Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

From master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind , comes The Angel’s Game — a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love. The whole of Barcelona stretched out at my feet and I wanted to believe that when I opened those windows — my new windows — each evening its streets would whisper stories to me,... (more)

The Professor and the Madman

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman , masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED began in 1857, it was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led... (more)

Humboldt's Gift

by Saul Bellow

A chronicle of success and failure, this work is Bellow's tale of the writer's life in America. When Humboldt dies a failure in a seedy New York hotel, Charlie Citrine coping with the tribulations of his own success, begins to realize the significance of his own life.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel

by Dai Sijie, Sijie Dai

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western... (more)

Duluth (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Duluth (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

by Gore Vidal

"A wild spoof of absolutely everything: social pretenses, law enforcement, marriage, open marriage, racism, literature, television, science fiction, and sex. Dozens of plots perk along at an amazing pace . . . . raunchy, dirty, outrageous, rife with cliches -- and often very funny." -- People "One of the most brilliant, most radical, and most subversive pieces of writing to emerge from America in recent years." --... (more)

Landscape with Traveler (Vintage Contemporaries)

Landscape with Traveler (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Barry Gifford

Lempriere's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

An international best-seller and winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, Lempriere's Dictionary is the debut novel from Lawrence Norfolk, one of England's most innovative, internationally acclaimed young authors. In eighteenth-century London, John Lempriere works feverishly on a celebrated dictionary of classical mythology that bears his name. He discovers a conspiracy against his family dating back 150 years. Told... (more)

February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn

February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn

by Sherill Tippins

In this captivating book, Sherill Tippins brings to life the story of what was possibly the most fertile and improbable live-in salon of the twentieth century. Known as February House, its residents included, among others, Carson McCullers, W. H. Auden, Paul Bowles, and the famed burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. This ramshackle Brooklyn brownstone was host to an explosion of creativity, an extraordinary... (more)

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (Essential Haiku)

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa (Essential Haiku)

American readers have been fascinated, since their exposure to Japanese culture late in the nineteenth century, with the brief Japanese poem called the hokku or haiku . The seventeen-syllable form is rooted in a Japanese tradition of close observation of nature, of making poetry from subtle suggestion. Infused by its great practitioners with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, the haiku has served as an example of the... (more)

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The Angel's Game

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon