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books tagged “Writing” (writing)
books tagged “Writing”
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Advice to Writers : A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lightsby Jon WinokurISBN 0679443878 (0-679-44387-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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All over but the Shoutin'by Rick BraggISBN 0679442588 (0-679-44258-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All over but the Shoutin''Book summary:One reason Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize for his feature articles at the New York Times is that he never forgets his roots. When he writes about death and violence in urban slums, Bragg draws on firsthand knowledge of how poverty deforms lives and on his personal belief in the dignity of poor people. His memoir of a hardscrabble Southern youth pays moving tribute to his indomitable mother and struggles to forgive his drunken father. All Over but the Shoutin' is beautifully achieved on both these counts--and many more. [via]
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American Library Association Guide to Information Access: A Complete Research Handbook and Dictionaryby Sandy WhiteleyISBN 0679750754 (0-679-75075-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Another Life: A Memoir of Other Peopleby Michael KordaISBN 0679456597 (0-679-45659-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Nightby Bennett Alfred Cerf, Richard Francis BurtonISBN 0679602356 (0-679-60235-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night'Book summary:Full of mischief and valor, ribaldry and romance, The Arabian Nights is a work that has enthralled readers for centuries. The text presented here is that of the 1932 Modern Library edition for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the "most famous and representative" of the stories from the multivolume translation of Richard F. Burton.
The origins of The Arabian Nights are obscure. About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together; only much later was the collection called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. All the stories are told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade), who entertains her husband, King Shahryar, whose custom it was to execute his wives after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution.
This selection includes many of the stories that are universally known though seldom read in this authentic form:
"Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp," "Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman," and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." These, and the tales that accompany them, make delightful reading, demonstrating, as the Modern Library noted in 1932, that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken. [via]More editions of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night:
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Axel's Castle : A Story of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930by Edmund WilsonISBN 067960233X (0-679-60233-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Axel's Castle : A Story of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930'Book summary:If great writers are hard to find, then it's safe to say great literary critics are as rare as wild white tigers who can juggle plates. Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) was one of America's most important critics, and Axel's Castle was the book that put him on the map. Few people outside graduate school read serious literary criticism, but a look into Wilson's intense thought and clear prose makes you wonder why the genre has been neglected. If you're a lover of the Modernist writers--Wilson looks specifically at Joyce, Proust, Yeats, Valery, Eliot, Stein, and Rimbaud here--then you'll enjoy Axel's Castle. [via]
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Bailey's Cafeby Gloria NaylorISBN 0679748210 (0-679-74821-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bailey's Cafe'Book summary:Set in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit. "A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humor."--New York Times Book Review. [via]
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Bernard Shaw Vol. 2: The Pursuit of Power (1898-1918)by Michael HolroydISBN 0679731326 (0-679-73132-6)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Captive and the Fugitiveby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-MoncrieffISBN 0679424776 (0-679-42477-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Captive and the Fugitive'Book summary:Since the original, prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the French original into English. This translation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic and lucid Proust. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME is one of the greatest, most entertaining reading experiences in any language. As the great story unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastating end, it is the Penguin Proust that makes Proust accessible to a new generation. Each book is translated by a different, superb translator working under the general editorship of Professor Christopher Prendergast, University of Cambridge. [via]
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Cities of the Plainby Cormac McCarthyISBN 0679747192 (0-679-74719-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cities of the Plain'Book summary:On a ranch in southeastern Texas, soon after World War II, a group of solitary, inarticulately lonely men gathers to work animals as the sun sets for good on the mythic American West. All of these men nurse losses both personal (siblings or wives) and collective (a shared lifestyle and philosophy). Among them is John Grady Cole, the adolescent hero of the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses. John Grady remains the magnificent horseman he always was, and he still dreams too much. On the ranch, he meets Billy Parham, whose own tragic sojourn through Mexico in The Crossing, the second book of the set, continues to quietly suffocate him. The two form a friendship that will nurture both but save neither from the destiny that McCarthy's characters always sense lurching to meet them.
Soaked in storm-heavy atmosphere but brightened by the ranch-hands' easy camaraderie and gentle humor, Cities of the Plain surprises with its sweetness. The awkward doomed-romance plot at the center of this tight, concise novel fails to convince, but, remarkably, does little to undercut the book's impact. What lingers here, and what matters, are the brooding, eerie portraits of the plains and the riders, glimpsed mostly alone but occasionally leaning together, who slip across them, over the horizon into memory. --Glen Hirshberg [via]
Conjunctionsby Bradford MorrowISBN 0679751122 (0-679-75112-2)
Softcover, Knopf Incorporated, Alfred A.
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Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madnessby William StyronISBN 0679736395 (0-679-73639-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness'Book summary:In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randall Jarrell, Primo Levi and Virginia Woolf. That Styron survived his descent into madness is something of a miracle. That he manages to convey its tortuous progression and his eventual recovery with such candor and precision makes Darkness Visible a rare feat of literature, a book that will arouse a shock of recognition even in those readers who have been spared the suffering it describes. [via]
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Deep Playby Diane AckermanISBN 0679448799 (0-679-44879-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Dictionary of Contemporary Slangby Tony ThorneISBN 0679737065 (0-679-73706-5)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dictionary of Contemporary Slang'Book summary:From A to Z:
Aim archie at the armitage brownie hound cassava dingleberries el ropo four-by-two get Chinese have the painters in idiot dancing jam sandwich kangaroo it lip service meathooks necktie party Ozzie and Harriet pearl diver quiche out rough end of the pineapple surfboard tray-bits under velcrohead write one's name on the lawn x-rated yodel in the canyon zippersniffer.
