Annie Proulx) whose “melancholy beauty resonates with the deepest truths” (Boston Globe).

    The witty, wise and evocative words cover every aspect of bookishness - including hoarding, buying, borrowing, arranging, stealing, choosing, losing, reviewing and displaying – and comprise memoirs, poetry, journalism, fiction and philosophy. The sources of the extracts range from Erasmus to Edith Wharton to Umberto Eco, from Dante to Descartes to Dickens, from Edward Gibbon to Kenneth Grahame to Groucho Marx. Celebrating the timeless pleasures of reading, casting an irreverent eye over the foibles and eccentricities of booklovers and revealing the reading habits of a host of famous writers, this compendium is a must for any bibliomane. Indeed, if you buy only one book this year, this one is probably not for you.

    Reapy, Charlotte Riddell, Eimear Ryan, Anakana Schofield, Somerville & Ross, Susan Stairs.Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 8 rare stories from deceased luminaries and forerunners, and 22 new unpublished stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland.These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly-drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

    A volume containing the English texts of all the plays of Samuel Beckett, including "Waiting For Godot", "Krapp's Last Tape", "Endgame" and "Not I".

    in their opinion, have been most successfully rendered into English. The French texts as established by Yves Gérard Le Dantec for the Pléiade edition are printed en face. Included are Baudelaire's "Three Drafts of a Preface" and brief notes on the nineteen translators whose work is represented.

    His fiction is an acknowledged influence on entire generations of writers, ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to James Branch Cabell, from Clark Ashton Smith to Lin Carter. Although many of his most famous stories are longer in length, the miniature portraits of Fifty-One Tales (originally published in 1915 and sometimes reprinted under the title The Food of Death) are an ideal introduction to Dunsany. Nowhere is the jewel-like quality of his prose more evident than in the short tales, seminal works which runs the gamut from whimsy to fantasy to social satire.CONTENTS:"The Assignation" "Charon" "The Death of Pan" "The Sphinx at Gizeh" "The Hen" "Wind and Fog" "The Raft Builders" "The Workman" "The Guest" "Death and Odysseus" "Death and the Orange" "The Prayer of the Flowers" "Time and the Tradesman" "The Little City" "The Unpasturable Fields" "The Worm and the Angel" "The Songless Country" "The Latest Thing" "The Demagogue and the Demi-Monde" "The Giant Poppy" "Roses" "The Man with the Golden Ear-rings" "The Dream of King Karna-Vootra" "The Storm" "A Mistaken Identity" "The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise" "Alone the Immortals" "A Moral Little Tale" "The Return of Song" "Spring in Town" "How the Enemy Came to Thlūnrāna" "A Losing Game" "Taking Up Piccadilly" "After the Fire" "The City" "The Food of Death" "The Lonely Idol" "The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)" "The Reward" "The Trouble in Leafy Green Street" "Furrow-Maker" "Lobster Salad" "The Return of the Exiles" "Nature and Time" "The Song of the Blackbird" "The Messengers" "The Three Tall Sons" "Compromise" "What We Have Come To" "The Tomb of Pan" "The Poet Speaks With Earth" (English version only) "The Mist" (American version only)

    Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard (or Ballygobackwards, as some gas tickets call it) with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin.Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, who is a bit of a hames (she’s lost two phones already this year – Aisling has never lost a phone). Aisling spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John’s. He’s from down home and was kiss number seventeen at her twenty-first.But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents’ house, although she’d miss Mammy turning on the electric blanket like clockwork and Daddy taking her car 'out for a spin' and bringing it back full of petrol.When a week in Tenerife with John doesn’t end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello with stylish Sadhbh from HR and her friend, the mysterious Elaine. Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling. Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, the creators of the much-loved Aisling character and the popular Facebook page 'Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling', bring Aisling to life in their novel about the quintessential country girl in the big smoke.

    Poems to Read is a welcoming avenue into poetry for readers new to poetry, including high school and college students. It is also meant to be a fresh, valuable collection for readers already devoted to the art. This anthology concentrates on the actual pleasures of reading poems: hearing the poem in your voice, bringing it to other people, musing about it, taking excitement or comfort from it, wandering with it or—as in the Keats letter quoted in the Introduction—having it as a starting post. Many of these 200 poems are accompanied by comments from readers of various ages, regions, and backgrounds who participated in the Favorite Poem Project. Included are poems by John Donne, Walt Whitman, William Butler Yeats, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Seamus Heaney, Allen Ginsberg, and Louise Glück, to name a few. The editors offer their own comments on some of the poems, which are arranged in thematic chapters.

    an anthology is that it presents the full range of Black-American poetry, from the slave songs to the present day. It is important that folk poetry be included because it is the root and inspiration of later, literary poetry. Not only does this book present the full range of Black poetry, but it presents most poets in depths, and in some cases presents aspects of a poet neglected or overlooked before. Gwendolyn Brooks is represented not only by poems on racial and domestic themes, but is revealed as a writer of superb love lyrics. Tuming away from White models and retuming to their roots has freed Black poets to create a new poetry. This book records their progress."—from the Introduction by Dudley Randall

    Included are popular myths and legends from all six Celtic cultures of Western Europe-Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Here for the modern reader are the rediscovered tales of cattle raids, tribal invasions, druids, duels, and doomed love that have been incorporated into, and sometimes distorted by, European mythology and even Christian figures. For example, there is the story of Lugh of the Long Hand, one of the greatest gods in the Celtic pantheon, who was later transformed into the faerie craftsman Lugh-Chromain, and finally demoted to the lowly Leprechaun. Celtic Myths and Legends also retells the story of the classic tragic love story of Tristan and Iseult (probably of Cornish origin-there was a real King Mark and a real Tristan in Cornwall) and the original tale of King Arthur, a Welsh leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons. In the hands of Peter Berresford Ellis, the myths sung by long-dead Celtic bards come alive to enchant the modern reader. "The casual reader will be best entertained by ... the legends themselves ...colored with plenty of swordplay, ... quests, shape-shiftings, and druidic sorcery."-Publishers Weekly

    A refreshing alternative to voluminous literature anthologies, this compact, inexpensive, and diverse collection of fiction, poetry, and drama provides a concise yet complete introduction to the study of literature.

    Lambe, Charlie Stella, Ray Banks, James O. Born, Sarah Weinman, Pat Mullan, Gary Phillips, Craig McDonald, Duane Swierczynski, Reed Farrel Coleman, and others.Irish crime-fiction sensation Ken Bruen and cohorts shine a light on the dark streets of Dublin. Dublin Noir features an awe-inspiring cast of writers who between them have won all major mystery and crime-fiction awards. This collection introduces secret corners of a fascinating city and surprise assaults on the "Celtic Tiger" of modern Irish prosperity.“The stories paint a picture of Dublin as the Celtic Tiger, a beast crouched on its hind legs about leap at you and roaring with its intensity . . . The cynicism and despair of classic noir is portrayed within each of these stories.”—Metro LA“Dublin Noir is perhaps the best short story anthology I’ve read.”—Reviewing the Evidence

    What If?

    After a wandering, precarious life during which he produced poems, essays, stories, and novels, Walser entered an insane asylum, saying, “I am not here to write, but to be mad.” Many of the unpublished works he left were in fact written in an idiosyncratically abbreviated script that was for years dismissed as an impenetrable private cipher. Fourteen texts from these so-called pencil manuscripts are included in this volume—rich evidence that Walser’s microscripts, rather than the work of incipient madness, were in actuality the product of desperate genius building a last reserve, and as such, a treasure in modern literature. With a brisk preface and a chronology of Walser’s life and work, this collection of fifty translations of short prose pieces covers the middle to later years of the writer’s oeuvre. It provides unparalleled insight into Walser’s creative process, along with a unique opportunity to experience the unfolding of his rare and eccentric gift. His novels The Robber (Nebraska 2000) and Jakob von Gunten are also available in English translation.

    Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U .S. Poet Laureate, introduces readers to the most significant and compelling poems of the past hundred years. Selecting from the canon of American poetry throughout the twentieth century, Dove has created an anthology that represents the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities-from styles and voices to themes and cultures-while balancing important poems with significant periods of each poet. Featuring poems both classic and contemporary, this collection reflects both a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern American poetry and outlines its trajectory over the past century.