Added by: neverlogic | Karma: 3.14 | Fiction literature | 15 February 2010
14
Joseph Heller- Catch 22 (PDF)
There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic.
Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 15 February 2010
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Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, who is the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy an impoverished scion of the family. Captain De Stancy represents a dream of medieval nobility to Paula. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues but William Dare decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections.
Added by: arcadius | Karma: 2802.10 | Fiction literature | 15 February 2010
16
Thomas Hardy is one of the sacred figures in English writing, a great poet and a novelist. His life was also extraordinary: from the poverty of rural Dorset he went on to become the Grand Old Man of English life and letters, his last resting place in Westminster Abbey. Thomas Hardy's first love was always poetry. It was not until 1898, when he was 58 years old, having already established his reputation with 14 novels and over 40 short stories, that his first book of poetry, "Wessex Poems" was published. For the final 30 years of his life he abandoned fiction and devoted himself entirely to poetry.
Added by: frufru2 | Karma: 306.02 | Fiction literature | 15 February 2010
2
The Sacred Well by Antoinette May
A young reporter in 1923, Alma Reed accompanies archaeologists to the ruins of Chichen Itza, where a fortune in Mayan artifacts has been stolen from a sacrificial well. It's believed a curse was unleashed by the theft—yet the career-making story it offers the ambitious journalist seems a godsend. It also leads her to a passionate love affair with revolutionary governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto. But when fate darkens their lives and damns them as doomed political pawns, Alma can't help but wonder if the curse is not, in fact, very real.