Jadine's bookshelf: all

Jadine's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 21:30:27 -0700 60 Jadine's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women �� and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—T�ܰ��Ա��
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Jadine 3 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Laughter and Forgetting]]> 240976 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970's. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than just its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed and experienced.]]> 313 Milan Kundera 0060932147 Jadine 0 4.01 1979 The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

author: Milan Kundera
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Dubliners 11012 I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'.

Joyce's aim was to tell the truth �� to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.

Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners �� a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled �� and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.]]> 352 James Joyce Jadine 0 3.86 1914

author: James Joyce
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1914
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Sabrina 37533587 How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Rate your overall mood from 1 to 5, 1 being poor. Rate your stress level from 1 to 5, 5 being severe. Are you experiencing depression or thoughts of suicide? Is there anything in your personal life that is affecting your duty?

When Sabrina disappears, an airman in the U.S. Air Force is drawn into a web of suppositions, wild theories, and outright lies. He reports to work every night in a bare, sterile fortress that serves as no protection from a situation that threatens the sanity of Teddy, his childhood friend and the boyfriend of the missing woman. Sabrina’s grieving sister, Sandra, struggles to fill her days as she waits in purgatory. After a videotape surfaces, we see devastation shown through a cinematic lens, as true tragedy is distorted when fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists begin to interpret events to fit their own narratives.

The follow-up to Nick Drnaso’s Beverly, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Sabrina depicts a modern world devoid of personal interaction and responsibility, where relationships are stripped of intimacy through glowing computer screens. Presenting an indictment of our modern state, Drnaso contemplates the dangers of a fake-news climate. Timely and articulate, Sabrina leaves you gutted, searching for meaning in the aftermath of disaster.]]> 204 Nick Drnaso 177046316X Jadine 0 3.83 2018 Sabrina

author: Nick Drnaso
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> The Complete Maus 15195
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust�� (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.]]> 296 Art Spiegelman 0141014083 Jadine 0 4.57 1980 The Complete Maus

author: Art Spiegelman
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
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 Jadine 0 3.83 2001 The Corrections

author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/14
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Shantaram 33600
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.]]> 936 Gregory David Roberts 192076920X Jadine 0 to-read 4.27 2003 Shantaram

author: Gregory David Roberts
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thinking, Fast and Slow 11468377 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.]]> 499 Daniel Kahneman 0374275637 Jadine 0 currently-reading 4.17 2011

author: Daniel Kahneman
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Hotel du Lac 251665
But instead of peace and rest, Edith finds herself sequestered at the hotel with an assortment of love's casualties and exiles. She also attracts the attention of a worldly man determined to release her unused capacity for mischief and pleasure. Beautifully observed, witheringly funny, Hotel du Lac is Brookner at her most stylish and potently subversive.]]> 184 Anita Brookner 0679759328 Jadine 0 currently-reading 3.59 1984

author: Anita Brookner
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Dracula 17245 You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.

In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.

This Norton Critical Edition includes a rich selection of background and source materials in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.

Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.]]> 488 Bram Stoker 0393970124 Jadine 0 currently-reading 4.02 1897 Dracula

author: Bram Stoker
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Purity 23754479
Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother �� her only family �� is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world �� including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters �� Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers �� and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.]]> 563 Jonathan Franzen 0374239215 Jadine 0 3.62 2015 Purity

author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]> 311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Jadine 0 currently-reading 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

author: Margaret Atwood
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Scanner Darkly 756984
The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among...]]> 220 Philip K. Dick Jadine 0 currently-reading 4.05 1977 A Scanner Darkly

author: Philip K. Dick
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Me Talk Pretty One Day 4137 272 David Sedaris 0349113912 Jadine 0 4.01 2000

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy �� the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Jadine 0 currently-reading 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

author: Ken Kesey
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/04/14
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Oxford Bookworms Library Level 5)]]> 2410819
Like Rick Deckard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They're machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill.]]> 128 Andy Hopkins 0194792226 Jadine 0 to-read 3.92 2000 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Oxford Bookworms Library Level 5)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Oxford Bookworms Library Level 5)

author: Andy Hopkins
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bachman Books 1049233
The Long Walk: A chilling look at the ultra-conservative America of the future where a gruelling 450-mile marathon is the ultimate sports competition.

Roadwork: An immovable man refuses to surrender to the irresistible force of progress.

The Running Man: TV's future-favorite game show, where contestants are hunted to death in the attempt to win a billion dollar jackpot.

