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› Find signed collectible books: 'Adrian Mole, the Lost Years'
Adrian Mole is balding, he's bitter, and he's back, this time at age 30. Though he may be older, Sue Townsend's comic creation is certainly no wiser. With his marriage to a Nigerian beauty in tatters, he passes his time dreaming of old flame Pandora Braithwaite, now a shining star in Tony Blair's new government. But underneath the layers of experience and sophistication, fans of the Mole family will find the same dysfunctional mess that made The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 an instant bestseller. This diarist's young son is being brought up by his mother in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, his 16-year-old sister has left home to live with her multiply pierced boyfriend, and his father is bed-bound with manic depression. Adrian himself still makes constant lists of juvenile neuroses, and spends an unhealthy amount of time grading his penile performance (only when he reaches the bleak score of zero out of 10 does he finally take action).
And what of his career? The hero of The Cappuccino Years works at Soho's Hoi Polloi restaurant, rustling up deliberately grubby blue-collar cuisine, from "Heinz tomato soup (with white bread floaters)" to "Boiled cabbage avec Dan Quayle Potatoes." At a certain point, he's spotted by a cable producer and ends up starring in a television show celebrating offal--yes, it's called Offally Good. Yet even Adrian is somewhat perplexed by his culinary gifts:
My mother's family (Norfolk) were practically illiterate, and seemed to live on boiled potatoes with HP sauce, and my father's family (Leicester) viewed books with deep suspicion, unless they had pictures which "broke up the pages." My paternal grandmother, May Mole, was a plain cook, who regarded eating as a gross indulgence. Thank God she died before I became a professional chef. It was her proud boast that she had never eaten in a proper restaurant in her life. She spoke of restaurants as others speak of crack dens.As the above should make clear, Townsend's acerbic (and very English) wit is still much in evidence. Occasionally she'll go to corny lengths for a joke: "I arrived at the Brent Cross shopping centre car-park, to find that my car had been towed away five days ago and was in a police compound somewhere in Purley. A £25 cab ride took me to the Purley gates." True Mole fanatics, however, will forgive Townsend her infrequent excesses. Accessible, amusing, and appealing, The Cappuccino Years reflects an Adrian who has tolerated the growing pains and survived the lost years. Now he's ready to face the only really important question: Is it cheating to use Viagra? --Lucie Naylor [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anansi Boys: Library Edition'
One of fiction's most audaciously original talents, Neil Gaiman now gives us a mythology for a modern age -- complete with dark prophecy, family dysfunction, mystical deceptions, and killer birds. Not to mention a lime.
Anansi Boys
God is dead. Meet the kids.
When Fat Charlie's dad named something, it stuck. Like calling Fat Charlie "Fat Charlie." Even now, twenty years later, Charlie Nancy can't shake that name, one of the many embarrassing "gifts" his father bestowed -- before he dropped dead on a karaoke stage and ruined Fat Charlie's life.
Mr. Nancy left Fat Charlie things. Things like the tall, good-looking stranger who appears on Charlie's doorstep, who appears to be the brother he never knew. A brother as different from Charlie as night is from day, a brother who's going to show Charlie how to lighten up and have a little fun ... just like Dear Old Dad. And all of a sudden, life starts getting very interesting for Fat Charlie.
Because, you see, Charlie's dad wasn't just any dad. He was Anansi, a trickster god, the spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of rebellion, able to overturn the social order, create wealth out of thin air, and baffle the devil. Some said he could cheat even Death himself.
Returning to the territory he so brilliantly explored in his masterful New York Times bestseller, American Gods, the incomparable Neil Gaiman offers up a work of dazzling ingenuity, a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth that is at once startling, terrifying, exhilarating, and fiercely funny -- a true wonder of a novel that confirms Stephen King's glowing assessment of the author as "a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him."
