Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: absurdity

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  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 5

  Mostly Harmless

  by Douglas Adams

  Douglas Adams is back with the amazing, logic-defying, but-why-stop-now fifth novel in the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Here is the epic story of Random, who sets out on a transgalactic quest to find the planet of her ancestors. Line drawings. From the Hardcover edition.
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  Waiting for Godot

  A Tragicomedy in 2 Acts

  by Samuel Beckett

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  The Bald Soprano and The Lesson

  by Eugène Ionesco, Robert A. Jouanny

  Often called the father of the Theater of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco wrote groundbreaking plays that are simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. Now his classic one acts The Bald Soprano and The Lesson are available in an exciting new translation by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tina Howe, noted heir of Ionesco’s absurdist vision, acclaimed by Frank Rich as “one of the smartest playwrights we have.” In The... (more)
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  The Fan Man

  by William Kotzwinkle

  Days in the life of Horse Badorties.
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  Invitation to a Beheading

  by Vladimir Nabokov

  Like Kafka's The Castle, Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude." an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers. an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner,... (more)
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  The Bald Soprano and Other Plays

  The Bald Soprano / The Lesson / Jack or the Submission / The Chairs

  by Eugène Ionesco

  The leading figure of absurdist theater and one of the great innovators of the modern stage, Eugene Ionesco did not write his first play, The Bald Soprano, until 1950. He went on to become an internationally renowned master of modern drama, famous for the comic proportions and bizarre effects that allow his work to be simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound.
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  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 4

  So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

  by Douglas Adams

  Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's... (more)
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  The Brooklyn Follies

  by Paul Auster

  Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore-a far cry from the brilliant academic career he+d begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom+s boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the -ancient kingdom... (more)
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  Omon Ra

  by Victor Pelevin

  black comic Russian novel, tr Andrew Bromfield
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  A Confederacy of Dunces

  by John Kennedy Toole

  A popular Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy follows the adventures of New Orlean's lower denizens of the French Quarter.
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  Batman Comics: Book 7

  Batman: The Killing Joke

  by Alan Moore, Brian Bolland

  One of the most famous Batman stories of all time is offered for the first time in hardcover in this special twentieth-anniversary edition. This is the unforgettable that forever changed Batman's world, adding a new element of darkness with its unflinching portrayal of The Joker's twisted psyche. Writer Alan Moore, acclaimed author of WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA, offers his take on the disturbing... (more)
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  Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, Private Lives: Three Plays (Vintage International)

  by Noël Coward

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  Adventures in the Skin Trade

  by Dylan Thomas

  Most famous for his poetry, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) also wrote captivating short-stories, a novella, several screenplays and radio plays, as well as his delightful stage play, Under Milk Wood —all infused with his passion for the English language and his enduring love of Wales.
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  The Plague

  by Albert Camus

  A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
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  Catch-22

  by Joseph Heller

  Catch-22 is set in the closing months of World War II, in an American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy. Its hero is a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever even if he has to die in the attempt.)His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men... (more)
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  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 2

  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

  by Douglas Adams

  Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons? Time for a cup of tea! Join the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his uncommon comrades in arms in their desperate search for a place to eat, as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability. Among Arthur’s motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a long-time friend and expert contributer to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ; Zaphod Beeblebrox,... (more)
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  The Trial

  by Franz Kafka

  Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. The terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism,... (more)
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  Twisthorn Bellow

  by Rhys Hughes

  It may come as no surprise that France wants to take over the world again. But this time they plan to go much further and gain control of the spiritual dimensions too, making French the official language of the afterlife! Twisthorn Bellow is a freshly baked golem who has fallen into a vat of nitroglycerin, turning him into a living stick of dynamite. As well as battling against monsters and rock musicians, he’s... (more)
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  Twisthorn Bellow

  by Rhys Hughes

  It may come as no surprise that France wants to take over the world again. But this time they plan to go much further and gain control of the spiritual dimensions too, making French the official language of the afterlife! Twisthorn Bellow is a freshly baked golem who has fallen into a vat of nitroglycerin, turning him into a living stick of dynamite. As well as battling against monsters and rock musicians, he’s... (more)
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  Ponthe Oldenguine

  by Andrew Hook

  If you want a picture of the future, Trunka, imagine a boot stamping on a cake - forever. Imagine just how glorious that would be.“Ponthe Oldenguine” is one part fictional biography of a former television impresario who claims he’s been hounded out of media history, and one part biography of the journalist commissioned to write his story. Where the tales merge, there is madness.Comic, curious,... (more)