American Pastoral

Philip Roth
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Philip Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist. American Pastoral is one of Philip Roth's masterpieces. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

American Pastoral is an elegy for the American century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, American Pastoral gives us Philip Roth at the height of his powers.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

立體書不可思議

楊清貴
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立體書（pop-up book）最早誕生於13世紀的英國。最初，立體書是提供成人使用的資訊處理工具，在中世紀的歐洲則被應用在天文、醫學等專業領域，直到18世紀中期，專供兒童閱讀的立體童書才逐漸面市。

立體書既是書，也是精妙的紙藝品，本書作者楊清貴集結22年來的珍藏及研究，以專業收藏家的淵博知識，引領讀者穿越立體書近八百年的時空。除了古今各類立體書經典一次盡收眼底，立體書的形式和技術演進歷程也有精闢的解說，為讀者打開另一番奇妙的藝術視野。

全書囊括：
★80本珍貴古董立體書、323幅精美藏品照片
★31款立體書形式、24種紙藝技術解析
★橫跨近800年的立體書深度歷史專論
★你不能不知道的32位立體書演進史重要人物
★42個精選線上典藏立體書QR code

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates

“Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

人生問題的有益答案 : 偉大思想家如何解決你的煩惱 (Great Thinkers)

The School of Life; 艾倫‧狄波頓 (Alain de Botton) 主編
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艾倫‧狄波頓請客！與偉大思想家喝下午茶，
你的煩惱和問題，他們都有答案…

那些日常生活的難題和煩惱，思想家都有答案！
他們的見解一針見血，撫慰人心，甚至饒富趣味，
能幫助我們預做準備，面對困難時，更勇敢恣意。

跟柏拉圖一起了解自己、與歌德旅行、與馬基維利談領導…
跟珍‧奧斯汀諮商愛情、看維梅爾欣賞日常、跟著松尾芭蕉從禁錮中逃離…

古往今來，哪些思想最有助於克服當前重大問題？解決生活的棘手難題？

由英倫才子艾倫‧狄波頓主編的《人生問題的有益答案》，為我們尋找切乎此時此刻的實用哲思，從哲學、政治理論、社會學、精神分析、藝術、建築，以及文學等領域，選出今日最能啟發我們的偉大思想，並且應用在生活中。

(摘錄自博客來網路書店)

The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

Martin Puchner
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The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they shaped world history

In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Through sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, he reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs.

We meet Murasaki, a lady from eleventh-century Japan who wrote the first novel, The Tale of Genji, and follow the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes as he battles pirates, both seafaring and literary. We watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. Puchner takes us to Troy, Pergamum, and China, speaks with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, as well as the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. This delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped people, commerce, and history. In a book that Elaine Scarry has praised as “unique and spellbinding,” Puchner shows how literature turned our planet into a written world.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

過於喧囂的孤獨 (Too Loud a Solitude)

赫拉．巴爾 (Hrabal, Bohumil)
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一九五四到一九五八年之間，赫拉巴爾曾於布拉格一處廢紙回收站當了四年打包工。據他自己說，他到這裏工作之後不久，便產生了要寫這麼一篇小說的想法，這個想法在他腦海裏醞釀了二十年之久。廢紙收購站的四年生活給他的感受如此之深，使他一直沒有放棄這個題材，而是不斷地對它加以補充，進行反覆的深刻思考。 故事主角是在廢紙收購站工作了三十五年的打包工漢嘉，他把珍貴的書從廢紙堆中挑出來，藏在家裡、藏在腦裡，他狂飲啤酒、啃噬著書本裡的思想和詞句，他從一無所知的青年變成滿腹詩書的老人，韓波的詩文、老子的《道德經》、萊布尼茨的情史，是他信手拈來的記憶，康德的話語是他感傷喃喃的聲音。

這是一個愛情故事——老打包工漢嘉和他經歷過的情人，他的工作，他的時代，還有他當作廢紙打包的書，以及他的生命。

他打開他珍愛的書籍，翻到最動人的一段，放在層層疊疊的廢紙中間，打成一個包，外頭再裹上一幅複製的名畫。儘管擺放壓力機的地下室蒼蠅成群、老鼠橫行，這潮濕惡臭的地窖卻在他的遊戲裡，在他的微笑裡成為天堂。

一九七二年，赫拉巴爾開始寫作，他曾三易其稿：先是詩、次是散文、完成則為一部憂傷的敘事曲。第一稿作者自稱是「一部阿波里奈爾式的詩稿」，因為他「把整個故事看成僅僅是抒情詩了」；第二稿改為散文，用的是布拉格口語，但他覺得缺乏嘲諷味兒，即我們在文中感受的黑色幽默。他認為主人公，一個通過閱讀廢紙回收站的舊書而無意中成為的文化人，用口語作獨白不很合適，於是又改用作者所說的「一絲不苟的嚴謹語言，捷克書面語」寫出了第三稿。這一稿讀來猶如一部憂傷的敘事曲，他滿意地說：「直到現在這個故事才是動人的。」到了一九七六年，本書終於完稿，但當時無法問世，只得放在抽屜裏。直到一九八九年底才由捷克斯洛伐克作家出版社正式出版。

(摘錄自eslite.com)