"Literary Wonderlands is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, and beautifully produced book that spans two thousand years of creative endeavor. From Spenser's The Fairie Queene to Wells's The Time Machine to Murakami's 1Q84 it explores the timeless and captivating features of fiction's imagined worlds including the relevance of the writer's own life to the creation of the story, influential contemporary events and philosophies, and the meaning...

A riotous romp through the alphabet featuring the history and living creativity of this special music!

In this practical and engaging guide, Roy Peter Clark teaches the fine art of X-ray reading. When we X-ray read, we look beneath the surface of a text to discover the strategies that create the effects we experience -- such as suspense, humor, or pain ; we can then adopt these strategies as our own.

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection...

"A book loaded with wit, freshness and empathy that illuminates us in an increasingly changing and contradictory world. Zadie Smith has proven to be a brilliant and unique essayist, making each of her texts a literary event in its own right. With total freedom , which compiles some of the most celebrated, covers Smith's wide range of interests: from all facets of culture and artistic freedom to the most pressing issues of politics and current affairs,...

"Sparky Sweets, Ph.D. presents Thug Notes, the outrageously funny, ultra-sharp guide to sixteen of literature's most beloved classics - including The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride & Prejudice and Things Fall Apart. Having already taught millions around the world, Dr. Sweets makes it easy to love and understand these important literary works. With hilarious character breakdowns, masterful analyses, witty observations, and eye-popping...

From the fourteenth century through to the present day, women who write have been understood as mad, undisciplined or dangerous. Female writers have always had to find ways to overcome or challenge these beliefs. Some were cautious and discreet, some didn’t give a damn, but all lived complex, eventful and often controversial lives. Eve Bites Back places the female contemporaries of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton centre stage in the history of literature...