Jaspreet Singh

Hector Jaime Oropesa

aasta Haukland

Jayden

Alokym ya Bassa

Joseph Greer

Catalina Olmos

George Balaskas

Ojasw Upadhyay

Taylor Robinson

Carly Hylton

Daniel Mariani

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything else in between. Part One: The Garden of Forking Paths Prologue Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940) The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (1936, not included in the 1941 edition) Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939) The Circular Ruins (1940) The Lottery in Babylon (1941) An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain (1941) The Library of Babel (1941) The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) Part Two: Artifices Prologue Funes the Memorious (1942) The Form of the Sword (1942) Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (1944) Death and the Compass (1942) The Secret Miracle (1943) Three Versions of Judas (1944) The End (1953, 2nd edition only) The Sect of the Phoenix (1952, 2nd edition only) The South (1953, 2nd edition only)

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes." With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

A mysterious stranger and his retinue have astonished the locals of Stalin’s Moscow with the magic show to end all magic shows and have quite literally set the town alight. But what’s the real purpose behind their visit?

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time, the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain." Roquentin's efforts to try and come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.The introduction for this edition of Nausea by Hayden Carruth gives background on Sartre's life and major works, a summary of the principal themes of Existentialist philosophy, and a critical analysis of the novel itself.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Inspired by the myth of a man condemned to ceaselessly push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll back to the valley below, The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.

I don’t know what to do with these stars anymore. I give stars to books and then I think, ‘god, you give five stars to everything, people will think you are terribly undiscriminating’ – so then I give four stars or even three stars to some books. Then I look back and it turns out that that I’ve given four stars to Of Human Bondage and honestly, how could I possibly have thought it was a good idea to give that book less than five stars? It is the absurdity of human conventions that has us doing such things.Now, that is what is called a segue, from the Italian ‘seguire’ – to follow. For the last thirty years I have studiously avoided reading this book. I have done that because for the last thirty years I have known exactly what this book is about and there just didn’t seem any point in reading it. In high school friends (one of them even became my ex-wife) told me it was a great book about a man condemned to die because he was an outsider. Later I was told that this book was a story about something much like the Azaria Chamberlain case. A case where someone does not react in a way that is considered to be ‘socially appropriate’ and is therefore condemned.But after 30 years of avoiding reading this book I have finally relented and read it. At first I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. It didn’t really get off to the raciest of starts and the character's voice – it is told in first person – was a bit dull. He is a man who lives entirely in the present, how terribly Buddhist of him – although, really there doesn’t seem to be all that much to him.My opinion of the book began to change at his mother’s funeral. I particularly liked the man who kept falling behind in the march to the cemetery and would take short cuts. Okay, so it is black humour, but Camus was more or less French – so black humour is more or less obligatory.I really hadn’t expected this book to be nearly so funny as it turned out. I’d always been told it was a ponderous philosophical text – and so, to be honest, I was expecting to be bored out of my skull. I wasn’t in the least bit bored.A constant theme in my life at present is that I read ‘classics’ expecting them to be about something and they end up being about something completely different. And given I’ve called this a ‘constant’ theme then you might think I would be less than surprised when a read a new ‘classic’ and it turns out to be completely different to my expectations. I’m a little more upset about this one than some of the others, as I’ve been told about this one before, repeatedly, and by people I’d have taken as ‘reputable sources’ – although, frankly, how well one should trust one’s ex-wife in such matters is moot.I had gotten the distinct impression from all of my previous discussions about this book that the guy ends up dead. In fact, this is not the case – he ends up at the point in his life where he has no idea if he will be freed or not. The Priest who comes to him at the end is actually quite certain that he will be freed. Let’s face it, he is only guilty of having murdered an Arab, and as we have daily evidence, Westerners can murder Arabs with complete impunity. The main point of the book to me is when he realises he is no longer ‘free’. He needs this explained to him – because life up until then had been about ‘getting used to things’ and one can 'get used to just about anything'. But the prison guard helpfully informs him that he is being ‘punished’ and the manifestation of that punishment is the removal of his ‘freedom’. Interestingly, he didn’t notice the difference between his past ‘free’ life and his current ‘unfree’ one. The most interesting part of the book to me was the very end, the conversation with the priest. The religious often make the mistake of thinking that Atheists are one thing – I’ve no idea how they ever came to make this mistake, but make it they do. Given that there are thousands upon thousands of different shades of Christians – from Jesuit Catholics to Anti-Disney Episcopalians – it should be fairly obvious that something like Atheism (without any ‘organised’ church or even system of beliefs) could not be in anyway ‘homogeneous’.I am definitely not the same kind of Atheist as Camus. To Camus there is no truth, the world is essentially absurd and all that exists is the relative truth an individual places on events and ideas. This makes the conversation with the priest fascinatingly interesting. To the priest the prisoner who is facing death is – by necessity – someone who is interested in God. You can play around with ideas like the non-existence of God when it doesn’t seem to matter (life is long and blasphemy can seem fun) – but surely when confronted with the stark truth of the human condition any man would turn away from their disbelief and see the shining light.Not this little black duck. Now, if I was in that cell I would have argued with the priest too – but I would not have argued in the same way that Meursault argues. No, I do not believe in God, but I do believe in truth, and so Camus’ arguments are barred to me.Meursault essentially says, “Look, I’m bored, I’m totally uninterested in the rubbish you are talking – now go away”. Now, this is a reasonable response. What is very interesting is that the priest cannot accept this as an answer. The world is not allowed to have such a person in it – if such a person really did exist then it would be a fundamental challenge to the core beliefs of the priest. So, he has to assume Meursault is either lying to him or is trying to taunt him. But it is much worse – he is absolutely sincere, he is not interested in this ‘truth’.I don’t know that the world is completely meaningless, it is conventional rather than meaningless. That those conventions are arbitrary (decided by the culture we grew up in) doesn’t make them meaningless, it makes them conventional. I don’t think I would like to live in a world where people go up and kill Arabs pretty much at random and with impunity, but then again, we have already established this is precisely the world I do live in. My point is that it would be better if we did adhere to some sort of moral principles and that these should be better principles than ‘he should be killed because he didn’t cry at his mum’s funeral’. Camus is seeking to say that all of our ‘moral principles’ in the end come to be as meaningless as that – we judge on the basis of what we see from the framework of our own limited experience. And look, yes, there is much to this – but this ends up being too easy.The thing I like most about Existentialism, though it isn’t really as evident in this book as it is in the actual philosophy – although this is something that Meursault is supposed to have grown to understand (sorry, just one more sub-clause) even though this wasn’t something I noticed at all while reading the book, was the notion of responsibility. I didn’t think in the end Meursault was all that much more ‘responsible’ for his actions than he had been at the start. But I do think that ‘responsibility’ is a key concept in morality and one that seems increasingly to be ignored.Better by far that we feel responsible for too much in our lives than too little – better by far that we take responsibility for the actions of our governments (say) than to call these governments ‘them’. I’m not advocating believing in The Secret - but that if one must err, better to err on the side of believing you have too much responsibility for how your life has turned out, rather than too little.So, what can I say? I enjoyed this much more than I expected – but I’m still glad I waited before reading it, I really don’t think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it at 15 as I did now.

