Samuel's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 23 Jan 2021 13:11:53 -0800 60 Samuel's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Arabian Nights 728610 458 Anonymous 0393313670 Samuel 0 to-read 3.92 800 The Arabian Nights
author: Anonymous
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.92
book published: 800
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1]]> 7123161 'The bride then came surrounded by her slave girls like the moon among stars or a matchless pearl set among others on a string.'

When the beautiful Shahrazad gives herself to the bloody-handed King Shahriyar, she is not expected to survive beyond dawn. But using her wit and guile, she begins a sequence of stories that will last 1001 nights: stories of 'ifrits and money-changers, prices and slave girls, fishermen and queens, and magical gardens of paradise. This volume also includes the well-known tale of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'.

Along with this landmark new translation, Robert Irwin's introduction discusses the many cultures The Arabian Nights has drawn on and the elaborate structure of the story-within-a-story that defines the collection, as well as the importance to the Nights of locked doors, sex, and the recurring themes of money, merchants and debts. This edition also contains suggestions for further reading, a glossary, maps and a chronology.]]> 982 Anonymous 0140449388 Samuel 0 to-read 4.02 800 The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1
author: Anonymous
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 800
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[A Poisonous Journey (Lady Evelyn Mystery, #1)]]> 26029116
Welcoming her are not only Briony and her husband, Jeffrey, but also his handsome and mysterious friends, Caspar Ballantine and Daniel Harper. Though the latter carries with him tragic memories of the Great War, Evelyn is glad to be in their company. With the sun warming her back and the dazzling sea in her sights, this fresh start seems destined for happy days ahead. Little does she know . . . What starts off as a sunny holiday quickly turns into a sinister nightmare, when Evelyn stumbles across the corpse of one of her cousin's houseguests. Drawn into the mystery surrounding the murder, Evelyn embarks on a mission to discover the truth, forcing her to face her own past as well as a cold-hearted killer. With the help of her cousin, the handsome local police detective, and the mysterious Daniel Harper, will she uncover the truth, before another life is claimed?]]> 394 Malia Zaidi 1631929933 Samuel 0 to-read 3.62 2015 A Poisonous Journey (Lady Evelyn Mystery, #1)
author: Malia Zaidi
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/11/12
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]]> City Come a-Walkin' 1123715 224 John Shirley 1568581912 Samuel 0 to-read 3.79 1980 City Come a-Walkin'
author: John Shirley
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/07/11
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]]> Wetware (Ware #2) 274005 183 Rudy Rucker 0380701782 Samuel 0 to-read 3.82 1988 Wetware (Ware #2)
author: Rudy Rucker
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Cyberpunk: The Big Book of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution]]> 13595000 Contents:
* Introduction (Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution) � essay by Victoria Blake
* Johnny Mnemonic (1981) / short story by William Gibson
* Mozart in Mirrorshades (1985) / short story by Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling
* Interview with the Crab (2005) / short fiction by Jonathan Lethem
* El Pepenador / short fiction by Benjamin Parzybok
* Down and Out in the Year 2000 (1986) / short story by Kim Stanley Robinson
* Getting to Know You [North American Future] (1997) / novelette by David Marusek
* User-Centric (1999) / short story by Bruce Sterling
* The Blog at the End of the World (2008) / short story by Paul Tremblay
* Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars (2006) / short story by Cat Rambo
* Rock On (1984) / short story by Pat Cadigan
* Blue Clay Blues (1992) / novelette by Gwyneth Jones
* The Lost Technique of Blackmail (2009) / short fiction by Mark Teppo
* Fall of the House of Escher / short fiction by Greg Bear (variant of The Fall of the House of Escher 1996)
* Soldier, Sailor (1990) / short story by Lewis Shiner
* The Nostalgist (2009) / short story by Daniel H. Wilson
* The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics (1982) / short story by Rudy Rucker
* Mr. Boy (1990) / novella by James Patrick Kelly
* Wolves of the Plateau (1988) / short story by John Shirley
* Life in the Anthropocene (2010) / short story by Paul Di Filippo
* When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (2006) / novelette by Cory Doctorow

.]]> 432 Victoria Blake 1937163083 Samuel 0 to-read 3.50 2012 Cyberpunk: The Big Book of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Revolution and Evolution
author: Victoria Blake
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology]]> 302702
Contents:
The Gernsback Continuum (1981) by William Gibson
Snake-Eyes (1986) by Tom Maddox
Rock On (1984) by Pat Cadigan
Tales of Houdini (1981) by Rudy Rucker
400 Boys (1983) by Marc Laidlaw
Solstice (1985) by James Patrick Kelly
Petra (1982) by Greg Bear
Till Human Voices Wake Us (1984) by Lewis Shiner
Freezone (1985) by John Shirley
Stone Lives (1985) by Paul Di Filippo
Red Star, Winter Orbit (1983) by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Mozart in Mirrorshades (1984) by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner]]> 239 Bruce Sterling Samuel 0 to-read 3.97 1986 Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
author: Bruce Sterling
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> The Art of Fielding 10996342
Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment - to oneself and to others.]]> 512 Chad Harbach 0316126691 Samuel 0 to-read 3.98 2011 The Art of Fielding
author: Chad Harbach
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/06/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Dryden's Aeneid: The English Virgil]]> 3986314 151 Taylor Corse 0874133858 Samuel 0 cyberpunk
The heroic couplets can also curiously muddle the plot for modern readers, more or less depending on your past engagement with such works. With each successive couplet, one perceives Dryden's choice of wit and word, while one also attempts to perceive narrative structure and, as they arise, important plot points. It is entirely possible to do all three things, but poses more difficulty than the average read, perhaps even moreso than that other landmark English poem Paradise Lost, unrhymed as it was.]]> 4.00 1991 Dryden's Aeneid: The English Virgil
author: Taylor Corse
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at: 2015/01/10
date added: 2015/06/01
shelves: cyberpunk
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The heroic couplets are beautiful in and of themselves, but there was a gap in my mind between their beauty and the comparative harshness of modern spoken English. Of course, this says nothing about the integrity (which is stunning) of Dryden's translation; all I mean to say is that even though this is a landmark English poem, it will take some work to get all the way through. I believe I started it in March of 2014 and finished around the turn of 2015, dropping in and out of it from time to time.

The heroic couplets can also curiously muddle the plot for modern readers, more or less depending on your past engagement with such works. With each successive couplet, one perceives Dryden's choice of wit and word, while one also attempts to perceive narrative structure and, as they arise, important plot points. It is entirely possible to do all three things, but poses more difficulty than the average read, perhaps even moreso than that other landmark English poem Paradise Lost, unrhymed as it was.
]]> In Mayan Splendor 2570748 66 Frank Belknap Long 0870540807 Samuel 0 to-read 3.88 1977 In Mayan Splendor
author: Frank Belknap Long
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/26
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]]> Prague 92488 400 Arthur Phillips 0375759778 Samuel 0 currently-reading 3.05 2002 Prague
author: Arthur Phillips
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/17
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]]> Islands in the Net 218571 In an age of advanced technology, information is the world's most precious commodity. Information is power. Data is locked in computers and carefully rationed through a global communications network. Full access is a privilege held by few.
Now, Laura Webster is about to be plunged into a netherworld of black-market data pirates, new-age mercenaries, high-tech voodoo... and murder.]]> 396 Bruce Sterling 0441374239 Samuel 0 to-read 3.67 1988 Islands in the Net
author: Bruce Sterling
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/11
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]]> Black Glass 4245345 312 John Shirley 1934501077 Samuel 0 to-read 3.47 2008 Black Glass
author: John Shirley
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Return of Kral Majales: Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010]]> 10101385
Ryan Scott, Cordite Poetry Review: This book positively brims. With words, with pictures, with experiments and experiences...

Seamus Heaney: "Three ringing cheers," as the old song demands... This is a magnificent volume, a huge effort and obviously worth the effort.]]> 960 Louis Armand 8073083027 Samuel 0 to-read 3.90 2010 The Return of Kral Majales: Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010
author: Louis Armand
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/03
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Samuel 5 favorites 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/03/18
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Samuel 0 to-read 3.89 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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]]> Les Misérables 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 Samuel 0 to-read 4.19 1862 Les Misérables
author: Victor Hugo
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/18
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]]> In Memoriam 294399
The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul", and this might give an idea of how the poem is an account of all Tennyson's thoughts and feelings as he copes with his grief over such a long period, including wrestling with the big philosophico-scientific questions of his day. It is perhaps because of this that the poem is still popular with and of interest to modern readers. Owing to its length and its arguable breadth of focus, the poem might not be thought an elegy or a dirge in the strictest formal sense.

The poem is not arranged exactly in the order in which it was written. The prologue, for example, is thought to have been one of the last things written. Critics believe, however, that the poem as a whole is meant to be chronological in terms of the progression of Tennyson's grief. The passage of time is marked by the three descriptions of Christmas at different points in the poem, and the poem ends with a description of the marriage of Tennyson's sister.

"In Memoriam" is written in four-line ABBA stanzas of iambic tetrameter, and such stanzas are now called In Memoriam Stanzas. Though not metrically unusual, given the length of the work, the meter creates a tonal effect which often divides readers - is it the natural sound of mourning and grief, or merely monotonous? The poem is divided into 133 cantos (including the prologue and epilogue), and in contrast to its constant and regulated metrical form, encompasses many different subjects: profound spiritual experiences, nostalgic reminiscence, philosophical speculation, Romantic fantasizing and even occasional verse. The death of Hallam, and Tennyson's attempts to cope with this, remain the strand that ties all these together.

Excerpt:
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove ;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade ;
Thou madest Life in man and brute ;
[...]]]> 280 Alfred Tennyson 0393979261 Samuel 3 4.06 1850 In Memoriam
author: Alfred Tennyson
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1850
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/03/18
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]]> The Fifth Heart 23962541
Holmes is currently on his Great Hiatus--his three-year absence after Reichenbach Falls during which time the people of London believe him to be deceased. Holmes has faked his own death because, through his powers of ratiocination, the great detective has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character.

