en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 20:16:44 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 3401616 A unique collection of funerary texts from a wide variety of sources, dating from the 15th to the 4th century BC

Consisting of spells, prayers and incantations, each section contains the words of power to overcome obstacles in the afterlife. The papyruses were often left in sarcophagi for the dead to use as passports on their journey from burial, and were full of advice about the ferrymen, gods and kings they would meet on the way. Offering valuable insights into ancient Egypt, The Book of the Dead has also inspired fascination with the occult and the afterlife in recent years.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700��titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the��series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date��translations by award-winning translators.]]> 992 Anonymous 0140455507 Ted 2 great-books 3.78 -1500
author: Anonymous
name: Ted
average rating: 3.78
book published: -1500
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 53064 384 Thomas Mann 0141181737 Ted 4 great-books 3.92 1911
author: Thomas Mann
name: Ted
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1911
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/08
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 12767 Fast poured his eyes at pity's claims,
And now, with mingled grief and ire,
He saw the murdered maid expire.
"God, in my need, be my relief,
As I wreak this on yonder Chief!"

- from The Lady of the Lake

Wildly successful with readers and critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1810, this is Scott's renowned romantic poem about love and honor amidst a bitter rivalry between King James V and the powerful Douglas family.

This revised edition, published in 1899, features an extensive introduction that places Scott and his writings in historical and literary context, as well as explanatory notes, study guides, and suggested selections for class or book-group readings. Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (1820). American writer William Vaughn Moody (1869 - 1910) served as co-editor of the Harvard Monthly and assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He authored several verse plays, books of poetry, and histories and criticisms of English literature.]]> 276 Walter Scott 1596054727 Ted 0 to-read 3.87 1810
author: Walter Scott
name: Ted
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1810
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 237794 48 Aeschylus 1419177060 Ted 3 great-books 3.64 -472
author: Aeschylus
name: Ted
average rating: 3.64
book published: -472
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 8171587 The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus, the greatest classical work of history ever written.

Herodotus was a Greek historian living in Ionia during the fifth century BCE. He traveled extensively through the lands of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and collected stories, and then recounted his experiences with the varied people and cultures he encountered. Cicero called him “the father of history,�� and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose that harks back to the time of oral tradition, Herodotus set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day.

In The Histories, Herodotus chronicles the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city-states. Within that story he includes rich veins of anthropology, ethnography, geology, and geography, pioneering these fields of study, and explores such universal themes as the nature of freedom, the role of religion, the human costs of war, and the dangers of absolute power.

Ten years in the making, The Landmark Herodotus gives us a new, dazzling translation by Andrea L. Purvis that makes this remarkable work of literature more accessible than ever before. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps, this edition also includes an introduction by Rosalind Thomas and twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields, covering such topics as Athenian government, Egypt, Scythia, Persian arms and tactics, the Spartan state, oracles, religion, tyranny, and women.

Like The Landmark Thucydides before it, The Landmark Herodotus is destined to be the most readable and comprehensively useful edition of The Histories available.]]> 1024 Robert B. Strassler 0307536548 Ted 5 4.40 -430
author: Robert B. Strassler
name: Ted
average rating: 4.40
book published: -430
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/21
date added: 2020/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 18625064
Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.

An animal protectionist, in 2006 Morrissey was voted the second greatest living British icon by viewers of the BBC, losing out to Sir David Attenborough. In 2007 Morrissey was voted the greatest northern male, past or present, in a nationwide newspaper poll. In 2012, Morrissey was awarded the Keys to the City of Tel-Aviv.

It has been said 'Most pop stars have to be dead before they reach the iconic status that Morrissey has reached in his lifetime.'

Autobiography covers Morrissey's life from his birth until the present day.]]> 457 Morrissey Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 3.62 2013
author: Morrissey
name: Ted
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/30
date added: 2019/05/02
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 1533 208 Aeschylus 1419150014 Ted 4 great-books 4.00 -470
author: Aeschylus
name: Ted
average rating: 4.00
book published: -470
rating: 4
read at: 2011/02/01
date added: 2017/11/20
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 943402
But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night....]]> 513 John Ajvide Lindqvist 1847241697 Ted 0 contemporary-fiction 4.08 2004
author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
name: Ted
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/21
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Ted 5 3.81 1927
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Ted
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 5
read at: 2017/07/16
date added: 2017/07/16
shelves:
review:
Part 3 is perhaps the most perfect extended piece of narrative prose I have ever read.
]]> 28381 Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In his introduction to this new translation, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.]]> 464 Nikolai Gogol 0140448071 Ted 3 great-books 4.00 1842
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Ted
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1842
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/05/20
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 30594 This is an older alternate cover edition for ISBN 0141183225/ 9780141183220. A newer edition may be found here.

From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of the finest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.

One of the 20th century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.]]> 255 Vladimir Nabokov Ted 4 great-books 4.06 1966
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Ted
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/06
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Ted 3 great-books 4.22 1869
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Ted
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 3
read at: 2017/05/04
date added: 2017/05/04
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Ted 4 great-books 4.21 1864
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Ted
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/04
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 9315641 448 Adam Hochschild 0618758283 Ted 5 contemporay-nonfiction 4.12 2011
author: Adam Hochschild
name: Ted
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/01/21
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 770438 228 Richard J. Tofel 1566636108 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 3.85 2005
author: Richard J. Tofel
name: Ted
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/01/21
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 30291444 312 Gad Horowitz Ted 3 3.67
author: Gad Horowitz
name: Ted
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/12/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 775366 The Ambassadors is a novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review (NAR).

Story:
Concerned that her son Chad may have become involved with a woman of dubious reputation, the formidable Mrs. Newsome sends her 'ambassador' Strether from Massachusetts to Paris to extricate him. Strether's mission, however, is gradually undermined as he falls under the spell of the city and finds Chad refined rather than corrupted by its influence and that of his charming companion, the comtesse de Vionnet. As the summer wears on, Mrs. Newsome comes to the conclusion that she must send another envoy to Paris to confront the errant Chad, and a Strether whose view of the world has changed profoundly.
The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view.

Extract:
After the opera, Strether tells Chad why he has come to Paris. However, as he speaks, Strether finds himself less certain of his stance. Chad, once callow and juvenile, now seems confident and restrained. His new personality impresses Strether, who wonders what—or who—has caused Chad’s transformation. Chad asks Strether to stay and meet his close friends, a mother and a daughter, who are arriving in a few days time. Strether, wondering if one of these women has been the impetus for Chad’s improvement, and assuming the daughter to be Chad’s lover, agrees to stay. Meanwhile, Bilham convinces Strether that Chad has a “virtuous attachment”—and that Chad’s relationship with the mysterious woman is innocent. Strether eventually meets the women, Madame de Vionnet and her daughter, Jeanne, at a high society party, but he does not see them long enough to cement an impression. After the brief introduction to Madame de Vionnet, Strether finds himself alone with little Bilham. Strether takes the opportunity to offer Bilham some sage advice: live all you can before it is too late. This advice exposes Strether’s own change since coming to Europe. In Paris, he feels renewed, young again, doubly alive. Over...]]> 528 Henry James 0140432337 Ted 1 great-books
Such was my response in my attempt to read "The Ambassadors", given its reputation and placement as one of the great novels of the 20th century.

A bit of context before I'm written off as a cretin without the refined sensibilities needed to appreciate "The Master."

First, this isn't my first go around with James. I read both "Turn of the Screw" and "The Spoils of Poynton." The former I felt was slightly disappointing; the latter I was fairly neutral on.

Second, I'm a Ph.D.-holding English professor who enjoys fiction that others would find prolix. "Middlemarch" is my favorite novel of all time. I find Austen endlessly engaging. Thomas Hardy is my jam. In fact, I organized my entire first trip to England around making pilgrimages to sites associated with these authors.

