Emo Nemo

Mily

Sarah

Shaidrian Rios

Jimmy Beans

miCCwatreSSop

Julie Wynne - videos

Kapuster

Nicky Tallon

Harini Sen

Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs."Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life.

When Jack Kerouac’s On the Road first appeared in 1957, readers instantly felt the beat of a new literary rhythm. A fictionalised account of his own journeys across America with his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s beatnik odyssey captured the soul of a generation and changed the landscape of American fiction for ever.Influenced by Jack London and Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac always wanted to be a writer, but his true voice only emerged when he wrote about his own experiences in On the Road. Leaving a broken marriage behind him, Sal Paradise (Kerouac) joins Dean Moriarty (Cassady), a tearaway and former reform school boy, on a series of journeys that takes them from New York to San Francisco, then south to Mexico. Hitching rides and boarding buses, they enter a world of hobos and drifters, fruit-pickers and migrant families, small towns and wide horizons. Adrift from conventional society, they experience America in the raw: a place where living is hard, but ‘life is holy and every moment is precious’.With its smoky, jazz-filled atmosphere and its restless, yearning spirit of adventure, On the Road left its mark on the culture of the late 20th century, influencing countless books, films and songs. Kerouac’s prose is remarkable both for its colloquial swing and for the pure lyricism inspired by the American landscape – ‘the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susquehanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy’. This Folio Society edition is illustrated with evocative photographs of Kerouac and the landscapes of 1950s America. Now acknowledged as a modern classic, On the Road remains a thrilling and poignant story of the road less travelled.

No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. As Williams's first popular success, it launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career, of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, Menagaerie has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by the editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Robert Bray, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." (back cover)

No Exit (French: Huis Clos, pronounced [ɥi klo]) is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The original title is the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors. The play was first performed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in May 1944. The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. It is the source of Sartre's especially famous quotation "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness.

I was five and a half years old when my mother gave me The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a New Year's gift (she is a literature teacher, and I have been reading novels since the tender age of four or so, and so it seemed appropriate).Being a diligent and serious¹ child (neither of those qualities have stuck with me, unfortunately), I opened it to page 1 and started reading. I even took it with me to kindergarten, where other kids were learning letters and I was mercifully allowed to read hefty tomes, having obviously achieved full literacy by that point.¹ \
Me (age 5) and Mom. The diligent seriousness is *all over* this picture. This book initially left me quite confused, but I was undeterred - after all, the world was a confusing place, full of adults and rules and great books - even those without pictures. (And I was very proud to own books without pictures, after all). But his one was just too strange - its beginning did not quite fit with the rest of the quite fun story - it was odd and dry and incomprehensible for the first 40 pages or so, and it even was about some other guy (Samuel Clemens?) who was not Tom Sawyer.A few years later I reread my early childhood favorite (I probably reached a ripe old age of eight or so, still diligent but a bit less serious already). It was then that I figured out what seemed strange about the beginning of this book when I was five.You see, I diligently slogged my way through the most boring academic foreword, assuming that was the first chapter. What amazes me that I managed to stay awake through it. Good job, five-year-old me! Excellent preparation for that painfully boring biochemistry course a couple of decades later!After that foreword, slogging through any classic was a comparative breeze. Yes, I'm looking at you, War and Peace! You know what you did, you endless tome.Also, as it turns out, when you include two characters named Joe in one book (Injun Joe and Tom's classmate Joe Harper) that can cause a certain amount of confusion to a five-year-old who assumes they have to be the same person and struggles really hard to reconcile their seemingly conflicting characters. And, as a side note, I have always been disappointed at Tom Sawyer tricking his friends to do the infamous fence whitewashing. A *real* kid knows after all that painting stuff is fun. Five-year-old me was a bit disapproving of the silliness. I have told bits and pieces of this book to my friends on the playground, while dangling from the monkey bars or building sandcastles (in a sandbox, that in retrospect I suspect was used by the neighborhood stray cats as a litterbox - but I guess you have to develop immunity to germs somehow). We may have planned an escape to an island in a true Tom Sawyer fashion, but the idea fizzled. After all, we did not have an island nearby, which was a problem. Also, we may have got distracted by the afternoon cartoons.Someday, I just may have to leave this book within a reach of my future hypothetical daughter - as long as I make sure it does not come with a long-winded boring introduction.

Στα 1816 ο δεκαεπτάχρονος Balzac μπήκε ως μαθητευόμενος στο δικηγορικό γραφείο του κυρίου Guyonnet de Merville, που υπήρξε ένας τίμιος και ακέραιος άνθρωπος και που, χωρίς να το επιδιώξει, αποτέλεσε πηγή εμπνευσης τόσο για τον θεατρικό συγγραφέα Eugène Scribe, (τον εβαλε να πρωταγωνιστεί στο έργο του Τα ενδοτερα του δικηγορικού γραφείου ή Ο ανακριτής και ο δικηγόρος με το όνομα Derville) όσο και για τον ίδιο τον Balzac, οποίος διατήρησε το ίδιο επινοημένο όνομα. 'Ετσι εδώ, σε ετούτη τη νουβέλα, με τίτλο Gobseck, είναι ο δικηγόρος Derville που αφηγείται την ιστορία του ιδιόρρυθμου, μισανθρώπου τοκογλύφου που δίνει το όνομα του στον τίτλο. Μέσα από διαδοχικές επεξεργασίες, το έργο, δημοσιεύτηκε αρχικά με τον τίτλο L'Usurier στο περιοδικο La Mode στα 1830 μετα στην συλλογή Scènes de la vie privée. Tome 1 par M. de Balzac στα 1832 με τον τίτλο Les Dangers de l'inconduite κι αργότερα, στα 1835 ο τίτλος μεταλλάχθηκε σε Papa Gobseck και τελικά πήρε την τελική του μορφή, Gobseck, στα 1842. Ανάμεσα στην έκδοση του 1832 και την τελική, όπου μπόρεσα να συγκρίνω, υπάρχουν μεγάλες διαφορές. Η κόμισσα de Grandlieu και η κόρη της, η Camille, καθώς και ο Ernest de Restaud και φυσικά ο ίδιος Gobseck παραμένουν ως έχουν, ωστόσο ο Derville παρουσιάζεται απλώς ως ο L'avoué (ο δικηγόρος), η κόμισσα Anastasie de Restaud (κόρη του Goriot και ερωμένη του Maxime de Trailles) αναφέρεται ως Emilie και ο εραστής της παραμένει ανώνυμος, και δεν υπάρχει καμία αναφορά στην la Torpille η οποία στο μεταγενέστερο κείμενο θα παρουσιαστεί ως κόρη της ανιψιάς του Gobseck. Η τελευταία σκηνή στο δωμάτιο του ήρωα παραλείπεται (και είναι μία σκηνή μεγαλειώδης μέσα στην ολοκληρωτική φρίκη της) και αρχικά το έργο κλείνει με μια αινιγματική φράση του γέρου τοκογλύφου, που εκφράζει τον κυνισμό του. Όπως και να έχει ο κεντρικός χαρακτήρας του τοκογλύφου κατάφερε να ασκήσει επάνω μου μια νοσηρή γοητεία. Ο Jean-Esther van Gobseck ή papa Gobseck, όπως τον φωνάζουν όλοι, διαθέτει μια ιδιόρρυθμη και αξιοπερίεργη προσωπικότητα. Λίγα πράγματα είναι γνωστά από το σκοτεινό παρελθόν του. Αλλά κυρίως είναι η κοσμοθεωρία του που συμβάλλει στην ιδιαιτερότητα του χαρακτήρα του. Γεννημένος στα 1740 είναι ήδη 76 ετών όταν γνωρίζεται με τον νεαρό δικηγόρο: "Το πρόσωπό του έμοιαζε με θαμπό ασήμι. Είχε γκρίζα μαλλιά, στιλπνά και καλοχτενισμένα. Τα χαρακτηριστικά του έμοιαζαν με μπρούντζινο εκμαγείο. Ακόμα κι ίδιος ο Ταλεϋράνδος έδειχνε λιγότερο απαθής από αυτόν εδώ τον δανειστή. Ένα ζευγάρι κίτρινα μάτια, κίτρινα σαν της νυφίτσας, χωρίς βλεφαρίδες, πρόβαλλαν μέσα από μια παλιομοδίτικη, φθαρμένη σκούφια, σαν να φοβούνταν το φως. Είχε τα λεπτά χείλη που βλέπει κάποιος στους πίνακες του