books tagged “prose”

books tagged “prose”

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  • The Aleph and Other Stories
    by Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley
    ISBN 0142437883 (0-14-243788-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borgess most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her fathers killer, and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house.  This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity collected in The Maker, which Borges wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.

    [via]

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  • Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll, Hugh Haughton
    ISBN 0141439769 (0-14-143976-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]

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  • Around the World in 80 Days
    by Jules Verne, Michael Glencross
    ISBN 0143034456 (0-14-303445-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Walt Disneys star-studded motion picture based on Jules Vernes classic novel hits theaters in June 2004. Vernes comic high adventure featuring the exploits of reserved Englishman Phileas Fogg and his hot-blooded manservant Passepartout combines exploration, adventure, and a thrilling race against timeand to this day remains hugely popular.

    Jules Verne (1828-1905) was the author of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and other scientific adventures. [via]

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  • Bleak House
    by Charles Dickens, Nicola Bradbury
    ISBN 0141439726 (0-14-143972-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Bleak House is a satirical look at the Byzantine legal system in London as it consumes the minds and talents of the greedy and nearly destroys the lives of innocents--a contemporary tale indeed. Dickens's tale takes us from the foggy dank streets of London and the maze of the Inns of Court to the peaceful countryside of England. Likewise, the characters run from murderous villains to virtuous girls, from a devoted lover to a "fallen woman," all of whom are affected by a legal suit in which there will, of course, be no winner. The first-person narrative related by the orphan Esther is particularly sweet. The articulate reading by the acclaimed British actor Paul Scofield, whose distinctive broad English accent lends just the right degree of sonority and humor to the text, brings out the color in this classic social commentary disguised as a Victorian drama. However, to abridge Dickens is, well, a Dickensian task, the results of which make for a story in which the author's convoluted plot lines and twists of fate play out in what seems to be a fast-forward format. Listeners must pay close attention in order to keep up with the multiple narratives and cast of curious characters, including the memorable Inspector Bucket and Mr. Guppy. Fortunately, the publisher provides a partial list of characters on the inside jacket. (Running time: 3 hours; 2 cassettes) [via]

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  • A Christmas Carol
    by Charles Dickens, Mark Peppe
    ISBN 0142300551 (0-14-230055-1)
    Softcover, Puffin

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    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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  • Common Sense: Library Edition
    by Thomas Paine
    ISBN 0143036254 (0-14-303625-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselvesand each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched livesand destroyed them.

    Now, Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are. Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers, and each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-drive design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped the world.

    Published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paines Common Sense was a radical and impassioned call for America to free itself from British rule and set up an independent republican government. Savagely attacking hereditary kingship and aristocratic institutions, Paine urged a new beginning for his adopted country in which personal freedom and social equality would be upheld and economic and cultural progress encouraged.  His pamphlet was the first to speak directly to a mass audienceit went through fifty-six editions within a year of publicationand its assertive and often caustic style both embodied the democratic spirit he advocated, and converted thousands of citizens to the cause of American independence.

    [via]

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  • Cranford
    by Elizabeth Gaskell, Patricia Ingham
    ISBN 0141439882 (0-14-143988-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    A gently comic picture of life in an English country town in the mid-nineteenth century, Cranford describes the small adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Rich with humor and filled with vividly memorable charactersincluding the dignified Lady Glenmire and the duplicitous showman Signor BrunoniCranford is a portrait of kindness, compassion, and hope.
    [via]

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  • Crime and Punishment
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    ISBN 0140621806 (0-14-062180-6)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption. [via]

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  • Dracula
    by Bram Stoker
    ISBN 014062063X (0-14-062063-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The vampire novel that started it all, Bram Stoker's Dracula probes deeply into human identity, sanity, and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client. Soon afterward, disturbing incidents unfold in Englandan unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby, strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck, and a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his "Master"culminating in a battle of wits between the sinister Count and a determined group of adversaries.


    @BleedingGums A damsel is bleeding from her ears and eyes! Shes afraid of the sun! Like a ginger!

    We must sort this out. She may be a vampire, but I cant tell the father. He wonders if her lady times are just out of control.

