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books tagged “prose”
books tagged “prose”
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The Aeneidby Virgil, Robert FitzgeraldISBN 0679413359 (0-679-41335-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid'Book summary:Arma virumque cano: "I sing of warfare and a man at war." Long the bane of second-year Latin students thrust into a rhetoric of sweeping, seemingly endless sentences full of difficult verb forms and obscure words, Virgil's Aeneid finds a helpful translator in Robert Fitzgerald, who turns the lines into beautiful, accessible American English. Full of betrayal, heartache, seduction, elation, and violence, the Aeneid is the great founding epic of the Roman empire. Its pages sing of the Roman vision of self, the Roman ideal of what it meant to be a citizen of the world's greatest power. The epic's force carries across the centuries, and remains essential reading. [via]
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The Age of Wire and String: Storiesby Ben MarcusISBN 0679426604 (0-679-42660-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found Thereby Lewis Carroll, John TennielISBN 0679417958 (0-679-41795-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There'Book summary:That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]
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Animal Farmby George OrwellISBN 0679420398 (0-679-42039-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Animal Farm'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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Apuleiusby Apuleius, J. Arthur HansonISBN 0674994981 (0-674-99498-1)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Apuleius'Book summary:In the Metamorphoses of ApuleiusThe Golden Ass, we have the only Latin novel which survives entire. It is truly enchanting: a delightful romance combining realism and magic.
The hero, Lucius, eager to experience the sensations of a bird, resorts to witchcraft but by an unfortunate pharmaceutical error finds himself transformed into an ass. He knows he can revert to his own body by eating rose-petals, but these prove singularly elusive; and the bulk of the work describes his adventures as an animal. He also retails many stories that he overheard, the most charming being that of Cupid and Psyche (beginning, in true fairy-tale fashion, 'Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina'). Some of the stories are as indecent as they are witty, and two in the ninth book were deemed by Boccaccio worthy of inclusion in the Decameron. At last the goddess Isis takes pity on Lucius. In a surprising denouement, he is restored to human shape and, now spiritually regenerated, is initiated into her mysteries. The author's baroque Latin style nicely matches his fantastic narrative and is guaranteed to hold a reader's attention from beginning to end.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Apuleius is in two volumes.
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Arabian Nightsby Husain Haddawy, Muhsin Mahdi, Mahdi MushinISBN 0679413383 (0-679-41338-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arabian Nights'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
These stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories), told by the Princess Shahrazad under the threat of death if she ceases to amuse, first reached the West around 1700. They fired in the European imagination an appetite for the mysterious and exotic which has never left it. Collected over centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from vivacious erotica, animal fables, and adventure fantasies to pointed Sufi tales, the stories of The Arabian Nights provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory.
The present new translation by Husain Haddawy is of the Mahdi edition, the definitive Arabic edition of a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which is the oldest surviving version of the tales and is considered to be the most authentic. This early version is without the embellishments and additions that appear in later Indian and Egyptian manuscripts, on which all previous English translations were based. [via]More editions of Arabian Nights:
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Art & Liesby Jeanette WintersonISBN 0679441816 (0-679-44181-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Art & Lies'Book summary:One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.
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Bleak Houseby Charles Dickens, Hablot Knight BrowneISBN 0679405682 (0-679-40568-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bleak House'Book summary: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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Boethius: Theological Tractates. Loeb 74, Consolation of Philosophyby BoethiusISBN 0674990838 (0-674-99083-8)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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Bostoniansby Henry JamesISBN 0679417508 (0-679-41750-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Carameloby Sandra CisnerosISBN 0679435549 (0-679-43554-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Catch-22by Joseph HellerISBN 0679437223 (0-679-43722-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catch-22'Book summary:There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.
Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. [via]More editions of Catch-22:
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The Charterhouse of Parmaby Henri Stendhal, C. K. Scott-MoncrieffISBN 0679417435 (0-679-41743-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Charterhouse of Parma'Book summary:Officer, diplomat, spy, journalist, and intermittent genius, Marie Henri Beyle employed more than 200 aliases in the course of his crowded career. His most famous moniker, however, was Stendhal, which he affixed to his greatest work, The Charterhouse of Parma. The author spent a mere seven weeks cranking out this marvel in 1838, setting the fictional equivalent of a land-speed record. To be honest, there are occasional signs of haste, during which he clearly bypassed le mot juste in favor of narrative zing. So what? Stendhal at his sloppiest is still wittier, and wiser about human behavior, than just about any writer you could name. No wonder so meticulous a stylist as Paul Valéry was happy to forgive his sins against French grammar: "We should never be finished with Stendhal. I can think of no greater praise than that."
The plot of The Charterhouse of Parma suggests a run-of-the-mill potboiler, complete with court intrigue, military derring-do, and more romance than you can shake a saber at. But Stendhal had an amazing, pre-Freudian grasp of psychology (at least the Gallic variant). More than most of his contemporaries, he understood the incessant jostling of love, sex, fear, and ambition, not to mention our endless capacity for self-deception. No wonder his hero, Fabrizio de Dongo, seems to know everything and nothing about himself. Even under fire at the Battle of Waterloo, the young Fabrizio has a tendency to lose himself in Napoleonic reverie:
Suddenly everyone galloped off. A few moments later Fabrizio saw, twenty paces ahead, a ploughed field that seemed to be strangely in motion; the furrows were filled with water, and the wet ground that formed their crests was exploding into tiny black fragments flung three or four feet into the air. Fabrizio noticed this odd effect as he passed; then his mind returned to daydreams of the Marshal's glory. He heard a sharp cry beside him: two hussars had fallen, riddled by bullets; and when he turned to look at them, they were already twenty paces behind the escort.
