The Story of the Stone, Volume I


Cao Xueqin - 1791
    1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder - within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives.

For All My Walking: Free-Verse Haiku of Taneda Santōka with Excerpts from His Diary


Santōka Taneda - 2002
    These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment.Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem or group of poems. In "For All My Walking, " master translator Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own. Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the emotional force at the core of the poems.This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical context to Taneda Santoka's work.

New Selected Poems


Stevie Smith - 1988
    Replacing the slim volume which introduced Stevie Smith to American readers, New Selected Poems is chronologically arranged and contains 165 poems along with many of the author's doodles.

Stories of the Sahara


Sanmao - 1976
    Born in China in 1943, she moved from Chongqing to Taiwan, Spain to Germany, the Canary Islands to Central America, and, for several years in the 1970s, to the Sahara.Stories of the Sahara invites us into Sanmao's extraordinary life in the desert: her experiences of love and loss, freedom and peril, all told with a voice as spirited as it is timeless.At a period when China was beginning to look beyond its borders, Sanmao fired the imagination of millions and inspired a new generation. With an introduction by Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti, this is an essential collection from one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures.

Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen


Marilyn Chin - 2009
    Raucous twin sisters Moonie and Mei Ling Wong are known as the “double happiness” Chinese food delivery girls. Each day they load up a “crappy donkey-van” and deliver Americanized (“bad”) Chinese food to homes throughout their southern California neighborhood. United in their desire to blossom into somebodies, the Wong girls fearlessly assert their intellect and sexuality, even as they come of age under the care of their dominating, cleaver-wielding grandmother from Hong Kong. They transform themselves from food delivery girls into accomplished women, but along the way they wrestle with the influence and continuity of their Chinese heritage. Marilyn Chin’s prose waxes and wanes between satire and metaphorical lyric, referencing classical Chinese tales and ghost stories that are at turns sensual, lurid, hilarious, shocking, and surreal. .

Kinder Than Solitude


Yiyun Li - 2013
    Moving back and forth in time, between America today and China in the 1990s, Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. As one of the three observes, “Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.” When Moran, Ruyu, and Boyang were young, they were involved in a mysterious “accident” in which a friend of theirs was poisoned. Grown up, the three friends are separated by distance and personal estrangement. Moran and Ruyu live in the United States, Boyang in China; all three are haunted by what really happened in their youth, and by doubt about themselves. In California, Ruyu helps a local woman care for her family and home, and avoids entanglements, as she has done all her life. In Wisconsin, Moran visits her ex-husband, whose kindness once overcame her flight into solitude. In Beijing, Boyang struggles to deal with an inability to love, and with the outcome of what happened among the three friends twenty years ago. Brilliantly written, a breathtaking page-turner, Kinder Than Solitude resonates with provocative observations about human nature and life. In mesmerizing prose, and with profound insight, Yiyun Li unfolds this remarkable story, even as she explores the impact of personality and the past on the shape of a person’s present and future.

The Book of Chuang Tzu


Zhuangzi
    It is considered second only to the Tao Te Ching, but the two books coundn't be more different. Where the Tao Te Ching is distant and proverbial in style, the Chuang Tze buzzes with life and with insights, often with considerable humour behind them.

The Search For Modern China


Jonathan D. Spence - 1990
    Praised as "a miracle of readability and scholarly authority," (Jonathan Mirsky) The Search for Modern China offers a matchless introduction to China's history.

The Concubine's Children


Denise Chong - 1994
    There’s Chan Sam, who left an "at home" wife in China to earn a living in "Gold Mountain"—North America. There’s May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, who labored in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family he would have in Canada, and the one he had in China. It was the concubine’s third daughter, the author’s mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter, whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century.

Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-On Guide


Jane Reichhold - 2002
    Haiku are clearly shown to be a means of discovering and recording the miracles of the world, from the humorous to the tragic. This is one of the major themes underlying Writing and Enjoying Haiku-that haiku can provide a way to a better life.After looking at why the reading and writing of haiku is important from a spiritual point of view, the book shows, as has never been done before, the techniques of writing-the when and the where, punctuation and capitalization, choice of words, figures of speech, sharing haiku, and much, much more.Having come this far, having learned to read and write haiku with a discerning mind, the reader will never again look upon the world in quite the same way.

The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot


T.S. Eliot - 1986
    Eliot’s work, all with an active Table of Contents for easy navigation! The collection is formatted for optimal viewing on the Nook! The collection includes:PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS, which contains:• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock• Portrait of a Lady• Preludes• Rhapsody on a Windy Night• Morning at the Window• The Boston Evening Transcript• Aunt Helen• Cousin Nancy• Mr. Apollinax• Hysteria• Conversation Galante• La Figlia Che PiangePOEMS, containing:• Gerontion• Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar• Sweeney Erect• A Cooking Egg• Le Directeur• Mélange adultère de tout• Lune de Miel• The Hippopotamus• Dans le Restaurant• Whispers of Immortality• Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service• Sweeney Among the NightingalesTHE WASTE LANDEELDROP AND APPLEPEX (short story)THE SACRED WOOD: ESSAYS ON POETRY AND CRICTICISM, containing:• The Perfect Critic• Imperfect Critics• Tradition and the Individual Talent• The Possibility of a Poetic Drama• Euripides and Professor Murray• "Rhetoric" and Poetic Drama• Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe• Hamlet and His Problems• Ben Jonson• Philip Massinger• Swinburne As Poet• Blake• DanteEZRA POUND: HIS METRIC AND POETRY

Marrow and Bone


Walter Kempowski - 1992
    He lives with his girlfriend Ulla in a grand, decrepit prewar house that just by chance escaped annihilation by the Allied bombers. One day Jonathan receives a package in the mail from the Santubara Company, a luxury car company, commissioning him to travel in their newest V8 model through the People’s Republic of Poland and to write about the route for a car rally. Little does the company know that their choice location is Jonathan’s birthplace, for Jonathan is a war orphan from former East Prussia, whose mother breathed her last fleeing the Russians and whose father, a Nazi soldier, was killed on the Baltic coast. At first Jonathan has no interest in the job, or in dredging up ancient family history, but as his relationship with Ulla starts to wane, the idea of a return to his birthplace, and the money to be made from the gig, becomes more appealing. What follows is a darkly comic road trip, a queasy misadventure of West German tourists in Communist Poland, and a reckoning that is by turns subtle, satiric, and genuine. Marrow and Bone is an uncomfortably funny and revelatory odyssey by one of the most talented and nuanced writers of postwar Germany.

T S Eliot - Waste Land And Other Poems


R. Tilak
    Edited with a Critical Introduction, Complete Paraphrase of the Text, Annotations and Explainations, and Questions with Answers

The Three Kingdoms: The Sleeping Dragon (The Three Kingdoms, #2 of 3)


Luo Guanzhong
    It recounts in vivid historical detail the turbulent years at the close of the Han Dynasty, when China broke into three competing kingdoms and over half the population were either killed or driven from their homes. Part myth, part fact, readers will experience the loyalty and treachery, the brotherhood and rivalry of China's legendary heroes and villains during the most tumultuous period in Chinese history.Considered the greatest work in classic Chinese literature, The Three Kingdoms is read by millions throughout Asia today. Seen not just as a great work of art, many Chinese view it as a guide to success in life and business as well as a work that offers great moral clarity—while many foreigners read it to gain insights into Chinese society and culture. From the saga of The Three Kingdoms, readers will learn how great warriors motivate their troops and enhance their influence, while disguising their weaknesses and turning the strengths of others against them.This second volume introduces Liu Bei's greatest ally, his advisor Zhuge Lian—a master strategist whose clever strategies allows Liu Bei to claim many victories in the never-ending battle for dominance during the Warring States period in Chinese history.

Poems that will Save Your Life: Inspirational verse by the world's greatest writers to motivate, strengthen and bring comfort in difficult times


John Boyes - 2010
    In this superb anthology can be found the best of the English-speaking world’s inspirational and reassuring verse, including such classics as Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ and W.H. Davies’ ‘Leisure’. This beautifully illustrated collection of over 120 poems is sure to offer solace, hearten the soul and motivate the human spirit.