Troubled by an inability to find any meaning in his life, the 25-year-old narrator of this deceptively simple novel quits university and eventually arrives at his brother's New York apartment. In a bid to discover what life is all about, he writes lists. He becomes obsessed by time and whether it actually matters. He faxes his meteorologist friend. He endlessly bounces a ball against the wall. He befriends a small boy who lives next door. He yearns to get to the bottom of life and how best to live it. Funny, friendly, enigmatic, and frequently poignant - superbly naive.

Book Description This work tells the story of 30 pilgrims who meet by chance at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, and journey together to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. To pass the time along the way, they tell stories to one another, shot through with cunning wit and dry humour. About this book: Geoffey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) was one of the finest storytellers in the English language, as well as being a great poet and an accomplished prose writer. The Canterbury Tales, although incomplete at the time of Chaucer's death, is generally regarded as his greatest work. The Canterbury Tales tells the story of 30 pilgrims who meet by chance at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London and journey together to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. To pass the time along the way, they tell stories to one another. The Tales themselves range from the exemplary saints' lives told by the nuns, to the bawdy, comic tales of the miller and the reeve, always shot through with Chaucer's cunning wit and dry humour. Chaucer leaves his readers with the impression that the whole of medieval society has passed before their eyes. This new transcription and edition is taken from British Library MS Harley 7334, a beautifully decorated, volume produced within ten years of Chaucer's death. The aim of the present edition, with its 'on-page' notes and glosses, is to enable readers with little or no previous experience of medieval English to read and enjoy this landmark in English Literature. Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

《宽容》内容简介：宗教史上的对立与融合、迫害与反迫害，历来是个复杂而敏感的问题。房龙以他犀利的眼光，从不同宗教派别的冲突中去寻找背后的深层根源。最终他看到：历史上的宗教改革家假以“宗教改革”的名义，对一切不利于自己发展的思想创新进行残酷迫害，这种精神上的不宽容导致的恰是他们的“敌人”犯下的那些错误。借助于房龙的“宽容”之眼，我们不难对宗教史乃至一切精神文化现象的发展有一个清晰的轮廓。

在线阅读本书 "Vanity Fair", Thackeray's panoramic, satirical saga of corruption at all levels of English society, was published in 1847 but set during the Napoleonic Wars. It chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her schoolmate Amelia Sedley, a typically naive Victorian heroine, the pampered daughter of a wealthy family. Becky's fluctuating fortunes eventually bring her to an affair with Amelia's dissolute husband; when he is killed at Waterloo, Amelia and her child are left penniless, while Becky and her husband Rawdon Crawley rise in the world, managing to lead a high life in London solely on the basis of their shrewdness.(The chapter entitled "How to Live on Nothing" is a classic.) Thackeray's subtitle, "A Novel Without a Hero," is understating the case; his view of humanity in this novel is distinctly bleak and deliberately antiheroic. Critics of the time misunderstood the book, decrying it as (among other things) vicious, vile, and odious. But "Vanity Fair" has endured as one of the great comic novels of all time, and a landmark in the history of realism in fiction.

This Norton Critical Edition reprints the 1818 text of the novel, as well as two chapters for it that were cancelled. Also included are a selection of Austen's letters pertaining to the novel and a number of critical interpretations.

Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchant ship, is shipwrecked on the strange island of Lilliput where the inhabitants are only six inches tall. After they overcome their timidity about the giant in their midst, Gulliver becomes embroiled in the islanders petty disputes about such issues as whether it is better to break an egg at the big end or the little end, the rivalry between those who wear high heels and those who prefer low heels, and the ridiculous pomposity of their miniature emperor. This is not the end of Gulliver s adventures, for he later finds himself on Brobdingnag, where the natives are incredibly tall; the flying island of Laputo, where they intellectualise from dawn till dusk; and, finally, the country of the wise " Houyhnhnms and the vulgar Yahoos. All human life is satirised here, from politicians to priests and philosophers to poets. And yes, the truth is that we re all Yahoos.

