Sarah's bookshelf: all

Sarah's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 16 Mar 2025 07:28:32 -0700 60 Sarah's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture]]> 58537332 In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal�� when it comes to health?

Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal�� as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Co-written with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.]]> 576 Gabor Maté 0593083881 Sarah 0 to-read 4.30 2022 The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

author: Gabor Maté
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Hopscotch 53413 Hopscotch is the dazzling, freewheeling account of Oliveira's astonishing adventures.

The book is highly influenced by Henry Miller’s reckless and relentless search for truth in post-decadent Paris and Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s modal teachings on Zen Buddhism.

Cortázar's employment of interior monologue, punning, slang, and his use of different languages is reminiscent of Modernist writers like Joyce, although his main influences were Surrealism and the French New Novel, as well as the "riffing" aesthetic of jazz and New Wave Cinema.

In 1966, Gregory Rabassa won the first National Book Award to recognize the work of a translator, for his English-language edition of Hopscotch. Julio Cortázar was so pleased with Rabassa's translation of Hopscotch that he recommended the translator to Gabriel García Márquez when García Márquez was looking for someone to translate his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude into English. "Rabassa's One Hundred Years of Solitude improved the original," according to García Márquez.]]> 564 Julio Cortázar 0394752848 Sarah 0 to-read 4.24 1963 Hopscotch

author: Julio Cortázar
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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]]> 2666 63032 1128 Roberto Bolaño 843396867X Sarah 0 to-read 4.22 2004 2666

author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> Septology (Septologien, #1-7) 60246552
Jon Fosse’s S��ٴǱ��ǲ�� is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience �� incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.]]> 825 Jon Fosse 1804270067 Sarah 0 to-read 4.51 2022 Septology (Septologien, #1-7)

author: Jon Fosse
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media]]> 2474084 Benjamin’s famous 'Work of Art' essay sets out his boldest thoughts--on media and on culture in general--in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin's explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the 'Work of Art' essay the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin's observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin's best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays--some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin's media theory can be fully appreciated.

]]> 448 Walter Benjamin 0674024451 Sarah 0 to-read 4.09 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

author: Walter Benjamin
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> Tao Te Ching 67896 A lucid translation of the well-known Taoist classic by a leading scholar-now in a Shambhala Pocket Library edition.

Written more than two thousand years ago, the Tao Teh Ching, or -The Classic of the Way and Its Virtue, - is one of the true classics of the world of spiritual literature.

Traditionally attributed to the legendary -Old Master, - Lao Tzu, the Tao Teh Ching teaches that the qualities of the enlightened sage or ideal ruler are identical with those of the perfected individual.

Today, Lao Tzu's words are as useful in mastering the arts of leadership in business and politics as they are in developing a sense of balance and harmony in everyday life. To follow the Tao or Way of all things and realize their true nature is to embody humility, spontaneity, and generosity.

John C. H. Wu has done a remarkable job of rendering this subtle text into English while retaining the freshness and depth of the original. A jurist and scholar, Dr. Wu was a recognized authority on Taoism and the translator of several Taoist and Zen texts and of Chinese poetry.

This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts.

The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.]]> 107 Lao Tzu 0679724346 Sarah 0 to-read 4.29 -350 Tao Te Ching

author: Lao Tzu
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.29
book published: -350
rating: 0
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]]> The Bhagavad Gita 99944 Mahabharata incorporates Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred Hindu text that takes the form of a philosophical dialogue in which Krishna instructs Arjuna, the prince, in ethical matters and the nature of God.

Krishna expounds the nature and the way that humans can come to know God to Arjuna, the warrior prince in the Bhagavad-Gita.

Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic, contains the text of the Bhagavad-Gita.

This early epic poem recounts the conversation between the warrior and his charioteer, the divine manifestation. It sets out the important lessons to learn to change the outcome of the war in the moments before a great battle that the warrior fights, and culminates in revealing the true cosmic warrior and counselling him to search for the universal perfection of life. This most important work ranges from yoga postures to dense moral discussion and serves as a practical guide to living well.]]> 160 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa 0140449183 Sarah 0 to-read 4.13 -400 The Bhagavad Gita

author: Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: -400
rating: 0
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]]> �ʱ�Բ�é�� 449407 334 Blaise Pascal Sarah 0 to-read 3.97 1670

author: Blaise Pascal
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1670
rating: 0
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]]> Água Viva 13082435 88 Clarice Lispector 0811219909 Sarah 0 to-read 4.33 1973

author: Clarice Lispector
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> Fathers and Sons 19117
Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.

