Monday, October 27, 2025

The Melancholy of Resistance

Laszlo Krasznahorkai
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WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE

The Hungarian master’s first work to appear in English, and still one of the best

A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, "lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds."

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

未知的香港粗獷建築

彭展華
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榮獲第五屆香港出版雙年獎:最佳出版獎(社會科學)、2024 美國建築師學會香港特別嘉許獎狀、粵港澳大灣區書籍設計藝術展(2025)優秀圖書等獎項

由零開始,還原本地粗獷建築的精神面貌

多年來粗獷建築均被誤解,有人認為與城市空間格格不入,另外也有人批評混凝土外觀冰冷無味,殘破不堪。有人嫌它醜,更多人其實是一無所知。

粗獷主義(Brutalism)提倡「As Found」概念:追求真實的材料運用,如實地設計當下現況,讓建築呈現最客觀的現實。

1960至1980年代為戰後與經濟起飛之間的年代,香港開始與世界脈搏同步呼吸。本書介紹的20組香港粗獷建築及12位建築師的故事,展現出緊貼世界潮流的觸覺。前衛的設計,令本土的城市風景增添了國際化的色彩。同時也反映當時的人文風景:樸實無華,追求基本生活的精神。

長達三年的研究試圖填補歷史的空白,打開討論的大門,讓專業人士、保育專家和普羅大眾共同尋找這批建築的「未知的」命運:是「去」?或是「留」?

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, October 20, 2025

Dallergut Dream Department Store

Lee Miye
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THE #1 KOREAN BESTSELLER WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

For fans of magical realism and the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi comes this cozy fantasy debut.

What if there was a store that sold dreams? Which would you buy? And who might you become when you wake up?

In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there's a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal shuffle in to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor specializes in a specific type of dream: childhood memories, food dreams, ice skating, dreams of stardom. Flying dreams are almost always sold out. Some seek dreams of loved ones who have died.

For Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at Dallergut is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including Dallergut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.

A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

香港四季色 : 身邊的植物學

劉大偉, 王天行, 吳欣娘
online access from HyRead ebook
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本套書以四季作為分冊,輯錄了香港市區及郊野常見的100種植物。

春季
春季在寒冬過後,大地回暖,恢復生機,是很多植物配合久違了的動物活動萌芽開花的季節。本冊以在春季花期,呈現出顯著花色的品種為主題,共計25種包括:紫、紅、黃、綠、白等色系;加上1種擁有鮮艷的紫紅色葉片品種,全冊共載26種。

夏季
夏季來臨,有不少植物開始結果,也是讓人聯想到水果的季節。因此,本冊除了夏季開花的18個品種,花色包括紅、橙、黃、綠、白、紫等色系之外,還收錄了7個果實顏色顯著的品種,包括紅、橙、黃、綠等色系,全冊共載25種。

秋季
秋季是不少植物的結果期,因此本冊除了秋季開花的8個品種,花色包括黃、綠、白、紫、紅等色系外,還收錄了具顯著果色的17個品種,包括黃、綠、黑及紅等色系,全冊共載25種。

冬季
冬季是植物葉色轉化最明顯的季節,因此本冊除了冬季開花的8個品種,花色包括白、綠、黃、紅和紫等色系;9個結果的品種,果色包括黃、紅和橙等色系之外,還收錄7個具顯著葉色的品種,包括黃和紅等色系,全冊共載24種。

本書系統地以植物最突出的顏色(花色、果色、葉色)作為索引,即使不清楚品種的名稱,根據顏色便可輕鬆尋得其資訊。書中有超過1600張不同角度與焦距的實物照片,可結合胡秀英植物標本館製作的3D植物模型記錄,以及可觀察植物真實生長狀態的360度VR環境記錄,用嶄新的角度、數碼互動媒體去認識我們身邊的植物。本書基於嚴謹的植物學分類研究,化繁為簡地介紹了香港常見植物的知識,是植物學的入門著作。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)


