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  • Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    by Arthur Conan Doyle
    ISBN 0553267728 (0-553-26772-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • All Creatures Great and Small
    by James Herriot
    ISBN 0553268120 (0-553-26812-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Here is the heartwarming true story of Dr. James Herriot, an English country veterinarian, whose humor and natural storytelling ability have captured the hearts of American readers in a very special way. "Warm, joyous, often hilarious . . . "--New York Times Book Review. (All Ages) [via]

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  • Anne of Avonlea
    by L.M. Montgomery, Caroline Parry
    ISBN 0553213148 (0-553-21314-8)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    The Girl from Green Gables

    It seemed  only yesterday that the skinny, freckle-faced redhead  had first come to the island. Now here was Anne,  teaching at the Avonlea school, sixteen, pretty,  and all grown up. Well, not quite grown up. In fact,  Anne was not very different from her restless  young pupils -- mischievous and spirited as ever and  headed for hilarious predicaments with a cranky new  neighbor, a hungry Jersey cow, a parrot with an  embarrassing vocabulary, and a truly  dreadful mistake!

    The Anne Books  

    Delightful, unpredictable Anne Shirley has  been charming readers of all ages, in every part of  the world, for over three-quarters of a century.  Bestsellers from the moment they were published,  the Anne Of Green Gables novels  have allowed generations of children to grow up  right along with Anne. [via]

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  • Anne of Green Gables
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 0553153277 (0-553-15327-7)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    As soon as Anne Shirley arrived at the snug,  white farmhouse called Green Gables, she knew she  wanted to stay forever... but would the Cuthberts  send her back to the orphanage? Anne knows she's not  what they expected -- a skinny girl with decidedly  red hair and a temper to match. If only she could  convince them to let her stay, she'd try very hard  not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes or blurt  out the very first thing she had to say. Anne was  not like anybody else, everyone at Green Gables  agreed; she was special -- a girl with an enormous  imagination. This orphan girl dreamed of the day  when she could call herself Anne of Green Gables. [via]

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  • Anne of the Island
    by L.M. Montgomery
    ISBN 0553213172 (0-553-21317-2)
    Softcover, Skylark

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    Book summary:

    This volume contains "Anne of The Island" and "Anne of Windy Willows". Anne is older now, and her friends are beginning to get married and move away; meanwhile her romance with Gilbert Blythe begins to blossom, and there are developments in her career as a schoolteacher. [via]

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  • Around the World in Eighty Days
    by Jules Verne
    ISBN 0553213563 (0-553-21356-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Jules Verne Great excitement and awe greeted its publication in 1873, and today Around the World in Eighty Days remains Jules Vernes most successful novel. A daring wager by the eccentric and mysterious Englishman Phileas Fogg that he can circle the globe in just eighty days initiates this marvelous travelogue and exciting suspense story. Together with his manservant, Passepartout, Fogg makes a breathless world tour, overcoming wild misadventures and finding time to rescue a beautiful Indian maharani from a burning funeral pyreall the while restlessly pursued by a bumbling detective called Mr. Fix. Realistically utilizing nearly every means of transportation known in the 1870s, Around the World in Eighty Days generated enchantment with scientific progressand its delightful mixture of fantasy, comedy, and dazzling suspense has kept it a perennially superb entertainment. [via]

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  • Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
    The Bell Jar
    by Sylvia Plath, Frances McCullough
    ISBN 0553260081 (0-553-26008-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    A vulnerable young girl wins a dream assignment  on a big-time New York fashion magazine and finds  herself plunged into a nightmare. An  autobiographical account of Sylvia Plath's own mental breakdown  and suicide attempt, The Bell Jar  is more than a confessional novel, it is a comic  but painful statement of what happens to a woman's  aspirations in a society that refuses to take them  seriously... a society that expects electroshock  to cure the despair of a sensitive, questioning  young artist whose search for identity becomes a  terrifying descent toward madness. [via]

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  • Bhagavad-Gita
    by Barbara S. Miller
    ISBN 0553213652 (0-553-21365-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    The Bhagavad-Gita has been an essential text of Hindu culture in India since the time of its composition in the first century A.D. One of the great classics of world literature, it has inspired such diverse thinkers as Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and T.S. Eliot; most recently, it formed the core of Peter Brook's celebrated production of the Mahabharata. [via]

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  • The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War
    by Barbara S. Miller
    ISBN 0553353403 (0-553-35340-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    "The Bhagavad-Gita" has been an essential text of Hindu culture in India since the time of its composition in the first century A.D. One of the great classics of world literature, it has inspired such diverse thinkers as Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and T.S. Eliot; most recently, it formed the core of Peter Brook's celebrated production of the "Mahabharata." [via]

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  • London, Jack: The Call of the Wild and White Fang
    The Call of the Wild and White Fang
    by Jack London
    ISBN 0553212338 (0-553-21233-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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  • Cannery Row
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0553278231 (0-553-27823-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Floods bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who ministers to sick puppies and unhappy souls, unexpectedly finds true love. Cannery Row is just a few blocks long, but the story it harbors is suffused with warmth, understanding, and a great fund of human values.