Introduction by Jane Costlow]]> 244 Ivan Turgenev 0451529693 Sarah 0 to-read 3.99 1862 Fathers and Sons

author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1862
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov]]> 5693 ��
Considered the greatest short story writer, Anton Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition. From characteristically brief, evocative early pieces such as “The Huntsman�� and the tour de force “A Boring Story,�� to his best-known stories such as “The Lady with the Little Dog�� and his own personal favorite, “The Student,�� Chekhov’s short fiction possesses the transcendent power of art to awe and change the reader. This monumental edition, expertly translated, is especially faithful to the meaning of Chekhov’s prose and the unique rhythms of his writing, giving readers an authentic sense of his style and a true understanding of his greatness.]]> 496 Anton Chekhov 0553381008 Sarah 0 4.37 1903 Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

author: Anton Chekhov
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1903
rating: 0
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]]> Min kamp 6 (Min kamp, #6) 13479925 1116 Karl Ove Knausgård 8249507169 Sarah 0 4.18 2011

author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> HHhH 7992363
L’essentiel de l’histoire se situe entre 1938 et 1942. Le récit est structuré comme un entonnoir : des chapitres courts relatent différents épisodes en divers lieux et à diverses époques, qui tous convergent vers Prague où s’est déroulé l’attentat. Tous les personnages de ce livre ont réellement existé ou existent encore. L’auteur a rapporté les faits le plus fidèlement possible mais a dû résister à la tentation de romancer. Comment raconter l’Histoire ? Cette question conduit parfois l’auteur à se mettre en scène pour rendre compte de ses conditions d’écriture, de ses recherches, de ses hésitations. La vérité historique se révèle à la fois une obsession névrotique et une quête sans fin.]]> 442 Laurent Binet 2246760011 Sarah 0 to-read 4.05 2010 HHhH

author: Laurent Binet
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories]]> 17329076 Stefan's Zweig's Letter from an Unknown Woman and other stories contains a new translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell of one of his most celebrated novellas, Letter from an Unknown Woman , the inspiration for a classic 1948 Hollywood film by Max Ophüls, as well as three new stories, appearing in English for the first time.

A famous author receives a letter on his forty-first birthday. He doesn't know the sender, but still the letter concerns him intimately. Its story is earnest, even piteous: the story of a life lived in service to an unannounced, unnoticed love.

In the other stories in this collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves for her sister; two erstwhile lovers meet after an age spent apart; and a married woman repays a debt of gratitude. All four tales, newly translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, are among Zweig's most celebrated and compelling work-expertly paced, laced with empathy and an unwaveringly acute sense of psychological detail.]]> 153 Stefan Zweig 1906548935 Sarah 0 to-read 4.23 1922 Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

author: Stefan Zweig
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> The Loser 92570
One of Bernhard's most acclaimed novels, The Loser centers on a fictional relationship between piano virtuoso Glenn Gould and two of his fellow students who feel compelled to renounce their musical ambitions in the face of Gould's incomparable genius. One commits suicide, while the other—the obsessive, witty, and self-mocking narrator—has retreated into obscurity. Written as a monologue in one remarkable unbroken paragraph, The Loser is a brilliant meditation on success, failure, genius, and fame.]]> 208 Thomas Bernhard 1400077540 Sarah 4 4.10 1983

author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> The Company She Keeps 80055 304 Mary McCarthy 0156027860 Sarah 0 to-read 3.82 1942

author: Mary McCarthy
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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]]> Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1) 4799 Cannery Row is a book without much of a plot. Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live "up the hill" in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme violence: suicides, corpses, and the cruelty of the natural world.

The "story" of Cannery Row follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot down on the Row.

Sweet Thursday is the sequel to Cannery Row.]]> 181 John Steinbeck 014200068X Sarah 5 4.06 1943 Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)

author: John Steinbeck
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1943
rating: 5
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]]> The Elementary Particles 58314 The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.]]> 272 Michel Houellebecq 0375727019 Sarah 5 3.91 1998 The Elementary Particles

author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism]]> 30351044 From the fiery intellectual provocateur: a brilliant essay collection that both celebrates and challenges modern feminism from motherhood to Madonna, football to Friedan, stilettos to Steinem.
When Camille Paglia first burst onto the scene with her best-selling Sexual Personae, she established herself as a smart, fearless, and often dissenting voice among feminists. Now, for the first time, her best essays on the subject are gathered together in one concise volume. Whether she is declaring Madonna the future of feminism, asking if men are obsolete, calling for equal opportunity for American women years before the founding of N.O.W., or urging all women to love football, Paglia can always be counted on to get a discussion started. The rock-solid intellectual foundation beneath her fiery words assures her timeless relevance."]]> 315 Camille Paglia 0375424776 Sarah 3 3.76 2017 Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism

Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism

author: Camille Paglia
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> Against Nature 210255 Against Nature or as Against The Grain, this wildly original fin-de-siècle novel follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes, and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. The original handbook of decadence, Against Nature exploded like a grenade (in the words of Huysmans) and has enjoyed a cult readership from its publication to the present day.]]> 288 Joris-Karl Huysmans 0140447636 Sarah 5 3.88 1884

author: Joris-Karl Huysmans
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1884
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> The Crying of Lot 49 2794 The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.]]> 152 Thomas Pynchon 006091307X Sarah 2 3.70 1966

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1966
rating: 2
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]]> My Struggle: Book Four 23164960 485 Karl Ove Knausgård 0914671170 Sarah 4 4.25 2010

author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> My Struggle, Book Two 16057602
Book Two is at heart a love story—the story of Karl Ove falling in love with his wife. But the novel also tells other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at a family vacation, of the emotional strain of birthday parties for children, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of Stockholm keeping him from (and filling) his novel.]]> 571 Karl Ove Knausgård 1935744828 Sarah 5 4.38 2009 My Struggle, Book Two

author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> Revolutionary Road 48328 355 Richard Yates Sarah 3 3.92 1961

author: Richard Yates
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1961
rating: 3
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]]> My Struggle: Book Three 18811428
"Of course, I remember nothing from this time. It is completely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed; this is in fact so difficult it almost seems wrong to use the word 'I' when referring to it, lying in the baby bath, for instance, its skin unnaturally red, its arms and legs sprawling, and its face distorted in a scream no one remembers the reason for anymore ... Is that creature the same as the one sitting here in Malmö, writing this?"
--from Book Three of My Struggle]]> 432 Karl Ove Knausgård 1935744860 Sarah 0 4.26 2009 My Struggle: Book Three

author: Karl Ove Knausgård
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/24
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]]> At the Mountains of Madness 32767 At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition's uncanny discoveries --and their encounter with an untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization--is a milestone of macabre literature.

This Definitive Edition of At the Mountains of Madness (The Modern Library) also includes Lovecraft's long essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature."]]> 194 H.P. Lovecraft 0812974417 Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 1931

author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Žižek (Squared) Equals Bannon]]> 218678028 114 David Shields Sarah 0 to-read 3.92

How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Žižek (Squared) Equals Bannon

author: David Shields
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A History of Western Philosophy]]> 243685 A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject—unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.]]> 906 Bertrand Russell 0671201581 Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1945 A History of Western Philosophy

author: Bertrand Russell
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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]]> My Struggle: Book 1 219850146 449 Karl Ove Knausgaard Sarah 4 4.31

author: Karl Ove Knausgaard
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> La draisine 25144335 426 Carl-Henning Wijkmark 2868694640 Sarah 0 to-read 0.0 1983

author: Carl-Henning Wijkmark
name: Sarah
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The New York Trilogy (New York Trilogy, #1-3)]]> 431 The remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels �� from the author of 4 3 2 1: A Novel

The New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster’s work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.�� Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission, as well. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and nothing but a cache of novels, plays, and poems.

This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes an introduction from author and professor Luc Sante, as well as a pulp novel-inspired cover from Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist of Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers.]]> 308 Paul Auster 0143039830 Sarah 0 to-read 3.93 1987 The New York Trilogy (New York Trilogy, #1-3)

The New York Trilogy (New York Trilogy, #1-3)

author: Paul Auster
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> The Patrick Melrose Novels 11717571 NATIONAL��BESTSELLER

An��Atlantic Magazine��Best Book of the Year
A��Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

For more than twenty years, acclaimed author Edward St. Aubyn has chronicled the life of Patrick Melrose, painting an extraordinary portrait of the beleaguered and self-loathing world of privilege. This single volume collects the first four novels��Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother’s Milk, a Man Booker finalist—to coincide with the publication of At Last, the final installment of this unique novel cycle.

