en-US Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:15:34 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 61264 91 Alessandro Baricco 0375703829 SSR 0 to-read 3.91 1996
author: Alessandro Baricco
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average rating: 3.91
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]]> 17014093
Aaron W. Hughes uniquely traces the development of Islam in relation to historical, intellectual, and cultural influences, enriching his narrative with the findings, debates, and methodologies of related disciplines, such as archaeology, history, and Near Eastern studies. Hughes's work challenges the dominance of traditional terms and concepts in religious studies, recasting religion as a set of social and cultural facts imagined, manipulated, and contested by various actors and groups over time. Making extensive use of contemporary identity theory, Hughes rethinks the teaching of Islam and religions in general and helps facilitate a more critical approach to Muslim sources. For readers seeking a non-theological, unbiased, and richly human portrait of Islam, as well as a strong grasp of Islamic study's major issues and debates, this textbook is a productive, progressive alternative to more classic surveys.]]> 328 Aaron W. Hughes 0231161468 SSR 0 3.91 2013
author: Aaron W. Hughes
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average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
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]]> 2547 The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.]]> 127 Kahlil Gibran 000100039X SSR 0 4.27 1923
author: Kahlil Gibran
name: SSR
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1923
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]]> 5936
"In his work a continent awakens to consciousness." So wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, the author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America's most revered writers, lionized during his lifetime as "the people's poet." This selection of Neruda's poetry, the most comprehensive single volume available in English, presents nearly six hundred poems. Scores of them are in new and sometimes multiple translations, and many accompanied by the Spanish original. In his introduction, Ilan Stavans situates Neruda in his native milieu as well as in a contemporary English-language one, and a group of new translations by leading poets testifies to Neruda's enduring, vibrant legacy among English-speaking writers and readers today.]]> 1040 Pablo Neruda 0374529604 SSR 0 4.44 1951
author: Pablo Neruda
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average rating: 4.44
book published: 1951
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]]> 62793 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780099282990

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial familes, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion.]]> 389 Yukio Mishima SSR 0 to-read 4.18 1967
author: Yukio Mishima
name: SSR
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1967
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak SSR 0 to-read 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: SSR
average rating: 4.38
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]]> 24970 'What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?'

Either/Or is the earliest of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most startlingly original thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century, and the first which he wrote under a pseudonym, as he would for his greatest philosophical writings. Adopting the viewpoints of two distinct figures with radically different beliefs--the aesthetic young man of Part One, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section--Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer's Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman. A masterpiece of duality, Either/Or is an exploration of the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical--both meditating ironically and seductively upon Epicurean pleasures, and eloquently expounding the noble virtues of a morally upstanding life.

This lightly abridged edition fully conveys the vigour and eloquence of the original. Alastair Hannay's introduction explains the philosophical background to the work and places it in the context of its times.]]> 633 Søren Kierkegaard SSR 0 to-read 4.18 1843
author: Søren Kierkegaard
name: SSR
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1843
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]]> 855697 247 Alice Munro 0143054996 SSR 0 to-read 4.10 1994
author: Alice Munro
name: SSR
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1994
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]]> 984032 235 Daniel Martin Varisco 1403967733 SSR 3 3.69 2005
author: Daniel Martin Varisco
name: SSR
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> 2759003 374 Terry Janzen 9027216835 SSR 0 to-read 4.17 2005
author: Terry Janzen
name: SSR
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
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]]> 85812 Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."

Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.

The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.

Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.

