| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
books tagged “funny”
books tagged “funny”
›› Find signed collectible books by ''
English
20,000 Baseball Cards Under the Seaby Jon Buller, Susan SchadeISBN 0679815694 (0-679-81569-4)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: '20,000 Baseball Cards Under the Sea'More editions of 20,000 Baseball Cards Under the Sea:
The 20-Minute Gardener : The Garden of Your Dreams Without Giving up Your Life, Your Job, or Your Sanityby T. Christopher, Marty AsherISBN 0679448144 (0-679-44814-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The 20-Minute Gardener : The Garden of Your Dreams Without Giving up Your Life, Your Job, or Your Sanity'More editions of The 20-Minute Gardener : The Garden of Your Dreams Without Giving up Your Life, Your Job, or Your Sanity:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyerby Mark Twain, Russell BakerISBN 0679735011 (0-679-73501-1)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'More editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:
-
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found Thereby Lewis Carroll, John TennielISBN 0679417958 (0-679-41795-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There'Book summary:That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]
More editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There:
All Creatures Great and Smallby Laura KellyISBN 0679872183 (0-679-87218-3)
Softcover, Random House Children's Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'All Creatures Great and Small'More editions of All Creatures Great and Small:
-
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clayby Michael ChabonISBN 0679450041 (0-679-45004-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'Book summary:Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.
But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.
More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park [via]
More editions of Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay:
-
The Annotated Lolitaby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0679727299 (0-679-72729-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Annotated Lolita'Book summary: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]
More editions of The Annotated Lolita:
Bachelor Girlsby Wendy WassersteinISBN 0679730621 (0-679-73062-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Bachelor Girls'More editions of Bachelor Girls:
A Bad Week for the Three Bearsby Tony Bradman, Jenny WilliamsISBN 067983379X (0-679-83379-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Bad Week for the Three Bears'More editions of A Bad Week for the Three Bears:
The Berenstain Bears in the Freaky Funhouseby Stan BerenstainISBN 0679872442 (0-679-87244-2)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Berenstain Bears in the Freaky Funhouse'More editions of The Berenstain Bears in the Freaky Funhouse:
The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Brokeby Angela NisselISBN 0679783571 (0-679-78357-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke'More editions of The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke:
-
The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black GarnettISBN 0679601813 (0-679-60181-3)
Hardcover, Modern Library
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Brothers Karamozov'Book summary:A new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. This acclaimed new English version of Dostoevsky's last novel does justice to all its levels of artistry and intention. [via]
-
Brothers Karamazovby Richard Pevear, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0679410031 (0-679-41003-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Brothers Karamazov'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Dostoevskys towering reputation as one of the handful of thinkers who forged the modern sensibility has sometimes obscured the purely novelistic virtuesbrilliant characterizations, flair for suspense and melodrama, instinctive theatricalitythat made his work so immensely popular in nineteenth-century Russia. The Brothers Karamazov, his last and greatest novel, published just before his death in 1881, chronicles the bitter love-hate struggle between the outsized Fyodor Karamazov and his three very different sons. It is above all the story of a murder, told with hair-raising intellectual clarity and a feeling for the human condition unsurpassed in world literature.
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonskythe definitive version in Englishmagnificently captures the rich and subtle energies of Dostoevskys masterpiece. [via]More editions of Brothers Karamazov:
The Cat in the Hat Party Editionby SeussISBN 0679863486 (0-679-86348-6)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cat in the Hat Party Edition'More editions of The Cat in the Hat Party Edition:
Catullusby Gaius Valerius Catullus, Elmer T. MerrillISBN 0674103505 (0-674-10350-5)
Hardcover, Harvard University Press
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Catullus'More editions of Catullus:
-
Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Venerisby Gaius Valerius CatullusISBN 0674990072 (0-674-99007-2)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris'Book summary:Catullus (Gaius Valerius, 8454 BCE), of Verona, went early to Rome, where he associated not only with other literary men from Cisalpine Gaul but also with Cicero and Hortensius. His surviving poems consist of nearly sixty short lyrics, eight longer poems in various metres, and almost fifty epigrams. All exemplify a strict technique of studied composition inherited from early Greek lyric and the poets of Alexandria. In his work we can trace his unhappy love for a woman he calls Lesbia; the death of his brother; his visits to Bithynia; and his emotional friendships and enmities at Rome. For consummate poetic artistry coupled with intensity of feeling Catullus's poems have no rival in Latin literature.
