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books tagged “artists”
books tagged “artists”
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3 X Abstraction: New Methods Of Drawing By Hilma Af Klint, Emma Kunz, And Agnes Martinby Catherine De Zegher, Hendel TeicherISBN 0300108265 (0-300-10826-5)
Hardcover, Yale Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: '3 X Abstraction: New Methods Of Drawing By Hilma Af Klint, Emma Kunz, And Agnes Martin'Book summary:3x an Abstraction presents the extraordinary work of three important women artists whose innovative ideas and approaches to drawing had a significant impact on the history of modern abstraction. Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 18621944), Emma Kunz (Switzerland, 18921963), and Agnes Martin (Canada, b. 1912; U.S. citizenship 1950) approached geometric abstraction not as formalism, but as a means of structuring philosophical, scientific, and spiritual ideas. Using line, geometry, and the grid, each of these artists created diagrammatic drawings of their exploration of complex belief systems and restorative practices.Noteworthy among the 150 illustrations in the volume are a large number of works by Hilma af Klint, reproduced here for the first time in a major publication; Emma Kunzs drawings, exhibited in the United States for the first time in 2005; and approximately 20 early works by Agnes Martin. The book also includes writings by each of the artists, an introduction by Catherine de Zegher, seven essays by distinguished contributors, and brief statements from five contemporary artists.By considering collectively the works of these three artists anew, 3x an Abstraction highlights the artistic contributions of af Klint and Kunz and revisits the work of Martin from a new perspective.[via]More editions of 3 X Abstraction: New Methods Of Drawing By Hilma Af Klint, Emma Kunz, And Agnes Martin:
About Rothkoby Dore AshtonISBN 0306807041 (0-306-80704-1)
Softcover, Da Capo Press, Incorporated
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Amphigorey Alsoby Edward GoreyISBN 0312920237 (0-312-92023-7)
Hardcover, Congdon & Weed
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amphigorey Also'Book summary:GOREY FANS WILL LOVE THIS BOOK =) [via]
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Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Ninby Noel Riley FitchISBN 0316284319 (0-316-28431-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin'Book summary:Anais Nin was the ultimate femme fatale, a passionate and mysterious woman, world famous for her extravagant sexual exploits, most notably her simultaneous affairs with Henry and June Miller and her bicoastal bigamous marriages. In the mid-1920s, eager to break the confines of American Victorianism both as an artist and as a woman, Nin traveled to Paris, where she fell in with the legendary artistic and literary circles of the Left Bank.
"Nin's Diary", published over the years in numerous volumes, has been hailed as a breakthrough document by literary critics and feminists alike. Yet in the published diary, Nin did not lay bare her true self. She instead constructed a carefully stylized image of the woman the world knew as "Anais" while keeping her inner self hidden. In "Anais", biographer Noel Riley Fitch presents an honest portrait of Nin's passionate, tumultuous, and sometimes bitterly painful life. Fitch reveals, among other things, that behind Nin's coquetry was the desperate yearning of an abused and abandoned child. This, the first biography of Nin, complements, corrects, and demystifies the image that Nin so artfully crafted in her diary. [via]More editions of Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin:
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Ariame Belovedby DupereISBN 0312904924 (0-312-90492-4)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ariame Beloved'Book summary:Revised edition of Betty Edwards' drawing instruction book, in large format with colour illustrations. [via]
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Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Artby Mark Rothko, Christopher RothkoISBN 0300115857 (0-300-11585-7)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art'Book summary:Mark Rothko, the painter famous for his luminous abstract canvases, spent several years in the late 1930s and early '40s writing a book about the meaning of art. Edited by his son Christopher, Rothko's uncompleted manuscript, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art, reveals a man struggling to make a case for the highest ideals of Western culture at a time when crass popular taste and American regionalism were conspiring against the values he held dear. During these years, Rothko worked in a melancholy Expressionist style that was just beginning to be influenced by Surrealism. The hovering rectangles of color that would put him on the modern art map were still a decade away. While this book will no doubt be important to Rothko scholars, it is a period piece, relying on a form of rhetoric and a belief system that can be exasperating to modern readers. Windy chapters on such topics as "The Integrity of the Plastic Process," studded with references to Plato and Leonardo, "truth" and "unity," are Rothko's stock in trade. He never mentions his own paintings and refers to a few other living artists only in passing. And yet--as Christopher Rothko points out in his clear-eyed and useful introduction--the process of wrestling ideas onto the page may have helped the artist find a personal means of expressing the "tragic emotionality" that he believed to be the essence of all great art. Rothko longed to discover a new, post-Christian "myth" that could express a unified outlook on life by embodying "the world of ideals." Little did he realize at the time that the resolution of his dilemma would be based on a radically new approach to handling paint and using color. Cathy Curtis [via]
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The Artist's Voice: Talks With Seventeen Modern Artistsby Katharine KuhISBN 0306809052 (0-306-80905-2)
Softcover, Da Capo Pr
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Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionaryby Kristin G. Congdon, Kara Kelley HallmarkISBN 0313315442 (0-313-31544-2)
Hardcover, Greenwood Pub Group
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Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the Worldby Paul CollinsISBN 0312300336 (0-312-30033-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World'Book summary:The historical record crowns success. Those enshrined in its annals are men and women whose ideas, accomplishments, or personalities have dominated, endured, and most important of all, found champions. John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets are classic celebrations of the greatest, the brightest, the eternally constellated.[via]
Paul Collins' Banvard's Folly is a different kind of book. Here are thirteen unforgettable portraits of forgotten people: men and women who might have claimed their share of renown but who, whether from ill timing, skullduggery, monomania, the tinge of madness, or plain bad luck-or perhaps some combination of them all-leapt straight from life into thankless obscurity. Among their number are scientists, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, from across the centuries and around the world. They hold in common the silenced aftermath of failure, the name that rings no bells.
