en-US Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:50:56 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 2282 162 Truman Capote 067960085X Mike 4 4-stars 3.87 1958
author: Truman Capote
name: Mike
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/19
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 625164 My Country Right or Left, Decline of the English Murder, Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging.

With great originality and wit Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from the moral enormity of Jonathan Swift’s strange genius and a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, a comic yet profound discussion of naughty sea-side picture postcards and a spirited defence of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose style, Orwell’s essays challenge, move and entertain.

Contents:
Why I Write
The Spike
A Hanging
Shooting an Elephant
Bookshop Memories
Marrakech
Charles Dickens
Boys' Weeklies
Inside the Whale
My Country Right or Left
The Lion and the Unicorn
Wells, Hitler and the World State
The Art of Donald McGill
Rudyard Kipling
Looking Back on the Spanish War
W.B. Yeats
Poetry and the Microphone
Benefit of Clergy; Some Notes on Salvador Dali
Raffles and Miss Blandish
Arthur Koestler
Antisemitism in Britain
In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse
Notes on Nationalism
Good Bad Books
The Sporting Spirit
Nonsense Poetry
The Prevention of Literature
Books v. Cigarettes
Decline of the English Murder
Politics and the English Language
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray
Confessions of a Book Reviewer
Politics vs Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels
How the Poor Die
Riding Down from Bangor
Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
Such, Such Were the Joys
Writers and Leviathan
Reflections on Gandhi]]> 466 George Orwell 0141183063 Mike 4 4-and-a-half-stars 4.35 1941
author: George Orwell
name: Mike
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1941
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/12/02
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 1047308 208 Paul Metcalf 0826313000 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars 4.26 1965
author: Paul Metcalf
name: Mike
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1965
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/28
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 153747 "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."

So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.

This edition of Moby-Dick, which reproduces the definitive text of the novel, includes invaluable explanatory notes, along with maps, illustrations, and a glossary of nautical terms.]]> 720 Herman Melville 0142437247 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars 3.53 1851
author: Herman Melville
name: Mike
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1851
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/18
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 766869 288 Edgar Allan Poe 0140437487 Mike 3 3-stars 3.47 1838
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Mike
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1838
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/01
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 625094 The Sicilian prince Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (1896-1957) died just after writing The Leopard, his only novel. Visconti's film adaptation, starring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1963.

In Sicily, in 1860, a family from the high aristocracy suffered the consequences of the change of regime in favor of the Republicans. While Prince Salina lets himself be overcome by nostalgia, his nephew Tancred embodies the new force that is shaking his country. He asks for the hand of Angélique, daughter of an upstart, while this union marks the defeat of the family coat of arms.]]> 319 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 0679731210 Mike 4 4-stars 4.01 1958
author: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
name: Mike
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/23
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 23012473 NATIONAL BEST SELLER  

From the author of the international best seller House of Leaves and National Book Award–nominated Only Revolutions comes a monumental new novel as dazzling as it is riveting. The Familiar (Volume 1) ranges from Mexico to Southeast Asia, from Venice, Italy, to Venice, California, with nine lives hanging in the balance, each called upon to make a terrifying choice. They include a therapist-in-training grappling with daughters as demanding as her patients; an ambitious East L.A. gang member contracted for violence; two scientists in Marfa, Texas, on the run from an organization powerful beyond imagining; plus a recovering addict in Singapore summoned at midnight by a desperate billionaire; and a programmer near Silicon Beach whose game engine might unleash consequences far exceeding the entertainment he intends. At the very heart, though, is a twelve-year-old girl named Xanther who one rainy day in May sets out with her father to get a dog, only to end up trying to save a creature as fragile as it is dangerous . . . which will change not only her life and the lives of those she has yet to encounter, but this world, too—or at least the world we think we know and the future we take for granted.

(With full-color illustrations throughout.) ]]> 880 Mark Z. Danielewski 0375714944 Mike 2 3-stars 3.66 2015
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Mike
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 29906980 Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?]]> 368 George Saunders 0812995341 Mike 3 2-and-a-half-stars 3.75 2017
author: George Saunders
name: Mike
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/04/14
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: 2-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 7747 230 Hunter S. Thompson 0007204493 Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 3.95 1971
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Mike
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2009/07/31
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 446542 241 Samuel Beckett 0802151361 Mike 4 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 4.06 1951
author: Samuel Beckett
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 3263632 980 James Joyce 0199535671 Mike 4 own, favorites, 4-stars 4.03 1922
author: James Joyce
name: Mike
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: own, favorites, 4-stars
review:

]]> 10629
Elle aime les sensations fortes, les virées nocturnes et le rock n'roll des années héroïques. Depuis qu'elle connaßt Arnie, elle est amoureuse. Signe particulier : Christine est une Plymouth « Fury », sortie en 1958 des ateliers automobiles de Detroit.

