saad's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 12 Jun 2025 18:18:00 -0700 60 saad's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800]]> 34356265 Memoirs, spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygone world of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beaches of Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg, hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried on pikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia, and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to France after eight years of exile in England.

In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer of great wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaning of history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy and memorable gloom.]]>
584 1681371294 saad 0 to-read 4.30 Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1768-1800
author: François-René de Chateaubriand
name: saad
average rating: 4.30
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The Briefcase 12474332
As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time’s passing comes across through the seasons and the food and beverages they consume together. From warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms, the reader is enveloped by a keen sense of pathos and both characters� keen loneliness.]]>
176 Hiromi Kawakami 1582435995 saad 0 to-read 3.80 2001 The Briefcase
author: Hiromi Kawakami
name: saad
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/13
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Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]>
56 Hugh Howey saad 0 to-read 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: saad
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/09
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Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 saad 0 to-read 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: saad
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. �The Judgment,� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and �The Stoker,� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with �The Metamorphosis,� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are �In the Penal Colony,� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and �A Hunger Artist,� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]>
224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 saad 0 to-read 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: saad
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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Scaramouche 11863307
Once he was André-Louis Moreau, a lawyer raised by nobility, unconcerned with the growing discontent among France’s lower class—until his friend was mercilessly struck down by a member of the aristocracy.

Now he is Scaramouche. Speaking out against the unjust French government, he takes refuge with a nomadic band of actors and assumes the role of the clown Scaramouche—a comic figure with a very serious message�.

Set during the French Revolution, this novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual’s role in society—a story that has become Rafael Sabatini’s enduring legacy.

With an Introduction by Gary Hoppenstand]]>
531 Rafael Sabatini 110149848X saad 0 to-read 4.39 1921 Scaramouche
author: Rafael Sabatini
name: saad
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1921
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)]]> 15810910
Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, commander of one of the Vordanai empire’s colonial garrisons, was resigned to serving out his days in a sleepy, remote outpost. But that was before a rebellion upended his life. And once the powder smoke settled, he was left in charge of a demoralized force clinging tenuously to a small fortress at the edge of the desert.

To flee from her past, Winter Ihernglass masqueraded as a man and enlisted as a ranker in the Vordanai Colonials, hoping only to avoid notice. But when chance sees her promoted to command, she must win the hearts of her men and lead them into battle against impossible odds.

The fates of both these soldiers and all the men they lead depend on the newly arrived Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich, who has been sent by the ailing king to restore order. His military genius seems to know no bounds, and under his command, Marcus and Winter can feel the tide turning. But their allegiance will be tested as they begin to suspect that the enigmatic Janus’s ambitions extend beyond the battlefield and into the realm of the supernatural—a realm with the power to ignite a meteoric rise, reshape the known world, and change the lives of everyone in its path.]]>
513 Django Wexler 0451465105 saad 0 to-read 4.03 2013 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)
author: Django Wexler
name: saad
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X saad 0 to-read 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: saad
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/29
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Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]>
384 Peter Watts 0765312182 saad 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: saad
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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The Call of Cthulhu 15730101 The Call of Cthulhu is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world.]]> 43 H.P. Lovecraft saad 0 3.97 1928 The Call of Cthulhu
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: saad
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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<![CDATA[Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)]]> 50027 Discover the origin story of one of the greatest heroes of the Realms—Drizzt Do’Urden—in this thrilling first installment of the Dark Elf Trilogy

Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre’s standout characters. With Homeland, Salvatore pulls back the curtain to reveal the startling tale of how this hero came to be—how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark; how he left behind an evil society and a family that wanted him dead.

As the third son of Mother Malice and weaponmaster Zaknafein, Drizzt Do’Urden is meant to be sacrificed to Lolth, the evil Spider Queen, per drow tradition. But with the unexpected death of his older brother, young Drizzt is spared—and, as a result, further ostracized by his family. As Drizzt grows older, developing his swordsmanship skills and studying at the Academy, he begins to realize that his idea of good and evil does not match up with those of his fellow drow. Can Drizzt stay true to himself in a such an unforgiving, unprincipled world?

Homeland is the first book in the Dark Elf Trilogy and the Legend of Drizzt series.]]>
343 R.A. Salvatore saad 0 to-read 4.26 1990 Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)
author: R.A. Salvatore
name: saad
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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Suicide 4604185 128 Édouard Levé 2846822360 saad 0 to-read 4.18 2008 Suicide
author: Édouard Levé
name: saad
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/25
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<![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]>
182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn saad 0 to-read 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: saad
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness]]> 376895 193 Itzhak Bentov 0892812028 saad 0 to-read 4.26 1977 Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness
author: Itzhak Bentov
name: saad
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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The Pale King 9443405
The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.]]>
548 David Foster Wallace 0316074233 saad 0 to-read 3.97 2011 The Pale King
author: David Foster Wallace
name: saad
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/07
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Bombardiers 306424 352 Po Bronson 0812971868 saad 0 to-read 3.77 1995 Bombardiers
author: Po Bronson
name: saad
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/07
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<![CDATA[The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest]]> 306422 289 Po Bronson 0380816245 saad 0 to-read 3.83 1996 The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest
author: Po Bronson
name: saad
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/07
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The Tartar Steppe 83017 198 Dino Buzzati 1567923046 saad 0 to-read 4.24 1940 The Tartar Steppe
author: Dino Buzzati
name: saad
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/10
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Indigo 20665571 400 Clemens J. Setz 0871402688 saad 0 to-read 3.37 2012 Indigo
author: Clemens J. Setz
name: saad
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/16
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Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]>
304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 saad 0 to-read 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: saad
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/11
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Love 60557516 A novel of intersecting historical threads.

