Bookpedia : GQ Book Library : Genre : L

ISBN: 9780330319928

ListPrice: $35.30

Summary: American Psycho is a harsh commentary upon a society dominated by materialism and devoid of emotion, passion, caring or love.



Pat Bateman, the anti-hero of the book, is a suave, sophisticated Wall Street Yuppie. He seems to have it all, the good school, Harvard, the right job, plenty of money, great clothes, a beautiful apartment. He is handsome, fit, rich and is courted by beautiful women.



But from the opening of the book you realise that here is a man who is not living. He exists. And he exists vicariously through brand names, expensive restaurants, personal products. His life is simply a litany of consumption. He is in fact a non-person. Frequently his associates mistake him for other people, and he has trouble telling his associates apart. They are all a homogeneous and indistinguishable set of "in" people.



Bateman describes the murder of a prostitute in the same clinical voice as he uses when he describes the records of Genesis, or the features of his VCR, or how he makes love to his girlfriend, or the clothes and food in the local restaurant. All life is lived in a cold passionless clinical state of semi-awareness.



The lack of a real life is tearing Bateman apart. He searches for a passion, a reality of some kind. In his mind he plays out the murder of beggars, prostitutes and colleagues in vivid detail. But the lines blur. How much is played out in his head and how much is in his mind. Is the Chinese Laundry washing his blood soaked shirts? If not why does he still see stains? At times his violent fantasy world seems to be crossing the border into his daily reality. But how far is this happening?



The only times you see real emotion appear are when Bateman has to interact at a real level with others. He hates live music, why? Live music is emotional in a way records can never be. He is consumed by getting restaurant reservations. He fears having to stand in a crowded restaurant lobby, subject to the vagaries of random people, a situation where he has no control. He is far more comfortable dissecting bodies in his apartment.



So. Is he a murderer, or is it all in his head. At some point are we all a bit like Bateman?

ISBN: 9780141187389

ListPrice: $12.40

Summary: The book is written by Eric Arthur Blair with the pen name of George Orwell. In this novel he speaks of Communism, why it is actually more of a bane than a boon. He got the idea of writting a book from an animals perspective when one day, he saw a little boy of about 10 years of age driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck him that if only such animals became aware of their strength humans should have no power over them. He felt that humans exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat. He thus began to analyse Marxism from the animal's point of view. This book is for both the young and old who are interested to know why Communism is said to be bad when it actually seems to act fairly on paper. Readers will enjoy the irony of Marxism when implemented on the animals, at the same time they learn the vital weaknessess that expels Communism from being an viable alternative in anyway. A must read!

ISBN: 9780140183337

Dimensions: 0.55 x 7.80 x 5.04 in

Translator: Roger Senhouse

Summary: Through the study of the social ethics of France under German occupation, Simone de Beauvoir describes the true question at the heart of existentialism - 'How much responsibility can one truly have for other peoples' lives?' - and the ethical and moral questions that are raised as a consequence. That said, the book is lively and weaves the philosophical theme into the story seamlessly. Profound and uplifting.

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ListPrice: 32.99 AUD

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ISBN: 9780375414152

ListPrice: $25.00

Summary:
The characters of "The Rotters’ Club"—Jonathan Coe’s nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in the 1970s—have bartered their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in a story that is very much of the moment, charged with such issues as 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

On New Year’s Eve of 1999, with Tony Blair presiding over a glossy new version of Britain, Benjamin Trotter watches the celebration on television in the same Birmingham house where he’d grown up. Watches, in fact, his younger brother Paul, now a member of Parliament and a rising star of New Labour, glad-handing his way through the festive crowd at the Millennium Dome. Neither of them could guess their lives are about to implode.

Paul begins an affair with his young assistant, soon realizes he has made the fatal mistake of falling in love with her, then is threatened with exposure by Doug Anderton, a journalist who happens to be one of his oldest schoolboy enemies. At the same time, Benjamin and his friend Claire, still haunted by memories almost thirty years old, make a desperate attempt to break free of the past, if only to escape the notion that their happiest years are behind them.

