en-US Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:57:34 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 825332 Ignorance, set in contemporary Prague, one of the most distinguished writers of our time takes up the complex and emotionally charged theme of exile and creates from it a literary masterpiece.

A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The simple truth is that after such a long absence 'their memories no longer match.' We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion as the memory records only 'an insignificant, minuscule particle' of the past, 'and no one knows why it's this bit and not any other bit.' We live our lives sunk in a vast forgetting, and we refuse to see it. Only those who return after twenty years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance first-hand. Milan Kundera has taken these dizzying concepts of absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transformed them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.]]> 195 milan-kundera 0571215513 David 0 3.74 2000
author: milan-kundera
name: David
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 13072449 ?
In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith＊s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church＊s origin and development, explains how Mormonism came to be one of the fastest-growing religions in the world by the turn of twenty-first-century, and ably sets the scene for a 2012 presidential election that has the potential to mark a major turning point in the way this ※all-American§ faith is perceived by the wider American public〞and internationally.
?
Mormonism started as a radical movement, with a profoundly transformative vision of American society that was rooted in a form of Christian socialism. Over the ensuing centuries, Bowman demonstrates, that vision has evolved〞and with it the esteem in which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on the one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots clad in ※magic underwear.§ Even today, the place of Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate on both sides of the political divide. Polls show widespread unease at the prospect of a Mormon president. Yet the faith has never been more popular. Today there are about 14 million Mormons in the world, fewer than half of whom live inside the United States. It is a church with a powerful sense of its own identity and an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture.
?
Mormons will surely play an even greater role in American civic life in the years ahead. In such a time, The Mormon People comes as a vital addition to the corpus of American religious history〞a frank and fair-minded demystification of a faith that remains a mystery for many.]]> 352 Matthew Bowman 0679644903 David 0 3.85 2012
author: Matthew Bowman
name: David
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 643835 336 Mark Edward Lewis 067402477X David 4 3.75 2007
author: Mark Edward Lewis
name: David
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/21
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
Probably a 4.5. Well-structured, insightful, achieves scholarly excellence.
]]> 50849430 The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system.

Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.

Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.]]> 1104 Thomas Piketty 0674980824 David 4 4.27 2019
author: Thomas Piketty
name: David
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/08/07
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
Brilliant, necessary. 4.5 stars. This book is a graduate-level education in one stroke. If you can't commit to the whole shebang--it's a long read-- you can pick and choose and still reap a semester's worth. It should be a 5-star read but the book lacks judicious editing, especially in exposition, making it unnecessarily bloated at times. (My guess, the exposition problem stems from weak overall revision of multiple contributions from Piketty's stable of research assistants.)
]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin David 5 4.08 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: David
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> 604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 David 5 4.40 2010
author: Liu Cixin
name: David
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin David 5 4.39 2008
author: Liu Cixin
name: David
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 62962414 Communicology is Vil谷m Flusser's first thesis on his concepts of technical images and technical imagination. In this foundational text he lays the groundwork for later work, offering a philosophical approach to communication as a phenomenon that permeates every aspect of human existence. Clearly organized around questions such as "What is Communication?," "What are Codes?," and "What is Technical Imagination?," the work touches on theater, photography, film, television, and more. Originally written in 1978, but only posthumously published in German, the book is one of the clearest statements of Flusser's theory of communication as involving a variably mediated relation between humans and the world. Although Flusser was writing in the 1970s, his work demonstrates a prescience that makes it of significant contemporary interest to scholars in visual culture, art history, media studies, and philosophy.]]> 206 Vil谷m Flusser 1503634493 David 5 4.40
author: Vil谷m Flusser
name: David
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves:
review:
Yes! I found the Flusser ur-text. All those key terms that flash by in his other well-known books such as Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Into the Universe of Technical Images, and Does Writing Have a Future? find loving, if sometimes annoying, elaboration in Communicology. Strangely, despite predating these other books, this one only saw the light of day in English in 2022. Given the general patch-work translation of his books into English, none of this is truly surprising. But who's complaining? Glad to have the ur-text.
]]> 9785666 Does Writing Have a Future?, a remarkably perceptive work first published in German in 1987, Vil谷m Flusser asks what will happen to thought and communication as written communication gives way, inevitably, to digital expression. In his introduction, Flusser proposes that writing does not, in fact, have a future because everything that is now conveyed in writing〞and much that cannot be〞can be recorded and transmitted by other means.

Confirming Flusser＊s status as a theorist of new media in the same rank as Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Friedrich Kittler, the balance of this book teases out the nuances of these developments. To find a common denominator among texts and practices that span millennia, Flusser looks back to the earliest forms of writing and forward to the digitization of texts now under way. For Flusser, writing〞despite its limitations when compared to digital media〞underpins historical consciousness, the concept of progress, and the nature of critical inquiry. While the text as a cultural form may ultimately become superfluous, he argues, the art of writing will not so much disappear but rather evolve into new kinds of thought and expression.]]> 208 Vil谷m Flusser 0816670234 David 4 The irony is that "writing" as a topic elicits considerably less power from Flusser, in his writing, than does the "technical image" in the other book: it is almost as if Flusser had already capitulated to the end of writing as a fait accompli and was wholly taken up with the emergent technical image.]]> 4.13 1987
author: Vil谷m Flusser
name: David
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
Very good, definitely recommended, but uneven compared to the other two books in the trilogy.
The irony is that "writing" as a topic elicits considerably less power from Flusser, in his writing, than does the "technical image" in the other book: it is almost as if Flusser had already capitulated to the end of writing as a fait accompli and was wholly taken up with the emergent technical image.
]]> 293658 176 Vil谷m Flusser 1861890761 David 5 4.10 1983
author: Vil谷m Flusser
name: David
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
The thinking and writing here is in the stratosphere.
]]> 43565360 A sweeping examination of the current state of artificial intelligence and how it is remaking our world

No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scientist, now reveals AI＊s turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it.

In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent〞really〞are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant models of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought underpinning recent achievements. She meets with fellow experts such as Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize每winning author of the modern classic G?del, Escher, Bach, who explains why he is ※terrified§ about the future of AI. She explores the profound disconnect between the hype and the actual achievements in AI, providing a clear sense of what the field has accomplished and how much further it has to go.

Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell＊s humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today＊s AI, its quest for ※human-level§ intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.]]> 336 Melanie Mitchell 0374257833 David 0 to-read 4.34 2019
author: Melanie Mitchell
name: David
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5597902 Complexity: A Guided Tour--winner of the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science--offers a wide-ranging overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for its contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.
]]> 368 Melanie Mitchell 0195124413 David 0 4.11 2009
author: Melanie Mitchell
name: David
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 57183987 432 Eugene Y. Park 1503629848 David 0 currently-reading 3.69
author: Eugene Y. Park
name: David
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 10656837 Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a darling of the international socialist idealists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir vocally opposed apartheid and built alliances with black leaders in newly independent African nations. South Africa, for its part, was controlled by a regime of Afrikaner nationalists who had enthusiastically supported Hitler during World War II.
But after Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, the country found itself estranged from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. As both states became international pariahs, their covert military relationship they exchanged billions of dollars' worth of extremely sensitive material, including nuclear technology, boosting Israel's sagging economy and strengthening the beleaguered apartheid regime.
By the time the right-wing Likud Party came to power in 1977, Israel had all but abandoned the moralism of its founders in favor of close and lucrative ties with South Africa. For nearly twenty years, Israel denied these ties, claiming that it opposed apartheid on moral and religious grounds even as it secretly supplied the arsenal of a white supremacist government.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky reveals the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel's own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries, "The Unspoken Alliance "tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel's estrangement from the left. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Israel's history and its future.
"From the Hardcover edition."]]> 324 Sasha Polakow-Suransky 1770098402 David 0 to-read 4.27 2010
author: Sasha Polakow-Suransky
name: David
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 34746515 From one of our most celebrated writers on religion comes this fresh, bold, and unsettling new translation of the New Testament

David Bentley Hart undertook this new translation of the New Testament in the spirit of ※etsi doctrina non daretur,§ ※as if doctrine is not given.§ Reproducing the texts＊ often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts＊ impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers.

The early Christians＊ sometimes raw, astonished, and halting prose challenges the idea that the New Testament affirms the kind of people we are. Hart reminds us that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. ※To live as the New Testament language requires,§ he writes, ※Christians would have to become strangers and sojourners on the earth, to have here no enduring city, to belong to a Kingdom truly not of this world. And we surely cannot do that, can we?§]]> 616 David Bentley Hart 0300186096 David 0 to-read 4.51 2017
author: David Bentley Hart
name: David
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 133426894 John Dominic Crossan David 0 to-read 0.0 1991
author: John Dominic Crossan
name: David
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 427964
Called "a book of uncommon brilliance" by Commonweal , Jesus Through the Centuries is an original and compelling study of the impact of Jesus on cultural, political, social, and economic history. Noted historian and theologian Jaroslav Pelikan reveals how the image of Jesus created by each successive epoch〞from rabbi in the first century to liberator in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries〞is a key to understanding the temper and values of that age.

"An enlightening and often dramatic story . . . as stimulating as it is informative.§〞John Gross, New York Times

※A gracious little masterpiece.§〞Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor
?]]> 270 Jaroslav Pelikan 0300079877 David 0 to-read 4.05 1985
author: Jaroslav Pelikan
name: David
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 107274
Ehrman shows us what historians have long known about the Gospels and the man who stands behind them. Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament (and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter), Ehrman proposes that Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet--a man convinced that the world would end dramatically within the lifetime of his apostles and that a new kingdom would be created on earth. According to Ehrman, Jesus' belief in a coming apocalypse and his expectation of an utter reversal in the world's social organization not only underscores the radicalism of his teachings but also sheds light on both the appeal of his message to society's outcasts and the threat he posed to Jerusalem's established leadership.]]> 288 Bart D. Ehrman 019512474X David 0 to-read 4.12 1999
author: Bart D. Ehrman
name: David
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12249 The New York Times hailed the first volume as "an achievement that places us more deeply in Lattimore's debt than any other in a long and diligent career."

Lattimore's aim was to provide a simple, literal rendering in which the syntax and order of the Greek dictate the character of the English style. He lets the words of the apostles and early disciples speak for themselves with an accuracy and fidelity to the original language that is a gift to today's reader.]]> 608 Richmond Lattimore 0865475245 David 0 to-read 4.20 110
author: Richmond Lattimore
name: David
average rating: 4.20
book published: 110
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2199365 A brilliant and beguiling reimagining of one of our greatest myths by a gifted young writer, Zachary Mason＊s brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer＊s classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer＊s original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

]]> 256 Zachary Mason 097888115X David 0 to-read 3.95 2007
author: Zachary Mason
name: David
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36521339 The Lost Books of the Odyssey 每 where he recast episodes from Homer＊s masterpiece 每 Metamorphica now reimagines Ovid＊s epic poem of endless transformation, Metamorphoses. Just as the Roman poet reinvigorated the Greek Classical legends 700 years after Homer, so Mason now gives us a radical and exciting renovation of those myths, 2,000 years after Ovid.

It retells the great stories of Narcissus, Orpheus, Persephone, Icarus, Midas, Medea and Actaeon, and strings them together like the stars in constellations 每 with even Ovid himself entering the narrative. It＊s as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino 每 or artificial intelligence 每 and brought glimmering back into our world. Metamorphica re-engages with the elemental power of the ancient shape-changing gods by keeping their essences while rewriting their stories. It is this extraordinary narrative approach that is so thrilling; we watch as the author extracts more and more out of the original legend 每 adding infinite perspectives to narratives we thought we knew. Mason understands that the great myths are parables 每 always in flux, always relevant 每 always throwing shards of light from the morning of the world.]]> 282 Zachary Mason 0224097970 David 0 to-read 3.70 2018
author: Zachary Mason
name: David
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52379410 'With Genesis, Wilson inspires awe ... His message is that selection has shaped a society that is characterized by cooperation and division of labour' Nature

Of all species that have ever existed on earth, only one has reached human levels of intelligence and social organisation: us. Why? In Genesis, celebrated biologist Edward O. Wilson traces the great transitions of evolution, from the origin of life to the invention of sexual reproduction to the development of language itself.

