A comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life (1914-1973) of one of the world's most famous storytellers. 'It is not possible even at great length to "pot" The Lord of the Rings in a paragraph or two. It was begun in 1936, and every part has been written many times! the labour has been colossal; and it must stand or fall, practically as it is.' J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the most prolific letter writers of this century. Over the years he wrote to his publishers, his family, to friends (including C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden and Naomi Mitchison) and to fans of his books. The letters present a fascinating and highly detailed portrait of the man in many of his aspects: as storyteller, scholar, Catholic, parent and observer of the world around him. They also shed much light on his creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world -- Middle-earth. This collection will appeal not only to the legions of Tolkien fans, but will entertain anyone who appreciates the art of letter-writing, of which Tolkien was a master. 'I am nearly always written to as Tolkein (not by you): I do not know why, since it is pronounced by me always -keen.'

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"The Cure at Troy" is Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles' "Philoctetes." Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy. Abandoned because of a wounded foot, Philoctetes nevertheless possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War. They are forced to return to Lemnos and seek out Philoctetes' support in a drama that explores the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency. Heaney's version of "Philoctetes" is a fast-paced, brilliant work ideally suited to the stage. Heaney holds on to the majesty of the Greek original, but manages to give his verse the flavor of Irish speech and context.

A Japanese fishing vessel in 1841 sinks and its crew swims to a small unknown island to be rescued by a passing American ship. At the time, the Japanese borders were closed to all western nations so the Japanese sailors are frightened of their captors. They cannot return to Japan because the western ship will not be allowed into port, and even if it was, the fishing crew would end up in prison (or even put to death) as associates of the west. So the crew goes off to America with the western ship, learning English on the way. Our hero is Manjiro, a 14 year old boy, who is very curious and learns everything he can about this new culture. He ends up being adopted by the captain of the western ship and lives for a time in New England. Then he heads to San Francisco to pan for gold, but eventually he makes his way back to Japan where at first he is imprisoned, but then later helps the emperor to lower the wall around Japan. The emperor calls him a samurai, which had always been the boy's dream.

在线阅读本书 The beloved plays of Shakespeare are still produced everywhere, yet the life of the worlds most famous playwright remains largely a mystery. Young Will left the town of Stratford to pursue theater in London, where his work eventually thrived and made him a famous and wealthy man. With black-and-white illustrations that include a diagram of the famous Globe theater, Celeste Davidson Mannis puts together the pieces of Shakespeares life and work for young readers.

Charles and Mary Lamb have delighted generations of adults as well as children with their famed prose renderings of Shakespeare's originals. Bringing the plays to life in a form that encourages readers to enjoy and explore, Tales from Shakespeare provides an entertaining and informative introduction to the great works while retaining much of Shakespeare's lyricism, phrasing, and rhythm. It is a captivating work of Romantic storytelling as well as the original literary homage to the Bard. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

莎士比亚400周年特别套装，16部经典著作包括：驯悍记，威尼斯商人李尔王，尤利乌斯凯撒，无事生非，因为你喜欢它，李察三世，奥赛罗，安东尼与克莉奥佩特拉，第十二夜，罗密欧与朱丽叶，亨利五世，麦克白，暴风雨，仲夏夜之梦，哈姆雷特。 Shakespeare Children's Stories 16 Books Collection Titles in This Set： The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Richard III, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Macbeth, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet.

八十天环游世界，ISBN：9787561766002，作者：（法）凡尔纳 著；

Book Description This work tells the story of 30 pilgrims who meet by chance at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, and journey together to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. To pass the time along the way, they tell stories to one another, shot through with cunning wit and dry humour. About this book: Geoffey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) was one of the finest storytellers in the English language, as well as being a great poet and an accomplished prose writer. The Canterbury Tales, although incomplete at the time of Chaucer's death, is generally regarded as his greatest work. The Canterbury Tales tells the story of 30 pilgrims who meet by chance at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London and journey together to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury cathedral. To pass the time along the way, they tell stories to one another. The Tales themselves range from the exemplary saints' lives told by the nuns, to the bawdy, comic tales of the miller and the reeve, always shot through with Chaucer's cunning wit and dry humour. Chaucer leaves his readers with the impression that the whole of medieval society has passed before their eyes. This new transcription and edition is taken from British Library MS Harley 7334, a beautifully decorated, volume produced within ten years of Chaucer's death. The aim of the present edition, with its 'on-page' notes and glosses, is to enable readers with little or no previous experience of medieval English to read and enjoy this landmark in English Literature. Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out? On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

