Harold Jaffe's "Clown" piece, which verges on the homophobic, its multiple murderers linked in sexuality as straight society views all gay men as clowns.Again and again I go back to Ed Taylor's exceedingly brief "Pilgrim," which resonates long after the book has been closed and life goes on, in the vein of Kerouac, Celine, Haldor Laxness."Which way to live?While angels meringue on some pin's head I wade out to wait for the light, & Bob and Bing now swing my way, got up in blue.They help me off the sawhorse I copped & say, don't block the limos of justice." ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Desmond Ford, Ross Clifford, Graham Twelftree, Kevin Conner, John Chryssavgis, Peter Jensen, Bill Loader, Arthur Patrick, Michael Lattke, Frank W. Boreham, Hermann Sasse, David Mulready, Allan Harman, Michael Frost, Geoffrey Bingham, Alan Walker, J. Sidlow Baxter, Marie Tulip, Mark Durie, Mary Augustine Lane, Graeme Goldsworthy. Excerpt:Sir Alan Walker , O.B.E. (4 June 1911 29 January 2003) was an Australian theologian and evangelist . He was: He was awarded the World Methodist Peace Award in 1986 and honoured as an Australian Living Treasure . He was married to Lady Winifred Walker and they had four children; a daughter, Lynette Sue, and three sons, all of whom followed him into ministry : Bruce and Christopher as ministers of the Uniting Church in Australia and David as a social worker. All three sons earned M.Div. degrees at Garrett in Chicago (and Chris went on to earn a Ph.D. at Claremont). (Among Alan Walker's ancestors was a convict couple whose drunken son became a Methodist minister after his conversion. Walker was the thirteenth minister of the family). Biographies Websites (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at Allan Macdonald Harman (born 7 June 1936) is an Australian Presbyterian theologian and Old Testament scholar. He has been described as a "well-known and highly regarded figure in Christian and especially evangelical circles within Australia and overseas." Harman was born in Lismore, New South Wales and attended Taree High School and Sydney University (B.A. , 1957). He then studied overseas, at the University of Edinburgh (B.D. , 1960; M.Litt in Hebrew and Semitic Languages ) and Westminster Theological Seminary (ThM , 1961; ThD ). In 2003, he was granted an honorary ThD from the Australian College of Theology . Harman was Professor of Old T... ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Kurt Thomas, Anton Heida, Paul Hamm, George Eyser, Peter Vidmar, Bart Conner, Dallas Bixler, Edward Hennig, Trent Dimas, Frank Kriz, Herman Glass, George Gulack. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Kurt Bilteaux Thomas (né le 29 mars 1956 à Miami) était un gymnaste américain. Il est le premier à exécuter les Cercles Thomas (Flares) directement au sol. ...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Look around--the volcanic landscape of Mount St. Helens, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, displays remarkable diversity and resilience.Trees and plants are combining to lay a fabric of green over the rocky ground, and wildlife appears with surprising abundance.

Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, located in southwestern Washington, was established in 1982 under Forest Service management to allow for natural regrowth and change following the 1980 eruption. ... Read more