books tagged “fate”

books tagged “fate”

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  • Doerr, Anthony: About Grace
    About Grace
    by Anthony Doerr
    ISBN 0743261836 (0-7432-6183-6)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    When Anthony Doerr's "The Shell Collector" was published in 2002, the "Los Angeles Times" called his stories "as close to faultless as any writer -- young or vastly experienced -- could wish for." He won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Discover Prize, Princeton's Hodder Fellowship, and two O. Henrys, and shared the Young Lions Award. Now he has written one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling first novels of recent times.

    David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen -- a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in a supermarket. When David dreams that his infant daughter will drown in a flood as he tries to save her, he comes undone. He travels thousands of miles, fleeing family, home, and the future itself, to deny the dream.

    On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind.

    Doerr's characters are full of grief and longing, but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose, he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. "About Grace" is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.

    [via]

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  • The Aeneid
    by Virgil
    ISBN 0679729526 (0-679-72952-6)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Arma virumque cano: "I sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless sentences full of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a helpful translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful, accessible American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire. Its pages sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to be a citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across the centuries, and remains essential reading. [via]

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  • Aeneid of Virgil
    by R. Humphries
    ISBN 0684718162 (0-684-71816-2)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Aenied of Virgil [Paperback] [via]

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  • Anna Karenina
    by Leo Tolstoy, Leonard J. Kent, Constance Black Garnett, Nina Nikolaevna Berberova
    ISBN 067978330X (0-679-78330-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Some people say Anna Karenina is the single greatest novel ever written, which makes about as much sense to me as trying to determine the world's greatest color. But there is no doubt that Anna Karenina, generally considered Tolstoy's best book, is definitely one ripping great read. Anna, miserable in her loveless marriage, does the barely thinkable and succumbs to her desires for the dashing Vronsky. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say that 19th-century Russia doesn't take well to that sort of thing. [via]

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  • The Annotated Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov
    ISBN 0679727299 (0-679-72729-9)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    In 1954 Vladimir Nabokov asked one American publisher to consider "a firebomb that I have just finished putting together." The explosive device: Lolita, his morality play about a middle-aged European's obsession with a 12-year-old American girl. Two years later, the New York Times called it "great art." Other reviewers staked a higher moral ground (the editor of the London Sunday Express declaring it "the filthiest book I've ever read"). Since then, the sinuous novel has never ceased to astound. Even Nabokov was astonished by its place in the popular imagination. One biographer writes that "he was quite shocked when a little girl of eight or nine came to his door for candy on Halloween, dressed up by her parents as Lolita." And when it came time to casting the film, Nabokov declared, "Let them find a dwarfess!"

    The character Lolita's power now exists almost separately from the endlessly inventive novel. If only it were read as often as it is alluded to. Alfred Appel Jr., editor of the annotated edition, has appended some 900 notes, an exhaustive, good-humored introduction, and a recent preface in which he admits that the "reader familiar with Lolita can approach the apparatus as a separate unit, but the perspicacious student who keeps turning back and forth from text to Notes risks vertigo." No matter. The notes range from translations to the anatomical to the complex textual. Appel is also happy to point out the Great Punster's supposedly unintended word play: he defends the phrase "Beaver Eaters" as "a portmanteau of 'Beefeaters' (the yeoman of the British royal guard) and their beaver hats." [via]

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  • Apuleius
    by Apuleius, J. Arthur Hanson
    ISBN 0674994981 (0-674-99498-1)
    Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr

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    In the Metamorphoses of ApuleiusThe Golden Ass, we have the only Latin novel which survives entire. It is truly enchanting: a delightful romance combining realism and magic.

    The hero, Lucius, eager to experience the sensations of a bird, resorts to witchcraft but by an unfortunate pharmaceutical error finds himself transformed into an ass. He knows he can revert to his own body by eating rose-petals, but these prove singularly elusive; and the bulk of the work describes his adventures as an animal. He also retails many stories that he overheard, the most charming being that of Cupid and Psyche (beginning, in true fairy-tale fashion, 'Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina'). Some of the stories are as indecent as they are witty, and two in the ninth book were deemed by Boccaccio worthy of inclusion in the Decameron. At last the goddess Isis takes pity on Lucius. In a surprising denouement, he is restored to human shape and, now spiritually regenerated, is initiated into her mysteries. The author's baroque Latin style nicely matches his fantastic narrative and is guaranteed to hold a reader's attention from beginning to end.