Love narrates celebrated Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal’s search for death. The decision blossoms within I—the I-person�"like some interior bloom, black and beautiful� on a warm spring day in May, and it is this resolution that fills his self-imposed final year with meaning: Death. It can be so beautiful. One must create this beauty for oneself. One must submit to this naturalness, one must choose it, like pulling the duvet over oneself in bed or jumping off a bridge. But almost immediately life deals I a wildcard: a new love affair brings some of the best days he’s ever known and threatens his pact with death. Will he be able to leave Aka and the child she’s carrying? He has put an endpoint on his life to intensify experience but is he sure that disappearing from their lives, becoming an absent father, is the best thing for all of them? Set against Espedal’s constant reference, the ebb and flow of the seasons, something close to ecstasy propels this most introspective of narratives towards a universal truth.]]>
100 Tomas Espedal 1803090804 saad 0 to-read 3.88 2022 Love
author: Tomas Espedal
name: saad
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
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<![CDATA[I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream]]> 20813135 Ich denke, also bin ich109 Jahre nach dem Ende des Dritten Weltkriegs leben nur noch fünf Menschen. Sie hausen in unterirdischen Stollen, immer am Rande des Verhungerns, und werden jede Minute ihres Lebens von einem Supercomputer gefoltert, der ein Bewusstsein erlangt hat � und mit ihm unendlichen Hass auf seine Erbauer. Es gibt nur einen einzigen Ausweg für die gequälten Menschen � doch welcher von ihnen wird stark genug sein, ihn zu wählen? Die Kurzgeschichte „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� erscheint als exklusives E-Book Only bei Heyne und ist zusammen mit weiteren Stories von Harlan Ellison auch in dem Sammelband „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� enthalten. Sie umfasst ca. 22 Buchseiten.]]> 20 Harlan Ellison saad 0 3.73 1967 I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
author: Harlan Ellison
name: saad
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/28
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<![CDATA[The Unincorporated Man (Unincorporated Man, #1)]]> 4025200

The Unincorporated Man is a provocative social/political/economic novel that takes place in the future, after civilization has fallen into complete economic collapse. This reborn civilization is one in which every individual is incorporated at birth, and spends many years trying to attain control over his or her own life by getting a majority of his or her own shares. Life extension has made life very long indeed.

Now the incredible has happened: a billionaire businessman from our time, frozen in secret in the early twenty-first century, is discovered and resurrected, given health and a vigorous younger body. Justin Cord is the only unincorporated man in the world, a true stranger in this strange land. Justin survived because he is tough and smart. He cannot accept only part ownership of himself, even if that places him in conflict with a civilization that extends outside the solar system to the Oort Cloud.  People will be arguing about this novel and this world for decades.

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479 Dani Kollin 0765318997 saad 0 to-read 3.79 2009 The Unincorporated Man  (Unincorporated Man, #1)
author: Dani Kollin
name: saad
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/23
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The Colour Out of Space 2978169 The Colour Out of Space
The Picture in the House
The Call of Cthulhu
Cool Air
The Whisper in Darkness
The Terrible Old Man
The Shadow Out of Time]]>
222 H.P. Lovecraft saad 0 to-read 3.93 1927 The Colour Out of Space
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: saad
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1927
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/02
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<![CDATA[Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening]]> 55883882
Collects MONSTRESS #1-6

About the Creators:

New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer Marjorie Liu is best known for her fiction and comic books. She teaches comic book writing at MIT, and leads a class on Popular Fiction at the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop. Ms. Liu's extensive work includes the bestselling "Astonishing X-Men" for Marvel Comics, which featured the gay wedding of X-Man Northstar and was subsequently nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Prior to writing full-time, Liu was a lawyer. She currently resides in Boston.

Sana Takeda is an illustrator and comic book artist who was born in Niigata, and now resides in Tokyo, Japan. At age 20 she started out as a 3D CGI designer for SEGA, a Japanese video game company, and became a freelance artist when she was 25. She is still an artist, and has worked on titles such as "X-23" and "Ms. Marvel" for Marvel Comics, and is an illustrator for trading card games in Japan.]]>
192 Marjorie M. Liu 1632157098 saad 0 to-read 3.96 2016 Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: saad
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/28
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Misery 11555358 By Anton Chekhov

"To whom shall I tell my grief?"
THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off.... His little mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to think.]]>
8 Anton Chekhov saad 0 3.92 1883 Misery
author: Anton Chekhov
name: saad
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1883
rating: 0
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Oblomov 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 saad 0 to-read 4.09 1859 Oblomov
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: saad
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/01
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<![CDATA[A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)]]> 226004 A Fire Upon The Deep, this is the story of Pham Nuwen, a small cog in the interstellar trading fleet of the Queng Ho. The Queng Ho and the Emergents are orbiting the dormant planet Arachna, which is about to wake up to technology, but the Emergents' plans are sinister.]]> 775 Vernor Vinge 0812536355 saad 0 to-read 4.31 1999 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)
author: Vernor Vinge
name: saad
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/01
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Savages (Savages #2) 8008928
When they refuse to back down, the cartel escalates its threat, kidnapping Ophelia, the boys' playmate and confidante. O's abduction sets off a dizzying array of ingenious negotiations and gripping plot twists that will captivate readers eager to learn the costs of freedom and the price of one amazing high.]]>
302 Don Winslow 1439183368 saad 0 to-read 3.84 2010 Savages (Savages #2)
author: Don Winslow
name: saad
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/28
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<![CDATA[Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously]]> 96999
The book begins with an in-depth exploration of the meaning of courage and how it is expressed in the everyday life of the individual. Unlike books that focus on heroic acts of courage in exceptional circumstances, the focus here is on developing the inner courage that enables us to lead authentic and fulfilling lives on a day-to-day basis. This is the courage to change when change is needed, the courage to stand up for our own truth, even against the opinions of others, and the courage to embrace the unknown in spite of our fears-in our relationships, in our careers, or in the ongoing journey of understanding who we are and why we are here.

