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books tagged “english literature” (ENGLISH LITERATURE / English literature)
books tagged “english literature”
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Absolute Friendsby John Le CarreISBN 0316058777 (0-316-05877-7)
Softcover, Grand Central Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Absolute Friends'Book summary:An absolutely triumphant bestseller-everywhere hailed as the masterpiece toward which John le Carre has been building since the fall of communism. This thrilling tale of Joyaity, betrayal and international espionage spans the lives of two friends from the not-torn West Berlin of the 1960s to the grimy looking-glass of Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism and uncertain new alliances-alliances that aren't always what they seem to be. [via]
More editions of Absolute Friends:
- Absolute Friends: ISBN 0316159395 (0-316-15939-5)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co - Absolute Friends: ISBN 0340832886 (0-340-83288-6)
Softcover, Hodder & Stoughton - Absolute Friends: ISBN 0316000698 (0-316-00069-8)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - Absolute Friends: ISBN 0340832878 (0-340-83287-8)
Hardcover, Hodder & Stoughton - Absolute Friends: ISBN 0316000647 (0-316-00064-7)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - Absolute Friends: ISBN 0316058777 (0-316-05877-7)
Softcover, Grand Central Pub
- Absolute Friends: ISBN 0316159395 (0-316-15939-5)
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Around the World in 80 Daysby Jules VerneISBN 0304317691 (0-304-31769-1)
Hardcover, Cassell
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Around the World in 80 Days'Book summary:An adaption of the classic tale, designed for young readers, and illustrated in colour. [via]
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Beowulf: An Illustrated Editionby Seamus HeaneyISBN 0374111197 (0-374-11119-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition'Book summary:In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts with instant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death. The Anglo-Saxon epic, composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, has long been accorded its place in literature, though its hold on our imagination has been less secure. In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, thanks to the Irish poet's marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun.
There are endless pleasures in Heaney's analysis, but readers should head straight for the poem and then to the prose. (Some will also take advantage of the dual-language edition and do some linguistic teasing out of their own.) The epic's outlines seem simple, depicting Beowulf's three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art: Grendel, Grendel's mother (who's in a suitably monstrous snit after her son's dismemberment and death), and then, 50 years later, a gold-hoarding dragon "threatening the night sky / with streamers of fire." Along the way, however, we are treated to flashes back and forward and to a world view in which a thane's allegiance to his lord and to God is absolute. In the first fight, the man from Geatland must travel to Denmark to take on the "shadow-stalker" terrorizing Heorot Hall. Here Beowulf and company set sail:
Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
After a fearsome night victory over march-haunting and heath-marauding Grendel, our high-born hero is suitably strewn with gold and praise, the queen declaring: "Your sway is wide as the wind's home, / as the sea around cliffs." Few will disagree. And remember, Beowulf has two more trials to undergo.
sand churned in the surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird...Heaney claims that when he began his translation it all too often seemed "like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer." The poem's challenges are many: its strong four-stress line, heavy alliteration, and profusion of kennings could have been daunting. (The sea is, among other things, "the whale-road," the sun is "the world's candle," and Beowulf's third opponent is a "vile sky-winger." When it came to over-the-top compound phrases, the temptations must have been endless, but for the most part, Heaney smiles, he "called a sword a sword.") Yet there are few signs of effort in the poet's Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epic's mix of fate and fear. After Grendel's misbegotten mother comes to call, the king's evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but it's a gift to the reader:
A few miles from here
In Heaney's hands, the poem's apparent archaisms and Anglo-Saxon attitudes--its formality, blood-feuds, and insane courage--turn the art of an ancient island nation into world literature. --Kerry Fried [via]
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.More editions of Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition:
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The Biographer's Taleby A. S. ByattISBN 0375725083 (0-375-72508-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Biographer's Tale'Book summary:A.S. Byatt chronicles the life of the mind with the immediacy other novelists bring to the physical world. So when the graduate-student hero of The Biographer's Tale announces that he needs "a life full of things," we take his words with a grain of salt. Yes, Phineas G. Nanson has renounced the "cross-referenced abstractions" of life as a postmodern literary theorist, and vows to ground himself in what he warily calls the "facts" (the quotation marks are definitely in order). Yet he first forays into empiricism by reading a three-volume life of the Victorian traveler, writer, and diplomat Elmer Bole--then immediately undertakes a biography of Bole's biographer, Scholes Destry-Scholes.
Things, as Nanson discovers, can prove just as slippery as ideas. His research quickly leapfrogs beyond the biographer to his other subjects: scientist Carl Linnaeus, playwright Henrik Ibsen, and eugenicist Francis Galton, all of whom Destry-Scholes chronicled in three unpublished, unfinished, and, as it turns out, well-embroidered accounts. Meanwhile, our hero continues his forays into the real world. He takes a part-time job with a pair of gay travel agents, who arrange some very specialized vacations, and meets up with a Swedish bee taxonomist named Fulla, who wants to save the world. He also unearths a perplexing series of Destry-Scholes's index cards, full of sketches, facts, quotations, and unattributed lines of verse. These he attempts to shuffle into some kind of order, even as the enigmatic figure of the biographer himself seems to appear and disappear from view.
