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The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
William Blake
Penguin Classics, 1978
Unparalleled visionary power
+ the heights and depths of human experience
+ Masterful
+ What immortal hand or eye ?
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Too Loud a Solitude
Bohumil Hrabal
Mariner Books, 1992
A beautiful, witty and tragic novel
+ Powerful punch in 100 pages
+ Small gems are the best
+ Get a firm grip on the pitcher!
+ We make our own meaning
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Dead Souls: A Poem (Oxford World's Classics)
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
Oxford University Press, USA, 1998
Devastatingly funny: The satire that launched modern novel in Russia
+ "For your pleasure I am prepared to assume even a loss."
+ Challenging But Worthy Read
+ "I don't want real peasants. I want to have dead ones."
+ Dead Souls
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The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann
Vintage, 1996
Freedom from responsibility
+ different
+ Book
+ Excellent
+ Magic Mountain Thrills Again
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Ulysses
James Joyce
Vintage, 1990
More than just a book, and sometimes less... know what you are getting yourself into
This whoel review began as a comment, and tehn I realizedi had soemthign to say for myself on the topic, so here it is:
I took a Course on Joyce at NUI Galway and I am thankful that I did because otherwise I would not appreciate Ulysses. Many of the points made by detractors of Joyce and ...
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The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
Hermann Hesse
Picador, 2002
Literature with Constructive Meaning
+ A leap out of faith
It's a synthesis. Imagine the sum of human perspectives and knowledge reduced into symbols and played like a symphony to permute meanings and explore conclusions. That's the glass bead game, which approaches a spiritual experience if played correctly. Frankly, it's a wonderful dream.
Despite ...
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In Search of Lost Time, Vol. II: Within a Budding Grove (Modern Library Classics) (v. 2)
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 1998
A highly intelligent dreamwork
+ good edition of a classic
+ Philosophy as narrative
+ Perception and cognition
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The Trial
Franz Kafka
Schocken, 1995
the system sucks
+ Nightmare or Paranoia or a Bad Trip for This Poor Dude?
+ The Absurd, Haunting, Neurotic Masterpiece: Kafka's Best Fiction
+ It's Kafka...
+ soooo good
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The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso)
Dante Alighieri
NAL Trade, 2003
Good so far...
+ Excellent!
+ Great for begginners.
Dante's just made his way to the sixth circle of Hell. Proved to be an interesting story so far.
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In Search of Lost Time Volume IV Sodom and Gomorrah (Modern Library Classics) (v. 4)
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 1999
"The true persuasion of sexual jealousy": Harold Bloom
+ Wonderful
+ Volume 4 -- not volume 5
Volume IV of "In Search of Lost Time" begins in the afternoon of the day of Princess of Guermantes's party, the one that Marcel had looked forward for so long as his definitive entrance into the world of high society. That afternoon, by spying on them, Marcel discovers with his own eyes, for the ...
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In Search of Lost Time, Vol. III: The Guermantes Way (v. 3)
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 1998
High Society
+ Proust is Tough
+ Wonderful and challenging
+ save your money for the new translation
+ In touch with the high spheres of society
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Growth of the Soil
Knut Hamsun
Vintage, 1972
Simple yet frustratingly beautiful.
+ Beautiful novel, limited ideology...
+ Get Your Hands Dirty!
+ I am in love with this book and no other.
+ Feather Trail Press edition terrible
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Time Regained: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. VI (Modern Library Classics) (v. 6)
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 1999
again, a misleading heading
+ "...perched upon living stilts..."
+ You've come this far, don't stop now
+ On Its Own Plane
+ look for the new translation!
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The Captive & The Fugitive: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. V (Modern Library Classics) (v. 5)
Marcel Proust
Modern Library, 1999
Don't stop now
+ Whilst tears dampen the dusk, he dessicates the dawn with whimsical gaiety of Sparrows basking in the matutinal glow of spring.
+ and the search goes on...
+ smooth sailing from here on out!
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The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
PUBLISHER'S INFLUENCE on LENGTH?
+ definition of a masterpiece
+ Overrated
+ Perfect book
+ Never too late to get a good education
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