Une seule rivale en travers de sa route : Leigh, la petite amie d'Arnie�
Ce roman légendaire de Stephen King, rythmé par la musique de Chuck Berry et de Janis Joplin, a déjà pris place parmi les classiques de l'épouvante.]]> 411 Stephen King 2253147699 Mike 3 3-stars 3.85 1983
author: Stephen King
name: Mike
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 527869 Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain.

Trainspotting is the hilarious, appalling, riveting, bestselling, and altogether masterful first novel that launched the spectacular career of Irvine Welsh. It is an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating group portrait of blasted lives in Edinburgh—as unforgettable a clutch of junkies, rude boys, and nutters as readers will ever encounter.]]> 349 Irvine Welsh 0393314804 Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 4.04 1993
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Mike
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 147476 326 George Orwell 0140126716 Mike 4 own, 3-and-a-half-stars 4.21 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Mike
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2009/05/16
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: own, 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 51504 208 Charles Bukowski 0876850867 Mike 3 3-stars 4.01 1971
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Mike
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1971
rating: 3
read at: 2013/12/14
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 70240 136 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 3.82 1969
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Mike
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 587678 195 John Hawkes 0811200639 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 3.79 1949
author: John Hawkes
name: Mike
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 25333047 Pond is an absorbing chronicle of the pitfalls and pleasures of a solitudinous life told by an unnamed woman living on the cusp of a coastal town. Broken bowls, belligerent cows, swanky aubergines, trembling moonrises and horrifying sunsets, the physical world depicted in these stories is unsettling yet intimately familiar and soon takes on a life of its own. Captivated by the stellar charms of seclusion but restless with desire, the woman’s relationship with her surroundings becomes boundless and increasingly bewildering. Claire-Louise Bennett’s startlingly original first collection slips effortlessly between worlds and is by turns darkly funny and deeply moving.]]> 148 Claire-Louise Bennett 1906539464 Mike 4 4-stars, favorites 3.54 2015
author: Claire-Louise Bennett
name: Mike
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 457228 Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.

It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, ïŹred up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,â€� drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to ïŹnd a world as irremediably changed as they have been.]]> 274 John Williams 1590171985 Mike 4 4-stars, favorites 4.18 1960
author: John Williams
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1960
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/30
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy Mike 4 4.18 1985
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: favorites, own, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 4645 The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes "The Killers," the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical; the autobiographical "Fathers and Sons," which alludes, for the first time in Hemingway's career, to his father's suicide; "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," a "brilliant fusion of personal observation, hearsay and invention," wrote Hemingway's biographer, Carlos Baker; and the title story itself, of which Hemingway said: "I put all the true stuff in," with enough material, he boasted, to fill four novels. Beautiful in their simplicity, startling in their originality, and unsurpassed in their craftsmanship, the stories in this volume highlight one of America's master storytellers at the top of his form.

]]> 144 Ernest Hemingway 0684862212 Mike 4 4-stars 3.90 1936
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Mike
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 331070 144 Albert Camus 0881032476 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.83 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Mike
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1942
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 74406 252 Robertson Davies 0141181362 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 4.06 1970
author: Robertson Davies
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 94486 The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.]]> 103 Adolfo Bioy Casares 1590170571 Mike 4 4-stars 4.02 1940
author: Adolfo Bioy Casares
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 6595144
Don DeLillo has been "weirdly prophetic about twenty-first-century America" (The New York Times Book Review). In his earlier novels, he has written about conspiracy theory, the Cold War and global terrorism. Now, in Point Omega, he looks into the mind and heart of a "defense intellectual", one of the men involved in the management of the country's war machine.

Richard Elster was a scholar—an outsider—when he was called to a meeting with government war planners, asked to apply "ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency".

We see Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, "somewhere south of nowhere", in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, Elster its single character�"Just a man and a wall."

