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books tagged “artists”
books tagged “artists”
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The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900-1914by Alexander BlandISBN 0688033660 (0-688-03366-0)
Hardcover, W. Morrow
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Alias Olympia: A Woman's Search for Manet's Notorious Model & Her Own Desireby Eunice LiptonISBN 0684194171 (0-684-19417-1)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Artby Mary D. GarrardISBN 0691002851 (0-691-00285-1)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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An Artist of the Floating Worldby Kazuo IshiguroISBN 0679722661 (0-679-72266-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Artist of the Floating World'Book summary:In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro offers readers of the English language an authentic look at postwar Japan, "a floating world" of changing cultural behaviors, shifting societal patterns and troubling questions. Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki in 1954 but moved to England in 1960, writes the story of Masuji Ono, a bohemian artist and purveyor of the night life who became a propagandist for Japanese imperialism during the war. But the war is over. Japan lost, Ono's wife and son have been killed, and many young people blame the imperialists for leading the country to disaster. What's left for Ono? Ishiguro's treatment of this story earned a 1986 Whitbread Prize. [via]
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Autobiography of Alice B. Toklasby Gertrude SteinISBN 067972463X (0-679-72463-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Birds and Lightby Lars JonssonISBN 0691114897 (0-691-11489-7)
Hardcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle Eastby Lars Jonsson, David ChristieISBN 0691026483 (0-691-02648-3)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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The Captive and the Fugitiveby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-MoncrieffISBN 0679424776 (0-679-42477-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Captive and the Fugitive'Book summary:Since the original, prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is the Penguin Proust that makes Proust accessible to a new generation. Each book is translated by a different, superb translator working under the general editorship of Professor Christopher Prendergast, University of Cambridge. [via]
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A Change of Perspectiveby Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, Joanne Trautmann BanksISBN 0701204435 (0-7012-0443-5)
Hardcover, Hogarth Press
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Change of Perspective'Book summary:Opening soon after Virginia Woolf met Vita Sackville-West and culminating with the publication of "Orlando", this volume of letters covers Bloomsbury's most triumphant period. This was the time when Woolf wrote five of her best-known books, including "Mrs Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse", and whilst she became one of the most famous writers of her generation, many of her friends - Lytton Strachey, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster - had become equally eminent. The slow evolution of Virginia's affair with Vita is traced through some of her wittiest letters, while her correspondence with her sister Vanessa and other friends reveals a strong sympathy with people beneath her ironic view of life. [via]
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Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Lifeby Charles Addams, Linda H. DavisISBN 0679463259 (0-679-46325-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Creators/a History of Heroes of the Imaginationby Daniel J. BoorstinISBN 0679743758 (0-679-74375-8)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Creators/a History of Heroes of the Imagination'Book summary:Historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings his customary depth and range to this compelling book on Western art, taking on everything from European megaliths (Stonehenge, for example) to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography ("the first American addition to world literature"). Boorstin does not aim at being comprehensive--he much prefers to linger over certain "heroes of the imagination" as he surveys human accomplishment in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpting, and writing--yet The Creators certainly feels comprehensive, as Boorstin carefully places everything he describes within a grand tradition of aesthetic achievement.
Boorstin knows that good history demands good writing, and his prose makes this big book easy to absorb. "This is a story," he writes, "of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience"--an apt description of the role art plays in our life and an equally apt description of the way Boorstin interprets it for readers. (The Creators also is the second volume of a trilogy that starts with The Discoverers and concludes with The Seekers, although none of these books requires any knowledge of the others.) --John J. Miller [via]
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A Cry in the Nightby Mary Higgins ClarkISBN 0671886665 (0-671-88666-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Diary of Virginia Woolfby Virginia WoolfISBN 0701204249 (0-7012-0424-9)
Hardcover, Hogarth Press
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Diegoby Jeanette Winter, Jonah WinterISBN 067985617X (0-679-85617-X)
Softcover, Random House Espanol
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diego'Book summary:This story of Diego Rivera, the greatest muralist of Mexico--and of the world--is told in Spanish and English. Vibrant miniature paintings convey the sense of adventure and magic that marked Rivera's early years. And the story shows how his passion for painting and love for his country combined to make a powerful art celebrating the Mexican people
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Es la historia de Diego Rivera, el gran muralista Mejicano--y del mundo--y está contada en Español y en Inglés. Vibrantes pinturas en miniatura transmiten el sentido de magia y aventura que marcaron los primeros años de Rivera y la historia nos muestra como al combinar su pasión por la pintura y el amor por su país logró un poderoso arte que reconoce al pueblo Mejicano. [via] 
Diego/in English and Spanishby Jeanette Winter, Amy PrinceISBN 0679919872 (0-679-91987-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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The Discovery of Americaby Saul SteinbergISBN 0679402780 (0-679-40278-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Dr. Seuss: Young Author And Artistby Meryl HendersonISBN 0689873476 (0-689-87347-6)
