Connor's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:40:45 -0700 60 Connor's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3)]]> 40470 All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier. It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. They value that life all the more because they know it is about to change forever.

The change comes when John Grady falls in love with a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute and sets in motion a chain of events as violent as they are unstoppable. Haunting in its beauty, filled with sorrow, humor, and awe, Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic.]]> 293 Cormac McCarthy 0679747192 Connor 0 to-read 4.13 1998 Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)]]> 365990
Having trapped a she-wolf he would restore to the mountains of Mexico, he is long gone and returns to find everything he left behind transformed utterly in his absence. Except his kid brother, Boyd, with whom he strikes out yet again to reclaim what is theirs - thus crossing into "that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever."

What they find instead, is an extraordinary panoply of fiestas and circuses, dogs, horses and hawks, pilgrims and revolutionaries, grand haciendas and forlorn cantinas, bandits, gypsies and roving tribes, a young girl alone on the road, a mystery in the mountain wilds, and a myth in the making.

And in this wider world they fight a war as rageful as the one neither, in the end, will join up for back home. One brother finds his destiny, while the other arrives only at his fate.

An essential novel by any measure, and the transfixing middle passage of Cormac McCarthy's ongoing trilogy, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops,and starts the heart and mind at once.]]> 426 Cormac McCarthy Connor 0 to-read 4.16 1994 The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)]]> 469571 302 Cormac McCarthy 0679744398 Connor 0 to-read 4.04 1992 All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> Suttree 394469 471 Cormac McCarthy 0679736328 Connor 0 to-read 4.20 1979 Suttree
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> Endgame 12287 Endgame, originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, is now considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. A pinnacle of Beckett's characteristic raw minimalism, it is a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.]]> 60 Samuel Beckett 0571070671 Connor 0 to-read 3.83 1957 Endgame
author: Samuel Beckett
name: Connor
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3) 10357575 The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.� A world that bears a question.� Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s � 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.]]> 944 Haruki Murakami 0307593312 Connor 4 next-in-line 3.94 2009 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Connor
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> Man and His Symbols 123632 Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book. Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, Jung felt that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. Thus, the reader will gain new insights into himself from this thoughtful volume, which also illustrates symbols throughout history. Completed just before his death by Jung and his associates, it is clearly addressed to the general reader.]]> 415 C.G. Jung 0440351839 Connor 5 4.19 1964 Man and His Symbols
author: C.G. Jung
name: Connor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1964
rating: 5
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]]> Memories, Dreams, Reflections 612188 Memories, Dreams, Reflections includes Jung's VII Sermones ad Mortuos. It is a fully corrected edition.From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 430 C.G. Jung 0679723951 Connor 5 4.16 1962 Memories, Dreams, Reflections
author: C.G. Jung
name: Connor
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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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 Connor 4 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Connor
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/30
date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)]]> 256008 Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.]]> 960 Larry McMurtry 067168390X Connor 0 to-read 4.54 1985 Lonesome Dove (Lonesome Dove, #1)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Connor
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/13
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]]> White Noise 11762 310 Don DeLillo 0140283307 Connor 5 3.86 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]> 7588 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.]]> 329 James Joyce 0142437344 Connor 5 3.64 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
author: James Joyce
name: Connor
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1916
rating: 5
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]]> Dubliners 11012 I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'.

Joyce's aim was to tell the truth � to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.

Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners � a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled � and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.]]> 352 James Joyce Connor 5 3.86 1914 Dubliners
author: James Joyce
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1914
rating: 5
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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 Connor 5 4.46 1944 Ficciones
author: Jorge Luis Borges
name: Connor
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1944
rating: 5
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]]> The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Connor 4 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Connor
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy Connor 5 4.18 1985 Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/11
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]]> Nog 1237451 Originally published by Random House in 1969, Nog became a universally revered cult novel and a symbol of the countercultural movement.

In Rudolph Wurlitzer's signature hypnotic and haunting voice, Nog tells the tale of a man adrift in the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere.

This edition of Nog features a new introduction from noted critic and writer Erik Davis (TechGnosis).

Yesterday afternoon a girl walked by the window and stopped for sea shells. I was wrenched out of two months of calm. Nothing more than that, certainly, nothing ecstatic or even interesting, but very silent and even, as those periods have become for me.