This leads to serious complications for James--for if his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power -- possibly named Moriarty -- that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?]]> 624 Dan Simmons 0316198803 Samuel 0 to-read 3.87 2015 The Fifth Heart
author: Dan Simmons
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)]]> 4912857
The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that when I opened those windows � my new windows � each evening its streets would whisper stories to me, secrets in my ear, that I could catch on paper and narrate to whomever cared to listen�

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martin, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city’s underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.

Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Close to despair, David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike anything that has ever existed � a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, and perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realizes that there is a connection between his haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.

Once again, Zafon takes us into a dark, gothic universe first seen in The Shadow of the Wind and creates a breathtaking adventure of intrigue, romance, and tragedy. Through a dizzyingly constructed labyrinth of secrets, the magic of books, passion, and friendship blend into a masterful story.
(jacket)]]> 531 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 0385528701 Samuel 0 to-read 3.94 2008 The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/13
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]]> Our Lady of Darkness 102267
Middle-aged San Francisco horror writer Franz Westen is rediscovering ordinary life following a long alcoholic binge. Then one day, peering at his apartment window from atop a nearby hill, he sees a pale brown thing lean out his window…and wave.

This encounter sends Westen on a quest through ancient books and modern streets, for the dark forces and paramental entities that thrive amidst the towering skyscrapers of modern urban life…and meanwhile, the entities are also looking for him.

A pioneering work of modern urban fantasy, Our Lady of Darkness is perhaps Fritz Leiber’s greatest novel.
]]> 183 Fritz Leiber 0441644171 Samuel 0 to-read 3.68 1977 Our Lady of Darkness
author: Fritz Leiber
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (Aries, 7)]]> 5601351 544 Wouter J. Hanegraaff 9004168737 Samuel 0 to-read 4.15 2008 Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (Aries, 7)
author: Wouter J. Hanegraaff
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Love and the Soul: Psychological Interpretations of the Eros and Psyche Myth]]> 1306807
This elaborate work provides serious students of psychology, religion and mythology with a detailed account and analysis of what has been accomplished in the spychological interpretation of the Eros and Psyche myth to date. It emphasizes how psychological theory determines the direction of interpretation much more than does the literary context of the myth itself. It also examines the strengths and weaknesses of these psychological interpretations (five Freudian and six Jungian) of the Eros and Psyche myth in order to lay the groundwork for an interpretation which (1) avoids the rigidity of both Freudian and Jungian dogma and (2) restores the myth to its rightful literary and religious context -- something which has been ignored by most psychological interpretations.]]> 182 James Gollnick 0889202125 Samuel 0 to-read 4.00 1992 Love and the Soul: Psychological Interpretations of the Eros and Psyche Myth
author: James Gollnick
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Birth of Tragedy / The Case of Wagner]]> 568047 240 Friedrich Nietzsche 0394703693 Samuel 5 cyberpunk 4.17 1888 The Birth of Tragedy / The Case of Wagner
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1888
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/12/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism]]> 479035
Eliot begins with the appearance of poetry criticism in the age of Dryden, when poetry became the province of an intellectual aristocracy rather than part of the mind and popular tradition of a whole people. Wordsworth and Coleridge, in their attempt to revolutionize the language of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, made exaggerated claims for poetry and the poet, culminating in Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." And, in the doubt and decaying moral definitions of the nineteenth century, Arnold transformed poetry into a surrogate for religion.

By studying poetry and criticism in the context of its time, Eliot suggests that we can learn what is permanent about the nature of poetry, and makes a powerful case for both its autonomy and its pluralism in this century.]]> 160 T.S. Eliot 0674931505 Samuel 0 to-read 4.02 1964 The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
author: T.S. Eliot
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/19
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]]> The Historian 10692
Late one night in 1972, as a 16-year-old girl, she discovers a mysterious book and a sheaf of letters in her father's library—a discovery that will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences, and will send her on a journey of mind-boggling danger. While seeking clues to the secrets of her father's past and her mother's puzzling disappearance, she follows a trail from London to Istanbul to Budapest and beyond, and learns that the letters in her possession provide a link to one of the world's darkest and most intoxicating figures. Generation after generation, the legend of Dracula has enticed and eluded both historians and opportunists alike. Now a young girl undertakes the same search that ended in the death and defilement of so many others—in an attempt to save her father from an unspeakable fate.
(Fall 2005 Selection)]]> 704 Elizabeth Kostova 0751537284 Samuel 4 3.78 2005 The Historian
author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2014/10/17
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It's been years since I've read this book, but the levels of intrigue that Kostova was able to build by her stories within stories within stories was fairly amazing and stuck with me permanently, and were, not to mention, a worthy testament to the epistolary nature of Bram Stoker's novel. It was as if The Historian was a literary update, a postmodern reboot of the more esoteric implications of Stoker's novel, where the horror (and the embodiment of it, the Count himself) is less seen than felt and sensed; Dracula pervades the pages of Kostova's work in a much more disembodied and ethereal manner, lacking form, substance, and location, in comparison to Stoker's where his horrifying qualities were carefully focused in a figure--the Count--and in the actions of that figure. It was a gripping read, written by an author passionate about Stoker's novel, literature in general, Eastern European folklore and history, and academia. If any of these interests appeal to you than definitely pick this book up.
]]> Lord of the Flies 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Samuel 5 3.70 1954 Lord of the Flies
author: William Golding
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590�1612 (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 13)]]> 5895309 254 Claire McEachern 052157031X Samuel 0 to-read 3.50 1996 The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 13)
author: Claire McEachern
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/14
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]]> Tender Is the Night 46164 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 430 F. Scott Fitzgerald Samuel 0 to-read 3.81 1934 Tender Is the Night
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/13
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]]> As I Lay Dying 77013 As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members -- including Addie herself -- as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.]]> 288 William Faulkner Samuel 0 to-read 3.71 1930 As I Lay Dying
author: William Faulkner
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/13
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]]> The Scarlet Letter 12296 279 Nathaniel Hawthorne 0142437263 Samuel 4 3.43 1850 The Scarlet Letter
author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1850
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/10/13
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]]> Catch-22 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Samuel 0 to-read 3.99 1961 Catch-22
author: Joseph Heller
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/13
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]]> The Beach 607639
The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveller slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travellers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumoured, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world first hand.]]> 436 Alex Garland 1573226521 Samuel 5 3.97 1996 The Beach
author: Alex Garland
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/10/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)]]> 865396 164 Jean Baudrillard 0472095218 Samuel 0 to-read 3.83 1981 Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)
author: Jean Baudrillard
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Spenser: The Faerie Queene 19433622 Hamilton's revised edition, itself a milestone in academic achievement, is now considered the standard text of the poem.

· Best available scholarly editions of THe Faerie Queene

· Striking new cover design will make the paperback edition stand out on the shelf

