Kuba's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 18 Nov 2024 18:32:28 -0800 60 Kuba's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Kuba 0 to-read, lit-top-100 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 0
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]]> Lysistrata and Other Plays 1567 Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.

For this edition Alan Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of these three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes� ribald humour and intricate word play, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays.]]> 241 Aristophanes Kuba 4 3.94 -423 Lysistrata and Other Plays
author: Aristophanes
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.94
book published: -423
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> A Brief History of Everything 40363634 A
Brief History of Everything

is an altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in a
universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom
New
York Times
reporter
Tony Schwartz "No one has described the path to wisdom better than
Ken Wilber."

Wilber
examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from
matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development
where Spirit becomes conscious of itself. In each of these domains, there are
recurring patterns, and by looking closely at them, we can learn much about the
predicament of our world—and the direction we must take if "global
transformation" is to become a reality.

Wilber
offers a series of striking and original views on many topics of current
interest and controversy, including the gender wars, modern liberation
movements, multiculturalism, ecology and environmental ethics, and the conflict
between this-worldly and otherworldly approaches to spirituality. The result is
an extraordinary and exhilarating ride through the Kosmos in the company of one
of the great thinkers of our time.

]]> 579 Ken Wilber 0834821028 Kuba 0 3.89 1996 A Brief History of Everything
author: Ken Wilber
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Inner Work: An Invitation to True Freedom and Lasting Happiness]]> 45480660 0 Mathew Micheletti Kuba 0 4.11 The Inner Work: An Invitation to True Freedom and Lasting Happiness
author: Mathew Micheletti
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/12
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]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Kuba 2 4.39 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Journey to the End of the Night]]> 12395 Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.]]> 453 Louis-Ferdinand Céline 0811216543 Kuba 5 4.23 1932 Journey to the End of the Night
author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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]]> Mieć czy być? 10937137 280 Erich Fromm 8375103500 Kuba 5 4.07 1976 Mieć czy być?
author: Erich Fromm
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2023/01/02
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review:

]]> Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Thus Spoke Zarathustra is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale in Penguin Classics.

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life passionate, chaotic and free.]]> 327 Friedrich Nietzsche Kuba 5 favorites 4.10 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1883
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2022/12/25
shelves: favorites
review:

]]> Totem and Taboo 132464 Totem and Taboo was first published in 1913, it caused outrage. Thorough and thought-provoking, Totem and Taboo remains the fullest exploration of Freud's most famous themes. Family, society, religion - they're all put on the couch here. Whatever your feelings about psychoanalysis, Freud's theories have influenced every facet of modern life, from film and literature to medicine and art. If you don't know your incest taboo from your Oedipal complex, and you want to understand more about the culture we're living in, then Totem and Taboo is the book to read.]]> 224 Sigmund Freud 041525387X Kuba 5 3.86 1913 Totem and Taboo
author: Sigmund Freud
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1913
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/05
date added: 2022/12/25
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review:

]]> The Odyssey 5872480 The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles

Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Christopher Nolan

A Penguin Classic

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 modern-verse translation. "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, which Jasper Griffin in the New York Times Book Review hails as "a distinguished achievement."

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of an everyman's journey through 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 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 insightful background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new generation of Homer's students. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features French flaps and deckle-edged paper.


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.]]> 562 Homer 1101221844 Kuba 5 greeks 4.30 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.30
book published: -700
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/27
date added: 2022/12/25
shelves: greeks
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]]> The Aeneid 1681593 Iliad, begins an incredible journey to fulfill his destiny as the founder of Rome.

His voyage will take him through stormy seas, entangle him in a tragic love affair, and lure him into the world of the dead itself—all the way tormented by the vengeful Juno, Queen of the Gods. Ultimately, he reaches the promised land of Italy where, after bloody battles and with high hopes, he founds what will become the Roman empire. An unsparing portrait of a man caught between love, duty, and fate, theAeneid redefines passion, nobility, and courage for our times. Robert Fagles, whose acclaimed translations of Homer’sIliad ԻOdyssey were welcomed as major publishing events, brings theAeneid to a new generation of readers, retaining all of the gravitas and humanity of the original Latin as well as its powerful blend of poetry and myth. Featuring an illuminating introduction to Virgil’s world by esteemed scholar Bernard Knox, this volume lends a vibrant new voice to one of the seminal literary achievements of the ancient world.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.

From the award-winning translator ofThe Iliad and The Odysseycomes a brilliant new translation of Virgil's great epic

]]> 484 Virgil Kuba 5 4.00 -19 The Aeneid
author: Virgil
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.00
book published: -19
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/30
date added: 2022/12/25
shelves: read-in-english, romans, favorites
review:

]]> The Iliad 1371
Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, 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, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer’s poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad’s mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls “an astonishing performance.”]]> 614 Homer 0140275363 Kuba 5 greeks 3.88 -800 The Iliad
author: Homer
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.88
book published: -800
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/15
date added: 2022/12/25
shelves: greeks
review:

]]> Heart of Darkness 420031 Heart of Darkness (1899) explores the limits of human experience as well as the nighmarish realities of imperialism.]]> 136 Joseph Conrad 0141441674 Kuba 0 to-read 3.29 1899 Heart of Darkness
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1899
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career]]> 44770129
Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education.

In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner.

The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention.

Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French.

Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life.

Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs.

Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.]]> 305 Scott H. Young Kuba 0 3.94 2019 Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
author: Scott H. Young
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2021/11/17
date added: 2021/11/17
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]]> Grek Zorba 11815907
The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest. Zorba, a Greek working man, is a larger-than-life character, energetic and unpredictable. He accompanies the unnamed narrator to Crete to work in the narrator’s lignite mine, and the pair develops a singular relationship. The two men couldn’t be further apart: The narrator is cerebral, modest, and reserved; Zorba is unfettered, spirited, and beyond the reins of civility. Over the course of their journey, he becomes the narrator’s greatest friend and inspiration and helps him to appreciate the joy of living.

