Probables lluvias

2012-01-18T22:03:00.001-08:00

Novedad Knopf

Título: The Flame Alphabet
Autor: Ben Marcus
Número de páginas: 304
Editorial: Knopf
Fecha original de publicación: 2012
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0307379375

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.knopfdoubleday.com) "In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families.
A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction.
With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents’ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.
The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus’s position in the first rank of American novelists."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The Age of Wire and String (1995)
. Notable American Women (2002)
. The Father Costume (2002)
. The Moors (2010)

2012-01-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

Novedad City Lights

Título: Ether
Autor: Ben Ehrenreich
Número de páginas: 144
Editorial: City Lights
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0872865181

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as The Stranger wanders an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to "get back on top." Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alike—even by the author of this novel, whom he visits repeatedly in unsuccessful attempts to determine his own narrative—his impotence and rage are expressed in acts of seemingly senseless violence. The various characters he encounters on his journey—a pack of sadistic boys, skinheads who beat him senseless, a deaf-mute woman who tries to heal him, a sidewalk preacher, and a deranged man who identifies him as The One—avoid or abuse him, or attempt to follow him.
Entertaining, disturbing, and wildly intelligent, written with sinister humor and great compassion, Ether reflects on the possibilities and consequences of forgiveness, the problems of faith, and the trials of creation.

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The Suitors (2006)

2011-12-31T11:04:00.000-08:00

Las lecturas de 2011

Hace menos de un mes, por alguna razón que desconozco, me dio por pensar que este año había sido uno de pocas lecturas gratificantes. Ahora que realizo un recuento de lo leído en 2011 me doy cuenta que no fue así.

NOVELA

El tedio y la repetición pueden ser dos ingredientes que logren destruir a un texto literario. En el caso de The Pale King, la novela póstuma e inconclusa de David Foster Wallace, éstos se convierten en el combustible capaz de sostener un clímax que se prolonga durante las 550 páginas del libro. En la mayor parte de la historia se establecen los mecanismos laborales entre los empleados de una agencia tributaria ubicada en Peoria, Illinois cuyo objetivo primordial, aunque no único, es detectar discrepancias o datos cuestionables que puedan activar el proceso de una auditoría fiscal. También incluye varios fragmentos aislados, de prosa brillante, en los que se narran hechos de la infancia y juventud de algunos de los personajes protagónicos: un niño que desarrolla habilidades contorsionistas para besar toda la piel que cubre su cuerpo; un hombre cuya inseguridad y nerviosismo le provocaban transpirar de manera incontrolable y humillante en público, entre otros tantos más. Cumbres literarias como ésta: pocas.

Suicide, del escritor francés Édouard Levé, es otra novela cuya lectura disfruté muchísimo este año. El autor terminó y entregó el manuscrito algunos días antes de suicidarse en 2007 y este hecho plantea la posibilidad de que el texto pueda ser asimilado, a pesar de estar plagado de elementos ficticios, como una nota de despedida. El uso de la segunda persona del singular a lo largo de la narración le otorga un tono retórico que obliga al lector a preguntarse si la intención de Levé era la de ofrecer una especie de disculpa dirigida a sus seres queridos por lo que estaba a punto de cometer.

Algunos han sugerido que se trata de un conjunto de relatos, otros la consideran novela o bitácora de viajes, pero La vida triestina, de David Miklos, es un libro que desafía cualquier intento de categorización, pues se niega a terminar aplastada por el, a veces, anquilosante peso de los rubros literarios. Su prosa diáfana crea un cauce de aguas tranquilas que conduce al lector a experimentar encuentros y desencuentros en el presente y el pasado, entre la identidad heredada y la que está en formación.

CUENTO

A principios de año leí La señora rojo, del escritor mexicano Antonio Ortuño. Uno de esos libros que da gusto leer puesto que cada texto en la colección, poblada de personajes hilarantes que transitan realidades desencantadas, es de calidad excelente, lo cual considero como un fenómeno de frecuencia esporádica. No me extrañaría ver el cuento que le da título al libro incluido ad nauseam en antologías venideras.