Softcover, Aladdin Paperbacks
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Draw Me a Starby Eric CarleISBN 0698116321 (0-698-11632-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Draw Me a Star'Book summary:?Draw me a star. And the artist drew a star. It was a good star. Draw me a sun, said the star. And the artist drew a sun.? And on the artist draws, bringing the world to life picture by beautiful picture until he is spirited across the night sky by a star that shines on all he has made. In Draw Me a Star, Eric Carle celebrates the imagination in all of us with a beguiling story about a young artist who creates a world of light and possibility. ?A remarkable, quintessentially simple book encompassing Creation, creativity, and the cycle of life within the eternal.? -- Kirkus Reviews, pointer review ?This book will appeal to readers of all ages?. An inspired book in every sense of the word.? -- School Library Journal ?A fable about the passage through life and its fullness of possibilities, children will like the cumulative effects of the tale, the creation of the world through paints, and Carle?s collages flaring with rainbow hues.? --The Bulletin of the Center for Children?s Books[via]More editions of Draw Me a Star:
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Furyby Salman RushdieISBN 0679783504 (0-679-78350-4)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fury'Book summary:life is fury. Fury-sexual, oedipal, political, magical, brutal- drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise-the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation. We raise each other to the heights of joy. We tear each other limb from bloody limb." malik solanka, historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family without a word of explanation, and flees london for new york. There's a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in new york at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of america's wealth and power, seeking to "erase" himself. Eat me, america, he prays, and give me peace.but fury is all around him. Cabdrivers spout invective. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete. The petty spats and bone-deep resentments of the metropolis engulf him. His own thoughts, emotions, and desires, meanwhile, are also running wild. A tall, green-eyed young blonde in a d'angelo voodoo baseball cap is in store for him. As is another woman, with whom he will fall in love and be drawn toward a different fury, whose roots lie on the far side of the world. Fury is a work of explosive energy, at once a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a profoundly disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature, and a love story of mesmerizing force. It is also an astonishing portrait of new york. Not since the bombay of midnight's children have a time and place been so intensely and accurately captured in a novel. In his eighth novel, salman rushdie brilliantly entwines moments of anger and frenzy with those of humor, honesty, and intimacy. Fury is, above all, a masterly chronicle of the human condition [via]
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Georgia O'Keeffe: 100 Flowersby Georgia O'Keeffe, James O'HoretonISBN 0679724087 (0-679-72408-7)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Georgia O'Keeffe: 100 Flowers'Book summary:The magnificent O'Keeffe flower paintings of the 20's and 30's reproduced to capture her incomparable use of color and delicacy of the brush. [via]
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Georgia O'Keeffe 100 Flowers Postcard Bookby Georgia O'Keeffe, James O'HoretonISBN 0679727035 (0-679-72703-5)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Good Faeries, Bad Faeries: 2 Books in 1by Brian Froud, Terri WindlingISBN 0684847817 (0-684-84781-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Faeries, Bad Faeries: 2 Books in 1'Book summary:Why are large, illustrated works offhandedly relegated to gather dust on the corner of your coffee table? Sure, you will want to put Good-Faeries/Bad Faeries in an obvious place, somewhere your friends will see it and pick it up, but it's far more than mere decoration. Froud's illustrations have delighted readers since his first book, Faeries, introduced us to the little people of folklore. Good Faeries/Bad Faeries is a doorway to the faery realm of the 20th century, where you'll meet delightful characters like Quempel, who dances to celebrate when something is done well; or the Buttered Toast Faery, who decides which side of a dropped piece of toast will hit the floor--faeries who will call you back so often that Good Faeries/Bad Faeries won't have a chance to gather dust. --Brian Patterson [via]
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Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modernby Barnes Foundation, Susan RalstonISBN 0679762213 (0-679-76221-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern'Book summary:The pictures that made history as they traveled around the world on their only exhibition tour: more than a hundred masterpieces of modern French painting from one of the world's fabled repositories of great artThe Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvaniaare here published in trade paperback for the first time.
These paintings are the crowning glory of the extraordinary collection assembled in the early twentieth century by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the bold and original collector who established the Foundation in 1922 as a school for the study of art and philosophy. Now, after six decades of limited access to visitors and a ban on color reproduction, the Barnes Foundation welcomes a wider audience both on its premises and through the publication of this magnificent volume, containing the most eagerly awaited set of reproductions in art-book history.
Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rousseau, Soutine, La Fresnaye, Modigliani, Picasso, Braque, and Matissethe list of artists gives only a hint of the splendors this book contains. Here are major landmarks of modern art, including twenty-four Renoirs encompassing the entire span of his career . . . thirty monumental Cézannes, including bather groups, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits . . . Matisse's pivotal Bonheur de vivre, Three Sisters Triptych, and world-famous Dance mural (and eighteen other paintings and oil studies) . . . the finest of van Gogh's six paintings of Joseph-Etienne Roulin . . . Seurat's celebrated Models . . . The Douanier Rousseau's strange, unsettling Unpleasant Surprise . . . the tender portrait of young M. Loulou by Gauguin . . . a spectacular cluster of seven early Picassos. And this is only a sampling of the exhilarating visual banquet offered in these pages.