As Cool Britannia is forced to address its ongoing racial and social tensions—and as its role in America’s “war on terrorism” grows increasingly compromised—"The Closed Circle" shuttles between London and Birmingham, where fat cats, politicos, media advisers, and protesters in both locales lay bare an era when policy and PR have become indistinguishable. Meanwhile, its rich cast of characters contends with startling revelations about their youth and the pressing, perennial problems of love, vocation, and family.gt;

ISBN: 9780330482868

ListPrice: $14.45

Summary: He wakes up in the men's room at Union Station. He can not remember who he is or how he got there. One shocking look in the mirror tells him he is a bum however he can not believe it. Now he must find out who he is. Watch answer leads him in a different direction and we are intrigued to find more about what let to this situation.



The only positive thing I can say about the story is that it is the standard Follett formula. Not quit the stature of "Eye of the needle" but better than the Follett wantobes . This is more like a Colombo episode in which we know the answer long before the characters and read to see how long it takes them to catch up with us. There are a few surprising details that pop up at the last minute. Do not look too close at real life dates and technology as many things do not match; however they do not distract from the story.



Mainly there are three elements that are intertwined through the story. One is the present (1958) where Luke has to figure out who he is and what he is doing on an urgent time schedule. The second is a detailed layman's description of how the first rockets were designed in 1958. The third is a story of a group that met in Harvard just before Pearl Harbor and went through the equivalent of the OSS together and where they ended up to the present day.



Try to find a copy of George Guidall's unabridged recorded reading as it adds a good dimension to the story and will keep you hooked to the end. I used up some predacious gasoline listing to this in the parking lot.



Once you start the story you will have to finish it. Then you may wish it did not finish so soon.

ISBN: 9780141188089

ListPrice: $20.65

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ISBN: 9781841156729

ListPrice: £17.99

Summary: Critically lauded and an Oprah Book Club choice, Jonathan Franzen's third novel "The Corrections" is already a huge success in the US, and it's none too difficult to see why. Whereas his earlier novels, "The Twenty-Seventh City" and "StrongMotion" could be seen as single-issue works (on inner city decay and abortion respectively), the long-awaited "The Corrections" is far more grandiose in its ambition and its scale.
Framed by matriarch Enid Lambert's attempts to gather her three grown children back home for Christmas, "The Corrections" examines their lives: Enid's husband Alfred, sinking into dementia, her sons banker Gary and writer Chip (now in Lithuania) and daughter Denise, a chef, busily re-evaluating her sexual identity.
With these characters, Franzen gives himself plenty of room to examine the foibles, fears, hopes, anxieties and neuroses of 21st-century American life and the mad Lithuanian subplot provides some real laughs. But most striking and surprising about "The Corrections" is its reassuring normality. Despite all its well-signposted dysfunction, this remains at heart a big sprawling family saga, with all the security that implies. The book closes with Enid noting "that current events in general were more muted or insipid nowadays than they'd been in her youth" during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, "disasters of this magnitude no longer seemed to befall the United States". It's a line Franzen couldn't have written after 11 September, 2001--and, perhaps because of its now forgotten confidence, "The Corrections" is a book that readers will take to their hearts.--"Alan Stewart"

ISBN: 9780140085303

ListPrice: 23.99 AUD

Summary: In this collection of short stories, Ken Kesey challenges public and private demons with a wrestler's brave and deceptive embrace, making it clear that the energy of madness must live on.

ISBN: 9780948149269

Summary: EVERYMAN'S POETRY LIBRARY: This new series of the world's greatest poetry features the hallmarks of Everyman Classics: top-quality production and reader-friendly design along with helpful notes and critiques. Each edition is also a great value, especially for those readers beginning to explore the work of this remarkable poet.

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Summary: "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson



Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.



Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.



The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.



See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)



I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.

ISBN: 9780553282092

ListPrice: $7.99

Summary: Dead of night.  Salonika, Greece, December 1939.  A clandestine order of monks embarks on a desperate mission: to transport a mysterious vault to a hiding place high in the Italian Alps.  Its sinister contents, concealed fro centuries, could rip apart the Christian world.  Now, as the Nazi threat marches inexorably closer, good men and evil will be drawn into a violent and deadly hunt, sparking a relentless struggle that could forever change the world as we know it.

ISBN: 9780297851868

ListPrice: £12.99

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ISBN: 9780224076098

ListPrice: £15.99

Summary: With House of Meetings Martin Amis has at last put down his distorting lens. With the unarguable reality of his subject matter - the Siberian gulag - what is left to distend? Only the faint but imperishable joys of human imagination can grace such a heartless state inspired depravity. And here, at last, Amis serves himself a dish greatly to his relish and taste. Utilising wonderfully subtle hyperbole, he creates a Russian alter-ego whose self-awareness unshackles the author's usual authorial straightjacket.



Sensitive yet violent, his narrator symbolically represents that strange ambiguity of Russian power, whether personal or political. In a language of rich beauty he discovers where all is lost, in a sense everything else is gained and rare for Amis, not least a voice of buoyancy.



But be warned, in the gulag the writer is still in his element. In place of the usual narrative morbidity we have the refined voice of a resilient brute whose ultimate act of destructiveness somehow represents the withering insecurity of the Amis paranoia. This closes up an otherwise excellent book in a typical fetish of `male anxiety' and justifiable self-loathing.



In sum great writing, even a great book; but sadly let down by the author's flawed finale squeezing out its loftier potential. The arch miserablist remains intact.

ISBN: 9780385493703

ListPrice: $13.95

Dimensions: 0.90 x 7.90 x 5.00 in

Summary: Pity the poor Chawla family of Shahkot, India--their son, Sampath causes all kinds of trouble for his family, culminating in a "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard", but in a village like Shakhot, hullabaloo is a way of life. Indian writer Kiran Desai begins her first novel with Sampath's birth at the tail-end of a terrible drought. His mother, Kulfi, half-maddened by heat and hunger, can think of nothing but food: "Her stomach grew larger. Her dreams of eating more extravagant. The house seemed to shrink. All about her the summer stretched white-hot into an infinite distance. Finally, in desperation for another landscape, she found a box of old crayons in the back of a cupboard and ... began to draw.... As her husband and mother-in-law retreated in horror, not daring to upset her or the baby still inside her, she drew a parade of cooks beheading goats." Sampath's father, Mr. Chawla is a man for whom "oddness, like aches and pains, fits of tears and lethargy" is a source of discomfort; he fears "these uncontrollable, messy puddles of life, the sticky humanness of things." This distaste for sticky humanness will prove problematic for Mr. Chawla later in life when his son grows up to become a young man possessed of a great deal of feeling and very little common sense or ambition.
Mr. Chawla's frustration comes to a head when Sampath loses his menial job at the post office after performing an impromptu cross-dressing strip-tease at his boss's daughter's wedding. Confined to the house in disgrace, Sampath runs away from home and takes refuge in the branches of a guava tree in an abandoned orchard outside of town. At first family and townsfolk think he's mad, but in an inspired moment of self-preservation Sampath, who had spent his time in the post office reading other people's mail, reveals some choice secrets about his persecutors and convinces them that he is, in fact, clairvoyant. It isn't long before Mr. Chawla sees the commercial possibilities of having a holy man in the family, and pretty soon the guava orchard has become the latest stop along the spiritual tourism trail.
Take one holy man in a guava tree, add a venal father, a food-obsessed mother and a younger sister in love with the Hungry Hop Kwality Ice Cream boy and you've got a recipe for delicious comedy. Mix in a rioting band of alcoholic monkeys, a journalist determined to expose Sampath as a fraud, an unholy trio of hypochondriac district medical officer, army general and university professor, all determined to solve the monkey problem, and you've got a real hullabaloo. Kiran Desai's delirious tale of love, faith, and family relationships is funny, smartly written, and reminiscent of other works by Indian authors writing in English such as Salman Rushdie's "The Moor's Last Sigh", Banerjee Divakaruni's "The Mistress of Spices" and Shashi Tharoor's "Show Business". "--Alix Wilber"