Zorba has been acclaimed as one of the most remarkable figures in literature; he is a character in the great tradition of Sinbad the Sailor, Falstaff, and Sancho Panza. He responds to all that life offers him with passion, whether he’s supervising laborers at a mine, confronting mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the tales of his past adventures, or making love. Zorba the Greek explores the beauty and pain of existence, inviting readers to reevaluate the most important aspects of their lives and live to the fullest.]]> 269 Nikos Kazantzakis Kuba 0 favorites 3.94 1946 Grek Zorba
author: Nikos Kazantzakis
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1946
rating: 0
read at: 2021/09/17
date added: 2021/10/11
shelves: favorites
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 Kuba 0 3.83 1929 A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at: 2021/10/07
date added: 2021/10/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment]]> 6708 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781577314806.

To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.� Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.]]> 229 Eckhart Tolle Kuba 0 to-read 4.16 1997 The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
author: Eckhart Tolle
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence]]> 56142210
In this original reading of eternal recurrence, McNeil explores the strength of metaphorical meaning contained within Heraclitean and Stoic cosmologies, revealing their influence on Nietzsche’s own cosmology, along with their holistic approach to life which Nietzsche endorsed. Furthermore, an extensive critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of eternal recurrence is given. McNeil argues that Heidegger ignores not only the life-affirming Dionysian aspects of the concept, but also the Heraclitean sense of play evident in the cosmology, and the importance of this for developing a positive, celebratory attitude towards our lives and creative projects. ]]> 335 Bevis E. McNeil 3030552969 Kuba 0 to-read 4.00 Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence
author: Bevis E. McNeil
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/09/13
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]]> Growth of the Soil 342049 435 Knut Hamsun 0394717813 Kuba 5 bloomer, favorites 4.27 1917 Growth of the Soil
author: Knut Hamsun
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1917
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/19
date added: 2021/09/11
shelves: bloomer, favorites
review:

]]> Moses and Monotheism 97743 178 Sigmund Freud 0394700147 Kuba 5 3.70 1939 Moses and Monotheism
author: Sigmund Freud
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at: 2021/07/19
date added: 2021/07/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Clever Gut Diet: How to Revolutionize Your Body from the Inside Out]]> 34466478 New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Diet and The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet comes a life-changing look at your gut—home to your “second brain”—and the crucial role it plays in your health and your weight.

Your gut is astonishingly clever. It contains millions of neurons—as many as you would find in the brain of a cat—and is home to the microbiome, an army of tiny organisms that influence your mood, your immune system, and even your appetite.

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Mosley takes us on a revelatory journey through the gut, showing how junk food and overuse of antibiotics have wiped out many “good� gut bacteria leading to a modern plague of allergies, food intolerances, and obesity. Drawing from the latest cutting-edge research, Dr. Mosley provides scientifically proven ways to control your cravings, boost your mood, and lose weight by feeding the “good� bacteria that keep you healthy and lean, while staving off “bad� bacteria that contribute to weight gain and disease.

Dr. Mosley also shares a simple two-phase healing program, an effective way to repair and replenish the microbiome and to ease intestinal distress. Discover how foods like chocolate, red wine, and cheese can be part of a gut-healthy diet; how fasting can strengthen the gut and boost “good� bacteria; how changing your microbiome can undo the damage of yo-yo dieting; and how opening a window (and other simple acts) can improve gut health.

Packed with delicious, healing recipes, meal plans, checklists, and tips, The Clever Gut Diet includes all the tools you need to transform your gut and your health for the rest of your life.]]> 288 Michael Mosley 1501172735 Kuba 0 3.89 2017 The Clever Gut Diet: How to Revolutionize Your Body from the Inside Out
author: Michael Mosley
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2021/07/01
date added: 2021/07/10
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]]> Storm of Steel 240485
Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict, but more importantly as a unique personal struggle.

Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure.

Published shortly after the war's end, 'Storm of Steel' was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann's brilliant new translation.]]> 289 Ernst Jünger 0141186917 Kuba 4 4.13 1920 Storm of Steel
author: Ernst Jünger
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1920
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/03
date added: 2021/07/10
shelves:
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]]> On Pain 5299799 On Pain is an astonishing essay that announces the rise of a new metaphysics of pain in a totalitarian age. One of the most controversial authors of twentieth-century Germany, Jünger rejects the liberal values of liberty, security, ease, and comfort, and seeks instead the measure of man in the capacity to withstand pain and sacrifice. Jünger heralds the rise of a breed of men who--equipped with an unmatched ability to treat themselves and others in a cold and detached way--become one with new, terrorizing machines of death and destruction in human-guided torpedoes and manned airborne missiles, and whose "peculiarly cruel way of seeing," resembling the insensitive lens of a camera, anticipates the horrors of World War II. With a preface by Russell A. Berman, and an introduction by translator David C. Durst, this remarkable essay not only provides valuable insights into the cult of courage and death in Nazi Germany, but also throws light on the ideology of terrorism today.<]]> 96 Ernst Jünger 0914386409 Kuba 0 3.87 1934 On Pain
author: Ernst Jünger
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at: 2021/07/09
date added: 2021/07/09
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]]> Napoleon: A Life 20821092 The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and theGrand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.]]> 976 Andrew Roberts 0670025321 Kuba 5 favorites marasme of Elba and 'the grave' on St. Helena.