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

    [via]

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  • Edward Lear: The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense
    by Edward Lear, Vivien Noakes
    ISBN 0142002275 (0-14-200227-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The absurd and fanciful verses of Edward Lear-from "The Owl and the Pussy-cat" to "The Jumblies," from "The Scroobious Pip" to countless limericks-have enchanted generations of readers, children and adults alike. This delightful collection, the most comprehensive ever compiled of his work, presents all of Lear's verse and other nonsense writings, including stories, letters, and illustrated alphabets, as well as previously unpublished material. Featuring Lear's own line drawings throughout and an introduction by leading Lear authority Vivien Noakes, this captivating volume reveals a complex man of ample talents, achievements, and influence-and is teeming with timeless nonsense.

    [via]

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  • Coetzee, J. M.: Elizabeth Costello
    Elizabeth Costello
    by J. M. Coetzee
    ISBN 0142004812 (0-14-200481-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • Hynes, Samuel: The Enormous Room
    The Enormous Room
    by Samuel Hynes, Cummings E. E.
    ISBN 0141181249 (0-14-118124-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • Eyre Affair
    by Jasper Fforde
    ISBN 0142001805 (0-14-200180-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Is this on your summer reading list? [via]

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  • Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden
    by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Alison Lurie
    ISBN 0142437050 (0-14-243705-0)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]

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  • The Golden Bowl
    by Henry James, Gore Vidal, Patricia Crick
    ISBN 0141000902 (0-14-100090-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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    This story of the alliance between Italian aristocracy and American millionaires is "a work unique among all [James's] novels: it is [his] only novel in which things come out right for his characters. . . . he had finally resolved the questions, curious and passionate, that had kept him at his desk on his inquiries into the process of living. He could now make his peace with America-and he could now collect and unify the work of a lifetime." -Leon Edel, The Life of Henry James [via]

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  • Goldfinger
    by Ian Fleming
    ISBN 0142002046 (0-14-200204-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Auric Goldfinger, the most phenomenal criminal Bond has ever faced, is an evil genius who likes his cash in gold bars and his women dressed only in gold paint. After smuggling tons of gold out of Britain into secret vaults in Switzerland, this powerful villain is planning the biggest and most daring heist in history-robbing all the gold in Fort Knox. That is, unless Secret Agent 007 can foil his plan. In one of Ian Fleming's most popular adventures, James Bond tracks this most dangerous foe across two continents and takes on two of the most memorable villains ever created-a human weapon named Oddjob and a luscious female crime boss named Pussy Galore. REVIEW; A superlative thriller from our foremost literary magician. (The New York Herald Tribune)

    Auric Goldfinger, the most phenomenal criminal Bond has ever faced, is an evil genius who likes his cash in gold bars and his women dressed only in gold paint. After smuggling tons of gold out of Britain into secret vaults in Switzerland, this powerful villain is planning the biggest and most daring heist in history-robbing all the gold in Fort Knox. That is, unless Secret Agent 007 can foil his plan. In one of Ian Fleming's most popular adventures, James Bond tracks this most dangerous foe across two continents and takes on two of the most memorable villains ever created-a human weapon named Oddjob and a luscious female crime boss named Pussy Galore. REVIEW; A superlative thriller from our foremost literary magician. (The New York Herald Tribune)

    [via]

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  • The Good Soldier
    by Ford Madox Ford, David Bradshaw
    ISBN 0141441844 (0-14-144184-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Classics

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    Ford Madox Ford's extraordinary novel of passion and betrayal, "The Good Soldier", is edited with an introduction by David Bradshaw in "Penguin Classics". The Dowells, a wealthy American couple, have been close friends with the Ashburnhams for years. Edward Ashburnham, a first-rate soldier, seems to be the perfect English gentleman, and Leonora his perfect wife, but beneath the surface their marriage seethes with unhappiness and deception. Our only window on the strange tangle of events surrounding Edward is provided by John Dowell, the husband he deceives. Gradually Dowell unfolds a devastating story, in which everyone's honesty is in doubt. "The Good Soldier" is a masterpiece of narrative skill and emotional depth. David Bradshaw's introduction discusses John Dowell as the classic unreliable narrator and as English literature's most fascinating enigma, and shows how Ford Madox Ford's unconventional narrative structure makes "The Good Soldier" a modernist masterwork. Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), born in Surrey and educated in England, Germany and France, changed his original surname, Hueffer, in 1919, after having served with the British army in World War I. As well as founding both the "English Review" and the "Transatlantic Review", home to such writers as James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, Ford was the author of more than sixty works including novels, poems, criticism, travel writing and reminiscences. "The Good Soldier" (1915) is considered his masterpiece. If you enjoyed "The Good Soldier", you might like Ford's "Parade's End", also available in "Penguin Classics", and now the subject of a major new BBC/HBO television miniseries. "A masterpiece". (Julian Barnes, Booker Prize-winning author of "The Sense of an Ending"). "I don't know how many times in nearly forty years I have come back to this novel". (Graham Greene). [via]