Italo Calvino's extraordinary imagination and intelligence combine here in an enchanting series of stories about the evolution of the universe. He makes his characters out of mathematical formulae and simple cellular structures. They disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms, and even have a love life.During the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. He succeeds in relating complex scientific concepts to the ordinary reactions of common humanity.William Weaver's excellent translation won a National Book Award in 1969“Naturally, we were all there," old Qfwfq said, "where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?”

Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of such contemporary masters of supernatural fiction as Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, and Kelly Link, who introduces this edition of Carter's most celebrated book, published for the seventy-fifth anniversary of her birth.In The Bloody Chamber - which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan's 1984 movie The Company of Wolves - Carter spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like "Little Red Riding Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Beauty and the Beast," giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

An alternate cover edition can be found here.Black Venus (also published as Saints and Strangers), is an anthology of short fiction. Angela Carter takes real people and literary legends - most often women - who have been mythologized or marginalized and recasts them in a new light. In a style that is sensual, cerebral, almost hypnotic, "The Fall River Axe-Murders" portrays the last hours before Lizzie Borden's infamous act: the sweltering heat, the weight of flannel and corsets, the clanging of the factory bells, the food reheated and reserved despite the lack of adequate refrigeration, the house "full of locked doors that open only into other rooms with other locked doors." In "Our Lady of the Massacre" the no-nonsense voice of an eighteenth-century prostitute/runaway slave questions who is civilized - the Indians or the white men? "Black Venus" gives voice to Charles Baudelaire's Creole mistress, Jeanne Duval: "you could say, not so much that Jeanne did not understand the lapidary, troubled serenity of her lover's poetry but, that it was a perpetual affront to her. He recited it to her by the hour and she ached, raged and chafed under it because his eloquence denied her language." "The Kiss" takes the traditional story of Tamburlaine's wife and gives it a new and refreshing ending. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking, Angela Carter's stories offer a feminist revision of images that lie deep in the public psyche.

