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Все книги издательства IngramThe Invisible Man - The Original Classic Edition
On the surface, THE INVISIBLE MAN concerns a scientist named Griffin who has discovered the means to invisibility–but who has gone mad in the process. When frustrated in his efforts to restore himself to visibility, he determines to embark upon a reign of terror that will make him master of the world. It is worth noting, however, that Wells was very much a social writer and that his novels are inevitably commentaries on various social evils. Once you scratch the surface of THE INVISIBLE MAN you will find that it is very much a parable of class structure that dominated British life during the Victorian age: there are many invisible men; this particular one, however, is in a very literal situation. <p> And it is the literal situation from which the novel draws most of its power. Invisibility sounds attractive–but what if you were to actually become so? How would you cope with the ordinary details of every day life? Griffin does not cope well at all, and although Wells suggests that his madness have arisen from a number of sources, he also implies that it may arise from the fact of invisibility itself, again twisting the context back into the social criticism on which the novel seems based. <p> First published in 1897, THE INVISIBLE MAN is one of Wells earliest novels, and for all its charms it creaks a bit in terms of plot and structure. Some may disagree, but to my mind the most effective portion of the novel are the chapters in which Griffin relates his adventures to fellow scientist Kemp–but regardless of its flaws remains extremely influential and it has tremendous dash and style throughout. Short enough to be read in a single sitting, it is a quick and entertaining read and it is also quite witty in an underhanded, subversive sort of way. Extremely memorable!
Bleak House - The Original Classic Edition
Bleak House is long, tightly plotted, wonderfully descriptive, and full of memorable characters. Dickens has written a vast story centered on the Jarndyce inheritance, and masterly manages the switches between third person omniscient narrator and first person limited narrator. <p> In this book a poor boy (Jo) will be literally chased from places of refuge and thus provide Dickens with one of his most powerful ways to indict a system that was particularly cruel to children. Mr. Skimpole, pretending not to be interested in money; Mr. Jarndyce, generous and good; Richard, stupid and blind; the memorable Dedlocks, and My Lady Dedlocks secret being uncovered by the sinister Mr. Tulkinghorn; Mrs. Jellyby and her telescopic philanthropy; the Ironmaster described in Chapter 28, presenting quite a different view of industralization than that shown by Dickens in his next work, Hard Times. <p> Here is a veritable cosmos of people, neighbors, friends, enemies, lovers, rivals, sinners, and saints, and Dickens proves himself a true master at describing their lives and the environment they dwell in. There are landmark chapters: Chapter One must be the best description of a dismal city under attack by dismal weather and tightly tied by perfectly dismal laws, where the Lord Chancellor sits eternally in Lincolns Inn Hall. Chapter 32 has one of the eeriest scenes ever written, with suspicious smoke, greasy and reeking, as a prelude to a grisly discovery. Chapter 47 is when Jo cannot move along anymore. <p> Bleak House is a long, complex novel that opens a window for us to another world. It is never boring and, appearances to the contrary, is not bleak. Enjoy.
Middlemarch - The Original Classic Edition
This book was on a booklist of the 100 best books written, and once read, you will have to agree. It will take a while to get into it because theres a great deal of expository writing at the beginning, but stick with it and youll be introduced to some fascinating characters in the town of Middlemarch. <p> Dorothea Brooke is a young woman about to take a much older husband, determined to find purpose in her life by assisting him with his lifes work, a book which is to a definitive guide to all the mythologies of the world. When she begins to suspect her husbands work is little more than empty piffle, how will she find her way? <p> Mr. Lydgate is a hotshot young physician determined to do great works from the small town of Middlemarch. Thwarted by small town suspicion and politics, and increasingly saddled by debt incurred by a pretty young wife, how will he cope as his lifes dream slips away? <p> Fred Vincy is the son of a town merchant determined to see him made a gentleman. Hes paid for Fred to recieve a gentlemans education at Oxford with the intention that Fred will join the Church. Fred knows the Church isnt for him, but isnt sure what else to do, nor how to tell his father his education was for naught. <p> These are just three of a huge cast of characters, all of them fascinating in their own way as their lives intersect. The book feels more like a documentary than a novel, and you grow to feel as if the characters could be your own friends and neighbors. <p> Highly recommended, I know this is going to be one of your favorite books.
The Odyssey of Homer - The Original Classic Edition
Having withstood the test of time and considered the first great work of the Western tradition, The Odyssey can do well enough without introduction. <p> This translation is among the most accurate on the market. Classics professors have urged students to read this translation, the best English source available. Despite the usual popularity of the Fitzgerald translation, the Pope version provides a more literal translation with consistent themes of word choice running throughout. They put their hands to the good things that lay ready before them, for example, will come up over and over again because, quite simply, the phrase comes up over and over again. And we have the same adjectives consistently before each of the major players: resourceful Odysseus, thoughtful Telemachos, and circumspect Penelope, along with the gray-eyed Athene. Pope explains how he chooses to translate the work, and his translation is a literal work of a genius. He retains the lyric style in form throughout the work, aligning this translation even more closely with the original text. <p> For those who desire the most accurate translation of this great work, this Pope translation of The Odyssey of Homer is highly recommended.
Utopia - The Original Classic Edition
Utopia, written in 1516 by Thomas More, is probably one of the most important books ever written. Why?. Simply because it influenced many people, and motivated many events: it made a difference. <p> Utopia means, literally, no place. The word didnt exist until More coined it in this book. He wanted to make a critic regarding the English society of his time, but needed to cloak it under a fictional mantle due to censure. Displeasing the king was very dangerous in Mores time. <p> What is this short novel about?. Well, More introduces us to an imaginary character, Raphael Hythloday, a traveler that has visited a distant country: Utopia. After meeting More, Raphael tells him about the country he visited, and afterwards More writes a book about what he was told. <p> To begin with, in that country community is more important that private aims, and that fact permeates all social and political life. There is no private propriety of the means of production, and everything belongs to everybody. Work is obligatory to all healthy men and women, and those who want to do nothing are punished with forced labor. There is no money, but everybody has what is needed to live well, although frugally. Thanks to the fact labor is well distributed, leisure time is available to all. As a result, men and women (equals in this society) can dedicate time to cultivate their minds. <p> Other important points that should be highlighted regarding Utopia, especially because they contrast strongly with the situation of Mores England, are that in this country all religions are allowed, and that there isnt an autocratic rule (a democratically elected assembly and different local governments are elected). All in all, equality prevails, and thanks to the above mentioned arrangements harmony is achieved. <p> Utopia was written a few years later that Machiavellis The Prince, but the differences between the two books are incredible. In Utopia instead of praising the power of princes More wanted to show clearly all that was wrong in English society because it was governed by a bad ruler. He didnt tell others to face reality: he asked them to criticize it, in order to improve it later. Thus, Moro established the essential traits of what was later known as the utopian method: to describe in other situation, with a prejudice of optimism, all that that we dont like in our society. <p> With Utopia Moro created a new way to mobilize energies, and showed options that had remained hidden from the eyes of those who werent happy with their societies. Behind the name of fiction, he gave politics new intruments of discussion, and opened to it novel ways of considering reality, in the light of what could/should be. <p> There is no politics without the idea that something better can be achieved, without the kind of imagination that allows us to think that something better is possible. Moro made that evident… <p> This book is highly recommended.
Mansfield Park - The Original Classic Edition
After having read (and loved) Jane Austens more famous novels EMMA and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, you will find MANSFIELD PARK a true delight. Fanny Price is taken in by her wealthy aunt and uncle as charity to her more lowly-married mother, and is raised with her cousins with the idea she needs refinement and education to become as good a woman as her lesser social standing will allow. Fanny is nervous and self-effacing, struggling with her new situation until her cousin Edmund makes her feel more at home. Gradually, she feels like a part of the family, although the nagging sense of unworthiness always asserts itself. As cousins marry and suitors appear, as scandals arise and emotions become known, Fanny finds herself in the equivalent of a Victorian soap opera. <p> Fanny is undoubtedly one of Austens less assertive characters, although she does mature into a woman who knows what she wants and will accept no less. Youll love Fanny and her honesty, the little girl who fears the stars in her eyes and still manages to grow up into a respectable – and respected – woman. Her complexities are subtle and understated, making the reader work at times to understand her motivation, although anyone who has felt like an outcast even once, or anyone who respects honesty, will identify with her. In true Austen fashion, the observations are witty, with pointed social analysis and cynicism dressed up in sly humor. Fannys aunts in particular are skewered, but no one, not even Fanny, is spared. <p> Readers picking up this novel for the sheer delight of it will find it difficult to put down, as its language is accessible and free-flowing. Students and book club members who must pay closer attention to themes and other literary issues may want to consider the role social standing and money play; the evolution of Fannys character (and whether she is sympathetic); the techniques Austen uses to evoke humor; and the courtship protocol for Victorian England and how the characters both work within, and violate, the social rules. <p> This book is highly recommended for teenagers and adults alike, especially those whose literary tastes run toward the classics.
Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - The Original Classic Edition
A young country lass is abandoned in London without any money or supervision. Having come there with the intention of entering into service, she is instead unwittingly swept into prostitution because she is so lovely and there is a strong market for maidenhead. By dumb luck, Fanny manages to hold onto her virginity just long enough to give it to Charles, who remains the love of her life despite her subsequent dalliances. Fanny and Charles are separated against their will, and her life follows an increasingly lurid trajectory as she becomes more than one gentlemans kept woman, works in a brothel, picks up a john on the street, indulges various fetishes, witnesses a male homosexual encounter through a peep hole, and eventually inherits a sizeable fortune from an elderly gentleman with whom she consorted until his end of days. When she and Charles re-encounter each other, Fannys new wealth enables them to be together, and so she ends respectably married and maternal after all. <p> The sex in this book is graphic. The descriptions of engines and chinks are overblown and hilarious. Fanny and her paramours certainly seem to enjoy themselves, and simultaneous orgasm is always achieved! There is never a violent or scary or even utterly abject moment, so a life of prostitution is quite romanticized here. <p> The book is a quick read and funny. Fanny is a stereotypical prostitute with a heart of gold who is rewarded with middle class respectability. Not realistic, but definitely entertaining.
Three Men in a Boat - The Original Classic Edition
This book will turn out to be one the best gifts youll ever get. Jeromes witty ramblings are the funniest you will ever read. Mark Twain comes close to Jeromes style but is a poor second. Jerome finds humor in the commonplace and the every day occurrences which all of us, even a good 100 years later, can identify with. <p> Starting with his self-diagnosis of every ailment, excepting house-maids knee, to his singular insights into his friends, self, and surroundings; you will never tire of rereading this book. It becomes clear quickly that the dog, Montmorency, is the only one with any sense. Three Men and a Boat will always cheer you after a cold, bleak winter. Its the best Spring tonic–highly recommended as an annual dose. Give this book to friends so they can share your enjoyment in this wonderfully humorous and offbeat book. <p> Read, enjoy, and laugh often.
Right Ho, Jeeves - The Original Classic Edition
A highly comic romp with the English gentry, you know, those fellows of Eton, living in Manors (and having impeccable ones,I am told), with little to do but receive social approval for whatever they do; all with the quietly dignified, prescient aid of their butler. Pleasant enough, but P.G. Wodehouse masterfully parodies the upper crust and their sometimes foolish pretences as he skewers one Bertram Bertie Wooster (A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have ceased to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men.); often through the verbal and psychological ingenuity of Jeeves, the almost obedient servant who masters the master (I fear, sir, that I was not entirely frank with regard to my suggestion of ringing the fire bell). <p> Wodehouse (who belongs with those other two-initialed humorists of the era, A.J. Leibling, S.J. Perelman, and T.E. White) created icons and, perhaps, an entire genre through Bertie and Jeeves. The dialogue is, as they say, splendid: Droll and dry, understated yet preposterous. Perhaps nowhere else have the strictures of etiquette been exposed with such wit: A touch of salmon? Thank you With a suspicion of salad? If you please. Wodehouse manages this satire through the first-person narrative of the object satirized-no mean feat, what? (You may find yourself uttering Wodehousian English phrases for a few days after reading this.) The plot is a bedroom farce without the bedroom, with lots of the usual twists and turns, but the ending is a little too neat. One reads Wodehouse, however, mostly for his delicious language, his assortment of odd, engaging (and oddly engaged) personalities, and, above all, his adroit sense of humor and timing. <p> Right ho! Highly recommended.
Madame Bovary - The Original Classic Edition
For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, Madame Bovary remains a powerful and arousing novel. <p> Madame Bovary is the greatest novel written by Gustave Flaubert. The 1855 masterpiece portrays in searing detail the tragic tale of a young girl whose dreams turned into nightmares; whose sandcastles are swept away by unfulfilled passion; whose young life is ended in a tragic death. Years before Tolstoy limned the adultress woman in his Anna Karenina we see the consequences which ensue when a middle class wife and mother breaks the seventh commandment. <p> What makes this novel of adultery, satirical views of provincial life, mockery of the relgious hypocrisy in the French countryside and lacerating portraits of such types as the village atheist Homais so great? In my opinion the reasons this is such a landmark work must include:<p> a. A picture of a woman seeking to break out of the nineteenth century bourgeoisie view of females as placid wives and mothers with no aspirations of their own. Throughout the novel there are images of birds seeking freedom from cages. Emma is a modern feminist in the nineteenth century society she finds impossible to escape. Emma is an iconoclastic rebel.<p> b. A satirical and cynical view of human hypocrisy drawn with skill in the pictures Flaubert draws of such figures as the village priest, scientist, merchants and moneylenders. Society is concerned with money and social status to the detriment of more spiritual and ethical values.<p> c. Flaubert introduces a new realism to the novel which will influence such naturalist as Emile Zola and others. The novel reads as if it was written today instead of over 150 years ago.<p> d. Flauberts descriptions of the beauty of nature (and its indifference to human suffering and troubles) are beautifully etched. His use of language and the level of suspense he maintains throughout the work are excellent.<p> e. Flaubert is not afraid to describe female sexual longings. His sex scenes are tasteful to our eyes but viewed as prurient reading in his own day. Penguin editons are always a joy to read with their critical apparatus and excellent introductions. <p> Enjoy this great work of literature as soon as you can!