    First published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is—both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. John Steinbeck draws on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, and interweaves their stories in this world where only the fittest survive—creating what is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck returns to the setting of Tortilla Flat to create another evocative portrait of life as it is lived by those who unabashedly put the highest value on the intangibles—human warmth, camaraderie, and love.

    [via]

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  • A Christmas Carol
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553212443 (0-553-21244-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    In the history of English literature, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which has been continuously in print since it was first published in the winter of 1843, stands out as the quintessential Christmas story. What makes this charming edition of Dickens's immortal tale so special is the collection of 80 vivid illustrations by Everett Shinn (1876-1953). Shinn, a well-known artist in his time, was a popular illustrator of newspapers and magazines whose work displayed a remarkable affinity for the stories of Charles Dickens, evoking the bustling street life of the mid-1800s. Printed on heavy, cream-colored paper stock, the edges of the pages have been left rough, simulating the way in which the story might have appeared in Dickens's own time. Though countless editions of this classic have been published over the years, this one stands out as particularly beautiful, nostalgic, and evocative of the spirit of Christmas. [via]

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  • Dickens, Charles: A Christmas Carol and Other Victorian Fairy Tales
    A Christmas Carol and Other Victorian Fairy Tales
    by Charles Dickens, U. C. Knoepflmacher
    ISBN 0553211269 (0-553-21126-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Cider House Rules
    by John Irving
    ISBN 0553258001 (0-553-25800-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is John Irving's sixth novel. Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud's, ether addict and abortionist. It is also the story of Dr. Larch's favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. [via]

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  • Colour of Magic
    by Terry Pratchett
    ISBN 0552124753 (0-552-12475-3)
    Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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    Book summary:

    paperback, vg++ [via]

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  • Confessions of Nat Turner
    by William Styron
    ISBN 055326916X (0-553-26916-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery...

    The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.

    The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August.

    The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations--and hopes--which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage.


    From the Hardcover edition. [via]

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  • Count of Monte Cristo
    by Alexandre Dumas, Lowell Blair
    ISBN 0553213504 (0-553-21350-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Edmund Dantes, unjustly convicted of aiding the exiled Napoleon, escapes after 14 years of imprisonment and seeks his revenge in Paris. [via]

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  • The Crying of Lot Forty-Nine
    by Thomas Pynchon
    ISBN 0553236911 (0-553-23691-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.

    [via]

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  • The Dancing Wu Li Masters : An Overview of the New Physics
    by Gary Zukav, David Finkelstein
    ISBN 055326382X (0-553-26382-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    At an Esalen Institute meeting in 1976, tai chi master Al Huang said that the Chinese word for physics is Wu Li, "patterns of organic energy." Journalist Gary Zukav and the others present developed the idea of physics as the dance of the Wu Li Masters--the teachers of physical essence. Zukav explains the concept further:

    The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter.... This book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li.... Most people believe that physicists are explaining the world. Some physicists even believe that, but the Wu Li Masters know that they are only dancing with it.

    The "new physics" of Zukav's 1979 book comprises quantum theory, particle physics, and relativity. Even as these theories age they haven't percolated all that far into the collective consciousness; they're too far removed from mundane human experience not to need introduction. The Dancing Wu Li Masters remains an engaging, accessible way to meet the most profound and mind-altering insights of 20th-century science. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]

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  • The Difference Engine
    by Bruce Sterling, William Gibson
    ISBN 055329461X (0-553-29461-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. [via]

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  • The Difference Engine
    by William Gibson
    ISBN 055307346X (0-553-07346-X)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. [via]

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  • The Doctors' Book of Home Remedies
    by Prevention Magazine Editors
    ISBN 0553291564 (0-553-29156-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    What do doctors do when they get sick? The editors of Prevention Magazine Health Books asked more than 500 of the nations top specialists to recommend their best doctor-tested and easy-to-follow remedies for 138 illnesses and maladies. This complete, practical guide contains the distilled experience of health professionals who offer more than 2300 accessible healing tips for the most common medical complaints. In this handy reference you will find curative techniques and symptom-relieving treatments for bladder infections, depression, emphysema, headaches, premenstrual syndrome, toothaches, and much more. Here are invaluable at-home solutions for annoying afflictions such as canker sores, dandruff, and snoring as well as methods for coping with more serious health problems such as high cholesterol, ulcers, and backaches. The Doctors Book Of Home Remedies is like having a doctor on call 24 hours a day. So treat yourself to this prescription for health and stay well. [via]

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  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 055321277X (0-553-21277-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    From the Back Cover: "Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' as a 'shilling shocker.' He then burned the draft, and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self. Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, 'Jekyll and Hyde' is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature - as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror..." [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stoker
    ISBN 0553212710 (0-553-21271-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    One of the most popular stories ever told, dracula (1897) has been re-created for the stage and screen hundreds of times in the last century. Yet it is essentially a victorian saga, an awesome tale of thrillingly bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal atrocities reflect the dark underside of a supremely moralistic age. Above all, dracula is a quintessential story of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters in literature: centuries-old count dracula, whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, the beautiful. Bram stoker, who was also the manager of the famous actor sir henry irving, wrote seventeen novels. Dracula remains his most celebrated and enduring work -- even today this gothic masterpiece has lost none of the spine-tingling impact that makes it a classic of the genre [via]

