Reddit mentions: The best american dramas & plays books

Okay so, YA books are my jam, and I'll get to those in a second. But if you want a fun summer read you'll have trouble putting down, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is great. It's a really fun read, especially for people who like books. It's got mystery, humor, and you'll stay up way too late reading to figure out what's going to happen next. It's not the deepest or most challenging book in the world, but it's real fun and well paced.

For YA, anything by Laurie Halse-Anderson is amazing. I've read Speak more times than any other book. Her book Catalyst is also really awesome. And I just finished her book Twisted a few days ago, and it was a great, quick read. (I actually finished it in one lazy day!)

Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why is heartbreaking. If you liked Fault in Our Stars, I'm sure you'll love this. It's a great concept (girl who kills herself gives a series of tapes to a boy to explain why she did it), and it's just superbly well written. Along the same lines, Markus Zusak's I am the Messenger is also a great high-concept, all-the-feels read.

If you like the more fantasy-esque YA books, the best series I've found is Clive Barker's Abarat series. If you end up getting these, make sure to get the hardcover versions. The writing is great itself, but what really makes the series is that each book has over 300 paintings and illustrations done by the author himself. It's a great epic, and the third book of five just came out last year. The series gets darker as it goes, which is great.

And, finally, not a YA novel, but Adam Rapp's The Metal Children is an awesome play about a guy who wrote a YA book that's the focus of a censorship argument in a small town. It's got some great points in it, and is a fast, fun read.

Hope this helps! Sorry if I used the word 'great' too much. :P

Oh! I love reading books!

I'm going to fall back on a couple of non-fiction books that are mind-blowing, although not necessarily on the same scale you're talking about.

On germs, plagues and bio-containment:

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston:

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Terrifying-True-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864059&sr=8-1

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864094&sr=1-1

I read both of these books back to back and it's like reading the same story first covered by the National Enquirer (Hot Zone) and then again by the New York Times (Coming Plague). It's a fascinating look at disease distribution and protection. The Hot Zone is a light easy read that's more sensationalist than scientific, the Coming Plague is the polar opposite, but both are good reads.

Road Fever by Tim Cahill:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Fever-Tim-Cahill/dp/0394758374/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864207&sr=1-1

Guy is hired by GM for a promotional stunt. Drive their new truck from the tip of Argentina to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska as fast as he can. The problems he has getting through South and Central America are amazing, and not just culturally, politically.

Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon:

http://www.amazon.com/Into-Heart-Borneo-Redmond-OHanlon/dp/0394755405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266864285&sr=1-1

Take your average academic natural history book reviewer and throw him in the jungle for a month! It will be great!

For the sake of publishing, I've had good luck with CreateSpace and KDP. Both are owned by Amazon and take a much smaller cut of royalties than traditional publishers.

https://www.createspace.com/

https://kdp.amazon.com/


To prove they work, here's a link to something I've published.

http://www.amazon.com/Static-Lullaby-Mr-Angus-Russell/dp/1466231998/

(Not child friendly, written for cynical teenagers.)

I actually wrote a children's story about the moon once. MOON, Shibes.
And here it is, in it's entirety.

Once there was a girl who loved the night sky.
she loved the moon.
She loved the stars.
She loved the airplanes.
Once, on her birthday, she had a wonderful wish.
She wanted to visit all her friends in the sky.
She wanted to ride an airplane.
She wanted to walk the moon.
She wanted to dance among the stars.
The moon, having heard her wish, lifted her from the ground.
She flew past airplanes.
She flew past clouds.
She came to meet the moon.
“I am the moon, and I love you”
“But moon, I want to keep going. I want to see the stars.”
“The stars will hurt you.”
“I just want to dance among them.”
“They won't treat you right.”
“They're so pretty.”
“I suppose, if you really wish, I could let you dance with the stars.”
“Thank you, moonfriend.”
So the moon let her go, and she kept flying. She met with the stars, and asked them to dance.
One star was hot and burned her.
One star had become a black hole and tried to shrink her down.
One star exploded and left her with a bruise.
When she could no longer take the stars, she floated back down to the moon.
“Moon, why did the stars hurt me?”
“Because they may be pretty from afar, but up close, they can hurt you.”
“Would you ever hurt me, moon?”
“no. I am the moon, and I love you.”
“You wouldn't make me feel small?”
“You are big to me.”
“You wouldn't bruise me?”
“I have no way to bruise you.”
“I love you moon.”
“I love you, girl.”