To describe the paintings and relate the achievements of Dr. Barnes as a collector and educator, commentaries and essays have been provided by a dozen notable American and French art historians and curators. Together they provide the historical and aesthetic setting for these glowing jewels of modern art.
For everyone to whom the paintings in the Barnes Foundation have been a legendunattainableand for every devotee of great art and beautiful books, this volume will be a joy and a treasure.
With 320 illustrations, 151 in full color, and 18 pages of gatefolds. [via]More editions of Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern:
- Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern: ISBN 0679409637 (0-679-40963-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group - Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern: ISBN 0679762213 (0-679-76221-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern: ISBN 0679409637 (0-679-40963-7)
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Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modernby Richard J. Wattenmaker, Anne DistelISBN 0679744762 (0-679-74476-2)
Softcover, Natl Gallery of Art
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern'Book summary:The pictures that made history as they traveled around the world on their only exhibition tour: more than a hundred masterpieces of modern French painting from one of the world's fabled repositories of great artThe Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvaniaare here published in trade paperback for the first time.
These paintings are the crowning glory of the extraordinary collection assembled in the early twentieth century by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the bold and original collector who established the Foundation in 1922 as a school for the study of art and philosophy. Now, after six decades of limited access to visitors and a ban on color reproduction, the Barnes Foundation welcomes a wider audience both on its premises and through the publication of this magnificent volume, containing the most eagerly awaited set of reproductions in art-book history.
Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rousseau, Soutine, La Fresnaye, Modigliani, Picasso, Braque, and Matissethe list of artists gives only a hint of the splendors this book contains. Here are major landmarks of modern art, including twenty-four Renoirs encompassing the entire span of his career . . . thirty monumental Cézannes, including bather groups, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits . . . Matisse's pivotal Bonheur de vivre, Three Sisters Triptych, and world-famous Dance mural (and eighteen other paintings and oil studies) . . . the finest of van Gogh's six paintings of Joseph-Etienne Roulin . . . Seurat's celebrated Models . . . The Douanier Rousseau's strange, unsettling Unpleasant Surprise . . . the tender portrait of young M. Loulou by Gauguin . . . a spectacular cluster of seven early Picassos. And this is only a sampling of the exhilarating visual banquet offered in these pages.
To describe the paintings and relate the achievements of Dr. Barnes as a collector and educator, commentaries and essays have been provided by a dozen notable American and French art historians and curators. Together they provide the historical and aesthetic setting for these glowing jewels of modern art.
For everyone to whom the paintings in the Barnes Foundation have been a legendunattainableand for every devotee of great art and beautiful books, this volume will be a joy and a treasure.
With 320 illustrations, 151 in full color, and 18 pages of gatefolds. [via]More editions of Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern:
The Greedy Pythonby Richard Buckley, Eric CarleISBN 0689820593 (0-689-82059-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
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The Grouchy Ladybugby Eric CarleISBN 069401320X (0-694-01320-X)
Hardcover, Harperfestival
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Grouchy Ladybug'Book summary:A grouchy ladybug, looking for a fight, challenges everyone she meets regardless of their size or strength. [via]
Hamilton's Art Showby Lisa Campbell ErnstISBN 0688041213 (0-688-04121-3)
Hardcover, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books
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Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsonsby Ben Fong-TorresISBN 067170513X (0-671-70513-X)
Hardcover, Pocket Books
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Howards Endby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679722556 (0-679-72255-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Howards End'Book summary:Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber [via]
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In Search of Lost Timeby Marcel ProustISBN 0679600280 (0-679-60028-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of Lost Time'Book summary:The Guermantes Way, in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantess château near Combray. It also represents the narrators passage into the rarefied social kaleidoscope of the Guermantess Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantess drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]More editions of In Search of Lost Time:
In the Frameby Dick FrancisISBN 0671507540 (0-671-50754-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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In the Night Cafeby Joyce JohnsonISBN 0671701118 (0-671-70111-8)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In the Night Cafe'Book summary:Tom Murphy was raised in Hell's Kitchen, unwanted by his mother, deserted by his father. 35 years on, he is a painter who has abandoned a wife and two children in his turn. He is a damaged man when he meets Joanna, but for a brief time, love seems to be all that matters. [via]
