"Codex Seraphinianus" by Luigi Serafini
"An extraordinary and surreal art book, this edition has been
redesigned by the author and includes new illustrations. Ever since the Codex
Seraphinianus was first published in 1981, the book has been recognized as one
of the strangest and most beautiful art books ever made. This visual
encyclopedia of an unknown world written in an unknown language has fueled much
debate over its meaning. Written for the information age and addressing the
import of coding and decoding in genetics, literary criticism, and computer
science, the Codex confused, fascinated, and enchanted a generation.
While its message may be unclear, its appeal is obvious: it is a most exquisite artifact. Blurring the distinction between art book and art object, this anniversary edition-redesigned by the author and featuring new illustrations-presents this unique work in a new, unparalleled light. With the advent of new media and forms of communication and continuous streams of information, the Codex is now more relevant and timely than ever. A special limited and numbered deluxe edition that includes a signed print is also available."
While its message may be unclear, its appeal is obvious: it is a most exquisite artifact. Blurring the distinction between art book and art object, this anniversary edition-redesigned by the author and featuring new illustrations-presents this unique work in a new, unparalleled light. With the advent of new media and forms of communication and continuous streams of information, the Codex is now more relevant and timely than ever. A special limited and numbered deluxe edition that includes a signed print is also available."
"Make Good Art" by Neil Gaiman
"In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman delivered the
commencement address at Philadelphia’s
University of the Arts, in which he shared his thoughts about creativity,
bravery, and strength. He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians,
writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he
encouraged them to make good art.
The book Make Good Art, designed by renowned graphic artist
Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman’s inspiring speech."
"Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes" by Maria Konnikova
"No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of
thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary
intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these
abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home?
We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova,
and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the “brain attic”—Holmes’s
metaphor for how we store information and organize knowledge—Konnikova unpacks
the mental strategies that lead to clearer thinking and deeper insights.
Drawing on twenty-first-century neuroscience and psychology, Mastermind
explores Holmes’s unique methods of ever-present mindfulness, astute
observation, and logical deduction. In doing so, it shows how each of us, with
some self-awareness and a little practice, can employ these same methods to
sharpen our perceptions, solve difficult problems, and enhance our creative
powers. For Holmes aficionados and casual readers alike, Konnikova reveals how
the world’s most keen-eyed detective can serve as an unparalleled guide to
upgrading the mind."
"The Hundred Headless Woman" by Max Ernst
"Max Ernst's early-twentieth-century collage-novel calls upon
the reader to interpret captions and surrealistic illustrations—created from
old picture books and journals—to create a story."
"Maidenhair" by Mikhail Shishkin
"Day after day the Russian asylum-seekers sit across from the
interpreter and Peter—the Swiss officers who guard the gates to paradise—and
tell of the atrocities they’ve suffered, or that they’ve invented, or heard
from someone else. These stories of escape, war, and violence intermingle with
the interpreter’s own reading: a history of an ancient Persian war; letters
sent to his son “Nebuchadnezzasaurus,” ruler of a distant, imaginary childhood
empire; and the diaries of a Russian singer who lived through Russia’s wars and
revolutions in the early part of the twentieth century, and eventually saw the
Soviet Union’s dissolution.
Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions—of truth and fiction, of time and timelessness, of love and war, of Death and the Word—and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys."
Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair is an instant classic of Russian literature. It bravely takes on the eternal questions—of truth and fiction, of time and timelessness, of love and war, of Death and the Word—and is a movingly luminescent expression of the pain of life and its uncountable joys."
"The Obscene Bird of Night" by Jose Donoso
"This haunting jungle of a novel has been hailed as "a
masterpiece" by Luis Bunuel and "one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time" by Carlos Fuentes.
The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous
mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with
other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of
imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy
will not soon fade from the reader's mind."
"S." by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
"One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and
desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger.
Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story
and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the
book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them
both into the unknown.
The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but
enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied
onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and
perilous journey.
The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of
one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world
knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around
him.
The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a
disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who
they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with
their passions, hurts, and fears.
S., conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by
award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each
other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle
between forces they don’t understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst’s love
letter to the written word."
"The Box Man" by Kobo Abe
"In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless
protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in
a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling
madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he
sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a
mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a
doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely
fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.
Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders."
Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders."
"The Machine" by James Smythe
"Haunting memories defined him. The machine took them away.
She vowed to rebuild him. From the author of The Testimony comes a Frankenstein
for the twenty-first century.
Beth lives alone on a desolate housing estate near the sea. She came here to rebuild her life following her husband’s return from the war. His memories haunted him but a machine promised salvation. It could record memories, preserving a life that existed before the nightmares.
Now the machines are gone. The government declared them too controversial, the side-effects too harmful. But within Beth’s flat is an ever-whirring black box. She knows that memories can be put back, that she can rebuild her husband piece by piece."
Beth lives alone on a desolate housing estate near the sea. She came here to rebuild her life following her husband’s return from the war. His memories haunted him but a machine promised salvation. It could record memories, preserving a life that existed before the nightmares.
Now the machines are gone. The government declared them too controversial, the side-effects too harmful. But within Beth’s flat is an ever-whirring black box. She knows that memories can be put back, that she can rebuild her husband piece by piece."
"The Suicide Shop" by Jean Teule
"With the twenty-first century just a distant memory and the
world in environmental chaos, many people have lost the will to live.
Business is brisk at The Suicide Shop. Run by the Tuvache
family, the shop offers a variety of ways to end it all, with something to fit
every budget.
The Tuvaches go mournfully about their business until the
youngest member of the family threatens to destroy their contented misery by
confronting them with something they've never encountered before: a love of
life."
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