Ooooh awesome!

1. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. A tragic comedy, it tells in a wonderful way the toils of religion and the euphoria of love. A dystopian romantic fantasy, and apart from #2 the best book I've ever read.
   
   
2. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. A comedic tragedy, the story of a man in love and in desperation and in trouble. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Quite probably my favorite book ever, and I think everybody should read it.
   
   
3. Technically it's a play, but The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh. A really well written dark and disturbing story about a man in a totalitarian investigation. But it still manages to be hilarious in all the most deep and worrying ways. It's definitely my favorite play, and is really amazing.

Oh I dunno what Mamet's "best" play might be - I haven't read them all, for one thing. But the three that I listed above are my favorites. Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1984. Oleanna might be the best example of Mamet's dialogue style. You can read a few pages of each using the "Look Inside" link at the Amazon entries above and decide if you're interested.

Are you looking for a textbook or non-fiction books?

I am a microbiologist so these books are biased towards that:

The Coming Plague. Its a little sensationalist but its a good read.

The Hot Zone This is the book that got me into microbiology and started me on the path to being a microbiologist.

The Immortal Life of Henriatta Lacks Light on the science but still puts a personal context to science especially tissue culture.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History Good historical look on a disease that we still fear today.

Not a book but check out This Week in Microbiology and This Week in Virology podcasts. Great and informative.

Your best bet is to read as many plays as you can get your hands on, and find monologues you connect with. The key will be hunting down plays with male characters in your age bracket.

Colleen Wagner's The Monument opens with a great monologue by Stetko, a young man on trial for war crimes. You could probably cut a good 1.5min section out of it for a dramatic piece. The character is challenging, and might be fun for you to explore.

The character of Sparkle also has some nice little monologues in Judith Thompson's Habitat.

I have a book of plays by Christopher Durang that I'm working through, but before this I had just reread these three plays by Rajiv Joseph. Gruesome Playground Injuries is one of my favorite plays that features only two people and I love how the two characters seem real no matter at what age they're shown (which is from 8-38). I highly recommend Gruesome for someone looking to get into reading plays.

This one won a Pulitzer Prize, but I'm afraid it is non-fiction

If you need it to be fiction, here's one of the best plays ever written about a trial on the same subject

I also agree with KosherDev - go see a real one.

Edit - to add another link....

>Yet he lost the battle to Order, the system of values that governs the world that Gotham is siatuated in

Did he? The entire thing was literally built on a lie -- in the John Ford style -- and came crashing to the ground. In the end, it was disorder that saved them. It took the two forces of order having a gunfight in front of city hall to return any sense of normalcy to the city, and the good guy reactionary order guys were the ones who blew the last bridge out of Gotham. And the city still needs its Batman.

I think the compromised order that Nolan constructed is a pretty good representation of the Nietzschean conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The eternal conflict between the Batman and the Joker is necessary and natural, because one is incapable of surviving without the other. The best way I could explain this would be to read this -- or see it, if it's playing near you. It's a play after all, it's not meant to be read.

I was fortunate enough to see the play called "The Sea Farer" where it originated in London as well as its run on Broadway in 07'. I think you would find interesting parallels with your story. Great writing Hans. http://www.amazon.com/Seafarer-Conor-McPherson/dp/1559363126/ref=la_B001JP4OA2_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398225869&sr=1-2
// Edit: contraction fix

When theater people talk about Samuel French format, they're talking about a format for submission of plays, not a publication format. Sam French is the most common, standard play submission format, but each theater can have its own specifications. Here are some examples of Samuel French format:

http://www.playwrightslocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Samuel-French-Formatting-Guide.pdf

http://broadwayeducators.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Sample_Format_Page.pdf

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/stageus.pdf

When you say Samuel French format, you're talking about Acting Editions like these? Small, thin booklets used by actors as they learn the play? Published by Sam French or Dramatist's Play Service? They are called acting editions:



https://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Acting-Clifford-Williams/dp/0573113653



https://www.amazon.com/Remember-Mama-Acting-John-Druten/dp/0573011974/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542057843&sr=1-3


https://www.amazon.com/Wit-Acting-Margaret-Edson/dp/082221704X


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0573651302/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p2_i5


https://www.amazon.com/Side-Man-Acting-Warren-Leight/dp/082221721X

So just a little more detail on this, especially in regards to Ebola virus and how the US dealt with it. Also, to preface, I'm about to begin my PhD and will be working in high containment - as I am completely fascinated by these pathogens, especially filoviruses, and had the pleasure of meeting one of the head physicians who tended to the Ebola cases at Emory University.