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Indigo's Starby Hilary McKayISBN 0689865635 (0-689-86563-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Is It Rough? Is It Smooth? Is It Shiny?by Tana HobanISBN 0688038247 (0-688-03824-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoirby Anatole BroyardISBN 0679781269 (0-679-78126-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Keith Haring : The Authorized Biographyby John GruenISBN 0671781502 (0-671-78150-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Keith Haring : The Authorized Biography'Book summary:The biography of painter, designer and AIDS victim Keith Haring. [via]
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King and Congressby Jerrilyn G. MarstonISBN 0691047456 (0-691-04745-6)
Hardcover, Princeton University Press
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Leave the Letters Till We're Deadby Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, Joanne Trautmann BanksISBN 0701204702 (0-7012-0470-2)
Hardcover, Hogarth Press
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Leonardo Da Vinciby Diane StanleyISBN 0688161553 (0-688-16155-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Leonardo Da Vinci'Book summary:Older children will certainly appreciate the wealth of information in this complete and fascinating biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Illustrated in an Old Masters style, the book follows the life of da Vinci from birth to death and gives a detailed account of his extraordinary achievements, not only in his painting but also as an engineer, scientist, and inventor who is centuries ahead of his time. The treatment of da Vinci's famous notebooks usefully conveys the power of the man's imagination. His practice of writing in a backward script from right to left, requiring a mirror to decipher it, will intrigue children. (The dust jacket bears such lettering on the back, which should immediately prompt a run to the bathroom mirror.) An accomplished and engaging biography for children. [via]
The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolfby Louise A. DeSalvo, Mitchell A. Leaska, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-WestISBN 0688039634 (0-688-03963-4)
Hardcover, Gage Learning Corporation
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The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolfby Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Louise A. Desalvo, Mitchell Alexander LeaskaISBN 0688062717 (0-688-06271-7)
Softcover, Quill
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Letters to a Young Poetby Stephen Mitchell, Rainer Maria RilkeISBN 0679642323 (0-679-64232-3)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Letters to a Young Poet'Book summary:Rilkes Letters to a Young Poet are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of the twentieth century. Written when the poet was himself still a young man, with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his own writing, asking for advice on becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been cherished by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls in his Foreword the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them. Eloquent and personal, Rilkes meditations on the creative process, the nature of love, the wisdom of children, and the importance of solitude offer a wealth of spiritual and practical guidance for anyone. At the same time, this collection, in Stephen Mitchells definitive translation, reveals the thoughts and feelings of one of the greatest poets and most distinctive sensibilities of the twentieth century. [via]
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Lily of the Valleyby Suzanne Strempek SheaISBN 0671027115 (0-671-02711-5)
Softcover, Washington Square Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lily of the Valley'Book summary:With a gift for creating fiction that is "rich with an unusual sweetness" "(USA Today)," and filled with "undeniable offbeat charm" "(Boston Sunday Globe)," Suzanne Strempek Shea captured a special corner of the world -- quirky, colorful, small-town Massachusetts -- in two acclaimed novels. Now, with her comic timing in full flower, Shea returns to the place she knows so well to introduce Lily Wilk, an artist who longs to create a memorable masterpiece -- and who finds the key to her dream is in her own backyard.
On her tenth birthday, Lily Wilk reached into a grab bag and pulled out a box -- a box that contained her future. The drawing kit she picked by chance held a pencil, an eraser, a sharpener, a pad of paper, and an instruction sheet. Draw a line. "Draw a circle. Draw a square. Congratulations," the instructions informed her, "now you are an artist."
And so she became an artist, whose work is always in demand around her town: she paints barns, houses, and fire hydrants; she fetters diplomas, and "Gulls" and "Buoys" onto restaurant bathroom doors; she depicts a tiny romance story on the ten fake nails of a bride-to-be. Taking stock of her life so far, Lily appreciates that the odd jobs pay the bills. But she also knows that someday she will paint something truly special, a work that will forever change everyone who sees it.
Her chance comes when Mary Ziemba, owner of thelargest chain of supermarkets in the valley, commissions a family portrait. But instead of a sitting, Mary asks her to work from snapshots taken of her loved ones on the days they were the happiest. Lily takes in Mary's detailed stories of the people she loves most in the world, and as the facesand personalities come to life on her drawing board, Lily reflects on the recent fractures tothestructure of her own family. And slowly, with each small and gentle brushstroke, she begins to change her own definition of what it means to be related. When the portrait is complete, it is indeed for the world to see -- but at a time and in a place she never couldhave imagined. Painting Mary Ziemba's family becomes its own reward, a journey of self-discovery for the artist in search of herself -- and her own sense of family.