ISBN: 0006490344

ListPrice: £5.99

Edition: New Ed

Summary: "Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight--how to get from shore to food and back again," writes author Richard Bach, in this allegory about a unique bird named Jonathan Livingston Seagull. "For most gulls it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." Flight is indeed the metaphor that makes the story soar. Ultimately this is a fable about the importance of seeking a higher purpose in life, even if your flock, tribe or neighbourhood finds your ambition threatening. (At one point our beloved gull is even banished from his flock.) By not compromising his higher vision, Jonathan gets the ultimate pay-off: transcendence. Ultimately, he learns the meaning of love and kindness. The dreamy seagull photographs by Russell Munson provide just the right illustrations--although the overall packaging does seem a bit dated (keep in mind that it was first published in 1970). Nonetheless, this is a spirituality classic and an especially engaging parable for adolescents. --"Gail Hudson"

ISBN: 0747573646

ListPrice: £7.99

Edition: New Ed

Summary: You know the feeling of sticking your hand in a sack of grain? The engulfing sense of texture that surrounds your fingers, comfortingly close, smooth yet strangely rough, tactile and claustrophobic, and ultimately entirely satisfying. Donna Tartt's prose is like that. Her plots are dense, with so many themes tied together that it can feel as though the events are crowding around you, happening just out of your sight. There is no other author who so easily marries excitement and intrigue with sumptuous description and literary reference. As it was with The Secret History, so it is with The Little Friend. There is something for absolutely everyone here, whether you are looking for the excitement of a murder mystery or the insight and subtle illusions of literary fiction.
With The Secret History, Donna Tartt achieved the unusual combination of critical acclaim and international success. Her second novel, The Little Friend, a decade in the writing, was finally published in 2002. It tells the tale of Harriet, a precocious twelve year old whose once wealthy family is still reeling from the death of her older brother Robin when she was a baby. Since then her father has moved to another city, her mother can barely raise herself from bed long enough to smoke a cigarette and her elder sister Alison is so timid she barely says a word. So Harriet, accompanied by her only friend Hely, sets out to solve the riddle of Robin's mysterious murder and reap vengeance on the man she suspects. But with her comfortable family life falling apart all around her Harriet is forced to face up to the adult world, with all its struggles and ambiguity. The result is a delicious journey through the internal world of a twelve year old girl, as she struggles to locate her place in the wider world.
The complex plot and myriad themes keep the reader guessing to the end but this is a less intense offering than The Secret History. At 555 pages of tiny print it is far longer and much slower. Much of it is taken up with building the setting and developing a real sense of the characters and their small Mississippi town. Harriet is brilliantly construed, her thought process and intense emotions feel incredibly familiar and believable.
However, it is also a little too long and there are passages in the middle which you feel could have been better edited. It is not as good as The Secret History, partly because the claustrophobia and mystery is often broken by the slow pace. However, as it builds to its convergent climax the last hundred or so pages are as good as anything she has written and the lack of a conclusive ending leaves the reader guessing. Donna Tartt has claimed that she does reveal the identity of Robin's murder somewhere in the plot, but if that is the case then few people have discovered the answer. That is one of the best things about this, the density of plot construction and sheer number of recurring ideas mean this is a book to read and then reread again and again. Donna Tartt is a joy to read, one of the best present day writers anywhere in the world. Read her stuff...read it now!

ISBN: 9780091831080

Summary: If you can get hold of this book through Amazon U.K., do so, if you want to read about a realistic portrayal of a young gay Greek-Australian in inner city Melbourne. Not a hint of Kangaroos bounding across the Yarra River, or Crocodile Dundee, Thank God.
This books tells us of young Alex, over the course of several days.Life is not easy, and it portrays the difficulty of coming to terms with, and accepting one's sexuality in both a contemporary white Australian context, as well as within the confines of a traditional society, uprooted from Greece, and transplanted into the soil of a new country.
Within the narrative are numerous references to popular TV culture and popular music from the last few decades, which serve as ready reference points for those of us who grew up watching those TV shows, listening to that music.
The novel also includes lengthy descriptions on ethnic and class divides in urban Australia, and this makes the novel all the more worthwhile to read.
So, read the novel (if you can get it, try amazon.uk) if only because it is by and largely about a gay man. Read the novel, if only because it describes an urban Australian reality - Melbourne. Read the novel, if only because of it's gritty, confrontational style of writing and subject matter.
Read it, and enhance your perceptions of Australia.