There is a linguistic riot going on the English-speaking world over, in the form of energetic, informal speech, extraordinary for its wit, quirkiness, and biting satire. The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, the most comprehensive guide to slang, gathers more than 5,000 colloquialisms, puns, similes, metaphors, and double entendres -- from sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll; to fads, fashion, and cults; to taboos, obscenities, and euphemisms -- that have enriched our language for the past forty years. Most entries have multiple definitions that are enlivened by examples of usage. [via]More editions of Dictionary of Contemporary Slang:
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Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biographyby Judith Morgan, Neil MorganISBN 0679416862 (0-679-41686-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography'Book summary:California journalists Neil and Judith Morgan present the authorized biography of the late Ted Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, the phenomenally successful, beloved author and illustrator of dozens of memorable children's books, including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. 16 pages of photos. [via]
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The Education of Henry Adamsby Henry Adams, Edmund MorrisISBN 067964010X (0-679-64010-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Education of Henry Adams'Book summary:Many great artists have had at least intermittent doubts about their own abilities. But The Education of Henry Adams is surely one of the few masterpieces to issue directly from a raging inferiority complex. The author, to be sure, had bigger shoes to fill than most of us. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather were U.S. presidents. His father, a relative underachiever, scraped by as a member of Congress and ambassador to the Court of St. James. But young Henry, born in Boston in 1838, was destined for a walk-on role in his nation's history--and seemed alarmingly aware of the fact from the time he was an adolescent.
It gets worse. For the author could neither match his exalted ancestors nor dismiss them as dusty relics--he was an Adams, after all, formed from the same 18th-century clay. "The atmosphere of education in which he lived was colonial," we are told,
revolutionary, almost Cromwellian, as though he were steeped, from his greatest grandmother's birth, in the odor of political crime. Resistance to something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked out on the world with the instinct of resistance; for numberless generations his predecessors had viewed the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly succeeded in the abolition; the duty was unchanged.
Here, as always, Adams tells his story in a third-person voice that can seem almost extraplanetary in its detachment. Yet there's also an undercurrent of melancholy and amusement--and wonder at the specific details of what was already a lost world.Continuing his uphill conquest of the learning curve, Adams attended Harvard, which didn't do much for him. ("The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.") Then, after a beer-and-sausage-scented spell as a graduate student in Berlin, he followed his father to Washington, D.C., in 1860. There he might have remained--bogged down in "the same rude colony ... camped in the same forest, with the same unfinished Greek temples for workrooms, and sloughs for roads"--had not the Civil War sent Adams père et fils to London. Henry sat on the sidelines throughout the conflict, serving as his father's private secretary and anxiously negotiating the minefields of English society. He then returned home and commenced a long career as a journalist, historian, novelist, and peripheral participant in the political process--a kind of mouthpiece for what remained of the New England conscience.
He was not, by any measure but his own, a failure. And the proof of the pudding is The Education of Henry Adams itself, which remains among the oddest and most enlightening books in American literature. It contains thousands of memorable one-liners about politics, morality, culture, and transatlantic relations: "The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest." There are astonishing glimpses of the high and mighty: "He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism..." (That would be Abraham Lincoln; the "melancholy function" his Inaugural Ball.) But most of all, Adams's book is a brilliant account of how his own sensibility came to be. A literary landmark from the moment it first appeared, the Autobiography confers upon its author precisely that prize he felt had always eluded him: success. --James Marcus [via]
More editions of The Education of Henry Adams:
- The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography: ISBN 0679732322 (0-679-73232-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group - The Education of Henry Adams: ISBN 0679602070 (0-679-60207-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - The Education of Henry Adams: ISBN 067964010X (0-679-64010-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography: ISBN 0679732322 (0-679-73232-2)
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiographyby Philip RothISBN 0679749055 (0-679-74905-5)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Fame and Folly : Essaysby Cynthia OzickISBN 0679446907 (0-679-44690-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dreamby Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph SteadmanISBN 0679724192 (0-679-72419-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream'Book summary:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the ne plus ultra of Hunter S. Thompson and the whole gonzo clan he spawned. Written in the lurid afterglow of the 1960s, Fear and Loathing is a loosely connected series of mad dashes across the desert, trashed hotel rooms, and goofs on the brutish, naïve, or merely unhip, perpetrated by Thompson and his mammoth Samoan attorney. The pair start out high on a medicine cabinet's worth of elixirs, powders, and pills, and stay that way for 200 pages. They careen through an unsettling landscape of paranoia and alienation, but that doesn't mean the book isn't a riot. Here's a small taste: "By this time, the drink was beginning to cut the acid and my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The room service waiter had a vaguely reptilian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge pterodactyls lumbering around the corridors in pools of fresh blood."
