books tagged “literary”

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  • Al Faro
    by Virginia Wolf
    ISBN 8420655279 (84-206-5527-9)
    Softcover, Alianza Editorial Sa

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  • Animal Farm
    by George Orwell
    ISBN 1595404295 (1-59540-429-5)
    Softcover, 1st World Library

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    Book summary:

    Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson [via]

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  • Animal Farm
    by Ian Woodldridge, George Orwell
    ISBN 1854597892 (1-85459-789-2)
    Softcover, Hern Books, Limited, Nick

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    Book summary:

    Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson [via]

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  • The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
    by Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan, Richard Proudfoot
    ISBN 1903436397 (1-903436-39-7)
    Hardcover, Arden Shakespeare

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    Book summary:

    The Complete Arden Shakespeare, published for the first time in 1998, is now available in an updated hardback edition. The Complete Arden Shakespeare contains the texts of all ShakespeareÂ's plays, edited by leading Shakespeare scholars for the renowned Arden Shakespeare series. The updated edition includes eight newly revised playtexts as published in the Arden Third Series since 1998. A general introduction by the three General Editors of the ongoing Arden Shakespeare series gives the reader an overall view of how and why Shakespeare has become such an influential cultural icon, and how perceptions of his work have changed in the intervening four centuries. The introduction summarises the known facts about the dramatistÂ's life, his reading and use of sources, and the nature of theatrical performance during his lifetime. Brief introductions to each play, written specially for this volume by the Arden General Editors, discuss the date and contemporary context of the play, its position within ShakespeareÂ's ÂSuvre, and its subsequent performance history. An extensive glossary explains vocabulary which may be unfamiliar to modern readers. · The sound, reliable, critical edition of ShakespeareÂ's work · Updated and revised to include all of the editions currently available in the Arden Third Series · Includes The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Poems and the Sonnets · General introduction by the Arden General Editors · Brief contextual introductions to each play · Glossary with about 400 entries [via]

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  • Arden Shakespeare Complete Works of Shakespeare
    ISBN 1903436613 (1-903436-61-3)
    Softcover, Arden Shakespeare

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    Book summary:

    The Complete Arden Shakespeare contains the texts of all Shakespeare's plays and poems, edited by leading Shakespeare scholars for the renowned Arden Shakespeare series. This edition includes eight newly revised playtexts as published in the Arden Third Series since 1998.
     
    A general introduction by the three General Editors of the Arden Shakespeare Third Series gives the reader an overall view of how and why Shakespeare has become such an influential cultural icon, and how perceptions of his work have changed in the intervening four centuries. The introduction summarizes the known facts about the dramatist's life, his reading and use of sources, and the nature of theatrical performance during his lifetime.
     
    Brief introductions to each play, written specially for this volume by the Arden General Editors, discuss the date and contemporary context of the play, its position within Shakespeare's oeuvre, and its subsequent performance history. An extensive glossary with nearly 400 entries explains vocabulary which may be unfamiliar to modern readers.
     
     
     
    Table of Contents
    List of Illustrations
    General Editors' Preface
    Introduction
    Shakespeare's Sonnets
    A Lover's Complaint
    Venus and Adonis
    Lucrece
    The Passionate Pilgrim
    "The Phoenix and Turtle"
    All's Well That Ends Well
    Antony and Cleopatra
    As You Like It
    The Comedy of Errors
    Coriolanus
    Cymbeline
    Hamlet
    Julius Caesar
    King Henry IV, Part 1
    King Henry IV, Part 2
    King Henry V
    King Henry VI, Part 1
    King Henry VI, Part 2
    King Henry VI, Part 3
    King Henry VIII
    King John
    King Lear
    King Richard II
    King Richard III
    Love's Labour's Lost
    Macbeth
    Measure for Measure
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    Much Ado About Nothing
    Othello
    Pericles
    Romeo and Juliet
    The Taming of the Shrew
    The Tempest
    Timon of Athens
    Titus Andronicus
    Troilus and Cressida
    Twelfth Night
    The Two Gentlemen of Verona
    The Two Noble Kinsmen
    The Winter's Tale
    Bibliography
    Index of first lines of sonnets
    Index of first lines of songs
    Glossary
    [via]

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  • Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley
    ISBN 156000522X (1-56000-522-X)
    Hardcover, Transaction Pub Large Print

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    Book summary:

    A fantasy of the future that sheds a blazing critical light on the present--considered to be Aldous Huxley's most enduring masterpiece.

