Nicholas's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:08:33 -0700 60 Nicholas's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Another Country 38474
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.]]>
448 James Baldwin 0141186372 Nicholas 4 4.32 1962 Another Country
author: James Baldwin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2011/07/07
date added: 2023/07/27
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A Scanner Darkly 14817
The undercover narcotics agent who calls himself Bob Arctor is desperate to discover the ultimate source of supply. But to find any kind of lead he has to pose as a user and, inevitably, without realising what is happening, Arctor is soon as addicted as the junkies he works among...]]>
324 Philip K. Dick 057507681X Nicholas 5 4.03 1977 A Scanner Darkly
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1977
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/02/05
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<![CDATA[Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World]]> 62558 Quantum Psychology is the book to change your way of perceiving yourself—and the universe—for the 21st century. Some say it's materialistic, others call it scientific and still others insist it's mystical. It is all of these—and none.]]> 202 Robert Anton Wilson 1561840718 Nicholas 4 4.23 1990 Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/24
date added: 2018/02/05
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Welcome to the Monkey House 4985 Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut’s audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Alternative cover edition here ]]>
331 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333501 Nicholas 4 4.14 1968 Welcome to the Monkey House
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1968
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/02/05
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<![CDATA[Down and Out in Paris and London]]> 12474591 213 George Orwell Nicholas 3 3.93 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London
author: George Orwell
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1933
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/07
date added: 2015/09/20
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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 Nicholas 5 3.81 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1926
rating: 5
read at: 2012/05/05
date added: 2014/07/24
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<![CDATA[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto]]> 1268994 338 Murray N. Rothbard Nicholas 3 4.28 1973 For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
author: Murray N. Rothbard
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2012/02/20
date added: 2014/07/24
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<![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]> 38447
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]>
311 Margaret Atwood 038549081X Nicholas 3 4.15 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2011/08/06
date added: 2014/07/24
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Zorba the Greek 1868738 Movie tie-in 347 Nikos Kazantzakis Nicholas 5
"Some men -- the more intrepid ones -- reach the edge of the leaf. From there we stretch out, gazing into chaos. We tremble. We guess what a frightening abyss lies beneath us. In the distance we can hear the noise of the other leaves of the tremendous tree, we feel the sap rising from the root of our leaf and our hearts swell. Bent thus over the awe-inspiring abyss, with all our bodies and all our souls, we tremble with terror. From that moment begins the great danger, Zorba. Some grow dizzy and delirious, others are afraid; they try to find an answer to strengthen their hearts, and they say: 'God'! Others again, from the edge of the leaf, look over the precipice calmly and bravely and say: 'I like it.' ]]>
3.88 1946 Zorba the Greek
author: Nikos Kazantzakis
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at: 2012/01/28
date added: 2014/07/24
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"We are little grubs, Zorba, minute grubs on the small leaf of a tremendous tree. The small leaf is the earth. The other leaves are the stars that you see moving at night. We make our way on this little leaf examining it anxiously and carefully. We smell it; it smells good or bad to us. We taste it and find it eatable. We beat on it and it cries out like a living thing.

"Some men -- the more intrepid ones -- reach the edge of the leaf. From there we stretch out, gazing into chaos. We tremble. We guess what a frightening abyss lies beneath us. In the distance we can hear the noise of the other leaves of the tremendous tree, we feel the sap rising from the root of our leaf and our hearts swell. Bent thus over the awe-inspiring abyss, with all our bodies and all our souls, we tremble with terror. From that moment begins the great danger, Zorba. Some grow dizzy and delirious, others are afraid; they try to find an answer to strengthen their hearts, and they say: 'God'! Others again, from the edge of the leaf, look over the precipice calmly and bravely and say: 'I like it.'
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Monday begins on Saturday 6556334 331 Arkady Strugatsky 9666961768 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.00 1965 Monday begins on Saturday
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/05/05
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Hard to Be a God 759517 -
Don Rumata has been sent from Earth to the medieval kingdom of Arkanar with instructions to observe and to save what he can. Masquerading as an arrogant nobleman, a dueler, and a brawler, he is never defeated, but yet he can never kill. With his doubt and compassion, and his deep love for a local girl named Kira, Rumata wants to save the kingdom from the machinations of Don Reba, the first minister to the king. But given his orders, what role can he play? This long overdue translation will reintroduce one of the most profound Soviet-era novels to an eager audience.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely known as the greatest Russian writers of science fiction, and their 1964 novel Hard to Be a God is considered one of the greatest of their works. Yet until now the only English version (unavailable for over thirty years) was based on a German translation, and was full of errors, infelicities, and misunderstandings. Now, in a new translation by Olena Bormashenko, whose translation of the authors� Roadside Picnic has received widespread acclaim, here is the definitive edition of this brilliant work.]]>
219 Arkady Strugatsky 0816491216 Nicholas 4 4.18 1964 Hard to Be a God
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1964
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/08
date added: 2014/05/03
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<![CDATA[Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds]]> 162120 Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it.

