Second-Hand Books New IN

In The Wall Gardens, Anahita Firouz - RM 5.00

(sold)

Review here

Typhoid Mary, Anthony Bourdain - RM 9.90

Review here

Untamed Tongues, Wild Words from Wild Women, Autumn Stephens - RM 5.00

Review here

POPism: The Warhol Sixties, Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett - RM 9.90

PRAISE FOR POPISM

"A vivid re-creation of a great time to live and a great time to die."--Martin Scorsese

Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan - RM 5.00

When Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was first published in the United States in 1963, it exploded into American consciousness. Since its first publication, critics and popular readers have been sharply divided on their assessment of the work. However, one fact is certain: The Feminine Mystique sparked a national debate about women's roles and in time was recognized as one of the central works of the modern women's movement. Friedan began writing the work after she attended her fifteen-year college reunion at Smith, a women's college. At this reunion, she gave a questionnaire to two hundred of her fellow classmates, and the results confirmed what she had already suspected—many American women were unhappy and did not know why. After three women's magazines refused to publish Friedan's results, because they contradicted the conventional assumptions about femininity, Friedan spent five years researching and writing The Feminine Mystique.

In the book, Friedan defines women's unhappiness as ‘‘the problem that has no name,’’ then she launches into a detailed exploration of what she believes causes this problem. Through her research—which includes many theories, statistics, and first-person accounts—Friedan pins the blame on an idealized image of femininity that she calls the feminine mystique. According to Friedan, women have been encouraged to confine themselves to the narrow roles of housewife and mother, foresaking education and career aspirations in the process. Friedan attempts to prove that the feminine mystique denies women the opportunity to develop their own identities, which can ultimately lead to problems for women and their families. Friedan sees the feminine mystique as a failed social experiment that World War II and the Cold Warhelped to create and which in turn contributed to postwar phenomena like the baby boom and the growth of suburbs. Although Friedan has written several more controversial works, The Feminine Mystique is the book that made her a household name, and it is still her best-known work.

Review from Enotes.

The Distant Lover, Christoph Hein - RM 9.90

The Distant Lover is a quick glance into the life of an unnamed East Berliner who’s learned that her married lover has died. As she struggles with the pain she worked so hard to avoid but realizes she can’t escape, her reflections drift backwards to momentous decisions in her life and the state they’ve left her in. Hein ends the story abruptly, closing the window to her enduring soul, if that’s what it is we’ve bore witness to.

Hein’s protagonist is out of touch. She’s a doctor who takes no pride in her work, discussing office politics and plans for retirement instead of sharing that one remembered patient, and she often uses the reader as she would an unappreciated friend, venting superficial frustrations and sharing unfinished philosophies. It makes sense for us to believe that Hein is trying to say something about East Germany. As a rule of thumb, the simpler the language, the wider the commentary.

Undoubtedly, Hein reflects his upbringing in his austere tale of survivalist comfort, about affording enough not to complain. As his first work translated into English, he must have intended it for an English-speaking audience. His doctor’s memories and regrets don’t come with violins in the background, trying to elicit your sympathy. At times I even found myself chuckling out loud at her occasional anecdotes and jabs. She may seem like a despondent character, but it’s the result of her individual experience. She accepts the culture she knows, and only we can formulate the context responsible for her suffering. Hein does not grovel for our pity; he’s a German and he’s a writer. As it is impossible to deny your heritage, also is it impossible to deny yourself a voice.

Review from schulerbooks.wordpress.com

Final Friends Book 2: The Dance, Christopher Pike's - RM 5.00

Scavenger Hunt, Christopher Pike's - RM 5.00

The Star Group, Christopher Pike's - RM 5.00

The Tao Of Meow Understanding; Training Your Cat The Taoist Way, Deborah Wood - RM 9.90

Use the gentle principles of Taoism to forge a profound and joyful relationship with your cat.