In this heartbreakingly beautiful book of disillusioned intimacy and persistent yearning, beloved and celebrated author Andre Dubus III explores the bottomless needs and stubborn weaknesses of people seeking gratification in food and sex, work and love.In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into the next, love is "dirty"—tangled up with need, power, boredom, ego, fear, and fantasy. On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty-five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she’s met surfing the Web.Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.

Sadism and masochism beneath a veneer of revenge. Lou Ford is a mild-mannered sheriff's deputy in a Texas oil town in the mid 1950's. His boss sends him to roust a prostitute living in a rural house. She slaps him; he hits her, then, after daily sex for the next few weeks, he decides it's love. She's devoted to him and becomes his pawn in a revenge plot she thinks is to shakedown the son of Chester Conway, the town's wealthy king of construction. Lou has a different plan, and bodies pile up as murder leads to murder. The district attorney suspects Lou, and Conway may have an inkling, but Lou stays cool. Is love, or at least peace, in the cards?

2010 film directed by Michael Winterbottom

Needing extra cash, two brothers conspire to pull off the perfect, victimless crime. No guns, no violence, no problem. But when an accomplice ignores the rules and crosses the line, his actions trigger a series of events in which no one is left unscathed.

Recently divorced Meg Altman and her daughter Sarah have bought a new home in New York. On their tour around the mansion, they come across the panic room. A room so secure, that no one can get in. When three burglars break in, Meg makes a move to the panic room. But all her troubles don't stop there. The criminals know where she is, and what they require the most in the house is in that very room.

John Holmes was a legend of the porn industry and revered in circles as a stud. But in 1981, years after his successful career and star fading, Holmes was a desperate man with his own internal demons to live up to. He's estranged from his wife, holding onto a relationship with his teenage mistress, and living as a junkie in search of his next fix. But one fateful night left four people dead and John as a key suspect in one of the most grisly murders in Los Angeles. Was he partly responsible for what happened at Wonderland Avenue?

Charlie is an ex-professor turned reluctant call center employee who gets fired on the first day. Distraught at being unable to provide for his daughter Emily and wife Penelope, he accepts when Gus, an aspiring scam artist who presents Charlie with a seemingly snag-free plan to make some cash. The plan is to blackmail Reverend Smalls, a man of the cloth, who's frequently turned up in the company database of visitors to illegal porn sites. Gus plans to extort Reverend Smalls, with the intention of publicly exposing his secret shame should he refuse, thus potentially destroying the man's career. Normally cautious, Charlie is keen on participating in this scam, confident that the money he'll make from the scam will finally help turn things around for him and his family. Joined by one-time teenage pageant queen Josie McBroom, Gus's ex, the plan goes ahead, but it all goes wrong as Reverend Smalls dies thanks to this trio, with this only being the start of their troubles.

The movie opens in a Los Angeles convenience store one late Monday night, where a smalltime drug dealer named Nick (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to decide what coffee brand to buy. His ex-lover Dallas (Paulina Porizkova) and fellow hitman Billy Hill (James LeGros) are getting impatient and tell him to hurry up. Conflicts between Nick and the cashier (Luck Hari) ensue, resulting in Dallas shooting the cashier dead. Though the three attempt to cover up the crime, they are forced to also shoot a police officer (Bari K. Willerford) when he discovers blood on the ground.

Ex-mob boss Christopher Walken is kidnapped by a group of four kids in a haphazard attempt at paying the ransom for another, separate kidnapping. Complexities arise as the group cannot seem to do anything right.

Injured after committing a bank robbery, John Taylor is desperate to find a place to hide out and approaches the home of Warwick Wilson. John manages to get himself invited into the house by posing as a friend of a friend and spinning a sob story of lost luggage and a violent mugging. Inside, Warwick, a consummate host, is making the final preparations for an impeccable dinner party. He insists John stay for the party, but as the evening begins it becomes obvious Warwick may not be what he first appears.

A few incidents that happen at 11:14 p.m. in the town of Middleton are seen from five different perspectives, each of the players who generally works toward self interest, not caring about the consequence to other people, and in the process exacerbating the situations by his or her actions. Jack, in town to meet someone, is a chronic drinker and driver, he still doing so despite having his license temporarily suspended. Teens Mark, Eddie, and Tim are out for a joyride in Mark's van, they generally causing havoc all in the name of having fun, that is until something goes wrong. Frank, out for a walk with his dog, stumbles across something which makes him jump to a conclusion about his daughter, to whom he is both overprotective and overly trusting. Duffy, who works as a clerk at Lloyd's EZZZ Stop convenience store, goes to the store just as it is closing to ask his friend, the clerk on duty, Buzzy, for a favor, which may be difficult for her to grant based on her own needs, and Cheri is trying to get a few hundred dollars for an abortion from the purported "fathers", while in reality, she has another plan in mind. All their actions make for a busy night for the first responders on-duty, including Officer Hannagan, and paramedics Leon and Kevin.