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  • Great Expectations
    by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Mitchell
    ISBN 0141439564 (0-14-143956-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The orphan Pip's terrifying encounter with an escaped convict on the Kent marshes, and his mysterious summons to the house of Miss Havisham and her cold, beautiful ward Estella, form the prelude to his "great expectations." How Pip comes into a fortune, what he does with it, and what he discovers through his secret benefactor are the ingredients of his struggle for moral redemption. @piMp The walk was a bad idea. I met a prisoner who demanded bread and a file. He looks like a pederast. And a murderer. Amber alert? From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less [via]

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  • Gulliver's Travels
    by Jonathan Swift, Robert Demaria
    ISBN 0141439491 (0-14-143949-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver's encounters with the petty, diminutive Lilliputians, the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Swift's fantastic and subversive book remains supremely relevant in our own age of distortion, hypocrisy, and irony. @LittleBigMan Awoke in an unfamiliar land. The boat and my crew are gone. Oh dear, the people here are very small. Oops. Sorry about that. I don't mean to boast; I'm not a terribly tall man. But these people of Lilliput are the size of child's Johnson. Still, they have captured me. I have become a great favorite of the Lilliputian court, whose antics are like an adorable tiny version King George's, the blithering idiot. From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less [via]

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  • Hard Times
    by Charles Dickens, Kate Flint
    ISBN 014143967X (0-14-143967-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The 'terrible mistake' was the contemporary utilitarian philosophy, expounded in Hard Times (1854) as the Philosophy of Fact by the hard-headed disciplinarian Thomas Gradgrind. But the novel, Dickens's shortest, is more than a polemical tract for the times; the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father is one of Dickens's triumphs. When Louisa, trapped in a loveless marriage, falls prey to an idle seducer, the crisis forces her father to reconsider his cherished system. Yet even as the development of the story reflects Dickens's growing pessimism about human nature and society, Hard Times marks his return to the theme which had made his early works so popular: the amusements of the people. Sleary's circus represents Dickens's most considered defence of the necessity of entertainment, and infuses the novel with the good humour which has ensured its appeal to generations of readers.
    [via]

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  • Henry IV. Part 1
    by William Shakespeare, Claire McEachern
    ISBN 0140714561 (0-14-071456-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Written between 1596 and 1597, Henry IV Part One represents Shakespeare's increasingly mature talent in staging the history of the early Tudor monarchy. Midway in the cycle of Shakespeare's History Plays, which begin with Richard II and ultimately culminate in his last play, Henry VIII, Henry IV Part One tells the story of the troubled reign of Henry IV following his deposition of Richard II. The historical action revolves around the attempt by Henry Percy (known as Hotspur) to overthrow Henry at the Battle of Shrewsbury. However, over half the play deals with the transformation of Henry's profligate son, Prince Hal (the future King Henry V), from tavern joker to national icon.

    The whole play is stolen from its kings and princes by Shakespeare's greatest comic creation, the "fat-kidneyed rascal" Sir John Falstaff, king of his own dominions--the taverns and brothels of London's Eastcheap district. The tavern scenes of the play are some of the most evocative accounts of 16th-century popular London life. They revolve around the comical but ultimately sinister relationship between Falstaff and his young apprentice Hal, who learns to "so offend to make offence a skill" as he learns the slippery ropes of realpolitik and kingship. The play is considered by many to be the liveliest and most profound of Shakespeare's History Plays, and remains one of its most popular examples. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • Howards End
    by E. M. Forster, David Lodge
    ISBN 014118213X (0-14-118213-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:

    Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
    Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.

    Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Hunger
    by Sverre Lyngstad, Knut Hamsun
    ISBN 0141180641 (0-14-118064-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    First published in Norway in 1890, probes into the depths of consciousness with frightening and gripping power. Like the works of Dostoyevsky, it marks an extraordinary break with Western literary and humanistic traditions.
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  • The Illustrated Dracula
    by Bram Stoker, Jae Lee
    ISBN 0142005150 (0-14-200515-0)
    Softcover, Studio

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    In 1897, Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, launching a literary sensation. In this new illustrated edition, Jae Lee, one of the most talked-about artists for Marvel comics, reawakens

    Count Dracula. Critics and fans alike praise Lee for his mastery of complex emotion and, in this book, forty illustrations present Dracula as never seen before. Jae Lees legions of fans will flock to this horror classic, and The Illustrated Dracula will also bring a new generation of young readers to the book.


    @BleedingGums A damsel is bleeding from her ears and eyes! Shes afraid of the sun! Like a ginger!

    We must sort this out. She may be a vampire, but I cant tell the father. He wonders if her lady times are just out of control.

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

    [via]

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  • The Illustrated Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Bronte, Darcy
    ISBN 0142005142 (0-14-200514-2)
    Softcover, Studio

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    A devoted readership will recognize Dame Darcy as the creator of highly original and off-kilter comic books. Here she uses her lavishly detailed illustrations to bring the best-loved Victorian novel Jane Eyre back into the spotlight. Darkly elegant illustrations draw back the novels curtain, revealing the depths of human depravity, despair, and ultimate redemption. Sure to impress traditional fans and newcomers alike, The Illustrated Jane Eyre updates the classic for a new era.


    @ToEyreIsHuman Romance, romance, this poppa Rochester wants to get in my pants!

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

    [via]

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  • Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Bronte, Stevie Davies
    ISBN 0141441143 (0-14-144114-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    "Jane Eyre," Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel, describes the passionate love between the courageous orphan Jane Eyre and the brilliant, brooding, and domineering Rochester. The loneliness and cruelty of Jane Eyre's childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in love with her sardonic employer, her discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a heart-wrenching choice. Ever since its publication in 1847, "Jane Eyre" has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic. "Jane Eyre" lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect. "At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë." -Virginia Woolf [via]

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  • Junky
    by William Burroughs, Oliver Harris
    ISBN 0142003166 (0-14-200316-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone. This book brings them vividly to life again; it is an unvarnished field report from the American postwar underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of Junk's text and places its contents against a lively historical background.

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  • Kidnapped
    by Robert Louis Stevenson
    ISBN 0141309369 (0-14-130936-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Young David Balfour, left in poverty when his father dies, goes to his uncle, Ebenezer, for assistance. He soon finds himself kidnapped and on board a ship, headed for a life of slavery. With the help of daring rebel Alan Breck, David escapes, only to get mixed up in a desperate adventure? suspected of murder and hunted across the Scottish moors.

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  • Lady Chatterley's Lover
    by D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires, Doris Lessing
    ISBN 0141441496 (0-14-144149-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Classics

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    Book summary:

    Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters. [via]

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  • Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe, John J. Richetti
    ISBN 0141439823 (0-14-143982-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being. First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has been praised by such writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Johnson as one of the greatest novels in the English language.


    @ImNotGilligan Youd think in a diary about solitude Id write something emotional, but nah, thatd be so emo. Im not in the mood.

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

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  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
    by Laurence Sterne, Melvyn New, Joan New
    ISBN 0141439777 (0-14-143977-7)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    The comic masterpiece Tristram Shandy is often regarded as a progenitor of the twentieth century novel. Within the resolutely tangled strands of this narrative is the life, from conception, of a gentleman cursed at birth with the name Tristram. Though everything occurs between parlor and garden, Tristram's excitable father, bewildered mother, and Uncle Toby provide ample opportunity for the digressions and madcap events that structure this seminal novel.


    @ACockAndBallsStory Ive just been born, and I had a tragic accident. A windowpane fell on me, and flattened my dic NOSE. My nose! That was almost embarrassing.

    Chapter XIX: I dont feel like tweeting today.

