en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:42:43 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 276751 154 Angela Carter 0140298614 Alex 0 to-read 4.05 1979
author: Angela Carter
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average rating: 4.05
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]]> 198487 Book by Carter, Angela 160 Angela Carter 1844083675 Alex 0 to-read 3.82 1974
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.82
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]]> 81035 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Black Venus (also published as Saints and Strangers), is an anthology of short fiction. Angela Carter takes real people and literary legends - most often women - who have been mythologized or marginalized and recasts them in a new light. In a style that is sensual, cerebral, almost hypnotic, "The Fall River Axe-Murders" portrays the last hours before Lizzie Borden's infamous act: the sweltering heat, the weight of flannel and corsets, the clanging of the factory bells, the food reheated and reserved despite the lack of adequate refrigeration, the house "full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors." In "Our Lady of the Massacre" the no-nonsense voice of an eighteenth-century prostitute/runaway slave questions who is civilized - the Indians or the white men? "Black Venus" gives voice to Charles Baudelaire's Creole mistress, Jeanne Duval: "you could say, not so much that Jeanne did not understand the lapidary, troubled serenity of her lover's poetry but, that it was a perpetual affront to her. He recited it to her by the hour and she ached, raged and chafed under it because his eloquence denied her language." "The Kiss" takes the traditional story of Tamburlaine's wife and gives it a new and refreshing ending. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking, Angela Carter's stories offer a feminist revision of images that lie deep in the public psyche.]]> 126 Angela Carter 014008973X Alex 0 to-read 3.92 1985
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.92
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]]> 81034
Rational civilization rests with the Professors in their steel and concrete villages; marauding tribes of Barbarians roam the surrounding jungles; mutilated Out People inhabit the burnt scars of cities.

But Marianne, a Professor's daughter, is carried away into the jungle--a grotesque vegetable paradise--where she will become the captive bride of Jewel, the proud and beautiful Barbarian. There she will witness the savage rituals of the snake worshippers, indulge her voluptuous, virginal fantasies, taste the forbidden fruit of chaos...

Erotic, exotic, and bizarre, HEROES AND VILLAINS is a post-apocalyptic romance, a gripping adventure story, a colourful embroidery of religion and magic and, not least, a dispassionate vision of life beyond our brave nuclear world.]]> 160 Angela Carter 0140234640 Alex 0 to-read 3.59 1969
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
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]]> 81021 Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world - from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters.]]> 486 Angela Carter 1844081737 Alex 0 to-read 4.14 1992
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1992
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]]> 581720
New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve.]]> 187 Angela Carter 0860683419 Alex 0 to-read 3.68 1977
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.68
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]]> 198483 A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.]]> 221 Angela Carter 0140235191 Alex 0 to-read 3.78 1972
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1972
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]]> 59562837
For many in the West, Tarot exists in the shadow place of our cultural consciousness, a metaphysical tradition assigned to the dusty glass cabinets of the arcane. Its history, long and obscure, has been passed down through secret writing, oral tradition, and the scholarly tomes of philosophers and sages. Hundreds of years and hundreds of creative hands--mystics and artists often working in collaboration--have transformed what was essentially a parlor game into a source of divination and system of self-exploration, as each new generation has sought to evolve the form and reinterpret the medium.

Author Jessica Hundley traces this fascinating history in Tarot, the debut volume in TASCHEN's Library of Esoterica series. The book explores the symbolic meaning behind more than 600 cards and works of original art, two thirds of which have never been published outside of the decks themselves. It's the first ever visual compendium of its kind, spanning from Medieval to modern, and artfully arranged according to the sequencing of the 78 cards of the Major and Minor Arcana. It explores the powerful influence of Tarot as muse to artists like Salvador Dal� and Niki de Saint Phalle and includes the decks of nearly 100 diverse contemporary artists from around the world, all of whom have embraced the medium for its capacity to push cultural identity forward. Rounding out the volume are excerpts from thinkers such as �liphas L�vi, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell; a foreword by artist Penny Slinger; a guide to reading the cards by Johannes Fiebig; and an essay on oracle decks by Marcella Kroll.]]> 520 Jessica Hundley Alex 0 to-read 4.57 2020
author: Jessica Hundley
name: Alex
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 35519 293 Joseph Campbell 0385418868 Alex 0 to-read 4.26 1988
author: Joseph Campbell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> 9998 The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.