The only way for us to fully understand human behaviour, Wilson argues, is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, he demonstrates that at least seventeen - from the African naked mole rat and the sponge-dwelling shrimp to one of the oldest species on earth, the termite - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism, cooperation and the division of labour. These rare eusocial species form the prehistory to our human social patterns, even, according to Wilson, suggesting the possible biological benefits of homosexuality and elderly grandmothers.

Whether writing about midges who dance about like acrobats, schools of anchovies who protectively huddle to appear like a gigantic fish or well-organised flocks becoming potentially immortal, Genesis is a pathbreaking work of evolutionary theory filled with lyrical observations. It will make us rethink how we became who we are.]]> 153 Edward O. Wilson 0141990236 David 4 3.43 2019
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: David
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
Tasty morsel. Felt truncated, no real sense of ending at the conclusion of the book. Nevertheless, a goodread.
]]> 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 David 0 to-read 3.80 1925
author: Virginia Woolf
name: David
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18839 Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.]]> 336 Virginia Woolf 0141184272 David 0 to-read 3.88 1928
author: Virginia Woolf
name: David
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 126608
Ford Madox Ford wrote The Good Soldier, the book on which his reputation most surely rests, in deliberate emulation of the nineteenth-century French novels he so admired. In this way he was able to explore the theme of sexual betrayal and its poisonous after-effects with a psychological intimacy as yet unknown in the English novel.]]> 214 Ford Madox Ford 0141441844 David 0 to-read 3.69 1915
author: Ford Madox Ford
name: David
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15994588 'She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings - that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigour of irresistible day'

George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'.]]> 923 George Eliot 0141199792 David 0 to-read 4.18 1872
author: George Eliot
name: David
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1039321
In 1689, in the lost lands where the Danube empties into the Black Sea, the Turks and Slavs are engaged in pitched battle. In the fighting, three men come face to face: Avram Brancovich, the noble warlord and litterateur; Yusuf Masudi, the Turkish lute player; and Samuel Cohen, the Jew. Each has (literally) dreamed the existence of the other two and has been tracking them down; at the moment of their encounter, all three die...

Three hundred years later, in 1982 in Istanbul, three scholars (Christian, Jew, Moslem) come together to pool their separately compiled fragmentary information about the lost tribe of the Khazars, once known to have been gathered into a single book of knowledge, The Khazar Dictionary, published in 1691 in an edition of 500 copies. 498 were destroyed by the Inquisition, one was 'consumed' and one, the "Golden Book" (with poisoned inks), survived, deadly to any Unbeliever who ignored the warnings and read more than nine pages. Now, once again at the precise moment when the three scholars may together be able to reconstitute at least part of the dictionary, two of them die...

What is the story of the Khazars? Milorad Pavic gives us the search for the Dictionary and a reconstructed possible version of the Dictionary, all in one. The rest is up to us...]]> 368 Milorad Pavi? 0241126584 David 0 to-read 3.79 1983
author: Milorad Pavi?
name: David
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 781182 592 Bryan Burrough 0060536357 David 0 4.26 1989
author: Bryan Burrough
name: David
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 16884
Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the Bomb with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers -- Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and yon Neumann -- stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.

Richard Rhodes takes us on that journey step by step, minute by minute, and gives us the definitive story of man's most awesome discovery and invention.]]> 886 Richard Rhodes 0684813785 David 0 4.38 1986
author: Richard Rhodes
name: David
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 374233 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration〞"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches〞stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition〞with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."]]> 260 Italo Calvino David 0 to-read 4.06 1979
author: Italo Calvino
name: David
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41160292
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic〞revelatory.]]> 368 Ted Chiang David 0 to-read 4.27 2019
author: Ted Chiang
name: David
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25242099
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes "Metamorphosis", his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; "Meditation", a collection of his earlier studies; "The Judgement", written in a single night of frenzied creativity; "The Stoker", the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, and "The Aeroplanes at Brescia", Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.]]> 320 Franz Kafka 0241197821 David 0 currently-reading 3.88 1915
author: Franz Kafka
name: David
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 17961 Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 978-0140286809, ISBN-10/ASIN: 0140286802

For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called ※the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century§ collected in a single volume

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with flaps and deckle-edged paper

For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story〞from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare＊s Memory〞Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself. Playfully experimenting with ostensibly subliterary genres, he took the detective story and turned it into metaphysics; he took fantasy writing and made it, with its questioning and reinventing of everyday reality, central to the craft of fiction; he took the literary essay and put it to use reviewing wholly imaginary books.

Bringing together for the first time in English all of Borges＊s magical stories, and all of them newly rendered into English in brilliant translations by Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions is the perfect one-volume compendium for all who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master＊s work for all who have yet to discover this singular genius.]]> 565 Jorge Luis Borges David 0 to-read 4.57 1998
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: David
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 24885533
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie. This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken＊s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: ※The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary§ (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), ※Mono No Aware§ (Hugo Award winner), ※The Waves§ (Nebula Award finalist), ※The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species§ (Nebula and Sturgeon award finalists), ※All the Flavors§ (Nebula award finalist), ※The Litigation Master and the Monkey King§ (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre＊s history, ※The Paper Menagerie§ (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

A must-have for every science fiction and fantasy fan, this beautiful book is an anthology to savor.]]> 450 Ken Liu 1481442546 David 0 to-read 4.36 2016
author: Ken Liu
name: David
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12016
Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star & self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know--a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he can't remember it.

Hailed by SFX magazine as "an excellent hopping-on point if you've never read a Banks SF novel before," Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly original, vividly realized civilization Banks calls the Culture.]]> 496 Iain M. Banks 0743421922 David 0 to-read 4.20 2000
author: Iain M. Banks
name: David
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8146 Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories.

Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales〞eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time〞display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination. They range from sprightly fables to bittersweet tales of loss, from claustrophobic exercises in horror to a connoisseur's samplings of the table of human folly. Read as a whole, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov offers an intoxicating draft of the master's genius, his devious wit, and his ability to turn language into an instrument of ecstasy.

