books literature

Hardcover. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 2nd pr., 1947, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in light tan cloth with red lettering to the spine, 361 pages. Although the life of London runs like a thread through the whole fabric of this book, it is not essentially a book about London. Life in Bloomsbury is but the center of a large circle, the point around which the rest of the book revolves, the origin of a disarming commentary on an infinite variety of topics - on Bloomsbury's squares, on the picturesqueness of London a generation ago, on what is true Cockney, on the differences of English and American humor, on the decay of English wit, on books and authors and publishers and the Press, on the literary lions of the past, on the religion of speed, on the charm of Americans, on how the Victorian age was neither so repressed nor so hidebound as most people today like to believe - and so on, one thing leading to another, like good conversation at a good luncheon overlooking the mellow squares of Bloomsbury. The book is full, too, of good stories and reminiscences, both humorous and pathetic, but there is shrewd comment besides on the deficiencies of contemporary society, not the less effective because the author knows how to soften the blow. Mild soil, sunning to covers, clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1998-10-26, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 181 pages, illustrated throughout with photos in b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. In this moving autobiography, Lois Lowry explores her rich history through personal photographs, memories, and recollections of childhood friends. Lowry's writing often transports readers into other worlds. Now, we have the opportunity to travel into the real world that is her life.

Hardcover. NY, Julian Messner, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. A memoir by the Chinese American author of many distinguished children's books. No dust-jacket issued. B&w photos, clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 208 pages. Between 1936 and 1941 Walker Evans and James Agee collaborated on one of the most provocative books in American literature, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). While at work on this book, the two also conceived another less well-known but equally important book project entitled Many Are Called. This three-year photographic study of subway passengers made with a hidden camera was first published in 1966, with an introduction written by Agee in 1940. Long out of print, Many Are Called is now being reissued with a new foreword and afterword and with exquisitely reproduced images from newly prepared digital scans. Many Are Called came to fruition at a slow pace. In 1938, Walker Evans began surreptitiously photographing people on the New York City subway. With his camera hidden in his coat--the lens peeking through a buttonhole--he captured the faces of riders hurtling through the dark tunnels, wrapped in their own private thoughts. By 1940-41, Evans had made over six hundred photographs and had begun to edit the series. The book remained unpublished until 1966 when The Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition of Evans's subway portraits.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Panjandrum/Aris Books, 1st, April 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 251 pages plus index, b&w photographs. Light edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.

Softcover. US, Damiani, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 110 pages, softcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Absence of Subject and Two Crowns of the Egg are Somoroff's most intriguing books of photography. In this edition of Two Crowns, the still life art work is as stunning as the female nudes. Of note, the rare combinations of objects (such. books of literature, high polished knives, exquisite dishes) and life matter (such pomegranates, honey, eggs, human skulls) set one's imagination in fire. These strange image compositions are as odd as the pairing of words by Postmodern poet Giannina Braschi who writes love poems to objects, animals, beings. The scholarly introduction by art historian Donald Kuspit is respectable but a bit dry. Regardless the imagery and poetry tower over any essay that one could write about them.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st English, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 131 pages. With an introduction by award-winning author Alberto Manguel, Milongas is Edgardo Cozarinsky's love letter to tango, and the diverse array of people who give it life. Argentine writer and filmmaker Edgardo Cozarinsky traces [tango's] fascinating journey through time and the seedy brothels and rough Argentine and European bars where the dance could be quite mannered or could spark with theatrical violence . . . Cozarinsky takes us through the ebbs and flows of the popularity of the tango, and also through a number of its evolutionary adaptive speciations. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Sterling, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with blue cloth spine, 12 pages with 6 pop-up spreads. Call me Ishmael." Three of the most famous words in all literature, they begin Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick. Now, the epic saga of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for the white whale comes vividly to life in this three-dimensional graphic novel, the first of its kind. This phenomenal work is the creation of multi-talented artist Sam Ita, apprentice to Robert Sabuda, one of the world's master paper engineers. Every amazing element is awe-inspiring: there's not just one pop-up per spread, but several, surrounded by colorful comic book-style panels that convey the story's drama. Some of the pops-ups are huge and incredibly detailed, like the Pequod itself, which rises gloriously from the page, complete with rigging. Others, smaller but no less wonderful, hide beneath flaps and folds. In one instance, readers actually get to look through a 3-D periscope and see Ishmael through the lens, drifting in the ocean. Clean copy w/o any flaws to paper.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 157 pages. A study of the popular English children's writer, Mrs Sherwood, 1775-1851 considering her style, writings, relations with publishers, etc. Includes reprints of The little woodman and his dog Caesar originally published: London, Houlston, 1850 and Soffrona and her cat Muff originally published: Wellington, Salop, Houlston, 1828. Includes a 38 page bibliography. "No study of nineteenth - century children's books in England can afford to ignore Mrs. Sherwood. She produced over four hundred different titles - books, tales, tracts, texts, magazines, articles in periodicals, cbapbooks, and Sunday School rewards. There is evidence that the writings of her Evangelical period, in particular, had a remarkable influence upon Victorian literature for the young.

Hardcover. Night Shade Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 439 pages. Hardcover with facsimile copy of handwritten letters to endpapers. Black cloth covered boards with iridescent titles to cover & spine. Frontispiece illustration of H. P. Lovecraft & Donald Wandrei in black & white. Dust jacket with light, marginal wear to edges. Tight binding, sharp corners, clean & unmarked pages.

