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books tagged “American literature” (american literature / American Literature)
books tagged “American literature”
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The Actualby Saul BellowISBN 0140274995 (0-14-027499-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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An American Childhoodby Annie DillardISBN 0060915188 (0-06-091518-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An American Childhood'Book summary:Annie Dillard remembers. She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive." [via]
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Anthology of American Literatureby Dana D. Nelson, James S. Leonard, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, David Bradley, Joseph Csicsila, George McMichaelISBN 0131987992 (0-13-198799-2)
Softcover, Prentice Hall
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anthology of American Literature'Book summary:This leading, two-volume anthology represents America's literary heritage from the colonial times of William Bradford and Anne Bradstreet to the contemporary era of Saul Bellow and Alice Walker. This anthology is best known for its solid headnotes and introductions as well as a balance approach to selections.
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Anthology of American Literature: Colonial Through Romanticby Leo Marx, George McMichael, David Smith, J. C. Levenson, David E. Smith, Mae Miller Claxton, Susan Bunn, McMichael George, Mae Claxton, George L. McMichaelISBN 0130838144 (0-13-083814-4)
Softcover, Prentice Hall
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anthology of American Literature: Colonial Through Romantic'Book summary:This leading, two-volume anthology represents America's literary heritage from the colonial times of William Bradford and Anne Bradstreet to the contemporary era of Saul Bellow and Alice Walker. The first volume covers Christopher Columbus through Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Additional Hopi and Navajo myths. Presents multiple selections by authors. Provides an expanded chronological chart. Presents many works in their entirety. For anyone interested in American Literature. [via]
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The Assistantby Bernard MalamudISBN 0060958308 (0-06-095830-8)
Softcover, Perennial
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The Awakening, and Other Stories.by Kate Chopin, Lewis Gaston LearyISBN 003078395X (0-03-078395-X)
Softcover, Thomson Learning
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Awakening, and Other Stories.'Book summary:Kate Chopin was one of the most individual and adventurous of nineteenth-century american writers, whose fiction explored new and often startling territory. When her most famous story, The Awakening, was first published in 1899, it stunned readers with its frank portrayal of the inner word of Edna Pontellier, and its daring criticisms of the limits of marriage and motherhood. The subtle beauty of her writing was contrasted with her unwomanly and sordid subject-matter: Edna's rejection of her domestic role, and her passionate quest for spiritual, sexual, and artistic freedom.
From her first stories, Chopin was interested in independent characters who challenged convention. This selection, freshly edited from the first printing of each text, enables readers to follow her unfolding career as she experimented with a broad range of writing, from tales for children to decadent fin-de siecle sketches. The Awakening is set alongside thirty-two short stories, illustrating the spectrum of the fiction from her first published stories to her 1898 secret masterpiece, "The Storm." [via]More editions of The Awakening, and Other Stories.:
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The Awakening and Selected Storiesby Kate ChopinISBN 0140390227 (0-14-039022-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Awakening and Selected Stories'Book summary:The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers and reviewers with its treatment of sex and suicide. In a departure from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation. The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class convention are the themes of this now-classic novel. The book was influenced by French writers ranging from Flaubert to Maupassant, and can be seen as a precursor of the impressionistic, mood-driven novels of Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes. Variously called "vulgar, " "unhealthily introspective, " and "morbid, " the book was neglected for several decades, not least because it was written by a "regional" woman writer. This edition also includes selected stories from Kate Chopin's Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and an introduction and notes by Nina Baym. [via]
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Back to Barbary Lane: The Final Tales of the City Omnibusby Armistead MaupinISBN 0060166495 (0-06-016649-5)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Back to Barbary Lane: The Final Tales of the City Omnibus'Book summary:"An old fashioned pleasure... there's been nothing like it since the heyday of the serial novel 100 years ago... Tearing through [the tales] one after the other, as I did, allows instant gratification; it also lets you appreciate how masterfully they're constructed. No matter what Maupin writes next, he can look back on the rare achievement of having built a little world and made it run."
--Walter Kendrick, Village Voice Literary SupplementBy turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City series stands as an incomparable blend of great storytelling and incisive social commentary. These six classic comedies, some of which originally appeared as serials in San Francisco newspapers, have won Maupin critical acclaim around the world and enthralled legions of devoted fans.