It was definitely a page-turner for me, despite containing many proper names, dates, numbers and descriptions of battle that I still had to see on video to make sense. Roberts is skillful in portraying the positive and the negative sides of Napoleon's (and his entourage's) character in suitable proportions. Author's dedication, manifested by the fact that he visited the battlefields mentioned and the amount of resources he gathered, encourages one to follow in Napoleon's footsteps too, as much with seeing these landscapes for ourselves as with studying the lives of the great individuals of this world.]]> 4.19 2014 Napoleon: A Life
author: Andrew Roberts
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/04
date added: 2021/06/28
shelves: favorites
review:
An extremely well-written biography about a life more extraordinary than one can find in an adventure novel. What makes it special is the density of prominent events, which is much higher than in an average work of fiction where the author does his best to even out the pace throughout the whole length. Every part of it is presented in a factual but also endearing and finally critical way: from promising early years, through efficient rise in military ranks, ascension to Emperorship; towards later post-Moscow decline and marasme of Elba and 'the grave' on St. Helena.

It was definitely a page-turner for me, despite containing many proper names, dates, numbers and descriptions of battle that I still had to see on video to make sense. Roberts is skillful in portraying the positive and the negative sides of Napoleon's (and his entourage's) character in suitable proportions. Author's dedication, manifested by the fact that he visited the battlefields mentioned and the amount of resources he gathered, encourages one to follow in Napoleon's footsteps too, as much with seeing these landscapes for ourselves as with studying the lives of the great individuals of this world.
]]> <![CDATA[Civilization and Its Discontents]]> 8302426 97 Sigmund Freud Kuba 0 3.87 1930 Civilization and Its Discontents
author: Sigmund Freud
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/25
date added: 2021/06/24
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is]]> 6632635 Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament to Nietzsche's will.]]> 176 Friedrich Nietzsche 0199552568 Kuba 0 3.78 1908 Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/22
date added: 2021/06/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality]]> 12526871 452 Friedrich Nietzsche 0804780056 Kuba 5 4.43 1881 Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1881
rating: 5
read at: 2021/06/21
date added: 2021/06/21
shelves:
review:
The Free Spirit trilogy (HATH, D, TGS) is my favorite phase of Nietzsche since in my opinion it's the quintessential period to understand if you aim to comprehend his message. No longer shackled by the association with Wagner, not yet extremely anti-Christian - just "a man alone with himself" who takes a journey to reinvent himself and makes numerous, dazzling observations when it comes to human mode of thinking.
]]> <![CDATA[12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos]]> 30257963 What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.

What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant, and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure, and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith, and human nature while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its listeners.]]> 409 Jordan B. Peterson 0345816021 Kuba 0 3.90 2018 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
author: Jordan B. Peterson
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/07
date added: 2021/06/07
shelves:
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]]> Tampa 17225311 "Smart and biting" —New York Journal of Books

"Laced with dark, sometimes savage humor and juicy riffs on consumer culture and its twin obsessions, youth and beauty" �Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Celeste Price is twenty-six years old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa. Yet she harbors a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. As the school year begins, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy begins to spiral out of control, the insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination.

"Impeccably written, full of smart cultural observations, and no small amount of wit . . . A very bold book." —Daily Beast]]> 266 Alissa Nutting 0062280562 Kuba 0 to-read 3.36 2013 Tampa
author: Alissa Nutting
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Essence of Christianity (Great Books in Philosophy)]]> 148488 364 Ludwig Feuerbach 0879755598 Kuba 0 to-read 3.79 1841 The Essence of Christianity (Great Books in Philosophy)
author: Ludwig Feuerbach
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1841
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/05/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Erotism: Death and Sensuality 37530 280 Georges Bataille 0872861902 Kuba 0 to-read 4.11 1957 Erotism: Death and Sensuality
author: Georges Bataille
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Biesy 8514784 Biesy to brutalnie szczera opowieść o politykach i myśli społecznej nie tylko dziewiętnastowiecznej Rosji - to uniwersalne ostrzeżenie przed złem zaklętym w marzeniach o powszechnym szczęściu dla wszystkich ludzi. Dostojewski pisze mądrze i ironicznie. Staje w obronie zwykłego człowieka, którego różni owładnięci przez diabła ideolodzy próbują przyciąć na miarę własnych pomysłów. A jednocześnie zapowiada totalitarne koszmary XX wieku, które straciły jednostkę z pola widzenia...
Nowy przekład Adama Pomorskiego pozwala ponownie rozsmakować się w prozie wielkiego klasyka.]]> 784 Fyodor Dostoevsky 8324013997 Kuba 0 4.20 1872 Biesy
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/25
date added: 2021/05/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones]]> 40121378 Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.

Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.

Learn how to:
-Make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);
-Overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
- Design your environment to make success easier;
- Get back on track when you fall off course;
...and much more.

Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.]]> 319 James Clear Kuba 0 audiobook 4.34 2018 Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
author: James Clear
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/19
date added: 2021/05/19
shelves: audiobook
review:

]]> Prometeusz skowany 39777495
Za nieposłuszeństwo, które uczyniło go dobroczyńcą ludzi, Prometeusz zostaje przykuty do skały i wydany na żer sępowi. Przyjmuje wyrok z dumą i dokładnie opowiada swoje dokonania. Odrzuca propozycję ukorzenia się przed Zeusem, którą przynosi mu Hermes. Zeusowi, który uzyskał władzę, pokonując Kronosa, zuchwały buntownik przepowiada również kres panowania.

Tragedia, stanowiąca środkową (i jedyną zachowaną) część trylogii prometejskiej Ajschylosa jest przypowieścią o nowej władzy, którą zwykło cechować szczególne okrucieństwo, jako że w ten sposób władza ta umacnia się w sobie i demonstruje na zewnątrz swą sprawczość i siłę.

