Books Read 2005-01

Explore a curated list of books read in January 2005. Discover top reads, genres, and recommendations from this 2005 book collection.

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ID: 0394742575
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How Proust Can Change Your Life Cover
Book

How Proust Can Change Your Life

by Alain De Botton

A bestselling author draws on the work of one of history’s most important writers to show us how to best live life in a book that’s "delightfully original.... A self-help book in the deepest sense of the term" (The New York Times). Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres—literary biography and self-help manual—in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life. Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and unclichéd articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust's essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work. Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life.
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ID: 0674013204
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ID: 0553210351
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ID: 0802130631
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ID: 0393048896
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The Elementary Particles Cover
Book

The Elementary Particles

by Michel Houellebecq

An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
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ID: 0060514469
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ID: 0688177875
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ID: 0452010055
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ID: 0801856620
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ID: 0500511993
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ID: 0500511985
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ID: 1876175702
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ID: 0803227094
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He Died with a Felafel in His Hand Cover
Book

He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

by John Birmingham

He died with a felafel in his hand.
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ID: 0553380656
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ID: 0393325644
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ID: 0671898434
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Cover
Book

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

by Hunter S. Thompson

50th Anniversary Edition • With an introduction by Caity Weaver, acclaimed New York Times journalist This cult classic of gonzo journalism is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken. Also a major motion picture directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.
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ID: 0394728998
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Mission to America Cover
Book

Mission to America

by Walter Kirn

On a mission to recruit young women for their church, Mason LaVerle and Elias Stark leave Montana and experience the excesses of contemporary American society in a Colorado ski town along with its colorful inhabitants.
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ID: 088784524X
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ID: 0393059626
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