]]> 816 Edmund Spenser Samuel 3 cyberpunk 4.25 1590 Spenser: The Faerie Queene
author: Edmund Spenser
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1590
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/10/07
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> The Marriage Plot 10964693
As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.]]> 406 Jeffrey Eugenides 0374203059 Samuel 0 The effect works vice versa as well: Mitchell is the quintessential second-best, a theology student inclined to mysticism whose unrequited love for Madeleine is as much a mark of his Darwinistic inferiority as it is one of the plot’s central components. The plot, for the matter, is so constructed in a way that readers are primed to pity the poor Mitchell and idolize the cool kid Leonard, his competitor for Madeleine’s affections. And while the text predisposes readers to this viewpoint, when Leonard takes his turn as the persona behind the third person narrator we find out that a prior liaison between Madeleine and Mitchell is the source not only for jealousy—by Leonard, of Mitchell, for Madeleine—but of erotic jealousy, even voyeuristic jealousy, in the imagination of Leonard, which runs wild while he is the depths of his depression. The thought of Mitchell and Madeleine engaged in sex acts is a particular turn on for Leonard in his darkest, most insecure state; yet because Leonard’s mental functioning is more or less normative while he is in this state, his erotic and voyeuristic jealousy becomes a mini-study on this type of pornographic male imagination. In turn, this propel’s Leonard into new depths of psychological complexity, part and parcel of which is a redefinition of the pity we feel for Mitchell, who, though Madeleine may not love him as deeply as she does Leonard, is still a “god,� as Girard might put it, in the eyes of Leonard.
Three novels, to whose ranks I will add The Marriage Plot as the fourth, have become for me retroactive handbooks for college life. I had a college life dissimilar to what I believe at this time to be the majority of the young folksâ€� who choose to pursue higher education after high school. This novel, along with The Secret History (a given, and not just for me, and not just for this “categoryâ€� I’ve fabricated), I Am Charlotte Simmons (young people read it now!! Before the imminent generation gap [the novel is ten years old this year!] becomes manifest), and The Last Enchantments (a healthy switch-up that leans towards the graduate lifestyle and boasts a European locale as its setting), have definitely instilled a university romance into my memory, as I’ve read the lot in the year since I graduated college myself. Since I was a junior college transfer student I always felt slightly deprived of the real, all-out, balls to the wall four year experience of university life, and these novels taken together filled in the gaps for me. In fact, the reviews I’ve written for them (here on GoodReads.com) are the very definition of bias and perhaps the definition of fan-fiction as well. While I’ve spent countless hours writing decidedly UNBIASED essays and critical exegeses during my college and university days, I may be committing a stroke of blasphemy in choosing to grace GoodReads with a biased, and perhaps, more heartfelt review, in the person of this one as well as the others. From what I’ve read of Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ review, I think this site is the perfect place for such a review, which is as much a testament to all of you out there on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ as it is to the site itself.]]> 3.46 2011 The Marriage Plot
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2014/07/10
date added: 2014/09/28
shelves:
review:
To a reader whose familiarity with Jeffrey Eugenides� subject matter marriage novels stretches very small spans, The Marriage Plot resided within totally unexplored territory for me, but became one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve ploughed through this past year. Most of the criticism I’ve picked up regarding it is justified from the perspective each critic tackles the material, save for the criticism that Eugenides� characters are static and undeveloped, for in my opinion this is definitely not the case. It might appear so upon an initial reading because Eugenides essentially demarcates The Marriage Plot into three basic sections, rather assigns the entire novelistic meat to one of three narrators: ; and relates the plot via third person limited perspective for each. The complexity is grounded in the fact that, since the plot of the novel (like the marriage plot of the title, if I’m understanding it right) often involves the amorous and personal exploits of three individuals (a woman and two men) separate but in relation to each other, meaning that the individuals are operating within their own lives while referring back, basing actions upon, or pondering the complexity of, the lives of the two others. And so, any given section might have a character proceeding through his/her daily existence with little significant character development occurring, other than traditional identity building (i.e. on the author’s part, building identity through descriptions of hobbies or mannerisms and such) but when those characters begin to discuss other characters, those other characters� previously “established� identities become much more fleshed out and re-dimensionalized.
The effect works vice versa as well: Mitchell is the quintessential second-best, a theology student inclined to mysticism whose unrequited love for Madeleine is as much a mark of his Darwinistic inferiority as it is one of the plot’s central components. The plot, for the matter, is so constructed in a way that readers are primed to pity the poor Mitchell and idolize the cool kid Leonard, his competitor for Madeleine’s affections. And while the text predisposes readers to this viewpoint, when Leonard takes his turn as the persona behind the third person narrator we find out that a prior liaison between Madeleine and Mitchell is the source not only for jealousy—by Leonard, of Mitchell, for Madeleine—but of erotic jealousy, even voyeuristic jealousy, in the imagination of Leonard, which runs wild while he is the depths of his depression. The thought of Mitchell and Madeleine engaged in sex acts is a particular turn on for Leonard in his darkest, most insecure state; yet because Leonard’s mental functioning is more or less normative while he is in this state, his erotic and voyeuristic jealousy becomes a mini-study on this type of pornographic male imagination. In turn, this propel’s Leonard into new depths of psychological complexity, part and parcel of which is a redefinition of the pity we feel for Mitchell, who, though Madeleine may not love him as deeply as she does Leonard, is still a “god,� as Girard might put it, in the eyes of Leonard.
Three novels, to whose ranks I will add The Marriage Plot as the fourth, have become for me retroactive handbooks for college life. I had a college life dissimilar to what I believe at this time to be the majority of the young folksâ€� who choose to pursue higher education after high school. This novel, along with The Secret History (a given, and not just for me, and not just for this “categoryâ€� I’ve fabricated), I Am Charlotte Simmons (young people read it now!! Before the imminent generation gap [the novel is ten years old this year!] becomes manifest), and The Last Enchantments (a healthy switch-up that leans towards the graduate lifestyle and boasts a European locale as its setting), have definitely instilled a university romance into my memory, as I’ve read the lot in the year since I graduated college myself. Since I was a junior college transfer student I always felt slightly deprived of the real, all-out, balls to the wall four year experience of university life, and these novels taken together filled in the gaps for me. In fact, the reviews I’ve written for them (here on GoodReads.com) are the very definition of bias and perhaps the definition of fan-fiction as well. While I’ve spent countless hours writing decidedly UNBIASED essays and critical exegeses during my college and university days, I may be committing a stroke of blasphemy in choosing to grace GoodReads with a biased, and perhaps, more heartfelt review, in the person of this one as well as the others. From what I’ve read of Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ review, I think this site is the perfect place for such a review, which is as much a testament to all of you out there on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ as it is to the site itself.
]]> Of Grammatology 85326 456 Jacques Derrida 0801858305 Samuel 0 to-read 3.96 1967 Of Grammatology
author: Jacques Derrida
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Corrections 3805 After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.]]> 653 Jonathan Franzen 1841156736 Samuel 0 currently-reading 3.83 2001 The Corrections
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Freedom 7905092
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
(jacket)]]> 562 Jonathan Franzen 0374158460 Samuel 0 3.78 2010 Freedom
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2014/08/02
date added: 2014/08/12
shelves:
review:

]]> The Goldfinch 18405388 771 Donna Tartt 1408704951 Samuel 0 3.97 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2014/04/12
date added: 2014/08/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories]]> 18170549 The instant New York Times bestseller and publishing phenomenon: Marina Keegan’s posthumous collection of award-winning essays and stories “sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth� (O, The Oprah Magazine).

Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at The New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.

Marina left behind a rich, deeply expansive trove of writing that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story “Cold Pastoral� was published on NewYorker.com. Her essay “Even Artichokes Have Doubts� was excerpted in the Financial Times, and her book was the focus of a Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times. Millions of her contemporaries have responded to her work on social media.

As Marina wrote: “We can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over…We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.� The Opposite of Loneliness is an unforgettable collection of Marina’s essays and stories that articulates the universal struggle all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to impact the world. “How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out? Answer: Read this book. A clear-eyed observer of human nature, Keegan could take a clever idea...and make it something beautiful� (People).]]> 241 Marina Keegan 1476753628 Samuel 5
Keegan's stories DO NOT directly address this idea, but the phantom of it appears in every work, in both sections, fiction and nonfiction, not to mention the titular essay. She deals with it in the way someone might deal with a deeply set conviction: convictions being, simultaneously, tremendously comforting and tremendously frustrating. And so, she expounds the virtue of impassioned artistic endeavors of both herself and her fellow students and revels in the fortune of being surrounded by such creative circles of friends, while lamenting the fact that as a writer she will never be able to provide her children with the same economic backbone she herself benefited from. And she skillfully weaves individualized, inspiring anecdotes into larger treatises on job markets and human-developmental frustrations, while haunting her pages which the grim reality that one day our Sun will burn out, leaving all our materialistic creations--records and artistic output alike--utterly eradicated. These contradictions are welcome and the tension that translates into the mind of the reader is not troubling at all; rather, each story is inspiring, and in light of the fact that each piece is standalone, Keegan does AN EXCELLENT job of providing closure to the topics she deals with on an essay by essay, story by story basis. Readers might find their passions rising but will discover by story/essay's end that Keegan not only anticipated just such a reaction but provided the requisite antidote and redirection to ensure that even the dismal pieces are motivational.

Her writing is superbly conversational and edged with a drama that, if it ever fails to engage the reader, at least conveys the author's passion. And frankly, this is an amazing young lady whose flare for linguistic drama is always matched by her obvious devotion, so I would be inclined--were I experiencing a dearth of passion for any single issue she tackles (a very rare occurrence)--to cast my vote on her side of the argument. She's definitely one of the smartest people I never got to meet, anticipating her detractors and counterarguments in beautifully succinct, literary ways, meaning to say that the articles are short, sweet, and comprehensive--while leaving readers with a wealth of information, ideas, and notions to mull over for days on end. I at least did.]]> 3.80 2014 The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
author: Marina Keegan
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2014/08/03
date added: 2014/08/03
shelves:
review:
She calls herself "religionless" on page 207 but Marina Keegan has a faith whose depth, breadth, and transcendentalism should be envied by religious persons for the ubiquitous clarity with which it manifests itself, so tactfully and nonchalantly subtle, in every single piece of her collected works, "The Opposite of Loneliness." The faith--and I'd never thought I'd say this apart from discussions of one singular movie the Wachowski's made 9 years ago--is in an IDEA. And the profundity of what would otherwise be a cliche is the innocence and familiarity of that idea. Chances are we all grew up with it inculcated into our brains and moral compass by anyone from parents to teachers to best friends: the idea that we can all, individually, make a difference in this world.

Keegan's stories DO NOT directly address this idea, but the phantom of it appears in every work, in both sections, fiction and nonfiction, not to mention the titular essay. She deals with it in the way someone might deal with a deeply set conviction: convictions being, simultaneously, tremendously comforting and tremendously frustrating. And so, she expounds the virtue of impassioned artistic endeavors of both herself and her fellow students and revels in the fortune of being surrounded by such creative circles of friends, while lamenting the fact that as a writer she will never be able to provide her children with the same economic backbone she herself benefited from. And she skillfully weaves individualized, inspiring anecdotes into larger treatises on job markets and human-developmental frustrations, while haunting her pages which the grim reality that one day our Sun will burn out, leaving all our materialistic creations--records and artistic output alike--utterly eradicated. These contradictions are welcome and the tension that translates into the mind of the reader is not troubling at all; rather, each story is inspiring, and in light of the fact that each piece is standalone, Keegan does AN EXCELLENT job of providing closure to the topics she deals with on an essay by essay, story by story basis. Readers might find their passions rising but will discover by story/essay's end that Keegan not only anticipated just such a reaction but provided the requisite antidote and redirection to ensure that even the dismal pieces are motivational.

Her writing is superbly conversational and edged with a drama that, if it ever fails to engage the reader, at least conveys the author's passion. And frankly, this is an amazing young lady whose flare for linguistic drama is always matched by her obvious devotion, so I would be inclined--were I experiencing a dearth of passion for any single issue she tackles (a very rare occurrence)--to cast my vote on her side of the argument. She's definitely one of the smartest people I never got to meet, anticipating her detractors and counterarguments in beautifully succinct, literary ways, meaning to say that the articles are short, sweet, and comprehensive--while leaving readers with a wealth of information, ideas, and notions to mull over for days on end. I at least did.
]]> <![CDATA[If Research Were Romance and Other Implausible Conjectures]]> 17825094 Is the answer 42? Would Jane Eyre prefer Hamlet or Claudius? And is research really like romance?