By turns harrowing and hilarious, these beautifully written novels dissect the English upper class as we follow Patrick Melrose’s story from child abuse to heroin addiction and recovery. Never Mind, the first novel, unfolds over a day and an evening at the family’s chateaux in the south of France, where the sadistic and terrifying figure of David Melrose dominates the lives of his five-year-old son, Patrick, and his rich and unhappy American mother, Eleanor. From abuse to addiction, the second novel, Bad News opens as the twenty-two-year-old Patrick sets off to collect his father’s ashes from New York, where he will spend a drug-crazed twenty-four hours. And back in England, the third novel, Some Hope, offers a sober and clean Patrick the possibility of recovery. The fourth novel, the Booker-shortlisted Mother’s Milk, returns to the family chateau, where Patrick, now married and a father himself, struggles with child rearing, adultery, his mother’s desire for assisted suicide, and the loss of the family home to a New Age foundation.

Edward St. Aubyn offers a window into a world of utter decadence, amorality, greed, snobbery, and cruelty—welcome to the declining British aristocracy.]]> 680 Edward St. Aubyn 0312429967 Sarah 0 to-read 4.07 2012 The Patrick Melrose Novels

author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> A Handful of Dust 531262 308 Evelyn Waugh 0316926051 Sarah 5 3.91 1934

author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1934
rating: 5
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]]> The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 517188 150 Muriel Spark 0060931736 Sarah 0 3.73 1961

author: Muriel Spark
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/21
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]]> The Age of Innocence 53835 The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.��

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.]]> 293 Edith Wharton 159308143X Sarah 5 3.96 1920 The Age of Innocence

author: Edith Wharton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 5
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]]> The Name of the Rose 119073 552 Umberto Eco 0156001314 Sarah 0 to-read 4.13 1980

author: Umberto Eco
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Sarah 0 to-read 4.41 1952

author: John Steinbeck
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)]]> 53317528 Called a masterpiece by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing

Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969-71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child's single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband.

Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today's discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen's trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up--in this sense, it's Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction.

Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with Tove fever gripping readers.]]> 371 Tove Ditlevsen 0374602395 Sarah 4 4.36 1967 The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)

The Copenhagen Trilogy (The Copenhagen Trilogy, #1-3)

author: Tove Ditlevsen
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1967
rating: 4
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]]> La carte et le territoire 8710484
Il évoquerait certainement Olga, une très jolie Russe rencontrée au début de sa carrière, lors d’une première exposition de son travail photographique à partir de cartes routières Michelin. C’était avant que le succès mondial n’arrive avec la série des « métiers », ces portraits de personnalités de tous milieux (dont l’écrivain Michel Houellebecq), saisis dans l’exercice de leur profession.

Il devrait dire aussi comment il aida le commissaire Jasselin à élucider une atroce affaire criminelle, dont la terrifiante mise en scène marqua durablement les équipes de police.

Sur la fin de sa vie il accédera à une certaine sérénité, et n’émettra plus que des murmures.

L’art, l’argent, l’amour, le rapport au père, la mort, le travail, la France devenue un paradis touristique sont quelques-uns des thèmes de ce roman, résolument classique et ouvertement moderne.

]]> 428 Michel Houellebecq 2081246333 Sarah 0 to-read 3.96 2010 La carte et le territoire

author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> Death on the Installment Plan 106096 Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Céline's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction. Under a cloud for a period, his work is now acknowledged as the forerunner of today's "black comedy."

Death on the Installment Plan is the story of young Ferdinand's first 18 years. His life is one of hatred, of the grinding struggle of small shopkeepers to survive, of childhood sensations and fantasies—lusty, scatological, violent, but also poetic. There is a running battle with his ineffectual insurance clerk of a father, with his mother, who lives and whines around the junkshop she runs for the boys benefit; there is also the superbly funny Meanwell College in England, where the boy went briefly, a Dickensian, nightmare institution. Always there is humiliation, failure, and boredom, at least until he teams up with the "scientist" des Pereires. This inventor, con-man, incorrigible optimist—whose last project is to grow enormous potatoes by electricity—rescues him, if only temporarily; for the reader he is one of the most lovable charlatans in French literature.]]> 592 Louis-Ferdinand Céline 0811200175 Sarah 0 to-read 4.25 1936 Death on the Installment Plan

author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> Happening 129263635
This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.

In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.