The quote above, a famous one, captures something of Stendhal's headlong style. Until now, most English-speaking readers have experienced it via C.K. Scott-Moncrieff's superb 1925 translation. But now Richard Howard has modernized his predecessor's period touches, streamlined some of the fussier locutions, and generally given Stendhal his high-velocity due. The result is a timely version of a timeless masterpiece, which shouldn't need to be updated again until, oh, 2050. Crammed with life, lust, and verbal fireworks, The Charterhouse of Parma demonstrates the real truth of its creator's self-composed epitaph: "He lived. He wrote. He loved." --James Marcus [via]More editions of The Charterhouse of Parma:
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A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679436391 (0-679-43639-1)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Christmas Carol'Book summary:In the history of English literature, Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which has been continuously in print since it was first published in the winter of 1843, stands out as the quintessential Christmas story. What makes this charming edition of Dickens's immortal tale so special is the collection of 80 vivid illustrations by Everett Shinn (1876-1953). Shinn, a well-known artist in his time, was a popular illustrator of newspapers and magazines whose work displayed a remarkable affinity for the stories of Charles Dickens, evoking the bustling street life of the mid-1800s. Printed on heavy, cream-colored paper stock, the edges of the pages have been left rough, simulating the way in which the story might have appeared in Dickens's own time. Though countless editions of this classic have been published over the years, this one stands out as particularly beautiful, nostalgic, and evocative of the spirit of Christmas. [via]
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Cicero: De Natura Deorum Academicaby CiceroISBN 0674992962 (0-674-99296-2)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolby Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Nikolai Vasilevich GogolISBN 0679430237 (0-679-43023-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Crime and Punishmentby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, W. J. LeatherbarrowISBN 0679420290 (0-679-42029-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crime and Punishment'Book summary:Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution. [via]
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Crime and Punishmentby Richard Pevear, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0679405577 (0-679-40557-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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David Copperfieldby Charles Dickens, Hablot Knight BrowneISBN 0679405712 (0-679-40571-2)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Copperfield'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Charles Dickenss most celebrated novel and the authors own favorite, David Copperfield is the classic account of a boy growing up in a world that is by turns magical, fearful, and grimly realistic. In a book that is part fairy tale and part thinly veiled autobiography, Dickens transmutes his life experience into a brilliant series of comic and sentimental adventures in the spirit of the great eighteenth-century novelists he so much admired. Few readers can fail to be touched by Davids fate, and fewer still to be delighted by his story. The cruel Murdstone, the feckless Micawber, the unctuous and sinister Uriah Heep, and David Copperfield himself, into whose portrait Dickens puts so much of his own early life, form a central part of our literary legacy.This edition reprints the original Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton and includes thirty-nine illustrations by Phiz. [via]
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The Divine Comedyby Dante Alighieri, Allen MandelbaumISBN 0679433139 (0-679-43313-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Divine Comedy'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.
Mandelbaums astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.
This Everymans editioncontaining in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisoincludes an introduction by Nobel Prizewinning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.
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Doctor Faustusby Thomas Mann, H.T. Lowe-PorterISBN 0679409963 (0-679-40996-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Doctor Faustus'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by T. J. Reed; Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter [via]More editions of Doctor Faustus:
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeby Robert Louis StevensonISBN 0679405380 (0-679-40538-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'Book summary:The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster [via]
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Einstein's Dreamsby Alan LightmanISBN 0679416463 (0-679-41646-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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El Doctor Zhivago / The Doctor Zhivagoby Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Max Hayward, Manya HarariISBN 0679407596 (0-679-40759-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Doctor Zhivago / The Doctor Zhivago'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
In the grand tradition of the epic novel, Boris Pasternaks masterpiece brings to life the drama and immensity of the Russian Revolution through the story of the gifted physician-poet, Zhivago; the revolutionary, Strelnikov; and Lara, the passionate woman they both love. Caught up in the great events of politics and war that eventually destroy him and millions of others, Zhivago clings to the private world of family life and love, embodied especially in the magical Lara.
First published in Italy in 1957, Doctor Zhivago was not allowed to appear in the Soviet Union until 1987, twenty-seven years after the authors death.
Translated by Manya Harari and Max Hayward [via]More editions of El Doctor Zhivago / The Doctor Zhivago:
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The Elephant Vanishes: Storiesby Haruki MurakamiISBN 0679420576 (0-679-42057-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elephant Vanishes: Stories'Book summary:With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.