In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written.

For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.]]>
96 Charles Mackay 1897597320 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.87 1841 Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
author: Charles Mackay
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1841
rating: 0
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Dead Souls 28381 Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In his introduction to this new translation, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.]]>
464 Nikolai Gogol 0140448071 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.00 1842 Dead Souls
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1842
rating: 0
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Heart of a Dog 113205 123 Mikhail Bulgakov 0802150594 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.15 1925 Heart of a Dog
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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The Lottery 6219656
“The Lottery� stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery� has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
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30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.08 1948 The Lottery
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Star Rover (Modern Library Classics)]]> 862311 The Star Rover, in the UK published as The Jacket, is a collection of short stories revolves around the concept of reincarnation. It tells the story of San Quentin death-row inmate Darrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life —and long stretches in a straitjacket� by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London’s friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author’s most complex and original works.]]> 266 Jack London 0812970047 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.27 1914 The Star Rover (Modern Library Classics)
author: Jack London
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1914
rating: 0
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The Master and Margarita 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]>
372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Nicholas 3 4.31 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/07/30
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Going to Meet the Man 38469 This is an older edition of ISBN 9780679761792.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water. It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.

By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying--and informed throughout by Baldwin's uncanny knowledge of the wounds racism has left in both its victims and its perpetrators--Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of our most important writers.]]>
249 James Baldwin Nicholas 0 to-read 4.38 1965 Going to Meet the Man
author: James Baldwin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1965
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/07/10
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I, Claudius (Claudius, #1) 18765
I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God, are among the most celebrated, as well the most gripping historical novels ever written.

Cover illustration: Brian Pike]]>
469 Robert Graves 067972477X Nicholas 0 to-read 4.24 1934 I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)
author: Robert Graves
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/06/11
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El túnel 53447 El túnel es la mejor introducción al universo prodigioso de Ernesto Sábato; para quien la conoce, un clásico de las letras del continente, una historia sobre el drama del hombre arrojado en el sinsentido más doloroso: la conciencia de la nada.
El narrador describe una historia de amor y muerte en la que muestra la soledad del individuo contemporáneo. No están ausentes de esta trama policial y de suspenso, la locura y la increíble reflexión del protagonista, el pintor Juan Pablo Castel, debatiéndose por comprender las causas que lo arrastraron a matar a la mujer que amaba, María Iribarne, y que era su única vía de salvación. En este alucinante drama de la vida interior, seres intrincados en la bestial búsqueda de comprensión ceden a la mentira, la hipocresía y los celos desmedidos hasta el crimen más inexplicable. Aventura amorosa, aventura onírica, aventura del ser que dan testimonio de un asesinato, de cierta memoria culpable y de una valiente introspección.
Técnicamente perfecta y de lectura apasionante, El túnel excede el negativismo ácido de Sartre y la frenética huida hacia el vacío que plantea El extranjero de Camus, pero tiene de esos dos maestros literarios la impronta genial que hace de la escritura una radiografía del alma atormentada.]]>
158 Ernesto Sabato 9871144261 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.04 1948 El túnel
author: Ernesto Sabato
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness]]> 535316 261 Kenzaburō Ōe 080215185X Nicholas 0 to-read 3.95 1966 Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
author: Kenzaburō Ōe
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/05/22
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Los premios 791190 «Los premios», a las que el narrador va dando sin cesar la palabra de su discurso mental o hablado. Pero el narrador se hace discreto para que entrechoquen todas las hablas, pues a través de ellas se va construyendo una variedad de posibles actitudes del hombre frente al mundo, actitudes que suponen una serie de relaciones de los sujetos consigo mismos y con los demás. De esta manera el entorno de referencia aparece en constante cambio y el lector puede tener la impresión
al recorrer la novela de haber llegado con retraso a alguna conversación empezada.]]>
448 Julio Cortázar 8466313044 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.93 1960 Los premios
author: Julio Cortázar
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/05/22
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The Invention of Morel 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 Nicholas 4 4.02 1940 The Invention of Morel
author: Adolfo Bioy Casares
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/18
date added: 2013/05/18
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To Have and Have Not 4630 To Have and Have Not is the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, an honest man who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.
Harshly realistic, yet with one of the most subtle and moving relationships in the Hemingway oeuvre, To Have and Have Not is literary high adventure at its finest.]]>
176 Ernest Hemingway Nicholas 4 3.55 1937 To Have and Have Not
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/11
date added: 2013/05/12
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The Master of Go 13752 From the Nobel Prize-winning author and acclaimed writer of Thousand Cranes comes the luminous chronicle of a match of the Japanese game Go played between a master and a younger, more modern challenger that serves as a suspenseful elegy for an entire society.

Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other’s black or white stones. Simple in its fundamentals, infinitely complex in its execution, Go is an essential expression of the Japanese spirit. And in his fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and heretofore invincible Master and a younger, more modern challenger, Yasunari Kawabata captured the moment in which the immutable traditions of imperial Japan met the onslaught of the twentieth century.

The competition between the Master of Go and his opponent, Otaké, is waged over several months and layered in ceremony. But beneath the game’s decorum lie tensions that consume not only the players themselves but their families and retainers—tensions that turn this particular contest into a duel that can only end in death. Luminous in its detail, both suspenseful and serene, The Master of Go is written with the poetic economy and psychological acumen that brought Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature.]]>
189 Yasunari Kawabata 0679761063 Nicholas 3 3.87 1951 The Master of Go
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2013/04/23
date added: 2013/04/22
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<![CDATA[House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories]]> 14032
In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but lecherous night with a drugged, unconscious virgin. As he admires the girl's beauty, he recalls his past womanizing, and reflects on the relentless course of old age.

In One Arm, a young girl removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to take home for the night; a surreal seduction follows as he tries to allay its fears, caresses it, and even replaces his own right arm with it.

The protagonist of Of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty.

Beautiful yet chilling, richly poetic yet subtly disturbing, these stories make compelling reading and reaffirm Kawabata s status as a world-class writer.]]>
148 Yasunari Kawabata 4770029756 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.82 1961 House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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The Consumer 676920 233 Michael Gira 1880985268 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.71 1995 The Consumer
author: Michael Gira
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/01/17
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The Amphibian 1243799 Sea-devil has appeared in the Rio de la Plata. Weird cries out at sea, slashed fishermen's nets, glimpses of a most queer creature astride a dolphin leave no room for doubt. The Spaniard Zurita, greed overcoming his superstition, tries to catch Sea-devil and force it to pearl-dive for him but fails.

On a lonely stretch of shore, not far from Buenos Aires, Dr. Salvator lives in seclusion behind a high wall, whose steel-plated gates only open to let in his Indian patients. The Indians revere him as a God but Zurita has a hunch that the God on land and the devil in the sea have something in common. Enlisting the help of two wily Araucanian brothers he sets out to probe the mystery.

As action shifts from the bottom of the sea to the Spaniard's schooner The Jellyfish and back again, with interludes in sun-drenched Buenos Aires and countryside, the mystery of Ichthyander the sea-devil is unfolded before the reader in a narrative as gripping as it informative.

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127 Alexander Belyaev 5050006597 Nicholas 0 to-read, to-buy 4.16 1927 The Amphibian
author: Alexander Belyaev
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/11/10
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The Moon Is Down 12722
In The Moon is Down, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the motivations and emotions of the enemy, Steinbeck uncovers profound and often unsettling truths both about war and human nature.]]>
144 John Steinbeck Nicholas 0 to-read 3.93 1942 The Moon Is Down
author: John Steinbeck
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/10/14
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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 Nicholas 2 4.05 1947 The Plague
author: Albert Camus
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
rating: 2
read at: 2012/09/18
date added: 2012/09/18
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Crome Yellow 53672 O primeiro romance de Aldous Huxley, autor de Admirável mundo novo

Uma crítica afiada à alta sociedade, seus luxos e interesses vazios

Denis é um jovem poeta tímido e cheio de incertezas sobre a vida. Ao chegar em Crome, no interior da Inglaterra, para passar as férias na mansão do sr. e da sra. Wimbush, se encontra com uma realidade à parte, em que pessoas ricas, escritores, jornalistas, pintores e socialites esbanjam o seu ócio pouco produtivo dia após dia.