    The Loeb Classical Library edition of Apuleius is in two volumes.

    [via]

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  • Apuleius Metamorphoses
    by Apuleius, J. Arthur Hanson
    ISBN 0674990498 (0-674-99049-8)
    Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr

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    In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, also known as The Golden Ass, we have the only Latin novel which survives entire. It is truly enchanting: a delightful romance combining realism and magic. The hero, Lucius, eager to experience the sensations of a bird, resorts to witchcraft but by an unfortunate pharmaceutical error finds himself transformed into an ass. He knows he can revert to his own body by eating rose-petals, but these prove singularly elusive; and the bulk of the work describes his adventures as an animal. He also retails many stories that he overheard, the most charming being that of Cupid and Psyche (beginning, in true fairy-tale fashion, ' Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina '). Some of the stories are as indecent as they are witty, and two in the ninth book were deemed by Boccaccio worthy of inclusion in the Decameron. At last the goddess Isis takes pity on Lucius. In a surprising denouement, he is restored to human shape and, now spiritually regenerated, is initiated into her mysteries. The author's baroque Latin style nicely matches his fantastic narrative and is guaranteed to hold a reader's attention from beginning to end. J. Arthur Hanson was at the time of his death in 1985 Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University. His publications include Roman Theater-Temples. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Apuleius is in two volumes. [via]

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  • Conrad, Joseph: Chance
    Chance
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 0701219114 (0-7012-1911-4)
    Softcover, Hogarth Pr

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  • Chapman's Homer: The Odyssey
    by Homer, Allardyce Nicoll, George Chapman
    ISBN 0691048916 (0-691-04891-6)
    Softcover, Princeton Univ Pr

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    George Chapman's translations of Homer are among the most famous in the English language. Keats immortalized the work of the Renaissance dramatist and poet in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." Swinburne praised the translations for their "romantic and sometimes barbaric grandeur," their "freshness, strength, and inextinguishable fire." The great critic George Saintsbury (1845-1933) wrote: "For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language." This volume presents the original text of Chapman's translation of the Odyssey (1614-15), making only a small number of modifications to punctuation and wording where they might confuse the modern reader. The editor, Allardyce Nicoll, provides an introduction, textual notes, a glossary, and a commentary. Garry Wills's preface to the Odyssey explores how Chapman's less strained meter lets him achieve more delicate poetic effects as compared to the Iliad. Wills also examines Chapman's "fine touch" in translating "the warm and human sense of comedy" in the Odyssey.

    Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

    That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

    Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

    Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.

    --John Keats

    [via]

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  • City of God
    by Augustine, Thomas Merton, Marcus Dods
    ISBN 0679783199 (0-679-78319-9)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Augustine's City of God, a monumental work of religious lore, philosophy, and history, was written as a kind of literary tombstone for Roman culture. After the sack of Rome, Augustine wrote this book to anatomize the corruption of Romans' pursuit of earthly pleasures: "grasping for praise, open-handed with their money; honest in the pursuit of wealth, they wanted to hoard glory." Augustine contrasts his condemnation of Rome with an exaltation of Christian culture. The glory that Rome failed to attain will only be realized by citizens of the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem foreseen in Revelation. Because City of God was written for men of classical learning--custodians of the culture Augustine sought to condemn--it is thick with Ciceronian circumlocutions, and makes many stark contrasts between "Your Virgil" and "Our Scriptures." Even if Augustine's prose strikes modern ears as a bit bombastic, and if his polarized Christian/pagan world is more binary than the one we live in today, his arguments against utopianism and his defense of the richness of Christian culture remain useful and strong. City of God is, as its final words proclaim itself to be, "a giant of a book." --Michael Joseph Gross [via]

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  • Curse
    by Nancy Holder, Debbie Viguie
    ISBN 0743426975 (0-7434-2697-5)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

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    Holly Cathers and her twin cousins have just graduated from high school, and they're moving on toward their first semester of college. But no matter where they go, they will never be entirely free of their past. The three are descendants of a powerful coven of witches -- in constant danger from a rival clan.