También leí con gran placer Enfermario, de la regiomontana Gabriela Torres Olivares, una de las escritoras más originales de mi generación que escribe lo que verdaderamente le viene en gana sin temer la recepción editorial de su trabajo. Carne asada (sabadrink) Y Esmegma guadalupano son de notable manufactura.

Hasta la fecha he leído a tres escritores cuya prosa considero perfecta (al menos en su lengua natal): David Foster Wallace, Gary Lutz y Lydia Davis. De esta última leí dos libros de cuentos: Break It Down y Almost No Memory. Todo parece indicar que esta mujer es incapaz de escribir un libro aburrido o de mala calidad. Incluso sus textos más breves resultan tan perspicaces como los de mayor longitud debido a la economía de su lenguaje en la que una concatenación de palabras, siempre exactas, encuentran acomodo como si representasen a cada una de las piezas imprescindibles que le han otorgado a la relojería suiza su notoriedad.

Memory Wall, del estadounidense Anthony Doerr, compuesto por una novela breve y cinco relatos conmovedores, es una lectura que me dejó perplejo por la exquisita capacidad narrativa del autor en la que la emigración y la memoria dictan los quehaceres de sus personajes, pero aún más lo hace el mundo de los objetos inanimados que los rodea.

POESÍA

Las peripecias lingüísticas de Drâstel, del escritor mexicano Román Luján, hacen de este libro de poemas uno de los más interesantes y entretenidos que he tenido la oportunidad de leer en los últimos años. La obra abre con Racimos, un poema-granada cuyas esquirlas presagian una serie de puentes verbales establecidos por el autor a lo largo del libro y que pueden entenderse como el resultado lírico de una vida bilingüe.

ENSAYO

Mientras deambulaba en el stand de la UNAM durante la FIL Guadalajara 2010, encontré un libro de ensayos autobiográficos que de inmediato me atrapó. Una habitación desordenada, de Vivian Abenshushan, es un libro que hace gala de una prosa lúcida, franca y accesible, en el que la autora nos deleita con una serie de pasajes íntimos de tan personales y diversas obsesiones bibliófilas que convierten a estos ensayos en pequeñas joyas, no sólo por su contenido, sino por el sorprendente talento narrativo desplegado desde las primeras hasta las últimas páginas.

MEMORIA

Reborn. Journals & Notebooks 1947-1963, el primer tomo que recoge los controvertidos diarios de la desaparecida ensayista y novelista estadounidense Susan Sontag, resultó ser una gran lectura pues incluso sus primeras entradas, escritas cuando la autora contaba con apenas 15 años de edad, denotan la ferocidad y franqueza que habrían de acompañarla hasta sus últimos días.

Otra lectura memorable dentro de este género fue A Widow’s Story, de la también estadounidense Joyce Carol Oates. En ésta, la escritora narra el proceso de luto y duelo a raíz de la muerte de su esposo con quien estuvo casada durante 46 años. Sus páginas, salpicadas por fragmentos ácidos y conmovedores, retratan el desmoronamiento físico y emocional de la autora con una honestidad fuera de serie y nos ofrecen, por fin, ese lado tan imperfecto y humano que hasta hace poco había conseguido resguardar con absoluto celo.

ARQUITECTURA

Si bien muy pocos proyectos del arquitecto danés Bjarke Ingels terminan de convencerme, la lectura de Yes Is More, la primera monografía que incluye la mayor parte del trabajo que su firma ha desarrollado hasta la fecha, me pareció sumamente divertida. El libro se lee como si se tratase de una novela gráfica –con burbujas de diálogos y otros elementos propios del cómic– en la que poco a poco el arquitecto narra sus aventuras, éxitos y fracasos al tener que lidiar con clientes de infladísimo ego y políticas burocráticas absurdas que parecen ser arrancadas de las páginas de un libro de Kafka.

