Ken Follett had long been a staple of the bestseller lists for his novels of intrigue and espionage. Then came The Pillars of the Earth, a grand novel of epic storytelling that readers and critics quickly hailed as his crowning achievement. Now, The Pillars of the Earth is available for the first time to a new audience of readers, in this attractive new trade paperback edition.
In 12th-century England, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral signals the dawn of a new age. This majestic creation will bond clergy and kings, knights and peasants together in a story of toil, faith, ambition and rivalry. A sweeping tale of the turbulent middle ages, The Pillars of the Earth is a masterpiece from one of the world's most popular authors.
"A novel of majesty and power...Will hold you, fascinate you, surround you." --Chicago Sun-Times
"A towering tale...There's murder, arson, treachery, torture, love, and lust...A good time can be had by all." --New York Daily News
"Touches all human emotions...truly a novel to get lost in." --Cosmopolitan
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
ADELITA (CANCION MEXICANA COMPLETA)
En lo alto de la abrupta serrania,
Acampado se encontraba un regimiento,
Y una moza que valiente lo seguia
Locamente enamorada del sargento
Popular entre la tropa era Adelita,
La mujer que el sargento idolatraba,
Porque a mas de ser valiente era bonita,
Que hasta el mismo coronel la respetaba
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria:
Que si Adelita se fuera con otro,
La seguiria por tierra y por mar;
Si por mar en un buque de guerra,
Si por tierra en un tren militar
Una noche en que la escolta regresaba
Conduciendo entre sus filas al sargento,
Por la voz de una mujer que sollozaba,
La plegaria se escucho en el campamento
Al oirla, el sargento, temeroso
De perder para siempre a su adorada,
Ocultando su emocion bajo el embozo,
A su amada le canto de esta manera
Que si Adelita se fuera con otro etc.
Y despues que termino la cruel batalla
Y la tropa regreso a su campamento,
Por las bajas que causara la metralla
Muy diezmado regresaba el regimiento
Recordando aquel sargento sus quereres,
Los soldados que volvian de la guerra
Ofreciendoles su amor a las mujeres
Entonaban este himno de la guerra:
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria:
Y si acaso yo muero en campaña
Y mi cadaver lo van a sepultar,
Adelita, por Dios te lo ruego
Con tus ojos me vayas a llorar
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria....
Y si Adelita fuera mi novia,
Y si Adelita fuera mi mujer,
Le compraria un vestido de seda
para llevarla a bailar al cuartel
Y si acaso yo muero en la guerra,
Y si mi cuerpo en la sierra va a quedar,
Ahy, adelita, por Dios te lo ruego,
Que por mis huesos no vayas a llorar.
Si Adelita quisiera ser mi esposa,
Si Adelita ya fuera mi mujer,
Le compraría un vestido de seda
Para llevarla conmigo al Edén.
Acampado se encontraba un regimiento,
Y una moza que valiente lo seguia
Locamente enamorada del sargento
Popular entre la tropa era Adelita,
La mujer que el sargento idolatraba,
Porque a mas de ser valiente era bonita,
Que hasta el mismo coronel la respetaba
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria:
Que si Adelita se fuera con otro,
La seguiria por tierra y por mar;
Si por mar en un buque de guerra,
Si por tierra en un tren militar
Una noche en que la escolta regresaba
Conduciendo entre sus filas al sargento,
Por la voz de una mujer que sollozaba,
La plegaria se escucho en el campamento
Al oirla, el sargento, temeroso
De perder para siempre a su adorada,
Ocultando su emocion bajo el embozo,
A su amada le canto de esta manera
Que si Adelita se fuera con otro etc.
Y despues que termino la cruel batalla
Y la tropa regreso a su campamento,
Por las bajas que causara la metralla
Muy diezmado regresaba el regimiento
Recordando aquel sargento sus quereres,
Los soldados que volvian de la guerra
Ofreciendoles su amor a las mujeres
Entonaban este himno de la guerra:
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria:
Y si acaso yo muero en campaña
Y mi cadaver lo van a sepultar,
Adelita, por Dios te lo ruego
Con tus ojos me vayas a llorar
Y se oia que decia
Aquel que tanto la queria....
Y si Adelita fuera mi novia,
Y si Adelita fuera mi mujer,
Le compraria un vestido de seda
para llevarla a bailar al cuartel
Y si acaso yo muero en la guerra,
Y si mi cuerpo en la sierra va a quedar,
Ahy, adelita, por Dios te lo ruego,
Que por mis huesos no vayas a llorar.
Si Adelita quisiera ser mi esposa,
Si Adelita ya fuera mi mujer,
Le compraría un vestido de seda
Para llevarla conmigo al Edén.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo - Christiane F.
Christiane F. (born Vera Christiane Felscherinow on May 20, 1962) is a former heroin addict famous for her contribution to the autobiographical book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, and the film based on the book, which describes her struggle with various forms of drug addiction during her teens.