Though somewhat dated (it appeared serially in Rolling Stone throughout November 1971), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a book of real vitality and Rabelaisian wit. A document of the counterculture after it was well past ripe and deep into rot, the book is a wild ride, a paranoid ramble that is thoroughly exhilarating and worth the trip. No pun intended. [via]
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories, Tie-In Editionby Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0679602984 (0-679-60298-4)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Other American Stories, Tie-In Edition'Book summary:Dr. Thompson made the list of inspirational scribes when I polled in a recent writing workshop, and why not? Back in a spiffy Modern Library edition, replete with additional essays, I find in this iconographic work that HST both invoked--and provoked--an era that was not so much the '60s proper, but rather the mean, shadow-filled death of that time, which is still playing out. Thank God Thompson was there to explode the myth of "objective" journalism and help pave the way for the pens and voices that followed. [via]
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Finding a Formby William H. GassISBN 0679446621 (0-679-44662-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Forewords and Afterwordsby W. H. AudenISBN 0679724850 (0-679-72485-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80'sby Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0679722378 (0-679-72237-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's'Book summary:A running tally of the folly of the 80's, the decade known for men of "huge brains, small necks, weak muscles and fat wallets.." - NYT Book Review [via]
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Hell's Angelsby Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 067960331X (0-679-60331-X)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hell's Angels'Book summary:"California, Labor Day weekend . . . early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur. . . The Menace is loose again." Thus begins Hunter S. Thompson's vivid account of his experiences with California's most no-torious motorcycle gang, the Hell's Angels. In the mid-1960s, Thompson spent almost two years living with the controversial An-gels, cycling up and down the coast, reveling in the anarchic spirit of their clan, and, as befits their name, raising hell. His book successfully captures a singular moment in American history, when the biker lifestyle was first defined, and when such countercultural movements were electrifying and horrifying America. Thompson, the creator of Gonzo journalism, writes with his usual bravado, energy, and brutal honesty, and with a nuanced and incisive eye; as The New Yorker pointed out, "For all its uninhibited and sardonic humor, Thompson's book is a thoughtful piece of work." As illuminating now as when originally published in 1967, Hell's Angels is a gripping portrait, and the best account we have of the truth behind an American legend.
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Home : American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Ownby Sharon S. Fiffer, Steve FifferISBN 0679442065 (0-679-44206-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Horse You Came in Onby Martha GrimesISBN 0679425233 (0-679-42523-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapterby Sherwin B. NulandISBN 0679742441 (0-679-74244-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter'Book summary:New Edition: With a new chapter addressing contemporary issues in end-of-life careA runaway bestseller and National Book Award winner, Sherwin Nuland's How We Die has become the definitive text on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death. This new edition includes an all-embracing and incisive afterword that examines the current state of health care and our relationship with life as it approaches its terminus. It also discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones.Shewin Nuland's masterful How We Die is even more relevant than when it was first published. [via]
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If...by Evelyn McFarlane, James Saywell, David RosenthalISBN 0679445358 (0-679-44535-8)
Hardcover, Villard Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If...'Book summary:In an elegant, two-color format, punctuated with intriguing drawings, If . . . poses hundreds of questions ranging from practical to maddening, moral to hilarious--which, if read alone, inspire self-exploration; if shared, spark fascinating discussions at gatherings, dinner parties, or meetings. [via]
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In Command Of History: Churchill Fighting And Writing The Second World Warby David ReynoldsISBN 0679457437 (0-679-45743-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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In Love with Norma Loquendiby William SafireISBN 0679423869 (0-679-42386-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Love with Norma Loquendi'Book summary:The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist describes his lifelong fascination with Norma Loquendi--common speech--in a collection of columns that celebrates the mysteries and continual evolution of the English language. 15,000 first printing. [via]
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In Search of Lost Timeby Marcel ProustISBN 0679600280 (0-679-60028-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of Lost Time'Book summary:The Guermantes Way, in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time, refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantess château near Combray. It also represents the narrators passage into the rarefied social kaleidoscope of the Guermantess Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantess drawing room. Here he encounters nobles, officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert de Saint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron de Charlus, and the Prince de Borodino.
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]More editions of In Search of Lost Time:
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The Informationby Martin AmisISBN 0679735739 (0-679-73573-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Information'Book summary:Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal--they're all here in The Information. How does one writer hurt another writer? This is the question novelist Richard Tull mills over, for his friend Gwyn Barry has become a darling of book buyers, award committees, and TV interviewers, even as Tull himself sinks deeper into the sub-basement of literary failure. The only way out of this predicament, Tull believes, is the plot the demise of Barry.
"With The Information, Amis delivers a portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than [anyone] since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities."--Houston Chronicle [via]More editions of The Information:
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Jane Eyreby Charlotte BrontëISBN 0679424725 (0-679-42472-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'Book summary:Jane Eyre is a wildly emotional romance with a lonely heroine and a tormented Byronic hero, pathetic orphans, dark secrets, and a madwoman in the attic. When it was
published in 1847, it was a great popular success. The power of the writing, the masterly
handling of the narrative, and the boldly realistic style were much admired. But many found it difficult to believe that Currer Bell, the pseudonymous author, was Charlotte Brontë, a young woman from a bleak Yorkshire parsonage.
Time has served Jane Eyre well. Charlotte Brontë's social commentary still fascinates; the novel is still powerful, full of erotic tension, passion, and irony. It can be read as an astonishing paradigm of feminist writing. At its heart is the assertion that a woman has the right to be independent, and its insistence on that fact and on the equality of the sexes makes it a truly revolutionary work of art. Above all, Jane Eyre is a marvelous love story, as affecting as any in fiction.
Diane Johnson has provided a new Introduction to this Modern Library edition, which is the companion volume to the A&E television presentation. The Modern Library also publishes Charlotte Brontë's three other completed novels: The Professor, Shirley, and Villette.