You’ll find answers to all the above questions, and many more, in this book.]]> 240 Manny Rayner Samuel 0 to-read 3.76 2013 If Research Were Romance and Other Implausible Conjectures
author: Manny Rayner
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Samuel 0 to-read 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Simulacra 226460 214 Philip K. Dick 0375719261 Samuel 0 to-read 3.65 1964 The Simulacra
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The End of the Affair 29641 "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..."

"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.

Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves deeper into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.]]> 160 Graham Greene Samuel 5 3.91 1951 The End of the Affair
author: Graham Greene
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/01
date added: 2014/06/23
shelves:
review:
Rather than compile the profuse marginalia littering my copy of "The End of The Affair" into something resembling an explicative review I’ll simply say that it was a highly emotional and melancholia-arousing read that perfectly coincided with the weather at the time (rainy), my favored drink at the time (vodka), and my outlook on life at the time (dismal). If you’re sifting through reviews on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ or elsewhere trying to determine the likelihood that this book will open up some sort of new and welcomed interpretive lens through which to view an occurrence in your life that is even spectrally related to its dominant themes then you should go ahead and read it because it will do this very thing and it’s short.
]]> Foucault’s Pendulum 17841
On a lark, the editors begin randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entries. What they believe they are creating is a long, lazy game - until the game starts taking over...

Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco—or indeed anyone—has ever devised.]]> 623 Umberto Eco 015603297X Samuel 5 favorites 3.92 1988 Foucault’s Pendulum
author: Umberto Eco
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/17
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, #2)]]> 59969 208 Frank Miller 1593072945 Samuel 5 favorites 4.18 1993 Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, #2)
author: Frank Miller
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/17
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso]]> 6656 This Everyman’s Library edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli’s marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

Translated in this edition by Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.]]> 798 Dante Alighieri 0679433139 Samuel 0 favorites 4.08 1320 The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1320
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Samuel 0 to-read, cyberpunk 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: to-read, cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer]]> 827 The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence.]]> 499 Neal Stephenson 0553380966 Samuel 0 to-read, cyberpunk 4.17 1995 The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: to-read, cyberpunk
review:

]]> The Count of Monte Cristo 7126 The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translation

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas� epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here]]> 1276 Alexandre Dumas 0140449264 Samuel 0 cyberpunk 4.29 1846 The Count of Monte Cristo
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1846
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction]]> 370160 Neuromancer. Cyberpunks are now among the shock troops of postmodernism, Larry McCaffery argues in Storming the Reality Studio, marshalling the resources of a fragmentary culture to create a startling new form. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, multinational machinations, frenetic bursts of prose, collisions of style, celebrations of texture: although emerging largely from science fiction, these features of cyberpunk writing are, as this volume makes clear, integrally related to the aims and innovations of the literary avant-garde.By bringing together original fiction by well-known contemporary writers (William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, J. G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delany), critical commentary by some of the major theorists of postmodern art and culture (Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Timothy Leary, Jean-François Lyotard), and work by major practitioners of cyberpunk (William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling), Storming the Reality Studio reveals a fascinating ongoing dialog in contemporary culture.
What emerges most strikingly from the colloquy is a shared preoccupation with the force of technology in shaping modern life. It is precisely this concern, according to McCaffery, that has put science fiction, typically the province of technological art, at the forefront of creative explorations of our unique age.
A rich opporunity for reading across genres, this anthology offers a new perspective on the evolution of postmodern culture and ultimately shows how deeply technological developments have influenced our vision and our art.

CONTENTS
Introduction: The Desert of the Real · Larry McCaffery
Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide to Storming the Reality Studio · Richard Kadrey & Larry McCaffery
Beyond the Extinction of Human Life [from Empire of the Senseless] · Kathy Acker ·
from Crash · J. G. Ballard ·
Mother and I Would Like to Know [from The Wild Boys] · William S. Burroughs ·
Rock On · Pat Cadigan ·
Among the Blobs · Samuel R. Delany ·
from White Noise · Don DeLillo ·
from Neuromancer · William Gibson ·
Fistic Hermaphrodites · Rob Hardin ·
Microbes · Rob Hardin
Penetrabit: Slime Temples · Rob Hardin ·
nerve terminals · Rob Hardin ·
Max Headroom · Harold Jaffe ·
from Straight Fiction · Thom Jurek ·
The Toilet Was Full of Nietzsche [from Metrophage] · Richard Kadrey ·
Office of the Future [from Dad’s Nuke] · Marc Laidlaw ·
I Was an Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot [from My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist] · Mark Leyner ·
from Plus · Joseph McElroy ·
Wire Movement #9 · Misha ·
Wire for Two Tims · Misha ·
from Easy Travel to Other Planets · Ted Mooney ·
Frame 137 · Jim O’Barr ·
from The Crying of Lot 49 · Thomas Pynchon ·
from Software · Rudy Rucker
from Life During Wartime · Lucius Shepard ·
Stoked · Lewis Shiner ·
Wolves of the Plateau · John Shirley ·
Twenty Evocations [“Life in the Mechanist/Shaper Era: 20 Evocations�; Mechanist-Shapers] · Bruce Sterling ·
Mare Tranquillitatis People’s Circumlunal Zaibatsu: 2-1-�16 [from Schismatrix] · Bruce Sterling
The Indigo Engineeers · William T. Vollmann ·
Before the Lights Came On: Observations of a Synergy · Steve Brown
The Automation of the Robot [from Simulations] · Jean Baudrillard
Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism · Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. ·
from Of Grammatology · Jacques Derrida ·
Yin and Yang Duke It Out · Joan Gordon ·
Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism · Veronica Hollinger
from Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism · Fredric Jameson
Television and the Triumph of Culture [from The Postmodern Scene] · Arthur Kroker & David Cook ·
Bet On It: Cyber/video/punk/performance · Brooks Landon ·
The Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot · Timothy Leary
The Postmodern [from The Postmodern Condition] · Jean-François Lyotard ·
An Interview with William Gibson · Larry McCaffery ·
Cutting Up: Cyberpunk, Punk Music, and Urban Decontextualizations · Larry McCaffery ·
POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM · Brian McHale ·
The Wars of the Coin’s Two Halves: Bruce Sterling’s Mechanist/Shaper Narratives · Tom Maddox ·
Frothing the Synaptic Bath · David Porush ·
Literary MTV · George Slusser ·
Preface from Mirrorshades · Bruce Sterling ·
On Gibson and Cyberpunk SF · Darko Suvin ·
The Japanese Reflection of Mirrorshades · Takayuki Tatsumi]]> 387 Larry McCaffery 0822311682 Samuel 0 to-read, cyberpunk 4.03 1991 Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction
author: Larry McCaffery
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: to-read, cyberpunk
review:

]]> Snow Crash 830 Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous� you'll recognize it immediately.]]> 438 Neal Stephenson 0553380958 Samuel 4 cyberpunk 4.02 1992 Snow Crash
author: Neal Stephenson
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Ficciones 426504 Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything else in between.

Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
Prologue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)
The Circular Ruins (1940)
The Lottery in Babylon (1941)
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941)
The Library of Babel (1941)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Part Two: Artifices
Prologue
Funes the Memorious (1942)
The Form of the Sword (1942)
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944)
Death and the Compass (1942)
The Secret Miracle (1943)
Three Versions of Judas (1944)
The End (1953, 2nd edition only)
The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only)
The South (1953, 2nd edition only)]]> 174 Jorge Luis Borges 0802130305 Samuel 5 cyberpunk, favorites 4.46 1944 Ficciones
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1944
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: cyberpunk, favorites
review:

]]> Don Quixote 3836
With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."]]> 1023 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Samuel 3 cyberpunk 3.86 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)]]> 2052
This is an alternate cover edition.]]> 231 Raymond Chandler 0394758285 Samuel 5 cyberpunk 3.96 1939 The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/13
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)]]> 100915
Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Lion Aslan, they realize they've been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch's sinister spell.]]> 206 C.S. Lewis Samuel 5 4.24 1950 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1950
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1622 298 William Shakespeare 0743477545 Samuel 5 3.95 1595 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
author: William Shakespeare
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1595
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]> 3049 144 Unknown 0451528182 Samuel 5 cyberpunk 3.71 1375 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
author: Unknown
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1375
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Paradise Lost 15997 Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his band of rebel angels plot their revenge against God. At the center of the conflict are Adam and Eve, who are motivated by all too human temptations but whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love.

Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition, Paradise Lost is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years, it has held generation upon generation of audiences in rapt attention, and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture.]]> 453 John Milton 0140424393 Samuel 5 favorites 3.83 1667 Paradise Lost
author: John Milton
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1667
rating: 5
read at:
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]]> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 51496 139 Robert Louis Stevenson 0451528956 Samuel 5 3.84 1886 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1886
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
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]]> Drood 3222979 Drood� is the name and nightmare that obsesses Charles Dickens for the last five years of his life.

On June 9, 1865, Dickens and his mistress are secretly returning to London, when their express train hurtles over a gap in a trestle. All of the first-class carriages except the one carrying Dickens are smashed to bits in the valley below. When Dickens descends into that valley to confront the dead and dying, his life will be changed forever. And at the core of that ensuing five-year nightmare is�

Drood� the name that Dickens whispers to his friend Wilkie Collins. A laudanum addict and lesser novelist, Collins flouts Victorian sensibilities by living with one mistress while having a child with another, but he may be the only man on Earth with whom Dickens can share the secret of�

Drood. Increasingly obsessed with crypts, cemeteries, and the precise length of time it would take for a corpse to dissolve in a lime pit, Dickens ceases writing for four years and wanders the worst slums and catacombs of London at night while staging public readings during the day, gruesome readings that leave his audiences horrified. Finally he begins writing what would have been the world’s first great mystery masterpiece, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only to be interrupted forever by�

Drood.