美丽、高傲的芭思希芭来到威瑟伯里继承她叔叔的农场。忠诚能干的奧克对她一见钟情，但遭到了拒绝。家境殷实的农场主波德伍德因为一次误会不断地向芭思希芭求爱。而芭思希芭却与英俊的中上特洛伊结了婚。然而，浪漫的爱情到结婚后便告终结。几番风波之后，波德伍德开枪打死了特洛伊，自己则向警方自首。失去了丈夫的芭思希芭同时又面临着失去农场的可能。这时奥克来到她的身边，给故事一个皆大欢喜的结局。

这个故事探讨了不同程度的偏见，也探讨了关于童年和成熟的过程。

In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes--and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful. The Random House colophon made its debut in February 1927 on the cover of a little pamphlet called "Announcement Number One." Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, the company's founders, had acquired the Modern Library from publishers Boni and Liveright two years earlier. One day, their friend the illustrator Rockwell Kent stopped by their office. Cerf later recalled, "Rockwell was sitting at my desk facing Donald, and we were talking about doing a few books on the side, when suddenly I got an inspiration and said, 'I've got the name for our publishing house. We just said we were go-ing to publish a few books on the side at random. Let's call it Random House.' Donald liked the idea, and Rockwell Kent said, 'That's a great name. I'll draw your trademark.' So, sitting at my desk, he took a piece of paper and in five minutes drew Random House, which has been our colophon ever since." Throughout the years, the mission of Random House has remained consistent: to publish books of the highest quality, at random. We are proud to continue this tradition today. This edition is set from the first American edition of 1937 and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of Random House.

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society. Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be. Third-place winner of Barnes & Noble's 2001 Discover Great New Writers Award for Nonfiction

在线阅读本书 Book Description The Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulfilment seems to lie in his relationship with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead. From Library Journal Jude the Obscure created storms of scandal and protest for the author upon its publication. Hardy, disgusted and disappointed, devoted the remainder of his life to poetry and never wrote another novel. Today, the material is far less shocking. Jude Fawley, a poor stone carver with aspirations toward an academic career, is thwarted at every turn and is finally forced to give up his dreams of a university education. He is tricked into an unwise marriage, and when his wife deserts him, he begins a relationship with a free-spirited cousin. With this begins the descent into bleak tragedy as the couple alternately defy and succumb to the pressures of a deeply disapproving society. Hardy's characters have a fascinating ambiguity: they are victimized by a stern moral code, but they are also selfish and weak-willed creatures who bring on much of their own difficulties through their own vacillations and submissions to impulse. The abridgment speeds Jude's fall to considerable dramatic effect, but it also deletes the author's agonizing logic. Instead of the meticulous weaving of Jude's destiny, we get a somewhat incoherent summary that preserves the major plot points but fails to draw us into the tragedy. Michael Pennington reads resonantly and skillfully, his voice perfectly matching the grim music of Hardy's prose, but this recording can only be recommended for larger public libraries. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　-John Owen, Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, CA From AudioFile Author Thomas Hardy espoused Shakespeare's dictum (from King Lear): "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." He particularly exhibits this pessimism in Jude the Obscure, his tragedy about Jude Fawley, a stonemason torn by ambitions both intellectual and carnal, and Sue Whitehead, an early feminist whom Jude loves and who sometimes loves Jude. A compelling novel is made more so in this audio version by the outstanding work of Frederick Davidson. Always dependable, Davidson here excels in his use of measured dramatics; his consistent differentiation of a large cast of characters from varying social, educational and, therefore, dialectal groups; and his obvious personal involvement in the miseries of the two main characters. T.H. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1894-95 in Harper's New Monthly as Hearts Insurgent; published in book form in 1895. Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster (Oxford University). Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude's son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude's children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably. The novel's sexual frankness shocked the public, as did Hardy's criticisms of marriage, the university system, and the church. Hardy was so distressed by its reception that he wrote no more fiction, concentrating solely on his poetry. About Author Rosellen Brown is the author of Half a Heart, The Autobiography of My Mother, Tender Mercies and Before and After. She lives in Chicago. Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