After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman, and together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side through this Sisyphean of tasks.]]> 241 KĹŤbĹŤ Abe 0679733787 Alex 0 to-read 3.89 1962
author: KĹŤbĹŤ Abe
name: Alex
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> 45153512 227 Seamus Deane 1473573815 Alex 0 to-read 3.94 1996
author: Seamus Deane
name: Alex
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 23522 The world-renowned classic that has enthralled and delighted millions of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes.

Edith Hamilton's Mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture--the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Praised throughout the world for its authority and lucidity, Mythology is Edith Hamilton's masterpiece--the standard by which all other books on mythology are measured.

]]> 497 Edith Hamilton 0316341517 Alex 0 to-read 4.03 1942
author: Edith Hamilton
name: Alex
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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]]> 97333 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780141182681

A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, At Swim-Two-Birds is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish collegestudent who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not inbed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling onhis head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing. Hilariously funny and inventive, At Swim-Two-Birds has influenced generations of writers, opening up new possibilities for what can be done in fiction. It is a true masterpiece of Irish literature.

Flann O'Brien's first novel is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense. Operating on many levels it incorporates plots within plots, giving full rein to O'Brien's dancing intellect and Celtic wit. The undergraduate narrator lives with his uncle in Dublin, drinks too much with his friends and invents stories peopled with hilarious and unlikely characters, one of whom, in a typical O'Brien conundrum, creates a means by which women can give birth to full-grown people. Flann O'Brien's blend of farce, satire and fantasy result in a remarkable, astonishingly innovaative book.]]> 239 Flann O'Brien Alex 0 to-read 3.88 1939
author: Flann O'Brien
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
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]]> 57693608
When I Sing, Mountains Dance, winner of the European Union Prize, is a giddy paean to the land in all its interconnectedness, and in it Sola finds a distinct voice for each extraordinary consciousness: the lightning bolts, roe deer, mountains, the ghosts of the civil war, the widow Sió and later her grown children, Hilari and Mia, as well as Mia’s lovers with their long-buried secrets and their hidden pain.

Irene SolĂ  animates the polyphonic world around us, the fierce music of the seasons, as well as the stories we tell to comprehend loss and love on a personal, historical, and even geological scale. Lyrical, elemental, and mythic, hers is a fearlessly imaginative new voice that brilliantly renders both our tragedies and our triumphs.]]> 216 Irene SolĂ  1644450801 Alex 0 to-read 4.11 2019
author: Irene SolĂ 
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
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]]> 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 Alex 0 to-read 4.31 1995
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Alex
average rating: 4.31
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]]> 226973
There’s not a whole lot to say story wise. A young man drinks a lot of beer and has strange conversations with a mysterious young lady he just met. So, classic Murakami.]]> 130 Haruki Murakami 4061860267 Alex 0 to-read 3.59 1979
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> 591978 215 Haruki Murakami 4061860127 Alex 0 to-read 3.52 1980
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Alex
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> 11298 353 Haruki Murakami 037571894X Alex 0 to-read 3.96 1982
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Alex 0 to-read 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
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]]> 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Alex 0 to-read 3.90 1808
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Alex
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
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]]> 721012 Sketch Book first appeared in 1819, readers in America and abroad greeted it with enthusiasm, and Irving emerged as America's first successful professional author. The pieces about life in England are gently ironic, reflecting the author's interest in the traditions of the Old World and his longings for his home in the New. But it is in "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" that Irving exhibits his true strength—the ability to depict American landscapes and culture so vividly that readers feel themselves a part of them. And it is on the basis of these two classic tales that Irving is generally credited with inventing the short story as a distinct literary genre.