The Wood-Sprite
Russian Spoken Here
Sounds
Wingstroke
Gods
A Matter of Chance
The Seaport
Revenge
Beneficence
Details of A Sunset
The Thunderstorm
La Veneziana
Bachmann
The Dragon
Christmas
A Letter That Never Reached Russia
The Fight
The Return of Chorb
A Guide to Berlin
A Nursery Tale
Terror
Razor
The Passenger
The Doorbell
An Affair of Honor
The Christmas Story
The Potato Elf
The Aurelian
A Dashing Fellow
A Bad Day
The Visit to the Museum
A Busy Man
Terra Incognita
The Reunion
Lips to Lips
Orache
Music
Perfection
The Admiralty Spire
The Leonardo
In Memory of L.I. Shigaev
The Circle
A Russian Beauty
Breaking the News
Torpid Smoke
Recruiting
A Slice of Life
Spring in Fialta
Cloud, Castle, Lake
Tyrants Destroyed
Lik
Mademoiselle O
Vasiliy Shishkov
Ultima Thule
Solus Rex
The Assistant Producer
That in Aleppo Once
A Forgotten Poet
Time and Ebb
Conversation Piece, 1945
Signs and Symbols
First Love
Scenes From the Life of A Double Monster
The Vane Sisters
Lance]]> 685 Vladimir Nabokov David 0 to-read 4.31 1995
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: David
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12187 Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.?It tells a love story troubled by incest.?But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously?sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.]]> 606 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725229 David 0 to-read 4.14 1969
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: David
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov David 0 to-read 4.17 1962
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: David
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223380 ]]> 281 Ted Chiang 0330426648 David 0 currently-reading 4.28 2002
author: Ted Chiang
name: David
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 18630 293 Iain M. Banks 0061053562 David 3 4.28 1988
author: Iain M. Banks
name: David
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 236219 150 Italo Calvino David 5 3.98 1972
author: Italo Calvino
name: David
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1972
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 215366091 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties〞successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father＊s death, he＊s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women〞his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude〞a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 448 Sally Rooney 0571365477 David 3 4.03 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: David
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
Just finished the book. High-level genre fiction. In spots Rooney catches fire with figurative language (Ivan's head buzzing like a bluebottle in a jar) but no real aesthetic power. The narrative is solid but no real payoff after the volta and denouement in the way Rooney ties up the various narrative strands. (Too much interior on Peter's tortured Hamlet jr.) Glad I read it (I think) but doubt I'll be back for more. I gave it 3 stars but really more like 2.5 stars.
]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist＊s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city＊s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life〞divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house〞and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco＊s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang〞who thrived and who faltered〞and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie＊s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou＊s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both〞and escape the merciless progress of time〞in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 David 4 novel 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: David
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: novel
review:
Probably 4.5 stars. Read it in fits and starts over the past few months. Will read again sometime and comment.
]]> 2722
Powerful political fiction that it is, CITIES OF SALT has been banned in several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. This novel, the first volume in a trilogy, has been translated from the Arabic to the English by Peter Theroux.]]> 627 Abdul Rahman Munif 039475526X David 0 to-read 3.86 1984
author: Abdul Rahman Munif
name: David
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 320601 144 Joseph Brodsky 0374523827 David 0 to-read 4.12 1989
author: Joseph Brodsky
name: David
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60408 After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the Babel problem in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions.

For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantially updated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.]]> 560 George Steiner 0192880934 David 0 currently-reading 4.13 1975
author: George Steiner
name: David
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 1395714 The Essential Chomsky brings together selections from his most important writings since 1959-from his groundbreaking critique of B.F. Skinner to his bestselling works Hegermony or Survival and Failed States-concerning subjects ranging from critiques of corporate media and U.S. interventionism to intellectual freedom and the political economy of human rights. With a foreword by Anthony Arnove, The Essential Chomsky is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky's thought.]]> 515 Noam Chomsky 0143065475 David 0 to-read 4.12 2008
author: Noam Chomsky
name: David
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23129811 On Palestine is the sequel to their acclaimed book Gaza in Crisis.]]> 220 Noam Chomsky 1608464709 David 0 to-read 4.28 2015
author: Noam Chomsky
name: David
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 224127 484 John J. Mearsheimer 0374177724 David 0 to-read 4.06 2006
author: John J. Mearsheimer
name: David
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38926072 Our American Israel tells the story of how a Jewish state in the Middle East came to resonate profoundly with a broad range of Americans in the twentieth century. Beginning with debates about Zionism after World War II, Israel＊s identity has been entangled with America＊s belief in its own exceptional nature. Now, in the twenty-first century, Amy Kaplan challenges the associations underlying this special alliance.

Through popular narratives expressed in news media, fiction, and film, a shared sense of identity emerged from the two nations＊ histories as settler societies. Americans projected their own origin myths onto Israel: the biblical promised land, the open frontier, the refuge for immigrants, the revolt against colonialism. Israel assumed a mantle of moral authority, based on its image as an ※invincible victim,§ a nation of intrepid warriors and concentration camp survivors. This paradox persisted long after the Six-Day War, when the United States rallied behind a story of the Israeli David subduing the Arab Goliath. The image of the underdog shattered when Israel invaded Lebanon and Palestinians rose up against the occupation in the 1980s. Israel＊s military was strongly censured around the world, including notes of dissent in the United States. Rather than a symbol of justice, Israel became a model of military strength and technological ingenuity.

In America today, Israel＊s political realities pose difficult challenges. Turning a critical eye on the turbulent history that bound the two nations together, Kaplan unearths the roots of present controversies that may well divide them in the future.]]> 368 Amy Kaplan 0674737628 David 0 to-read 4.20 2018
author: Amy Kaplan
name: David
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43154949 352 Noura Erakat 0804798257 David 0 to-read 4.59 2019
author: Noura Erakat
name: David
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210943364
The first of the book＊s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the ※steampunk§ city of ※old traditions and new machinery,§ but everywhere he goes he feels as if he＊s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates＊s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the ※racial reckoning§ of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community〞a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we＊ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians〞the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him〞and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country＊s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world〞and our own souls〞and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 David 0 to-read 4.51 2024
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: David
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6428445 J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece The Hobbit is a tale of high adventure, undertaken by a company of dwarves in search of dragon-guarded gold. A reluctant partner in this perilous quest is Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving unambitious hobbit, who surprises even himself by his resourcefulness and skill as a burglar. Encounters with trolls, goblins, dwarves, elves and giant spiders, conversations with the dragon, Smaug, and a rather unwilling presence at the Battle of the Five Armies are just some of the adventures that befall Bilbo. Bilbo Baggins has taken his place among the ranks of the immortals of children's fiction. Written by Professor Tolkien for his own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when published.