Don't miss the other Bachman titles: Thinner, The Regulators and Blaze ]]> 978 Richard Bachman 0340952253 Jadine 0 to-read 4.15 1986 The Bachman Books

author: Richard Bachman
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fahrenheit 451 17470674
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

--back cover]]> 227 Ray Bradbury 0007491565 Jadine 0 to-read 4.01 1953 Fahrenheit 451

author: Ray Bradbury
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Jadine 4 4.04 1942 The Stranger

author: Albert Camus
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/04/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Runaway: Stories 14280 Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises, from the title story about a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband, to three stories about a woman named Juliet and the emotions that complicate the luster of her intimate relationships.

In Munro’s hands, the people she writes about–women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children–become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own. (back cover)

Runaway
Chance
Soon
Silence
Passion
Trespasses
Tricks
Powers]]> 335 Alice Munro 1400077915 Jadine 0 to-read 4.00 2004 Runaway: Stories

author: Alice Munro
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (Hainish Cycle, #9)]]> 68021 362 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060509066 Jadine 0 to-read 4.33 2002

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (Hainish Cycle, #9)

author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks]]> 3297175
The next day, his clothes stained with blood, Carr went to his friends Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac for help. Doing so, he involved them in the crime. A few months later, they were caught up in the crime in a different way.

Something about the murder captivated the Beats, especially Kerouac and Burroughs, who decided to collaborate on a novel about the events of the previous summer. At the time, the two authors were still unknown, yet to write anything of note. Narrating alternating chapters, they pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and violence, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives.

They submitted their manuscript—called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks after an absurd line from a radio bulletin about a circus fire—to publishers, but it was rejected and confined to a filing cabinet for decades. Finally published, at long last, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks tells the story of Ramsay Allen and the object of his fixation, the charismatic, idealistic young Phillip Tourian. Phillip and his friends drink and dream in the bars and apartments of the West Village, until, with his friend Mike Ryko (Kerouac's narrator), he hatches a plan to ship out as a merchant marine. They'll catch a boat for France and jump ship, then make their way through the front to Paris.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an engaging, fast-paced read that shows the two authors' developing styles. It is also an incomparable artifact, a legendary novel from the dawn of the Beat movement by two hugely influential writers.]]> 214 William S. Burroughs 0802118763 Jadine 0 to-read 3.74 1945 And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

author: William S. Burroughs
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nine Stories 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé �� with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]> 302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Jadine 0 to-read 4.20 1953 Nine Stories

author: J.D. Salinger
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 51496 139 Robert Louis Stevenson 0451528956 Jadine 0 to-read 3.84 1886

author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1886
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Jadine 0 to-read 4.11 1969

author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia]]> 13651 387 Ursula K. Le Guin Jadine 0 to-read 4.24 1974

author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Solar 7140754
When Michael’s personal and professional lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways, an opportunity presents itself in the guise of an invitation to travel to New Mexico. Here is a chance for him to extricate himself from his marital problems, reinvigorate his career, and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. Can a man who has made a mess of his life clean up the messes of humanity?

A complex novel that brilliantly traces the arc of one man’s ambitions and self-deceptions, Solar is a startling, witty, and stylish new work from one of the world’s great writers.]]> 287 Ian McEwan Jadine 3 3.28 2010 Solar

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2009/04/12
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Atrocity Exhibition 70240 136 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Jadine 3 3.83 1969

author: J.G. Ballard
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2012/11/15
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Gone Girl 13643133 What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war...]]> 512 Gillian Flynn Jadine 0 to-read 4.10 2012 Gone Girl

author: Gillian Flynn
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fatherland 56842
The naked body of an old man floats in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. In one week it will be Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday. A terrible conspiracy is starting to unravel��

What if Hitler had won?

Fatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.

As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth -- a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.]]> 380 Robert Harris 0061006629 Jadine 0 to-read 4.01 1992 Fatherland

author: Robert Harris
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Palo Alto 7840834 Palo Alto is the debut of a surprising and powerful new literary voice. Written with an immediate sense of place--claustrophobic and ominous--James Franco's collection traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. In "Lockheed" a young woman's summer--spent working a dull internship--is suddenly upended by a spectacular incident of violence at a house party.�� In "American History" a high school freshman attempts to impress a girl during a classroom skit with a realistic portrayal of a slave owner—only to have his feigned bigotry avenged. In "I Could Kill Someone," a lonely teenager buys a gun with the aim of killing his high school tormentor, but begins to wonder about his bully's own inner life.

These linked stories, stark, vivid, and disturbing, are a compelling portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth.

