5744 results for "Literature"

Shadows on the Hudson

Isaac B. Singer
Serialized in the late 1950s, "Shadows on the Hudson" was translated from Yiddish and published posthumously as a complete novel in 1998, receiving widespread literary acclaim. From the Upper West Side to Miami's pastel resorts, Shadows on the Hudson traces the intertwined destiny of survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer has created a vibrant, resonant, and provocative cast of characters in search of answers to life's greatest dilemmas, challenges, and ironies.
Farrar, Straus And Giroux 1999

Lucy Church Amiably

Stein, Gertrude
There is no summarizing or explaining the writings of Gertrude Stein. With the exception of her fledgling efforts like Three Lives or her funny, successful memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , her fictions are without conventional plot, setting, or character. They are intellectual flowers, each sentence growing or receding from the one before it, repeating its main points with subtle, telling changes. In Lucy Church Amiably , first published in Paris in 1930 and long out of print, Stein describes the landscape and pastoral life of central France (while writing, she was staying near a small village named Lucy) in and through her character Lucy "Gradually remembering a lake. Gradually. Remembering. A lake. In gradually remembering a lake by the shore of the lake where they were sitting." Yet Stein is not opaque or purely she always provides solid details in unexpected places, specializing, as the critic Fred Dupee put it, in "the mingling of apparent conviction with transparent nonsense." She is a central figure in the modernist movement, but her relentless pleasure in her quirky, handmade idiom can repel the unwary reader. Although it is a delight to have this reprint, a brief introduction would have been useful for the uninitiated. Those interested in Stein should also turn to her Selected Writings , or, for a painless entrée to her work, begin with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . --Regina Marler
Something Else Press, Inc 1969-01-01 248 pages

A short history of fantasy

Mendlesohn, Farah
A history of the fantasy form, this work traces the genre from the earliest years with The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey through to the origins of modern fantasy in the 20th century with such acclaimed writers as Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling. An exploration of the great variety of fiction published under the heading “fantasy,” this engaging study seeks to explain its continuing and ever growing popularity.
London 2009 285 pages

Hard-core romance: Fifty shades of grey, best-sellers, and society

Illouz, Eva
"From its beginnings in Twilight fan-fiction to its record-breaking sales as an e-book and paperback, the story of the erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels is both unusual and fascinating. Having sold over seventy million copies worldwide since 2011, E. L. James’s lurid series about a sexual ingénue and the powerful young entrepreneur who introduces her to BDSM sex has ingrained itself in our collective consciousness. But why have these particular novels—poorly written and formulaic as they are—become so popular, especially among women over thirty? In this concise, engaging book, Eva Illouz subjects the Fifty Shades cultural phenomenon to the serious scrutiny it has been begging for. After placing the trilogy in the context of best-seller publishing, she delves into its remarkable appeal, seeking to understand the intense reading pleasure it provides and how that resonates with the structure of relationships between men and women today. Fifty Shades, Illouz argues, is a gothic romance adapted to modern times in which sexuality is both a source of division between men and women and a site to orchestrate their reconciliation. As for the novels’ notorious depictions of bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism, Illouz shows that these are as much a cultural fantasy as a sexual one, serving as a guide to a happier romantic life. The Fifty Shades trilogy merges romantic fantasy with self-help guide—two of the most popular genres for female readers. Offering a provocative explanation for the success and popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey novels, Hard-Core Romance is an insightful look at modern relationships and contemporary women’s literature"--Publisher's website.
The University of Chicago Press 2014 97 pages

