Books & Reading

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (Literary a to Z's)

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(series copy)

These encyclopedic companions are browsable, invaluable individual guides to authors and their works. Useful for students, but written with the general reader in mind, they are clear, concise, accessible, and supply the basic cultural, historical, biographical and critical information so crucial to an appreciation and enjoyment of the primary works. Each is arranged in an A-Z fashion and presents and explains the terms, people, places, and concepts encountered in the literary worlds of James Joyce, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf.

As a keen explorer of the mundane material of everyday life, James Joyce ranks high in the canon of modernist writers. He is arguably the most influential writer of the twentieth-century, and may be the most read, studied, and taught of all modern writers. The James Joyce A-Z is the ideal companion to Joyce's life and work. Over 800 concise entries relating to all aspects of Joyce are gathered here in one easy-to-use volume of impressive scope.

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Fires on the Plain (Tuttle Classics)

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The author's experience as a prisoner captured by American forces during WWII figures prominently in this haunting novel about the ultimate degradation of a man by war. Set in Leyte, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammering blows of American forces, the story focuses on the disintegration of one man, Private Tamura. One by one, each of his ties to society is destroyed, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast. Yet it is the novel's uplifting vision during a time of ultimate horror that has made it one of Japan's greatest novels.

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The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms

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CliffsNotes on Conrad's Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer

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Each of these stories deals with the "dark side" of the human character. Heart of Darkness is a journey up a Congo river to where an ivory agent, Kurtz, mentally disintegrates into a grotesque creature.

The Secret Sharer is about a murderous captain who is tragically alienated from other people.

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Explode the Code/Book Four

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Nancy Hall, Rena Price,Paperback, Edition: 1, English-language edition,Pub by Educators Publishing Service, Incorporated

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Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers, The (5th Edition) (MyCompLab Series)

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A comprehensive reference to grammar, writing, research, and documentation, The Longman Handbook offers a unique emphasis on how to write for different audiences -- academic, workplace, and public. No matter what you are trying to write -- an essay for college, a business proposal for your boss, an email memo, or a letter - The Longman Handbook will give you the help you need.

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The One Year Book of Psalms

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This devotional contains all 150 Psalms and 20 other songs in Scripture, divided into daily readings. The readings include helpful background information on the psalm, a related hymn stanza, and an application thought. Biweekly "Interludes" further aid understanding by explaining things such as acrostic psalms or Hebrew poetic style. Indexes included.

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Pages: 652, Edition: 7, Paperback, Bedford/St. Martin's

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Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking

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Get massive exposure for your book, no special computer skills needed -- trade published or self published, fiction or nonfiction

Discover why authors fail with paid advertising, pay-per-click, fee-based reviews, and "bestseller" campaigns

Blog to connect with readers, driving them to Amazon and bookstores

Boost your visibility with Google, use MySpace for viral marketing

Ignite word of mouth with Web social networks

Capitalize on peer content and "amateur" book reviews

Here's what the experts say about this book:

"A wealth of ideas for making your book stand out, including many techniques for Internet buzz you won't find elsewhere."

-- Jane Corn, Amazon.com Top Reviewer

"I spent two years building up skills to market my books Earthcore and Ancestor online, and I can tell you right now that Plug Your Book would have saved me MONTHS of time. I bought this book just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but it blew me away."

-- Scott Sigler, # 1 bestselling author

"An amazingly rich collection of cutting-edge promotional tactics and strategies. Makes most other books about online publicity look sickly."

-- Aaron Shepard, author: Aiming at Amazon

"...The one book every author needs to read. I don't care if you're writing a computer book, a science fiction novel or the next great self-help guide, you need to get copy of Steve Weber's Plug Your Book!"

- Joe Wikert, executive publisher, John Wiley & Sons"Practical, pragmatic, low-cost ideas for promoting the heck out of your own book, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, technical, business or anything else."

-- Dave Taylor, author: 'Growing Your Business with Google'

"I've worked with most of America's largest book publishers, helping many of them build online marketing departments. I've worked for authors too. Plug Your Book is the new training manual."

-- Steve O'Keefe, author: 'Publicity on the Internet'

"...Plug Your Book reveals the most effective and least expensive tools to promote your titles and to increase your exposure. It's the best book on online marketing I have ever read, and I read quite a few in the course of my consulting practice with small presses."

-- Marion Gropen, president, Gropen Associates

Here's what's inside the book:

... Taking control of your book sales; Electric word of mouth; Amazon's `long tail;' Personalized bookstores; Book recommendation effectiveness

... Amazon Bestseller Campaigns; How Bestseller Campaigns work; Haywired recommendations

... Amateur book reviews; Credibility through peers; Amazon Top Reviewers; Negative reviews; Posting trade reviews on Amazon; Fee-based book reviews

... Building your author Web site; A survey of author Web sites; Your online press kit; Multimedia for books; Podcasting for publicity; When to launch your site

... Blogging for authors; Connecting with readers; Blog comments: pros and cons; Blogging categories; Over the long haul; Blog-to-e-mail service

... Social networking; MySpace: Not just for kids; Facebook; Create your own group; Other places on MySpace; More social-networking sites

... Tag - You're it!; Personal book tagging; Amazon tags; Amazon Media Library; LibraryThing; Tag-based marketing

... Advanced Amazon tools; Buy X, Get Y; Free paired placement; Single New Product e-mails; Amazon Connect; Listmania; So You'd Like to . . . guides; Search Inside the Book; Statistically Improbable Phrases; Writing book reviews; Amapedia; Customer discussions; BookSurge; Your Amazon profile

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Atlas Shrugged (Cliffs Notes)

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Who is John Galt? This famous rhetorical question rings through Ayn Rand's best-selling novel as the people's anthem of despair in depressed economic times. Set in the future, the novel follows capitalist magnates as they battle looters, strikers, and the impending ruin of the United States' economy. The romantic and intellectual relationship between Dagny Taggart, the heroine, and John Galt, whose identity as the leader of the strike is eventually revealed, carries the novel to its climax.

This novel, controversial when it first appeared in 1957, purports Rand's objectivist philosophy that the individual is free to pursue his or her own happiness without bowing to God or society. Objectivism in action upholds full laissez-faire capitalism as the only philosophy that can protect humankind's freedom to think, to be inventive, and to live productively.

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