Ken's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 13 Sep 2024 07:56:04 -0700 60 Ken's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Works of P. G. Wodehouse. My Man Jeeves, Right Ho, Jeeves, The Man With Two Left Feet, A Damsel in Distress, Not George Washington, Mike, Poems, Stories]]> 8696760 Table of Contents

List of Works by Genre and Title
List of Works in Alphabetical Order
P. G. Wodehouse Biography

Novels
The Adventures of Sally
The Clicking of Cuthbert
A Damsel in Distress
The Coming of Bill
The Gem Collector
The Girl on the Boat
The Gold Bat
The Head of Kay's
Indiscretions of Archie
The Intrusion of Jimmy
Jill the Reckless or The Little Warrior
The Little Nugget
Love Among the Chickens Illustrated by Armand Both
Mike Illustrated by T. M. R. Whitwell
Mike and Psmith
A Man of Means
My Man Jeeves
Not George Washington. An Autobiographical Novel
Piccadilly Jim
The Pothunters
A Prefect's Uncle
The Prince and Betty
Psmith in the City
Psmith, Journalist
Right Ho, Jeeves
Something New
The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England
Tales of St. Austin's
Three Men and a Maid
Uneasy Money
The White Feather
William Tell Told Again Illustrated by Philip Dadd

Stories Collections
Death At The Excelsior
Jeeves Takes Charge and Other Stories
The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
The Man With Two Left Feet And Other Stories
The Politeness of Princes and Other School Stories

Stories
Ahead of Schedule
Archibald's Benefit
At Geisenheimer's
The Autograph Hunters
The Best Sauce
Bill the Bloodhound
Black for Luck
By Advice of Counsel
Concealed Art
A Corner in Lines
Crowned Heads
Death at the Excelsior
Deep Waters
Disentangling Old Duggie
Extricating Young Gussie
The Goal-Keeper and the Plutocrat
The Good Angel
The Guardian
An International Affair
In Alcala
Jeeves and the Chump Cyril
Jeeves in the Springtime
Jeeves Takes Charge
The Making of Mac's
The Man, the Maid, and the Miasma
The Man with Two Left Feet
The Man Upstairs
The Man Who Disliked Cats
The Mixer
Misunderstood
One Touch of Nature
Out of School
Pillingshot, Detective
The Politeness of Princes
Pots O'Money
The Romance of an Ugly Policeman
Rough-Hew Them How We Will
Ruth in Exile
A Sea of Troubles
Shields' And the Cricket Cup
Sir Agravaine a Tale of King Arthur's Round Table
Something to Worry About
The Test Case
Tom, Dick, and Harry
Three from Dunsterville
The Tuppenny Millionaire
When Doctors Disagree
When Papa Swore in Hindustani
Wilton's Holiday

Articles
Some Aspects of Game-Captaincy
An Unfinished Collection
The New Advertising
The Secret Pleasures of Reginald
My Battle with Drink
In Defense of Astigmatism
Photographers and Me
A Plea for Indoor Golf
The Alarming Spread of Poetry
My Life As a Dramatic Critic
The Agonies of Writing a Musical Comedy
On the Writing of Lyrics
The Past Theatrical Season

Poems
Damon and Pythias
The Haunted Tram

]]> 5067 P.G. Wodehouse 1607784254 Ken 5 4.49 2009 Works of P. G. Wodehouse. My Man Jeeves, Right Ho, Jeeves, The Man With Two Left Feet, A Damsel in Distress, Not George Washington, Mike, Poems, Stories
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Ken
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> Anna Karenina 151
«Nos capĂ­tulos iniciais de Anna KarĂ©nina, somos conduzidos, uma e outra vez, a um sentido de analogia musical. HĂĄ efeitos de contraponto e harmonia no desenvolvimento das principais tramas do “prelĂșdio Oblonskiâ€� (o acidente na estação ferroviĂĄria, a zombadora discussĂŁo sobre o divĂłrcio entre Vronski e a baronesa Chilton, o deslumbramento do fogo vermelho diante dos olhos de Anna). O mĂ©todo de Tolstoi Ă© polifĂłnico; mas as harmonias principais desen- volvem-se com uma tremenda força e amplitude. As tĂ©cnicas musicais e linguĂ­sticas nĂŁo podem comparar-se de um modo exato. Mas como poderĂ­amos elucidar de outro modo o sentimento de que as novelas de Tolstoi surgem de um princĂ­pio interior de ordem e vitalidade, enquanto as dos escritores menos importantes parecem alinhavadas?»

«Anna KarĂ©nina morre no mundo do romance; mas cada vez que lemos o livro ela ressuscita, e mesmo depois de o termos acabado adquire outra vida na nossa recordação. Em cada personagem literĂĄria existe algo da FĂ©nix imortal. AtravĂ©s das vidas perdurĂĄveis das suas personagens, a prĂłpria existĂȘncia de Tolstoi teve a sua eternidade.» [George Steiner, Tolstoi ou Dostoievski]]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0143035002 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.11 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Ken
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1878
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/29
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]]> Emma 468001
Her well-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealing Harriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton–and ends with her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life’s more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured.