Having said that, I could not finish "The Ambassadors." I got halfway through, and I started becoming so frustrated and angry with the writing, the characters, and the entire aesthetic of the novel that I actually started to dread the time I set aside for pleasure reading because I knew the muck of "The Ambassadors" was waiting for me to wade through. When I realized that I would rather not read at all than continue with the novel, I tapped out--not something I ever do. The "good student" in me won't allow me to quit books. God help me, I actually trudged my way through the entirety of "The Fountainhead" (not altogether by choice, but still).

While acknowledging that such judgments are subjective, here's some of what made "The Ambassadors" literally unreadable for me, even when similar books--including others of James--hadn't had that effect on me.

First, the alleged "realism" James is famous for is, at least in this book, not real at all. James is writing between the era of realism seen in Victorian fiction (let's call this "object" realism, in which external situations are portrayed realistically) and modern realism (psychological realism that attempts to portray the inner workings of individual consciousness in a realistic way). So, it's not surprising that the novel reads like some sort of transitional moment between the two; but the result--at least for me--is unpleasant—bordering on grotesque. It does neither version of realism very well, and in that failure, its contrived nature is amplified. Perhaps the novel is important from an academic setting precisely because it captures this transition in narrative style, but that doesn't mean it works as fiction itself. The analogy that comes to mind is a fossil of one of those transitional creatures in the evolutionary tree that illustrate a moment in biological history when things were changing (e.g. feathered dinosaurs). But often, precisely because of this odd mixture of qualities, the actual organisms themselves died out. "The Ambassadors" is potentially a good discussion piece about the evolution of the novel, but as a standalone work of fiction, it's stillborn.

For example, the conversations the characters engage in are utterly preposterous--I cannot imagine anyone speaking as the characters in the novel do. To the extent the characters are allowed to speak for themselves by the narrator, the result is cutesy cleverness rather than anything that rings even slightly true to lived experience. No amount of willing suspension of disbelief made the interactions among the characters seem authentic. Every time Strether is speaking with Maria Gostrey, Chad, or Madame de Vionnet, I feel I'm reading dialog written by a pretentious MFA student attempting to be artful. I have an easier time believing the historical Richard III spoke in iambic pentameter than that any actual human beings spoke to each other in the contrived, pseudo-clever way of James’s characters.

Of course, the dialog is meant to be simply the "tip of the iceberg" of the underlying machinations of the characters, but again, the portrayal of what is going on inside the characters (almost exclusively Strether) is presented in such a contrived fashion that I felt unable to muster even a smidgen of empathy for any of the characters. And when I say "empathy", I don't mean that I have to like them. I just have to believe in them enough to see things as they see them. James, to my eyes, is far too busy calling attention to the language itself (which, to add to the issue, is not particularly memorable or engaging) to bother offering the reader any actual connection with the characters.

And on the issue of character, if there is a more annoyingly oh-so-clever character in literature than Maria Gostrey, I am unfamiliar with them. Again, simply being an annoying character is not a problem--literature is filled with them. It's not that the character herself is annoying within the world of the novel, but the presentation of her to the reader (at least this reader) is so trite and contrived as to be maddening. This is amplified by the fact that (again, to my eyes), she seems to be intended by her creator to be this utterly charming, mysterious, charismatic figure. Yet, when I spotted the name "Gostrey" on the page, I thought to myself, "God, not her again!" It’s possible that Madame de Vionnet would give her a run for her money—there were signs of it when she was introduced. But it wasn’t long after she appeared on the stage that I decided enough was enough.

Some fault James in general and this novel in particular for a lack of plot. Supposedly, the original idea for the novel was intended to be a short story. Stretching out a rather nothing plot to 500 pages does present a risk. And since putting the book down, I read an anecdote about it claiming that long after being in print, it was discovered by some careful reader that two of the chapters had been published out of order without anyone having noticed before. Whether true or not, it’s easy to believe given the wispiness of the plot and the meandering of the narrative.

But to me, it's not that. Lots of great works of literature, particularly novels, can mine small nuances and seemingly inconsequential events for deep insights. Those who think Jane Austen novels are nothing more than conversations over tea with the vicar are missing the fact that Austen *can* actually take a simple, everyday series of events, capture them realistically, *and* find depth.

So it wasn't the thinness of the plot--I could imagine the same characters and events being portrayed to great artistic effect. But there is a quality that I could only finally describe as "inhuman" in James's treatment of the story. I didn’t get the sense that James himself cared about his characters. They came across like constructs meant to display something like cleverness, and therefore to show the author’s own cleverness. And it’s this perceived lack of interest or care in the characters or his readers that ultimately gave me the sense that the I was keeping company with a bona fide misanthrope. One might imagine that James didn’t have the emotional wherewithal or artistic ability to create a narrative that had some humanness in it, but that hardly seems likely. If nothing else, James seems to be someone capable of producing what he wants on the page. If we assume this, the only conclusion is that “The Ambassadors�� represents what James thought was a proper ethical and aesthetic view for the novel. And if so, he’s not someone in whose company I wish to be any longer.

I hadn’t read much *about* “The Ambassadors�� until after having put it down, but on the off chance that I might learn that the novel redeemed itself in the second half, I did a bit of reading and saw that there was no reason to think the novel would change for me in the second half. Indeed, it sounds as if the characteristics I loathed only become more pronounced.

On the plus side, I discovered that I wasn’t quite as alone as I might have feared when it comes to people who take literature seriously and who actively dislike the novel. F.R. Leavis, the eminent historian and critic of the genre of the novel said the following:

“[The Ambassadors] produced an effect of disproportionate ‘doing’—of a technique the subtleties and elaborations of which are not sufficiently controlled by a feeling for value and significance in living.��

When it comes to “The Ambassadors,�� I’m with him.

As a coda, I would strongly suggest not giving up on the James family. Henry’s brother, the philosopher/psychologist William James, can actually be read with great joy. Oddly enough, he’s a much finer wordsmith than his novelist brother, and even a paragraph or two from “The Varieties of Religious Experience�� have (to my eyes) much more insight into the human condition and of true lived experience than the entirety of what his brother can scrape out in the two and a half books of his I’ve read.
]]> 3.66 1903
author: Henry James
name: Ted
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1903
rating: 1
read at: 2016/11/01
date added: 2016/12/06
shelves: great-books
review:
There is a moment in the 2001 film "Zoolander" when fashion mogul Jacobim Mugatu, in complete bewilderment at how male model Derek Zoolander can be celebrated for his many "looks," says, "Magnum? Blue Steel? They're the SAME LOOK! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

Such was my response in my attempt to read "The Ambassadors", given its reputation and placement as one of the great novels of the 20th century.

A bit of context before I'm written off as a cretin without the refined sensibilities needed to appreciate "The Master."

First, this isn't my first go around with James. I read both "Turn of the Screw" and "The Spoils of Poynton." The former I felt was slightly disappointing; the latter I was fairly neutral on.

Second, I'm a Ph.D.-holding English professor who enjoys fiction that others would find prolix. "Middlemarch" is my favorite novel of all time. I find Austen endlessly engaging. Thomas Hardy is my jam. In fact, I organized my entire first trip to England around making pilgrimages to sites associated with these authors.

Having said that, I could not finish "The Ambassadors." I got halfway through, and I started becoming so frustrated and angry with the writing, the characters, and the entire aesthetic of the novel that I actually started to dread the time I set aside for pleasure reading because I knew the muck of "The Ambassadors" was waiting for me to wade through. When I realized that I would rather not read at all than continue with the novel, I tapped out--not something I ever do. The "good student" in me won't allow me to quit books. God help me, I actually trudged my way through the entirety of "The Fountainhead" (not altogether by choice, but still).

While acknowledging that such judgments are subjective, here's some of what made "The Ambassadors" literally unreadable for me, even when similar books--including others of James--hadn't had that effect on me.