Rembrandt και του Metsu, όποτε εκείνοι ζωγράφιζαν αλχημιστές ή ηλικιωμένους άνδρες, και μια μύτη τόσο σουβλερή που θύμιζε τρυπάνι. Η φωνή του ήταν εξαιρετικά χαμηλή. Πάντα μιλούσε με γλυκύτητα. Ποτέ δεν ανέβαζε τους τόνους. Η ηλικία του ήταν ένα μυστήριο. Κανείς δεν μπορούσε να πει αν είχε γεράσει πριν την ώρα του ή, κάνοντας οικονομία στη νιότη, είχε αρκετή για να του φτάσει για μια ολάκερη ζωή". Νόθο παιδί ενός Ολλανδού και μιας Εβραίας από τις Κάτω Χώρες μπάρκαρε ως καμαρότος σε ένα εμπορικό πλοίο για τις Ανατολικές Ινδίες, κι εκεί έζησε για περίπου είκοσι χρόνια. Ασχολήθηκε ανάμεσα σε άλλα με την πειρατεία, κατέληξε ως χρυσοθήρας στην Νότια Αμερική και αναμείχθηκε ως κατάσκοπος στον Πόλεμο της Αμερικάνικης Ανεξαρτησίας. Καταλήγει ως τοκογλύφος στο Παρίσι. Ζει μια ζωή μέσα σε μια φαινομενική στέρηση, ωστόσο όταν γνωρίζει αρκετά καλά τον νεαρό δικηγόρο ώστε να τον εμπιστευτεί (με το αζημίωτο) του αποκαλύπτει:"Τίποτα δεν μένει κρυμμένο από εμένα. Κανένας δεν αρνείται το παραμικρό σε εκείνον που κατέχει τα σχοινιά του πουγκιού και μπορεί να τα ανοίγει ή να τα σφίγγει κατά το κέφι του. Είμαι τόσο πλούσιος που μπορώ να εξαγοράσω τις συνειδήσεις των υπουργών, χρησιμοποιώντας τους υπαλλήλους ή τις ερωμένες τους. Δεν είναι λοιπόν αυτό από μόνο του Εξουσία; Μπορώ να έχω τις ωραιότερες γυναίκες, να δεχτώ τα απαλότερα χάδια. Δεν είναι αυτό Ηδονή; Και μήπως ολάκερη η κοινωνική οικονομία της εποχής μας δεν στηρίζεται επάνω σε αυτές ακριβώς τις δύο αξίες της Εξουσίας και της Ηδονής; Υπάρχουν συνολικά δέκα άνθρωποι στο Παρίσι μαζί με εμένα, σιωπηλοί και άγνωστοι βασιλιάδες που ορίζουμε τα πεπρωμένα σας. Τί είναι η ζωή πέρα από μια μηχανή που κινείται με τη δύναμη του χρήματος; Να το θυμάσαι καλά αυτό, μην συγχέεις τα μέσα με τα αποτελέσματα. Η ψυχή δεν μπορεί να διαχωριστεί από τις αισθήσεις και το πνεύμα από την ύλη. Ο Χρυσός είναι η πνευματική βάση της σημερινής κοινωνίας. Εμάς τους δέκα μας ενώνει το κοινό συμφέρον". Η ανατροπή και το ενδιαφέρον σε αυτήν την υπόθεση είναι πως ενώ κάποιος, μέσα από όλα αυτά, θα υπέθετε πως ο Gobseck είναι ο κακός της υπόθεσης, στην πραγματικότητα δεν είναι. Καθώς ο νεαρός δικηγόρος δένεται ολοένα και περισσότερο μαζί του, φτάνει να δει μέσα στη ψυχή του κάποιες ποιότητες που δεν διακρίνονται εκ πρώτης όψεως, κάποια χαρακτηριστικά που μένουν καλά κρυμμένα κάτω από το απαθές προσωπείο. Είναι μισάνθρωπος αλλά πάνω από όλα είναι ένας φιλόσοφος. Ένας φιλοσοφος της ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης που εξασκεί τα δόγματά του επάνω στους άλλους. Δεν τρέφεται από τις ανθρώπινες αδυναμίες αλλά τις διαχειρίζεται για το όφελός του, επειδή γνωρίζει τον τρόπο. Στην ουσία όσοι έρχονται σε αυτόν