Glenn's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 26 Jul 2023 04:44:57 -0700 60 Glenn's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf]]> 43961
DeSalvo and Leaska established the chronological order of the letters and placed them in sequence, and they have also included relevant diary entries and letters Vita and Virginia wrote to other friends where they add context and illumination to the narrative. Annotations throughout the text identify peripheral characters, clarify allusions, and provide background. As the New York Times noted, "the result is a volume that reads like a book, not just a gathering of marvelous scraps."

In his introduction Mitchell A. Leaska observes, "Rarely can a collection of correspondence have cast into more dramatic relief two personalities more individual or more complex; and rarely can an enterprise of the heart have been carried out so near the verge of archetypal feeling."]]> 448 Vita Sackville-West 1573441961 Glenn 0 to-read 4.30 1926 The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
author: Vita Sackville-West
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1926
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/26
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]]> Japan and Self Existence 8495378 388 Mick Karn Glenn 5 I’ve seen in some of the reviews here complaints about typos. I only though came across one in the entire book – a whose instead of a who’s. At times he writes dialogue phonetically which maybe explains this unwarranted criticism.
I’m presently writing a novel about a 1980s English band, inspired in large part by Japan and particularly the relationship between Karn and David Sylvian, and this autobiography was of immense help to me.
]]> 4.16 2009 Japan and Self Existence
author: Mick Karn
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2020/06/30
date added: 2020/06/30
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It was a tragic loss to the music world that Mick Karn died so young. His bass playing was a marvel and his stage presence in his prime as charismatic as much bigger and more well-known stars. He was a great inspiration to me in my youth.
I’ve seen in some of the reviews here complaints about typos. I only though came across one in the entire book – a whose instead of a who’s. At times he writes dialogue phonetically which maybe explains this unwarranted criticism.
I’m presently writing a novel about a 1980s English band, inspired in large part by Japan and particularly the relationship between Karn and David Sylvian, and this autobiography was of immense help to me.

]]> <![CDATA[The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City]]> 4379903 The authors explore the history of the ghetto’s evolution, the actual daily experience of its thousands of inhabitants from its creation in 1940 to its liquidation following the uprising of 1943. Encyclopedic in scope, the book encompasses a range of topics from food supplies to education, religious activities to the Jundenrat’s administration. Separate chapters deal with the mass deportations to Treblinka and the famous uprising. A series of original maps, along with biographies, a glossary, and a bibliography, completes this masterful work.]]> 936 Barbara Engelking 0300112343 Glenn 5 4.85 2009 The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City
author: Barbara Engelking
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.85
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/06/16
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]]> Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto 1120969 Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto is the moving account of the horror of the Warsaw Ghetto - written by the recognized archivist and historian of the area while he lived through it. Through anecdotes, stories, and notations - some as brief as "I was slapped today in Zlota Street" - there emerges the agonizing, eyewitness accounts of human beings caught in the furor of senseless, unrelenting brutality.

In the Journal, there is the whole of life in the Ghetto, from the erection of the Wall, in November 1940, for hygienic reasons, through the brief period of deceptive calm to the eventual mass murders. It is a portrait of man tested by crisis, stained at times by the meanness of avarice and self-preservation, illumined more often by moments of nobility.

Emmanual Ringelblum was 39 when he began his notes. When the Germans first invaded Poland, Ringelblum, who could have stayed abroad and escaped, returned to Warsaw from Switzerland knowing that his was an historical event of importance for his people and a moment in time that must be forever a part of written history. As the recognized archivist of the Ghetto he gathered around him a staff, and assigned each to cover a specific part of Ghetto life. From these reports and this notes, he assembled his Journal.

On March 7, 1944, Emmanual Ringelblum was executed among the ruins of Warsaw, together with his wife, his son, and thirt-eight others who shared his hiding place.]]> 402 Emmanuel Ringelblum 1596873310 Glenn 5 4.28 1974 Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto
author: Emmanuel Ringelblum
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/16
date added: 2019/06/16
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]]> A Sea of Straw 32623315
1966: When Jody, young mother and designer from Manchester, arrives on the Lisbon coast, she brings the lure of 'Swinging London' to Portuguese painter Ze 's existing dreams of freedom. A nascent love is interrupted when, back in England, husband Michael forces her to choose between their 2-year-old daughter Anna and Ze . And Ze, at home in Lisbon and grounded by the state's secret police, can only wait.