Lovingly rendered and beautifully imagined, "Lily of the Valley" is a bittersweet, unforgettable work of art. [via]
Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Lifeby Laurie LisleISBN 0671731874 (0-671-73187-4)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Middlemarchby George Eliot, A. S. ByattISBN 0679783318 (0-679-78331-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Middlemarch'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by E. S. Shaffer [via] -
Middlemarch : A Study of Provincial Lifeby George EliotISBN 067960118X (0-679-60118-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Middlemarch : A Study of Provincial Life'Book summary:On April 10, 1994, PBS stations nationwide will air the first episode of a lavish six-part Masterpiece Theatre production of Eliot's brilliant work, Middlemarch, hosted by Russell Baker and produced by Louis Marks. The Modern Library is pleased to offer this official companion edition, complete with tie-in art and printed on acid-free paper. Unabridged. [via]
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Mieko and the Fifth Treasureby Eleanor Coerr, H. Cecil UyeharaISBN 0698119908 (0-698-11990-8)
Softcover, Puffin
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Mosquitoesby William FaulknerISBN 0671557319 (0-671-55731-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Originals: American Women Artistsby Eleanor MunroISBN 0671428128 (0-671-42812-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Originals : American Women Artists'Book summary:At the end of the 1970s, Eleanor Munro embarked upon a series of interviews with some of the leading visual artists in the nation, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Alice Neel, Helen Frankenthaler, Louise Bourgeois, and Jennifer Bartlett. The resulting portraits led to a book as significant and exciting as the artists within it. Now Munro has added a new generation of women-including Kiki Smith and Julie Taymor-and a new introduction to her landmark entry in the literature of visual art, ensuring its status as an invaluable resource well into the twenty-first century. [via]
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The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeISBN 0679600019 (0-679-60001-9)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary:A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]
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Picture Thisby Joseph HellerISBN 0684868199 (0-684-86819-9)
Softcover, Scribner
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Picture This'Book summary:Picture this: Rembrandt is creating his famous painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. As soon as he paints an ear on Aristotle, Aristotle can hear. When he paints an eye, Aristotle can see. And what Aristotle sees and hears and remembers from the ancient past to this very moment provides the foundation for this lighthearted, freewheeling jaunt through 2,500 years of Western Civilization.
Picture This is an incisive fantasy that digs deeply into our illusions and customs. Nobody but Joseph Heller could have thought of a novel like this one. Nobody but Heller could have executed it so brilliantly. [via]
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The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parkerby Dorothy R. ParkerISBN 0679601325 (0-679-60132-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Portraits : Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhereby Michael KimmelmanISBN 0679452192 (0-679-45219-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Portraits : Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere'Book summary:"One can only speak properly about paintings in front of paintings," Paul Cézanne once said. It is usually, though, critics who speak in front of paintings, not artists. With an eye toward rectifying that situation, Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, constructed Portraits. He invited individual artists to meet him at museums, then tagged along on their peregrinations through various galleries--sometimes the most unlikely ones. At New York's Metropolitan Museum, the late Roy Lichtenstein, papa of pop, stopped to praise some frou-frou Fragonards. Who knew? "Clearly there's something wrong with me," Lichtenstein said.
Kimmelman's knowledge of art is astonishingly broad, and he has a way with questions that ignite each artist's memories, reflections, and opinions. Otherwise, he inserts himself only to offer enough biographical data or physical description to bring a reader up-to-date and up close. For the most part, he simply listens. Closely. The result is a series of interviews so cozy readers may feel they're eavesdropping. Few readers will ever make another foray through the Metropolitan or the Museum of Modern Art or London's National Gallery completely alone. After devouring these "portraits"--most of which appeared originally as articles in the Times's art pages--they will be accompanied forevermore by the lively, eccentric, thoughtful, unguarded voices of Jacob Lawrence, Kiki Smith, Wayne Thibaud, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Elizabeth Murray, Cindy Sherman, Richard Serra, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, Brice Marden, Hans Haacke, and Chuck Close. --Peggy Moorman [via]
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The Question of Things Happeningby Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, Joanne Trautmann BanksISBN 0701204206 (0-7012-0420-6)
Hardcover, Hogarth Press
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Rembrandt's Eyesby Simon Schama, Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van RijnISBN 067940256X (0-679-40256-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rembrandt's Eyes'Book summary:For Rembrandt as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance: the strutting and mincing; the wardrobe and the face paint; the full repertoire of gesture and grimace; the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes; the belly laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle, and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon; to shake a fist or uncover a breast; how to sin and how to atone; how to commit murder and how to commit suicide. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.
More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by: the Leiden miller's son who briefly found fame in Amsterdam, whose genius was fitfully recognized by his contemporaries, who fell into bankruptcy and died in poverty. So there is probably no painter whose life has engendered more legends, nor to whom more unlikely pictures have been attributed (a process now undergoing rigorous reversal). Rembrandt's Eyes, about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Through a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt's paintings threaded into this narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh.
But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved -- its sounds, smells, and tastes as well as its politics; the influences on him of the wars of the Protestant United Provinces against Spain, of the extreme Calvinism of his native Leiden, of the demands of patrons and the ambitions of contemporaries; the importance of his beloved Saskia and, after her death (Rembrandt was later forced to sell her grave, so complete was his ruin), of his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels; and, above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens:
"the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality.