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristophanes: Clouds'
Text with facing translation, commentary and notes. (Aris and Phillips 1982) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristophanes' Clouds Translated With Notes and Introduction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Authoritative Calvin And Hobbes'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A large-format treasury of cartoons featuring the mischievous six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: Includes Cartoons from Yukon Ho and Weirdos from Another Planet'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A large-format treasury of cartoons featuring the mischievous six-year-old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Billy'
Billy Connolly is loud, hilarious and contradictory. His biography, written by his wife, former comedian and practising psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson, is pretty much the same. Over the years Connolly has grown from Glasgow shipyard welder to folk-singing beardy hard man (yes there is such a thing) to darling of the good and great (or at least famous) around the world. That he is so many things to so many people while in no way compromising his core self can only be good. It would be no mean feat for Stephenson, then, to pen a history to that would satisfy Connolly audiences of fans and contemporaries from all periods of his life's journey. In most places, but in truth, not all, the author manages to do this well.
The first half of the biography is somewhat anthropological in tone. Not surprisingly, a post-war Glasgow upbringing is somewhat alien to the antipodean author and Stephenson errs towards Angela's Ashes intonation as she describes her husband's tenement childhood (Scots readers may also find her regular translation of seemingly self-explanatory Scots phrases--which Connolly would use--obtuse). In contrast her examination of her experience of living with the comedian and his life from that point on is much better. Anecdotes which Connolly uses in his live shows pepper the text and laughs are raised as he tells of the time he was mistaken as a drug dealer on Speyside, of his cheeky friendships with cinema's elite and even through the more difficult times; the difficulty of balancing an almost manic humour with a troubled life. Pages turn quickly as we grow to understand more of what makes the man tick.
Certainly fans of Billy Connolly will enjoy this book. It is not perfect but it is certainly entertaining and should fill a gap in the market until Billy--with his half-remembered stories and off-centre view of the world--decides to let us into his head as well as his history. There's surely one ideal way to do this and that's by writing his story himself. --Helen Lamont [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Calvin and Hobbes'
gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/ [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Clouds'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Days Are Just Packed: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection'
Zounds! Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man, the ferocious tiger Hobbes, and the rest of Calvin's riotous imagination are all included in The Days Are Just Packed. Calvin, the irrepressible pint-sized tyrant, is always bursting with energy. And the volume's oversized 12-by-9 inch format provides Calvin's outrageous fantasies room to explode. Dozens of Sunday strips are lavishly reproduced in color for The Days Are Just Packed, along with Calvin's amusing weekday adventures. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood: A Novel'
Wells is a Louisiana-born Seattle actress and playwright; her loopy saga of a 40-year-old player in Seattle's hot theater scene who must come to terms with her mama's past in steamy Thornton City, Louisiana, reads like a lengthy episode of Designing Women written under the influence of mint juleps and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!. The Ya-Yas are the wild circle of girls who swirl around the narrator Siddalee's mama, Vivi, whose vivid voice is "part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah." The Ya-Yas broke the no-booze rule at the cotillion, skinny-dipped their way to jail in the town water tower, disrupted the Shirley Temple look-alike contest, and bonded for life because, as one says, "It's so much fun being a bad girl!"
Siddalee must repair her busted relationship with Vivi by reading a half-century's worth of letters and clippings contained in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood's packet of "Divine Secrets." It's a contrived premise, but the secrets are really fun to learn. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Far Side Gallery 5'
A collective wail was heard earlier this year when readers of 1,900 newspapers discovered that Gary Larson was bowing out of daily cartooning. But fear not! Politically correct swamp monsters, fortune-telling chickens, boxing crabs, cows relaxing in a hay bar, and other creatures wrought from the imagination of this notoriously warped and wonderful wit come into readers' lives once again in his latest collection of uniquely wacky cartoons. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Fruits Basket 13'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gun Seller'
British actor and comedian Hugh Laurie's first book is a spot-on spy spoof about hapless ex-soldier Thomas Lang, who is drawn unwittingly and unwillingly into the center of a dangerous James Bond-like plot of international terrorists, arms dealing, high-tech weapons, and CIA spooks. You may recall having seen Laurie in the English television series Jeeves and Wooster; Laurie played Bertie Wooster, the clutzy hero of the P.G. Wodehouse comic novels that originated those characters. The lineage from Wodehouse's Wooster to Laurie's Lang is clear, and, if you like Wodehouse, you'll probably love The Gun Seller. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Right You Are, Jeeves'
A Bertie and Jeeves classic, featuring a cow-creamer, the redheaded Miss Wickham, and the formidable schoolmaster Aubrey Upjohn.