There are echoes here of Byatt's Booker Prize-winning Possession, another detective story for the MLA set. Yet The Biographer's Tale is an altogether odder--and chillier--sort of book. It is, in fact, almost terrifyingly learned, and wears its research about as lightly as a pair of Fulla's Ecco sandals. The mystery here is nothing less than the nature of mind, so it's no criticism to say that her characters have little life outside the ideas they represent. What's surprising is that the result is so readable, even beautiful at times. Here, for instance, is Nanson on truth and beauty:
There are a very few human truths and infinite variations on them. I was about to write that there are very few truths about the world, but the truth about that is that we don't know what we are not biologically fitted to know, it may be full of all sorts of shining and tearing things, geometries, chemistries, physics we have no access to and never can have. Reading and writing extend--not infinitely, but violently, but giddily--the variations we can perceive on the truths we thus discover.
The index cards themselves can be painful to read (remember the ersatz Victorian poetry in Possession?). But persevere, dear reader--meaning emerges through the play of one esoteric piece of information against another, just as it does in real life. Byatt extends her philosophical variations as far as she giddily can, and in The Biographer's Tale, she has constructed an elaborate, glittering labyrinth at the center of which lie surprisingly simple truths. --Mary Park [via] -
Black Mischiefby Evelyn WaughISBN 0316917338 (0-316-91733-8)
Softcover, Back Bay Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Mischief'Book summary:Treachery, cannibalism and civil war are among the evils at work in Azania. Against them are the forces of progress and the New Age, represented by the emperor Seth and his Minister of Modernization, Basil Seal. But it is a losing battle, and things are not much better back in Mayfair. [via]
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Bridget Jones's Diaryby Helen FieldingISBN 0330332767 (0-330-33276-7)
Hardcover, Picador
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bridget Jones's Diary'Book summary:In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.
At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"
This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried [via]
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Brontesby Juliet BarkerISBN 0312145551 (0-312-14555-1)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brontes'Book summary:The story of the tragic Bronte family is familiar to everyone: we all know about the half-mad, repressive father, the drunken, drug-addicted wastrel of a brother, wild romantic Emily, unrequited Anne and "poor Charlotte". Or do we? These stereotypes of the popular imagination are precisely that - imaginary - created by amateur biographers from Mrs Gaskell onwards who were primarily novelists, and were attracted by the tale of an apparently doomed family of genius. Later biographers still repeat her mistakes, and have, without exception, relied on the bowdlerised texts published by T.J. Wise, a forger. Juliet Barker's landmark book is the first definitive history of the Brontes. It demolishes the myths, yet provides startling new information that is just as compelling - but true. Based on firsthand research among all the Bronte manuscripts, many so tiny they can only be read by magnifying glass, and among contemporary historical documents never before used by Bronte biographers, this book is both scholarly and compulsively readable. [via]
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The Cloud Atlasby David MitchellISBN 0375507256 (0-375-50725-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cloud Atlas'Book summary:It's hard not to become ensnared by words beginning with the letter B, when attempting to describe Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's third novel. It's a big book, for start, bold in scope and execution--a bravura literary performance, possibly. (Let's steer clear of breathtaking for now.) Then, of course, Mitchell was among Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and his second novel number9dreamwas shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Characters with birthmarks in the shape of comets are a motif; as are boats. Oh and one of the six narratives strands of the book--where coincidentally Robert Frobisher, a young composer, dreams up "a sextet for overlapping soloists" entitled Cloud Atlas--is set in Belgium, not far from Bruges. (See what I mean?)