First, the alleged "realism" James is famous for is, at least in this book, not real at all. James is writing between the era of realism seen in Victorian fiction (let's call this "object" realism, in which external situations are portrayed realistically) and modern realism (psychological realism that attempts to portray the inner workings of individual consciousness in a realistic way). So, it's not surprising that the novel reads like some sort of transitional moment between the two; but the result--at least for me--is unpleasant—bordering on grotesque. It does neither version of realism very well, and in that failure, its contrived nature is amplified. Perhaps the novel is important from an academic setting precisely because it captures this transition in narrative style, but that doesn't mean it works as fiction itself. The analogy that comes to mind is a fossil of one of those transitional creatures in the evolutionary tree that illustrate a moment in biological history when things were changing (e.g. feathered dinosaurs). But often, precisely because of this odd mixture of qualities, the actual organisms themselves died out. "The Ambassadors" is potentially a good discussion piece about the evolution of the novel, but as a standalone work of fiction, it's stillborn.

For example, the conversations the characters engage in are utterly preposterous--I cannot imagine anyone speaking as the characters in the novel do. To the extent the characters are allowed to speak for themselves by the narrator, the result is cutesy cleverness rather than anything that rings even slightly true to lived experience. No amount of willing suspension of disbelief made the interactions among the characters seem authentic. Every time Strether is speaking with Maria Gostrey, Chad, or Madame de Vionnet, I feel I'm reading dialog written by a pretentious MFA student attempting to be artful. I have an easier time believing the historical Richard III spoke in iambic pentameter than that any actual human beings spoke to each other in the contrived, pseudo-clever way of James’s characters.

Of course, the dialog is meant to be simply the "tip of the iceberg" of the underlying machinations of the characters, but again, the portrayal of what is going on inside the characters (almost exclusively Strether) is presented in such a contrived fashion that I felt unable to muster even a smidgen of empathy for any of the characters. And when I say "empathy", I don't mean that I have to like them. I just have to believe in them enough to see things as they see them. James, to my eyes, is far too busy calling attention to the language itself (which, to add to the issue, is not particularly memorable or engaging) to bother offering the reader any actual connection with the characters.

And on the issue of character, if there is a more annoyingly oh-so-clever character in literature than Maria Gostrey, I am unfamiliar with them. Again, simply being an annoying character is not a problem--literature is filled with them. It's not that the character herself is annoying within the world of the novel, but the presentation of her to the reader (at least this reader) is so trite and contrived as to be maddening. This is amplified by the fact that (again, to my eyes), she seems to be intended by her creator to be this utterly charming, mysterious, charismatic figure. Yet, when I spotted the name "Gostrey" on the page, I thought to myself, "God, not her again!" It’s possible that Madame de Vionnet would give her a run for her money—there were signs of it when she was introduced. But it wasn’t long after she appeared on the stage that I decided enough was enough.

Some fault James in general and this novel in particular for a lack of plot. Supposedly, the original idea for the novel was intended to be a short story. Stretching out a rather nothing plot to 500 pages does present a risk. And since putting the book down, I read an anecdote about it claiming that long after being in print, it was discovered by some careful reader that two of the chapters had been published out of order without anyone having noticed before. Whether true or not, it’s easy to believe given the wispiness of the plot and the meandering of the narrative.

But to me, it's not that. Lots of great works of literature, particularly novels, can mine small nuances and seemingly inconsequential events for deep insights. Those who think Jane Austen novels are nothing more than conversations over tea with the vicar are missing the fact that Austen *can* actually take a simple, everyday series of events, capture them realistically, *and* find depth.

So it wasn't the thinness of the plot--I could imagine the same characters and events being portrayed to great artistic effect. But there is a quality that I could only finally describe as "inhuman" in James's treatment of the story. I didn’t get the sense that James himself cared about his characters. They came across like constructs meant to display something like cleverness, and therefore to show the author’s own cleverness. And it’s this perceived lack of interest or care in the characters or his readers that ultimately gave me the sense that the I was keeping company with a bona fide misanthrope. One might imagine that James didn’t have the emotional wherewithal or artistic ability to create a narrative that had some humanness in it, but that hardly seems likely. If nothing else, James seems to be someone capable of producing what he wants on the page. If we assume this, the only conclusion is that “The Ambassadors�� represents what James thought was a proper ethical and aesthetic view for the novel. And if so, he’s not someone in whose company I wish to be any longer.

I hadn’t read much *about* “The Ambassadors�� until after having put it down, but on the off chance that I might learn that the novel redeemed itself in the second half, I did a bit of reading and saw that there was no reason to think the novel would change for me in the second half. Indeed, it sounds as if the characteristics I loathed only become more pronounced.

On the plus side, I discovered that I wasn’t quite as alone as I might have feared when it comes to people who take literature seriously and who actively dislike the novel. F.R. Leavis, the eminent historian and critic of the genre of the novel said the following:

“[The Ambassadors] produced an effect of disproportionate ‘doing’—of a technique the subtleties and elaborations of which are not sufficiently controlled by a feeling for value and significance in living.��

When it comes to “The Ambassadors,�� I’m with him.

As a coda, I would strongly suggest not giving up on the James family. Henry’s brother, the philosopher/psychologist William James, can actually be read with great joy. Oddly enough, he’s a much finer wordsmith than his novelist brother, and even a paragraph or two from “The Varieties of Religious Experience�� have (to my eyes) much more insight into the human condition and of true lived experience than the entirety of what his brother can scrape out in the two and a half books of his I’ve read.

]]> 32071 "She was a brazen hussy."

"She wasn't. And she was pretty, wasn't she?"

"I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes"

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.]]> 654 D.H. Lawrence Ted 3 great-books 3.65 1913
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Ted
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1913
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/11/13
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 9784 Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War, and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire.

Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke. Quintessentially modernist, Women in Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works.]]> 416 D.H. Lawrence 0486424588 Ted 3 3.68 1920
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Ted
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1920
rating: 3
read at: 2016/10/03
date added: 2016/10/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 31548
Marked by countless similarities to Maugham’s own life, his masterpiece is “not an autobiography,�� as the author himself once contended, “but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inexorably mingled; the emotions are my own.”]]> 684 W. Somerset Maugham 0451530179 Ted 4 4.13 1915
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Ted
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1915
rating: 4
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]]> 318742 Publication of The Souls of Black Folk was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.]]> 288 W.E.B. Du Bois Ted 5 4.30 1903
author: W.E.B. Du Bois
name: Ted
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1903
rating: 5
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]]> 154472
Fussell's landmark study of World War I remains as original and gripping today as ever before: a literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, the one that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world. 14 halftones.]]> 368 Paul Fussell 0195133323 Ted 5 great-books 4.13 1975
author: Paul Fussell
name: Ted
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/07/04
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]]> 108824 Lytton Strachey's biographical essays on four "eminent Victorians" dropped an explosive charge on Victorian England when the book was published in 1918.