    Holly learns from a vision that Jer is still alive. As leader of the coven, she resolves to rescue him despite the fact that he is a member of the Deveraux clan and therefore her enemy. But her efforts are thwarted when her aunt reveals the nature of an ancient curse visited upon all Cathers witches. It becomes clear to Holly that the death of her parents was no accident, and a similar plague is sure to fall on anyone she grows close to. As her power strengthens, can Holly escape her destiny? And if her destiny includes Jer, does she want to? [via]

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  • Rhinehart, Luke: The Dice Man
    The Dice Man
    by Luke Rhinehart
    ISBN 0671782045 (0-671-78204-5)
    Softcover, Pocket Books

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  • The Dragon Reborn
    by Robert Jordan
    ISBN 0765305119 (0-7653-0511-9)
    Softcover, Tor Books

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    The Dragon Reborn--the leader long prophesied who will save the world, but in the saving destroy it; the savior who will run mad and kill all those dearest to him--is on the run from his destiny.

    Able to touch the One Power, but unable to control it, and with no one to teach him how--for no man has done it in three thousand years--Rand al'Thor knows only that he must face the Dark One. But how?

    Winter has stopped the war-almost-yet men are dying, calling out for the Dragon. But where is he?

    Perrin Aybara is in pursuit with Moiraine Sedai, her Warder Lan, and the Loial the Ogier. Bedeviled by dreams, Perrin is grappling with another deadly problem--how is her to escape the loss of his own humanity.

    Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve are approaching Tar Valon, where Mat will be healed--if he lives until they arrive. But who will tell the Amyrlin their news--that the Black Ajah, long thought only a hideous rumor, is all too real? They cannot know that in Tar Valon far worse awaits...

    Ahead, for all of them, in the Heart of the Stone, lies the next great test of the Dragon reborn....
    [via]

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  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0679405763 (0-679-40576-3)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Set in his fictional Wessex countryside in southwest England, Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's breakthrough work. Though it was first published anonymously in 1874, the quick and tremendous success of Far from the Madding Crowd persuaded Hardy to give up his first profession, architecture, to concentrate on writing fiction. The story of the ill-fated passions of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors offers a spectacle of country life brimming with an energy and charm not customarily associated with Hardy. ("When Farmer Oak smiled," the novel begins, "the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears. . . .")
    ----The text is based on the authoritative Wessex Edition of 1912, revised and corrected by Hardy himself.
    ----This edition is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS. It stars Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba Everdene, Nathaniel Parker as Gabriel Oak, Nigel Terry as Mr. Boldwood, and Jonathan Firth as Frank Troy. Adapted by Philomena
    McDonagh, Far from the Madding Crowd is directed by Nick Renton.
    The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via]

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  • The Farthest Shore
    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    ISBN 0689845340 (0-689-84534-0)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    The Farthest Shore is the third book in the renowned Earthsea trilogy. The young prince, Arren, brings harsh news. There is no longer true magic in Enlad; the mages have forgotten their spells so the springs of wizardry are running dry. Accompanied by Arren, Ged sets out to meet unknown dangers, to confront his own past, and to test the ancient prophecies, taking with him on his journey all the hopes of Earthsea, moving into doom or into a new age. The Farthest Shore rounds out the promise of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. Author Ursula Le Guin has won numerous awards including the National Book Award, five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, and a Pushcart Prize.
    [via]

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  • Chubet, Carolyn T.: Feeding Your Baby: Breast, Bottle and Baby Foods
    Feeding Your Baby: Breast, Bottle and Baby Foods
    by Carolyn T. Chubet
    ISBN 0681404531 (0-681-40453-1)
    Softcover, Longmeadow Pr

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  • From the Two Rivers
    by Robert Jordan
    ISBN 0765341840 (0-7653-4184-0)
    Softcover, Tor Books

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    An American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults

    A VOYA Best Books for Young Adults

    For Rand alThor and his pals, life in the sleepy village of Emonds Field has been pretty dull. Until the appearance on festival night of Moiraine, a mysterious woman who claims to be an Aes Sdeaia magician who can wield the One Power. Soon after, the village is attacked by Trollocsa savage tribe of half-men half-beasts. Rands father is nearly killed. But for Rand, the news gets worse. It was not the village the Trollocs were after, Moiraine tells him. It was you, Rand.