Rembrandt's Eyes shows us why Rembrandt is such a thrilling painter, so revolutionary in his art, so penetrating of the hearts of those who have looked for three hundred years at his pictures. Above all, Schama's understanding of Rembrandt's mind and the dynamic of his life allows him to re-create Rembrandt's life on the page. Through a combination of scholarship and literary skill, Schama allows us to actually see that life through Rembrandt's own eyes. In overcoming the paucity of conventional historical evidence, it is the most intelligently true biography of Rembrandt that has been written, and the most dazzling achievement to date of the art historian whose work has been hailed as "marvelously rich and eloquent" . . . "rare, imaginative" . . . "provocative" . . . "astoundingly learned with verve, humor, and an unflagging sense of delight" . . . that of "a master
storyteller . . . and "a master of history."*
*From the New York Times Book Review, Time, The New York Times, The Independent on Sunday, and Nature. [via]More editions of Rembrandt's Eyes:
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A Room of One's Own and Three Guineasby Virginia WoolfISBN 0701128291 (0-7011-2829-1)
Hardcover, Chatto & Windus
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Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters: Beaton, Capote, Dalí, Picasso, Freud, Warhol, and Moreby John RichardsonISBN 0679424903 (0-679-42490-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Secret Art of Dr. Seussby Theodor Seuss Geisel, Maurice SendakISBN 0679434488 (0-679-43448-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His Worldby Daniel J. BoorstinISBN 0679434453 (0-679-43445-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World'Book summary:Renowned historian Daniel J. Boorstin completes the trilogy he began with The Discoverers and The Creators. The first volume covered explorers, scientists, and historians in their quest for raw knowledge, while the second book describes writers, painters, and composers in their pursuit of inspiring art; The Seekers describes people searching for an understanding of human existence--"Man is the asking animal," notes Boorstin. It's a big, bold theme, and although The Seekers is the shortest work in the trilogy, it's still vintage Boorstin: incredibly learned, richly anecdotal, and casually profound. It begins with the prophets of the Holy Land and the philosophers of ancient Greece, continues through the Renaissance, and concludes with the modern era of the social sciences. "In this long quest [for understanding], Western culture has turned from seeking the end or purpose to seeking causes--from the Why to the How," writes Boorstin. That's a neat summary of Western intellectual development over several thousand years. What other author could put it so succinctly? Boorstin is generally stronger with material that is more recent and more secular, but this is an accomplished book and a worthy capstone to an outstanding three-volume effort. --John J. Miller [via]
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Sitaby Kate MillettISBN 0671731696 (0-671-73169-6)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Stanley Spencerby Stanley Spencer, Kitty HauserISBN 0691090246 (0-691-09024-6)
Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stanley Spencer'Book summary:One of the most highly regarded and well known of all twentieth-century British artists, Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) is famous for two things. He immortalized the Berkshire village of Cookham, where he was born and spent most of his life. And he celebrated sex both on his canvases and through his unconventional understanding of relationships.
Perhaps best known for his paintings of biblical subjects set in and around Cookham--in particular, The Resurrection, Cookham--Spencer was also an official war artist during both World Wars. In his paintings and in his life, he reveled in the intense ordinariness of the world he inhabited. His mature art fuses things most often thought of as separate: religion and sex, the real and the imaginary, public and private, the young and the old, the self and others.
In this excellent introduction to the artist and his work, Kitty Hauser reveals how Spencer's art grew out of places, experiences, and social relations that enriched his imagination. Though Spencer is often described as visionary, this book shows that his brand of mysticism was firmly grounded in material reality--in landscapes, homes, and the human relationships he felt so strongly.
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The Success and Failure of Picassoby John BergerISBN 0679737251 (0-679-73725-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Talented Mr. Ripleyby Patricia HighsmithISBN 0679742298 (0-679-74229-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'Book summary:One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him on a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fictionmaking and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers into empathizing with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.
The novel begins with a play on James's The Ambassadors. Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.
Unlike many modernist experiments, The Talented Mr. Ripley is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated maneuvers of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lecter. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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Talking with Artistsby Pat CummingsISBN 0689803109 (0-689-80310-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
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Time Regained/a Guide to Proustby Marcel Proust, Andreas Mayor, D.J. Enright, Joanna Kilmartin, Terence KilmartinISBN 0679424768 (0-679-42476-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time Regained/a Guide to Proust'Book summary:In this, the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, as the various threads which have emerged through the vast novel are brought together, and sometimes resolved, Marcel considers the nature of time and its effect on himself and the people has has known. "For after death time leaves the body, and memories - indifferent and pale - are obliterated in her who exists no longer and soon will be in him they still torture, memories which perish with the desire of the living body." [via]
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The Time Traveler's Wifeby Audrey NiffeneggerISBN 0676976336 (0-676-97633-6)
Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Time Traveler's Wife'Book summary:AUDREY NIFFENEGGER [via]
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Tin Drumby Gunter Grass, Ralph ManheimISBN 067972575X (0-679-72575-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tin Drum'Book summary:Meet Oskar Matzerath, "the eternal three-year-old drummer." On the morning of his third birthday, dressed in a striped pullover and patent leather shoes, and clutching his drumsticks and his new tin drum, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: "It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire." Here is a Peter Pan story with a vengeance. But instead of Never-Never Land, Günter Grass gives us Danzig, a contested city on the Polish-German border; instead of Captain Hook and his pirates, we have the Nazis. And in place of Peter himself is Oskar, a twisted puer aeternis with a scream that can shatter glass and a drum rather than a shadow. First published in 1959, The Tin Drum's depiction of the Nazi era created a furor in Germany, for the world of Grass's making is rife with corrupt politicians and brutal grocers in brown shirts:
There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze.