Collins brings them back to glorious life. John Banvard was an artist whose colossal panoramic canvasses (one behemoth depiction of the entire eastern shore of the Mississippi River was simply known as "The Three Mile Painting") made him the richest and most famous artist of his day. . . before he decided to go head to head with P. T. Barnum. René Blondot was a distinguished French physicist whose celebrated discovery of a new form of radiation, called the N-Ray, went terribly awry. At the tender age of seventeen, William Henry Ireland signed "William Shakespeare" to a book and launched a short but meteoric career as a forger of undiscovered works by the Bard -- until he pushed his luck too far. John Symmes, a hero of the War of 1812, nearly succeeded in convincing Congress to fund an expedition to the North Pole, where he intended to prove his theory that the earth was hollow and ripe for exploitation; his quixotic quest counted Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe among its greatest admirers.
Collins' love for what he calls the "forgotten ephemera of genius" give his portraits of these figures and the other nine men and women in Banvard's Folly sympathetic depth and poignant relevance. Their effect is not to make us sneer or revel in schadenfreude; here are no cautionary tales. Rather, here are brief introductions-acts of excavation and reclamation-to people whom history may have forgotten, but whom now we cannot.More editions of Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World:
Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luckby Paul CollinsISBN 0312268866 (0-312-26886-6)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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Chattertonby Peter AckroydISBN 0345358228 (0-345-35822-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chatterton'Book summary:Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), apparently a suicide at 18, posthumously astonished literary England when he was revealed as the author of a sequence of famous and influential "medieval" poems he claimed to have discovered. An authentic talent as well as a literary counterfeiter, he is the guiding spirit of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant novel. In today's London, a young poet and an elderly novelist engage the mystery of Chatterton by trying to decode the clues found in an old manuscript, only to discover that their investigation discloses other riddles for which there are no solutions. Chatterton is at once a hilariously witty comedy; a thoughtful and dramatic exploration of the deepest issues of authenticity in both life and art; and a subtle and touching story of failed lives, parental love, doomed marriages, and erotic passions.[via]More editions of Chatterton:
Chris Ware: Monographicsby DANIEL RAEBURNISBN 0300102917 (0-300-10291-7)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazineby Maria ReidelbachISBN 0316738913 (0-316-73891-3)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Goghby Vincent Van Gogh, Theo Van Gogh, Irving Stone, Jean StoneISBN 0304292931 (0-304-29293-1)
Hardcover, Cassell
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Death at the Barby Ngaio MarshISBN 0312964269 (0-312-96426-9)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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The Devil's Dreamby Lee SmithISBN 0345382919 (0-345-38291-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil's Dream'Book summary:"She writes lyric, luminous prose; her craft is so strong it becomes transparent, and, like the best of storytellers, she knows how to get out of the way so that the story can tell itself."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Moses Bailey, a preacher's son, forbade his fiddle-loving wife Kate Malone to play. But while he was gone on his travels, looking for God, Kate couldn't help herself, and began fiddling for her three children. For the love of music, Kate is willing to defy anyone who tries to stop her. From generation to generation, the gift and love of music cannot be stopped, and no Malone is immune from its spell. [via]More editions of The Devil's Dream:
Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexualityby Micha RamakersISBN 031227694X (0-312-27694-X)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexualityby Tom, Micha RamakersISBN 0312205260 (0-312-20526-0)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexuality'Book summary:In a gay heaven, the choir robes would be designed by Gautier after drawings by Tom of Finland. Even on Earth, utopia must be approaching when the musclebound torsos and bulging baskets of Tom's manly men attract a full-length critical study. Art historian Micha Ramakers, who previously edited a monograph of Tom of Finland's drawings, argues persuasively for the influence of these hyper-masculine figures on gay culture since the mid-1950s, when the artist's renderings of fantasy men first began to appear in American beefcake magazines. Although the consistency of Tom of Finland's technique and themes over the four decades of his working life doesn't leave Ramakers much room to discuss the development of his subject's talents, he makes ample use of his few opportunities (like the introduction of more black figures in the mid-1980s, after the artist spent six months in the U.S.). More rewardingly, he uses the pornographer's work as a lens for examining the evolution of gay masculinity since the 1950s. --Regina Marler [via]
