You Belong Here


Laurie Steed - 2018
    Soon they're the parents of three young children.Initially, the kids keep them together until love turns to lies and the family implodes. As they become adults, each child faces love and loss in the shadow of their family legacy.You Belong Here is a book about trust and connection. About what keeps us going in spite of ourselves. About a place where we belong.

The Frighteners


Stephen Laws - 1990
    HOW MUCH DO YOU HATE? When Sheraton's gang burn his wife and kids to death, Eddie soon learns the meaning of hate. HOW MUCH DO YOU HATE? And that's how the prison psycho transfers his awesome power to Eddie. A power that Eddie reckons he can control. A power that will enable Eddie to put the frighteners on Sheraton...

Terror from the Air


Peter Sloterdijk - 2001
    That day, the German army used a chlorine gas meant to exterminate indiscriminately. Until then, war, as described by Clausewitz and practiced by Napoleon, involved attacking the adversary’s vital function first. Using poison gas signaled the passage from classical war to terrorism. This terror from the air inaugurated an era in which the main idea was no longer to target the enemy’s body, but their environment. From then on, what would be attacked in wartime as well as in peacetime would be the very conditions necessary for life.This kind of terrorism became the matrix of modern and postmodern war, from World War I’s toxic gas to the Nazi Zyklon B used in Auschwitz, from the bombing of Dresden to the attack on the World Trade Center. Sloterdijk goes on to describe the offensive of modern aesthetics, aesthetic terrorism from Surrealism to Malevich--an “atmo-terrorism” in the arts that parallels the assault on environment that had originated in warfare.

Remarks on Colour


Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1977
    It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour (metallic colour, the colours of flames, etc.) and of luminosity--a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of thing.

Open House


Beth Ann Fennelly - 2002
    We at Zoo are eminently pleased to have such a fine book of verse for our inaugural Kenyon Review Prize volume. Fennelly's poems are well poised in their witty and sometime sassy ruminations, often "maximalist" in their scope (see "From L' HUtel Terminus Notebooks") and the pleasure one takes within them is of the rarest breed: it is the pleasure of unexpected revelation. Open House comes introduced by series judge and Kenyon Review poetry editor, David Baker.

Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine


Kevin J. Vanhoozer - 2013
    Vanhoozer argues that theology is not merely a set of cognitive beliefs, but is also something we "do" that involves speech and action alike. He uses a theatrical model to explain the ways in which doctrine shapes Christian understanding and forms disciples. The church, Vanhoozer posits, is the preeminent theater where the gospel is "performed," with doctrine directing this performance. Doctrines are not simply truths to be stored, shelved, and stacked, but indications and directions to be followed, practiced, and enacted. In "performing" doctrine, Christians are shaped into active disciples of Jesus Christ. He goes on to examine the state of the church in today's world and explores how disciples can do or perform doctrine. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Faith Speaking Understanding sets forth a compelling vision of what the church is and what it should be doing, and demonstrates the importance of Christian doctrine for this mission.Disciples who want to follow Christ in all situations need doctrinal direction as they walk onto the social stage in the great theater of the world. The Christian faith is about acknowledging, and participating in, the great thing God is doing in our world: making all things new in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Doctrine ministers understanding: of God, of the drama of redemption, of the church as a company of faithful players, and of individual actors, all of whom have important roles to play. In an age where things fall apart and centers fail to hold, doctrine centers us in Jesus Christ, in whom all things hold together.

The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination


Wallace Stevens - 1951
    His aim is not to produce a work of criticism or philosophy, or a mere discussion of poetic technique. As he explains in his introduction, his ambition in these various pieces, published in different times and places, aimed higher than that, in the direction of disclosing poetry itself, the naked poem, the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words. Stevens proves himself as eloquent and scintillating in prose as in poetry, as he both analyzes and demonstrates the essential act of repossessing reality through the imagination.

Everything I Never Told You: A Novel by Celeste Ng | Summary & Analysis


Book*Sense - 2015
    Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You is a many-layered novel about family, race, secrets and love. When Marilyn Walker and James Lee meet at college in the late 1950's, a mixed-race relationship is something unusual and socially questionable. The story begins in the mid-seventies, a time of political and social upheaval, when many parts of life formerly taken for granted are uncertain and subject to change. This is the milieu in which Lydia Lee vanishes one night. The reader knows from the first line that Lydia is dead; what happened to her is not the mystery. The mystery is how it happened. Was it a suicide? Accident? Did someone kill her? If so, who? And why? This companion to Everything I Never Told You also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher the novel • Details of Characters & Key Character Analysis • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis of Everything I Never Told You fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

Aesthetic Theory


Theodor W. Adorno - 1970
    The culmination of a lifetime of aesthetic investigation, Aesthetic Theory is Theodor W. Adorno's magnum opus, the clarifying lens through which the whole of his work is best viewed, providing a framework within which his other major writings cohere.

The Rhetoric of Fiction


Wayne C. Booth - 1961
    One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon.For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."

What We See When We Read


Peter Mendelsund - 2014
    A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page - a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so - and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved - or reviled - literary figures.In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature - he thinks of himself first, and foremost, as a reader - into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading.

Lake


Frank D. Gilroy - 2011
    Gilroy won the Pulitzer Prize for his play "The Subject Was Roses," and 43 years since he began work on "Lake." In the vein of Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Anthology," Gilroy tells the story of a summer vacation community in Northern New Jersey over the course of 25 years, the early 1920's through the late '40's. Each chapter is the voice of another character; some are monologues, some more interior than that. The story works its way around the lake, catching a vignette/snapshot/moment from each turn of the wheel. It's a remarkable read from an 86-year-old writer, still at the top of his game.

Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method


Gérard Genette - 1979
    Adopting what is essentially a structuralist approach, the author identifies and names the basic constituents and techniques of narrative and illustrates them by referring to literary works in many languages.

Language and Death: The Place of Negativity


Giorgio Agamben - 1982
    Focusing especially on the incompatible philosophical systems of Hegel and Heidegger within the space of negativity, Giorgio Agamben offers a rigorous reading of numerous philosophical and poetic works to examine how these issues have been traditionally explored. Agamben argues that the human being is not just “speaking” and “mortal” but irreducibly “social” and “ethical.” Giorgio Agamben teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. He is the author of Means without End (2000), Stanzas (1993), and The Coming Community (1993), all published by the University of Minnesota Press. Karen E. Pinkus is professor of French and Italian at the University of Southern California. Michael Hardt is professor of literature and romance studies at Duke University.

Crowe's Requiem


Mike McCormack - 1998
    Rich in language and imagination, it is the work of an uncommonly talented young writer.