Weeks later, Elster's daughter Jessica visits—an "otherworldly" woman from New York, who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. The three of them talk, train their binoculars on the landscape, and build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event throws everything into question.

In this compact and powerful novel, it is finally a lingering human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.]]> 117 Don DeLillo 1439169950 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.46 2010
author: Don DeLillo
name: Mike
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Mike 5 own, favorites, 5-stars 3.81 1927
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 5
read at: 2017/05/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: own, favorites, 5-stars
review:

]]> 19511 Schopenhauer makes a distinction between freedom of acting (which he endorses) and the freedom of willing (which he refutes). The philosopher regards human activity as entirely determined, but he also posits that the variety of freedom that cannot be established in the sphere of human activity resides at the level of individuated will � a reality that transcends all dependency on outside factors. Because the essay's clear and rigorous argument reveals many basic features of his thought, it forms a useful introduction to Schopenhauer for students of philosophy or religion.]]> 128 Arthur Schopenhauer 0486440117 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars 4.17 1839
author: Arthur Schopenhauer
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1839
rating: 5
read at: 2017/05/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 166997
John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]> 292 John Williams 1590171993 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 4.36 1965
author: John Williams
name: Mike
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2017/05/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 18839 Orlando 'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the novel ends in 1928, a year consonant with full suffrage for women. Orlando, now a wife and mother, stands poised at the brink of a future that holds new hope and promise for women.]]> 336 Virginia Woolf 0141184272 Mike 4 4-stars, own 3.88 1928
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Mike
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars, own
review:

]]> 70241 Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.]]> 224 J.G. Ballard 0312420331 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars, own 3.62 1973
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Mike
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars, own
review:

]]> 408 The Names is considered the book which began to drive "sharply upward the size of his readership" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Among the cast of DeLillo's bizarre yet fully realized characters in The Names are Kathryn, the narrator's estranged wife; their son, the six-year-old novelist; Owen, the scientist; and the neurotic narrator obsessed with his own neuroses. A thriller, a mystery, and still a moving examination of family, loss, and the amorphous and magical potential of language itself, The Names stands with any of DeLillo's more recent and highly acclaimed works.

"The Names not only accurately reflects a portion of our contemporary world but, more importantly, an original world of its own is created."--Chicago Sun-Times

"DeLillo sifts experience through simultaneous grids of science and poetry, analysis and clear sight, to make a high-wire prose that is voluptuously stark."--Village Voice Literary Supplement

"DeLillo verbally examines every state of consciousness from eroticism to tourism, from the idea of America as conceived by the rest of the world, to the idea of the rest of the world as conceived by America, from mysticism to fanaticism."--New York Times]]> 339 Don DeLillo 0679722955 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.64 1982
author: Don DeLillo
name: Mike
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2017/03/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 12036 361 Herman Melville 0192837621 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.63 1857
author: Herman Melville
name: Mike
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1857
rating: 4
read at: 2017/04/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 324129 192 J.G. Ballard Mike 5 4-stars 3.66 1969
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Mike
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2015/01/01
date added: 2017/08/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 52036 152 Hermann Hesse Mike 4 4.07 1922
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Mike
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/01
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 156192 256 Robert Coover 0452260302 Mike 4 3.86 1968
author: Robert Coover
name: Mike
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2017/02/01
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 200249 224 Anthony Burgess 3453130790 Mike 3 own, 4-stars 3.96 1962
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Mike
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: own, 4-stars
review:

]]> 216399 A Maze of Death is Philip K. Dick at his most dizzyingly provocative.

]]> 192 Philip K. Dick 0679752986 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.82 1970
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Mike
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1970
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 12220 Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williamsâ€� essay “The World I Live In.â€�

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared�57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams� A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the �40s and �50s.]]> 107 Tennessee Williams 0822210894 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.98 1947
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Mike
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Mike 3 2-stars 4.57 2005
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Mike
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 2-stars
review:

]]> 9595 Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut’s pen into hilarious farce—a final slapstick that may be the Almighty’s joke on us all.]]> 288 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334230 Mike 3 2-and-a-half-stars 3.87 1976
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mike
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 2-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 5809 640 Thomas Pynchon 2020418770 Mike 5 4-stars 3.97 1963
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 4.00 1925
author: Franz Kafka
name: Mike
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 1198388 183 Thomas Pynchon 0397004184 Mike 5 3.75 1966
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: own, 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 18545 126 Tom Stoppard 0802132758 Mike 5 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 4.04 1967
author: Tom Stoppard
name: Mike
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Mike 5 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 3.81 1952
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 28251250
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Part of the Penguin Orange Collection, a limited-run series of twelve influential and beloved American classics in a bold series design offering a modern take on the iconic Penguin paperback