Now an award-winning film by Audrey Diwan

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival

Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival]]> 96 Annie Ernaux 1609809483 Sarah 0 to-read 4.36 2000 Happening

author: Annie Ernaux
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> The Second Sex 457264 746 Simone de Beauvoir 0679724516 Sarah 0 to-read 4.16 1949

author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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]]> Candide 19380 Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher's immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that �� contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss �� all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire's most celebrated work.]]> 129 Voltaire 0486266893 Sarah 0 to-read 3.76 1759 Candide

author: Voltaire
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1759
rating: 0
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]]> Poèmes saturniens 1519706
Édition commentée et annotée par Martine Bercot.]]> 222 Paul Verlaine 2253098302 Sarah 0 to-read 4.08 1866

author: Paul Verlaine
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1866
rating: 0
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]]> Alcools 275505 185 Guillaume Apollinaire 0819512281 Sarah 0 to-read 3.91 1913 Alcools

author: Guillaume Apollinaire
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable]]> 12279 512 Samuel Beckett 0375400702 Sarah 4 4.29 1958

author: Samuel Beckett
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1958
rating: 4
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]]> Taipei 16041828
Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas.

From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.]]> 248 Tao Lin 0307950174 Sarah 2 3.35 2013 Taipei

author: Tao Lin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2013
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things: Stories]]> 31427967 National Bestseller

With a new foreword by Jeff Feuerzeig

A timely reissue of the extraordinary stories by JT LeRoy/Laura Albert that won international acclaim, to be timed with the theatrical release of the documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story.

“A startling achievement.”��Publishers Weekly

This book of interconnected stories depicts the chaotic life of a young��boy on the run with his teenage mother. When��Sarah reclaims Jeremiah from his foster parents, he finds himself catapulted into her world of motels and truck stops, exposed to the abusive, exploitative men she encounters.��As he learns to survive in this harrowing environment, Jeremiah��also learns to love his mother, even as she��descends into drug-fueled madness.

Told in��spare, lyrical prose,��rich with imagination and dark humor,��The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things transforms the savagery of Jeremiah's world into an indelible experience of compassion. This special edition includes an additional seven stories, previously uncollected,��by JT LeRoy, the literary persona of Laura Albert.

��

]]> 291 J.T. LeRoy Sarah 0 to-read 3.64 2001 The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things: Stories

author: J.T. LeRoy
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> The Bacchae 380609 96 Euripides 1854594117 Sarah 0 to-read 3.89 -405

author: Euripides
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: -405
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being

author: Milan Kundera
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> J R 28434 The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece. And J R is a book of comparable magnitude, substance, and humor--a rushing, raucous look at money and its influence, at love and its absence, at success and its failures, in the magnificently orchestrated circus of all its larger- and smaller-than-life characters; a frantic, forlorn comedy about who uses -- and misuses -- whom.

At the center: J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn. Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

The J R Corp and its Boss engulf brokers, lawyers, Congressmen, disaffected school teachers and disenfranchised Indians, drunks, divorcées, second-hand generals, and a fledgling composer hopelessly entangled in a nightmare marriage of business and the arts. Their bullish ventures -- shaky mineral claims and gas leases, cost-plus defense contracts, a string of nursing homes cum funeral parlors, a formula for frozen music -- burgeon into a paper empire ranging from timber to textiles, from matchbooks to (legalized) marijuana, from prostheses to publishing, inadvertently crushing hopes, careers, an entire town, on a collision course with the bigger world . . . the pragmatic Real World where the business of America is business, where the stock market exists as a convenience, and the tax laws make some people more equal than others . . . the world that makes the rules because it plays to win, and plays for keeps.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths -- voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios -- a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, stumble through our words -- through our lives -- while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes J R the extraordinary novel that it is.

--From the first-edition dustjacket]]> 752 William Gaddis 0140187073 Sarah 0 to-read 4.28 1975 J R

author: William Gaddis
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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]]> The Recognitions 395058 Catch-22 and V., managed to anticipate the spirit of both”��The Recognitions is a masterwork about art and forgery, and the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us.]]> 976 William Gaddis 0140187081 Sarah 0 to-read 4.17 1955 The Recognitions

author: William Gaddis
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Other Name: Septology I-II]]> 46024004
Written in hypnotic prose that shifts between the first and third person, The Other Name calls into question concrete notions around subjectivity and the self. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Through flashbacks, Fosse deftly explores the convergences and divergences in the lives of both Asles, slowly building towards a decisive encounter between them both. A writer at the zenith of his career, with The Other Name, the first two volumes in his Septology, Fosse presents us with an indelible and poignant exploration of the human condition that will endure as his masterpiece.]]> 351 Jon Fosse Sarah 0 to-read 4.04 2019 The Other Name: Septology I-II