Based on actual biographical events, Drood explores the still-unresolved mysteries of one of our greatest writer’s dark final days in a profoundly original tale that confirms Lincoln Child’s assessment of New York Times bestselling author Dan Simmons as “a giant among novelists.”]]> 775 Dan Simmons 0316007021 Samuel 4 3.54 2009 Drood
author: Dan Simmons
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Count Zero (Sprawl, #2) 22200
A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human....]]> 308 William Gibson Samuel 5 cyberpunk 4.03 1986 Count Zero (Sprawl, #2)
author: William Gibson
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) 22328 Alternate cover for ISBN: 9780441569595

Case was the sharpest data thief in the Matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he's ready for the silicon-quick, bleakly prophetic adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.]]> 271 William Gibson Samuel 5 cyberpunk 3.87 1984 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-) #7 22013208 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 0 to-read 4.02 2014 Coffin Hill (2013-) #7
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #6 21432313 32 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 4.19 Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #6
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #4 20807376 19 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 4.15 Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #4
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #5 20807375 22 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 4.03 Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #5
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #3 19845271 21 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 4.01 2013 Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #3
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #2 19768827 18 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 3.88 2013 Coffin Hill (2013-2015) #2
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick]]> 19536001
Collecting: Sex Criminals 1-5]]> 128 Matt Fraction 1607069466 Samuel 0 currently-reading 3.90 2014 Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick
author: Matt Fraction
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fatale, Vol. 2: The Devil's Business]]> 16121414
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' best-selling series just gets hotter!

Collecting: Fatale 6-10]]> 136 Ed Brubaker 1607066181 Samuel 3 3.97 2013 Fatale, Vol. 2: The Devil's Business
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fatale, Vol. 1: Death Chases Me]]> 13580807 Fatale, Book One: Death Chases Me.

In present day, a man meets a woman who he becomes instantly obsessed with, and in the 1950s, this same woman destroys the lives of all those who cross her path, on a quest for... what?

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' best-selling series will leave you craving more!

Collecting: Fatale 1-5]]> 144 Ed Brubaker 1607065630 Samuel 3 3.89 2012 Fatale, Vol. 1: Death Chases Me
author: Ed Brubaker
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill (Sin City, #3)]]> 419103 184 Frank Miller 1593072953 Samuel 5 favorites 4.12 1994 Sin City, Vol. 3: The Big Fat Kill (Sin City, #3)
author: Frank Miller
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> Batman: The Long Halloween 106069 376 Jeph Loeb 1563894696 Samuel 5 4.33 1997 Batman: The Long Halloween
author: Jeph Loeb
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)]]> 154091 Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date... The Mona Lisa Overdrive. Enter Gibson's unique world - lyric and mechanical, erotic and violent, sobering and exciting - where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace. Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled... or even known. And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yakuza, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes... or so they think.

]]> 312 William Gibson 0553281747 Samuel 0 currently-reading, cyberpunk 4.01 1988 Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)
author: William Gibson
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: currently-reading, cyberpunk
review:

]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Samuel 5 favorites 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/29
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> The Last Enchantments 17910101 The Last Enchantments is a powerfully moving and lyrically written novel. A young American embarks on a year at Oxford and has  an impassioned affair that will change his life forever

After graduating from Yale, William Baker, scion of an old line patrician family, goes to work in presidential politics.  But when the campaign into which he's poured his heart ends in disappointment, he decides to leave New York behind, along with the devoted, ambitious, and well-connected woman he’s been in love with for the last four years.

Will expects nothing more than a year off before resuming the comfortable life he's always known, but he's soon caught up in a whirlwind of unexpected friendships and romantic entanglements that threaten his safe plans. As he explores the heady social world of Oxford,  he becomes fast friends with Tom, his snobbish but affable flat mate;  Anil, an Indian economist with a deep love for gangster rap; Anneliese, a German historian obsessed with photography; and Timmo, whose chief ambition is to become a reality television star. What he's least prepared for is Sophie, a witty, beautiful and enigmatic woman who makes him question everything he knows about himself.

For readers who made a classic of Richard Yates's A Good School, Charles Finch's The Last Enchantments is a sweeping novel about love and loss that redefines what it means to grow up as an American in the twenty-first century.]]> 323 Charles Finch 1250018714 Samuel 4 Finch is also wonderfully adept at poetically Proustian interjections into the narrative which designate the literary value of the work as well accentuate the interiority of these characters. For the short length of the novel, these sections are skillfully woven into the text. Silently I harbored wishes that these types of deep introspective metaphysical commentaries were a part of the actual dialogue, but I see that this would have essentially conflicted with the novel’s scope. The characters are of course intellectual creatures, being that they attend a prestigious university like Harvard, but the story is not centered upon academia but on sociability, personal and professional aspirations, and love. Part of Sophie’s trials are the decision whether or not to pursue a doctorate, but her actual studying is condensed into brief passages to make way for the sociable aspects upon which the novel is grounded and lent its structure and enticement. The work is intellectual, but the characters, with the exception of protagonist and first person narrator Will Baker, are not–and that’s perfectly fine.
I tremendously enjoyed this novel, and bought it immediately after reading around 30 pages in Barnes & Noble one day. The one wish I would have, is that it was a bit longer; not much, perhaps 100-150 pages more, just to flesh the characters out fully and add more intrigue amongst them, as perhaps to interweave some Will Baker’s passive intellectualism more into the story and dialogue.]]> 3.15 2014 The Last Enchantments
author: Charles Finch
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/04/06
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves:
review:
Charles Finch’s The Last Enchantments is a book well worth the attention of any person recently graduated from college up to 40 years old, as it encompasses the range of thoughts, emotions, anxieties, and amours of the new-young adult 20-30 category, and the complex dynamic that living in our fast-paced society adds to those dillemmas. Nothing is necessarily new: there’s both camaraderie and rivalry amongst friends, who move in the same social circles and drink at the same bars and dance at the same clubs and sleep with the same people. There’s a realistic use of profanity that, having recently graduated from an America university, I can say Finch nails spot on, so that it adds dimension and personality to his work without dissuading the morally sensitive. The profanity, as well as the other dialogue, is largely reflective of the characters� emotional states as those states undergo their constant fluctuations throughout the novel. Chances are, the reader is already thinking some of this dialogue before it appears on the page.
Finch is also wonderfully adept at poetically Proustian interjections into the narrative which designate the literary value of the work as well accentuate the interiority of these characters. For the short length of the novel, these sections are skillfully woven into the text. Silently I harbored wishes that these types of deep introspective metaphysical commentaries were a part of the actual dialogue, but I see that this would have essentially conflicted with the novel’s scope. The characters are of course intellectual creatures, being that they attend a prestigious university like Harvard, but the story is not centered upon academia but on sociability, personal and professional aspirations, and love. Part of Sophie’s trials are the decision whether or not to pursue a doctorate, but her actual studying is condensed into brief passages to make way for the sociable aspects upon which the novel is grounded and lent its structure and enticement. The work is intellectual, but the characters, with the exception of protagonist and first person narrator Will Baker, are not–and that’s perfectly fine.
I tremendously enjoyed this novel, and bought it immediately after reading around 30 pages in Barnes & Noble one day. The one wish I would have, is that it was a bit longer; not much, perhaps 100-150 pages more, just to flesh the characters out fully and add more intrigue amongst them, as perhaps to interweave some Will Baker’s passive intellectualism more into the story and dialogue.
]]> Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1) 1524 144 Aeschylus 0521010756 Samuel 5 to-read 3.84 -472 Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1)
author: Aeschylus
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.84
book published: -472
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Lover's Discourse: Fragments]]> 380994 A Lover's Discourse, at its 1978 publication, was revolutionary: Roland Barthes made unprecedented use of the tools of structuralism to explore the whimsical phenomenon of love. Rich with references ranging from Goethe's Werther to Winnicott, from Plato to Proust, from Baudelaire to Schubert, A Lover's Discourse artfully draws a portrait in which every reader will find echoes of themselves.]]> 234 Roland Barthes 0374521611 Samuel 0 cyberpunk 4.43 1977 A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
author: Roland Barthes
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale 420474 464 Edward Bulwer-Lytton 0833400177 Samuel 5 cyberpunk
On another note, I have yet to read a novel in English that utilizes our language to with such a poetic perspicacity. If you enjoy other leaps of English literary aptitude such as "Paradise Lost" or Shakespeare, Bulwer-Lytton's "Zanoni" will amaze you with it's sublime utilization and incorporation of the English language. Like Milton and Shakespeare, the unfamiliar (to modern audiences) use of our language might at first be an obstacle, but perseverance quickly reveals it to be a joy to the both the ear and the mind. Bulwer-Lytton does things with prose I didn't think possible until going forth with this novel. In fact, purely coincidently, the closest analogous writer I can think of to compare him to, is the aforementioned Lovecraft, in that both wield a style of prose inappropriate to their contexts and all the more magnificent for it.

This novel will undoubtedly give you much to think about in regards to love, being in love, falling in love, academia, intellectualism, spiritualism, religion, and politics, with such encyclopedic scope being another comparison to epic poets like Milton or psychological poets like Shakespeare. It confronts the intellectual's--the TRUE, and HUMBLE intellectual--conundrum: the affluence of universal knowledge in the face of the short time each individual soul spends on earth. How is that question in any way intersected, over the course of the novel, with the questions of love? You'll have to read it to find out. You don't have to read far to confront the essential questions (100-200 pages) and Bulwer-Lytton provides less answers than he does questions, but isn't that why we read novels in the first place? The answers you get aren't those of a novelist like Dickens, where ambiguity is present but mostly disregarded and definitely glossed over with a healthy shine of humour, yet still, reading "Zanoni" is like reading Ovid's "Art of Love" in a desperate attempt to get laid: it might not be culturally relevant anymore, but it's use of language is poetically engaging, it's advice is (oxymoronically) outdatedly timeless, and, most importantly, it's fun.

