Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Falling Cloudberries

by Tessa Kiros

Falling Cloudberries is filled with the recipes that have weaved their way through the life of Tessa Kiros and her family, from the sweets handed out at Scottish fetes on days off from a Greek school in South Africa to the rice puddings with rosewater and cinnamon made in a shed by her Cypriot grandfather (who also had a fondness for pickling baby birds) and the gravlax with dill prepared by her Finnish mother. In... (more)

The Geography of Thought

by Richard E. Nisbett

When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people... (more)

Pr?i?be?h inz?eny?ra lidsky?ch dus?i?. (English)

Pr?i?be?h inz?eny?ra lidsky?ch dus?i?. (English)

by Josef Skvorecky, Paul Wilson

Fiction/ The expression "the engineer of human souls" is held, by many political indoctrinators, to be Stalin's definition of a writer: as an engineer constructs a machine, so must a writer construct the mind of the New Man. THE ENGINEER OF HUMAN SOULS is a labyrinthine comic novel that investigates the journey and plight of novelist Danny Smiricky, a Czech immigrant to Canada. As adventuresome, episodic,... (more)

The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture

The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture

The World is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture reveals the diverse traditions of other countries through its cuisine, through both stories and recipes. Chefs, travel writers, and dedicated foodies share their unique experiences, transporting readers into kitchens in Morocco, Italy, Belize, Cypress, Kenya, Vietnam, and elsewhere around the world. Feast upon Bahaian Fish Stew—a lover’s delight, Palak... (more)

Millennium; Tribal Wisdom and the Modern WorldDavid Maybury-Lewis

Millennium; Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World

by David Maybury-Lewis

Looks toward the tribal societies that Western civilization has swept aside for insight into how their traditions may be able to prevent humans from destroying themselves in the next millennium. TV tie-in. 100,000 first printing. 100,000 ad/promo.

How to Speak Fluent Lovey-Dovey in 11 Languages in 24 Hours

How to Speak Fluent Lovey-Dovey in 11 Languages in 24 Hours

by Karen Salmansohn

Prepare yourself for world-class flirting. The French purport to be one of zee most romantic cultures, but my honey bunny, did you know that their terms of endearment include "mon petit chou" (my little cabbage) and "ma puce" (my flea)? Or that in El Salvador, lovers call each other "gordita" (fatty) and like it? All over the world, people in love call each other the strangest things. Now these curious sweet... (more)

The Creating Word: Papers from an International Conference on the Learning and Teaching of English in the 1980sProfessor Patricia Demers FRSC

The Creating Word: Papers from an International Conference on the Learning and Teaching of English in the 1980s

by Professor Patricia Demers FRSC

These papers from "The Creating Word" conference at the University of Alberta look directly at the challenges facing English teachers in the 1980s. Eleven notable educators address topics of rhetoric, deconstructionism, transactional analysis, creative writing, reader-response theories, language arts methodology, and computer technology.

Harper Collins World Reader Volume IIMary Ann Caws

Harper Collins World Reader Volume II

by Mary Ann Caws

The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on... (more)

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure

by Mireille Guiliano

Stylish, convincing, wise, funny–and just in time: the ultimate non -diet book, which could radically change the way you think and live. French women don’t get fat, but they do eat bread and pastry, drink wine, and regularly enjoy three-course meals. In her delightful tale, Mireille Guiliano unlocks the simple secrets of this “French paradox”–how to enjoy food and stay slim and healthy. Hers is a charming,... (more)

The Namesake: A Novel

by Jhumpa Lahiri, Mira Nair

Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling first novel, now in paperback for the first time. The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of... (more)

A Thousand Days in Venice

by Marlena De Blasi

He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorced American chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks she is incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity for romantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she has packed up her house in St. Louis... (more)

Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference

Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference

by Craig Storti

According to Craig Storti, so much culture lurks in the common conversation that many of our most common, seemingly innocent exchanges are cultural minefields waiting to explode into cultural misunderstandings. This work is a collection of brief conversations between an American and someone from another country and culture. Each contains at least one breach of cultural norms, which the reader is challenged to... (more)

The Mistress of Spices: A Novel

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo--in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman--travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a... (more)

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

by Nicholas Ostler

Nicholas Ostler's Empires of the Word is the first history of the world's great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the struggles that gave birth to the languages of... (more)

Language and Culture (Oxford Introductions to Language Study)

Language and Culture (Oxford Introductions to Language Study)

by Claire J. Kramsch

Recent social and political changes have focused attention on the debate about the relationship between language and culture. This book offers an accessible survey of key concepts such as social context and cultural authenticity, using insights from fields which include linguistics, sociology and anthropology.

Folk Bags: 30 Knitting Patterns and Tales from Around the World (Folk Knitting series)

Folk Bags: 30 Knitting Patterns and Tales from Around the World (Folk Knitting series)

by Vicki Square

Thirty projects from 23 countries offer a worldwide representation of bags, from Asia and Africa to Europe and the Americas. From the fish-shaped Japanese felted bag to the Persian carpet-inspired handbag, each bag is a product of its cultural history. Each pattern begins with a brief history describing the source behind these contemporary interpretations of folk designs. Folk stories also accompany many projects.... (more)

Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects On Raising Internationally Adopted Children

Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects On Raising Internationally Adopted Children

by Cheri Register

GREAT CONDITION, WILL SHIP FAST!!

The Best Recipes in the World

by Mark Bittman

With his million-copy bestseller How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman made the difficult doable. Now he makes the exotic accessible. In this highly ambitious, accomplished, globe-spanning work, Bittman gathers the best recipes that people from dozens of countries around the world cook every day. And when he brings his distinctive no-frills approach to dishes that were once considered esoteric, America's home... (more)

Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism

Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism

by Mari Yoshihara

As exemplified by Madame Butterfly, East-West relations have often been expressed as the relations between the masculine, dominant West and the feminine, submissive East. Yet, this binary model does not account for the important role of white women in the construction of Orientalism. Mari Yoshihara's study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early... (more)

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Tags: crosscultural