Courage also features a number of meditation techniques specifically designed by Osho to help people deal with their fears.]]>
193 Osho 0312205171 saad 0 to-read 4.16 1977 Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously
author: Osho
name: saad
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/27
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The ZĂĽrau Aphorisms 17694
Illness set him free to write a series of philosophical some narratives, some single images, some parables. These “aphorisms� appeared, sometimes with a few words changed, in other writings–some of them as posthumous fragments published only after Kafka’s death in 1924. While working on K ., his major book on Kafka, in the Bodleian Library, Roberto Calasso realized that the Zürau aphorisms, each written on a separate slip of very thin paper, numbered but unbound, represented something unique in Kafka’s opus–a work whose form he had created simultaneously with its content.

The notebooks, freshly translated and laid out as Kafka had intended, are a distillation of Kafka at his most powerful and enigmatic. This lost jewel provides the reader with a fresh perspective on the collective work of a genius.]]>
160 Franz Kafka 0805212078 saad 0 3.92 1931 The ZĂĽrau Aphorisms
author: Franz Kafka
name: saad
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1931
rating: 0
read at: 2018/06/15
date added: 2023/07/21
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<![CDATA[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling]]> 99329

   • Includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, notes, glossary, and an appendix of Fielding's revisions
   • Introduction discusses narrative tecniques and themes, the context of eighteenth-century fiction and satire, and the historical and political background of the Jacobite revolution
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
975 Henry Fielding 0140436227 saad 0 to-read 3.75 1749 The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
author: Henry Fielding
name: saad
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1749
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Nightwatches of Bonaventura]]> 20701865 The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is a dark, twisted, and comic novel, one part Poe and one part Beckett. The narrator and anti-hero is not Bonaventura, but a night watchman named Kreuzgang, a failed poet, actor, and puppeteer who claims to be the spawn of the devil himself. As a night watchman, Kreuzgang takes voyeuristic pleasure in spying on the follies of his fellow citizens, and every night he makes his rounds and stops to peer into a window or door, where he observes framed scenes of murder, despair, theft, romance, and other private activities. In his responses, Kreuzgang is cynical and pessimistic, yet not without humor. For him, life is a grotesque, macabre, and base joke played by a mechanical and heartless force.

Since its publication, fans have speculated on the novel’s authorship, and it is now believed to be by theater director August Klingemann, who first staged Goethe’s Faust. Organized into sixteen separate night watches, the sordid scenes glimpsed through parted curtains, framed by door chinks, and lit by candles and shadows anticipate the cinematic. A cross between the gothic and Romantic, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is brilliant in its perverse intensity, presenting an inventory of human despair and disgust through the eyes of a bitter, sardonic watcher who draws laughter from tragedy.

Translated by Gerald Gillespie, who supplies a fresh introduction, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura will be welcomed by a new generation of English-language fans, eager to sample the night’s dark offerings.]]>
162 022614156X saad 0 to-read 3.74 1804 The Nightwatches of Bonaventura
author: Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann
name: saad
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1804
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Fall Out of Redemption, The: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy]]> 23490230
Through a series of “interhistorical� readings that put literary and critical writers from the last 150 years in dialogue, Acquisto shows how these authors struggle to articulate both the metaphysical and esthetic consequences of attempting to move beyond a logic of salvation. Putting these writers into dialogue with Baudelaire highlights the way both literary and critical approaches attempt to articulate a third option between theism and atheism that also steers clear of political utopianism and Nietzschean estheticism. In the concluding section, Acquisto expands metaphysical and esthetic concerns to account also for the ethics inherent in the refusal of the logic of salvation, an ethics which emerges from, rather than seeking to redeem or cancel, a certain kind of nihilism.]]>
232 Joseph Acquisto 162892652X saad 0 to-read 4.60 2015 Fall Out of Redemption, The: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy
author: Joseph Acquisto
name: saad
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (Short Circuits)]]> 329987 202 Alenka ZupanÄŤiÄŤ 0262740265 saad 0 to-read 4.37 2001 The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (Short Circuits)
author: Alenka ZupanÄŤiÄŤ
name: saad
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/11
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For Two Thousand Years 25853028
Mihail Sebastian's 1934 masterpiece, now translated into English for the first time, was written amid the anti-Semitism which would, by the end of the decade, force him out of his career and turn his friends and colleagues against him. For Two Thousand Years is a prescient, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, broken layers of memory and the terrible forces of history.]]>
231 Mihail Sebastian 0241189616 saad 0 to-read 4.03 1934 For Two Thousand Years
author: Mihail Sebastian
name: saad
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason]]> 796506 429 Hubert L. Dreyfus 0262540673 saad 0 to-read 4.17 1972 What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason
author: Hubert L. Dreyfus
name: saad
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age]]> 10087892 An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it's quite new. In medieval Europe, God's calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,� you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong� choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal?

