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Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a sick sense of humour? What is John Updike's deal anyway? And who won the Adult Video News' Female Performer of the Year Award the same year Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in his new book of hilarious non-fiction.

Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.

Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of Infinite Jest, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss....

Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Long renowned as one of the smartest writers on the loose, David Foster Wallace reveals himself in Consider the Lobster to be also one of the funniest. In this program, he ranges far and farther in his search for the original, the curious, or the merely mystifying. He discovers the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the Main Lobster Festival and confronts the inevitable question just beyond the butter-or-cocktail-sauce quandary.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.

Downloadable audio edition of David Foster Wallace's final and most ambitious undertaking – an audacious and hilarious look into the abyss of ordinary life.The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Centre in Peoria, IL, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling.

For decades, books about John or Robert Kennedy have woven either a shimmering tale of Camelot gallantry or a tawdry story of runaway ambition and reckless personal behavior. But the real story of the Kennedys in the 1960s has long been submerged - until now. In Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, David Talbot sheds a dramatic new light on the tumultuous inner life of the Kennedy presidency and its stunning aftermath. Talbot has written a gripping political history.

Walden is the classic account of two years spent by Henry David Thoreau living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The story is detailed in its accounts of Thoreau's day-to-day activities, observations, and undertakings to survive out in the wilderness for two years. Thoreau's journal is an exquisite account of a man seeking a more simple life by living in harmony with nature.

In 1985 southern Sudan is ravaged by war. Rebels and government forces battle for control, with ordinary people…people like the boy, Salva Dut…caught in the middle. When Salva's village is attacked, he must embark on a harrowing journey that will propel him through horror and heartbreak, across a harsh desert, and into a strange new life. Years later, in contemporary South Sudan, a girl named Nya must walk eight hours a day to fetch water. The walk is grueling, but there is unexpected hope.

How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? This speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.

Jonathan Thomas Meriweather is a typical college student, interested in girls, music, and an occasional taste of reefer. But when a journey through an interdimensional portal lands him in a world of talking animals and ominous sorcery, he finds he is on a very different trip indeed. Here, when he plays a strange instrument called a duar, peculiar things happen: powerful magic that may be the only way to stop a dark force that threatens his new world — and his old one.

In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.

One of the most influential musical forces of our time, David Foster—producer, arranger, songwriter, performer—has worked with superstars every decade since the 1970s. In this compelling and outspoken memoir, Foster shares revealing portraits and stories from over five decades of working with music superstars, including Michael Bublé, Celine Dion, Natalie Cole, Josh Groban, Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, and many others. A hitman who produced the soundtrack of our lives, Foster offers glimpses of the musical icons at work and shares secrets for success in the music industry.

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is presented for the first time in audiobook form in This Is Water. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.

An alien race decides humanity’s fate: Eradication. They didn’t count on someone rising to challenge their decree. Constantine had forsaken his family name and birthright. At 28-years old, he’d escaped Earth to help terraform Mars. An empire’s heir went missing just as the universe’s greatest threat announces itself. War Games will decide who represents humanity in this extinction level struggle. Constantine is summoned.

Una novela crítica, divertida y reflexiva sobre la adicción, el consumismo y la soledad de la sociedad norteamericana, desde una perspectiva de gran sabiduría y sentido del humor.

For two decades he served...and never questioned the orders. Would one act of mercy cost him? Alistair believed in the work. It was important to stop the rebels for the good of the Commonwealth. Over his career he’d become the greatest Titan the Corp had ever seen. It was a simple mission. Then the rebels said one thing...and Alistair’s life changed forever.

Homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, cults--secret sins rival the glitter of Hollywood for young actor David Kyle Foster. Winning wholesome television roles, his star on the rise, he is relieved to be free from his father's harshness. But the desperate loneliness and sexual obsession that characterized his youth now accompany his rise to success and bondage to a double life seems the only answer. Can Jesus' love reach one so broken?

While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eye—and the literary codes—of a college professor.