Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780060529703
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

The simplest thing would be to describe Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of ! this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is aided in his search by Alex Perchov, a naïve Ukrainian translator, Alex's grandfather (also called Alex), and a flatulent mongrel dog named Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. On their journey through Eastern Europe's obliterated landscape they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for Perchov as well as Safran Foer. This narrative is not, however, recounted from (the character) Jonathan Safran Foer's perspective. It is relayed through a series of letters that Alex sends to Foer. These are written in the kind of broken Russo-English normally reserved for Bond villains or Latka from Taxi. Interspersed between these letters are fragments of a novel by Safran Foer--a wonderfully imagined, almo! st magical realist, account of life in the shtetl before the N! azis des troyed it. These are in turn commented on by Alex, creating an additional metafictional angle to the tale.

If all this sounds a little daunting, don't be put off; Safran Foer is an extremely funny as well as intelligent writer who combines some of the best Jewish folk yarns since Isaac Bashevis Singer with a quite heartbreaking meditation on love, friendship, and loss. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk

Cabin Fever

  • Used - Like New

Greg Heffley is in big trouble. School property has been damaged, and Greg is the prime suspect. But the crazy thing is, he’s innocent. Or at least sort of.

The authorities are closing in, but when a surprise blizzard hits, the Heffley family is trapped indoors. Greg knows that when the snow melts he’s going to have to face the music, but could any punishment be worse than being stuck inside with your family for the holidays?

Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Jeff Kinney

Question: Given all the jobs that you have--game designer, fatherhood, Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie work, etc.,--do you h! ave a certain time that you set aside to write?

Kinney: I still treat writing like a hobby, working mostly at night and sometimes on weekends. But when a deadline looms my hobby time gets extended into the wee hours of the night. It's not uncommon for me to work until 4:00 a.m., and I'm usually back at work by 9:00 a.m.

Q: Did you get to choose which character you would play in the Wimpy Kid films (Mr. Hills)? What do you enjoy most about working on the movies?

Kinney: I never any real desire to appear in the Wimpy Kid films, but one day my wife encouraged me to be an extra in one of the crowd scenes. So I walked onto the set, ready to ask the assistant director to put me somewhere in the back. It happened that right at that moment the director was looking for someone to play the role of Mr. Hills, Holly Hills's father. What I didn't realize was that I'd be front and center in the church scene, and in the new movie, I'm even! more prominent. I'm incredibly self-conscious so appearing on! -camera was a real stretch for me.

Q: In 2009 Time magazine named you as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World--what’s the first thing you did after you found out?

Kinney: I thought it was a practical joke, so I tried to track down the source of the joke. I eventually reached a voicemail of a reporter who said they worked for Time, and at that point I thought it was just a well-planned practical joke. It took me a while to realize it was for real. It was a big honor, but I don't take it very seriously. I'm the fourth most influential person in my own house.

Q: Would you ever consider making Wimpy Kid into a newspaper comic strip or creating another one? Do you have any favorite comic strips that you currently read?

Kinney: I've considered it. I set out to become a newspaper cartoonist but failed to break in. But I like the freedom books give me, so it would be tough to cram my ideas into t! hree or four panels.

Q: What is (or could be) you motto in life?

Kinney: I was inspired to write by a Benjamin Franklin quote: "Well done is better than well said." But I always encourage kids to "create something great," because the tools to create something original and find an audience are available to them like never before.

Q: What was your favorite year in school, and why?

Kinney: Fifth grade was my favorite year. I had a great teacher, Mrs. Norton, who encouraged me to be funny and challenged me to be a better artist and joke-teller than I was. I liked it that she didn't coddle me.

Q: Kids now ask for a book that is “like Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” and with this series you’ve created a whole new subset of books for young readers--how does it feel to be the person behind such massive book enjoyment, reaching reluctant readers, and spawning any number of titles that aspire to be “the! next Wimpy Kid?”

Kinney: I'm happy t! hat kids are reading. I think graphical books reach kids who might otherwise see books as work. Books should be fun!

A modern Waldenâ€"if Thoreau had had three kids and a minivanâ€"Cabin Fever is a serious yet irreverent take on living in a cabin in the woods while also living within our high-tech, materialist culture.
 
Try to imagine Thoreau married, with a job, three kids, and a minivan. This is the serious yet irreverent sensibility that suffuses Cabin Fever, as the author seeks to apply the hermit-philosopher’s insights to a busy modern life.
 
Tom Montgomery Fate lives in a Chicago suburb, where he is a husband, father, professor, and active member of his community. He also lives in a cabin built with the help of friends in the Michigan woods, where he walks by the river, chops wood, and reads Thoreau by candle light.
 
While he divides his time between suburbia and the cabin, Fate’s point is not to draw a line between th! e two but to ask what each has to say about the other. How do we balance nature (picking blackberries) with technology (tapping BlackBerrys)? What is revealed about human boundaries when a coyote wanders into a Quiznos? Can a cardinal protecting chicks from a hungry cat teach us anything about instincts and parenting? Fate seeks a more attentive, deliberate way of seeing the world and our place in it, not only among the trees and birds but also in the context of our relationships and society.
 
