Sylvia's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 30 Aug 2025 22:08:11 -0700 60 Sylvia's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder]]> 919537 404 David McGowan 0595326404 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.89 2004 Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder
author: David McGowan
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/30
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]]> Boy Parts 49083140
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention…

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.]]> 304 Eliza Clark 1910312649 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.70 2020 Boy Parts
author: Eliza Clark
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
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]]> Either/Or 58890783 From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood

Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel--a life worthy of becoming a novel--without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?

Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice--no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 0525557598 Sylvia 0 currently-reading 3.98 2022 Either/Or
author: Elif Batuman
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/23
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]]> Girl, Interrupted 68783
Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. "Girl, Interrupted" is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness, and recovery.]]> 169 Susanna Kaysen 0679746048 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.96 1993 Girl, Interrupted
author: Susanna Kaysen
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/17
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]]> <![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.59 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> No Longer Human 194746 No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title).

Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.

Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston]]> 176 Osamu Dazai Sylvia 5 3.96 1948 No Longer Human
author: Osamu Dazai
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1948
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 767171 No other powerful empire ever bequeathed such mountains of evidence about its birth and destruction as the Third Reich. When the bitter war was over, and before the Nazis could destroy their files, the Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced an almost hour-by-hour record of the nightmare empire built by Adolph Hitler. This record included the testimony of Nazi leaders and of concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters—all the vast paperwork behind Hitler's drive to conquer the world.

The famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer, who had watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925, spent five and a half years sifting through this massive documentation. The result is a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind.

This worldwide bestseller has been acclaimed as the definitive book on Nazi Germany; it is a classic work.

The accounts of how the United States got involved and how Hitler used Mussolini and Japan are astonishing, and the coverage of the war-from Germany's early successes to her eventual defeat-is must reading

]]> 1147 William L. Shirer 0671728687 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.20 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/03
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]]> Girls Against God 51851428 At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot

“It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.”

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselves up around her. In a corner of Oslo, a coven of witches begins cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a black metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. Awful things happen in aspic.

Jenny Hval’s latest novel is a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art.]]> 240 Jenny Hval 1788738977 Sylvia 5 2.93 2018 Girls Against God
author: Jenny Hval
name: Sylvia
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/15
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]]> Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life 58870449
In Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, an unnamed young woman in her late twenties navigates unemployment, boredom, chronic illness and online dating. Her activities are banal — applying for jobs, looking up horoscopes, managing depression, going on Tinder dates.

‘I want to tell someone I love them but there is no one to tell,’ she says. ‘Except my sister maybe. I want to pick blackberries on a farm and then die.’ She observes the ambiguities of social interactions, the absurd intimacies of sex and the indignity of everyday events, with a skepticism about the possibility of genuine emotion, or enlightenment. Like life, things are just unfolding, and sometimes, like life, they don’t actually get better. Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle’s novella-in-fragments blends artifice with sincerity, is darkly funny, and alive to the incongruous performance that constitutes getting by.

'Written in a fragmentary form reminiscent of Renata Adler, Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, Zarah Butcher-McCunningle’s deadpan fiction debut, documents an unnamed young protagonist’s listless existence in an unnamed city. The book’s droll dispatches from daily life under late capitalism recall the writing of the author’s New Zealand contemporaries Hera Lindsay Bird and Eamonn Marra, but Butcher-McCunnigle’s distinctive voice is her own... Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life is a grimly funny rendering of the absurdity of life in the 2020s—an era in which, with nowhere to turn, the hopeless millennial turns in on herself.' — Kelsey Oldham, Books+Publishing

Praise for Autobiography of a Marguerite:

‘Workbook for surviving illness, guide to familial dysfunction and an intersection between fact and fiction…one of the most innovative New Zealand books published in recent years.’ — Booknotes ‘Books of the Year’

‘The writing goes to the aching heart of disconnection and of longing for repair…Butcher-McGunnigle has created a crooked beauty out of shards.’ — takahē magazine]]> 68 Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle 1925818829 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.54 2021 Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life
author: Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/11/19
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]]> Reverse Cowgirl 48508772
What if you were trans and didn't know it? What if there were some hole in your life and you didn't even know it was there? What if you went through life not knowing why you only felt at home in your body at peak moments of drugs and sex? What if you expended your days avoiding an absence, a hole in being? Reverse Cowgirl is not exactly a memoir. The author doesn't, in the end, have any answers as to who she really is or was, although maybe she figures out what she could become.