Źródło opisu: oficjalna strona Fundacji Nowoczesnej Polski]]> 41 Aeschylus 8328854686 Kuba 5 3.43 -480 Prometeusz skowany
author: Aeschylus
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.43
book published: -480
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2021/05/04
shelves: favorites, greeks, czytane-po-polsku
review:

]]> Oresteja 51278345
Na zamku w Argos królowa Klitajmestra wyczekuje powrotu męża z wojny. Rozpalane na szczytach gór sygnały ogniowe przenoszą wzdłuż wybrzeży wiadomość: Troja zdobyta! Po długich dziesięciu latach walk król Agamemnon, naczelny wódz Achajów, wraca do domu. Nie przypuszcza jednak, że żona nie wybaczyła mu dawnej zbrodni. Dziesięć lat temu zgromadzona w Aulidzie wielka achajska flota bezczynnie oczekiwała na wiatr, nie mogąc odpłynąć w stronę Troi. Żeby przebłagać obrażoną boginię, która zesłała ciszę morską, Agamemnon zabił w ofierze najstarszą córkę, Ifigenię� Zwycięski król, powracając spod Troi, nie myśli także o tym, że do Argos docierały wieści o jego wojennych brankach i nałożnicach. Wraca do domu z kolejną kochanką, trojańską wieszczką Kasandrą. Nie wie, że pod jego nieobecność Klitajmestra dała się uwieść namowom jego kuzyna Ajgistosa. Klitajmestra chce zemsty za śmierć córki, a jej kochanek nie zawaha się przejąć tronu…]]> 200 Aeschylus Kuba 0 greeks 3.76 -458 Oresteja
author: Aeschylus
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.76
book published: -458
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2021/05/04
shelves: greeks
review:

]]> Meditations 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 Kuba 3 4.29 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.29
book published: 180
rating: 3
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/04/29
shelves: philosophy, lit-top-100, romans
review:

]]> Tao Te Ching 67896 A lucid translation of the well-known Taoist classic by a leading scholar-now in a Shambhala Pocket Library edition.

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

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

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

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

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

The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.]]> 107 Lao Tzu 0679724346 Kuba 2 philosophy 4.29 -350 Tao Te Ching
author: Lao Tzu
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.29
book published: -350
rating: 2
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2021/04/29
shelves: philosophy
review:

]]> Human, All Too Human 12317 398 Friedrich Nietzsche 0804741719 Kuba 0 4.19 1878 Human, All Too Human
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1878
rating: 0
read at: 2021/04/25
date added: 2021/04/25
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]]> The Origin of Species 22463
Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and—by implication—within the human world.

Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.]]> 703 Charles Darwin Kuba 0 to-read 4.01 1859 The Origin of Species
author: Charles Darwin
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1859
rating: 0
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]]> Elective Affinities 128837 Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner. The novel asks whether we have free will or not and confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of repressing what little "real life" they have in themselves, a life so far removed from their natural states that it appears to them as something terrible and destructive.]]> 272 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0192837761 Kuba 0 to-read 3.81 1809 Elective Affinities
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1809
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Korona śniegu i krwi (Odrodzone królestwo, #1)]]> 15745365 Miecz, który skłóci śmiertelnych...
Orzeł, który przebudzi królestwo.

Czasy Wielkiego Rozbicia. Potężne ongiś królestwo w sercu Europy rozpadło się na księstwa, którymi władają skłóceni ze sobą Piastowie. Od wielu lat Polska nie ma króla, a tron pozostaje pusty.
Na horyzoncie pojawia się nadzieja � skromny kantor Jakub Świnka odczytuje klątwę i jako pierwszy dostrzega księcia, który może ją odwrócić. Książę Starszej Polski Przemysł II spędza czas na turniejach i w poszukiwaniu rycerskich laurów.
Na opustoszały królewski tron padają pożądliwe spojrzenia sąsiednich władców. W głębi lasów budzą się ludzie Starszej Krwi, a wraz z nimi zapomniane przez stulecia demony. Z herbów schodzą bestie, by w walce wspomóc swych panów. Sieć intryg coraz ciaśniej zaciska się wokół młodego księcia.
Święte księżne, grzeszni książęta i szlachetni rycerze. Jaką rolę odgrywa wielki ród Zarembów o skrzętnie skrywanych początkach? Czy minezingerzy zaśpiewają pieśń zwycięską czy też chmury nad tronem pogrążą królestwo w wiecznym mroku?
Czas rozpocząć bój o koronę, najwyższy czas zjednoczyć królestwo...

Wraz z rykiem lwa do lotu budzi się orzeł.]]> 768 Elżbieta Cherezińska 8375069949 Kuba 0 3.98 2012 Korona śniegu i krwi (Odrodzone królestwo, #1)
author: Elżbieta Cherezińska
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/23
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]]> Anna Karenina 6382501 Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

While previous versions have softened the robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear and Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This authoritative edition, which received the PEN Translation Prize and was an Oprah Book Club� selection, also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this Anna Karenina will be the definitive text for fans of the film and generations to come.]]> 790 Leo Tolstoy Kuba 3 lit-top-100 Madame Bovary and the latter definitely surpasses Charles in depth. Both situations are characterized by perceived impossibility of improvement due to main character's way of being and ascribing more worth of living on their own terms than to a humble compliance with social norms, which proves tragic for them but also catharthic for the reader.

