en-US Tue, 25 Feb 2014 08:05:35 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 18484945 Joseph Riippi littlesticeage 5 4.20 2014
author: Joseph Riippi
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 13498651
�� Sarah Rose Etter, Tongue Party

In A Cloth House, Joseph Riippi is alive to the modes of regret and tenderness that can exist at the same time, in the same person. His great talent is for dramatizing these modes with a purity that can make his readers feel as though they are watching a beloved film.

�� Edward Mullany, If I Falter At The Gallows

Joseph Riippi knows what it’s like to be ‘the fat girl�� and he proves it in A Cloth House. He also proves that houses made of cloth (or any other ad-hoc tent or ‘fort��) is not enough to shield that girl from pain or to protect her from the things that she will lose.

- John Dermot Woods, The Complete Collection of People, Places & Things

With A Cloth House Joseph Riippi is here to remind us that our imaginations are as fragile as the pillow forts we built in our youth. And for the love of God, we’ll thank him for helping us think about those things that don’t hurt quite so much.

�� Mark Cugini, Big Lucks]]> 94 Joseph Riippi littlesticeage 3 4.56 2012
author: Joseph Riippi
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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]]> 762390 The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.]]> 96 Clarice Lispector 0811211908 littlesticeage 5 4.11 1977
author: Clarice Lispector
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1977
rating: 5
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]]> 6716831 80 Zachary Schomburg 0977770990 littlesticeage 4 4.24 2009
author: Zachary Schomburg
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> 659775 112 Zachary Schomburg 0977770931 littlesticeage 2 4.22 2007
author: Zachary Schomburg
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/02/25
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]]> 13829350 118 J.A. Tyler 0984874402 littlesticeage 2 4.22 2012
author: J.A. Tyler
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 2
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]]> 7487563 J.A. Tyler littlesticeage 1 3.93 2010
author: J.A. Tyler
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 1
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date added: 2014/02/25
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]]> 396007 48 Susan Howe 1887123474 littlesticeage 0 to-read 3.88 2001
author: Susan Howe
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13189091 95 Cathy Park Hong 0393082849 littlesticeage 5 4.07 2012
author: Cathy Park Hong
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> 449156 104 Joshua Marie Wilkinson 0877459819 littlesticeage 5 4.21 2006
author: Joshua Marie Wilkinson
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> 11042163
It was selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition and is currently available from Caketrain Press.]]> 90 Sarah Rose Etter littlesticeage 5 4.33 2011
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> 17784689 Rewilding re-imagines the world with verve and originality. I was blown away by the scope, ambition, and what Wagner did with the abecedarian form, which is reminiscent of Inger Christensen's work."—Cathy Park Hong, judge of the 2012 Ahsahta Press Chapbook Contest]]> 48 Jasmine Dreame Wagner 1934103373 littlesticeage 5 4.83 2013
author: Jasmine Dreame Wagner
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.83
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> 13610556
Paul Hoover, author of Desolation: Souvenir]]> 112 Jasmine Dreame Wagner littlesticeage 5 4.37 2012
author: Jasmine Dreame Wagner
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> 16000411
The rain says, Listen to Debussy,
go ahead, Debussy will fix you.
—From “Migraine Cure��

The secret to including everything
is to intricately divide your mind
and then, all of a sudden,
undivide it.
—From “Still Life on a Scrolling Background”]]> 96 Dan Chelotti 1938073398 littlesticeage 5 4.04 2013
author: Dan Chelotti
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> 13509974 114 Paige Ackerson-Kiely 1934103276 littlesticeage 5 4.16 2012
author: Paige Ackerson-Kiely
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> 160147 72 Aaron Cometbus 1899866159 littlesticeage 5 4.24 1999
author: Aaron Cometbus
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/01/28
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review:

]]> 50833 449 Jacqueline Susann 0739418378 littlesticeage 0 to-read 3.66 1966
author: Jacqueline Susann
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8584686
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.]]> 315 Karen Russell 0307263991 littlesticeage 0 to-read 3.22 2011
author: Karen Russell
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> 88269 Get in the Van . Rollins's observations range from the wry to the raucous in this blistering account of a six-year career with the band - a time marked by crazed fans, vicious cops, near-starvation, substance abuse, and mind numbing all-night drives. Rollins decided to revise this edition by adding a wealth of new photographs, a new foreword, and an afterword to include some "where-are-they-now" information on the people featured in the book. This new edition includes 40 previously unpublished black-and-white photographs from Rollins's private collection and show flyers by artist Raymond Pettibon. Called "a soul-frying experience not to be undertaken by lightweights" by Wired magazine, Get in the Van perfectly embodies what one critic called the "secular gospel" of one of punk and post-punk's most respected and controversial figures.]]> 303 Henry Rollins 1880985764 littlesticeage 0 to-read 4.10 1994
author: Henry Rollins
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> 101113 280 Al Burian 097023130X littlesticeage 0 to-read 4.26 2000
author: Al Burian
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/01/07
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]]> 179512 Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at woman who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter day Delilahs include Yoko Ono, Pam Smart, Bess Myerson), Wurtzel finds many biblical counterparts to the men and woman in today's headlines. In five brilliant extended essays, she links the lives of women as demanding and disparate as Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, and Nicole Brown Simpson. Wurtzel gives voice to these women whose lives have been misunderstood, who have been dismissed for their beauty, their madness, their youth. She finds in the story of Amy Fisher the tragic plight of all Lolitas, our thirst for their brief and intense flame. She connects Hemingway's tragic suicide to those of Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, and Marilyn Monroe, women whose beauty was an end, ultimately, in itself. Wurtzel, writing about the wife/mistress dichotomy, explains how some women are anointed as wife material, while others are relegated to the role of mistress. She takes to task the double standard imposed on women, the cultural insistence on goodness and society's complete obsession with badness: what's a girl to do? Let's face it, if women were any real threat to male power, "Gennifer Flowers would be sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office," writes Wurtzel, "and Bill Clinton would be a lounge singer in the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock."

Bitch tells a tale both celebratory and cautionary as Wurtzel catalogs some of the most infamous women in history, defending their outsize desires, describing their exquisite loneliness, championing their take-no-prisoners approach to live and love. Whether writing about Courtney Love, Sally Hemmings, Bathsheba, Kimba Wood, Sharon Stone, Princess Di-- or waxing eloquent on the hideous success of The Rules, the evil that is The Bridges of Madison County, the twisted logic of You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again-- Wurtzel is back with a bitchography that cuts to the core. In prose both blistering and brilliant, Bitch is a treatise on the nature of desperate sexual manipulation and a triumph of pussy power.]]> 436 Elizabeth Wurtzel 0385484011 littlesticeage 5 3.38 1998
author: Elizabeth Wurtzel
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> 91009 72 Sarah Manguso 1882295331 littlesticeage 5 4.04 2002
author: Sarah Manguso
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/01/07
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]]> 743636 96 Kathleen Ossip 0971898111 littlesticeage 5 3.92 2002
author: Kathleen Ossip
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
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]]> 10321143 2011 Notable Books, Academy of American Poets

From the powerful drama and formal boldness of "The Status Seekers" to the various theories of criticism in "The Nervousness of Yvor Winters," Kathleen Ossip's second collection takes up the crazed threads of modern experience and all its contradictions. Each poem, each new approach is an attempt to extract something concrete from an era not yet past. Yet as the poet probes and wonders, she gradually reveals another narrative, built on strangled emotion and subdued lyricism. The Cold War is jagged and thought-provoking. It questions the origins and premises of contemporary American culture.]]> 72 Kathleen Ossip 1932511954 littlesticeage 5 3.76 2011
author: Kathleen Ossip
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> 160143 100 First Last 0867195614 littlesticeage 5 4.38 2002
author: First Last
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> 233504 278 Tama Janowitz 074757460X littlesticeage 5 3.54 1986
author: Tama Janowitz
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1986
rating: 5
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]]> 7742036 Girls to the Front is the epic, definitive history of Riot Grrrl, the radical feminist uprising that exploded into the public eye in the 1990s and included incendiary punk bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and Huggy Bear. A dynamic chronicle not just a movement but an era, this is the story of a group of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet.]]> 367 Sara Marcus 0061806366 littlesticeage 5 3.96 2010
author: Sara Marcus
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> 10380771 276 Joe Aguilar littlesticeage 5
Review by Sima Rabinowitz