For both Jody and Ze, love is revolution. And personal and political threads weave their story, a period piece set amid the then socially conservative North of England, the light and rugged landscapes of modern Portugal, and the darkness of the dying years of Europe's longest-running dictatorship. A Sea of Straw, with its pervading atmosphere of saudades, is a quest for love in revolutionary times.

"]]> 292 Julia Sutton 099328633X Glenn 5 4.31 A Sea of Straw
author: Julia Sutton
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/02/10
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]]> Mrs. Dalloway 14942 194 Virginia Woolf 0151009988 Glenn 5 3.79 1925 Mrs. Dalloway
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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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 Glenn 5 4.00 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> Bleak House 31242
At the novel's core is long-running litigation in England's Court of Chancery, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, which has far-reaching consequences for all involved. The litigation, which already has taken many years and consumed between £60,000 and £70,000 in court costs, is emblematic of the failure of Chancery.

Though Chancery lawyers and judges criticised Dickens's portrait of Chancery as exaggerated and unmerited, his novel helped to spur an ongoing movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.]]> 1017 Charles Dickens 0143037617 Glenn 5 4.01 1853 Bleak House
author: Charles Dickens
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1853
rating: 5
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]]> The History of Love 3867
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who, sixty years ago in Poland, inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives...

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here]]> 255 Nicole Krauss 0393328627 Glenn 5 3.92 2005 The History of Love
author: Nicole Krauss
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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]]> Oscar and Lucinda 316496
Oscar is a young English clergyman who has broken with his past and developed a disturbing talent for gambling. A country girl of singular ambition, Lucinda moves to Sydney, driven by dreams of self-reliance and the building of an industrial Utopia. Together this unlikely pair create and are created by the spectacle of mid-nineteenth century Australia.

Peter Carey's visionary brilliance, and his capacity to delight and surprise, propel this story to its stunning conclusion.]]> 515 Peter Carey 0702229784 Glenn 5 3.75 1988 Oscar and Lucinda
author: Peter Carey
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Occupied City (Tokyo Trilogy, #2)]]> 6367453 320 David Peace 0571232027 Glenn 5 3.39 2009 Occupied City (Tokyo Trilogy, #2)
author: David Peace
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> Brideshead Revisited 30933 Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 351 Evelyn Waugh 0316926345 Glenn 5 4.01 1945 Brideshead Revisited
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1945
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/05/05
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]]> The Idiot 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Glenn 5 4.22 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/05/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Tokyo Year Zero (Tokyo Trilogy, #1)]]> 755204
Narrated by the irreverent, despairing yet determined Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Tokyo Year Zero tells a fictionalized story of the real-life hunt for “the Japanese Bluebeard”—a decorated Imperial soldier who raped and murdered at least ten women amid the bleak turmoil of post-war Japan (“one huge sea of displaced persons . . . one minute here and one minute gone”). And it is the story of Detective Minami: chasing down, and haunted by, memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive.]]> 355 David Peace 0307263746 Glenn 5 3.31 2008 Tokyo Year Zero (Tokyo Trilogy, #1)
author: David Peace
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/05/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)]]> 17465515 My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker's James Wood described as "large, captivating, amiably peopled ... a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal," Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's most accomplished storytellers. She writes vividly about a specific neighborhood of Naples from the late-1950s through to the current day and about two remarkable young women who are very much the products of that place and time. Yet in doing so she has created a world in which readers will recognize themselves and has drawn a marvelously nuanced portrait of friendship.

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.]]> 471 Elena Ferrante Glenn 5 4.48 2012 The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels, #2)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2016/03/04
date added: 2016/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)]]> 23156040 418 Elena Ferrante Glenn 5 4.38 2013 Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3)
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> How to be Both 20439328
How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

A NOTE TO THE READER:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order?
This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both.
In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA.
In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES.
The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.

