Strong ​Opinions

William Golding - Rites ​of Passage
In ​the cabin of an ancient, stinking warship bound for Australia, a man writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in England. With wit and disdain he records mounting tensions on board, as an obsequious clergyman attracts the animosity of the tyrannical captain and surly crew.

Gerald Durrell - Marrying ​Off Mother
A ​collection of eight stories featuring an eccentric cast of characters in a variety of settings. The author returns to the Corfu of his childhood, shares a picnic with a prize pig in the Perigord, stays with a hangman in Paraguay and dines with a gambling nun in Monte Carlo.

Gerald Durrell - Bill Bowler - My ​Family and Other Animals (Oxford Dominoes)
Text ​adaptation by Bill Bowler The weather in England that summer had been so awful that Gerald's mother sold the family house and took her children to live on the Mediterranean island of Corfu. Between lessons, the ten-year-old Gerald was free to walk round the sunny island and discover the wonderful people and animals living there. This is the story of Gerald's adventures with the fascinating animals of Corfu, and, of course, with his surprising family and their friends.

James Joyce - Selected ​Letters of James Joyce
The ​noted Joycean biographer and scholar selects those letters he deems the most interesting, covering the entire span of Joyce's correspondence and including previously uncollected letters to his wife and to Harriet Shaw Weaver

Eric Metaxas - Bonhoeffer ​(angol)
From ​the New York Times bestselling author of Amazing Grace, a groundbreaking biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the greatest heroes of the twentieth century, the man who stood up to Hitler. A definitive, deeply moving narrative, Bonhoeffer is a story of moral courage in the face of the monstrous evil that was Nazism. After discovering the fire of true faith in a Harlem church, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany and became one of the first to speak out against Hitler. As a double agent, he joined the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, and was hanged in Flossenberg concentration camp at age 39. Since his death, Bonhoeffer has grown to be one of the most fascinating, complex figures of the 20th century. Bonhoeffer presents a profoundly orthodox Christian theologian whose faith led him to boldly confront the greatest evil of the 20th century, and uncovers never-before-revealed facts, including the story of his passionate romance.

Robert Capa - Slightly ​Out of Focus
In ​1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as a heated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of a pretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces -- John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" -- and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and pictures by an extraordinary man.

Tim Burton - Mark Salisbury - Burton ​on Burton
A ​revised edition of the only book to explore the unique brilliance of director Tim Burton's work, including a new chapter on the making of Sleepy Hollow. Still only in his thirties, Tim Burton has established himself in the past fifteen years as one of the great visionaries of film. With the Batman films, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, and, most recently, Sleepy Hollow, he has continually broken new ground both visually and thematically, exploring the dark anguish--as well as the dark humor--that animates many of his characters while also creating a densely textured, sometimes bizarre look specific to each film. In Burton on Burton, Burton talks to Mark Salisbury about his training as an animator at Disney, the importance of design in his films, and the recurring themes present in his work. In this revised edition, he also discusses the influence of 1950s sci-fi and 1970s disaster films on Mars Attacks! as well as how he conceived his highly stylized approach to the content and setting of Sleepy Hollow, his acclaimed retelling of the Washington Irving story that stars Johnny Depp, perhaps the actor most identified with Burton's work. Enhanced by stills from the films, storyboards, and illustrations of set designs for all his major films, Burton on Burton provides insights and information about the man and his work, throwing light on both his unique artistic vision and on the extraordinary films that have been the result.

Douglas Botting - Gerald ​Durrell
The ​authorised biography of the great naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell, who died aged seventy in January 1995 in Jersey, where he founded the zoo he'd dreamed of as a small boy and pioneered the captive breeding of animals for conservation. Gerald Durrell was a world-famous naturalist and popular author who wrote, in all, some thirty-seven immensely readable yarns, including the bestselling 'My Family and Other Animals'. His other books include 'Birds, Beasts and Relatives', 'The Bafut Beagles' and 'A Zoo in My Luggage'. Above all, he paved the way in print for the popular presentation of the natural world on television and presented twelve series himself -- the early ones, of his own expeditions. Sir David Attenborough has said: 'He was responsible for changing people's attitudes to zoology and changing their agenda. He showed them small animals could be as interesting as apes and elephants!He was a pioneer with a marvellous sense of humour.' His brother was the famous writer Lawrence Durrell.

