Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 1)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 1)

by A. L. Macfie, Adam Smith, Knud Haakonssen

Adam Smith's major work of 1759 develops the foundation for a general system of morals, and is a text of central importance in the history of moral and political thought. Through the idea of sympathy and the mental construct of an impartial spectator, Smith formulated highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment and the virtues. This volume offers a new edition of the text with helpful notes for the... (more)

Nova Express

by William S. Burroughs

Nova Express takes William S. Burroughs’s nightmarish future one step beyond The Soft Machine. The diabolical Nova criminals have gained control and plan on wreaking untold destruction. It’s up to Inspector Lee of the Nova Police to attack and dismantle the word-and-imagery machine of these “control addicts” before it’s too late.

Decline and Fall

by Evelyn Waugh

Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather embarks on a series of bizarre adventures that start in a minor public school and end in one of HM prisons. In this, his first and funniest novel, Evelyn Waugh immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingenu abroad in the razzmatazz of Twenties high society.

Four Seasons of Success: Personal ReminiBudd Schulberg

Four Seasons of Success: Personal Remini

by Budd Schulberg

Advertisements for Myself

by Norman Mailer

Originally published in 1959, Advertisements for Myself is an inventive collection of stories, essays, polemic, meditations, and interviews. It is Mailer at his brilliant, provocative, outrageous best. Emerging at the height of "hip," Advertisements is at once a chronicle of a crucial era in the formation of modern American culture and an important contribution to the great autobiographical tradition in... (more)

After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

by George Steiner

When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern... (more)

Our Lady of the Flowers

by Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean Genet's first, and arguably greatest, novel was written while he was in prison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction, Genet penned this work on the brown paper which inmates were supposed to use to fold bags as a form of occupational therapy. The masterpiece he managed to produce under those difficult conditions is a lyrical portrait of the criminal underground of Paris and the thieves, murderers and pimps... (more)

The Age of Uncertainty

by John Kenneth Galbraith

Shakespeare

by Anthony Burgess

Like Burgess's early novel, Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love-Life, this equally delightful factual treatment of what we know of the Bard combines Burgess's stimulating erudition and his well-informed imagination. The result is at once a speculative biography, a theatrical history, and a re-creation of the Elizabethan age. Whether a vivid retracing of the evolution Elizabethan theater, a bravura... (more)

Kinflicks

by Lisa Alther

Meet Ginny Babcock - the forerunner to BRIDGET JONES It's the 1950's and 60's in Hullsport, Tennessee and Ginny Babcock is coming of age. Bouncing from one identity to the other, she adopts the values, politics, lifestyles and even sexual orientation of each new partner she finds. In this wise, funny and ultimately heartbreaking story, Lisa Alther explores the limited roles offered to women in this period - from... (more)

Sartor Resartus

by Thomas Carlyle

Sartor Resartus ("The Tailor Retailored") is ostensibly an introduction to a strange history of clothing by the German Professor of Things in General, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh; its deeper concerns are social injustice, the right way of living in the world, and the large questions of faith and understanding. This is the first edition to present the novel as it originally appeared, with indications of the changes... (more)

Conjectures and Refutations

by Karl R. Popper

This classic remains one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history.

Ticket That Exploded

by William S. Burroughs

In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs’s grand cut-up trilogy, which began with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express, reaches its climax as Inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet.

A Ripple from the Storm (The Children of Violence, Book 3)

A Ripple from the Storm (The Children of Violence, Book 3)

by Doris Lessing

Martha Quest, the embodied heroine of the Children of Violence series, has been acclaimed as one of the greatest fictional creations in the English language. In a Ripple from the Storm, Doris Lessing charts Martha Quest's personal and political adventures in race-torn British Africa, following Martha through World War II, a grotesque second marriage, and an excursion into Communism. This wise and starling novel... (more)

Giles goat-boy;: Or, The revised new syllabus

Giles goat-boy;: Or, The revised new syllabus

by John Barth

In this outrageously farcical adventure, hero George Giles sets out to conquer the terrible Wescac computer system that threatens to destroy his community in this brilliant "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" ( Time ).

New Grub Street

by George Gissing

In "New Grub Street" George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London's literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing... (more)

Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

A university in America sends for James, one of the original, English, Angry Young Men, to teach creative writing. He is no longer angry, but thinks a new life in the USA might give new life to his writing. When he reaches America, he doesn't get what he expected, but then, neither does America.

A long trip to teatimeAnthony Burgess

A long trip to teatime

by Anthony Burgess

Love in a Cold Climate

by Nancy Mitford

In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, the story of coldly beautiful Polly Hampton and her aristocratic parents is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of... (more)

Ship of Fools

by Katherine Anne Porter

The story takes place in the summer of 1931, on board a cruise ship bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. The passenger list is long and portentous, and includes a Spanish noblewoman, a drunken German lawyer, an American divorcee, a pair of Mexican Catholic priests, and a host of others. This ship of fools is a crucible of intense experience, out of which everyone emerges forever changed. Rich in incident, passion, and... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: uk1

by A. L. Macfie, Adam Smith, Knud Haakonssen

by William S. Burroughs

by Evelyn Waugh

by Budd Schulberg

by Norman Mailer

by George Steiner

by Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre

by John Kenneth Galbraith

by Anthony Burgess

by Lisa Alther

by Thomas Carlyle

by Karl R. Popper

by William S. Burroughs

by Doris Lessing

by John Barth

by George Gissing

by Malcolm Bradbury

by Anthony Burgess

by Nancy Mitford

by Katherine Anne Porter