The English reader: what every literate person needs to know

Diane Ravitch,Michael Ravitch
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) -- Scarborough Fair -- Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) -- Christopher Marlowe (1564 - 1593) -- Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) -- Greensleeves -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- John Donne (1572 - 1631) -- Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637) -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- King James Bible (1611) -- Robert Herrick (1591 - 1674) -- George Herbert (1593 - 1633) -- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) -- Barbara Allen -- John Milton (1608 - 1674) -- Jeremy Taylor (1613 - 1667) -- The two brothers -- Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) -- Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678) -- John Bunyan (1628-1688) -- Lord Randal -- John Dryden (1631 - 1700) -- John Locke (1632 - 1704) -- The girl i left behind me -- Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) -- Our God, our help in ages past -- Joy to the world -- Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) -- Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744) -- Rule, Brittania -- John Wesley (1703 - 1791) -- Jesus, lover of my soul -- William Pitt (1708 - 1778) -- Heart of Oak -- Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) -- Thomas Gray (1716 - 1771) -- Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) -- God save the queen -- Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) -- Oliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774) -- William Cowper (1731 - 1800) -- William Blake (1757 - 1827) -- Mary Wollstonecraft (1859 - 1897) -- Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) -- Auld lang syne -- William Wilberforce (1759 - 1833) -- Amazing Grace -- William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) -- Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832) -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) -- Walter Savage Landor (1775 - 1824) -- William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830) -- Lord Byron (1788 - 1824) -- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) -- John Clare (1793 - 1864) -- Felicia Hemans (1793 - 1835) -- John Keats (1795 - 1821) -- Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) -- Thomas Hood (1799-1845) -- John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890) -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861) -- John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) -- Edward Fitzgerald (1809 - 1883) -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892) -- Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) -- Edward Lear (1812 - 1888) -- Robert Browning (1812 - 1889) -- Emily Bronte (1818 - 1848) -- John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) -- Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888) -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895) -- I know where I'm going -- Walter Bagehot (1826 - 1877) -- Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894) -- Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898) -- William Morris (1834 - 1896) -- Walter Pater (1839 - 1894) -- Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) -- Algernon Charles Swinburne (1843 - 1909) -- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889) -- W. E. Henley (1849 - 1903) -- The Major General's song -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) -- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) -- Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 - 1928) -- A. E. Houseman (1859 - 1936) -- David Lloyd George (1863 - 1945) -- There'll always be an England -- Roger Casement (1864 - 1916) -- Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) -- William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) -- G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) -- Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917) -- E. M. Forster (1879 - 1970) -- Virginia Woolf (1881 - 1941) -- D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930) -- Rupert Brooke (1887 - 1915) -- Keep the home fires burning -- T.S Eliot (1888 - 1965) -- Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918) -- George Orwell (1903 - 1950) -- W.H. Auden (1907-1973) -- Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) -- Phillip Larkin (1922- 1985) -- Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965).
Oxford University Press 2007 486 pages

12 Edmondstone Street

Malouf, David
Each house, like each place, has its own topography, its own lore. A complex history comes down to us, through household jokes and anecdotes, odd family habits and irrational superstitutions, that forever shapes what we see and the way in which we see it. In his book, David Malouf, one of Australia's most prestigious writers, takes an unsentimental journey into his past. Beginning with his childhood home, he moves on to show other landmarks in his life, and the way places and things create our private worlds. Written with humour and uncompromising intelligence, 12 Edmondstone Street is an unforgettable portrait of one man's life.
Penguin 1986 134 pages

Bible stories: retold by David Kossoff

Kossoff, David
Over 90 stories from the Bible, vividly retold by David Kossoff in this long-running bestseller. David Kossoff first starting retelling Bible stories for BBC radio in the early sixties. He was so popular that he was given his own television series, made records and public performances, and even had one of his pieces set to music and premiered at the Festival Hall. In this collection of tales from the Old Testament, ranging from Adam and Eve to Daniel, he sets vivid scenes and brings characters to life with simplicity and imagination, reaching every time to the very heart of the story. 'There is no more difficult task than to make the old new and the familiar interesting...This is the reason why I have read with such pleasure and delight David Kossoff's stories from the Bible. To my mind there is no doubt at all that he makes these stories come alive. He has the gift of making old stories new for he is a born story teller.' From the Foreword by William Barclay
Fount 1999 200 pages

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

Danilo Kiš
Composed of seven dark tales, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich presents variations on the theme of political and social self-destruction throughout Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The characters in these stories are caught in a world of political hypocrisy, which ultimately leads to death, their common fate. Although the stories Kis tells are based on historical events, the beauty and precision of his prose elevates these ostensibly true stories into works of literary art that transcend the politics of their time.
Harcourt Brace Jovanocich 1987 139 pages

Why Orwell Matters

Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. In his emulative and contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the facade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture towards which he exhibited much ambivalence.
MJF Books 2002 211 pages