Originally published as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.]]> 368 Washington Irving 014043769X Alex 0 to-read 3.96 1820
author: Washington Irving
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1820
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]]> 141828 Pied de nez aux conventions romanesques et Ă  la morale commune, L'Écume des jours est un dĂ©lice verbal et un festin poĂ©tique. Jeux de mots, nĂ©ologismes, dĂ©calages incongrus... Vian surenchĂ©rit sans cesse, faisant naĂ®tre comme un vertige chez le lecteur hĂ©bĂ©tĂ©, qui sourit quand il peut. Mais le vĂ©ritable malaise vient d'ailleursĚý: ces adolescents Ă©ternels Ă  la sensibilitĂ© exacerbĂ©e constituent des victimes de choix. L'obsession consumĂ©riste de Chick, nĂ©e d'une idolâtrie frĂ©nĂ©tique pour un certain Jean-Sol Partre, semble vouloir dire que le bonheur ne saurait durer. En effet, l'asphyxie gagne du terrain, et l'on assiste avec effroi au rĂ©trĂ©cissement inexorable des appartements. On en veut presque Ă  Vian d'ĂŞtre aussi lucide et de ne pas s'ĂŞtre contentĂ© d'une expĂ©rience ludique sur fond de roman d'amour. --Sana Tang-LĂ©opold Wauters

]]> 351 Boris Vian Alex 0 to-read 3.95 1947
author: Boris Vian
name: Alex
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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]]> 35743 580 GĂĽnter Grass 0099483505 Alex 0 to-read 3.96 1959
author: GĂĽnter Grass
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/17
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]]> 105189 106 Gabriel García Márquez Alex 0 to-read 3.85 1955
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Alex
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Alex 0 to-read 3.70 2006
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Alex
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 24874296 55 Anton Chekhov 0141397098 Alex 0 to-read 3.66 1898
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Alex
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1898
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> 765418
A Penguin Classic
Ěý
When Walt Whitman self-published his Leaves of Grass in July 1855, he altered the course of literary history. One of the greatest masterpieces of American literature, it redefined the rules of poetry while describing the soul of the American character.ĚýThroughout his great career, Whitman continuously revised, expanded, and republished Leaves of Grass , but many critics believe that the book that matters most is the 1855 original. Penguin Classics proudly presents that text in its original and complete form, with an introductory essay by the writer and poet Malcolm Cowley.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.�

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 145 Walt Whitman 0140421998 Alex 0 to-read 4.09 1855
author: Walt Whitman
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1855
rating: 0
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]]> 11921067 232 Andrea K. Höst 0987151401 Alex 0 to-read 4.30 2011
author: Andrea K. Höst
name: Alex
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> 83017 198 Dino Buzzati 1567923046 Alex 0 to-read 4.24 1940
author: Dino Buzzati
name: Alex
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/15
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]]> 340940 144 Italo Calvino 0156627809 Alex 0 to-read 3.84 1983
author: Italo Calvino
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> 81779
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love--as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

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.]]> 90 Plato 0140449272 Alex 4 4.11 -380
author: Plato
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
book published: -380
rating: 4
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]]> 53410
Axolotl
House taken over
Distances
Idol of the Cyclades
Letter to a young lady in Paris
Yellow flower
Continuity of parks
Night face up
Bestiary
Gates of heaven
Blow-up
End of the game
At your service
Pursuer
Secret weapons.]]> 277 Julio Cortázar 0394728815 Alex 4 4.23 1968
author: Julio Cortázar
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1968
rating: 4
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]]> 215021 157 Georges Perec 2266131079 Alex 4 3.77 1965
author: Georges Perec
name: Alex
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/05/03
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]]> 46182 144 Richard Brautigan 0099437597 Alex 3 3.80 1968
author: Richard Brautigan
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/22
date added: 2024/04/22
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]]> 38462 here.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.]]> 159 James Baldwin Alex 4 4.31 1956
author: James Baldwin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/21
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]]> 17573223 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola and her philandering rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly and unloved. Yet telling her story is the narrator Rodrigo S.M., who tries to direct Macabéa's fate but comes to realize that, for all her outward misery, she is inwardly free. Slyly subverting ideas of poverty, identity, love, and the art of writing itself, Clarice Lispector's audacious last novel, arguably her best, is a haunting portrayal of innocence in a bad world.]]> 96 Clarice Lispector 0141392037 Alex 4 4.02 1977
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Alex
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1977
rating: 4
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]]> 20579877
'Hurley's efforts at retranslating Borges are not anything but heroic. his versions are clear, elegant, crystalline' � Ilan Stavans, The Times Literary Supplement]]> 184 Jorge Luis Borges 0141183845 Alex 5 4.20 1944
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Alex
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1944
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/04/17
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]]> 59780
During the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. He succeeds in relating complex scientific concepts to the ordinary reactions of common humanity.