Jane Austen’s comic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she could use it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us a dazzling gallery of characters–some pretentious or ridiculous, some admirable and moving, all utterly true.]]> 495 Jane Austen 067940581X Ken 5 currently-reading 4.09 1815 Emma
author: Jane Austen
name: Ken
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1815
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/10/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress]]> 2443 560 Mark Twain 0812967054 Ken 4 3.83 1869 The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress
author: Mark Twain
name: Ken
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1869
rating: 4
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]]> Pride and Prejudice 1886 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780141439518

Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.]]> 367 Jane Austen Ken 5 4.29 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Ken
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1813
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/02/14
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]]> The Bookshop 319388
With an Introduction by David Nicholls, international best-selling author of One Day.

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop—the only bookshop—in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighborsâ€� lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence’s warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted.

Only too late does she begin to suspect the a town that lacks a bookshop isn’t always a town that wants one.

Basis for the major motion picture starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy, and Patricia Clarkson.]]> 123 Penelope Fitzgerald 0395869463 Ken 5 currently-reading 3.41 1978 The Bookshop
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Ken
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1978
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/03/01
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]]> Hamlet 761292
The Second Quarto Text (1604-1605), edited to the highest standards of scholarship.

Additional passages found only in the 1623 Folio text.

Detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text.

A full, illustrated introduction to the play's historical, cultural and performance contexts.

An in-depth survey of critical approaches to the play.

A full index to the introduction and notes.

A select bibliography of references and further reading.

This is a fully self-contained free-standing volume which includes in its introduction and appendices all the supporting materials that a reader would expect to find in an Arden edition. It forms the core of a ground-breaking edition of three hamlet texts. A companion volume contains fully annotated editions of the 1603 First Quarto and the 1623 Folio texts.

Readers of both editions have, for the first time, a unique opportunity to study the three surviving texts of Hamlet experiences by Shakespeare's contemporaries, fully modernized and edited by leading scholars.]]> 613 William Shakespeare 1904271332 Ken 5 currently-reading 4.36 1601 Hamlet
author: William Shakespeare
name: Ken
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1601
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/03/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things]]> 15819023
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the revered writer through a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work. Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Byrne's portrait-organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources-explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds-the East Indies and revolutionary Paris-and different events-from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic-wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.

Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen's novel's often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world-a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine-hold significance in her emotional and artistic development. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.]]> 380 Paula Byrne 0061999091 Ken 5 currently-reading 4.02 2013 The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
author: Paula Byrne
name: Ken
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/03/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History]]> 20893481 Ìę
On the fiftieth anniversary of Churchill’s death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays—with characteristic wit and passion—a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity.
Ìę
Fearless on the battlefield, Churchill had to be ordered by the king to stay out of action on D-Day; he pioneered aerial bombing and few could match his experience in organizing violence on a colossal scale, Ìęyet he hated war and scorned politicians who had not experienced its horrors. He was the most famous journalist of his time and perhaps the greatest orator of all time, despite a lisp and chronic depression he kept at bay by painting. His maneuvering positioned America for entry into World War II, even as it ushered in England’s post-war decline. His openmindedness made him a trailblazer in health care, education, and social welfare, though he remained incorrigibly politically incorrect. Most of all, he was a rebuttal to the idea that history is the story of vast and impersonal forces; he is proof that one person—intrepid, ingenious, determined—can make all the difference.]]> 400 Boris Johnson 1594633029 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.01 2014 The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History
author: Boris Johnson
name: Ken
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/03/01
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]]> The Uncommon Reader 1096390 120 Alan Bennett 0374280967 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.75 2007 The Uncommon Reader
author: Alan Bennett
name: Ken
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/03/01
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]]> At Freddie's 108617 160 Penelope Fitzgerald 0395956188 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.55 1982 At Freddie's
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Ken
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/02/17
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]]> The Aspern Papers 214528 180 Henry James 0486419223 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.67 The Aspern Papers
author: Henry James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.67
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rating: 0
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date added: 2015/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring on the Girls: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy With Pictures to Prove It]]> 874817 P.G. Wodehouse Ken 0 currently-reading 3.82 1953 Bring on the Girls: The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy With Pictures to Prove It
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Ken
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/02/17
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]]> H is for Hawk 18803640
When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for ÂŁ800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, "H is for Hawk" is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for "The Once and Future King." It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.]]> 300 Helen Macdonald 0224097008 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.73 2014 H is for Hawk
author: Helen Macdonald
name: Ken
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/02/17
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]]> The Birthplace 10223382
Excerpt:
The patience was needed for the particular feature of the ordeal that, by the time the lively season was with them again, had disengaged itself as the sharpest -- the immense assumption of veracities and sanctities, of the general soundness of the legend with which everyone arrived. He was well provided, certainly, for meeting it, and he gave all he had, yet he had sometimes the sense of a vague resentment on the part of his pilgrims at his not ladling, out their fare with a bigger spoon.]]> 58 Henry James 1162688963 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.18 1903 The Birthplace
author: Henry James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.18
book published: 1903
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Monogram Murders (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #1)]]> 19367226 ‘I’m a dead woman, or I shall be soon
â€�

Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. ÌęShe is terrified â€� but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer.ÌęOnce she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.

Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim...]]> 320 Sophie Hannah Ken 0 currently-reading 3.44 2014 The Monogram Murders (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries, #1)
author: Sophie Hannah
name: Ken
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/10/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces]]> 18775462 432 Miles J. Unger 1451678746 Ken 5 currently-reading 3.93 2014 Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces
author: Miles J. Unger
name: Ken
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/10/07
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]]> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, ÌęI wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never lookedÌęthroughÌęthem for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain Ken 5 3.92 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
author: Mark Twain
name: Ken
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Tennyson: To Strive, To Seek, To Find]]> 13573405
John Batchelor's enthralling new biography presents a Tennyson who is stronger, more self-reliant, and more business-like than previous biographies have displayed. Like many successful Victorians he was a provincial determined to make good in the capital while retaining his provincial strengths; in his particular case he never lost his Lincolnshire accent and in his relationships he remained close to his roots. At the same time and through his Laureteship, he determined the literary taste of the mid-to late Victorian period; and then, strategically, and with a secure instinct for the market, he fed that taste. The ascendancy of Tennyson was neither the irresistible triumph of pure genius nor an accident of history; he skilfully crafted his own career and his relationship with his audience.]]> 448 John Batchelor 0701180587 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.88 2012 Tennyson: To Strive, To Seek, To Find
author: John Batchelor
name: Ken
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/05
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]]> Howards End 3102 246 E.M. Forster 0486424545 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.97 1910 Howards End
author: E.M. Forster
name: Ken
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1910
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The History of the National Theatre]]> 900603 John Elsom 0224013408 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.71 The History of the National Theatre
author: John Elsom
name: Ken
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Strong Poison (Lord Peter Wimsey, #6)]]> 246225 240 Dorothy L. Sayers 0060809086 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.13 1930 Strong Poison (Lord Peter Wimsey, #6)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Ken
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965]]> 746673 The Last Lion picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister—when his tiny island nation stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The Churchill conjured up by William Manchester and Paul Reid is a man of indomitable courage, lightning fast intellect, and an irresistible will to action.

The Last Lion brilliantly recounts how Churchill organized his nation's military response and defense; compelled FDR into supporting America's beleaguered cousins, and personified the "never surrender" ethos that helped the Allies win the war, while at the same time adapting himself and his country to the inevitable shift of world power from the British Empire to the United States.

More than twenty years in the making, The Last Lion presents a revelatory and unparalleled portrait of this brilliant, flawed, and dynamic leader. This is popular history at its most stirring.

]]> 1182 William Manchester 0316547700 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.42 2012 The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965
author: William Manchester
name: Ken
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel Ken 0 currently-reading 4.26 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Ken
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence]]> 16141925
The summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events in the story of our country’s founding. While the thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire, the British were dispatching the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic to crush the rebellion in the cradle. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on the run, improvising as history congealed around them. In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis meticulously examines the most influential figures in this propitious moment, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Britain’s Admiral Lord Richard and General William Howe. He weaves together the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other.
Revolutionary Summer tells an old story in a new way, with a freshness at once colorful and compelling.]]> 249 Joseph J. Ellis 0385349629 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.94 2013 Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
author: Joseph J. Ellis
name: Ken
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/13
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]]> Leonard Bernstein: A Life 1723382
Here is Leonard Bernstein, full scale and fully alive -- the child prodigy, the man, the composer, the teacher, the hugely charismatic personality, the lover, the American folk hero.

Everything is the child growing up in a Hasidic family in Massachusetts, his father a rabbi's son; his first piano at age nine ("I remember touching it ... It was my contact with life, with God"); his reluctant, brilliant, argumentative years at Harvard; the rocky but exhilarating start of his career (scant jobs, no money, but friendships with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Judy Holliday, Comden and Green, et al.); his spectacular debut (understudy into a star!) as substitute conductor at the New York Philharmonic; the great career over the years as a composer in classical music (the Kaddish Symphony, Chichester Psalms, Songfest), and in musical theater (On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story, Mass, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue).

