英文
Oracle Bones 豆瓣 Goodreads
9.4 (24 个评分) 作者: Peter Hessler HarperCollins 2006 - 5
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world. A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time—the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country—is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones , a book that explores the human side of China's transformation. Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand. Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.
The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics) 豆瓣
作者: Edith Wharton / Louis Auchincloss Modern Library 1999 - 2
Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs--tender and impressionable, with equal purity of mind and manners. The engagement was announced discreetly, but all of New York society was soon privy to this most perfect match, a union of families and circumstances cemented by affection.
Enter Countess Olenska, a woman of quick wit sharpened by experience, not afraid to flout convention and determined to find freedom in divorce. Against his judgment, Newland is drawn to the socially ostracized Ellen Olenska, who opens his eyes and has the power to make him feel. He knows that in sweet-tempered May, he can expect stability and the steadying comfort of duty. But what new worlds could he discover with Ellen? Written with elegance and wry precision, Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is a tragic love story and a powerful homily about the perils of a perfect marriage.
Commentary by William Lyon Phelps and E. M. Forster
Imperium 豆瓣 Goodreads
作者: Robert Harris Simon & Schuster 2006 - 9
<center>
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FATHERLAND AND POMPEII COMES THE MOST PROVOCATIVE AND BRILLIANT NOVEL OF ANTIQUITY SINCE I, CLAUDIUS --
<font size="+1">IMPERIUM</font>
A CAUTIONARY TALE OF CICERO, THE GREATEST ORATOR OF ALL TIME, AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN ROME.
</center>
When Tiro, the confidential secretary (and slave) of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events that will eventually propel his master into one of the most suspenseful courtroom dramas in history. The stranger is a Sicilian, a victim of the island's corrupt Roman governor, Verres. The senator is Marcus Cicero -- an ambitious young lawyer and spellbinding orator, who at the age of twenty-seven is determined to attain imperium -- supreme power in the state.
Of all the great figures of the Roman world, none was more fascinating or charismatic than Cicero. And Tiro -- the inventor of shorthand and author of numerous books, including a celebrated biography of his master (which was lost in the Dark Ages) -- was always by his side.
Compellingly written in Tiro's voice, Imperium is the re-creation of his vanished masterpiece, recounting in vivid detail the story of Cicero's quest for glory, competing with some of the most powerful and intimidating figures of his -- or any other -- age: Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, and the many other powerful Romans who changed history.
Robert Harris, the world's master of innovative historical fiction, lures us into a violent, treacherous world of Roman politics at once exotically different from and yet startlingly similar to our own -- a world of Senate intrigue and electoral corruption, special prosecutors and political adventurism -- to describe how one clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable man fought to reach the top.
2016年11月21日 已读
美国最黑暗的时刻,重读。看看现在的美国到底有多像那时候的罗马共和国。//Robert Harris的书,一如既往的充满娱乐性,又能学到些古罗马历史。:)
2007年1月6日 评论 大人物与小人物 - 读《帝权》观《罗马》 - 感恩节刚看完 Robert Harris 的新书,以西赛罗(Cicero)为主人公写的《Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome》(帝权:一部关于古罗马的小说)。讲的是罗马共和国后期的事情。围绕西塞罗的崛起而写,从远赴希腊学习演说,到回罗马当律师,然后当选议员,之后拿到罗马的执政官的位子。罗马共和国的治国信条那时非常象现在的美国。就是讲究权力分享,互相制约。极其反对绝对并且没有制约的统治者。罗马最高的权力属于两个执政官,以便两个人互相制约,并且每两年就重新选举一次。西塞罗虽然十分信仰共和国的制度,他也向往拿到最高执政官的位子,这两者使他常常处于难以取舍的地段。为了在议院里建立自己的利益集团,他目睹并参与了刚出道的恺撒(那时恺撒是新议员)一手策划的一项具有决定性法律在元老院通过的谋划。这项法律看似为了当时如日中升的大将军庞培量身定造,允许罗马执政权在危机时刻归于一个人手下。其实是当时年青但是老谋深算的恺撒在为自己的将来铺路。埋下了罗马共和国最终被罗马帝国取代的种子。 《罗马》这部连续剧就是从 Harris 这本书里的事件发生后不久的时间开始。讲恺撒的崛起和陨落。这时恺撒已经是名声显赫独霸一方的将军了。在罗马的庞贝对他心有余悸。。。 和《帝权》相比,《罗马》关于当时的微妙政局,各路人物的钩心斗角讲的太浅,肥皂剧式的情节太多了些。所以看时很有些失望。但是和其他的电视剧相比,已经是很不错了。最地道的是整个剧目的场景,当时人物的生活细节都描绘设计的精细可信。很让人眼界大开。据说剧组搞设计的人做了很多考古研究,连当时罗马城里墙上涂鸦的颜色都研究了。力求符合史实。 高瞻远瞩的恺撒虽然巧妙耐心的布下了自己将来称帝的路,但是最终功亏一篑。连“大帝”的封号都没拿到就死去了。他栽好的树,最终由后人来乘凉。而共和国的命运却也无法挽回。虽然恺撒已去,他布下的阵剧却已成型,坚信共和国的议员们,沾了满手的鲜血,依然是无力回天,没法挡住罗马帝国的降临,罗马共和国的毁灭。好像《魔戒》里说的,人,总是无法抵制权力的诱惑。 跟恺撒和庞贝这样举重若轻的人物比起来,西塞罗好像就是个小人物了。在《帝权》这本书里,他其实是一个智慧的哲学家和政治家。但是在《罗马》电视剧里面,他变成个小丑样的人物,他内心的人天之争显得懦弱而可笑。是不是因为视角不同呢?