William Weaver's excellent translation won a National Book Award in 1969

“Naturally, we were all there," old Qfwfq said, "where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?�

The distance of the moon --
At daybreak --
A sign in space --
All at one point --
Without colors --
Games without end --
The aquatic uncle --
How much shall we bet? --
The dinosaurs --
The form of space --
The light-years --
The spiral.]]> 153 Italo Calvino 0156226006 Alex 5 4.23 1965
author: Italo Calvino
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/04/16
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]]> 32324808
In these stories an excellent host finds himself turned out of home by his own guests; a woman spends her wedding day frantically searching for her husband-to-be; and in Shirley Jackson's best-known story, a small farming village comes together for a terrible annual ritual. The creeping unease of lives squandered and the bloody glee of lives lost is chillingly captured in these tales of wasted potential and casual cruelty by a master of the short story.

'An amazing writer ... if you haven't read any of her short stories ... you have missed out on something marvellous' Neil Gaiman]]> 306 Shirley Jackson Alex 4 3.83 1949
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1949
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/04/15
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]]> 10571801
Snow Country is both delicate and subtle, reflecting in Kawabata's exact, lyrical writing the unspoken love and the understated passion of the young Japanese couple.]]> 121 Yasunari Kawabata 0141192593 Alex 4 3.43 1948
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Alex
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1948
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/04/11
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]]> 45711940
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is abandoned on the filthy streets of eighteenth-century Paris as a baby, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human's. Gradually he learns how to exploit this gift in the art of creating the most sublime perfumes in France. Yet there is one scent he cannot capture: the scent of an innocent young virgin. In order to perfect his experiments, he must have this final ingredient, at any cost. A cult international bestseller, Perfume is a bewitching, darkly humorous fable of desire, obsession and death.]]> 296 Patrick Suskind 0241420296 Alex 4 4.04 1985
author: Patrick Suskind
name: Alex
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/09
date added: 2024/04/09
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]]> 32489967 'One of his masterpieces . . . without doubt a great novel' Guardian

One of Hermann Hesse's greatest novels, Narcissus and Goldmund is an extraordinary recreation of the Middle Ages, contrasting the careers of two friends, one of whom shuns life in a monastery and goes on the road, tangled in the extremes of life in a world dominated by sin, plague and war, the other staying in the monastery and struggling, with equal difficulty, to lead a life of spiritual denial.

An superb feat of imagination, Narcissus and Goldmund can only be compared to such films set in medieval Europe as Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. It is a gripping, profound reading experience - as startling, in its different way, as Hesse's Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.]]> 320 Hermann Hesse 0141984619 Alex 4 4.36 1930
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Alex
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1930
rating: 4
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]]> 14799957 258 Hermann Hesse 0141192097 Alex 5 4.16 1927
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Alex
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1927
rating: 5
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]]> 34511849 144 Hermann Hesse 0241307430 Alex 4 3.99 1919
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Alex
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1919
rating: 4
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]]> 4986731 Siddhartha is one of the most influential spiritual works of the twentieth century.]]> 121 Hermann Hesse 0141189576 Alex 3 4.05 1922
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Alex
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1922
rating: 3
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]]> 157409 Like his Viennese contemporary Sigmund Freud, the doctor and dramatist Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was a bold pioneer in exploring the dark tangled roots of human sexuality.

Arthur Schnitzler is probably most famous for La Ronde, a play too scandalous to publish or perform in his own lifetime but whose daisy-chain of couplings inspired both Max Ophuls's classic film and David Hare's modernized version, The Blue Room, which played to sell-out audiences in the West End and on Broadway. Dream Story is an equally erotic work, in which a married couple are first traumatized and then achieve a new depth of understanding by confessing to each other their sexual fantasies, dream-like adventures and might-have-beens . . .

Taking us on a guided tour of Vienna's seedy cafés, red-light district, decadent villas, hospitals and morgue, Schnitzler brilliantly uncovers the violence and depravity lurking beneath the surface of civilized society.