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

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  • A Little Princess
    by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Janet Allison Brown, Graham Rust
    ISBN 0141312033 (0-14-131203-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    After her father dies and the family fortune is lost, Sara Crewe is forced to live in the school attic and work as a maid. But Sara's charming imagination and bold spirit help her to survive and flourish despite these hardships. [via]

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  • A Little Princess
    by U. C. Knoepflmacher, Frances Hodgson Burnett
    ISBN 0142437018 (0-14-243701-8)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Sara Crewe, an exceptionally intelligent and imaginative student at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, is devastated when her adored, indulgent father dies. Now penniless and banished to a room in the attic, Sara is demeaned, abused, and forced to work as a servant. How this resourceful girl's fortunes change again is at the center of A Little Princess, one of the best-loved stories in all of children's literature.

    This unique and fully annotated edition appends excerpts from Frances Hodgson Burnett's original 1888 novella Sara Crewe and the stage play that preceded the novel, as well as an early story, "Behind the White Brick," allowing readers to see how A Little Princess evolved. In his delightful introduction, U. C. Knoepflmacher considers the fairy-tale allusions and literary touchstones that place the book among the major works of Victorian literature, and shows it to be an exceptionally rich and resonant novel.
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  • Little Women
    by Louisa May Alcott, Janet Allison Brown, Dinah Dryhurst
    ISBN 0141312025 (0-14-131202-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    The March girls, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, are growing up in New England during the Civil War. Times are difficult, but the bond between the four sisters is strong and their courage and love help them overcome adversity. [via]

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  • Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding, Stephen Coote, G. Hanscombe
    ISBN 0140772863 (0-14-077286-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Uk

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    Book summary:

    In the PENGUIN STUDY NOTES series and originally published in 1986 as GOLDING'S LORD OF THE FLIES, a study guide to the novel, aimed at those preparing for the GCSE examination. It includes character studies, summaries of the plot with examinations of the background and major themes, as well as suggesting topics for discussion. [via]

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  • Amis, Kingsley: Lucky Jim
    Lucky Jim
    by Kingsley Amis, David Lodge
    ISBN 0142180149 (0-14-218014-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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  • Macbeth
    by William Shakespeare, Stephen Orgel
    ISBN 0140714782 (0-14-071478-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Shakespeares classic play of deception and murder is reinvented in the Japanese manga style and set on a vast ringworld encircling a sun. Artist Tony Tamais unique vision and style breathe new life into a captivating classic. [via]

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  • Master And Margarita
    by Mikhail Bulgakov, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
    ISBN 0141180145 (0-14-118014-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. Full of pungency and wit, this luminous work is Bulgakov's crowning achievement, skilfully blending magical and realistic elements, grotesque situations and major ethical concerns. Written during the darkest period of Stalin's repressive reign and a devastating satire of Soviet life, it combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with incident and with historical, imaginary, frightful and wonderful characters. Although completed in 1940, The Master and Margarita was not published until 1966 when the first section appeared in the monthly magazine Moskva. Russians everywhere responded enthusiastically to the novel's artistic and spiritual freedom and it was an immediate and enduring success. This new translation has been made from the complete and unabridged Russian text.

     

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  • Meditations
    by Marcus Aurelius
    ISBN 0143036270 (0-14-303627-0)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselvesand each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched livesand destroyed them.

    Now, Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are. Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers, and each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-drive design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped the world.

    Few ancient works have been as influential as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161180). A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Marcuss insights and adviceon everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with othershave made the Meditations required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. For anyone who struggles to reconcile the demands of leadership with a concern for personal integrity and spiritual well-being, the Meditations remains as relevant now as it was two thousand years ago.

     

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  • Eliot, George: The Mill on the Floss
    The Mill on the Floss
    by George Eliot, A. S. Byatt
    ISBN 0141439629 (0-14-143962-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • Much Ado About Nothing
    by William Shakespeare, Josephine Waters Bennett
    ISBN 014071412X (0-14-071412-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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    Book summary:

    "I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart) The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare series, which has sold more than four million copies, is now completely revised and repackaged. Each volume features: * Authoritative, reliable texts * High quality introductions and notes * New, more readable trade trim size * An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts [via]

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  • Dickens, Charles: Nicholas Nickleby
    Nicholas Nickleby
    by Charles Dickens, Mark Ford, Douglas McGrath
    ISBN 0142002755 (0-14-200275-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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  • Northanger Abbey
    by Jane Austen, Marilyn Butler
    ISBN 0141439793 (0-14-143979-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.

    Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Of Mice and Men
    by John Steinbeck
    ISBN 0142000671 (0-14-200067-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him. "A thriller, a gripping tale . . . that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." - The New York Times [via]

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  • One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
    by Ken Kesey, Robert Faggen
    ISBN 0141181222 (0-14-118122-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned. [via]

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  • Our Man in Havana
    by Graham Greene, Christopher Hitchens
    ISBN 0142438006 (0-14-243800-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Classics

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    Book summary:

    Graham Greene?s classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction

    First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates today. Conceived as one of Graham Greene?s ?entertainments,? it tells of MI6?s man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb?s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true.

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  • Persuasion
    by Jane Austen, Gillian Beer
    ISBN 0141439688 (0-14-143968-8)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    View our feature on Jane Austen. Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. Al the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love? Jane Austen once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work. [via]

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  • The Picture of Dorian Grey
    by Oscar Wilde, Robert Mighall
    ISBN 0141439572 (0-14-143957-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."

    As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]

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  • Hertzberg, Hendrik: Politics: Obsevations & Arguments; 1966-2004
    Politics: Obsevations & Arguments; 1966-2004
    by Hendrik Hertzberg
    ISBN 0143035533 (0-14-303553-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • The Portrait of a Lady
    by Henry James, Geoffrey Moore
    ISBN 0141439637 (0-14-143963-7)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.

    [via]

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  • Power and the Glory
    by Graham Greene
    ISBN 0142437301 (0-14-243730-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.

    On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"

    As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]

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  • Pygmalion
    by George Bernard Shaw, Dan H. Laurence
    ISBN 0141439505 (0-14-143950-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle-'an east-end dona with an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers'-for Mrs Patrick Campbell, with whom he had a passionate but unconsummated affair. From the outset the play was a sensational success, although Shaw, irritated by its popularity at the expense of his artistic intentions, dismissed it as a potboiler. The Pygmalion of legend falls in love with his perfect female statue and persuades Venus to bring her to life so that he can marry her. But Shaw radically reworks Ovid's tale to give it a feminist slant: while Higgins teaches Eliza to speak and act like a duchess, she also asserts her independence, adamantly refusing to be his creation. A brilliantly witty exposure of the British class system, it is, as Nicholas Grene comments in his Introduction, 'the wonderful inventiveness of its comedy, the force of what it still has to say to us, and the light playfulness of tone with which it is said', that ensures that Pygmalion continues to entertain us. [via]

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  • Richard III
    by William Shakespeare, G. Blakemore Evans
    ISBN 0140714162 (0-14-071416-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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    "Now is the winter of our discontent," intones Richard, Duke of Gloucester at the beginning of Shakespeare's Richard III, one of his most abidingly popular plays, and one of the most chilling portrayals of political tyranny ever seen on stage. Richard emerges from the chaos which surrounds the reign of Henry VI, already dramatised by Shakespeare earlier in his career, determined to become king by removing his elder brother Edward IV by convincing him that their brother Clarence is plotting against the crown. The deaths of both Clarence and Edward take Richard inexorably towards the crown, and the series of murders and conspiracies that Richard masterminds confirms his claim that "I am determined to prove a villain". Richard's political and sexual charisma are truly chilling, and his seduction of Lady Anne, over her husband's corpse is one of the most disturbing scenes in Shakespeare. At another level, the play is also a strongly anti-Yorkist play, which has a vested interest in portraying Richard as such as vicious tyrant before seeing him toppled, ushering in a period of rule which prefigured the Tudor dynasty of which Elizabeth I was herself a part. The play has had a deep and lasting influence on audiences and writers; Brecht rewrote the play as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, while both Laurance Olivier and Ian Mckellen have produced memorable film versions of Richard III, the latter updating the play into a 1930s fascist state ruled over by a Richard akin to Oswald Mosley. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • The Sagas of the Icelanders
    by Robert Kellogg, Jane Smiley
    ISBN 0141000031 (0-14-100003-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world's greatest literary treasures--as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured further west--to Greenland and, ultimately, the coast of North America itself.