    "Mr. Huxley is eloquent in his declaration of an artist's faith in man, and it is his eloquence, bitter in attack, noble in defense, that, when one has closed the book, one remembers."
    --Saturday Review of Literature

    "A Fantastic racy narrative, full of much excellent satire and literary horseplay."
    --Forum

    "It is as sparkling, provocative, as brilliant, in the appropriate sense, as impressive ads the day it was published. This is in part because its prophetic voice has remained surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semiserious alarm. But it is much more because the book succeeds as a work of art...This is surely Huxley's best book."
    --Martin Green

    [via]

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  • Cold Mountain
    by Charles Frazier
    ISBN 1405835672 (1-4058-3567-2)
    Softcover, Pearson Education, Limited

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    Book summary:

    The hero of Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier who has failed to die as expected after being seriously wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War. Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain the family farm she inherited. Cold Mountain is an unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most important and transformational periods in American history. [via]

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  • Complete Works of William Shakespeare
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 185326895X (1-85326-895-X)
    Softcover, Wordsworth Editions Ltd

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    Book summary:

    William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness. This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. [via]

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  • Crime and Punishment
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black Garnett, Ernest Joseph Simmons
    ISBN 0075535742 (0-07-553574-2)
    Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

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    Translated by Constance Garnett, Introduction by Ernest J. Simmons [via]

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  • Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts With Epilogue
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear
    ISBN 0099981904 (0-09-998190-4)
    Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

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    Book summary:

    A troubled young man commits the perfect crime: the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but he convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins a tragic novel that illuminates the eternal struggle between human emotions and desire, and the harsh laws of ethics and justice. Part thriller and part philosophical meditation, this is a penetrating look at the core of human nature.
    [via]

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  • Letkemann, Peter: Crime as Work
    Crime as Work
    by Peter Letkemann
    ISBN 0131929143 (0-13-192914-3)
    Hardcover, Prentice-Hall

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  • Cronica Del Pajaro/bird Chronicles
    by Haruki Murakami, Lourdes Porta Fuentes, Jun'ichi Matsuura
    ISBN 8483101718 (84-8310-171-8)
    Softcover, Tusquets Editor

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    Tooru Okada, un joven japonés que acaba de dejar voluntariamente su trabajo en un bufete de abogados, recibe un buen día la llamada anónima de una mujer. A partir de ese momento la vida de Tooru, que había transcurrido por los cauces de la más absoluta normalidad, empieza a sufrir una extraña transformación. A su alrededor van apareciendo personajes cada vez más extraños, y la realidad, o lo real, va degradándose hasta convertirse en algo fantasmagórico.

    The masterpiece of Japanese cult writer Haruki Murakami, the story of Tooru Okada, a young lawyer whose life begins to undergo a bizarre transformation. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle presents a collection of characters as surprising as they are real. [via]

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  • The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon
    ISBN 1568493207 (1-56849-320-7)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer 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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  • Die Satanischen Verse
    by Salman Rushdie
    ISBN 3426606488 (3-426-60648-8)
    Softcover, Distribooks Inc

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  • Don Quixote
    by Edith Grossman, Harold Bloom, Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
    ISBN 0060188707 (0-06-018870-7)
    Hardcover, Harpercollins

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    Book summary:

    Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.

    "Though there have been many valuable English translations of Don Quixote, I would commend Edith Grossman's version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose. The Knight and Sancho are so eloquently rendered by Grossman that the vitality of their characterization is more clearly conveyed than ever before. There is also an astonishing contextualization of Don Quixote and Sancho in Grossman's translation that I believe has not been achieved before. The spiritual atmosphere of a Spain already in steep decline can be felt throughout, thanks to her heightened quality of diction.

    Grossman might be called the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note. Reading her amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes's darkening vision is an entrance into a further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake."

    From the Introduction by Harold Bloom

    Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor's prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

    [via]

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  • Don Quixote
    by Miguel De Cervantes, Edith Grossman, Harold Bloom
    ISBN 0060934344 (0-06-093434-4)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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    Book summary:

    Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English until you've read this masterful translation.

    This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stoker, Glennis Byron
    ISBN 1551111365 (1-55111-136-5)
    Softcover, Broadview Pr

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    Book summary:

    Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power.

    Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality. In it, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.
     