The epitome of yin-yang, the cat is perfectly balanced between tame and wild, sociability and solitude, action and rest. Called inscrutable and mysterious, perhaps even recalcitrant, felines have been deemed difficult to understand and train. Not anymore. Using the kind, gentle principles of Taoism, veteran trainer Deborah Wood introduces her revolutionary "no force, no punishment" method of creating a loving, harmonious relationship with your cat . . . a companionship filled with unparalleled rewards and unconditional love. Discover:

Step-by-step remedies for difficult problems: refusal to use the litter box, aggression, clawing furniture, and spraying urine

Cat massage and other techniques to increase the flow of qi and create telepathic communication between human and animal

Interactive human-cat games to give the cat essential mental and physical stimulation

The practice of wu wei, action through nonaction, to enrich your relationship

Taoist diet needs, a path to understanding a cat's finicky eating, and the best foods for glowing health

Synopsis from barnes and nobel.

more now again a memoir of addiction, Elizabeth Wurtzel - RM 9.90

Publishers Weekly

In her second book, Bitch, a discourse on self-destructive women, Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) admits to writing the manuscript while on drugs and then checking herself into rehab. In this memoir, she expands that admission to its extreme, minutely detailing life as a Ritalin addict and then as a rehab patient. But with its long stretches of descriptions about glass coffee-tables, tweezed leg hairs, missed phone calls and junkie buddies, this new book would have been more aptly titled "Prosaic Nation." Not only does Wurtzel tread on well-covered terrain about getting clean, she manages to add little or no insight either to her own habit or to the landscape of addiction in general. She's never figured out how to be a grown-up and do the little things like scrubbing a tub, she writes, "and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics." Yet she fills this work with nothing but mere basics, like which cereals she eats, how she feels about television and how tough she finds life on a book tour. Even in rehab, that reliable bastion of craziness, the scenes are ordinary, washed out by Wurtzel's seeming lack of emotion. Indeed, throughout the book the author describes crying or worrying, but never seems to feel anything, so that when she has a surge of gung-ho self-esteem at the book's end, complete with a spiritual awakening, it rings false, a too hasty wrapup. Hardcore Wurtzel fans may find much to enjoy here, but the book's lack of depth and originality will check all but the most devoted. (Jan. 17) Forecast: The toned-down and boring jacket (compared with those of Wurtzel's previous books) and her lackluster writing won't do much for sales. More, Now, Again has scant chances of reaching new readers it just doesn't have the depth and insight of other works on addiction. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Catch Me If You Can, Frank W. Abagnale - RM 9.90

In his late teens, Abagnale posed as a PanAm co-pilot, getting lifts on airplanes for free to take him all around the country and the world, allowing him to pass bad checks behind the guise of a respectable airline pilot. By the time he was caught, at age 21, he had managed to bilk his victims, mostly PanAm, of over 2 million dollars. At that was 2 million in the late 60s, when the story took place. Posing as Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams, and Robert Monjo, Abagnale also managed to teach sociology at a college in Utah with a fake diploma, pass the bar exam and work in an attorney general's office, pose as a pediatrician and become a temporary resident supervisor at a hospital in Georgia.

In one outrageous scheme, Abagnale recruited, and then "hired" a group of young female college students from an Arizona University. He told the girls that they were to be part of a special PR project, where they would travel to different cities in Europe and, dressed as PanAm flight attendants, be photographed for PanAm publicity purposes. He took them to Europe, hired photographers in each city, and while the girls were getting photographed, he passed back checks.

Finally nabbed in Montpelier, France, Abagnale confessed and spent 6 months in the infamous Perpignan French prison, where he stayed naked, in a 5 foot by 5 foot by 5 foot cel, in complete darkness, with only a bucket, no drain, no running water. Not once did he see light or was able to stand completely straight (he's over 6 feet tall.) Once released from Perpignan, he was transfered to Sweden where he did 6 more months in a prison that was more like a college dorm. A Swedish judge then deported him back to the US. Faced with the prospect of meeting US Federal agents once his plane was at the gate, Frank escaped from the plane by removing the toilet mechanism from the airline restroom, and left the plane through the toilet hatch.