The books are intentionally printed in two different ways, so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which edition you happen to receive, the book will be: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. Enjoy the adventure.]]> 376 Ali Smith Glenn 5 3.65 2014 How to be Both
author: Ali Smith
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/03/04
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]]> Schindler’s List 375013 Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, an Aryan who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who conrinually defied and outwitted the SS, and who was transformed by the war into an angel of mercy. It is an unforgettable tale, all the more extraordinary for being true.]]> 429 Thomas Keneally 0340606517 Glenn 5 4.34 1982 Schindler’s List
author: Thomas Keneally
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1982
rating: 5
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]]> First Light 518136
It is the story of an idealistic schoolboy who couldn't believe his luck when the RAF agreed to take him on as a "pupil pilot" at the minimum age of seventeen and a half in 1939. In his fervor to fly, he gave little thought to the coming war."

"Writing with wit, compassion, and a great deal of technical expertise, Wellum relives his grueling months of flight training, during which two of his classmates crashed and died. He describes a hilarious scene during his first day in the prestigious 92nd Squadron when his commader discovered that Wellum had not only never flown a Spitfire, he'd never even seen one."

A battle-hardened ace by the winter of 1941, though still not out of his teens, 'Boy' Wellum flew scores of missions as fighter escort on bombing missions over France. Yet the constant life-or-death stress of murderous combat and anguish over the loss of his closest friends sapped endurance. Tortured by fierce headaches, even in the midst of battle, he could not bear the thought of "not pulling your weight," of letting the other pilots risk their lives in his place. Wellum's frank account of his long, losing bout with battle fatigue is both moving and enlightening.]]> 352 Geoffrey Wellum 0141008148 Glenn 5 4.44 2002 First Light
author: Geoffrey Wellum
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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]]> Lancaster Target 1856522 192 Jack Currie 0907579280 Glenn 5 4.31 1977 Lancaster Target
author: Jack Currie
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2015/08/18
date added: 2015/08/18
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]]> Vampires in the Lemon Grove 13531832 Swamplandia! — a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best.

Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.

Vampires in the lemon grove --
Reeling for the Empire --
Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --
Proving up --
Barn at the end of our term --
Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --
New veterans --
Graveless doll of Eric Mutis]]> 243 Karen Russell 0307957233 Glenn 0 to-read 3.68 2013 Vampires in the Lemon Grove
author: Karen Russell
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/07/12
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]]> The Shell Collector 883235 219 Anthony Doerr 0142002968 Glenn 4 3.98 2001 The Shell Collector
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/22
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]]> Herzog 6551 371 Saul Bellow 0142437298 Glenn 5 3.76 1964 Herzog
author: Saul Bellow
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1964
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/06/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Men Of Air: Doomed Youth of Bomber Command's War]]> 2507741 435 Kevin Wilson 029785321X Glenn 4 4.14 2007 Men Of Air: Doomed Youth of Bomber Command's War
author: Kevin Wilson
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/15
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]]> Let Me Be Frank With You 20828358 The Sportswriter, the Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner winning Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land

In his trio of world-acclaimed novels portraying the life of an entire American generation, Richard Ford has imagined one of the most indelible and widely-discussed characters in modern literature, Frank Bascombe. Through Bascombe—protean, funny, profane, wise, often inappropriate—we’ve witnessed the aspirations, sorrows, longings, achievements and failings of an American life in the twilight of the twentieth century.

Now, in Let Me Be Frank with You, Ford reinvents Bascombe in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In four richly luminous narratives, Bascombe (and Ford) attempts to reconcile, interpret and console a world undone by calamity. It is a moving, wondrous, and extremely funny odyssey through the America we live in at this moment. Ford is here again working with the maturity and brilliance of a writer at the absolute height of his powers.]]> 240 Richard Ford 0061692069 Glenn 0 to-read 3.59 2014 Let Me Be Frank With You
author: Richard Ford
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> Eva Trout 536510 Eva Trout, Elizabeth Bowen’s last novel, epitomizes her bold exploration of the territory between the comedy of manners and cutting social commentary.