]]> 176 Rudolph Wurlitzer 1852424230 Connor 0 to-read 3.66 1968 Nog
author: Rudolph Wurlitzer
name: Connor
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> Women and Men 888888
McElroy rests a global vision on two people, apartment-house neighbors who never quite meet. Except, that is, in the population of others whose histories cross theirs believers and skeptics; lovers, friends, and hermits; children, parents, grandparents, avatars, and, apparently, angels. For Women and Men shows how the families through which we pass let one person's experience belong to that of many, so that we throw light on each other as if these kinships were refracted lives so real as to be reincarnate. A mirror of manners, the book is also a meditation on the languages rich, ludicrous, exact, and also American in which we try to grasp the world we're in. Along the kindred axes of separation and intimacy Women and Men extends the great line of twentieth-century innovative fiction.]]> 1192 Joseph McElroy 1564780236 Connor 0 to-read 4.11 1987 Women and Men
author: Joseph McElroy
name: Connor
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing]]> 2141 146 Walter Murch 1879505622 Connor 5 4.21 1995 In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing
author: Walter Murch
name: Connor
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/10/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer]]> 206150 Mishima, American Gigolo, Hard Core, Blue Collar, and Cat People, and also the screenwriter forTaxi Driver, Paul Schrader here analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasajiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language by these artists from divergent cultures. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state with austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This important book is an original contribution to film analysis and a key work by one of our most searching directors and writers.]]> 194 Paul Schrader 0306803356 Connor 0 to-read 4.06 1972 Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer
author: Paul Schrader
name: Connor
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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]]> The Magic Lantern 213854 The Magic Lantern.

More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.

“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape. . . . Many gripping revelations.”�New York Times Book Review

“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”�New Republic

“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”�New York Times

“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all� book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker� books are not.”�Library Journal]]> 314 Ingmar Bergman 0226043827 Connor 0 to-read 4.10 1987 The Magic Lantern
author: Ingmar Bergman
name: Connor
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> Notes on the Cinematographer 72334
Director of The Trial of Joan of Arc, Pickpocket, A Prisoner Escapes, Diary of a Country Priest, Money, and many other classic films, Robert Bresson is, quite simply, one of the most brilliant cinematographers in the history of film.]]> 136 Robert Bresson 1557133654 Connor 5 4.25 1975 Notes on the Cinematographer
author: Robert Bresson
name: Connor
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1975
rating: 5
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]]> Sculpting in Time 28495
In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films--Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre--most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.]]> 254 Andrei Tarkovsky 0292776241 Connor 5 4.54 1984 Sculpting in Time
author: Andrei Tarkovsky
name: Connor
average rating: 4.54
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> Hitchcock/Truffaut 393601 Rear Window ("I was feeling very creative at the time, the batteries were well charged"), his technical insight into Psycho's shower scene ("the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the [editing]"), and his ruminations on flops such as Under Capricorn ("If I were to make another picture in Australia today, I'd have a policeman hop into the pocket of a kangaroo and yell 'Follow that car!'"). This is one of the most delightful film books in print. --Raphael Shargel]]> 368 François Truffaut 0671604295 Connor 0 to-read 4.51 1966 Hitchcock/Truffaut
author: François Truffaut
name: Connor
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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]]> Life: A User's Manual 28293
But the novel is more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formulae. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel.]]> 581 Georges Perec 0879237511 Connor 0 to-read 4.22 1978 Life: A User's Manual
author: Georges Perec
name: Connor
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Consider the Lobster and Other Essays]]> 6751
Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."]]> 343 David Foster Wallace 0316156116 Connor 0 currently-reading 4.19 2005 Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)]]> 18801 In Search of Lost Time contains both The Captive (1923) and The Fugitive (1925). In The Captive, Proust’s narrator describes living in his mother’s Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. In The Fugitive, the narrator loses Albertine forever. Rich with irony, The Captive and The Fugitive inspire meditations on desire, sexual love, music, and the art of introspection.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).]]> 957 Marcel Proust 0375753117 Connor 0 to-read 4.38 1923 The Captive / The Fugitive (In Search of Lost Time, #5-6)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Connor
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments]]> 6748 Infinite Jest.]]> 353 David Foster Wallace 0316925284 Connor 5 4.24 1996 A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
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]]> High-Rise 70256
Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on ‘enemy� floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for riots and technological mayhem.

In this visionary tale of urban disillusionment society slips into a violent reverse as the isolated inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, create a dystopian world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Iain Sinclair, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.]]> 272 J.G. Ballard 0586044566 Connor 0 3.85 1975 High-Rise
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Connor
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/03
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]]> Invisible Cities 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Connor 0 to-read 4.16 1972 Invisible Cities
author: Italo Calvino
name: Connor
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/01
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]]> Waiting for Godot 592951 87 Samuel Beckett 0571229115 Connor 0 to-read 3.74 1951 Waiting for Godot
author: Samuel Beckett
name: Connor
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/01
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]]> <![CDATA[If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler]]> 374233 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration�"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."]]> 260 Italo Calvino Connor 0 to-read 4.05 1979 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
author: Italo Calvino
name: Connor
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Runaway Horses (The Sea of Fertility, #2)]]> 62812 432 Yukio Mishima 0099282895 Connor 0 to-read 4.25 1969 Runaway Horses (The Sea of Fertility, #2)
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Connor
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Connor 3 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Connor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/08/24
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]]> Slow Learner 5814 Time Out