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Drawing Lessons from a Bearby David M. McPhailISBN 0316563455 (0-316-56345-5)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
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The English Dreamersby David LarkinISBN 0330245023 (0-330-24502-3)
Hardcover, Pan Books
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Eva Hesseby Lucy R. LippardISBN 0306804840 (0-306-80484-0)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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Faking Itby Jennifer CrusieISBN 0312932782 (0-312-93278-2)
Softcover, St. Martin's Press
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Faking It'Book summary:Setting: Columbus, Ohio
Sensuality: 7
Mural artist Tilda Goodnight is struggling to pay off the mortgage on the family business and keep the Goodnight secrets safely hidden. Juggling her life gets even more complicated when she hides in Clea Lewis's closet and collides with sexy Davy Dempsey. Tilda is in Clea's bedroom to steal back a forged painting; Davy's there to steal Clea's account codes and retrieve the $3 million the larcenous blonde stole from him. Somehow, Tilda finds herself exchanging a mind-blowing kiss with her fellow burglar, and when Davy follows her home and rents a room from her mother, she's forced to deal with the charming con man. Everyone in Tilda's world is pretending to be someone else, including her daydreaming mother, her split-personality sister, and her cross-dressing ex-brother-in-law. All of them, including Tilda and Davy, are Faking It. What will happen when all the secrets are out and everyone knows the truth about everyone else? Will Davy recover his 3 million? Will Tilda recover all the forged paintings and find her true artistic calling? Will Tilda's mother run off to Aruba with a hit man named Ford? And exactly what is the difference between a man labeled a "doughnut" and one who deserves the title "muffin"?
Faking It is a hilarious, warm novel with a cast of quirky and wonderful characters that endear while they charm. Readers who met the Dempsey siblings in Crusie's Welcome To Temptation will be delighted to revisit the family and discover what happens to Davy Dempsey when he meets his romantic nemesis, Tilda Goodnight. --Lois Faye Dyer [via]
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Flesh Tonesby M. J. RoseISBN 0345451058 (0-345-45105-8)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Flesh Tones'Book summary:Did Genny Haviland poison Slade Gabriel to save her adored father's art gallery or did she help the acclaimed artist kill himself before Alzheimer's disease destroyed his mind and talent? Although billed as a courtroom drama, there's not a great deal of suspense here, but that may not matter to readers who prefer their mysteries with a romantic subplot. In this engrossing, erotic novel, the affair that begins when 17-year-old Genny meets and falls in love with the married, much older Gabriel, and then spans two decades is more than a subplot--it's the whole thing. While the outcome of Genny's murder trial is hardly in doubt, it's a good frame for a nicely told story of love, art, and obsession. --Jane Adams [via]
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The Forgerby Paul WatkinsISBN 0312276966 (0-312-27696-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Forger'Book summary:"I reached Paris early in the summer of 1939," begins narrator David Halifax. Following in the footsteps of another generation of American expatriates, he has come to Paris for the sake of art (in his case, at the atelier of the temperamental and brilliant Alexander Pankratov). And like those earlier artists, he has arrived at a particularly crucial moment, as France is simultaneously preparing for and ignoring the threat of war. David vows to ignore the vagaries of the quotidian, however, immersing himself in his painting, down to
the minutest detail, so that it would stop being the whole picture and would break down into its individual parts, which were different from what the parts had been in reality. Now they were fragments of a different thing, a thing all by itself. But the ghost of the canvas underneath, the reminder of it, would always bring you back into the world from which the painting had emerged, many incarnations ago.
And of course, he isbrought back to the world: far from being the muse of escape, his talent will be the siren that draws him irrevocably into the harsh world of war. When Pankratov recruits David as part of the movement to replace priceless French-owned paintings with forgeries before the Germans seize them, the young artist quickly becomes absorbed by the very idea of forgery, by the necessity to adopt another identity, to live and breathe and be the master he copies. But when their lives depend on a final forgery--one so audacious that it will strike to the core of Hitler's own artistic obsessions--philosophy gives way to breathless suspense, as the pair journey through Normandy at the moment of the Allied invasion, desperately searching for a treasured Vermeer.
