Phyllis Rose, after a career of reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books, decided to read like an explorer. She "wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature." Casting herself into the untracked wilderness of the New York Society Library's stacks, she chose a shelf of fiction almost at random and read her way through it. Unsure of what she would find, she was nonetheless certain "that no one in the history of the world had read exactly this series of novels."
What results is a spirited experiment in "Off-Road or Extreme Reading." Rose's shelf of roughly thirty books has everything she could wish for--a remarkable variety of authors and a range of literary ambitions and styles. The early-nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside tales about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a novel from an Afrikaans writer who fascinates Rose to the extent that she ends up watching a YouTube video of his funeral.
Curious about the life of writers across a broad spectrum of time and space, with a keen interest in the challenges for literary women, Rose occasionally follows her reading with personal encounters. One of her favorite discoveries is the contemporary American novelist Rhoda Lerman, in whom she believes that she has found an unrecognized Grace Paley--"another funny feminist humane earth-mother Jewish writer." But Lerman, who becomes a friend, turns out to be not "another" anything: in addition to writing she now raises prizewinning Newfoundlands and "talks of champion canines with the reverence I reserve for Alice Munro."A joyous testament to the thrill of engagement with books high and low,The Shelf leaves us with the feeling that there are treasures to be found on every library or bookstore shelf. Rose investigates her own discoveries with exuberance, candor, and wit while exploring and relishing the centripetal nature of reading in the Internet age. Measuring her finds against her own inner shelf--those texts that accompany her through life--she creates an original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.
Le informazioni nella sezione "Riassunto" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.
Phyllis Rose is the author of A Woman of Letters: The Life of Virginia Woolf;Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages; Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time;The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time; and two collections of essays.
Le informazioni nella sezione "Su questo libro" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.
Spese di spedizione:
EUR 4,63
In U.S.A.
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: New. 271pp. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Codice articolo 069338
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: New. New softcover in matte printed wraps. Text is clean and free of marks or underlining. Includes author's notes and index. 271 pp. Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment -- to systematically read her way through a random shelf of books in the library, LEQ-LES, "fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels." An original take on literary taste and habits by the acclaimed author of Parallel Lives. Rose, after a career of reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books, decided to read like an explorer. She "wanted to sample, more democratically, the actual ground of literature." Casting herself into the untracked wilderness of the New York Society Library's stacks, she chose a shelf of fiction almost at random and read her way through it. What results is a spirited experiment in "Off-Road or Extreme Reading." Rose's shelf of roughly thirty books has everything she could wish for--a remarkable variety of authors and a range of literary ambitions and styles. The early-nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside tales about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels about a novel from an Afrikaans writer who fascinates Rose to the extent that she ends up watching a YouTube video of his funeral. A joyous testament to the thrill of engagement with books high and low, The Shelf leaves us with the feeling that there are treasures to be found on every library or bookstore shelf. Rose investigates her own discoveries with exuberance, candor, and while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf. "Exhilarating, adventurous, original--Phyllis Rose's The Shelf is a reminder of what reading and writing are all about." -- Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran . Codice articolo 2499
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Book is in NEW condition. Codice articolo 0374535361-2-1
Descrizione libro Paperback or Softback. Condizione: New. The Shelf: From Leq to Les: Adventures in Extreme Reading 0.6. Book. Codice articolo BBS-9780374535360
Descrizione libro PAP. Condizione: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. THIS BOOK IS PRINTED ON DEMAND. Established seller since 2000. Codice articolo L0-9780374535360
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Codice articolo I-9780374535360
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: New. Brand New! This item is printed on demand. Codice articolo 0374535361
Descrizione libro Paper Back. Condizione: New. Codice articolo 117745
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. Codice articolo 353-0374535361-new
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Codice articolo Holz_New_0374535361