Philosophically platitudinous. Levin, like Tolstoy, prefers to take a step back from philosophy to find comfort in its earlier form - religious faith. That is obviously beneficial in terms of improving their mental well-being, but one has to wonder why a potent mind like his couldn't view diverse philosophical schools the same sort of love that he seems to profess for other religions?]]> 4.16 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1878
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/13
date added: 2021/04/19
shelves: lit-top-100
review:
Magnificent prose, imaginative metaphors, perceptive psychological detail. The gradual development of Anna and Karenin has surprised me very positively, the former was realistically irrational and decadent, much like Emma from Madame Bovary and the latter definitely surpasses Charles in depth. Both situations are characterized by perceived impossibility of improvement due to main character's way of being and ascribing more worth of living on their own terms than to a humble compliance with social norms, which proves tragic for them but also catharthic for the reader.

Philosophically platitudinous. Levin, like Tolstoy, prefers to take a step back from philosophy to find comfort in its earlier form - religious faith. That is obviously beneficial in terms of improving their mental well-being, but one has to wonder why a potent mind like his couldn't view diverse philosophical schools the same sort of love that he seems to profess for other religions?
]]> Mythologies 51715 Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.

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

What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.]]> 160 Roland Barthes 0374521506 Kuba 0 to-read 4.12 1957 Mythologies
author: Roland Barthes
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Industrial Society and Its Future]]> 225468 149 Theodore John Kaczynski Kuba 1 3.88 1995 Industrial Society and Its Future
author: Theodore John Kaczynski
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1995
rating: 1
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> Pan 32590 181 Knut Hamsun 0141180676 Kuba 3 3.86 1894 Pan
author: Knut Hamsun
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1894
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/06
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> The Possibility of an Island 263985
Surprisingly poignant, philosophically compelling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, The Possibility of an Island is at once an indictment, an elegy, and a celebration of everything we have and are at risk of losing. It is a masterpiece from one of the world's most innovative writers.]]> 352 Michel Houellebecq 0307275213 Kuba 2 3.84 2005 The Possibility of an Island
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2005
rating: 2
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]]> The Charterhouse of Parma 14680
With beautiful illustrations by Robert Andrew Parker.]]> 532 Stendhal 0679783180 Kuba 5 3.87 1839 The Charterhouse of Parma
author: Stendhal
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1839
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/25
date added: 2021/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs]]> 94578 "[This book] mirrors all of Nietzsche's thought and could be related in hundreds of ways to his other books, his notes, and his letters. And yet it is complete in itself. For it is a work of art." —Walter Kaufmann in the Introduction

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.

Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.

Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.]]> 396 Friedrich Nietzsche 0394719859 Kuba 5 philosophy 4.29 1882 The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1882
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/26
date added: 2021/04/15
shelves: philosophy
review:

]]> Platform 88514
In his early forties, Michel Renault skims through his days with as little human contact as possible. But following his father’s death he takes a group holiday to Thailand where he meets a travel agent—the shyly compelling Valérie—who begins to bring this half-dead man to life with sex of escalating intensity and audacity. Arcing with dreamlike swiftness from Paris to Pattaya Beach and from sex clubs to a terrorist massacre, Platform is a brilliant, apocalyptic masterpiece by a man who is widely regarded as one of the world’s most original and daring writers.]]> 259 Michel Houellebecq 1400030269 Kuba 2 3.83 2001 Platform
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 2
read at: 2019/01/25
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> The Elementary Particles 58314 The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.

Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.]]> 272 Michel Houellebecq 0375727019 Kuba 5 3.91 1998 The Elementary Particles
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> Hunger 32585 134 Knut Hamsun 0486431681 Kuba 5 4.09 1890 Hunger
author: Knut Hamsun
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Kuba 5 lit-top-100 4.21 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/04/15
shelves: lit-top-100
review:

]]> The Death of Ivan Ilych 18386
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 86 Leo Tolstoy Kuba 3 4.12 1886 The Death of Ivan Ilych
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/17
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> The Republic 30289 416 Plato 0140449140 Kuba 5 3.97 -400 The Republic
author: Plato
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.97
book published: -400
rating: 5
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]]> 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 Kuba 4 3.85 1513 The Prince
author: Niccolò Machiavelli
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1513
rating: 4
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]]> Madame Bovary 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Kuba 5 french 3.70 1856 Madame Bovary
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/10
date added: 2021/04/15
shelves: french
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)]]> 22034
Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.]]> 448 Mario Puzo Kuba 3 4.39 1969 The Godfather (The Godfather, #1)
author: Mario Puzo
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/04
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> <![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 Kuba 4 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
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]]> The Count of Monte Cristo 8127528 1138 Alexandre Dumas Kuba 4 french, lit-top-100 4.62 1846 The Count of Monte Cristo
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.62
book published: 1846
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/03
date added: 2021/04/15
shelves: french, lit-top-100
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]]> Death on the Installment Plan 106096 Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan shocked European literature and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of service in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Céline's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction. Under a cloud for a period, his work is now acknowledged as the forerunner of today's "black comedy."

Death on the Installment Plan is the story of young Ferdinand's first 18 years. His life is one of hatred, of the grinding struggle of small shopkeepers to survive, of childhood sensations and fantasies—lusty, scatological, violent, but also poetic. There is a running battle with his ineffectual insurance clerk of a father, with his mother, who lives and whines around the junkshop she runs for the boys benefit; there is also the superbly funny Meanwell College in England, where the boy went briefly, a Dickensian, nightmare institution. Always there is humiliation, failure, and boredom, at least until he teams up with the "scientist" des Pereires. This inventor, con-man, incorrigible optimist—whose last project is to grow enormous potatoes by electricity—rescues him, if only temporarily; for the reader he is one of the most lovable charlatans in French literature.]]> 592 Louis-Ferdinand Céline 0811200175 Kuba 5 doomer, french 4.25 1936 Death on the Installment Plan
author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/02
date added: 2021/04/15
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]]> Whatever 58372
Houellebecq's debut novel is painfully realistic portrayal of the vanishing freedom of a world governed by science and by the empty rituals of daily life.]]> 160 Michel Houellebecq 1852425849 Kuba 0 3.59 1994 Whatever
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> Serotonin 42594530
In SEROTONIN rechnet die Hauptfigur ab: mit der modernen Gesellschaft, der Wirtschaft, der Politik � und mit sich selbst.