]]> 208 James Franco 1439163146 Jadine 3 3.00 2009 Palo Alto

author: James Franco
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2015/01/02
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Perks of Being a Wallflower]]> 22628 offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(back cover)]]> 213 Stephen Chbosky Jadine 4 4.24 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower

author: Stephen Chbosky
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2015/01/08
date added: 2015/01/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1)]]> 2113260
Eddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.

For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey...]]> 400 Jasper Fforde 0670019631 Jadine 0 to-read 4.15 2009 Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1)

author: Jasper Fforde
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Jadine 0 to-read 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jude the Obscure 50798 310 Thomas Hardy 0486452433 Jadine 4 3.82 1895

author: Thomas Hardy
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conversations with Ian McEwan (Literary Conversations Series)]]> 7606418
McEwan's candid and forthcoming discussions with notable contemporary writers---Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Ian Hamilton, David Remnick, and Stephen Pinker---provide readers with the most in-depth portrait available of the author and his works.

Readers will find McEwan to be just as engaging, humorous, and intelligent as his writings suggest. The volume includes interviews from British, Spanish, French, and American sources, two interviews previously available only in audio format, and a new interview conducted with the book's editor.]]> 224 Ryan Roberts 1604734205 Jadine 0 to-read 4.04 2010 Conversations with Ian McEwan (Literary Conversations Series)

Conversations with Ian McEwan (Literary Conversations Series)

author: Ryan Roberts
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Short Stories 2108865 First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets. The former was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award.]]> 302 Ian McEwan 0224042580 Jadine 0 to-read 3.78 1975

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Innocent 6868 226 Ian McEwan Jadine 0 to-read 3.70 1990

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Child in Time 6869 The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.]]> 263 Ian McEwan 0385497520 Jadine 0 to-read 3.60 1987

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Amsterdam 6862 Amsterdam is��"a dark tour de force, perfectly fashioned" ( The New York Times ) from the bestselling author of Atonement.

On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen��

Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons .]]> 208 Ian McEwan 0385494246 Jadine 0 to-read 3.46 1998 Amsterdam

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Cement Garden 9957 144 Ian McEwan 0099468387 Jadine 0 to-read 3.56 1978

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Comfort of Strangers 6872 128 Ian McEwan 0679749845 Jadine 0 to-read 3.44 1981

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Saturday 5015
Later, as Perowne makes his way through London streets filled with hundreds of thousands of anti-war protestors, a minor car accident brings him into a confrontation with Baxter, a fidgety, aggressive young man, on the edge of violence. To Perowne's professional eye, there appears to be something profoundly wrong with him. But it is not until Baxter makes a sudden appearance as the Perowne family gathers for a reunion, that Henry's fears seem about to be realised.]]> 289 Ian McEwan 1400076196 Jadine 0 to-read 3.64 2005 Saturday

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sweet Tooth 13562049 In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan's first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.

Cambridge student Serena Frome's beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England's legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named "Sweet Tooth."

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.

Once again, Ian McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.]]> 320 Ian McEwan Jadine 0 to-read 3.41 2012 Sweet Tooth

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On Chesil Beach 815309
It is July 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence’s response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence’s anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite.

Ian McEwan has caught with understanding and compassion the innocence of Edward and Florence at a time when marriage was presumed to be the outward sign of maturity and independence. On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from McEwan—a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.]]> 166 Ian McEwan 0224081187 Jadine 0 to-read 3.61 2007

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fight Club 825840 218 Chuck Palahniuk 0099765217 Jadine 0 to-read 4.11 1996

author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)]]> 215224 252 Arthur C. Clarke 1857236645 Jadine 0 to-read 4.21 1968

2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)

author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shoplifting from American Apparel]]> 6096464
From VIP rooms in hip New York City clubs to central booking in Chinatown, from New York University�� s Bobst Library to a bus in someone’s backyard in a college-town in Florida, from Bret Easton Ellis to Lorrie Moore, and from Moby to Ghost Mice, it explores class, culture, and the arts in all their American forms through the funny, journalistic, and existentially-minded narrative of someone trying to both “not be a bad person�� and “find some kind of happiness or something,�� while he is driven by his failures and successes at managing his art, morals, finances, relationships, loneliness, confusion, boredom, future, and depression.]]> 112 Tao Lin 1933633786 Jadine 0 to-read 3.16 2009 Shoplifting from American Apparel

author: Tao Lin
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Revolutionary Road 48328 355 Richard Yates Jadine 0 to-read 3.92 1961

author: Richard Yates
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prince 28862
1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people.
2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him.
3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose.
4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory.
5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression.
6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope.
7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters,
8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure.
9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice
10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.]]> 144 Niccolò Machiavelli 0937832383 Jadine 3 3.85 1513 The Prince

author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
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 Jadine 0 to-read 3.86 1615 Don Quixote

author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1615
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Vindication of the Rights of Woman]]> 224387 269 Mary Wollstonecraft 0141441259 Jadine 2 3.92 1792

author: Mary Wollstonecraft
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1792
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Jadine 0 to-read 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse

author: Virginia Woolf
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]> 7588 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.]]> 329 James Joyce 0142437344 Jadine 0 to-read 3.64 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

author: James Joyce
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1916
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Jadine 0 to-read 4.08 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> For Whom the Bell Tolls 46170 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Jadine 0 to-read 3.98 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)]]> 5043 Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