Orphaned at a young age, Eva has found a home of sorts in Worcestershire with her former schoolteacher, Iseult Arbles, and Iseult's husband, Eric. From a safe distance in London, her legal guardian, Constantine, assumes that all's well. But Eva's flighty, romantic nature hasn't entirely clicked with the Arbles household, and Eva is plotting to escape. When she sets out to hock her Jaguar and disappear without a trace, she unwittingly leaves a paper trail for her various custodians–and all kinds of trouble–to follow.]]> 302 Elizabeth Bowen Glenn 4 3.40 1968 Eva Trout
author: Elizabeth Bowen
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1968
rating: 4
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]]> The Heat of the Day 195987
Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose to stay. But for her, the sense of impending catastrophe becomes acutely personal when she discovers that her lover, Robert, is suspected of selling secrets to the enemy, and that the man who is following him wants Stella herself as the price of his silence. Caught between these two men, not sure whom to believe, Stella finds her world crumbling as she learns how little we can truly know of those around us.]]> 415 Elizabeth Bowen 0385721285 Glenn 4 3.41 1948 The Heat of the Day
author: Elizabeth Bowen
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1948
rating: 4
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]]> Night and Day 116056 496 Virginia Woolf 0140185682 Glenn 3 3.77 1919 Night and Day
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1919
rating: 3
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]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Glenn 4 3.95 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life – A Fresh Biography Exploring Her Creative Work Through Essays and Letters]]> 9507  
In this fresh, absorbing book, Julia Briggs puts the writing back at the center of Woolf’s life, reads that life through her work, and mines the novels themselves to create a compelling new form of biography. Analyzing Woolf’s own commen­tary on the creative process through her letters, diaries, and essays, Julia Briggs has produced a book that is a convincing, moving portrait of an artist, as well as a profound meditation on the nature of creativity.


]]> 544 Julia Briggs 0156032295 Glenn 4 4.15 2005 Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life – A Fresh Biography Exploring Her Creative Work Through Essays and Letters
author: Julia Briggs
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> Virginia Woolf 18846
It is not often that biography offers the satisfactions of great fiction--but this is clearly what Hermione Lee has achieved. Accessible, intelligent, and deeply pleasurable to read, her Virginia Woolf will undoubtedly take its place as the standard biography for years to come.]]> 893 Hermione Lee 0375701362 Glenn 4 3.98 1996 Virginia Woolf
author: Hermione Lee
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> Tender Is the Night 46164 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 430 F. Scott Fitzgerald Glenn 4 3.80 1934 Tender Is the Night
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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]]> Ghostwritten 6819
A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut novel of a writer with astonishing gifts.]]> 426 David Mitchell 0375724508 Glenn 4 4.06 1999 Ghostwritten
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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]]> Number9Dream 6820 Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, number9dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister’s death and his mother’s breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses—through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck—a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father’s identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.]]> 401 David Mitchell 0812966929 Glenn 4 3.89 2001 Number9Dream
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> Black Swan Green 14316
Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.]]> 296 David Mitchell 0812974018 Glenn 4 3.97 2006 Black Swan Green
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet]]> 7141642
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.]]> 479 David Mitchell 1400065453 Glenn 5 4.01 2010 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/06/09
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]]> Cloud Atlas 49628
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .

Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Glenn 5 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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]]> No Moon Tonight 2541355 160 Don Charlwood 0907579973 Glenn 5 4.13 1956 No Moon Tonight
author: Don Charlwood
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1956
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Bomber Boys - Fighting Back 1940 - 1945]]> 826561 448 Patrick Bishop 0007189869 Glenn 5 4.18 2007 Bomber Boys - Fighting Back 1940 - 1945
author: Patrick Bishop
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945]]> 2263409
And while the Allies and Germans were fighting it out through the mountains, the Italians were engaging in bitter battles too. Partisans were carrying out a crippling resistance campaign against the German troops but also battling the Fascists forces as well in what soon became a bloody civil war. Around them, innocent civilians tried to live through the carnage, terror and anarchy, while in the wake of the Allied advance, horrific numbers of impoverished and starving people were left to pick their way through the ruins of their homes and country. In the German-occupied north, there were more than 700 civilian massacres by German and Fascist troops in retaliation for Partisan activities, while in the south, many found themselves forced into making terrible and heart-rending decisions in order to survive.