The novel is so strong that its occasional moments of weakness seem an almost personal affront to the reader who has been bewitched by author Paul Watkins's quiet elegance. The narrative skims too quickly over David's life in Paris during the war years, and some of the most crucial facets of the generally well-balanced plot--Pankratov's diatribe to David on the German threat, for example, or David's decision to create that one last canvas--seem pale despite their avowed vigor. These moments feel as if Watkins has failed to prepare his own canvas properly, contenting himself with superficially dramatic strokes rather than carefully layering his foundation. But these flaws are minor detractions in an otherwise splendid work that balances canny portraiture with an unsentimentally evocative landscape. --Kelly Flynn [via]
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From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500by Paula NuttallISBN 0300102445 (0-300-10244-5)
Hardcover, Yale Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500'Book summary:Paula Nuttall explores the artistic contacts between Italy and the Netherlands during the 15th century, with special regard to the influence of Dutch style on the development of painting in Florence, including the work of Leonardo, Perugino and Ghirlandaio. [via]
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From Rembrandt to Vermeer: 17Th-Century Dutch Artistsby Jane TurnerISBN 0312229720 (0-312-22972-0)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Rembrandt to Vermeer: 17Th-Century Dutch Artists'Book summary:One of the most creative and accessible periods of art the world has ever known, the Golden Age is brought to life in an unprecedented series of biographies of the artists active in the Netherlands during the 17th-century. Painters in the Dutch Republic specialized in portraits, domestic genre scenes, still-lives, and landscapes--metaphors of the tiny new country's immense pride and wealth. This book features biographies on all the great masters from Frans Hals to Vermeer to Rembrandt. There are entries on more that 220 artists.
This unprecedented book draws together biographies of artists who worked in one of the most exciting and dramatic political eras in France, when Paris became the artistic capital of Europe. It features in-depth studies of such well-known Neo-classical artists as Jacques-Louis David, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the artist most revered by his fellow countrymen. Also included are artists of the Romantic Movement, like Delacroix and Gericault, as well as the painters of the Barbizon School, whose plein-air landscapes anticipated those of the Impressionists. [via]More editions of From Rembrandt to Vermeer: 17Th-Century Dutch Artists:
Georgia O'Keeffeby Elizabeth Hutton TurnerISBN 0316856495 (0-316-85649-5)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
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The Heart of the Artist: A Character-Building Guide for You and Your Ministry Teamby Rory NolandISBN 0310224713 (0-310-22471-3)
Softcover, Zondervan
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Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsonsby Ben Fong-TorresISBN 0312194641 (0-312-19464-1)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons'Book summary:Gram Parons lived hard and died young, and left behind a musical legacy that has influenced generations of rock and country legends. Ben Fong-Torres's moving account of his story--from his poor-little-rich-kid childhood; through his seminal time with the Byrds and his own bands, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Fallen Angels; to days and nights spent with the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Emmylou Harris--is a classic of rock biography. This newly expanded edition updates the text and discograph, adds rare new photographs, and concludes with an intriguing epilogue that answers some lingering questions about Gram's untimely death--and raised a few more.[via]More editions of Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons:
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Hogarth: A Life and a Worldby Jennifer S. UglowISBN 0374171696 (0-374-17169-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hogarth: A Life and a World'Book summary:Combining in-depth history with perceptive explication of the references encoded in William Hogarth's images, Jenny Uglow enables modern readers to fully understand the society that shaped the art of William Hogarth (1697-1764). Hugely popular engravings such as A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-La-Mode commented on the tumultuous changes sweeping through 18th-century English society; Hogarth was appreciated as a moralist as much as a painter. Uglow colorfully recreates a vanished world, as well as the prickly nature of a man who revolutionized the role and the status of British artists. [via]
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Howards Endby E. M. Forster, Alistair M. DuckworthISBN 0312111827 (0-312-11182-7)
Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
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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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I Capture the Castleby Dodie SmithISBN 0312201656 (0-312-20165-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Capture the Castle'Book summary:Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. Bravely making the best of things, Cassandra gets hold of a journal and begins her literary apprenticeship by refusing to face the facts. She writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."
Rose longs for suitors and new tea dresses while Cassandra scorns romance: "I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them." But romantic isolation comes to an end both for the family and for Cassandra's heart when the wealthy, adventurous Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, just the right voice for chronicling the perilous cusp of adulthood. Some people have compared I Capture the Castle to the novels of Jane Austen, and it's just as well-plotted and witty. But the Mortmains are more bohemian--as much like the Addams Family as like any of Austen's characters. Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations, wrote this novel in 1948. And though the story is set in the 1930s, it still feels fresh, and well deserves its reputation as a modern classic. --Maria Dolan [via]
More editions of I Capture the Castle:
- I Capture the Castle: ISBN 031231616X (0-312-31616-X)
Softcover, St Martins Pr - I Capture the Castle: ISBN 0312993021 (0-312-99302-1)
Softcover, St. Martin's Press - I Capture the Castle: ISBN 0312974175 (0-312-97417-5)
Softcover, St Martins Pr - I Capture the Castle: ISBN 0312181108 (0-312-18110-8)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr - I Capture the Castle: ISBN 0312201656 (0-312-20165-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
- I Capture the Castle: ISBN 031231616X (0-312-31616-X)
Indigo's Starby Hilary McKayISBN 034087578X (0-340-87578-X)
Hardcover, Hodder Children's Books
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Joni: An Unforgettable Storyby Joe Musser, Joni Eareckson Tada, Billy GrahamISBN 0310240018 (0-310-24001-8)
Softcover, Zondervan
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The Legacy of Mark Rothkoby Lee SeldesISBN 0306807254 (0-306-80725-4)
Softcover, Perseus Books
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The Love-Artistby Jane AlisonISBN 0312420064 (0-312-42006-4)
Softcover, Picador USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Love-Artist'Book summary:A darkly brilliant first novel that imagines a missing chapter in the life of Ovid.