Back to Barbary Lane comprises the second trilogy of the series--Babycakes (1984), Significant Others (1987), and Sure of You (1989) -- concluding the saga of the tenants, past and present, of Mrs. Madrigal's beloved apartment house on Russian Hill. While the first trilogy celebrated the carefree excesses of the seventies, this volume tracks its hapless, all-to-human cast across a decade troubled by plague, deceit and overweening ambition.
Like its companion volume, 28 Barbary Lane, Back to Barbary Lane is distinguished by what The Guardian of London has called "some of the sharpest and most speakable dialogue you are ever likely to read." It promises hours of literate entertainment for readers old and new.
With a foreword by the author. [via]
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The Bad Beginningby Lemony Snicket, Brett HelquistISBN 0061146307 (0-06-114630-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bad Beginning'Book summary:Make no mistake. The Bad Beginning begins badly for the three Baudelaire children, and then gets worse. Their misfortunes begin one gray day on Briny Beach when Mr. Poe tells them that their parents perished in a fire that destroyed their whole house. "It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed," laments the personable (occasionally pedantic) narrator, who tells the story as if his readers are gathered around an armchair on pillows. But of course what follows is dreadful. The children thought it was bad when the well-meaning Poes bought them grotesque-colored clothing that itched. But when they are ushered to the dilapidated doorstep of the miserable, thin, unshaven, shiny-eyed, money-grubbing Count Olaf, they know that they--and their family fortune--are in real trouble. Still, they could never have anticipated how much trouble. While it's true that the events that unfold in Lemony Snicket's novels are bleak, and things never turn out as you'd hope, these delightful, funny, linguistically playful books are reminiscent of Roald Dahl (remember James and the Giant Peach and his horrid spinster aunts), Charles Dickens (the orphaned Pip in Great Expectations without the mysterious benefactor), and Edward Gorey (The Gashlycrumb Tinies). There is no question that young readers will want to read the continuing unlucky adventures of the Baudelaire children in The Reptile Room and The Wide Window. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson [via]
More editions of The Bad Beginning:
- The Bad Beginning: ISBN 0060283122 (0-06-028312-2)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - The Bad Beginning: ISBN 006075589X (0-06-075589-X)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited - The Bad Beginning: ISBN 0060518286 (0-06-051828-6)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited - The Bad Beginning: ISBN 0061146307 (0-06-114630-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
- The Bad Beginning: ISBN 0060283122 (0-06-028312-2)
The Bad Beginningby Daniel Handler, Brett HelquistISBN 0064407667 (0-06-440766-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bad Beginning'Book summary:Hardcover Publisher: Harper Collins (1999) Language: English Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1" Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds [via]
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The Bad Beginning Privateby Lemony Snicket, Brett HelquistISBN 0060837462 (0-06-083746-2)
Hardcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Meby Richard Farina, Thomas PynchonISBN 0140189300 (0-14-018930-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me'Book summary:This is the ultimate novel of college life during the first hallucinatory flowering of what has famously come to be known as The Sixties. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me follows haunted ur-hippy Gnossos Pappadopoulis upon return to his old university town that's just tilting into a new era, and Gnossos' involvement in a swirl of sixties-style drug taking and the search for love and the meaning of it all. It is a hilarious and haunting book. [via]
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By the Shores of Silver Lakeby Laura Ingalls Wilder, Garth WilliamsISBN 0064400050 (0-06-440005-0)
Softcover, Trophy Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'By the Shores of Silver Lake'Book summary:The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they move from their little house on the banks of Plum Creek to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Here Pa works on the new railroad until he finds a homestead claim that is perfect for their new little house. Laura takes her first train ride as she, her sisters, and their mother come out to live with Pa on the shores of Silver Lake. After a lonely winter in the surveyors' house, Pa puts up the first building in what will soon be a brand-new town on the beautiful shores of Silver Lake. The Ingallses' covered-wagon travels are finally over. [via]
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A Canticle for Leibowitzby Walter M. Miller, Mary Doria RussellISBN 0060892994 (0-06-089299-4)
Softcover, Eos
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'Book summary:Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes [via]
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Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millayby Edna st Vincent MillayISBN 0060910917 (0-06-091091-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay'Book summary:More than 180 sonnets selected from Millay's books of poems -- including 20 sonnets from Mine the Harvest not contained in previous editions of her Collected Sonnets -- are brought together in this new, expanded edition.
