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1) Oblomov
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was a Russian novelist who achieved literary fame later in life, after a career in the civil-service which spanned more than thirty years. His first novel, "A Common Story", was a definitive success and his notoriety was cemented with the publication of his second novel, "Oblomov", in 1850. Based on a short story written a year prior, "Oblomov" is about a cultured, intelligent, upper middle class man experiencing...
Author
Language
English
Description
A satirical collection of letters to the great voices of literary history, from Herodotus to Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, and more.
The Scottish poet and scholar Andrew Lang took a novel approach to literary criticism when he chose to address his comments to authors who could no longer receive them. Beyond both flattery and insult, dead authors proved the ideal subject for the unmitigated honesty of Lang's assessments. First published...
4) Hard times
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.3 - AR Pts: 20
Lexile measure
790L
Language
English
Description
"Written deliberately to increase the circulation of Dickens's weekly magazine, Household Words, Hard Times was a huge and instantaneous success upon publication in 1854. Yet this novel is not the cheerful celebration of Victorian life one might have expected from the beloved author of The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution-and...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 12.4 - AR Pts: 66
Lexile measure
1260L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Before taking up her new post as a governess, the artful and ambitious Becky Sharp spends a brief period at the family home of her friend Amelia Sedley. Passive, pampered and utterly reliant on others, Amelia is the opposite of her scheming and ruthless friend. While Becky tries to ensnare the wealthy and vain Jos Sedley, Amelia desires nothing more than to be betrothed to the self-obsessed and raffish soldier George Osborne. Meanwhile, Captain William...
6) The Decameron: Collector's Edition: 3 Different Translations by John Payne, John Florio & J.M. Rigg
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Language
English
Description
The Decameron (c.1351) is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions....
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English
Description
This Misery of Boots is a 1907 political tract by H. G. Wells advocating socialism. Published by the Fabian Society, This Misery of Boots is the expansion of a 1905 essay with the same name. Its five chapters condemn private property in land and means of production and calls for their expropriation by the state "not for profit, but for service.
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English
Description
Richard Whately (1787-1863) was an English rhetorician, academic, logician, philosopher, theologian, and economist. Written when he lived in Oxford, his tract "Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte" is a witty jeu d'ésprit aimed at excessive scepticism of Gospel history. First published in 1819, this book is highly recommended for those with an interest in Napoleon Buonaparte and European history in general. Contents include: "The Death...
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Language
English
Description
NOT YOUR PROFESSOR'S FOLLY.
In 1925, the celebrated Chicago publisher Pascal Covici brought out an eclectic if unorthodox edition of In Praise of Folly, the classic Renaissance-era essay by philosopher and theologian Desiderius Erasmus. A work of many hands, the limited edition of eleven hundred numbered copies, bound in cloth and boards, and printed on fine paper (Coventry Book), quickly sold out and the edition went out of print. Since then,...
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English
Description
Patty Hearst & The Twinkie Murders is a darkly satiric take on two of the most famous cases of our era: the kidnapping of heiress, Patty Hearst, and the shocking assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and gay leader Harvey Milk. As a reporter for the Berkeley Barb, Paul Krassner was ringside at the spectacular California trials. Krassner's deadpan, hilarious style captures the nightmare reality behind the absurdities of the courtroom...
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English
Description
The author of one of the greatest romance novels of all time, Pride and Prejudice, takes her readers on a satiric tour through England's history, mercilessly exploiting the comedic potential of human foibles within British royalty. Part of Jane Austen's Juvenilia of the 1790s, The History of England was written during the author's teenage years. Filled with puns and parodies, the history begins with the reign of Henry IV and concludes with the death...
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Language
English
Description
Self Condemned, originally published in 1954, tells the story of Professor Renarding and his wife, Essie, as they find themselves in Momaco, a fictionalized version of Toronto, following Ren resignation as an academic in London, England. Reduced to a position at the second-rate University of Momaco, Rennd Essie suffer through a bleak and oppressive isolation in a dreary and alien city. The novel, a devastating, disturbing satire of life in wartime...
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Series
Language
English
Description
In a series of essays, Runyon, reflects on the frank, often outrageous opinions of his "old man," who knows a thing or two about just about everything-and even if he doesn't, he'll tell you anyway. Damon Runyon's "old man" is neither a small-time Broadway crook, nor a modest Brooklyn Babbitt... He is a salty old commentator on men, women and manners, who says what he thinks with more force and frequency than tact. My Old Man is a classic collection...
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Language
English
Description
In an endeavor to write a book that captures the very essence of Englishness, a young Scot finds himself in 1920s England. To this end, he finds himself in typical English situations and circumstances, including participation in rural sports, international diplomacy, weekend trips to the country, and a village cricket match; all set to the backdrop of a nation going through significant social upheaval. This eloquent and affectionate novel will appeal...
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English
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Description
Excerpt: ""Moral Statistician."-I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards...
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English
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Description
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift is a satirical masterpiece that employs biting wit and irony to address the pressing issue of poverty and overpopulation in 18th-century Ireland. Swift's proposal, presented in a straightforward and logical manner, suggests a shocking and absurd solution to the problem: the consumption of infants.
As readers delve into this essay, they quickly realize that Swift's proposal is not to be taken seriously but is...
17) Look who's back
Author
Language
English
Description
He's back. Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of ground, alive and well. Things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. And he's führious. People certainly recognize him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a Youtube...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Told from the perspective of a cantankerous man named Deidrick Knickerbocker, A Knickerbocker's History of New York depicts a satirical history spanning from the world's creation to the end of the Dutch dynasty. Beginning with the start of time itself, Knickerbocker reveals historical anecdotes, both real and imagined featuring social commentary, fresh perspectives on the past, and conversations with powerful historical figures. With humor and intrigue,...
20) Redemption Songs
Author
Language
English
Description
After the death of her American husband, Josephine Myers Blakely has moved back to Jamaica, the land of her birth. Married at nineteen and widowed at forty, Jo is adrift in a sea of grief. Then a chance meeting with a shadowy family member sets her on a path to help her family atone for generations of sin... or perish with them in the fire of their own destruction. She must find the strength to walk between two worlds, reconciling them, not only for...
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