NOVELA GRÁFICA

Antes de que fuese publicado el primero de cuatro números, que más tarde se reunieron en un solo volumen, apareció un desplegado en la red ilustrando a un nuevo superhéroe enmascarado con la leyenda What if Batman Was a Total Cunt?, misma que desató una serie de amenazas legales de parte de DC Comics, propietarios intelectuales del murciélago, en contra del sello Marvel. La respuesta a esta pregunta incendiaria es Nemesis, la novela gráfica escrita por Mark Millar e ilustrada por Steve McNiven, la cual introduce no a un superhéroe sino al villano más despiadado y dramático de la historia, uno que a todos hace gritar sálvese quien pueda. Esta es una obra cuya crueldad irredimible lo deja a uno boquiabierto y seguramente no tardará en encontrar adaptación cinematográfica en fechas muy próximas.

Life with Mr. Dangerous, del escritor y artista estadounidense Paul Hornschemeier, cuenta con el tono existencial y el desencanto que ha caracterizado al resto de su obra. Esta historia trata sobre la vida desilusionada e inconsecuente de Amy, una mujer soltera que odia su empleo en un centro comercial, con una madre que preferiría evitar, un ex-novio al que no le guarda afecto y una adicción televisiva al programa que le da título a esta novela y que al parecer sólo ella ve. El aislamiento que Hornschemeier logra capturar en sus dibujos y la sutileza de sus diálogos se han vuelto común denominadores que confirman una vez más el talento gráfico y literario de este autor.

Basta con ver en una sola página el acomodo de las ilustraciones a las que Chris Ware nos tiene acostumbrados para comprender cómo trabaja la mente de un genio visual. Lint (Acme Novelty # 20) es su libro más reciente y uno de los más interesantes que ha publicado. Esta novela comienza con el nacimiento de Jordan Lint, su protagonista, y termina justo en el momento de su muerte. En apenas 76 páginas Ware consigue ilustrar la vida de un hombre común e imperfecto de forma magistral.

MISCELÁNEA / EXPERIMENTAL

El bloqueo mental que la autora, actriz, artista plástica y cineasta estadounidense Miranda July padeció mientras escribía el guión cinematográfico de “The Future”, su segundo largometraje, hizo posible la escritura de It Chooses You, un catálogo de vidas variopintas que la autora intersectó y que agudizaron su aplazamiento creativo pero que al final le dieron las respuestas para resolver los elementos narrativos de la cinta. Mediante textos y fotografías July documenta sus encuentros, demasiado humanos, con una serie de individuos que consiguió contactar a través de una publicación impresa semanal en la cual aparecen anuncios para la compra y venta de todo tipo de mercancía.

Sin lugar a dudas existe una amplia tradición del tachado o borrado literario que le permite a los autores crear una historia a partir de otra escrita por alguien más. Sin embargo, Tree of Codes, el libro más reciente del escritor estadounidense Jonathan Safran Foer, revoluciona la idea porque en esta ocasión la tecnología es el ingrediente fundamental en su manufactura. Cada página de este ejemplar se encuentra troquelada de forma distinta, lo cual no sólo le otorga sentido literario a la narración sino también escultórico. Se trata de un producto pseudo-artesanal que fusiona el quehacer de la literatura y hasta cierto punto el de las artes plásticas como hace medio siglo lo hizo Raymond Queneau con Cent mille milliards de poèmes, ese libro maravilloso de trizas paralelas cuyas casi infinitas permutaciones poético-matemáticas ningún ser humano conseguirá leer en su totalidad.