We see the good father to his three children, the man who adored his wife, Felicia Montealegre, the man who adored men, the brilliant and generous mentor, the temperamental artist, the hypochondriac, the politician, the businessman, the Pied Piper ...

His life, his music, the great international cultural world in which he traveled, are richly and vividly portrayed in this magnificent biography, alive with music -- and with life.]]> 471 Meryle Secrest 0679407316 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.85 1994 Leonard Bernstein: A Life
author: Meryle Secrest
name: Ken
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare]]> 16085450 A foolproof, enormously fun method of teaching your children the classic works of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare’s plays are among the great bedrocks of Western civilization and contain the finest writing of the past 450 years. Many of the best novels, plays, poetry, and films in the English language produced since Shakespeare’s death in 1616—from Jane Austen to The Godfather—are heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s stories, characters, language, and themes.Ìę In a sense, his works are a kind of Bible for the modern world, bringing us together intellectuallyÌęand spiritually.ÌęÌęHamlet, Juliet, Macbeth, Ophelia, andÌęa vast array of other singular Shakespearean characters have become theÌęarchetypes of our consciousness. To know some Shakespeare provides a head start in life.Ìę InÌęHow to Teach Your Children Shakespeare,Ìęacclaimed playwright Ken Ludwig provides the tools you need to instill an understanding, and a love, of Shakespeare’s works in your children, and to have fun together along the way.

Ken Ludwig devised his methods while teaching his own children, and his approach isÌęfriendlyÌęand easy to master.ÌęBeginning withÌę memorizing short specific passages from Shakespeare's plays, this method then instillsÌęchildren with cultural references they will utilize for years to come. Ludwig’s approach includes understanding of the time period and implications of Shakespeare’s diction as well as the invaluable lessons behind hisÌęwords and stories.ÌęÌęColorfully incorporating the history of Shakespearean theater andÌęsociety,ÌęHow to Teach Your Children ShakespeareÌęguides readers on anÌęinformedÌęandÌęadventurousÌęjourney through the world in which the Bard wrote.

This book’s simple process allows anyone to impartÌęto childrenÌęthe wisdom of plays likeÌęAÌęMidsummer Night’s Dream,ÌęTwelfth Night, Macbeth,ÌęandÌęRomeo and Juliet. And there’s fun to be had along the way. Shakespeare novices and experts, and readers of all ages, will each find something delightfully irresistible inÌęHow to Teach Your Children Shakespeare.]]> 368 Ken Ludwig 0307951499 Ken 5 4.19 2013 How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare
author: Ken Ludwig
name: Ken
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/07/26
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]]> Robert Burns: A Life 131677 461 Ian McIntyre 156649205X Ken 4 3.80 1995 Robert Burns: A Life
author: Ian McIntyre
name: Ken
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2013/01/31
shelves:
review:
This is a fabulous biography of Burns. I'm learning about Burns and the period hand over fist. I read it all the way home from Scotland.
]]> Death Comes to Pemberley 12875355
It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.

Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story, as only she can write it.]]> 291 P.D. James 0307959856 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.32 2011 Death Comes to Pemberley
author: P.D. James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Spiders (Nero Wolfe, #22)]]> 77606 206 Rex Stout 0553277804 Ken 0 currently-reading 4.07 1953 The Golden Spiders (Nero Wolfe, #22)
author: Rex Stout
name: Ken
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Charles Dickens 11202585 527 Claire Tomalin 1594203091 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.86 2011 Charles Dickens
author: Claire Tomalin
name: Ken
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris]]> 10131648
After risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history. As David McCullough writes, "Not all pioneers went west." Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to know more about everything. There he saw black students with the same ambition he had, and when he returned home, he would become the most powerful, unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate, almost at the cost of his life.

Two staunch friends, James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse, worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Cooper writing and Morse painting what would be his masterpiece. From something he saw in France, Morse would also bring home his momentous idea for the telegraph.

Pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans launched his spectacular career performing in Paris at age 15. George P. A. Healy, who had almost no money and little education, took the gamble of a lifetime and with no prospects whatsoever in Paris became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day. His subjects included Abraham Lincoln.

Medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote home of his toil and the exhilaration in "being at the center of things" in what was then the medical capital of the world. From all they learned in Paris, Holmes and his fellow "medicals" were to exert lasting influence on the profession of medicine in the United States.

Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James were all "discovering" Paris, marveling at the treasures in the Louvre, or out with the Sunday throngs strolling the city's boulevards and gardens. "At last I have come into a dreamland," wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe, seeking escape from the notoriety Uncle Tom's Cabin had brought her. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris and even more atrocious nightmare of the Commune. His vivid account in his diary of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris (drawn on here for the first time) is one readers will never forget. The genius of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the son of an immigrant shoemaker, and of painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, three of the greatest American artists ever, would flourish in Paris, inspired by the examples of brilliant French masters, and by Paris itself.