Traveling from Sydney in the 1980s to New York today, Reverse Cowgirl is a comedy of errors, chronicling the author's failed attempts at being gay and at being straight across the shifting political and media landscapes of the late twentieth century. Finding that the established narratives of being transgender don't seem to apply to her, Wark borrows from the genres of autofiction, fictocriticism, and new narrative to create a writing practice that can discover the form of a life outside existing accounts of trans experience: an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self.]]> 200 McKenzie Wark 1635901189 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.10 2020 Reverse Cowgirl
author: McKenzie Wark
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
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 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.13 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Electric Wizards: A Tapestry of Heavy Music, 1968 to the Present]]> 57402596  
It began with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” It was distilled to its dark essence by Black Sabbath. And it has flourished into a vibrant modern underground, epitomized by Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. This is the evolution of heavy music. The voyage is as varied as it is from the lysergic blunt trauma of Blue Cheer to the locked grooves of Funkadelic, the aural frightmares of Faust to the tectonic crush of Sleep, alighting on post-punk, industrial, grunge, stoner rock, and numerous other genres along the way. Ranging from household names to obscure cult heroes and heroines, Electric Wizards demonstrates how each successive phase of heavy music was forged by what came before, outlining a rich and eclectic lineage that extends far beyond the usual boundaries of heavy rock or heavy metal. It extols those who did things differently, who introduced something fresh and exciting into this elemental tradition, whether by design, accident, or sheer chance. In doing so, Electric Wizards weaves an entirely new tapestry of heavy music.]]> 480 J.R. Moores 1789144485 Sylvia 5 3.92 Electric Wizards: A Tapestry of Heavy Music, 1968 to the Present
author: J.R. Moores
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.92
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rating: 5
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]]> Ants Have Sex In Your Beer 1576416 David Shrigley 1870003543 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.06 2007 Ants Have Sex In Your Beer
author: David Shrigley
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/31
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]]> Beyond Good and Evil 12321 Beyond Good and Evil is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics.

Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world.

This edition includes a commentary on the text by the translator and Michael Tanner's introduction, which explains some of the more abstract passages in Beyond Good and Evil.

Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. A powerfully original thinker, Nietzsche's influence on subsequent writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre, was considerable.

If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also available in Penguin Classics.

"One of the greatest books of a very great thinker." —Michael Tanner]]> 240 Friedrich Nietzsche 014044923X Sylvia 4 4.04 1886 Beyond Good and Evil
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1886
rating: 4
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]]> The Consumer 676920 233 Michael Gira 1880985268 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.69 1995 The Consumer
author: Michael Gira
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/18
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]]> Girl in a Band 22693211 273 Kim Gordon 0062295896 Sylvia 5 3.67 2015 Girl in a Band
author: Kim Gordon
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/17
date added: 2022/08/17
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]]> The Cannibal 587678 195 John Hawkes 0811200639 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.81 1949 The Cannibal
author: John Hawkes
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/06
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]]> A Short History of Decay 2855
E.M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history. He focuses on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science.]]> 186 Emil M. Cioran 1559704640 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.26 1949 A Short History of Decay
author: Emil M. Cioran
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1949
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/06
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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 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.14 1987 Women and Men
author: Joseph McElroy
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/06
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]]> Story of the Eye 436806
Story of the Eye, written in 1928, is his best-known work; it is unashamedly surrealistic, both disgusting and fascinating, and packed with seemingly endless violations. It's something of an underground classic, rediscovered by each new generation. Most recently, the Icelandic pop singer Björk Guðdmundsdóttir cites Story of the Eye as a major inspiration: she made a music video that alludes to Bataille's erotic uses of eggs, and she plans to read an excerpt for an album.

Warning: Story of the Eye is graphically sexual, and is only suited for adults who are not easily offended.]]> 103 Georges Bataille 0872862097 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.69 1928 Story of the Eye
author: Georges Bataille
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1928
rating: 0
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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 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.64 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
author: James Joyce
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1916
rating: 0
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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 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.86 1914 Dubliners
author: James Joyce
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1914
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft]]> 11851522
The eBook’s table of contents is listed below. It includes the year each story was written.