This edition is unique in being fully annotated and in drawing on the full range of Strachey's manuscript materials and literary remains.]]> 336 Lytton Strachey 0192801589 Ted 4 great-books 3.77 1918
author: Lytton Strachey
name: Ted
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1918
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/05/30
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]]> 82896 320 Henry Adams 1406802786 Ted 5 great-books 3.64 1918
author: Henry Adams
name: Ted
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1918
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/03/27
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]]> 6240610 256 Jerome K. Jerome 1406527408 Ted 3 great-books 3.48 1919
author: Jerome K. Jerome
name: Ted
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1919
rating: 3
read at: 2016/03/27
date added: 2016/03/27
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]]> 52251 I, Claudius, Robert Graves continues the tumultuous life of the Roman who became emperor in spite of himself and his handicaps. Claudius the God reveals the splendor, vitality and decadence of the Roman Empire through the eyes of the wry and bemused Claudius who reigns as emperor for thirteen years. The crippled Claudius describes himself as the fool of the royal family, whom none of his ambitious and blood-thirsty relatives considered worth the trouble of killing. Once in the throne, however, he finds himself at last at the center of the political maelstrom.]]> 533 Robert Graves 0679725733 Ted 4 4.22 1934
author: Robert Graves
name: Ted
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/27
date added: 2016/03/27
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]]> 1128994 412 Thomas Hardy 0192836358 Ted 4 great-books 3.69 1880
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Ted
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1880
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/02/21
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]]> 499933 315 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723420 Ted 4 great-books 4.21 1962
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Ted
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/10/15
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]]> 24914 --back cover]]> 363 E.L. Doctorow 0812976150 Ted 4 contemporary-fiction 3.75 2005
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Ted
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/09/21
shelves: contemporary-fiction
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Ted 4 great-books 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Ted
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/05/03
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 100019 133 Julia Annas 0192853570 Ted 4 academia 3.60
author: Julia Annas
name: Ted
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/04/05
shelves: academia
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]]> 13423
This book covers the invention of western introducing to us the first thinkers to explore ideas about the nature of reality, time, and the origin of the universe.

About the Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]> 176 Catherine Osborne 0192840940 Ted 3 academia 3.65 2003
author: Catherine Osborne
name: Ted
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> 380544 Composed during the fourteenth century in the English Midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight describes the events that follow when a mysterious green-coloured knight rides into King Arthur's Camelot in deep mid-winter. The mighty knight presents a challenge to the court: he will allow himself to be struck by one blow, on the condition that he will be allowed to return the strike on the following New Year's Eve. Sir Gawain takes up the challenge, decapitating the stranger - only to see the Green Knight seize up his own severed head and ride away, leaving Gawain to seek him out and honour their pact. Blending Celtic myth and Christian faith, Gawain is among the greatest Middle English poems: a tale of magic, chivalry and seduction.

Bernard O'Donoghue's elegant, lyrical verse translation skilfully conveys the force and imagery of the original, while his introduction considers the work's influences. This edition also includes a note on the translation and an extract from the original Middle English text.]]> 94 Unknown 0140424539 Ted 5 great-books 3.75 1350
author: Unknown
name: Ted
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1350
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/02/22
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]]> 23520650 Isocrates Ted 5 great-books 3.86 -353
author: Isocrates
name: Ted
average rating: 3.86
book published: -353
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/02/21
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]]> 6290189 Suetonius Ted 4 great-books 3.60 1995
author: Suetonius
name: Ted
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/02/21
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]]> 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Ted 5 great-books 3.90 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: Ted
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 5
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]]> 9590 Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) presents Eliot Rosewater, an itinerant, semi-crazed millionaire wandering the country in search of heritage and philanthropic outcome, introducing the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout to the world and Vonnegut to the collegiate audience which would soon make him a cult writer.

Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly thru a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.]]> 288 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333471 Ted 5 great-books, to-read 3.94 1965
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ted
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1965
rating: 5
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]]> 1217100 You can’t stop the future.
You can’t rewind the past.
The only way to learn the secret . . . is to press play.

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker–his classmate and crush–who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah’s voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he’ll find out why.

Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah’s pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.]]> 288 Jay Asher 1595141715 Ted 4 contemporary-fiction, to-read 4.00 2007
author: Jay Asher
name: Ted
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 99561 Before. Miles “Pudge�� Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps�� even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.]]> 221 John Green 1435249151 Ted 5 contemporary-fiction, to-read 3.97 2005
author: John Green
name: Ted
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> 679253 237 Susan Presby Kodish 0970066465 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 4.11 2000
author: Susan Presby Kodish
name: Ted
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/01/30
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]]> 18007564
Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error�� are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills �� and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit �� he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

]]> 384 Andy Weir 0804139024 Ted 0 to-read 4.41 2011
author: Andy Weir
name: Ted
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/05
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]]> 126512 The Way of All Flesh is regarded by some as the first twentieth-century novel. Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values.

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," this chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex spans four generations, focusing chiefly on the relationship between Ernest and his father, Theobald. Written in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, it reflects the dawning consciousness of heredity and environment as determinants of character. Along the way, it offers a powerfully satirical indictment of Victorian England's major institutions—the family, the church, and the rigidly hierarchical class structure.]]> 315 Samuel Butler 0486434664 Ted 3 3.61 1903
author: Samuel Butler
name: Ted
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1903
rating: 3
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]]> 195769 265 Lucretius 025320125X Ted 4 3.99 -55
author: Lucretius
name: Ted
average rating: 3.99
book published: -55
rating: 4
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]]> 12914
Virgil’s epic tale tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero, who flees his city after its fall, with his father Anchises and his young son Ascanius �� for Aeneas is destined to found Rome and father the Roman race. As Aeneas journeys closer to his goal, he must first prove his worth and attain the maturity necessary for such an illustrious task. He battles raging storms in the Mediterranean, encounters the fearsome Cyclopes, falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage, travels into the Underworld and wages war in Italy.]]> 442 Virgil 0679729526 Ted 3 3.86 -19
author: Virgil
name: Ted
average rating: 3.86
book published: -19
rating: 3
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]]> 190475 348 Walter Benjamin 080520802X Ted 4 4.33 1978
author: Walter Benjamin
name: Ted
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1978
rating: 4
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]]> 51910
-Philosophical Quarterly]]> 203 John Rogers Searle 052109626X Ted 4 3.89 1969
author: John Rogers Searle
name: Ted
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1969
rating: 4
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]]> 333832 How to Do Things with Words.

For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.]]> 168 J.L. Austin 0674411528 Ted 5 3.95 1955
author: J.L. Austin
name: Ted
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> 245831
Before the invention of printing, a trained memory was of vital importance. Based on a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on the mind, the ancient Greeks created an elaborate memory system which in turn was inherited by the Romans and passed into the European tradition, to be revived, in occult form, during the Renaissance.

Frances Yates sheds light on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the form of the Shakespearian theatre and the history of ancient architecture; The Art of Memory is an invaluable contribution to aesthetics and psychology, and to the history of philosophy, of science and of literature.]]> 400 Frances A. Yates 0226950018 Ted 5 4.17 1966
author: Frances A. Yates
name: Ted
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1966
rating: 5
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]]> 161207 288 Kenneth L. Higbee 1569246297 Ted 4 3.95 1977
author: Kenneth L. Higbee
name: Ted
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1977
rating: 4
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]]> 13707734
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

The copying and translation of this ancient book—the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age—fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.]]> 356 Stephen Greenblatt 0393343405 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 3.88 2011
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Ted
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Ted 4 great-books 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ted
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 4
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]]> 398130 Publishers Weekly

Emma, one of England's most remarkable queens, made her mark on a nation beset by Viking raiders at the end of the Dark Ages. At the center of a triangle of Anglo Saxons, Vikings, and Normans all jostling for control of England, Emma was a political pawn who became an unscrupulous manipulator. Regarded by her contemporaries as a generous Christian patron, an admired regent, and a Machiavellian mother, Emma was, above all, a survivor: hers was a life marked by dramatic reversals of fortune, all of which she overcame.]]> 234 Harriet O'Brien 1596911190 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 3.88 2005
author: Harriet O'Brien
name: Ted
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/01/04
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]]> 902971 Humpty Dumpty in Oakland is a tragicomedy of misunderstandings among used car dealers and real-estate salesmen: the small-time, struggling individuals for whom Philip K. Dick always reserved his greatest sympathy.
��
Jim Fergesson is an elderly garage owner with a heart condition, who��is about to��retire; Al Miller is a somewhat feckless mechanic who sublets part of Jim's lot and finds his livelihood threatened by the decision to sell; Chris Harman is a record-company owner who for years has relied on Fergesson to maintain his cars. When Harman hears of Fergesson's impending retirement he tips him off to what he says is a cast-iron business proposition: a development in nearby Marin County with an opening for a garage. Al Miller is convinced that Harman is a crook, out to fleece Fergesson of his life's savings. As much as he resents Fergesson he can't bear to see it happen and--denying to himself all the time what he is doing--he sets out to thwart Harman.]]> 252 Philip K. Dick 0765316900 Ted 4 great-books 3.33 1986
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Ted
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1986
rating: 4
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]]> 9592 Librarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.]]> 282 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334141 Ted 5 great-books 4.23 1961
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ted
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1961
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/01/04
shelves: great-books
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]]> 567189 In an era when communication has become increasingly diverse and complex, this classic work on semantics—now fully revised and updated—distills the relationship between language and those who use it.