历史 古罗马 英文 英文小说
Next 豆瓣
作者: Michael Crichton HarperCollins 2006 - 11
Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease? <p align=center>
<table cellpadding="4" width="100%"> <tr align="center"><td><img src=" http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/books/video-grabs/crichton-book_video.jpg" border="0" align="center">
What's coming Next? Get a hint of what Michael Crichton sees on the horizon in this short video clip: high bandwidth or low bandwidth</td></tr> </table> <p align=left>
We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies.
We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes...
Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn.
Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.
The future is closer than you think.
Collected Short Stories 豆瓣
作者: William Somerset Maugham Penguin Putnam Inc 1992 - 4
The stories in this collection move from Malaya to America and England, and include some of Maugham's most famous tales; 'Flotsam and Jetsam', the story of an old woman trapped for years in a loveless marriage in the remote rubber plantations; 'The Man with the Scar', and notably the opening story 'The Vessel of Wrath', a tale of the unexpected love that grows between a devout missionary nurse and a drunken reprobate. In this second volume of his collected stories, Maugham illustrates his characteristic wry perception of human foibles and his genius for evoking compelling drama from an acute sense of time and place.
The Comedians 豆瓣
作者: Graham Greene Penguin Classics 2005 - 1
Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt aPapa Doca and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence manathese are the acomediansa of Greeneas title. Hiding behind their actorsa masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. They are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 豆瓣
9.2 (63 个评分) 作者: [英] J·K·罗琳 Arthur A. Levine Books 2007 - 7
Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort’s remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety, and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him.
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven narrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again.
Harry is waiting in Privet Drive. The Order of the Phoenix is coming to escort him safely away without Voldemort and his supporters knowing – if they can. But what will Harry do then? How can he fulfil the momentous and seemingly impossible task that Professor Dumbledore has left him with?
Diary of a Bad Year 豆瓣
作者: J.M. Coetzee Harvill Secker 2007 - 9
An utterly contemporary and deeply thought-provoking novel which addresses the profound unease of countless people in modern democracies around the world.
An eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong Opinions. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He writes short essays on the origins of the state, on Machiavelli, on anarchism, on Al-Qaida, on intelligent design, on music. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state? How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state’s willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its war on terror, a war that includes the use of torture? How does the state handle outsiders?
In the laundry-room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is between jobs he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya has no interest in politics but the job provides a distraction, as does the writer’s evident and not unwelcome attraction toward her.
Her boyfriend, Alan, an investment consultant who understands the world in harsh neo-liberal economic terms, has reservations about his trophy girlfriend spending time with this 1960s throwback. Taking a lively interest in his affairs, Alan begins to formulate a plan.
Diary of a Bad Year is an utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers. It addresses the profound unease of countless people in democracies across the world.
2008年6月20日 已读
how could i not want to read it after this: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/24/071224crbo_books_wood?
英文 英文小说
The Omnivore's Dilemma 豆瓣
作者: Michael Pollan Penguin 2007 - 8
这是一本《纽约时报》畅销书。这本颇具革命意义的书改变了读者对饮食生态学的看法。金牌作家迈克尔·波伦向我们提出一个看似简单的问题:饭桌上应该吃什么?通过追溯食物链从挑选食材到端上饭桌的全过程——包括工业、有机、替代品、加工品,作者向我们描绘了一幅美国式饮食的肖像。该书提出一个让人吃惊的发现——饥饿塑造了人类进化,也谈到食物选择对人类健康乃至地球未来的深远影响。
A New York Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain uswhether industrial or organic, alternative or processedhe develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.
