The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018


Sheila HetiSeo-Young Chu - 2018
    Their compilation includes new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and the category-defying gems that have become one of the hallmarks of this lively collection.Divine Providence / Quim Monzo --An excerpt from Notes of a Crocodile / Qiu Miaojin --This Rain / Catherine Pond --My Family's Slave / Alex Tizon --Eight Bites / Carmen Maria Machado --The Deaths of Henry King / Jesse Ball and Brain Evenson --A Refuge for Jae-In Doe: Fugues in the key of English major / Seo-Young Chu --In conversation with Vi Khi Nao / Stacey Tran --Come and Eat the World's largest shrimp cocktail in Mexico's Massacre Capital / Diego Enrique Osorno --The Uninhabitable Earth / David Wallace-Wells --An excerpt from Hunger / Roxane Gay --An excerpt from Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation / Frank B Wilderson III --A Tribute to Alvin Buenaventura / Andrew Leland, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Anders Nilsen --Six selected comics / Chris (Simpsons artist) --Artist's Statement / Kara Walker --Wave at the People Walking Upside Down / Tongo Eisen-Martin --Meanwhile, on Another Planet / Gunnhild Oyehaug --The David Party / David Leavitt --The Reenactors / Katherine Augusta Mayfield --Your Black Friend / Ben Passmore --Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild / Kathy Fish --Cat Person / Kristen Roupenian --An Excerpt from The Antipodes / Annie Baker --A Fair Accusation of Sexual Harassment or a Witch Hunt? / Lucy Huber --Lizard-Baby / Benjamin Schaefer --Chasing Waterfalls / László Krasznahorkai --Love, Death & Trousers: Eight Found Stories / Laura Francis and Alexander Masters --On Future and Working Through What Hurts / Hanif Abdurraqib --The Universe Would Be So Cruel / Souvankham Thammavongsa --A Love Story / Samantha Hunt

Paris Stories


Mavis Gallant - 2002
    Mysterious, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, these are tales of expatriates and exiles, wise children and straying saints. Together they compose a secret history, at once intimate and panoramic, of modern times.

Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece


Gustav Schwab - 1837
    Here are Icarus flying too close to the sun, mighty Hercules, Achilles and that darn heel, the Trojans and their wooden horse, brave Perseus and beautiful Andromeda, wandering Odysseus and steadfast Penelope. Their stories and the stories of the powerful gods and goddesses who punish and reward, who fall in love with and are enraged by the humans they have created, are set forth simply but movingly, in language that retains the power and drama of the original works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer. In Gustav Schwab’s masterful retelling, they are made accessible to readers of all ages.Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

The Annotated Brothers Grimm


Jacob GrimmKay Nielsen - 2004
    The volume includes over forty of the Grimms' most beloved stories, including:Rapunzel * Hansel and Gretel * The Brave Little Tailor * Cinderella * Little Red Riding Hood * The Robber Bridegroom * Briar Rose * Snow White * Rumplestilskin * The Golden Goose * The Singing, Soaring Lark * The Frog King * The Juniper Tree * and Mother HolleWith over 150 paintings and drawings from the most celebrated fairy tale illustrators, including George Cruikshank, Paul Hey, Walter Crane, Warwick Goble, Kay Nielsen, and Arthur Rackham.

Russian Fairy Tales


Alexander Afanasyev - 1855
    The more than 175 tales culled from a centuries-old Russian storytelling tradition by the outstanding Russian ethnographer Aleksandr Afanas’ev reveal a rich, robust world of the imagination that will fascinate readers both young and old.With black-and-white drawings throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Redeployment


Phil Klay - 2014
    Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. In "Redeployment", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains - of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming. Redeployment is poised to become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.

One Hundred Leaves: A new annotated translation of the Hyakunin Isshu


Fujiwara no Teika
    Many Japanese know the poems by heart as a result of playing the popular card game version of the anthology. Collecting one poem each from one hundred poets living from the 7th century to the 13th century, the book covers a wide array of themes and personal styles.

A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government


Nakae Chōmin - 1989
    Their discussion is moderated by the imperturbable Master Nankai, who loves nothing more than to drink and argue politics. The fiction of the drinking bout allowed Chomin to debate freely topical political issues, in a discussion that offers an astute analysis of contemporary European politics and a prophetic vision of Japan's direction. This lucid and precise translation of a delightful work has been designated one of the UNESCO series of classics of world literature.

Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo


Miyuki Miyabe - 2000
    It lived alongside the present, in dark corners, and in the shadows. In these tales, award-winning author Miyuki Miyabe explores the ghosts of Japan, and the spaces of the living world they inhabit. Written with a journalistic eye and a fantasist’s heart Apparitions bring the restless dead, and those who encounter them, to life.

Legends of the Samurai


Hiroaki Sato - 1995
    In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.

Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories


Michael Sims - 2010
    Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait" and Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" to Guy de Maupassant's "The Horla" and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "Good Lady Ducayne." Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker's own "Dracula's Guest"-a chapter omitted from his landmark novel.Vampires captivated the Victorians, as Sims reveals in his insightful introduction: In 1867, Karl Marx described capitalism as "dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor"; while in 1888 a London newspaper invoked vampires in trying to explain Jack the Ripper's predations. At a time when vampires have been re-created in a modern context, Dracula's Guest will remind readers young, old, and in between of why the undead won't let go of our imagination.

Showa, 1926-1939: A History of Japan


水木しげる - 2013
    This volume deals with the period leading up to World War II, a time of high unemployment and other economic hardships caused by the Great Depression. Mizuki's photo-realist style effortlessly brings to life the Japan of the 1920s and 1930s, depicting bustling city streets and abandoned graveyards with equal ease. When the Showa era began, Mizuki himself was just a few years old, so his earliest memories coincide with the earliest events of the time. With his trusty narrator Nezumi Otoko (Rat Man), Mizuki brings history into the realm of the personal, making it palatable, and indeed compelling, for young audiences as well as more mature readers. As he describes the militarization that leads up to World War II, Mizuki's stance toward war is thoughtful and often downright critical--his portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre clearly paints the incident (a disputed topic within Japan) as an atrocity. Mizuki's "Showa 1926-1939" is a beautifully told history that tracks how technological developments and the country's shifting economic stability had a role in shaping Japan's foreign policy in the early twentieth century.

Stephen King Goes to the Movies


Stephen King - 2009
    1408 starred John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson and was a huge box office success in 2007. The short story "Children of the Corn" was adapted into the popular Children of the Corn. The Mangler was inspired by King's loathing for laundry machines from his own experience working in a laundromat. Hearts in Atlantis (based on "Low Men in Yellow Coats," the first part of the novel Hearts in Atlantis) starred Anthony Hopkins. This collection features new commentary and introductions to all of these stories in a treasure-trove of movie trivia.

The Cat Who Saved Books


Sōsuke Natsukawa - 2017
    Then, a talking cat named Tiger appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and Tiger and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners. Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different mazes to set books free. Through their travels, Tiger and Rintaro meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publishing drone who only wants to create bestsellers. Their adventures culminate in one final, unforgettable challenge—the last maze that awaits leads Rintaro down a realm only the bravest dare enter...