��

Renowned professor and former U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa discusses the role of language in human life, the many functions of language, and how language—sometimes without our knowing—shapes our thinking in this engaging and highly respected book. Provocative and erudite, it examines the relationship between language and racial and religious prejudice; the nature and dangers of advertising from a linguistic point of view; and, in an additional chapter called “The Empty Eye,�� the content, form, and hidden message of television, from situation comedies to news coverage to political advertising.]]> 224 S.I. Hayakawa Ted 5 academia 4.23 1939
author: S.I. Hayakawa
name: Ted
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1939
rating: 5
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]]> 57913
Filled with sex and violence—in and out of time and space—the three books of The Illuminatus! Trilogy are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the cover-ups of our time—from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill—and suggest a mind-blowing truth.]]> 805 Robert Shea 0440539811 Ted 3 4.02 1983
author: Robert Shea
name: Ted
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1983
rating: 3
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]]> 17331306 The United States of Paranoia presents a comprehensive history of conspiracy theories in American culture and politics, from the colonial era to the War on Terror.

The fear of intrigue and subversion doesn’t exist only on the fringes of society, but has always been part of our national identity. When such tales takes hold, Walker argues, they reflect the anxieties and experiences of the people who believe them, even if they say nothing true about the objects of the theories themselves.

With intensive research and a deadpan sense of humor, Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia combines the rigor of real history with the punch of pulp fiction.

This edition includes primary-source documentation in the form of archival photographs, cartoons, and film stills selected by the author.]]> 464 Jesse Walker 0062135570 Ted 4 academia 3.51 2012
author: Jesse Walker
name: Ted
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/09/29
shelves: academia
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]]> 18765
I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike]]> 469 Robert Graves 067972477X Ted 4 great-books 4.24 1934
author: Robert Graves
name: Ted
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/09/29
shelves: great-books
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]]> 243601 imperium—supreme power in the state.

Of all the great figures of the Roman world, none was more fascinating or charismatic than Cicero. And Tiro—the inventor of shorthand and author of numerous books, including a celebrated biography of his master (which was lost in the Dark Ages)—was always by his side.

Compellingly written in Tiro's voice, Imperium is the re-creation of his vanished masterpiece, recounting in vivid detail the story of Cicero's quest for glory, competing with some of the most powerful and intimidating figures of his—or any other—age: Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, and the many other powerful Romans who changed history.

Robert Harris, the world's master of innovative historical fiction, lures us into a violent, treacherous world of Roman politics at once exotically different from and yet startlingly similar to our own—a world of Senate intrigue and electoral corruption, special prosecutors and political adventurism—to describe how one clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable man fought to reach the top.]]> 305 Robert Harris 074326603X Ted 3 contemporary-fiction 4.12 2006
author: Robert Harris
name: Ted
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/09/06
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 11366
In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.]]> 606 Barbara W. Tuchman 0345476093 Ted 5 great-books 4.18 1962
author: Barbara W. Tuchman
name: Ted
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/08/23
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]]> 10979 Light in August, a novel that contrasts stark tragedy with hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, which features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, a lonely outcast haunted by visions of Confederate glory; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.]]> 507 William Faulkner 0679732268 Ted 3 great-books 3.93 1932
author: William Faulkner
name: Ted
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1932
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/07/30
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 137717 430 Stephen Greenblatt 039332737X Ted 5 contemporay-nonfiction 3.90 2004
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Ted
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/07/04
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
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]]> 100911 Martin Middlebrook's research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality of an new kind of war for front-line soldiers.]]> 352 Martin Middlebrook 1844154653 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 4.27 1971
author: Martin Middlebrook
name: Ted
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2014/06/27
date added: 2014/06/27
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 332138
In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has “as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions�� of this book. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately he remains “committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity.”]]> 304 Alasdair MacIntyre 0268006113 Ted 5 academia After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory is a work I've known by reputation and short excerpts, quotations, summaries, and paraphrases for years, but which I only read cover to cover recently.

It is simply one of the most impressive works of nonfiction I've ever read.

Like only a handful of relatively contemporary works, its combination of breadth and depth in covering a topic that would seem to defy such treatment in a single volume is impressive. Another such book that comes to mind that would fit this bill is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Like that book, one need not buy every detail of the author's argument wholesale to appreciate the sweeping scope of the view offered.

In the case of Macintyre, the view is of the history of how we think about virtue in the Western tradition, focusing particularly on how we have inherited a vocabulary with which to talk about moral theory which is anachronistic and unsuited to our times. That would be bad enough, but the real problem is that we are not aware of how anachronistic it is. The result is that we don't simply have disagreements when we attempt to discuss issues in terms of virtues--that's no problem at all. Rather, the problem is that it becomes impossible to even characterize these disagreements in any accurate way since we have no common language with which to speak to one another, and no common concepts with which to reason about them.

Macintyre charts the changing notions of what it means to lead a "virtuous" life, from Homer, through Aristotle, Scholasticism, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, noting that what counts as "virtuous" changes, and often for understandable reasons. The virtues of Bronze Age Greece, not surprisingly, have only limited value in the postmodern world.

But in our postmodern world, we have an even more difficult task, because not only do previous concepts of what the virtuous life is seem antiquated, but we have no clear foundation upon which to build our own ideas about what the virtues mean now. Our highly scientific approach to understanding the nature of lived human life negates what Macintyre sees as an essential prerequisite to formulating a coherent view of the virtues: the notion of life as a narrative--a story that we tell about ourselves and which is affected by the stories of others. Without a sense of life-as-narrative, we are left with static and/or fragmentary understanding of ourselves that makes creation of any clear criteria of what constitutes "the good life" impossible.

This is an impossibly simplistic and distorted version of Macintyre's argument, which is rich with discussions of philosophy, the social sciences (spoiler alert: the social "sciences" are not scientific), and history. Even more important than the conclusion Macintyre reaches is the path he takes to get there. Even if one ends up disagreeing with Macintyre in profound ways, spending time thinking along the lines he draws is incredibly valuable.

One potential criticism is one that can often be leveled at ambitious intellectual works, which is that it does a better job of describing the problem than offering any concrete solution. Toward the end of the book, one is hoping that Macintyre will lay out in some specifics how two people who, for example, disagree on the issue of abortion might carry out a coherent conversation and even reach a conclusion rather than talking past one another. That never quite happens. While I haven't yet read Macintyre's follow up work to "After Virtue," I gather that while he seems to hold out the promise of following through on this in these later works, it never quite emerges there either.

But I think the disappointment a reader might feel about this, as understandable as it is, misses the larger point, which is that the solution to the problem is fundamentally to understand that there *is* a problem at all. It truly is a case of "the first step is to admit you have a problem." We live in a world shot through with pseudo-moralistic discourse, but which is cut off from any common ideas about what these words and ideas actually mean. Yet we continue to blather away as if these concepts are clearly understood by all. For me, the upshot of the book is that we must be aware of the extent to which we lack a common language with which to speak about the virtuous life. Simply acknowledging this would be a hugely helpful step forward in creating more meaningful, coherent interactions with one another.