“This is how it ends.�� That’s the first line of a poem by Jess Wigent. Could there be a more wonderful beginning? I love it. I don’t necessarily understand it, but I love it. That’s my overall assessment of the issue—weird endings and beginnings I find compelling and exciting and often perfect, even though I don’t necessarily always understand them or believe I can explain them or even know what genre I’m reading. Wigent’s piece, “This One Thing Truly Makes,�� is a marvelous prose poem/story with visual complements of post-it-note/memo style fragments. It’s the idea itself of “what truly makes�� that makes the journal appealing, the search for essential meaning.

That search for meaning, that elusive and glorious specificity, precision, exactitude of detail and sensation, includes E.C. Belli’s poem “A Cosmology of Light��:

Noontime sun, scars forming on the skin’s surface. Stiff rays
eclipsing the street.
To know light like this. The white kind. The kind so white it is actually
������������
That search for meaning includes the relentlessly talented Rosemarie Waldrop’s prose poem, “Detour��: “The telephone calls, there are too many. So difficult too. All these difficulties to work at work at. Not managing, and you trying to help. In your way.�� And another by Adriana Grant, “Don’t Touch Anything��: “A tangle of electric lines overhead. The deer are so graceful, spindly legs propped in the life-size dioramas.�� And a poem by Emily Toder that demonstrates the impossibility and simultaneous complete right-ness of the capacity of language to capture a moment in time, “At Dusk in the Dusk��:

at dusk in the dusk the
opal
water
vapor
in dusk at dusk the dusk of baseball glistens
the sky of baseball at dusk spreads
in the dusk at dusk
That search for meaning also includes translations from the French of poet Paul Braffort’s “My Hypertropes�� by Amaranth Borsuk and Gabriella Jauregui, published with the originals (yes, thank you!); Louisa Storer’s “Sonnet (8) Ardor��; and fiction by Robert Kloss (“Beneath the Light of an Exploding City��) and Corey Zeller, among others, though these pieces might easily also be classified as long poetry stories or story poetry.

Here is Jasmine Dreame Wagner summing up the issue’s search for meaning in her poem “Black Swans��:

It has been written, is written, will be written
That the first rule is that there are no rules; nothing is forbidden
All that has happened is happening now
All that has happened will happen
But what of our poor view of what it is to see
If all we have to see has been seen
Believe me…you haven’t seen it all until you’ve gotten your hands on this issue of Caketrain.



Miraculously unearthed at:




]]> 4.15 2010
author: Joe Aguilar
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/04/18
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Review by Sima Rabinowitz

“This is how it ends.�� That’s the first line of a poem by Jess Wigent. Could there be a more wonderful beginning? I love it. I don’t necessarily understand it, but I love it. That’s my overall assessment of the issue—weird endings and beginnings I find compelling and exciting and often perfect, even though I don’t necessarily always understand them or believe I can explain them or even know what genre I’m reading. Wigent’s piece, “This One Thing Truly Makes,�� is a marvelous prose poem/story with visual complements of post-it-note/memo style fragments. It’s the idea itself of “what truly makes�� that makes the journal appealing, the search for essential meaning.

That search for meaning, that elusive and glorious specificity, precision, exactitude of detail and sensation, includes E.C. Belli’s poem “A Cosmology of Light��:

Noontime sun, scars forming on the skin’s surface. Stiff rays
eclipsing the street.
To know light like this. The white kind. The kind so white it is actually
������������
That search for meaning includes the relentlessly talented Rosemarie Waldrop’s prose poem, “Detour��: “The telephone calls, there are too many. So difficult too. All these difficulties to work at work at. Not managing, and you trying to help. In your way.�� And another by Adriana Grant, “Don’t Touch Anything��: “A tangle of electric lines overhead. The deer are so graceful, spindly legs propped in the life-size dioramas.�� And a poem by Emily Toder that demonstrates the impossibility and simultaneous complete right-ness of the capacity of language to capture a moment in time, “At Dusk in the Dusk��:

at dusk in the dusk the
opal
water
vapor
in dusk at dusk the dusk of baseball glistens
the sky of baseball at dusk spreads
in the dusk at dusk
That search for meaning also includes translations from the French of poet Paul Braffort’s “My Hypertropes�� by Amaranth Borsuk and Gabriella Jauregui, published with the originals (yes, thank you!); Louisa Storer’s “Sonnet (8) Ardor��; and fiction by Robert Kloss (“Beneath the Light of an Exploding City��) and Corey Zeller, among others, though these pieces might easily also be classified as long poetry stories or story poetry.