The escapades described in this story are creative, daring, and sometimes just heart-stopping. My one complaint with the book is that it sort of leaves you hanging at the end. Frank manages to evade some FBI agents and then the book just stops. I couldn't believe it. What happens next?! A little research online reveals that Frank is eventually caught and serves 4 years in a US prison. He is released with the agreement that he will help law enforcement agencies catch check forgers. Frank has since made a career for himself providing this kind of advice to companies (see www.abagnale.com).

by Elise

French And Poetry for Cats, Henry Beard - RM 9.90

In the vein of his bestselling French for Cats, Henry Beard has assembled a brilliant anthology of treasured works by feline poets. Includes "Do Not Go Gentle to That Damned Vet" by Dylan Thomas's cat, "The Human" by Edgar Allan Poe's cat and other works. Poetry for Cats will prove as thrilling as a stiff shot of catnip. Color illustrations.

French For Cats: All The French Your Cat Will Ever Need, Henry Beard - RM 9.90

Are you thinking of house-sitting in France next summer, and are worried that you won't be able to communicate with your hosts' cat? Then this is just the book for you. When the cat says meow, is it trying to say, "Here comes a fur ball," or "I did not break that vase"? All will be revealed in Henry Beard's mini bilingual book of catspeak. With English phrases given first followed by French translations in italics and accompanied by illuminating illustrations, each page gives us a rare insight into the inner workings of a feline brain.

We are first introduced to The Major Cat Parts (of the body), and these are followed by The Basic Cat Wardrobe co

Ciao

nsisting of a bell, flea and tick collar, and name tag.

When we proceed to the section on Cat Names, puss starts to voice his opinions quite firmly: "I will answer to Serafina, Caesar," etc., but "I will not answer to Fluffy, Kitty," and so on. What I Do Not Do seems arise from a confusion between canine and feline behaviour: we are informed that cats do not 'fetch', catch Frisbees, or guard houses. What's more "Je ne cours pas apres les voitures" ("I don't chase cars.")

After a picture of The Food Bowl, we are shown The Four Cat Food Groups: Dry Food, Canned Food, Natural Foods (The Mouse or The Big Ugly Bug), and of course Forbidden Foods (string, dried flowers, tinsel etc.) We then discover the French for "I want my food in my bowl now. I'm waiting." The Unpleasant Medicinal Additives are delineated, and the message is "Do not put additives in my food unless you are sure that I am dying."

The Litter box naturally follows on from here, and we must understand the feline requirement: "I need a little privacy." Who wouldn't, indeed? There may be misunderstandings of course over The Nap Place or The Cat Bath - Le Bain a Coups de Langue - and we mustn't forget that "I prefer to give myself my own bath." Then The Fur Ball has to be watched out for, as it sometimes comes without warning, unless we are familiar with the phrase "Je crois que je vais cracher une boule de poils."

We probably understand the importance of The Territory, but do we know the French for "I like to climb large trees in my territory"? The Cat Carrier, Le Porte-Chat, is one of the most feared objects, as puss explains "I do not like to leave my territory for any reason." especially for a visit to The Vet - "I do not want to be neutered" ("Je ne veux pas etre chatre.")

A section on The Cat Toys, where we are told "I do not wish to play with my cat toys" is followed by The Things That Are Not, Strictly Speaking, Cat Toys, But Which Nevertheless Have Great Play Value - a vase, a lamp, or a crystal candy dish. "Alas, they are not very durable" is translated as "C'est la vie".

The Hunt explains to us that "Sometimes I choose to play with my prey" but we might be asked "Ou voulez-vous que je mette ca?" (Where do you want me to put this?)
The Enemies of course include the dog, the mean child and the lawn mower, and we might hear "Je voudrais que la tondeuse du gazon ecrase le chat du voisin" ("I wish that the lawn mower would run over the neighbor's cat").