    Rand and his friends are forced to flee. But his escape will bring him face to face with the Dark One...the most powerful force of evil in the universe.
    [via]

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  • God of Small Things
    by Arundhati Roy
    ISBN 0679309411 (0-679-30941-1)
    Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd

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    "They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. " The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . . Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family--their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen."  With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes--Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic. [via]

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  • The Golden Ass, Or, The Metamorphoses
    by Apuleius, William Adlington
    ISBN 0760755981 (0-7607-5598-1)
    Softcover, Barnes & Noble Books

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  • Hatchet
    by Gary Paulsen
    ISBN 0689840926 (0-689-84092-6)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Headed for Canada to visit his father for the first time since his parents' divorce, thirteen-year-old Brian is the sole survivor of a plane crash, with only the clothes he has on and a hatchet to help him shape a life for himself in the wilderness. Reprint. AB. K. [via]

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  • Heart of Darkness
    by Joseph Conrad
    ISBN 0679428011 (0-679-42801-1)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Heart of Darkness grew out of a journey Joseph Conrad took up the Congo River; the verisimilitude that the great novelist thereby brought to his most famous tale everywhere enhances its dense and shattering power.

    Apparently a sailors yarn, it is in fact a grim parody of the adventure story, in which the narrator, Marlow, travels deep into the heart of the Congo where he encounters the crazed idealist Kurtz and discovers that the relative values of the civilized and the primitive are not what they seem. Heart of Darkness is a model of economic storytelling, an indictment of the inner and outer turmoil caused by the European imperial misadventure, and a piercing account of the fragility of the human soul. [via]

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  • Holes
    by Louis Sachar
    ISBN 0747546487 (0-7475-4648-7)
    Softcover, Bloomsbury Pub Ltd

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    "If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy." Such is the reigning philosophy at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention facility where there is no lake, and there are no happy campers. In place of what used to be "the largest lake in Texas" is now a dry, flat, sunburned wasteland, pocked with countless identical holes dug by boys improving their character. Stanley Yelnats, of palindromic name and ill-fated pedigree, has landed at Camp Green Lake because it seemed a better option than jail. No matter that his conviction was all a case of mistaken identity, the Yelnats family has become accustomed to a long history of bad luck, thanks to their "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!" Despite his innocence, Stanley is quickly enmeshed in the Camp Green Lake routine: rising before dawn to dig a hole five feet deep and five feet in diameter; learning how to get along with the Lord of the Flies-styled pack of boys in Group D; and fearing the warden, who paints her fingernails with rattlesnake venom. But when Stanley realizes that the boys may not just be digging to build character--that in fact the warden is seeking something specific--the plot gets as thick as the irony.

    It's a strange story, but strangely compelling and lovely too. Louis Sachar uses poker-faced understatement to create a bizarre but believable landscape--a place where Major Major Major Major of Catch-22 would feel right at home. But while there is humor and absurdity here, there is also a deep understanding of friendship and a searing compassion for society's underdogs. As Stanley unknowingly begins to fulfill his destiny--the dual plots coming together to reveal that fate has big plans in store--we can't help but cheer for the good guys, and all the Yelnats everywhere. (Ages 10 and older) --Brangien Davis [via]

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  • Hunt Begins
    by Robert Jordan
    ISBN 0765348438 (0-7653-4843-8)
    Softcover, Tor Books

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    Since they were boys, Rand and his friends have heard the tales of the Great Hunt of the Horn. Fabulous tales of hunters and of a legendary horn that can raise the dead heroes of the ages.

    But no sooner is the horn found then it is stolen.