Jeeves is infallible. Jeeves is indispensable. Unfortunately, in How Right You Are, Jeeves, he is also in absentia. In this wonderful slice of Woosterian mayhem, Bertie has sent that prince among gentlemen's gentlemen off on his annual vacation. Soon, drowning dachshunds, broken engagements, and inextricable complications lead to the only possible conclusion: "We must put our trust in a higher power. Go and fetch Jeeves!" [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Inimitable Jeeves'
The 11 stories prepared in this collection are the original stories which were all first published between 1918 and 1922 in the magazines Strand and Cosmopolitan, now in the public domain. They were then revised and re-published together as 18 stories in 1923 but these are the original magazine versions. The Inimitable Jeeves was the second collection of Jeeves stories, after My Man Jeeves (1919); the next collection would be Carry on, Jeeves in 1925. All of the stories in The Inimitable Jeeves are connected and most of them involve Bertie's friend Bingo Little, who is always falling in love. It's Wodehouse at his best. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'
With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex Laurence Sterne s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne the most liberated spirit of all time . [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mapp & Lucia Prion Humour Class'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mapp and Lucia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moab Is My Washpot: An Autobiography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer'
Book Description:
Bill Maher is on the forefront of the new wave of comedians who have begun to influence and shape political debate through their comedy. He is best known not just for being funny, but for advocating truth over sensitivity and taking on the political establishment. Maher first came to national attention as the host of the hit ABC-TV program Politically Incorrect, where he offered a combustible mixture of irreverence and acerbic humor that helped him to garner a loyal following, as well as a reputation for being a controversial bad boy.
Bill Maher's popular new HBO television show, Real Time, has put Maher more front and center than ever before. Particularly one regular segment on the show, entitled "New Rules," has been a hit with his ever-growing legion of fans. It is the part of the show during which Maher takes serious aim, bringing all of his intelligence, incisiveness, wit, and his signature exasperation to bear on topics ranging from cell phones ("I don't need my cell phone to take pictures or access the Internet. I just need it to make a phone call. From everywhere! Not just the places it likes!") to fast food ("No McDonald's in hospitals. I'm not kidding!) to the conservative agenda ("Stop claiming it's an agenda. It's not an agenda. It's a random collection of laws that your corporate donors paid you to pass.")
His new book, the first since his bestselling When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden, brings these brilliantly conceived riffs and rants to the written page. Appropriately titled New Rules, the book will collect some of the best of the rules derived from previously written material and will also contain substantial new material, including some longer form "editorials"--of course with a twist and bite that only Bill Maher can deliver.
In New Rules: Polite Musings of a Timid Observer, Bill Maher skewers celebrity, pop culture, and politics in his classic acerbic style. With a new season of Real Time with Bill Maher and an upcoming HBO Special (his sixth), Bill Maher: I'm Swiss, on deck, Maher also found the time to host Amazon.com's 10th Anniversary Concert at Seattle's Benaroya Hall. Amazon.com caught up with Maher upon his return to Los Angeles to talk about the book, the comic's night-table reading habits, the Internet, and what's wrong with the media.
Read our Amazon.com interview with Bill Maher
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'
Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.
Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'
Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.
Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God'
Fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicolson is back in British author Louise Rennison's irreverent, laugh-out-loud sequel to the Michael L. Printz Honor Book Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. Written in diary form, these truly hilarious books chronicle the often minute-by-minute, very dramatic, and significant flip-flops of a teenager's psyche.
7:18 p.m.
My eyes are all swollen up like mice eyes from crying. Even my nose is swollen. It's not small at the best of times, but now it looks like I've got three cheeks. Marvelous. Thank you, God.9:00 p.m.
I'll never get over this.9:10 p.m.
Time goes very slowly when you're suicidal.