By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities -- and to come back bearing treasure.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Elephant Vanishes: Stories:
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Fablesby Aesop, Roger L'EstrangeISBN 0679417907 (0-679-41790-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fables'Book summary:Aesop is said to have lived in the sixth century B.C., a slave on the Greek island of Samos. The eternally entertaining tales attributed to himin which the fates of sly foxes, wicked wolves, industrious ants, and others, suggest what our own behaviors should (or should not) behave been universal "best-sellers" since before L'Estrange's definitive 1692 English translation. Gooden's superb engravings were first published in 1936 in a limited edition. [via]
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Fairy Talesby H.C. Andersen, W. Heath Robinson, Reginald SpinkISBN 0679417915 (0-679-41791-5)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fairy Tales'Book summary:"The Princess and the Pea, " "The Little Mermaid, " and other great Andersen fairy tales have enchanted children since the first ones appeared in Danish in the 1830s and '40s. Spink's translation into English is widely recognized as the finest, and the new Everyman's Library edition is further graced by the magical pictures made in 1899 by three of Britain's most celebrated illustrators. [via]
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Fairy Talesby Wilhelm Grimm, Brothers Grimm, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679417966 (0-679-41796-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fairy Tales'Book summary:Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Snow White are among the jewels we owe to the German brothers Grimm, who began in the first decade of the 19th century to seek out and listen to village storytellers. The best-loved of the tales they discovered are now brought together with the marvelous pictures that in 1900 first established the reputation of one of the greatest children's illustrators of all time, Arthur Rackham. [via]
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Gardenby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles RobinsonISBN 0679423095 (0-679-42309-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'Book summary:Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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Gift from the Seaby Anne Morrow LindberghISBN 0679406832 (0-679-40683-2)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gift from the Sea'Book summary:I found a 1955 printing of this book in an old waterfront cabin and was struck by the care with which the previous owner had read it. Eve (the name inscribed inside the front cover and then again above the heading for chapter 3) made pencil marks on nearly every paragraph of the book, underlining a phrase, highlighting many passages with strong vertical marks, scratching out some words that she seems to have found superfluous and even x-ing out whole sections that apparently missed their mark with her altogether. Two rusting paper clips isolate several pages, absent any marking at all. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's lyrical words are still relevant and presage so many of the themes of today's most popular books: simplicity, peaceful solitude, caring for the soul, a woman finding her place in society and life. I heard that the woman who had lived in the cabin had actually passed away some time before. Thank you, Eve, for your gift... from the sea. [via]
The Golden Bowlby Henry James, Denis DonoghueISBN 0679417338 (0-679-41733-8)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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Good Benitoby Alan P. LightmanISBN 0679436146 (0-679-43614-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Benito'Book summary:Throughout his life, Bennett Long pursues a vision that compels him to become a scientist and that transforms the everyday world into one of purity, beauty, and order, whose very allure lies in its unattainable ideal. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour. [via]
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The Good Soldierby Ford Madox FordISBN 0679406654 (0-679-40665-4)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Soldier'Book summary:First published in 1915, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier begins, famously and ominously, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." The book then proceeds to confute this pronouncement at every turn, exposing a world less sad than pathetic, and more shot through with hypocrisy and deceit than its incredulous narrator, John Dowell, cares to imagine. Somewhat forgotten as a classic, The Good Soldier has been called everything from the consummate novelist's novel to one of the greatest English works of the century. And although its narrative hook--the philandering of an otherwise noble man--no longer shocks, its unerring cadences and doleful inevitabilities proclaim an enduring appeal.
Ford's novel revolves around two couples: Edward Ashburnham--the title's soldier--and his capable if off-putting wife, Leonora; and long-transplanted Americans John and Florence Dowell. The foursome's ostensible amiability, on display as they pass parts of a dozen pre-World War I summers together in Germany, conceals the fissures in each marriage. John is miserably mismatched with the garrulous, cuckolding Florence; and Edward, dashing and sentimental, can't refrain from falling in love with women whose charms exceed Leonora's. Predictably, Edward and Florence conduct their affair, an indiscretion only John seems not to notice. After the deaths of the two lovers, and after Leonora explains much of the truth to John, he recounts the events of their four lives with an extended inflection of outrage. From his retrospective perch, his recollections simmer with a bitter skepticism even as he expresses amazement at how much he overlooked.
Dowell's resigned narration is flawlessly conversational--haphazard, sprawling, lusting for sympathy. He exudes self-preservation even as he alternately condemns and lionizes Edward: "If I had had the courage and the virility and possibly also the physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done much what he did." Stunningly, Edward's adultery comes to seem not merely excusable, but almost sublime. "Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions," John surmises. Ford's novel deserves its reputation if for no other reason than the elegance with which it divulges hidden lives. --Ben Guterson [via]
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Great Expectationsby Charles DickensISBN 0679405798 (0-679-40579-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Expectations'Book summary:An absorbing mystery as well as a morality tale, the story of Pip, a poor village lad, and his expectations of wealth is Dickens at his most deliciously readable. The cast of characters includes kindly Joe Gargery, the loyal convict Abel Magwitch and the haunting Miss Havisham. If you have heartstrings, count on them being tugged. [via]
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Gulliver's Travelsby Jonathan SwiftISBN 0679405453 (0-679-40545-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
An immediate success on its publication in 1726, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was read, as John Gay put it, "from the cabinet council to the nursery." Dean Swift's great satire is presented here in its unexpurgated entirety. [via]More editions of Gulliver's Travels:
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Hard Timesby Charles DickensISBN 0679413235 (0-679-41323-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Times'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)By 1854, when Hard Times was published, Charles Dickens' magisterial progress as a writer had come to incorporate a many-sided, coherent vision of English society, both as it was and as he wished it to be. Hard Times. a classic Dickensian story of redemption set in a North of England town beset by industrialism, everywhere benefits from this vision - in the trenchancy of its satire, in its sweeping indignation at social injustice, and in the persistent humanity with which its author enlivens his largest and smallest incidents. [via]
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Heart of Darkness, Youth, Typhoonby Joseph ConradISBN 0679424687 (0-679-42468-7)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Howards Endby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679406689 (0-679-40668-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Howards End'Book summary: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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If on a Winter's Night a Travelerby William Weaver, Italo CalvinoISBN 0679420258 (0-679-42025-8)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveler'Book summary:If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration--"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.