◎近年來最重要、最令世界文壇驚艷的英語小說最高傑作！我是Pi，我和一隻巨無霸的孟加拉虎在太平洋上的一艘救生艇『狹路相逢』，為什麼會這樣？說來話長，就別提了，現在最要緊的是，我要如何對付這隻叫理查•帕克的老虎？ 計畫一：把牠推下救生艇。可那有什麼用？就算推下去了，老虎也是游泳健將，而我一定會因此付出代價的。 計畫二：用六劑嗎啡殺了牠。牠會乖乖的讓你連續注射六支嗎？不可能！我要是拿針筒戳牠，牠肯定會賞我一虎掌。 計畫三：用手邊找得到的武器攻擊牠。神經病！我又不是泰山，如果我真能在牠身上劃出一道小傷口，那我倒真成了超人了。 計畫四：勒死牠。 計畫五：毒死牠，燒死牠，電死牠。哼，可真是找死的好計畫！ 計畫六：長期抗戰，消耗敵人。我只需要讓嚴厲的大自然執行它的法則，坐著等牠日漸消瘦、飢渴而死，我一點力氣都不用花。我心底燃起了微弱的希望之火，就如黑夜中的燭光。但是，老實說吧，告訴你一個祕密：我的心裡有一部分很高興有理查•帕克作伴。因為萬一牠死了，我就剩下一個人陷入深深的絕望之中，而絕望這敵人是比老虎更棘手的，所以我決定了， 計畫七：不能讓牠死！可是，在茫茫汪洋中，要如何才能馴服一頭重達四百五十磅的孟加拉虎呢？

LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME THE HAPPY PRINCE THE BIRTHDAY OF THE INFANTA In Dorian Gray , Wilde's full-length novel, a fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Also included in the volume are three of the Irish master storyteller's short works.

In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the horror of the battles in France. But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey's courage touches the soldiers around him and he is able to find warmth and hope. But his heart aches for Albert, the farmer's son he left behind. Will he ever see his true master again?

《英美文学名著导读详注本之24:老人与海》确是一部杰作。海明威1953年获得普利策奖、1954年获得诺贝尔文学奖都是因为他的这部力作。《老人与海》所反映的人生哲学，与作者先前的哲学思想大不相同：一方面，他继续发扬顽强的拼搏精神，提倡为生活斗争到底的思想观念；但另一方面，却不可避免的再次陷入悲观主义的老路，把人生看作一场残酷的搏斗，主宰人生的法则是谁也无法抗拒的“命运”。作品所表现出来的富有感情的人物形象，深刻的心理描写，情节与景物之间无与伦比的和谐，叙述的简洁凝炼，以及行文的流畅，这些在艺术上早有定评的杰出成就，正是它成为海明威叙事艺术珍品的原因之一。

弗朗西丝·霍奇森·伯内特（1849年-1924），一位影响了整个20世纪的英国女作家，是最早使用现代心理描写手法进行少儿文学创作的作家之一。出于曼彻斯特，你亲早逝，家境贫寒。16岁时，弗朗西丝随全家移民美国；18岁时，开始发表作品；28风时，出版了她的第一部畅销书《劳瑞家的闺女》；62岁时，他作了她最著名最成功的作品《秘密花园》，奠定了她在英国文学史上举足轻重的地位。此外还有代表作品《小公主》、《小少爷方特罗伊》等，广爱欧美国家青少年的喜爱，都是世界文学宝库中的经典著作。

Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (one of its few rivals in fame and breadth of appeal). As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language: notably the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland, where talking horses are the dominant species. It spares no vested interest from its irreverent wit, and its attack on political and financial corruption, as well as abuses in science, continue to resonate in our own times.