What tragedy has her so distraught? Her parents have told her she's moving to New Zealand just when she's managed to snog (kiss--look it up in the glossary) the SG (Sex God, a.k.a Robbie). This is of course not the only source of drama in Georgia's eventful life. Her half Scottish wildcat, Angus, who is the size of a small Labrador, herds the poodles next door and terrorizes the neighborhood. Her little sister, Libby, who is slightly mad, stores her "pooey knickers" and her scuba-diving Barbie doll in Georgia's bed. Her mother (from whom she inherited her orangutan eyebrow gene and possibly her "gigantic basoomas") is clearly inhabiting Earth solely to make her life miserable, and even her best friend Jas is "half girl, half turnip."
Despite the fact that she's spared from going to "Kiwi-a-gogo land," things don't get much better for Georgia. She's suspended for a childish prank right before her dad returns from New Zealand, she falls in love with the SG who dumps her for being too young, and Dave, the "red-herring" boyfriend she's using to make the SG jealous calls her a "heartless whatsit." And, she continues, "the spot on my bum is probably a boil. I wonder what Buddha would do now?" Rennison's comedic timing is brilliant. Adolescent angst ("I hope I am not driven to the brink of madness by grief") vanishes less than an hour later ("Angus can fetch sticks!!!") and sometimes even sooner. (Warning: Do not read this book while riding a train or bus unless you don't care what people think of intermittent explosive laughter. Seriously.) (Ages 12 and older) --Karin Snelson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God: Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolson'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Once upon a More Enlightened Time'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Politically Correct Bedtime Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prehistory of the Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit'
Was there life before "The Far Side?" This fabulous narrative by Gary Larson, including hundreds of cartoons, explores the most fundamental question of our day, providing a telescopic view of both the dark and the light sides of the mysterious universe of Gary Larson. Andrews, McMeel & Parker. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pygmalion'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Rebuilding Coventry'
From its title on, Sue Townsend's short, utterly entertaining novel is full of jokes both sly and slapstick. The Coventry of the title is one Coventry Dakin, the novel's narrator, and a devoted, intelligent, but intensely bored wife and mother maintaining her dull husband and two nearly-grown children in suburban Midlands. Coventry also just killed her neighbor, a jerk named Gerald Fox who's been spreading nasty (and false) rumors about her. Now she's on the lam, and Townsend, author of the well-loved Adrian Mole series of books, takes us down and out on a comic excursion into London, where Coventry, now a penniless fugitive, seeks protection with both the lowest and highest levels of British society. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'
Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'
Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Slaughter House Five'
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves'
P. G. Wodehouse's complete Jeeves and Wooster novel read by Jonathan Cecil. Bertie Wooster looks pretty stylish in his new Tyrolean hat - or so he thinks. Others, notably Jeeves, disagree. But when Bertie embarks on an errand of mercy to Totleigh Towers, things get quickly out of control and he's going to need all the help Jeeves can provide. There are good eggs present, such as Gussie Fink-Nottle and the Rev. 'Stinker' Pinker. But there also is Sir Watkyn Bassett JP, enemy of all the Woosters hold dear, to say nothing of his daughter Madeline and Roderick Spode, now raised to the peerage. And Major Brabazon Plank, the peppery explorer, who wants to lay Bertie out cold. Thank goodness for the intervention of Chief Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard. But is this gentleman all he seems...? Jonathan Cecil (picture above) has toured in "The Incomparable Max", "Twelfth Night" and "An Ideal Husband", while among his considerable TV and film appearances are "The Rector's Wife", "The Worst Week of My Life", "Midsomer Murders" and "Victoria & Albert". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!'
