Title: Gargantua and Pantagruel Author: Francois Rabelais File Type: Mobi Subject:classics Description:ReviewCollective title of five comic novels by Francois Rabelais, published between 1532 and 1564. The novels present the comic and satiric story of the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. The first two novels were published under the anagrammatic pseudonym Alcofribas (Alcofrybas) Nasier. The first book, commonly called Pantagruel (1532), deals with some of the fantastic incidents of the early years of Pantagruel. While at the University of Paris he receives a letter from his father that is still considered an essential exposition of French Renaissance ideals. In Paris Pantagruel also meets the cunning rogue Panurge, who becomes his companion throughout the series. In Gargantua (1534), old-fashioned scholastic pedagogy is ridiculed and contrasted with the humanist ideal of King Francis I, whose efforts to reform the French church Rabelais supported. Le Tiers Livre (1546; The Third Book) is Rabelais's most profound and erudite work. In it Pantagruel has become a sage; Panurge is self-absorbed and bedeviled, wondering if he should marry. He consults various prognosticators, allowing Rabelais to hold forth on sex, love, and marriage, and to satirize fortune tellers, judges, and poets. Panurge persuades Pantagruel and friends to join him on a voyage to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle in Cathay for an answer. This they do in Le Quart Livre (1552; The Fourth Book), which reflects the era's interest in exploration; the Pantagruelians encounter a series of islands that present opportunities for the author to satirize the religious and political forces wreaking havoc on 16th-century Christendom. In a fifth book, Le Cinquieme Livre (1564; of doubtful authenticity), the band arrives at the temple of the Holy Bottle, where the oracle answers Panurge with a single word: Drink! -- __An elaborate parody written in the 16th century, Gargantua and Pantagruel is a comic blend of energetic realism and carnival fantasy. The two main characters are giants, a father and his son, who have numerous adventures. Many different types of people are satirized during their chivalric exploits, from lawyers to theologians, generals to monarchs, with humor that is often grotesque or obscene. Intertwined with this crude comedy, however, is the wisdom of Renaissance learning, which exposes countless examples of human foolishness. Divided into two volumes, one describes a sullied giant who grows into a grand knight and prince, and the other portrays his erudite son who himself becomes a Renaissance Socrates. Rabelais' work is full of freedom and laughter, as well as a certain understanding that will give readers a renewed worldview.
Title: Look at the Birdie_ Unpublished Short Fi
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction
Description:
**Look at the Birdie** is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned murder counselor concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing– and provide insight into the development of his early style–collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut. Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut' s characteristically insouciant line drawings, **Look at the Birdie** is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever–and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Read Hello, Red and The Petrified Ants, two of the stories from the collection, as single-story e-books before **Look at the Birdie** goes on sale. Available wherever e-books are sold.
Title: Dance Dance Dance
Author: Haruki Murakami
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Historical
Description:From Publishers WeeklyIn this impressive sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase , Murakami displays his talent to brilliant effect. The unnamed narrator, a muddled freelance writer, is 34 and no closer to finding happiness than he was in the previous book. Divorced, bereaved and abandoned by his various lovers, he is drawn to the Dolphin Hotel--a strange and lonely establishment where Kiki, a woman he once lived with, upped and vanished. Kiki and the Sheep Man, an odd fellow who wears a sheepskin and speaks in a toneless rush, visit the narrator in visions that lead him to two mysteries, one metaphysical (how to survive the unsurvivable) and the other physical (a call girl's murder). In his searchings, he encounters a clairvoyant 13-year-old, her misguided parents and a one-armed poet. All the hallmarks of Murakami's greatness are here: restless and sensitive characters, disturbing shifts into altered reality, silky smooth turns of phrase and a narrative with all the momentum of a roller coaster. If Mishima had ever learned the value of gentleness, this is the sort of page-turner he might have written. Paperback rights to Vintage. 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalIf Kafka were to find himself imprisoned in a novel that had been written by Raymond Chandler and was then forced to develop a sense of humor, the resultant voice might likely resemble that of the protagonist in this latest delight from one of Japan's leading contemporary writers. Something of a sequel to 1988's A Wild Sheep Chase ( LJ 101589), this book features an ordinary man on an extraordinary journey living in a world glittering with technology in which something is wanting still. Fans of the first book will certainly want to read this one, although Dance Dance Dance stands quite well on its own. The relentless coyness and flippancy that characterized A Wild Sheep Chase gives way here to passages that are sometimes lyrical and an ending that is at once desperate, affirmative, and filled with the breath of life. Recommended for all serious fiction collections.- Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y. 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Title: Abandon
Author: Meg Cabot
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Young Adult
Description:ReviewPraise for Meg Cabot:“Cabot shows the dark side behind the bling-blingy superficial worlds.” —Teenreads.com[The] strong, amusing voice, the plot twists, and the possibility of romance will draw mystery and chick-lit readers alike. —ALA Booklist “Bag the tiara and get out the gun ... Cabot delivers.” —Publishers Weekly New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a dark, fantastical story about this world . . . and the underworld.Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce cant help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet shes never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.But now shes moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.Only she cant. Because even here, he finds her. Thats how desperately he wants her back. She knows hes no guardian angel, and his dark world isnt exactly heaven, yet she cant stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.
Title: Double Cross
Author: James Patterson
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Suspense
Description:
Just when Alex thought his life was calming down into a routine of patients and therapy sessions, he finds himself back in the game--this time to catch a criminal mastermind like no other. A spate of elaborate murders in Washington D.C. have the whole East Coast on edge. They are like nothing Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, have ever seen. With each murder, the case becomes increasingly complex. There's only one thing Alex knows: the killer adores an audience. As victims are made into gruesome spectacles citywide, inducing a media hysteria, it becomes clear to Alex that the man he's after is a genius of terror--and he's after fame. The killer has the whole city by its strings--and he'll stop at nothing to become the most terrifying star that Washington D.C. has ever seen.
Title: Further Adventures
Author: Jon Stephen Fink
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Humor
Description:
To Whom It May Concern—I was The Green Ray. Now it can be told—the story which many tried to silence, many refused to believe, and many did not want to hear. In the depths of the Great Depression, the voice of a radio superhero known as The Green Ray entertained America. Forty years later, the man behind the character—two-bit voice actor Ray Green, known to his family as Reuven Agranovsky—is caught in an all-night blackout in the desert town of Mason, New Mexico, where a chain of events is set in motion that forces The Green Ray out of retirement. But at seventy-three, Ray faces a different—and far more terrifying—world. A wildly inventive, raucously funny novel of heroism, neurosis, and transcendence, Further Adventures was ahead of its time when it was first published fifteen years ago. Like Ray Green himself, it now reemerges in a newly revised author's cut for a new generation of readers.
Title: The Great Pursuit
Author: Tom Sharpe
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Humor
Description:
A Totally Filthy Novel To Put The Literary World In Spasms - But Sure To Make A Shameful Pile Of Money In America. Frensic, A Literary Agent With A Nose For A Bestseller (As Well As Port And Snuff), Places This Hot Property With Hutchmeyer - Who Is The Least Respected Publisher In The World. And A Gullible Author Is Despatched Across The Atlantic For A Chaotic Publicity Tour.