Gatsbysafterparty's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 21 Mar 2024 09:33:46 -0700 60 Gatsbysafterparty's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Nadja by André Breton (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide (BrightSummaries.com)]]> 35560841
This engaging summary presents an analysis of Nadja by André Breton, which tells the story of the author’s encounters with the titular character over a period of several days. The book stands out for its highly original it combines autobiographical and novelistic elements, incorporates a series of photographs and drawings alongside the text, and uses language in a highly unusual and inventive way. Nadja was first published in 1928 and is one of the most influential works of the French Surrealist movement, of which Breton was the leading figure. This movement flourished in the aftermath of the First World War, and sought to challenge conventions and conformism in literature, film, music and the visual arts. André Breton was a poet, novelist and essayist, and wrote dozens of books and essays, including The Surrealist Manifesto and The Magnetic Fields .

Find out everything you need to know about Nadja in a fraction of the time!

This in-depth and informative reading guide brings
•A complete plot summary
•Character studies
•Key themes and symbols
•Questions for further reflection

Why choose BrightSummaries.com?
Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!]]> 26 Bright Summaries 2806295890 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.50 Nadja by André Breton (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide (BrightSummaries.com)
author: Bright Summaries
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait]]> 91760
Published in its entirety, Frida Kahlo’s amazing, illustrated journal documents the last 10 years of her turbulent life. These passionate, often surprising, intimate records, kept under lock and key for some 40 years in Mexico, reveal many new dimensions in the complex personal life of this remarkable artist.

The 170-page journal contains the artist’s thoughts, poems, and dreams—many reflecting her stormy relationship with her husband, artist Diego Rivera—along with 70 mesmerizing watercolor illustrations. Her views of love, politics, and more come into sharp focus in a kaleidoscope of creativity and thought.

In his introduction, award-winner Carlos Fuentes, one of Mexico’s most important writers and critics, ties Kahlo’s images of pain, loss, mutilation, and transcendence to Mexico’s historic cycles of revolution and reaction. Sprinkled with irony, black humor, even gaiety, and augmented with translations of the diary entries plus commentaries and photographs, her diary stands as a reminder of not only Kahlo’s formidable talent, but also her resilience and courage.

The text entries, written in Frida’s round, full script in brightly colored inks, make the journal as captivating to look at as it is to read. Her writing reveals the artist’s political sensibilities, recollections of her childhood, and her enormous courage in the face of more than 35 operations to correct injuries she had sustained in an accident at the age of 18.

This intimate portal into her life is sure to fascinate fans of the artist, art historians, and women’s culturalists alike.]]> 296 Frida Kahlo 0810959542 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.91 1995 The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
author: Frida Kahlo
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Letters to Yves 33164893 108 Pierre Bergé 9954361278 Gatsbysafterparty 5 4.11 2010 Letters to Yves
author: Pierre Bergé
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas]]> 527495 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was written in 1933 by Gertrude Stein in the guise of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, who was her lover. It is a fascinating insight into the art scene in Paris as the couple were friends with Paul CĂ©zanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They begin the war years in England but return to France, volunteering for the American Fund for the French Wounded, driving around France, helping the wounded and homeless. After the war Gertrude has an argument with T. S. Eliot after he finds one of her writings inappropriate. They become friends with Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. It was written to make money and was indeed a commercial success. However, it attracted criticism, especially from those who appeared in the book and didn't like the way they were depicted.]]> 252 Gertrude Stein 067972463X Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.54 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
author: Gertrude Stein
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nightwood 53101
The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions.

Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it."

Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.]]> 182 Djuna Barnes 0811216713 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.66 1936 Nightwood
author: Djuna Barnes
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Der Zauberberg 820630 Zauberberg ganz oben auf die Liste gehören. Noch bevor ich das Buch gelesen hatte, weckte schon das Wort Neugier auf eine magische Welt. Nun, wer den Zauberberg kennt, weiß, daß dies kein Buch von fremden Feenwelten ist, und doch waltet hier eindeutig Magie.

Die erste magische Leistung besteht darin, eine Handlung, die in einem Satz zusammengefaĂźt werden kann, auf 1.000 Seiten zu packen: Der junge Hamburger Hans Castorp, SproĂź einer Patrizierfamilie lebt bis zum Ausbruch des ersten Weltkriegs sieben Jahre in einem Schweizer Luxussanatorium fĂĽr Lungenkranke, ohne selbst krank zu sein.