Stupid White Men, Michael Moore's screed against "Thief-in-Chief" George Bush's power elite, hit No. 1 at Amazon.com within days of publication. Why? It's as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any right-wing bestseller, as irreverent as The Onion, and as noisily entertaining as a wrestling smackdown. Moore offers a more interesting critique of the 2000 election than Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party (he argued with Nader, his old boss, who sacked him), and he's serious when he advocates ousting Bush. But Moore's rage is outrageous, couched in shameless gags and madcap comedy: "Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.... Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!... We are no longer [able] to hold free and fair elections. We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops". Moore's ideas range from on-the-money (Arafat should beat Sharon with Gandhi's non-violent shame tactics) to over-the-top: blacks should put inflatable white dolls in their cars so racist cops will think they're chauffeurs; the ever-more-Republicanesque Democratic Party should be sued for fraud; "no contributions toward advancing our civilization ever came out of the South [except Faulkner, Hellman, and R.J. Reynolds]," because it's too hot to think straight there; Korean dictator Kim Jong-il "has got to broaden himself beyond porn and John Wayne" by watching better movies, like Dude, Where's My Car? (which contains "all you need to know about America"). Whatever your politics, Stupid White Men should make you blow your stack.--Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Truth with Jokes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook'
How to Wrestle Free from an Alligator: 4. If its jaws are closed on something you want to remove (for example, a limb), tap or punch it on the snout.
Though it's being marketed as a humorous title--after all, it's unlikely you'll be called upon to land a plane, jump from a motorcycle to a moving car, or win a swordfight--the information contained in The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook is all quite sound. Authors Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht consulted numerous experts in their fields (they're cited at the end of the book) to discover how to survive various and sundry awful events. Parachute doesn't open? Your best bet for survival is to hook your arms through the straps of a fellow jumper's chute--and even then you're likely to dislocate both shoulders and break both legs. Car sinking in water? Open the window immediately to equalize pressure, then open the car door and swim to the surface. Buried in an avalanche? Spit on the snow--it will tell you which direction is really up. Then dig as fast as you can.
Each survival skill is explained in simple steps with helpful illustrations. Most stress the need to be prepared--both mentally and physically. For example, to escape from quicksand, you will need to lay a pole on the surface of the quicksand, flop on your back atop the pole, and pull your legs out one by one. No pole? No luck. "When walking in quicksand country, carry a stout pole--it will help you get out should you need to."
Hopefully you'll never need to know how to build a fire without matches, perform a tracheotomy, or treat a bullet wound. But in the words of survival evasion resistance escape instructor "Mountain" Mel Deweese, "You never know." --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook'
Forget quicksand and shark attacks, child-rearing is the truly terrifying activity. A screaming baby on an airplane, no diapers (!), monsters hiding in the closet, a long family car trip, the first datethese are the high-risk adventures you need to survive. Fortunately, the authors of the phenomenally best-selling Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series now keep parents safe, from cradle to teens. Hands-on, step-by-step instructions show you how to remove objects stuck in a child's nose or gum stuck in hair, and how to survive endless soccer games, slumber parties, and sleep deprivation. From baby-proofing the house to dealing with a dead pet, from the perils of the play-date to explaining about the birds and the bees, this essential guide tells parents what to really expect when your worst-case scenario is all in the family. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook : Holidays'
Turkey on fire? No plans for New Year's Eve? Obnoxious relatives headed your way? The authors of the best-selling The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook are here to help you survive the dangers of the holiday season, from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Learn how to rescue someone stuck in a chimney, survive the office holiday party, and escape a runaway parade balloon. Expertly deal with a meddling parent, silence a group of carolers, and treat a tongue stuck to a frozen pole. Illustrated, step-by-step instructions guide you through these and dozens of other festive scenarios. With a helpful appendix of holiday excuses, last-minute gift ideas, and creative drink recipes for when the liquor runs out, this is truly the perfect gift. Gleaming silver cover. Fits all sized stockings. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel'
Piven and Borgenicht's Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel is, like their previous bestseller The Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook, a pithy, witty and surprisingly useful guide to getting through life's stickier patches with body, soul and even dignity intact.