    Brooke Allen is a book critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hudson Review. A collection of her essays, Twentieth-Century Attitudes, will be published in 2003.
    [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Tim Wynne-Jones, Bram Stoker, Laszlo Gal
    ISBN 1550139002 (1-55013-900-2)
    Hardcover, Key Porter Kids

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    After discovering the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire. [via]

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  • El Club De LA Buena Estrella
    by Amy Tan
    ISBN 8472231631 (84-7223-163-1)
    Softcover, Ediciones Urano

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    En 1949, cuatro mujeres chinas emigradas a San Francisco se reunen regularmente para comer dim sum,jugar al mah-jong y hablar. Unidas por sentimientos de perdida y esperanza, se hacen llamar El Club de laBuena Estrella. Amy Tan explora la conexion entre las protagonistas y sus hijas, ya nacidas en Estados Unidos, un mundo totalmente distinto al suyo. [via]

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  • El Paciente Ingles
    by Michael Ondaatje
    ISBN 8401463297 (84-01-46329-7)
    Softcover, Distribooks Inc

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  • Flaubert's Parrot
    by Julian Barnes
    ISBN 0070037485 (0-07-003748-5)
    Softcover, McGraw-Hill

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    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]

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  • Gilead: A Novel
    by Marilynne Robinson
    ISBN 1594131244 (1-59413-124-4)
    Softcover, Thorndike Press

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    Book summary:

    In 1981, Marilynne Robinson wrote Housekeeping, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and became a modern classic. Since then, she has written two pieces of nonfiction: Mother Country and The Death of Adam. With Gilead, we have, at last, another work of fiction. As with The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzards's return, 22 years after The Transit of Venus, it was worth the long wait. Books such as these take time, and thought, and a certain kind of genius. There are no invidious comparisons to be made. Robinson's books are unalike in every way but one: the same incisive thought and careful prose illuminate both.

    The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man.

    The reason for the letter is Ames's failing health. He wants to leave an account of himself for this son who will never really know him. His greatest regret is that he hasn't much to leave them, in worldly terms. "Your mother told you I'm writing your begats, and you seemed very pleased with the idea. Well, then. What should I record for you?" In the course of the narrative, John Ames records himself, inside and out, in a meditative style. Robinson's prose asks the reader to slow down to the pace of an old man in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956. Ames writes of his father and grandfather, estranged over his grandfather's departure for Kansas to march for abolition and his father's lifelong pacifism. The tension between them, their love for each other and their inability to bridge the chasm of their beliefs is a constant source of rumination for John Ames. Fathers and sons.

    The other constant in the book is Ames's friendship since childhood with "old Boughton," a Presbyterian minister. Boughton, father of many children, favors his son, named John Ames Boughton, above all others. Ames must constantly monitor his tendency to be envious of Boughton's bounteous family; his first wife died in childbirth and the baby died almost immediately after her. Jack Boughton is a ne'er-do-well, Ames knows it and strives to love him as he knows he should. Jack arrives in Gilead after a long absence, full of charm and mischief, causing Ames to wonder what influence he might have on Ames's young wife and son when Ames dies.

    These are the things that Ames tells his son about: his ancestors, the nature of love and friendship, the part that faith and prayer play in every life and an awareness of one's own culpability. There is also reconciliation without resignation, self-awareness without deprecation, abundant good humor, philosophical queries--Jack asks, "'Do you ever wonder why American Christianity seems to wait for the real thinking to be done elsewhere?'"--and an ongoing sense of childlike wonder at the beauty and variety of God's world.

    In Marilynne Robinson's hands, there is a balm in Gilead, as the old spiritual tells us. --Valerie Ryan [via]

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  • The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 1851523812 (1-85152-381-2)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    He's indisputably the greatest writer in the English language, a master of every mood from sidesplitting comedy (Twelfth Night) to profound tragedy (King Lear) to the historically majestic (Henry V). Every bookshelf must have a complete collection of his 38 plays, his magnificent and passionate sonnets, and his epic poems. Here they all are in one 1,024-page, yet compact and low-cost hardcover, sturdy enough to withstand students poring through its pages for classes and exams; theatergoers refreshing their acquaintance with a favorite play before seeing it performed; and literature lovers picking it up again and again simply for pleasure. Every time you return to Shakespeare's elegantly phrased lines, and his rich and complex characters, you'll find something new to treasure. Illustrated with Renaissance pictures that capture the feel of the Bard's era. [via]

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  • Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Bronte
    ISBN 1416500243 (1-4165-0024-3)
    Softcover, Pocket Classics

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    Book summary:

    "Jane Eyre" is the story of its title character, a poor orphaned girl who comes to live with her aunt where she endures poor treatment from her aunt and cousins. Jane subsequently ships off to Lowood, a Christian boarding school where she endures more horrible conditions. After some time, life becomes more bearable at Lowood for Jane and she eventually finishes her coursework and spends a period of time as a teacher at the school. After leaving Lowood she comes into the employment of Mr. Rochester as a governess at Thornfield Hall. "Jane Eyre" is the story of one woman's struggle to overcome adversity and a classic love story. [via]

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  • The Joy Luck Club
    by Amy Tan
    ISBN 1587248832 (1-58724-883-2)
    Softcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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    Book summary:

    Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

    With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. [via]

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  • The Library Shakespeare
    by William Shakespeare, George Cruikshank, John Gilbert, Robert Dudley
    ISBN 1888777745 (1-888777-74-5)
    Hardcover, Trident Reference Pub

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    Book summary:

    Known as the greatest playwright of all time Wiiliam Shakespeare has been immortalized in this deluxe 1448 edition of his works. This reproduction, from an original 3 volume 19th Century Manuscript,is beautifully illustrated by Irish artist George Cruikshank, joined by Sir John Gilbert, and R. Dudley.

    This Complete Library of Shakspeare is divided into three sections: Tragedies, Comedies, & Histories with Sonnets. [via]

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  • Lighthouses
    by Virginia Woolf, Valerie E. Kenney
    ISBN 1586631489 (1-58663-148-9)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    A visual celebration of the magnificent and romantic structures that have guided seafarers for generations. Introduction by the founder of the Lighthouse Preservation Society. 75 photos. [via]

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  • Loves Labours Lost
    ISBN 1904271103 (1-904271-10-3)
    Softcover, Arden Shakespeare

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    Book summary:

    Another example of Shakespeare's comic fascination with the battle between and misunderstanding of the sexes, Love's Labour's Lost is a difficult play to read, but one which is extremely effective on stage. The Play opens with King Ferdinand of Navarre and his courtiers taking a vow of study and sexual abstinence for a period of three years. However, their vows are soon placed under strain with the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies in waiting. The inevitable happens, and the different couples attempt to surreptitiously communicate, causing much hilarious confusion and embarrassment in the process. Shakespeare deploys every farcical element in the book, including impersonation, wrongly delivered letters, outrageous puns and word play, fights, drunkenness and masquerades, as Ferdinand's entourage soon learn that rather than running from women to books, it is in fact the opposite sex that "are the books, the arts, the academes/That show, contain, and nourish all the world". However, one of the most interesting aspects of the play is that it does not end with everyone marrying and living happily ever after. The women give as good as they get from the men, and in the end turn the tables in extremely interesting ways. One of Shakespeare's most linguistically challenging, but also intelligent comedies. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Mientras Agonizo / As I Lay Dying
    by William Faulkner, Javier Coy, Mariano Antolin Rato
    ISBN 8437608341 (84-376-0834-1)
    Softcover, Catedra Ediciones

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  • Mrs Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf
    ISBN 0099470454 (0-09-947045-4)
    Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

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    Book summary:

    As Clarissa Dalloway walks through London on a fine June morning, a sky-writing plane captures her attention. Crowds stare upwards to decipher the message while the plane turns and loops, leaving off one letter, picking up another. Like the airplane's swooping path, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway follows Clarissa and those whose lives brush hers--from Peter Walsh, whom she spurned years ago, to her daughter Elizabeth, the girl's angry teacher, Doris Kilman, and war-shocked Septimus Warren Smith, who is sinking into madness.

    As Mrs. Dalloway prepares for the party she is giving that evening, a series of events intrudes on her composure. Her husband is invited, without her, to lunch with Lady Bruton (who, Clarissa notes anxiously, gives the most amusing luncheons). Meanwhile, Peter Walsh appears, recently from India, to criticize and confide in her. His sudden arrival evokes memories of a distant past, the choices she made then, and her wistful friendship with Sally Seton.