Here is Jasmine Dreame Wagner summing up the issue’s search for meaning in her poem “Black Swans��:

It has been written, is written, will be written
That the first rule is that there are no rules; nothing is forbidden
All that has happened is happening now
All that has happened will happen
But what of our poor view of what it is to see
If all we have to see has been seen
Believe me…you haven’t seen it all until you’ve gotten your hands on this issue of Caketrain.



Miraculously unearthed at:





]]> 91499 64 Edward Gorey 0747541655 littlesticeage 5 4.38 1969
author: Edward Gorey
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> 1688736 84 Jane Miller 1556590083 littlesticeage 5 3.83 1987
author: Jane Miller
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 2868121 5 cents for 50 chiles can Wal-Mex get it down to 3 cents. Pass the savings on to US.
Will they open a Supercenter in Falluja once it is pacified. Once the corpses
in the garden have decomposed. Once the wild dogs have finished off the bones.
Does the war never end. Is this the war of all against all.
Who will build the great wall between us, the illegals, the vigilantes, the
evangelicals. . . C.D. Wright , author of twelve collections of poetry and prose, is a professor of English at Brown University and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. She lives outside Providence, Rhode Island.]]> 100 C.D. Wright 1556592736 littlesticeage 5 4.12 2008
author: C.D. Wright
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 139878
]]> 128 C.D. Wright 155659092X littlesticeage 5 4.24 1998
author: C.D. Wright
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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]]> 13137552 Kellzo littlesticeage 5 4.67
author: Kellzo
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 10324182
]]> 142 Daniel Casebeer 0972649344 littlesticeage 5 4.81 2011
author: Daniel Casebeer
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.81
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> 2839
That's not a very promising beginning for a friendship, but Jess and Leslie Burke become inseparable. Together they create Terabithia, a magical kingdom in the woods where the two of them reign as king and queen, and their imaginations set the only limits.]]> 128 Katherine Paterson 0439366771 littlesticeage 5 3.99 1977
author: Katherine Paterson
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1977
rating: 5
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]]> 6327 Note: This edition shares ISBN 0590032496 with another edition.

This is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches. Real witches don't ride around on broomsticks. They don't even wear black cloaks and hats. They are vile, cunning, detestable creatures who disguise themselves as nice, ordinary ladies. So how can you tell when you're face to face with one? Well, if you don't know yet you'd better find out quickly-because there's nothing a witch loathes quite as much as children and she'll wield all kinds of terrifying powers to get rid of them.]]> 208 Roald Dahl 0590032496 littlesticeage 5 4.18 1981
author: Roald Dahl
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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]]> 24178 Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, is a classic of children's literature that is "just about perfect." This high-quality paperback features vibrant illustrations colorized by Rosemary Wells!

Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.

E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. This edition contains newly color illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E. B. White's Stuart Little and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, among many other books.]]> 184 E.B. White 0064410935 littlesticeage 5 4.20 1952
author: E.B. White
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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]]> 370493
So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein.

Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.

This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein has created a moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return.]]> 64 Shel Silverstein 0060256656 littlesticeage 5 4.38 1964
author: Shel Silverstein
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1964
rating: 5
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]]> 227443 a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"129 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4 pounds in the middle of the night? Could flesh have somehow solidified becoming denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent), cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

"Bridget Jones' Diary" is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement �� a year in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional relationship with a responsible adult - and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you helpless with laughter, and �� like millions of readers the world round �� you'll find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"]]> 288 Helen Fielding 014028009X littlesticeage 5 3.81 1996
author: Helen Fielding
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 5
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]]> 6452796 The New York Times bestseller that gives readers a paradigm-shattering new way to think about motivation

Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.]]> 242 Daniel H. Pink 1594488843 littlesticeage 3 3.94 2009
author: Daniel H. Pink
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> 2612 The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.]]> 301 Malcolm Gladwell 0316346624 littlesticeage 5 4.01 2002
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 22543 A vibrant collection of essays on the cosmos from the nation's best-known astrophysicist. "One of today's best popularizers of science." —Kirkus Reviews.