Although known as a land of beauty and for the richness of its culture, Italy's suffering in 1944-1945 is now largely forgotten. This is the first account of the conflict there to tell the story from all sides and to include the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike. Offering extensive original research, it weaves together the drama and tragedy of that terrible year, including new perspectives and material on some of the most debated episodes to have emerged from the Second World War.]]> 606 James Holland 0312373961 Glenn 4 4.31 2008 Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945
author: James Holland
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Mother's Milk (Patrick Melrose, #4)]]> 466349 235 Edward St. Aubyn 1890447404 Glenn 4 3.81 2005 Mother's Milk (Patrick Melrose, #4)
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> HHhH 7992363
L’essentiel de l’histoire se situe entre 1938 et 1942. Le récit est structuré comme un entonnoir : des chapitres courts relatent différents épisodes en divers lieux et à diverses époques, qui tous convergent vers Prague où s’est déroulé l’attentat. Tous les personnages de ce livre ont réellement existé ou existent encore. L’auteur a rapporté les faits le plus fidèlement possible mais a dû résister à la tentation de romancer. Comment raconter l’Histoire ? Cette question conduit parfois l’auteur à se mettre en scène pour rendre compte de ses conditions d’écriture, de ses recherches, de ses hésitations. La vérité historique se révèle à la fois une obsession névrotique et une quête sans fin.]]> 442 Laurent Binet 2246760011 Glenn 5 4.06 2010 HHhH
author: Laurent Binet
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing 18218630 A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation.

Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny – and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.]]> 205 Eimear McBride 0957185324 Glenn 4 3.50 2013 A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
author: Eimear McBride
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> The Tree of Man 561413 480 Patrick White 0099324512 Glenn 4 3.96 1955 The Tree of Man
author: Patrick White
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1955
rating: 4
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]]> Remembering Babylon 827326 207 David Malouf 0679749519 Glenn 4 3.50 1993 Remembering Babylon
author: David Malouf
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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]]> Jack Maggs 640900 344 Peter Carey 2259187692 Glenn 4 3.70 1997 Jack Maggs
author: Peter Carey
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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]]> The Damned Utd 984021
David Peace's extraordinarily inventive novel tells the story of a world characterised by fear of failure and hunger for success set in the bleak heart of the 1970s.]]> 346 David Peace 0571224334 Glenn 5 4.15 2006 The Damned Utd
author: David Peace
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> The Echoing Grove 1473860 304 Rosamond Lehmann 1844080366 Glenn 4 3.58 1953 The Echoing Grove
author: Rosamond Lehmann
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1953
rating: 4
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]]> The Transit of Venus 12738 337 Shirley Hazzard 1860491812 Glenn 5 4.00 1980 The Transit of Venus
author: Shirley Hazzard
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> The Great Fire 142975


Arriving in Occupied Japan to record the effects of the bomb at Hiroshima, Leith meets Benedict and Helen Driscoll, the Australian son and daughter of a tyrannical medical administrator. Benedict, at twenty, is doomed by a rare degenerative disease. Helen, still younger, is inseparable from her brother. Precocious, brilliant, sensitive, at home in the books they read together, these two have been, in Leith's words, delivered by literature. The young people capture Leith's sympathy; indeed, he finds himself struggling with his attraction to this girl whose feelings are as intense as his own and from whom he will soon be fatefully parted.

]]> 326 Shirley Hazzard 0312423586 Glenn 5 3.46 2003 The Great Fire
author: Shirley Hazzard
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> A Change of Climate 101922 342 Hilary Mantel 0007172907 Glenn 5 3.86 1994 A Change of Climate
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> A Place of Greater Safety 101921 749 Hilary Mantel 0312426399 Glenn 5 4.00 1992 A Place of Greater Safety
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel Glenn 5 4.27 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel Glenn 5 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> NW 13537891 NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.]]> 296 Zadie Smith 0241144140 Glenn 4 3.49 2012 NW
author: Zadie Smith
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> Pnin 30593 Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian émigré precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950's. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.

Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him. Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader’s deepest protective instinct.