"An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling griefwith a goshawk. . . . Writing with breathless urgency . . . Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment. Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it's poignant, thoughtful and movingand likely to become a classic in either genre." Kirkus Reviews (starred) " H is for Hawk is a work of great spirit and wonder, illuminated equally by terror and desire. Each beautiful sentence is capable of taking a reader’s breath. The book is built of feather and bone, intelligence and blood, and a vulnerability so profound as to conjure that vulnerability’s shadow, which is the great power of honesty. It is not just a definitive work on falconry; it is a definitive work on humanity, and all that can and cannot be possessed." Rick Bass "A lovely touching book about a young woman grieving over the death of her father becoming rejuvenated by training one of the roughest, most difficult creatures in the heavens, the goshawk." Jim Harrison "Rich with the poetry of ideation, the narrative flows through the author’s deeply textured story of personal loss like a mountain wind, swirling seamlessly through fields of literature, biology, natural history, and the art of hunting with hawks. Readers might do well to absorb this book a bite at a timebut be prepared for a full meal." Lynn Schooler "In this elegant synthesis of memoir and literary sleuthing . . . Macdonald describes in beautiful, thoughtful prose how she comes to terms with death in new and startling ways." Publishers Weekly "A dazzling piece of work: deeply affecting, utterly fascinating and blazing with love . . . a deeply human work shot through, like cloth of gold, with intelligence and compassionan exemplar of the mysterious alchemy by which suffering can be transmuted into beauty. I will be surprised if a better book than H is for Hawk is published this year." Melissa Harrison, Financial Times "More than any other writer I know, including her beloved [T.H.] White, Macdonald is able to summon the mental world of a bird of prey . . . she extends the boundaries of nature writing. As a naturalist she has somehow acquired her bird's laser-like visual acuity. As a writer she combines a lexicographer's pleasure in words as carefully curated objects with an inventive passion for new words or for ways of releasing fresh effects from the old stock. . . . Macdonald looks set to revive the genre." Mark Cocker, Guardian "A talon-sharp memoir that will thrill and chill you to the bone . . . Macdonald has just the right blend of the scientist and the poet, of observing on the one hand and feeling on the other." Craig Brown, Daily Mail "What [Macdonald] has achieved is a very rare thing in literaturea completely realistic account of a human relationship with animal consciousness. . . . Her training of Mabel has the suspense and tension of the here and now. You are gripped by the slightest movement, by the turn of every feather. It is a soaring performance and Mabel is the star." John Carey, Sunday Times "A well-wrought book, one part memoir, one part gorgeous evocation of the natural world and one part literary meditation . . . lit with flashes of grace, a grace that sweeps down to the reader to hold her wrist tight with beautiful, terrible claws. The discovery of the season." Erica Wagner, Economist "The magnificent H is for Hawk [has] grabbed me by its talons . . . [it’s] nature writing, but not as you know it. Astounding." Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller "It sings. I couldn’t stop reading." Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother "This beautiful book is at once heartfelt and clever in the way it mixes elegy with celebration: elegy for a father lost, celebration of a hawk found - and in the finding also a celebration of countryside, forbears of one kind and another, life-in-death. At a time of very distinguished writing about the relationship between human kind and the environment, it is immediately pre-eminent." Andrew Motion, author of In the Blood "A deep, dark work of terrible beauty that will open fissures in the stoniest heart. . . . Macdonald is a survivor . . . she has produced one of the most eloquent accounts of bereavement you could hope to read . . . A grief memoir with wings." The Bookseller "A book made from the heart that goes to the heart . . . It combines old and new nature and human nature with great originality. No one who has looked up to see a bird of prey cross the sky could read it and not have their life shifted." Tim Dee, author of The Running Sky "The most magical book I have ever read." Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Springs When Helen Macdonald’s father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconerHelen had been captivated by hawks since childhoodshe’d never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk’s fierce and feral anger mirrored her own. Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel, and turned to the guidance of The Sword and the Stone author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her journey into Mabel’s world. Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald’s humanity. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement; a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast; and the story of an eccentric falconer and legendary writer. Weaving together obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history, H is for Hawk is a distinctive, surprising blend of nature writing and memoir from a very gifted writer.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams's luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

在线阅读本书 'Bushnell's beat is that demi-monde of nightclubs, bars, restaurants and parties where the rich come into contact with the infamous, the famous with the wannabes and the publicity-hungry with the gossip-peddlers' EVENING STANDARD Wildly funny, unexpectedly poignant, wickedly observant, SEX AND THE CITY blazes a glorious, drunken cocktail trail through New York, as Candace Bushnell, columnist and social critic par excellence, trips on her Manolo Blahnik kitten heels from the Baby Doll Lounge to the Bowery Bar. An Armistead Maupin for the real world, she has the gift of assembling a huge and irresistible cast of freaks and wonders, while remaining faithful to her hard core of friends and fans: those glamorous, rebellious, crazy single women, too close to forty, who are trying hard not to turn from the Audrey Hepburn of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S into the Glen Close of FATAL ATTRACTION, and are - still - looking for love.