2011-12-06T20:18:00.001-08:00

Leyendo

Título: The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
Autor: David Shields
Número de páginas: 256
Editorial: Vintage
Fecha original de publicación: 2008
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0307387967

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "Inspired by the immense vitality of his 90-something father, author Shields (Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine) looks at the arc of a human life in order to come to terms with mortality. Organized into four stages of life-infancy and childhood, adolescence, adulthood and middle age, old age and death-Shields's short, snappy chapters are crafted from personal anecdotes (many featuring his wife and teenage daughter), literary-philosophical musing and enlightening scientific data, examining a wide range of human concerns relating to 'the beauty and pathos in my body and his body and everybody else's body as well.' Shields also visits historical and contemporary figures, from Sigmund Freud to John Ruskin and Woody Allen, for their thoughts on mortality; says Picasso, 'One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it's too late.' Shield's eclectic approach and personal voice makes this extended meditation on living and dying a pleasing and occasionally profound read."

Otros títulos notables del autor:

. Heroes (1984)
. Dead Languages (1989)
. Handbook for Drowning (1992)
. Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (1996)
. Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine (2004)
. Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography (2002)
. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2010)

2011-12-05T20:17:00.000-08:00

Christa Wolf (1929-2011)

Algunos títulos notables de la autora:
. Moskauer (1961)
Der geteilte Himmel (1963)
. Nachdenken über Christa T (1968)
. Lesen und Schreiben. Aufsätze und Betrachtungen (1972)
. Till Eulenspiegel (1972)
. Unter den Linden. Drei unwahrscheinliche Geschichten (1974)
. Kindheitsmuster (1976)
. Kein Ort. Nirgends (1979)
. Fortgesetzter Versuch. Aufsätze, Gespräche (1979)
. Geschlechtertausch (1980)
. Lesen und Schreiben. Neue Sammlung (1980)
. Kassandra (1983)
Ins Ungebundene gehet eine Sehnsucht. Gesprächsraum Romantik. Prosa (1985)
. Die Dimension des Autors (1959)
. Störfall (1987)
. Ansprachen (1988)
. Sommerstück (1989)
. Was bleibt (1990)
. Reden im Herbst (1990)
. Sei gegrüßt und lebe. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen, 1964–1973 (1993)
. Auf dem Weg nach Tabou (1994)
. Medea: Stimmen (1996)
. Hierzulande Andernorts (1999)
. Leibhaftig (2002)
Ein Tag im Jahr (2003)
. Ja, unsere Kreise berühren sich (2004)
. Mit anderem Blick (2005)
. Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud (2010)

2011-11-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

Novedad Calamari Press

Título: Divorcer
Autor: Gary Lutz
Número de páginas: 120
Editorial: Calamari Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0983163350

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.calamaripress.com) "Divorcer is a collection of seven harrowing and hyperprecise short stories about ruinous relationships and their aftershocks."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Stories In the Worst Way (1996)
. I Looked Alive (2003)
. Partial List of People to Bleach (2007)

2011-11-28T09:33:00.000-08:00

Novedad Turtle Point Press

Título: Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems
Autor: David Trinidad
Número de páginas: 512
Editorial: Turtle Point Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1933527475

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.turtlepointpress.com) "'This magnum opus confirms David Trinidad's place in the poetic firmament: he is simply the best we have. A worthy successor to James Schuyler, Trinidad writes soulfully and sometimes photorealistically about the melancholy threshold where dolls and stars become inner objects—dirty, glamorous, destructible. Jacqueline Susann meets Sei Shonagon? Trinidad manages to combine neo-formalist abstraction with dripping gorgeous figuration: Bonnard's wet dream.'—Wayne Koestenbaum
'This is a volume celebratory in tone, panoramic in scope, funny, and genuinely moving. Trinidad is at the center of what's relevant in his art. And this collection is more vital and more enjoyable than any single performance he has given thus far.'—D.A. Powell
'Trinidad attends to the present to see into the past with such needle point precision it's like encountering a perfectly appointed movie set where personal memory crosses intimately with cultural memory. Poetic form in Trinidad's hands is a metaphor for staking a claim on the material world even as it slips away in a shimmery Hollywood dissolve—a desperate, doomed reclamation of all that can never be held long enough.'—Robyn Schiff"