Nearly all of these Americans, whatever their troubles learning French, their spells of homesickness, and their suffering in the raw cold winters by the Seine, spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris. McCullough tells this sweeping, fascinating story with power and intimacy, bringing us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens's phrase, longed "to soar into the blue." The Greater Journey is itself a masterpiece.]]> 558 David McCullough 1416571760 Ken 0 currently-reading 3.92 2011 The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
author: David McCullough
name: Ken
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/03/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Writer's Diary 14948
Included are entries that refer to her own writing, and those that are relevant to the raw material of her work, and, finally, comments on the books she was reading. The first entry included here is dated 1918 and the last, three weeks before her death in 1941. Between these points of time unfolds the private world—the anguish, the triumph, the creative vision—of one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

â€� A Writer’s Diary . . . is Virginia Woolf . . . The whole vibrates with the ups and downs of a passionate relationship . . . in the intensities, variations, alarms and excursions, panics and exaltations of her relationship to her art.”â€� New York Times Book Review

Edited and with a Preface by Leonard Woolf.]]> 355 Virginia Woolf 0156027917 Ken 5 currently-reading 4.16 1953 A Writer's Diary
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Ken
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/11/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Verdi: A Biography 95088 Italian nationalism that dictated that not only musical, but political considerations permeate his life and work. Here too is a glimpse into the composer's personal life--his turbulent relationships with his friends and family, his dedication to his music, his passion for his country.
Upon his death in 1901 there were scenes of national mourning for the man whose actions had become a model, and music an inspiration to all of Italy. With an eloquent foreword by Andrew Porter, A Biography brilliantly illuminates the life of the composer, patriot, and philanthropist who
not only created the operas that would prosper generations after the artist, but who also emboldened the cultural pride of a country fighting for its freedom.]]> 972 Mary Jane Phillips-Matz 0198166001 Ken 3 4.18 1993 Verdi: A Biography
author: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
name: Ken
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2009/12/20
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves:
review:
This a the one great monumental biography in English.
]]> <![CDATA[Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home]]> 6657509
Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time.

The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again.

A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. Wandering through her house that day, Hill's eyes were opened to how much of that life was stored in her home, neglected for years.

'Howards End is on the Landing' charts the journey of one of the nation's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.]]> 236 Susan Hill 1846682657 Ken 5 3.65 2009 Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
author: Susan Hill
name: Ken
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/12/10
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves:
review:
A wonderful book about books. Yet another reminder of how many books are on my shelves that I'd like to reread.
]]> <![CDATA[La's Orchestra Saves the World]]> 5066978
(Ellen Shapiro for People magazine)]]> 224 Alexander McCall Smith 184697092X Ken 4 3.69 2008 La's Orchestra Saves the World
author: Alexander McCall Smith
name: Ken
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/03
date added: 2010/08/04
shelves:
review:
I'm just starting it; and like all AM Smith's books, it has a
]]> Good Companions 6545958 656 J.B. Priestley 0749313927 Ken 5 4.08 1929 Good Companions
author: J.B. Priestley
name: Ken
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/02/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Leaven of Malice (Salterton Trilogy, #2)]]> 48270 272 Robertson Davies 0140054332 Ken 5 4.15 1954 Leaven of Malice (Salterton Trilogy, #2)
author: Robertson Davies
name: Ken
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1954
rating: 5
read at: 2009/12/20
date added: 2010/01/03
shelves:
review:
One of best comic novels of the 20th Century.
]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6148028 Sparks are igniting.
Flames are spreading.
And the Capitol wants revenge.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol—a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest that she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before . . . and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 391 Suzanne Collins 0439023491 Ken 3 4.34 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Ken
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/12/20
shelves:
review:
I loved the first book in the series and this is tons of fun so far.
]]> The Letters of Noël Coward 383438
The range, charm, and vitality of his talents—he was a playwright, actor, composer, librettist, lyricist, director, painter, writer, cabaret singer, wit—brought him into close encounters, and often close friendship, with the great and the gifted. He knew everybody who was anybody in the theater and in the movies, in literature and in politics, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Among those at his “marvelous partyâ€�: George Bernard Shaw . . . T. E. Lawrence . . . Virginia Woolf . . . the Churchills . . . Daphne Du Maurier . . . Greta Garbo (she wrote asking him to marry her; he wrote back saying he almost accepted) . . . Ian Fleming . . . W. Somerset Maugham . . . Marlene Dietrich (he advised her, “To hell with God damned ‘L’Amour.â€� It always causes far more trouble than it is worthâ€�) . . . Tallulah Bankhead . . . Edith Sitwell . . . FDR . . . Gertrude Lawrence (in a cable about Private Lives : “Have written delightful new comedy stop good part for you stop wonderful one for me stopâ€�), and many more.