An introduction by Norma Millay, written expressly for this volume, focuses on examples of the poet's variations in sonnet structure. Here is the voice of Millay, whose prophetic vision, devotion to freedom, and intellectual daring combine with her mastery of the sonnet form to speak eloquently for the human spirit. [via]
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The Company She Keepsby Mary McCarthyISBN 0140023275 (0-14-002327-5)
Hardcover, Penguin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Company She Keeps'Book summary:These six brilliantly written episodes, brought together in Mary McCarthy's first novel, create a fascinating portrait of a 1930s New York social circle. Based loosely on the author's own life, the book follows a young bohemian woman, Margaret Sargent, through her experiences and lost loves in a time of coming war. On publication in 1942, its bold insight, sly wit and virtuoso style won Mary McCarthy immediate recogntion as one of the most accomplished, versatile and penetrating writers in America. [via]
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Complete Storiesby Dorothy Parker, Colleen BreeseISBN 0140189394 (0-14-018939-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete Stories'Book summary:Dorothy Parker's quips and light verse have become part of the American literary landscape, but, as this new collection of her complete short stories demonstrates, Parker's talents extended far beyond brash one-liners and clever rhymes. Many of the stories, originally written for magazines, have never been collected before. [via]
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The Counterlifeby Philip RothISBN 0140097694 (0-14-009769-4)
Softcover, Penguin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Counterlife'Book summary:The saga of Henry and Nathan Zuckerman continues, 13 years after novelist Nathan Zuckerman first appeared in Roth's 1974 effort, My Life as a Man. In The Counterlife, the dentist Henry suffers an unsettling--and for Roth, a predictable--side effect to his heart medication: impotence, which leads him to undergo an ill-fated operation. The multi-layered plot line travels from New York to London to Israel, while the characters undergo a series of surprising transformations. In the words of Nathan, a change in one's life causes "a counterlife that is one's own anti-myth." It's vintage Roth. [via]
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Crossing to Safetyby Wallace Earle StegnerISBN 0140112499 (0-14-011249-9)
Softcover, Penguin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crossing to Safety'Book summary:It's deceptively simple: two bright young couples meet during the Depression and form an instant and lifelong friendship. "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?" Larry Morgan, a successful novelist and the narrator of the story, poses that question many years after he and his wife, Sally, have befriended the vibrant, wealthy, and often troubled Sid and Charity Lang. "Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?" It's not here. What is here is just as fascinating, just as compelling, as touching, and as tragic.
Crossing to Safety is about loyalty and survival in its most everyday form--the need to create bonds and the urge to tear them apart. Thirty-four years after their first meeting, when Larry and Sally are called back to the Langs' summer home in Vermont, it's as if for a final showdown. How has this friendship defined them? What is its legacy? Stegner offer answers in those small, perfectly rendered moments that make up lives "as quiet as these"--and as familiar as our own. --Sara Nickerson [via]
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Crossing to Safetyby Wallace StegnerISBN 0140133488 (0-14-013348-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crossing to Safety'Book summary:It's deceptively simple: two bright young couples meet during the Depression and form an instant and lifelong friendship. "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?" Larry Morgan, a successful novelist and the narrator of the story, poses that question many years after he and his wife, Sally, have befriended the vibrant, wealthy, and often troubled Sid and Charity Lang. "Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?" It's not here. What is here is just as fascinating, just as compelling, as touching, and as tragic.
Crossing to Safety is about loyalty and survival in its most everyday form--the need to create bonds and the urge to tear them apart. Thirty-four years after their first meeting, when Larry and Sally are called back to the Langs' summer home in Vermont, it's as if for a final showdown. How has this friendship defined them? What is its legacy? Stegner offer answers in those small, perfectly rendered moments that make up lives "as quiet as these"--and as familiar as our own. --Sara Nickerson [via]
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Cryptonomiconby Neal StephensonISBN 0060512806 (0-06-051280-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cryptonomicon'Book summary:Neal Stephenson enjoys cult status among science fiction fans and techie types thanks to Snow Crash, which so completely redefined conventional notions of the high-tech future that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if his cyberpunk classic was big, Cryptonomicon is huge... gargantuan... massive, not just in size (a hefty 918 pages including appendices) but in scope and appeal. It's the hip, readable heir to Gravity's Rainbow and the Illuminatus trilogy. And it's only the first of a proposed series--for more information, read our interview with Stephenson.
Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, cryptanalyst extraordinaire, and gung ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first.... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed.... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."
All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.
Cryptonomicon is vintage Stephenson from start to finish: short on plot, but long on detail so precise it's exhausting. Every page has a math problem, a quotable in-joke, an amazing idea, or a bit of sharp prose. Cryptonomicon is also packed with truly weird characters, funky tech, and crypto--all the crypto you'll ever need, in fact, not to mention all the computer jargon of the moment. A word to the wise: if you read this book in one sitting, you may die of information overload (and starvation). --Therese Littleton [via]
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Damnation of Theron Wareby Harold FredericISBN 0140390251 (0-14-039025-1)
Softcover, Penguin USA
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The Dead Fatherby Donald BarthelmeISBN 0140086676 (0-14-008667-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dead Father'Book summary:The Dead Father is a gargantuan half-dead, half-alive, part mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself--even while he is being dragged by means of a cable toward a mysterious goal. In this extraordinary novel, marked by the imaginative use of language that influenced a generation of fiction writers, Donald Barthelme offered a glimpse into his fictional universe. As Donald Antrim writes in his introduction, "Reading The Dead Father, one has the sense that its author enjoys an almost complete artistic freedom . . . a permission to reshape, misrepresent, or even ignore the world as we find it . . . Laughing along with its author, we escape anxiety and feel alive."[via]More editions of The Dead Father:
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The Dispossessedby Ursula K. Le GuinISBN 006051275X (0-06-051275-X)
Softcover, Perennial
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dispossessed'Book summary:Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
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Essays of E.B. Whiteby E. B. WhiteISBN 0060932236 (0-06-093223-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Essays of E.B. White'Book summary:The classic collection by one of the greatest essayists of our time. [via]
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Factotumby Charles BukowskiISBN 006113127X (0-06-113127-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Factotum'Book summary:One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.
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Further Tales of the Cityby Armistead MaupinISBN 0060924926 (0-06-092492-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Further Tales of the City'Book summary:The calamity-prone residents of 28 barbary lane are at it again in this deliciously dark novel of romance and betrayal. While anna madrigal imprisons an anchorwoman in her basement, michael tolliver looks for love at the national gay rodeo, dede halcyon day and mary ann singleton track a charismatic psychopath across alaska, and society columnist prue giroux loses her heart to a derelict living in san francisco park [via]
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Galatea 2.2by Richard PowersISBN 0060976926 (0-06-097692-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Galatea 2.2'Book summary:After several years abroad, novelist Richard Powers -- the fictional protagonist of the story -- returns to America and accepts the position of Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous and prestigious Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There, he meets Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on creating a model of the human brain with computer-based neural networks, and together they embark on an outlandishly ambitious project -- to teach the neural net English literature so that it can pass a difficult master's exam.
As their experiment progresses, their brain-child absorbs more and more information, gradually becoming increasingly worldly. Soon, it demands to know its name, sex, race and reason for existing. Meanwhile, this literary crash course sparks in Powers a parallel awakening, and he begins a reconsideration of his chosen profession, his decade-long, failed relationship with a former pupil and his obsession with the master's candidate against whom his cybernetic pupil is slated to compete. [via]
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The Gold Bug Variationsby Richard PowersISBN 0060975008 (0-06-097500-8)
Softcover, Perennial
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Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems, Tales, Criticismby Edgar Allan Poe, G.R. ThompsonISBN 0060727853 (0-06-072785-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Short Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Poems, Tales, Criticism'Book summary:The classic poems and spine-tingling stories of a Gothic American master collected in one volume.
Of all the American masters, Edgar Allan Poe staked out perhaps the most unique and vivid reputation, as a master of the macabre. Even today, in the age of horror movies and high-tech haunted houses, Poe is the first choice of entertainment for many who want a spine-chilling thrill.
