Monday, September 13, 2010

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov.




Lolita
by
Vladimir Nabokov
Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover - D. H. Lawrence



Lady Chatterly’s Lover
by
D. H. Lawrence
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters


Friday, September 10, 2010

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET

THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET By William Shakespeare
THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
By
William Shakespeare


Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young "star-cross'd lovers" whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet and Macbeth, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.


War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy


War and Peace
by
Leo Tolstoy

Epic historical novel by Leo Tolstoy, originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865-69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families--particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs--the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence. The heroine, Natasha Rostova, for example, reaches her greatest fulfillment through her marriage to Pierre Bezukhov and her motherhood. The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism.

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A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH




A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
By
Jules Verne

Novel by Jules Verne, published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre. It is the second book in his popular science-fiction series Voyages extraordinaires (1863-1910). Otto Lidenbrock, an impetuous German professor of geology, discovers an encoded manuscript in which a 16th-century explorer claims to have found a passageway to the center of the Earth. Otto impulsively prepares a subterranean expedition, enlisting his young nephew Axel and a stoic Icelandic guide, Hans Bjelke. After descending into an extinct volcano in Iceland, the men spend several months in a underground world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic sea creatures until they ride a volcanic eruption out of Stromboli Island, off the coast of Italy


The Odyssey by Homer


The Odyssey - Homer
Translated by
Samuel Butler

The "Odyssey" is a magnificient piece of literature that we find absolutely spectacular in the fact of its potential for helping us understand pre-history of many ancient cultures, and because of the fact that it is so well written and perhaps one of the first "books" (epics) ever written down.

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The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci



The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci, arguably the central figure of the Renaissance, has long been considered by many a man of mystery. This is in spite of the fact that we have an unparalleled set of documents which illuminate his thought processes, interests, and deepest beliefs. We have access to hundreds of pages of his notes, jottings, sketches, doodles, and musings, including lists of books he read and even scraps of financial records. All of the known Da Vinci papers as of the mid-19th century are included here in this magnificent collection. What emerges is the picture of a rationalist. For instance, Da Vinci was one of the first to question the Biblical account of the Flood. He saw the fossils of sea creatures on the tops of mountains and concluded that these could not have been deposited in a forty day flood. He looked at river valleys and did the math; they could only have been eroded over huge horizons of time. Da Vinci put as much thought into his art as he did his science. Practically half of the writings here relate to detailed studies of the natural world which informed his work as an artist.


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THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION
THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED
ELDERS OF ZION

‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ is allegedly an old textual guide addressing novice Jewish Elders on the methods to gain control of world economy and media, ultimately to attain global dominance. Over the years, convincing evidence has been put forth, labeling it as mere propaganda and a hoax.

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Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Virgin and the Gipsy by D.H. Lawrence (Audio Book)



The Virgin and the Gipsy
by
D.H. Lawrence

The Virgin and the Gipsy was discovered in France after D. H. Lawrence's death in 1930. Immediately recognized as a masterpiece in which Lawrence had distilled and purified his ideas about sexuality and morality, The Virgin and the Gipsy has become a classic and is one of Lawrence's most electrifying short novels.
Set in a small village in the English countryside, this is the story of a secluded, sensitive rector's daughter who yearns for meaning beyond the life to which she seems doomed. When she meets a handsome young gipsy whose life appears different from hers in every way, she is immediately smitten and yet still paralyzed by her own fear and social convention. Not until a natural catastrophe suddenly, miraculously sweeps away the world as she knew it does a new world of passion open for her. Lawrence's spirit is infused by all his tenderness, passion, and knowledge of the human soul.

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Audio Book)


The Great Gatsby
by
F. Scott Fitzgerald



In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

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The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde (Audio Book)

The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde
The Selfish Giant
by
Oscar Wilde

This classic story by Oscar Wilde is set in a garden that is not unlike paradise. Children play freely among the trees and flowers. And then the owner, The Selfish Giant, returns from a long holiday and drives out the children. But all is not lost, for the giant finds redemption through a child.

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Audio Book)



Frankenstein
by
Mary Shelley

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the is an 1818 novel written by Mary Shelley at the age of 19, first published anonymously in London, but more often known by the revised third edition of 1831 under her own name. It is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the RomanticIndustrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus and spawned a complete genre of . The story has had an influence across literature and popular culturehorror stories and films. Many distinguished authors, such as Brian Aldiss, consider this the very first science fiction novel.

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