The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches--stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition--with explorations of how and why we read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space." [via]
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Jane Eyreby Charlotte BronteISBN 0679405828 (0-679-40582-8)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Charlotte Brontës impassioned novel is the love story of Jane Eyre, a plain yet spirited governess, and her employer, the arrogant, brooding Mr. Rochester. Published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, the book heralded a new kind of heroineone whose virtuous integrity, keen intellect, and tireless perseverance broke through class barriers to win equal stature with the man she loved. Hailed by William Makepeace Thackeray as the masterwork of a great genius, Jane Eyre is still regarded, over a century later, as one of the finest novels in English literature. [via] -
Jude the Obscureby Thomas HardyISBN 0679409939 (0-679-40993-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jude the Obscure'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and its unflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a storm of controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly in response, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writing altogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though we have come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuing century, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power to shock us and disturb our dreams. [via]More editions of Jude the Obscure:
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Just So Storiesby Rudyard KiplingISBN 0679417974 (0-679-41797-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Just So Stories'Book summary:Kipling's own drawings, with their long, funny captions, illustrate his hilarious explanations of How the Camel Got His Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Armadillo Happened, and other animal How's. He began inventing these stories in his American wife's hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont, to amuse his eldest daughter--and they have served ever since as a source of laughter for children everywhere. [via]
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Kidnappedby Robert Louis Stevenson, Rowland HilderISBN 0679436383 (0-679-43638-3)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kidnapped'Book summary:Seventeen-year-old David Balfour's villainous uncle has him kidnapped in order to steal his inheritance. David escapes only to fall into the dangerous company of rebels who are resisting British redcoats in the Scottish highlands. [via]
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Kimby Rudyard KiplingISBN 0679443606 (0-679-44360-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kim'Book summary:One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.
From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Life of Piby Yann MartelISBN 0676978991 (0-676-97899-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life of Pi'Book summary:Serious novels about young boys being drawn closer to God while trapped on lifeboats with dangerous wild animals ought to be impossible. Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, proves they're not. Its plot stretches the limits of credibility into new and exciting shapes, and the fact that Martel has made his materials into an enchanting story is almost unbelievable. Martel's Pi is Piscine Molitor Patel, a boy from Pondicherry, one of the few Indian towns to be colonized by France. Pi is an intelligent, unusual child: he has a scientific turn of mind but is also a practising Hindu, Moslem, and Christian. Pi's family runs a large zoo, but they decide to sell their animals to zoos in the United States and emigrate to Canada. Crossing the Pacific (with their animals), they're shipwrecked halfway between China and Midway. Pi survives, only to find himself sharing a lifeboat with an injured zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan, and Richard Parker--an immense Bengal tiger.
Most of these animals are doomed, but Pi and Richard Parker cling to life, establishing a tacit order on the lifeboat. Martel handles this part of the story perfectly: one would expect Life of Pi to become cute, or perhaps preachy, but it is neither. Life on the boat proceeds in strict accordance with the rules of ecology and territorialism, and the interdependence of the passengers is both believable and absorbing. Life of Pi is a superb novel, both for its story and for its rich examinations of religion, isolation, and love. If this is an indication of what is to come, we can expect great things from Yann Martel. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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The Little Friendby Donna TarttISBN 0679439382 (0-679-43938-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Little Friend'Book summary:The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of The Secret Historya best-seller nationwide and around the world, and one of the most astonishing debuts in recent timesThe Little Friend is even more transfixing and resonant.
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, whowhen she was only a babywas found hanging dead from a black-tupelo tree in their yard. His killer was never identified, nor has his family, in the years since, recovered from the tragedy.
For Harriet, who has grown up largely unsupervised, in a world of her own imagination, her brother is a link to a glorious past she has only heard stories about or glimpsed in photograph albums. Fiercely determined, precocious far beyond her twelve years, and steeped in the adventurous literature of Stevenson, Kipling, and Conan Doyle, she resolves, one summer, to solve the murder and exact her revenge. Harriets sole ally in this quest, her friend Hely, is devoted to her, but what they soon encounter has nothing to do with childs play: it is dark, adult, and all too menacing.
A revelation of familial longing and sorrow, The Little Friend explores crime and punishment, as well as the hidden complications and consequences that hinder the pursuit of truth and justice. A novel of breathtaking ambition and power, it is rich in moral paradox, insights into human frailty, and storytelling brilliance. [via]More editions of The Little Friend:
Little Lord Fauntleroyby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles E. BrockISBN 0679444742 (0-679-44474-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Little Women, Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amyby Louisa May AlcottISBN 0679436421 (0-679-43642-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women, Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy'Book summary:Louisa May Alcott's beloved tale about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy is presented in a beautiful Everyman's Library Children's Classics edition. The story of the four sisters' dreams, quarrels, and romances are brought to vivid life in this edition that features full cloth binding in bold, bright colors; silk ribbon marker and headband; two-color illustrated endpapers and illustrations throughout. A brief biography of Alcott is also included. [via]
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The Magic Mountainby Thomas Mann, John E. WoodsISBN 0679441832 (0-679-44183-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Magic Mountain'Book summary:A vast intellectual drama of the forces that play upon modern man, The Magic Mountain is set in a sanitorium in the Swiss Alps--a community organized with exclusive reference to ill health, and a symbol of the diseased society of Europe before 1914. [via]
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Marcus Aureliusby C.R. HainesISBN 0674990641 (0-674-99064-1)
Hardcover, Harvard Univ Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Marcus Aurelius'Book summary:Marcus Aurelius (121180 CE), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, born at Rome, received training under his guardian and uncle emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 138161), who adopted him. He was converted to Stoicism and henceforward studied and practised philosophy and law. A gentle man, he lived in agreement and collaboration with Antoninus Pius. He married Pius's daughter and succeeded him as emperor in March 161, sharing some of the burdens with Lucius Verus.