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition]]> 320 Don DeLillo 0143129554 Mike 4 3.88 1985
author: Don DeLillo
name: Mike
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
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review:

]]> 11588 497 Stephen King 0450040186 Mike 3 4.28 1977
author: Stephen King
name: Mike
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
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review:

]]> 11590 Librarian's Note: Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0450031063

Thousands of miles away from the small township of 'Salem's Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to 'Salem's Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.]]> 483 Stephen King 0450031063 Mike 4 4.06 1975
author: Stephen King
name: Mike
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
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review:

]]> 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Mike 4 4.16 1972
author: Italo Calvino
name: Mike
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/04/09
shelves: reviewed, own, favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 4171978 232 Knut Hamsun 0374505209 Mike 4 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 4.18 1890
author: Knut Hamsun
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1890
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/03/07
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 11220 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.

This edition includes a new forward by Kesey, a new text introduction by Robert Faggan, and line drawings the author made when writing the book, many never before published.

Cover illustration by Paul Wearing

--back cover]]> 281 Ken Kesey 0141181222 Mike 4 4-stars 4.11 1962
author: Ken Kesey
name: Mike
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2016/10/11
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 72193
]]> 223 J.K. Rowling Mike 3 3-stars 4.45 1997
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Mike
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2016/09/28
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 21480930 560 Gillian Flynn 0553418351 Mike 3 3-stars 4.05 2012
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Mike
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/08/09
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 2794 The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.]]> 152 Thomas Pynchon 006091307X Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars 3.70 1966
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girlsâ€� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins â€� someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspectsâ€� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling Mike 3 2-stars 4.42 1998
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Mike
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 2-stars
review:

]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Mike 2 3-stars 4.56 2000
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Mike
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 12885 205 John Barth 0385240872 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.69 1968
author: John Barth
name: Mike
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/01
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 5933841 Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog

It's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dodgy dentists.

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .hang on. . .what]]> 369 Thomas Pynchon 1594202249 Mike 4 4-stars 3.79 2009
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Mike
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 158141 320 Nicholas Pileggi 0671723227 Mike 4 4-stars 4.22 1985
author: Nicholas Pileggi
name: Mike
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 16631 Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".]]> 256 Hermann Hesse 0140282580 Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 4.15 1927
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Mike
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1927
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
review:

]]> 102908
First published in 1966, Beautiful Losers demonstrates that its author is not only a superb songwriter but also a novelist of visionary power. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, it is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of sexuality and faith.]]> 243 Leonard Cohen 0679748253 Mike 4 own, 4-stars 3.62 1966
author: Leonard Cohen
name: Mike
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1966
rating: 4
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shelves: own, 4-stars
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]]> 752994 The Misanthrope or Le Misanthrope ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux is a comedy of manners in five acts and in verse.

It is one of the best of ČюDZôŸ±Ăš°ù±đ's plays â€� and one of the greatest of all comedies â€� spotlighting the absurdities of social and literary pretension, focusing on a man who is quick to criticize the faults of others, yet remains blind to his own.
This play satirizes the hypocrisies of French aristocratic society, but it also engages a more serious tone when pointing out the flaws, which all humans possess. The play differs from other farces at the time by employing dynamic characters like Alceste and CĂ©limĂšne as opposed to the traditionally flat characters used by most satirists to criticize problems in society. It also differs from most of ČюDZôŸ±Ăš°ù±đ's other works by focusing more on character development and nuances than on plot progression. The play, though not a commercial success in its time, survives as ČюDZôŸ±Ăš°ù±đ's best-known work today. Much of its universal appeal is due to common undercurrents of misanthropy across cultural borders.]]> 119 ČюDZôŸ±Ăš°ù±đ Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 3.81 1666
author: ČюDZôŸ±Ăš°ù±đ
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1666
rating: 3
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shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 19117
Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.

