Books on Books
A chronological survey of the world's most influential books. Many books have become classics, must-reads or overnight publishing sensations, but how many can genuinely claim to have changed the way ..
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Each book is a creation of genius and inventiveness, and their design and illustration represent such diverse trends as the Russian Constructivists, Italian Futurists and Postwar Neo-romantics. They a..
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Agatha Christie's detailed plotting is what makes her books so compelling. Christie used poison to kill her characters more often than any other murder method, with the poison itself being a central p..
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Artist and graphic designer Andy Tuohy turns his hand to the world of modern literature in this new instalment of the A-Z series. Rendered in his distinctive style, this new book features portraits of..
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'Wonderfully entertaining, hilarious. Contains the distilled wisdom of some of the greatest writers who ever lived' Allison Pearson, Sunday Telegraph What should I do with my life? What if my..
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'All the books published by a certain publisher could be seen as links in a single chain'. In this fascinating memoir and manifesto the author and publisher Roberto Calasso meditates on the art of boo..
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'Fascinating ... A stimulating contribution to our never-ending fascination with Holmes himself, and, even more perhaps, his genial creator' Sunday Times A medical student at the University of Ed..
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As a young medical student at the University of Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle studied under the vigilant eye of Dr Joseph Bell. He observed as Dr Bell identified a patient's occupation, hometown and a..
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Libraries today are more important than ever. More than just book repositories, libraries can become bulwarks against some of the most crucial challenges of our age: unequal access to education, jobs,..
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No Marketing Blurb..
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A beautifully produced, small-format jacketed hardback with simple illustrations that are whimsical yet humorous. A book is to read. A book belongs in a library, on a bookshelf, in a bookshop, in your..
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Ever wondered how ink is made? Or what is the bestselling book of all time? Or which are the oldest known books in the world? Highbrow to lowbrow, all aspects of the book are celebrated and explo..
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This is a book of book lists. Not of the '1,001 Books You MUST Read Before You Die' variety but lists that tell stories. Lists that make you smile, make you wonder, and see titles together in entirely..
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'Joyous . . . fascinating' Cathy Rentzenbrink'I love it! A real gem' Joanne Harris'Will have the inevitable effect of sending readers in search of these intriguing lost names' Barry ForshawAbsence doe..
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Around 40 semi-official 'Book Towns' now exist around the world, with most concentrated in Europe, South-East Asia, North America and Australia, but until now, there has been no directory of their loc..
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From the author of the best-selling The End of Your Life Book Club, an inspiring and magical exploration of the power of books to shape our lives in an era of constant connectivity. 'I'm on a search ..
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With a foreword by James NaughtieTurn the pages of the most famous books of all time and marvel at the stories behind them. Over 75 of the world's most celebrated, rare, and seminal books are examined..
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Books That Changed the World tells the fascinating stories behind 50 books that, in ways great and small, have changed the course of human history. Andrew Taylor sets each text in its historical conte..
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We're not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We're talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in..
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Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining extended essay, Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the world, via its bo..
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Venice in the 1500s is the mercantile and cultural capital of the world. There, the first printers, publishing houses and bookstores open for business, and thrive, finding fertile ground in the city's..
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What caused Dickens to leap out of bed one night and walk 30 miles from London to Kent?How did a small town on the Welsh borders become the second-hand bookshop capital of the world?Why did a jellyfis..
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Did Charlotte Bronte take opium? Did the Reverend Bronte carry a loaded pistol? What, precisely, does 'wuthering' mean? Distinguished literary critic John Sutherland takes an idiosyncratic look at the..
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A celebration of bookshops around the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Pankaj Mishra, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann In Browse Henry Hitchings asks fifteen writers from..
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Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Book Review turn with anticipation to see which novelist, historian, short story writer, or artist will be the subject of the popular By the Book feature. T..
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In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Penguin Classics, Classic Penguin: Cover To Cover showcases over ten years of stunning cover designs. It begins with the now-iconic redesign of the black spin..
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How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing t..
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When We Were Very Young Children's Books delight the young and the young at heart. From the gentle ritual of Goodnight Moon to the incredible odyssey of bad boy Max in Where the Wild Things Are, thes..
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'A murder of crows', 'a charm of goldfinches', 'an ostentation of peacocks': collective nouns for British birds have existed since at least the mid fifteenth century. They are thought to originate in ..
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Literacy, long upheld as a standard bearer for progress, is not always a force for good. Had Stalin's mother never sent him to the seminary he never would have learned to read and so never discovered ..
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The Man Booker International-winning author of Broken April and The Siege, Albania's most renowned novelist, and perennial Nobel Prize contender Ismail Kadare explores three giants of world literature..
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A humorous "guide to life" for grown-ups! One day, Diane Muldrow, a longtime editor of the iconic Little Golden Books, realized that, despite their whimsical appearance, there was hardly a real-life s..
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This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. Writing with humour and erudition, Fadiman revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving eas..
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Many New Zealand writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century travelled extensively or lived overseas for a time, and they often led very interesting lives. The received wisdom is that t..
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From beloved"New Yorker"cartoonist Bob Eckstein, "Footnotes from the World s Greatest Bookstores"invites you into the heart and soul of every community: the local bookshop, each with its own quirks, c..
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Elena Ferrante is one of the greatest novelists of our time. Read her novels and don't worry about who she is: you will be entranced by her writing. Fragments is a riveting compilation, over the cours..
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Available for the first time in English in Howard Curtis's brilliant translation this collection of personal essays shows Izzo at his most contemplative and insightful. He writes beautifully about the..
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A radical look at Jane Austen as you've never seen her - as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen celebrates Britain's favourite novelist 200 years after her death a..
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George Orwell's story told in full, with a light touch and copious illustrations. With "alternative facts" and newspeak the order of the political day, a growing audience for George Orwell's work has ..
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Rainy summer of 1816. Paparazzi train their telescopes across Lake Geneva on the hanky-panky of Byron, Shelley and their womenfolk. Mary Shelley is inspired to write FRANKENSTEIN. Byron diets and dash..
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The Good Story is an exchange between a writer with a longstanding interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with a training in literary studies. J. M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz consider psy..
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Great Books of China offers concise introductions - each of them accompanied by generous quotation (in English) from the book in question - to sixty-six works in the canon of Chinese literature. The b..
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From a creative crisis to a dissatisfied editor, and from a bizarre twist of fate to an untimely death, behind each unpublished book lies a unique and compelling story. One of the giants of modern lit..
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It can be much harder than it seems; commas, colons, semi-colons and even apostrophes can drive us all mad at times, but it riles no one more than the longest-serving resident of Countdown's Dictionar..
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The English Language is spoken by more than a billion people throughout the world. But where did English come from? And how has it evolved into the language used today? In Do You Speak English? Simon ..
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An essential primer to reading poetry that unlocks the keys to enjoying works from Lord Byron to the Beatles No literary form is as admired and feared as poetry. Admired for its lengthy pedigree-..
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I'd Rather Be Reading is a visual love letter to all things bookish. It features beautiful art, photography, and illustrations depicting the pleasures of books - from the likes of Jane Mount, Lisa Con..
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The moving story of the life and work of novelist Virginia Woolf, revealed through her own letters to those closest to her. The letters - at times witty and irreverent, at times melancholy and in..
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From the rise of the egalitarian Little Free Library movement (motto: Take a book, return a book) to the growth in luxury hotel libraries, Alex Johnson whose parents were both librarians maps out the ..
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