Why was Ovid, the most popular author of his day, banished to the edges of the Roman Empire? Why do only two lines survive of his play Medea, reputedly his most passionate work and perhaps his most Accomplished? Between the known details of the poet's life and these enigmas, Jane Alison has Interpolated a haunting drama of passion and psychological manipulation.
On holiday at the Black Sea, on the fringes of the Empire, Ovid encounters an almost otherworldly woman who seems to embody the fictitious creations of his soon-to-be-published Metamorphoses. Part healer, part witch, she seems myth come to life. Enchanted and obsessed -- and, for the first time in a long while, flush with inspiration -- Ovid takes her back with him to Rome. But the inexorable pull of ambition leads him to make a Faustian bargain with fate that will betray his newfound muse. As the two of them become entangled in its snares, the reader is drawn deep into an ingeniously enacted meditation on love, art, and the desire for immortality. [via]
Lying in Bedby M. J. RoseISBN 0373605080 (0-373-60508-0)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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M: The Man Who Became Caravaggioby Peter RobbISBN 0312274742 (0-312-27474-2)
Softcover, Picador USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio'Book summary:A New York Times Notable Book of the Year[via]
As vividly and unflinchingly presented herein with "blood and bone and sinew" (Times Literary Supplement) by Peter Robb, Caravaggio's wild and tempestuous life was a provocation to a culture in a state of siege. The end of the sixteenth century was marked by the Inquisition and Counter-Reformation, a background of ideological war against which, despite all odds, brilliant feats of art and science were achieved. No artist captured the dark, violent spirit of the time better than Caravaggio, variously known as Marisi, Moriggia, Merigi, and sometimes, simply M. As art critic Robert Hughes has said, "There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same." Robb's masterful biography "re-creates the mirror Cravaggio held up to nature," as Hilary Spurling wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "with singular delicacy as well as passion and panache."More editions of M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio:
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The Magic Mirror of M. C. Escherby Bruno ErnstISBN 0345242432 (0-345-24243-2)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Magic Mirror of M. C. Escher'Book summary:"A woman once rang me up and said, 'Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print Reptiles you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madame, if that's the way you see it, so be it, '" An engagingly sly comment by the renowned Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972)--the complex ambiguities of whose work leave hasty or single-minded interpretations far behind. Long before the first computer-generated 3-D images were thrilling the public, Escher was a master of the third dimension. His lithograph "Magic Mirror" dates as far back as 1946. In taking that title for this book, mathematician Bruno Ernst is stressing the magic spell Escher's work invariably casts on those who see it. Ernst visited Escher every week for a year, systematically talking through his entire oeuvre with him. Their discussions resulted in a friendship that gave Ernst intimate access to the life and conceptual world of Escher. Ernst's account was meticulously scrutinized and made accurate by the artist himself. Escher's work refuses to be pigeonholed. Scientific, psychological, or aesthetic criteria alone cannot do it justice. The questions remain. Why did he create the pictures? How did he construct them? What preliminary studies were necessary before he could arrive at the final version? And how are the various images Escher created interrelated? This book, complete with biographical data, 250 illustrations, and explications of mathematical problems, offers answers to these and many other questions, and is an authentic source text of the first order.[via]More editions of The Magic Mirror of M. C. Escher:
May And Amy: A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, And the Secret Lives of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, And Sir Edward Burne-Jonesby Josceline DimblebyISBN 0307335895 (0-307-33589-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Memory and Dreamby Charles De LintISBN 0312855729 (0-312-85572-9)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memory and Dream'Book summary:From her mentor, Rushkin, Isabell Copley had learned to paint creatures that come to life--literally--and years after these creatures have ruined her life, Isabelle returns to painting, haunted by memories, dreams, and the threat of her mentor's return. [via]
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Moony B. Finch, the Fastest Draw in the Westby David M. McPhailISBN 0307175545 (0-307-17554-5)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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Narcissus and Goldmundby Hermann Hesse, Ursule MolinaroISBN 0312421672 (0-312-42167-2)
Softcover, Picador USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narcissus and Goldmund'Book summary:Hermann Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of a passionate yet uneasy friendship between two men of opposite character. Narcissus, an ascetic instructor at a cloister school, has devoted himself solely to scholarly and spiritual pursuits. One of his students is the sensual, restless Goldmund, who is immediately drawn to his teachers fierce intellect and sense of discipline. When Narcissus persuades the young student that he is not meant for a life of self-denial, Goldmund sets off in pursuit of aesthetic and physical pleasures, a path that leads him to a final, unexpected reunion with Narcissus.[via]More editions of Narcissus and Goldmund:
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The Onion Girlby Charles De LintISBN 0312873972 (0-312-87397-2)
Hardcover, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Onion Girl'Book summary:In novel after novel, and story after story, Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life. Newford: where magic lights dark streets; where myths walk clothed in modern shapes; where a broad cast of extraordinary and affecting people work to keep the whole world turning.[via]
At the center of all the entwined lives in Newford stands a young artist named Jilly Coppercorn, with her tangled hair, her paint-splattered jeans, a smile perpetually on her lips--Jilly, whose paintings capture the hidden beings that dwell in the city's shadows. Now, at last, de Lint tells Jilly's own story...for behind the painter's fey charm lies a dark secret and a past she's labored to forget. And that past is coming to claim her now.