There are letters about his productions of Bitter Sweet . . . Cavalcade . . . In Which We Serve . . . Brief Encounter . . . Private Lives, etc. . . . about his activities during World War II (he was a spy for the British government along with co-conspirator Cary Grant) . . . about the move to make him a knight that was endorsed in a personal letter from King George VI and blocked by Winston Churchill. Here are letters to and from his beloved mother, Violet . . . his longtime set and costume designer, Gladys Calthrop . . . his traveling companion from the 1930s on, Lord Amherst . . . and his business manager and onetime lover, Jack Wilson, in which he reveals his “secret heart.â€�

Profoundly savvy, witty, loving, bitchy, and often surprisingly moving, The Letters of NoĂ«l Coward gives us “Destiny’s Totâ€� at his crackling best. An irresistible portrait of a time, of the man himself, and of the world he lived in and enchanted.]]> 800 NoĂ«l Coward 0375423036 Ken 5 4.13 1958 The Letters of NoĂ«l Coward
author: Noël Coward
name: Ken
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2009/12/20
date added: 2009/12/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Summer Lightning (Blandings Castle, #4)]]> 46761 272 P.G. Wodehouse 0141181958 Ken 5 4.23 1929 Summer Lightning (Blandings Castle, #4)
author: P.G. Wodehouse
name: Ken
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1929
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/12/20
shelves:
review:
This is one of my favorite Wodehouse novels. It's the third or fourth time I've read it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century]]> 392563 The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains an obscure world for most people. While paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, and lines from T. S. Eliot are quoted on the yearbook pages of alienated teenagers across the land, twentieth-century classical music still sends ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, its influence can be felt everywhere. Atonal chords crop up in jazz. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalism has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward.

The Rest Is Noise shows why twentieth-century composers felt compelled to create a famously bewildering variety of sounds, from the purest beauty to the purest noise. It tells of a remarkable array of maverick personalities who resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with sweet sounds or battered them with dissonance, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art. The narrative goes from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.]]> 640 Alex Ross 0374249393 Ken 4 4.08 2007 The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
author: Alex Ross
name: Ken
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/12/10
shelves:
review:
The best book ever about 20th Century music.
]]> The Life of Samuel Johnson 688826

Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious Journals he wrote daily furnished him with first-rate material when he came to write his biography.

The result is a masterpiece that brims over with wit, anecdote and originality. Hailed by Macaulay as the best biography ever written and by Carlyle as a book 'beyond any other product of the eighteenth century', The Life of Samuel Johnson today continues to enjoy its status as a classic of the language.

This shortened version is based on the 1799 edition, the last in which the author had a hand.

]]> 1344 James Boswell 0679417176 Ken 5 currently-reading 3.76 1790 The Life of Samuel Johnson
author: James Boswell
name: Ken
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1790
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/09/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:
This, along with Pride and Prejudice, Tom Jones and a few prime Wodehouse novels, is my favorite book of all time and I'm always re-reading it.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932]]> 19809 When Winston Spencer Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, Imperial Britain stood at the splendid pinnacle of her power. Yet within a few years, the Empire would hover on the brink of a catastrophic new era. This first volume of the best-selling biography of the adventurer, aristocrat, soldier, and statesman covers the first 58 years of the remarkable man whose courageous vision guided the destiny of those darkly troubled times and who looms today as one of the greatest figures of the 20th century.