Dream Story is the inspiration for Eyes Wide Shut, co-written by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael.]]> 117 Arthur Schnitzler 0141182245 Alex 0 to-read 3.86 1926
author: Arthur Schnitzler
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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]]> 57845145 The Cyberiad, outlandish events abound- two ingenious 'constructors' travel through a medieval universe offering their technical expertise; a machine capable of creating anything that starts with the letter 'N' meets an untimely end; kings oppress their people with parlour games; and PhD pirates demand ransom in knowledge rather than gold. It is a world where UFOs land silently on lawns at dawn, and where even the stars can be re-arranged for advertising purposes. In these fantastical short stories, Stanisław Lem rewrites the laws of reality, space and language itself to take us on an anarchic and darkly comic journey through a newly imagined universe.

'A Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age.' - The New York Times]]> 289 Stanisław Lem 0141394595 Alex 4 3.87 1965
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1965
rating: 4
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]]> 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Alex 5 4.16 1972
author: Italo Calvino
name: Alex
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> 18929 128 Italo Calvino Alex 4 3.83 1963
author: Italo Calvino
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1963
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/17
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]]> 13079982 Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.� But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.]]> 194 Ray Bradbury Alex 3 3.97 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1953
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/14
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]]> 30672
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.]]> 216 Arthur Koestler 0553265954 Alex 0 to-read 4.09 1940
author: Arthur Koestler
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
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rating: 0
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]]> 386411 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature. At one time, this novel could probably be found on the bookshelf of every college kid in America; it's still a fabulous read and a great place to start if you're young enough to have missed the first Vonnegut craze.]]> 287 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 038533348X Alex 4 4.11 1963
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1963
rating: 4
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]]> 89724 Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.]]> 152 Shirley Jackson 0143039970 Alex 4 3.93 1962
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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]]> 89717 182 Shirley Jackson 0143039989 Alex 4 3.85 1959
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1959
rating: 4
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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. Alex 5 4.10 1969
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Alex
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> 49011 126 Angela Carter 014017821X Alex 4 3.96 1979
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1979
rating: 4
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]]> 53101
The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions.

Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it."

Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.]]> 182 Djuna Barnes 0811216713 Alex 0 to-read 3.66 1936
author: Djuna Barnes
name: Alex
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1936
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]]> 32599701 83 Stefan Zweig 0241305160 Alex 4 4.27 1942
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Alex
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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]]> 24874311
With pathos and humour, Flaubert imagines the unexamined life of a servant girl.

Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).

Flaubert's works available in Penguin Classics are Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Three Tales and Salammbo.]]> 56 Gustave Flaubert 0141397500 Alex 0 to-read 3.51 1877
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Alex
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1877
rating: 0
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]]> 12172 347 Marguerite Yourcenar 0374529264 Alex 0 to-read 4.27 1951
author: Marguerite Yourcenar
name: Alex
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Alex 4 4.06 1979
author: Italo Calvino
name: Alex
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 4
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]]> 594913 The Sorrows of Young Werther draws both on Goethe's own unrequited love for Charlotte Buff and on the death of his friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. The book was an immediate success, and a cult rapidly grew up around it, resulting in numerous imitations as well as violent criticism and even suppression on the grounds of its apparent recommendation of suicide. Goethe's sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist at odds with society and ill-equipped to cope with life is now considered the first great tragic novel of European literature.]]> 164 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 014044503X Alex 3 3.69 1774
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Alex
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1774
rating: 3
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Alex 4 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Alex
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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]]> 319790 Exercises in Style is quite simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told ninety-nine more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.]]> 204 Raymond Queneau 0811207897 Alex 3 4.09 1947
author: Raymond Queneau
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1947
rating: 3
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]]> 250 Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods, and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.
]]> 348 Henry Miller 0802151825 Alex 0 to-read 3.84 1939
author: Henry Miller
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
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]]> 249 Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."]]> 318 Henry Miller 0802131786 Alex 0 to-read 3.69 1934
author: Henry Miller
name: Alex
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1934
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]]> 1335145 EUROPEENNE
DU XXe SIECLE
Zenobia est l'histoire d'un vieil homme qui se penche sur le mystère de sa vie.
Ballotté entre la terreur et la réconciliation soudaine avec une réalité insoutenable, le narrateur dit avoir trouvé son salut dans son amour pour Zenobia. « Il suffit de creuser le sol pour faire une tanière où les amants vont hiberner : il suffit d'une robe de plastique pour se vêtir durant l'hiver, et de quelques pommes pour se nourrir » : Ainsi Zenobia, l'initiatrice, a-t-elle su à sa manière, maîtriser le monde et entraîner son amant de l'autre côté du miroir. Comme chez Beckett, lorsque s'efface la logique du réel, reste celle du langage, qui nous entraîne dans les tréfonds de l'absurde et de l'humour.
Né à Bucarest en 1913. Gellu Nanm est non seulement un des plus grands poètes roumains d'aujourd'hui, sinon le plus grand, mais aussi une figure charismatique malgré un destin involontairement confiné à son pays natal.
Illustration Victor Braumer. Le Surréaliste . Venise, collection Peggy Guggenheim & The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation]]> 263 Gellu Naum Alex 0 to-read 4.12 1985
author: Gellu Naum
name: Alex
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> 46987 199 Leonora Carrington 1878972197 Alex 0 to-read 4.06 1974
author: Leonora Carrington
name: Alex
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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]]> 18490 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439471

'Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ...'

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.]]> 288 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Alex 5 3.77 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Alex
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1818
rating: 5
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]]> 765172 Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.
]]> 116 Jean Toomer 0871401517 Alex 0 to-read 3.86 1923
author: Jean Toomer
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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]]> 944103 The Palm-Wine Drinkard, appeared in 1952, it aroused exceptional worldwide interest. Drawing on the West African (Nigeria) Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure. Since then, The Palm-Wine Drinkard has been translated into more than 15 languages and has come to be regarded as a masterwork of one of Africa's most influential writers.]]> 125 Amos Tutuola 0571049966 Alex 0 to-read 3.78 1952
author: Amos Tutuola
name: Alex
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> 489732 'The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty'

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succès de scandale. Early readers were shocked by its hints at unspeakable sins, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895.

This definitive edition includes a selection of contemporary reviews condemning the novel's immorality, and the introduction to the first Penguin Classics edition by Peter Ackroyd.]]> 253 Oscar Wilde 0141439572 Alex 4 4.21 1890
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Alex
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1890
rating: 4
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]]> 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 Alex 0 to-read 4.09 1859
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 0
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]]> 35206 ¸é˛ą˛őłóĹŤłľ´Ç˛Ô to his later, more autobiographical writings.

RyĹ«nosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan’s foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. â€�¸é˛ą˛őłóĹŤłľ´Ç˛Ôâ€� and â€�In a Bamboo Groveâ€� inspired Kurosawa’s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as â€�The Noseâ€�, â€�O-Ginâ€� and â€�Loyaltyâ€� paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as â€�Death Registerâ€�, â€�The Life of a Stupid Manâ€� and â€�Spinning Gearsâ€�, Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.

A WORLD IN DECAY
- ¸é˛ą˛őłóĹŤłľ´Ç˛Ô (Sep 1915)
- In a Bamboo Grove (Dec 1921)
- The Nose (Jan 1916)
- Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale (May 1919)
- The Spider Thread (Apr 1918)
- Hell Screen (1918)
UNDER THE SWORD
- Dr. Ogata RyĹŤsai: Memorandum (Dec 7th 1916)
- O-Gin (Aug 1922)
- Loyalty (Feb 1917)
MODERN TRAGICOMEDY
- The Story of a Head That Fell Off (Dec 1917)
- Green Onions (Dec 1919)
- Horse Legs (Jan 1925)
AKUTAGAWA'S OWN STORY
- DaidĹŤji Shinsuke: The Early Years (Dec 9th 1924)
- The Writer's Craft (Mar 1924)
- The Baby's Sickness (Jul 1923)
- Death Register (Sep 1926)
- The Life of a Stupid Man (Jun 1927 posthumous)
- Spinning Gears (Jun 1927 posthumous)

Cover illustration by Yoshihiro Tatsumi]]> 268 Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 0143039849 Alex 0 to-read 4.15 1927
author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
name: Alex
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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]]> 23919 821 Edgar Allan Poe 0385074077 Alex 0 to-read 4.39 1849
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Alex
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1849
rating: 0
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]]> 90666
William Carlos Williams was not a historian, but he was fascinated by the texture of American history. He found in the fabric of familiar episodes new shades of meaning, new configurations of character and intent. He brought a poetic imagination to the task of reconstructing a live tradition for Americans, and the result is a genuinely consistent and integrated expression of the American inheritance. Williams did not invent the native conscience, but he rediscovered it, often in the more remote gestures of history, and has here given it enduring stature in prose.