Entre horóscopos de cavalos, discussões existencialistas, flertes e um vaivém constante e desinteressado de personagens, Denis se mistura à excêntrica fauna do lugar e tenta se encaixar e se descobrir como homem e como poeta. Logo, porém, ele se dá conta de que aquelas pessoas, à primeira vista tão cultas e interessantes, possuem mentes tão caóticas quanto a dele.

Em Amarelo-Cromo, publicado originalmente em 1921 mas ainda hoje atemporal, Huxley descreve como poucos a sensação de desconforto diante das extravagâncias vazias, hipocrisias e incoerências da aristocracia inglesa e, com detalhes nem sempre sutis, expõe os valores e princípios não tão admiráveis da alta sociedade.]]>
176 Aldous Huxley 0486436632 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.45 1921 Crome Yellow
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1921
rating: 0
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Paths of Glory 462335 304 Humphrey Cobb 0820308846 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.21 1935 Paths of Glory
author: Humphrey Cobb
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1935
rating: 0
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Stranger in a Strange Land 350 NAME: Valentine Michael Smith
ANCESTRY: Human
ORIGIN: Mars

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love.]]>
525 Robert A. Heinlein Nicholas 3 3.93 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land
author: Robert A. Heinlein
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1961
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/06/28
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Invitation to a Beheading 376561 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude", an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his final days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his prison cell.]]>
223 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725318 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.95 1935 Invitation to a Beheading
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1935
rating: 0
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The Ruined Map 9997 The Ruined Map, he crafted a mesmerizing literary crime novel that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the psychological depth of Dostoevsky.

Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo’s dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity. Surreal, fast-paced, and hauntingly dreamlike, Abe’s masterly novel delves into the unknowable mysteries of the human mind.

Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.]]>
304 Kōbō Abe 0375726527 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.52 1967 The Ruined Map
author: Kōbō Abe
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1967
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Beauty and Sadness 14029 The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before.

Otoko is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover.

This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.]]>
206 Yasunari Kawabata 0679761055 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.88 1964 Beauty and Sadness
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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Rosshalde 10064 Rosshalde is the classic story of a man torn between obligations to his family and his longing for a spiritual fulfillment that can only be found outside the confines of conventional society.

Johann Veraguth, a wealthy, successful artist, is estranged from his wife and stifled by the unhappy union. Veraguth's love for his young son and his fear of drifting rootlessly keep him bound within the walls of his opulent estate, Rosshalde, while a friend tries to persuade him to seek fulfillment in the East.]]>
217 Hermann Hesse 9500725959 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.82 1914 Rosshalde
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1914
rating: 0
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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 Nicholas 4 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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Island 5130 Island, his last novel, Huxley transports us to a Pacific island where, for 120 years, an ideal society has flourished. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events begin to move when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and—to his amazement—give him hope.]]> 354 Aldous Huxley 0060085495 Nicholas 3 3.87 1962 Island
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1962
rating: 3
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Moon of Ice 624842 288 Brad Linaweaver 0812520203 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.32 1988 Moon of Ice
author: Brad Linaweaver
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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For Whom the Bell Tolls 46170 For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.]]> 471 Ernest Hemingway Nicholas 0 to-read 3.98 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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A Streetcar Named Desire 12220 Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams� essay “The World I Live In.�

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 Nicholas 4 3.98 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions]]> 433567 [sic � ed.], a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status.
Through strange occurrences that bring him into contact with a host of geometric forms, Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions—a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Flatland is not only fascinating reading, it is still a first-rate fictional introduction to the concept of the multiple dimensions of space. "Instructive, entertaining, and stimulating to the imagination." � Mathematics Teacher.]]>
96 Edwin A. Abbott 048627263X Nicholas 0 to-read 3.82 1884 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
author: Edwin A. Abbott
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 0
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Franny and Zooey 5113 ‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.�

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny� and ‘Zooey� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey�, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]>
201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.97 1957 Franny and Zooey
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
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<![CDATA[Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction]]> 5114
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a story about the Glass family, narrated by Buddy, the second oldest brother. Buddy is attending his brother Seymour's wedding to a gal named Muriel, but he's on Army leave during active duty in World War II. At the wedding, everyone is stunned when Seymour does not show up.

The action of the story picks up when several characters end up carpooling together following the failed wedding. The others (the Matron of Honor and her husband, and a couple of stragglers) are talking about Seymour and the disappointment of his not showing up, and Buddy never tells them that he is secretly Seymour's brother, so they talk more openly with him than they otherwise would.

