Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (Vintage International)

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (Vintage International)

by Julian Barnes

This is, in short, a complete, unsettling, and frequently exhilarating vision of the world, starting with the voyage of Noah's ark and ending with a sneak preview of heaven!

Flaubert's Parrot (Vintage International)

Flaubert's Parrot (Vintage International)

by Julian Barnes

A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters.

The New York Trilogy (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

The New York Trilogy (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

by Paul Auster

Combining dark humor, Hitchcock-like suspense, and film-noir prose, these three unique novels--united--form a powerful and thought-provoking puzzle.

The Magus

by John Fowles

At the novels center is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island. There he befriends a local millionaire, but the friendship soon evolves into a deadly game and Nicholas finds that he must fight not only for his sanity but for his very survival.

The Island of the Day Before

by Umberto Eco, William Woys Weaver

After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked-on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his... (more)

An Artist of the Floating World (Vintage International)

An Artist of the Floating World (Vintage International)

by Kazuo Ishiguro

It is 1948. Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson, and his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet Iantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories... (more)

The Unconsoled (Vintage International)

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Only the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day could have created this daring and stunningly inventive new novel. The Unconsoled gives readers what is at once a riveting psychological mystery, an acute satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public self has taken on a life of its own. "Ishiguro writes with his characteristic grace and off-beat pungency."--Los... (more)

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing... (more)

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

The hilarious and tragic story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who feels passion only for the young "nymphet" Dolores Haze, whom he renames Lolita.

Foucault's Pendulum

by Umberto Eco

Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups,... (more)

A Primer on Postmodernism

by Stanley J. Grenz

Grenz examines the topography of postmodernism, a phenomenon everyone acknowledges, but has difficulty describing with precision. Of particular significance is his discussion of the challenges this cultural shift presents to the church.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

If on a Winters Night

by Italo Calvino

A postmodern novel which combines a love and a detective story with a sardonic dissection of the publishing industry in an allegory of reading. Two readers attempt to finish the same book, but are comically and repeatedly frustrated.

unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianityand Why It Matters

unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianityand Why It Matters

by David Kinnaman

Based on groundbreaking Barna Group research, unChristian uncovers the negative perceptions young people have of Christianity and explores what can be done to reverse them.

Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones/Jorge Luis Borges : StoriesJorge Luis Borges Acevedo

Jorge Luis Borges: Ficciones/Jorge Luis Borges : Stories

by Anthony Kerrigan, Peter Hulme, Jorge L. Borges

Ficciones es una obra imprescindible en la literatura contemporánea que merece su lugar destacado en cualquier canon de la literatura universal. Aquí se reúnen dos libros de Borges: El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) que incluye ocho relatos y Artificios (1944) con nueve cuentos. En esta colección, Borges nos lleva de viaje por un reino extraño, irresistible y profundamente resonante. Entramos en... (more)

Discipline & Punish

The Birth of the Prison

by Michel Foucault, Alan Sheridan

In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.

The Atrocity Exhibition

by J. G. Ballard

The Atrocity Exhibition is J.G. Ballard's most complex, disturbing work, with fabulous photos by Ana Barrado and artwork by Phoebe Gloeckner.

Cosmicomics

by Italo Calvino

Enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. “Naturally, we were all there, - old Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?” Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

The Body Artist

by Don Delillo

For thirty years, since the publication of his first novel, Americana, Don DeLillo has lived in the skin of our times. He has found a voice for the forgotten souls who haunt the fringes of our culture and for its larger-than-life, real-life figures. His language is defiantly, radiantly American. Now, to a new century, he has brought The Body Artist. In this spare, seductive novel, he inhabits the muted... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: postmodernism

by Thomas Pynchon

by Julian Barnes

by Julian Barnes

by Paul Auster

by John Fowles

by Umberto Eco, William Woys Weaver

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Jeanette Winterson

by Vladimir Nabokov

by Umberto Eco

by Stanley J. Grenz

by Jonathan Safran Foer

by Italo Calvino

by David Kinnaman

by Anthony Kerrigan, Peter Hulme, Jorge L. Borges

The Birth of the Prison

by Michel Foucault, Alan Sheridan

by J. G. Ballard

by Italo Calvino

by Don Delillo