Divisadero 豆瓣
作者: Michael Ondaatje Alfred A. Knopf 2007 - 5
From the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion comes a remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.
In the 1970s in Northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence—of both hand and heart—that sets fire to the rest of their lives.

Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos and eventually to the landscape of south-central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time—Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough hewn from the past.
Breathtakingly evoked and with unforgettable characters, Divisadero is a multilayered novel about passion, loss, and the unshakable past, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. It is Michael Ondaatje’s most intimate and beautiful novel to date.
2008年2月23日 已读
文字是一如往常的Ondaajie风格.但是故事结尾太零落了.当诗歌看还可.好像都不能算小说吧?
英文 英文小说
Diary of a Bad Year 豆瓣 Goodreads
作者: J. M. Coetzee Viking Adult 2007 - 1
A new work of fiction by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Disgrace
In this brilliant new work of fiction, J. M. Coetzee once again breaks new literary ground with a book that is, in the words of its main character, “a response to the present in which I find myself.” Diary of a Bad Year takes on the world of politics—a new topic for Coetzee—and explores the role of the writer in our times with an extraordinary moral compass.
At the center of the book is “Señor C,” an aging author who has been asked to write his thoughts on the state of the world by his German publisher. These thoughts, called “Strong Opinions,” address a wide range of subjects and include a scathing indictment of Bush, Cheney, and Blair, as well as a witheringly honest examination of everything from Machiavelli and the current state of the university to music, literature, and intelligent design, offering unexpected perceptions and insightful arguments along the way. Meanwhile, someone new enters the writer’s life: Anya, the beautiful young woman whom he hires to type his manuscript. The relationship that develops between Señor C and Anya has a profound effect on both of them. It also changes the course of Anya’s relationship with Alan, the successful, swaggering man whom she lives with—and who has designs on Señor C’s bank account. Through these characters, Coetzee creates an ingenious literary game that will enthrall readers and surprise them with its emotional power. Bold, funny, and sad, as well as intellectually clever and satisfying, Diary of a Bad Year is a journey into the mind and heart of one of the world’s most acclaimed and accomplished writers.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities 豆瓣
8.9 (8 个评分) 作者: Jane Jacobs Vintage 1992
A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.
Unaccustomed Earth 豆瓣
作者: Jhumpa Lahiri Knopf 2008 - 4
From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize—winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand.
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories–a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate–we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.
(布鲁克林的荒唐事)Brooklyn Follies Auster 豆瓣
作者: Paul Auster Picador USA 2005
Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore - a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances - not to mention a stray relative or two - and leads him to a reckoning with his past. Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others. The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.
The Magus 豆瓣
作者: John Fowles Bantam Books 1985 - 5
A man trapped in a millionare's deadly game of political and sexual betrayal. Filled with shocks and chilling surprises, "The Magus" is a masterwork of contemporary literature. In it, a young Englishman, Nicholas Urfe, accepts a teaching position on a Greek island where his friendship with the owner of the islands most magnificent estate leads him into a nightmare. As reality and fantasy are deliberately confused by staged deaths, erotic encounters, and terrifying violence, Urfe becomes a desperate man fighting for his sanity and his life. A work rich with symbols, conundrums and labrinthine twists of event, "The Magus" is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, a work that ranks with the best novels of modern times.
2008年11月25日 已读
多年前读过,非常喜欢。昨天开始重读。。。依然很喜欢很喜欢。。。好像感触又不同
英文 英文小说
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star 豆瓣
作者: Paul Theroux Hamish Hamilton 2008 - 9
Starting off on the Eurostar from London, Paul Theroux once again sets out on a railway journey through the East, travelling overland through Eastern Europe, and eventually reaching India and Asia. Infused with the changes that have shaped the exterior landscape and enriched with developments to his own perceptions and psychology, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is an absorbing and beautifully written follow-up to The Great Railway Bazaar. Full of life and impeccably evoked, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Paul Theroux at his very best.
2008年12月12日 已读
从dark star safari 开始,Paul Theroux 的游记越来越好看了.文笔真好啊!想慢慢慢慢的看,舍不得看完...看完了,结尾两章,穿越西伯利亚的真是又臭又长,无聊得很.
旅行 英文
Blink 豆瓣
作者: [加拿大] 马尔科姆·格拉德威尔 Back Bay Books 2007 - 4
In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.