For the TV tie-in edition with the same ISBN go to this Alternate Cover Edition
]]> 976 Ken Follett 045122213X Jadine 0 to-read 4.34 1989 The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)

The Pillars of the Earth (Kingsbridge, #1)

author: Ken Follett
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway Jadine 0 to-read 3.81 1926

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Name of the Rose 119073 552 Umberto Eco 0156001314 Jadine 0 to-read 4.13 1980

author: Umberto Eco
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> On the Road 70401 307 Jack Kerouac 0140042598 Jadine 0 to-read 3.63 1957

author: Jack Kerouac
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Love in the Time of Cholera 9712 348 Gabriel García Márquez 140003468X Jadine 3 3.92 1985

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> In Cold Blood 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 Jadine 0 to-read 4.08 1966

author: Truman Capote
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bell Jar 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Jadine 0 to-read 4.05 1963

author: Sylvia Plath
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> East of Eden 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

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

author: John Steinbeck
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Farewell to Arms 10799 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.]]> 293 Ernest Hemingway 0099910101 Jadine 0 to-read 3.83 1929

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Woman in Black 37034
Alas, we cannot give you Austen, but Susan Hill's remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as our era can provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north from London to attend the funeral and settle the affairs of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the deserted nursery, the eerie sound of a pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and most dreadfully--and for Kipps most tragically--The Woman In Black.

The Woman In Black is both a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror and a delicious spine-tingler--proof positive that this neglected genre, the ghost story, isn't dead after all.]]> 138 Susan Hill 1567921892 Jadine 3 3.76 1983 The Woman in Black

author: Susan Hill
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> A Doll's House 37793

A Doll's House (1879), is a masterpiece of theatrical craft which, for the first time portrayed the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian middle class marriage on the stage. The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life".��

The Student Edition contains these exclusive features:

·�� A chronology of the playwright's life and work

·�� An introduction giving the background of the play

·�� Commentary on themes, characters. language and style

·�� Notes on individual words and phrases in the text

·�� Questions for further study

·�� Bibliography for further reading.

��

]]> 122 Henrik Ibsen 1406914835 Jadine 3 3.76 1879 A Doll's House

author: Henrik Ibsen
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1879
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Tess of the D’Urbervilles 32261 here and here.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousin�� Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.]]> 518 Thomas Hardy Jadine 4 3.83 1891 Tess of the D’Urbervilles

author: Thomas Hardy
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1891
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

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

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Jadine 4 4.17 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest

author: Oscar Wilde
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays]]> 4143 National Enquirer, Sedaris’s collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.

David Sedaris made his debut on NPR’s Morning Edition with “SantaLand Diaries��, recounting his strange-but-true experiences as an elf at Macy’s, and soon became one of the show’s most popular commentators. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behavior. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life, and anything can happen.

Parade --
Music for lovers --
The last you'll hear from me --
My manuscript --
Firestone --
We get along --
Glen's homophobia newsletter vol. 3, no. 2 --
Don's story --
Season's greeting to our friends and family!!! --
Jamboree --
After Malison --
Barrel fever --
Diary of a smoker --
Giantess --
The curly kind --
SantaLand diaries]]> 196 David Sedaris 0316779423 Jadine 0 to-read 3.80 1994 Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules]]> 4140
A bestseller in its own right and a must-have for fans of the #1 bestselling author David Sedaris, a collection of his favorite short fiction.

David Sedaris is an exceptional reader. Alone in his apartment, he reads stories aloud to the point he has them memorized. Sometimes he fantasizes that he wrote them. Sometimes, when they’re his very favorite stories, he’ll fantasize about reading them in front of an audience and taking credit for them. The audience in these fantasies always loves him and gives him the respect he deserves.

David Sedaris didn’t write the stories in Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules . But he did read them. And he liked them enough to hand pick them for this collection of short fiction. Featuring such notable writers as Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Thompson, and Tobias Wolff, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules includes some of the most influential and talented short story writers, contemporary and classic.