"In the American Grain is a fundamental book, essential if one proposes to come to terms with American literature."
-- Times Literary Supplement]]> 234 William Carlos Williams 0811202305 Alex 0 to-read 3.99 1925
author: William Carlos Williams
name: Alex
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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]]> 36952615
An inventive world, a breathtaking love story, and stunning art come together in this new work by award-winning artist Tillie Walden.]]> 533 Tillie Walden 1250178134 Alex 0 to-read 4.31 2018
author: Tillie Walden
name: Alex
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/03
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]]> 43788856
When the aliens came, everything we thought we knew was wrong. This is the motif that runs through Michael Kamakana’s refreshingly different take on alien invasion. It’s not War of the Worlds or even Childhood’s End. It’s a far more subtle and quiet takeover, which unfolds in the periphery of everyday lives. The rolling language repeats like waves on a shore, carrying the reader deeper and deeper, until we too, feel like we have been colonized.

If Stansilaw Lem and James Joyce had a love child that was more brilliant and yet more readable than either, Michael Kamakana would be that child. This amazing debut novel is destined to become a science fiction classic.]]> Kamakana Alex 0 to-read 3.59 2019
author: Kamakana
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/27
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]]> 542639 448 Robert Hughes 0500275823 Alex 0 to-read 3.74 1980
author: Robert Hughes
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> 28369 A metro strike sends country-girl Zazie on a crazy Parisian adventure in this comic cult classic

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute.

Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle in 1960. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty today as it did back then.]]> 157 Raymond Queneau 0142180041 Alex 0 to-read 3.76 1959
author: Raymond Queneau
name: Alex
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> 70101 The Immoralist , André Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him both sexually and morally, Michel discovers a new freedom in seeking to live according to his own desires. But, as he also discovers, freedom can be a burden. A frank defense of homosexuality and a challenge to prevailing ethical concepts, The Immoralist is a literary landmark, marked by Gide's masterful, pure, simple style.]]> 123 André Gide 0142180025 Alex 0 to-read 3.62 1902
author: André Gide
name: Alex
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1902
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> 110457
The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in the city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work -- pictures of various surreal people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in naja's presence and which inspire him to mediate on their reality or lack of it. The Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as not so much a thing as a way things happen, Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, k a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel.]]> 160 André Breton 0802150268 Alex 0 to-read 3.57 1928
author: André Breton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> 565149 182 Arthur Rimbaud 0811201848 Alex 0 to-read 4.37 1875
author: Arthur Rimbaud
name: Alex
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1875
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/23
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]]> 37415 238 Zora Neale Hurston 0061120065 Alex 0 to-read 3.98 1937
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: Alex
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/08
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]]> 10505 History of Beauty, making this intellectual and philosophical journey with one of the world’s most acclaimed thinkers available in a more compact and affordable format.

From the Trade Paperback edition]]> 438 Umberto Eco 0847826465 Alex 0 to-read 3.83 2004
author: Umberto Eco
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/07
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]]> 119512 314 László Krasznahorkai 0811215040 Alex 0 to-read 4.22 1989
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Alex
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 92576
"Mr. Bernhard's portrait of a society in dissolution has a Scandinavian darkness reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg, but it is filtered through with a minimalist prose. . . . Woodcutters offers an unusually strange, intense, engrossing literary experience."—Mark Anderson, New York Times Book Review

"Musical, dramatic and set in Vienna, Woodcutters. . . .resembles a Strauss operetta with a libretto by Beckett."—Joseph Costes, Chicago Tribune