‘Pynchon at his best�
Guardian

‘Thomas Pynchon is the Gargantua of modern fiction� Pynchon in person, though, is famously unsubstantial. The “About the author� endpapers of his books are conspicuously blank. In Slow Learner he breaks cover for the first time with a remarkable openhanded portrait of the writer as a young man�
Sunday Times

‘Possibly the most accomplished writer of prose in English since James Joyce� Sentence by sentence he can do more than any novelist of this century with the resources of the English-American language�
London Review of Books]]> 195 Thomas Pynchon 0099532514 Connor 0 to-read 3.55 1984 Slow Learner
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Connor
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/23
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]]> The Three Sisters 143513 The Three Sisters probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to escape. Their hopes for a life more suited to their cultivated tastes and sensibilities provide a touching counterpoint to the relentless flow of compromising events in the real world.
In this powerful play, a landmark of modern drama, Chekhov masterfully interweaves character and theme in subtle ways that make the work's finale seem as inevitable as it is deeply moving. It is reprinted here from a standard text with updated transliteration of character names and additional explanatory footnotes.]]> 81 Anton Chekhov Connor 0 to-read 3.78 1900 The Three Sisters
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Connor
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1900
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/23
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]]> Uncle Vanya 231560 116 Anton Chekhov 1406507881 Connor 0 to-read 3.86 1897 Uncle Vanya
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1897
rating: 0
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]]> The Seagull 79649
When it first opened in St Petersburg in 1896, The Seagull survived only five performances after a disastrous first opening night. Two years later it was revived by Nemirovich-Danchenko at the newly-founded Moscow Art Theatre with Stanslasky as Trigorin and was an immediate success. Checkhov's description of the play was characteristically self-mocking: "A comedy - 3F, 6M, four acts, rural scenery (a view over a lake); much talk of literature, little action, five bushels of love".
Michael Frayn's translation was commissioned by the Oxford Playhouse Company.]]> 65 Anton Chekhov 0413771008 Connor 0 to-read 3.93 1895 The Seagull
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Connor
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1895
rating: 0
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]]> The Cherry Orchard 87346
In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - perhaps his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces, forces rooted deep in history, and in the society around them. Their estate is hopelessly in debt: urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard and sell the land for holiday cottages, they struggle to act decisively. Tom Murphy's fine vernacular version allows us to re-imagine the events of the play in the last days of Anglo-Irish colonialism. It gives this great play vivid new life within our own history and social consciousness.]]> 96 Anton Chekhov 0413774031 Connor 0 to-read 3.72 1903 The Cherry Orchard
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Connor
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1903
rating: 0
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]]> Orpheus Descending 205132
"... because of the power and the brilliance and the humor of his writing, it emerges as a consistently moving and captivating experience ... the author has done a masterful job of getting inside his characters." —NY Journal-American.]]> 83 Tennessee Williams 0822208652 Connor 0 to-read 3.84 1957 Orpheus Descending
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> The Rose Tattoo 528230 72 Tennessee Williams 0822209713 Connor 0 to-read 3.68 1951 The Rose Tattoo
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/23
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]]> Summer and Smoke 167587 72 Tennessee Williams 0822210975 Connor 0 currently-reading 3.99 1948 Summer and Smoke
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/23
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review:

]]> The Night of the Iguana 629931 Now published for the first time as a trade paperback with a new introduction and the short story on which it was based.

Williams wrote: “This is a play about love in its purest terms.� It is also Williams’s robust and persuasive plea for endurance and resistance in the face of human suffering. The earthy widow Maxine Faulk is proprietress of a rundown hotel at the edge of a Mexican cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean where the defrocked Rev. Shannon, his tour group of ladies from a West Texas women’s college, the self-described New England spinster Hannah Jelkes and her ninety-seven-year-old grandfather, Jonathan Coffin (“the world’s oldest living and practicing poet�), a family of grotesque Nazi vacationers, and an iguana tied by its throat to the veranda, all find themselves assembled for a rainy and turbulent night.



This is the first trade paperback edition of The Night of the Iguana and comes with an Introduction by award-winning playwright Doug Wright, the author’s original Foreword, the short story “The Night of the Iguana� which was the germ for the play, plus an essay by noted Tennessee Williams scholar, Kenneth Holditch.