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foun-dation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hard-bound editions of important works of liter-ature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices. [via] -
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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Letters for Our Childrenby Erica Goode, Cokie Roberts, Steven V. RobertsISBN 0679450114 (0-679-45011-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Life of Samuel Johnsonby James BoswellISBN 0679417176 (0-679-41717-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life of Samuel Johnson'Book summary:James Boswell is for some the ideal scribe, for others a sycophantic toady. Edmund Wilson, for example, memorably labeled him "a vain and pushing diarist." Boswell can even be seen as someone unconsciously intent on undermining his idol in sonorous, balanced sentences. Early on in his massive Life, he puts all manner of ideas into our heads with his boobish attempts to clear the youthful Johnson of potential impropriety: "His juvenile attachments to the fair sex were, however, very transient; and it is certain that he formed no criminal connection whatsoever." And while it's often tempting to ignore Boswell's more personal intrusions and delight solely in the melancholic master's words and deeds, there are suchdelightful admissions as, "I was at this time so occupied, shall I call it? or so dissipated, by the amusements of London that our next meeting was not till Saturday, June 25..."
Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 and died in 1784--a long life, though one marred by depression and fear of death. On April 20, 1764, for example, he declared, "I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits." Many of the quotes Boswell includes are a sort of greatest hits: Johnson's definitions of oats and lexicographer, his love for his cat Hodge, as well as thousands of bon, and mal, mots. ("Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel"; "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.") But there are also many unfamiliar pleasures--Boswell's accounts of Johnson's literary industry, including the Dictionary, The Rambler, and Lives of the Poets; Johnson's singular loathing for Scotland and France; and the surprising hints of revelry. Awakened at 3 AM by friends, he greets them with, "What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you." This at age 42. Johnson's final years were marked by pain and loneliness but certainly no loss of wit. [via]
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Literary Trivia : Fun and Games for Book Loversby Richard Lederer, Michael S. GillelandISBN 067975380X (0-679-75380-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Literary Trivia : Fun and Games for Book Lovers'Book summary:From the author of Crazy English and The Miracle of Language, a fiendishly engrossing, thoroughly addictive volume of anecdotes, curiosities, and quizzes testing your knowledge of books from Genesis to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.. [via]
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The Longest Journeyby E. M. ForsterISBN 0679748156 (0-679-74815-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Longest Journey'Book summary:In this searching tragicomedy of manners, personalities, and world views, E. M. Forster explores the "idea of England" he would later develop in Howard's End. Bookish, sensitive, and given to wild enthusiasms, Rickie Elliot is virtually made for a life at Cambridge, where he can subsist on a regimen of biscuits and philosophical debate. But the love-smitten Rickie leaves his natural habitat to marry the devastatingly practical Agnes Pembroke, who brings with her as a sort of dowry a teaching position at the abominable Sawston School. [via]
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Making Moviesby Sidney LumetISBN 0679437096 (0-679-43709-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Making Movies'Book summary:It's well known that a vast number of people work on any given movie in roles as varied as writing scripts, choosing locations, dressing sets, costuming the players, lighting scenes, manipulating the camera, directing actors, editing film, working on sound, advertising the finished product, and screening it to an audience. Have you ever thought about how these components are collated? Or why the director is most often considered the author of a film? Wonder no more, because Sidney Lumet's Making Movies is a terrific journey through each stage of filmmaking that is overseen by the director. Lumet, the veteran director of Twelve Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, and many other fine movies, knows the ins and outs of American filmmaking as well as anyone. In this excellent, personable account, Lumet tells what he's learned about making movies in the course of the last 40 years. He shows why fine directors need to have strong imaginations, extraordinary adaptability, and skill in many different fields. His enthusiasm for his life's work, particularly his love of actors, is evident on every page of this book. As Herculean as the labors of film directing are, Lumet takes great pleasure in his work, almost guiltily admitting that the film director's job is "the best in the world." [via]
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Mama Dayby Gloria NaylorISBN 0679721819 (0-679-72181-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mama Day'Book summary:1988 Mama day [via]
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Meditations from a Movable Chairby Andre DubusISBN 0679751157 (0-679-75115-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Meditations from a Movable Chair: Essays'Book summary:In his first book of essays, Broken Vessels, Andre Dubus uses experiences such as baseball games and sheep herding as occasions for insight. His second essay collection, Meditations from a Movable Chair, is about the people who have meant the most to him. The book conjures a cloud of witnesses--Dubus's father, his sister, Norman Mailer, Liv Ullmann, a gay military officer--so vividly that their gifts to Dubus become gifts to the reader, as well. Many of these people helped Dubus understand the holiness, even sacramentality, of everyday life, which he describes in explicitly Catholic terms. Meditations from a Movable Chair is a rare and wonderful thing--a book written out of love, whose richness of heart is expressed by an exacting and challenging mind. --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evilby John BerendtISBN 0679751521 (0-679-75152-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'Book summary:Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city is certain to become a modern classic. [via]
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Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil: A Savannah Storyby John BerendtISBN 0679643419 (0-679-64341-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil: A Savannah Story'Book summary:John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil has been heralded as a "lyrical work of nonfiction," and the book's extremely graceful prose depictions of some of Savannah, Georgia's most colorful eccentrics--remarkable characters who could have once prospered in a William Faulkner novel or Eudora Welty short story--were certainly a critical factor in its tremendous success. (One resident into whose orbit Berendt fell, the Lady Chablis, went on to become a minor celebrity in her own right.) But equally important was Berendt's depiction of Savannah socialite Jim Williams as he stands trial for the murder of Danny Hansford, a moody, violence-prone hustler--and sometime companion to Williams--characterized by locals as a "walking streak of sex." So feel free to call it a "true crime classic" without a trace of shame. [via]
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Midnight's Childrenby Salman RushdieISBN 0679444629 (0-679-44462-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight's Children'Book summary:Anyone who has spent time in the developing world will know that one of Bombay's claims to fame is the enormous film industry that churns out hundreds of musical fantasies each year. The other, of course, is native son Salman Rushdie--less prolific, perhaps than Bollywood, but in his own way just as fantastical. Though Rushdie's novels lack the requisite six musical numbers that punctuate every Bombay talkie, they often share basic plot points with their cinematic counterparts. Take, for example, his 1980 Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children: two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment at which India became an independent nation--are switched in the hospital. The infant scion of a wealthy Muslim family is sent to be raised in a Hindu tenement, while the legitimate heir to such squalor ends up establishing squatters' rights to his unlucky hospital mate's luxurious bassinet. Switched babies are standard fare for a Hindi film, and one can't help but feel that Rushdie's world-view--and certainly his sense of the fantastical--has been shaped by the films of his childhood. But whereas the movies, while entertaining, are markedly mediocre, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece, brilliant written, wildly unpredictable, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is the Hindu child raised by wealthy Muslims. Near the beginning of the novel, he informs us that he is falling apart--literally:
I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug--that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.
