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"From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognizably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers-from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched...
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Celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers the author admires above all others, from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan.
In an age defined by hyper-connectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. Inspiring and illuminating, What to Read and Why includes selections culled from Prose's previous essays, reviews,...
3) The waves
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Innovative and deeply poetic, The Waves is often regarded as Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. It begins with six children--three boys and three girls--playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf draws her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their...
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An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style. Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence...
5) Pericles
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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...
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Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...
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Mikhail Lermontov's pioneering psychological novel, "A Hero of Our Time", is probably his most impactful work, one which influenced the works of other great Russian authors such as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The novel's narrative is the story of Pechorin a young officer in the army whose story is told in five non-chronological parts. Drawing upon his own experiences in the military, Lermontov creates a fascinating anti-hero in Pechorin, a man who is...
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"The New York Times film critic shows why we need criticism now more than ever. Few could explain, let alone seek out, a career in criticism. Yet what A.O. Scott shows in Better Living Through Criticism is that we are, in fact, all critics: because critical thinking informs almost every aspect of artistic creation, of civil action, of interpersonal life. With penetrating insight and warm humor, Scott shows that while individual critics--himself included--can...
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Description
John Gardner's essential collection encompassing the fundamentals of fiction writing. In this posthumously published collection of his essays and reviews, acclaimed novelist John Gardner discusses the craft of fiction writing, taking to task some of his best-known contemporaries in the process. Gardner criticizes some for writing disingenuous fiction, and commends others who produce literature that acts as a life-affirming force. He offers insights...
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"The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative - and readable - study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors...
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"This book explores resilience by tracing the linked stories of how Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James dealt with personal tragedy: for Emerson, the death of his young wife and, eleven years later, his five-year-old son; for Thoreau, the death of his brother; and for James, the death of his beloved cousin Minny. Weaving together biographical detail with quotations from the writers' journals and letters, Richardson shows readers...
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"The "Fresh Air" book critic investigates the enduring power of The Great Gatsby -- "The Great American Novel we all think we've read, but really haven't." Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece...
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German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche was one the most controversial figures of the 19th century. His evocative writings on religion, morality, culture, philosophy, and science were often polemic attacks against the established views of his time. First published in 1872, "The Birth of Tragedy" is the author's classic work on dramatic theory. It was the author's first published work in which he exhibited his enthusiasm for the dramatic works of Aeschylus...
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1886 Bannin Bay, Westaustralien: Strände voller glänzender Perlen und Muscheln so groß wie Teller – hier wollen die Brightwells mit Tochter Eliza ihr Glück finden. Zehn Jahre später ist Charles Brightwell der erfolgreichste Perlenfischer der Küste. Eines Tages jedoch kehrt sein Boot ohne ihn zurück, Charles ist spurlos verschwunden. Eliza weigert sich zu glauben, dass ihr Vater tot ist und forscht entschieden nach. Doch in einer Stadt voller...
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Am 13. Juli 2014 schrieb Mario Götze Fußballgeschichte. An diesem Tag schoss er die deutsche Nationalelf mit seinem 1:0 im WM-Finale gegen Argentinien zum Weltmeistertitel. Das Tor war der vorläufige Höhepunkt der noch jungen Karriere eines der talentiertesten Fußballer, die Deutschland je hatte. Wenn nur Pep Guar-diola, sein Trainer bei den Bayern, die Fähigkeiten des Ex-Dortmunders endlich voll ausschöpfen würde ...
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Description
"A few years into her marriage and feeling societal pressure to surrender to domesticity, Joanna Biggs found herself longing for a different kind of existence. Was this all there was? She divorced without knowing what would come next. Newly untethered, Joanna returned to the free-spirited writers of her youth and was soon reading in a fever--desperately searching for evidence of lives that looked more like her own, for the messiness and freedom, for...
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"How did Adeline Virginia Stephen become the great writer Virginia Woolf? Gillian Gill tells the stories of the women whose legacies—of strength, style, and creativity—shaped Woolf’s path to the radical writing that inspires so many today.
Gill casts back to Woolf’s French-Anglo-Indian maternal great-grandmother Thérèse de L’Etang, an outsider to English culture whose beauty passed powerfully down the female line; and to Woolf’s aunt...
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"In 1690, the dour New England Primer, thought to be the first American children's book, was published in Boston. Offering children gems of advice such as 'Strive to learn' and 'Be not a dunce,' it was no fun at all. So how did we get from there to 'Let the wild rumpus start'? And now that we're living in a golden age of children's literature, what can adults get out of reading Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon, or Charlotte's Web and Little...
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