“I’m tired of conducting services in praise and worship of a senile delinquent—yeah, that’s what I said, I shouted! All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent and, by God, I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this…this…this angry, petulant old man.�

—The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon, from The Night of the Iguana]]> 93 Tennessee Williams 0822208237 Connor 0 to-read 3.86 1961 The Night of the Iguana
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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]]> Suddenly Last Summer 161915 72 Tennessee Williams 0822210940 Connor 0 to-read 3.95 1958 Suddenly Last Summer
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 72159 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father’s inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003�2004 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams&rsquoi; essay “Person-to-Person,� Williams� notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author’s life. One of America’s greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright’s perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now.]]> 208 Tennessee Williams 0811216012 Connor 0 to-read 4.07 1955 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> The Glass Menagerie 92517
The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by the editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Robert Bray, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes."
(back cover)]]> 104 Tennessee Williams 0811214044 Connor 0 to-read 3.73 1945 The Glass Menagerie
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1945
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 Connor 0 to-read 3.98 1947 A Streetcar Named Desire
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Connor
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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]]> V. 5809 640 Thomas Pynchon 2020418770 Connor 5 3.97 1963 V.
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Connor
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/26
date added: 2023/08/23
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I love Pynchon's descriptions, ways with words, humor, creativity, intelligence, and ability to push boundaries. However, it's hard to keep up with here. Hard to follow what exactly is going on. Hard to keep full interest. More so than Gravity's Rainbow. I see it all has a deeper meaning about chasing waterfalls, and the Benny Profane and The Whole Sick Crew parts are great, but there were times I wanted to throw this book against my wall, it was so frustrating, I can't believe I finished it. I understood like under 5% of it, I feel like. It's even frustratingly difficult to follow the action at times. I love art and experimentation of a certain medium, I love Gravity's Rainbow and Lot 49, but this is a love-hate relationship with this book.
]]> 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 Connor 0 to-read 4.32 1962 Another Country
author: James Baldwin
name: Connor
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> What is Cinema? Volume I 72401 192 André Bazin 0520000927 Connor 0 to-read 4.15 1967 What is Cinema? Volume I
author: André Bazin
name: Connor
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/03
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]]> On Being Blue 156185 91 William H. Gass 0879232374 Connor 0 to-read 3.90 1975 On Being Blue
author: William H. Gass
name: Connor
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/22
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]]> Omensetter's Luck 156188 Omensetter's Luck is the quirky, impressionistic, and breathtakingly original story of an ordinary community galvanized by the presence of an extraordinary man. Set in a small Ohio town in the 1890s, it chronicles - through the voices of various participants and observers - the confrontation between Brackett Omensetter, a man of preternatural goodness, and the Reverend Jethro Furber, a preacher crazed with a propensity for violent thoughts. Omensetter's Luck meticulously brings to life a specific time and place as it illuminates timeless questions about life, love, good and evil.]]> 315 William H. Gass 0141180102 Connor 0 to-read 4.00 1966 Omensetter's Luck
author: William H. Gass
name: Connor
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories]]> 152653 First published in 1968, this book begins with a beguiling thirty-three page essay and has five fictions: the celebrated novella "The Pedersen Kid," "Mrs. Mean," "Icicles," "Order of Insects," and the title story.

]]> 240 William H. Gass 0879233745 Connor 0 to-read 4.03 1968 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories
author: William H. Gass
name: Connor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> The Tunnel 156182 The Tunnel meditates on history, hatred, unhappiness, and, above all, language.]]> 652 William H. Gass 1564782131 Connor 0 to-read 3.99 1995 The Tunnel
author: William H. Gass
name: Connor
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> Inherent Vice 5933841 Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog

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

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .hang on. . .what]]> 369 Thomas Pynchon 1594202249 Connor 5 next-in-line 3.79 2009 Inherent Vice
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Connor
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> Delta of Venus 11041
In Delta of Venus Anaïs Nin penned a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for the opium dens of Peru. Delta of Venus is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from the master of erotic writing.

Part of the Quality Paperback Book Club series with limited-edition art cover. Cover art painted by Monica Elias.]]> 271 Anaïs Nin 1579125743 Connor 3 next-in-line 3.67 1977 Delta of Venus
author: Anaïs Nin
name: Connor
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1977
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968]]> 626392
The auteur theory, of which film critic Andrew Sarris was the leading American proponent, holds that artistry in cinema can be largely attributed to film directors, who, while often working against the strictures of studios, producers, and scriptwriters, manage to infuse each film in their oeuvre with their personal style. Sarris's The American Cinema , the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited." Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject.]]> 392 Andrew Sarris 0306807289 Connor 0 to-read 4.03 1968 The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968
author: Andrew Sarris
name: Connor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 55922484
RICK DALTON � Once he had his own TV series, but now Rick’s a washed-up villain-of-the week drowning his sorrows in whiskey sours. Will a phone call from Rome save his fate or seal it?

CLIFF BOOTH � Rick’s stunt double, and the most infamous man on any movie set because he’s the only one there who might have gotten away with murder. . . .