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

In Paris, a young American who works as a Michael Jackson look-alike meets Marilyn Monroe, who invites him to her commune in Scotland, where she lives with Charlie Chaplin and her daughter, Shirley Temple.

A thief awakens Valerie, just 13, taking earrings left to her by her mother. By morning, the earrings have been returned, Valerie's first period has begun, and a troupe and a missionary have arrived in her 19th century town. The thief is Orick; he reports to a cloaked constable who may also be the missionary. Attention to sexuality is everywhere: Valerie's grandmother's puritanical nature, the missionary's sermon to the town's virgins, the parish priest's attempt to seduce Valerie, and lusty adults at play. Valerie's nascent sexuality puts her in great danger. Can she navigate the passage from innocence to experience, a route teaming with vampires, a murderer, and an obscure family tree?

Inspired by real events, this is a black comedy about 20 years of history of Sicily from 1970s to 1990s, mocking Mafia Bosses and restoring the generosity of the heroes of Antimafia. It's focused on Arturo, a young boy who grows up in Palermo and tries to conquer his beloved Flora.

Tired of her husband's philandering ways, the mother of two daughters drowns her husband. With the reluctant help of the local coroner, the murder is covered up. Her daughters are having similar problems with relationships, and tend to follow their mother's example, and the coroner becomes reluctantly involved in their murders as well. As the plot progresses, visual and spoken numbers appear in the scenes, counting from one to one hundred.

Jakub's life arrived at a dead-end. He leaves his job, and gets into conflict with his father. The trouble just grows by his relation with a married woman. Breaking out, Jakub realizes the pleasures of the countryside in the old garden of his grandfather. He finds true love with an angel, and encounters various exciting moments of his new free life. Strange visitors arrive, and he wont get back to town anymore.

1995 Slovak feature film directed by Martin Šulík

Francine Fishpaw is an upper middle class suburban housewife in Baltimore. Unfortunately, the money to support her lifestyle comes from her husband's porno theater, the neighbors are protesting, her son is a "stomper", her daughter is knocked up by a local hoodlum, and her husband is having an affair.

Sleaze queen Divine lives in a caravan with her mad hippie son Crackers and her 250-pound mother Mama Edie, trying to rest quietly on their laurels as 'the filthiest people alive'. But competition is brewing in the form of Connie and Raymond Marble, who sell heroin to schoolchildren and kidnap and impregnate female hitchhikers, then sell the babies to lesbian couples. Finally, they challenge Divine directly, and battle commences.

A small group of adult bourgeois friends are on a day outing in the country, that outing which includes having a picnic. While they are going for a walk after the picnic, they encounter a group of officious looking men who commandeer them to a small clearing. Although there is no direct threat and the picnickers are not scared, they nonetheless feel the need to do what the men say. The men, led by one called Rudolph, set the rules of "the game". Ultimately, the picnickers learn that Rudolph was supposed to invite them to a party nearby. Much like the game, the party's host sets the rules for the party to which the picnickers and all the other guests must abide. Order in the eyes of the host seems to be paramount. Although the picnickers and the other guests enjoy many aspects of the party, some just do not want to be there, such thinking which cannot be tolerated.

Several bourgeois friends planning to get together for dinner experience a succession of highly unusual occurrences that interfere with their expected dining enjoyment.

After realizing that all world is spoiled, blond Marie and brunette Marie are committed to be spoiled themselves. Their life motto is: Nothing is bad as long as you are having fun. They rip off older men, feast in lavish meals and do all kinds of mischief. But what is all this leading to?

A group of friends work together on a children's show.

A look at the life of a rap star and his entourage.

The series centers on Julio Lopez, a punk-ass bitch with a heart of gold who goes out of his way to help everyone but himself. Inspired by the life and stand-up comedy of star, co-creator and real-life punk ass bitch Estrada, the cinematic half-hour comedy explores Julio's attempts to better his community, overcome his codependency issues with his family and navigate working class life in South Central.

Inspired by the popular series of CollegeHumor Originals, HOT DATE is a new television comedy from Pop TV and Big Breakfast spotlighting modern-day relationships and dating dilemmas. The series stars real-life married couple Emily Axford and Brian K. Murphy, two CollegeHumor comedians who also star in the "Hot Date" digital series, which has garnered over 100 million views to date. Executive produced by Will Arnett ("Arrested Development," "30 Rock") and Electus production company Big Breakfast ("Adam Ruins Everything"), HOT DATE chronicles the social mores of dating, sex and marriage.