Black and white photos & illustrations.]]> 992 William Manchester 0385313489 Ken 5 4.31 1983 The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932
author: William Manchester
name: Ken
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1983
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/09/16
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing Playwright]]> 6662648 256 Simon Reade 1840028297 Ken 5 4.00 2009 Dear Mr. Shakespeare: Letters to a Jobbing Playwright
author: Simon Reade
name: Ken
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/16
date added: 2009/09/16
shelves:
review:
This is a fabulous analysis of all of Shakespeare's plays
]]> <![CDATA[Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare]]> 137717 430 Stephen Greenblatt 039332737X Ken 5 3.90 2004 Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Ken
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare)]]> 749394 Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing, and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Chapters on Shakespeare's life in Stratford and in London offer a fresh view of the development of the writer's career and personality. At the core of the book lies a magisterial study of the writings themselves--how Shakespeare set about writing a play, his relationships with the company of actors with whom he worked, his developing mastery of the literary and rhetorical skills that he learned at the Stratford grammar school, the essentially theatrical quality of the structure and language of his plays. Subsequent chapters trace the fluctuating fortunes of his reputation and influence. Here are accounts of adaptations, productions, and individual performances in England and, increasingly, overseas; of great occasions such as the Garrick
Jubilee and the tercentenary celebrations of 1864; of the spread of Shakespeare's reputation in France and Germany, Russia and America, and, more recently, the Far East; of Shakespearian discoveries and forgeries; of critical reactions, favorable and otherwise, and of scholarly activity; of paintings, music, films and other works of art inspired by the plays; of the plays' use in education and the political arena, and of the pleasure and intellectual stimulus that they have given to an increasingly international public.
Shakespeare, said Ben Jonson, was not of an age but for all time. This is a book about him for our time.]]> 480 Stanley Wells 0195160932 Ken 4 4.19 2003 Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare)
author: Stanley Wells
name: Ken
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3)]]> 3590 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the Strand magazine, in which they were first published, and won immense popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The detective is at the height of his powers and the volume is full of famous cases, including 'The Red-Headed League', 'The Blue Carbuncle', and 'The Speckled Band'.
The editor of this volume, Richard Lancelyn Green is editor of The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes and The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. With John Michael Gibson, he compiled the Soho Series Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle.
1. A Scandal In Bohemia
2. The Red-Headed League
3. A Case Of Identity
4. The Boscombe Valley Mystery
5. The Five Orange Pips
6. The Man With The Twisted Lip
7. The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle
8. The Adventure Of The Speckled Band
9. The Adventure Of The Engineer's Thumb
10. The Adventure Of The Noble Bachelor
11. The Adventure Of The Beryl Coronet
12. The Adventure Of The Copper Beaches]]> 389 Arthur Conan Doyle Ken 5 4.32 1892 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, #3)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Ken
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1892
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)]]> 8921 256 Arthur Conan Doyle Ken 5 4.16 1902 The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Ken
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1902
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> The Final Solution 16696
What is the meaning of the mysterious string of German numbers the bird spews out - a top secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case - the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot - beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth?

A short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.]]> 131 Michael Chabon 0060777109 Ken 3 3.35 2004 The Final Solution
author: Michael Chabon
name: Ken
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rumpole and the Reign of Terror]]> 54376 Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders â€� John Mortimer’s first Rumpole novel ever â€� debuted last year, devoted fans came to it in droves. Now, just in time for Christmas, Mortimer returns with another Rumpole novel to tackle a truly relevant topic with his signature wit and style.

While defending a mind-numbingly dull theft charge, Rumpole finds that the new terrorist laws have hamstrung his beloved courts. Meanwhile, a Pakistani doctor has been imprisoned without charge or trial under suspicion of aiding al Qaeda in its plans for a terrorist attack. With the doctor’s wife begging him to help her husband, the Great Defender is determined to bring the case before a jury.

Trouble is also brewing at home as Hilda â€� She Who Must Be Obeyed â€� sits down to write her own memoirs describing her view of Rumpole and her own love life. Rumpole’s battle on the home front threatens to derail his case but where there’s a Rumpole, there’s a way!]]> 192 John Mortimer 0670038040 Ken 3 4.07 2006 Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
author: John Mortimer
name: Ken
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rumpole of the Bailey (Rumpole of the Bailey, #1)]]> 779522
Horace Rumpole, the irreverent, iconoclastic, claret-swilling, poetry-spouting barrister at law, is among the most beloved characters of English crime literature. He is not a particularly gifted attorney, nor is he particularly fond of the law by courts if it comes to that, but he'd rather be swinging at a case than bowing to his wife Hilda, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.

In this first title of the popular series featuring Rumpole, all of the major characters who occupy the Rumpole stories make their introductions: the sneaky, slightly effeminate Erskine-Brown, the bumbling Guthrie Featherstone and various and sundry other lawyers and clerks whose lives weave in and out of these stories.

These six stories include: Rumpole and the Younger Generation, Rumpole and the Alternative Society, Rumpole and the Honourable Member, Rumpole and the Married Lady, Rumpole and the Learned Friends, and Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade.]]> 208 John Mortimer 0140046704 Ken 5 4.00 1978 Rumpole of the Bailey (Rumpole of the Bailey, #1)
author: John Mortimer
name: Ken
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (Rumpole of the Bailey #13)]]> 131260 224 John Mortimer 0143036114 Ken 4 3.90 2004 Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (Rumpole of the Bailey #13)
author: John Mortimer
name: Ken
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Clouds of Witness (Lord Peter Wimsey, #2)]]> 192888 288 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043532 Ken 5 3.98 1926 Clouds of Witness (Lord Peter Wimsey, #2)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Ken
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1926
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Busman's Honeymoon (Lord Peter Wimsey, #13)]]> 116971
Dramatised by Alistair Beaton for BBC Radio 4 with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey, Sarah Badel as Harriet Vane and Peter Jones as Bunter. It was first broadcast from 2 January to 7 February 1983.