Born in Boston in 1809, and dead at the age of 40, Poe wrote across several fields during his life, noted for his poetry and short stories as well as his criticism. The best of each of these is collected here, including the classic poem The Raven, and timeless stories like The Tell-Tale Heart. In his introduction to this volume, G. R. Thompson argues that Poe was a great satirist and comedic craftsman, as well as a formidable Gothic writer. "All of Poe's fiction," Thompson writes, "and the poems as well, can be seen as one coherent piece—as the work of one of the greatest ironists of world literature."
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Great Short Works of Edgar Allen Poeby Edgar Allan Poe, Gary Richard ThompsonISBN 006083093X (0-06-083093-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Short Works of Edgar Allen Poe'Book summary:"From the best of his comic and satiric works to the best of his Gothic works . . . a remarkable literary achievement--perhaps one of the most remarkable of the nineteenth century."--G. R. Thompson, from the Introduction [via]
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Great Short Works of Mark Twainby Mark Twain, Justin KaplanISBN 0060727861 (0-06-072786-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Short Works of Mark Twain'Book summary:Selected works of humour and criticism by a revered American master.
Beloved by millions, Mark Twain is the quintessential American writer. More than anyone else, his blend of scepticism, caustic wit and sharp prose defines a certain American mythos. While his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is still taught to anyone who attends school and is considered by many to be the Great American Novel, Twain's shorter stories and criticisms have unequalled style and bite.
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In a review that's less than kind to the writing of James Fenimore Cooper, Twain writes: "Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one." It's difficult to imagine anyone else writing in quite this style, which is why Twain's legacy only continues to grow.More editions of Great Short Works of Mark Twain:
Great Short Works of Mark Twainby Samuel Langhorne ClemensISBN 0060830751 (0-06-083075-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Henry James, Les Annees Dramatiquesby Leon EdelISBN 0060914327 (0-06-091432-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry James, Les Annees Dramatiques'Book summary:This is the one-volume edition of a famous biography of Henry James, which includes new material. Born in America, Henry James was educated both there and in Europe before settling in London, where he was to spend most of his life, in 1876. His novels represent the culmination of the 19th-century realist tradition of Austen, George Eliot, Flauberty and Balzac, and a decisive step towards the experimental modernism of Woolf and T.S. Eliot. His works often focus upon an innocent American in Europe, and assess the qualities and dangers of both American and European culture at the time, as well as showing their vast differences. "A Portrait of a Lady", "The Ambassadors" and "The Golden Bowl" all explore this subject, whilst Honore de Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet" was so admired by James that he was inspired to write "Washington Square", his own version of the tale. James's works explore sexual roles, feminism and class conflict. [via]
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High Tide in Tucsonby Barbara KingsolverISBN 0060927569 (0-06-092756-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'High Tide in Tucson'Book summary:"There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature," raves the Washington Post Book World, and it is right. She has been nominated three times for the ABBY award, and her critically acclaimed writings consistently enjoy spectacular commercial success as they entertain and touch her legions of loyal fans.
In High Tide in Tucson, she returnsto her familiar themes of family, community, the common good and the natural world. The title essay considers Buster, a hermit crab that accidentally stows away on Kingsolver's return trip from the Bahamas to her desert home, and turns out to have manic-depressive tendencies. Buster is running around for all he's worth -- one can only presume it's high tide in Tucson. Kingsolver brings a moral vision and refreshing sense of humor to subjects ranging from modern motherhood to the history of private property to the suspended citizenship of human beings in the Animal Kingdom.
Beautifully packaged, with original illustrations by well-known illustrator Paul Mirocha, these wise lessons on the urgent business of being alive make it a perfect gift for Kingsolver's many fans. [via]
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High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Neverby Barbara Kingsolver, Paul MirochaISBN 0060172916 (0-06-017291-6)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never'Book summary:Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven.
In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, a family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.
In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction. Defiant, funny, courageously honest, High Tide in Tucson proves once again that "there is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature."--Washington Post Book World [via]
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House Made of Dawnby N. Scott MomadayISBN 0060931949 (0-06-093194-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'House Made of Dawn'Book summary:House Made of Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969, tells the story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, a goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.