Tibullus (Albius, ca. 5419 BCE), of equestrian rank and a friend of Horace, enjoyed the patronage of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, whom he several times apostrophizes. Three books of elegies have come down to us under his name, of which only the first two are authentic. Book 1 mostly proclaims his love for 'Delia', Book 2 his passion for 'Nemesis'. The third book consists of a miscellany of poems from the archives of Messalla; it is very doubtful whether any come from the pen of Tibullus himself. But a special interest attaches to a group of them which concern a girl called Sulpicia: some of the poems are written by her lover Cerinthus, while others purport to be her own composition.
The Pervigilium Veneris, a poem of not quite a hundred lines celebrating a spring festival in honour of the goddess of love, is remarkable both for its beauty and as the first clear note of romanticism which transformed classical into medieval literature. The manuscripts give no clue to its author, but recent scholarship has made a strong case for attributing it to the early fourth-century poet Tiberianus.
[via]More editions of Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris:
Commitmentsby Roddy DoyleISBN 0679721746 (0-679-72174-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Commitments'More editions of Commitments:
The Complete Works of Shakespeareby William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington, Hardin CraigISBN 0673076911 (0-673-07691-1)
Hardcover, Scott, Foresman
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare'Book summary:Kindle Description:
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Every play All 37, All 154 Sonnets, with hyper-linking ready Easy To Use 'Table of Contents'
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright
This publication includes all of Shakespeare's works and comes with an Easy To Use 'Table of Contents' to navigate from the beginning to any play of your choice.
Included are all the 37 Major plays by Shakespeare.
Included are all the 154 Sonnets all by Shakespeare. [via]More editions of The Complete Works of Shakespeare:
The Complete Works of Shakespeareby David BevingtonISBN 0673388735 (0-673-38873-5)
Hardcover, Addison-Wesley
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare'More editions of The Complete Works of Shakespeare:
Confessions of a Crap Artist-Jack Isidoreby Philip K. DickISBN 0679741143 (0-679-74114-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of a Crap Artist-Jack Isidore'More editions of Confessions of a Crap Artist-Jack Isidore:
-
Decline and Fallby Evelyn WaughISBN 067942041X (0-679-42041-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Decline and Fall'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Decline and Fall (1928) was Evelyn Waugh's immensely successful first novel, and it displays not only all of its author's customary satiric genius and flair for unearthing the ridiculous in human nature, but also a youthful willingness to train those weapons on any and every thing in his path. In this fractured picaresque comedy of the hapless Paul Pennyfeather stumbling from one disaster to another, Waugh manages the delicious task of skewering every aspect of the society in which he lived.
With an Introduction by Frank Kermode [via]More editions of Decline and Fall:
-
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomedby Karen Elizabeth GordonISBN 0679418601 (0-679-41860-1)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed'Book summary:Karen Elizabeth Gordon is no ordinary grammarian, and her works (including The New Well-Tempered Sentence, Torn Wings and Faux Pas, and The Disheveled Dictionary)--are no ordinary books of grammar. A special edition of the 1984 classic, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is populated by a wickedly decadent cast of gargoyles, mastodons, murderous debutantes, and, yes, vampires (both transitive and otherwise), who cavort and consort in order to illustrate basic principles of grammar. The sentences are intoxicating--"How he loved to dangle his participles, brush his forelock off his forehead with his foreleg, and gaze into the aqueous depths"--but the rules and their explanations are as sound as any you might find in Strunk and White. Outlining the building blocks of the English language, from parts of speech to phrases and clauses, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire goes on to exorcise such grammatical demons as passive voice, fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences. At last, a handbook of grammar you will actually want to read. In the words of Gordon's preface, "Howling, exploding, crackling, flickering with new life-forms, and drunk on fresh blood (some of mine is certainly missing), this deluxe edition reminds us on every page that words, too, have hoofs and wings to transport us far and deep." [via]
More editions of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed:
Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? : Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hitsby Bill MaherISBN 0679456279 (0-679-45627-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? : Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hits'More editions of Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? : Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hits:
A Dollar for Pennyby Julie Glass, Joy AllenISBN 0679889736 (0-679-88973-6)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Dollar for Penny'More editions of A Dollar for Penny:
-
The Elephant Vanishesby Haruki MurakamiISBN 0679750533 (0-679-75053-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elephant Vanishes'Book summary:With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.