Life is really tough for Julie Kessler (Julie Klausner) and Billy Epstein (Billy Eichner), two thirty-something aspiring comics living and working in New York City. While their friends and acquaintances move on to find success and love, they continue to struggle with careers and relationships, getting more bitter by the day.

When retired Los Angeles businessman Neil Bremer decides to run for mayor of his beloved city, he surprises everyone and wins the seat. With great ideas and commitment to the community, he optimistically sets out to get to work shaking up City Hall. However, he quickly discovers navigating politics is not business as usual. There are opinions to be heard, ribbons to be cut and foods to be eaten -- all in support of his fellow citizens. Luckily, he can rely on the know-how of his political-veteran deputy Arpi -- whose savvy and ambition make her equal parts friend and foil -- and the dedication of his offbeat staff to keep him on the right path, as well as some inspiration from his teenage daughter.

Centers around comedian Rob Schneider's real life while living in Hollywood.

The Mick centers on Mackenzie "Mickey" Murphy (Olson), a hard-living, foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking woman who moves to affluent Greenwich, CT to raise the spoiled kids of her wealthy sister who has fled the country to avoid a federal indictment. She quickly learns what the rest of us already know - other people's children are awful.

American comedy television series (2017-2018)

Follows a documentary crew, who go to a small town to study young adults and their current concerns. Their focus is the daily lives of cousins Kelly and Shrub Mallet and their idiosyncratic surroundings.

With help from her dad and grandmother, Nora Lum navigates young adulthood in Flushing, New York with her cousin.

A sketch comedy show that follows the absurd adventures of Michael, Michael and David.

A New Jersey mom puts her relationship with her daughter to the test when she lands an internship at her new job, which comes with many challenges.

A former philosophy professor who takes a job teaching advanced placement biology uses his students to get back at the people in his life who have wronged him.

An ensemble workplace comedy about a group of underdogs trying to find their place in the world, set on the Friday night flight from LAX to Vegas and the returning flight on Sunday, who all share the same goal: to come back a winner in the casino of life.

A woman overcomes childhood leukemia to achieve her dream of becoming an on-air host at a home shopping network.

A man's camping trip with his wife and friends spirals out of control. A U.S. adaptation of the British series, 'Camping'.

Two not-so-young socially-awkward Millennials--rich, self-conscious, unmotivated Benji and his poor, freeloading, self-centered, strictly-platonic best friend Esther--try to fit in with L.A.'s vain and status-obsessed elite.

American comedy series created by and starring Benji Aflalo and Esther Povitsky

Two American physicians in São Paulo, Brazil, discover a civilization-threatening virus and are recruited as government agents in a race against time and around the world to find a cure and uncover a dark conspiracy.

A young African-American comedian rises among the ranks of the stand-up world and braces for "break-out" fame.

Sarah Silverman stars as Sarah Silverman, an unemployed single woman who still behaves like a child. Sarah depends in everything on her sister (played by her real sister Laura). Sarah is petty, self centered, childish, sometimes dumb and always Jewish. Other characters are her two gay neighbors (or gaybors as she calls them) and Laura's boyfriend who is a police officer.

G.L.

Foucault's Pendulum is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. The novel is full of esoteric references to the Kabbalah. The title of the book refers to an actual pendulum designed by the French physicist Léon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the earth, which has symbolic significance within the novel.Bored with their work, and after reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, three vanity publisher employees (Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon) invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "The Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real.The three become increasingly obsessed with The Plan, and sometimes forget that it's just a game. Worse still, other conspiracy theorists learn about The Plan, and take it seriously. Belbo finds himself the target of a real secret society that believes he possesses the key to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semioticadventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.

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Titta di Girolamo has a regular, even tedious life--nothing extravagant apart from his own name, as he tends to say. He's been living in a hotel in the Swiss city of Lugano for eight years, spending his days waiting for some kind of change in his boring life. His existence is too rigid and detached, full of loneliness and repetitive routine. Titta ignores everyone and probably has no emotions at all. But one day he decides to break all his personal rules and exchanges some words with Sofia, the hotel barmaid. His situation suddenly changes: emotions, love, Mafia, and death violently re-enter Titta's life.

The Los Angeles-set tale follows Ronnie, a man who runs a Disco Walking tour along with his browbeaten son, Brayden. When a sexy, alluring woman comes to take the tour, it begins a competition between father and son for her attentions. It also signals the appearance of an oily, slimy inhuman maniac who stalks the streets at night and strangles the innocent, soon dubbed 'The Greasy Strangler.'

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