Loyal readers of the monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries of the cosmos with stunning clarity and almost childlike enthusiasm. Here, Tyson compiles his favorite essays across a myriad of cosmic topics.

The title essay introduces readers to the physics of black holes by explaining the gory details of what would happen to your body if you fell into one. "Holy Wars" examines the needless friction between science and religion in the context of historical conflicts. "The Search for Life in the Universe" explores astral life from the frontiers of astrobiology. And "Hollywood Nights" assails the movie industry's feeble efforts to get its night skies right.

Known for his ability to blend content, accessibility, and humor, Tyson is a natural teacher who simplifies some of the most complex concepts in astrophysics while simultaneously sharing his infectious excitement about our universe.]]> 384 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393062244 littlesticeage 0 to-read 4.09 2006
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 64582 Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum’s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick’s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe.]]> 352 James Gleick 0140092501 littlesticeage 5 4.04 1987
author: James Gleick
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1987
rating: 5
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]]> 13259270
In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.]]> 96 Sam Harris 1451683405 littlesticeage 0 to-read 3.86 2012
author: Sam Harris
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 22435 The fabric of the cosmos 569 Brian Greene 0965900584 littlesticeage 0 to-read 4.12 2004
author: Brian Greene
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> 55030
The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds.

Sagan retraces the fifteen billion years of cos-mic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the Cosmos to wonder about itself. He considers the latest findings on life elsewhere and how we might communicate with the beings of other worlds.

Cosmos is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huy-gens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. Sagan looks at our planet from an extra-terrestrial vantage point and sees a blue jewel-like world, inhabited by a lifeform that is just beginning to discover its own unity and to ven-ture into the vast ocean of space.]]> 384 Carl Sagan 0375508325 littlesticeage 5 4.39 1980
author: Carl Sagan
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 513367
John Gribbin tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth far stranger than any fiction. He takes us step-by-step into an ever more bizarre and fascinating place—requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrödinger's Cat—a search for quantum reality—as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today—quantum physics.]]> 320 John Gribbin 0553341030 littlesticeage 5 4.06 1984
author: John Gribbin
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored�� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia �� a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo �� to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality�� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family �� past and present �� is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 littlesticeage 5 4.12 2010
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> 61535
Chapters:
1. Why are people?
2. The replicators
3. Immortal coils
4. The gene machine
5. Aggression stability and the selfish machine
6. Genesmanship
7. Family planning
8. Battle of the generations
9. Battle of the sexes
10. You scratch my back, I'll ride on yours
11. Memes: the new replicators
12. Nice guys finish first
13. The long reach of the gene]]> 360 Richard Dawkins 0199291152 littlesticeage 5 4.15 1976
author: Richard Dawkins
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1976
rating: 5
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]]> 771
Today, physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are feverishly working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small--General Relativity and Quantum Theory--is resolved. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. In this brilliantly articulated and refreshingly clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything.

Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, The Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.]]> 425 Brian Greene 0375708111 littlesticeage 5 4.06 1999
author: Brian Greene
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> 3869
Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,�� of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.]]> 226 Stephen Hawking 0553380168 littlesticeage 5 4.22 1988
author: Stephen Hawking
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> 270903
I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.]]> 168 Claudia Rankine 1555974074 littlesticeage 0 to-read 4.28 2004
author: Claudia Rankine
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> 150250 Glass, Irony and God. This collection includes: "The Glass Essay," a powerful poem about the end of a love affair, told in the context of Carson's reading of the Brontë sisters; "Book of Isaiah," a poem evoking the deeply primitive feel of ancient Judaism; and "The Fall of Rome," about her trip to "find" Rome and her struggle to overcome feelings of a terrible alienation there.]]> 142 Anne Carson 0811213021 littlesticeage 5 4.33 1995
author: Anne Carson
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> 402128
Enjoy the show!