Marcus's reign soon saw fearful national disasters from flood, earthquakes, epidemics, threatened revolt (in Britain), a Parthian war, and pressure of barbarians north of the Alps. From 169 onwards he had to struggle hard against the German Quadi, Marcomani, Vandals, and others until success came in 174. In 175 (when Faustina died) he pacified affairs in Asia after a revolt by Avidius. War with Germans was renewed during which he caught some disease and died by the Danube in March 180.
The famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (not his title; he simply calls them 'The matters addressed to himself') represents reflections written in periods of solitude during the emperor's military campaigns. Originally intended for his private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations has endured as a potent expression of Stoic belief. It is a central text for students of Stoicism as well as a unique personal guide to the moral life.
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Master And Margaritaby Michael Glenny, Mikhail BulgakovISBN 0679410465 (0-679-41046-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'MASTER AND MARGARITA'Book summary:Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.
Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"
Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park [via]
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Meditationsby Marcus Aurelius, A.S.L. FarquharsonISBN 0679412719 (0-679-41271-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Meditations'Book summary:The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (a.d. 121180) embodied in his person that deeply cherished, ideal figure of antiquity, the philosopher-king. His Meditations are not only one of the most important expressions of the Stoic philosophy of his time but also an enduringly inspiring guide to living a good and just life. Written in moments snatched from military campaigns and the rigors of politics, these ethical and spiritual reflections reveal a mind of exceptional clarity and originality, and a spirit attuned to both the particulars of human destiny and the vast patterns that underlie it.
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The Mill on the Flossby George EliotISBN 0679417265 (0-679-41726-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mill on the Floss'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot re-creates her own childhood through the story of the wild, gifted Maggie Tulliver and her spoiled, selfish brother. Though tragic in its outcome, this tenderly comic novel combines vivid vignettes of family life with a magnificent portrait of the heroine and an acute critique of Victorian sexual politics. Eliot had no peer when it came to finding the drama at the heart of normal lives lived in tandem with the gigantic rhythms of nature itself, and in The Mill on the Floss she shows us once again how thoroughly the art of fiction can satisfy our deepest mental and emotional cravings. [via]
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The Moonstoneby Wilkie CollinsISBN 0679417222 (0-679-41722-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moonstone'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Introduction by Catherine Peters [via]More editions of The Moonstone:
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Nicholas Nickleby: Library Editionby Charles DickensISBN 0679423079 (0-679-42307-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nicholas Nickleby: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Introduction by John Carey [via]
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Northanger Abbeyby Jane AustenISBN 067941715X (0-679-41715-X)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'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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Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboardby Joseph ConradISBN 0679409904 (0-679-40990-4)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Conrad's foresight and his ability to pluck the human adventure from complex historical circumstances were such that his greatest novel, Nostromo -- though nearly one hundred years old -- says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life. Insistently dramatic in its storytelling, spectacular in its recreation of the subtropical landscape, this picture of an insurrectionary society and the opportunities it provides for moral corruption gleams on every page with its author's dry, undeceived, impeccable intelligence. [via]
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One Hundred Years of Solitudeby Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gregory RabassaISBN 0679444653 (0-679-44465-3)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'Book summary:"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:
A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Our Mutual Friendby Charles DickensISBN 0679420282 (0-679-42028-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Pantagruel Gargantuaby Francois Rabelais, Thomas UrquhartISBN 0679431373 (0-679-43137-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pantagruel Gargantua'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) [via]
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Persuasionby Jane AustenISBN 0679409866 (0-679-40986-6)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persuasion'Book summary:Anne Elliot, heroine of Austen's last novel, did something we can all relate to: Long ago, she let the love of her life get away. In this case, she had allowed herself to be persuaded by a trusted family friend that the young man she loved wasn't an adequate match, social stationwise, and that Anne could do better. The novel opens some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, and she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea. As always, Austen's storytelling is so confident, you can't help but allow yourself to be taken on the enjoyable journey. [via]
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The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeISBN 0679600019 (0-679-60001-9)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary: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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Poe: Poems and Proseby Edgar Allan PoeISBN 0679445056 (0-679-44505-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Portrait of a Ladyby Henry JamesISBN 0679405623 (0-679-40562-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portrait of a Lady'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The Portrait of a Lady is the most stunning achievement of Henry James's early period--in the 1860s and '70s when he was transforming himself from a talented young American into a resident of Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatest novelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of this transformation informs every page of this masterpiece. Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled--the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle--are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting--in England and Italy--provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama. [via]More editions of The Portrait of a Lady:
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Rembrandt's Eyesby Simon Schama, Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van RijnISBN 067940256X (0-679-40256-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rembrandt's Eyes'Book summary:For Rembrandt as for Shakespeare, all the world was indeed a stage, and he knew in exhaustive detail the tactics of its performance: the strutting and mincing; the wardrobe and the face paint; the full repertoire of gesture and grimace; the flutter of hands and the roll of the eyes; the belly laugh and the half-stifled sob. He knew what it looked like to seduce, to intimidate, to wheedle, and to console; to strike a pose or preach a sermon; to shake a fist or uncover a breast; how to sin and how to atone; how to commit murder and how to commit suicide. No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own. No painter ever looked with such unsparing intelligence or such bottomless compassion at our entrances and our exits and the whole rowdy show in between.