Die zweite magische Leistung ist Thomas Manns Sprache, die auch in tausend Jahren nichts von ihrer Kraft verloren haben wird.

Die dritte magische Leistung ist die Behandlung der Figuren, die alle mehr mehr sind als bloße Protagonisten. Sie sind Exponate ihrer Zeit, jede für sich repräsentiert einen Teil geistigen Lebens in einer Ära, deren Ende sich vollzog während Thomas Mann am Zauberberg saß und schrieb.

Die vierte magische Leistung schließlich, die zauberbergigste vielleicht, ist das Spiel mit dem Leser. Oder besser: das Spiel mit der Geschwindigkeit des Lesers. Thomas Mann erreicht, daß dem Leser zehn Minuten Lesen wie eine halbe Stunde Lesen vorkommen, und zwar genau dann, wenn Hans Castorp denkt, er habe eine halbe Stunde geträumt. Wie sich herausstellt, waren es zehn Minuten.

Elf Jahre hat Thomas Mann an dem Buch geschrieben, das doch eigentlich nur eine WeiterfĂĽhrung des Themas aus Tod in Venedig sein sollte. Es wurde einer der meist gelesenen deutschen Romane. Zu recht. --Bettina Albert

]]> 1008 Thomas Mann 3596294339 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.11 1924 Der Zauberberg
author: Thomas Mann
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Der Tod in Venedig 1132010 In der Textfassung der GroĂźen kommentierten Frankfurter Ausgabe (GKFA).]]> 139 Thomas Mann 3596112664 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.47 1911 Der Tod in Venedig
author: Thomas Mann
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays]]> 11987 212 Albert Camus Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.23 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
author: Albert Camus
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ulysses 338798
According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain.

The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature. Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted textual "Joyce Wars." The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—replete with puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history; Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.']]> 783 James Joyce Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.72 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Winter Dreams 815356 48 F. Scott Fitzgerald 1419194348 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.78 1922 Winter Dreams
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Catcher in the Rye 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 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 88 Poems 1203699 189 Ernest Hemingway 0151280525 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.10 1979 88 Poems
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.10
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Men Without Women 108218 “Hills Like White Elephants� and “Fifty Grand,� which a Cosmopolitan editor praised as “one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands.� Read by an Earphones Award–winning narrator.

Originally published in October 1927, the second short-story collection published by Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway contains the following fourteen stories:
The Undefeated, In Another Country, Hills Like White Elephants, The Killers, Che Ti Dice La Patria?, Fifty Grand, A Simple Enquiry, Ten Indians, A Canary for One, An Alpine Idyll, A Pursuit Race, Today is Friday, Banal Story, Now I Lay Me. Themes and subject matter range from bullfighting, boxing, and prizefighting to divorce, infidelity, and death. Critics at the time praised Hemingway’s concise language and powerful prose.

Content Warning: As a part of the public domain, Men Without Women is a literary work that reflects the time in which it was published—both its good and its ill. The original text of Men Without Women contains slurs and depictions that represent prejudiced and harmful beliefs regarding race, ethnicity, and religion. To erase or bury this representation of inequity and prejudice would be akin to pretending it never existed, a denial that only perpetuates and extends the original harm done. Thus, in the interest of preserving and documenting both the faults and highlights of literary history—an instrumental, crucial function of works entering the public domain—this text is unedited and uncensored in this audiobook recording. Please proceed with discretion.]]> 153 Ernest Hemingway Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.62 1927 Men Without Women
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.]]> 189 Ernest Hemingway Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.81 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Farewell to Arms 10799 A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.]]> 293 Ernest Hemingway 0099910101 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.83 1929 A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Zueignungen. 11 Literarische Porträts. Enthält: Der Lyriker Brecht, Ernest Hemingway, Ernst Barlachs Dramen, Freuds Briefe u,a.]]> 145932508 0 Walter Jens Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 0.0 Zueignungen. 11 Literarische Porträts. Enthält: Der Lyriker Brecht, Ernest Hemingway, Ernst Barlachs Dramen, Freuds Briefe u,a.
author: Walter Jens
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories]]> 251688 Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's... And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

Also included are three of Capote's best-known stories:
� House of Flowers - Ottilie is entranced by a beautiful young man, and leaves her life and friends to live with him and his old grandmother, who seems to hate her.
� A Diamond Guitar - Hear the story of the prized possession of a younger prison inmate, a rhinestone-studded guitar.
� A Christmas Memory - A poignant tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.]]> 142 Truman Capote Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso]]> 6656 This Everyman’s Library edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli’s marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

Translated in this edition by Allen Mandelbaum, The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.]]> 798 Dante Alighieri 0679433139 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.08 1320 The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1320
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Inferno 15645
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.