So despite the fact that Ebola will likely never reach epidemic proportions in the US as it did in Africa due to cultural differences that ultimately led to quick dissemination through the region - the US swiftly put precautionary measures into place. The most notable is how quickly they turned a wing of the hospital at Emory into a BSL4 containment facility. Utilizing the NEIDL at Boston University as an upsetting example of how many set backs there are to establishing BSL4 facilities - I believe there's less than 20 in the US (the exact number escapes me at this hour), yet another illustration of the difficulties of establishing high containment facilities. Yet When emory began getting over crowded and needed more BSL4 space - they were able to (with the help of their CDC neighbors) create a fully functional BSL4 in 48hrs. In addition to the Emory isolation unit, after the 'Ebola scare' the government and/or state health departments issued high containment bio safety suits to the major hospitals in each state (even if they didn't have quarantine units), in case they ever had to deal with an outbreak. (Source: a few friends of mine are head of their departments in major cities and informed me because they knew I would get a kick out of it. lol)

I could go on and on (because I am a super big nerd about infectious pathogens), but I will give you some cool resources for you to check out if you'd like to read about it more.

Emory Ebola isolation unit

My absolute favorite book, which explains how a lot of the worlds most deadly pathogens first emerged and how they were discovered - The Coming Plague

Not quite the same as your examples, but some of my favorite non-fiction science are...

The Coming Plague

And The Band Played On

The Disappearing Spoon

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

I could probably come up with a few others if any of these seem to be what interests you.

Smart.

Honestly dude, your strength is exactly what I told you, you have a sense of story-as-conflict which is kind of rare. Student films often start off with boring exposition.

The best thing you can do is READ ALOT OF PLAYS. I live in new york and I read a short play every day on the subway ride to work. Plays will teach you to write realistic dialogue and how to tell a story using people talking and arguing in a room (ie the main element of your chosen genre, which is drama). I look for collections of (usually short) plays when I go to the used bookstore (I try to get modern ones for obvious reasons, harder to learn dialogue from older ones). Try to pay attention to how dialogue "bounces off" each other in an action/reaction fashion, seeing this on a play manuscript on paper help you learn this. Your genre is drama so READ DRAMA. If you want a playwright to start with to explore Id go with John Patrick Shanley he write romance/drama but boy he knows how to keep people at each others throats.

Maybe get this:

https://www.amazon.com/13-Shanley-Thirteen-Plays/dp/1557830991/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519516204&sr=1-1&keywords=13+by+shanley

Im reading this right now:

https://www.amazon.com/Outstanding-Short-Plays-Craig-Pospisil/dp/0822225131

Just keep people arguing (maybe not every scene but most scenes and the first scene always), keep them talking in a realistic fashion, and youll be playing to your strengths.

Do NOT get caught in the trap of focusing more on your cinematography than your storytelling. We ALL fall into that trap. Just shoot closer thats your main cinematography issue which is loose compositions (im not an expert cinematographer on the technical side-my stuff is rough as hell with no image quality, but I know the artistic/creative side) .

Oh and biggest lighting tip:

Light people with a soft light from the side (often no fill light necessary) and watch how your stuff magically looks much more like a movie.

I would also recommend watching Blue Valentine and trying to learn from it. Heart wrenching drama.

Good luck on your journey

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

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amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett

It's my favorite non-fiction book and it pushed me into being pre-med in college. Obviously not about the Cold War (although some of it takes places during then) but it's really well researched and fascinating.

If you like The Hot Zone, you'll love The Coming Plague.

I just finished reading Looking for Alaska . I enjoyed it. Some people lump it in with young adult, but I found it to be more sophisticated and thought provoking than most of the other YA books I've read.

Oh this epidemic is in the infant stage. It's simple math. He will understand when the hot zone is Africa.
Ebola is a ping pong ball the closer people are compacted population wise

Read this book if you want some truth and not current population concentrations of an infant epidemic
Thanks sponsz for getting it.

