Beast, Joyce Carol Oates - RM 9.90
Beasts, beasts, beasts
In Beasts, Oates explores the underbelly of a common before-bed/during-class fantasy: that of being seduced, admired, respected by a professor. In this case the greasy yet intoxicating Professor Andre Harrow is joined in his frequent seductions by his part French wife, Dorcus, a jealous green parrot, and a host of date-rape drugs. Oates chooses as her protagonist a modern Philomela, who cannot speak because a man has cut out her tongue, yet who gains freedom and adulthood through an apposite revenge.
Oates uses a frame story and first person narrative to create distance between the reader and truth. She leaves just the right amount of mystery, the right amount of questions never answered: who sets the fires? did Mr. Harrow love his girls? are seduction and submission synonymous?
Currently, I am trying to read books by women authors; I have found most of my favorites are men, and I've decided it's from lack of exposure to ecriture feminine. One can certainly tell that a woman wrote this novella. But what is it that makes that so? Is it the subject matter? Sex. Drugs. Seduction. A young woman's coming-of-age. Is it the writing style? Emotive. Referential. Tight.
Helene Cixous would be proud. Oates writes from the body; she writes to bodies; her subject matter is the body. The woman's body is her body of work-whether sculptural or poetic or danced or slit. One could discount this text as merely a perfect midnight snack of a novella. To those, I would suggest rereading it in glaring morning sunshine on a full stomach.from hubpages
Bodily Harm :The Breakthrough Healing Program For Self-Injurers, Karen Conterio & Wendy Lader (Hard Cover) - RM 13.00
From the cover
Self-injury is one of our society’s fastest-growing and most disturbing epidemics. Experts estimate that more than three million Americans are afflicted with this syndrome, which compels people to mutilate their own skin or break their own bones. Due to society’s reaction to it, self-abuse is a widely misunderstood and dangerously mistreated psychiatric disorder.
Bodily Harm is the most authoritative exmination of this alarming syndrome and the first to offer a comprehensive treatment regimen. Written by the directors of S.A.F.E. Alternatives (Self Abuse Finally Ends), it clearly defines what cutting is and explains the kinds of emotional trauma that can lead to self-mutilation. It also includes case studies, diaries, and success stories from a diverse group of patients. Most importantly, Bodily Harm offers a course of treatment based on years of experience and extensive clinical research — as well as compassion, advice and hope for the afflicted and their loved ones. In this book, you’ll find:
- How to distinguish something relatively harmless from a serious disorder, with a diagnostic questionnaire to help.
- Why women account for the majority of self-injurers.
- What motivates self-injury and why it has grown so rapidly?
- How therapists, families and friends can help.
The Pillow Book Of Carol Tinker - RM 5.00
Kenneth Rexroth writes in his foreword:
“Critics somehow seem to have ignored the remarkable fact that, at the peaks and turning points of American poetry, at least since the death of Whitman, there has usually stood a woman . . . but few people, even the most passionate feminists, seem to have noticed it.”
From the Book
A spectacle of cruelty
A stand of cypress burning
The eyelid drops on no mans land
Hot ashes fall below eye level
To form a mold
Of what is seen
The mold that needs the ear to test it
Ringing true
A bell like form
Studded with rocks that fall like
Jewels from their setting
As time collapses
The Cat And The Tao, Kwong Kuen Shan (Hard Cover) - RM 9.90
From Publishers Weekly
The hitherto separate realms of Chinese philosophy and cat-fancying are finally bridged in this winsome little tome. Shan, a painter and calligrapher, assembles an intriguing collection of ancient Chinese proverbs, poems and teachings of the sages, ranging from fortune-cookie aphorisms ("A friend who truly knows you is always with you") to Confucius's shrewd condemnation of nostalgia ("The contemporary man who wants to re-create the past indiscriminately," he writes, will just "bring trouble" on himself) and Gao Bagong's advice ("Do not take it to heart when you lose,/ Do not show it on your face when you win"). But the book's raison d'etre is the accompanying reproductions of Shan's portraits of cats as they doze, glare and stalk through a variety of landscapes and interiors. Done in a traditional Chinese style, festooned with traditional seals and calligraphic characters and featuring delicate lines and washes of muted color, her paintings eschew the lush, throbbing adorableness of the typical kitten calendar in favor of a more restrained-but still very cute-aesthetic, with nary a ball of yarn in sight. Illus.
The Law of Love, Laura Esquivel - RM 13.00
How to describe this book? Science Fiction? An adventure in a style somewhere between Tom Robbins andDouglas Adams? A mystical study in the likeness of a Jane Roberts Seth book?
This cosmic love story is all that and more. It starts in Montezuma's Mexico and quickly brings us to the 23rd century, a time when aura reading is scientific business and the government can create virtual realities from our deepest conscious thoughts - like memories from past lives. Acuzena is an astroanalyst which means that she can help the karmatically challenged to recover memories from their previous lives. She, herself, is about to meet her twin soul even though her Guardian Angel, Anacreonte doesn't think she's ready. Anacreonte's job is to watch over her and to guide her to serve the Divine Will, except Acuzena doesn't always listen.
In Esquivel's version of the 23rd century, an aerophone transports one anywhere (like back to your apartment) by stepping into a teleport and dialing a number, the home security system reads auras and the televirtual transmits the viewer to the scene of the news story. To help with the mood of the story, Esquivel includes a CD with Puccinni tracks and illustrations from Miguelanxo Prado. This multi-media novel includes numerous poems and lively danzones for "intermission for dancing!" All in all this book is innovative in content and style. While it may not be for everyone, I liked it well enough that I'll probably read it again.
Welcome To My Country, Lauren Slater - RM 5.00
From the publisher
Lauren Slater, a brilliant writer who is a young therapist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal and professional journey in this remarkable memoir about her work with mental and emotional illness. The territory of the mind and of madness can seem a foreign, even frightening place-until you read Welcome to My Country.Writing in a powerful and original voice, Lauren Slater closes the distance between "us" and "them," transporting us into the country of Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, and Marie. She lets us watch as she interacts with and strives to understand patients suffering from mental and emotional distress-the schizophrenic, the depressed, the suicidal. As the young psychologist responds to, reflects on, and re-creates her interactions with the inner realities of the dispossessed, she moves us to a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human mind and spirit. And then, in a stunning final chapter, the psychologist confronts herself, when she is asked to treat a young woman, bulimic and suicidal, who is on the same ward where Slater herself was once such a patient.
Like An Unquiet Mind, Listening to Prozac and Girl, Interrupted, Welcome to My Country is a beautifully written, captivating, and revealing book, an unusual personal and professional memoir that brings us closer to understanding ourselves, one another, and the human condition.
Notebooks 1970 - 2003 by Bill Murray
"Six small notebooks, yellow with blue lettering "Spirax No. 561", bought in Melbourne 1968 - the Indian and Afghanistan notebooks; one smaller with pink cover, bought in Bombay, now lost; eight shorthand notebooks, caramel covers, London 1970-74; one, used during the first American visit, 1972, lost. Entries here have been taken, with some corrections, mostly from seven "London" books.' A privileged and fascinating glimpse into a writer's life, taken from the working notebooks of Murray Bail, acclaimed author of EUCALYPTUS, HOLDEN'S PERFORMANCE and HOMESICKNESS, encompassing three continents and spanning thirty years. From overheard conversations, to favourite aphorisms, to brilliant observations of people and places, to Bail's musings on art, literature and landscape, Notebooks is a feast of beautiful words and intriguing thoughts from one of the world's most original and important writers.
Review by Googles
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