    Woolf then explores the relationships between women and men, and between women, as Clarissa muses, "It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.... Her relation in the old days with Sally Seton. Had not that, after all, been love?" While Clarissa is transported to past afternoons with Sally, and as she sits mending her green dress, Warren Smith catapults desperately into his delusions. Although his troubles form a tangent to Clarissa's web, they undeniably touch it, and the strands connecting all these characters draw tighter as evening deepens. As she immerses us in each inner life, Virginia Woolf offers exquisite, painful images of the past bleeding into the present, of desire overwhelmed by society's demands. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]

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  • Mundo Feliz
    by Aldous Huxley
    ISBN 8497594258 (84-9759-425-8)
    Softcover, Debolsillo

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    Book summary:

    Un mundo feliz es posiblemente la novela mas leida de Huxley, y su influencia es evidente tanto en buena parte de la novela de ciencia ficcion de calidad como en las novelas filosoficas. Presenta un mundo en el que el Estado controla hasta el mas minimo detalle de la vida de los individuos, a los que mantiene en una ignorancia, producto de un depurado lavado de cerebro. Mas tarde el autor escribiria Nueva visita a un mundo feliz, donde analizaria lo que habia escrito anos antes y sacaria conclusiones muy distintas sobre el destino de la humanidad. [via]

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  • Pride and Prejudice
    by Jane Austen
    ISBN 0060933259 (0-06-093325-9)
    Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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    Book summary:

    "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

    Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.

    Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Rebelion en la granja / Animal Farm
    by George Orwell
    ISBN 8423337332 (84-233-3733-2)
    Softcover, Planeta Pub Corp

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    Book summary:

    Esta es una fabula en la que la adjudicacion de las aflicciones y las necesidades humanas a los animales protagonistas vencio la resistencia nacional de los primeros lectores a mirar lo que no querian mirar. Lo que nos cuenta el autor ya estaba en los periodicos: la historia sobre los crimenes estalinistas en la Union Sovietica. [via]

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  • [???]: Shakespeare
    Shakespeare
    ISBN 1897954239 (1-897954-23-9)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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  • The Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway
    ISBN 0020518706 (0-02-051870-6)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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    Book summary:

    The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.

    Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands.

    But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin [via]

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  • To the Lighthouse
    by Virginia Woolf
    ISBN 140679239X (1-4067-9239-X)
    Softcover, Read Books

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    Book summary:

    To the Lighthouse is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War. [via]

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  • Twelfth Night
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 1904271154 (1-904271-15-4)
    Softcover, Arden Shakespeare

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    Book summary:

    The Arden Shakespeare is the established edition of Shakespeare's work. Justly celebrated for its authoritative scholarship and invaluable commentary, Arden guides you a richer understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's plays. This edition of Twelfth Night provides, a clear and authoritative text, detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text, a full introduction discussing the critical and historical background to the play and appendices presenting sources and relevant extracts. [via]

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  • Shakespeare, William: The Unabridged William Shakespeare
    The Unabridged William Shakespeare
    by William Shakespeare, William George Clark, William Aldis Wright
    ISBN 1889372331 (1-889372-33-1)
    Hardcover, Sweetwater Pr

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  • The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
    by Harold Bloom
    ISBN 1573225142 (1-57322-514-2)
    Softcover, Riverhead Books

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    Book summary:

    Discussed and debated, revered and reviled, Bloom's tome reinvigorates and re-examines Western Literature, arguing against the politicization of reading. His erudite passion will encourage you to hurry and finish his book so you can pick up Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens once again to rediscover their original magic. In addition, his appendix listing of the "future" canon - the books today that will be timeless tomorrow - is sure to be the template for future debate. [via]

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  • William Shakespeare
    ISBN 1586635565 (1-58663-556-5)
    Hardcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    But thy eternal summer shall not fade
    Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
    Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
    When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
    -- from Sonnet 18

    No home should be without this: every play, from the early histories to the sad, wise Winter's Tale and The Tempest; every exquisitely crafted sonnet; every long poem (such as Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece) written by the greatest writer in the English language. This edition of the Bard of Avon's complete works is a facsimile of the definitive Shakespeare Head edition published originally in Oxford, England. All the plays are arranged in chronological order of their composition, rather than by genre, so that the evolution of Shakespeare's monumental genius can be more easily followed and appreciated.
    [via]

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  • William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet/Macbeth/Hamlet/Othello/The Taming of the Shrew/A Midsummer Night's Dream/The Merchant of Venice
    by William Shakespeare
    ISBN 1555211623 (1-55521-162-3)
    Hardcover, Book Sales

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    Book summary:

    FROM THE WORLD FAMOUS ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, THE FIRST AUTHORITATIVE, MODERNIZED, AND CORRECTED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARES FIRST FOLIO IN THREE CENTURIES.

    Skillfully assembled by Shakespeares 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 todays 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]

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  • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
    by Haruki Murakami
    ISBN 1860464696 (1-86046-469-6)
    Softcover, Harvill Pr

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    Book summary:

    Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.

    Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.

    If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake [via]

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