Esolen's edition also provides a critical ntroduction and endnotes, with appendices containing Dante's most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and beyond —that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.

Verse Translation by Anthony Esolen
Illustrations by Gustave Doré]]> 490 Dante Alighieri 0812970063 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.02 1320 Inferno
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1320
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Time Machine 2493
So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth.  There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well.  Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 118 H.G. Wells Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.91 1895 The Time Machine
author: H.G. Wells
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.17 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.36 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1880
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Iliad 77265004 848 Homer 1324001801 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.09 -800 The Iliad
author: Homer
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.09
book published: -800
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Secret Garden 2998
Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors after the death of her parents. There she meets a hearty housekeeper and her spirited brother, a dour gardener, a cheerful robin, and her wilful, hysterical, and sickly cousin, Master Colin, whose wails she hears echoing through the house at night.

With the help of the robin, Mary finds the door to a secret garden, neglected and hidden for years. When she decides to restore the garden in secret, the story becomes a charming journey into the places of the heart, where faith restores health, flowers refresh the spirit, and the magic of the garden, coming to life anew, brings health to Colin and happiness to Mary.]]> 331 Frances Hodgson Burnett 0517189607 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.16 1911 The Secret Garden
author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.

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

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

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

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

--

Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.]]> 541 Homer 0143039954 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.79 -700 The Odyssey
author: Homer
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.79
book published: -700
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Tale of Two Cities 1953 A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.]]> 489 Charles Dickens 0141439602 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.86 1859 A Tale of Two Cities
author: Charles Dickens
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1859
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Romeo and Juliet 18135 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.

In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers� final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.]]> 281 William Shakespeare 0743477111 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.74 1597 Romeo and Juliet
author: William Shakespeare
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1597
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Plague 11989
It tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

The book tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to affect their destinies. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, whose individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings; the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition.]]> 308 Albert Camus Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.05 1947 The Plague
author: Albert Camus
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Gatsbysafterparty 5 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Gatsbysafterparty 0 3.90 1915 The Metamorphosis
author: Franz Kafka
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> Siddhartha 52036 152 Hermann Hesse Gatsbysafterparty 0 4.07 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1922
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson]]> 6900
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Gatsbysafterparty 0 4.19 1997 Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
author: Mitch Albom
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Lonely Londoners 612888
In the hopeful aftermath of war they flocked to the Mother Country � West Indians in search of a prosperous future in the "glitter-city."

Instead, they have to face the harsh realities of living hand to mouth, of racism, of bone-chilling weather and bleak prospects. Yet friendships flourish among these Lonely Londoners and, in time, they learn to survive.]]> 142 Sam Selvon 0582642647 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.71 1956 The Lonely Londoners
author: Sam Selvon
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lucky Jim 395182 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

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

More than just a merciless satire of cloistered college life and stuffy postwar manners, Lucky Jim is an attack on the forces of boredom, whatever form they may take, and a work of art that at once distills and extends an entire tradition of English comic writing, from Fielding and Dickens through Wodehouse and Waugh. As Christopher Hitchens has written, “If you can picture Bertie or Jeeves being capable of actual malice, and simultaneously imagine Evelyn Waugh forgetting about original sin, you have the combination of innocence and experience that makes this short romp so imperishable.”]]> 296 Kingsley Amis 0140186301 Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 3.77 1954 Lucky Jim
author: Kingsley Amis
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Shadowboxing 575739 Tony Birch Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.08 2006 Shadowboxing
author: Tony Birch
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Moveable Feast 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway Gatsbysafterparty 5 4.04 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Down and Out in Paris and London]]> 393199 213 George Orwell 015626224X Gatsbysafterparty 0 to-read 4.10 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London
author: George Orwell
name: Gatsbysafterparty
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1933
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>