They criticize Seymour and speculate about his character flaws and deficiencies, but Buddy finds their assessments quite judgmental and biased. He then decides to tell the car who he really is, shaming them for their loose criticisms.

He finds Seymour's journal, and he discovers a strange message from their sister Boo Boo for Seymour on their bathroom mirror: "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom/ taller far than a tall man." This is a fragment from the Greek poet Sappho.

"Seymour: An Introduction" is a kind of elegy for Seymour from Buddy, told in the form of an introduction to the reader. The reader makes Seymour's acquaintance while knowing that Seymour technically isn't alive when the story is published, having killed himself in 1948.

This portion of the story is told in stream of consciousness, and it discusses Eastern religious mysticism.]]>
256 J.D. Salinger 0316766941 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.13 1955 Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1955
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Atlas Shrugged 662 This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?

Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor � and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.

Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life � from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy � to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction � to the philosopher who becomes a pirate � to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph � to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad � to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.

You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.

This is a mystery story, not about the murder � and rebirth � of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.]]>
1168 Ayn Rand 0452011876 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.67 1957 Atlas Shrugged
author: Ayn Rand
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.67
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The Giver (The Giver, #1) 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.12 1993 The Giver (The Giver, #1)
author: Lois Lowry
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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Answered Prayers 2288
As it follows the career of a writer of uncertain parentage and omnivorous erotic tastes, Answered Prayers careens from a louche bar in Tangiers to a banquette at La Côte Basque, from literary salons to high-priced whorehouses. It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently funny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.]]>
150 Truman Capote 0679751823 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.39 1986 Answered Prayers
author: Truman Capote
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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Other Voices, Other Rooms 2287 232 Truman Capote 0679745645 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.80 1948 Other Voices, Other Rooms
author: Truman Capote
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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<![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 Nicholas 4 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 4
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Gravity’s Rainbow 415 776 Thomas Pynchon 0143039946 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.01 1973 Gravity’s Rainbow
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories]]> 9924 The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house. AS they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, "that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."

This volume also includes Capote's A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called "unobstrusively beautiful...a superlative book."]]>
272 Truman Capote 0679745572 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.01 1956 The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1956
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<![CDATA[The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science]]> 137037 The New Inquisition dares to confront the disease of our time; Fundamentalist Materialism. Wilson explains, I am opposing the Fundamentalism, not the Materialism. This book...is deliberately shocking because I do not want its ideas to seem any less stark or startling than they are.]]> 256 Robert Anton Wilson 0941404498 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.98 1986 The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices]]> 377487 272 Christopher S. Hyatt 1561840572 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.93 1982 Undoing Yourself with Energized Meditation and Other Devices
author: Christopher S. Hyatt
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Reality Is What You Can Get Away With]]> 96727 176 Robert Anton Wilson 1561840807 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.84 1992 Reality Is What You Can Get Away With
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits]]> 259578 Sex, Drugs & Magick can be considered a "scholarly" appraisal of both the historical and modern use (an misuse) of drugs in conjunction with sex and "occult" practices. But don't let the word "scholarly" put you off. Done in Wilson's inimitable style, this is a book filled with humor, cynicism, wonder and essential information for those who would pursue what can be an immensely rewarding path, potholed with a array of social and physical dangers.]]> 274 Robert Anton Wilson 1561840017 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.98 1973 Sex, Drugs & Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1973
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<![CDATA[Right Where You Are Sitting Now]]> 137044
Robert Anton Wilson, best known as the chronicler of the Illuminatus conspiracy, is a leading futurist, author and guerilla ontologist. In this controversial classic he probes: Emic reality, Negative Entropy, Witch Hunters of the Scientific Establishment, The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon, Is God a Dope, Have Fun with Your Head, and The Reality Labyrinth.]]>
208 Robert Anton Wilson 0914171453 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.89 1982 Right Where You Are Sitting Now
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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Coincidance: A Head Test 62584
No, the spelling of the title is not a mistake. Dance a mad dervish whirl of coincidence and synchronicity with Robert Anton Wilson and his dancing partners James Joyce, the Marquis de Sade, William S. Borroughs, Carl Jung, Timothy Leary, Bobbie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and a host of others.