    And in order to save Mat's life, Rand must find it.
    [via]

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  • Vojnar, Kamil: Legacy
    Legacy
    by Kamil Vojnar, Debbie Viguie, Nancy Holder
    ISBN 0743426983 (0-7434-2698-3)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

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  • Life of Pi
    by Yann Martel
    ISBN 0676978991 (0-676-97899-1)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Serious novels about young boys being drawn closer to God while trapped on lifeboats with dangerous wild animals ought to be impossible. Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, proves they're not. Its plot stretches the limits of credibility into new and exciting shapes, and the fact that Martel has made his materials into an enchanting story is almost unbelievable. Martel's Pi is Piscine Molitor Patel, a boy from Pondicherry, one of the few Indian towns to be colonized by France. Pi is an intelligent, unusual child: he has a scientific turn of mind but is also a practising Hindu, Moslem, and Christian. Pi's family runs a large zoo, but they decide to sell their animals to zoos in the United States and emigrate to Canada. Crossing the Pacific (with their animals), they're shipwrecked halfway between China and Midway. Pi survives, only to find himself sharing a lifeboat with an injured zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan, and Richard Parker--an immense Bengal tiger.

    Most of these animals are doomed, but Pi and Richard Parker cling to life, establishing a tacit order on the lifeboat. Martel handles this part of the story perfectly: one would expect Life of Pi to become cute, or perhaps preachy, but it is neither. Life on the boat proceeds in strict accordance with the rules of ecology and territorialism, and the interdependence of the passengers is both believable and absorbing. Life of Pi is a superb novel, both for its story and for its rich examinations of religion, isolation, and love. If this is an indication of what is to come, we can expect great things from Yann Martel. --Jack Illingworth [via]

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  • Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov
    ISBN 0679723161 (0-679-72316-1)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

    Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

    She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
    Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake [via]

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  • London Fields
    by Martin Amis
    ISBN 0679730346 (0-679-73034-6)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    London Fields is Amis's murder story for the end of the millennium. The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts. Or is the killer the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch? [via]

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  • Balzac, Honoré de: Lost Illusions
    Lost Illusions
    by Honoré de Balzac, Kathleen Raine
    ISBN 067960264X (0-679-60264-X)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    by Thomas Hardy, Craig Raine
    ISBN 0679420355 (0-679-42035-5)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Thomas Hardys almost supernatural insight into the course of wayward lives, his instinctive feeling for the beauty of the rural landscape, and his power to invest that landscape with moral significance all came together in an utterly fluent way in The Mayor of Casterbridge. A classically shaped story about the rise and fall of the brooding and sometimes brutal Michael Henchard in the harsh world of nineteenth-century rural England, The Mayor of Casterbridge is an emblematic product of Hardys maturityvigorous, forceful, and unclouded by illusions. [via]

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  • Memoirs of a Geisha
    by Arthur Golden
    ISBN 0679781587 (0-679-78158-7)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    The first thing you notice about the audio version of Memoirs of a Geisha is that Arthur Golden's 428-page novel has been reduced to a scant two cassettes. But dismay quickly gives way to mounting pleasure as Elaina Erika Davis (Contact, As the World Turns) begins her delicate rendering of geisha culture in the years before World War II. Davis reads the abbreviated story of Sayuri with an authentic-sounding Japanese accent--one mixed with a magical combination of Asian reserve and theatrical energy. As Sayuri ages from a 9-year-old peasant girl to a popular geisha in her late 20s, Davis directs her voice gently away from curious youth to a tone that reflects Sayuri's uphill life.

    From start to finish, the listener is absorbed in the elegant spirit of Davis's performance, eager to hear the next chapter of Sayuri's transformation into one of the most famous geishas of the century. How unfortunate, then, to learn that book readers not only get the basic story, but a fascinating look at the intricate rules and rituals of geisha culture. Here, for example, is one of the many revelations omitted from the cassette: "Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs.... In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial.... When a man sits beside her, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath."

    We're also denied several subplots--the aborted friendship between Sayuri and a geisha named Pumpkin, for example, or much of the story involving the man Sayuri is secretly in love with. But what remains is as precious as a traditional Japanese kimono--at once artistic, suggestive, and moving. --Ann Senechal [via]

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  • Moby Dick
    by Herman Melville, Larzer Ziff
    ISBN 0679405593 (0-679-40559-3)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    An award-winning author and illustrator bring Melville's masterpiece to life for a new generation of readers in a stunning gift edition.