As Oskar grows older (though not taller), portents of war transform into the thing itself. Danzig is the first casualty when, in the summer of 1939, residents turn against each other in a pitched battle between Poles and Germans. In the years that follow, Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next--he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist--until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital.The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife--yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. --Alix Wilber [via]
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To the Lighthouseby Virginia WoolfISBN 0679405372 (0-679-40537-2)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Lighthouse'Book summary:This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever. In this, her most autobiographical novel, Virginia Woolf captures the intensity of childhood longing and delight, and the shifting complexity of adult relationships. From an acute awareness of transcience, she creates an enduring work of art. [via]
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The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse The Early Years, 1869-1908by Hilary SpurlingISBN 0679434283 (0-679-43428-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse The Early Years, 1869-1908'Book summary:Henri Matisse is one of the masters of twentieth-century art and a household word to millions of people who find joy and meaning in his light-filled, colorful images--yet, despite all the books devoted to his work, the man himself has remained a mystery. Now, in the hands of the superb biographer Hilary Spurling, the unknown Matisse becomes visible at last.
Matisse was born into a family of shopkeepers in 1869, in a gloomy textile town in the north of France. His environment was brightened only by the sumptuous fabrics produced by the local weavers--magnificent brocades and silks that offered Matisse his first vision of light and color, and which later became a familiar motif in his paintings. He did not find his artistic vocation until after leaving school, when he struggled for years with his father, who wanted him to take over the family seed-store. Escaping to Paris, where he was scorned by the French art establishment, Matisse lived for fifteen years in great poverty--an ordeal he shared with other young artists and with Camille Joblaud, the mother of his daughter, Marguerite.
But Matisse never gave up. Painting by painting, he struggled toward the revelation that beckoned to him, learning about color, light, and form from such mentors as Signac, Pissarro, and the Australian painter John Peter Russell, who ruled his own art colony on an island off the coast of Brittany. In 1898, after a dramatic parting from Joblaud, Matisse met and married Amélie Parayre, who became his staunchest ally. She and their two sons, Jean and Pierre, formed with Marguerite his indispensable intimate circle.
From the first day of his wedding trip to Ajaccio in Corsica, Matisse realized that he had found his spiritual home: the south, with its heat, color, and clear light. For years he worked unceasingly toward the style by which we know him now. But in 1902, just as he was on the point of achieving his goals as a painter, he suddenly left Paris with his family for the hometown he detested, and returned to the somber, muted palette he had so recently discarded.
Why did this happen? Art historians have called this regression Matisse's "dark period," but none have ever guessed the reason for it. What Hilary Spurling has uncovered is nothing less than the involvement of Matisse's in-laws, the Parayres, in a monumental scandal which threatened to topple the banking system and government of France. The authorities, reeling from the divisive Dreyfus case, smoothed over the so-called Humbert Affair, and did it so well that the story of this twenty-year scam--and the humiliation and ruin its climax brought down on the unsuspecting Matisse and his family--have been erased from memory until now.
It took many months for Matisse to come to terms with this disgrace, and nearly as long to return to the bold course he had been pursuing before the interruption. What lay ahead were the summers in St-Tropez and Collioure; the outpouring of "Fauve" paintings; Matisse's experiments with sculpture; and the beginnings of acceptance by dealers and collectors, which, by 1908, put his life on a more secure footing.
Hilary Spurling's discovery of the Humbert Affair and its effects on Matisse's health and work is an extraordinary revelation, but it is only one aspect of her achievement. She enters into Matisse's struggle for expression and his tenacious progress from his northern origins to the life-giving light of the Mediterranean with rare sensitivity. She brings to her task an astonishing breadth of knowledge about his family, about fin-de-siècle Paris, the conventional Salon painters who shut their doors on him, his artistic comrades, his early patrons, and his incipient rivalry with Picasso.