SHARON TATE � She left Texas to chase a movie-star dream, and found it. Sharon’s salad days are now spent on Cielo Drive, high in the Hollywood Hills.

CHARLES MANSON � The ex-con’s got a bunch of zonked-out hippies thinking he’s their spiritual leader, but he’d trade it all to be a rock ‘n� roll star.

HOLLYWOOD 1969 � YOU SHOULDA BEEN THERE]]> 400 Quentin Tarantino 0063112523 Connor 4 3.86 2021 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
author: Quentin Tarantino
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 4
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]]> God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater 33290408
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.]]> 290 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Connor 4 next-in-line 4.02 1965 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Connor
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1965
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!]]> 9595 Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today’s follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut’s pen into hilarious farce—a final slapstick that may be the Almighty’s joke on us all.]]> 288 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334230 Connor 2 next-in-line 3.87 1976 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Connor
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1976
rating: 2
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]]> Less Than Zero 9915
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs, and into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.]]> 208 Bret Easton Ellis Connor 2 3.62 1985 Less Than Zero
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Connor
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1985
rating: 2
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]]> <![CDATA[Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works]]> 48462 Library of America collection, the most comprehensive ever published, contains all of her novels and short-story collections, as well as nine other stories, eight of her most important essays, and a selection of 259 witty, spirited, and revealing letters, twenty-one published here for the first time.

Her fiction brilliantly explores the human obsession with seemingly banal things. It might be a new hat or clean hogs or, for Hazel Motes, hero of Wise Blood (1952), an automobile. "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified," Hazel assures himself while using its hood for a pulpit to preach his "Church Without Christ." As in O'Connor's subsequent work, the characters in this novel are driven to violence, even murder, and their strong vernacular endows them with the discomforting reality of next-door neighbors. "In order to recognize a freak," she remarks in one of her essays, "you have to have a conception of the whole man."

In the title story of her first, dazzling collection of stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), the old grandmother discovers the comic irrelevance of good manners when she and her family meet up with the sinister Misfit, who claims there is "no pleasure but meanness." The terror of urban dislocation in "The Artificial Nigger," the bizarre baptism in "The River," or one-legged Hulga Hopewell's encounter with a Bible salesman in "Good Country People"--these startling events give readers the uneasy sense of mysteries about to be revealed.

Her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960), casts the shadow of the Old Testament across a landscape of backwoods shacks, modern towns, and empty highways. Caught between the prophetic fury of his great-uncle and the unrelenting rationalism of his uncle, fourteen-year-old Francis Tarwater undergoes a terrifying trial of faith when he is commanded to baptize his idiot cousin.

The nine stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) show O'Connor's powers at their height. The title story is a terrifying, heart-rending drama of familial and racial misunderstanding. "Revelation" and "The Enduring Chill" probe further into conflicts between parental figures and recalcitrant offspring, where as much tension is generated from quiet conversation as from the physical violence of gangsters and fanatics.]]> 1281 Flannery O'Connor 0940450372 Connor 0 4.50 1988 Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Connor
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> The Complete Stories 284996 ISBN: 0374515360 (ISBN13: 9780374515362

Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime - Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day" - sent to her publisher shortly before her death - is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

Contents:
The geranium --
The barber --
Wildcat --
The crop --
The turkey --
The train --
The peeler --
The heart of the park --
A stoke of good fortune --
Enoch and the gorilla --
A good man is hard to find --
A late encounter with the enemy --
The life you save may be your own --
The river --
A circle in the fire --
The displaced person --
A temple of the Holy Ghost --
The artificial nigger --
Good country people --
You can't be any poorer than dead --
Greenleaf --
A view of the woods --
The enduring chill --
The comforts of home --
Everything that rises must converge --
The partridge festival --
The lame shall enter first --
Why do the heathen rage? --
Revelation --
Parker's back --
Judgement Day.]]> 555 Flannery O'Connor Connor 0 to-read 4.41 1971 The Complete Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Connor
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1971
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]]> <![CDATA[A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories]]> 48464
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.]]> 252 Flannery O'Connor 0151365040 Connor 5 4.19 1955 A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Connor
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> Wise Blood 48467 This is an alternate-cover edition for ISBN 9780374530631)

The American short story master Flannery O'Connor's haunting first novel of faith, false prophets, and redemptive wisdom.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes's existential struggles.

This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.]]> 256 Flannery O'Connor 0374530637 Connor 0 3.84 1952 Wise Blood
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Connor
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1952
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 Connor 5 next-in-line 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Connor
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> White Noise 28251250
White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

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

Winner of the 2016 AIGA + Design Observer 50 Books | 50 Covers competition]]> 320 Don DeLillo 0143129554 Connor 0 currently-reading 3.88 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: Connor
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> Girl with Curious Hair 8822819 Remarkable, hilarious and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent " (Jenifer Levin, New York Times Book Review).

Girl with Curious Hair is replete with David Foster Wallace's remarkable and unsettling reimaginations of reality. From the eerily "real," almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, where terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.

This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN: 0393313964/9780393313963]]> 373 David Foster Wallace Connor 0 to-read 3.88 1988 Girl with Curious Hair
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> Oblivion 6749
Mister squishy --
The soul is not a smithy --
Incarnations of burned children --
Another pioneer --
Good old neon --
Philosophy and the mirror of nature --
Oblivion --
The suffering channel]]> 329 David Foster Wallace 0316010766 Connor 0 to-read 4.09 2004 Oblivion
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Brief Interviews with Hideous Men]]> 6753
Among the stories are 'The Depressed Person', a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state; 'Adult World', which reveals a woman's agonised consideration of her confusing sexual relationship with her husband; and 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men', a dark, hilarious series of portraits of men whose fear of women renders them grotesque. Wallace's stories present a world where the bizarre and the banal are interwoven and where hideous men appear in many different guises. Thought-provoking and playful, this collection confirms David Foster Wallace as one of the most imaginative young writers around. Wallace delights in leftfield observation, mining the ironic, the surprising and the illuminating from every situation. This collection will delight his growing number of fans, and provide a perfect introduction for new readers.]]> 273 David Foster Wallace 034911188X Connor 0 to-read 3.88 1999 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life]]> 5986375
How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.

Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.]]> 138 David Foster Wallace 0316068225 Connor 0 to-read 4.52 2009 This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
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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 Connor 0 to-read 3.97 2011 The Pale King
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
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]]> J R 28434 The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece. And J R is a book of comparable magnitude, substance, and humor--a rushing, raucous look at money and its influence, at love and its absence, at success and its failures, in the magnificently orchestrated circus of all its larger- and smaller-than-life characters; a frantic, forlorn comedy about who uses -- and misuses -- whom.

At the center: J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn. Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

The J R Corp and its Boss engulf brokers, lawyers, Congressmen, disaffected school teachers and disenfranchised Indians, drunks, divorcées, second-hand generals, and a fledgling composer hopelessly entangled in a nightmare marriage of business and the arts. Their bullish ventures -- shaky mineral claims and gas leases, cost-plus defense contracts, a string of nursing homes cum funeral parlors, a formula for frozen music -- burgeon into a paper empire ranging from timber to textiles, from matchbooks to (legalized) marijuana, from prostheses to publishing, inadvertently crushing hopes, careers, an entire town, on a collision course with the bigger world . . . the pragmatic Real World where the business of America is business, where the stock market exists as a convenience, and the tax laws make some people more equal than others . . . the world that makes the rules because it plays to win, and plays for keeps.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths -- voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios -- a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, stumble through our words -- through our lives -- while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes J R the extraordinary novel that it is.

--From the first-edition dustjacket]]> 752 William Gaddis 0140187073 Connor 0 to-read 4.28 1975 J R
author: William Gaddis
name: Connor
average rating: 4.28
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]]> The Recognitions 395058 Catch-22 and V., managed to anticipate the spirit of both”�The Recognitions is a masterwork about art and forgery, and the increasingly thin line between the counterfeit and the fake. Gaddis anticipates by almost half a century the crisis of reality that we currently face, where the real and the virtual are combining in alarming ways, and the sources of legitimacy and power are often obscure to us.]]> 976 William Gaddis 0140187081 Connor 0 to-read 4.17 1955 The Recognitions
author: William Gaddis
name: Connor
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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]]> The Dream of a Ridiculous Man 329866 32 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1419160222 Connor 5 4.15 1877 The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
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name: Connor
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1877
rating: 5
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]]> White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky Connor 5 4.16 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Connor
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1848
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories]]> 49961 Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classicsseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
Biographies of the authors
Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
Footnotes and endnotes
Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
Comments by other famous authors
Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
Bibliographies for further reading
Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
Often considered a prologue to Dostoevsky’s brilliant novels, the story “Notes from Underground� introduces one of the great anti-heroes in literature: the underground man, who lives on the fringes of society. In an impassioned, manic monologue this character—plagued by shame, guilt, and alienation—argues that reason is merely a flimsy construction built upon humanity’s essentially irrational core. Internal conflict is also explored in “The Double,� a surreal tale of a government clerk who meets a more unpleasant version of himself and is changed as a result. In addition to these two existential classics, this collection also includes the psychologically probing stories “The Meek One,� “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,� and “White Nights.�

Deborah A. Martinsen is Assistant to the Director of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University and Adjunct Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature. She is the author of Surprised by Shame: Dostoevsky's Liars and Narrative Exposure.]]> 451 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1593080379 Connor 5 next-in-line 4.27 Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories
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name: Connor
average rating: 4.27
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]]> The Complete Stories 22904 --penguinrandomhouse.com