Structured rather akin to a Chinese puzzle or a set of Matrioshka dolls, there are dazzling shifts in genre and voice and the stories leak into each other with incidents and people being passed on like batons in a relay race. The 19th-century journals of an American notary in the Pacific that open the novel are subsequently unearthed 80 years later on by Frobisher in the library of the ageing, syphilitic maestro he's trying to fleece. Frobisher's waspish letters to his old Cambridge crony, Rufus Sexsmith, in turn surface when Rufus, (by the 1970s a leading nuclear scientist) is murdered. A novelistic account of the journalist Luisa Rey's investigation into Rufus' death finds its way to Timothy Cavendish, a London vanity publisher with an author who has an ingenious method of silencing a snide reviewer. And in a near-dystopian Blade Runner-esque future, a genetically engineered fast food waitress sees a movie based on Cavendish's unfortunate internment in a Hull retirement home. (Cavendish himself wonders how a director called Lars might wish to tackle his plight). All this is less tricky than it sounds, only the lone "Zachary" chapter, told in Pacific Islander dialect (all "dingos'n'ravens", "brekker" and "f'llowin'"s) is an exercise in style too far. Not all the threads quite connect but nonetheless Mitchell binds them into a quite spellbinding rumination on human nature, power, oppression, race, colonialism and consumerism. --Travis Elborough [via]
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The Collectorby John FowlesISBN 0316290238 (0-316-29023-8)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collector'Book summary:Hailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that catapulted John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelists. This tale of obsessive love--the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the beautiful young art student who is his ultimate quarry--remains unparalleled in its power to startle and mesmerize.[via]More editions of The Collector:
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The Colour of Magicby Terry PratchettISBN 0312150849 (0-312-15084-9)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Colour of Magic'Book summary:The Colour of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the bizarre land of Discworld. His entertaining and witty series has grown to more than 20 books, and this is where it all starts--with the tourist Twoflower and his hapless wizard guide, Rincewind ("All wizards get like that ... it's the quicksilver fumes. Rots their brains. Mushrooms, too."). Pratchett spoofs fantasy clichés--and everything else he can think of--while marshalling a profusion of characters through a madcap adventure. The Colour of Magic is followed by The Light Fantastic. --Blaise Selby [via]
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The Complete Short Storiesby Evelyn Waugh, Ann Pasternak SlaterISBN 0375404309 (0-375-40430-9)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Short Stories'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Evelyn Waugh's short stories are the marvelous, concentrated riffs of his comic genius, revealing in miniaturized perfection all the elements that made him the greatest comic writer of our century. We find in them Waugh's almost superhuman technical skill as a writer and his quicksilver attentiveness to the minutiae of human absurdity, as well as his worldly knowledge, his tenderness, his perceptive compassion, and his sophisticated, disabused, but nevertheless forceful idealism.
The thirty-nine stories collected here include such small masterpieces as "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" and "Scott-King's Modern Europe"; an alternative ending to Waugh's novel A Handful of Dust; a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, the hero of Brideshead Revisited; and two linked stories, remnants of an abandoned novel that Waugh considered his best writing.
This edition contains the original illustrations to "Love Among the Ruins," as well as more than thirty graphics produced by the author as an Oxford undergraduate in the 1920s. [via]More editions of The Complete Short Stories:
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The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waughby Evelyn WaughISBN 0316926604 (0-316-92660-4)
Softcover, Back Bay Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh'Book summary:Mordant, mirthful, and unrelenting in their lampoon of aristocratic mischief, Evelyn Waugh's novels have earned him a permanent place in the literary pantheon. But this cantankerous master--the scion, by the way, of a decidedly middle-class family of publishers and writers--was no less adept when it came to the short form. Indeed, Waugh first broke into print in 1926 with "The Balance: A Yarn of the Good Old Days of Broad Trousers and High Necked Jumpers," an early story that suggests a modernized and misanthropic P.G. Wodehouse. And he continued to write short fiction throughout the rest of his career, all of which has now been collected in the delectable Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh.
The first few entries in the collection capture a kinder, gentler author, not yet red at the verbal tooth and claw. But by 1932, when he wrote "Love in the Slump," Waugh's eye for the black-comic detail was firmly in place:
It rained heavily on the day of the wedding, and only the last-ditchers among the St. Margaret's crowd turned out to watch the melancholy succession of guests popping out of their dripping cars and plunging up the covered way into the church.... A doctor was summoned to attend the bridegroom's small nephew, who, after attracting considerable attention as a page at the ceremony by his outspoken comments, developed a high temperature and numerous disquieting symptoms of food poisoning.
Waugh's wit only sharpened throughout the succeeding decades, and the very texture of his prose thickened (although it never took on much in the way of modernist adipose tissue). In "Compassion," a 1949 tale that belies the author's vaunted anti-Semitism, a mere glimpse of some Yugoslavian partisans leads to this superabundant sentence: "He passed ragged, swaggering partisans, all young, some scarcely more than children; girls in battle dress, bandaged, bemedalled, girdled with grenades, squat, chaste, cheerful, sexless, barely human, who had grown up in mountain bivouacs, singing patriotic songs, arm-in-arm along the pavements where a few years earlier rheumatics had crept with parasols and light, romantic novels." Nobody can accuse Waugh of squishy sentimentality--remember, romantic prose is strictly for convalescents. Still, The Complete Stories offers an accurate and stupendously entertaining vision of human folly, no less effective for being administered in smaller doses. [via]More editions of The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh:
The Complete Works of Sakiby Hector Hugh MunroISBN 0370303601 (0-370-30360-1)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Works of Saki'More editions of The Complete Works of Saki:
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Daniel Martinby John FowlesISBN 0316290394 (0-316-29039-4)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Daniel Martin'Book summary:A new trade paperback edition of "a masterpiece of symbolically charged realism....Fowles is the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James" (John Gardner, Saturday Review).[via]