Introduction by Jane Costlow]]> 244 Ivan Turgenev 0451529693 Mike 4 4-and-a-half-stars 3.99 1862
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Mike
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1862
rating: 4
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shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 8695 alternate edition for ISBN 0345418921/9780345418920

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle through space powered by pure improbability - and desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a long-time friend and contributor to the The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMilan, a fellow Earth refuge who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, who suffers nothing and no one gladly.

Source: douglasadams.com]]> 250 Douglas Adams Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 4.22 1980
author: Douglas Adams
name: Mike
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:
The last 70 or so pages, including a meeting with the Ruler of the Universe and a reimagining of the origins of mankind, is some of the most brilliant stuff Douglas Adams has ever written. The rest of the book is pretty funny too.
]]> 3431
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"]]> 196 Mitch Albom 0786868716 Mike 2 own, 2-stars 4.01 2003
author: Mitch Albom
name: Mike
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 2
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: own, 2-stars
review:

]]> 60106 118 Italo Calvino 0099430878 Mike 2 2-and-a-half-stars 3.93 1983
author: Italo Calvino
name: Mike
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1983
rating: 2
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 2-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 299773
Chamdi’s quiet life takes a sudden turn, however, when he learns that the orphanage will be shut down by land developers. He decides that he must run away in search of his long-lost father, taking nothing with him but the blood-stained white cloth he was left in as a baby.

Outside the walls of the orphanage, Chamdi quickly discovers that Bombay is nothing like Kahunsha. The streets are filthy and devoid of colour, and no one shows him an ounce of kindness. Just as he’s about to faint from hunger, two seasoned street children offer the lovely, sarcastic Guddi and her brother, the charming, scarred, and crippled Sumdi. After their father was crushed by a car before their eyes, the children were left to care for their insane mother and their infant brother. They soon initiate Chamdi into the brutal life of the city’s homeless, begging all day and handing over most of his earnings to Anand Bhai, a vicious underworld don who will happily mutilate or kill whoever dares to defy him.

Determined to escape the desperation, filth, and violence of their lives, Guddi and Sumdi recruit Chamdi into their plot to steal from a temple. But when the robbery goes terribly awry, Chamdi finds himself in an even worse situation. The city has erupted in Hindu-Muslim violence and, held in Anand Bhai’s fierce grip, Chamdi is presented with a choice that threatens to rob him of his innocence forever.]]> 320 Anosh Irani 0385662297 Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 3.70 2006
author: Anosh Irani
name: Mike
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 461121 A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Samuel, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.
]]> 230 Michael Cunningham 0312243022 Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 3.98 1998
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Mike
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1998
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 1397735
Now in prison, Antonio Martens is a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct dictatorship. He requests and is given writing materials in his cell, and what he has to recount is his involvement in the surveillance, torture, and assassination of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a prominent father and son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Preying on young Enrique’s aimless life, the secret police began to position him as a subversive and then targeted his father. Once this plan was set into motion, any means were justified to reach the regime’s chosen end—the destruction of an entire liberal class.

Inside Martens’s mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis. A slim, explosive novel of justice railroaded by malevolence, Detective Story is a warning cry for our time.]]> 112 Imre KertĂ©sz 0307266443 Mike 4 3-and-a-half-stars 3.49 1977
author: Imre Kertész
name: Mike
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1977
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Mike 4 own, 3-and-a-half-stars 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Mike
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: own, 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Mike 4 4-stars 4.57 1999
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Mike
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 393199 213 George Orwell 015626224X Mike 4 4-stars 4.10 1933
author: George Orwell
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 4
read at: 2014/03/20
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 244261
Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.]]> 160 Bruno Schulz 0140186255 Mike 4 4.18 1933
author: Bruno Schulz
name: Mike
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1933
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, own, favorites
review:

]]> 310612
His mother thinks he needs to go to work. He does, in a succession of jobs. Each job rapidly escalates into a lunatic adventure, a full-blown disaster; yet each has, like Don Quixote's, its own eerie logic.

His girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex.

Ignatius is an intellectual, ideologue, deadbeat, goof-off, glutton, who should repel the reader with his gargantuan bloats, his thunderous contempt, and one-man war against everybody: Freud, homosexuals, heterosexuals, Protestants, and the assorted excesses of modern times.