Finally we are told "When I meow, it means..." a whole host of things, from "I just put a mouse in the bureau drawer..." to "I feel an overpowering urge to run rapidly from room to room."

It's a tiny book with a hard cover and just a small amount of text on each of its ninety pages, rather like a children's book. There are charming watercolour sketches on every page, almost half in colour, the rest in black and white, from a double page aerial view of the territory and neighbouring cats' gardens to a tiny bell and a name tag.

Henry Beard is said to be 'a firm believer in the pesky but potentially highly profitable secondary school foreign language requirement'. Well, this is an American book, but I have to admit that the expressions given here don't relate particularly closely to our GCSE French syllabus. Nevertheless, they might provide a but of fun to a bored pupil, and the simplicity of the layout with so many illustrations might even appeal to a younger child and spark an interest in French. Other than that, it's for cat sitters in France, or of course for any cat-lover emigrating to France who will find some useful phrases here to use in the pet shop or at the vet. It could be a good stocking-filler for any cat-owner who has an interest in French.

From Ciao

The House Of The Spirits, Isabel Allende - RM 5.00



VOGUE - March 1985
PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT ...
the amazing Isabel Allende, the niece of Chile's ousted President Salvador Allende, is creating the kind of literary sensation most writers only dream of. And “The House of the Spirits” is no ordinary first novel. It is an exotic vision - a brilliant, impassioned epic - and a personal coup for the young journalist who “had to write it.”
By Cathleen Medwick
The book seemed to come from nowhere: a first novel by a forty two-year-old Chilean journalist that has dazzled readers throughout Europe and Latin America, making its author the most unexpected sensation since the emergence of Gabriel Garcia Márquez.


PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Engrossing...impassioned...richly symbolic,”


taken from isabelallende.com

 

An Accidental Man, Iris Murdoch - RM 9.90


Austin, the accidental man, is marvelously mapped out -- one of the best of all the Murdoch personae. "Why was he always doing things that he didn't mean to or want to?" (Or, as another man says of himself, "I . . . am a hopeless unworkable human being designed to be miserable and cause misery.") Amid the themes of wasted lives, or life as a total mess, Austin has the touch that really kills: he drivers over a child when he's drunk, nearly murders and permanently maims her blackmailing stepfather, and fans his second wife's death wish to the extent that she carelessly electrocutes herself in a bathtub. Although two other chapters end with gulps of sleeping pills, the unconscious suicide is the only successful one -- which bears out the point of this novel.


- NY Times

The Basketball Diaries, Jim Caroll - RM 5.00

The publication of Jim Carroll’s diary, entitled The Basketball Diaries: Age Twelve to Fifteen(1978), had been eagerly awaited. The book, which is generally referred to by its main title alone, had started appearing in excerpt form throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s in various literary publications. Carroll claimed that the diaries were written at the time in which the events related took place. However, some critics wondered how much the diaries were edited before publication, especially since the book includes many outrageous incidents. Regardless of its authenticity, the book made a statement when it was published. Some people at that time were glorifying the image of life in the 1960s urban counterculture. Carroll’s gritty diary was explicit; it took readers inside the real world of drug addiction, male prostitution, and crime in 1960s New York.

The book also discussed what life was like for war babies—people who grew up under the constant fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War—and the difficulty in remaining neutral in the 1960s antiwar debate. The Basketball Diaries has become Carroll’s best-known work, especially after the release of a 1995 film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1987, Carroll published a sequel, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries, 1971–73.