    The 10 Sagas and seven shorter tales in this volume include the celebrated "Vinland Sagas," which recount Leif Eiriksson's pioneering voyage to the New World and contain the oldest descriptions of the North American continent.

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  • The Scarlet Letter
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nina Baym, Thomas E. Connolly
    ISBN 0142437263 (0-14-243726-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the dichotomy between the public and private self, internal passion and external convention, gives us the unforgettable Hester Prynne, who discovers strength in the face of ostracism and emerges as a heroine ahead of her time.

     

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  • The Secret Garden
    by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Janet Allison Brown, Graham Rust
    ISBN 0141312017 (0-14-131201-7)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • Secret Life of Bees
    by Sue Monk Kidd
    ISBN 0142001740 (0-14-200174-0)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler [via]

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  • Shirley
    by Charlotte Bronte
    ISBN 0141439866 (0-14-143986-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Set during the Napoleonic wars at a time of national economic struggles, Shirley is an unsentimental yet passionate depiction of conflict among classes, sexes, and generations. Struggling manufacturer Robert Moore considers marriage to the wealthy and independent Shirley Keeldar, yet his heart lies with his cousin Caroline. Shirley, meanwhile, is in love with Roberts brother, an impoverished tutor. As industrial unrest builds to a potentially fatal pitch, can the four be reconciled?

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  • Siddhartha
    by Joachim Neugroschel, Hermann Hesse
    ISBN 0142437182 (0-14-243718-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Hesse's famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation. This new translation by award-winning translator Joachim Neugroschel includes an introduction by Hesse biographer Ralph Freedman. [via]

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  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    by Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Mighall
    ISBN 0141439734 (0-14-143973-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    tevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil, "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," has become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a morality tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives. Also in this volume are "The Body Snatcher," which charts the murky underside of Victorian medical practice, and "Olalla," a tale of vampirism and "the beast within," with a beautiful woman at its center.

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  • A Tale of Two Cities
    by Charles Dickens, Richard Maxwell
    ISBN 0141439602 (0-14-143960-2)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine. [via]

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  • The Taming of the Shrew
    by William Shakespeare, Richard Hosley
    ISBN 0140714251 (0-14-071425-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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    Book summary:

    One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, The Taming of the Shrew is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua". He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, "shrewish" sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot "tame" and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that "this is the way to kill a wife with kindness". The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that "thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper". The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of "comedy" has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --Jerry Brotton [via]

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  • The Tempest
    by William Shakespeare, Peter Holland
    ISBN 0140714855 (0-14-071485-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    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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  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles
    by Thomas Hardy, Tom Dolin
    ISBN 0141439599 (0-14-143959-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    The chance discovery by a young peasant woman that she is a descendant of the noble family of d'Urbervilles is to change the course of her life. Tess Durbeyfield leaves home on the first of her fateful journeys, and meets the ruthless Alec d'Urberville. Thomas Hardy's impassioned story tells of hope and disappointment, rejection and enduring love.
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  • Vineland
    by Thomas Pynchon
    ISBN 0141180633 (0-14-118063-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    A spaced-out story of Zoyd Wheeler's passion for Frenesi Gates finding fulfilment in his love for their daughter, Prairie. It has been described as "a meditation on myth-making - historical, personal, cinematic and televised". By the author of "V", "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow". [via]

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  • The Wind in the Willows
    by Kenneth Grahame, Joanne Moss, Janet Allison Brown
    ISBN 0141312041 (0-14-131204-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    When Mole goes for a boat ride one day with Rat he discovers what an exciting place the river is. He meets Toad and Badger and the four animal friends go on remarkable adventures together. [via]

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  • Winnie-the-Pooh
    by A. A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard
    ISBN 0142404675 (0-14-240467-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    For nearly seventy years, readers have been delighted by the adventures of Christopher Robin and his lovable friends.  Paired with the perfectly suited drawings of Ernest H.  Shepard, A.A. Milne's classic story continues to captivate children of all ages.