The eponymous hero of John Fowles's largest and richest novel is an English playwright turned Hollywood screenwriter who has begun to question his own values. Summoned home to England to visit an ailing friend, Daniel Martin finds himself back in the company of people who once knew him well, forced to confront his buried past, and propelled toward a journey of self-discovery through which he ultimately creates for himself a more satisfying existence. A brilliantly imagined novel infused with a profound understanding of human nature, Daniel Martin is John Fowles at the height of his literary powers. -
The Debt to Pleasureby John LanchesterISBN 0312420366 (0-312-42036-6)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Debt to Pleasure'Book summary:A gorgeous, dark, and sensuous book that is part cookbook, part novel, part eccentric philosophical treatise, reminiscent of perhaps the greatest of all books on food, Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin's The Physiology of Taste. Join Tarquin Winot as he embarks on a journey of the senses, regaling us with his wickedly funny, poisonously opinionated meditations on everything from the erotics of dislike to the psychology of a menu, from the perverse history of the peach to the brutalization of the palate, from cheese as "the corpse of milk" to the binding action of blood. [via]
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The Desire & Pursuit of the Wholeby Frederick RolfeISBN 0306802589 (0-306-80258-9)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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Echoes from the Macabreby Daphne Du MaurierISBN 0380019531 (0-380-01953-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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England, Englandby Julian BarnesISBN 0375705503 (0-375-70550-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'England, England'Book summary:Imagine being able to visit England--all of England--in a single weekend. Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall, Harrods, Manchester United Football Club, the Tower of London, and even the Royal Family all within easy distance of the each other, accessible, and, best of all, each one living up to an idealized version of itself. This fantasy Britain is the very real (and some would say very cynical) vision of Sir Jack Pitman, a monumentally egomaniacal mogul with a more than passing resemblance to modern-day buccaneers Sir Rupert Murdoch or Robert Maxwell: "'We are not talking theme park,' he began. 'We are not talking heritage centre. We are not talking Disneyland, World's Fair, Festival of Britain, Legoland or Parc Asterix.'" No indeed; Sir Jack proposes nothing less than to offer "the thing itself," a re-creation of everything that adds up to England in the hearts and minds of tourists looking for an "authentic" experience. But where to locate such an enterprise? As Sir Jack points out,
England, as the mighty William and many others have observed, is an island. Therefore, if we are serious, if we are seeking to offer the thing itself, we in turn must go in search of a precious whatsit set in a silver doodah.
Soon the perfect whatsit is found: the Isle of Wight; and a small army of Sir Jack's forces are sent to lay siege to it. Swept up in the mayhem are Martha Cochrane, a thirtysomething consultant teetering on the verge of embittered middle age, and Paul Harrison, a younger man looking for an anchor in the world. The two first find each other, then trip over a skeleton in Sir Jack's closet that might prove useful to their careers but disastrous to their relationship. In the course of constructing this mad package-tour dystopia, Julian Barnes has a terrific time skewering postmodernism, the British, the press, the government, celebrity, and big business. At the same time his very funny novel offers a provocative meditation on the nature of identity, both individual and national, as the lines between the replica and the thing itself begin to blur. Readers of Barnes have learned to expect the unexpected, and once again he more than lives up to the promise in England, England. But then, that was only to be expected. --Alix Wilber [via] 
English Musicby Peter AckroydISBN 0345376137 (0-345-37613-7)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Fifth Childby Doris May LessingISBN 0224025538 (0-224-02553-8)
Hardcover, Cape
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fifth Child'Book summary:The married couple in this novel pull off a remarkable achievement: They purchase a three-story house with oodles of bedrooms, and, on a middle-class income, in the '70s, fill it to the brim with happy children and visiting relatives. Their holiday gatherings are sumptuous celebrations of life and togetherness. And then the fifth child arrives. He's just a child--he's not supernatural. But is he really human? This is an elegantly written tale that the New York Times called "a horror story of maternity and the nightmare of social collapse . . . a moral fable of the genre that includes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and George Orwell's 1984." [via]
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Gaudy Nightby Dorothy Leigh SayersISBN 0380012073 (0-380-01207-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Grendelby John Champlin GardnerISBN 0345288653 (0-345-28865-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Grendel'Book summary:Grendel is a beautiful and heartbreaking modern retelling of the Beowulf epic from the point of view of the monster, Grendel, the villain of the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon epic. This book benefits from both of Gardner's careers: in addition to his work as a novelist, Gardner was a noted professor of medieval literature and a scholar of ancient languages. [via]
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Headlongby Michael FraynISBN 0312267460 (0-312-26746-0)
Softcover, Picador USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Headlong'Book summary:An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less-Martin believes-than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and concealments, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner. In Headlong, Michael Frayn, "the master of what is seriously funny" Anthony Burgess , offers a procession of superbly realized characters, from the country squire gone to seed to his giddy, oversexed young wife. All are burdened by human muddle and human cravings; all are searching for a moral compass as they grapple with greed, folly, and desire. And at the heart of the clamor is Breugel's vision, its dark tones warning of the real risks of temptation and obsession.With this new novel, Michael Frayn has given us entertainment of the highest order. Supremely wise and wickedly funny, Headlong elevates Frayn into the front rank of contemporary novelists. [via]
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The Heat of the Dayby Elizabeth BowenISBN 038042309X (0-380-42309-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heat of the Day'Book summary:A novel which draws on a recollection of wartime London to depict the effect of war on the manners, morals and emotions of those not directly engaged in the fighting. By the author of TO THE NORTH, THE HOTEL and A WORLD OF LOVE. [via]
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History of English Literatureby Edward AlbertISBN 0245504702 (0-245-50470-2)
Hardcover, T. Y. Crowell Company
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0345391802 (0-345-39180-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'Book summary:Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
Together, this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed, ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphods girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens hes bought over the years.
Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars! [via]More editions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
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The Hound of the Baskervillesby Arthur Conan DoyleISBN 0345350529 (0-345-35052-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'Book summary:We owe 1902's The Hound of the Baskervilles to Arthur Conan Doyle's good friend Fletcher "Bobbles" Robinson, who took him to visit some scary English moors and prehistoric ruins, and told him marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed Baskerville Hall now has another mysterious death: that of Sir Charles Baskerville. Could the culprit somehow be mixed up with secretive servant Barrymore, history-obsessed Dr. Frankland, butterfly-chasing Stapleton, or Selden, the Notting Hill murderer at large? Someone's been signaling with candles from the mansion's windows. Nor can supernatural forces be ruled out. Can Dr. Watson--left alone by Sherlock Holmes to sleuth in fear for much of the novel--save the next Baskerville, Sir Henry, from the hound's fangs?
Many Holmes fans prefer Doyle's complete short stories, but their clockwork logic doesn't match the author's boast about this novel: it's "a real Creeper!" What distinguishes this particular Hound is its fulfillment of Doyle's great debt to Edgar Allan Poe--it's full of ancient woe, low moans, a Grimpen Mire that sucks ponies to Dostoyevskian deaths, and locals digging up Neolithic skulls without next-of-kins' consent. "The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul," Watson realizes. "Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay ... while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet ... it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths." Read on--but, reader, watch your step! --Tim Appelo [via]
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A House for Mr. Biswasby V.S. NaipaulISBN 0375707166 (0-375-70716-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A House for Mr. Biswas'Book summary:The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipauls brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels.
In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduousand endlessstruggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a mans quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas. [via]More editions of A House for Mr. Biswas:
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J.R.R. Tolkienby J. R. R. TolkienISBN 0345340426 (0-345-34042-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'J.R.R. Tolkien'Book summary:Four book set includes the Hobbit and Complete Lord of the Rings; the Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; The Return of The King. [via]
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Jamaica Innby Daphne Du MaurierISBN 0380725398 (0-380-72539-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jamaica Inn'Book summary:Jamaica Inn is a true classic. After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on the wild British moors to live with her Aunt Patience. The coachman warns her of the strange happenings there, but Mary is committed to remain at Jamaica Inn. Suddenly, her life is in the hands of strangers: her uncle, Joss Merlyn, whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable and perpetually frightened; and the enigmatic Francis Davey. But most importantly, Mary meets Jem Merlyn, Joss's younger brother, whose kisses make her heart race. Caught up in the danger at this inn of evil repute, Mary must survive murder, mystery, storms, and smugglers before she can build a life with Jem. [via]
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Life, the Universe and Everythingby Douglas AdamsISBN 0345391829 (0-345-39182-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life, the Universe and Everything'Book summary:The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their headsso they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galazy; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert universal Armageddon and save life as we know itand dont know it! [via]More editions of Life, the Universe and Everything:
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The Line Of Beautyby Alan HollinghurstISBN 0330427377 (0-330-42737-7)
Softcover, Picador
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Line Of Beauty'Book summary:Interview with Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst's extraordinarily rich novel The Line of Beauty. has garnered a new level of acclaim for the author after winning the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Hollinghurst speaks about his work in our interview.More editions of The Line Of Beauty:
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London Fieldsby Martin AmisISBN 0224026097 (0-224-02609-7)
Hardcover, J. Cape
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› Find signed collectible books: 'London Fields'Book summary:Set in the pubs and streets of West London, this is a murder story for the end of the millennium. The author has written six novels including "The Rachel Papers", for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award, "Money" and "Success". [via]
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Mantissaby John FowlesISBN 0316290270 (0-316-29027-0)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mantissa'Book summary:In Mantissa (1982), a novelist awakes in the hospital with amnesia -- and comes to believe that a beautiful female doctor is, in fact, his muse. [via]
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Measure for Measure: Texts and Contextsby William Shakespeare, Ivo Kamps, Karen RaberISBN 031239506X (0-312-39506-X)
Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts'Book summary:This edition of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure reprints the Bevington edition of the play accompanied by four sets of thematically arranged primary documents and illustrations designed to facilitate many different approaches to Shakespeare's play and the early modern culture out of which the play emerges. The texts include royal proclamations, speeches, court records, sermons, biographical writings, prayers, ballads, poetry, excerpts from plays and the Bible, and drawings, woodcuts, and engravings. These documents contextualize the role of rulers and government in Jacobean society, crime and punishment in London's underworld, the religious and secular laws that regulated marriage and sexuality, Catholic and Puritan morality, and the religious and cultural significance of chastity and virginity in Shakespeare's time. Editorial features designed to help students read the play in light of the historical documents include an intelligent and engaging general introduction, introductions to each thematic group of documents, thorough headnotes and glosses for the primary documents (presented in modern spelling), and an extensive bibliography. [via]
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Monsignor Quixoteby Graham GreeneISBN 0370309235 (0-370-30923-5)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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Night Trainby Martin AmisISBN 0375701141 (0-375-70114-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agencyby Alexander McCall SmithISBN 0307261581 (0-307-26158-1)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'Book summary:5 Books in Very Good Condition. All Paperbacks. [via]
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agencyby R. A. McCall SmithISBN 0375423877 (0-375-42387-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'Book summary:Penzler Pick, July 2001: Working in a mystery tradition that will cause genre aficionados to think of such classic sleuths as Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner or Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee, Alexander McCall Smith creates an African detective, Precious Ramotswe, who's their full-fledged heir.