author: Jon Fosse
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> Absalom, Absalom! 373755 316 William Faulkner 0679732187 Sarah 0 to-read 3.97 1936

author: William Faulkner
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]> 92303
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Sarah 0 to-read 4.17 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest

author: Oscar Wilde
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 0
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]]> Loitering with Intent 58677 224 Muriel Spark 0811214745 Sarah 0 to-read 3.81 1981

author: Muriel Spark
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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]]> The Transit of Venus 12738 337 Shirley Hazzard 1860491812 Sarah 0 to-read 3.99 1980

author: Shirley Hazzard
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/13
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]]> Herzog 6551 371 Saul Bellow 0142437298 Sarah 0 to-read 3.77 1964 Herzog

author: Saul Bellow
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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]]> Mating 527513 480 Norman Rush 067973709X Sarah 5 3.85 1991 Mating

author: Norman Rush
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011��2019]]> 53091637 256 Natasha Stagg 1635900964 Sarah 0 to-read 3.82 2019

Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011–2019

author: Natasha Stagg
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> Treatise on Modern Stimulants 38814344
Balzac here describes his “terrible and cruel method�� for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration (not recommended for blonds of weak constitution), explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany, and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac’s obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one’s vital forces, one’s energies, one’s inspiration, and, ultimately, one’s life.

Honoré de Balzac (1799��1850), was a true monolith of French letters, one of the fathers of realism, and a great abuser of coffee. His Human Comedy ended up consisting of over one hundred interlinked stories and novels, and featured a cast of some two thousand characters. One of the earliest components of this enormous body of work was a never-completed four-part Pathology of Social Life. Balzac’s physiologies and nonfiction sociological studies read like the casebooks of a sociological Sherlock Holmes, and remain the least-known components to Balzac's sprawling Comedy.

“An unwitting revolutionary”—Victor Hugo

“[Balzac] groups a complete history of French society from which, even in economic details �� I have learned more than from all the prefessional historians, economists, and statisticians of the period altogether”—Friedrich Engels]]> 80 Honoré de Balzac 1939663385 Sarah 0 to-read 3.66 1839 Treatise on Modern Stimulants

author: Honoré de Balzac
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1839
rating: 0
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]]> Richard Yates 7665458 208 Tao Lin 1935554158 Sarah 0 to-read 3.39 2010

author: Tao Lin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> Mythologies 51715 Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.

Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.

What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.]]> 160 Roland Barthes 0374521506 Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1957 Mythologies

author: Roland Barthes
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> Eleven Kinds of Loneliness 114475
Contents

"Doctor Jack-o'-lantern"
"The Best of Everything"
"Jody Rolled The Bones"
"No Pain Whatsoever"
"A Glutton for Punishment"
"A Wrestler with Sharks"
"Fun with a Stranger"
"The B.A.R. Man"
"A Really Good Jazz Piano"
"Out with the Old"
"Builders"]]> 230 Richard Yates 0679722211 Sarah 0 to-read 4.09 1962 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

author: Richard Yates
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> Chess Story 59151
Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig's story.

This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work's unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.]]> 104 Stefan Zweig 1590171691 Sarah 0 to-read 4.31 1942

author: Stefan Zweig
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> Miss Lonelyhearts 250041 208 Nathanael West 082220763X Sarah 0 to-read 3.65 1933

author: Nathanael West
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1933
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> A Scanner Darkly 14817
The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among...]]> 324 Philip K. Dick 057507681X Sarah 0 to-read 4.03 1977 A Scanner Darkly

author: Philip K. Dick
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> Extinction 162612 Extinction, his last novel, takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau. The intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family, Murau lives in self-exile in Rome. Obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, he resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. But when news comes of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate.

Written in Bernhard's seamless style, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.]]> 335 Thomas Bernhard 0704370859 Sarah 0 to-read 4.32 1986

author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> Gravity’s Rainbow 415 776 Thomas Pynchon 0143039946 Sarah 0 to-read 4.01 1973

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> The Atrocity Exhibition 70240 136 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Sarah 0 to-read 3.83 1969

author: J.G. Ballard
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> American Buffalo: A Play 98183 106 David Mamet 0394170164 Sarah 0 to-read 3.76 1975

author: David Mamet
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy Sarah 0 to-read 4.18 1985 Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction]]> 5114
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a story about the Glass family, narrated by Buddy, the second oldest brother. Buddy is attending his brother Seymour's wedding to a gal named Muriel, but he's on Army leave during active duty in World War II. At the wedding, everyone is stunned when Seymour does not show up.