Enotes

Living At The Movies, Jim Carroll - RM 5.00



Living at the Movies is Jim Carroll's first major collection of poetry; it earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination when he was 22 years old. The back cover of the Penguin edition states:
"In these poems, all written before the age of twenty-two, Carroll shows an uncanny virtuosity. His power and poisoned purity are reminiscent of Arthur Rimbaud, and, like the strongest poets of the New York School, Carroll transforms the everyday details of city life into poetry. In language at once delicate, hallucinatory, and menacing, his major themes--love, friendship, the exquisite pains and pleasures of drugs, and above all, the ever-present city--emerge in an atmosphere where dreams and reality mingle on equal terms...."


catholicboy.com

The Devil’s Larder, Jim Crace - RM 9.90

THE DEVIL'S LARDER is not about food. Food is there, certainly, in each of the exquisitely crafted little stories. But to say that these stories are about food is like saying that Saving Private Ryan is a movie about Tom Hanks. So what are these stories about? And why are they so affecting? I understood the day after I first opened the book.

I had a serious craving for apple pie. One minute I'm fine, and the next thing I know there's an apple pie cooling on the windowsill of my mind, as the sounds of children playing on a creaking swing set are carried in on a fragrant summer breeze that billows the simple cotton curtains. Hey, it's my mind. Back off.

There are those who say that food is fuel. For Jim Crace and THE DEVIL'S LARDER, food is exactly that, but in a sense that has absolutely nothing to do with nutrition or digestion. To be more precise, in Crace's remarkably rich little explorations, food is a medium through which passes the entire breadth and scope of human emotion and interaction. Nostalgia, temptation, guilt, violence, lust, gratification, risk, delusion, and fear. But there is no pie. Pie is not the issue. Hunger is not the issue.

Some of these stories cover three or four pages; most require only a few paragraphs, and one is exactly two words long, which makes the wit and depth and power on display all the more surprising. And satisfying.

It is difficult to avoid using food analogies to describe THE DEVIL'S LARDER. Thank Jim Crace for that. His stories demonstrate that as an element critical to human survival, food has taken root in our ability to express thought and emotion. Try to get through any conversation without using a food-related metaphor and you'll see what I mean. Have you ever had to swallow a bitter pill? Eat humble pie? Do you have a sweet disposition? Do you drive a lemon? Do you have a gravy job? Did you sugarcoat some bad news? Do you know on which side your bread is buttered? Do you bring home the bacon?


Book reporter

Freaky Green Eyes : Can You See the Truth?, Joyce Carol Oates - RM 9.90

Sometimes, when things start to go wrong in our lives, the easiest way to deal with it can be to ignore it completely and pretend that nothing is happening. Have you noticed that? A bit like the ostrich burying its head in the sand.

That's how it is for Franky Pierson in this story. She seems to have it all - a celebrity TV sports commentator father, a perfect mother, an architect-designed home and comfortable lifestyle. It seems she could want for nothing else. It certainly seems like that to her, until things begin to slip a little around her.

Franky's mother starts to spend time away from the family, little by little, building a new life around her work as an artist. Franky's father is one of those larger-than-life characters, determined to live life to the full. He's generous and loves his family. And he seems resentful that his wife is trying to separate herself from the family circle. Well, that's not unreasonable, is it? It makes Franky angry too. Of course it makes her angry, because her mother seems to be splitting up the family for no apparent reason, and Franky wants her mother back at home, where she's always been. Franky's little sister, Sam, obviously feels that way too.

So it's a while before Franky even begins to consider the reasons why her mother might be choosing to live alone. And when she does start to think about it, she doesn't like to delve too deeply into her own memories:

"Franky-girl, Sam-Sam: your daddy loves you, too. When you're good girls, not naughty."
We laughed as if we'd been tickled. Almost, I could feel Daddy's strong fingers running up and down my ribs making me squeal with laughter.
For Daddy had not disciplined either of us in some time. You could almost forget there'd been such a time.

This is a creepy story full of gathering tension. Franky seems to have two voices inside her head, offering two interpretations for every event. What you'll be wanting to know is whether she works out exactly what is going on in time to sort everything out...

You'll have to read the book, but I'll warn you now, it's a page turner, and it isn't a comfortable read. You might though, like me, overlook the first chapter which seems to serve no other purpose than to provide an irrelevant title.

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