Coincidance is one of Wilson's personal favorites. If you liked Prometheus Rising or Quantum Psychology, you will love Coincidance!]]>
258 Robert Anton Wilson 1561840041 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.89 1988 Coincidance: A Head Test
author: Robert Anton Wilson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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Doctor Brodie's Report 1943171 Brodie's Report, he returned also to the style of his earlier years with its brutal realism, nightmares & bloodshed. Many of these stories, including Unworthy & The Other Duel are set in the macho Argentinean underworld, & even the rivalries between artists are suffused with suppressed violence. Throughout, opposing themes of fate & free will, loyalty & betrayal, time & memory flicker in the recesses of these compelling stories, among the best Borges ever wrote.]]> 155 Jorge Luis Borges 0553077651 Nicholas 4 3.62 1970 Doctor Brodie's Report
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1970
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy]]> 733473
“Nobody can really know the future. But few could imagine it better than Lem.”� Paris Review

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure—a future whose strangeness exceeds anything the congress conjectured.

Translated by Michael Kandel.

“A vision of Earth’s future where the authorities dose the population with ‘psychemicals� to make life in a desperately over-populated world worth living.”� Boston Globe]]>
149 Stanisław Lem 0156340402 Nicholas 3 4.21 1971 The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1971
rating: 3
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Toil, taxes, and trouble 2093359 159 Vivien Kellems Nicholas 0 to-read 4.25 1952 Toil, taxes, and trouble
author: Vivien Kellems
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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The Illuminatus! Trilogy 57913
Filled with sex and violence—in and out of time and space—the three books of The Illuminatus! Trilogy are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the cover-ups of our time—from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill—and suggest a mind-blowing truth.]]>
805 Robert Shea 0440539811 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.02 1983 The Illuminatus! Trilogy
author: Robert Shea
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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Messiah 88873
Gore Vidal’s deft and daring blend of satire and prophecy, first published in 1954, eerily anticipates the excesses of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult.]]>
264 Gore Vidal 0141180390 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.94 1954 Messiah
author: Gore Vidal
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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Another Roadside Attraction 9570 Another Roadside Attraction answers those questions and a lot more. It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind.]]> 366 Tom Robbins 1842431293 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.00 1971 Another Roadside Attraction
author: Tom Robbins
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers, #1)]]> 10878 Gonzo Papers offers brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in his signature style.

Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling “Gonzo Papers� is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.

Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed “gonzo”—“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,� which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful �60s and �70s.]]>
624 Hunter S. Thompson 0743250451 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.09 1979 The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers, #1)
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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More Than Human 541024
In this genre-bending novel - among the first to have launched scifi into the arena of literature - one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. For as the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it. Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.]]>
186 Theodore Sturgeon 0375703713 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.95 1953 More Than Human
author: Theodore Sturgeon
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater 9590 Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) presents Eliot Rosewater, an itinerant, semi-crazed millionaire wandering the country in search of heritage and philanthropic outcome, introducing the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout to the world and Vonnegut to the collegiate audience which would soon make him a cult writer.

Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly thru a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.]]>
288 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333471 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.94 1965 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1965
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Collected Stories 10978
These tales are set not only in Yoknapatawpha County but in Beverly Hills and in France during World War I; they are populated by such characters as the Faulknerian archetypes Flem Snopes and Quentin Compson (“A Justice�) as well as ordinary men and women who emerge in these pages so sharply and indelibly that they dwarf the protagonists of most novels.
--back cover