Monday, October 13, 2025

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century

Tim Weiner
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""No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win Weiner a second Pulitzer."" —The Guardian

A masterpiece of reporting based on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers: The Mission is a gripping and revelatory history of the modern CIA, reaching from 9/11 through its covert operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to today’s secret battles with Russia and China, concluding with the Agency's own fight for survival under the current president of the United States

Tim Weiner's epic successor to Legacy of Ashes, his National Book Award–winning classic about the CIA's first sixty years

At the turn of the century, the Central Intelligence Agency was in crisis. The end of the Cold War had robbed the agency of its mission. More than thirty overseas stations and bases had been shuttered, and scores that remained had been severely cut back. Many countries where surveillance was once deemed crucial went uncovered. Essential intelligence wasn’t being collected. At the dawn of the information age, the CIA’s officers and analysts worked with outmoded technology, struggling to distinguish the clear signals of significant facts from the cacophony of background noise.

Then came September 11th, 2001. After the attacks, the CIA transformed itself into a lethal paramilitary force, running secret prisons and brutal interrogations, mounting deadly drone attacks, and all but abandoning its core missions of espionage and counterespionage. The consequences were grave: the deaths of scores of its recruited foreign agents, the theft of its personnel files by Chinese spies, the penetration of its computer networks by Russian intelligence and American hackers, and the tragedies of Afghanistan and Iraq. A new generation of spies now must fight the hardest targets—Moscow, Beijing, Tehran—while confronting a president who has attacked the CIA as a subversive force.

From Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner, The Mission tells the gripping, high-stakes story of the CIA through the first quarter of the twenty-first century, revealing how the agency fought to rebuild the espionage powers it lost during the war on terror—and finally succeeded in penetrating the Kremlin. The struggle has life-and-death consequences for America and its allies. The CIA must reclaim its original mission: know thy enemies. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

A masterpiece of reporting, The Mission includes exclusive on-the-record interviews with six former CIA directors, the top spymaster, thirteen station chiefs, and scores of top operations officers who served undercover for decades and have never spoken to a journalist before.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

大英博物館給世界的藝術課:細品一生必看的21件文明珍寶,在一個博物館思考整個世界

程珺
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大英博物館尋寶記
讀懂偉大博物館的背後傳奇
▌用21件珍寶,濃縮800萬件藏品精華 ▌
7件作品看懂鎮館之寶˙9件作品見證文明奇蹟˙5件作品看見文化融合


懂世界:
˙為什麼大英博物館最多人參觀的地方,永遠在羅塞塔石碑?法老過世2000年後,兩個男人去征討他的國家,研究他們的文字,這相隔2000年的交流,如何寫下文明的里程碑?
˙馬雅文明和復活島,曾經輝煌卻又消失,傳奇文明如何覆滅?世外桃源的真正下場是什麼?文物如何洩露玄機?
˙如何從古埃及壁畫,理解埃及人的理想生活?埃及法老的雕像,為什麼都那麼像?
˙兩河流域的一塊泥板,如何震驚世人?諾亞方舟的故事只存在於《聖經》裡嗎?
˙世界最早的亞述帝國,人口占了世界1/3,為何國王愛獵獅?而一個戰車模型,竟能看懂統治者是如何管理國家?

講傳奇:
˙十四層樓的摩索拉斯陵墓,名列世界古代七大奇蹟,當代建築爭相仿效,是如何消失的?
˙英國大衛爵士如何眼光獨具,收藏了碩果僅存罕見的元青花瓷,改寫了中國陶瓷的歷史?
˙八國聯軍入侵下的受難國寶《女史箴圖》,堂堂大英博物館竟硬生生切割它,犯下世界級的錯誤?

看名作:
˙為什麼古希臘雕塑特別珍稀、好看?如何正確欣賞?
˙《女史箴圖》是一幅文學插畫?畫中十二重要場景訴說著怎麼樣的歷史故事?
˙從近8000張到今天剩不到十張,《神奈川衝浪裏》如何從過去紅到今天,成為史上最暢銷的浮世繪?