    A tragic tale of obsession and revenge set against the unforgiving sea, Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK has now been expertly edited and generously illustrated for the twenty-first-century reader. Here are the mad whaling captain Ahab, the all-observant narrator Ishmael, and the mysterious, invincible white whale himself, and here are scenes of peril and carnage, nobility and redemption  presented in Melville's original language, threaded together with passages of summary by renowned author Jan Needle. Lavish artwork by Patrick Benson, one of the finest children's illustrators working today, captures the timeless spirit of this extraordinary classic. [via]

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  • Moby Dick Or, the Whale
    by Herman Melville, Rockwell Kent
    ISBN 067978327X (0-679-78327-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    Avec Moby Dick, Melville a donné naissance à un livre-culte et inscrit dans la mémoire des hommes un nouveau mythe : celui de la baleine blanche. Fort de son expérience de marin, qui a nourri ses romans précédents et lui a assuré le succès, l'écrivain américain, alors en pleine maturité, raconte la folle quête du capitaine Achab et sa dernière rencontre avec le grand cachalot. Véritable encyclopédie de la mer, nouvelle Bible aux accents prophétiques, parabole chargée de thèmes universels, Moby Dick n'en reste pas moins construit avec une savante maîtrise, maintenant un suspense lent, qui s'accélère peu à peu jusqu'à l'apocalypse finale. L'écriture de Melville, infiniment libre et audacieuse, tour à tour balancée, puis hachée au rythme des houles, des vents et des passions humaines, est d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Il faut remonter à Shakespeare pour trouver l'exemple d'une langue aussi inventive, d'une poésie aussi grandiose. --Scarbo [via]

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  • New Threads in the Pattern
    by Robert Jordan
    ISBN 0765348446 (0-7653-4844-6)
    Softcover, Starscape

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    Book summary:

    In this second part of the tale after The Hunt Begins, Rand al'Thor-- reluctantly drawn into the quest to recover the Horn of Valere--must face something even more frightening that the Myrddraal and Trollocs: his own true identity.

    Can Rand really be the Dragon Reborn?
    [via]

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  • The Odyssey
    by Homer, Martin Hammond
    ISBN 0715629581 (0-7156-2958-1)
    Softcover, Intl Pub Marketing Inc

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    Book summary:

    Here is a new Loeb Classical Library edition of the resplendent epic tale of Odysseus's long journey home from the Trojan War and the legendary temptations, delays, and perils he faced at every turn. Homer's classic poem features Odysseus's encounters with the beautiful nymph Calypso; the queenly but wily Circe; the Lotus-eaters, who fed his men their memory-stealing drug; the man-eating, one-eyed Cyclops; the Laestrygonian giants; the souls of the dead in Hades; the beguiling Sirens; the treacherous Scylla and Charybdis. Here, too, is the hero's faithful wife, Penelope, weaving a shroud by day and unraveling it by night, in order to thwart the numerous suitors attempting to take Odysseus's place.

    The works attributed to Homer include the two oldest and greatest European epic poems, the Odyssey and Iliad. These texts have long stood in the Loeb Classical Library with a faithful and literate prose translation by A. T. Murray. George Dimock now brings the Loeb's Odyssey up to date, with a rendering that retains Murray's admirable style but is worded for today's readers. The two-volume edition includes a new introduction, notes, and index.

    [via]

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  • Homerus: The Odyssey of Homer
    The Odyssey of Homer
    by Homerus
    ISBN 0672614154 (0-672-61415-4)
    Hardcover, Bobbs-Merrill Co

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  • Oedipus the King: Uses And Abuses
    by Sophocles, Bernard Knox
    ISBN 0671888048 (0-671-88804-8)
    Softcover, Pocket Classics

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    Book summary:

    A new edition of a dramatic classic about a king's struggle with pride, incest, and murder features period illustrations and photographs, a historical background, and a modern critical perspective that relates the piece to contemporary issues. Reissue. [via]

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  • Old Magic
    by Marianne Curley
    ISBN 0743437691 (0-7434-3769-1)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    When Kate first sees Jarrod she senses that he is special and that like her, he has magical powers. But she also knows he is completely unaware of his gift and will be difficult to persuade. Kate's grandmother realises that Jarrod and his family have an ancient curse placed upon them which they must tackle before Jarrod's life, along with the lives of his parents and little brother, can become happy, peaceful and free of the troubles that have plagued them. He must learn to use his gift, and when he does, Kate and Jarrod find themselves in a time hundreds of years old, and very very far from home pitched in the greatest battle of their lives. A fabulous book with the perfect combination of pace, intrigue, suspense, utterly entrancing characters, and romance. [via]

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  • One Hundred Years of Solitude
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory Rabassa
    ISBN 0679444653 (0-679-44465-3)
    Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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    "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

    It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:

    A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
    "Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.