»Der umwerfendste Schriftsteller unserer Gegenwart«
Julia Encke, F.A.S]]> 337 Michel Houellebecq 3832184422 Kuba 0 3.61 2019 Serotonin
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/04/11
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]]> Soumission 23929479
Le talent de l’auteur, sa force visionnaire nous entraînent sur un terrain ambigu et glissant ; son regard sur notre civilisation vieillissante fait coexister dans ce roman les intuitions poétiques, les effets comiques, une mélancolie fataliste.

Ce livre est une saisissante fable politique et morale.

]]> 300 Michel Houellebecq 2081354802 Kuba 0 3.71 2015 Soumission
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Metamorphoses 17262168
Roman poet Ovid’s dazzling cycle of tales begins with the creation of the world and ends with the deification of Caesar Augustus. In between is a glorious panoply of the most famous myths and legends of the ancient Greek and Roman world—from Echo’s passion for Narcissus to Pygmalion’s living statue, from Perseus’s defeat of Medusa to the fall of Troy. Retold with Ovid’s irreverent flair, these tales are united by the theme of metamorphosis, as men and women are rendered alien to themselves, turned variously to flowers, trees, animals, and stones. The closest thing to a central character is love itself—a confounding, transforming, irrational force that makes fools of gods and mortals alike.

The poem’s playful verses, both sensually earthy and wittily sophisticated, have reverberated through the centuries, inspiring countless artists and writers from Shakespeare to the present. Frequently translated, imitated, and adapted, The Metamorphoses has lost none of its power to provoke and entertain.]]> 568 Ovid 0375712313 Kuba 0 to-read 4.30 8 Metamorphoses
author: Ovid
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.30
book published: 8
rating: 0
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]]> Ways of Seeing 2784 John Berger’s Classic Text on Art

Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times a critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.

"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review

"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling.]]> 176 John Berger 0140135154 Kuba 0 to-read 3.93 1972 Ways of Seeing
author: John Berger
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/03/06
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]]> The Civil War 56781
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.]]> 368 Gaius Julius Caesar 0140441875 Kuba 0 to-read 4.08 -47 The Civil War
author: Gaius Julius Caesar
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.08
book published: -47
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/03/04
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]]> The Rise of the Roman Empire 70670 Universal History primarily to chronicle and account for the Roman conquest of Greece between 200 and 167 B.C. He saw that Mediterranean history, under Rome's influence, was becoming an organic whole, so he starts his work in 264 B.C. with the beginning of Rome's clash with African Carthage, the rival imperialist power, and
ends with the final destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.]]> 576 Polybius 0140443622 Kuba 0 to-read 4.05 -170 The Rise of the Roman Empire
author: Polybius
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.05
book published: -170
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives]]> 279460 Greek Lives can be seen as a summing up of the classical Greek age and its great writers.

The nine Lives translated here and arranged in chronological order follow the history of Athens from the legendary times of Theseus, the city's founder, to its defeat at the hands of Lysander, its Spartan conqueror. Included in this selection are the biographies of Themistocles, a brilliant but heavy-handed naval commander, Aristides 'the Just' and Pericles, who was responsible for the buildings on the Acropolis. Plutarch's real interest in these men is not in the greatness of their victories or achievements but in their moral strengths, and for him responsibility for the eventual fall of Athens lay with the weakness and ambition of its great men.

Varying in historical accuracy, these accounts are nevertheless rich in anecdote, and Plutarch's skill as a social historian and his fascination with personal idiosyncracies make them of timeless interest.

]]> 320 Plutarch 0140441026 Kuba 0 to-read 4.08 100 The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives
author: Plutarch
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.08
book published: 100
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fall of the Roman Republic]]> 55002

Rome's famed historian illuminates the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 157 to 43 BC in succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesmen of the classical period.

Includes a new introduction, a new essay on the revised Plutarch editions, notes, a glossary, and updated suggestions for further reading

Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero]]> 414 Plutarch 0140449345 Kuba 0 to-read 4.12 100 The Fall of the Roman Republic
author: Plutarch
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.12
book published: 100
rating: 0
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]]> The Campaigns of Alexander 862639 Campaigns of Alexander is the most reliable account of the man and his achievements we have. Arrian’s own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world’s greatest conqueror. He tells of Alexander’s violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his total defeat of Persia, and his campaigns through Egypt, India and Babylon � establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. While Alexander emerges from this record as an unparalleled and charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective and fully rounded portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power and worshipped as a god in his own lifetime.

