2025 reads
Items in this hypelist
5 stars
Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer · 1997
The Lover
Marguerite Duras · 1998
Small Boat
Vincent Delecroix · 2025
"An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix's fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies?"--Publisher.
East of Eden
John Steinbeck · 2002
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors, in a commemorative hardcover edition In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Adapted for the 1955 film directed by Elia Kazan introducing James Dean, and read by thousands as the book that brought Oprah’s Book Club back, East of Eden has remained vitally present in American culture for over half a century.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong · 2021
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel
Olga Tokarczuk · 2020
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE<br/><br/>"A brilliant literary murder mystery." —Chicago Tribune<br/><br/>"Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." —Annie Proulx<br/><br/>In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .<br/><br/>A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante · 2020
The international bestseller, now in B-format paperback with a brand new cover.
Autobiography of Red
Anne Carson · 1999
The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.<br/><br/>Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.<br/><br/>A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR<br/>National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist<br/><br/>"Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." --Michael Ondaatje<br/><br/>"This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." --Alice Munro<br/><br/>"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." --The New York Times Book Review<br/><br/>"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The Village Voice
The Years
Annie Ernaux · 2017
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE<br/><br/>Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize<br/><br/>Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008<br/><br/>The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.<br/><br/>Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.<br/><br/>On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir "written" by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the "I" for the "we" (or "they", or "one") as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents' generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents' generation (and could be writing of her own book): "From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the "we" and impersonal pronouns."<br/><br/>Co-winner of the 2018 French-American Foundation Translation Prize in Nonfiction<br/>Winner of the 2017 Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her entire body of work<br/>Winner of the 2016 Strega European Prize
A Month in Siena
Hisham Matar · 2020
FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR<br/><br/>'Sparkles with brilliant observations on art and architecture, friendship and loss' Guardian<br/><br/>'Everybody should get to spend a month with Mr. Matar, looking at paintings' Zadie Smith, Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year<br/>_______________________________________________<br/><br/>Matar was nineteen years old when his father was kidnapped. In the year following he found himself turning to art, particularly the great paintings of the Sienese School. They became a refuge and a way to think about the world outside the urgencies of the present.<br/><br/>A quarter of a century later, having found no trace of his father, Matar finally visits the birthplace of those paintings. A Month in Siena is the encounter between the writer and the city. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of love, grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life.<br/>_______________________________________________<br/><br/>'A dazzling exploration of art's impact on his life and writing, and a moving contemplation of grief' Financial Times<br/><br/>'I can think of no better expression of the humane than this economical, modest, yet altogether breathtaking book' New Statesman, Books of the Year<br/><br/>'Bewitching, intensely moving' The Economist, Books of the Year
On Photography
Susan Sontag · 2001
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.<br/><br/>One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, Susan Sontag's On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs." It begins with the famous "In Plato's Cave"essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching "Brief Anthology of Quotations."
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 2001
Supreme masterpiece recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own thoughts after he brutally murders an old woman. Overwhelmed afterwards by guilt and terror, Raskolnikov confesses and goes to prison. There he realizes that happiness and redemption can only be achieved through suffering. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
The Sun-Room (unreleased)
Jess Watts • 2025
4 stars
A Very Easy Death
Simone De Beauvoir · 1985
Slow Days, Fast Company The World, The Flesh, and L.A.
Eve Babitz · 2016
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
Anne De Marcken · 2024
Near to the Wild Heart
Clarice Lispector · 2012
Of Human Freedom
Epictetus · 2010
In this personal and practical guide to moral self-improvement and living a good life, the second-century philosopher Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, stubbornness and fear, family, friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in the classical world. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Mitch Albom · 2003
Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It's a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"
Deborah Levy Things I Don't Want to Know
LEVY DEBORAH · 2018
'Unmissable. Like chancing upon an oasis, you want to drink it slowly... Subtle, unpredictable, surprising' Guardian<br/>Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood.<br/>Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need. Things I Don't Want to Know is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers.<br/>'Superb sharpness and originality of imagination. An inspiring work of writing' Marina Warner
Outline
Rachel Cusk · 2018
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
3 stars
An Apprenticeship Or the Book of Pleasures
Clarice Lispector · 2022
Giovannis Room
Baldwin, James
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera · 2005
International Bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction<br/>“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People<br/>In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples: a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.<br/>This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
Foster
Claire Keegan · 2022
An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US<br/>It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.<br/>Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker,this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy · 2010
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Nausea
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1969
The diary of Antoine Roquentin follows his thoughts as he gradually sinks into a metaphysical crisis of despair, in this the first novel by the leader of French Existentialism
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The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 2002
Inland
Gerald Murnane · 2024
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1995
Set in a small English village during 1812, this classic novel is one of the greatest love stories ever told!<br/>A poor country squire is trying to find husbands for his five daughters. When one of them, Elizabeth, meets rich Mr. Darcy at a dance, they don't find much in common. But during the next few months, they overcome their differences and fall in love.
Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
Anne Carson · 2000
White Nights
Urszula Honek · 2023
White Nights, the debut short story collection from poet Urszula Honek, is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them. Urszula relates to us, with the sincerest care and honesty, a localised, yet so clearly universal, story of ruin and hope: a story where the protagonists do not ask to be understood, but merely to be seen and to be heard. Kate Webster’s brilliant translation of Urszula’s poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.
Wrong Norma
Anne Carson · 2024
The Beautiful Summer
Cesare Pavese · 2018
'an Astonishing Portrait Of An Innocent On The Verge Of Discovering The Cruelties Of Love... There Are Whispers Here Of The Future Work Of Elena Ferrante' Elizabeth Strout, From The Introduction 'life Was A Perpetual Holiday In Those Days...' It's The Height Of Summer In 1930s Italy And Sixteen-year-old Ginia Is Desperate For Adventure. So Begins A Fateful Friendship With Amelia, A Stylish And Sophisticated Artist's Model Who Envelops Her In A Dazzling New World Of Bohemian Artists And Intoxicating Freedom. Under The Spell Of Her New Friends, Ginia Soon Falls In Love With Guido, An Enigmatic Young Painter. It's The Start Of A Desperate Love Affair, Charged With False Hope And Overwhelming Passion - Destined To Last No Longer Than The Course Of A Summer. The Beautiful Summer Is A Gorgeous Coming-of-age Tale Of Lost Innocence And First Love, By One Of Italy's Greatest Writers. 'pavese, To Me, Is A Constant Source Of Inspiration' Jhumpa Lahiri 'one Of The Few Essential Novelists Of The Mid-twentieth Century' Susan Sontag '[pavese Writes Books Of] Extraordinary Depth Where One Never Stops Finding New Levels, New Meaning' Italo Calvino 'for My Trip To Los Angeles, I'm Packing The Beautiful Summer, A Slender Account Of Love In 1930s Italy' Jessie Burton, Bestselling Author Of The Miniaturist And The Muse
Elysian Fields
Twila Gingerich · 2024
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
Olga Tokarczuk · 2024
want to own & read
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas père · 2003
Psychology and Alchemy (Collected Works of C.G. Jung)
C. G. Jung · 1980
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver · 2020
A New York Times Bestseller, chosen as Oprah's "Books That Help Me Through" for Oprah's Book Club<br/><br/>“No matter where one starts reading, Devotions offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive, and Dream Work, one of her exceptional collections. Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.” —The Washington Post<br/><br/>“It’s as if the poet herself has sidled beside the reader and pointed us to the poems she considers most worthy of deep consideration.” —Chicago Tribune<br/><br/>Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.<br/><br/>Throughout her celebrated career, Mary Oliver has touched countless readers with her brilliantly crafted verse, expounding on her love for the physical world and the powerful bonds between all living things. Identified as "far and away, this country's best selling poet" by Dwight Garner, she now returns with a stunning and definitive collection of her writing from the last fifty years.<br/><br/>Carefully curated, these 200 plus poems feature Oliver's work from her very first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems, published in 1963 at the age of 28, through her most recent collection, Felicity, published in 2015. This timeless volume, arranged by Oliver herself, showcases the beloved poet at her edifying best. Within these pages, she provides us with an extraordinary and invaluable collection of her passionate, perceptive, and much-treasured observations of the natural world.
White Blood
Nanak Singh, translated by Dilraj Singh Suri
My Death
Lisa Tuttle · 2023
A widowed writer begins to work on a biography of a novelist and artist—and soon uncovers bizarre parallels between her life and her subject’s—in this chilling and singularly strange novella by a contemporary master of horror and fantasy.<br/><br/>The narrator of Lisa Tuttle’s uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At once the answer comes to her: she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan’s much-reproduced painting Circe, and the inspiration for his classic children’s book, Hermine in Cloud-Land.<br/><br/>But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most radical painting, My Death, deemed too unsettling—malevolent even—to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves an astonishingly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman’s history and her own. Whose biography is she writing—really?
The Power of Words
WEIL SIMONE · 2020
'There are certain words which possess, in themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the good'<br/><br/>The philosopher and activist Simone Weil was one of the most courageous thinkers of the twentieth century. Here she writes, with honesty and moral clarity, about the manipulation of language by the powerful, the obligations of individuals to one another and the needs - for order, equality, liberty and truth - that make us human.<br/><br/>One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.