Joyce Carol Oates - The ​Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
On ​New Year's day 1973, Joyce Carol Oates began keeping a journal, which she maintains to this day. Already a well-established literary force by the age of thirty-four, Oates had written three books that had been named finalists for the National Book Award (in 1968, 1969, and 1972), and her novel them won the award in 1970; she had also received a number of O. Henry Awards, in addition to many other honors. Despite the warm critical reception from the literary world, however, the young author was naturally reticent about her personal life and would remain so throughout her career. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson, offers a rare first glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer. This volume focuses on excerpts from the journal written during the crucial first decade, 1973-1982, one of the most productive of Oates's long career. Housed in her archive at Syracuse University, the journals themselves run to more than 5,000 single-spaced typewritten pages. Far more than just a daily account of a writer's writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore Oates's friendship with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth, among others. Oates also describes, in vivid and captivating detail, her university teaching, her love of the natural world, her rural background, her vast reading, her critics, her travels, and, predominantly, the "silent, secret" life of the imagination. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture—a writer who paradoxically thought of herself as "invisible" while becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.

Joyce Carol Oates - The ​Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
On ​New Year's day 1973, Joyce Carol Oates began keeping a journal, which she maintains to this day. Already a well-established literary force by the age of thirty-four, Oates had written three books that had been named finalists for the National Book Award (in 1968, 1969, and 1972), and her novel them won the award in 1970; she had also received a number of O. Henry Awards, in addition to many other honors. Despite the warm critical reception from the literary world, however, the young author was naturally reticent about her personal life and would remain so throughout her career. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, edited by Greg Johnson, offers a rare first glimpse into the private thoughts of this extraordinary writer. This volume focuses on excerpts from the journal written during the crucial first decade, 1973-1982, one of the most productive of Oates's long career. Housed in her archive at Syracuse University, the journals themselves run to more than 5,000 single-spaced typewritten pages. Far more than just a daily account of a writer's writing life, these intimate, unrevised pages candidly explore Oates's friendship with other writers, including John Updike, Donald Barthelme, Susan Sontag, Gail Godwin, and Philip Roth, among others. Oates also describes, in vivid and captivating detail, her university teaching, her love of the natural world, her rural background, her vast reading, her critics, her travels, and, predominantly, the "silent, secret" life of the imagination. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young woman, fully engaged with her world and her culture—a writer who paradoxically thought of herself as "invisible" while becoming one of the most respected, honored, discussed, and controversial figures in American letters.

Paul Auster - Collected ​Prose
An ​updated edition with six new essays, including "An Evening at Shea" and "Remembering Beckett," as well as two long interviews from "one of America's greats" ("Time Out Chicago") The celebrated author of "Invisible," "The New York Trilogy," and "The Book of Illusions "presents a highly personal collection of essays, prefaces, true stories, autobiographical writings (including the seminal work "The Invention of Solitude"), and collaborations with artists, as well as occasional pieces written for magazines and newspapers. Ranging in subject from Sir Walter Raleigh to Kafka, Nathaniel Hawthorne to the high-wire artist Philippe Petit, conceptual artist Sophie Calle to Auster's own typewriter, the World Trade Center catastrophe to his beloved New York City itself, "Collected Prose" records the passions and insights of a writer who "will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time" ("San Francisco Chronicle").

Arthur Golden - Memoirs ​of a Geisha
A ​seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. From a small fishing village in 1929, the tale moves to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s, where a young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York; it exquisitely evokes another culture, a different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It conjures up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

Ernest Hemingway - A ​Moveable Feast
Published ​posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published. Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's sole surviving son, and an introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, this new edition also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack and his first wife, Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of other luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford, and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. Sure to excite critics and readers alike, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Mark Twain - Autobiography ​of Mark Twain
"I've ​struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away--to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion--to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"--meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind." The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

Edmund de Waal - The ​Hare with Amber Eyes
264 ​wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined...The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Marcel Proust was briefly his secretary and used Charles as the model for the aesthete Swann in _Remembrance of Things Past._ Charles' passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objects were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna. Later, three children - including a young Ignace - would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, smuggled out of the huge Viennese palace (then occupied by Hitler's theorist on the 'Jewish Question'), one piece at a time, in the pocket of a loyal maid - and hidden in a straw mattress. In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century. And, in prose as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves, he tells the story of a unique collection which passed from hand to hand - and which, in a twist of fate, found its way home to Japan.

Julia Baird - Imagine ​This
Ehhez a könyvhöz nincs fülszöveg, de ettől függetlenül még rukkolható/happolható.