Serialized in The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, Pnin brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.]]> 184 Vladimir Nabokov 1400041988 Glenn 5 3.89 1957 Pnin
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1957
rating: 5
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]]> Lolita 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov Glenn 5 3.87 1955 Lolita
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> The Baron in the Trees 9804
Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy—he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by, and a new century dawn.

The Baron in the Trees exemplifies Calvino’s peerless ability to weave tales that sparkle with enchantment. This new English rendering by acclaimed translator Ann Goldstein breathes new life into one of Calvino’s most beloved works.]]> 217 Italo Calvino Glenn 5 4.12 1957 The Baron in the Trees
author: Italo Calvino
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1957
rating: 5
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]]> Invisible Cities 9809 165 Italo Calvino 0156453800 Glenn 5 4.15 1972 Invisible Cities
author: Italo Calvino
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[If on a Winter's Night a Traveler]]> 374233 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."]]> 260 Italo Calvino Glenn 5 4.04 1979 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
author: Italo Calvino
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1979
rating: 5
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]]> The Informers 9914 240 Bret Easton Ellis 0330339184 Glenn 4 3.42 1994 The Informers
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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]]> Motherless Brooklyn 328854 Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.]]> 311 Jonathan Lethem 0345803396 Glenn 5 3.86 1999 Motherless Brooklyn
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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]]> Mao II 402 The New York Times), Don DeLillo presents an extraordinary new novel about words and images, novelists and terrorists, the mass mind and the arch-individualist. At the heart of the book is Bill Gray, a famous reclusive writer who escapes the failed novel he has been working on for many years and enters the world of political violence, a nightscape of Semtex explosives and hostages locked in basement rooms. Bill's dangerous passage leaves two people stranded: his brilliant, fixated assistant, Scott, and the strange young woman who is Scott's lover—and Bill's.]]> 241 Don DeLillo 0140152741 Glenn 5 3.70 1991 Mao II
author: Don DeLillo
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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]]> Cosmopolis 28703 209 Don DeLillo 0330412744 Glenn 3 3.29 2003 Cosmopolis
author: Don DeLillo
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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]]> Libra 400
In this powerful, unsettling novel, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.

A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.]]> 480 Don DeLillo 0140156046 Glenn 5 4.09 1988 Libra
author: Don DeLillo
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> Underworld 11761
Underworld opens with a breathlessly graceful prologue set during the final game of the Giants-Dodgers pennant race in 1951. Written in what DeLillo calls "super-omniscience" the sentences sweep from young Cotter Martin as he jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, runs out to the diamond, slides in on a fast ball, pops into the stands where J. Edgar Hoover is sitting with a drunken Jackie Gleason and a splenetic Frank Sinatra, and learns of the Soviet Union's second detonation of a nuclear bomb. It's an absolutely thrilling literary moment. When Bobby Thomson hits Branca's pitch into the outstretched hand of Cotter—the "shot heard around the world"—and Jackie Gleason pukes on Sinatra's shoes, the events of the next few decades are set in motion, all threaded together by the baseball as it passes from hand to hand.

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

Through fragments and interlaced stories—including those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and sundry others—DeLillo creates a fragile web of connected experience, a communal Zeitgeist that encompasses the messy whole of five decades of American life, wonderfully distilled.]]> 827 Don DeLillo 0330369954 Glenn 5 3.95 1997 Underworld
author: Don DeLillo
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> White Noise 11762 310 Don DeLillo 0140283307 Glenn 5 3.86 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 5
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]]> In the Skin of a Lion 5946 256 Michael Ondaatje 0679772669 Glenn 4 3.86 1987 In the Skin of a Lion
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> The Cat's Table 11076177
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table" - as far from the Captain's Table as can be - with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.

As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story - by turns poignant and electrifying - about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.]]> 269 Michael Ondaatje 0224093614 Glenn 4 3.61 2011 The Cat's Table
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> Anil's Ghost 5942 here.

With his first novel since the internationally acclaimed The English Patient, Booker Prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje gives us a work displaying all the richness of imagery and language and the piercing emotional truth that we have come to know as the hallmarks of his writing.