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  • Dragonsong
    by Anne McCaffrey
    ISBN 0553258524 (0-553-25852-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Anne McCaffrey's best-selling Harper Hall Trilogy  is a wonder-filled classic of the  imagination. Dragonsong, the first volume in the  series, is the enchanting tale of how Menolly of  Half Circle Hold became Pern's first female Harper,  and rediscovered the legendary fire lizards who  helped to save her world. [via]

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  • Dubliners
    by James Joyce
    ISBN 0553213806 (0-553-21380-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    James Joyce has been hailed as one of the great literary rebels of our time. He rebelled against social and literary conventions, against Catholicism, and against Dublin, the city at the center of this magnificent collection of stories. In Dubliners, Joyce paints vivid portraits of the denizens of the city of his birth, from the young boy encountering death in the fist story, "The Sisters," to the middle-aged Gabriel of the haunting final story, "The Dead." This collection is both unflinchingly realistic portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" and, as Joyce himself explained, a window through which his countrymen could get "one good look at themselves." [via]

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  • The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
    by Tom Wolfe
    ISBN 0553264915 (0-553-26491-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.

    Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo [via]

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  • Kaye, M. M.: The Far Pavilions
    The Far Pavilions
    by M. M. Kaye
    ISBN 0553277359 (0-553-27735-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Farthest Shore
    by Ursula K. Le Guin
    ISBN 0553268473 (0-553-26847-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea cycle has become one of the best-loved fantasies of our time.  The windswept world of Earthsea is one of the greatest creations in all fantasy literature, frequently compared with J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth or C.S. Lewis' Narnia.  The magnificent saga begins with A Wizard Of Earthsea,  continues in The Tombs Of Atuan and The Farthest Shore, and concludes with Tehanu --each book a treasure of wisdom, wonder, and literary wizardry.  The magic had gone out of the world.  All over Earthsea the mages had forgotten their spells, the springs of wizardry were running dry.  Ged, Dragonlord and Archmage, set out with Arren, a highborn young prince, to seek the source of the darkness.  This is the tale of their harrowing journey beyond the shores of death to heal a wounded land. [via]

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  • Girls In Pants: The Third Summer Of The Sisterhood
    by Ann Brashares
    ISBN 0552552771 (0-552-55277-1)
    Softcover, Trafalgar Square Books

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    Book summary:

    Ages 12 and up. Best buds Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bridget are back with their magical pair of shared jeans in Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood. Each summer brings new and difficult challenges, as the perennially separated friends discover afresh this last season before college. Tibby struggles with the idea of close friend Brian becoming her boyfriend, and their fragile relationship is soon tested by a tragedy in her immediate family. Carmen doesnt know how to react when she finds out that her middle-aged mom is pregnant, and Bridget is unpleasantly surprised to be reunited with the boy who broke her heart two summers ago. Finally, Lena, still coming to terms with the loss of her first love, tries to convince her strict father that art school is a better career path than Greek restaurant management. But through every crisis, each girl is assured of the love and support of the created sisterhood when she pulls on the denim armor of the cherished, and by now, a bit fragrant ("Rule # 1. You must never wash the Pants.") Traveling Pants.

    Full of homey platitudes about life, love and the pursuit of perfect jeans, Girls in Pants occasionally reads like a lengthy Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul entry. But often thats precisely the kind of friendly reassurance female readers are looking for, and fans of the wildly popular series whove journeyed every summer with the "Septembers" will find much to laugh and cry about in this concluding volume. --Jennifer Hubert [via]

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  • Gnomes
    by Rien Poortvliet, Will Huygen
    ISBN 0553345001 (0-553-34500-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Les gnomes sont nombreux à peupler les sous-bois de toute l'Europe. Il fallait donc bien un livre qui apprenne aux humains à mieux les connaître. Celui-ci, largement commenté et illustré, est devenu l'ouvrage de référence en la matière. Il détaille la vie et les légendes des gnomes. Ses auteurs ont mené une véritable enquête scientifique et font part de toutes leurs observations. Comment les gnomes construisent-ils leurs maisons ? Comment mangent-ils ? Comment se soignent-ils ? Comment se reproduisent-ils ? Rien n'est oublié. Les Gnomes régaleront ceux qui s'intéressent aux personnages fantastiques. Ils trouveront des mêmes auteurs et chez le même éditeur Le Livre secret des gnomes. --Ségolène Dujardin [via]

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  • Good Omens
    by Terry Pratchett
    ISBN 0552137030 (0-552-13703-0)
    Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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    Book summary:

    Pratchett (of Discworld fame) and Gaiman (of Sandman fame) may seem an unlikely combination, but the topic (Armageddon) of this fast-paced novel is old hat to both. Pratchett's wackiness collaborates with Gaiman's morbid humor; the result is a humanist delight to be savored and reread again and again. You see, there was a bit of a mixup when the Antichrist was born, due in part to the machinations of Crowley, who did not so much fall as saunter downwards, and in part to the mysterious ways as manifested in the form of a part-time rare book dealer, an angel named Aziraphale. Like top agents everywhere, they've long had more in common with each other than the sides they represent, or the conflict they are nominally engaged in. The only person who knows how it will all end is Agnes Nutter, a witch whose prophecies all come true, if one can only manage to decipher them. The minor characters along the way (Famine makes an appearance as diet crazes, no-calorie food and anorexia epidemics) are as much fun as the story as a whole, which adds up to one of those rare books which is enormous fun to read the first time, and the second time, and the third time... [via]

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  • Great Expectations
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553213423 (0-553-21342-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    In the marshy mists of a village churchyard, a  tiny orphan boy named Pip is suddenly terrified by a  shivering, limping convict on the run. Years  later, a supremely arrogant young Pip boards the coach  to London where, by the grace of a mysterious  benefactor, he will join the ranks of the idle rich  and "become a gentleman." Finally, in the  luminous mists of the village at evening, Pip the  man meets Estella, his dazzingly beautiful  tormentor, in a ruined garden--and lays to rest all the  heartaches and illusions that his "great  expectations" have brought upon him. Dickens's  biographer, Edgar H. Johnson, has said that--except  for the author's last-minute tampering with his  original ending--Great Expectations  is "the most perfectly constructed and  perfectly written of all Dickens's works." In John  Irving's Introduction to this edition, the  novelist takes the view that Dickens's revised ending is  "far more that mirror of the quality of trust in  the novel as a whole." Both versions of the  ending are printed here. [via]

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  • Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings
    by Jonathan Swift
    ISBN 055321232X (0-553-21232-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Considered one of English literature's first and greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift possessed a timeless genius for pointing out the foibles of human nature that still has the power to provoke, amuse, and, at times, even outrage our modern sensibilities. This representative collection of Swift's major writings includes the complete Gulliver's Travels as well as A Tale of a Tub, "The Battle of the Books," "A Modest Proposal," "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity," "The Bickerstaff Papers," and many more of his brilliantly satirical works. Here too are selections from Swift's poetry and portions of his Journal to Stella. Swift's savage ridicule, corrosive wit, and sparkling humor are fully displayed in this comprehensive collection. [via]

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  • King Lear
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553212974 (0-553-21297-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    King Lear stands alongside Hamlet as one of the most profound expressions of tragic drama in literature. Written between 1604 and 1605, it represents Shakespeare at the height of his dramatic power. Drawing on ancient British history, Shakespeare constructs a plot that reads like a fable in its clear-sighted but terrifying simplicity. The ageing King Lear calls his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia to witness that he wishes "to shake all cares and business from our age" and divide his kingdom between his three children. When Cordelia refuses to flatter her father with sycophantic words of love, her banishment leads to chaos and civil war as Lear's disastrous "division of the kingdom" gives free reign to the greed and ambition of his two remaining daughters.

    As Lear sinks into rage and madness he is deserted by everyone except his "bitter" Fool, the loyal Kent and the exiled Cordelia. The play descends into a nighmarish theatre of cruelty and absurdity as Lear realises he has "ta'en / Too little care" of the poverty and corruption of his kingdom, and his loyal but foolish friend Gloucester has his eyes gouged out. Metaphors of monstrosity and perversions of nature structure the dramatic action, and the play's ending remains one of the most harrowing in all of Shakespeare. Many see a profound despair and nihilism in King Lear, and would agree with Kent's conclusion that "All's cheerless, dark and deadly". Other writers have identified a radical but pessimistic critique of contemporary conceptions of kingship and absolutist authority, yet it remains a remarkable tragedy of public misjudgement and intensely private grief and anguish. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Hesse, Hermann: Magister Ludi
    Magister Ludi
    by Hermann Hesse
    ISBN 0553262378 (0-553-26237-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Hammett, Dashiell: Maltese Falcon
    Maltese Falcon
    by Dashiell Hammett
    ISBN 0553065092 (0-553-06509-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Martian Chronicles
    by Ray Bradbury
    ISBN 0553278223 (0-553-27822-3)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    From "Rocket Summer" to "The Million-Year Picnic," Ray Bradbury's stories of the colonization of Mars form an eerie mesh of past and future. Written in the 1940s, the chronicles drip with nostalgic atmosphere--shady porches with tinkling pitchers of lemonade, grandfather clocks, chintz-covered sofas. But longing for this comfortable past proves dangerous in every way to Bradbury's characters--the golden-eyed Martians as well as the humans. Starting in the far-flung future of 1999, expedition after expedition leaves Earth to investigate Mars. The Martians guard their mysteries well, but they are decimated by the diseases that arrive with the rockets. Colonists appear, most with ideas no more lofty than starting a hot-dog stand, and with no respect for the culture they've displaced.