One night Max puts on his wolf suit and makes mischief of one kind and another, so his mother calls him 'Wild Thing' and sends him to bed without his supper. That night a forest begins to grow in Max's room and an ocean rushes by with a boat to take Max to the place where the wild things are. Max tames the wild things and crowns himself as their king, and then the wild rumpus begins. But when Max has sent the monsters to bed, and everything is quiet, he starts to feel lonely and realises it is time to sail home to the place where someone loves him best of all. When Maurice Sendak won the American Library Association's Caldecott Medal for WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, he said: 'Max, the hero of my book, discharges his anger against his mother, and returns to the real world sleepy, hungry and at peace with himself...from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustration as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.'

Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them. Surprisingly, analytic philosophers have said relatively little about these important questions about the meaning of life. When they have tackled the big questions, they have tended, like popular writers, to offer comforting, optimistic answers. The Human Predicament invites readers to take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human condition. David Benatar here offers a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism about the central questions of human existence. He argues that while our lives can have some meaning, we are ultimately the insignificant beings that we fear we might be. He maintains that the quality of life, although less bad for some than for others, leaves much to be desired in even the best cases. Worse, death is generally not a solution; in fact, it exacerbates rather than mitigates our cosmic meaninglessness. While it can release us from suffering, it imposes another cost - annihilation. This state of affairs has nuanced implications for how we should think about many things, including immortality and suicide, and how we should think about the possibility of deeper meaning in our lives. Ultimately, this thoughtful, provocative, and deeply candid treatment of life's big questions will interest anyone who has contemplated why we are here, and what the answer means for how we should live.

Book Description The highest standards in editing and production have been applied to the Wordsworth Children's Classics, while the low price makes them affordable for everyone. Wordsworth's list covers a range of the best-loved stories for children, from nursery tales, classic fables, and fairy tales to stories that will appeal to older children and adults alike. Many of these volumes have contemporary illustrations, and while they are ideal for shared family reading, their attractive format will also encourage children to read for themselves. Like all Wordsworth Editions, these children's books represent unbeatable value. When the Cuthberts send to the orphanage for a boy to help them at their farm Green Gables, they are astonished when a talkative little girl steps off the train. Anne, an incurable romantic causes chaos at Green Gables and at the village, but her good nature endears her to the residents. Amazon.com When Marilla Cuthbert's brother, Matthew, returns home to Green Gables with a chatty redheaded orphan girl, Marilla exclaims, "But we asked for a boy. We have no use for a girl." It's not long, though, before the Cuthberts can't imagine how they could ever do without young Anne of Green Gables--but not for the original reasons they sought an orphan. Somewhere between the time Anne "confesses" to losing Marilla's amethyst pin (which she never took) in hopes of being allowed to go to a picnic, and when Anne accidentally dyes her hated carrot-red hair green, Marilla says to Matthew, "One thing's for certain, no house that Anne's in will ever be dull." And no book that she's in will be, either. This adapted version of the classic, Anne of Green Gables, introduces younger readers to the irrepressible heroine of L.M. Montgomery's many stories. Adapter M.C. Helldorfer includes only a few of Anne's mirthful and poignant adventures, yet manages to capture the freshness of one of children's literature's spunkiest, most beloved characters. There's just enough to make beginning readers want more--luckily, there's a lot more in the originals! Illustrator Ellen Beier creates vibrant pictures to portray the beauty of the land around Green Gables and the spirited nature of Anne herself. (Ages 5 to 8) --Emilie Coulter From Library Journal This version of Mongomery's classic is illustrated with 14 beautiful color prints by artist Gabriella Dellosso. Though many cheaper editions are available, this is really quite nice for the price. From School Library Journal Grade 5-8-The nostalgic charm of Avonlea comes alive in Lucy Maud Montgomery's heart-warming tale set on the quaint island of Prince William about an aging brother and sister, Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert, and their decision to adopt a young boy to help with chores around their farm. However, as the result of a misunderstanding the boy turns out to be a feisty, independent, and wildly imaginative redheaded girl named Anne. Marilla's first reaction to this news is, "What use is she to us?" Wherein Mathew replies, "We might be of some use to her." Throughout this moving story these two statements mix and meld together so richly and completely that they become one truth. Three lives are changed so dramatically that none can imagine life without the others. Each new day brings a new set of adventures, often hilarious and always uplifting. Anne's vivid and overactive imagination is the cause of many mishaps, but her saving grace is her heart of gold. Her best friend and "kindred spirit," Diana, and her handsome admirer, Gilbert Blythe, often find themselves unintentional victims of Anne's escapades. Narrator Shelly Frasier's pleasant voice is especially enjoyable during the rapid ramblings of Anne and as the soft-spoken, slow-paced Mathew. Her voice reflects the human qualities of each character, switching seamlessly between broken and despaired, curt and crisp, or dreamy and absent-minded. This perennial classic, divided into convenient three minute tracks and containing a short biography of the author, is a must have for expanding audiobook collections. Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg High School, OH From AudioFile [Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.]--Imagination is key to both these classics. Young Anne ("Anne with an e"), adopted into a Prince Edward Island household, uses her imagination and determined spirit to fill her world with hopes and aspirations. And the "dreamings and readings" of the pauper Tom Canty set off the cascade of mistaken identities that comprise Twain's famous tale. The St. Charles Players offer amusing adaptations of these stories with accessible, appealing performances. Here is family listening to entertain different ages and interests. The casts are a bit uneven, but each has some outstanding roles. These are not sophisticated productions, but the spirit of these classics is undaunted--like Anne of Green Gables herself. R.F.W. About Author L. M. Montgomery, a Canadian national treasure, grew up on Prince Edward Island, where her stories are set. Her Anne of Green Gables novels are popular worldwide. Book Dimension : length: (cm)19.8 width:(cm)12.6 点击链接进入中文版： 清秀佳人