ISBN: 9780140440157

ListPrice: $3.95

Dimensions: 0.90 x 6.90 x 4.40 in

Translator: Alan Russell

Summary: For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, "Madame Bovary" remains a powerful and arousing novel.

Translated with an Introduction by Geoffrey Wall
New Preface by Michèle Roberts

ISBN: 9780679760801

ListPrice: $13.00

Summary: Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than "The Master and Margarita". Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A puzzled relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection.
Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is "necessary": "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"
Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. "The Master and Margarita" is a different book each time it is opened. "--Mary Park"

ISBN: 055299670X

ListPrice: £6.99

Edition: New Ed

Summary: There are books that, although nothing much happens, they still give the impression of many things bubbling under the surface - this is one of them. Not dissimilar to Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, this is a story of the magic in the mundane, only in this case, rather than trying to fit in and be "normal", the narrator tries desperately to hang onto her mystery and magic, all the while battling her own desires in order to remain a Mistress of Spices. It's a voyage of self-discovery, of living in a foreign land and trying to maintain the elements of home in a new country. It's also, ultimately, a story of hope - that perhaps a woman really can have it all if she dares.



The style is at once flowing and jarring; a mix of flowing thought and halting speech that feels both familiar and foreign - a novel of extreme contrasts. The characters are fragile and all too human, afraid of losing their roots, but hoping for a better life in America than they had in India. There's something absolutely charming about this story that I can't quite put my finger on, almost as if one was under a spell while reading it that lingers after you've finished the last page. Absorbing, exotic and mysterious.

ISBN: 9780141187655

ListPrice: $16.50

Summary:

ISBN: 9780670917334

Edition: Open market e.

Dimensions: 0.87 x 9.13 x 5.98 in

Summary: Following "The Rotters’ Club "and its sequel, "The Closed Circle, "Jonathan Coe now offers his first stand-alone novel in a decade, a story of three generations of women whose destinies reach from the English countryside in World War II to London, Toronto, and southern France at the turn of the new century.
Evacuated to Shropshire during the Blitz, eight-year-old Rosamond forged a bond with her cousin Beatrix that augured the most treasured and devastating moments of her life. She recorded these memories sixty years later, just before her death, on cassettes she bequeathed to a woman she hadn’t seen in decades. When her beloved niece, Gill, plays the tapes in hopes of locating this unwitting heir, she instead hears a family saga swathed in promise and betrayal: the story of how Beatrix, starved of her mother’s affection, conceived a fraught bloodline that culminated in heart-stopping tragedy—its chief victim being her own granddaughter. And as Rosamond explores the ties that bound these generations together and shaped her experience all along, Gill grows increasingly haunted by how profoundly her own recollections—not to mention the love she feels for her grown daughters, listening alongside her—are linked to generations of women she never knew.
A stirring, masterful portrait of motherhood and family secrets, "The Rain Before It Falls" is also a meditation on the tapestries we weave out of the past, whether transcendent or horrific. Hailed by the "Los Angeles Times" for his “sustained, intricate brilliance,” Jonathan Coe once again proves himself “an artist of character and of his characters’ stories,” here more astutely than ever before.

ISBN: 9780141887159

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ISBN: 048626467X

ListPrice: £0.95

Edition: New Ed

Translator: E. Fitzgerald

Summary: Intending purchasers of the Rubaiyat with this particular ISBN need to be wary. What I got here was exactly what I wanted, namely FitzGerald's first version, the version familiar to many of us from our schooldays as it is given in the additional poems at the end of Palgrave's Golden Treasury. FitzGerald revised the work no fewer than four times, and so far as I can see there is also a version in circulation with this same ISBN but giving one of the later texts and having a different editor as well as a different picture on the cover.



Presumably FitzGerald thought he was making improvements as he went along. For me, although some of the revised stanzas are probably better than his first attempts, and those that are completely new are very welcome, each successive version is a little weaker than the one before. He abandons, for instance, the magnificent and unique metaphor in the first quatrain, and the very effective quatrains where all four lines are made to rhyme disappear as well. The general feel of it all stays the same of course, but I sense a loss of vividness in the afterthoughts by and large.