"I'm the onion girl," Jilly Coppercorn says. "Pull back the layers of my life, and you won't find anything at the core. Just a broken child. A hollow girl." She's very, very good at running. But life has just forced Jilly to stop.More editions of The Onion Girl:
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The Optimistsby Andrew MillerISBN 0340836555 (0-340-83655-5)
Softcover, Sceptre
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Originals: American Women Artistsby Eleanor MunroISBN 0306809559 (0-306-80955-9)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeISBN 0321427130 (0-321-42713-0)
Softcover, Longman Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oscar Wilde's 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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Pablo Picasso: A Retrospectiveby William RubinISBN 0316707031 (0-316-70703-1)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Picture Thisby Joseph HellerISBN 0345358864 (0-345-35886-4)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Picture This'Book summary:"Mr. Heller treats the whole panorama of history past and present with the bravado of Mark Twain in one of his sassier moods." The New York Times Book Review
A keenly satirical look at the world of art and museums by the author of the modern classic, Catch-22. [via]More editions of Picture This:
Portrait of the Art World: A Century of Artnews Photographsby Pete Hamill, William F. Stapp, National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Milton Esterow, Tracey L. AvantISBN 0300097522 (0-300-09752-2)
Hardcover, Yale Univ Pr
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Putting Dell on the Map: A History of the Dell Paperbacksby William H. LylesISBN 0313236674 (0-313-23667-4)
Hardcover, Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated
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Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymourby J. D. SalingerISBN 0316766941 (0-316-76694-1)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour'Book summary:The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family. It struck me that they had better be collected together, if not deliberately paired off, in something of a hurry, if I mean them to avoid unduly or undesirably close contact with new material in the series. There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along ? waxing, dilating ? each in its own way, but I suspect the less said about them, in mixed company, the better. Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years. I can't say why, though. Not, at least, outside the casino proper of my fiction. [via]
More editions of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour:
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: ISBN 0316769517 (0-316-76951-7)
Softcover, Lb Books - Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: ISBN 0316769576 (0-316-76957-6)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: ISBN 0316766941 (0-316-76694-1)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: ISBN 0316769517 (0-316-76951-7)
Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Our Worldby Bob BrinerISBN 0310591112 (0-310-59111-2)
Softcover, Zondervan
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Your World'Book summary:In order to return Christian values to society, it is necessary to do more than criticize and rail against evil. In a wake-up call for every believer lulled into thinking there is no room for Christian thought or teaching in the secular world, Briner details pratical ways to penetrate every area of society and replace evil with good. [via]
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Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Coletteby Judith ThurmanISBN 0345371038 (0-345-37103-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette'Book summary:The same keen yet affectionate gaze Judith Thurman trained on Isak Dinesen in her 1983 National Book Award winner, The Life of a Storyteller, distinguishes her robust portrait of the great French writer Colette. In Secrets of the Flesh, Thurman shrewdly disentangles fact from legend during the course of the writer's long and turbulent life (1873-1954), yet she doesn't question Colette's right to mythologize herself. The fictions Colette created about herself were part of a lifelong attempt to make sense, not just of her own experience, but of the "secrets of the flesh" (André Gide's phrase in an admiring letter), the bonds that link women to men, parents to children, in an eternal search for love that is also a struggle for dominance. Chronicling Colette's scandalous life--male and female lovers, a stint in vaudeville, an affair with her stepson, a final happy marriage to a younger man--Thurman makes it clear that the writer's adored yet dominating mother and exploitative first husband made it difficult for her to conceive of amorous equality. Yet she nonetheless created a satisfying, creative existence, firmly rooted in the senses and filled with artistic achievement, from the bestselling Claudine novels to the mature insights of The Vagabond and Chéri. Thurman assesses with equal acuity the bleakness of Colette's world-view and a zest for life that it never seemed to dampen. --Wendy Smith [via]
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The Shell Seekersby Rosamunde PilcherISBN 0312961324 (0-312-96132-4)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Shell Seekers'Book summary:Set in London and Cornwall between World War II and the present, this is the story of the Keeling family, and of the passions and heart-break that have held them together for three generations--a story of life, hope, children and death. [via]
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Shocking: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelliby Dilys E. BlumISBN 0300100663 (0-300-10066-3)