Contains:
Barn burning --
Shingles for the Lord --
The tall men --
A bear hunt --
Two soldiers --
Shall not perish --
A rose for Emily --
Hair --
Centaur in brass --
Dry September --
Death drag --
Elly --
Uncle Willy --
Mule in the yard --
That will be fine --
That evening sun --
Red leaves --
A justice --
A courtship --
Lo! --
Ad Astra --
Victory --
Crevasse --
Turnabout --
All the dead pilots --
Wash --
Honor --
Dr. Martino --
Fox hunt --
Pennsylvania Station --
Artist at home --
The brooch --
My Grandmother Millard --
Golden land --
There was a queen --
Mountain victory --
Beyond --
Black music --
The leg --
Mistral --
Divorce in Naples --
Carcassonne.]]>
900 William Faulkner Nicholas 0 to-read 4.26 1950 Collected Stories
author: William Faulkner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1950
rating: 0
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The Kreutzer Sonata 141077
In her Introduction, Doris Lessing shows how relevant The Kreutzer Sonata is to our understanding of Tolstoy the artist, as well as to feminism and literature. This Modern Library Paperback Classic also contains Tolstoy’s Sequel to the Kruetzer Sonata .]]>
128 Leo Tolstoy 0812968239 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.90 1889 The Kreutzer Sonata
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1889
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.07 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297 272 Oscar Wilde Nicholas 0 to-read 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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Snopes 58544 The Hamlet, the first book of the series chronicling the advent and rise of the grasping Snopes family in mythical Yoknapatawpha County, is a work that Cleanth Brooks called "one of the richest novels in the Faulkner canon." It recounts how the wily, cunning Flem Snopes dominates the rural community of Frenchman's Bend - and claims the voluptuous Eula Varner as his bride. The Town, the second novel, records Flem's ruthless struggle to take over the county seat of Jefferson, Mississippi. Finally, The Mansion tells of Mink Snopes, whose archaic sense of honor brings about the downfall of his cousin Flem. "For all his concerns with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man," noted Ralph Ellison. "Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics."]]> 1072 William Faulkner 0679600922 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.37 1959 Snopes
author: William Faulkner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 7572
Featuring Bonanza Jellybean and the smooth-riding cowgirls of Rubber Rose Ranch. Chink, lascivious guru of yams and yang. Julian, Mohawk by birth; asthmatic esthete and husband by disposition. Dr. Robbins, preventive psychiatrist and reality instructor...

Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax...

"This is one of those special novels--a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and san--that you just want to ride off into the sunset with."--Thomas Pynchon

"The best fiction, so far, to come out of the American counterculture."-- "Chicago Tribune Book World"]]>
366 Tom Robbins 1842430246 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.79 1976 Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
author: Tom Robbins
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Portable Chekhov (Portable Library)]]> 84592
Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov's best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy--including "The Kiss," "The Darling," and "In the Ravine"--as well as two complete plays; The Boor, an example of Chekhov's earlier dramatic work, and The Cherry Orchard, his last and finest play. In addition, this volume includes a selection of letters, candidly revealing of Chekhov's impassioned convictions on life and art, his high aspirations, his marriage, and his omnipresent compassion.]]>
631 Anton Chekhov 0140150358 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.31 1947 The Portable Chekhov (Portable Library)
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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The Seven That Were Hanged 7274624 236 Leonid Andreyev 0898752647 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.10 1908 The Seven That Were Hanged
author: Leonid Andreyev
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1908
rating: 0
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The Face of Another 10000 The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him.

His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.]]>
238 Kōbō Abe 0375726535 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.78 1964 The Face of Another
author: Kōbō Abe
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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Ficciones 426504 Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything else in between.

Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths
Prologue
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939)
The Circular Ruins (1940)
The Lottery in Babylon (1941)
An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941)
The Library of Babel (1941)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
Part Two: Artifices
Prologue
Funes the Memorious (1942)
The Form of the Sword (1942)
Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944)
Death and the Compass (1942)
The Secret Miracle (1943)
Three Versions of Judas (1944)
The End (1953, 2nd edition only)
The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only)
The South (1953, 2nd edition only)]]>
174 Jorge Luis Borges 0802130305 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.46 1944 Ficciones
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1944
rating: 0
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Dog Day Afternoon 1424920
Kirjaan perustuvaa Sidney Lumetin ohjaamaa kulttielokuvaa katsotaan edelleen, ja sitä pidetään yhtenä alan merkkipaaluista ja 1970-luvun tärkeimmistä elokuvateoksista. Siitä sai alkunsa nuoren Al Pacinon ja Ben Gazzalen tähtiura.]]>
Patrick Mann 0583127029 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.56 1974 Dog Day Afternoon
author: Patrick Mann
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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Johnny Got His Gun 51606
This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome... but so is war.

Winner of the National Book Award.]]>
309 Dalton Trumbo 0806512814 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.19 1939 Johnny Got His Gun
author: Dalton Trumbo
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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Bend Sinister 142529
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic.While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.]]>
192 Vladimir Nabokov 0141185767 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.81 1947 Bend Sinister
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Six Tales of the Jazz Age (and Other Stories)]]> 1217221 The camel's back --
The curious case of Benjamin Button --
Tarquin of cheapside --
O russet witch! --
The Lees of happiness --
The adjuster --
Hot and cold blood --
Gretchen's forty winks.]]>
192 F. Scott Fitzgerald 068471762X Nicholas 0 to-read 3.91 1925 Six Tales of the Jazz Age (and Other Stories)
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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Eden 28768 276 Stanisław Lem 0156278065 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.91 1959 Eden
author: Stanisław Lem
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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Last and First Men 2749148 Last and First Men. This masterpiece of science fiction by British philosopher and writer Olaf Stapledon (1886�1950) is an imaginative, ambitious history of humanity's future that spans billions of years. Together with its follow-up, Star Maker, it is regarded as the standard by which all earlier and later future histories are measured.