The edition as I have it is edited by Alexander Hutchison who contributes a helpful short introduction. There is in addition a set of notes at the back, and these are thoughtful and informative also. I would imagine that for Eng Lit students this little book will be a godsend at such modest cost. Enthusiasts for the poem in general will find the printing beautifully clear, and I did not spot any misprints or inaccuracies. What I wanted is what I have been given here, but that was more by luck than by judgment on my part.

ISBN: 9780140167771

ListPrice: £7.99

Summary: It seems to be a book that either readers love or hated but i am quite in between for me it was a page turner and i loved the fact that greek was inputed here and there but i did find it rather a aint climax and donna tartt not the best writer but by far not the worst. I found the ending depressing; that none of the characters are happy, sure it makes sense that everyone was effected by their murder badly but it seem that if they were willing enogh to do that enventually the should move on and find SOME happiness, (not in a fake fairy tale way) i mean even the dead are unhappy! I was also shocked at how causual (thought it was predictable to the read) the whole twin thing was taken by the rest of the group!

ISBN: 9780312422288

ListPrice: $13.00

Dimensions: 0.70 x 8.20 x 5.40 in

Summary: Light and funny, with a bitter aftertaste, the action of "Sellevision" takes place behind the scenes (and on the set) of a successful television shopping network, where a feminine role model, Peggy Jean Smythe, the married, Christian mother of three, begins receiving suspicious e-mail from a viewer who insists that Peggy's hairy earlobe is obscuring her presentation of jewelry during the broadcast. When Peggy fails to respond to the e-mail, but silently waxes her lobe, the cruel notes escalate, until Peggy believes herself to be suffering from a hormonal crisis that has given her a mustache, a gruff voice, and the manner of a lumberjack. Meanwhile, one of her cohosts, Max Andrews, has been fired for accidentally exposing himself during a children's special, and learns just how undesirable a commodity a penis-baring ex-Sellevision host can be on the job market. The book is an unusually smooth read for a first novel, with six or seven truly inspired lines. "--Regina Marler"

ISBN: 0349117543

ListPrice: £8.99

Edition: New Ed

Summary: I can't believe some of the critical reviews of this book that I have just read here. This book is one of the best I have read in a long long time. I really enjoyed it and found it hard to put down. Surely this is an important quality in a book..... The book has also given me a desire to learn more about and possibly even travel to India. All in all I felt the book was well written and gripping and I highly recommend it

ISBN: 9780330234818

ListPrice: $24.90

Dimensions: 0.31 x 7.76 x 5.16 in

Summary: In the novel, "Siddhartha," a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life -- the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom. "From the Paperback edition."

ISBN: 9781741753592

Summary: Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2009, this title is an international bestseller. At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own...The reverberations call into question the relationships between all those who witness it. At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly 3-year-old boy. The boy is not his son. It is a single act of violence, but this one slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen. In his controversial, award-winning novel, Christos Tsiolkas presents an apparently harmless domestic incident as seen from eight very different perspectives. The result is an unflinching interrogation of our lives today; of the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits...

ISBN: 9780099769910

ListPrice: $14.45

Dimensions: 0.87 x 7.83 x 5.08 in

Summary: The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included "In Patagonia", a fabulist travel narrative, "The Viceroy of Ouidah", a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and "The Songlines", his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made "The Songlines" one of his last books.

ISBN: 9780099415381

Edition: New Ed

Summary: This is serious popular fiction -- a true page-turner -- about an American woman in London whose entire life is turned upside down, and London becomes a very foreign place.

This is the story of Sally Goodchild, a thirty-seven-year-old American, who, after nearly two decades as a highly independent journalist, suddenly finds herself pregnant and in London, married to an English foreign correspondent, Tony Thompson, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo. From the outset, Sally’s relationship with both Tony and London is an uneasy one -- especially as she finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than she imagined. But her adjustment problems are soon overshadowed by a troubled pregnancy. When she goes into premature labour, there are doubts whether her child will survive unscathed. And then, out of nowhere, Sally is hit by an appalling post-natal depression -- a descent into a temporary, but very personal hell, which even sees her articulating a homicidal thought against her baby.