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Pavane (1981)
. Monday, Monday (1985)
. Living Doll (1986)
. November (1987)
. Three Stories (1988)
. A Taste of Honey (with Bob Flanagan, 1990)
. Hand Over Heart: Poems 1981-1988 (1991)
. Answer Song (1994)
. Essay with Movable Parts (1998)
. Chain Chain Chain (with Jeffery Conway and Lynn Crosbie, 2000)
. Plasticville (2000)
. Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse (with Jeffery Conway and Lynn Crosbie, 2003)
. Tiny Moon Notebook (2007)
. The Late Show (2007)
. By Myself (2010, con D. A. Powell)

2011-11-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

Leyendo

Título: The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws
Autora: Margaret Drabble
Número de páginas: 368
Editorial: Mariner
Fecha original de publicación: 2009
País: Reino Unido
ISBN: 978-0547386095

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression. Alongside curious facts and discoveries about jigsaw puzzles — did you know that the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a boom in puzzle sales? — Drabble introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl, and describes childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read, the jigsaws they completed. She offers penetrating sketches of her parents, her siblings, and her children; she shares her thoughts on the importance of childhood play, on art and writing, on aging and memory. And she does so with her customary intelligence, energy, and wit. This is a memoir like no other."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. A Summer Bird Cage (1963)
. The Garrick Year (1964)
. The Millstone (1965)
. Jerusalem the Golden (1967)
. The Waterfall (1969)
. The Needle's Eye (1972)
. The Realms of Gold (1975)
. The Ice Age (1977)
. The Middle Ground (1980)
. Hassan's Tower (1980)
. The Radiant Way (1987)
. A Natural Curiosity (1989)
. The Gates of Ivory (1991)
. The Witch of Exmoor (1996)
. The Peppered Moth (2001)
. The Seven Sisters (2002)
. The Red Queen (2004)
. The Sea Lady (2006)
. A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman (2011)

2011-11-25T23:37:00.000-08:00

Leyendo

Título: Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan
Autor: William T. Vollmann
Número de páginas: 61
Editorial: Byliner, Kindle
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ASIN: B004YXB5RG

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "Do you think that nuclear power is wise or unwise? When you think about radiation, what comes to mind? How relevant is the nuclear accident to you? So, you approve of nuclear power? These are not questions asked around a water cooler in Anywhere, USA, a safe distance from the eastern coast of Japan, which is experiencing a nuclear disaster of Chernobyl-like proportions. These are questions William T. Vollmann asked a handful of people who were there--who were rocked by the 9-magnitude earthquake on March 11, 2011; who managed to survive the tsunami that followed; and who are now dealing with what is probably the most fearsome element in this trifecta of catastrophes--the unknown. Armed with a dosimeter and an anti-nuclear agenda, Vollmann boldly goes where even the most hungry and seasoned journalist would fear to tread, 'the forbidden zone.' The answers Vollmann gets may surprise you. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the kindness and enduring spirit of the people he encounters--people still abiding what had seemed like a remote horror that now, yet again, is all too real."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. You Bright and Risen Angels (1987)
. The Rainbow Stories (1989)
. The Ice-Shirt (Volume One of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes) (1990)
. Whores for Gloria (1991)
. 13 Stories and 13 Epitaphs (1991)
. An Afghanistan Picture Show (1992)
. Fathers and Crows (Volume Two of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American (1992) Landscapes)
. Butterfly Stories (1993)
. The Rifles (Volume Six of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes) (1994)
. The Atlas (1996)
. The Royal Family (2000)
. Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith (2001) (Volume Three of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes)
. Rising Up and Rising Down : Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means (2004)
. Europe Central (2005)
. Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006)
. Poor People (2007)
. Riding Toward Everywhere (2008)
. Imperial (2009)
. Kissing the Mask (2010)

2011-11-21T01:22:00.000-08:00

Leyendo

Título: We the Animals
Autor: Justin Torres
Número de páginas: 144
Editorial: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0547576725

Sinopsis: (Tomado de www.amazon.com) "We The Animals, Justin Torres's sparse debut novel, is brimming with delicate stories of family, of growing up, of facing reality, and of delaying it. Narrated by the youngest son of a Puerto Rican father and white mother from Brooklyn raising their three young sons in upstate New York, the novel is comprised of vignettes detailing moments spent in the eye of the ferocious bubble of home. Torres paints a large picture through diminutive strokes, evoking envy for the couple’s passion and fear for just how easily that passion turns to rage. The brothers wrestle, fight, cry, and laugh as their family is torn and repaired over and over again. Torres’s prose is fierce, grabbing hold of the reader and allowing him inside the wrenching, whirlwind of a life lived intensely. --Alexandra Foster"

2011-11-20T21:55:00.000-08:00

Novedad Scribner

Título: The Angel Esmeralda

Autor: Don DeLillo
Número de páginas: 224
Editorial: Scribner
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1451655841

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Don DeLillo, a master of using exactly as many words as he needs to paint the sharpest possible picture, has published his first story collection. Written between 1979 and 2011, the nine short pieces in The Angel Esmeralda sketch a handful of moments--the arc of a circumstantial affair, the explosion of a friendship between two teenagers--with the author’s trademark economy. DeLillo knows his context and characters so well, a sliver of them is enough to engage us completely. As one man puts it, floating through space in the collection opener, 'The emptier the land, the more luminous and precise the names for its features.' DeLillo’s short fiction is a series of pointillist landscapes; entire worlds spring from the section of the canvas he chooses to frame for us. Lean in and pay attention--every glimpse counts."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Americana (1971)
. End Zone (1972)
. Great Jones Street (1973)
. Ratner's Star (1976)
. Players (1977)
. Running Dog (1978)
. Amazons (1980)
. The Names (1982)
. White Noise (1985)
. The Day Room (1986)
. Libra (1988)
. Mao II (1991)
. Underworld (1997)
. Valparaiso (1999)
. The Body Artist (2001)
. Cosmopolis (2003)
. Love-Lies-Bleeding (2005)
. Falling Man (2007)
. The Word for Snow (2007)
. Point Omega (2010)

2011-11-19T00:25:00.000-08:00

Daniel Sada (1953-2011)

Algunos títulos notables del autor:
. Los lugares (1977)
. Lampa vida (1980)
. Un rato (1984)
. Juguete de nadie y otras historias (1985)
. Albedrío (1989)
. Tres historias (1990)
. Registro de causantes (1992)
. Una de dos (1994)
. El límite (1997)
. Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe (1999)
. Albedrío (2001)
. Luces Artificiales (2002)
. Ritmo delta (2005)
. El amor es cobrizo (2005)
. La duración de los empeños simples (2006)
. Casi nunca (2008)
. Aquí (2008)
. Ese modo que colma (2010)
. A la vista (2011)

2011-11-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

Leyendo

Título: Blue nights
Autora: Joan Didion
Número de páginas: 208
Editorial: Knopf
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-0307267672
País: Estados Unidos

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. 'How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?' Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Run, River (1963)
. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
. Play It As It Lays (1970)
. A Book of Common Prayer (1977)
. The White Album (1979)
. Salvador (1983)
. Democracy (1984)
. Miami (1987)
. After Henry (1992)
. The Last Thing He Wanted (1996)
. Political Fictions (2001)
. Where I Was From (2003)
. Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003; preface by Frank Rich)
. Vintage Didion (2004)
. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (2006)
. The Year of Magical Thinking (2006)

2011-11-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

Leyendo (Novedad McSweeney's)

Título: It Chooses You
Autora: Miranda July
Número de páginas: 208
Editorial: McSweeney's
Fecha de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1936365012

Sinopsis: (From store.mcsweeneys.net) "In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the 'Large Leather Jacket, $10'? It seemed important to find out—or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay.
Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways.
Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. No One Belongs Here More than You (2007)

2011-11-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

Novedad Pantheon

Título: The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
Autor: Randall Kennedy
Número de páginas: 336
Editorial: Pantheon
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0307377890

