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The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vintage, 2003
Personal Favorite Dostoevsky
+ Good + Was prince Myshkin really a positively beautiful individual????? + is it ironic, or pragmatic?
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Pere Goriot (Norton Critical Editions) Honoré de Balzac
W. W. Norton, 1997
Caffeine Inspired Realism
+ Peerless + The quality of Balzac
You know right away that de Balzac is an author of realism when, at the start of the book, he takes you on a five page tour of the first floor of Madame Vauquer's Parisian boarding house. One immediately realizes that sanitation standards for such accommodations were seriously lacking. The dining ...
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Tristram Shandy (Norton Critical Editions) Laurence Sterne
W. W. Norton, 1980
Postmodern before modern
+ I wish I'd had an Uncle Toby + Pre-modernist postmodern
A line from the movie "adaptation" put it best: this was a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post to.
Simply put, Laurence Sterne threw out all the literary conventions of what a novel should be and how it should be arranged, a few hundred years before more recent writers ...
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Red and Black: A New Translation, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism Stendhal
W. W. Norton & Company, 1969
A colourful tale...
Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) is a classic novel that was very important to me in early formation of directions in life. I found I could identify quite strongly with Julien Sorel, who wanted a better life, a life of meaning and importance, and was torn about which direction ...
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A Sentimental Education (Oxford World's Classics) Gustave Flaubert
Oxford University Press, USA, 2008
Flaubert's Sentimental Education: one reason why life's worth living.
+ Comment dites voux "Love Stinks"? + A novel about unfulfilled promise
"I want to write the moral history of the men of my generation-- or, more accurately, the history of their feelings. It's a book about love, about passion; but passion such as can exist nowadays--that is to say, inactive." --Flaubert on Sentimental Education.
Best known for his novel, Madame ...
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Dead Souls: A Novel Nikolai Gogol
Vintage, 1997
Dead Souls: Translation is Everything
+ An Incredibly Funny Social Satire + definitely worth a read! + A Charming Russian Masterpiece + Russian satire at its best.
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Leaves of Grass, Second Edition (Norton Critical Editions) Walt Whitman
W. W. Norton, 2002
What book will you get when you order this?
+ The original lean, bursting on the scene, Whitman + Excellent edition of Whitman's Masterwork
There seems to be some confusion, both in the editorial reviews and the customer reviews, about what edition is being referred to in this listing. the first editorial review correctly discusses the first edition as shorter and "less bloated" than the deathbed edition. however, the rest of the ...
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Madame Bovary (Bantam Classics) Gustave Flaubert
Bantam Classics, 1982
Wow, what a prescient novel
+ Humanity Captured in Prose + Over the years... still a great book + Interesting story!
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Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allen Poe Edgar Allan Poe
Vintage Books, 1975
Bobby birthday
+ "The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe + Great Compilation + Great Purchase + Poe-try
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Gulliver's Travels (Norton Critical Editions) Jonathan Swift
W. W. Norton & Company, 2001
Fellow Yahoos, read this book!
+ Review of Gullivers Travels + Excellent book, not so good edition. + NOT Bringing Home the Bacon! + Parody of man
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Great Expectations Charles Dickens
W. W. Norton, 1999
One of the Greatest Novels Ever Written
+ Norton Critical strikes again + Great Expectations
Why do I come here to "review" this? It isn't anyone's book club selection, no. But tonight I want to talk about this incomparably rich and wonderful book, and how as a fourteen year old kid I simply sank into it, taking it slowly week by week, glorying in its mysteries, its great grotesque ...
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Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vintage, 1993
Crime and Punishment
+ A true masterpiece + Awesome Insight into the mind and heart of a criminal + Masterful work, worthy of every accolade it's received, and worthy of accolades it has yet to receive.... + One of my favorites
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The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
Perhaps the best novel ever written in the history of mankind
+ Bothers Karamazov + Dark and Beautiful + What a messed up family! + Understanding the Russian
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Moby Dick, or The Whale: Volume Six: 150th Anniversary Edition (Melville) Herman Melville
Northwestern University Press, 2001
The epic American novel of obsession.
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Demons Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vintage, 1995
Demons is a devil of a read on Russian angst/nihilism by the master Dostoevsky
+ great + Dostoyevsky's toughest nut to crack + Not for casual reading... + Great Potential Never Realized: Too Diffuse and Too Fragmented.
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