Also: if there's a REAL girl like Viola Pisani, then, men, we are quite the more fortunate sex indeed.]]> 3.84 1842 Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale
author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1842
rating: 5
read at: 2014/02/05
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Well I'm on page 394 so I can't claim that the novel's denouement hasn't completely turned me off; yet, in light of the fact that I view published novels to be "as perfect" iterations of the ideas the author has delved into--which is to say, complete works in and of themselves in so far as they capture the imaginative genius of the author given the context of their own personal development, the publishing industry, etc.--I still can say that this is one of the my favorite novels. Increasingly I am feeling that, like our own great H.P. Lovecraft, I was simply born in the wrong century of Western culture, and this novel only compounds upon that personal revelation in that both Clarence Glyndon and Zanoni possess personality traits that I identify with on an intensely subjective personal scale. I have the intellectual and impassioned ambition of Glyndon while completely connecting with Zanoni's more amorously-inclined passion for Viola Pisani--a fascinating character in and of herself, if I might add. Like my first Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ.com review, which was for Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons," I firmly believe that the profound effect this novel has had on me has to do with my age and place in life while reading it: I'm nearly Glyndon's age yet identify mostly with Zanoni, and this completely coincidental likening to both of Bulwer-Lytton's protagonists makes the novel an extremely personal work for me. I can't necessarily recommend it to anyone based on this alone, but I can say that for me, it is quite an amazing feat of novelistic virtuosity.

On another note, I have yet to read a novel in English that utilizes our language to with such a poetic perspicacity. If you enjoy other leaps of English literary aptitude such as "Paradise Lost" or Shakespeare, Bulwer-Lytton's "Zanoni" will amaze you with it's sublime utilization and incorporation of the English language. Like Milton and Shakespeare, the unfamiliar (to modern audiences) use of our language might at first be an obstacle, but perseverance quickly reveals it to be a joy to the both the ear and the mind. Bulwer-Lytton does things with prose I didn't think possible until going forth with this novel. In fact, purely coincidently, the closest analogous writer I can think of to compare him to, is the aforementioned Lovecraft, in that both wield a style of prose inappropriate to their contexts and all the more magnificent for it.

This novel will undoubtedly give you much to think about in regards to love, being in love, falling in love, academia, intellectualism, spiritualism, religion, and politics, with such encyclopedic scope being another comparison to epic poets like Milton or psychological poets like Shakespeare. It confronts the intellectual's--the TRUE, and HUMBLE intellectual--conundrum: the affluence of universal knowledge in the face of the short time each individual soul spends on earth. How is that question in any way intersected, over the course of the novel, with the questions of love? You'll have to read it to find out. You don't have to read far to confront the essential questions (100-200 pages) and Bulwer-Lytton provides less answers than he does questions, but isn't that why we read novels in the first place? The answers you get aren't those of a novelist like Dickens, where ambiguity is present but mostly disregarded and definitely glossed over with a healthy shine of humour, yet still, reading "Zanoni" is like reading Ovid's "Art of Love" in a desperate attempt to get laid: it might not be culturally relevant anymore, but it's use of language is poetically engaging, it's advice is (oxymoronically) outdatedly timeless, and, most importantly, it's fun.

Also: if there's a REAL girl like Viola Pisani, then, men, we are quite the more fortunate sex indeed.
]]> Confessions 27037 Confessions is one of the most influential and most innovative works of Latin literature. Written in the author's early forties in the last years of the fourth century A.D. and during his first years as a bishop, they reflect on his life and on the activity of remembering and interpreting a life. Books I-IV are concerned with infancy and learning to talk, schooldays, sexual desire and adolescent rebellion, intense friendships and intellectual exploration. Augustine evolves and analyses his past with all the resources of the reading which shaped his mind: Virgil and Cicero, Neoplatonism and the Bible. This volume, which aims to be usable by students who are new to Augustine, alerts readers to the verbal echoes and allusions of Augustine's brilliant and varied Latin, and explains his theological and philosophical questioning of what God is and what it is to be human. The edition is intended for use by students and scholars of Latin literature, theology and Church history.]]> 341 Augustine of Hippo 0192833723 Samuel 0 cyberpunk 3.95 400 Confessions
author: Augustine of Hippo
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 400
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/25
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> Possession 41219 A beautiful hardback edition of the Booker Prize-winning novel. A romance, a literary quest, a modern classic.

A pair of young scholars investigate the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story.]]> 555 A.S. Byatt 0679735909 Samuel 0 to-read 3.89 1991 Possession
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life]]> 209844
Included in this study are the secret cult scenes of the women's mysteries both within and beyond Attica, the mystic sacrificial rite at Delphi, and the great public Dionysian festivals at Athens. The way in which the Athenian people received and assimilated tragedy in its immanent connection with Dionysos is seen as the greatest miracle in all cultural history. Tragedy and New Comedy are seen as high spiritual forms of the Dionysian religion, and the Dionysian element itself is seen as a chapter in the religious history of Europe.]]> 476 Karl Kerényi 0691029156 Samuel 0 currently-reading 4.43 1976 Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life
author: Karl Kerényi
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Agricola and The Germania 25689 Agricola is both a portrait of Julius Agricola - the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus' well-loved and respected father-in-law - and the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country, and a succinct account of the early stages of the Roman occupation, nearly fatally undermined by Boudicca's revolt in AD 61 but consolidated by campaigns that took Agricola as far as Anglesey and northern Scotland. The warlike German tribes are the focus of Tacitus' attention in the Germania, which, like the Agricola, often compares the behaviour of 'barbarian' peoples favourably with the decadence and corruption of Imperial Rome.]]> 174 Tacitus 0140442413 Samuel 0 to-read 3.98 98 The Agricola and The Germania
author: Tacitus
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 98
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Conquest of Gaul 592167 TRANSLATED BY S. A. HANDFORD WITH REVISIONS BY JANE GARDNER

The earliest eye-witness account of Britain and its inhabitants appears in these famous memoirs.

Between 58 and 50 BC Julius Caesar not only conquered almost the whole of modern France, Belgium and Switzerland, with parts of Holland and Germany, but also invaded Britain twice. It was partly as a piece of personal propaganda that he recorded his campaigns against the various Gallic tribes in Latin; nevertheless these simple, direct and lucid texts are a unique direct source on Gaul in that period and also the only narrative actually written by a great general of antiquity about his own campaigns.

Revised and updated by Jane Gardner, S. A. Handford's translation allows modern readers to grasp the full sense of Caesar's exciting account.]]> 269 Gaius Julius Caesar 0140444335 Samuel 0 to-read 4.03 -50 The Conquest of Gaul
author: Gaius Julius Caesar
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.03
book published: -50
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]> 19400
The work covers the history of the Roman Empire, Europe, and the Catholic Church from 98 to 1590 and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the East and West. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of primary sources, unusual at the time, its methodology became a model for later historians. This led to Gibbon being called the first "modern historian of ancient Rome"

This version includes working footnotes unobtrusively placed at the back of the book with active links for easy navigation, maps from the original book, modern maps, and links to audiobook of all volumes.
]]> 1312 Edward Gibbon Samuel 0 to-read 3.97 1776 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
author: Edward Gibbon
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1776
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I, Claudius (Claudius, #1) 18765
I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike]]> 469 Robert Graves 067972477X Samuel 0 to-read 4.24 1934 I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)
author: Robert Graves
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Imperium (Cicero, #1) 243601 imperium—supreme power in the state.

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

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

Robert Harris, the world's master of innovative historical fiction, lures us into a violent, treacherous world of Roman politics at once exotically different from and yet startlingly similar to our own—a world of Senate intrigue and electoral corruption, special prosecutors and political adventurism—to describe how one clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable man fought to reach the top.]]> 305 Robert Harris 074326603X Samuel 0 to-read 4.12 2006 Imperium (Cicero, #1)
author: Robert Harris
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Coffin Hill (2013-) #1 18300840
Following a night of sex, drugs and witchcraft in the woods, Eve wakes up naked, covered in blood and unable to remember how she got there. One friend is missing, one is in a mental ward—and one knows that Eve is responsible.

After a stint as a Boston cop that ends in a bullet wound and unintended celebrity, Eve returns to Coffin Hill, only to discover the darkness that she unleashed ten years ago in the woods was never contained. It continues to seep through the town, cursing the soul of this sleepy Massachusetts hollow, spilling secrets and enacting its revenge.