χωρίζονται σε δύο κατηγορίες. Σε αυτούς που είναι ήδη από χέρι χαμένοι, οπότε η παρέμβασή του δεν συμβάλλει περισσότερο στην ήδη προδιαγεγραμμένη καταστροφική τους πορεία, και σε αυτούς που έχουν ταλέντα και όρεξη για δουλειά αλλά τους λείπει το κεφάλαιο. Αυτοί οι δεύτεροι... δεν κινδυνεύουν από τον Gobseck. Δεν θα τους χαρίσει τίποτα. Θα πάρει πίσω ό,τι του αναλογεί με τόκο. Αλλά δεν θα τους καταπιεί. Για τους δεύτερους λειτουργεί απλώς ως ανεπίσημος τραπεζίτης και επενδύει στην εργατικότητα και στις ικανότητές τους. Οπότε όλοι βγαίνουν κερδισμένοι;Ένα υπέροχο έργο και ειδικά εκείνη η τελευταία σκηνή με στοίχειωσε. Η αμύθητη περιουσία του γέρου τοκογλύφου, η μανία του να συσσωρεύει, να κατέχει, είναι από μόνη της μια μορφή τρέλας η οποία ωστόσο έχει τη δική της λογική. Όλα τα αγαθά που μαζεύει δεν τα απολαμβάνει σε επίπεδο υλικό, δεν καταναλώνει, τα αποθηκεύει και τα διακινεί με σκοπό πάντα το κέρδος. Απώτερος σκόπος η εξουσία, να ελέγχει τις ζωές των άλλων, να τιμωρεί και να δικαιώνει σαν μικρός θεός. Να λοιπόν πώς ο Balzac κάνει το πορτραίτο των θεών της σύχρονης εποχής: Οι κεφαλαιούχοι, οι καπιταλιστές. Ακόμα κι όταν κανένας δεν τους γνωρίζει, δεν παύει να είναι αυτοί που ελέγχουν την καθημερινότητα του βίου μας. Όλοι κρεμόμαστε από τα σχοινιά του πουγκιού του Gobseck.Γι' αυτό μου αρέσει και απολαμβάνω να διαβάζω ρεαλιστική λογοτεχνία. Ακόμα κι αν ήταν δυνατό να αλλάξουμε αυτόν τον κόσμο, αυτό δεν θα μπορούσε να πραγματοποιηθεί, εαν πρώτα δεν προβαίναμε στην κατανόησή του. Και είναι φοβερός ο τρόπος που οι ρεαλιστές λογοτέχνες φωτίζουν ακόμα και τις πιο σκιώδεις και άγνωστες πλευρές της ανθρώπινης πραγματικότητας.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America is a 1962 travelogue written by American author John Steinbeck. It depicts a 1960 road trip around the United States made by Steinbeck, in the company of his standard poodle Charley. Steinbeck wrote that he was moved by a desire to see his country on a personal level because he made his living writing about it. He wrote of having many questions going into his journey, the main one being "What are Americans like today?" However, he found that he had concerns about much of the "new America" he witnessed.Steinbeck tells of traveling throughout the United States in a specially made camper he named Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse. His travels start in Long Island, New York, and roughly follow the outer border of the United States, from Maine to the Pacific Northwest, down into his native Salinas Valley in California] across to Texas, through the Deep South, and then back to New York. Such a trip encompassed nearly 10,000 miles.