Aubrey de Sélincourt’s vivid translation is accompanied by J. R. Hamilton’s introduction, which discusses Arrian’s life and times, his synthesis of other classical sources and the composition of Alexander’s army. The edition also includes maps, a list for further reading and a detailed index.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 430 Arrian 0140442537 Kuba 0 to-read 4.13 150 The Campaigns of Alexander
author: Arrian
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.13
book published: 150
rating: 0
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]]> Memoirs of Hadrian 12172 347 Marguerite Yourcenar 0374529264 Kuba 4 4.27 1951 Memoirs of Hadrian
author: Marguerite Yourcenar
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/05
date added: 2021/02/28
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]]> The Constitution of Liberty 1044658 580 Friedrich A. Hayek 0226320847 Kuba 2 4.14 1960 The Constitution of Liberty
author: Friedrich A. Hayek
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1960
rating: 2
read at: 2018/01/01
date added: 2021/02/28
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]]> 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 Kuba 5 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Kuba 5 lit-top-100 4.26 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/28
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Kuba 5 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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]]> A History of My Times 261228
Xenophon himself knew many of the protagonists and his writing is personal history as well as a chronicle of events; he vividly portrays individuals, heroic and treacherous, influencing politics and battles and leading Greece inevitably towards impotence.]]> 432 Xenophon 0140441751 Kuba 0 to-read 4.04 -362 A History of My Times
author: Xenophon
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.04
book published: -362
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition]]> 40881621 The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography� or “diary� containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, in a complete English edition by master translator Margaret Jull Costa. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.]]> 433 Fernando Pessoa 0811226948 Kuba 0 on-hold, to-read 4.39 1982 The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition
author: Fernando Pessoa
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/20
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]]> The Kalevala 400869 679 Elias Lönnrot 019283570X Kuba 0 to-read 4.05 1835 The Kalevala
author: Elias Lönnrot
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1835
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/19
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]]> Le Petit Prince 70720 S'ouvre alors un monde étrange et poétique, peuplé de métaphores, décrit à travers les paroles d'un "petit prince" qui porte aussi sur notre monde à nous un regard tout neuf, empli de naïveté, de fraîcheur et de gravité. Très vite, vous découvrez d'étranges planètes, peuplées d'hommes d'affaires, de buveurs, de vaniteux, d'allumeurs de réverbères.

Cette évocation onirique, à laquelle participent les aquarelles de l'auteur, a tout d'un parcours initiatique, où l'enfant apprendra les richesses essentielles des rapports humains et le secret qui les régit : "On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

Oeuvre essentielle de la littérature, ce livre de Saint-Exupéry est un ouvrage que l'on aura à coeur de raconter à son enfant, page après page, histoire aussi de redécouvrir l'enfant que l'on était autrefois, avant de devenir une grande personne !]]> 123 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 3125971403 Kuba 0 --ڰç 4.38 1943 Le Petit Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/12
date added: 2021/02/17
shelves: --ڰç
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]]> Story of the Eye 436806
Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album.

Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended.]]> 103 Georges Bataille 0872862097 Kuba 0 to-read 3.71 1928 Story of the Eye
author: Georges Bataille
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/14
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]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Kuba 5 lit-top-100, favorites 4.36 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 5
read at: 2019/04/13
date added: 2021/02/09
shelves: lit-top-100, favorites
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]]> Candide, or Optimism 545085
In Candide, Voltaire threw down an audacious challenge to the philosophical views of the Enlightenment to create one of the most glorious satires of the eighteenth century. His eponymous hero is an innocent young man whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own fortune. As he and his various companions roam over the world, an outrageous series of disasters - earthquakes, syphilis, the Inquisition - sorely test the young hero's optimism, holding a mirror up to all fanatics, zealots and moral reformers of humankind.

Translated and Edited by Theo Cuffe with an Introduction by Michael Wood]]> 155 Voltaire 0140455108 Kuba 5 french, liveby, favorites 3.70 1759 Candide, or Optimism
author: Voltaire
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1759
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2021/01/28
shelves: french, liveby, favorites
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]]> Shirley 31168 Jane Eyre, which earned her lifelong notoriety as a moral revolutionary, Charlotte Brontë vowed to write a sweeping social chronicle that focused on "something real and unromantic as Monday morning." Set in the industrializing England of the Napoleonic wars and Luddite revolts of 1811-12, Shirley (1849) is the story of two contrasting heroines. One is the shy Caroline Helstone, who is trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of a Yorkshire rectory and whose bare life symbolizes the plight of single women in the nineteenth century. The other is the vivacious Shirley Keeldar, who inherits a local estate and whose wealth liberates her from convention.

A work that combines social commentary with the more private preoccupations of Jane Eyre, Shirley demonstrates the full range of Brontë's literary talent. "Shirley is a revolutionary novel," wrote Brontë biographer Lyndall Gordon. "Shirley follows Jane Eyre as a new exemplar but so much a forerunner of the feminist of the later twentieth century that it is hard to believe in her actual existence in 1811-12. She is a theoretic possibility: what a woman might be if she combined independence and means of her own with intellect. Charlotte Brontë imagined a new form of power, equal to that of men, in a confident young woman [whose] extraordinary freedom has accustomed her to think for herself....Shirley [is] Brontë's most feminist novel."]]> 624 Charlotte Brontë 0141439866 Kuba 0 to-read 3.76 1849 Shirley
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1849
rating: 0
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]]> The Bhagavad Gita 463500 The Bhagavad Gita is an early epic poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna, the manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, the dialogue sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to change the outcome of the war he is to fight, and culminates in Krishna revealing to the warrior his true cosmic form, counselling him to search for the universal perfection of life. Ranging from instructions on yoga postures to dense moral discussion, the Gita is one of the most important Hindu texts, as well as serving as a practical guide to living well.]]> 234 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa 0140447903 Kuba 0 to-read 4.08 -400 The Bhagavad Gita
author: Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.08
book published: -400
rating: 0
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]]> Dangerous Liaisons 326768
Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 418 Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 0140449574 Kuba 0 to-read 4.05 1782 Dangerous Liaisons
author: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1782
rating: 0
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]]> Parzival 560089 448 Wolfram von Eschenbach 0140443614 Kuba 0 to-read 3.74 1215 Parzival
author: Wolfram von Eschenbach
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1215
rating: 0
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]]> The Nibelungenlied 18261 404 Unknown 0140441379 Kuba 0 to-read 3.85 1200 The Nibelungenlied
author: Unknown
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1200
rating: 0
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]]> Gargantua and Pantagruel 18266 Pantagruel, a tale of comic chivalry, satirizes lawyers, theologians and academic buffoons, while Gargantua mocks rash generals, idiotic monarchs and uncouth professors. It champions freedom and laughs at a dirty young giant before he turns into a splendid prince. Sequels lead into more complex and daring laughter and high mythology, often at the expense of Panurge � the mad, word-spinning companion of Pantagruel (who becomes a giant in wisdom, a Renaissance Socrates).

