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Mistakes Were Made: Penguin Special

Mistakes Were Made: Penguin Special

by Pieper Liam and Liam Pieper
Paperback
Publication Date: 16/03/2015

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Liam Pieper's made some poor life choices, but he's (usually) meant well. He's tried to write important stories, fight racial prejudice and rescue traumatised puppies. And he's ended up with life-threatening infestations, a punch in the face at a Leonard Cohen concert and brief detention by counter-terrorism experts. Taking us from Nimbin to US border security to the star-studded Chateau Marmont in LA, these four essays are compelling, insightful and very funny. Mistakes Were Made is about the gap between our ideals in life - of love, compassion, ambition - and how things actually play out. 'His writing is electric: charged with meaning and energised by surprising comedic turns.' Weekend Australian 'Charming and amusing.' Sunday Age 'The ability to laugh at yourself is arguably the most valuable quality you can cultivate as a writer, and Liam Pieper has it in spades . . . he does hilarious self-deprecation with considerable panache.' Sydney Morning Herald
ISBN:
9780143573128
9780143573128
Category:
Literary essays
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
16-03-2015
Publisher:
Penguin Australia Pty Ltd
Pages:
80
Dimensions (mm):
180x112x6mm
Weight:
0.06kg
What would a full year of dog-sitting an idiot pooch called Geoffrey teach you about cats? Plenty, actually, as is detailed by Liam Pieper in this essay collection.
For example, cats are:
  1. Crafty: “The cat meows for the benefit of humans. If a cat is never exposed to humans it will never meow; it’s something only domestic cats do to manipulate their human companions.”
  2. Calculating: “A domestic cat meows with the same frequency with which a newborn human baby cries – they do this deliberately to provoke an instinctive nurturing instinct in us.”
  3. Uncultivated: “There is no such thing as a domesticated cat. Unlike other companion animals that have been selectively bred over time to serve human ends – goats, horses, Idiot Geoffrey – cats have refused all efforts at domestication.”
  4. Survivors: “They remain wild at heart; you can drop the most coddled housecat in the middle of the jungle and it’ll be just fine, thank you. A housecat isn’t a pet, it’s a roommate.”
  5. Perfect in every way: “If ever there was a spirit animal for the writer, it is the cat: vain, spoiled, disloyal, lazy but predatory; forever discontented, even if it looks to be purring; endlessly fascinating, to itself at least, and to those who go for that sort of thing.”
Liam Pieper

Liam Pieper is a Melbourne-based author and journalist. His first book was a memoir, The Feel-Good Hit of the Year, shortlisted for the National Biography Award and the Ned Kelly Best True Crime award. His second was the Penguin Special Mistakes Were Made, a volume of humorous essays. He was co-recipient of the 2014 M Literary Award, winner of the 2015 Geoff Dean Short Story Prize and the inaugural creative resident of the UNESCO City of Literature of Prague. The Toymaker is his first novel.

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