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Author
Description
"What are you reading?" That's the quest Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer. This is the inspiring story of a son and his mother, who start a "book club"...
2) Mythology
Author
Series
Description
A collection of Greek and Roman myths from various classical sources arranged in section on the gods and early heroes, love and adventure stories, heroes before and during the Trojan War, and lesser myths. Includes a brief section on Norse mythology.
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Description
In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society,...
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2022
Description
Explore never-before-seen insights into the Wheel of Time, including:
• A brand-new, redrawn world map by Ellisa Mitchell using change requests discovered in Robert • Jordan's unpublished notes
• An alternate scene from an early draft of The Eye of the World
• The long-awaited backstory of Nakomi
Take a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Origins of The Wheel of...
Author
Description
In this uproarious exploration of the joys of reading, a long-time teacher, lifelong reader and The New Yorker contributor shares surprising stories from her life and the poignant ways in which books have impacted her students and shows us how literature can transform us for the better.
Author
Pub. Date
[2020]
Description
The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this "dazzling" essay collection (Wall Street Journal).
In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while...
In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while...
8) Pericles
Author
Description
Likely written around 1607 or 1608 and attributed at least in part to Shakespeare, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" is an adventure-filled play that follows the extended sailing journeys of a young prince. Pericles, a young prince from Phoenicia, is forced to flee Antioch when he correctly guesses a riddle that reveals the incestuous activity of King Antiochus. Unable to stay at home in Tyre because of Antiochus' vengeance, he sails away and ends up shipwrecked...
9) 1984
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
Description
A dictatorship called Big Brother rules the people in a collectivist society where Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth. Winston joins the underground where he becomes involved in a forbidden love affair.
Author
Pub. Date
[2016]
Description
In a collection that includes new essays written explicitly for this volume, one of our sharpest and most influential critics confronts the past, present, and future of literary culture.
If every outlet for book criticism suddenly disappeared - if all we had were reviews that treated books like any other commodity - could the novel survive? In a gauntlet-throwing essay at the start of this brilliant assemblage, Cynthia Ozick stakes the claim that,...
11) Holidays on ice
Author
Description
A best-selling classic features six additional works on the joys and embarrassments of favorite holidays, in a volume that includes tales of tardy trick-or-treaters, the difficulties of explaining the Easter Bunny to another culture, and a barnyard Secret Santa scheme gone awry.
Author
Description
Although one of his lesser known plays, Shakespeare's considerable abilities as a playwright are readily apparent in "Troilus and Cressida." This historical and tragic 'problem play', thought to be inspired by Chaucer, Homer, and some of Shakespeare's history-recording contemporaries, is initially a tale of a man and woman in love during the Trojan War. When Cressida is given to the Greeks in exchange for a prisoner of war, Troilus is determined to...
13) The Trial
Author
Series
Description
"A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his...
15) Twelfth night
Author
Series
Description
Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy devises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions, and mistaken identity. Juxtaposed to it is the satirical story of a self-deluded steward who dreams of becoming "Count Malvolio" only to receive his comeuppance at the hands of the merrymakers he wishes to suppress. The two plots combine to create a farce touched with melancholy, mixed throughout with seductively beautiful...
Author
Description
What is the role of literature in an era when one political party wages continual war on writers and the press? What is the connection between political strife in our daily lives, and the way we meet our enemies on the page in fiction? How can literature, through its free exchange, affect politics? In this galvanizing guide to literature as resistance, Nafisi seeks to answer these questions. Drawing on her experiences as a woman and voracious reader...
Author
Description
In this autobiography, initially published in 1903, Helen Keller recalls her remarkable life as a blind and deaf woman taught to communicate by Ann Sullivan. Here among other memories, Keller describes her epiphany at the water pump when she connected the physical world with its linguistic counterpart. Keller was eventually educated at Radcliffe University, where she graduated with honors.
18) King John
Author
Description
First published in the "First Folio" in 1623 and likely written in the 1590s, "King John" is one of William Shakespeare's best historical plays. It centers on the events of King John's reign of England during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. King John, son of Henry I of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, inherits the throne after the death of his older brother, King Richard I. John's claim to the throne is challenged by the King of...
19) M train
Author
Description
From the National Book Award���winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the caf��s and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as "a roadmap to my life." M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village caf�� where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook....
Author
Description
"As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution."--Book...