All Things Shining says we can. Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. Their journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert.

Dreyfus, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, for forty years, is an original thinker who finds in the classic texts of our culture a new relevance for people’s everyday lives. His lively, thought-provoking lectures have earned him a podcast audience that often reaches the iTunesU Top 40. Kelly, chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University, is an eloquent new voice whose sensitivity to the sadness of the culture� and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away—captures a generation adrift.

Re-envisioning modern spiritual life through their examination of literature, philosophy, and religious testimony, Dreyfus and Kelly unearth ancient sources of meaning, and teach us how to rediscover the sacred, shining things that surround us every day. This book will change the way we understand our culture, our history, our sacred practices, and ourselves. It offers a new—and very old—way to celebrate and be grateful for our existence in the modern world.]]>
272 Hubert L. Dreyfus 1439101701 saad 0 to-read 3.73 2010 All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
author: Hubert L. Dreyfus
name: saad
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Thus Spoke Zarathustra is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale in Penguin Classics.

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life passionate, chaotic and free.]]>
327 Friedrich Nietzsche saad 0 currently-reading 4.10 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: saad
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1883
rating: 0
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Lazarus 4796684 48 Leonid Andreyev 1419129368 saad 0 to-read 4.02 1906 Lazarus
author: Leonid Andreyev
name: saad
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1906
rating: 0
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Satan's Diary 10922589 312 Leonid Andreyev saad 0 to-read 3.80 1920 Satan's Diary
author: Leonid Andreyev
name: saad
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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الŮسمية 13013126 160 عبد العزيز مشري saad 0 to-read 3.04 1982 الŮسمية
author: عبد العزيز مشري
name: saad
average rating: 3.04
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/06
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<![CDATA[The Critical Case of a Man Called K]]> 57021583
After reading Kafka, K decides to write his own diary, but he is constantly frustrated by his lack of experiences: he is worn down by the drudgery of his corporate job for a faceless corporation and by his incessant family obligations.

When he receives the news that he has leukemia, he finds himself torn between a sense of devastation and a revelation that he has finally found a way out of his writing predicament.

Through Aziz Mohammed’s measured but forceful writing, this compelling debut has a universality that reaches across time, place, and culture.

Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.]]>
266 عزيز محمد 1649030754 saad 0 to-read 3.90 2017 The Critical Case of a Man Called K
author: عزيز محمد
name: saad
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
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The Shape of Things 134052 192 Vilém Flusser 1861890559 saad 0 to-read 4.07 1993 The Shape of Things
author: Vilém Flusser
name: saad
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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Seiobo There Below 16241799
In Seiobo There Below we see the goddess Seiobo returning to mortal realms in search of perfection. An ancient Buddha being restored; Perugino managing his workshop; a Japanese Noh actor rehearsing; a fanatic of Baroque music lecturing to a handful of old villagers; tourists intruding into the rituals of Japan’s most sacred shrine; a heron hunting.� Seiobo hovers over it all, watching closely.

Melancholic and brilliant, Seiobo There Below urges us to treasure the concentration that goes into the perception of great art, leading us to re-examine our connection to immanence.]]>
451 László Krasznahorkai 0811219674 saad 0 4.30 2008 Seiobo There Below
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: saad
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2008
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A Short History of Decay 2855
E.M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history. He focuses on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science.]]>
186 Emil M. Cioran 1559704640 saad 0 4.27 1949 A Short History of Decay
author: Emil M. Cioran
name: saad
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1949
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The Jaunt. Travel 6296531 Dual-language book (English and German) and audio CD read by Allen Hoaglund.

Familie Oates tritt ihre Reise zum Mars an � eigentlich eine Routine-Teleportation �

PONS read & listen bietet:
* unterhaltsame, zeitgenössische Literatur
* rechts den Originaltext, links die Ăśbersetzung
* die Story in voller Länge von einem professionellen Sprecher vorgelesen
* 68 Minuten Hörvergnügen
* die wichtigsten Vokabeln und interkulturellen Infos im Register

Lesen, hören, mitlesen: Originalliteratur genießen. Für Lerner mit guten Vorkenntnissen.]]>
95 Stephen King 3125615550 saad 0 4.21 1981 The Jaunt. Travel
author: Stephen King
name: saad
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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La Raza Cosmica 45169876 164 José Vasconcelos 9700757285 saad 0 to-read 3.45 1925 La Raza Cosmica
author: José Vasconcelos
name: saad
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1925
rating: 0
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The Art of Seeing 5133 The Art of Seeing records Aldous Huxley's victory over near-blindness and details the simple exercises anyone can follow to improve eyesight. Using the method devised by Dr. William H. Bates, "the pioneer of visual education," as Huxley called him, and heeding the advice of Dr. Bates' disciple, Margaret D. Corbett, Aldous Huxley conquered a vision problem that had plagued him for more than a quarter century.]]> 147 Aldous Huxley 0916870480 saad 0 to-read 3.71 1942 The Art of Seeing
author: Aldous Huxley
name: saad
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1942
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<![CDATA[The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida)]]> 19226890 The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English.

The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from 2001�2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,� Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,� Machiavelli’s Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract.

Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal.]]>
368 Jacques Derrida saad 0 to-read 4.20 2008 The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida)
author: Jacques Derrida
name: saad
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2008
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<![CDATA[Nietzsche's Reading and Private Library, 1885-1889]]> 18109710 31 Thomas H. Brobjer saad 0 to-read 4.00 1997 Nietzsche's Reading and Private Library, 1885-1889
author: Thomas H. Brobjer
name: saad
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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The Blue Period 50348178 110 Matthew Gasda 0997613475 saad 0 to-read 4.50 The Blue Period
author: Matthew Gasda
name: saad
average rating: 4.50
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Moon on Water 19503525 238 Matthew Gasda 0615870627 saad 0 to-read 4.25 2013 Moon on Water
author: Matthew Gasda
name: saad
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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Creative Evolution 379659 468 Henri Bergson 1596053097 saad 0 to-read 4.10 1907 Creative Evolution
author: Henri Bergson
name: saad
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1907
rating: 0
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Critique of Everyday Life 1443432
Henri Lefebvre's three-volume Critique of Everyday Life is perhaps the richest, most prescient work by one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, the Critique was a philosophical inspiration for the 1968 student revolution in France and is considered to be the founding text of all that we know as cultural studies, as well as a major influence on the fields of contemporary philosophy, geography, sociology, architecture, political theory and urbanism. A work of enormous range and subtlety, Lefebvre takes as his starting-point and guide the "trivial" details of quotidian experience: an experience colonized by the commodity, shadowed by inauthenticity, yet one which remains the only source of resistance and change.

This is an enduringly radical text, untimely today only in its intransigence and optimism.]]>
312 Henri Lefebvre 1844671917 saad 0 to-read 4.11 1947 Critique of Everyday Life
author: Henri Lefebvre
name: saad
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1947
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From an Abandoned Work 10228053
This edition is the original play on its own and not part of an anthology]]>
22 Samuel Beckett saad 0 4.17 1958 From an Abandoned Work
author: Samuel Beckett
name: saad
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1958
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Hedyphagetica 1407520 217 Austryn Wainhouse 1564784673 saad 0 to-read 3.43 1954 Hedyphagetica
author: Austryn Wainhouse
name: saad
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies]]> 349990 184 Marcel Mauss 039332043X saad 0 to-read 3.93 1923 The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies
author: Marcel Mauss
name: saad
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1923
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<![CDATA[Forests: The Shadow of Civilization]]> 1063562
"Forests is one of the most remarkable essays on the human place in nature I have ever read, and belongs on the small shelf that includes Raymond Williams' masterpiece, The Country and the City. Elegantly conceived, beautifully written, and powerfully argued, [Forests] is a model of scholarship at its passionate best. No one who cares about cultural history, about the human place in nature, or about the future of our earthly home, should miss it.—William Cronon, Yale Review

"Forests is, among other things, a work of scholarship, and one of immense value . . . one that we have needed. It can be read and reread, added to and commented on for some time to come."—John Haines, The New York Times Book Review]]>
304 Robert Pogue Harrison 0226318079 saad 0 to-read 4.23 1992 Forests: The Shadow of Civilization
author: Robert Pogue Harrison
name: saad
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1992
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The Coming Insurrection 6447374 A call to arms by a group of French intellectuals that rejects leftist reform and aligns itself with younger, wilder forms of resistance.

Thirty years of “crisis,� mass unemployment, and flagging growth, and they still want us to believe in the economy... We have to see that the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. The Coming Insurrection is an eloquent call to arms arising from the recent waves of social contestation in France and Europe. Written by the anonymous Invisible Committee in the vein of Guy Debord—and with comparable elegance—it has been proclaimed a manual for terrorism by the French government (who recently arrested its alleged authors). One of its members more adequately described the group as “the name given to a collective voice bent on denouncing contemporary cynicism and reality.� The Coming Insurrection is a strategic prescription for an emergent war-machine capable of “spreading anarchy and live communism.� Written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005 and presaging more recent riots and general strikes in France and Greece, The Coming Insurrection articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the younger, wilder forms of resistance that have emerged in Europe around recent struggles against immigration control and the “war on terror.� Hot-wired to the movement of '77 in Italy, its preferred historical reference point, The Coming Insurrection formulates an ethics that takes as its starting point theft, sabotage, the refusal to work, and the elaboration of collective, self-organized life forms. It is a philosophical statement that addresses the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.]]>
136 The Invisible Committee 1584350806 saad 0 3.81 2007 The Coming Insurrection
author: The Invisible Committee
name: saad
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2007
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The Walk 13335631
A pseudo-biographical "stroll" through town and countryside rife with philosophic musings, The Walk has been hailed as the masterpiece of Walser's short prose. Walking features heavily in his writing, but nowhere else is it as elegantly considered. Without walking, "I would be dead," Walser explains, "and my profession, which I love passionately, would be destroyed. Because it is on walks that the lore of nature and the lore of the country are revealed, charming and graceful, to the sense and eyes of the observant walker." The Walk was the first piece of Walser's work to appear in English, and the only one translated before his death. However, Walser heavily revised his most famous novella, altering nearly every sentence, rendering the baroque tone of his tale into something more spare. An introduction by translator Susan Bernofsky explains the history of The Walk, and the difference between its two versions.]]>
89 Robert Walser 0811219925 saad 0 to-read 3.92 1917 The Walk
author: Robert Walser
name: saad
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1917
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IXth Generation Vol. 1 25068313 160 Matt Hawkins 1632153238 saad 0 to-read 3.56 2015 IXth Generation Vol. 1
author: Matt Hawkins
name: saad
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/12
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Irrational Man 10425669 320 William Barrett 0307761088 saad 0 to-read 4.38 1958 Irrational Man
author: William Barrett
name: saad
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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Поезия 8433726 356 Atanas Dalchev saad 0 to-read 4.24 1984 Поезия
author: Atanas Dalchev
name: saad
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Inhuman: Reflections on Time]]> 343989 225 Jean-François Lyotard 0804720088 saad 0 to-read 3.99 1988 The Inhuman: Reflections on Time
author: Jean-François Lyotard
name: saad
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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This is Not a Program 10124350
Historical conflict no longer opposes two massive molar heaps, two classes—the exploited and the exploiters, the dominant and dominated, managers and workers—between which, in each individual case, it would be possible to differentiate. The front line no longer cuts through the middle of society; it now runs through each one of us... � � from This Is Not a Program