The Tomb (1917)
Dagon (1917)
Polaris (1918)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1919)
Memory (1919)
Old Bugs (1919)
The Transition of Juan Romero (1919)
The White Ship (1919)
The Doom That Came to Sarnath (1919)
The Statement of Randolph Carter (1919)
The Terrible Old Man (1920)
The Tree (1920)
The Cats of Ulthar (1920)
The Temple (1920)
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (1920)
The Street (1920)
Celephaïs (1920)
From Beyond (1920)
Nyarlathotep (1920)
The Picture in the House (1920)
Ex Oblivione (1921)
The Nameless City (1921)
The Quest of Iranon (1921)
The Moon-Bog (1921)
The Outsider (1921)
The Other Gods (1921)
The Music of Erich Zann (1921)
Herbert West — Reanimator (1922)
Hypnos (1922)
What the Moon Brings (1922)
Azathoth (1922)
The Hound (1922)
The Lurking Fear (1922)
The Rats in the Walls (1923)
The Unnamable (1923)
The Festival (1923)
The Shunned House (1924)
The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
He (1925)
In the Vault (1925)
The Descendant (1926)
Cool Air (1926)
The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Pickman’s Model (1926)
The Silver Key (1926)
The Strange High House in the Mist (1926)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927)
The Colour Out of Space (1927)
The Very Old Folk (1927)
The Thing in the Moonlight (1927)
The History of the Necronomicon (1927)
Ibid (1928)
The Dunwich Horror (1928)
The Whisperer in Darkness (1930)
At the Mountains of Madness (1931)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931)
The Dreams in the Witch House (1932)
The Thing on the Doorstep (1933)
The Evil Clergyman (1933)
The Book (1933)
The Shadow out of Time (1934)
The Haunter of the Dark (1935)]]> 811 H.P. Lovecraft Sylvia 0 to-read 4.37 2020 The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/27
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]]> Cows 815760
Cows is the long-awaited reissue of Matthew Stokoe's critically acclaimed debut novel.]]> 192 Matthew Stokoe 1840680059 Sylvia 0 to-read 2.67 1998 Cows
author: Matthew Stokoe
name: Sylvia
average rating: 2.67
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Roadside Picnic / Tale of the Troika]]> 3885738
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits compelled to venture illegally into the Zone and collect the strange artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered there. His whole life, even the nature of his daughter, is determined by the Zone.


En la Unión Soviética, como en los Estados Unidos, la fascinación por las posibilidades de la ciencia y la tecnología produjo una larga y rica tradición de ciencia ficción. Los hermanos Strugatsky son sin duda las primeras figuras del género en su pais. Las dos novelas cortas que integran este volumen tienen una introducción de Theodore Sturgeon.

"Picnic extraterrestre" trata de una fugaz visita de seres de otro planeta, que dejan en la Tierra algunos desperdicios, algo así como los restos de un picnic. Estos productos son de una tecnología extraña ponen en juego toda suerte de ambiciones humanas.

"Leyendas de la Troika" es una sátira sobre un futuro lejano en el que el mundo se divide en innumerables pisos conectados por ascensores que nunca funcionan. Clara denuncia a la irracionalidad burocrática, "Leyendas de la Troika" es absolutamente diferente de "Picnic Extraterrestre", lo que prueba la extraordinaria versatilidad de los hermanos Strugatsky.]]> 245 Arkady Strugatsky 0026151707 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.22 1972 Roadside Picnic / Tale of the Troika
author: Arkady Strugatsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/26
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]]> The System of Objects 22616 A tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard.

The System of Objects is a tour de force—a theoretical letter-in-a-bottle tossed into the ocean in 1968, which brilliantly communicates to us all the live ideas of the day.

Pressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, The System of Objects offers a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society. Baudrillard classifies the everyday objects of the “new technical order” as functional, nonfunctional and metafunctional. He contrasts “modern” and “traditional” functional objects, subjecting home furnishing and interior design to a celebrated semiological analysis. His treatment of nonfunctional or “marginal” objects focuses on antiques and the psychology of collecting, while the metafunctional category extends to the useless, the aberrant and even the “schizofunctional.” Finally, Baudrillard deals at length with the implications of credit and advertising for the commodification of everyday life.

The System of Objects is a tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard, who emerges in retrospect as something of a lightning rod for all the live ideas of the day: Bataille's political economy of “expenditure” and Mauss's theory of the gift; Reisman's lonely crowd and the “technological society” of Jacques Ellul; the structuralism of Roland Barthes in The System of Fashion; Henri Lefebvre's work on the social construction of space; and last, but not least, Guy Debord's situationist critique of the spectacle.]]> 224 Jean Baudrillard 1844670538 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 1968 The System of Objects
author: Jean Baudrillard
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/20
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]]> America 688540 129 Jean Baudrillard 0860919781 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.91 1986 America
author: Jean Baudrillard
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism]]> 880355
Exploring key anarchist ideas of society and the state, freedom and equality, authority and power, the record investigates the successes and failures of anarchist movements throughout the world. Presenting a balanced and critical survey, the detailed document covers not only classic anarchist thinkers--such as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus, and Emma Goldman--but also other libertarian figures, such as Nietzsche, Camus, Gandhi, Foucault, and Chomsky.

Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand what anarchists stand for and what they have achieved, this fascinating account also includes an epilogue that examines the most recent developments, including postanarchism and anarcho-primitivism as well as the anarchist contributions to the peace, green, and global justice movements of the 21st century.]]> 767 Peter H. Marshall 0006862454 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.11 1992 Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
author: Peter H. Marshall
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Current Affairs Rules For Life: On Social Justice & Its Critics]]> 41883686 370 Nathan J. Robinson 0997844787 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.28 The Current Affairs Rules For Life: On Social Justice & Its Critics
author: Nathan J. Robinson
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.28
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date added: 2022/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness]]> 6792458
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.]]> 290 Michelle Alexander Sylvia 0 to-read 4.51 2010 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
author: Michelle Alexander
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Conquest of Bread (Working Classics)]]> 1113155 The fourth in AK Press’ Working Classics series, The Conquest of Bread is Peter Kropotkin’s most extensive study of human needs and his outline of the most rational and equitable means of satisfying them. A combination of detailed historical analysis and far-reaching Utopian vision, this is a step-by-step guide to social revolution: the concrete means of achieving it, and the world that humanity’s “constructive genius” is capable of creating. Includes a new introduction that historically situates and discusses the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin’s ideas.

]]> 224 Pyotr Kropotkin 1904859100 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 1892 The Conquest of Bread (Working Classics)
author: Pyotr Kropotkin
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Working Classics)]]> 51353
“[Rocker’s] approach is far from ‘utopian’; this is not an abstract discourse but a call to action.”—Noam Chomsky

Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958) was a leading figure in the international anarchist movement for over 60 years.

In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.


]]> 160 Rudolf Rocker 1902593928 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.96 1938 Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Working Classics)
author: Rudolf Rocker
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics)]]> 312957 Library Journal

Murray Bookchin has been an active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than 40 years.]]> 242 Murray Bookchin 1904859062 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.96 1971 Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Working Classics)
author: Murray Bookchin
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> Bullshit Jobs: A Theory 34466958 From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences.

Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.

There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.

Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.]]> 335 David Graeber 150114331X Sylvia 0 to-read 4.02 2018 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
author: David Graeber
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
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]]> American Psycho 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Sylvia 5 3.81 1991 American Psycho
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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]]> The Atrocity Exhibition 70240 130 J.G. Ballard 1889307033 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.80 1969 The Atrocity Exhibition
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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]]> The Yellow Wall-Paper 286957
In a private journal, the woman records her growing obsession with the “horrid” wallpaper. Its strange pattern mutates in the moonlight, revealing what appears to be a human figure in the design. With nothing else to occupy her mind, the woman resolves to unlock the mystery of the wallpaper. Her quest, however, leads not to the truth, but into the darkest depths of madness.

A condemnation of the patriarchy, The Yellow Wallpaper explores with terrifying economy the oppression, grave misunderstanding, and willful dismissal of women in late nineteenth-century society.

First published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine.

Excerpt:
Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.]]> 62 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1558611584 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.09 1892 The Yellow Wall-Paper
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1892
rating: 0
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]]> To Kill a Mockingbird 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 Sylvia 3 4.26 1960 To Kill a Mockingbird
author: Harper Lee
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1960
rating: 3
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]]> The Bell Jar 6514 294 Sylvia Plath Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 1963 The Bell Jar
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 0
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]]> The Virgin Suicides 10956 250 Jeffrey Eugenides 0747560595 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.80 1993 The Virgin Suicides
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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]]> Factotum 497199
Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.]]> 205 Charles Bukowski 0876852630 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.94 1975 Factotum
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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]]> The Wasp Factory 567678 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780684853154

Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.]]> 184 Iain Banks Sylvia 0 to-read 3.78 1984 The Wasp Factory
author: Iain Banks
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]> 241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.00 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> Fight Club 36236124 Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.]]> 224 Chuck Palahniuk 0393355942 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.17 1996 Fight Club
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Perfume: The Story of a Murderer]]> 343 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.]]> 263 Patrick Süskind Sylvia 0 to-read 4.06 1985 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
author: Patrick Süskind
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> The Secret History 29044 Truly deserving of the accolade modern classic, Donna Tartt's novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.]]> 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.15 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences]]> 119561 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

With vast erudition, Foucault cuts across disciplines and reaches back into seventeenth century to show how classical systems of knowledge, which linked all of nature within a great chain of being and analogies between the stars in the heavens and the features in a human face, gave way to the modern sciences of biology, philology, and political economy. The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths.