    Bradbury's quiet exploration of a future that looks so much like the past is sprinkled with lighter material. In "The Silent Towns," the last man on Mars hears the phone ring and ends up on a comical blind date. But in most of these stories, Bradbury holds up a mirror to humanity that reflects a shameful treatment of "the other," yielding, time after time, a harvest of loneliness and isolation. Yet the collection ends with hope for renewal, as a colonist family turns away from the demise of the Earth towards a new future on Mars. Bradbury is a master fantasist and The Martian Chronicles are an unforgettable work of art. --Blaise Selby [via]

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  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    by Thomas Hardy
    ISBN 0553210246 (0-553-21024-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    From its spectacular opening-the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a county fair-to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power-only to suffer a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction. [via]

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  • Hofstadter, Douglas R.: Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
    by Douglas R. Hofstadter
    ISBN 0553342797 (0-553-34279-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    Hofstadters collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.
    [via]

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  • Metamorphosis
    by Franz Kafka
    ISBN 0553213695 (0-553-21369-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from  unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his  bed into a monstrous vermin." With this  startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first  sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The  Metamorphosis. It is the story of a  young man who, transformed overnight into a giant  beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to  his family, an outsider in his own home, a  quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though  absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of  inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, The  Metamorphosis has taken its place as one  of the mosst widely read and influential works of  twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote,  "Kafka is important to us because his predicament  is the predicament of modern man." [via]

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  • The Metamorphosis: Including Selections from Kafka's Letters and Diaries and Critical Essays
    by Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold
    ISBN 055321196X (0-553-21196-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is one of the great novellas of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. This story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking up to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect-like creature. [via]

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  • The Mind's I
    by Hofstadter, Douglas R. & Dennett, Daniel C., Daniel C. Dennett
    ISBN 0553345842 (0-553-34584-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    Ever wondered who you are? Who you really are? This collection of writings and reflections by some of today's most notable thinkers is designed to enliven this most central, and most baffling, question in the philosophy of mind. In some ways, the questions posed and bantered about in this book are at the heart of all philosophical reasoning. They are the ultimate questions about the self. The Mind's I contains an astonishing variety of approaches to answering the question, "Who am I?" Between the covers of this book one encounters the literary erudition of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges alongside the analytic rigor of John Searle. There are sophisticated metaphorical pieces (such as "The Princess Ineffabelle" by Polish philosopher and writer Stanislaw Lem), intriguing dialogues (like Raymond Smullyan's "Is God a Taoist?"), and serious but engaging philosophical essays from a host of thinkers (see Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?").

    Editors Hofstadter and Dennett--leading lights in the study of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of mind--follow each selection with a short reflection designed to elaborate on their main themes. The Mind's I admirably broadens their fields to a more general audience. The book's essays are grouped into six categories, each successively raising the philosophical stakes by introducing new levels of complexity. Ultimately, one confronts some of the thorniest questions in modern philosophy here, such as the nature of free will, our place in the metaphysical world, and the possibility of genuine artificial intelligence. The book closes with a playful and perplexing piece by Robert Nozick, an adequate summation to The Mind's I. He writes, "Perhaps God has not decided yet whether he has created, in this world, a fictional world or a real one.... Which decision do you hope for?" --Eric de Place [via]

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  • The Moonstone
    by Wilkie Collins
    ISBN 0553211560 (0-553-21156-0)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    T.S. Eliot called `The Moonstone the first and greatest English detective novel. The novel is worthy of such praise.

    The story begins with a brief prologue describing how the famous yellow diamond was captured during a military campaign in India by a British officer in 1799. The action moves quickly to 1848 England, where, according to the British officers will, the diamond has been given to one of the soldiers young relatives, Rachel Verinder. Yet only hours after the diamond arrives at the Verinder estate, it disappears. Was it stolen by a relative? A servant? And who are these three Indian men who keep hanging around the estate?

    `The Moonstone is told from the point of view of several characters. The first portion of the tale is told by Gabriel Betteredge, house steward of the Verinder estate, who has been working for the family practically his entire life. Betteredges account holds the readers interest as he introduces the main players and the crime itself. The next account, by distant Verinder relative Miss Clack, is humorous and somewhat important. But after Miss Clacks account, things really take off at breakneck speed.

    Readers who latch onto the T.S. Eliot quote expecting a modern detective tale will be sorely disappointed. You arent going to see anything resembling Jeffrey Deaver, James Patterson, Sue Grafton, or even Mary Higgins Clark. You also wont see Mickey Spillane, Dashiel Hammett, or Raymond Chandler. Nor will you see Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, or Martha Grimes. You wont even see Arthur Conan Doyle. But you WILL see the novel that influenced them all.

    Youll also see something else. Something that modern mystery/detective writers have for the most part lost. Characters. Oh sure, modern writers have characters, but for the most part, the reader only learns enough about the character to forward the plot. In our time, plot is King. When `The Moonstone was published (1868), [via]

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  • More-With-Less Cookbook
    by Doris Janzen Longacre
    ISBN 0553139304 (0-553-13930-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    While including no new recipes, this most recent printing is refreshed with a new introduction and detailed statistics including updated nutritional and pricing information for a new generation.