In light of this unfortunate physical degeneration, Saleem has decided to write his life story, and, incidentally, that of India's, before he crumbles into "(approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust." It seems that within one hour of midnight on India's independence day, 1,001 children were born. All of those children were endowed with special powers: some can travel through time, for example; one can change gender. Saleem's gift is telepathy, and it is via this power that he discovers the truth of his birth: that he is, in fact, the product of the illicit coupling of an Indian mother and an English father, and has usurped another's place. His gift also reveals the identities of all the other children and the fact that it is in his power to gather them for a "midnight parliament" to save the nation. To do so, however, would lay him open to that other child, christened Shiva, who has grown up to be a brutish killer. Saleem's dilemma plays out against the backdrop of the first years of independence: the partition of India and Pakistan, the ascendancy of "The Widow" Indira Gandhi, war, and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.We've seen this mix of magical thinking and political reality before in the works of Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. What sets Rushdie apart is his mad prose pyrotechnics, the exuberant acrobatics of rhyme and alliteration, pun, wordplay, proper and "Babu" English chasing each other across the page in a dizzying, exhilarating cataract of words. Rushdie can be laugh-out-loud funny, but make no mistake--this is an angry book, and its author's outrage lends his language wings. Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's irate, affectionate love song to his native land--not so different from a Bombay talkie, after all. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Misfit : The Strange Life of Frederick Exleyby Jonathan YardleyISBN 0679439498 (0-679-43949-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Misfit : The Strange Life of Frederick Exley'Book summary:Frederick Exley was at once unique and prototypical. He inhabited his own bizarre universe and obeyed no rules except his own, yet he was a familiar and characteristic American literary type: an author whose reputation rests on a single book. His life, which he described, and disguised, and distorted in all three of his books, rivaled his "fiction. Everything he did involved a struggle, and the most important struggle of his life was his writing; out of that strife came A Fan's Notes, which Jonathan Yardley believes is one of the best books of our time.
Exley was an alcoholic who drank in copious amounts, yet he always sobered up when he was ready to write. In his younger days he did time in a couple of mental institutions, which imposed involuntary discipline on him and helped him start to write. He was personally and financially irresponsible--he had no credit cards, no permanent address, and ambiguous relationships with everyone he knew--yet people loved him and took care of him.
The center of Fred's strange world was Watertown in upstate New York, where he was born and grew up. Other important points of his compass included various places in Florida and Hawaii, and a funky bar in New York's Greenwich Village called the Lion's Head. No matter where he was, in the dark of night he phoned friends and subjected them to interminable monologues. To many, these were a nuisance and an imposition, but later, in the light of day, they were remembered with affection and gratitude.
In Misfit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic of The Washington Post portrays in full one of the most tormented, distinctive, and talented writers of the postwar years. Exley's story, which in Yardley's telling reads as if it were a novel, reveals a singular personality: raunchy, vulgar, self-centered, and even infantile, yet also loyal, self-deprecating, and unfailingly humorous. Sympathetic and affectionate, honest and unsparing, Yardley's portrait gives us a man who sacrificed everything in order to write and who becomes, even more than before, his own most memorable creation. [via]More editions of Misfit : The Strange Life of Frederick Exley:
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Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locustby Nathanael WestISBN 067960278X (0-679-60278-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust'Book summary:"Somehow or other I seem to have slipped in between all the 'schools,' " observed Nathanael West the year before his untimely death in 1940. "My books meet no needs except my own, their circulation is practically private and I'm lucky to be published." Yet today, West is widely recognized as a prophetic writer whose dark and comic vision of
a society obsessed with mass-
produced fantasies foretold much
of what was to come in American life.
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), which West envisioned as "a novel in the form of a comic strip," tells of an advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist who becomes tragically embroiled in the desperate lives of his readers. The Day of the Locust (1939) is West's great dystopian Hollywood novel based on his experiences at the seedy fringes of the movie industry.