Set against the haunted backdrop of New England, COFFIN HILL explores what people will do for power and retribution. Noted novelist Caitlin Kittredge, author of the Black London series, brings a smart, mesmerizing style to comics. Artist Inaki Miranda (FABLES) brings his dynamic storytelling to COFFIN HILL, following an acclaimed run on FAIREST.
- See more at: ]]> 32 Caitlin Kittredge Samuel 5 Eve Coffin is a youngish rookie police officer in Boston who, in the year 2013, begins to become renowned after apprehending serial killer the Ice Fisher. She’s unfazed by her brush with celebrity status, and melancholically returns to her home in Dorchester, only to find her roommate’s dealer boyfriend threatening her roommate with a gun for ostensibly stealing his drug stash. In the ensuing incident, Eve intervenes, is shot in the head, and rushed to the emergency room. The page on which readers are shown the doctors operating on Eve is both profound and mysterious: we are given what are definitely a series of flashbacks and accompanying snippets of dialogue, but the captions only tangentially match the images upon which the are superimposed; and some of the characters are performing actions that contrast with their appearances later, in the more structured and formal flashback scene to 2003.
In that flashback, we are taken to a Halloween party held at the Coffin family mansion in Massachusetts the night of Wednesday, October 29, 2003, where a teenage Eve crashes her parents drunken party and escapes to her grandmothers grave to gather drugs and alcohol before rendezvousing with friends to perform a black magic ritual in the haunted forests outside of town. Whoa.
It’s a pretty standard story but it escapes cliché and artificiality with great artwork by Inaki Miranda, in which is rendered a paradoxically vibrant darkness that screams, quite literally, Halloween all over. There’s also a dose of arcana to the chain of Miranda’s images: Eve is in a small social setting with a few friends of hers (who are hooking up while she puts on her makeup, capturing the rife sexual characteristics of horror fiction without reveling in it for sex’s sake–that is, a perfect and erotic use of sexuality that is well-played and not overdone), but retreats to a dark library to retrieve a black book (of spells?) which is a family heirloom passed down generations from her Salem progenitors; before going back to an even larger social setting, her parent’s party. Showing this artwork in this pattern makes Eve simultaneously a character who is both social and mysterious, having an socially attractive demeanor that manifests in both her speech and action, and a dark personal side too, interested in secret rituals and ancient lore, not just parties and sex. The black book is, in this first issue, a location of the esoterica and the arcana of Coffin Hill, but Kittredge doesn’t play it up past its dexterity, for later, one of her friends disrespects the authenticity of the little volume. Ultimately Coffin Hill is in this way both a young adult escapade into romance/sexuality and an inheritor, however minor, or Lovecraft’s propensity for dark family secrets, esoterica, and arcana.
Sex plays later into the issue as well, but this is only revealed in retrospect. The morning after the ritual is performed, one of Eve’s friends is shown naked and covered in blood; and by issue three, in another flashback to the night of the ritual, a naked Eve appears too. Again, sex is a part of the story and more directly of the ritual, but the focus is overwhelmingly on the dark evil released that night by the ritual performed, and its haunting and malignant presence that effects Boston generally and the characters specifically, throughout (?) the rest of the series.
This is one of the better first issues I’ve come across recently, and the fact that it’s a good horror first issue makes it amazing on a whole other level as well. Part of this magnificence is that while an initial read-through is evidently entertaining and enrapturing, going back once you’ve completed the issue releases a subsequent level of delight, as readers are able to now deconstruct the tenuous flashback sequence from the beginning, when Eve is undergoing her emergency operation and a flood of images permeates the page; and comparing Eve’s three physical metamorphoses that occur all throughout this single issue: her initial melancholic and slightly depressed appearance, circa 2013 and pre-gunshot wound; the flashback to her teenage years, where she’s young and vibrant and sexy; and her final dark and imposing appearance, 2013 and post-gunshot wound, where her eye is blacked out and the reader is impressed with the idea that she’s staring directly into his or her soul–an enticing portent, perhaps, for what future issues will hold.
Kittredge shows her horror heritage and inspirations in what amounts to a tremendously well-balanced fusion of young adult fiction, paranormal romance, and Lovecraftian allusion. Coupling her story, plot, themes, and dialogue with Miranda’s above-par darkly vibrant artwork produces a first issue that holds huge promise and potential, and is enough to appeal to a fairly wide audience of readers spanning Twilight aficionados to average horror-movie goers to genre purists.]]> 3.67 2013 Coffin Hill (2013-) #1
author: Caitlin Kittredge
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/03/30
date added: 2014/04/01
shelves:
review:
The thrills, scares, and demented delight that make horror fiction such an appealing genre unfortunately often result in it being cashed in on. These quick horror fixes achieve virtually nothing and demolish any basis for the effect of real horror, with flaccid jumps, predictable and clichéd stories and characters, and a bare-bones prototype of a plot. Conversely, horror fiction that acknowledges the roots of the genre and incorporates them into an updated version while also (though not necessarily) bringing in multi-varied inspirations and elements from other interesting genres (e.g. to appeal to a mass audience), are some of the modern cream-of-the-horror-crop. World War Z (the film version, based on the book of the same title) catapults the horror staple of a zombie outbreak into the realm of international catastrophe and relief effort, while still employing a basic story of a man trying to protect his loved ones. The Ring brings Japanese horror to American shores, and is one of the best horror films of at least the last ten years. Franchises like Silent Hill blend J-Horror with David Lynch’s filmic surreality, and Paranormal Activity narrowed the focus of a “typical� demonic possession by examining it’s effect on a young couple who become found-footage detectives interested in demystifying that strange occurrences happening while they sleep. All of these articles of contemporary horror media acknowledge their distinctive roots and expand upon them, rather than cashing in on the sadly-standard alternative of mimicking the great archetypes of this genre. Coffin Hill falls into the former category, being the creative offspring of Caitlin Kittredge, a writer with a burgeoning career in young adult fiction and all of its concomitant romance and paranormal constituents, and having been reared on a healthy offering of H.P. Lovecraft’s weird horror.
Eve Coffin is a youngish rookie police officer in Boston who, in the year 2013, begins to become renowned after apprehending serial killer the Ice Fisher. She’s unfazed by her brush with celebrity status, and melancholically returns to her home in Dorchester, only to find her roommate’s dealer boyfriend threatening her roommate with a gun for ostensibly stealing his drug stash. In the ensuing incident, Eve intervenes, is shot in the head, and rushed to the emergency room. The page on which readers are shown the doctors operating on Eve is both profound and mysterious: we are given what are definitely a series of flashbacks and accompanying snippets of dialogue, but the captions only tangentially match the images upon which the are superimposed; and some of the characters are performing actions that contrast with their appearances later, in the more structured and formal flashback scene to 2003.
In that flashback, we are taken to a Halloween party held at the Coffin family mansion in Massachusetts the night of Wednesday, October 29, 2003, where a teenage Eve crashes her parents drunken party and escapes to her grandmothers grave to gather drugs and alcohol before rendezvousing with friends to perform a black magic ritual in the haunted forests outside of town. Whoa.
It’s a pretty standard story but it escapes cliché and artificiality with great artwork by Inaki Miranda, in which is rendered a paradoxically vibrant darkness that screams, quite literally, Halloween all over. There’s also a dose of arcana to the chain of Miranda’s images: Eve is in a small social setting with a few friends of hers (who are hooking up while she puts on her makeup, capturing the rife sexual characteristics of horror fiction without reveling in it for sex’s sake–that is, a perfect and erotic use of sexuality that is well-played and not overdone), but retreats to a dark library to retrieve a black book (of spells?) which is a family heirloom passed down generations from her Salem progenitors; before going back to an even larger social setting, her parent’s party. Showing this artwork in this pattern makes Eve simultaneously a character who is both social and mysterious, having an socially attractive demeanor that manifests in both her speech and action, and a dark personal side too, interested in secret rituals and ancient lore, not just parties and sex. The black book is, in this first issue, a location of the esoterica and the arcana of Coffin Hill, but Kittredge doesn’t play it up past its dexterity, for later, one of her friends disrespects the authenticity of the little volume. Ultimately Coffin Hill is in this way both a young adult escapade into romance/sexuality and an inheritor, however minor, or Lovecraft’s propensity for dark family secrets, esoterica, and arcana.
Sex plays later into the issue as well, but this is only revealed in retrospect. The morning after the ritual is performed, one of Eve’s friends is shown naked and covered in blood; and by issue three, in another flashback to the night of the ritual, a naked Eve appears too. Again, sex is a part of the story and more directly of the ritual, but the focus is overwhelmingly on the dark evil released that night by the ritual performed, and its haunting and malignant presence that effects Boston generally and the characters specifically, throughout (?) the rest of the series.
This is one of the better first issues I’ve come across recently, and the fact that it’s a good horror first issue makes it amazing on a whole other level as well. Part of this magnificence is that while an initial read-through is evidently entertaining and enrapturing, going back once you’ve completed the issue releases a subsequent level of delight, as readers are able to now deconstruct the tenuous flashback sequence from the beginning, when Eve is undergoing her emergency operation and a flood of images permeates the page; and comparing Eve’s three physical metamorphoses that occur all throughout this single issue: her initial melancholic and slightly depressed appearance, circa 2013 and pre-gunshot wound; the flashback to her teenage years, where she’s young and vibrant and sexy; and her final dark and imposing appearance, 2013 and post-gunshot wound, where her eye is blacked out and the reader is impressed with the idea that she’s staring directly into his or her soul–an enticing portent, perhaps, for what future issues will hold.
Kittredge shows her horror heritage and inspirations in what amounts to a tremendously well-balanced fusion of young adult fiction, paranormal romance, and Lovecraftian allusion. Coupling her story, plot, themes, and dialogue with Miranda’s above-par darkly vibrant artwork produces a first issue that holds huge promise and potential, and is enough to appeal to a fairly wide audience of readers spanning Twilight aficionados to average horror-movie goers to genre purists.
]]> Propinquity 18104367
"A novel close to unclassifiability." - Times on Sunday

Winner of the biennial Adelaide Festival Award - one of the world's great writing prizes.

"The depth of visionariness of this novel will reward many readers." - Dr Barry Westburg, Radio 5UV

"Plenty of wit, lots of exuberance. One of the most imaginative novels to appear for some years." - The Age

                     "An international rollercoaster." - Times on Sunday

A 2013 Amazon sensation, Propinquity is about the relationship between the "engagingly dangerous" Clive and the ethereal Samantha - a medievalist who discovers a secret tomb deep under Westminster Abbey, and isn't sure what to do about it.

The tomb contains Richard the Lionheart's queen, reputedly a carrier of the same gnostic illumination dispensed by Christ. Samantha and her lover begin unwinding its 800-year-old enigmas.

Propinquity is quite a page-turner (see Chapter 13's ritual sex among the tombs at the heart of Christendom), and contains some unexpected plot twists. Most strikingly, our heroic couple discover that the entombed queen may not actually be dead, but in a coma induced by herbs. So there's an international chase to find the antidote, lost for centuries, and bring her back to life: To watch those blue, medieval Saxon eyes open, and behold the modern world...