In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that “man”—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.]]> 416 Michel Foucault 0679753354 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.12 1966 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
author: Michel Foucault
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1966
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]]> <![CDATA[Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison]]> 80369 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

Barely two hundred and fifty years ago a man condemned of attempting to assassinate the King of France was drawn and quartered in a grisly spectacle that suggested an unmediated duel between the violence of the criminal and the violence of the state. This groundbreaking book by the most influential philosopher since Sartre compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about all the ensuing reforms in the penal institutions of the West. For as he examines innovations that range from the abolition of torture to the institution of forced labor and the appearance of the modern penitentiary, Michel Foucault suggests that punishment has shifted its focus from the prisoner's body to the soul — and that our very concern with rehabilitation encourages and refines criminal activity.

Lucidly reasoned and deftly marshaling a vast body of research, Discipline and Punish is a genuinely revolutionary book, whose implications extend beyond the prison to the minute power relations of our society.]]> 333 Michel Foucault 0679752552 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.23 1975 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
author: Michel Foucault
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1975
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]]> <![CDATA[A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]> 118316
A Thousand Plateaus is part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for nomadic thought and has had a galvanizing influence on today's anti-capitalist movement.

Translated by Brian Massumi]]> 632 Gilles Deleuze 0816614024 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.32 1980 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
author: Gilles Deleuze
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1980
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]]> Junky 23940 The definitive edition of Burroughs’s seminal first novel.

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky, his first novel. It is a candid eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground.

Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940s was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media.

For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly recreated the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts and places the book's contents against a lively historical background in a comprehensive introduction. Here as well, for the first time, are Burroughs' own unpublished introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many “lost” passages, as well as auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others.]]> 166 William S. Burroughs 0142003166 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.87 1953 Junky
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1953
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]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.07 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> Jesus’ Son 608287 Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievement for this acclaimed writer. In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.

Contains:
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
Two Men
Out on Bail
Dundun
Work
Emergency
Dirty Wedding
The Other Man
Happy Hour
Steady Hands at Seattle General
Beverly Home']]> 160 Denis Johnson 0060975776 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.15 1992 Jesus’ Son
author: Denis Johnson
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1992
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]]> Filth 23966
There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there's that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can't get a whole lot worse. . .

]]> 393 Irvine Welsh 0393318680 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.82 1998 Filth
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> Porno (Mark Renton, #3) 23965 Trainspotting, Sick Boy está en franca decadencia. Acaba de dejar su piso en un barrio pijo de Londres y se ha mudado a un agujero miserable, y tras una noche de drogas y sexo indiscriminados, decide aceptar la oferta de su tía Paula: lo dejará a cargo de su pub en Leith y se marchará con su amante español a Alicante.

Pero en el Port Sunshine el negocio no está solamente en las bebidas: Sick Boy descubre que un grupo liderado por «Juice» Terry Lawson, su antiguo conocido, se reúne a follar y a filmar sus orgías en uno de los salones privados. Y que en Edimburgo hay un floreciente negocio de vídeos porno realizados en las trastiendas de los pubs, con los clientes como estrellas. Y Sick Boy, que siempre está maquinando negocios, se pondrá, con la ayuda de la guapa Nikki Fuller-Smith, estudiante de cine de día y trabajadora del sexo por las noches, a hacer una película porno de altura, con calidad suficiente como para ser vendida internacionalmente y circular por Internet. Y también incluirá en el equipo a su viejo amigo Renton, el que diez años antes los traicionó y huyó a Ámsterdam con el dinero del alijo de heroína. Pero cuando Sick Boy maquina algo, la cosa tiene más complicaciones y trampas que la tela de una araña, y entre los hilos también se mueven Spud, el único que había recibido a escondidas su parte del dinero de la droga, y Begbie, el psicópata del grupo, que después de pasar unos años en la cárcel volverá a la acción aún más paranoico y furioso que antes.]]> 600 Irvine Welsh 8433972618 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.84 2002 Porno (Mark Renton, #3)
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2002
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]]> Against Nature 210255 Against Nature or as Against The Grain, this wildly original fin-de-siècle novel follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes, and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. The original handbook of decadence, Against Nature exploded like a grenade (in the words of Huysmans) and has enjoyed a cult readership from its publication to the present day.]]> 288 Joris-Karl Huysmans 0140447636 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.87 1884 Against Nature
author: Joris-Karl Huysmans
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1884
rating: 0
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]]> Venus in Furs 427354 Venus in Furs describes the obsessions of Severin von Kusiemski, a European nobleman who desires to be enslaved to a woman. Severin finds his ideal of voluptuous cruelty in the merciless Wanda von Dunajew. This is a passionate and powerful portrayal of one man's struggle to enlighten and instruct himself and others in the realm of desire. Published in 1870, the novel gained notoriety and a degree of immortality for its author when the word "masochism"—derived from his name—entered the vocabulary of psychiatry. This remains a classic literary statement on sexual submission and control.]]> 160 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch 0140447814 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.66 1870 Venus in Furs
author: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1870
rating: 0
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]]> Erotism: Death and Sensuality 37530 280 Georges Bataille 0872861902 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.11 1957 Erotism: Death and Sensuality
author: Georges Bataille
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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]]> Ethics 205218 Ethics is undoubtedly Spinoza's greatest work—an elegant, fully cohesive cosmology derived from first principles, providing a coherent picture of reality, and a guide to the meaning of an ethical life. Following a logical step-by-step format, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding—moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness. A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection. The Ethics is presented in the standard translation of the work by Edwin Curley. This edition also includes an introduction by Stuart Hampshire, outlining Spinoza's philosophy and placing it in context.]]> 186 Baruch Spinoza 0140435719 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.09 1677 Ethics
author: Baruch Spinoza
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1677
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason]]> 51933 Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.

Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 – from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the “insane” and the rest of humanity.]]> 299 Michel Foucault 067972110X Sylvia 0 to-read 4.08 1961 Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
author: Michel Foucault
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?]]> 6763725 81 Mark Fisher 1846943175 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.20 2009 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
author: Mark Fisher
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2009
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]]> The Society of the Spectacle 381440 The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.]]> 154 Guy Debord 0942299795 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 1967 The Society of the Spectacle
author: Guy Debord
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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]]> Difference and Repetition 765337 350 Gilles Deleuze 0231081596 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.27 1968 Difference and Repetition
author: Gilles Deleuze
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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]]> Simulacra and Simulation 22613 Simulacra et Simulation in 1981 marked Jean Baudrillard's first important step toward theorizing the postmodern. Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure.

Baudrillard uses the concepts of the simulacra—the copy without an original—and simulation. These terms are crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to the extent that they address the concept of mass reproduction and reproduceability that characterizes our electronic media culture.

Baudrillard's book represents a unique and original effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.

Sheila Glaser is an editor at Artforum magazine.]]> 164 Jean Baudrillard 0472065211 Sylvia 5 4.02 1981 Simulacra and Simulation
author: Jean Baudrillard
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1981
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]> 118317 400 Gilles Deleuze 0816612250 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.17 1972 Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
author: Gilles Deleuze
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division]]> 15818498
Now, for the first time, their story is told by one of their own. In Unknown Pleasures, founding member and bass player Peter Hook recounts how four young men from Manchester and Salisbury, with makeshift instruments and a broken-down van, rose from the punk scene to create a haunting, atmospheric music that would define a generation. Peter talks with eye-opening candor and reflection about the suicide of Ian Curtis; the band's friendships and fallouts; the evolution of their sound and image; and the larger-than-life characters who formed a vital part of the Joy Division legend, including Factory Records founder Tony Wilson and producer Martin Hannett. Told with surprising humor and vivid detail, Unknown Pleasures is the book Joy Division fans have awaited for decades.]]> 416 Peter Hook 0062222562 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.14 2012 Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division
author: Peter Hook
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
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]]> Nudes 56609421 Elle Nash Sylvia 0 to-read 4.02 2021 Nudes
author: Elle Nash
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Ulysses 338798 Ulysses is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. It was not easy to find a publisher in America willing to take it on, and when Jane Jeap and Margaret Anderson started printing extracts from the book in their literary magazine The Little Review in 1918, they were arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. They were fined $100, and even The New York Times expressed satisfaction with their conviction.

Ulysses was not published in book form until 1922, when another American woman, Sylvia Beach, published it in Paris her Shakespeare & Company. Ulysses was not available legally in any English-speaking country until 1934, when Random House successfully defended Joyce against obscenity charges and published it in the Modern Library.]]> 783 James Joyce Sylvia 0 to-read 3.73 1922 Ulysses
author: James Joyce
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1922
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dead: James Joyce's Famous Story Annotated]]> 9411621
Joyce wrote “The Dead,” and all the other stories in DUBLINERS, with loving care for the geographical, historical, and political details of his native city. As a consequence most of the local references are painstakingly exact; they are part of Joyce’s “realism” and are often suggestive of everyday Dublin life.

We have supplied glosses where the significance of these references goes beyond matters of local color or Joycean realism. The aim of the footnotes, therefore, is to explain topical and religious references, literary allusions, historical and political nuances, and Irishisms which are likely to baffle the modern-day reader.]]> 82 James Joyce Sylvia 0 to-read 3.83 1914 The Dead: James Joyce's Famous Story Annotated
author: James Joyce
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1914
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]]> Bluets 6798263
A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue, while folding in, and responding to, the divergent voices and preoccupations of such generative figures as Wittgenstein, Sei Shonagon, William Gass and Joan Mitchell. Bluets further confirms Maggie Nelson’s place within the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.