The difference here is that the authors have addressed the kind of glitches, pitfalls, disasters and conundra one might encounter when sojourning in distant or hostile lands. Hence there are sections offering advice on: How to Control a Runaway Camel; How to Survive in Frigid Water; How to Pass a Bribe; How to Deal with a Tarantula; and so on. Some of the problems and chapters might seem a little far-fetched and remote (How to Cross a Piranha-infested River); others all-too local and everyday to be confined to a travel book (How to Survive a Mugging). Each and every chapter is clearly written, accompanied by simple but effective illustrations, and derived from the accumulated wisdom of top survival experts in various armies, navies, academies and universities. There's also a very handy appendix dealing with general travel tips, such as which thumb-gestures to avoid when you don't want to insult the natives, and how to say, "Hello, I have been seriously wounded" in Japanese. This is a must-pack for all modern adventurers. --Sean Thomas [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Yukon Ho!: A Calvin And Hobbes Collection'
The spirit of childhood leaps to life again with boundless energy and magic in Yukon Ho!, the newest collection of adventures featuring rambunctious six-year-old Calvin and his co-conspirator tiger-chum, Hobbes. Picking up where The Essential Calvin and Hobbes left off, Yukon Ho! is sure to begin an immediate reign at the top of bestseller lists everywhere! [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Estupidos Hombres Blancos / Stupid White Men'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Loca Por Las Compras / Shopaholic'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sentido y Sensibilidad'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vida Y Opiniones Del Caballero Tristram Shandy / The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy Gentleman'
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Sublimi Segreti Delle Ya-Ya'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Les Divins Secrets Des Petits Ya-Ya'
"Une danseuse de claquettes maltraite ses enfants". Lorsque Vivi Walker, la soixantaine, découvre dans le prestigieux New York Times le portrait que dresse d'elle sa fille Siddy, metteur en scène de renom, elle la répudie sur le champ. Pour renouer le dialogue et assurer une meilleure compréhension réciproque, ses trois meilleures amies parviennent à la convaincre de confier à sa fille ses carnets secrets sur les Ya-Ya, du nom que les quatre femmes ont attribué dès leur enfance à leur petite tribu. A travers ces fragments du passé, tantôt légers, tantôt tragiques, Siddy est alors amenée à découvrir des aspects méconnus de la personnalité de sa mère, femme pétillante, énergique et exubérante, mais aussi femme blessée par la vie, et que seule l'attention indéfectible de ses amies a réussi à maintenir debout.
Ce livre a séduit des millions de lectrices. L'amitié féminine et les relations aigres-douces entre mères et filles en constituent les principaux thèmes, traités sur un mode jovial et divertissant. --Nathalie Gouiffès [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya-Schwestern'
Die vier Mädchen hatten noch Bänder im Haar und Söckchen an, als sie miteinander in Louisiana davon träumten die letzten Überlebenden eines aussterbenden Stammes zu sein -- die Ya-Yas.
Zusammen nahmen sie am Shirley-Temple-Nachwuchs-Wettbewerb teil und brachten nicht nur die Jury mit ihrem ungewöhnlichen Benehmen in Verlegenheit, sie waren auch bei der Welturaufführung ihres späteren Lieblingsfilms Vom Winde verweht anwesend. Mitunter wurde ihr Club zu einem Quartett der Peinlichkeiten, doch die vier standen, was auch kommen mochte, felsenfest zusammen.
Gesammelt hat Vivi ihre Erlebnisse in einem Album, das sie Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya-Schwestern nannte. Und als sie es, viele Jahre später, ihrer Tochter Sidda zum Lesen gibt, ist ihr Mutter-Tochter-Verhältnis gerade zum Bersten gespannt, denn immerhin hat Sidda in der New York Times bei einem Interview zu ihrem neuen Theaterstück ihre Mutter als "eine Step tanzende, prügelnde Rabenmutter" bezeichnet. Sidda begibt sich auf die schmerzliche Suche nach der Wahrheit, und oft erzählen ihr die fehlenden Personen auf den Fotos mehr als die Bilder selbst.
Rebecca Wells, die selbst auf einer Plantage in Louisiana aufwuchs, schuf mit den Ya-Yas und ihren Kindern ungeheuer quirlige und phantasievolle Frauen, die die größten Sorgen mit einem lauten Lachen und einem Glas Whiskey in der Hand aus der Welt wischen. Und wenn sie sich dann doch nicht ganz beseitigen lassen, sind immer noch drei Ya-Yas da, die sofort als Feuerwehr zur Stelle sind. --Manuela Haselberger [via]
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