This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.]]> 304 Max Horkheimer 0804736332 SSR 0 4.11 1947
author: Max Horkheimer
name: SSR
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1947
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]]> 670129 244 Dror Ze'evi 0520245636 SSR 0 3.83 2006
author: Dror Ze'evi
name: SSR
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2006
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]]> 587469 His thoughts form a consistent and coherent philosophical system, and a close study of his writings in Persian reveals a theory of knowledge generally called 'Knowledge by Presence'. The elaborate web of myth and symbolism in Suhrawardi's philosophy articulates his theory of knowledge, an important subject in the ishraqi school of thought.
Suhrawardi, who claims first to have discovered the truth and then embarked on a path to find the rational basis of his experiential wisdom, represents a thinker who tried to reconcile rational discourse and inner purification.]]> 202 Mehdi Aminrazavi 0700704124 SSR 0 3.83 1996
author: Mehdi Aminrazavi
name: SSR
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1996
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]]> 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 SSR 0 4.41 1952
author: John Steinbeck
name: SSR
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
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]]> 31341 752 Anne Rice 0099271494 SSR 0 3.93 2001
author: Anne Rice
name: SSR
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
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]]> 31332 Interview with the Vampire, the first of The Vampire Chronicles, the novel that established its author worldwide as a magnificent storyteller and creator of magical realms.

Now, we go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion - and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius, who masquerades among humankind as a mysterious, reclusive painter and who will bestow upon Armand the gift of vampiric blood. As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.]]> 457 Anne Rice 0345434803 SSR 0 3.80 1998
author: Anne Rice
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average rating: 3.80
book published: 1998
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]]> 43758 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire . . . in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat.ĚýĚý±ő˛Ô The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary "Vampire Chronicles" in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds:

- The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco.  Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a "greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals," fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him . . .

- The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy.  It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end . . .

- Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to "save" mankind from itself and make "all myths of the world real" by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: "I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause" . . .

These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings.  As the stories of the "first brood" of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of "being emptied, of being devoured, of being nothing." Vampires are destroyed.  Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world.  And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 448 Anne Rice 0345419626 SSR 0 3.93 1988
author: Anne Rice
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average rating: 3.93
book published: 1988
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]]> 43814 481 Anne Rice 0345476883 SSR 0 4.10 1985
author: Anne Rice
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average rating: 4.10
book published: 1985
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]]> 43763
Louis and Claudia travel Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires--a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals pretending to be vampires. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and in fact presents dangers they scarcely imagined.

Originally begun as a short story, the book took off as Anne wrote it, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul. As well as the struggles of its characters, Interview captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, sexuality, and power.
source: annerice.com]]> 346 Anne Rice 0345476875 SSR 0 4.04 1976
author: Anne Rice
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average rating: 4.04
book published: 1976
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]]> 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 SSR 0 to-read 4.16 1994
author: Haruki Murakami
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average rating: 4.16
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]]> 17799 Alternate cover edition here.

Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]> 190 Haruki Murakami 0099448572 SSR 0 to-read 3.89 1992
author: Haruki Murakami
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average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
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]]> 161634 John Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops and even canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

]]> 424 John Boswell 0226067114 SSR 0 to-read 4.18 1980
author: John Boswell
name: SSR
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1980
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date added: 2013/03/25
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]]> 10634570
He lives on Mount Olympus, where the gods have day jobs working for major gods like Zeus. But rather than being a delivery boy for Mercury, a firefighter for Prometheus, or a wine steward for Dionysus, Troyd dreams of becoming the kind of god people will remember: a Love god like his idol, Cupid.

Long ago, Cupid used his bow and arrow to become the king of matchmaking. But when Cupid retired, he opened Cupid's Academy, a school where teenage gods and goddesses, now armed with magic pistols and love potions, study to become Love gods, matchmakers for the human race.

To graduate, Troyd must improve his grades. But soon his overzealousness lands him in hot water with the headmaster, getting him suspended. Yet to get back in, Troyd is forced to leave Mount Olympus for Earth, where he uncovers a secret that may shut down the Academy forever � only to find help from a girl who gets him to see love from a different point of view.

Cupid's Academy: The Miseducation of Mergatroyd, Love god in Training is a humorous adventure filled with lovable characters, stays true to the classic Greek stories, and is a great way to introduce young adults, ages 10 to 16, to a modernized version of the Greek and Roman mythology.]]> 169 Tai Odunsi SSR 0 to-read 3.36 2011
author: Tai Odunsi
name: SSR
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2011
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