Taking Pictures

by Anne Enright

*Condition of book is as seen in the picture. Click for better view.

*Firsthand copy. Read once almost to the end.
*Large print.
*Some smoothed-out dog-ears. Some age spots on the sides of the book otherwise still good and sturdy.

Product Description (via amazon.co.uk)

The stories in "Taking Pictures" are snapshots of the body in trouble: in denial, in extremis, in love. Mapping the messy connections between people - and their failures to connect - the characters are captured in the grainy texture of real life: freshly palpable, sensuous and deeply flawed. From Dublin to Venice, from an American college dorm to a holiday caravan in France, these are stories about women stirred, bothered, or fascinated by men they cannot understand, or understand too well. Enright's women are haunted by children, and by the ghosts of the lives they might have led - lit by new flames, old flames, and flames that are guttering out.A woman's one night stand is illuminated by dreams of a young boy on a cliff road, another's is thwarted by a swarm of somnolent bees. A pregnant woman is stuck in a slow lift with a tactile American stranger, a naked mother changes a nappy in a hotel bedroom, and waits for her husband to come back from the bar. These are sharp, vivid stories of loss and yearning, of surrender to responsibilities or to unexpected delight; all share the unsettling, dislocated reality, the subversive wit and awkward tenderness that have marked Anne Enright as one of our most thrillingly gifted writers.

RM 5   Now RM 3

(postage not included)

The Last Safe Place on Earth

by Richard Peck

*Condition of the book is as seen in the picture. Click for better view.

*Firsthand ownership but bought at clearance sale so not spanking brand new copy when I bought it last year in 2010.

*Read once.

Product Description (via amazon.com)

Todd, 15, thinks life in the quality community of Walden Woods is perfect, until Laurel, his dream girl, comes to babysit for his sister and reveals the forces of fundamentalism and censorship at work in the town. A provocative new novel by a highly honored author that speaks to today's issues of censorship and fundamentalism.

RM 5   Now RM 3

(postage not included)

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

*Condition of book is as seen in the picture. Click to enlarge for better view.
*Firsthand copy. Read once.
*Note that this book has some age spots and discolored pages. Cover has a small stain. 

Product Description (via amazon.com)

Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a seld divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl. As Nina Baym writes in her Introduction, "The Scarlet Letter" was not written as realistic, historical fiction, but as a "romance", a creation of the imagination that discloses the truth of the human heart.

Book Quotes:

"Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world."

"It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)

RM 5   Now RM 3

(postage not included)