In Hilary Spurling, Matisse has found a biographer with a detective's ability to unearth crucial facts, the narrative power of a novelist, and profound empathy for her subject. [via]More editions of The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse The Early Years, 1869-1908:
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Virginia Woolfby Hermione LeeISBN 0679447075 (0-679-44707-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Virginia Woolf'Book summary:"Woolf's story is reformulated by each generation," writes Hermione Lee, a professor of English literature. But her richly human portrait, so respectful of the complexities of her subject's life, seems unlikely to be surpassed. Lee extricates Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from clichés about madness and modernism to reveal a vigorous artist whose work is politically probing as well as psychologically delicate. She makes brilliant use of the formidable Woolf archives to let the writer speak directly to us, then comments shrewdly on her words' hidden significances. Biographies don't get much better than this. [via]
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The Waste Land and Other Writingsby T. S. Eliot, Mary KarrISBN 0679641017 (0-679-64101-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waste Land and Other Writings'Book summary:First published in 1922, "The Waste Land" is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, and is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a rich new poetic language, breaking decisively with Romantic and Victorian poetic traditions. Kenneth Rexroth was not alone in calling Eliot "the representative poet of the time, for the same reason that Shakespeare and Pope were of theirs. He articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression."
As influential as his verse, T.S. Eliot's criticism also exerted a transformative effect on twentieth-century letter, and this new edition of The Waste Land and Other Writings includes a selection of Eliot's most important essays.
In her new Introduction, Mary Karr dispels some of the myths of the great poem's inaccessibility and sheds fresh light on the ways in which "The Waste Land" illuminates contemporary experience. [via]More editions of The Waste Land and Other Writings:
When I Was Puerto Ricanby Esmeralda SantiagoISBN 0679756760 (0-679-75676-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The World According to Garpby John IrvingISBN 0679603069 (0-679-60306-9)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World According to Garp'Book summary:"Garp was a natural storyteller," says the narrator of John Irving's incandescent novel, referring to the book's hero, the novelist Garp, who has much in common with Irving himself. "He could make things up one right after the other, and they seemed to fit."
Irving packs wild characters and weird events into his classic--officially recognized as such in a Modern Library edition with a new introduction by the author--while amazingly maintaining the rough feel of realism in every scene and the pulse of life in every heart. Many novelists of his time might have populated a novel with a novelist protagonist whose life and books comment on each other and the novel we're reading. Transsexual football players, ball turret gunners lobotomized in battle, multiple adultery, unicycling bears, mad feminists who amputate their tongues in sympathy with the celebrated victim of a horrifying rape--Irving made them all people. Even the bear is a fitting character.
In a crucial episode, Garp's wife's seduction of a young man coincidentally occurs at the moment when Garp is delighting their young sons with a reckless car trick (one of the few scenes beautifully, eerily, heartbreakingly captured in the film version as well). Many authors would have been content with the harsh comedy of the scene, but Irving respects its integrity, and he builds the rest of the book on the consequences of the event. How does he get away with his killer cocktail of slapstick and horror? Because it's simply what we all face daily, rearranged into soul-satisfying art. "Life is an X-rated soap opera," according to Garp, and who can contradict him?
Rereading Garp 20 years later, one is struck by how elegantly Irving structures his bizarre and complex story. Take the two most celebrated bits in the book, the Under Toad and Garp's story "The Pension Grillparzer," which shimmers like an exquisite Kafkaesque insect in the amber of the novel. When Garp warns his son about the "undertow" at the beach, the boy imagines a monster out of Beowulf who lurks beneath the waves to suck you under: the "Under Toad." It's funny at first, but we soon find that the Under Toad is a metaphor with teeth--he connects with a prophetic dream of death in "The Pension Grillparzer," set in Vienna. Garp's son's last words are, "It's like a dream!" And as Irving--who studied at the University of Vienna--can certainly tell you, the German word for "death" sounds precisely like the English word "toad."
All that death, and yet Garp is mainly exuberant. This story is, as Garp's stuttering writing teacher puts it, "rich with lu-lu-lunacy and sorrow." It enriches literature, and our lives. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenanceby Robert M. PirsigISBN 0688032079 (0-688-03207-9)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'Book summary:In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.
Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.
In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesby Robert M. PirsigISBN 0688002307 (0-688-00230-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values'Book summary:In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.
Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.
In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]
More editions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: ISBN 0688052304 (0-688-05230-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: ISBN 0688171664 (0-688-17166-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: ISBN 0688002307 (0-688-00230-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values: ISBN 0688052304 (0-688-05230-4)
Spanish
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Cuando Era Puertorriquena / When I Was Puerto Ricanby Esmeralda SantiagoISBN 0679756779 (0-679-75677-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cuando Era Puertorriquena / When I Was Puerto Rican'Book summary:Magia, tensión sexual, comedia e intenso drama se mueven dentro de ésta encantadora pero a la vez dura autobiografía; es la historia de una niña que deja a su pueblo en puerto rico por la atracción de nueva york, y una oportunidad para el éxito. "clara, calladamente poderosa y muy lírica: una historia de verdadera valentía." - kirkus reviews [via]
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