Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

by David Sedaris

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is a 2004 collection of 22 autobiographical essays by American humorist David Sedaris. The essays address the author's upbringing in Raleigh, North Carolina, his relationships with family members, and his work and life in New York City and France.

The Opposite of Fate

by Amy Tan

Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her... (more)

The Bookseller of Kabul

by A?sne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen

This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details - a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the... (more)

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest

by Mark J. Plotkin

Western medicine is only just beginning to value the curative powers of plants and herbs found in the Amazon rain forests. The story of ethnobotanist Mark Plotkins's apprenticeship with shaman wise men of the area is truly an anthropological adventure, that also vividly clarifies what destruction of the rain forests may ultimately cost humanity.Photos. Author lecture tour.

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

by Elizabeth Wurtzel

No one better understands the desire to be bad than Elizabeth Wurtzel. Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behavior. By looking at women who derive their power from their sexuality, Wurtzel offers a trenchant cultural critique of contemporary gender relations. Beginning with Delilah, the first woman to supposedly bring a great man down (latter-day Delilahs include Yoko Ono, Pam... (more)

A Feather on the Breath of God: A Novel

by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez+s early novel is the beautifully wrought story of one woman living precariously between cultures, a haunting tale of un-assimilation. Our narrator, the daughter of a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother, comes of age in the 1960s housing projects of New York. Desperate to escape from her troubled home, Christa throws herself into the world of ballet and language. It is only when she begins a... (more)

The Call of the Weird

by Louis Theroux

"The king of offbeat documentaries sets off across America in search of the weird and wacky. Cool." -- Mail on Sunday (England) No, it doesn't get much weirder than this: Thor Templar, Lord Commander of the Earth Protectorate, who claims to have killed ten aliens. Or April, the Neo-Nazi bringing up her twin daughters Lamb and Lynx (who have just formed a white-power folk group for kids called... (more)

Restless Warrior: Sir Stamford RafflesRichard Ian Mann

Restless Warrior: Sir Stamford Raffles

by Richard Ian Mann

The Time of Secrets and the Time of LoveMarcel Pagnol

The Time of Secrets and the Time of Love

by Marcel Pagnol

Following the success of "My Father's Glory" and "My Mother's Castle", this book is an evocation of the author's school-days in Provence.

The Jade Peony

by Wayson Choy

"Beautifully written….It renders a complex and complete human world, which by the end we have learned to love."— The Boston Book Review Chinatown, Vancouver, in the late 1930s and '40s provides the backdrop for this poignant first novel, told through the vivid reminiscences of the three younger children of an immigrant Chinese family. The siblings grapple with their individual identities in a changing world,... (more)

What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love

What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love

by Carole Radziwill

"What Remains is a vivid and haunting memoir about a girl from a working-class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a prince, Anthony Radziwill, one of a long line of Polish royals and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Carole Radziwill's story is part fairy tale, part tragedy. She tells both with great candor and wit. Carole grew up in a small suburb with a large, eccentric cast of... (more)

Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing

Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing

by Ian Buruma

Who speaks for China? Is it the old men of the politbureau or an activist like Wei Jingshsheng, who spent eighteen years in prison for writing a democratic manifesto? Is China’s future to be found amid the boisterous sleaze of an electoral campaign in Taiwan or in the maneuvers by which ordinary residents of Beijing quietly resist the authority of the state? These are among the questions that Ian Buruma poses in... (more)

The English Language: A Historical introduction (Canto)

The English Language: A Historical introduction (Canto)

by Charles Laurence Barber

Where does today's English come from? This book describes the nature of language and language change, and presents a history of the English language from prehistory to the present day, dealing with key topics such as grammar, pronunciation and semantics. The main theoretical and technical concepts of historical linguistics are also explained. Charles Barber uses familiar texts, including the English of King... (more)

The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons

The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons

by David Crane

A stunningly original account, revolutionary in technique, examining the character of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron through the lives and deadly rivalry of the two women he left behind. The heart of David Crane’s account is the lifelong feud between Augusta—Byron’s half sister with whom he had a passionate affair—and Annabella, his society wife, both of whom bore him daughters. Crane reimagines the famous... (more)

Reflected Glory : The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman

Reflected Glory : The Life of Pamela Churchill Harriman

by Sally Bedell Smith

Featuring a new afterword containing the latest information on Pamela Harriman's death and will, a paperback edition of a uniquely detailed biography draws on hundreds of interviews to portray a woman sometimes called the century's greatest courtesan. Reprint. 40,000 first printing."

Beyond the Narrow Gate

by Leslie Chang

Beyond the Narrow Gate is the brave and moving story of four Chinese girls--Dolores, Suzanne, Margaret, and Mary--from their ultimate passage through the "narrow gate" in Communist China to America and their decades-long friendship. Leslie Chang, an American-born journalist and the daughter of Mary, lifts the veils of secrecy, shame, and loss that have for so long hung over the "bamboo generation." What Chang... (more)

Sold for Silver (Oxford in Asia paperbacks)

Sold for Silver (Oxford in Asia paperbacks)

by Janet Lim

"I was looked at, criticized, and after much bargaining sold for $250." So begins Janet Lim’s ordeal as a slave girl in 1930s Singapore. But this is only the beginning of a remarkable journey, which sees the author freed from child bondage to assume a position of leadership, and obtain true happiness, in later life. After gaining her freedom, Janet is educated by missionaries, she embraces the Christian... (more)

Small World

by David Lodge

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle and the lovely Angelica are the jet-propelled academics who are on the move, in the air, and on the make, in David Lodge's satirical 'Small World'. It is a world of glamorous travel and high excitement, where stuffy lecture rooms are swapped for lush corners of the globe, and romance is in the air...'A wonderful tissue of outrageous coincidences and correspondences,... (more)

by Kate Adie

Kate Adie has courageously reported from all over the world since she joined the BBC in 1969. These memoirs encompass her reporting from, inter alia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Tiananmen Square and, of course, the Gulf War of 1991. From the siege at the Iranian embassy which shot her to public acclaim, to an alarming encounter with a drunken Libyan army commander who shot her at point-blank range, from the... (more)

Fashion Conspiracy a Remarkable Journey Through the Empires of FashionNicholas Coleridge

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