]]> 322 J.R.R. Tolkien 0061952842 David 3 novel 4.45 1937
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: David
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 57972 376 Edgar Rice Burroughs 1846771153 David 0 4.01 1991
author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
name: David
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 34068514 464 Thomas Rid 0393354954 David 0 3.87 2016
author: Thomas Rid
name: David
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 18740986 Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today.

This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think.

The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy. There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are.

Larry Siedentop was appointed to the first post in intellectual history ever established in Britain, at Sussex University in the 1970s. From there he moved to Oxford, becoming Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought and a Fellow of Keble College. His writings include a study of Tocqueville, an edition of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, and Democracy in Europe, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Siedentop was made CBE in 2004.]]> 416 Larry Siedentop 0713996447 David 0 4.02 2014
author: Larry Siedentop
name: David
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 22505318 566 Roberto Mangabeira Unger 1107074061 David 0 to-read 3.79 2014
author: Roberto Mangabeira Unger
name: David
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 467122 534 Steven D. Carter 0804722129 David 0 poetry 4.49 1991
author: Steven D. Carter
name: David
average rating: 4.49
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 1065993 English, Japanese 591 Helen Craig McCullough 0804712468 David 0 poetry 4.33 1985
author: Helen Craig McCullough
name: David
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 5886597 In Monkey's Raincoat there are four sections, or kasen, titled Winter Moon, Summer Rain, Autumn Cricket, & Grass & Plum. Images in a renga are always organized around a theme &, along with the seasons, other popular themes may be organized in subtle groupings such as 'things that rise' (mist, smoke, haze). An old Zen saying expresses the aim of renga poets: to be inside the poem creating it rather than standing outside it as creators: "Entering the forest does not disturb a blade of grass/Entering the water does not/create a ripple."
Monkey's Raincoat came about in 1690 when the poet Basho & a friend, Otokuni, made a trip to the capital city, Edo (Tokyo). The two invited six other poets to help them celebrate the occasion by composing a renga. As the basho, Basho wrote the lead verses. "Let's squeeze the juice from our bones", he enthused.
Why A monkey? Some answers suggest themselves. Buddhism refers to 'Monkey Mind' to describe the way our thoughts flit from one idea to another without taking time to fully explore them. This is likened to the way a monkey swings from tree to tree, tearing off pieces of fruit & throwing them away after a taste. Pliny, the Roman scholar, also compared the monkey to humans, noting similarities of behavior centuries before zoologists began their investigations. In western lore, allegories of the five senses often represent the taste sense by a monkey eating fruit. Medieval bestiaries, popular catalogs of animal information, often depict monkeys in a negative way, as tho those similarities cause us discomfort. Surely monkeys are not to blame for their relationship to us or for being a mirror of our own traits.
The renga has been compared to the verse debates conducted by medieval troubadours. Called partumens, these debates provided entertainment for aristocratic gatherings. At about the same time in Japan, Lady Murasaki in her masterpiece The Tale of Genji described the court members passing the time by making a renga. It would be the great poet Basho (1644-1694) who transformed the renga from a game to a profound art.
Basho came from a modest background but, as a dedicated student, he became learned in poetry, Taoism, & Buddhism, especially Zen. He spent long periods in seclusion, alternating his monastic bent with the travels that inspired his best-known verses in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Basho was also sought after as a teacher & the other poets who contributed to Monkey's Raincoat were members of the Basho School. They included Fuminkani (a doctor), the devoted disciple Korai (who trained to be a military officer before choosing poetry) & Yasui (a rich merchant & government official).
The poetry of Monkey's Raincoat is enjoyable on several levels: as a journey through the changing seasons, as a picture of life & love in the Edo Period & as a fine example of a subtle poetic form.]]> 396 Matsuo Bash身 0691064601 David 0 poetry 3.00 1690
author: Matsuo Bash身
name: David
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1690
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 53022 The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats includes all of the poems authorized by Yeats for inclusion in his standard canon. Breathtaking in range, it encompasses the entire arc of his career, from luminous reworking of ancient Irish myths and legends, to passionate meditations on the demands and rewards of youth and old age, from exquisite, occasionally whimsical songs of love, nature, and art to somber and angry poems of life in a nation torn by war and uprising. In observing the development of rich and recurring images and themes over the course of his body of work, we can trace the quest of this century's greatest poet to unite intellect and artistry in a single magnificent vision.

Revised and corrected, this edition includes Yeat's own notes on his poetry, complemented by explanatory notes from esteemed Yeats scholar Richard J. Finneran. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats is the most comprehensive edition of one of the world's most beloved poets available in paperback.]]> 544 W.B. Yeats 0684807319 David 5 poetry 4.23 1933
author: W.B. Yeats
name: David
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1933
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green David 0 novel 4.13 2012
author: John Green
name: David
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2020/05/24
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 1178340 544 Robert H. Brower 0804715246 David 5 poetry 4.31 1961
author: Robert H. Brower
name: David
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/01
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 36077650 332 John Tucker 1107096871 David 0 plays 4.00
author: John Tucker
name: David
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/20
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: plays
review:

]]> 32520 忖汍糸 ?聿肋 汍考?糸汐 老?汛羊 米羊耒, 羽羊耒 汍糸而?? 而羊耒 汍?考汐牝 而羊 羽汐糸.

收?老汐糸汍 汍考? 而羊糸 成?糸汐而羊 羽羊耒 而羊耒? 牟糸灰而羊?? 米汐老汐?糸汍牝,
扛牝 ?而考牝 汐糸 羽汍牟?糸汍牝 羊 成?糸汐而羊?, 百汐糸汍?? 汛汍糸 牟汐 羽汍牟?糸汍牝.

扛牝 汐糸 汐老?考汍 灰 收羊?考汐 米羊耒 考而羊耒 汐牝?糸汐 米汐? 而灰 竹?缶汐,
忖牝百? 米羊耒 汐? 汍?糸汐牝 灰 百羊?老汐考灰, 汛牝百? 考羊耒 汐? 汍?糸` 灰 汛?缶汐.