    This is a new edition of Herald Press's all-time best-selling cookbook, helping thousands of families establish a climate of joy and concern for others at mealtime.

    The late author's introductory chapters have been edited and revised for today's cooks. Statistics and nutritional information have been updated to reflect current American and Canadian eating habits, health issues, and diet guidelines. The new U.S. food chart My Plate was slipped in at the last minute and placed alongside Canada's Food Guide.

    But the message has changed little from the one that Doris Janzen Longacre promoted in 1976, when the first edition of this cookbook was released. In many ways she was ahead of her time in advocating for people to eat more whole grains and more vegetables and fruits, with less meat, saturated fat, and sugars.

    This book is part of the World Community Cookbook series that is published in cooperation with Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of relief, development, and peace.

    Mennonites are widely recognized as good cooks. But Mennonites are also a people who care about the world's hungry.
    Doris Janzen Longacre

    [via]

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  • Hamilton, Edith: Mythology
    Mythology
    by Edith Hamilton
    ISBN 0531002462 (0-531-00246-2)
    Hardcover, Scholastic Library Pub

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  • Nine Stories
    by J. D. Salinger
    ISBN 0553263609 (0-553-26360-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

    The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grown-ups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed." [via]

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  • Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!
    O Pioneers!
    by Willa Cather
    ISBN 055321358X (0-553-21358-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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  • Of Human Bondage
    by W. Somerset Maugham
    ISBN 055321392X (0-553-21392-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    A young man struggling for self-realization is caught up in a destructive love affair. [via]

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  • Of Mice and Men
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 055327824X (0-553-27824-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck, one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, offers a powerful but tragic tale in "Of Mice and Men". 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place'. George and his large, simple-minded friend Lennie are drifters, following wherever work leads them. Arriving in California's Salinas Valley, they get work on a ranch. If they can just stay out of trouble, George promises Lennie, then one day they might be able to get some land of their own and settle down some place. But kind-hearted, childlike Lennie is a victim of his own strength. Seen by others as a threat, he finds it impossible to control his emotions. And one day not even George will be able to save him from trouble. "Of Mice and Men" is a tragic and moving story of friendship, loneliness and the dispossessed. "A thriller, a gripping tale that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick". ("New York Times"). Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. His complete works are published by Penguin and include "Cannery Row", "The Pearl", "The Winter of Our Discontent" and "The Grapes of Wrath". [via]

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  • The Origin of Species: Library Edition
    by Charles Robert Darwin
    ISBN 0553214632 (0-553-21463-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.

    To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.

    Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]

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  • The Persian Boy
    by Mary Renault
    ISBN 0553242946 (0-553-24294-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    It takes skill to depict, as Miss Renault has done, this half-man, half Courtesan who is so deeply in love with the warrior.The Atlantic Monthly

    The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexanders life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes-mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexanders mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone. [via]

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  • The Pickwick Papers
    by Charles Dickens
    ISBN 0553211234 (0-553-21123-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    The high-spirited work of a young Dickens, The Pickwick Papers is the remarkable first novel that made its author famous and that has remained one of the best-known books in the world. In it the inimitable Samuel Pickwick, his well-fed body and unsinkable good spirits clad in tights and gaiters, sallies forth through the noisy streets of London and into the colorful country inns of rural England for a series of sparkling encounters with love and misadventure. From the wit of cockney bootblack Sam Weller to the unforgettable Fat Boy and rascals like the amorous Mr. Jingle and the unscrupulous lawyers Dodson and Fogg, The Pickwick Papers reels with joyous fantasy, infectious good humor, and a touch of the macabrea classic work that G. K. Chesterton called the great example of everything that made Dickens great&[a] supreme masterpiece. [via]

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  • The Portrait of a Lady
    by Henry James
    ISBN 0553211277 (0-553-21127-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Capturing the grandeur of a gracious, splendid Europe of wealth and Old World sensibilities, this glorious, complex novel has become a touchstone for a great writers entire literary achievement. From the opening pages, when the high-spirited American girl Isabel Archer arrives at the English manor Gardencourt, Jamess luminous, superbly crafted prose creates an atmosphere of intensity, expectation, and incomparable beauty.

    Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfill her potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and a brash American, as well as the secret adoration of her invalid cousin, Ralph Touchett. But her vulnerability and innocence lead her not to love but to a fatal entrapment in intrigue, deception, and betrayal. This brilliant interior drama of the forming of a womans consciousness makes The Portrait of a Lady a masterpiece of Jamess middle years. [via]