"The work of Nathanael West, savagely, comically, tragically original, has come into its own," said novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg. "A new public [has] discovered in the writings of West a brilliant reflection of its own sense of chaos and helplessness in a world running more to madness than to reason." [via]More editions of Miss Lonelyhearts & the Day of the Locust:
Monster in a Boxby Spalding GrayISBN 0679737391 (0-679-73739-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whalesby Diane AckermanISBN 0679742263 (0-679-74226-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales'Book summary:In a rare blend of scientific fact and poetic truth, the acclaimed author of A Natural History of the Senses explores the activities of whales, penguins, bats, and crocodilians, plunging headlong into nature and coming up with highly entertaining treasures. [via]
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My Dark Places : An L. A. Crime Memoirby James EllroyISBN 0679441859 (0-679-44185-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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My Life As Author and Editorby H. L. MenckenISBN 067974102X (0-679-74102-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Regionby John Bull, John FarrandISBN 0679428526 (0-679-42852-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region'Book summary:Introduced in 1977 and completely revised in 1994 these bestselling photographic field guides have become the birding bibles of more than four million enthusiasts. Virtually every bird found in North America is brought to life in a full-color photograph and with textual information on the bird s voice nesting habits habitat range and interesting behaviors. Accompanying range maps; overhead flight silhouettes; sections on bird-watching accidental species and endangered birds make these the most comprehensive field guides to birds available. Note: the Eastern Edition generally covers states east of the Rocky Mountains while the Western Edition covers the Rocky Mountain range and all the states to the west of it. Author: National Audubon Society. [via]
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggeby Stephen Mitchell, Rainer Maria RilkeISBN 0679732454 (0-679-73245-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Nothin' but Good Times Aheadby Molly IvinsISBN 0679419152 (0-679-41915-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nothin' but Good Times Ahead'Book summary:A follow-up to the best-selling Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, by the nationally syndicated columnist, pinpoints the 1992 campaign, fellow Texan Ross Perot, and Clinton's presidency. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour. [via]
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Oscar Wilde: A Certain Geniusby Barbara BelfordISBN 0679457348 (0-679-45734-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius'Book summary:Why, readers may ask, yet another book about Oscar Wilde? "Because his life is a continual allegory," the author tells us in her introduction, "and his social, political, and artistic views, which went right to the heart of Victorian society, are no less threatening today." In contrast to earlier biographers like Hesketh Pearson and Richard Ellmann, Belford emphasizes the cultural context in which Wilde (1854-1900) operated as both shrewd self-publicist and provocateur. Researching previous biographies of Violet Hunt and Bram Stoker, Belford immersed herself in the florid atmosphere of London during the 1890s, the decade of Wilde's greatest fame and infamy, and she uses this knowledge to deepen our understanding of the writer's relationship with his times. In particular, the West End theater district comes to life as the scene of Wilde's greatest triumphs as a playwright (from Lady Windermere's Fan to The Importance of Being Earnest) as well as of his introduction to "a homosocial world that had existed since Elizabethan times." Victorian society could not tolerate Wilde's relatively open homosexuality, however, and two 1895 trials ended with his conviction on charges of "gross indecency." He served two years in prison and died three years after his release, exiled, poor, and alone. Yet Belford stresses not Wilde's tragedy but his triumph. To the end, he was a gaily subversive writer whose works "demonstrate the value of graciousness, charm, and wit" even as they assert "the right of art and language to shock, to undermine, and to unsettle." --Wendy Smith [via]
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Our Private Livesby Daniel HalpernISBN 0679725326 (0-679-72532-6)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Pale Fireby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0679723420 (0-679-72342-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pale Fire'Book summary:Like Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a masterpiece that imprisons us inside the mazelike head of a mad émigré. Yet Pale Fire is more outrageously hilarious, and its narrative convolutions make the earlier book seem as straightforward as a fairy tale. Here's the plot--listen carefully! John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote.
According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus.
In the course of this dizzying narrative, shots are indeed fired. But it's Shade who takes the hit, enabling Kinbote to steal the dead poet's manuscript and set about annotating it. Is that perfectly clear? By now it should be obvious that Pale Fire is not only a whodunit but a who-wrote-it. There isn't, of course, a single solution. But Nabokov's best biographer, Brian Boyd, has come up with an ingenious suggestion: he argues that Shade is actually guiding Kinbote's mad hand from beyond the grave, nudging him into completing what he'd intended to be a 1,000-line poem. Read this magical, melancholic mystery and see if you agree. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Passions of the Mind: Selected Writingsby A. S. ByattISBN 0679736786 (0-679-73678-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Playerby Michael TolkinISBN 0679722548 (0-679-72254-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Playwrights at Workby George PlimptonISBN 0679640215 (0-679-64021-5)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Playwrights at Work'Book summary:The third installment in the Modern Library's Paris Review "Writers at Work" series, this is an all-new gathering of interviews with the most important and compelling playwrights of our time. Their singular takes on their craft, their influences, their lives, the state of contemporary theater, and the tricks of the trade create an illuminating and unparalleled record of the life of the theater itself.
"At its best, theater is an antidote to the whiff of barbarity in the millennial air. 'My feeling is that people in a group, en masse, watching something, react differently, and perhaps more profoundly, than they do when they're alone in their living rooms,' Arthur Miller says here. In the dark, facing the stage, surrounded by others, the paying customer can let himself go; he is emboldened. The theatrical encounter allows a member of the public to think against received opinions. He can submerge himself in the extraordinary, admit his darkest, most infantile wishes, feel the pulse of the contemporary, hear the sludge of street talk turned into poetry. This enterprise can be joyous and dangerous; when the theater's game is good and tense, it is both."
--from the Introduction by John Lahr [via]More editions of Playwrights at Work:
The Portrait of a Ladyby Henry James, Richard Poirier, Library of America StaffISBN 0679736352 (0-679-73635-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Princeton Review: Writing Smart Your Guide to Great Writingby Marcia LernerISBN 0679753605 (0-679-75360-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Random House College Thesaurusby Random House Value Publishing StaffISBN 067941780X (0-679-41780-X)
Hardcover, Random House Information Group
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The Random House Thesaurusby Jess Stein, Stuart Berg FlexnerISBN 0679727108 (0-679-72710-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Random House Webster's Quotationaryby Leonard Roy FrankISBN 0679448500 (0-679-44850-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Random House Webster's Quotationary'Book summary:Though Emerson said "Quotation confesses inferiority," and Thomas Fuller advised "Search not Authors to say what thou canst as well say thyself," E.M. Cioran warned "Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation," and Vauvenargues contended that "Other people's wit does not entertain us for long," there is always the viewpoint of Samuel Richardson, who said "We are wise by other people's experience," and Ovid's, who believed "It is right to learn even from one's enemies."