扛汐牝 而?而汍 米汐?老羊 牟汐 羊老百牝考而? 羽肋? 汍?糸汐牝 百汐牝 而羊 百?竹竹羊?,
收?糸羊 而羊 聿老?米汐 考羊耒 ?米羊老耳羊 百牝 ?考聿灰米羊? 百?牟汍 ?竹竹羊?.

?聿牝, 灰 考耒糸汍?汛灰考灰 汐糸 而灰糸 羽肋 "汐污?羽灰" 汛汍糸 米汍 而?羽而汍牝:
式耳羊? 灰 汐污?羽灰 米羊耒 污牝` 汐耒而?糸 汍污汍?老汍而汐牝 百汐牝 羽?羽而汍牝

扛牝 ?米肋? 耳羊汕?米汐牝 牟汐 百竹汐羽汍?? 汐百?米汐 百牝 汐羽? `汛肋
收?聿老牝 百牝 灰 羽?考而灰 牟汐 `百竹汍汕汍 而?而羊牝羊 ?羽汐牟竹羊 汐百老牝汕?.

收?聿老牝 竹羊牝羽?糸 糸汐 考` 汐糸汐考而?考汍牝 灰 忖?百灰 汐耒而? 百牝 汍考?糸汐,
戌汍牝? 米?考汐 汍汛? 百汐牝 百汐而羊牝百汍?? 考而肋糸 汍老汐考而?糸 而羊 汕竹?米米汐.

扛牝 汐耒而?糸 考汐 米牝汐糸 汍羽牝而羊米? 灰 朴?考灰 ?聿汍牝 耳耒竹?缶汍牝,
曳而灰糸 肉汍?而老汐 有?聿糸灰, 而羊耒 ?竹竹羊而汍 而羊 百?竹竹羊? 糸汐 汛牝汛?缶汍牝.

朴耒竹?缶羊耒 汐羽` 而汐 羽老羊糸?米牝? 考羊耒 汐污?羽灰: 汐汛?缶牝羊 聿?老牝
扛?糸汍牝 糸汐 聿?考汍牝 而灰糸 汐牝聿米? 而羊 羽牝羊 考百竹灰老? 米汐聿汐?老牝.

扛牝 汍考? 而羊 米糸灰米汍?羊 考羊耒 牟汐 汕老汍牝?, ?而汐糸 而耒老?糸糸肋糸
托羊耳?汐 百汐牝 而?耳羊牝 米羽老羊?糸而汎牝糸羊牝 而灰 竹?米肉灰 而羊耒 牟汐 聿?糸羊耒糸.]]> 583 William Shakespeare 0300085060 David 5 poetry 4.41 1609
author: William Shakespeare
name: David
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1609
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 112110
For Wordsworth, as he so clearly stated in his celebrated preface to the 1800 edition (also reproduced here), the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, and not the poem itself. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.]]> 118 William Wordsworth 0140424628 David 5 poetry 3.96 1798
author: William Wordsworth
name: David
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1798
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 32053
Lawrence's reputation as a novelist has often meant that his achievements in poetry have failed to receive the recognition they deserve. This edition brings together, in a form he himself sanctioned, his Collected Poems of 1928, the unexpurgated version of Pansies, and Nettles, adding to these volumes the contents of the two notebooks in which he was still writing poetry when he died in 1930.

It therefore allows the reader to trace the development of Lawrence as a poet and appreciate the remarkable originality and distinctiveness of his achievement. Not all the poems reprinted here are masterpieces but there is more than enough quality to confirm Lawrence's status as one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century.]]> 704 D.H. Lawrence David 4 poetry 4.00 1964
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: David
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 150221 Some Trees and The Tennis Court Oath through the triumphs of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror to the brilliance of A Wave - each collection of John Ashbery's verse has broken new ground. Now, from the whole range of a lifetime's work, Ashbery has chosen his own selection of 138 poems, including short lyrics, haiku, prose poems, and many of his major long poems. Seeing these great works together in one volume, readers will be able to savor a distillation of John Ashbery's work and appreciate fully how remarkable is his achievement.]]> 368 John Ashbery 0140585532 David 3 poetry 4.20 1967
author: John Ashbery
name: David
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 845197 I didn＊t ask to be this or that, one way or another, just a young
man of words.
Words that grew in sandy soil, words that fit scrub trees and
beach grass.
Sentenced to work alone where there is often no one to talk to.
The poetry of skulls demands complicity of the reader, that the
reader put words in the skull＊s mouth.
The reader must put water and beer in the mouth, and music in the
ears, and fan the air for aromas to enter the nostrils.
The reader must take these lost heads to heart＃
〞from "Skulls" "Marvin Bell＊s career has been substantial [and] Nightworks reminds us just how distinctive his voice has been all along〞how prophetic, how candid, how rigorously philosophical. He enlarges our understanding of what poetry can do."〞 The Georgia Review Marvin Bell has taught for nearly 40 years at the Iowa Writers＊ Workshop. He is the first and current Poet Laureate of Iowa.]]> 304 Marvin Bell 1556591802 David 4 poetry 4.19 2000
author: Marvin Bell
name: David
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 175628 346 Matsuo Bash身 0791461661 David 4 poetry 4.21 1996
author: Matsuo Bash身
name: David
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:
A good edition but still haven't found what I'm looking for.
]]> 405407 The Spring of My Life, is an autobiographical sketch of linked prose and haiku in the tradition of Basho's famous Narrow Road to the Interior.

