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"A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language. Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities...
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English
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Books About Libraries/Librarians (Adult)
Challenging Reads
Classics - St. Charles Public Library
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Challenging Reads
Classics - St. Charles Public Library
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Description
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. His delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths that take place in seven days and nights of apocalyptic terror. The body of one monk is found in a cask of pigs' blood, another is floating in a bathhouse, still another is crushed at the foot of a cliff.
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English
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A “scintillating collection” of essays on Disneyland, medieval times, and much more, from the author of Foucault’s Pendulum (Los Angeles Times).
Collected here are some of Umberto Eco’s finest popular essays, recording the incisive and surprisingly entertaining observations of his restless intellectual mind. As the author puts it in the preface to the second edition: “In these pages, I...
Collected here are some of Umberto Eco’s finest popular essays, recording the incisive and surprisingly entertaining observations of his restless intellectual mind. As the author puts it in the preface to the second edition: “In these pages, I...
Author
Language
English
Description
Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist...
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English
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"An artistic collection of 50 drawings featuring unique, funny, and poignant foreign words that have no direct translation into English. Did you know that the Japanese have a word to express the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees? Or that there's a Swedish word to describe the reflection of the moon across the water? The nuanced beauty of language is even more interesting and relevant in our highly communicative, globalized modern world....
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English
Description
How do we know a cat is a cat . . . and why do we call it a cat? In Kant and the Platypus, the renowned semiotician, philosopher, and bestselling author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum explores the question of how much of our perception of things is based on cognitive ability, and how much on linguistic resources. In six remarkable essays, Umberto Eco explores in depth questions of reality, perception, and experience. Basing his...
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English
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A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world's most polarizing punctuation mark. The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care? In [this book, the author] charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the world...
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English
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"With an abandoned degree behind her and a thirtieth birthday approaching, amateur writer Bonnie Falls moves out of her parents' home into a nearby flat. Her landlady, Sylvia Slythe, takes an interest in Bonnie, encouraging her to finish one of her stories, in which a young woman moves to the seaside, falling under strange influences. As summer approaches, Sylvia suggests to Bonnie that, as neither of them has anyone else to go on holiday with, they...
10) Mythologies
Author
Language
English
Description
"No denunciation without its proper instrument of close analysis," Roland Barthes wrote in his preface to Mythologies. There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book?one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.
Author
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English
Description
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) was University Professor at the University of Toronto, where he was also professor of English at Victoria College. His books include Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton). David Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature and director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University.
A landmark work of literary criticism
Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism...
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English
Description
"Reading literature in a time of climate emergency can sometimes feel a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. Yet, at this turning point for the planet, scientists, policymakers, and activists have woken up to the power of stories to fight global warming. In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner ranges across four thousand years of world literature to draw vital lessons about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change-and how we might...
Author
Language
English
Description
Philosophies of Crime Fiction provides a considered analysis of the philosophical ideas to be found in crime literature-both hidden and explicit. Josef Hoffmann ranges expertly across influences and inspirations in crime writing with a stellar cast including Conan Doyle, G K Chesterton, Dashiell Hammett, Albert Camus, Borges, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler and Ted Lewis. Hoffmann examines why crime literature may provide stronger consolation for...
Author
Language
English
Description
In Critical Children, Richard Locke follows child characters in classic novels for adults and their use in exploring or evading social, psychological, and moral problems. Moving from Dickens's Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Henry James's Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and his modern American descendent, J. D. Salinger's Holden...
Author
Language
English
Description
A professor, critic, and insatiable reader, Jenny Davidson investigates the passions that drive us to fall in love with certain sentences over others and the larger implications of our relationship with writing style. At once playful and serious, immersive and analytic, her memoir/critique shows how style elicits particular kinds of moral judgments and subjective preferences, which turn reading into a highly personal and political act. Melding her...
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English
Description
"A film about cinema itself, with close readings of some of the most intriguing and celebrated films in cinema history. Serving as guide is the charismatic Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, who delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves. Structured in three parts, the Pervert's Guide To Cinema offers an introduction to Žižek's ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity,...
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English
Description
Making the provocative purposeful, this analysis spotlights the most exciting--or potentially embarrassing--story element: the obligatory sex scene. This sensibly suggestive guide demonstrates how to advance plots and reveal truths about characters through their romantic tableaus. Each scene is accompanied by insight into its authors' intentions, how they accomplished them, and their thoughts on romance, love, and sex. The featured passages include...
Author
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English
Description
The first critical study of writing without language. In recent years, asemic writing--writing without language--has exploded in popularity, with anthologies, a large-scale art exhibition, and flourishing interest on sites like tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. Yet this burgeoning, fascinating field has never received a dedicated critical study. Asemic fills that gap, proposing new ways of rethinking the nature of writing. Pioneered in the...
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