However, when she does manage to extricate herself from this desperate dark wood, she finds herself in a fresh new nightmare -- as she discovers that everything can be taken down and used against you…especially by a spouse who now considers you an unfit mother and wants to bar you from ever seeing your child again.


"From the Trade Paperback edition."

ISBN: 9780766196971

ListPrice: $31.95

Illustrator: Harry Furniss

Dimensions: 0.76 x 9.00 x 6.00 in

Summary: 1926. From the author of the Alice books, The Story of Sylvie and Bruno follows the adventures of two young children in such places as Dogland, Outland and Elfland. It combines Carrollian nonsense, linguistic play and philosophical reflection.

ISBN: 9780415025256

ListPrice: $37.95

Edition: 1

Dimensions: 0.55 x 7.80 x 4.96 in

Summary: Intended for those with no prior knowledege of the subject, this book discuses the nature and development of structure and semiotics. It answers questions raised by the whole `science of signs' considering what `reading' and `writing' involves.

ISBN: 9780571165254

ListPrice: $16.50

Dimensions: 1.02 x 7.56 x 4.96 in

Summary: Mistry does something that only the really natural writers can do: without apparent effort, manipulation or contrivance, he creates characters you like instantly and will gladly follow for as long as the novel leads. The book is about an Indian family during the years of Indira Ganhdi's rule; it's also a study of the times, its politics and corruption, and was especially interesting for me, who knows so little about life in the rest of the world. It had to be a good book: after I read Such a Long Journey, I wanted to go right out and buy a plane ticket and see India for myself.

ISBN: 9781921520532

ListPrice: US$ 23.73

Edition: Edition:

Summary:

ISBN: 9780805209990

ListPrice: $13.00

Summary: The story of "The Trial"'s publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare "The Trial" and the rest of his papers for publication. When the Nazis came to power, publication of Jewish writers such as Kafka was forbidden; Kafka's writings, many of which have distinctively Jewish themes, did not find a broad audience until after World War II. (Hannah Arendt once observed that although "during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, [Kafka] will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed.") Among the current crop of Kafka heirs is Breon Mitchell, the translator of this edition of "The Trial". Rather than tidying up Kafka's unconventional grammar and punctuation (as previous translators have done), Mitchell captures the loose, uneasy, even uncomfortable constructions of Kafka's original story. His translation technique is the only way to convey the comedy and confusion of this narrative, in which Josef K., "without having done anything truly wrong," is arrested, tried, convicted and executed--on a charge that is never disclosed to him. --"Michael Joseph Gross"

ISBN: 9780140082517

Edition: New Ed

Summary: Anais Nin did not adhere to the traditions of story-telling. Formulaic plots, character arcs, and realistic descriptions didn't interest her. She was a master of character analysis and description -- instead of watching her characters move through the story, you, as the reader, move through the characters. This was because Nin was experimenting with a new artistic movement called surrealism and she ended up being one of its brightest stars.
Because of Edmund Wilson's favorable review (and he was, of course, the king of critics) this was the collection of stories that finally brought Nin's work to the attention of public. Her writing style is simply stunning. Imagine distilling a story, as one distills a liquid, down to the final crystals. Or creating a beautiful and poetic ritual out of something mundane (such as the Geisha's tea ceremony).
I think my personal favorites in this collection are "Ragtime," an amazing description of the poverty-stricken rag-picking community in 1930s Paris, "The Mouse," about Nin's fearful maid, and "Birth," the now notorious story about Nin's abortion. Seem like ugly topics? You'd be amazed at how beautiful Nin can render them.
It takes a sensitive reader to understand Anais Nin's writing, but if you are that, I think you will find value in these stories.

ISBN: 1853262277

ListPrice: £1.99

Edition: New Ed

Summary: I borrow the title of Poussin's painting to add my appreciation. Hardy view his rustics through the prism of music: the old church string choir is to be replaced with the spanking new organ. Added to this is the story of young Dave and his love for the organist, Fancy Day.
A story of established customs breaking down through the interloper, a new vicar in town. Structurally divided into Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, it follows the natural rhythms of the earth and of society.
Filled with nostalgia, seasoned with wisdom and wit, this is truly fabulous - a mini-masterpice in a similar bag to, say, Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford". It was deservedly Hardy's own favourite among his novels.