The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.Woven into the novel are the following short stories: Illumination, Dandelion Wine, Summer in the Air, Season of Sitting, The Happiness Machine, The Night, The Lawns of Summer, Season of Disbelief, The Last--the Very Last, The Green Machine, The Trolley, Statues, The Window, The Swan, The Whole Town's Sleeping, Goodbye Grandma, The Tarot Witch, Hotter Than Summer, Dinner at Dawn, The Magical Kitchen, Green Wine for Dreaming.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is heartbroken, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Fathers and Sons (Russian: «Отцы и дети»; Otcy i deti, IPA: [ɐˈtsɨ i ˈdʲetʲi]; archaic spelling Отцы и дѣти), also translated more literally as Fathers and Children, is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Moscow by Grachev & Co. It is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the 19th century.Arkady Kirsanov has just graduated from the University of Petersburg and returns with a friend, Bazarov, to his father's modest estate in an outlying province of Russia. His father, Nikolay, gladly receives the two young men at his estate, called Marino, but Nikolay's brother, Pavel, soon becomes upset by the strange new philosophy called "nihilism" which the young men, especially Bazarov, advocate.

Kahlil Gibran, author of "The Prophet" and many other famous works, is known throughout the world as the Immortal Prophet of Lebanon and the Savant of His Age.This new, enlarged volume contains much of Gibran's magnificent poetry and various prose pieces which he wrote when scarcely twenty years old. Translated superbly into English from his beloved mother tongue, Arabic, these timeless writings reveal his remarkably mature grasp of a subject which has challenged philosophers throughout history until today - man's destiny and the meaning of his existence.In this volume also is Gibran's heralded story, "The Bride's Bed", a strange, gripping tale that is both a plea for individual liberty and an expression of his bitter condemnation of pre-arranged marriages of children by their parents. It is widely recognized that Gibran, through the razor-sharp attacks in this story and others like it, was responsible in great part for many social, political and religious reforms throughout the East.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.With THE SCARLET LETTER, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