The Quotationary is a collection of quotations, some 20,000 of them, arranged by subject (from Ability to Zen, and each with suggestions of other headings to check for similar topics), cross-referenced by author (from Edward Abbey on truthfulness to Martin Zweig on the stock market), and then indexed by subject categories as well, making it easy to find the right bon mot to start a speech or cap an argument (or cap a speech and start an argument). And they are addictive. It may be instructive, but it is also entertaining to read the words of others. There's Napoleon's view that "All being said, I like only those people who are useful to me, and only so long as they are useful," and Fran Lebowitz opining that "There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death." The important thing is that whatever take on life you espouse, you can not only find elegant quotes to support you, but also fine words to the opposite. --Stephanie Gold [via]
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![[???]: Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: Indexed](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0679458549.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "[???]: Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: Indexed")
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: IndexedISBN 0679458549 (0-679-45854-9)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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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:This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe-and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... Consistently popular since its first publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe's story of human endurance in an exotic, faraway land exerts a timeless appeal. The first important English novel, Robinson Crusoe has taken its rightful place among the great myths of Western civilization.
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Robinson Crusoe:
Savage Art : A Biography of Jim Thompsonby Robert PolitoISBN 0679733523 (0-679-73352-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Selected Writings of Gertrude Steinby Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, F.W. DupeeISBN 0679724648 (0-679-72464-8)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein'Book summary:"This collection, a retrospective exhibit of the work of a woman who created a unique place for herself in the world of letters, contains a sample of practically every period and every manner in Gertrude Stein's career. It includes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its entirety; selected passages from The Making of Americans; "Melanctha"from Three Lives; portraits of the painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso; Tender Buttons; the opera Four Saints in Three Acts; and poem, plays, lectures, articles, sketches, and a generous portion of her famous book on the Occupation of France, Wars I Have Seen. [via]
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Sense And Sensibilityby Jane AustenISBN 0679601953 (0-679-60195-3)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'Book summary:Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!
Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]More editions of Sense And Sensibility:
Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughesby Janet MalcolmISBN 0679751408 (0-679-75140-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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A Slender Thread : Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisisby Diane AckermanISBN 0679448772 (0-679-44877-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Slender Thread : Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis'Book summary:Diane Ackerman has generally turned her unusual sensitivity to consideration of the natural world and the human experience of it. In A Slender Thread, she journeys down a vastly different road, describing her involvement with a telephone crisis center in the college town where she lives. The callers want her to talk them out of suicide, and their fear and sadness is a weight she at first has trouble bearing gracefully.
"It's no bother. That's why we're here," I say, trying not to sound dutiful or perfunctory. I want him to stay calm, but I also want him to feel comfortable about calling. As usual, I wish I had more control over my voice, wish I could sculpt its nuances so that, regardless of the exact words I used, the tone would tell a caller like this one, You're not alone. We're here to help you, or, if help is impossible, at least to understand. I think it's possible to insinuate your emotions into your voice wholeheartedly like that, to speak sentences charged with pure emotion, as if they were part of an opera in which indecipherable words float on waves of heart-stirring and meaningful music. I just can't figure out how best to do it.
Ackerman explores human despair as she would a magnificent cavern, always moving toward the light of understanding. Highly recommended. [via]
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Strong Opinionsby Vladimir Vladimirovich NabokovISBN 0679726098 (0-679-72609-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Swann's Wayby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence KilmartinISBN 067972009X (0-679-72009-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Swann's Way'Book summary:The transmutation of sensation into sentiment, the ebb tide of memory, waves of emotion such as desire, jealousy, and artistic euphoria--this is the material of this enormous and yet singularly light and translucid work.
--VLADIMIR NABOKOV
In the overture to Swann's Way, the themes of the whole of In Search of Lost Time are introduced, and the narrator's childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator's love for Swann's daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann's passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.
The final volume of a new, definitive text of A la recherche du temps perdu was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in 1989. For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new French editions. [via] -
Time Regained/a Guide to Proustby Marcel Proust, Andreas Mayor, D.J. Enright, Joanna Kilmartin, Terence KilmartinISBN 0679424768 (0-679-42476-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time Regained/a Guide to Proust'Book summary:In this, the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, as the various threads which have emerged through the vast novel are brought together, and sometimes resolved, Marcel considers the nature of time and its effect on himself and the people has has known. "For after death time leaves the body, and memories - indifferent and pale - are obliterated in her who exists no longer and soon will be in him they still torture, memories which perish with the desire of the living body." [via]
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Tripmaster Monkeyby Maxine Hong KingstonISBN 0679727892 (0-679-72789-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tripmaster Monkey'Book summary:Driven by his dream to write and stage an epic stage production of interwoven Chinese novelsWittman Ah Sing, a Chinese-American hippie in the late '60s. [via]
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An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Fieldby Terry T. WilliamsISBN 0679432442 (0-679-43244-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Fieldby Terry Tempest Williams, Robin DesserISBN 0679752560 (0-679-75256-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field'Book summary:Terry Tempest Williams makes it clear that we lose an essential part of ourselves when we neglect the earth, but this collection of essays does not offer a soapbox delivery of tired manifestoes; rather, it uses poetic and insightful inspiration to urge the reader to become aware, assess the damage, and begin to heal broken bonds. In her essay "Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place," Williams writes, "There is no defense against an open heart and a supple body in dialogue with wildness. Internal strength is an absorption of the external landscape. We are informed by beauty, raw and sensual. Through an erotics of place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility."