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  • A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
    by James Joyce
    ISBN 0553214047 (0-553-21404-7)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    Perhaps Joyce's most personal work, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man depicts the intellectual awakening of one of literature's most memorable young heroes, Stephen Dedalus.  Through a series of brilliant epiphanies that parallel the development of his own aesthetic consciousness, Joyce evokes Stephen's youth, from his impressionable years as the youngest student at the Clongowed Wood school to the deep religious conflict he experiences at a day school in Dublin, and finally to his college studies where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom.  James Joyce's highly autobiographical novel was first published in the United States in 1916 to immediate acclaim.  Ezra Pound accurately predicted that Joyce's book would "remain a permanent part of English literature," while H.G. Wells dubbed it "by far the most important living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing."  A remarkably rich study of a developing young mind, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man made an indelible mark on literature and confirmed Joyce's reputation as one of the world's greatest and lasting writers. [via]

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  • The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli
    ISBN 0553212788 (0-553-21278-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    When Lorenzo de' Medici seized control of the Florentine Republic in 1512, he summarily fired the Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Signoria and set in motion a fundamental change in the way we think about politics. The person who held the aforementioned office with the tongue-twisting title was none other than Niccolò Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, followed the career trajectory of many modern politicians into punditry. Unable to become an on-air political analyst for a television network, he only wrote a book. But what a book The Prince is. Its essential contribution to modern political thought lies in Machiavelli's assertion of the then revolutionary idea that theological and moral imperatives have no place in the political arena. "It must be understood," Machiavelli avers, "that a prince ... cannot observe all of those virtues for which men are reputed good, because it is often necessary to act against mercy, against faith, against humanity, against frankness, against religion, in order to preserve the state." With just a little imagination, readers can discern parallels between a 16th-century principality and a 20th-century presidency. --Tim Hogan [via]

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  • The Red Badge of Courage
    by Stephen Crane
    ISBN 0553210114 (0-553-21011-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    First published in 1895, America's greatest novel  of the Civil War was written before 21-year-old  Stephen Crane had "smelled even the powder of a  sham battle." But this powerful psychological  study of a young soldier's struggle with the  horrors, both within and without, that war strikes the  reader with its undeniable realism and with its  masterful descriptions of the moment-by-moment riot  of emotions felt by me under fire. Ernest  Hemingway called the novel an American classic, and  Crane's genius is as much apparent in his sharp,  colorful prose as in his ironic portrayal of an episode  of war so intense, so immediate, so real that the  terror of battle becomes our own ... in a  masterpiece so unique that many believe modern American  fiction began with Stephen Crane. [via]

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  • Separate Peace
    by John Knowles
    ISBN 055323224X (0-553-23224-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Pr Ltd

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    Book summary:

    Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual.  Phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete.  What happened between them at school one summer  during the early years of World War II is the  subject of A Separate Peace. A  great bestseller for over thirty years--one of the  most starkly moving parables ever written of the  dark forces that brood over the tortured world of  adolescence. [via]

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  • Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse
    ISBN 0553208845 (0-553-20884-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    In the shade of a banyan tree, a grizzled ferryman sits listening to the river. Some say he's a sage. He was once a wandering shramana and, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gautama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But this man, Siddhartha, was not a follower of any but his own soul. Born the son of a Brahman, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence, and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure and titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people," dragged around by his desires. Like Hesse's other creations of struggling young men, Siddhartha has a good dose of European angst and stubborn individualism. His final epiphany challenges both the Buddhist and the Hindu ideals of enlightenment. Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river. --Brian Bruya [via]

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  • Styron, William: Sophie's Choice
    Sophie's Choice
    by William Styron
    ISBN 0553277499 (0-553-27749-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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  • Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 0531002853 (0-531-00285-3)
    Hardcover, Scholastic Library Pub

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  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
    by Richard P Feynman
    ISBN 0553276646 (0-553-27664-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]

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  • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
    by Richard Phillips Feynman
    ISBN 0553256491 (0-553-25649-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith [via]

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  • Kellerman, Jonathan: Survival of the Fittest
    Survival of the Fittest
    by Jonathan Kellerman
    ISBN 0553089234 (0-553-08923-4)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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  • The Swiss Family Robinson
    by J.D. Wyss
    ISBN 0553214039 (0-553-21403-9)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    For many days we had been tempest-tossed&the raging storm increased in fury until on the seventh day all hope was lost.

    From these dire opening lines, a timeless story of adventure begins. One family will emerge alive from this terrible storm: the Robinsonsa Swiss pastor, his wife, and four sons, plus two dogs and a shipload of livestock. Inspired by Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe, this heartwarming tale portrays a familys struggle to create a new life on a strange and fantastic tropical island. There each boy must learn to utilize his own unique nature as their adventures lead to difficult challenges and amazing discoveries, including a puzzling message tied to an albatrosss leg. But it is in the ingenuity and authenticity of the family itself, and the natural wonders of this exotic land that have made The Swiss Family Robinson, first published at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the most enduring and imitated stories of shipwreck and survival. [via]

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  • The Tao of Physics
    by Fritjof Capra
    ISBN 055326379X (0-553-26379-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    The Tao of Physics, Capra's first book, challenges much of conventional wisdom by demonstrating striking parallels between ancient mystical traditions and the discoveries of 20th century physics. [via]

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  • The Tempest
    by William Shakespeare, David M. Bevington
    ISBN 0553213075 (0-553-21307-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's most famous but also enigmatic plays, for many years the story of Prospero's exile from his native Milan, and life with his daughter Miranda on an unnamed island in the Mediterranean, was seen as an autobiographical dramatisation of Shakespeare's departure from the London stage. The Epilogue, spoken by Prospero, claims that "now my charms are all o'erthrown", appeared to reflect Shakespeare's own renunciation of his magical dramatic powers as he retired to Stratford. But The Tempest is far more than this, as recent commentators have pointed out. The dramatic action observes the classical unities of time, place and action, as Prospero uses his "rough magic" to lure his wicked usurping brother, Antonio, and King Alonso of Naples to his island retreat to torment them before engineering his return to Milan.