Christiane was born in Hamburg, but her family moved to West Berlin when she was a child. They settled in Gropiusstadt, a dreary neighborhood in Neukölln consisting mainly of high-rise concrete apartment blocks where social problems were prevalent. Christiane's father frequently had a violent temper, drank heavily and raged at his family, and her parents eventually divorced. When she was 12 years old, she began smoking hashish with a group of friends who were slightly older, at a local youth club. They gradually began experimenting with stronger drugs, such as LSD and various forms of pills, and she ended up trying heroin. By the time she was 14, she was a junkie and prostitute, mainly at the then-largest train station of West Berlin, Bahnhof Zoo. Here she became part of a notorious group of teen aged drug-users and prostitutes (of both sexes).
Two journalists from the news magazine Stern, Kai Herrmann and Horst Rieck, met Christiane in 1978 in Berlin when she was a witness in a trial against a man who paid underaged girls with heroin in return for sex. The journalists wanted to disclose the drug problem among teenagers in Berlin, which was severe but also surrounded by strong taboos. They arranged a two-hour interview with Christiane. The two hours ended up being two months, where Christiane provided an in-depth description of a life with drugs and prostitution that she and other teenagers in West Berlin experienced in the 1970s. The journalists subsequently ran a series of articles about her addiction in Stern, based on tape recorded interviews with Christiane.
The interviews were extensive, and the Stern publishing house eventually decided to publish the successful book Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo in 1979. The book chronicles her life from 1975 to 1978, when she was aged 12–15. The narrative of the book is in the first person, from Christiane's viewpoint, but was written by the journalists functioning as ghostwriters. Others, such as Christiane's mother, and various people who witnessed the escalating drug situation in Berlin at the time, also contributed to the book. It depicts several of Christiane's friends along with other drug addicts, as well as scenes from typical locations of the drug scene in Berlin.
Christiane was born in Hamburg, but her family moved to West Berlin when she was a child. They settled in Gropiusstadt, a dreary neighborhood in Neukölln consisting mainly of high-rise concrete apartment blocks where social problems were prevalent. Christiane's father frequently had a violent temper, drank heavily and raged at his family, and her parents eventually divorced. When she was 12 years old, she began smoking hashish with a group of friends who were slightly older, at a local youth club. They gradually began experimenting with stronger drugs, such as LSD and various forms of pills, and she ended up trying heroin. By the time she was 14, she was a junkie and prostitute, mainly at the then-largest train station of West Berlin, Bahnhof Zoo. Here she became part of a notorious group of teen aged drug-users and prostitutes (of both sexes).
Two journalists from the news magazine Stern, Kai Herrmann and Horst Rieck, met Christiane in 1978 in Berlin when she was a witness in a trial against a man who paid underaged girls with heroin in return for sex. The journalists wanted to disclose the drug problem among teenagers in Berlin, which was severe but also surrounded by strong taboos. They arranged a two-hour interview with Christiane. The two hours ended up being two months, where Christiane provided an in-depth description of a life with drugs and prostitution that she and other teenagers in West Berlin experienced in the 1970s. The journalists subsequently ran a series of articles about her addiction in Stern, based on tape recorded interviews with Christiane.
The interviews were extensive, and the Stern publishing house eventually decided to publish the successful book Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo in 1979. The book chronicles her life from 1975 to 1978, when she was aged 12–15. The narrative of the book is in the first person, from Christiane's viewpoint, but was written by the journalists functioning as ghostwriters. Others, such as Christiane's mother, and various people who witnessed the escalating drug situation in Berlin at the time, also contributed to the book. It depicts several of Christiane's friends along with other drug addicts, as well as scenes from typical locations of the drug scene in Berlin.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
The story takes place in 1954 on Shutter Island, home to a psychiatric hospital called Ashecliffe. U.S. Deputy Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who had committed multiple murders. The deputy marshals search the island for the patient as a hurricane bears down on them, and they find that the hospital has practiced sinister measures during its existence.