A tragicomedy, set in New Orleans.]]> 394 John Kennedy Toole 0802130208 Mike 4 4-stars 3.89 1980
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Mike
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at:
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shelves: 4-stars
review:

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

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Mike 5 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites 4.17 1962
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Mike
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars, favorites
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]]> 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 710 Mark Z. Danielewski Mike 4 favorites, 4-stars 4.11 2000
author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Mike
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2013/12/10
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: favorites, 4-stars
review:

]]> 1444187 81 Henrik Ibsen 1420922432 Mike 4 4-stars 3.65 1879
author: Henrik Ibsen
name: Mike
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1879
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 900432 Librarian's note: This is an Alternate Cover Edition for ISBN10: 0141182741 ISBN13: 9780141182742.

In the spring of 1948 Arthur Miller retreated to a log cabin in Connecticut with the first two lines of a new play already fixed in his mind. He emerged six weeks later with the final script of Death of a Salesman - a painful examination of American life and consumerism. Opening on Broadway the following year, Miller's extraordinary masterpiece changed the course of modern theatre. In creating Willy Loman, his destructively insecure anti-hero, Miller himself defined his aim as being 'to set forth what happens when a man does not have a grip on the forces of life'.]]> 112 Arthur Miller Mike 4 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 3.58 1949
author: Arthur Miller
name: Mike
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1949
rating: 4
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review:

]]> 218659 Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.]]> 269 Flannery O'Connor Mike 5 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 4.24 1965
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Mike
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1965
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 11991
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth. In a eulogy to Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described the novel as "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books.]]> 147 Albert Camus 0679720227 Mike 5 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 4.07 1956
author: Albert Camus
name: Mike
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Mike 5 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Mike
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 5
read at: 2009/02/25
date added: 2015/07/05
shelves: own, favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 18245
Includes an introduction, note on the translation, cast of characters, maps, notes on the major battles depicted, and chapter summaries]]> 1424 Leo Tolstoy 0143039997 Mike 0 to-read, own 4.42 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Mike
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/10
shelves: to-read, own
review:

]]> 374188 Ghosts is a three-act tragedy that explores uncomfortable, even forbidden themes. It is also a highly critical commentary on the morality of the day. The play centers around the widow of a prominent Norwegian sea captain whose son returns home and, with tragic consequences, revives the ghosts of the past that she has long labored to put to rest.

Ghosts immediately became a source of controversy for its inclusion of topics like venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, and it was banned from being performed in England for many years. Its arrival signals a shift in the nature of theatre and, despite negative criticism, it was translated into other languages and performed in Sweden, Germany, and New York within a few years of its debut. It stands now as one of the works considered to have ushered in the era of modern drama.]]> 48 Henrik Ibsen 1420927957 Mike 3 3-and-a-half-stars 3.83 1881
author: Henrik Ibsen
name: Mike
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1881
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/06/19
shelves: 3-and-a-half-stars
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]]> 12113 Pirandello (1867-1936) is the founding architect of twentieth-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre.This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits.]]> 224 Luigi Pirandello 014018922X Mike 3 3-stars 3.94 1921
author: Luigi Pirandello
name: Mike
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1921
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/06/17
shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 298160 111 Samuel Beckett 0802130348 Mike 5 own, favorites, 5-stars 3.76 1951
author: Samuel Beckett
name: Mike
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2014/06/12
shelves: own, favorites, 5-stars
review:

]]> 70884 The Last Night of the Earth Poems explores writing, death, immortality, city life, war, and the past.]]> 408 Charles Bukowski Mike 4 4-stars 4.31 1992
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Mike
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: 4-stars
review:

]]> 220682
Edited by John Martin, the legendary publisher of Black Sparrow Press and a close friend of Bukowski's, The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best works from Bukowski's long poetic career, including the last of his never-before-collected poems. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary and surprising sensibility, and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a rich lifetime of experiences and speak to Bukowski's “immense intelligence, the caring heart that saw through the sham of our pretenses and had pity on our human conditionâ€� (New York Quarterly). The Pleasures of the Damned is an astonishing poetic treasure trove, essential reading for both longtime fans and those just discovering this unique and legendary American voice.]]> 557 Charles Bukowski 0061228435 Mike 4 4-and-a-half-stars 4.37 2007
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Mike
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 1591 Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.]]> 132 Aristophanes 0872206033 Mike 3 reviewed, 3-and-a-half-stars 3.87 -423
author: Aristophanes
name: Mike
average rating: 3.87
book published: -423
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: reviewed, 3-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 262304 Wild Party, a lost classic from 1928. The inventive and varied page designs offer perfect counterpoint to the staccato tempo of this hard-boiled jazz-age tragedy told in syncopated rhyming couplets.