    The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."

    With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound
    Prometheus Bound
    by Aeschylus, Warren D. Anderson
    ISBN 0672603578 (0-672-60357-8)
    Softcover, Bobbs-Merril

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  • Readings on Native Son
    by Richard Wright, Hayley R. Mitchell
    ISBN 0737703202 (0-7377-0320-2)
    Hardcover, Greenhaven Pr

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    Book summary:

    "An anthology of essays by scholars representing various perspectives and interpretation of the novel. The book(s) provides criticism and discussions of meaning, structure, and the historical content...as well as biographical information. It is organized in such a way that will give students a plethora of information in a largely accessible format. Each chapter heading is annotated, giving readers a chance to sample the content of the essays. Furthermore, each selection is introduced with background biographical data on the essay's author alongwith a summary of the content and the particular point of view represented. A reader-friendly and comprehensive resouce for students and teachers of world literature."
    -- School Library Journal ( November 2001) (School Library Journal 20011015) [via]

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  • Sel 43 Tess D'urbervilles
    by S. E. L. 43 HUGMAN
    ISBN 071315506X (0-7131-5506-X)
    Softcover, Ashgate Publishing, Limited

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    Book summary:

    When John Durberyfield discovers a family connection to the ancient Norman family, the d'Urbervilles, the fate of daughter Tess is transformed. [via]

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  • Viguie, Debbie: Spellbound
    Spellbound
    by Debbie Viguie, Nancy Holder
    ISBN 0743426991 (0-7434-2699-1)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

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  • The Stranger
    by Albert Camus, Matthew Ward
    ISBN 0679720200 (0-679-72020-0)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    Book summary:

    The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.

    The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.

    Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson [via]

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  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0679405860 (0-679-40586-0)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardys early work, Tess of the DUrbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature. [via]

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  • Tess of the D'urbervilles : A Pure Woman
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0679603182 (0-679-60318-2)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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    Book summary:

            

    Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's "bestseller," and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two men--Alec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husband--Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.
    ----"Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination," said Irving Howe. "In Tess he stakes everything on his sensuous apprehension of a young woman's life, a girl who is at once a simple milkmaid and an archetype of feminine strength. . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting."
    ----Now Tess of the d'Urbervilles has been brought to television in a magnificent new co-production from A&E Network and London Weekend Television. Justine Waddell (Anna Karenina) stars as the tragic heroine, Tess; Oliver Milburn (Chandler & Co.) is Angel Clare; and Jason Flemyng is Alec d'Urberville. The cast also includes John McEnery (Black Beauty) as Jack Durbeyfield and Lesley Dunlop (The Elephant Man) as Joan Durbeyfield. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is directed by Ian Sharp and produced by Sarah Wilson, with a screenplay by Ted Whitehead; it was filmed in Hardy country, the beautiful English countryside in Dorset where Thomas Hardy set his novels.

    The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-
    dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via]

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  • Jordan, Robert: To the Blight
    To the Blight
    by Robert Jordan
    ISBN 0765342219 (0-7653-4221-9)
    Softcover, Tor Books

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  • Tombs of Atuan
    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    ISBN 0689845359 (0-689-84535-9)
    Softcover, Aladdin Paperbacks

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    Book summary:

    Often compared to Tolkien's Middle-earth or Lewis's Narnia, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea is a stunning fantasy world that grabs quickly at our hearts, pulling us deeply into its imaginary realms. Four books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu) tell the whole Earthsea cycle--a tale about a reckless, awkward boy named Sparrowhawk who becomes a wizard's apprentice after the wizard reveals Sparrowhawk's true name. The boy comes to realize that his fate may be far more important than he ever dreamed possible. Le Guin challenges her readers to think about the power of language, how in the act of naming the world around us we actually create that world. Teens, especially, will be inspired by the way Le Guin allows her characters to evolve and grow into their own powers.