Anil’s Ghost transports us to Sri Lanka, a country steeped in centuries of tradition, now forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war. Into this maelstrom steps Anil Tissera, a young woman born in Sri Lanka, educated in England and America, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a story about love, about family, about identity, about the unknown enemy, about the quest to unlock the hidden past–a story propelled by a riveting mystery. Unfolding against the deeply evocative background of Sri Lanka’s landscape and ancient civilization, Anil’s Ghost is a literary spellbinder–Michael Ondaatje’s most powerful novel yet.]]> 311 Michael Ondaatje 0375724370 Glenn 4 3.59 2000 Anil's Ghost
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2000
rating: 4
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]]> The English Patient 11713 320 Michael Ondaatje 0771068719 Glenn 5 3.88 1992 The English Patient
author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> To the Lighthouse 59716
As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.]]> 209 Virginia Woolf Glenn 5 3.81 1927 To the Lighthouse
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1927
rating: 5
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]]> The Waves 46114 The Waves introduces six characters—three men and three women—who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Virginia Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing them through their thoughts and interior soliloquies. As their understanding of nature’s trials grows, the chorus of narrative voices blends together in miraculous harmony, remarking not only on the inevitable death of individuals but on the eternal connection of everyone. The novel that most epitomizes Virginia Woolf’s theories of fiction in the working form, The Waves is an amazing book very much ahead of its time. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental, and thrilling.]]> 297 Virginia Woolf 0156949601 Glenn 5 4.17 1931 The Waves
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1931
rating: 5
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]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Glenn 5 4.27 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1866
rating: 5
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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 Glenn 5 4.38 1879 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1879
rating: 5
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]]> Doctor Zhivago 130440
Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.]]> 592 Boris Pasternak 0679774386 Glenn 5 4.03 1957 Doctor Zhivago
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1957
rating: 5
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]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Glenn 5 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Glenn
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> Time's Arrow 23031 Time's Arrow the doctor Tod T. Friendly dies and then feels markedly better, breaks up with his lovers as a prelude to seducing them, and mangles his patients before he sends them home. And all the while Tod's life races backward in time toward the one appalling moment in modern history when such reversals make sense.

]]> 165 Martin Amis 0679735720 Glenn 5 3.78 1991 Time's Arrow
author: Martin Amis
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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]]> Great House 7907782
Connecting these stories is a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or have given it away. As the narrators of Great House make their confessions, the desk takes on more and more meaning, and comes finally to stand for all that has been taken from them, and all that binds them to what has disappeared.

Great House is a story haunted by questions: What do we pass on to our children and how do they absorb our dreams and losses? How do we respond to disappearance, destruction, and change?

Nicole Krauss has written a soaring, powerful novel about memory struggling to creat a meaningful permanence in the face of inevitable loss.

(front flap)]]> 289 Nicole Krauss 0393079988 Glenn 5 3.48 2010 Great House
author: Nicole Krauss
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> The Sea 3656 The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory. The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy” of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.” What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer]]> 195 John Banville 1400097029 Glenn 4 3.54 2005 The Sea
author: John Banville
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[True History of the Kelly Gang]]> 110090
In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
]]> 369 Peter Carey 0375724672 Glenn 5 3.84 2000 True History of the Kelly Gang
author: Peter Carey
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> Lila (Gilead, #3) 20575411
Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church - the only available shelter from the rain - and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.

Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves.

Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.]]> 261 Marilynne Robinson 0374187614 Glenn 4 3.95 2014 Lila (Gilead, #3)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> The Bone Clocks 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Glenn 4 3.82 2014 The Bone Clocks
author: David Mitchell
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> Daniel Deronda 304 796 George Eliot 037576013X Glenn 4 3.85 1876 Daniel Deronda
author: George Eliot
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1876
rating: 4
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Glenn 5 3.90 1847 Wuthering Heights
author: Emily Brontë
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1847
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)]]> 12374 Independence Day reveals a man and our country with unflinching comedy and the specter of hope and even permanence, all of which Richard Ford evokes with a keen intelligence, perfect emotional pitch, and a voice invested with absolute authority.]]> 464 Richard Ford 0099447126 Glenn 4 3.87 1995 Independence Day (Frank Bascombe, #2)
author: Richard Ford
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1995
rating: 4
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]]> The Great Gatsby 4671 here, here and here.

The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Glenn 5 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Glenn
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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