Here is a poem that can make even readers with no time for poetry stop dead in their tracks. Once read, large shards of this story of one night of debauchery will become permanently lodged in the brain. When The Wild Party was first published, Louis Untermeyer declared: "It is repulsive and fascinating, vicious and vivacious, uncompromising, unashamed . . . and unremittingly powerful. It is an amazing tour de force."]]> 112 Joseph Moncure March 0375706437 Mike 3 3-stars 4.10 1928
author: Joseph Moncure March
name: Mike
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1928
rating: 3
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shelves: 3-stars
review:

]]> 286804
The new Pelican Shakespeare will be an excellent resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals well into the twenty-first century.]]> 145 William Shakespeare 0140714634 Mike 4 own, 4-and-a-half-stars 3.98 1603
author: William Shakespeare
name: Mike
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1603
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: own, 4-and-a-half-stars
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]]> 1420 289 William Shakespeare 0521618746 Mike 4 4.02 1601
author: William Shakespeare
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1601
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/09
date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: own, favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 97333 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780141182681

A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, At Swim-Two-Birds is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish collegestudent who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not inbed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling onhis head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing. Hilariously funny and inventive, At Swim-Two-Birds has influenced generations of writers, opening up new possibilities for what can be done in fiction. It is a true masterpiece of Irish literature.

Flann O'Brien's first novel is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense. Operating on many levels it incorporates plots within plots, giving full rein to O'Brien's dancing intellect and Celtic wit. The undergraduate narrator lives with his uncle in Dublin, drinks too much with his friends and invents stories peopled with hilarious and unlikely characters, one of whom, in a typical O'Brien conundrum, creates a means by which women can give birth to full-grown people. Flann O'Brien's blend of farce, satire and fantasy result in a remarkable, astonishingly innovaative book.]]> 239 Flann O'Brien Mike 4 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 3.88 1939
author: Flann O'Brien
name: Mike
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1939
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
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]]> 1522537 Village Voice pieces over the past decade, Movie Journal provides a chronicle of the birth and infancy of the new genre he baptised as the New American Cinema.

Here are perceptive discussions of Markopoulos, Brakhage, Jack Smith, Antonioni, Anger, and Breer; lacerating comments on Hollywood film; exhortations to young film-makers, unabashedly ecstatic reviews. Unlike most film criticism, Movie Journal sees its subject not as a seperate, extracultural phenomenon, but as the lens of a kaleidoscopic new culture. Consistently rejecting the false for the true, the ugly for the beautiful, the trite for the meaningful, Mekas' passionately honest and human vision provides a unique and total trip through the sensual world of a new art.]]> 434 Jonas Mekas Mike 4 favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars 4.46 1972
author: Jonas Mekas
name: Mike
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1972
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: favorites, 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Mike 4 4-and-a-half-stars 4.12 1984
author: Milan Kundera
name: Mike
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/05/11
shelves: 4-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 22582 The Unteleported Man, which Dick worked on shortly before his death. In Lies, Inc., fans of the science fiction legend will immediately recognize his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion. This publication marks its first complete appearance in the United States.

In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never comeback. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return.]]> 202 Philip K. Dick 1400030080 Mike 2 2-and-a-half-stars 3.24 1983
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Mike
average rating: 3.24
book published: 1983
rating: 2
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date added: 2014/04/22
shelves: 2-and-a-half-stars
review:

]]> 588495
For this completely updated edition, Maurice Hindle has revised his introduction, list of further reading and notes, and added two appendices: Stoker's essay on censorship and his interview with Winston Churchill, both published in 1908. Christopher Frayling's preface discusses Stoker's significance and the influences that contributed to his creation of the Dracula myth.]]> 454 Bram Stoker 014143984X Mike 0 to-read 3.84 1897
author: Bram Stoker
name: Mike
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1897
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12986717
In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.]]> 258 John Le Carré 0143121421 Mike 0 to-read 4.12 1963
author: John Le Carré
name: Mike
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 581579 321 Ralph Rosenblum 0306802724 Mike 4 4-stars 4.02 1979
author: Ralph Rosenblum
name: Mike
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1979
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/03/04
shelves: 4-stars
review:

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