In addition to The Spring of My Life, the translator has included more than 160 of Issa's best haiku and an introduction providing essential information on Issa's life and valuable comments on translating (and reading) haiku.]]> 188 Kobayashi Issa 1570621446 David 5 poetry 4.32 1819
author: Kobayashi Issa
name: David
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1819
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:
This classic is a gem. I've come back to this book several times, mostly recently with my boys. It turned out that they already knew several of the poems, recognizing them in the English even though they had learned them in the Japanese!
]]> 191523 192 釦硃勳眶聆身 0861713222 David 4 poetry 4.32 2003
author: 釦硃勳眶聆身
name: David
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 705212 240 Shotetsu 0231105770 David 5 poetry 4.50 1996
author: Shotetsu
name: David
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 2420650 208 Steven D. Carter 0231125534 David 5 poetry 4.00 2002
author: Steven D. Carter
name: David
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 18245
Includes an introduction, note on the translation, cast of characters, maps, notes on the major battles depicted, and chapter summaries]]> 1424 Leo Tolstoy 0143039997 David 5 novel Pierre and Prince Andrey meet up in 1807, two
years after the Rostov salon party. The
exchange between the two is the first time, for me, the book
brings philosophical dialogue and personal narrative into a
focused aesthetic relationship. As you listen to each of them speaking about life
and its capacity for meaning, their personal narratives shimmer in
the background i.e. Andrey's war experience and losing his young wife during childbirth, Pierre's marital troubles and his recent conversion to masonry. An excellent summative point in the book, and well executed.]]> 4.42 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: David
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1869
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:
P. 400, and not even half way through.
Pierre and Prince Andrey meet up in 1807, two
years after the Rostov salon party. The
exchange between the two is the first time, for me, the book
brings philosophical dialogue and personal narrative into a
focused aesthetic relationship. As you listen to each of them speaking about life
and its capacity for meaning, their personal narratives shimmer in
the background i.e. Andrey's war experience and losing his young wife during childbirth, Pierre's marital troubles and his recent conversion to masonry. An excellent summative point in the book, and well executed.
]]> 16304 322 Agatha Christie 0425200450 David 3 novel 4.16 1934
author: Agatha Christie
name: David
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/09
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:
The boys love it so far. They're big into detective stories, especially Sherlock Holmes (mostly in Japanese translation). So now they're getting Agatha Christie in English.
]]> 128837 Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner. The novel asks whether we have free will or not and confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of repressing what little "real life" they have in themselves, a life so far removed from their natural states that it appears to them as something terrible and destructive.]]> 272 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0192837761 David 5 novel 3.81 1809
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: David
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1809
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:
Part of a comparative literature course I'm teaching now. Not easy for the modern reader on the first try, but on a second read has amazing moments. J Hillis Miller in Ariadne's Thread provides perceptive commentary from the narrative point of view.
]]> 93840 192 Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki 0679730249 David 4 novel 3.64 1961
author: Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki
name: David
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:
Tanizaki at his best. This is a funny book that had me up late into the night. I could only hope that no one else in the house could hear me laughing so hard. The second half sobers up a bit as Utsugi's fantasy life takes increasingly strange turns in real time. Utsugi's desire to have the headstone for his grave modeled on Satsuko's foot is the ultimate in religio-erotic fantasy. Hibbet's translation could not have been better. Deserves 4.5 stars.
]]> 189048 212 Ono no Komachi 0679729585 David 5 poetry 4.40 1988
author: Ono no Komachi
name: David
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:
Sparkling gems! And the translation too.
]]> 505938 183 Takeda Izumo 0231035314 David 5 plays 3.83 1748
author: Takeda Izumo
name: David
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1748
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: plays
review:

]]> 175622
In Basho's Journey, David Landis Barnhill provides the definitive translation of Matsuo Basho's literary prose, as well as a companion piece to his previous translation, Basho's Haiku . One of the world's greatest nature writers, Basho (1644每1694) is well known for his subtle sensitivity to the natural world, and his writings have influenced contemporary American environmental writers such as Gretel Ehrlich, John Elder, and Gary Snyder. This volume concentrates on Basho's travel journal, literary diary (Saga Diary), and haibun. The premiere form of literary prose in medieval Japan, the travel journal described the uncertainty and occasional humor of traveling, appreciations of nature, and encounters with areas rich in cultural history. Haiku poetry often accompanied the prose. The literary diary also had a long history, with a format similar to the travel journal but with a focus on the place where the poet was living. Basho was the first master of haibun, short poetic prose sketches that usually included haiku.

As he did in Basho's Haiku, Barnhill arranges the work chronologically in order to show Basho's development as a writer. These accessible translations capture the spirit of the original Japanese prose, permitting the nature images to hint at the deeper meaning in the work. Barnhill's introduction presents an overview of Basho's prose and discusses the significance of nature in this literary form, while also noting Basho's significance to contemporary American literature and environmental thought. Excellent notes clearly annotate the translations.

※Barnhill＊s approach to translation is straightforward and unfussy, aiming to be as accurate as possible, making his two volumes a highly serviceable compilation. They will be of great value to readers.§ 〞 The Japan Times

"Read cover to cover, the volume presents the breadth of Basho＊s prose. If you open it randomly, on almost every page you encounter haunting images of the landscape, village life, and literary culture of Japan. This book inspires us to stop and pay attention to the poetry of the world around us." 〞 Buddhadharma

※＃Barnhill reveals the importance of narrative and social contexts in reading Basho. Barnhill＊s careful translations and notes reveal a poet both independent and pious ＃ Above all, Basho＊s experience of ＆cultured nature＊ emerges unforgettably.§ 〞 The Providence Sunday Journal on Basho ＊s Journey and Basho ＊s Haiku

"Barnhill's translations maintain the Japanese originals' direct sparseness, and retain their dramatic sequence, which all too many translations unfortunately and unnecessarily sacrifice." 〞 Taigen Dan Leighton, cotranslator of Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen A Translation of Eihei Shingi]]> 210 Matsuo Bash身 0791464148 David 0 short-stories 4.15 2005
author: Matsuo Bash身
name: David
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 642952 The Tale of Genji, these stories ably balance the lyrical and the dramatic, the ribald and the profound, offering a window into a long-vanished though perennially fascinating culture.]]> 341 Royall Tyler David 3 short-stories 3.92 1980
author: Royall Tyler
name: David
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 60376
Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei , or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life.

Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined〞from the poems of longing of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries.

Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.]]> 368 Yoel Hoffmann 0804831793 David 4 poetry 4.24 1985
author: Yoel Hoffmann
name: David
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: poetry
review:

]]> 59145 P豕re Goriot is the tragic story of a father whose obsessive love for his two daughters leads to his financial and personal ruin. Interwoven with this theme is that of the impoverished young aristocrat, Rastignac, who came to Paris from the provinces to hopefully make his fortune. He befriends Goriot and becomes involved with the daughters. The story is set against the background of a whole society driven by social ambition and lust for wealth.]]> 384 Honor谷 de Balzac 039397166X David 5 novel 3.89 1835
author: Honor谷 de Balzac
name: David
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1835
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:
The last chapter is devastating. Goriot's love for his daughters is mesmerizing and borderline delusionary love, underwritten by money and class society.
]]> 7042 1182 Murasaki Shikibu 014243714X David 5 novel 3.72 1000
author: Murasaki Shikibu
name: David
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1000
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 292336 "Five charming novellas...which have astonishing freshness, color, and warmth." The New Yorker

First published in 1686, this collection of five novellas was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy world that was Genroku Japan, and the book's popularity has increased with age, making it today a literary classic like Boccaccio's Decameron, or the works of Rabelais.