By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via] -
Flaubert's Parrotby Julian BarnesISBN 0679731369 (0-679-73136-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Flaubert's Parrot'Book summary:Just what sort of book is Flaubert's Parrot, anyway? A literary biography of 19th-century French novelist, radical, and intellectual impresario Gustave Flaubert? A meditation on the uses and misuses of language? A novel of obsession, denial, irritation, and underhanded connivery? A thriller complete with disguises, sleuthing, mysterious meetings, and unknowing targets? An extended essay on the nature of fiction itself?
On the surface, at first, Julian Barnes's book is the tale of an elderly English doctor's search for some intriguing details of Flaubert's life. Geoffrey Braithwaite seems to be involved in an attempt to establish whether a particularly fine, lovely, and ancient stuffed parrot is in fact one originally "borrowed by G. Flaubert from the Museum of Rouen and placed on his worktable during the writing of Un coeur simple, where it is called Loulou, the parrot of Felicité, the principal character of the tale."
What begins as a droll and intriguing excursion into the minutiae of Flaubert's life and intellect, along with an attempt to solve the small puzzle of the parrot--or rather parrots, for there are two competing for the title of Gustave's avian confrere--soon devolves into something obscure and worrisome, the exploration of an arcane Braithwaite obsession that is perhaps even pathological. The first hint we have that all is not as it seems comes almost halfway into the book, when after a humorously cantankerous account of the inadequacies of literary critics, Braithwaite closes a chapter by saying, "Now do you understand why I hate critics? I could try and describe to you the expression in my eyes at this moment; but they are far too discoloured with rage." And from that point, things just get more and more curious, until they end in the most unexpected bang.
One passage perhaps best describes the overall effect of this extraordinary story: "You can define a net in one of two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally, you would say that it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string." Julian Barnes demonstrates that it is possible to catch quite an interesting fish no matter how you define the net. --Andrew Himes [via]
More editions of Flaubert's Parrot:
Fletchby Gregory McDonaldISBN 0672520206 (0-672-52020-6)
Hardcover, Bobbs-Merrill
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fletch'More editions of Fletch:
The Fran Lebowitz Readerby Fran LebowitzISBN 0679761802 (0-679-76180-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fran Lebowitz Reader'More editions of The Fran Lebowitz Reader:
-
Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Gardenby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles RobinsonISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'Book summary:Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
More editions of Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden:
-
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafeby Fannie FlaggISBN 0679744959 (0-679-74495-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe'Book summary:The remarkable novel of two Southern friendships--the basis of the hit film--available for the first time in large print. [via]
More editions of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe:
-
Geniusby James GleickISBN 0679747044 (0-679-74704-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Genius'Book summary:If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read. [via]
More editions of Genius:
-
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynmanby James GleickISBN 0679408363 (0-679-40836-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman'Book summary:If you've read any of Richard Feynman's wonderful autobiographies you may think that a biography of Feynman would be a waste of your time. Wrong! Gleick's Genius is a masterpiece of scientific biography--and an inspiration to anyone in pursuit of their own fulfillment as a person of genius. Deservedly nominated for a National Book Award, underservedly passed over by the committee in the face of tough competition, and very deservedly a book that you must read. [via]
More editions of Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman:
-
Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beerby P. J. O'RourkeISBN 0679742018 (0-679-74201-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer'Book summary:The bestselling author of Parliament of Whores now dismantles victims ranging from backpack liberals to Lee Iacocca and surveys the collapse of communism, celebrity, and liberalism. "Whatever your political persuasion, you would have to be totally humorless not to feel like chuckling when he (O'Rourke) starts hacking away."--New York Times Book Review. [via]
More editions of Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer:
Goodbye, Columbusby Philip RothISBN 0679748261 (0-679-74826-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Goodbye, Columbus'More editions of Goodbye, Columbus:
-
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Storiesby Philip RothISBN 0679601597 (0-679-60159-7)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories'Book summary:Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters.
Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora. [via]More editions of Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories:
-
The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Worldby Haruki Murakami, Alfred BirnbaumISBN 0679743464 (0-679-74346-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World'Book summary:Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall. [via]
More editions of The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World:
-
The Hippopotamusby Stephen FryISBN 0679438793 (0-679-43879-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hippopotamus'Book summary:Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too.
Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments and disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose and free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan.
But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles, Healings, Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted... [via]More editions of The Hippopotamus:
The Illustrated Woody Allen Readerby Woody Allen, Linda SunshineISBN 067942072X (0-679-42072-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader'More editions of The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader:
-
Jaguars Ripped My Fleshby Tim CahillISBN 0679770798 (0-679-77079-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Jaguars Ripped My Flesh'Book summary:The author of A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg and Pecked to Death by Ducks gives new meaning to the words "going to extremes" in this exhilarating--and frequently hilarious--collection of adventure travel writing. "Cahill . . . (writes) with the precision ofJohn McPhee and Joan Didion tempered by a Monty Pythonesque sense of the absurd."--San Diego Union-Tribune. [via]
More editions of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh:
James and the Giant Peachby Roald Dahl, Lane SmithISBN 0679880909 (0-679-88090-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'James and the Giant Peach'More editions of James and the Giant Peach:
Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Businessby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 0679838864 (0-679-83886-4)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business'More editions of Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business:
Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthdayby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 0679866957 (0-679-86695-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday'More editions of Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday:
Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Busby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 0679826424 (0-679-82642-4)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus'More editions of Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus:
Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcakeby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 0679866949 (0-679-86694-9)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake'More editions of Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake:
-
Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bedby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 0679866973 (0-679-86697-3)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed'Book summary:Meet the World's Funniest KindergartnerJunie B. Jones!
With over 50 million books in print, Barbara Park's New York Times bestselling chapter book series, Junie B. Jones, is a classroom favorite and has been keeping kids laughingand readingfor over 20 years! In the 8th Junie B. Jones book, Junie B. knows there's no such thing as monsters. Mother and Daddy even said so. But then why is there monster drool on Junie B.'s pillow? Oh, no! What if Paulie Allen Puffer is rightwhat if she really does have a monster under her bed? If Junie B. goes to sleep, the monster might see her feet hanging down. And he might think her piggy toes are yummy little wiener sausages!
USA TODAY:
"Junie B. is the darling of the young-reader set."
Publisher's Weekly:
"Park convinces beginning readers that Junie B.and readingare lots of fun."
Kirkus Reviews:
"Junie's swarms of young fans will continue to delight in her unique take on the world&.A hilarious, first-rate read-aloud."
Time Magazine:
"Junie B. Jones is a feisty six-year-old with an endearing penchant for honesty." [via]More editions of Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed:
-
Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animalby Barbara Park, Denise BrunkusISBN 067988663X (0-679-88663-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal'Book summary:Meet the World's Funniest Kindergartner-Junie B. Jones!Junie B. is spending the night! With over 50 million books in print, Barbara Park's New York Times bestselling chapter book series, Junie B. Jones, is a classroom favorite and has been keeping kids laughing-and reading-for over 20 years! In the 10th Junie B. Jones book, Lucille is having a sleepover party-at her richie nanna's big giant house! Grace and Junie B. can't wait to see all the rich stuff in that place. Sleeping over at the nanna's is sure to be a dream come true! 'Cause what could possibly go wrong? USA TODAY: "Junie B. is the darling of the young-reader set." Publisher's Weekly: "Park convinces beginning readers that Junie B.-and reading-are lots of fun." Kirkus Reviews: "Junie's swarms of young fans will continue to delight in her unique take on the world....A hilarious, first-rate read-aloud." Time Magazine: "Junie B. Jones is a feisty six-year-old with an endearing penchant for honesty." [via]
More editions of Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal:
-
Just So Storiesby Rudyard KiplingISBN 0679417974 (0-679-41797-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Just So Stories'Book summary:Kipling's own drawings, with their long, funny captions, illustrate his hilarious explanations of How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Armadillo Happened, and other animal How's. He began inventing these stories in his American wife's hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, to amuse his eldest daughter--and they have served ever since as a source of laughter for children everywhere. [via]
More editions of Just So Stories:
The Ladies' Manby Elinor LipmanISBN 0679456945 (0-679-45694-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ladies' Man'More editions of The Ladies' Man:
The Lay of the Landby Richard FordISBN 0679454683 (0-679-45468-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lay of the Land'More editions of The Lay of the Land:
-
Life of Piby Yann MartelISBN 0676978991 (0-676-97899-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Life of Pi'Book summary: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]
More editions of Life of Pi:
Life on the Mississippiby Mark Twain, Jonathan Raban, Library of America StaffISBN 067972527X (0-679-72527-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Life on the Mississippi'Book summary:Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twains most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twains life before he began to write.
Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also Americas most profound chronicler of the human comedy.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]-
Lolitaby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0679723161 (0-679-72316-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Lolita'Book summary: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] -
The Loraxby Dr. SeussISBN 0679889108 (0-679-88910-8)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lorax'Book summary:When Dr. Seuss gets serious, you know it must be important. Published in 1971, and perhaps inspired by the "save our planet" mindset of the 1960s, The Lorax is an ecological warning that still rings true today amidst the dangers of clear-cutting, pollution, and disregard for the earth's environment. In The Lorax, we find what we've come to expect from the illustrious doctor: brilliantly whimsical rhymes, delightfully original creatures, and weirdly undulating illustrations. But here there is also something more--a powerful message that Seuss implores both adults and children to heed.
The now remorseful Once-ler--our faceless, bodiless narrator--tells the story himself. Long ago this enterprising villain chances upon a place filled with wondrous Truffula Trees, Swomee-Swans, Brown Bar-ba- loots, and Humming-Fishes. Bewitched by the beauty of the Truffula Tree tufts, he greedily chops them down to produce and mass-market Thneeds. ("It's a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat.") As the trees swiftly disappear and the denizens leave for greener pastures, the fuzzy yellow Lorax (who speaks for the trees "for the trees have no tongues") repeatedly warns the Once-ler, but his words of wisdom are for naught. Finally the Lorax extricates himself from the scorched earth (by the seat of his own furry pants), leaving only a rock engraved "UNLESS." Thus, with his own colorful version of a compelling morality play, Dr. Seuss teaches readers not to fool with Mother Nature. But as you might expect from Seuss, all hope is not lost--the Once-ler has saved a single Truffula Tree seed! Our fate now rests in the hands of a caring child, who becomes our last chance for a clean, green future. (Ages 4 to 8) [via]
More editions of The Lorax:
Lost in Place: Growing up Absurd in Suburbiaby Mark SalzmanISBN 0679767789 (0-679-76778-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia'Book summary:The author of Iron and Silk looks back to his tortured youth with self-deprecating humor and wistful fondness. The oldest child in a middle-class household in Connecticut, the son of a piano teacher and a social worker, by age six the author was an eccentric with enormous aspirations - none of them ever fulfilled - who stood out not only from his more conventional parents and brother and sister but from everyone else in his suburban neighborhood. A hilarious memoir in the tradition of Russell Baker's Growing Up. [via]
More editions of Lost in Place: Growing up Absurd in Suburbia:
A Magic Crystal?by Louis Sachar, Amy WummerISBN 0679890025 (0-679-89002-5)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Magic Crystal?'More editions of A Magic Crystal?:
Marvin Redpostby Louis Sachar, Amy WummerISBN 067988999X (0-679-88999-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Marvin Redpost'More editions of Marvin Redpost:
-
Master And Margaritaby Michael Glenny, Mikhail BulgakovISBN 0679410465 (0-679-41046-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'MASTER AND MARGARITA'Book summary:Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.
Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"
Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park [via]
More editions of Master And Margarita:
-
Master And Margaritaby Mikhail Bulgakov, Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, Diana Lewis BurginISBN 0679760806 (0-679-76080-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'MASTER AND MARGARITA'More editions of Master And Margarita:
-
A Midsummer Night's Dreamby Leon Garfield, Elena Prorokova, William ShakespeareISBN 0679838708 (0-679-83870-8)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'Book summary:An illustrated, abridged verison of the Shakespeare comedy with background information and explanatory stage directions. [via]
More editions of A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Mr. Frumble's Worst Day Ever!by Richard ScarryISBN 067981616X (0-679-81616-X)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Frumble's Worst Day Ever!'More editions of Mr. Frumble's Worst Day Ever!:
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologistby Mark LeynerISBN 0679745793 (0-679-74579-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist'More editions of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist:
Nobody's Foolby Richard RussoISBN 0679753338 (0-679-75333-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Nobody's Fool'More editions of Nobody's Fool:
Nothing but Blue Skiesby Thomas McGuaneISBN 0679747788 (0-679-74778-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Nothing but Blue Skies'More editions of Nothing but Blue Skies:
-
Pantagruel Gargantuaby Francois Rabelais, Thomas UrquhartISBN 0679431373 (0-679-43137-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Pantagruel Gargantua'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]
More editions of Pantagruel Gargantua:
Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U. S. Governmentby P. J. O'RourkeISBN 0679737898 (0-679-73789-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U. S. Government'More editions of Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U. S. Government:
Pass the Butterworms : Remote Journeys Oddly Renderedby Tim CahillISBN 0679456252 (0-679-45625-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Pass the Butterworms : Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered'More editions of Pass the Butterworms : Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered:
The Penelopiadby Margaret AtwoodISBN 067697418X (0-676-97418-X)
Hardcover, Knopf
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Penelopiad'More editions of The Penelopiad:
-
The Phantom Tollboothby Norton JusterISBN 0679833706 (0-679-83370-6)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Phantom Tollbooth'Book summary:"It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time," Milo laments. "[T]here's nothing for me to do, nowhere I'd care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing." This bored, bored young protagonist who can't see the point to anything is knocked out of his glum humdrum by the sudden and curious appearance of a tollbooth in his bedroom. Since Milo has absolutely nothing better to do, he dusts off his toy car, pays the toll, and drives through. What ensues is a journey of mythic proportions, during which Milo encounters countless odd characters who are anything but dull.
Norton Juster received (and continues to receive) enormous praise for this original, witty, and oftentimes hilarious novel, first published in 1961. In an introductory "Appreciation" written by Maurice Sendak for the 35th anniversary edition, he states, "The Phantom Tollbooth leaps, soars, and abounds in right notes all over the place, as any proper masterpiece must." Indeed.
As Milo heads toward Dictionopolis he meets with the Whether Man ("for after all it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be"), passes through The Doldrums (populated by Lethargarians), and picks up a watchdog named Tock (who has a giant alarm clock for a body). The brilliant satire and double entendre intensifies in the Word Market, where after a brief scuffle with Officer Short Shrift, Milo and Tock set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. Anyone with an appreciation for language, irony, or Alice in Wonderland-style adventure will adore this book for years on end. (Ages 8 and up) [via]
More editions of The Phantom Tollbooth:
-
Pninby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0679723412 (0-679-72341-2)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Pnin'Book summary:Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever. [via]
More editions of Pnin:
-
Portnoy's Complaintby Philip RothISBN 0679756450 (0-679-75645-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Portnoy's Complaint'Book summary:Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.
With a new Afterword by the author for the 25th Anniversary edition. [via]More editions of Portnoy's Complaint:
-
A Prayer for Owen Meanyby John IrvingISBN 0679642595 (0-679-64259-5)
Hardcover, Modern Library
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Prayer for Owen Meany'Book summary:Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras.
The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo [via]
More editions of A Prayer for Owen Meany:
-
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate : Two Novelsby Nancy MitfordISBN 0679600906 (0-679-60090-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate : Two Novels'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 The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate : Two Novels:
Scorned & Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentricsby Bill RichardsonISBN 0676970796 (0-676-97079-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Canada
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Scorned & Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics'More editions of Scorned & Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics:
Snowballby Jennifer Armstrong, Jean PidgeonISBN 067986444X (0-679-86444-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Snowball'More editions of Snowball:
-
Thank You for Smokingby Christopher BuckleyISBN 0679431748 (0-679-43174-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Thank You for Smoking'Book summary:"Nick Naylor had been called many things since becoming chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. But until now no one had actually compared him to Satan." They might as well have, though. "Gucci Goebbels," "yuppie Mephistopheles," and "death merchant" are just a few endearments Naylor has earned himself as the tobacco lobby's premier spin doctor. The hero of Thank You for Smoking does of course have his fans. His arguments against the neo-puritanical antismoking trends of the '90s have made him a repeat guest on Larry King, and the granddaddy of Winston-Salem wants him to be the anointed heir. Still, his newfound notoriety has unleashed a deluge of death threats.