This grabbed from a library and randomly thumbed through. You'll get a good series of stuff. Also, read this by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I like classics, especially now that I am old enough to have experiences these literary gods talked about.

I did my thesis on him. You can find a lot of his major works online, but there are two standard compilations of his oeuvre.

This one skips his later works, but that's okay because once he finished Four Quartets he basically decided he could never write something better, and so he didn't write for the next 15 years of his life or so. It also includes his plays, as he was a major playwright as well.

This one includes more poetry, but not the plays.

I'm pretty sure the dude is disabled. This picture went around a while back. I think he also was like trying to sue Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande for not dating him or something.

Here he is, he also wrote a book

https://www.reddit.com/r/niceguys/comments/6502wq/guy_who_sued_taylor_swift_heartbroken_over_ariana/

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Sued-Taylor-Swift-Frivolous/dp/069297010X



edit: oh and this is apparently also him, but the name is blocked out so no way to know for sure

https://imgur.com/a/FR7YC

By far The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. Makes The Hot Zone seem like a carefree weekend.

happy birthday

have you read TS Elliot

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Tiger_at_the_Baghdad_Zoo

Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Gruesome-Playground-Injuries-Animals-Baghdad/dp/1593762941
Dramatists Play Service - http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=4343

Looking for Alaska - John Green

Edit: I misread the title, this is not a series. It's still great though.

The Coming Plague is a good read.

This guy also wrote a book about why he sued Taylor Swift for not being his girlfriend. I'm conflicted because I don't want to give this dude money but I really, really want to read his trash book.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Sued-Taylor-Swift-Frivolous/dp/069297010X

I think everyone in this thread would be well served to read Laurie Garrett's "The Coming Plague" and Robert Preston's "The Hot Zone".

This is a good, long book about the origins and discovery of some of the newer, more confusing diseases. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
The title is more clickbait-y than the actual work.

Oh it's available via Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0822221004/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1450910606&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=pillowman&dpPl=1&dpID=41Ap9fv9AsL&ref=plSrch

if you ment 'the guard', it is too. i don't use streaming services (bad selection in my country) so i can't help with that...

The guy wrote a book about suing Taylor Swift
Why I sued Taylor Swift

For those who havent seen this guy. It's a trip.

Or read his book!

Here is a penny book! :)

The diseases are actually quite old. They're both zoonoses, or diseases transmitted from animals to people. In the case of HIV from chimps, and in the case of Ebola we don't know the reservoir species. Maybe bats. From there, these diseases are able to transmit directly from human to human. HIV turned out to be quite well adapted for this, perhaps because SIV was in chimps for so long and also because unlike Ebola, HIV takes awhile to cause symptoms, and symptoms aren't as scary at least for awhile.

It's new patterns of population and travel that have amplified them (and a bit of bad luck). A great book on this for HIV is [Jacques Pepin's The Origin of AIDS] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-AIDS-Jacques-Pepin/dp/0521186374). Essentially we can see based on historic biological samples and the pace of genetic viral mutation that HIV has crossed into humans from chimps multiple times and among primates as well. What changed was that HIV managed to infect a bush meat hunter then make it into a city with a lot of men and few women and then perhaps into a sex worker and . . . away we go. Whereas infecting one bush hunter who then infects his wife and she goes on to have an infected baby - well they all just die out, end of "epidemic."

[Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague] (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance/dp/0140250913/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301527&sr=1-1&keywords=the+coming+plague) and [David Quammen's Spillover] (http://www.amazon.com/Spillover-Animal-Infections-Human-Pandemic/dp/0393346617/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407301582&sr=1-3&keywords=the+coming+plague) also address this question well.

I followed that one with The Coming Plague. It's a bit more heavy, less of a narrative. Man, I was paranoid for MONTHS after reading those two!

I have always been a bit grimly obsessed by Ebola, and my friend gave me this to read a few years ago. It was terrifying and riveting. Plus, not long after, said friend went on Honeymoon very near to supposed Ebola cave... he wasn't keen.

Incidentally, a good follow-up read to this is The Coming Plague

I always point people to this book when they blow off vaccinations or contagious diseases:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp/0140250913

The other book? Preston's The Hot Zone.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Hot-Zone-Terrifying-Story/dp/0385479565

Both of those scared the ever living shit out of me, and they're also why I hate Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy.