Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, this debut collection of literary essays is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory. From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions-or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a... (more)

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

by Stephen Fry

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. —Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write... (more)

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries

by Suad Amiry

Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that architect Suad Amiry kept from 1981 to 2004, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law evokes the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Amiry writes elegance and humor about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another, the torture of falling in love with someone from another town, the absurdity of her... (more)

Den unge Amalie Skram: Et portrett fra det nittende århundreLiv Køltzow

Den unge Amalie Skram: Et portrett fra det nittende århundre

by Liv K\c3\b8ltzow

Text: Norwegian

The Complete Persepolis: Now a Major Motion Picture

The Complete Persepolis: Now a Major Motion Picture

by Marjane Satrapi

Here, in one volume: Marjane Satrapi's best-selling, internationally acclaimed memoir-in-comic-strips. Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of... (more)

The Prince

by Niccolo Machiavelli

Rufus Goodwin has made a new translation into modern English of Machiavelli's masterpiece, The Prince. Machiavelli, father of Social Sciences, continues to have relevance in our modern world, and his observations on the nature of human being and the political systems are as new today as they were during the Renaissance. In the Introduction, the adjective "Machiavellian" is analyzed.

Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions)

Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations (Dover Thrift Editions)

by Oscar Wilde

Epigrams, aphorisms, and other bon mots gathered from the celebrated wit’s plays, essays, and conversation offer an entertaining selection of observations both comic and profound. Organized by category, the nearly 400 quotes range in subject from human nature, morals, and society to art, politics, history, and more. A superb compilation, ideal as both an introduction to Wilde and as a treat for devotees.

Stupid White Men

And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!

by Michael Moore

In the winter of 2002, Stupid White Men took America -- and the world -- by storm. Tired and skeptical of George W. Bush's high approval ating, frightened by the implications of the Enron scandal -- and generally just looking for a voice of honest dissent in the thick atmosphere of jingoism that followed 9/11 -- book buyers from coast to coast swiftly embraced Michael Moore's in-your-face anti-Bush-era... (more)

Wild Swans

Three Daughters of China

by Rowena Cooper, Jung Chang

A new edition of one of the best-selling and best-loved books of recent years. The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and was named the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award.... (more)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

A Book for None and All

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. With blazing intensity... (more)

On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection

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I Was Told There'd Be Cake

by Sloane Crosley