The protagonist of this compelling novel is humanity itself, stripped down to sheer intelligence. It evolves through the ages: rising to pinnacles of civilization, teetering on the brink of extinction, surviving onslaughts from other planets and a decline in solar energy, and constantly developing new forms, new senses, and new intellectual abilities. From the present to five billion years into the future, this romance of humanity abounds in profound and imaginative thought.]]>
246 Olaf Stapledon 0486466825 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.81 1930 Last and First Men
author: Olaf Stapledon
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1930
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Space Merchants (The Space Merchants, #1)]]> 392566 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

It is the 22nd Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.

Biographical Notes

Pohl and Kornbluth started writing together as early as 1940, although both authors produced a wide variety of stories separately, under their own names and pseudonyms.

Each wrote sections, starting where the other left off, and through long experience they developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other's intentions.]]>
186 Frederik Pohl Nicholas 0 to-read 3.86 1952 The Space Merchants (The Space Merchants, #1)
author: Frederik Pohl
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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A Very Long Engagement 588002
A runaway bestseller in France and the winner of the 1991 Prix Interallié, this astonishing novel is many things at once: an absorbing mystery, a playful study of the different ways one story can be told, a moving and incisive portrait of life in France during and after the First World War, and a love story of transforming power and beauty.]]>
327 Sébastien Japrisot 0452272971 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.93 1991 A Very Long Engagement
author: Sébastien Japrisot
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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The Trial 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 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.00 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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Steppenwolf 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 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.15 1927 Steppenwolf
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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Go Tell It on the Mountain 17143 Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.]]> 256 James Baldwin 0141185910 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.06 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain
author: James Baldwin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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Still Life with Woodpecker 9566 277 Tom Robbins 184243022X Nicholas 0 to-read 4.05 1980 Still Life with Woodpecker
author: Tom Robbins
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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Player Piano 9597
Alternate cover edition here]]>
341 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385333781 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.90 1952 Player Piano
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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Breakfast of Champions 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 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.08 1973 Breakfast of Champions
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates]]> 8680
Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government; a pacifist who carries a gun; a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy; a cyberwhiz who hates computers; a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior). Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. And as we dog Switters’s strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, discovering in the process the “true� Third Secret of Fatima, we experience Tom Robbins—that fearless storyteller, spiritual renegade, and verbal break dancer—at the top of his game. On one level this is a fast-paced CIA adventure story with comic overtones; on another it’s a serious novel of ideas that brings the Big Picture into unexpected focus; but perhaps more than anything else, Fierce Invalids is a sexy celebration of language and life.

Praise for Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

“Superb.� � New York Post

“Dangerous? Wicked? Forbidden? You bet. . . . Pour yourself a bowl of chips and dig in.� � Daily News , New York

“Robbins is a great writer . . . and definitely a provocative rascal.� � The Tennessean

“Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction never read a Tom Robbins novel. . . Clever, creative, and witty, Robbins tosses off impassioned observations like handfuls of flower petals.� � San Diego Union-Tribune]]>
445 Tom Robbins 055337933X Nicholas 0 to-read 4.04 2000 Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
author: Tom Robbins
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]>
325 Ken Kesey Nicholas 0 to-read 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]> 12187 Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.It tells a love story troubled by incest.But more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniouslysardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.]]>
606 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725229 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.13 1969 Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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Nine Stories 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé � with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]>
302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.20 1953 Nine Stories
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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Altered States 224994 206 Paddy Chayefsky 0553147374 Nicholas 0 to-read 3.87 1978 Altered States
author: Paddy Chayefsky
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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Just Above My Head 38457
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.�

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain , to the forbidden passion of Giovanni’s Room , and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses—and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land.]]>
584 James Baldwin 0385334567 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.45 1979 Just Above My Head
author: James Baldwin
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.45
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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Intruder in the Dust 72228 247 William Faulkner Nicholas 0 to-read 3.78 1948 Intruder in the Dust
author: William Faulkner
name: Nicholas
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 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 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway]]> 4625 THE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR

In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.]]>
650 Ernest Hemingway 0684843323 Nicholas 0 to-read 4.30 1987 The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Nicholas
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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