Softcover. NY, Zone Books, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 525 pages. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a disturbing and decidedly non-classical reading of Greek tragedy that insists on its radical discontinuity with our own outlook and with our social, aesthetic, and psychological categories. Originally published in French in two volumes, this new single-volume edition includes revised essays from volume one and is the first English translation of both volumes. Remainder mark top edge otherwise a clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 418 pages. A rich, polyphonic novel from one of the leading voices of contemporary Polish literature, encompassing a half-century of history and memory. In a Polish village, a young man watches an old man trip and fall down a flight of stairs. From this singular event arises a cascade of memories, regrets, and longings: the buried sensations of a whole lifetime, condensed and released. We hear of life during occupation, the scarcities of a childhood lived under the sign of war--and fragments of a home's sounds and scents (the private speech of mothers and fathers, the treasures of coffee, raisins, almonds, and plums). There are loves unrequited and fulfilled, landscapes of winter and spring, old jobs and old friends, all flowing together. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner , 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Novelist and critic Colm Toibin provides "a fascinating exploration of writers and their families" (Entertainment Weekly) and "an excellent guide through the dark terrain of unconscious desires" (The Evening Standard) in this brilliant collection of essays that explore the relationships of writers to their families and their work. Colm Toibin--celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and his provocative book reviews and essays--traces the intriguing, often twisted family ties of writers in the books they leave behind. Through the relationship between W. B. Yeats and his father, Thomas Mann and his children, Jane Austen and her aunts, and Tennessee Williams and his sister, Toibin examines a world of relations, richly comic or savage in their implications. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, New York Review Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 448 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Black and white photos in center. Two pages wrinkled and stuck together in the middle of picture pages. Otherwise tight.

Hardcover. NY, Harper Collins, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 233 pages. Authors, illustrators, and poets describe their childhoods, approaches to creating children's books, and career paths.

NY, Burt/Blue Ribbon Books, reprint, circa 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, light green cloth with gilt & black decorated cover and spine labels. 258 pages. Four color plates by Charles Folkard, many b&w text drawings (not credited). Dust jacket chipped and worn. states translation by May M. Sweet, but title page gives M. A. Murray as translator. The mischievous adventures of an animated marionette named Pinocchio and his father, a poor woodcarver named Geppetto. It is considered a canonical piece of children's literature and has inspired hundreds of new editions, stage plays, merchandising and movies, such as Walt Disney's iconic animated version and commonplace ideas such as a liar's long nose. No markings.

Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 179 pages. This collection of exploratory pieces, short stories, and reflections was originally published in Zurich in 1936. It was the last volume Robert Musil published before his sudden death in 1942. Musil had begun to fathom the impossibility of completing his monumental masterpiece The Man Without Qualities and this volume reveals a radically different aspect of his work. Musil observes a fly's tragic struggle with flypaper, the laughter of a horse; he peers through microscopes and telescopes, dissecting both large and small. Musil's quest for the essential is a voyage into the minute. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Books, 2nd pr., 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 625 pages, b&w illustrations. The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books. Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls-the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser-the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series-masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Mild wrinkle to page 243. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.

Hardcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with fading to the spine. "Cary Nelson performs an invaluable service to the reader by recovering the work of dozens of forgotten poets, especially women, blacks, and writers on the left, while making it clear that the texts we recover inevitably gain new meaning from their positioning within contemporary culture." Nicely illustrated in b&w and some color, mostly book jackets and title pages of books discussed. Some light pencil marking in margins.

Hardcover. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. What motivates us to reread literary works? How is our pleasure, interpretation, involvement, and evaluation different when we read a literary work and when we reread it? This fascinating book by Matei Calinescu is the first to focus on the implications of rereading for critical understanding. Drawing on literary theory, cultural anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and previous theories of reading, Calinescu describes the dynamics of rereading and explores the sometimes complementary, sometimes sharply conflicting relationships between reading and rereading. Calinescu analyzes fictional works by Borges, Nabokov, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, and Henry James, among others, explaining how reading texts is related both to symbolic play or make-believe and to games with rules. He reviews the history of reading in modern times, discussing, for example, how the Reformation led to rereadings of Scripture and how the proliferation of books during the Enlightenment led to a shift from "intensive reading" to "extensive reading." Calinescu looks at the distinctions between reading and rereading from the perspectives of the age, situation, and gender of the individual reader. He discusses the problems raised by secret or oblique languages and codes - devised to evade censors, communicate with a select audience of "secret sharers," or play games of hide-and-seek with the reader - and shows that they naturally lead to rereading a text. Calinescu argues persuasively that an understanding of rereading is useful in formulating both analytic strategies of practical criticism and a poetics of reading. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Lexington Books , 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glazed boards, 299 pages. John McWilliams has written the first, much needed account of the ways the promise and threat of political revolution have informed masterpieces of the historical novel. McWilliams provides close readings of some twenty historical novels, from Scott and Cooper through Tolstoy, Zola and Hugo, to Pasternak and Lampedusa, and ultimately to Marquez and Hilary Mantel, but with continuing regard to historical contexts past and present. He traces the transformation of the literary conventions established by Scott's Waverley novels, showing both the continuities and the changes needed to meet contemporary times and perspectives. Although the progressive hopes imbedded in Scott's narrative form proved no longer adaptable to twentieth century carnage and the rise of totalitarianism, the meaning of any single novel emerges through comparison to the tradition of its predecessors. A foreword and epilogue explore the indebtedness of McWilliams's perspective to the Marxist scholarly tradition of Georg Lukacs and Frederic Jameson, while defining his differences from them. This is a scholarly work of no small ambition and achievement. Clean copy.