The Return of the Dancing Master - Henning Mankell
From Publishers Weekly
Mankell, known in this country for his Kurt Wallander police procedurals (Faceless Killers; The Dogs of Riga), sets this intricate, stand-alone tale of murder and intrigue in the vast pine forests of north-central Sweden. Stefan Lindman, a 37-year-old policeman in the city of Boras, sees his life, both professional and personal, as absolutely ordinary. Then he discovers a strange lump on his tongue; it's cancer, and his life changes dramatically. At the doctor's office he picks up a discarded newspaper and reads that former colleague Herbert Molin has been murdered in the northern forests. Because Lindman needs to take his mind off his upcoming cancer treatment, he decides to investigate Molin's death. As the details of the crime come to light, Lindman realizes he never knew the real Molin. The plot involves the secret world of Nazis, both past and present. The prose can be cold and spare, at least in translation: "There was a smell of paint in the house. All the lights were on. Lindman had to bow his head when he entered through the door." The unrelenting Lindman turns out to be an innovative investigator, though those seeking fast-paced action rather than meticulous introspection will be disappointed. Secrets are slowly and methodically teased from the evidence, and by the satisfying end readers with a taste for the unusual will find Lindman, and the mystery he solves, not in the least bit ordinary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Mankell, known in this country for his Kurt Wallander police procedurals (Faceless Killers; The Dogs of Riga), sets this intricate, stand-alone tale of murder and intrigue in the vast pine forests of north-central Sweden. Stefan Lindman, a 37-year-old policeman in the city of Boras, sees his life, both professional and personal, as absolutely ordinary. Then he discovers a strange lump on his tongue; it's cancer, and his life changes dramatically. At the doctor's office he picks up a discarded newspaper and reads that former colleague Herbert Molin has been murdered in the northern forests. Because Lindman needs to take his mind off his upcoming cancer treatment, he decides to investigate Molin's death. As the details of the crime come to light, Lindman realizes he never knew the real Molin. The plot involves the secret world of Nazis, both past and present. The prose can be cold and spare, at least in translation: "There was a smell of paint in the house. All the lights were on. Lindman had to bow his head when he entered through the door." The unrelenting Lindman turns out to be an innovative investigator, though those seeking fast-paced action rather than meticulous introspection will be disappointed. Secrets are slowly and methodically teased from the evidence, and by the satisfying end readers with a taste for the unusual will find Lindman, and the mystery he solves, not in the least bit ordinary.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Auschwitz and After - Charlotte Delbo
Auschwitz and After (Auschwitz, et après) is a first person account of life and survival in Birkenau by Charlotte Delbo. Delbo, who had returned to occupied France to work in the French resistance alongside her husband, was sent to the camp for her activities. Her memoir uses unconventional, almost experimental, narrative techniques to not only convey the experience of Auschwitz but how she and her fellow survivors coped in the years afterwards.
Auschwitz and After is really a trilogy of separately published shorter works: "None of Us Will Return" (Aucun de nous ne reviendra), "Useless Knowledge" (La connaissance inutile), and "The Measure of Our Days" (Mesure des nos jours). The first and last volumes deal with Auschwitz as lived and remembered, respectively, and do not entirely follow linear time. The middle volume concerns the surviving Frenchwomen's slow journey back to freedom after they were moved from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and ultimately turned over to the Swedish Red Cross, and is somewhat more linear.
"O You Who Know," ("Vous qui saviez") a poem early in the trilogy, challenges the reader with the inadequacy of what they already understand:
O you who know
Could you know that hunger makes the eyes sparkle?
While thirst makes them dim?
You who know
Could you know that you can see your mother dead
Without shedding a tear?
You who know
Could you know how in the morning you crave death
Only to fear it by evening?
"Horror cannot be circumscribed," she concludes, and throughout the trilogy she regularly expresses doubt as to whether she can truly tell the reader what it was like, whether anyone can.
You don't believe what we say
because
if what we say were true
we wouldn't be here to say it.
we'd have to explain
the inexplicable
"I am not sure that what I wrote is true," she wrote in the epigraph to the first volume, "I am certain that it is truthful." Resolving those two statements makes reading Auschwitz and After an advanced reading experience that more are slowly discovering.
Auschwitz and After is really a trilogy of separately published shorter works: "None of Us Will Return" (Aucun de nous ne reviendra), "Useless Knowledge" (La connaissance inutile), and "The Measure of Our Days" (Mesure des nos jours). The first and last volumes deal with Auschwitz as lived and remembered, respectively, and do not entirely follow linear time. The middle volume concerns the surviving Frenchwomen's slow journey back to freedom after they were moved from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and ultimately turned over to the Swedish Red Cross, and is somewhat more linear.
"O You Who Know," ("Vous qui saviez") a poem early in the trilogy, challenges the reader with the inadequacy of what they already understand:
O you who know
Could you know that hunger makes the eyes sparkle?
While thirst makes them dim?
You who know
Could you know that you can see your mother dead
Without shedding a tear?
You who know
Could you know how in the morning you crave death
Only to fear it by evening?
"Horror cannot be circumscribed," she concludes, and throughout the trilogy she regularly expresses doubt as to whether she can truly tell the reader what it was like, whether anyone can.
You don't believe what we say
because
if what we say were true
we wouldn't be here to say it.
we'd have to explain
the inexplicable
"I am not sure that what I wrote is true," she wrote in the epigraph to the first volume, "I am certain that it is truthful." Resolving those two statements makes reading Auschwitz and After an advanced reading experience that more are slowly discovering.
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer - Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong
When World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. When he discovered them in the house, Gutowna became his mistress to protect her friends--later escaping him to join the Polish partisans during the Germans' retreat. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage. Although adults will find Irene's tale moving, it is appropriately published as a young adult book. Her experiences while still in her teens remind adolescents everywhere that their actions count, that the power to make a difference is in their hands.
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