A seasonal nature memoir, Cabin Fever takes readers on a search for the wild both in the woods and within ourselves. Although we are often estranged from nature in our daily lives, Fate shows that we can recover our kinship with the earth and its other inhabitants if we are willing to pay attention.
 
In his exploration of how we are to live “a more deliberate life” amid a high-tech, material world, Fate invites readers into an interrogation of their ow! n lives, and into a new kind of vision: the possibility of eno! ugh in a culture of more.

 

Love isn’t something she thinks she needs…until it lands right on her doorstep.
 
Genevieve Boden is a witch and doesn’t care who knows. The townspeople’s fear of her keeps away those who have hurt her beforeâ€"like the local men of authority. Besides, a life of exile deep in the woods of West Virginia is due punishment, she figures, for the part she played in her mother’s death. If she’s alone, no one need know that the trauma took away her powers.
 
Then she finds a bloody, fatally wounded man slumped on her porch. In an instant, her healing ability reawakensâ€"and that’s not all. He stirs a hunger beyond her wildest dreams. But a relationship with the new chief of police? Not a chance.
 
Alex Rivera isn’t sure how he survived, but he’s certain his beautiful savior did more than just bandage his wounds. Captivated by this wary angel and stunned! by the depth of emotion he feels for her, he vows to discover her secrets. After all, thanks to the raging snowstorm, they have nothing to do but share body heat.
 
Their sizzling attraction goes straight to their hearts. So could a killer’s bullet…once whoever shot Alex finds them.
 
Warning: Contains a convenient snowstorm that throws together two wounded characters who happen to be wildly attracted to each other, a drool-worthy hero, a shotgun-toting heroine, mattress sex, shower sex, couch sex, armchair sex, some light bondage, and a really good cup of hot cocoa.
 

 

A log cabin in the woods is one of America's most cherished icons -- a dream shared around the world. As the stress level of city life rises, more and more of us are imagining our own cottages far away from traffic lights and urban distractions. Cabins in the wilderness have never gone out of style, because the rustic l! ife is a simple, rewarding one rooted in the traditions of the! great o utdoors.

Featuring rustic interiors as well as North Woods architecture, Cabin Fever visits more than two dozen charming retreats old and new, large and small, in the mountains and along the water, from the wilds of New York out to the wild, wild West. Author Rachel Carley explains where our love for the rustic comes from and shows the amazingly varied guises in which it appears today.

After serving as settlers' cabins, log homes enjoyed a phenomenal popularity in the late nineteenth century. Wealthy families such as the Vanderbilts, Guggenheims, and Carnegies summered in areas as remote as they could find, building what were euphemistically called camps. Those less affluent, following the era's prescription for fresh air and simplicity, traveled to even more rustic hotels and vacation cabins to get their share of the refreshing woods. Cabin Fever presents some of the best of these old lodges and private cabins, along with striking new homes that give a! contemporary twist to the ideal of the rustic life.

To help fill a cabin, a whole camp, or even an apartment with the latest in rustic style, the book's catalogue shows where to find home furnishings from twig bedsteads to Hudson Bay blankets to Adirondack chairs. Brimming with exceptionally creative ideas for achieving this truly American look, this enchanting guide to living with the rustic style will cure every variety of cabin fever.The craze for "getting away from it all" in buildings of log, stone, and unpainted lumber has been a part of American life since the 1800s. From the Gilded Age retreats of the Catskills and Adirondacks to the rugged Wild West lodges of Yellowstone and Yosemite, Cabin Fever celebrates the architectural elements that make cabin style unique: gleaming hand-peeled and polished logs, cowhide sofas, and river-rock fireplaces. Some are large, old, and built as public lodgings, like Putnam Camp, the Adirondack summer retreat found! ed by philosopher William James, which still has the cheerful! austeri ty it had when Freud and Jung mingled there with Harvard academicians. Others, like the grand hunting lodge nestled on the edge of a marsh, are more recent monuments to quirky private visions of the perfect rustic retreat. Rooms in both are accessorized with animal heads, native American blankets and art, snowshoes, antler chandeliers, and willow twig furniture. The book's appendix includes catalog sources for everything from small wooden summerhouses to buffalo-plaid blankets, and a list of hotels in the grand old style (like Yosemite's Ahwahnee and the Grand Canyon's El Tovar). Even if you can't have a piece of the wilderness to call your own (and the burl furniture to match), you can still enjoy the rustic yet substantial comforts of Cabin Fever.CABIN FEVER - DVD Movie

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: (Great Books edition) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

  • ISBN13: 9780140283341
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
These deluxe editions are packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front.

"A glittering parable of good and evil . . . a work of genuine literary merit."--The New York Times

Other Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
My Antonia by Willa Cather
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
White Noise by Don DeLillo

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