It's the detective as folk hero, solving crimes through an innate, self-possessed wisdom that, combined with an understanding of human nature, invariably penetrates into the heart of a puzzle. If Miss Marple were fat and jolly and lived in Botswana--and decided to go against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father's cattle to set up a Ladies' Detective Agency--then you have an idea of how Precious sets herself up as her country's first female detective. Once the clients start showing up on her doorstep, Precious enjoys a pleasingly successful series of cases.
But the edge of the Kalahari is not St. Mary Mead, and the sign Precious orders, painted in brilliant colors, is anything but discreet. Pointing in the direction of the small building she had purchased to house her new business, it reads "THE NO. 1 LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY. FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT."
The solutions she comes up with, whether in the case of the clinic doctor with two quite different personalities (depending on the day of the week), or the man who had joined a Christian sect and seemingly vanished, or the kidnapped boy whose bones may or may not be those in a witch doctor's magic kit, are all sensible, logical, and satisfying. Smith's gently ironic tone is full of good humor towards his lively, intelligent heroine and towards her fellow Africans, who live their lives with dignity and with cautious acceptance of the confusions to which the world submits them. Precious Ramotswe is a remarkable creation, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency well deserves the praise it received from London's Times Literary Supplement. I look forward with great eagerness to the upcoming books featuring the memorable Miss Ramotswe, Tears of the Giraffe and Morality for Beautiful Girls, soon to be available in the U.S. --Otto Penzler [via]
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Number9dreamby David MitchellISBN 0375507264 (0-375-50726-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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On Beautyby Zadie SmithISBN 0241142938 (0-241-14293-8)
Hardcover, Hamish Hamilton
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On the Black Hillby Bruce ChatwinISBN 0224019805 (0-224-01980-5)
Hardcover, J. Cape
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The Orton Diaries: Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and Othersby John Lahr, Joe OrtonISBN 0306807335 (0-306-80733-5)
Softcover, Perseus Books Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Orton Diaries: Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and Others'Book summary:To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature. When Joe Orton (19331967) wrote those words in his diary in May 1967, he was being hailed as the greatest comic playwright since Oscar Wilde for his darkly hilarious Entertaining Mr. Sloane and the farce hit Loot, and was completing What the Butler Saw; but less than three months later, his longtime companion, Kenneth Halliwell, smashed in Ortons skull with a hammer before killing himself. The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapadesat his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell, the relationship that transformed and destroyed him. Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.[via]More editions of The Orton Diaries: Including the Correspondence of Edna Welthorpe and Others:
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A Perfect Spyby John Le CarreISBN 034038784X (0-340-38784-X)
Hardcover, Hodder & Stoughton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Perfect Spy'Book summary:Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. [via]
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Poems of Alexander Popeby Alexander PopeISBN 0300000308 (0-300-00030-8)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr
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Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climateby Nancy MitfordISBN 0375718990 (0-375-71899-0)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate'Book summary:Few aristocratic English families of the 20th century have enjoyed quite the delicious notoriety that the Mitford sisters courted in the years bracketed by two world wars. For a start, two of the girls, Unity and Diana, were Fascists (the former was a friend of Hitler and Goebbels, and the latter married Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists). Two others took the writing route: Jessica ran away from home and became a famous muckraking journalist, and Nancy composed maliciously witty--and transparently autobiographical--novels as well as several biographies. The Pursuit of Love (1945), her greatest fictional success, and its companion, Love in a Cold Climate (1949), keep closely to the spirit (and details) of their youthful amusements and more grown-up adventures.
Seen through the adoring eyes of Fanny Logan, the self-effacing cousin who records their shenanigans with a wicked sincerity, the Radletts of Alconleigh shine with Gloucestershire glamour: apoplectic Uncle Matthew; Lord Alconleigh (modeled to a fine nuance after Mitford's father, Lord Redesdale, who like Uncle Matthew used to hunt his children with bloodhounds); his kind, rather vague wife, Aunt Sadie; as well as Fanny's favorite cousin Linda and the other six Radlett children. The Radlett daughters and Fanny wait impatiently for life to become interesting. Because of their station, however, nothing but marriage is expected of them, so they hurl themselves at love like crusaders, with varied and always fascinating results. At one point Fanny recounts:
A few minutes only after Linda had left me to go back to London, Christian and the comrades, I had another caller. This time it was Lord Merlin...."This is a bad business," he said, abruptly, and without preamble, though I had not seen him for several years. "I'm just back from Rome, and what do I find--Linda and Christian Talbot. It's an extraordinary thing that I can't ever leave England without Linda getting herself mixed up with some thoroughly undesirable character. This is a disaster--how far has it gone? Can nothing be done?"