John C. Bogle shares his extensive insights on investing in mutual funds Since the first edition of Common Sense on Mutual Funds was published in 1999, much has changed, and no one is more aware of this than mutual fund pioneer John Bogle. Now, in this completely updated Second Edition, Bogle returns to take another critical look at the mutual fund industry and help investors navigate their way through the staggering array of investment alternatives that are available to them. . Written in a straightforward and accessible style, this reliable resource examines the fundamentals of mutual fund investing in today's turbulent market environment and offers timeless advice in building an investment portfolio. Along the way, Bogle shows you how simplicity and common sense invariably trump costly complexity, and how a low cost, broadly diversified portfolio is virtually assured of outperforming the vast majority of Wall Street professionals over the long-term. Written by respected mutual fund industry legend John C. Bogle Discusses the timeless fundamentals of investing that apply in any type of market Reflects on the structural and regulatory changes in the mutual fund industry Other titles by Bogle: The Little Book of Common Sense Investing and Enough. Securing your financial future has never seemed more difficult, but you'll be a better investor for having read the Second Edition of Common Sense on Mutual Funds .

E.H. Carr's "Twenty Years' Crisis" is a classic work in international relations. Published in 1939, on the eve of World War II, it was immediately recognized by friend and foe alike as a defining work in the fledgling discipline. The author was one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the 20th century. The issues and themes he develops in this book continue to have relevance to modern day concerns with power and its distribution in the international system. Michael Cox's critical introduction provides the reader with background information about the author, the context for the book, its main themes and contemporary relevance. Written with the student in mind, it offers a guide to understanding a complex, but crucial text.

Bill Bryson turns away form the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent , for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America , Bryson de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up - as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame. Buy this book at once and have a nice day!

To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners. Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned. Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

IMPLEMENTING THE LEXICAL APPROACH describes how the lexical approach works in the classroom. This book will stimulate educators to think about what one does at all levels. IMPLEMENTING THE LEXICAL APPROACH develops the theoretical position set out in Michael Lewis' highly acclaimed THE LEXICAL APPROACH.

'An excellent and very welcome guide to psycholinguistics...highly recommended.' The Washington Post 'The reader's curiosity about the complexities of the mother tongue is kept right to the end.' The times Educational supplement 'This is an excellent text which would give the undergraduate student as fine an introduction to the field of psycholinguistics as is available today.' Choice This concise and readable introduction to psycholinguistics requires on prior knowledge of the subject. Jean aitchison addresses key questions such as: Is language restricted to humans? Is there biologica evidence for innate language capacity? How do children learn language? How do we understand and produce speech? This widley used and highly successful book has been extensively revised. In this 4th edition, Jean Aitchison covers new work on 'talking animals', on language and the brain, on child language, and speech understanding. She also discusses the pros and cons of Chomsky's recent ideas. As a result, several chapters of the book have been largely rewritten, and new references have been added throughout. 作者简介： Jean Aitchison is the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and communication at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow at Worcester College. Her other publications include Words in the Mind (2nd edn 1994)and The Seeds of speech(1996). She gave the 1996 BBC Reith lectures on 'the language web', also now published as a book(1997).