The action of the story picks up when several characters end up carpooling together following the failed wedding. The others (the Matron of Honor and her husband, and a couple of stragglers) are talking about Seymour and the disappointment of his not showing up, and Buddy never tells them that he is secretly Seymour's brother, so they talk more openly with him than they otherwise would.

They criticize Seymour and speculate about his character flaws and deficiencies, but Buddy finds their assessments quite judgmental and biased. He then decides to tell the car who he really is, shaming them for their loose criticisms.

He finds Seymour's journal, and he discovers a strange message from their sister Boo Boo for Seymour on their bathroom mirror: "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom/ taller far than a tall man." This is a fragment from the Greek poet Sappho.

"Seymour: An Introduction" is a kind of elegy for Seymour from Buddy, told in the form of an introduction to the reader. The reader makes Seymour's acquaintance while knowing that Seymour technically isn't alive when the story is published, having killed himself in 1948.

This portion of the story is told in stream of consciousness, and it discusses Eastern religious mysticism.]]> 256 J.D. Salinger 0316766941 Sarah 0 to-read 4.13 1955 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

author: J.D. Salinger
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> White Noise 11762 310 Don DeLillo 0140283307 Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 1985

author: Don DeLillo
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> Disgrace 6192 220 J.M. Coetzee 0143036378 Sarah 0 to-read 3.86 1999

author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> Pnin 30593 Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.

Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.

Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.]]> 184 Vladimir Nabokov 1400041988 Sarah 0 to-read 3.90 1957 Pnin

author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> Monogamy 763684
Adam Phillips manages to unsettle one of our most dearly held ideals, that of the monogamous couple, by speculating upon the impulses that most threaten it—boredom, desire, and the tempting idea that erotic fulfillment might lie elsewhere. With 121 brilliant aphorisms, the witty, erudite psychoanalyst who gave us On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored distills the urgent questions and knotty paradoxes behind our mating impulse, and reveals the centrality of monogamy to our notions of marriage, family, the self—in fact, to everything that matters.

The only truly monogamous relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
Every marriage is a blind date that makes you wonder what the alternatives are to a blind date.
There's nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.]]> 144 Adam Phillips 0679776176 Sarah 0 to-read 3.58 1996 Monogamy

author: Adam Phillips
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> Hunger 32585 134 Knut Hamsun 0486431681 Sarah 0 4.09 1890 Hunger

author: Knut Hamsun
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/05/22
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]]> Filth 23966
There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . .

]]> 393 Irvine Welsh 0393318680 Sarah 0 to-read 3.81 1998 Filth

author: Irvine Welsh
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale 420474 464 Edward Bulwer-Lytton 0833400177 Sarah 0 to-read 3.84 1842

author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1842
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/10
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]]> Madame Bovary 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Sarah 0 to-read 3.70 1856

author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales]]> 22917 Children’s and Household Tales, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales contains the essential bedtime stories for children worldwide for the better part of two centuries.��The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, were German linguists and cultural researchers who gathered legendary folklore and aimed to collect the stories exactly as they heard them.��2012 marked the 200th anniversary of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and what better way to celebrate than to include all 211 stories into the Knickerbocker Classic Series?

Featuring all your favorite classics, including “Hansel and Gretel,�� “Cinderella,�� “The Frog Prince,�� “Rapunzel,�� “Snow White,�� “Rumpelstiltskin,�� and dozens more, The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales is also accompanied by 40 color plates and 60 black and white illustrations from award-winning English illustrator Arthur Rackham, whose books and prints are now highly sought-after collectibles.

The third title in the Knickerbocker Classic series has 800 pages of classic fairy tales to enjoy and will also feature a full-cloth binding, ribbon marker, and will fit neatly in an elegant slipcase for your personal library collection.

Also includes a selection of stunning color reproductions by the famous illustrator, Arthur Rackham.
]]> 880 Jacob Grimm Sarah 0 to-read 4.30 1812 The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

author: Jacob Grimm
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1812
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 12749 In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way.]]> 468 Marcel Proust 0142437964 Sarah 0 4.12 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)

author: Marcel Proust
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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]]> The Magic Mountain 88077
The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.]]> 706 Thomas Mann Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1924

author: Thomas Mann
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven]]> 17883941
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents�� house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer’s greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime’s immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, and explaining in wonderful detail the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects—and what it can tell us about Bach the man.