The Pursuit of Love follows the romantic fortunes of Linda Radlett, while Love in a Cold Climate ventures further afield with the story of Polly Hampton's shocking love affair and its unexpectedly funny aftermath. Fanny's inexhaustible narration is a pleasant buffer for Mitford's deft teasing, which dances along just this side of mockery. The author of U and Non-U, a famous tongue-in-cheek treatise on the shibboleths of upper-class mores, Mitford often leaves the reader wondering just where she stands in the class wars, and much of her humor arises in the fine distinctions of aristocratic manners and speech. Still, there's an inimitable tart sweetness to these stories of true love and its pallid imitators, making them perfect snapshots of a vanished world. --Barrie Trinkle [via]More editions of Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate:
Rob Royby Walter Scott, Lockhart Bogle, Georg LukacsISBN 0375760601 (0-375-76060-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Robert Browning, The Ring and the Bookby Robert Browning, Richard D. AltickISBN 0300026854 (0-300-02685-4)
Softcover, Yale University Press
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The Rotters' Clubby Jonathan CoeISBN 0375713123 (0-375-71312-3)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rotters' Club'Book summary:At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug, and Benjamin--who must come to terms not only with the normal pangs of adolescence but with terrible knitwear, ludicrous pop music, nightmarish food, and insidious racism, all set against the awful, surreal, and tragicomic reality of a postimperial nation.
The book suffers in its programmatic attempts to make the four boys and their families symbolize, or represent, something important to do with British life. Doug, for instance, symbolizes Industrial Decline--his dad is a shop steward at the doomed British Leyland Longbridge plant. Sean symbolizes Sexual Liberation--at least he's the one who seems most likely to get his rocks off. And young Ben Trotter would appear to represent A Young Jonathan Coe. But if this aspect of the novel seems contrived, then the author's capricious, deft, wryly comedic, and touchingly empathetic style keeps things chugging along, as he knits together the troubles and tragedies of some fairly ordinary people living through fairly extraordinary years. --Sean Thomas, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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The Seaby John BanvilleISBN 0307263118 (0-307-26311-8)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sea'Book summary:Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writers most accomplished work.
Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?
The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a masters skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw [via]
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Small Islandby Andrea LevyISBN 0312424671 (0-312-42467-1)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Small Island'Book summary:Winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction A Picador Original Trade Paperback Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life. [via]
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Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Hamby J. R. R. TolkienISBN 0345336062 (0-345-33606-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Songlinesby ChatinISBN 0224024523 (0-224-02452-3)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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Sonnets from the Portugueseby Elizabeth B. BrowningISBN 031274501X (0-312-74501-X)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'Book summary:Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a prolific writer and reviewer in the Victorian period, and in her lifetime, her reputation as a poet was at least as great as that of her husband, poet Robert Browning. Some of her poetry has been noted in recent years for strong feminist themes, but the poems for which Elizabeth Barrett Browning is undoubtedly best know are Sonnets from the Portuguese.[via]
Written for Robert Browning, who had affectionately nicknamed her his "little Portuguese," the sequence is a celebration of marriage, and of one of the most famous romances of the nineteenth century. Recognized for their Victorian tradition and discipline, these are some of the most passionate and memorable love poems in the English language. There are forty-four poems in the collection, including the very beautiful sonnet, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."More editions of Sonnets from the Portuguese:
Super-Cannesby James Graham BallardISBN 0312306091 (0-312-30609-1)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Super-Cannes'Book summary:JG Ballard covers familiar territory in Super-Cannes: new social structures under pressure, new psychopathologies to be explored. As he did in his previous novel Cocaine Nights, he has avoided the more abstract imagery and plot of Rushing to Paradise or The Day of Creation to create, on the surface, a more mainstream novel, clearly concerned with modern issues of racism, random violence and sexuality. But familiar territory is always the most deeply subversive place in a Ballard novel.
Eden-Olympia is more than a mere business park. It is an expensive and intense hive, the modern "Dream Palace" of "a new elite of administrators, enarques and scientific entrepreneurs"; its aim, "to turn Provence into Europe's silicon valley". Paul Sinclair finds himself with time on his hands in this radical environment when his young wife takes a job at Eden-Olympia. She replaces a doctor who killed 10 executives with a rifle before shooting himself. He left no note and no explanation. Sinclair finds himself living in the same house and learning some of the same lessons as the killer.