With all your favourite cats, starring ...
Macavity, the Mystery Cat
Mr Mistofelees, the Original Conjuring Cat
Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
and many more!]]> 56 T.S. Eliot 0151686564 littlesticeage 5 4.07 1939
author: T.S. Eliot
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1939
rating: 5
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]]> 367802 The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas contains poems that Thomas personally decided best represented his work. A year before its publication Thomas died from swelling of the brain triggered by excessive drinking.

Since its initial publication in 1953, this book has become the definitive edition of the poet’s work. Thomas wrote ��Prologue�� addressed to “my readers, the strangers�� �� an introduction in verse that was the last poem he would ever write. Also included are classics such as ��And Death Shall Have No Dominion,�� ��Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,�� and ��Fern Hill�� that have influenced generations of artists from Bob Dylan (who changed his last name from Zimmerman in honor of the poet), to John Lennon (The Beatles included Thomas�� portrait on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band); this collection even appears in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road when it is retrieved from the rubble of a bookshelf.]]> 203 Dylan Thomas 0811202054 littlesticeage 5 4.21 1952
author: Dylan Thomas
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1952
rating: 5
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]]> 133906
Alongside such famous works as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Montage of a Dream Deferred, The Collected Poems includes the author's lesser-known verse for children; topical poems distributed through the Associated Negro Press; and poems such as "Goodbye Christ" that were once suppressed.  Lyrical and pungent, passionate and polemical, the result is a treasure of a book, the essential collection of a poet whose words have entered our common language.]]> 736 Langston Hughes 0679764089 littlesticeage 5 4.36 1994
author: Langston Hughes
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> 27494 624 Walt Whitman littlesticeage 5 4.12 1855
author: Walt Whitman
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1855
rating: 5
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]]> 30118 Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...This 20th anniversary of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic includes a CD of highlights from his Grammy Award-winning album.

Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face, and find out what happens when Somebody steals your knees, you get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink, a Mountain snores, and They Put a Brassiere on the Camel.

From the creator of the beloved poetry collections Where the Sidewalk Ends and Falling Up, here is another wondrous book of poems and drawings.]]> 176 Shel Silverstein 0060513063 littlesticeage 5 4.36 1981
author: Shel Silverstein
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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]]> 30119 Come in... for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins.

Shel Silverstein, the New York Times bestselling author of The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and Every Thing On It, has created a poetry collection that is outrageously funny and deeply profound.

You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

Shel Silverstein's masterful collection of poems and drawings stretches the bounds of imagination and will be cherished by readers of all ages.]]> 176 Shel Silverstein 0060513039 littlesticeage 5 4.34 1974
author: Shel Silverstein
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1974
rating: 5
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]]> 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 littlesticeage 5 4.08 1966
author: Truman Capote
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 5
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]]> 3228917 Learn what sets high achievers apart �� from Bill Gates to the Beatles �� in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.]]> 309 Malcolm Gladwell 0316017922 littlesticeage 5 4.19 2008
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 littlesticeage 5 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> 24280 1463 Victor Hugo 0451525264 littlesticeage 5 4.19 1862
author: Victor Hugo
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1862
rating: 5
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]]> 2657 "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

"To Kill A Mockingbird" became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 littlesticeage 5 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
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]]> 31818 A loosely formed autobiography by Andy Warhol, told with his trademark blend of irony and detachment

In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol—which, with the subtitle "(From A to B and Back Again)," is less a memoir than a collection of riffs and reflections—he talks about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, and success; about New York, America, and his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania; about his good times and bad in New York, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and his life among celebrities.]]> 272 Andy Warhol 0156717204 littlesticeage 3 3.84 1975
author: Andy Warhol
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1975
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/04/18
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]]> 47558 64 Edward Gorey 0747541604 littlesticeage 5 4.07 1963
author: Edward Gorey
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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]]> 2784 John Berger’s Classic Text on Art

Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times a critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.

"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review

"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling.]]> 176 John Berger 0140135154 littlesticeage 5 3.93 1972
author: John Berger
name: littlesticeage
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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]]>