More than three centuries after his death, Rembrandt remains the most deeply loved of all the great masters of painting, his face so familiar to us from the self-portraits painted at every stage in his life, yet still so mysterious. As with Shakespeare, the facts of his life are hard to come by: the Leiden miller's son who briefly found fame in Amsterdam, whose genius was fitfully recognized by his contemporaries, who fell into bankruptcy and died in poverty. So there is probably no painter whose life has engendered more legends, nor to whom more unlikely pictures have been attributed (a process now undergoing rigorous reversal). Rembrandt's Eyes, about which Simon Schama has been thinking for more than twenty years, shows that the true biography of Rembrandt is to be discovered in his pictures. Through a succession of superbly incisive descriptions and interpretations of Rembrandt's paintings threaded into this narrative, he allows us to see Rembrandt's life clearly and to think about it afresh.
But this book moves far beyond the bounds of conventional biography or art history. With extraordinary imaginative sympathy, Schama conjures up the world in which Rembrandt moved -- its sounds, smells, and tastes as well as its politics; the influences on him of the wars of the Protestant United Provinces against Spain, of the extreme Calvinism of his native Leiden, of the demands of patrons and the ambitions of contemporaries; the importance of his beloved Saskia and, after her death (Rembrandt was later forced to sell her grave, so complete was his ruin), of his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels; and, above all, the profound effect on him of the great master of the immediately preceding generation, the Catholic painter from Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens:
"the prince of painters and the painter of princes" with whom Rembrandt was obsessed for the first part of his life, and whose career was the shaping force that drove Rembrandt to test the farthest reaches of his own originality.
Rembrandt's Eyes shows us why Rembrandt is such a thrilling painter, so revolutionary in his art, so penetrating of the hearts of those who have looked for three hundred years at his pictures. Above all, Schama's understanding of Rembrandt's mind and the dynamic of his life allows him to re-create Rembrandt's life on the page. Through a combination of scholarship and literary skill, Schama allows us to actually see that life through Rembrandt's own eyes. In overcoming the paucity of conventional historical evidence, it is the most intelligently true biography of Rembrandt that has been written, and the most dazzling achievement to date of the art historian whose work has been hailed as "marvelously rich and eloquent" . . . "rare, imaginative" . . . "provocative" . . . "astoundingly learned with verve, humor, and an unflagging sense of delight" . . . that of "a master
storyteller . . . and "a master of history."*
*From the New York Times Book Review, Time, The New York Times, The Independent on Sunday, and Nature. [via]More editions of Rembrandt's Eyes:
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Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe, W.J. LintonISBN 0679428194 (0-679-42819-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robinson Crusoe'Book summary:Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe has long been celebrated as the first great English novel. Based on the account of a shipwrecked sailor, it tells the story of one man rediscovering himself and the world in a solitude he thinks complete until his encounter with Man Friday.
Distinguished by its strong, pure style, and by a delight in factual precision, Robinson Crusoe is still the most compelling book we have from the Age of Exploration. The impact of Daniel Defoes prose on the development of English writing has often been compared to that of the King James Bible; and the power of this fable of human loneliness has been felt by readers of every age over the last three hundred years. [via] 
Sand and Foamby Kahlil GibranISBN 067943920X (0-679-43920-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel HawthorneISBN 0679417311 (0-679-41731-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Scarlet Letter'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The story of Hester Prynnefound out in adultery, pilloried by her Puritan community, and abandoned, in different ways, by both her partner in sin and her vengeance-seeking husbandpossesses a reality heightened by Hawthornes pure human sympathy and his unmixed devotion to his supposedly fallen but fundamentally innocent heroine. In its moral force and the beauty of its conciliations, The Scarlet Letter rightly deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced an American literature equal to any in the world. [via]More editions of The Scarlet Letter:
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Secret Agentby Joseph ConradISBN 0679417230 (0-679-41723-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Secret Agent'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and innocent alike.
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The Secret Historyby Donna TarttISBN 0679410325 (0-679-41032-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret History'Book summary:Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartts novel is a remarkable achievementboth compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Secret History:
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Selected Short Stories of William Faulknerby William FaulknerISBN 0679424784 (0-679-42478-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner'Book summary:William Faulkner was a master of the short story. Most of the pieces in this collection are drawn from the greatest period in his writing life, the fifteen or so years beginning in 1929, when he published The Sound and the Fury. They explore many of the themes found in the novels and feature characters of small-town Mississippi life that are uniquely Faulkners. In A Rose for Emily, the first of his stories to appear in a national magazine, a straightforward, neighborly narrator relates a tale of love, betrayal, and murder. The vicious family of the Snopes trilogy turns up in Barn Burning, about a sons response to the activities of his arsonist father. And Jason and Caddy Compson, two other inhabitants of Faulkners mythical Yoknapatawpha County, are witnesses to the terrorizing of a pregnant black laundress in That Evening Sun. These and the other stories gathered here attest to the fact that Faulkner is, as Ralph Ellison so aptly noted, the greatest artist the South has produced.