M.A. Screech's translation captures Rabelais' ingenious wordplay and mastery of language. The introduction explores his individuality while comparing him to Shakespeare, and presents each book to open up the new horizons of Renaissance Europe. This edition also includes a chronology and notes.]]> 1041 François Rabelais 0140445501 Kuba 0 to-read 3.66 1532 Gargantua and Pantagruel
author: François Rabelais
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1532
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading]]> 567610 How to Read a Book, originally published in 1940, has become a rare phenomenon, a living classic. It is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader. And now it has been completely rewritten and updated.

You are told about the various levels of reading and how to achieve them � from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading, you learn how to pigeonhole a book, X-ray it, extract the author's message, criticize. You are taught the different reading techniques for reading practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science.

Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests whereby you can measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension and speed.

This a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780671212094

]]> 442 Mortimer J. Adler Kuba 4 3.98 1940 How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
author: Mortimer J. Adler
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2020/12/16
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]]> Mythology 23522 The world-renowned classic that has enthralled and delighted millions of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes.

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

]]> 497 Edith Hamilton 0316341517 Kuba 3 greeks 4.03 1942 Mythology
author: Edith Hamilton
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2020/12/16
shelves: greeks
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]]> The Last Days of Socrates 8610185 A new translation of Plato's four-part dialogue that eulogizes the genius of his mentor Socrates.

Plato's account of Socrates' trial and death in 399 BC represents a significant moment in Western literature as well as a watershed in the life of ancient Athens. In these four dialogues, Plato develops the Socratic belief in responsibility for one's self and shows Socrates- condemned to suicide by his fellow Athenians-living and dying under his own philosophy. In Euthyphro, Socrates debates goodness outside the courthouse; Apology sees him in court, rebutting all charges of impiety; in Crito, he refuses an entreaty to escape from prison; and in Phaedo, Socrates faces his impending death with calmness and a skillful discussion of immortality.]]> 256 Plato 0140455493 Kuba 0 4.04 -400 The Last Days of Socrates
author: Plato
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.04
book published: -400
rating: 0
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]]> On the Genealogy of Morals 80449 On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. Nietzsche rewrites the former as a history of cruelty, exposing the central values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures. The result is a book which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation. Nietzsche questions moral certainties by showing that religion and science have no claim to absolute truth, before turning on his own arguments in order to call their very presuppositions into question. The Genealogy is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his characteristic concerns. This edition places his ideas within the cultural context of his own time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience.]]> 208 Friedrich Nietzsche 019283617X Kuba 0 4.16 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1887
rating: 0
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]]> The Anti-Christ 18304 126 Friedrich Nietzsche 1421270536 Kuba 0 philosophy 3.97 1895 The Anti-Christ
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1895
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/12/16
shelves: philosophy
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]]> The Sorrows of Young Werther 16640 149 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0812969901 Kuba 5 3.71 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1774
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/16
date added: 2020/12/16
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]]> The Symposium 81779
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love--as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 90 Plato 0140449272 Kuba 0 philosophy 4.11 -380 The Symposium
author: Plato
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.11
book published: -380
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Marx: A Very Short Introduction]]> 74642 Marx: A Very Short Introdution, Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx's thought, enabling us to grasp Marx's views as a whole. He sees him as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist. In plain English, he explains alienation, historical materialism, the economic theory of Capital, and Marx's ideas of communism, and concludes with an assessment of Marx's legacy.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.]]> 108 Peter Singer 0192854054 Kuba 0 3.68 1980 Marx: A Very Short Introduction
author: Peter Singer
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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]]> Fragments 134891 Fragments of wisdom from the ancient world

In the sixth century b.c.—twenty-five hundred years before Einstein—Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything becomes energy in flux, in relativity. His great book, On Nature, the world's first coherent philosophical treatise and touchstone for Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius, has long been lost to history-but its surviving fragments have for thousands of years tantalized our greatest thinkers, from Montaigne to Nietzsche, Heidegger to Jung. Now, acclaimed poet Brooks Haxton presents a powerful free-verse translation of all 130 surviving fragments of the teachings of Heraclitus, with the ancient Greek originals beautifully reproduced en face.

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.]]> 97 Heraclitus 0142437654 Kuba 0 4.20 -501 Fragments
author: Heraclitus
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.20
book published: -501
rating: 0
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]]> Of Mice and Men 890 “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.�

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. But George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.

While the powerlessness of the laboring class is a recurring theme in Steinbeck's work of the late 1930s, he narrowed his focus when composing Of Mice and Men, creating an intimate portrait of two men facing a world marked by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy, and callousness. But though the scope is narrow, the theme is universal: a friendship and a shared dream that makes an individual's existence meaningful.

A unique perspective on life's hardships, this story has achieved the status of timeless classic due to its remarkable success as a novel, a Broadway play, and three acclaimed films.]]> 107 John Steinbeck 0142000671 Kuba 2 3.88 1937 Of Mice and Men
author: John Steinbeck
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[French Literature: A Very Short Introduction]]> 8357735 144 John D. Lyons Kuba 0 3.74 2010 French Literature: A Very Short Introduction
author: John D. Lyons
name: Kuba
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> The Waves 46114 The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 297 Virginia Woolf 0156949601 Kuba 0 to-read 4.17 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Kuba
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1931
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