Gardiner’s background as a historian has encouraged him to search for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few biographical shards, scrutinizing the music, and watching for those instances when Bach’s personality seems to penetrate the fabric of his notation. Gardiner’s aim is “to give the reader a sense of inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related processes of composing and performing his music.��

It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach’s works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.��]]> 672 John Eliot Gardiner 0375415297 Sarah 0 to-read 4.09 2013 Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

author: John Eliot Gardiner
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Studies in the History of the Renaissance]]> 7520474 Studies in the History of the Renaissance redefined the practice of criticism as an impressionistic, almost erotic exploration of the critic's aesthetic responses. Pater's infamous "Conclusion," which forever linked him with the decadent movement, scandalized many with its insistence on making pleasure the sole motive of life, even as it charmed fellow aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde. This edition of Studies reproduces the text of the first edition of 1873. Matthew Beaumont's Introduction describes the cultural context that gave rise to the book, the reasons for its notoriety, Pater's philosophical outlook, and the arguments in his book. It explores Pater's work as an attempt to preserve the unique aesthetic of a work of art in the face of encroaching mass culture. The book also includes the later chapter on Giorgione as an Appendix, comprehensive notes that identify the many literary and artistic references, and a useful glossary of names.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
]]> 193 Walter Pater 0199535078 Sarah 0 to-read 3.73 1873 Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Studies in the History of the Renaissance

author: Walter Pater
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1873
rating: 0
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine�� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Sarah 0 3.99 1932 Brave New World

author: Aldous Huxley
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
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]]> Ulysses 338798
According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain.

The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature. Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—replete with puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history; Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.']]> 783 James Joyce Sarah 0 to-read 3.72 1922 Ulysses

author: James Joyce
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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]]> Berlin Alexanderplatz 243381 457 Alfred Döblin 3423002956 Sarah 0 to-read 3.83 1929

author: Alfred Döblin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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review:

]]> Crash 70241 Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.]]> 224 J.G. Ballard 0312420331 Sarah 0 3.62 1973 Crash

author: J.G. Ballard
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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]]> Molloy 446542 241 Samuel Beckett 0802151361 Sarah 0 4.06 1951 Molloy

author: Samuel Beckett
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Manifesto cyborg. Donne, tecnologie e biopolitiche del corpo]]> 7420442 194 Donna J. Haraway 8807460017 Sarah 0 3.99 1985

Manifesto cyborg. Donne, tecnologie e biopolitiche del corpo

author: Donna J. Haraway
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> Myra Breckinridge 86036 264 Gore Vidal 1125979488 Sarah 0 to-read 3.56 1968

author: Gore Vidal
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> Our Lady of the Flowers 53003 216 Jean Genet 1596541369 Sarah 0 to-read 4.06 1943

author: Jean Genet
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/10
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]]> Women in Love 9784 Women in Love is both a lucid account of English society before the First World War, and a brilliant evocation of the inexorable power of human desire.

Women in Love continues where The Rainbow left off, with the third generation of Brangwens: Ursula Brangwen, now a teacher at Beldover, a mining town in the Midlands, and her sister Gudrun, who has returned from art school in London. The focus of the novel is primarily on their relationships, Ursula's with Rupert Birkin, a school inspector, and Gudrun's with industrialist Gerald Crich, and later with a sculptor, Loerke. Quintessentially modernist, Women in Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works.]]> 416 D.H. Lawrence 0486424588 Sarah 0 to-read 3.68 1920

author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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]]> Lady Chatterley’s Lover 32049 376 D.H. Lawrence 039460430X Sarah 0 3.56 1928

author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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]]> Mrs. Dalloway 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 Sarah 0 3.80 1925

author: Virginia Woolf
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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]]> The Sound and the Fury 10975 366 William Faulkner Sarah 0 3.86 1929

author: William Faulkner
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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]]> Gargoyles 92571 Gargoyles, one of his earliest novels, is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity.

One morning a doctor and his son set out on daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside. They observe the colorful characters they encounter—from an innkeeper whose wife has been murdered to a crippled musical prodigy kept in a cage—coping with physical misery, madness, and the brutality of the austere landscape. The parade of human grotesques culminates in a hundred-page monologue by an eccentric, paranoid prince, a relentlessly flowing cascade of words that is classic Bernhard.]]> 208 Thomas Bernhard 1400077559 Sarah 0 to-read 3.95 1967 Gargoyles

author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man Without Qualities: Volume I]]> 191940 725 Robert Musil 0679767878 Sarah 0 to-read 4.31 1930

author: Robert Musil
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/17
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]]>