This isn't to say that Macintyre does not have specific points of view on how to approach the task of enriching our talk about the virtuous life. Some thinkers (e.g., Aristotle) are clearly more helpful than others, and some virtues (e.g. justice) are of particular importance. But the point is not to offer a bullet point list of steps or process flow chart with which to hammer out any and all moral conundrums. That would be to impose a pseudo-scientific understanding of something that is inherently human, interpersonal, situated in context, and narrative. Rather, the purpose is to make it clear what particular context we, today, are in and how this affects the way we think and talk about the virtuous life. Only by fully understanding the philosophical, historical, and social context in which we live (rather than attempting to find some sort of meta-contextual guide to virtue, be it the Categorical Imperative, the Old Testament, etc.)can we start speaking with one another in a way in which virtue again becomes comprehensible.
]]> 4.19 1982
author: Alasdair MacIntyre
name: Ted
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2014/06/03
date added: 2014/06/27
shelves: academia
review:
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory is a work I've known by reputation and short excerpts, quotations, summaries, and paraphrases for years, but which I only read cover to cover recently.

It is simply one of the most impressive works of nonfiction I've ever read.

Like only a handful of relatively contemporary works, its combination of breadth and depth in covering a topic that would seem to defy such treatment in a single volume is impressive. Another such book that comes to mind that would fit this bill is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Like that book, one need not buy every detail of the author's argument wholesale to appreciate the sweeping scope of the view offered.

In the case of Macintyre, the view is of the history of how we think about virtue in the Western tradition, focusing particularly on how we have inherited a vocabulary with which to talk about moral theory which is anachronistic and unsuited to our times. That would be bad enough, but the real problem is that we are not aware of how anachronistic it is. The result is that we don't simply have disagreements when we attempt to discuss issues in terms of virtues--that's no problem at all. Rather, the problem is that it becomes impossible to even characterize these disagreements in any accurate way since we have no common language with which to speak to one another, and no common concepts with which to reason about them.

Macintyre charts the changing notions of what it means to lead a "virtuous" life, from Homer, through Aristotle, Scholasticism, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, noting that what counts as "virtuous" changes, and often for understandable reasons. The virtues of Bronze Age Greece, not surprisingly, have only limited value in the postmodern world.

But in our postmodern world, we have an even more difficult task, because not only do previous concepts of what the virtuous life is seem antiquated, but we have no clear foundation upon which to build our own ideas about what the virtues mean now. Our highly scientific approach to understanding the nature of lived human life negates what Macintyre sees as an essential prerequisite to formulating a coherent view of the virtues: the notion of life as a narrative--a story that we tell about ourselves and which is affected by the stories of others. Without a sense of life-as-narrative, we are left with static and/or fragmentary understanding of ourselves that makes creation of any clear criteria of what constitutes "the good life" impossible.

This is an impossibly simplistic and distorted version of Macintyre's argument, which is rich with discussions of philosophy, the social sciences (spoiler alert: the social "sciences" are not scientific), and history. Even more important than the conclusion Macintyre reaches is the path he takes to get there. Even if one ends up disagreeing with Macintyre in profound ways, spending time thinking along the lines he draws is incredibly valuable.

One potential criticism is one that can often be leveled at ambitious intellectual works, which is that it does a better job of describing the problem than offering any concrete solution. Toward the end of the book, one is hoping that Macintyre will lay out in some specifics how two people who, for example, disagree on the issue of abortion might carry out a coherent conversation and even reach a conclusion rather than talking past one another. That never quite happens. While I haven't yet read Macintyre's follow up work to "After Virtue," I gather that while he seems to hold out the promise of following through on this in these later works, it never quite emerges there either.

But I think the disappointment a reader might feel about this, as understandable as it is, misses the larger point, which is that the solution to the problem is fundamentally to understand that there *is* a problem at all. It truly is a case of "the first step is to admit you have a problem." We live in a world shot through with pseudo-moralistic discourse, but which is cut off from any common ideas about what these words and ideas actually mean. Yet we continue to blather away as if these concepts are clearly understood by all. For me, the upshot of the book is that we must be aware of the extent to which we lack a common language with which to speak about the virtuous life. Simply acknowledging this would be a hugely helpful step forward in creating more meaningful, coherent interactions with one another.

This isn't to say that Macintyre does not have specific points of view on how to approach the task of enriching our talk about the virtuous life. Some thinkers (e.g., Aristotle) are clearly more helpful than others, and some virtues (e.g. justice) are of particular importance. But the point is not to offer a bullet point list of steps or process flow chart with which to hammer out any and all moral conundrums. That would be to impose a pseudo-scientific understanding of something that is inherently human, interpersonal, situated in context, and narrative. Rather, the purpose is to make it clear what particular context we, today, are in and how this affects the way we think and talk about the virtuous life. Only by fully understanding the philosophical, historical, and social context in which we live (rather than attempting to find some sort of meta-contextual guide to virtue, be it the Categorical Imperative, the Old Testament, etc.)can we start speaking with one another in a way in which virtue again becomes comprehensible.

]]> 12995 The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile.]]> 409 William Faulkner 0679736530 Ted 0 to-read 3.87 1940
author: William Faulkner
name: Ted
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2034476
A collapsed economy and an increasingly savage society were causing thousands to abandon America. Captain Jonah Scott was a pilot, hired to fly some lucky refugees to London. But once in the air, nuclear war broke out, and Scott became responsible for the entire human race!]]> 352 David Graham 1416567666 Ted 0 to-read 3.88 1979
author: David Graham
name: Ted
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Ted 0 to-read 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Ted
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17780
In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex - an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In a harrowing page-turner, Nathaniel Philbrick restores this epic story to its rightful place in American history.

In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy.

At once a literary companion and a page-turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.]]> 302 Nathaniel Philbrick 0141001828 Ted 5 contemporay-nonfiction 4.16 2000
author: Nathaniel Philbrick
name: Ted
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/25
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 2012229 Rare book 400 Alessandro Barbero 0802714536 Ted 5 contemporay-nonfiction 4.31 2003
author: Alessandro Barbero
name: Ted
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/25
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 2823 The Birth of Tragedy has become a key text in European culture and in literary criticism.]]> 121 Friedrich Nietzsche 0140433392 Ted 4 great-books 4.01 1871
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Ted
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1871
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/05/03
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 8494444 Paris, 1686: When The Bishop of Marseilles discovers that his young cousin Charles du Luc, former soldier and half-fledged Jesuit, has been helping heretics escape the king's dragoons, the bishop sends him far away-to Paris, where Charles is assigned to assist in teaching rhetoric and directing dance at the prestigious college of Louis le Grand.

Charles quickly embraces his new life and responsibilities. But on his first day, the school's star dancer disappears from rehearsal, and the next day another student is run down in the street. When the dancer's body is found under the worst possible circumstances, Charles is determined to find the killer in spite of being ordered to leave the investigation.]]> 376 Judith Rock 0425236641 Ted 3 contemporary-fiction 3.67 2010
author: Judith Rock
name: Ted
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2014/05/01
date added: 2014/05/01
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 2240674 3 Christopher Lee 0563553650 Ted 4 contemporay-nonfiction 4.50 1996
author: Christopher Lee
name: Ted
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/01
date added: 2014/04/15
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 28187 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends—one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena - Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.]]> 377 Rick Riordan 0786838655 Ted 3 contemporary-fiction 4.31 2005
author: Rick Riordan
name: Ted
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/13
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 35794
After an idyllic time working around airplanes in Kansas, Cleet is drawn, with deep reluctance, back to his home town in Connecticut by an enormously rich and powerful family who have always magnetized everyone and everything around them. The Reardons live in a huge Victorian mansion, High Farms, and it is there that the family power challenges Cleet. For the Reardons, led by the son and heir, Neil, have always succeeded in twisting those around them to their own purposes: Cleet himself; Neil's wife, Georgia, bubbling over with the gaiety of riches she does not believe in; her sister Lynn, terrified of the Reardons and of her own awkwardness; their ne'er-do-well parents - winning, alcoholic Ken and loud, warmhearted Genevieve - who come to High Farms for the great annual ball which is at the climax of the novel. Among the vast rooms and grounds of High Farms all these people struggle against a most common human dilemma: they live their lives out of season, like actors performing last week's play in front of this week's sets. In his struggle against the Reardon world, Cleet stakes everything he values on meeting the Reardon challenge.]]> 243 John Knowles 0394430476 Ted 4 great-books 3.37 1966
author: John Knowles
name: Ted
average rating: 3.37
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/17
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 18113619 160 Barry M. Kroll 0874219264 Ted 4 academia 4.33 2013
author: Barry M. Kroll
name: Ted
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/08
shelves: academia
review:

]]> 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Ted 4 great-books 3.81 1952
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Ted
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/03
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 193772
The power struggle that ensues between the three women leaves Owen vacillating. What is at stake is not the mere possession of tables and chairs; it is, for Fleda, a conflict between aesthetic ideals, ethical imperatives, and her innermost feelings, in which she risks betraying, and being betrayed by, all that she holds most dear.

About the For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 252 Henry James 0809594048 Ted 3 great-books 3.70 1896
author: Henry James
name: Ted
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1896
rating: 3
read at: 2014/03/02
date added: 2014/03/02
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 139087
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends.

Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.]]> 438 Alan Hollinghurst 0739464469 Ted 3 contemporary-fiction 3.76 2004
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Ted
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2014/02/26
date added: 2014/02/26
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 17834830 The gripping account of a once-in-a-lifetime football team and their lone championship season


For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever--a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city.

It was not just that the Monsters of the Midway won, but how they did it. On offense, there was high-stepping running back Walter Payton and Punky QB Jim McMahon, who had a knack for pissing off Coach Mike Ditka as he made his way to the end zone. On defense, there was the 46: a revolutionary, quarterback-concussing scheme cooked up by Buddy Ryan and ruthlessly implemented by Hall of Famers such as Dan "Danimal" Hampton and "Samurai" Mike Singletary. On the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in bars, there was the never-ending soap opera: the coach and the quarterback bickering on TV, Ditka and Ryan nearly coming to blows in the Orange Bowl, the players recording the "Super Bowl Shuffle" video the morning after the season's only loss.

Cohen tracked down the coaches and players from this iconic team and asked them everything he has always wanted to know: What's it like to win? What's it like to lose? Do you really hate the guys on the other side? Were you ever scared? What do you think as you lie broken on the field? How do you go on after you have lived your dream but life has not ended?

The result is Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, a portrait not merely of a team but of a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it's about being a fan--about loving too much. This is a book about America at its most nonsensical, delirious, and joyful.]]> 338 Rich Cohen 0374298688 Ted 5 contemporay-nonfiction 4.17 2013
author: Rich Cohen
name: Ted
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/01/26
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
review:

]]> 43945 Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. 'The Puzzled Penis', Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) it is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.]]> 274 Philip Roth Ted 4 3.71 1969
author: Philip Roth
name: Ted
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2014/01/18
date added: 2014/01/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Ted 5 great-books
For my money, there are three of Austen's six finished novels that one can make a good argument for being her "best":

"Pride and Prejudice" (the popular choice, and my wife's)
"Emma" (the educated choice--most lit profs go with this one)
"Persuasion" (the truly refined choice)

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon" calls it perhaps a "perfect novel," and while I disagree with some of his interpretations of the characters (yes, blasphemy, I know), I wholeheartedly concur with his overal assessment.

While all of Austen's novels are generally comic, "Persuasion" is the most nuanced. It's been described as "autumnal" and that word suits it. There's a bittersweetness to it that you just don't get in Austen's other work.

The novel it comes closest to in terms of character and plot is probably one of her earliest novels "Sense and Sensibility." Like Eleanor in that novel, Anne is older and more mature than the typical Austen heroine. In fact, she's dangerously close to being "over the hill" at the age of 27(!). Love has passed her by, apparently.

But unlike Eleanor, who one always feels will muddle through even if she ends up disappointed in affairs of the heart, there's something more dramatically at stake with Anne. She is in great danger of ceasing to exist, not physically, but socially. When we meet her, she's barely there at all. Although a woman of strong feelings, she is ignored and literally overlooked by most of the other characters. In the universe of Austen's novels, the individual doesn't truly exist unless connected with the social world, and while Anne has a stoic strength, we understand that she is in some senses doomed if things don't change for her.

This is where we see what the mature Austen can do with a character type that she couldn't when she was younger.

This edition also has the original ending of the novel included as an appendix, which gives us a rare and fascinating look in to Austen as a technical artist.

I read this novel as an undergraduate, and have reread it several times since. I even took the novel with me to Bath on a trip to England, and spent a wonderful summer evening reading it while sitting in Sidney Gardens, across the street from one of the homes Austen lived in during her time in Bath, listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto #27. It's one of my favorite memories.

More than any other of her novels, "Persuasion" shows how Austen dealt with profound existential questions within the confines of her deceptively limited setting and cast of characters. Those who think Austen is simply a highbrow precursor to contemporary romance novels or social comedies are missing the colossal depth of thought that is beneath the surface of any of her novels, this one most of all.

Austen is nearly unique in the history of the novel for the consistency of her excellence. While most novelists have a clear masterpiece that stands out among their work, and usually a fairly sizable number of works that are adequate but not enduring, all of Austen's novels stand up to repeated readings and deserve a wide audience among today's readers.

Having said that, "Persuasion" is simply the best of the best.
]]> 4.15 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Ted
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 5
read at: 1990/11/01
date added: 2014/01/12
shelves: great-books
review:
One of the major sources of contention and strife in my marriage is the disagreement between my wife and me over what is the best Jane Austen novel (yes, we are both more than a bit geekish in our love of words and literature--our second biggest ongoing quarrel is about the merits of the serial comma).

For my money, there are three of Austen's six finished novels that one can make a good argument for being her "best":

"Pride and Prejudice" (the popular choice, and my wife's)
"Emma" (the educated choice--most lit profs go with this one)
"Persuasion" (the truly refined choice)

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon" calls it perhaps a "perfect novel," and while I disagree with some of his interpretations of the characters (yes, blasphemy, I know), I wholeheartedly concur with his overal assessment.

While all of Austen's novels are generally comic, "Persuasion" is the most nuanced. It's been described as "autumnal" and that word suits it. There's a bittersweetness to it that you just don't get in Austen's other work.

The novel it comes closest to in terms of character and plot is probably one of her earliest novels "Sense and Sensibility." Like Eleanor in that novel, Anne is older and more mature than the typical Austen heroine. In fact, she's dangerously close to being "over the hill" at the age of 27(!). Love has passed her by, apparently.

But unlike Eleanor, who one always feels will muddle through even if she ends up disappointed in affairs of the heart, there's something more dramatically at stake with Anne. She is in great danger of ceasing to exist, not physically, but socially. When we meet her, she's barely there at all. Although a woman of strong feelings, she is ignored and literally overlooked by most of the other characters. In the universe of Austen's novels, the individual doesn't truly exist unless connected with the social world, and while Anne has a stoic strength, we understand that she is in some senses doomed if things don't change for her.

This is where we see what the mature Austen can do with a character type that she couldn't when she was younger.

This edition also has the original ending of the novel included as an appendix, which gives us a rare and fascinating look in to Austen as a technical artist.

I read this novel as an undergraduate, and have reread it several times since. I even took the novel with me to Bath on a trip to England, and spent a wonderful summer evening reading it while sitting in Sidney Gardens, across the street from one of the homes Austen lived in during her time in Bath, listening to Mozart's Piano Concerto #27. It's one of my favorite memories.