    In this second book of Le Guin's Earthsea series, readers will meet Tenar, a priestess to the "Nameless Ones" who guard the catacombs of the Tombs of Atuan. Only Tenar knows the passageways of this dark labyrinth, and only she can lead the young wizard Sparrowhawk, who stumbles into its maze, to the greatest treasure of all. Will she? [via]

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  • The Trial
    by Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir
    ISBN 0679409947 (0-679-40994-7)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. [via]

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  • The Wasp Factory
    by Iain Banks
    ISBN 0684853159 (0-684-85315-9)
    Softcover, Scribner

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    Book summary:

    "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me."

    Those lines begin one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels. The narrator, Frank Cauldhame, is a weird teenager who lives on a tiny island connected to mainland Scotland by a bridge. He maintains grisly Sacrifice Poles to serve as his early warning system and deterrent against anyone who might invade his territory.

    Few novelists have ever burst onto the literary scene with as much controversy as Iain Banks in 1984. The Wasp Factory was reviled by many reviewers on account of its violence and sadism, but applauded by others as a new and Scottish voice--that is, a departure from the English literary tradition. The controversy is a bit puzzling in retrospect, because there is little to object to in this novel, if you're familiar with genre horror.

    The Wasp Factory is distinguished by an authentically felt and deftly written first-person style, delicious dark humor, a sense of the surreal, and a serious examination of the psyche of a childhood psychopath. Most readers will find that they sympathize with and even like Frank, despite his three murders (each of which is hilarious in an Edward Gorey fashion). It's a classic of contemporary horror. --Fiona Webster [via]

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  • Radziwill, Carole: What Remains : A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love
    What Remains : A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love
    by Carole Radziwill
    ISBN 0743276949 (0-7432-7694-9)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster

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  • Midgley, Mary: Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay
    Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay
    by Mary Midgley
    ISBN 0744800536 (0-7448-0053-6)
    Softcover, Routledge

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  • Holder, Nancy: Witch
    Witch
    by Nancy Holder, Debbie Viguié
    ISBN 0743426967 (0-7434-2696-7)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

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  • A Wizard of Earthsea
    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    ISBN 0689317204 (0-689-31720-4)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

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    Book summary:

    Often compared to Tolkien's Middle-earth or Lewis's Narnia, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea is a stunning fantasy world that grabs quickly at our hearts, pulling us deeply into its imaginary realms. Four books (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu) tell the whole Earthsea cycle--a tale about a reckless, awkward boy named Sparrowhawk who becomes a wizard's apprentice after the wizard reveals Sparrowhawk's true name. The boy comes to realize that his fate may be far more important than he ever dreamed possible. Le Guin challenges her readers to think about the power of language, how in the act of naming the world around us we actually create that world. Teens, especially, will be inspired by the way Le Guin allows her characters to evolve and grow into their own powers.

    In this first book, A Wizard of Earthsea readers will witness Sparrowhawk's moving rite of passage--when he discovers his true name and becomes a young man. Great challenges await Sparrowhawk, including an almost deadly battle with a sinister creature, a monster that may be his own shadow. [via]

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  • The World of Thought in Ancient China
    by Benjamin Isadore Schwartz
    ISBN 0674961919 (0-674-96191-9)
    Softcover, Harvard Univ Pr

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    Book summary:

    The center of this prodigious work of scholarship is a fresh examination of the range of Chinese culture thought during the formative period of Chinese culture. Benjamin Schwartz looks at the surviving texts of this period with a particular focus on the range of diversity to be found in them. While emphasizing the problematic and complex nature of this thought he also considers views which stress the unity of Chinese culture.

    Attention is accorded to pre-Confucian texts, to the evolution of early Confucianism, to Mo-Tzu, to the "Taoists" the legalists, the Ying-Yang school, the "five classics" as well as to intellectual issues which cut across the conventional classification of schools. The main focus is on the high cultural texts, but Mr. Schwartz also explores the question of the relationship of these texts to the vast realm of popular culture.

    [via]

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  • The World's Great Classics
    ISBN 0717200019 (0-7172-0001-9)
    Hardcover, Xs Books

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    Book summary:

    Odyssey, The: The World's Great Classics, by Homer; tr. by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang [via]

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