Mark Twain - The ​Diaries of Adam and Eve
The ​Diaries of Adam and Eve is a great book for pleasure reading or for research. It isn't as well known as some of Twain's other works, but it displays his amazing wit and sense of humor. Adam is a couch potato, while Eve is a stereotypical chatterbox. The book is set up as a series of diary entries by both Adam and Eve. These entries tell the creation story in a fresh, amusing way. Twain may have been influenced by Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost."

Fritjof Capra - Uncommon ​Wisdom
Fusing ​modern science and Eastern mysticism, Fritjof Capra took the intellectual world by storm with the publication of his hugely influential The Tao of Physics. Now, in Uncommon Wisdom, he charts the cultural, sceintific and philosophical landmarks behind that intellectual odyssey through his conversations with some quite remarkable people: with Werner Heisenberg he explodes the myths of atomic physics, and searches for spiritual freedom alongside J. Krishnamurti; he pinpoints the nature of mental illness with R.D. Laing, and of ecological principles with E.F. Schumacher and Hazel Henderson, while Indira Gandhi stimulates his understanding of feminism in traditional Indian society. All offer rich insight into the iltellectual and artistic environment which helped shape one of this century's most fascinating world views of political, economic and social harmony. Remarkable is the right word... it causes the reader to do some hard thinking on his own. Uncommon Wisdom is certainly worth reading - Frederick Pohl, New Scientist In the role of interpreter of the philosophy of physics today, Dr Capra has few equals. - John Gribben, Times Educational Supplement

Hillary S. Webb - Traveling ​Between the Worlds
For ​anyone who's ever had the desire to look at the world through the eyes of our indigenous ancestors, here is a unique opportunity. Traveling between the Worlds is a treasure trove of insight and exploration into the ancient spiritual wisdom of such diverse cultures as Ireland, Africa, and the Americas. The keeper of this wisdom is the shaman--a man or woman who can, at will, enter into altered states of consciousness in order to acquire extrasensory knowledge and healing power. In this important book, Hillary S. Webb invites us to eavesdrop on her conversations with some of today's most influential teachers and writers of shamanism. While the conversations cover a variety of topics pertaining to the shaman's path and practice, this book explores how we in the modern world can use these ancient teachings to help ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Included in this book are conversations with: Renowned author and environmentalist John Perkins, who brings corporate executives to the Amazon to teach them the value of merging business and eco-philosophy. Rabbi Gershon Winkler, who uses the beliefs and techniques of the Jewish shamanic tradition to bring Israelis and Palestinians together on common, and more peaceful, ground--their indigenous roots. "Renegade" shaman Ken Eagle Feather of the Toltec tradition, who explains how modern technology can help us evolve into the next level of perception. Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro-Quesada, whose ideas on life and death may alter your view of reality itself. And that is just the beginning.

Ryszard Kapuściński - The ​Shadow of the Sun
Colorful ​writing and a deep intelligence highlight these essays' graceful exploration of postcolonial Africa. A Polish journalist who has written about the continent for more than three decades, Kapuscinski provides glimpses into African life far beyond what has been covered in headlines or in most previous books on the subject. The dispatches focus on the awkward relationship between Europe and Africa. Kapuscinski, whose books have been translated into 19 languages (they include The Emperor and The Soccer War), makes this clear through his own personal struggle with malaria soon after he first arrived on the continent. This emphasis also comes through in his dispatches on African nations such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda, which detail how the giddy optimism of the immediate postcolonial era disintegrated into corruption, poverty and conflict. But even as he describes a familiar story, his keen observations make it fresh. Writing about the provincialism of Rwanda, he says, "A trip round the world is a journey from backwater to backwater, each of which considers itself... a shining star." But political observations are just one of the strengths of this book. Kapuscinski's seemingly effortless writing style makes daily life come alive whether he's covering an Arab vendor making coffee or the efforts made at night by lizards to catch their mosquito prey. (The lizards' "eyes are capable of 180-degree rotation within their sockets, like the telescopes of astronomers....") Ultimately, this book is a personal and political travelogue of one man's rocky love affair with a continent of nations. Those looking for an engaging, literary introduction to Africa or even for some additional knowledge should look no further. (Apr.) Forecast: Kapuscinski is a very popular writer in Europe but has never broken out here. With a cluster of books on Africa coming out this season, this will get some media attention and may sell better than his previous books.