Hardcover, Yale Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shocking: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli'Book summary:If you're a fashionista who's not a babe, you look for clothes that create attention all by themselves. That was the secret of Elsa Schiaparelli, the Italian designer who gave women unusual textures, eccentric patterns and surprising shapes influenced by the Surrealist artists in her circle. In Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli--a winking reference to her most famous perfume as well as to her designing audacity--Dilys E. Blum celebrates the couturiere whose achievements have long been eclipsed by her rival, Coco Chanel. A frustrated sculptor, Schiaparelli invested many of her garments of the 1930s and '40s with an architectural quality, from aerodynamic, back-swept bustles and overskirts dramatically curved back over themselves to stiff, fan-shaped peplums. She created a hat in the shape of an upside-down shoe, made comfy leopard-skin booties, and incorporated such novelties as monkey fur and Rhodophane, a transparent man-made fabric. Her clothes were worn by Mae West and heiress Millicent Rogers, by Helena Rubenstein and French film star Arletty. At her most eccentric, inspired by the artist Man Ray, Schiaparelli produced suede gloves with red snakeskin fingernails. At her most practical, she designed a daring (in 1931) silk tennis costume with a divided skirt. More than 300 stunning photographs, both vintage and contemporary, and a detailed yet lively text made this book a must for anyone interested in the history of fashion. A coordinated exhibition of the same title is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, through Jan. 4, 2004, before traveling to Paris. --Cathy Curtis [via]
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Sitaby Kate MillettISBN 0345355393 (0-345-35539-3)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Lifeby Jon Scheuler, Russell Banks, Diane Cousineau, Magda Salvesen, Jon SchuelerISBN 0312200153 (0-312-20015-3)
Hardcover, Picador
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Still Lifeby Penny LouiseISBN 0312352557 (0-312-35255-7)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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Stravinsky's Lunchby Drusilla ModjeskaISBN 0330361864 (0-330-36186-4)
Hardcover, Picador
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The Sun, the Moon, and the Starsby Steven BrustISBN 0312860390 (0-312-86039-0)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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The Time of Our Singingby Richard PowersISBN 0312422180 (0-312-42218-0)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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Violet Clayby Gail GodwinISBN 034538993X (0-345-38993-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Violet Clay'Book summary:Violet Clay had come to New York City from Charleston to take the art world by storm. But nine years, many affairs, and thousands of drinks later, the reality of her shadow life is made clear when she is fired from her job as a freelance illustrator. That same day, she hears that her beloved Uncle Ambrose, an unsuccessful writer, has shot himself.
As Violet collects the shattered pieces of her uncle's life, she is forced to face herself and her own tattered dreams. And what she discovers is that she has just been going through the motions of living. She's not even sure she can do anything else. But she's in her mid-thirties and knows she still has time to try again. If she succeeds, she will have broken from her family of dreamers forever and can deservedly claim both the rich rewards and frustrating adversities of the artist's life.... [via]More editions of Violet Clay:
Warhol: The Biography 75th Anniversay Editionby Victor BockrisISBN 030681272X (0-306-81272-X)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoirby Esmeralda SantiagoISBN 0306814528 (0-306-81452-8)
Softcover, Da Capo Pr
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White Oleanderby Janet FitchISBN 0316182540 (0-316-18254-0)
Softcover, Little Brown & Company
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Oleander'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1999: Astrid Magnussen, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a mother who is as sharp as a new knife. An uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and self-pity, telling her daughter that they are descendants of Vikings, savages who fought fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her point, killing the man with the poison of oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster homes.
As Astrid bumps from trailer park to tract house to Hollywood bungalow, White Oleander uncoils her existential anxieties. "Who was I, really?" she asks. "I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces." Fitch adroitly leads Astrid down a path of sorting out her past and identity. In the process, this girl develops a wire-tight inner strength, gains her mother's white-blonde beauty, and achieves some measure of control over their relationship. Even from prison, Ingrid tries to mold her daughter. Foiling her, Astrid learns about tenderness from one foster mother and how to stand up for herself from another. Like the weather in Los Angeles--the winds of the Santa Anas, the scorching heat--Astrid's teenage life is intense. Fitch's novel deftly displays that, and also makes Astrid's life meaningful. --Katherine Anderson [via]
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- White Oleander: ISBN 0316284955 (0-316-28495-5)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co - White Oleander: ISBN 0316285269 (0-316-28526-9)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - White Oleander: ISBN 0316569321 (0-316-56932-1)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - White Oleander: ISBN 0316182540 (0-316-18254-0)
Softcover, Little Brown & Company
- White Oleander: ISBN 0316284955 (0-316-28495-5)
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A Widow for One Year: A Novelby John IrvingISBN 0345424719 (0-345-42471-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Widow for One Year: A Novel'Book summary:John Irving fans will not be startled to find that A Widow for One Year is a sprawling farce-tragedy crawling with characters who are writers. In the opening scene, 4-year-old Ruth Cole walks in on her melancholy mother, Marion, who is in flagrante with 16-year-old Eddie, the driver for drunken Ted (Ruth's dad and Marion's estranged, womanizing husband).