Two Introductory parables: Before the law --
Imperial message --
Longer stories: Description of a struggle --
Wedding preparations in the country --
Judgment --
Metamorphosis --
In the penal colony --
Village schoolmaster (The giant mole) --
Blumfeld, and elderly bachelor --
Warden of the tomb --
Country doctor --
Hunter Gracchus --
Hunter Gracchus: A fragment --
Great Wall of China --
News of the building of the wall: A fragment --
Report to an academy --
Report to an academy: Two fragments --
Refusal --
Hunger artist --
Investigations of a dog --
Little woman --
The burrow --
Josephine the singer, or the mouse folk --
Children on a country road --
The trees --
Clothes --
Excursion into the mountains --
Rejection --
The street window --
The tradesman --
Absent-minded window-gazing --
The way home --
Passers-by --
On the tram --
Reflections for gentlemen-jockeys --
The wish to be a red Indian --
Unhappiness --
Bachelor's ill luck --
Unmasking a confidence trickster --
The sudden walk --
Resolutions --
A dream --
Up in the gallery --
A fratricide --
The next village --
A visit to a mine --
Jackals and Arabs --
The bridge --
The bucket rider --
The new advocate --
An old manuscript --
The knock at the manor gate --
Eleven sons --
My neighbor --
A crossbreed (A sport) --
The cares of a family man --
A common confusion --
The truth about Sancho Panza --
The silence of the sirens --
Prometheus --
The city coat of arms --
Poseidon --
Fellowship --
At night --
The problem of our laws --
The conscripton of troops --
The test --
The vulture --
The helmsman --
The top --
A little fable --
Home-coming --
First sorrow --
The departure --
Advocates --
The married couple --
Give it up! --
On parables.]]> 486 Franz Kafka Connor 5 4.37 1911 The Complete Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Connor
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1911
rating: 5
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]]> The Double 210190 Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, Dostoyevsky also wrote much superb short fiction. The Double is one of the finest of his shorter works. It appeared in 1846 (his second published work) and is by far the most significant of his early stories, not least for its successful, straight-faced treatment of a hallucinatory theme.
In The Double, the protagonist, Golyadkin senior, is persecuted by his double, Golyadkin junior, who resembles him closely in almost every detail. The latter abuses the former with mounting scorn and brutality as the tale proceeds toward its frightening denouement. Characteristic Dostoyevskyan themes of helplessness, victimization, and scandal are beautifully handled here with an artistry that qualifies the story as a small masterpiece.
Students of literature, admirers of Dostoyevsky, and general readers will all be delighted to have this classic work available in this inexpensive but high-quality edition.
]]> 144 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0486295729 Connor 5 3.70 1846 The Double
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Connor
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1846
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]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Notes from Underground marks the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In complete retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Dostoevsky translations have become the standard, give us a brilliantly faithful edition of this classic novel, conveying all the tragedy and tormented comedy of the original.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Connor 5 4.21 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Connor
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1864
rating: 5
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]]> Infinite Jest 6759
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.]]> 1088 David Foster Wallace Connor 5 next-in-line 4.26 1996 Infinite Jest
author: David Foster Wallace
name: Connor
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 1677233
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes "Metamorphosis", his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; "Meditation", a collection of his earlier studies; "The Judgement", written in a single night of frenzied creativity; "The Stoker", the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, and "The Aeroplanes at Brescia", Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.]]> 299 Franz Kafka 0143105248 Connor 5 4.03 1915 Metamorphosis and Other Stories
author: Franz Kafka
name: Connor
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1915
rating: 5
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]]> Making Movies 111537
Why does a director choose a particular script? What must they do in order to keep actors fresh and truthful through take after take of a single scene? How do you stage a shootout—involving more than one hundred extras and three colliding taxis—in the heart of New York’s diamond district? What does it take to keep the studio honchos happy? From the first rehearsal to the final screening, Making Movies is a master’s take, delivered with clarity, candor, and a wealth of anecdote.

For in this book, Sidney Lumet, one of our most consistently acclaimed directors, gives us both a professional memoir and a definitive guide to the art, craft, and business of the motion picture. Drawing on forty years of experience on movies that range from Long Day’s Journey into Night to Network and The Verdict —and with such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino—Lumet explains how painstaking labor and inspired split-second decisions can result in two hours of screen magic.]]> 218 Sidney Lumet 0679756604 Connor 0 4.29 1995 Making Movies
author: Sidney Lumet
name: Connor
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom]]> 236056 195 Louis Sachar 0590590898 Connor 0 3.98 1987 There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom
author: Louis Sachar
name: Connor
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> The Tale of Despereaux 37190 A brave mouse, a covetous rat, a wishful serving girl, and a princess named Pea come together in Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Medal–winning tale.