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  • The Winter's Tale
    by William Shakespeare, Frances E. Dolan
    ISBN 014071488X (0-14-071488-X)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's most haunting and enigmatic late plays, The Winter's Tale is a fine example of Shakespeare's fascination with the dramatic genre of "romance": the portrayal of magical lands, familial conflict and exile, and final reunion and reconciliation. Drawing on Robert Green's story Pandosto, Shakespeare play tells the story of the middle-aged Leontes, king of Sicilia, and his childhood friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. Leontes mistakenly believes that his friend is having an affair with his wife, Hermione. In his jealousy, and consumed by "tremor cordis", he tries to murder Polixenes, who flees, and accuses his wife of adultery. Hermione gives birth to a baby girl, Perdita, who Leontes denounces as illegitimate, and casts her out into the wilderness. Hermione is ultimately proved innocent, but her son, Mamillius, dies of grief. Hermione collapses, apparently dead, and Leontes is left to pick up the tragic consequences of his actions. Time passes, and the action moves to Bohemia, where the lost child Perdita has grown up a shepherdess in the midst of "great creating nature". The final scenes of the play draw towards resolution and reconciliation between Leontes, Hermione and their lost daughter, culminating in one of Shakespeare's most moving final scenes. One of Shakespeare's most consummate plays, The Winter's Tale is a fascinating study of male insecurity and the relations between art and nature. --Jerry Brotton. [via]

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  • The Winter's Tale : Texts and Contexts
    by William Shakespeare, Baldwin Maxwell
    ISBN 0140714049 (0-14-071404-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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    Book summary:

    One of Shakespeare's most haunting and enigmatic late plays, The Winter's Tale is a fine example of Shakespeare's fascination with the dramatic genre of "romance": the portrayal of magical lands, familial conflict and exile, and final reunion and reconciliation. Drawing on Robert Green's story Pandosto, Shakespeare play tells the story of the middle-aged Leontes, king of Sicilia, and his childhood friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. Leontes mistakenly believes that his friend is having an affair with his wife, Hermione. In his jealousy, and consumed by "tremor cordis", he tries to murder Polixenes, who flees, and accuses his wife of adultery. Hermione gives birth to a baby girl, Perdita, who Leontes denounces as illegitimate, and casts her out into the wilderness. Hermione is ultimately proved innocent, but her son, Mamillius, dies of grief. Hermione collapses, apparently dead, and Leontes is left to pick up the tragic consequences of his actions. Time passes, and the action moves to Bohemia, where the lost child Perdita has grown up a shepherdess in the midst of "great creating nature". The final scenes of the play draw towards resolution and reconciliation between Leontes, Hermione and their lost daughter, culminating in one of Shakespeare's most moving final scenes. One of Shakespeare's most consummate plays, The Winter's Tale is a fascinating study of male insecurity and the relations between art and nature. --Jerry Brotton. [via]

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  • The Wizard of Oz
    by L. Frank Baum, Michael Cavallaro
    ISBN 0142404713 (0-14-240471-3)
    Softcover, Puffin

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    Book summary:

    For many of us, the adventures of Dorothy in Oz will forever be associated not with Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" but with W. W. Denslow's exceedingly odd line drawings for the original editions of Baum's Oz series. The Viennese artist Lisbeth Zwerger, however, goes a long way toward providing a new and refreshed set of images for the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the humbug wizard. These illustrations are often cockeyed, with occasional realistic details thrown in, like a crow with a corncob in its beak in the first portrait of the Scarecrow. The characters have a poignance and oddity that escaped the makers of the Oz movie. [via]

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  • Baum, L. Frank: The Wonderful World of Oz
    The Wonderful World of Oz
    by L. Frank Baum, Jack David Zipes
    ISBN 0141180854 (0-14-118085-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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  • Wuthering Heights
    by Emily Bronte, Pauline Nestor
    ISBN 0141439556 (0-14-143955-6)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Published a year before her death at the age of thirty, Emily Brontës only novel is  set in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors. Depicting the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with an instinct for poetry and for the dark depths of human psychology.


    @HeathBar The house is now mine. Since the neighbor has Catherine, Ill seduce his sister. Well see how brave he is when shes got Heathcock in her.

    Girl is preggers. Catherine is dead. My world is over. Ive become an evil, evil man. Naming my son Heathcliff Jr.

    From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

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