The book follows five determined women in their always amorous, erotic and usually illicit adventures. The five heroines are Onatsu, already wise in the ways of love the tender age of sixteen; Osen, a faithful wife until unjustly accused of adultery; Osan, a Kyoto beauty who falls asleep in the wrong bed; Oshichi, willing to burn down a city to meet her samurai lover; and Oman, who has to compete with handsome boys to win her lover's affections.

But the book is more than a collection of skillfully told erotic tales, for "Saikaku…could not delve into the inmost secrets of human life only to expose them to ridicule or snickering prurience. Obviously fascinated by the variety and complexity of human love, but retaining always a sense of its intrinsic dignityhe is both a discriminating and compassionate judge of his fellow man."

Saikaku's style, as allusive as it is witty, as abbreviated as it is penetrating, is a challenge that few translators have dared to face, and certainly never before with the success here achieved in a translation that recaptures the heady flavor of the original.]]> 272 Saikaku Ihara 0804801843 David 4 short-stories 3.61 1686
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1686
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 292338 128 Saikaku Ihara 0804833397 David 4 short-stories 3.39 1692
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1692
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 1119426 250 Saikaku Ihara 0804812497 David 4 short-stories 3.83 1980
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 1119422 283 Saikaku Ihara 0521061822 David 5 short-stories 4.18 1959
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 292334 371 Saikaku Ihara 0804718954 David 0 short-stories 3.83 1687
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1687
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 3289662
But the versatile Saikaku also wrote about the samurai class, and in this complete translation of the twenty-six tales making up his Buke Giri Monogatari, 1688, he vividly recounts, often with a note of irony, incidents involving duels, vendettas, suicides, and loyalty to illustrate the warrior ethic of giri, "honor" or "duty".

In the introduction to her translation, Caryl Ann Callahan describes the society and times in which the master storyteller composed his tales, traces his development as a writer, and discusses the implications of the samurai's concept of giri.]]> 156 Saikaku Ihara David 0 short-stories 3.80 1688
author: Saikaku Ihara
name: David
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1688
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 237118 Ugetsu.

The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense.

The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.]]> 248 Ueda Akinari 0231139128 David 0 short-stories 3.86 1776
author: Ueda Akinari
name: David
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1776
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 292315 173 Chikamatsu Monzaemon 0939512513 David 4 plays 3.46 1703
author: Chikamatsu Monzaemon
name: David
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1703
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: plays
review:

]]> 14027 here.

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata＊s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead.
?
While attending a traditional tea ceremony in the aftermath of his parents＊ deaths, Kikuji encounters his father＊s former mistress, Mrs. Ota. At first Kikuji is appalled by her indelicate nature, but it is not long before he succumbs to passion〞a passion with tragic and unforeseen consequences, not just for the two lovers, but also for Mrs. Ota＊s daughter, to whom Kikuji＊s attachments soon extend. Death, jealousy, and attraction convene around the delicate art of the tea ceremony, where every gesture is imbued with profound meaning.]]> 147 Yasunari Kawabata 0679762655 David 4 novel 3.77 1952
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: David
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 14028 Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer's masterpiece, a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.]]> 175 Yasunari Kawabata 0679761047 David 0 novel 3.63 1948
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: David
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 14031 ]]> 262 Yasunari Kawabata 0374530491 David 0 short-stories 4.04 1971
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: David
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: short-stories
review:

]]> 14032
In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but lecherous night with a drugged, unconscious virgin. As he admires the girl's beauty, he recalls his past womanizing, and reflects on the relentless course of old age.

In One Arm, a young girl removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to take home for the night; a surreal seduction follows as he tries to allay its fears, caresses it, and even replaces his own right arm with it.

The protagonist of Of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty.

Beautiful yet chilling, richly poetic yet subtly disturbing, these stories make compelling reading and reaffirm Kawabata s status as a world-class writer.]]> 148 Yasunari Kawabata 4770029756 David 4 novel 3.82 1961
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: David
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2011/01/27
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 34449
Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings obstinately to the prestige of her family name even as her husband prepares to move their household to Tokyo, where that name means nothing. Sachiko compromises valiantly to secure the future of her younger sisters. The unmarried Yukiko is a hostage to her family＊s exacting standards, while the spirited Taeko rebels by flinging herself into scandalous romantic alliances. Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist, The Makioka Sisters is a classic of international literature.]]> 530 Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki 0679761640 David 0 novel 4.03 1948
author: Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki
name: David
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 194642 202 Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki 0679752692 David 3 novel 3.66 1928
author: Jun'ichir身 Tanizaki
name: David
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1928
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]> 762476 The New Yorker as "rich in understanding and insight,"

Kokoro〞"the heart of things"〞is the work of one of Japan's most popular authors. This thought-provoking trilogy of stories explores the very essence of loneliness and stands as a stirring introduction to modern Japanese literature.

What is love, and what is friendship? What is the extent of our responsibility to ourselves and to others? A trilogy of stories that explores the very essence of loneliness, Kokoro opens with "Sensei and I," in which the narrator recounts his relationship with an intellectual who dwells in isolation but maintains a sophisticated worldview. "My Parents and I" brings the reader into the narrator's family circle, and "Sensei and His Testament" features the eponymous character's explanation of how he came to live a life of solitude.

Natsume Soseki (1867每1916), perhaps the greatest novelist of the Meiji period, remains one of Japan's most widely read authors. He wrote this novel in 1914, at the peak of his career, and it remains an excellent introduction to modern Japanese literature.]]> 256 Natsume S身seki 0809260956 David 0 novel 4.05 1914
author: Natsume S身seki
name: David
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1914
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/16
shelves: novel
review:

]]>