Christopher Buckley's satirical gift shines in this hilarious look at the ironies of "personal freedom" and the unbearable smugness of political correctness. Bracing in its cynicism, Thank You for Smoking is a delightful meander off the beaten path of mainstream American ethics. And despite his hypertension-inducing, slander-splattered, morally bankrupt behavior--which leads one Larry King listener to describe him as "lower than whale crap"--you'll find yourself rooting for smoking's mass enabler. --Rebekah Warren [via]
More editions of Thank You for Smoking:
There's a Wocket in My Pocket!by SeussISBN 0679882839 (0-679-88283-9)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'There's a Wocket in My Pocket!'More editions of There's a Wocket in My Pocket!:
This Damn House! : My Subcontract with Americaby Margo KaufmanISBN 0679428402 (0-679-42840-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'This Damn House! : My Subcontract with America'More editions of This Damn House! : My Subcontract with America:
-
This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott FitzgeraldISBN 0679447237 (0-679-44723-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'This Side of Paradise'Book summary:Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920. [via]
-
The Three Musketeersby Alexandre Dumas, Deborah G. FelderISBN 0679860177 (0-679-86017-7)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Three Musketeers'Book summary:It's "one for all and all for one!" as D'Artagnan and his three pals follow a course of swashbuckling intrigue and adventure in 17th-centry France. [via]
More editions of The Three Musketeers:
-
The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequelby Alexandre Dumas, Jacques Le ClercqISBN 0679603328 (0-679-60332-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel'Book summary:"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth escapes, wild rides. It is all impossible and it is all magnificent."
First published in 1844, Alexandre Dumas's swashbuckling epic chronicles the adventures of D'Artagnan, a gallant young nobleman who journeys to Paris in 1625 hoping to join the ranks of musketeers guarding Louis XIII. He soon finds himself fighting alongside three
heroic comrades--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis--who seek to uphold the honor of the king by foiling the wicked plots of Cardinal Richelieu and the beautiful spy "Milady."
"Dumas will be read a hundred, nay, three hundred years on," wrote John Galsworthy. "His greatest creation is undoubtedly D'Artagnan, type at once of the fighting adventurer and of the trusty servant, whose wily blade is ever at the back of those whose hearts have neither his magnanimity nor his courage. Few, if any, characters in fiction inspire one with such belief in their
individual existences. . . . To one who made D'Artagnan all shall be forgiven." Clifton Fadiman agreed: "Dumas enjoyed writing his stories. . . . The pleasure he must have felt in
creating D'Artagnan's troubles and triumphs
flashes out of these pages. . . . Dumas rampaged through the history of France, inventing, changing, distorting--doing whatever was needed to produce a tale to hold the reader breathless." [via]More editions of The Three Musketeers: Being the First of the D'artagnan Romances; and Twenty Years After, a Sequel:
-
The Thurber Carnivalby James ThurberISBN 0679600892 (0-679-60089-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Thurber Carnival'Book summary:After the chuckles and amidst the chortles, the first-time reader of The Thurber Carnival is bound to utter a discreetly voiced "Huh?" Like Cracker Jacks, there are surprises inside James Thurber's delicious 1945 smorgasbord of essays, stories, and sketches. This festival is, surprises and all, a collection of earlier collections (mostly), including, among others, gems from My World--and Welcome to It, Let Your Mind Alone!, and The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze. Needless to say, there are also numerous cartoons that, by themselves, are worth the price of admission. While redoubling Thurber's deserved reputation as a laugh-out-loud humorist and teller-of-gentle-tales, it reintroduces him as a thinker-of-thoughts. To wit: his 1933 "Preface to a Life," in which he observes himself while discussing "writers of light pieces running from a thousand to two thousand words":
To call such persons "humorists," a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature. The little wheels of their invention are set in motion by the damp hand of melancholy.