"Thomas Bernhard, the great pessimist-rhapsodist of German literature . . . never compromises, never makes peace with life. . . . Only in the pure, fierce isolation of his art can he get justice."—Michael Feingold, Village Voice

"In typical Bernhardian fashion the narrator is moved by hatred and affection for a society that he believes destroys the very artistic genius it purports to glorify. A superb translation."�Library Journal]]> 188 Thomas Bernhard 0226043967 Alex 0 to-read 4.23 1984
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/06
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]]> 59234398
Whether selling grimoires on Etsy, posting photos of their crystal-adorned altar on Instagram or gathering to cast spells on Donald Trump, witches are everywhere. But who exactly were the forebears of these modern witches? Who was historically accused of witchcraft, often meeting violent ends? What types of women have been censored, eliminated, repressed over the centuries?

Mona Chollet takes three archetypes from historic witch hunts, and examines how far women today have the same charges levelled against them: independent women; women who choose not to have children; and women who reject the idea that to age is a terrible thing. Finally, Chollet argues that by considering the lives of those who dared to live differently, we can learn more about the richness of roles available, just how many different things a woman can choose to be.]]> 304 Mona Chollet Alex 0 to-read 3.83 2018
author: Mona Chollet
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/30
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]]> 16277245
Some of the most extraordinary and obscure plants have been fermented and distilled, and they each represent a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions and our history. Molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence: when the British forced the colonies to buy British (not French) molasses for their New World rum-making, the settlers outrage kindled the American Revolution. Rye, which turns up in countless spirits, is vulnerable to ergot, which contains a precursor to LSD, and some historians have speculated that the Salem witch trials occurred because girls poisoned by ergot had seizures that made townspeople think they d been bewitched. Then there's the tale of the thirty-year court battle that took place over the trademarking of Angostura bitters, which may or may not actually contain bark from the Angostura tree.

With a delightful two-color vintage-style interior, over fifty drink recipes, growing tips for gardeners, and advice that carries Stewart's trademark wit, this is the perfect gift for gardeners and cocktail aficionados alike.]]> 362 Amy Stewart 1616200464 Alex 0 to-read 4.02 2013
author: Amy Stewart
name: Alex
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 326768
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 418 Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 0140449574 Alex 0 to-read 4.05 1782
author: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
name: Alex
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1782
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/21
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]]> 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Alex 3 4.22 2020
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Alex
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/11
date added: 2023/10/07
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]]> 721867 240 Angela Carter 014017530X Alex 0 to-read 3.93 1991
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/05
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]]> 81026
"Beneath its contemporary surface, this novel shimmers with blurred echoes—from Lewis Carroll, from 'Giselle' and 'Coppelia,' Harlequin and Punch� It leave behind it a flavor, pungent and unsettling" �The New York Times Book Review]]> 200 Angela Carter 0140256407 Alex 0 to-read 3.84 1967
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/05
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]]> 653651
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia.]]> 295 Angela Carter 0140077030 Alex 0 to-read 3.91 1984
author: Angela Carter
name: Alex
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> 929585 Brodie's Report, he also returned to the style of his earlier work with its brutal realism, nightmares, and bloodshed. Many of these stories, including Unworthy and The Other Duel, are set in the macho Argentinean underworld, and even the rivalries between artists are suffused with suppressed violence. Throughout, opposing themes of fate and free will, loyalty and betrayal, time and memory flicker in the recesses of these compelling stories, among the best Borges ever wrote.]]> 126 Jorge Luis Borges 0143039253 Alex 0 to-read 4.09 1970
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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]]> 50269327
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 Alex 0 to-read 3.59 2018
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Alex
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Alex 0 to-read 3.97 1997
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/03
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]]> 95558
When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts.]]> 204 Stanisław Lem Alex 0 to-read 4.00 1961
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/03
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]]> 175675 Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, NY, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. Almost magically, the line between fantasy & historical fact, between real & imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud & Emiliano Zapata slip in & out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family & other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler & a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.]]> 320 E.L. Doctorow 0812978188 Alex 0 to-read 3.88 1975
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/02
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]]> 53423 162 Julio Cortázar 0811214028 Alex 0 to-read 4.34 1962
author: Julio Cortázar
name: Alex
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/29
shelves: to-read
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]]>