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Interzoneby William S. Burroughs, James GrauerholzISBN 0140094512 (0-14-009451-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Interzone'Book summary:[via]In 1954 William Burroughs settled in Tangiers, finding a sanctuary of sorts in its shadowy streets, blind alleys, and lowlife decadence. It was this city that served as a catalyst for Burroughs as a writer, the backdrop for one of the most radical transformations of style in literary history.
Burroughs's life during this period is limned in a startling collection of short stories, autobiographical sketches, letters, and diary entries, all of which showcase his trademark mordant humor, while delineating the addictions to drugs and sex that are the central metaphors of his work. But it is the extraordinary "WORD," a long, sexually wild and deliberately offensive tirade, that blends confession, routine, and fantasy and marks the true turning point of Burroughs as a writer-the breakthrough of his own characteristic voice that will find its full realization in Naked Lunch. James Grauerholz's incisive introduction sets the scene for this series of pieces, guiding the reader through Burroughs's literary evolution from the precise, laconic, and deadpan writer of Junky and Queer to the radical, uncompromising seer of Naked Lunch. Interzone is an indispensable addition to the canon of his works.
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Jrby William GaddisISBN 0140187073 (0-14-018707-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Leaves of Grass and Selected Proseby Walt Whitman, Buell LawrenceISBN 0075542633 (0-07-554263-3)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College
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Letters from an American Farmer ; And, Sketches of Eighteenth-Century Americaby J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, Albert E. StoneISBN 0140390065 (0-14-039006-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Magic Barrelby Bernard MalamudISBN 0140025588 (0-14-002558-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Books
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The Marrow of Traditionby Eric J. Sundquist, Charles Waddell ChesnuttISBN 0140186867 (0-14-018686-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Marrow of Tradition'Book summary:One of the most significant novels in American literature, "The Marrow of Tradition" is based on the Wilmington, North Carolina, Massacre of 1898. Called a "race riot" by the inflammatory Southern press and engineered by white Democrats who had seen their political slip into the hands of Republicans, many of whom were black, it was in fact a coup that restored power to the Democrats by subverting the principles of free democratic election. Some of Charles Chestnutt's relatives lived through the violence, and their accounts inspired this powerful and passionate novel. [via]
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Martin Edenby Jack LondonISBN 0140187723 (0-14-018772-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Mr. Vertigoby Paul AusterISBN 0140231900 (0-14-023190-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Vertigo'Book summary:Paul Auster, the New York Times-bestselling author of The New York Trilogy presents a dazzling, picaresque novel set in the late 1920s the era of Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, and Al Capone. Walter Claireborne Rawley, renowned nationwide as "Walt the Wonder Boy," is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by a mysterious Hungarian Jew, Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. Master Yehudi brings Walt into a Kansas circus troupe consisting of Mother Sioux and Aesop, a young black genius. The vaudeville act takes them across a vast and vibrant country, through mythic Americana where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob. Walt's rise to fame and fortune mirrors America's own coming of age, and his resilience, like that of the nation, is challenged over and over and over again.[via]More editions of Mr. Vertigo:
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My Life As a Manby Philip RothISBN 0140076808 (0-14-007680-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Life As a Man'Book summary:At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureens death, Peter is still tryingand failingto write his way free of it. Out of desperate inventions and cauterizing truths, acts of weakness, tenderheartedness, and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a work worthy of Strinberga fierce tragedy of sexual need and blindness. [via]
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The Night Listenerby Armistead MaupinISBN 006093090X (0-06-093090-X)
Softcover, Perennial
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Night Listener'Book summary:"I'm a fabulist by trade," warns Gabriel Noone, a late-night radio storyteller, as he begins to untangle the skeins of his tumultuous life: his crumbling ten-year love affair, his disaffection from his Southern father, his longtime weakness for ignoring reality. Gabriel's most sympathetic listener is Pete Lomax, a thirteen-year-old fan in Wisconsin whose own horrific past has left him wise and generous beyond his years. But when this virtual father-son relationship is rocked by doubt, a desperate search for the truth ensues. Welcome to the complex, vertiginous world of The Night Listener . [via]
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On the Banks of Plum Creekby Laura Ingalls Wilder, Garth WilliamsISBN 0060522399 (0-06-052239-9)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Banks of Plum Creek'Book summary:For the first time in the history of the Little House books, this new edition features Garth Williams interior art in vibrant, full color, as well as a beautifully redesigned cover.