Traditional lines of revolutionary struggle no longer hold. Rather, it is ubiquitous cybernetics, surveillance, and terror that create the illusion of difference within hegemony. Configurations of dissent and the rhetoric of revolution are merely the other face of capital, conforming identities to empty predicates, ensuring that even “thieves,� “saboteurs,� and “terrorists� no longer exceed the totalizing space of Empire. This Is Not a Program offers two texts, both originally published in French by Tiqqun with Introduction to Civil War in 2001. In This Is Not a Program, Tiqqun outlines a new path for resistance and struggle in the age of Empire, one that eschews the worn-out example of France's May '68 in favor of what they consider to be the still fruitful and contemporary insurrectionary movements in Italy of the 1970s. “As a Science of Apparatuses� examines the way Empire has enforced on the subject a veritable metaphysics of isolation and pacification, “apparatuses� that include chairs, desks, computers; surveillance (security guards, cameras); disease (depression); crutch (cell phone, lover, sedative); and authority. Tiqqun's critique of the biopolitical subject and omnipresent Empire is all the more urgent as we become inured to the permanent state of exception that is the War on Terror and to other, no less intimate forms of pacification. But all is not lost. In its unrelenting production of the Same, Empire itself creates the conditions necessary for the insurrection to come.]]>
216 Tiqqun 1584350970 saad 0 to-read 3.97 2009 This is Not a Program
author: Tiqqun
name: saad
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2009
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Animalinside 9376941 Animalinside explodes from its first line: "He wants to break free, attempts to stretch open the walls, but he has been tautened by them, and there he remains in this tautening, in this constraint, and there is nothing to do but howl. . . ." To create this work that strains against all constraints, László Krasznahorkai began from one of Max Neumann’s paintings; Neumann, spurred into action, created 14 more images, which unleashed an additional 13 texts from the author. Animalinside is the rare case of two matchless artists meeting across disciplines, and New Directions is very proud to publish a limited edition of this powerful novella, exquisitely produced by Sylph Editions and the Cahiers Series of the American University of Paris with a deluxe seven-stage printing process for the amazing Neumann images.]]> 48 László Krasznahorkai 081121916X saad 0 to-read 4.13 2010 Animalinside
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: saad
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Magic in the Weaving (Circle of Magic, #1)]]> 879226 The Winding Circle Temple has four new residents...
Sandry, Tris, Briar and Daja couldn't be more different. One is of noble birth and one is a street urchin, brought up to a life of thievery. One is a Trader and one a merchant girl, two cultures traditionally at war with each other.

But the all have something in common...
They each possess a strange and wonderful power. These four powers will unite them. And when disaster strikes, it is the weaving of the magic that will keep them alive...]]>
215 Tamora Pierce 0590542214 saad 0 to-read 4.10 1997 The Magic in the Weaving (Circle of Magic, #1)
author: Tamora Pierce
name: saad
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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The Book of Ebenezer Le Page 750407 The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island.

G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.]]>
394 G.B. Edwards 1590172337 saad 0 to-read 4.26 1981 The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
author: G.B. Edwards
name: saad
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1981
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Soul 589257 A New York Review Books Original

The Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov’s vision have become ever more clear. For Nadezhda Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, Platonov was the writer who most profoundly registered the spiritual shock of revolution. For a new generation of innovative post-Soviet Russian writers he figures as a daring explorer of word and world, the master of what has been called “alternative realism.� Depicting a devastated world that is both terrifying and sublime, Platonov is, without doubt, a universal writer who is as solitary and haunting as Kafka.

This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are “The Return,� about an officer’s difficult homecoming at the end of World War II, described by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of “three great works of Russian literature of the millennium�; “The River Potudan,� a moving account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the extraordinary tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech.

This prizewinning English translation is the first to be based on the newly available uncensored texts of Platonov’s short fiction.]]>
335 Andrei Platonov 159017254X saad 0 to-read 4.15 1935 Soul
author: Andrei Platonov
name: saad
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1935
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<![CDATA[The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs]]> 94578 "[This book] mirrors all of Nietzsche's thought and could be related in hundreds of ways to his other books, his notes, and his letters. And yet it is complete in itself. For it is a work of art." —Walter Kaufmann in the Introduction

Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.

Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.

Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche.]]>
396 Friedrich Nietzsche 0394719859 saad 0 4.29 1882 The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: saad
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1882
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Memoirs of My Nervous Illness 287490 455 Daniel Paul Schreber 094032220X saad 0 to-read 4.05 1903 Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
author: Daniel Paul Schreber
name: saad
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1903
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The Experience of Pain 35783553 'The seething cauldron of life, the infinite stratification of reality, the inextricable tangle of knowledge are what Gadda wants to depict' Italo Calvino

At the height of Fascist rule in Italy and following the death of his mother, Carlo Emilio Gadda began work on his first novel, The Experience of Pain. This portrait of a highly educated young man whose anger and frustration frequently erupt in ferocious outbursts directed towards his ageing mother is a powerful critique of the society of his time and the deep wounds inflicted on his generation. Set in a fictional South American country, The Experience of Pain is at once richly imaginative and intensely personal: the perfect introduction to Gadda's innovative style and literary virtuosity.

Translated by Richard Dixon

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238 Carlo Emilio Gadda saad 0 to-read 3.27 1963 The Experience of Pain
author: Carlo Emilio Gadda
name: saad
average rating: 3.27
book published: 1963
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Murder 17221882 “One does not die alone, one is killed, by routine, by impossibility, following their inspiration. If all this time, I have spoken of murder, sometimes half camouflaged, it’s because of that, that way of killing.�

Murder is Danielle Collobert’s first novel. Originally published in 1964 by Éditions Gallimard while Collobert was living as a political exile in Italy, this prose work was written against the backdrop of the Algerian War. Uncompromising in its exposure of the calculated cruelty of the quotidian, Murderâ€s accusations have photographic precision, inculpating instants of habitual violence.]]>
98 Danielle Collobert 1933959177 saad 0 to-read 4.27 1964 Murder
author: Danielle Collobert
name: saad
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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Steps 18464
From the esteemed author of the classics The Painted Bird and Being There comes this award-winning novel about one man's sexual and sensual experiences, the fabric from which his life has been woven.

Jerzy Kosinski's classic vision of moral and sexual estrangement brilliantly captures the disturbing undercurrents of modern politics and culture. In this haunting novel, distinctions are eroded between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrator and victim, narcissism and anonymity. Kosinski portrays men and women both aroused and desensitized by an environment that disdains the individual and seeks control over the imagination in his unforgettable and immensely provocative work.]]>
148 Jerzy Kosiński 0802135269 saad 0 to-read 3.78 1968 Steps
author: Jerzy Kosiński
name: saad
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1968
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In Youth Is Pleasure 398337 144 Denton Welch 1904634176 saad 0 to-read 4.16 1945 In Youth Is Pleasure
author: Denton Welch
name: saad
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1945
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The Weight of the World 768338 288 Peter Handke 0374287457 saad 0 to-read 4.17 1977 The Weight of the World
author: Peter Handke
name: saad
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1977
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Senselessness 2635557 142 Horacio Castellanos Moya 0811217078 saad 0 to-read 3.80 2004 Senselessness
author: Horacio Castellanos Moya
name: saad
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2004
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EEG 33401357 415 Daša Drndić saad 0 to-read 4.18 2016 EEG
author: Daša Drndić
name: saad
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2016
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Trieste 11812200 432 Daša Drndić 0857050222 saad 0 to-read 4.15 2007 Trieste
author: Daša Drndić
name: saad
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2007
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Morte D'Urban 133166
The hero of J.F. Powers's comic masterpiece is Father Urban, a man of the cloth who is also a man of the world. Charming, with an expansive vision of the spiritual life and a high tolerance for moral ambiguity, Urban enjoys a national reputation as a speaker on the religious circuit and has big plans for the future. But then the provincial head of his dowdy religious order banishes him to a retreat house in the Minnesota hinterlands. Father Urban soon bounces back, carrying God's word with undaunted enthusiasm through the golf courses, fishing lodges, and backyard barbecues of his new turf. Yet even as he triumphs his tribulations mount, and in the end his greatest success proves a setback from which he cannot recover.

First published in 1962, Morte D'Urban has been praised by writers as various as Gore Vidal, William Gass, Mary Gordon, and Philip Roth. This beautifully observed, often hilarious tale of a most unlikely Knight of Faith is among the finest achievements of an author whose singular vision assures him a permanent place in American literature.]]>
336 J.F. Powers 0940322234 saad 0 to-read 3.81 1962 Morte D'Urban
author: J.F. Powers
name: saad
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Connemara: Listening to the Wind]]> 1294147 320 Tim Robinson 1844880656 saad 0 to-read 4.18 2006 Connemara: Listening to the Wind
author: Tim Robinson
name: saad
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
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Conversations 18470083 The Conversations, a reality within a fiction within a parallel reality, is hilariously funny and surprisingly touching.]]> 88 César Aira 0811221105 saad 0 to-read 3.78 2007 Conversations
author: César Aira
name: saad
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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Melancholy 118449 284 Jon Fosse 1564784517 saad 0 to-read 3.84 1995 Melancholy
author: Jon Fosse
name: saad
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1995
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<![CDATA[The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery]]> 575786
It is the first book in a trilogy that continues with A Glimpse of Nothingness and Afterzen .]]>
146 Janwillem van de Wetering 0312207743 saad 0 to-read 4.12 1973 The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery
author: Janwillem van de Wetering
name: saad
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1973
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<![CDATA[Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God]]> 467164 166 Rainer Maria Rilke 1573225851 saad 0 4.35 1905 Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: saad
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1905
rating: 0
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Wittgenstein’s Nephew 92578 Wittgenstein’s Nephew is both a meditation on the artist’s struggle to maintain a solid foothold in a world gone incomprehensibly askew, and an eulogy to a real-life friendship.]]> 101 Thomas Bernhard 0226043924 saad 0 4.09 1982 Wittgenstein’s Nephew
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: saad
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection]]> 20821373 Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet. What does this unavoidable fact mean?