There are the (un)usual Ballardian motifs; the injured airman, the swimming pools, the cars, the voyeuristic sex and violence, the perverse personal iconography of the central characters (the hothouse social environment even harks back to High-Rise from 1975), but in this new context they are even more profoundly unsettling than before. The apparently slick, professional characters are flawed and ambiguous, while strange events, as in the outstanding novella Running Wild from 1988, lead to extreme conclusions. Ballard is an expert in explaining how what at first appears perverse, amoral or simply wrong, is actually obvious, sensible and sane, and then going even further. From the beginning, the clues are all there. Eventually, both Sinclair and the reader are clear on what must be done. --John Shire [via]
The Tale of Old Mortalityby Walter Scott, Douglas S. MackISBN 0231084706 (0-231-08470-6)
Hardcover, Columbia Univ Pr
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The Trumpet-majorby Thomas HardyISBN 0330344722 (0-330-34472-2)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trumpet-major'Book summary:One of a selection of Thomas Hardy's best-known novels to be published with introductions by critics, notes, a bibliography, a map of Hardy's Wessex, a chronology of his life and the New Wessex Edition text. [via]
More editions of The Trumpet-major:
- The Trumpet-major: ISBN 0333168909 (0-333-16890-9)
Hardcover, Trafalgar Square - The Trumpet-major: ISBN 0312821468 (0-312-82146-8)
Softcover, St Martins Pr - The Trumpet-major: ISBN 0333179080 (0-333-17908-0)
Hardcover, Macmillan - The Trumpet-major: ISBN 0330344722 (0-330-34472-2)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
- The Trumpet-major: ISBN 0333168909 (0-333-16890-9)
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The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0345453743 (0-345-45374-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'Book summary:At last in paperback in one complete volume, here are the five classic novels from Douglas Adamss beloved Hitchiker series.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.
Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.
Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself? [via]More editions of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjectsby Mary Wollstonecraft, Katha PollittISBN 0375757228 (0-375-75722-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects'Book summary:First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was an instant success, turning its thirty-three-year-old author into a minor celebrity. A pioneering work of early feminism that extends to women the Enlightenment principle of "the rights of man," its argument remains as relevant today as it was for Woll-stonecraft's contemporaries. "Mary Wollstonecraft was not the first writer to call for women to receive a real, challenging education," writes Katha Pollitt in the new Introduction. "But she was the first to connect the education of women to the transformation of women's social position, of relations between the sexes, and even of society itself. She was the first to argue that women's intellectual equality would and should have actual consequences. The winds of change sweep through her pages."
This classic work of early feminism remains as relevant and passionate today as it was for Wollstonecraft's contemporaries. This edition includes new explanatory notes.
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The Waste Land and Other Writingsby T. S. EliotISBN 0375759344 (0-375-75934-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Waste Land and Other Writings'Book summary:Also includes Prufrock and Other Observations, Poems (1920), and The Sacred Wood
Introduction by Mary Karr
First published in 1922, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliots masterpiece, is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliots poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a potent new poetic language. As Kenneth Rexroth wrote, Eliot articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression. As commanding as his verse, Eliots criticism also transformed twentieth-century letters, and this Modern Library edition includes a selection of Eliots most important essays. [via]More editions of The Waste Land and Other Writings:
Wessex Tales: The Three Strangers; a Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; the Melancholy Hussar; the Withered Armby Thomas HardyISBN 0312862768 (0-312-86276-8)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Mythby Robert GravesISBN 0374504938 (0-374-50493-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth'Book summary:Robert Graves, the late British poet and novelist, was also known for his studies of the mythological and psychological sources of poetry. With The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves was able to combine many of his passions into one work. While the book is so poetically written that many of the passages amount to prose poems, it is also frequently plot driven enough to feel like a novel, and it is rich with scholarly insight into the deep wells of poetry. Especially fascinating is the chapter in which Graves explores the ancient and ongoing practice of poets' invoking the muse. Graves details the practice in both the Eastern and Western literary traditions, and shows specific similarities and differences among Greek, British, and Irish tales and myths about the muse. Graves has much to offer students of history and myth, but poetry lovers will also be fascinated with The White Goddess. [via]
More editions of The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth:
- The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374289328 (0-374-28932-8)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux - The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374932395 (0-374-93239-5)
Hardcover, Octagon Books - The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374504938 (0-374-50493-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth: ISBN 0374289328 (0-374-28932-8)
Wife of Bathby Geoffrey Chaucer, Peter G. BeidlerISBN 0312158599 (0-312-15859-9)
Hardcover, Palgrave Macmillan
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wife of Bath'More editions of Wife of Bath:
Wife of Bathby Peter G. Beidler, Geoffrey ChaucerISBN 0312111282 (0-312-11128-2)
Softcover, Bedford/st Martins
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Wise Childrenby Angela CarterISBN 0374291330 (0-374-29133-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wise Children'Book summary:Dora and Nora Chance are a famous song-and-dance team of the British music halls. Billed as The Lucky Chances, the sisters are the illegitimate and unacknowledged daughters of Sir Melchoir Hazard, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day. At once ribald and sentimental, glittery and tender, this rambunctious family saga is Angela Carter at her bewitching best. [via]
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