"If she can be revived, then a gnosis master walks the earth again... The prospect is too exciting to ignore. Macgregor is a masterful writer. His prose moves with an elegant, engaging cadence... A down-under view of the world that is laced with wit and cynicism." - John, NC, USA (Amazon)

"Whether Macgregor is describing the cold recesses of Westminster Abbey, the voodoo trail in Haiti, or buttering crumpets in Mullumbimby, the flowing assuredness of his prose sucks the reader in." - The Australian

"An engagingly dangerous hero." - Times on Sunday

                      "What a journey." - Linda Robinson (Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ)

"Has none of the cheap, frenetic thrills of Dan Brown's book, nor the mind-bending (read: confusing) complexity of Eco's Pendulum. Yet either of these books could have been inspired by Propinquity." - Denise Greene, USA (Amazon)]]> 372 John Macgregor 148418601X Samuel 0 to-read 3.70 1986 Propinquity
author: John Macgregor
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Student's Guide]]> 346037 248 Isabel Rivers 0415106478 Samuel 4 textbooks 3.56 1979 Classical and Christian Ideas in English Renaissance Poetry: A Student's Guide
author: Isabel Rivers
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1979
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/02/28
shelves: textbooks
review:
This is a great survey of the Classical and Christian elements that surface in the work of renaissance poets, and provides an crucial interpretive lens through which to view those works. Lay readers approaching English renaissance poetry would be tempted to view the great majority of it as a series of dogmatic enunciations of sermons and obscure theology, but in reality, English poetry is much more complex and not at all a simple elaboration of ideas commonly found in churches. The short chapters in this book convince the reader of that fact by offering a brief survey on the topic in question (e.g. "Protestant Theology," "Platonism and Neoplatonism," "View of History," etc.). Each chapter has extensive quotations in the back; they're not essential to get the author's main point, but they do help to drive her point home. Finally, the nature of the survey-style is that there's dozens of works mentioned throughout each chapter, meaning this book basically eliminates a huge amount of the research required when approaching a topic one knows little about. Get this book to have a short synopsis of major religious topics in English poetry and a list of works to consult if the professor requires anything further (NOTE: the quotes in the back are so perfectly suited to the topics that in theory they can be picked right out of the book and interwoven into a college essay. This might not go over well on upper division classes and definitely won't be accepted in Masters level work, but for lower-classmen at universities and most junior colleges it's probably a safe bet).
]]> Bright Lights, Big City 86147 Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn. With nothing but goodwill, controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches his reckoning point, where he is forced to acknowledge loss and, possibly, to rediscover his better instincts. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America.]]> 208 Jay McInerney Samuel 0 3.80 1984 Bright Lights, Big City
author: Jay McInerney
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2014/01/30
date added: 2014/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Adolescent (Vintage Classics)]]> 5700 The Adolescent (first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father’s wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and armed with a mysterious document that he believes gives him power over others. This new English version by the most acclaimed of Dostoevsky’s translators is a masterpiece of pathos and high comedy.]]> 580 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0375719008 Samuel 0 to-read 3.95 1875 The Adolescent (Vintage Classics)
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1875
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology]]> 94606
With this probing new contribution to the study of Christianity, Armando Maggi examines this dialogue, exploring how evil spirits interacted with mankind during the early modern period. Reading innumerable treatises on demonology written during the Renaissance, including Thesaurus exorcismorum, the most important record of early modern exorcisms, Maggi finds repeated attempts to define the language exchanged between the fallen progeny of Adam, and the most notorious fallen angel of them all, Satan. Using points of departure taken from de Certeau and Lacan, Maggi shows that Satan articulates his language first and foremost in the mind. More than speaking, the devil tries to make human beings understand his language and speak it themselves. Through sodomites, infidels, and witches, then, the devil is able to infect humanity as it appropriates his seductive rhetoric.]]> 256 Armando Maggi 0226501329 Samuel 0 to-read 3.86 2001 Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology
author: Armando Maggi
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dionysus: Myth and Cult 565355 288 Walter F. Otto 0253208912 Samuel 5 4.21 1933 Dionysus: Myth and Cult
author: Walter F. Otto
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1933
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/16
date added: 2014/01/17
shelves:
review:
Excellent introduction to Dionysus and the complexities of his cultus. If you've already read Euripides' "Bacchae," some of Otto's research and findings will be familiar to you, albeit much more contextualized and grounded in academia. If not, than read Euripides afterwards for an excellent tragedy that perfectly encapsulates the full range of the Dionysian. It's quite a treat for 21st century readers of the play to be able to study the complex and interesting background of a greek god and then read a play wherein the full spectrum of that god's characteristics are manifested in an intriguing plot and a horrifying conclusion. It's like reading a psych book on dreams before watching "Inception," or researching Eastern religion before watching "The Matrix." It just makes the dramatic treatment much more sublime.
]]> The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 30597
The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been adapted for film over a dozen times, in addition to numerous television and stage adaptations, such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney, a 1939 sound film with Charles Laughton, and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce (both as Quasimodo).

The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great change, which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures. The novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.]]> 510 Victor Hugo 0451527887 Samuel 4
His characters are somewhat "stock," but they're utilized to illustrate the driving passions of human life. You have to factor in the architectural aspects of the novel in order to understand Hugo's choice to portray his characters that way because you see, then, that the novel functions more like an epic poem portraying a civilization at a moment in history, i.e. a late-medieval Paris. Phoebus is a typical womanizer, probably failing to win the sympathy of most readers; except for the fact that Esmeralda is madly in love with him. Her love can be passed off as the infatuation of a sixteen-year-old girl (which it essentially is), but should this lower our empathy for her? Phoebus does not return her sentiment, but Esmeralda still undergoes torture in the name of his memory. Doesn't this make her "love" for him all the more real? All the more empathic? Yet she submits to her torturers ALMOST at the first touch of pain--but does this eradicate our pity for her? She's sixteen. She's in love, or thinks she is. She acts from her heart throughout the book, which in a way makes her incorruptible. Hugo's characters may be stock, but if anything, that heightens our ability to identify with them. He's not giving us absolutes, but extremes--people who are at the height of interpersonal dynamism, and are thus widely identifiable, across genders and ages and religions.

One more thing: everyone seems to get their panties in a knot over the mistranslation of the title. It seems it was originally called "Notre Dame de Paris" but was translated into English as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." I have two things to say to that:
1. The mistranslation was decades upon decades ago. The sheer amount of English readers who've read the novel, and the amount of critical work in English done that refers to the novel in it's mistranslated iteration, is enough to secure the mistranslation it's own place in the ENGLISH literary canon.
2. In addition to Esmeralda's complexity, she can also function metaphorically as a human representation of Paris throughout that city's history, eternally young and vibrant and victimized. Quasimodo, in a similar vein, could stand in for the monstrous, malformed cathedral of Notre Dame, which Hugo makes clear "watches over" the city of Paris just as the character Quasimodo always appears to rescue Esmeralda. All of which is to say that to call the novel "The HUNCHBACK of Notre Dame" is for all intents and purposes the same thing as calling the novel "NOTRE DAME de Paris."]]> 4.01 1831 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
author: Victor Hugo
name: Samuel
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1831
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/25
date added: 2014/01/05
shelves:
review:
Hugo has shaped a novel into a treatise on architecture. Inexplicably. I will never look at the skylines of L.A. or New York or Boston the same way again. Or any building, for that matter.

His characters are somewhat "stock," but they're utilized to illustrate the driving passions of human life. You have to factor in the architectural aspects of the novel in order to understand Hugo's choice to portray his characters that way because you see, then, that the novel functions more like an epic poem portraying a civilization at a moment in history, i.e. a late-medieval Paris. Phoebus is a typical womanizer, probably failing to win the sympathy of most readers; except for the fact that Esmeralda is madly in love with him. Her love can be passed off as the infatuation of a sixteen-year-old girl (which it essentially is), but should this lower our empathy for her? Phoebus does not return her sentiment, but Esmeralda still undergoes torture in the name of his memory. Doesn't this make her "love" for him all the more real? All the more empathic? Yet she submits to her torturers ALMOST at the first touch of pain--but does this eradicate our pity for her? She's sixteen. She's in love, or thinks she is. She acts from her heart throughout the book, which in a way makes her incorruptible. Hugo's characters may be stock, but if anything, that heightens our ability to identify with them. He's not giving us absolutes, but extremes--people who are at the height of interpersonal dynamism, and are thus widely identifiable, across genders and ages and religions.

One more thing: everyone seems to get their panties in a knot over the mistranslation of the title. It seems it was originally called "Notre Dame de Paris" but was translated into English as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." I have two things to say to that:
1. The mistranslation was decades upon decades ago. The sheer amount of English readers who've read the novel, and the amount of critical work in English done that refers to the novel in it's mistranslated iteration, is enough to secure the mistranslation it's own place in the ENGLISH literary canon.
2. In addition to Esmeralda's complexity, she can also function metaphorically as a human representation of Paris throughout that city's history, eternally young and vibrant and victimized. Quasimodo, in a similar vein, could stand in for the monstrous, malformed cathedral of Notre Dame, which Hugo makes clear "watches over" the city of Paris just as the character Quasimodo always appears to rescue Esmeralda. All of which is to say that to call the novel "The HUNCHBACK of Notre Dame" is for all intents and purposes the same thing as calling the novel "NOTRE DAME de Paris."
]]> Great Expectations 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 Samuel 4 3.78 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 4
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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 Samuel 5 3.96 1920 The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]> 732562 "Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere") is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written circa 1797 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 and featuring a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.

It relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience, fear, and fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, the use of narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, or the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood each different part of the poem.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772�1834) was an English poet, critic and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England, and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1792) and 'Kubla Khan' (1816), as well as his major prose work 'Biographia Literaria' (1817).]]> 77 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 0486223051 Samuel 5 3.95 1798 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
name: Samuel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1798
rating: 5
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