Geo

 

In recent years, I’ve made the effort to branch out into new reading territories. I had since developed strong interests in books on or about world history, mythology, and environmentalism. While my interests are wide-ranging, I am foremost an advocate of the literary classic - more often than not, the ones with the fat spines.

 

 

 

...And here is some more inspiration.

 

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Ulysses (Vintage International) By James Joyce Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780679722762
Availability: Not On Our Shelves - Available within 1 to 5 Days
Published: Vintage - June 16th, 1990

Nobody reads Joyce anymore,” James Agee wrote in his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, commenting on the watered-down artistic tastes of the masses. That was in 1941. And still today, nobody reads Joyce. I firmly believe that Joyce is to literary fiction as Shakespeare is to theatre. If the episodes of Ulysses had been published separately as novellas, Joyce would be just as well-known and read as Shakespeare is today. Joyce once said that he wrote about simple topics using difficult techniques. Ulysses is just that. Joyce’s favorite topics of familial, religious, and national self-exile are examined here through a progression of numerous writing styles and techniques. The start of the novel carries on the narrative style of Joyce’s earlier works before blending in other techniques, such as interior monologue, epic drama, and the parodying of writing styles before him. Interested in a course on the history of English language? Forego the course fee and just read Ulysses.


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Finnegans Wake (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) By James Joyce Cover Image
$25.00
ISBN: 9780141181264
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin Classics - December 1st, 1999

By the time James Joyce decided what his follow-up work to Ulysses would be (“I think I will write a history of the world”), he declared that he was done with the English language and set about developing the style that would infamously make up Finnegans Wake. In this novel, his topics of family, religion, and country become his characters, and through the blending, metamorphosing, and punning of language, he was able to portray multiple aspects of each topic into every page, paragraph, and word. Fore me, the Wake rebellusioneyesd the wayvey sea languish. Itsy finnished product of seehear ramblitzion, returnmination, brailleance, and oddacity. In a single workd, Joyce stoughed everadam theme I punder a bout. Heavydense that any thinking be righten. Iambic turnally inkpressed.


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Gravity's Rainbow (Classics Deluxe Edition): (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) By Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller (Illustrator)
$24.00
ISBN: 9780143039945
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin Classics - October 31st, 2006

Gravity’s Rainbow contains all the features of the postmodern literary movement: encyclopedic information, divergent plotlines, time and space fiascos, high- and low-art marriage, and tongue-in-cheek self-reference. But what sets Thomas Pynchon’s novel (and Pynchon himself) apart from other postmodern efforts are content and execution that match equally his oftentimes eccentric style. Pynchon deals with opposing ideas: science and art, intellect and humor, time and space. He exploit’s the resulting tensions to illustrate perhaps his most important opposing idea: the opposition between chaos and order. These are not mere juxtapositions. They are harsh, disagreeable, and sometimes violent conflicts. Gravity’s Rainbow is a mosaic of opposing governments, militant factions, war-torn cultures and ideologies, all trying desperately to control the chaos of the war in their own conflicting ways, unaware of the fact that they are all exacerbating the entropy. Oh, and did I mention that this book is really funny?


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The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas By Gertrude Stein Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9780679724636
Availability: Not On Our Shelves - Available within 1 to 5 Days
Published: Vintage - March 17th, 1990

“I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it,” Alice B. Toklas writes in her autobiography. Or was it Gertrude Stein who wrote it? Or was it Toklas telling Stein to write it? The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a memoir both conventional and unconventional, depending on the reader’s point of view regarding the book’s point of view. It is mostly believed to be Toklas’s own voice, words, and thoughts, perhaps organized and structured by Stein. Still, I can’t help but entertain the possibility that Stein had a bit of fun writing about herself from her companion’s perspective. Any way you choose to read it, it is a book about extraordinary subjects (legendary artists and writers) during extraordinary times (the rise of modern art and modernist literature during WWI) in an extraordinary city (Paris, France). It is also a wonderful starting point of Stein’s work for anyone unfamiliar with her, and it will give you almost all the information you need about her life, regardless of whose point of view it is coming from.