Recent Awesome Reading and Listening
Discover an inspiring collection of recent awesome books, readings, and listenings. Explore top recommendations for your next great read or listen!
Book
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)âand haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. In one of the first non-fiction novels ever written, Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, generating both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
Book
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Fifteen short stories evoke the character, atmosphere, and people of the Irish city of Dublin at the turn of the century
Item Not Found
ID: 0143039237
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 159692151X
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 081257608X
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 1596878177
(Type: books)
Book
The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
âWhen Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.â With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowingâthough absurdly comicâmeditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, âKafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.â
Item Not Found
ID: B000FVQM2Y
(Type: books)
Book
King Rat
by China MiĂŠville
A London man is enrolled by the King of Rats to assassinate the Pied Piper of Hamelin who dethroned him. The man is Saul, whose rat mother joined humanity, making him immune to the piper's call. In his rat persona Saul eats garbage and climbs walls.
Book
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
The masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all timeâwith an Oscarâwinning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix. â[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank.ââThe New York Times Book Review I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . . This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.
Book
The First World War
by John Keegan
The definitive account of the Great War and national bestseller from one of our most eminent military historians, John Keegan. The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. The First World War probes the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict and takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministers, and their doomed efforts to defuse the crisis. Keegan reveals how, by an astonishing failure of diplomacy and communication, a bilateral dispute grew to engulf an entire continent. But the heart of Keegan's superb narrative is, of course, his analysis of the military conflict. With unequalled authority and insight, he recreates the nightmarish engagements whose names have become legend--Verdun, the Somme and Gallipoli among them--and sheds new light on the strategies and tactics employed, particularly the contributions of geography and technology. No less central to Keegan's account is the human aspect. He acquaints us with the thoughts of the intriguing personalities who oversaw the tragically unnecessary catastrophe--from heads of state like Russia's hapless tsar, Nicholas II, to renowned warmakers such as Haig, Hindenburg and Joffre. But Keegan reserves his most affecting personal sympathy for those whose individual efforts history has not recorded--"the anonymous millions, indistinguishably drab, undifferentially deprived of any scrap of the glories that by tradition made the life of the man-at-arms tolerable." By the end of the war, three great empires--the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman--had collapsed. But as Keegan shows, the devastation ex-tended over the entirety of Europe, and still profoundly informs the politics and culture of the continent today. His brilliant, panoramic account of this vast and terrible conflict is destined to take its place among the classics of world history.
Book
The Faerie Queene
by Edmund Spenser
âGreat Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shineâ The Faerie Queene was one of the most influential poems in the English language. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united Arthurian romance and Italian renaissance epic to celebrate the glory of the Virgin Queen. Each book of the poem recounts the quest of a knight to achieve a virtue: the Red Crosse Knight of Holinesse, who must slay a dragon and free himself from the witch Duessa; Sir Guyon, Knight of Temperance, who escapes the Cave of Mammon and destroys Acrasiaâs Bowre of Bliss; and the lady-knight Britomartâs search for her Sir Artegall, revealed to her in an enchanted mirror. Although composed as a moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queeneâs magical atmosphere captivated the imaginations of later poets from Milton to the Victorians. This edition includes the letter to Raleigh, in which Spenser declares his intentions for his poem, the commendatory verses by Spenserâs contemporaries and his dedicatory sonnets to the Elizabethan court, and is supplemented by a table of dates and a glossary For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Item Not Found
ID: B000I5Y8ZU
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: B000CA3EO2
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: B000098ZPP
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: B0009VNCXW
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: B00002MUOZ
(Type: books)
Book
The Lady in the Lake
by Raymond Chandler
Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's fourth novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). In The Lady in the Lake, hardboiled crime fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wivesâone a rich man's and one a poor man'sâwho have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.
Book
The High Window
by Raymond Chandler
Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's third novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortuneâthe elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation. "Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude." Erle Stanley Gardner "Raymond Chandler has given us a detective who is hard-boiled enough to be convincing . . . and that is no mean achievement." --The New York Times
Book
Extinction Journals
by Jeremy Robert Johnson
"You can survive a nuclear blast. All you need is some luck, and maybe a customized business suit coated in cockroaches. It could work. At least that's what Dean believed before the bombs actually dropped and his suit led him to murder a very important man at the foot of a blackened obelisk. Now D.C. is looking awfully empty. Life on Earth is pretty much coming to an end. All of which leaves Dean with a single question-"What now?" The answer to that question will take him on an uncanny voyage across a newly nuclear America where he must confront the problems associated with loneliness, radiation, love, and an ever-evolving cockroach suit with a mind of its own. Dean's bizarre adventures mark the last chronicle of human existence, the final entries in our species' own ..."--Publisher description