The story of a wealthy, fiftyish American widow, recently a famous stage beauty, but now "drifting." The novel opens soon after her husband's death and her retirement from the theatre, as Mrs. Stone tries to adjust to her aimless new life in Rome. She is adjusting, too, to aging ("The knowledge that her beauty was lost had come upon her recently and it was still occasionally forgotten.") With poignant wit and his own particular brand of relish, Williams charts her drift into an affair with a cruel young gigolo: "As compelling, as fascinating, and as technically skilled as his plays." (Publishers Weekly)

First published in 1922, The Beautiful and the Damned followed Fitzgerald's impeccable debut, This Side of Paradise, thus securing his place in the tradition of great American novelists. Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless marriage sways under the influence of alcohol and avarice. A devastating look at the nouveau riche, and the New York nightlife, as well as the ruinous effects of wild ambition, The Beautiful and the Damned achieved stature as one of Fitzgerald's most accomplished novels. Its distinction as a classic endures to this day. Pocket Book's Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enhanced for the contemporary reader. Special features include critical perspectives, suggestions for further read, and a unique visual essay composed of period photographs that help bring every word to life.

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countrysideEthan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book.--back cover

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend, based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540).The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a limited term.The Faust of early books — as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them — is irrevocably damned because he prefers human to divine knowledge: "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a classic treatment in his play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (whose date of publication is debated, but likely around 1587). In Goethe's reworking of the story two hundred years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink" in his life.

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's romantic and witty first novel, was written when the author was only twenty-three years old. This semi-autobiographical story of the handsome, indulged, and idealistic Princeton student Amory Blaine received critical raves and catapulted Fitzgerald to instant fame. Now, readers can enjoy the newly edited, authorized version of this early classic of the Jazz Age, based on Fitzgerald's original manuscript. In this definitive text, This Side of Paradise captures the rhythms and romance of Fitzgerald's youth and offers a poignant portrait of the "Lost Generation."

It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life.\
  Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her.\


A Separate Peace is a coming-of-age novel by John Knowles, published in 1959. Based on his earlier short story "Phineas", published in the May 1956 issue of Cosmopolitan, it was Knowles's first published novel and became his best-known work. Set against the backdrop of World War II, A Separate Peace explores morality, patriotism, and loss of innocence through its narrator, Gene.Gene Forrester returns to his old prep school, Devon (a thinly veiled portrayal of Knowles's alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy), 15 years after he graduated, to visit two places he regards as "fearful sites": a flight of marble stairs and a big tree by the river from which he caused his friend, Phineas, to fall. First, he examines the stairs and notices that they are made of marble. He then goes to the tree, which brings back memories of his time as a student at Devon. From this point, the novel follows Gene's description of the time from the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1943. In 1942, he is 16 and living at Devon with his best friend and roommate, Phineas (nicknamed Finny). World War II is taking place and has a prominent effect on the story's plot and characters.

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes

After awakening from a four-year coma, a former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins who betrayed her.

An elderly Margaret Thatcher talks to the imagined presence of her recently deceased husband as she struggles to come to terms with his death while scenes from her past life, from girlhood to British prime minister, intervene.

2011 British film directed by Phyllida Lloyd

A Mumbai teenager reflects on his life after being accused of cheating on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".

A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a fourteen-year-old nymphet.

The story of King George VI, his impromptu ascension to the throne of the British Empire in 1936, and the speech therapist who helped the unsure monarch overcome his stammer.

A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.

A manipulative woman and a roguish man conduct a turbulent romance during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods.

A silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

A writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel's glorious years under an exceptional concierge.

Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.

Four interlocking tales that take place in a fading hotel on New Year's Eve.

A middle-aged woman finds herself in the middle of a huge conflict that will either make her a profit or cost her life.

1997 thriller movie directed by Quentin Tarantino

In 1944 France, a group of escaped American military prisoners en route to Switzerland volunteers to steal a Nazi V2 rocket warhead for the Allies.

1978 Italian action/war film directed by Enzo G. Castellari

When a simple jewelry heist goes horribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island people are shattered when their addictions run deep.

With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation-owner in Mississippi.

In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.

The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino

Bubble Puppy is an American psychedelic rock band originally active from 1967 to 1972. They are best remembered for their Top 20 hit, "Hot Smoke & Sasafrass".

Norwegian singer, actor, violinist, composer, pianist

In the Court of the Crimson King (subtitled An Observation by King Crimson) is the debut studio album by English rock band King Crimson, released on 10 October 1969 by Island Records. The album is one of the first and most influential of the progressive rock genre, where the band largely combined blues influences that rock music was founded upon with elements of jazz, classical, and symphonic music.The album reached number five on the UK Albums Chart and number 28 on the US Billboard 200, where it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. It was reissued several times in the 1980s and 1990s using inferior copies of the master tapes. After the original masters were discovered in the Virgin archives in 2003, the album was remastered again by Simon Heyworth and reissued in 2004. A 40th anniversary edition of the album was released in 2009 with new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mixes by Steven Wilson.

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