A native of Utah, Williams is best known for her reflections on the American West, but the first essay in this book takes us to Africa's Serengeti Plain: "Morning comes quickly near the equator. There is little delineation of dawn. On the Serengeti, it is either day or night. A peculiar lull occurs just before sunrise. The world is cool and still. Gradually, the sun climbs the ladder of clouds until the sky mirrors the nacreous hues of abalone."
Through these readings you'll discover that Williams's "unspoken hunger" is for us to live lives with greater intent and accountability and in greater intimacy with the natural world. --Kathryn True [via]
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The Vintage Menckenby Alistair Cooke, H. L. MenckenISBN 0679728953 (0-679-72895-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vintage Mencken'Book summary:The anthology that spans an entire lifetime of writing by America's greatest curmudgeon, with a "flick of mischief on nearly every page." [via]
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Loveby Raymond CarverISBN 0679723056 (0-679-72305-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'Book summary:"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is not only the most well-known short story title of the latter part of the 20th century; it has come to stand for an entire aesthetic, the bare-bones prose style for which Raymond Carver became famous. Perhaps, it could be argued, too famous, at least for his fiction's own good. Like those of Hemingway or any other writer similarly loved, imitated, parodied, and reviled, these stories can sometimes produce the sense of reading pastiche. "A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house." "That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window." "My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right." What other writer ever produced first sentences like these? They are like doors into Carverworld, where everyone speaks in simple declarative phrases, no one ever stops at one beer, and failure or violence are the true outcomes of the American dream.
Yet these stories bear careful re-reading, like any truly important and enduring work. For one thing, Carver is one of the few writers who can make desperation--cutting your ex-wife's telephone cord in the middle of a conversation, standing on your own roof chunking rocks while a man with no hands takes your picture--deeply funny. Then there is the sheer craft that went into their creation. Despite their seeming simplicity, his tales are as artfully constructed as poems--and like poems, the best of them can make your breath catch in your throat. In the title piece, for instance, after the gin has been drunk, after the stories have been told, after the tensions in the room have come to the surface and subsided again, there comes a moment of strange lightness and peace: "I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."
Much of what happens in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981) happens offstage, and we're left with tragedy's props: booze, instant coffee, furniture from a failed marriage, cigarettes smoked in the middle of the night. This is not merely a matter of technique. Carver leaves out a great deal, but that's only a measure of his characters' vulnerability, the nerve endings his stories lay bare. To say anything more, one feels, would simply hurt too much. --Mary Park [via]
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Where I'm Calling fromby Raymond CarverISBN 0679722319 (0-679-72231-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Where I'm Calling from'Book summary:The last story collection published during Carver's life (he died in 1988) contains most of his greatest hits from his earlier books, as well as seven stories that hadn't been collected up to that point. The breadth of the collection makes these 37 stories an extremely complete map of Carver territory, of a particular area of America and of the specific texture of the people Carver writes about -- their difficult attempts at survival in a world where happiness does not arrive wrapped up in neat packages but comes in far more peculiar parcels, if it comes at all. [via]
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Pleaseby Raymond CarverISBN 0679735690 (0-679-73569-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Winesburg, Ohioby Sherwood AndersonISBN 0679601465 (0-679-60146-5)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Winesburg, Ohio'Book summary:Library Journal praised this edition of Sherwood Anderson's famed short stories as "the finest edition of this seminal work available." Reconstructed to be as close to the original text as possible, Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented by his hands. In "Adventure," lonely Alice Hindman impulsively walks naked into the night rain. Threaded through the stories is the viewpoint of George Willard, the young newspaper reporter who, like his creator, stands witness to the dark and despairing dealings of a community of isolated people. [via]
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Within a Budding Groveby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, Terence KilmartinISBN 067960006X (0-679-60006-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Within a Budding Grove'Book summary:First published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swanns Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swanns daughter Gilberte, the narrator visits the seaside resort of Balbec with his grandmother and meets a new object of attentionAlbertine, a girl with brilliant, laughing eyes and plump, matt cheeks.
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]More editions of Within a Budding Grove:
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Word Play: What Happens When People Talkby Peter FarbISBN 0679734082 (0-679-73408-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Writers on World War II : An Anthologyby Mordecai RichlerISBN 0679742344 (0-679-74234-4)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women An Anthologyby Jill K. ConwayISBN 0679736336 (0-679-73633-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women An Anthology'Book summary:Jill Ker Conway (The Road from Coorain ) edits this sterling selection of autobiographical excerpts by 25 American women. Among them are artists, scientists, doctors, writers, and reformers, all well chosen though not necessarily well known. Physician Anne Walter Fearn writes of decades dispensing Western medicine in China and struggling with her husband, a God-fearing medical missionary who was "born to give orders just as definitely as I was born not to take them." The heart-rending narrative of former slave Harriet Ann Jacob, who tells of abortive and finally successful attempts to free herself and her children segues into Maya Angelou's more widely read contemporary account of doggedly soliciting sex as a teen uncertain of her sexual identity and hoping to be ushered into "that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity." [via]
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Written by Herself Vol. 2 : Women's Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia and the United Statesby Jill Ker ConwayISBN 0679751092 (0-679-75109-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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