For future generations, it won't mean anything very obvious. They will be so immersed in online life that questions about the Internet's basic purpose or meaning will vanish.

But those of us who have lived both with and without the crowded connectivity of online life have a rare opportunity. We can still recognize the difference between Before and After. We catch ourselves idly reaching for our phones at the bus stop. Or we notice how, mid-conversation, a fumbling friend dives into the perfect recall of Google.

In this eloquent and thought-provoking book, Michael Harris argues that amid all the changes we're experiencing, the most interesting is the one that future generations will find hardest to grasp. That is the end of absence-the loss of lack. The daydreaming silences in our lives are filled; the burning solitudes are extinguished. There's no true "free time" when you carry a smartphone. Today's rarest commodity is the chance to be alone with your own thoughts.]]>
243 Michael Harris 1591846935 saad 0 to-read 3.62 2014 The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection
author: Michael Harris
name: saad
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
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<![CDATA[Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age]]> 9408311
In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message.

World-renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as “viral media,� “social currency� and “screenagers.� He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, correctly predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as the current financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, face on PBS, and writer in publications from Discover Magazine to the New York Times.

“Douglas Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers––and writers––of our time.� —Timothy Leary

“Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates." —Walter Isaacson]]>
152 Douglas Rushkoff saad 0 to-read 3.71 2010 Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
author: Douglas Rushkoff
name: saad
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2010
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On the Mountain 805446 On The Mountain is a monologue delivered by a court reporter who encounters a variety of characters during the course of his day. It was Bernhard's first prose work which he completed in 1959.]]> 143 Thomas Bernhard 0704302063 saad 0 3.62 1989 On the Mountain
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: saad
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/11/30
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Film as a Subversive Art 260290 344 Amos Vogel 1933045272 saad 0 to-read 4.31 1974 Film as a Subversive Art
author: Amos Vogel
name: saad
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1974
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The Immoralist 70101 The Immoralist , André Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him both sexually and morally, Michel discovers a new freedom in seeking to live according to his own desires. But, as he also discovers, freedom can be a burden. A frank defense of homosexuality and a challenge to prevailing ethical concepts, The Immoralist is a literary landmark, marked by Gide's masterful, pure, simple style.]]> 123 André Gide 0142180025 saad 0 to-read 3.61 1902 The Immoralist
author: André Gide
name: saad
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1902
rating: 0
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Canti (Penguin Classics) 9248247 and foundering is sweet in such a sea' Revisited and reorganized over his lifetime, this extraordinary work was described by Leopardi as a 'reliquary' for his ideas, feelings and deepest preoccupations. It encompasses drastic shifts in tone and material, and includes early personal elegies and idylls; radical public poems on history and politics; philosophical satires; his great, dark, despairing odes such as 'To Silvia'; and later masterworks such as 'The Setting of the Moon', written not long before Leopardi's death. Infused with classical allusion and nostalgia, yet disarmingly modern in their spare, meditative style and their sense of alienation and scepticism, the Canti influenced the following two centuries of Western lyric poetry, and inspired thinkers and writers from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Beckett and Lowell. Jonathan Galassi's direct new translation sensitively responds to the musicality of the Canti , while his introduction discusses the paradoxes of Leopardi's life and work.]]> 528 Giacomo Leopardi 0141193875 saad 0 4.32 1845 Canti (Penguin Classics)
author: Giacomo Leopardi
name: saad
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1845
rating: 0
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The Wild Duck 197120
Should the truth be pursued whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based.]]>
128 Henrik Ibsen 0413775755 saad 0 to-read 3.79 1884 The Wild Duck
author: Henrik Ibsen
name: saad
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1884
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Garden, Ashes 217984
Andi's search for his father is a poetic, lyrical remembrance of things past. The celebrated Serbian writer Danilo Kis has blended bits of realism, snatches of dreams, and echoes of his own consciousness as a child to shape this magical and memorable novel.]]>
170 Danilo Kiš 156478326X saad 0 to-read 4.20 1965 Garden, Ashes
author: Danilo Kiš
name: saad
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1965
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A Balcony in the Forest 391206 213 Julien Gracq 1860462944 saad 0 to-read 4.05 1958 A Balcony in the Forest
author: Julien Gracq
name: saad
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1958
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The Sellout 31308100 The Sellout is raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist. He is told that his father's work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he realises there never was a memoir. All that's left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.

What's more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. The narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

The Sellout is a work of comic genius by a writer at the top of his game.]]>
294 Paul Beatty 1786070170 saad 0 to-read 3.67 2015 The Sellout
author: Paul Beatty
name: saad
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
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The Baron in the Trees 9804
Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy—he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by, and a new century dawn.

The Baron in the Trees exemplifies Calvino’s peerless ability to weave tales that sparkle with enchantment. This new English rendering by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein breathes new life into one of Calvino’s most beloved works.]]>
217 Italo Calvino saad 0 to-read 4.12 1957 The Baron in the Trees
author: Italo Calvino
name: saad
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
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<![CDATA[On Earth and in Hell: Early Poems]]> 24886718 New York Times book review as “the most significant literary achievement since World War II,� Bernhard’s On Earth and in Hell offers a distilled perspective on the essence of his artistry and his theme of death as the only reality. A remarkable achievement by highly-respected translator Peter Waugh.]]> 256 Thomas Bernhard 1941110231 saad 0 to-read 3.59 1957 On Earth and in Hell: Early Poems
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: saad
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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