Eddie spends the rest of his life obsessively writing novels like Sixty Times, his roman à clef about his 60 seductions by Marion. Ted is a failed novelist who gets rich and famous writing creepy children's stories based on tales he tells Ruth (such as The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls). Marion abandons Ruth, Ted, and Eddie and becomes a successful pseudonymous novelist. And Ruth becomes the most richly celebrated writer of them all because of her early training by Ted, who not only told her stories, but also helped her craft narratives to explain their home's many photographs of her brothers, who died in a gory car wreck the year before she was born. Grief over the boys is why Ruth's mother does not dare to love her.
Ruth, Irving's first female main character, works brilliantly, first as an imaginative, almost Salingeresque child coming to terms with her bewildering family, then as a grownup striving to understand her mother's motives--or at least to track her down. Ted is a mordantly funny caricature, interestingly sinister and plausibly self-justifying when most inexcusable. Eddie is a lovable schlemiel, yet not too sentimentally drawn. And what set pieces Irving can write! The story of the boys' death is horrific and effective in dramatizing the character of Ted, who narrates it. Ted's attempted murder by a spurned lover is as hilarious as the VW-down-the-marble-stairway scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany (which has been adapted by Disney Studios), though not quite on a par with the celebrated "Pension Grillparzer" episode in The World According to Garp (reissued in a 20th anniversary edition by Modern Library).
Irving has the effrontery to get away with practically any scene that comes into his head--Ruth winds up an eyewitness to a hooker's murder in Amsterdam, a Dutch detective starts tracking her down (just as Ruth is hunting Marion), and the multiple plot strands all converge in a finale that neatly echoes the opening scene. It's all done with the outrageously coincidental yet minutely realistic brio of Charles Dickens, with a sad, self-conscious jokiness like that of Irving's mentor, Kurt Vonnegut. --Tim Appelo [via]
More editions of A Widow for One Year: A Novel:
- A Widow for One Year: A Novel: ISBN 0345432835 (0-345-43283-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books - A Widow for One Year: A Novel: ISBN 034543479X (0-345-43479-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books - A Widow for One Year : A Novel: ISBN 0345469011 (0-345-46901-1)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group - A Widow for One Year: A Novel: ISBN 0345424719 (0-345-42471-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
- A Widow for One Year: A Novel: ISBN 0345432835 (0-345-43283-5)
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The World According to Garpby John IrvingISBN 034536676X (0-345-36676-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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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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The Year's Best Graphic Novels, Comics, and Mangaby Byron Preiss, Howard Zimmerman, Neil GaimanISBN 0312343264 (0-312-34326-4)
Softcover, St. Martin's Press
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![[???]: Your Students Can Become Roaring Lambs: Helping Your High Schooler Integrate Their Christian Beliefs With Real Life](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0310234190.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "[???]: Your Students Can Become Roaring Lambs: Helping Your High Schooler Integrate Their Christian Beliefs With Real Life")
Your Students Can Become Roaring Lambs: Helping Your High Schooler Integrate Their Christian Beliefs With Real LifeISBN 0310234190 (0-310-23419-0)
Softcover, Zondervan
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesby Robert M. PirsigISBN 0370103386 (0-370-10338-6)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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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]
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Mujer Del Viajero en el Tiempoby Audrey NiffeneggerISBN 0307344835 (0-307-34483-5)
Softcover, Random House Mondadori
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mujer Del Viajero en el Tiempo'Book summary:Clare y Henry son en apariencia una pareja normal que lleva una vida corriente en Chicago. Él es bibliotecario y ella artista, pero la terrible verdad es que Henry sufre una extraña enfermedad que lo hace viajar en el tiempo, al pasado o al futuro sin previo aviso, normalmente fruto de una situación de estrés previa. Lo transporta desnudo, con desagradables malestares y vulnerable.
Cuando Henry tiene 31 años y Clare 23 se encuentran por primera vez. Y allí nace en tiempo presente su historia de amor, su vida en común de la que ocasionalmente Henry se ausenta propulsado a otras épocas de su vida y revisitando otros momentos felices o tristes, a veces encontrándose a sí mismo cuando era niño, con el temor de Clare de que no regrese de uno de esos viajes.
La historia se va desplegando contada a dos voces, bajo los puntos de vista de Clare y Henry, y enfoca las consecuencias de esta particularidad en su matrimonio y el amor apasionado que se tienen. Clare y Henry intentar llevar vidas normales, buscar una cura médica para la disfunción de Henry, ponerse objetivos a futuro, disfrutar de sus amigos y familia; aunque a veces se presenta la tentación de utilizar su capacidad de conocer el futuro para manejar el presente o evitar algún peligro... Pero todo ello está amenazado por algo que no pueden controlar ni prevenir: Henry puede viajar un día al futuro y descubrir que él ya no forma parte de ese tiempo, descubrir su propia muerte o la de sus seres queridos, ver a una Clare sola y envejecida, conocer a una hija que todavía no ha tenido y que heredará su extraña disfunción. [via]More editions of Mujer Del Viajero en el Tiempo:
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