Enjoy the surprises, certainly, but revel in the candy-coated popcorn and peanuts. As in "More Alarms at Night," in which a teenaged Thurber intrudes upon his sleeping father, a skittish man named Charles, because he can't recall the name Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Coincidentally, his father has just been frightened half to death by Thurber's brother, who had earlier stalked into his room saying coldly, "Buck, your time has come.""Listen," I said. "Name some towns in New Jersey quick!" It must have been around three in the morning. Father got up, keeping the bed between him and me, and started to pull his trousers on. "Don't bother about dressing," I said. "Just name some towns in New Jersey." While he hastily pulled on his clothes--I remember he left his socks off and put his shoes on his bare feet--father began to name, in a shaky voice, various New Jersey cities. I can still see him reaching for his coat without taking his eyes off me. "Newark," he said, "Jersey City, Atlantic City, Elizabeth, Paterson, Passaic, Trenton, Jersey City, Trenton, Paterson--" "It has two names," I snapped. "Elizabeth and Paterson," he said.
Of course, things turn out fine, as well they should. And why not? The best of Thurber, which The Thurber Carnival arguably is, is sublime; surprising insight and wry observations tossed lightly and served constantly with effortless good humor and an obvious love for all things gently eccentric. --Michael Hudson [via]More editions of The Thurber Carnival:
-
The Time Traveler's Wifeby Audrey NiffeneggerISBN 0676976336 (0-676-97633-6)
Softcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Time Traveler's Wife'Book summary:AUDREY NIFFENEGGER [via]
More editions of The Time Traveler's Wife:
-
To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Designby Henry PetroskiISBN 0679734163 (0-679-73416-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design'Book summary:The moral of this book is that behind every great engineering success is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular) engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best known examples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action -- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seen tossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage), the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- and many lesser known but equally informative examples. The line of reasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized into his quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in The Evolution of Useful Things, but this book is arguably the more illuminating -- and defintely the more enjoyable -- of these two titles. Highly recommended. [via]
More editions of To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design:
-
Ulyssesby James JoyceISBN 0679722769 (0-679-72276-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
The Universe of Douglas Adamsby Douglas AdamsISBN 0671922319 (0-671-92231-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Universe of Douglas Adams'More editions of The Universe of Douglas Adams:
-
The Vintage Menckenby Alistair Cooke, H. L. MenckenISBN 0679728953 (0-679-72895-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vintage Mencken'Book summary:The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page." [via]
More editions of The Vintage Mencken:
-
William Shakespeare Complete Worksby William Shakespeare, Eric Rasmusse N, Heloise SenechalISBN 0679642951 (0-679-64295-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'William Shakespeare Complete Works'Book summary:FROM THE WORLD FAMOUS ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, THE FIRST AUTHORITATIVE, MODERNIZED, AND CORRECTED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S FIRST FOLIO IN THREE CENTURIES.Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare's fellow actors in 1623, the First Folio was the original Complete Works. It is arguably the most important literary work in the English language. But starting with Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day, Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, gradually corrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflated textual variations.Now Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today's most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, have edited the First Folio as a complete book, resulting in a definitive Complete Works for the twenty-first century.Combining innovative scholarship with brilliant commentary and textual analysis that emphasizes performance history and values, this landmark edition will be indispensable to students, theater professionals, and general readers alike.For more information on this Modern Library edition, visit www.therscshakespeare.com [via]
More editions of William Shakespeare Complete Works:
Zombies Don't Do Windowsby Erica Farber, J. R. Sansevere, Mercer MayerISBN 0679873619 (0-679-87361-9)
Softcover, Random House Children's Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Zombies Don't Do Windows'More editions of Zombies Don't Do Windows:
Latin
Latin for Even More Occasions (Lingua Latina Multo Pluribus Occasionibus)by Henry BeardISBN 0679406743 (0-679-40674-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Latin for Even More Occasions (Lingua Latina Multo Pluribus Occasionibus)'More editions of Latin for Even More Occasions (Lingua Latina Multo Pluribus Occasionibus):
![[powered by Muze Inc.]](http://i.bookfinder.com/images/site/muze/powered_by_muze.gif){kind=small}