The adventures of Laura Ingalls and her family continue as they leave their little house on the prairie and travel in their covered wagon to Minnesota. Here they settle in a little house made of sod beside the banks of beautiful Plum Creek. Soon Pa builds a wonderful new little house with real glass windows and a hinged door. Laura and her sister Mary go to school, help with the chores, and fish in the creek. At night everyone listens to the merry music of Pa's fiddle. Misfortunes come in the form of a grasshopper plague and a terrible blizzard, but the pioneer family works hard together to overcome these troubles.
And so continues Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved story of a pioneer girl and her family. The nine Little House books have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique glimpse into America's frontier past and a heartwarming, unforgettable story.
[via]More editions of On the Banks of Plum Creek:
- On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060581832 (0-06-058183-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books - On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060885408 (0-06-088540-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books - On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060264705 (0-06-026470-5)
Hardcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books - On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060264713 (0-06-026471-3)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0064400042 (0-06-440004-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books - On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060522399 (0-06-052239-9)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
- On the Banks of Plum Creek: ISBN 0060581832 (0-06-058183-2)
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The Portable Thoreauby Henry David ThoreauISBN 0140150315 (0-14-015031-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portable Thoreau'Book summary:Henry David Thoreau dedicated his life to preserving his freedom as a man and an artist. Nature was the fountainhead of his inspiration and his refuge from what he considered the follies of society. Heedless of his friends advice to live in a more orthodox manner, he determinedly pursued his own inner bent, which was that of a poet-philosopher, in prose and verse.[via]Carl Bode brings together the best of Thoreaus works in The Portable Thoreau, a comprehensive collection of the writings of a unique and profoundly influential American thinker. The complete texts of Thoreaus classic works Walden and Civil Disobedience, as well as selections from The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, the Journal, and eighteen poems are included. Bodes introduction rounds out this compact volume, offering a thorough and informative analysis of Thoreau and the forces that shaped his life and writing.
This compact book, containing infinite riches in a little room, is a simple setting for sound sense, nugget-like thought, the refined essences of a point of view
St. Louis Post-DispatchMore editions of The Portable Thoreau:
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Prodigal Summerby Barbara KingsolverISBN 0060199660 (0-06-019966-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Prodigal Summer'Book summary:There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.
Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:
The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.
The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story."Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn [via]
The Professor of Desireby Philip RothISBN 0140076778 (0-14-007677-8)
Softcover, Penguin
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Queerby William S. BurroughsISBN 0140083898 (0-14-008389-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Queer'Book summary:For more than three decades, while its writer's world fame increased, Queer remained unpublished because of its forthright depiction of homosexual longings. Set in the corrupt and spectral Mexico City of the forties, Queer is the story of William Lee, a man afflicted with both acute heroin withdrawal and romantic and sexual yearnings for an indifferent user named Eugene Allerton. The narrative is punctuated by Lee's outrageous "routines" brilliant comic monologues that foreshadow Naked Lunch yet the atmosphere is heavy with foreboding.[via]In his extraordinary introduction, Burroughs reflects on the shattering events in his life that lay behind this work.