    However, the play is full of extraordinary anomalies and fantastic interludes, including Gonzalo's fantasy of a utopian commonwealth, Prospero's magical servant Ariel, and the "poisonous slave" Caliban. The creation of Caliban has particularly fascinated critics, who have noticed in his creation a colonial dimension to the play. In this respect Caliban can be seen as an American Indian or African slave, who articulates a particularly powerful strain of anti-colonial sentiment, telling Prospero that "this island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,/ Which thou tak'st from me". This has led to an intense reassessment of the play from a post-colonial perspective, as critics and historians have debated the extent to which the play endorses or criticises early English colonial expansion. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Kellerman, Jonathan: Time Bomb
    Time Bomb
    by Jonathan Kellerman
    ISBN 055329170X (0-553-29170-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more  explores the corruption of California's golden  coast and produces a novel of complex  characterizations and nonstop suspense.  By the time psychologist Dr. Alex  Delaware reached the school the damage was done:  A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground,  but was gunned down before any children were  hurt.  While  the TV news crews feasted on the scene an Alex  began his therapy sessions with the traumatized  children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight  teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the  identity behind the name and face: a would-be  assassin, or just another victim beneath an  indifferent California sky?

    Intrigued by a request from the sniper's father  to conduct a "psychological autopsy" of  his child, Alex begins to uncover a strange  pattern of innocence, neglect, and loss. Then suddenly  it is more than a pattern -- it is a trail of  blood. In the dead sniper's past was a dark and  vicious plot. And in Alex Delaware's future is the  stuff of grown-up nightmares: the face of real  human evil.

    Also available on BDD Audio Cassette.


    From the Paperback edition. [via]

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  • Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells
    ISBN 0553213512 (0-553-21351-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything has changed.  In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony.  The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings--unearth their secret and then retum to his own time--until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.  H.G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895.  It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction. [via]

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  • Tom Jones
    by Henry Fielding
    ISBN 0553214578 (0-553-21457-8)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    Tom Jones isn't a bad guy, but boys just want to have fun. Nearly two and a half centuries after its publication, the adventures of the rambunctious and randy Tom Jones still makes for great reading. I'm not in the habit of using words like bawdy or rollicking, but if you look them up in the dictionary, you should see a picture of this book. [via]

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  • Cooney, Caroline B.: Twenty Pageants Later
    Twenty Pageants Later
    by Caroline B. Cooney
    ISBN 0553296728 (0-553-29672-8)
    Softcover, Random House Children's Books

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  • Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe
    ISBN 0534521983 (0-534-52198-3)
    Softcover, Wadsworth Pub Co

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    Book summary:

    Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking, controversial, and powerful work -- exposing the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward "the peculiar institution" and documenting, in heartrending detail, the tragic breakup of black Kentucky families "sold down the river." An immediate international sensation, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the first year, was translated into thirty-seven languages, and has never gone out of print: its political impact was immense, its emotional influence immeasurable. [via]

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  • Vanity Fair
    by William Makepeace Thackery
    ISBN 0553214624 (0-553-21462-4)
    Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept

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    Book summary:

    A deliciously satirical attack on a money-mad society, Vanity Fair, which first appeared in 1847, is an immensely moral novel, and an immensely witty one. Called in its subtitle A Novel Without a Hero, Vanity Fair has instead two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkertons academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London. Thackerays forte is the bon mot and it is amply exercised in a novel filled with memorably wicked lines. Lengthy and leisurely in pace, the novel follows the adventures of Becky and Amelia as their fortunes rise and fall, creating a tale of both picaresque and risqué. Thackery mercilessly skewers his society, especially the upper class, poking fun at their shallow values and pointedly jabbing at their hypocritical morals. His weapons, however, are not fire and brimstone but an unerring eye for the absurd and a genius for observation of the foibles of his age. An enduring classic, this great novel is a brilliant study in duplicity and hypocrisy&and a mirror with which to view our own times. [via]

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  • Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
    by Maya Angelou
    ISBN 0553380176 (0-553-38017-6)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Book summary:

    Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power do spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou's latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth on every page.


    From the Paperback edition. [via]

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  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
    by Robert M. Pirsig
    ISBN 0553277472 (0-553-27747-2)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.

    Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.

    In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]

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  • Zen Art of Motorcycle
    by Robert Pirsig
    ISBN 055325748X (0-553-25748-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.

    Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.

    In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]

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