Published in over ten foreign editions, including Jonathan Cape, UK (2017), Kolektif Kitap, Turkey (2017), Editions Du Seuil, France (2017), Hanser Berlin, Germany (2017), Modernista, Sweden (2017), Saiplanet, Korea (2017), Editores Tajamar, Spain (2017); Pelikanen Forlag As, Norway (2018), No Kidding, Russia (2019), Schildts; Soderstrom, Finland (2019), Nottetempo, Italy (2023).

Adapted for the stage in 2024, by director Katie Mitchell, script adapted by Margaret Perry. Royal Court Theatre, London, England. Starring Emma D’Arcy, Kayla Meikle, and Ben Whishaw.]]> 99 Maggie Nelson 1933517409 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.06 2009 Bluets
author: Maggie Nelson
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
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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 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.65 1985 Less Than Zero
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> Diary 22284
Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.]]> 262 Chuck Palahniuk 1400032814 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.66 2003 Diary
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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]]> Skagboys (Mark Renton, #1) 12926063
It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence - the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all.

Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred - but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.]]> 548 Irvine Welsh 0224087916 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 2012 Skagboys (Mark Renton, #1)
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
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]]> Last Exit to Brooklyn 50275 Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.

Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.

Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.

'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'
Allen Ginsberg

'An urgent tickertape from hell'
Spectator]]> 290 Hubert Selby Jr. 0747549923 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.98 1964 Last Exit to Brooklyn
author: Hubert Selby Jr.
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Naked Lunch: The Restored Text]]> 7437 Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted a significant influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections to errors present in previous editions, and incorporates Burroughs’s notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.]]> 289 William S. Burroughs 0802140181 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.48 1959 Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2)]]> 135836 ''The best book ever written by man or woman . . . Deserves to sell more copies than the Bible" —Rebel Inc

THE BESTSELLING NOVEL THAT INSPIRED DANNY BOYLE’S CULT FILM

Described by The Sunday Times as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent," Trainspotting follows the lives of a group of Scottish junkies. Its bleak depiction of drug addiction is vivid and brutal, and has lost none of its power to shock. Choose the book that outraged the critics. Choose the literary phenomenon that defined a generation. Choose Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.]]> 431 Irvine Welsh 0099465892 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.16 1993 Trainspotting (Mark Renton, #2)
author: Irvine Welsh
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1993
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]]> Imperial Bedrooms 7519866 "Less Than Zero", we pick up again with "Clay".

In 1985, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned, and disturbed with "Less Than Zero", his 'extraordinarily accomplished first novel' ("New Yorker"), successfully chronicling the frightening consequences of unmitigated hedonism within the ranks of the ethically bereft youth of 80s Los Angeles. Now, twenty-five years later, Ellis returns to those same characters: to Clay and the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his.

But now, some years on, they face an even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age. Clay seems to have moved on - he's become a successful screenwriter - but when he returns from New York to Los Angeles, to help cast his new movie, he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is now married to Trent, and their Beverly Hills parties attract excessive levels of fame and fortune, though for all that Trent is a powerful manager, his baser instincts remain: he's still a bisexual philanderer.

Then there's Clay's childhood friend, Julian - who's now a recovering addict - and their old dealer, Rip - face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than he was in his notorious past. Clay, too, struggles with his own demons after a meeting with a gorgeous actress determined to win a role in his movie. And with his life careening out of control, he's forced to come to terms with the deepest recesses of his character - and with his seemingly endless proclivity for betrayal.]]> 256 Bret Easton Ellis 0330517090 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.20 2010 Imperial Bedrooms
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2010
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]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist.]]> 288 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Sylvia 4 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos]]> 30257963 What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research.

Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.