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The Recognitionsby William GaddisISBN 0140187081 (0-14-018708-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Recognitions'Book summary:Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate 'originals' - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize. Contemporary life collapses the distinction between the 'real' and the 'virtual' world, and Gaddis' novel pre-empts our common obsessions by almost half a century. This novel tackles the blurring of perceptual boundaries, The Matrix and Bladerunner pale in comparison to this epic novel. [via]
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The Rules of Attractionby Bret Easton EllisISBN 0140112286 (0-14-011228-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rules of Attraction'Book summary:The author of Less Than Zero delivers a startling novel about three students entangled in a loveless sexual triangle. Wealthy upperclass students, they indulge in a routine of happy hours, parties, late night drinking bouts, drug abuse, and casual sex fueled by a desperate desire for love. [via]
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Selected Writings of Emersonby Ralph Waldo EmersonISBN 007554265X (0-07-554265-X)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College
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Soldiers' Payby William FaulknerISBN 0140001239 (0-14-000123-9)
Hardcover, Penguin
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Sometimes a Great Notionby Ken KeseyISBN 0140045295 (0-14-004529-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sometimes a Great Notion'Book summary:[via]The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sailor Song is a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon logging clan.A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his father; and Viv, who fell in love with Hank's exuberant machismo but now finds it wearing thin. And then there is Leland, Henry's bookish younger son, who returns to his family on a mission of vengeance - and finds himself fulfilling it in ways he never imagined. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals Ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.More editions of Sometimes a Great Notion:
Sport and a Pastimeby James SalterISBN 0140056386 (0-14-005638-6)
Softcover, Penguin USA
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Sure of Youby Armistead MaupinISBN 0060924845 (0-06-092484-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sure of You'Book summary:A fiercely ambitious TV talk show host finds she must choose between national stardom in New York and a husband and child in San Francisco. Caught in the middle is their longtime friend, a gay man whose own future is even more uncertain. Wistful and compassionate, yet subversively funny, Sure of You could only come from Armistead Maupin.
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Transparent Thingsby Vladimir Vladimirovich NabokovISBN 0070457344 (0-07-045734-4)
Hardcover, McGraw-Hill
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Uncle Tom's Childrenby Richard Wright, Richard YarboroughISBN 0060587148 (0-06-058714-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncle Tom's Children'Book summary:This fascinating and famous collection brings to life post-slavery characters in their full psychological and emotional depth. [via]
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Under the Lilacsby Louisa May AlcottISBN 0140351329 (0-14-035132-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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Up Above the Worldby Paul BowlesISBN 0061137359 (0-06-113735-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up Above the World'Book summary:On the terrace of an elaborate hilltop apartment overlooking a Central American capital, four people sit making polite conversation. The American couple -- an elderly physician and his young wife -- are tourists. Their host, whom they have just met, is a young man of striking good looks and charm. The girl, his mistress, is very young and very beautiful. Sitting there, watching the sunset, the Slades seem to be enjoying the sort of fortunate chance encounter that travelers cherish. But amid the civilities and small talk, the host's casual remark to the American woman proves prophetic: "It's not exactly what you think."
Masterfully -- with the poetic control that has always characterized his work -- Paul Bowles leads the reader beneath the surface of hospitality and luxury into a tortuous maze of human relationships and shifting moods, until what seems at first a merely casual encounter is seen to be one rooted in viciousness and horror.
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Pleaseby Raymond CarverISBN 0070101930 (0-07-010193-0)
Hardcover, McGraw-Hill
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The Women of Brewster Placeby Gloria NaylorISBN 014006690X (0-14-006690-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Women of Brewster Place'Book summary:Once the home of poor Irish and Italian immigrants, Brewster Place, a rotting tenement on a dead-end street, now shelters black families. This novel portrays the courage, the fear, and the anguish of some of the women there who hold their families together, trying to make a home. Among them are: Mattie Michael, the matriarch who loses her son to prison; Etta Mae Johnson who tries to trade the 'high life' for marriage with a local preacher; Kiswana Browne who leaves her middle-class family to organize a tenant's union.[via]More editions of The Women of Brewster Place:
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The Writing Lifeby Annie DillardISBN 0060919884 (0-06-091988-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Writing Life'Book summary:Annie Dillard has spent a lot of time in remote, bare-bones shelters doing something she claims to hate: writing. Slender though it is, The Writing Life richly conveys the torturous, tortuous, and in rare moments, transcendent existence of the writer. Even for Dillard, whose prose is so mellifluous as to seem effortless, the act of writing can seem a Sisyphean task: "When you write," she says, "you lay out a line of words.... Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow or this time next year." Amid moving accounts of her own writing (and life) experiences, Dillard also manages to impart wisdom to other writers, wisdom having to do with passion and commitment and taking the work seriously. "One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place.... Something more will arise for later, something better." And, if that is not enough, "Assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients," she says. "That is, after all, the case.... What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?"
This all makes The Writing Life seem a dense, tough read, but that is not the case at all. Dillard is, after all, human, just like the rest of us. During one particularly frantic moment, four cups of coffee and not much writing down, Dillard comes to a realization: "Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever." --Jane Steinberg [via]
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