The Fountainhead is an unprecedented phenomenon in modern literature.Arguably the century's most challenging novel of ideas, The Fountainhead is the story of a gifted young architect, his violent battle with conventionalstandards, and his explosive love affair with the beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. In his fight for success, he first discovers, thenrejects, the seductive power of fame and money, finding that in the end, creative genius must triumph. His battle against mediocrity gives a gripping newdimension to the concept of evil. The Fountainhead is at once dramatic, poetic, and demanding. A statement of principles for its author, the novelchampions the cause of individualism and remains one of the towering books on the contemporary intellectual scene.
Barcelona, 1945 - just after the war, a great world city lies inshadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To consolehis only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tendedby Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’sfather coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel soloves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discoversthat someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. BeforeDaniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness anddoomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will sufferhorribly.
As with all astounding novels, The Shadow of the Wind sends the mind groping for comparisons—The Crimson Petal and theWhite? The novels of Arturo Pérez-Reverte? Of Victor Hugo? Love in the Time of Cholera?—but in the end, as with all astounding novels, no comparison cansuffice. As one leading Spanish reviewer wrote, "The originality of Ruiz Zafón’s voice is bombproof and displays a diabolical talent. The Shadow of theWind announces a phenomenon in Spanish literature." An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a moving homage to themystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.
Inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild, The Stolen Child is a modern fairy tale narratedby the child Henry Day and his double.On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is takenby the changelings—an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away, name him Aniday, and make him one of theirown. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He also seeks to understand and fit inthis shadow land, as modern life encroaches upon both myth and nature.
In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who stealsHenry’s life in the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his true identity from the Day family. But he can’t hide hisextraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling performances prompt his father to suspect that the son hehas raised is an impostor. As he ages the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a Germanpiano teacher and his prodigy. Of a time when he, too, had been a stolen child. Both Henry and Aniday obsessively search for who they once were beforethey changed places in the world.
The Stolen Child is a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity. With just theright mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue has created a bedtime story for adults and a literary fable of remarkable depth and strangedelights.
: keith donohue | 100 hundred years of solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude is the literaryequivalent of a magic carpet ride, your own magic genii come to life, and Shaharazade's 101 tales wrapped into one brilliant, multilayered epic novel.From page one you will voyage with the most remarkably original cast of characters, through worlds of vibrant color, where the sun shines almost always -when not obscured by a four year downpour. You will find yourself laughing out loud when you are not sobbing in sympathy with someone dying ofheartbreak. I do not like to label Sr. Garcia Marquez' work "magical realism." There is no label to accurately describe the writing that gifted us withOne Hundred Years Of Solitude. This is a book that defies description. You must read it to experience the fantastically real world of Macondo, and thepeople who live there. Once you know them, they will be a part of your own world forever. Have you ever looked at a painting, walked into it and become apart of it? When you open this novel at page one, you are beckoned to enter.
Macondo is a mythical South American town, founded,almost by accident, by Jose Arcadio Buendia, and populated primarily by his descendants. This is the story of one hundred years in the life of Macondoand its inhabitants - the story of the town's birth, development and death. Civil war and natural calamities plague this vital place whose populacefights to renew itself and survive. This is a huge narrative fiction that explores the history of a people caught up in the history of a place. AndMarquez captures the range of human emotions and the reasons for experiencing them in this generational tale.
There is much that isdelightful and comical here. Surprises never cease, whether it be Remedios ascending, or a man whose presence is announced by clouds of butterflies.There is satire, sexuality and bawdiness galore. But there is also a pervading sadness and futility that permeates throughout. Cruelty is a reality inMarquez' world, as are failure, despair and senseless, sudden violence. The plot is filled with passion, poetry, romance, tragedy and the echoes of thehistory of Colombia and Latin America.
: gabriel garcia marquez | love in the time ofcholera The title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel saysit all: this is an epic story told with witty, often hilarious, insight about thwarted love. Florentino is passionately and irrevocably in love withFermina, but when Fermina abruptly calls off their courtship, he is helpless to stop her from marrying a physician. Florentino must endure decades ofunrequited love while his beloved constructs a life around another man. But this novel is about so much more than the love Florentino harbors forFermina. This is about love in all difficult times, through social and political change, through obligation and approaching old age, through betrayal andbold declarations. Fermina's husband Juvenal Urbino is as much a part of this novel as the two lovers.
As always, Garcia Marquezsupplies engaging and surreal detail to his story. Only a writer as skilled as he could succeed in exploring all the events leading to the death of acharacter who is trying to capture his pet parrot. The absurd and fantastical happenings harbor sharp social commentary, elevating this novel from atrifle about love to a masterpiece. As with all of Garcia Marquez's book, this novel is about gritty reality despite the playful, magic realistoverlay.
: gabriel garcia marquez | notes from underground By the time Dostoevsky was 40, he had spent four years inprison and a further four years in the army as punishment for his part in a political conspiracy. His health was broken. He was gaunt, fervid,anxiety-ridden, and close to bankruptcy. It was in this state he wrote Notes from the Underground, a masterpiece of the psychology of the outsider.
The book, published in 1864, marks a turning point in Dostoevsky's writing: it announces the moral, political, and social ideas that hewill further examine in Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The book opens with a tormented soul crying out, "I am a sick man...I am aspiteful man." This is the cry of an alienated individual who has become one of the greatest anti-heroes in all literature. : fyodordostoevsky | paladin of souls Three years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista foundrelease from the curse of madness that kept her imprisoned in her family's castle of Valenda. Her newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories,regrets, and guilty secrets, for she knows the truth of what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And now the road, escape, beckons...A simplepilgrimage, perhaps. Quite fitting for the Dowager Royina of Chalion.
Yet something else is free, too, something beyond deadly. Tothe north lies the vital border fortress of Porifors. Memories linger there as well, of wars and invasions and the mighty Golden General of Jokona. Andsomeone, something, watches from across that border: humans, demons, gods
Ista thinks her little party of pilgrims wanders at will,but whose? When Ista's retinue is unexpectedly set upon not long into its travels, a mysterious ally appears, a warrior nobleman who fights like aberserker. The temporary safety of her enigmatic champion's castle cannot ease Ista's mounting dread, however, when she finds his dark secrets areentangled with hers in a net of the gods' own weaving.
In her dreams, the threads are already drawing her to unforeseen chances,fateful meetings, fearsome choices. What the inscrutable gods commanded of her in the past brought her land to the brink of devastation. Now, once again,they have chosen Ista as their instrument. And again, for good or for ill, she must comply.
: lois mcMaster bujold | the curse of chalion Lord Cazaril has been, in turn, courtier, castle-warder, and captain; now he is but a crippled ex-galley slave seeking nothing more than amenial job in the kitchens of the Dowager Provincara, the noble patroness of his youth. But Cazaril finds himself promoted to the exalted and dangerousposition of tutor to Iselle, the beautiful, fiery sister of the heir to Chalion's throne.Amidst the decaying splendor and poisonousintrigue of Chalion's ancient capital, Cazaril is forced to confront not only powerful enemies but also the malignant curse that clings to the royalhousehold, trapping him, flesh and soul, in a maze of demonic paradox, damnation, and death for as long as he dares walk the five-fold pathway of thegods.
: lois mcMaster bujold | the harry potter books
: j.K. rowling | wicked Heralded as aninstant classic of fantasy literature, Maguire has written a wonderfully imaginative retelling of The Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked Witch's point ofview. More than just a fairy tale for adults, Wicked is a meditation on the nature of good and evil.
Elphaba is born with green skin,a precocious mind, and a talent for magic. An outcast throughout her childhood in Munchkinland, she finally begins to feel as though she fits in when sheenters the University in the Emerald City. While she hones her skills, she discovers that Oz isn't the Utopia it seems. She sets out to protect itsunwanted creatures, becoming known as the Wicked Witch along the way.
: gregory maguire | the sorrows of young werther The novel is in the form of a series of letters fromWerther to his brother Wilhelm detailing his love for Lotte (Charlotte S.) despite her bethrothal and subsequent marriage to Albert. She has eightbrothers and sisters and promised her deceased mother to marry Albert. He is a sensitive artist, poet, and lover of nature and Homer. He exhibitsincreasing obsession over this unrequited love and with thoughts of death and suicide, and is emotionally ill-equipped to get on with his life. Whenemployed by an ambassador, he is rejected by the noble guests at a gathering as not of their class. His standard wear is a blue frock-coat and buffwaistcoat and breeches [as Jerusalem wore at the time of his suicide]. As his obsession (and madness) deepens, he prefers the fictitious Gaelic poetOssian over Homer, and prepares a translation. Lotte believes he is ill and begs him to leave her alone. Albert is uneasy with Werther and wishes hewould visit less. Lotte finally asks that he not visit before Christmas Eve, but he comes anyway. She asks him to read to her his translation of thesongs of Ossian. He reads out loud, she is moved to tears, he is overcome with passion and covers her lips with kisses-- she is horrified and banisheshim from her presence forever. Werther later sends a servant with a note to Albert to borrow his pistols for a journey-- Albert instructs Lotte to givethem to the servant. Later that night, Werther shoots himself.
: johann wolfgang von goethe | everything by edgar allen poe | everythingby h.P. lovecraft | everything by joseph conrad | & most of hemingway's short stories