Perfect for fans who suffer from Sedaris fever, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules will tide them over and provide relief.
2 hrs 56 mins]]> 256 David Sedaris 0743276124 Jadine 0 to-read 3.68 2005

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> SantaLand Diaries 178357 138 David Sedaris 0349119759 Jadine 0 to-read 4.33 1998

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Naked 4138 Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its proverbial ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview—a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.]]> 304 David Sedaris Jadine 0 to-read 4.10 1997 Naked

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim]]> 10176 --davidsedarisbooks.com]]> 257 David Sedaris 0965904830 Jadine 0 to-read 4.12 2004

author: David Sedaris
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything]]> 1202
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)]]> 268 Steven D. Levitt 0061234001 Jadine 0 to-read 4.01 2005 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Jadine 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close]]> 4588
The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?

So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives, and complete strangers. He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years. But will it take him any closer to, or further from, his lost father?]]> 326 Jonathan Safran Foer 0618711651 Jadine 0 to-read 3.98 2005 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Jadine 4 3.94 2001

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,�� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Jadine 0 to-read 3.99 2006 The Road

author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Stand 149267 For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift. And those who are listening to The Stand for the first time will discover a triumphant and eerily plausible work of the imagination that takes on the issues that will determine our survival.]]> 1152 Stephen King Jadine 0 to-read 4.35 1978

author: Stephen King
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shining (The Shining, #1) 11588 497 Stephen King 0450040186 Jadine 0 to-read 4.28 1977

author: Stephen King
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> War and Peace 656
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.

Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.]]> 1392 Leo Tolstoy 0192833987 Jadine 0 to-read 4.14 1869

author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Clockwork Orange 227463 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."]]> 192 Anthony Burgess Jadine 0 to-read 3.98 1962

author: Anthony Burgess
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Jadine 0 to-read 3.87 1955 Lolita

author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Frankenstein 18490 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439471

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

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

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.]]> 288 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Jadine 4 3.77 1818 Frankenstein

author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1818
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Old Man and the Sea 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Jadine 0 to-read 3.81 1952 The Old Man and the Sea

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
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 Jadine 0 to-read 4.29 1846 The Count of Monte Cristo

author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1846
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.��

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Jadine 0 to-read 4.10 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five

author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Anna Karenina 15823480 Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.

Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.]]> 964 Leo Tolstoy 0345803922 Jadine 0 to-read 4.11 1878 Anna Karenina

author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1878
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
��
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence �� a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Jadine 0 to-read 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon

author: Daniel Keyes
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Enduring Love 6870 Apart from the incessant stalking, it is the conditionals--the contingencies--that most frustrate Joe, a scientific journalist. If only he and Clarissa had gone straight home from the airport... If only the wind hadn't picked up... If only he had saved Jed's 29 messages in a single day... Ian McEwan has long been a poet of the arbitrary nightmare, his characters ineluctably swept up in others' fantasies, skidding into deepening violence, and--worst of all--becoming strangers to those who love them. Even his prose itself is a masterful and methodical exercise in de-familiarisation. But Enduring Love and its underrated predecessor, Black Dogs, are also meditations on knowledge and perception as well as brilliant manipulations of our own expectations. By the novel's end, you will be surprisingly unafraid of hot-air balloons, but you won't be too keen on looking a stranger in the eye. --Alex Freeman

]]> 245 Ian McEwan 0099481243 Jadine 3 3.65 1997 Enduring Love

author: Ian McEwan
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Jadine 0 to-read 3.99 1961 Catch-22

author: Joseph Heller
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez Jadine 0 to-read 4.10 1967

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Grapes of Wrath 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Jadine 0 to-read 4.06 1939 The Grapes of Wrath

author: John Steinbeck
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Color Purple 11486
Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.]]> 295 Alice Walker Jadine 4 4.22 1982 The Color Purple

author: Alice Walker
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Odyssey 1381 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

--

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 Jadine 0 to-read 3.79 -700 The Odyssey

author: Homer
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.79
book published: -700
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited]]> 5479 Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class. This powerful work of speculative fiction sheds a blazing critical light on the present and is considered to be Aldous Huxley's most enduring masterpiece.

The non-fiction work Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958, is a fascinating work in which Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy envisioned in Brave New World, including the threats to humanity, such as over-population, propaganda, and chemical persuasion.]]> 340 Aldous Huxley 0060776099 Jadine 0 to-read 4.17 1958 Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited

Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited

author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Jadine 0 to-read 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray

author: Oscar Wilde
name: Jadine
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 Jadine 3 3.89 1847

author: Emily Brontë
name: Jadine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]>