800萬件藏品,濃縮人類文明的藝術簡史
這是大英博物館和其他大型博物館(如羅浮宮或大都會博物館)最不一樣的地方,因為這個博物館的著眼點一直放在「全球文明」上。這本《大英博物館給世界的藝術課》也是從這個視角出發的,特意精選了大英博物館裡21件非常重要的藏品,它們幾乎覆蓋了全世界各個地區的文明,有像四大古文明之一的古埃及文明,也有像復活節島這樣已經永遠消失的部落文明。它們中的每一件所反映的都是不同時期的人類,他們的智慧、觀念與創造力的結晶。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Monday, October 6, 2025

After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People

Dean Spears, Michael Geruso
online access from EBSCOhost eBook Collection
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
What if the challenge for humanity’s future is not too many people on a crowded planet, but too few people to sustain the progress that the world needs?


Most people on Earth today live in a country where birth rates already are too low to stabilize the population: fewer than two children for every two adults. In After the Spike, economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso sound a wakeup call, explaining why global depopulation is coming, why it matters, and what to do now.

It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better—better for the planet, better for the people who remain. This book invites us all to think again. Despite what we may have been told, depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for environmental challenges like climate change. Nor will it raise living standards by dividing what the world can offer across fewer of us. Spears and Geruso investigate what depopulation would mean for the climate, for living standards, for equity, for progress, for freedom, for humanity’s general welfare. And what it would mean if, instead, people came together to share the work of caregiving and of building societies where parenting fits better with everything else that people aspire to.

With new evidence and sharp insights, Spears and Geruso make a lively and compelling case for stabilizing the population—without sacrificing our dreams of a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. They challenge us to see how depopulation threatens social equity and material progress, and how welcoming it denies the inherent value of every human life. More than an assembly of the most important facts, After the Spike asks what future we should want for our planet, for our children, and for one another.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

像哲學家一樣思考 : 27堂邏輯素養課Step by step 鍛鍊你駕馭AI的思辨力! (Think Like a Philosopher)

安.魯尼 (Anne Rooney)
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\ 猴子愛吃香蕉,你也愛吃香蕉,所以你是猴子? /
\ 殺人是錯的,墮胎即殺人,所以墮胎是錯的? /

你真的有在思考嗎?
還是只是在「被帶風向」而已?

釐清現況 →提出假設 →做出決策
27堂邏輯素養課,
Step by Step鍛鍊你駕馭AI的思辨力!


│指引善惡路徑、挑戰主流思想、最大化推理能力……
│哲學,原來可以拿來做這些學校不會教的事!

生命是由一連串的選擇組成,
在你決定要「做些什麼」之前,必須先掌握「我是怎麼想」,
以及「我為什麼會這麼想」。
這就是本書要教你的事:
你可以透過邏輯思考,利用哲學解決真實世界的難題!

│Google、蘋果公司與華爾街的投資機構……
│為什麼紛紛重金聘請哲學家,幫助員工解決問題?

本書要告訴你:
哲學家的思辨能力,如何幫助人類跳脫思維定勢?
只要養成「質疑固有想法」的能力,你就能進一步掌握及創造未來趨勢。

本書會提出大量的問題,測試你心中的那把尺。
一旦你開始思考,就會意猶未盡、難以停止,
最終你將答出「我是怎麼想的?」這個問題──所有一切皆根源於此!

│你唯一能確定的事,就是自己的無知;
│如果你比別人聰明,那是因為你承認自己的無知!

在哲學家的世界裡,
「未經審視、渾渾噩噩的生活不值得人過」。
本書將提出迥異於教科書上,逸趣橫生的哲學應用方式,
為跨領域的讀者帶來發人深省的嶄新觀點,
你將因此擁有全新視野,重新看待那些過去難解的生活謎題。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)