What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant, and vengeful? Dr. Peterson journeys broadly, discussing discipline, freedom, adventure, and responsibility, distilling the world's wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. 12 Rules for Life shatters the modern commonplaces of science, faith, and human nature while transforming and ennobling the mind and spirit of its listeners.]]> 409 Jordan B. Peterson 0345816021 Sylvia 1 3.89 2018 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
author: Jordan B. Peterson
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2018
rating: 1
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]]> The Symposium 81779
In the course of a lively drinking party, a group of Athenian intellectuals exchange views on eros, or desire. From their conversation emerges a series of subtle reflections on gender roles, sex in society and the sublimation of basic human instincts. The discussion culminates in a radical challenge to conventional views by Plato's mentor, Socrates, who advocates transcendence through spiritual love. The Symposium is a deft interweaving of different viewpoints and ideas about the nature of love--as a response to beauty, a cosmic force, a motive for social action and as a means of ethical education.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 90 Plato 0140449272 Sylvia 3 4.11 -380 The Symposium
author: Plato
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.11
book published: -380
rating: 3
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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 Sylvia 5 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 5
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]]> Notes from Underground 49455 Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes — moral, religious, political and social — that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground, then, aside from its own compelling qualities, offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination, profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction.]]> 136 Fyodor Dostoevsky 067973452X Sylvia 5 4.20 1864 Notes from Underground
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1864
rating: 5
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]]> The Myth of Sisyphus 91950 The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.]]> 192 Albert Camus Sylvia 4 4.22 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus
author: Albert Camus
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1942
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk]]> 14595 A Time Out and Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its initial release, Please Kill Me is the first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Malcom McLaren, Jim Carroll, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. From its origins in the twilight years of Andy Warhol's New York reign to its last gasps as eighties corporate rock, the phenomenon known as punk is scrutinized, eulogized, and idealized by the people who were there and who made it happen.
]]> 488 Legs McNeil 0802142648 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.19 1996 Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
author: Legs McNeil
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> How Music Works 13235689
Acting as historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, he searches for patterns—and shows how those patterns have affected his own work over the years with Talking Heads and his many collaborators, from Brian Eno to Caetano Veloso. Byrne sees music as part of a larger, almost Darwinian pattern of adaptations and responses to its cultural and physical context. His range is panoptic, taking us from Wagnerian opera houses to African villages, from his earliest high school reel-to-reel recordings to his latest work in a home music studio (and all the big studios in between).

Touching on the joy, the physics, and even the business of making music, How Music Works is a brainy, irresistible adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s liberating, life-affirming power.]]> 345 David Byrne 1936365537 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.00 2014 How Music Works
author: David Byrne
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> Frankenstein 35031085
This edition is the original 1818 text, which preserves the hard-hitting and politically charged aspects of Shelley's original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by author and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson.]]> 260 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0143131842 Sylvia 0 to-read 4.05 1818 Frankenstein
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1818
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]]> Nausea 298275 Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him.

His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time, the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."

Roquentin's efforts to try and come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.

The introduction for this edition of Nausea by Hayden Carruth gives background on Sartre's life and major works, a summary of the principal themes of Existentialist philosophy, and a critical analysis of the novel itself.]]> 178 Jean-Paul Sartre 0811201880 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.95 1938 Nausea
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1938
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]]> The Sorrows of Young Werther 16640 149 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0812969901 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.72 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1774
rating: 0
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]]> White Nights 1772910 82 Fyodor Dostoevsky Sylvia 4 4.11 1848 White Nights
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1848
rating: 4
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]]> Thus Spoke Zarathustra 51893 Friedrich Nietzsche’s most accessible and influential philosophical work, misquoted, misrepresented, brilliantly original and enormously influential

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche’s utterance ‘God is dead’, his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.]]> 327 Friedrich Nietzsche Sylvia 4 4.10 1883 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
author: Friedrich Nietzsche
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1883
rating: 4
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]]> The Brothers Karamazov 4934
This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.]]> 796 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0374528373 Sylvia 4 4.38 1879 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1879
rating: 4
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]]> Dead Souls 28381 Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In his introduction to this new translation, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.]]> 464 Nikolai Gogol 0140448071 Sylvia 0 to-read 3.99 1842 Dead Souls
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1842
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fall (Vintage International)]]> 11991
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth. In a eulogy to Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described the novel as "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books.]]> 147 Albert Camus 0679720227 Sylvia 5 4.06 1956 The Fall (Vintage International)
author: Albert Camus
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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]]> The Idiot 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Sylvia 5 4.22 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 5
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]]> The Plague 11989 The Plague is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947. 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 Sylvia 5 4.05 1947 The Plague
author: Albert Camus
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
rating: 5
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]]> The Trial 17690
In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel as full of energy and power as when it was first written.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Sylvia 5 3.99 1925 The Trial
author: Franz Kafka
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Sylvia 5 3.92 1915 The Metamorphosis
author: Franz Kafka
name: Sylvia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1915
rating: 5
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]]> Animal Farm 170448 Animal Farm is the most famous by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny erected by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his spare prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message.

Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.]]> 141 George Orwell 0451526341 Sylvia 4 4.10 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1945
rating: 4
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]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Sylvia 5 4.27 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1866
rating: 5
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]]> 1984 40961427
Living under constant state surveillance via ubiquitous telescreens, Winston covertly rebels against the ruling Party through private journal writing and an illicit relationship with a coworker, Julia. The novel examines the mechanics of political authoritarianism, the manipulation of language and history, and the tension between individual consciousness and state power.]]> 298 George Orwell Sylvia 4 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 4
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date added: 2022/05/29
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]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Sylvia 5 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Sylvia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/05/29
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