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The Size of Thoughts : Essays and Other Lumberby Nicholson BakerISBN 0679439323 (0-679-43932-3)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Size of Thoughts : Essays and Other Lumber'Book summary:Novelist and essayist Nicholson Baker has had a small but well-deserved cult following since his first book, The Mezzanine, and the publication of the literary sex-bomb Vox saw his popularity mushroom. Baker's great gift is a precision of observational detail that has a peculiarly incisive effect on a reader's consciousness. Here is over a decade's worth of his essays and articles, including the much-praised card catalogue article first published in the New Yorker. The Size of Thoughts, through its varied forays into the realms of the overlooked, the underfunded, and the wrongfully scrapped, is a funny and thought-provoking book by one of the most distinctive stylists and thinkers of our time. [via]
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The Souls of Black Folkby W. E. B. Du BoisISBN 067942802X (0-679-42802-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Souls of Black Folk'Book summary:William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
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The Sparrow : A Novelby Mary Doria RussellISBN 0679451501 (0-679-45150-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sparrow : A Novel'Book summary:In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet which will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question the meaning of being "human." When the lone survivor of the expedition, Emilio Sandoz, returns to Earth in 2059, he will try to explain what went wrong... Words like "provocative" and "compelling" will come to mind as you read this shocking novel about first contact with a race that creates music akin to both poetry and prayer. [via]
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Speak, Memoryby Vladimir NabokovISBN 067943318X (0-679-43318-X)
Hardcover, Knopf
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The Sportswriterby Richard FordISBN 0679454519 (0-679-45451-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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A Tale of Two Citiesby Charles DickensISBN 0679420738 (0-679-42073-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tale of Two Cities'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)A Tale of Two Cities begins on a muddy English road in an atmosphere charged with mystery and drama, and it ends in the Paris of the French Revolution with one of the most famous acts of self-sacrifice in literature. In between lies one of Charles Dickenss most exciting books a historical novel that, generation after generation, has given readers access to the profound human dramas that lie behind cataclysmic social and political events. Famous for the character of Sydney Carton, who sacrifices himself upon the guillotine It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done the novel is also a powerful study of crowd psychology and the dark emotions aroused by the Revolution, and is illuminated by Dickenss lively comedy.This edition reprints the original Everyman introduction by G. K. Chesterton and includes sixteen illustrations by Phiz. [via]
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Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas HardyISBN 0679405860 (0-679-40586-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardys early work, Tess of the DUrbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature. [via]
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This Side of Paradiseby F. Scott FitzgeraldISBN 0679447237 (0-679-44723-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Side of Paradise'Book summary:Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920. [via]
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The Trialby Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin MuirISBN 0679409947 (0-679-40994-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trial'Book summary:A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. [via]
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Tristram Shandyby Laurence SterneISBN 0679405607 (0-679-40560-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Introduction by Peter Conrad [via]More editions of Tristram Shandy:
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Under the Black Flag : The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Piratesby David CordinglyISBN 0679425608 (0-679-42560-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Black Flag : The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates'Book summary:Though literature, films, and folklore have romanticized pirates as gallant seaman who hunted for treasure in exotic locales, David Cordingly, a former curator at the National Maritime Museum in England, reveals the facts behind the legends of such outlaws as Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and Calico Jack. Even stories about buried treasure are fictitious, he says, yet still the myth remains. Though pirate captains were often sadistic villains and crews endured barbarous tortures, were constantly threatened with the possibility of death by hanging, drowning in a storm, or surviving a shipwreck on a hostile coast, pirates are still idealized. Cordingly examines why the myth of the romance of piratehood endures and why so few lived out their days in luxury on the riches they had plundered. [via]
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Under Western Eyes: Library Editionby Joseph ConradISBN 0679405542 (0-679-40554-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Up in the Old Hotelby Joseph MitchellISBN 0679412638 (0-679-41263-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Up in the Old Hotel'Book summary:Journalist Joseph Mitchell, whose death in in May 1996 at the age of 87 merited a half-page obituary in the New York Times, pioneered a style of journalism while crafting brilliant magazine pieces for the New Yorker from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of his best reporting, is a 700-page joy to read.
Mitchell lovingly chronicled the lives of odd New York characters. In the pages of Up In the Old Hotel, the reader passes through places such as McSorley's Old Ale House or the Fulton Fish Market that many observers might have found ordinary. But when experienced through Mitchell's gifted eye, the reader will see that these haunts of old New York possess poetry, beauty, and meaning. [via]
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Villette: Library Editionby Charlotte BronteISBN 0679409882 (0-679-40988-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Villette: Library Edition'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Left by harrowing circumstances to fend for herself in the great capital of a foreign country, Lucy Snowe, the narrator and heroine of Villette, achieves by degrees an authentic independence from both outer necessity and inward grief. Charlotte Brontë's last novel, published in 1853, has a dramatic force comparable to that of her other masterpiece, Jane Eyre, as well as strikingly modern psychological insight and a revolutionary understanding of human loneliness. With an introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallet. [via]More editions of Villette: Library Edition:
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Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreauby Henry David Thoreau, Brooks AtkinsonISBN 0679600043 (0-679-60004-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau'Book summary:With their call for "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! , for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature.
The selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle. A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature--and of himself--is recorded in selections from A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods and The Journal. [via]More editions of Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau:
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War and Peaceby Leo Tolstoy, Louise Maude, Aylmer MaudeISBN 0679405739 (0-679-40573-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'War and Peace'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Three-Volume Boxed Set [via]More editions of War and Peace:
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The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith ; Introduction by Alan B. Krueger ; Edited, With Notes and Marginal Summary, by Edwin Cannanby Adam Smith, D. D. RaphaelISBN 067940564X (0-679-40564-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith ; Introduction by Alan B. Krueger ; Edited, With Notes and Marginal Summary, by Edwin Cannan'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Published in 1776, in the same year as the Declaration of Independence, The Wealth of Nations has had an equally great impact on the course of modern history. Adam Smiths celebrated defense of free market economies was written with such expressive power and clarity that the first edition sold out in six months. While its most remarkable and enduring innovation was to see the whole of economic life as a unified system, it is notable also as one of the Enlightenments most eloquent testaments to the sanctity of the individual in his relation
to the state. [via]More editions of The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith ; Introduction by Alan B. Krueger ; Edited, With Notes and Marginal Summary, by Edwin Cannan:
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The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causesby Adam SmithISBN 0679424733 (0-679-42473-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes'Book summary:Introduction by Robert ReichCommentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner Adam Smith's masterpiece, first published in 1776, is the foundation of modern economic thought and remains the single most important account of the rise of, and the principles behind, modern capitalism. Written in clear and incisive prose, The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society; and Robert Reich's Introduction both clarifies Smith's analyses and illuminates his overall relevance to the world in which we live. As Reich writes, "Smith's mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century-jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics." Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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What Maisie Knewby Henry JamesISBN 0678028117 (0-678-02811-7)
Hardcover, Scholars Book Shelf
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Why Read the Classics?by Italo Calvino, Martin McLaughlinISBN 0679415246 (0-679-41524-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Why Read the Classics?'Book summary:Why read Italo Calvino's book on the classics? Because it passes his own test for what a classic is, and its brisk prose can blast your concept of the word clean of the dusty associations that cling to it. Calvino gives 14 offbeat definitions of classic, my favorite being "a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off." His sharp essays on Conrad, Dickens, Diderot, Flaubert, Ovid, and others constitute an act of self-criticism too, a novelist's imaginative autobiography. In 1955, when rave-reviewing Robinson Crusoe, he called Daniel Defoe the "inventor of modern journalism." In 1954, he overcame his disgust with Hemingway's life "of violent tourism," coolly assessed his dry heights and sodden depths, and called himself Papa's apprentice. And the 1984 piece on Borges shows who influenced Calvino most once he'd become a master himself.
From both the American and the Argentinian, Calvino learned to be concise, and his quick sketches of books like the "unqualified masterpiece" Our Mutual Friend provide a contact high--one wants to drop everything and head straight to a library, so infectious is his enthusiasm. "How many young people will be smitten" by Stendhal's recently, brilliantly retranslated Waterloo-era adventure The Charterhouse of Parma, he writes, "recognizing it as the novel they had always wanted to read... the benchmark for all the other novels they will read in later life." Like a great teacher, Italo Calvino distills a writer's essence in a vivid phrase: money, for instance, serves as "the motive force of Balzac's narrative, the true test of feeling in Dickens; but in Mark Twain money is a game of mirrors, causing vertigo over a void." --Tim Appelo [via]
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The Wind in the Willowsby Kenneth Grahame, Arthur RackhamISBN 0679418024 (0-679-41802-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind in the Willows'Book summary:"[Mole] thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again." Such is the cautious, agreeable Mole's first introduction to the river and the Life Adventurous. Emerging from his home at Mole End one spring, his whole world changes when he hooks up with the good-natured, boat-loving Water Rat, the boastful Toad of Toad Hall, the society- hating Badger who lives in the frightening Wild Wood, and countless other mostly well-meaning creatures. Michael Hague's exquisitely detailed, breathtaking color illustrations on almost every generous spread--along with Kenneth Grahame's elegant, delightfully old-fashioned characterizations of the animals--make this book a wonderful read-aloud. Grahame's The Wind in the Willows has enchanted readers for four generations, and this lavishly illustrated gift edition is perhaps the finest around. (All ages, or 9 to 12) [via]
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The Wonderful Wizard of Ozby L. Frank Baum, W. W. DenslowISBN 067941794X (0-679-41794-X)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'Book summary:In spite of the fact that L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) is one of the most popular stories in America, relatively few people have actually read the book. It's well worth the effort! Young readers expecting rainbows, Munchkin songs, and wicked witches with burning brooms will instead find a complex country populated with mocking Hammerhead men, dainty people made out of china, and fierce monsters with heads of tigers and bodies of bears. Through the fantastic land of Oz ramble Dorothy and her trusty companions--Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion--each seeking his or her heart's desire. Although the premise of the book and the 1939 movie is the same, the book--as so often is the case--delivers a far more subtle and intricate plot. A child's imagination will run rampant in these pages as one extraordinary creature after another leads the motley crew into strange and magical adventures. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Nowby Maya AngelouISBN 0679427430 (0-679-42743-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now'Book summary:Wisdom from a remarkable woman of many talents--a writer who captured America's heart on Inauguration Day. [via]
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Written on the Bodyby Jeanette WintersonISBN 067942007X (0-679-42007-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Written on the Body'Book summary:The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review. [via]
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Wuthering Heightsby Emily BronteISBN 0679405437 (0-679-40543-7)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wuthering Heights'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Virginia Woolf said of Emily Brontë that her writing could "make the wind blow and the thunder roar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of their mythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today as they have been for every generation of readers since the novel was first published in 1847. With an introduction by Katherine Frank. [via]More editions of Wuthering Heights:
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