More than any other of her novels, "Persuasion" shows how Austen dealt with profound existential questions within the confines of her deceptively limited setting and cast of characters. Those who think Austen is simply a highbrow precursor to contemporary romance novels or social comedies are missing the colossal depth of thought that is beneath the surface of any of her novels, this one most of all.

Austen is nearly unique in the history of the novel for the consistency of her excellence. While most novelists have a clear masterpiece that stands out among their work, and usually a fairly sizable number of works that are adequate but not enduring, all of Austen's novels stand up to repeated readings and deserve a wide audience among today's readers.

Having said that, "Persuasion" is simply the best of the best.

]]> 11447921
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece�� (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.]]> 337 Jess Walter 0061928127 Ted 4 contemporary-fiction 3.67 2012
author: Jess Walter
name: Ted
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/01/12
shelves: contemporary-fiction
review:

]]> 15645
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.

Esolen's edition also provides a critical ntroduction and endnotes, with appendices containing Dante's most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and beyond —that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.

Verse Translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré]]> 490 Dante Alighieri 0812970063 Ted 0 great-books 4.02 1320
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Ted
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1320
rating: 0
read at: 2014/01/12
date added: 2014/01/12
shelves: great-books
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]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Ted 5 4.07 1980
author: Howard Zinn
name: Ted
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/29
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Masterful, sweeping, undeniable.
]]> 32767 At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries --and their encounter with an untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization--is a milestone of macabre literature.

This Definitive Edition of At the Mountains of Madness (The Modern Library) also includes Lovecraft's long essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature."]]> 194 H.P. Lovecraft 0812974417 Ted 3 great-books 3.86 1931
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Ted
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1931
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/09/05
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 46730 289 Daniel Defoe 0140437851 Ted 3 great-books 3.52 1722
author: Daniel Defoe
name: Ted
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1722
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/20
date added: 2013/08/20
shelves: great-books
review:

]]> 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Ted 0 currently-reading 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Ted
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 100027
Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schr�dinger showed that it "absurdly" allowed a cat to be in a "superposition" simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory's "spooky interactions." With Bell's Theorem, we now know Schr�dinger's superpositions and Einstein's spooky interactions indeed exist.

Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and bits about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation.

Physics' encounter with consciousness is its skeleton in the closet. Because the authors open the closet and examine the skeleton, theirs is a controversial book. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial.

Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing.

Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.]]> 211 Bruce Rosenblum 019517559X Ted 4 4.10 2006
author: Bruce Rosenblum
name: Ted
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/15
date added: 2013/08/15
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]]> 126609 580 Theodore Dreiser 0393960420 Ted 4 great-books 3.77 1900
author: Theodore Dreiser
name: Ted
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1900
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/06
date added: 2013/08/06
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]]> 531 416 Victor Davis Hanson 0812969707 Ted 0 currently-reading 4.10 2005
author: Victor Davis Hanson
name: Ted
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/07/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 7745326
Balthazar Jones has lived in the Tower of London with his loving wife, Hebe, and his 120-year-old pet tortoise for the past eight years. That’s right, he is a Beefeater (they really do live there). It’s no easy job living and working in the tourist attraction in present-day London.

Among the eccentric characters who call the Tower’s maze of ancient buildings and spiral staircases home are the Tower’s Rack & Ruin barmaid, Ruby Dore, who just found out she’s pregnant; portly Valerie Jennings, who is falling for ticket inspector Arthur Catnip; the lifelong bachelor Reverend Septimus Drew, who secretly pens a series of principled erot­ica; and the philandering Ravenmaster, aiming to avenge the death of one of his insufferable ravens.

When Balthazar is tasked with setting up an elaborate menagerie within the Tower walls to house the many exotic animals gifted to the Queen, life at the Tower gets all the more interest­ing. Penguins escape, giraffes are stolen, and the Komodo dragon sends innocent people running for their lives. Balthazar is in charge and things are not exactly running smoothly. Then Hebe decides to leave him and his beloved tortoise “runs�� away.

Filled with the humor and heart that calls to mind the delight­ful novels of Alexander McCall Smith, and the charm and beauty of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise is a magical, wholly origi­nal novel whose irresistible characters will stay with you long after you turn the stunning last page.

Published in the UK in August 2010 as Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo.]]> 304 Julia Stuart 0385533284 Ted 4 3.58 2010
author: Julia Stuart
name: Ted
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/27
date added: 2013/07/27
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]]> 12947 271 Henry James 039395904X Ted 3 3.53 1898
author: Henry James
name: Ted
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at: 2008/02/02
date added: 2013/07/08
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]]> 1242525 224 Marie Belloc Lowndes 0897332997 Ted 4 great-books 3.63 1913
author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
name: Ted
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/27
date added: 2012/12/27
shelves: great-books
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]]> 8753495 From a master historian, the story of Lincoln's—and the nation's—transformation through the crucible of slavery and emancipation.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize

In this landmark work of deep scholarship and insight, Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner begins with Lincoln's youth in Indiana and Illinois and follows the trajectory of his career across an increasingly tense and shifting political terrain from Illinois to Washington, D.C. Although “naturally anti-slavery�� for as long as he can remember, Lincoln scrupulously holds to the position that the Constitution protects the institution in the original slave states. But the political landscape is transformed in 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act makes the expansion of slavery a national issue.

A man of considered words and deliberate actions, Lincoln navigates the dynamic politics deftly, taking measured steps, often along a path forged by abolitionists and radicals in his party. Lincoln rises to leadership in the new Republican Party by calibrating his politics to the broadest possible antislavery coalition. As president of a divided nation and commander in chief at war, displaying a similar compound of pragmatism and principle, Lincoln finally embraces what he calls the Civil War's “fundamental and astounding�� result: the immediate, uncompensated abolition of slavery and recognition of blacks as American citizens.

Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike. This powerful work will transform our understanding of the nation's greatest president and the issue that mattered most.]]> 336 Eric Foner 0393066185 Ted 0 contemporay-nonfiction 4.17 2010
author: Eric Foner
name: Ted
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/12/27
shelves: contemporay-nonfiction
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]]> 10856622 448 Eric Foner 039334066X Ted 4 4.30 2010
author: Eric Foner
name: Ted
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> 681508 James propounded his theories of pragmatism in this book, one of the most important in American philosophy. In a sense, he wished to test competing systems of thought in the "marketplace of actual experience" to determine their validity, i.e. whether adopting a particular philosophical theory or way of looking at the world makes an actual difference in individual conduct or in how we perceive and react to the varieties of experience. In these pages, James not only makes a strong case for his own ideas, but mounts a powerful attack against the transcendental and rationalist tradition.
For anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought, Pragmatism is an essential and thought provoking reference. In this handy, inexpensive edition, it will challenge and stimulate any thinking person.]]> 116 William James 0486282708 Ted 5 great-books 3.93 1907
author: William James
name: Ted
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1907
rating: 5
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]]> 28867 778 Edward Rutherfurd 0345472357 Ted 4 contemporary-fiction 3.86 2004
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Ted
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/12/27
shelves: contemporary-fiction
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]]> 216363
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.]]> 259 Philip K. Dick 0679740678 Ted 0 3.64 1962
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Ted
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/11/11
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]]> 1519 Alternate covers of this ISBN here, here, here, here. Most recent cover is here.

In the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge within the royal family of Argos.

Moving from darkness to light, from rage to self-governance, from primitive ritual to civilized institution, their spirit of struggle and regeneration becomes an everlasting song of celebration.]]> 336 Aeschylus Ted 4 great-books 4.03 -458
author: Aeschylus
name: Ted
average rating: 4.03
book published: -458
rating: 4
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date added: 2011/11/13
shelves: great-books
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]]> 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.��

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Ted 5 great-books 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ted
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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date added: 2011/11/13
shelves: great-books
review:

]]>