It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

    The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

    Potter: Letters of Love, Loss, and Magic features hundreds of letters and pictures from Harry Potter fans. Individually, these letters and pictures tell stories of how fans have been impacted and inspired by Harry Potter. Together they serve as proof of what all Potter fans know so well: the Harry Potter series changes lives.Along with fans from around the world, Dear Mr. Potter also features letters from Harry Potter actress Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), New York Times-bestselling author John Green, Leaky Cauldron webmistress and author of New York Times-bestseller Harry, A History Melissa Anelli, Andrew Slack of the Harry Potter Alliance, Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters, Andrew Sims and Eric Scull of MuggleNet, and Esther Earl’s mom, Lori.

    It investigates all the clues that J.K. Rowling has hidden in her series.This is the Guide that got almost everything right about what would happen in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Over 400 pages of theories and predictions -- including many more theories about what will happen in Books 6 and 7. Find out about those!Using only legitimate sources (J.K. Rowling's published works and interviews), this guide can be used to expose plot puzzles and clues that the author has concealed in her stories. Readers are excited to discover all the hints they missed when they read the Harry Potter books the first time(s)!Readers are taught to become an expert HP Sleuth, so they can have a lot more fun doing their Harry Potter detective work while they wait for Book 6.Here is a taste of what's in the book...-What's with Percy?-What is going to happen in the war?-Who may turn traitor in the final two books?-What secrets does Professor Snape hold?-Do you know how to solve Snape's poison bottle puzzle in the room "through the trapdoor?" Did you know there are actually 2 solutions to that puzzle?The Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter addresses a broad audience in a humorous, fun-to-read, conversational format that brings new excitement to the Harry Potter series. It is a must have for Harry Potter fans!

    Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text.Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television."We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect.The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance.These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination.In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

    In this book, the experts at MuggleNet.com present a wide range of hard facts and bold predictions about the most popular storylines, favorite characters, and final outcome of the Harry Potter saga. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of the previous six books as well as tips and suggestions made by millions of MuggleNet.com fans (not to mention a personal interview with J.K. Rowling), the authors offer answers to the burning questions of Harry Potter readers everywhere: Will Hogwarts School be open for Harry’s final year, and will Harry even be in attendance? Will Harry’s quest for the remaining Horcruxes be rewarded? Where do Severus Snape’s true loyalties lie? And, most importantly, will Harry survive the final battle with Lord Voldemort?

    In over 30 essays, written over 20 years, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining, and above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topic, including the origin and composition of Philip's own stories, the craft of writing and the story-tellers who have meant the most to him. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and the striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts.

    A proper cuppa tea and rock cakes in Hagrid's hut. Cauldron cakes and pumpkin juice on the Hogwarts Express. With this cookbook, dining a la Hogwarts is as easy as Banoffi Pie! With more than 150 easy-to-make recipes, tips, and techniques, you can indulge in spellbindingly delicious meals drawn straight from the pages of your favorite Potter stories, such as:Treacle Tart--Harry's favorite dessert, Molly's Meat Pies--Mrs. Weasley's classic dish, Kreacher's French Onion Soup, Pumpkin Pasties--a staple on the Hogwarts Express cartWith a dash of magic and a drop of creativity, you'll conjure up the entries, desserts, snacks, and drinks you need to transform ordinary Muggle meals into magickal culinary masterpieces, sure make even Mrs. Weasley proud!

    Jonathan Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary theory, offers discerning insights into such theories as the nature of language and meaning, and whether literature is a form of self-expression or a method of appeal to an audience. Concise yet thorough, Literary Theory also outlines the ideas behind a number of different schools: deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism, among others. From topics such as literature and social identity to poetry, poetics, and rhetoric, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is a welcome guide for anyone interested in the importance of literature and the debates surrounding it.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world. In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

    K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is explained, expanded, and celebrated in a literary guidebook which also includes information on the historical roots of the symbolism and mythology used in the series. Original.

     We do it in the dark. Under the sheets. With a penlight. We wear sunglasses and a baseball hat at the bookstore. We have a "special place" where we store them. Let's face it: Not many folks are willing to publicly admit they love romance novels. Meanwhile, romance continues to be the bestselling fiction genre. Ever. So what's with all the shame? Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan -- the creators of the wildly popular blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books -- have no shame! They look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in the world of romance novels and tackle the hard issues and questions: -- The heroine's irresistible Magic Hoo Hoo and the hero's untamable Wang of Mighty Lovin' -- Sexual trends. Simultaneous orgasms. Hymens. And is anal really the new oral? -- Romance novel cover requirements: man titty, camel toe, flowers, long hair, animals, and the O-face -- Are romance novels really candy-coated porn or vehicles by which we understand our sexual and gender politics? With insider advice for writing romances, fun games to discover your inner Viking warrior, and interviews with famous romance authors, Beyond Heaving Bosoms shows that while some romance novels are silly -- maybe even tawdry -- they can also be intelligent, savvy, feminist, and fabulous, just like their readers!

    In this elegant and thought-provoking collection of original essays, Kate Bernheimer brings together twenty-eight leading women writers to discuss how these stories helped shape their imaginations, their craft, and our culture. In poetic narratives, personal histories, and penetrating commentary, the assembled authors bare their soul and challenge received wisdom. Eclectic and wide-ranging, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall is essential reading for anyone who has ever been bewitched by the strange and fanciful realm of fairy tales.Contributors include: Alice Adams, Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Ann Beattie, Rosellen Brown, A. S. Byatt, Kathryn Davis, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Deborah Eisenberg, Maria Flook, Patricia Foster, Vivian Gornick, Lucy Grealy, bell hooks, Fanny Howe, Fern Kupfer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carole Maso, Jane Miller, Lydia Millet, Joyce Carol Oates, Connie Porter, Francine Prose, Linda Gray Sexton, Midori Snyder, Fay Weldon, Joy Williams, Terri Windling.

    In this exhilarating followup, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling and utterly original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. What Reading Lolita in Tehran was for Iran, The Republic of Imagination is for America. Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle, where a skeptical reader told her that Americans don’t care about books the way they did back in Iran, she challenges those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite American novels—from Huckleberry Finn to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—she invites us to join her as citizens of her "Republic of Imagination," a country where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy, and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.

    This is the perfect guide for parents who want to teach their children science through their favorite adventures as well as for the millions of adult fans of the series intrigued by its marvels and mysteries.- An ALA Booklist Editors' Choice -