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other's lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.]]> 272 Kate DiCamillo 0763625299 Connor 0 4.07 2003 The Tale of Despereaux
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: Connor
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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]]> What is Cinema?: Volume 2 1202031 What Is Cinema? (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential Cahiers du Cinéma, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin "will survive even if the cinema does not."]]> 232 André Bazin 0520242289 Connor 0 currently-reading 4.20 1971 What is Cinema?: Volume 2
author: André Bazin
name: Connor
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> Lord Jim 12194
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties. He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent world. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature.

Contents:

Lord Jim

Memoirs & Letters:

A Personal Record; or Some Reminiscences

The Mirror of the Sea

Notes on Life & Letters

Biography & Critical Essays:

Joseph Conrad (A Biography) by Hugh Walpole

Joseph Conrad by John Albert Macy

A Conrad Miscellany by John Albert Macy

Joseph Conrad by Virginia Woolf]]> 455 Joseph Conrad 1551111721 Connor 4 next-in-line 3.63 1900 Lord Jim
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Connor
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1900
rating: 4
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]]> Nostromo 115476 ]]> 336 Joseph Conrad 0486424529 Connor 0 to-read 3.81 1904 Nostromo
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Connor
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1904
rating: 0
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]]> The Secret Agent 86658
Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a "monstrous town," a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and savage butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist activity in the UK, imperialism, and Conrad's narrative techniques.]]> 304 Joseph Conrad 0192801694 Connor 0 to-read 3.60 1907 The Secret Agent
author: Joseph Conrad
name: Connor
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1907
rating: 0
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]]> Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Connor 5 next-in-line 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Connor
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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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 Connor 0 to-read 4.05 1947 The Plague
author: Albert Camus
name: Connor
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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]]> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never lookedthroughthem for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain Connor 0 3.92 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
author: Mark Twain
name: Connor
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Connor 0 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Connor
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
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]]> Walden or, Life in the Woods 16902 352 Henry David Thoreau Connor 5 3.77 1854 Walden or, Life in the Woods
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Connor
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1854
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/25
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]]> Cosmopolis 28703 209 Don DeLillo 0330412744 Connor 0 to-read 3.26 2003 Cosmopolis
author: Don DeLillo
name: Connor
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/21
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]]> Libra 400
In this powerful, unsettling novel, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.

A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.]]> 480 Don DeLillo 0140156046 Connor 0 to-read 4.05 1988 Libra
author: Don DeLillo
name: Connor
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> Underworld 11761
Underworld opens with a breathlessly graceful prologue set during the final game of the Giants-Dodgers pennant race in 1951. Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter—the "shot heard around the world"—and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand.

"It's all falling indelibly into the past," writes DeLillo, a past that he carefully recalls and reconstructs with acute grace. Jump from Giants Stadium to the Nevada desert in 1992, where Nick Shay, who now owns the baseball, reunites with the artist Kara Sax. They had been brief and unlikely lovers 40 years before, and it is largely through the events, spinoffs, and coincidental encounters of their pasts that DeLillo filters the Cold War experience. He believes that "global events may alter how we live in the smallest ways," and as the book steps back in time to 1951, over the following 800-odd pages, we see just how those events alter lives. This reverse narrative allows the author to strip away the detritus of history and pop culture until we get to the story's pure elements: the bomb, the baseball, and the Bronx. In an epilogue as breathless and stunning as the prologue, DeLillo fast-forwards to a near future in which ruthless capitalism, the Internet, and a new, hushed faith have replaced the Cold War's blend of dread and euphoria.

Through fragments and interlaced stories—including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others—DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled.]]> 827 Don DeLillo 0330369954 Connor 0 to-read 3.95 1997 Underworld
author: Don DeLillo
name: Connor
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
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]]> Absalom, Absalom! 373755 316 William Faulkner 0679732187 Connor 0 to-read, next-in-line 3.98 1936 Absalom, Absalom!
author: William Faulkner
name: Connor
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> Sons and Lovers 32071 "She was a brazen hussy."

"She wasn't. And she was pretty, wasn't she?"

"I didn't look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when they're running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes"

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.]]> 654 D.H. Lawrence Connor 0 to-read, next-in-line 3.65 1913 Sons and Lovers
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Connor
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1913
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]]> The Hawkline Monster 302666
But the more she tells them about the monster, the more her story unravels, until it isn't clear if the monster is even real, or if anything else is.

Richard Brautigan's classic surrealist novel has inspired for decades with its wild, witty, and bizarre encounters with western-themed psychedelia.]]> 216 Richard Brautigan 0671221566 Connor 0 to-read, next-in-line 3.86 1974 The Hawkline Monster
author: Richard Brautigan
name: Connor
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/13
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