Library

Price: $6.20

ISBN: 9784088562094

Summary:

Price: $6.20

ISBN: 9784088562865

Summary:

Price: CDN$ 10.99

Edition: 1

ISBN: 1421510200

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Price: $12.95

ISBN: 9780385492164

Summary: In conventional fiction, war heroes return home minus an arm or a leg--or, to take Hemingway's worst-case scenario, the family jewels. In Aimee Bender's deeply unconventional collection, however, an even more suggestive body part goes AWOL: "Steve returned from the war without his lips." The army doctors have temporarily replaced them with a plastic disc, which impairs his speech. Luckily, this doesn't prevent him and his wife from engaging in some slightly surrealistic sexual maneuvers: "That night in bed, he grazed the disc over her raised nipples like a UFO and the plastic was cool on her skin. It felt like they were in college and toying with desk items as sexual objects."
That same combo--sex and off-kilter surrealism--provides Bender with her modus operandi. In "Call My Name," for example, a young heiress tails a stranger back to his apartment, gets her dress sliced off, and then consents to be trussed to a chair while he watches a TV documentary about Mozart. "Quiet Please" features a libidinous librarian who takes on all, uh, comers in the back room. Bender isn't, it should be said, simply a purveyor of French postcards. Her prose is exquisitely shaped, and its singsong rhythms suggest something out of a wised-up, whacked-out fairy tale. Indeed, if the Brothers Grimm had been a little more attuned to the pleasure principle, their fables might have boasted at least a family resemblance to Aimee Bender's. "--James Marcus"

Price: $12.95

ISBN: 9780385492249

Summary: Aimee Bender's funny, delicately shaded first novel is a constant delight, even at its most warped. "An Invisible Sign of My Own" tells the story of Mona Gray, a math wiz and a high school track star, whose ordinary childhood comes to pieces when her father is stricken with a mysterious illness. There doesn't seem to be a name for it, but he looks sort of gray and seems frail and unhappy. Whether there's anything really wrong with Mona's dad is unclear, but her fear that he will die, as well as his withdrawal from family life--no more vacations, no running practice with his daughter, no unplanned outings--triggers a corresponding withdrawal in her. Whenever she does well at anything, or starts to enjoy herself, she quits: piano class, dancing lessons, her first boyfriend, running. I quit dessert to see if I could do it; of course I could; I quit breathing one evening until my lungs overruled; I quit touching my skin, sleeping with both hands under the pillow. When no one was home, I tied ropes around the piano, so that it would take me thirty minutes with scissors to get back to that minuet. Then I hid all the scissors. Instead of working out her problems, Mona develops a habit of knocking on wood, and sometimes knocks for an hour before getting to sleep. Eating soap is her other dark indulgence: a surefire anti-aphrodisiac that she calls on whenever she feels sexually attracted to a man.
At 20, Mona is recruited to teach math at the local elementary school. To her surprise, she is a brilliant teacher, making addition and subtraction tangible to second graders with a game called Numbers and Materials, in which the students bring in natural or man-made objects that take the form of numbers. When 7-year-old Lisa Venus brings in a zero made of IV tubing from her dying mother's hospital room, Mona recognizes a kindred spirit. But she will have to be healthy herself to help Lisa resist her urge to take on her mother's illness out of grief and loyalty. The complicated connection between children and adults is the underlying theme of this big-hearted novel. However quirky and alarming Bender's methods may seem, "An Invisible Sign of My Own" is no darker than a fairy tale, and the witch--even if it's the witch within--is reliably vanquished in the end. "--Regina Marler"

Price: $28.95

ISBN: 9780773761322

Summary: This anthology is a tasteful and diverse collection of some of the world's most compelling tales of erotic short fiction. This well thought out assemblige of stories gives an insightful gaze into the variety with which we view and experience human sexuality both historically and culturally. The editor, Alberto Manguel, not only gives a comprehensive introduction to the entire collection, but also prefaces each story with a mini-introduction, adding to the interest of each piece. This treasury of erotic tales contains works from such celebrated authors as D.H. Lawrence who penned "Lady Chatterly's Lover", Milan Kundara who wrote "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which was later made into an award winning film, Ang Li, author of the novel, "The Butcher's Wife", and of course, Anais Nin, well known for her published diaries. There is also a section at the end with notes on each author included and a thorough bibliography should the reader want to further explore this genre of literature. All in all, this is an excellent compilation of fiction erotica from the imaginations of well respected writers.

Price: $19.95

ISBN: 9780965104203

Summary: This book takes off where Gillian Garr's 1992 She's A Rebel leaves off, and is a perfect companion volume for that great book. It features interviews (that read like thoughtful essays) with Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Valerie Agnew (7 Year Bitch), Lois Maffeo, Naomi Yang (Galaxie 500), Kendra Smith, Phranc, Candice Pederson (K Records), Bettina Richards, Chrissie Hynde, and June Millington (Fanny, the "Godmothers of Womyn's Rock").

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Summary: As the name of this book suggests, the book is all about, well, memoirs of a geisha.. :-)



Before I read this book, all I knew about a geisha is that she's a Japanese girl who provides entertaining and lighthearted company to men. Nothing else I knew.. However, this story revolves around a geisha and with every page I turned, I got to know more.



The strong point of the story is the way the memoirs have been presented. The way the entire plot has been weaved, makes it an intersting read.



In fact, it was after reading the book that I was even more interested to watch the movie when it hit the theaters.