2 CDs. 2 hrs 25 mins.]]> 409 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043516 Ken 3 4.23 1937 Busman's Honeymoon (Lord Peter Wimsey, #13)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Ken
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)]]> 93575 501 Dorothy L. Sayers 0061043494 Ken 5 4.20 1935 Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Ken
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1935
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Black Mountain (Nero Wolfe #24)]]> 77595 9780553272918

Vowing to avenge the murder of his dear friend, Marko Vukcic, Nero Wolfe, along with his faithful partner, Archie Goodwin, journey to the hazardous mountains of Montenegro.]]> 176 Rex Stout Ken 4 4.01 1954 The Black Mountain (Nero Wolfe #24)
author: Rex Stout
name: Ken
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Some Buried Caesar (Nero Wolfe, #6)]]> 77621
The feud is about a restauranteur's plan to buy the stud and barbecue it as a publicity stunt. It may be in poor taste, but it isn't a crime . . . until Hickory Caesar Grindon, the soon-to-be-beefsteak bull, is found pawing the remains of a family scion. Wolfe is sure the idea that Caesar is the murderer is, well, pure bull. Now the great detective is on the horns of a dilemma as a veritable stampede of suspects--including a young lady Archie has his eye on--conceals a special breed of killer who wins a blue ribbon for sheer audacity.

A grand master of the form, Rex Stout was one of America's greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained--and puzzled--millions of mystery fans around the world. Along with Archie Goodwin, his perambulatory man-about-town, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth Nero Wolfe stars in seventy-three cases of crime and detection.]]> 274 Rex Stout 0553254642 Ken 4 4.16 1938 Some Buried Caesar (Nero Wolfe, #6)
author: Rex Stout
name: Ken
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Death of a Dude (Nero Wolfe, #44)]]> 77600 210 Rex Stout 0553762958 Ken 4 3.88 1969 Death of a Dude (Nero Wolfe, #44)
author: Rex Stout
name: Ken
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Too Many Cooks (Nero Wolfe, #5)]]> 77627 179 Rex Stout 0553763067 Ken 5 4.09 1938 Too Many Cooks (Nero Wolfe, #5)
author: Rex Stout
name: Ken
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1938
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/07/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Ken 2 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Ken
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at:
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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 Ken 5 3.99 1961 Catch-22
author: Joseph Heller
name: Ken
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 5
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]]> The Fixer 3066
The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel—one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.

Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.]]> 335 Bernard Malamud 0374529388 Ken 3 3.96 1966 The Fixer
author: Bernard Malamud
name: Ken
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1966
rating: 3
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]]> A Glass of Blessings 226971 256 Barbara Pym 0330334972 Ken 4 3.91 1958 A Glass of Blessings
author: Barbara Pym
name: Ken
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1958
rating: 4
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]]> Excellent Women 178565 Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those “excellent women,â€� the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 014310487X Ken 4 3.91 1952 Excellent Women
author: Barbara Pym
name: Ken
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1952
rating: 4
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]]> Lucky Jim 395182 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers back in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.â€� Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”]]> 296 Kingsley Amis 0140186301 Ken 5 3.77 1954 Lucky Jim
author: Kingsley Amis
name: Ken
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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]]> The Spoils of Poynton 193772
The power struggle that ensues between the three women leaves Owen vacillating. What is at stake is not the mere possession of tables and chairs; it is, for Fleda, a conflict between aesthetic ideals, ethical imperatives, and her innermost feelings, in which she risks betraying, and being betrayed by, all that she holds most dear.

About the For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.]]> 252 Henry James 0809594048 Ken 4 3.70 1896 The Spoils of Poynton
author: Henry James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1896
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Europeans (Penguin Popular Classics)]]> 137277
Its wit, gaiety, and what Rebecca West calls its "clear sunlit charm" have made this masterly short novel one of the most popular of James's novels.]]> 192 Henry James 0140621954 Ken 4 3.62 1878 The Europeans (Penguin Popular Classics)
author: Henry James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1878
rating: 4
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]]> The Portrait of a Lady 264
]]> 797 Henry James 0141439637 Ken 5 3.79 1881 The Portrait of a Lady
author: Henry James
name: Ken
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1881
rating: 5
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]]> The Pickwick Papers 229432 The Pickwick Papersâ€�-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters & incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour & literary invention.]]> 801 Charles Dickens Ken 5 3.83 1837 The Pickwick Papers
author: Charles Dickens
name: Ken
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1837
rating: 5
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]]> Nicholas Nickleby 325085 817 Charles Dickens 0140435123 Ken 4 3.92 1839 Nicholas Nickleby
author: Charles Dickens
name: Ken
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1839
rating: 4
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]]> A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Ken 5 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Ken
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Ken 5 3.82 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
author: Mark Twain
name: Ken
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling]]> 99329

ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęIncludes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, notes, glossary, and an appendix of Fielding's revisions
ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęIntroduction discusses narrative tecniques and themes, the context of eighteenth-century fiction and satire, and the historical and political background of the Jacobite revolution
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 975 Henry Fielding 0140436227 Ken 5 3.75 1749 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
author: Henry Fielding
name: Ken
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1749
rating: 5
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]]>