Azar Nafasi formed a book club in Tehran comprised of seven young women who got together to discuss such books as THE GREAT GATSBY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, DAISY MILLER, and, of course, LOLITA--books forbidden by the Islamic government. In this memoir, Nafasi, who was expelled from the country for refusing to wear the veil, writes about those women, ...
A fun and practical introduction to literature and literary basics--symbols, themes, and contexts--shows how to make everyday reading experiences more rewarding and enjoyable.
Through a series of comic anecdotes, quirky essayist David Sedaris touches on the highlights of his life to date, including his cross-country hitchhiking trip; his discovery of Shakespeare in rural North Carolina; his various odd jobs as a migrant fruit picker, a jade polisher, and a woodwork refinisher; a family Christmas Eve spent with a ...
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren's classic guide to enlightened reading. On everything from poetry and plays to science and philosophy, Adler and Van Doren teach general readers how to analyze a text, to appreciate its method and bias, and to come away with a full understanding of the author's point.
This book presents an inside look at how the professionals read and write. Long before there were creative writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says the author. In "Reading Like a Writer", Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of ...
Ginsberg's celebrated 1956 poem brought the writing of the Beat Generation to widespread attention. In the words of a critic who was there, when Ginsberg read "Howl" aloud for the first time at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October of 1955, the audience knew "at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body ...
Written by artists, for artists, this survival guide explores the way art gets made, the reason it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.
The concise version of the discipline's most popular introductory anthology, Kennedy/Gioia's Literature, Compact Edition continues to inspire students with engaging insights on reading and writing about stories, poems, and plays. Poets in their own right, editors X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia bring personal warmth and a human perspective to this ...
Honey for a Child's Heart, now in its third edition, is one of the best guides to children's books available. It is for parents who know the value of reaching their children with good books. This edition includes an indexed and updated 85-page list of the best children's classics ever.
Shakespeare's dark portrait of ambition begins when three prophesying witches conspire to meet with Macbeth. Obliging his fate, he indeed encounters these "Weird Sisters," who mysteriously refer to him by the title Thane of Cawdor, and moreover, as the future king. Macbeth's companion Banquo is told that his descendants will inherit the throne. ...
Kahlil Gibran worked on the manuscript for "The Prophet"--his second work in English after "The Madman"--for several years before it was published in October 1923. Both the author and the world consider this his masterpiece, and it has been translated into dozens of languages. "The Prophet" concerns Almustafa, "the chosen one," who, after exile on ...
The original "Pretty Good Joke Book" was pretty darn funny, yet each edition just gets better. The "Fifth Edition" of this perennial favorite is a treasury of snickers, chortles, and belly-laughs from "A Prairie Home Companion"'s popular joke shows-hundreds and hundreds of jokes, audience-tested and certified Pretty Good. Includes over 350 ...
The fourth edition of this standard work contains 1800 poems by 300 poets, with 600 poems and 100 poets newly included. The anthology offers more poetry by women (40 new poets), with special attention to early women poets. The book also includes a greater diversity of American poetry, with double the number of poems by African American, Hispanic, ...
Prepared by editors whose scholarship fuses literary and composition studies, "Making Literature Matter "combines a comprehensive writing text with a uniquely organized anthology for introductory literature courses that emphasize critical and academic writing. What makes literature matter? Writing about it -- argumentatively. The writing text ...
His first book since Truman, from one of America's most distinguished and popular biographers. Destined for the same kind of sweeping success as his Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman, John Adams is a powerful, deeply moving biography that reads like an epic historical novel. Breathing fresh life into American history, it takes as its subject the ...
Featuring extensive, clear, and faithful translations of original sources, Classical Mythology, 7/e retells the myths and legends of Greece and Rome in a lucid and engaging style. Building on the best-selling tradition of previous editions, it incorporates a dynamic combination of poetic narratives and enlightening commentary to make classical ...
Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, WALDEN vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his ...
Literature for Composition offers the finest writing and argument coverage, helpful discussions of the literary elements, compelling case studies, and a diverse array of selections. This book is based on the assumption that students in composition or literature courses should encounter first-rate writing--not simply competent prose, but the ...
This volume provides an introduction to literature; it contains a broad selection of literature - from the contemporary to the canonical, the serious to the humorous, and the poignant to the whimsical. It now includes a contemporary selection of stories, works by Gish Jen, Andrea Barret and Rick Bass as well as old favorites by Joyce, Hemingway, ...
Begun in 1857, the Oxford English Dictionary (fondly known as the O.E.D.) was not completed until the 1920s. Since then, it has been considered the definitive source for the meaning and, more importantly, the etymology of every English word ever recorded. Simon Winchester's entertaining account of its history begins with a look at the English ...
In this first volume of her celebrated collection of memoirs, the poet Maya Angelou describes in vivid, lyrical detail her childhood as a young black girl in the South.
Greenblatt interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. Readers see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world.
OUT OF AFRICA is the classic account of the experiences of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) in Kenya, where she managed a coffee plantation for 17 years, from 1914 to 1931, first with her difficult husband the Baron von Blixen and, after their divorce, by herself. One of the most popular books of the 20th century, it provides a vivid and lyrical ...