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.barnesandnoble.com) "Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency.
Renowned for his cool reason vis-à-vis the pitfalls and clichés of racial discourse, Randall Kennedy—Harvard professor of law and author of the New York Times best seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—gives us a keen and shrewd analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency.
Kennedy tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama, whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, black patriotism, the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites, the challenges posed by the dream of a postracial society, and the far-from-simple symbolism of Obama as a leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors in its entire history.
Eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right, Kennedy offers a gimlet-eyed view of Obama’s triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Race, Crime, and the Law (1997)
. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002)
. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption (2003)
. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008)

2011-10-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

Novedad Cambridge University Press

Título: The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941-1956
Autor: Samuel Beckett
Editores: Martha Dow Fehsendfeld, Lois More Overbeck, Dan Gunn, George Craig
Número de páginas: 886
Editorial: Cambridge University Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Irlanda
ISBN: 978-0521867948

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.cambridge.org) "This second volume of The Letters of Samuel Beckett opens with the War years, when it was often impossible or too dangerous to correspond. The surge of letters beginning in 1945, and their variety, are matched by the outpouring and the range of Beckett's published work. Primarily written in French and later translated by the author, the work includes stories, a series of novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable), essays and plays – most notably Waiting for Godot. The letters chronicle a passionately committed but little known writer evolving into a figure of international reputation, and his response to such fame. The volume provides detailed introductions which discuss Beckett's situation during the War and his crucial move into the French language, as well as translations of the letters, explanatory notes, year-by-year chronologies, profiles of correspondents and other contextual information."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Whoroscope (1930)
. Proust (1931)
. Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932)
. More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
. Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)
. Murphy (1938)
. Eleutheria (1940s)
. Watt (1945)
. First Love (1945)
. Mercier and Camier (1946)
. The Expelled (1946)
. The Calmative (1946)
. The End (1946)
. Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949)
. Molloy (1951)
. Malone Dies (1951)
. Waiting for Godot (1952)
. The Unnamable (1953)
. Stories and Texts for Nothing (1954)
. Act Without Words I (1956)
. Act Without Words II (1956)
. All That Fall (1956)
. From an Abandoned Work (1957)
. Endgame (1957)
. Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
. Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
. Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
. Embers (1959)
. Happy Days (1960)
. Rough for Radio I (1961)
. Rough for Radio II (1961)
. Words and Music (1961)
. How It Is (1961)
. Cascando (1962)
. Play (1963)
. Come and Go (1965)
. Eh Joe (1965)
. Disjecta (1929 - 1967)
. Breath (1969)
. The Lost Ones (1971)
. Not I (1972)
. That Time (1975)
. Footfalls (1975)
. Ghost Trio (1975)
. ... but the clouds ... (1976)
. Fizzles (1976)
. A Piece of Monologue (1980)
. Company (1980)
. Ill Seen Ill Said (1981)
. Rockaby (1981)
. Ohio Impromptu (1981)
. Quad I + II (1981)
. Catastrophe (1982)
. Nacht und Träume (1982)
. What Where (1983)
. Worstward Ho (1983)
. Stirrings Still (1988)
. What is the Word (1989)

2011-10-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Boys and Murderers
Autor: Hermann Hungar
Traducción de: Isabel Fargo Cole
Número de páginas: 252
Editorial: Twisted Spoon Press
Fecha original de publicación: 1920
País: Alemania
ISBN: 978-8086264257

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.barnesandnoble.com) "'From the author of the highly-acclaimed novel The Maimed, the completecollection of his short fiction translated for the first time into English. Admired by Thomas Mann, whose Preface is included in this volume for his analysis of the human psyche, Ungar was a writer of unique talent whose life was prematurely ended by illness. The stories in this volume are in turn grotesque and comical as they explore the depravities of the heart and delusions of the mind. Taking Prague as well as his hometown of Boskovice for his settings, Ungar can be located in that illustrious tradition of both Prague German writers (he was associated with Franz Kafka in the Prague Circle) and Jewish writers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Joseph Roth. Long forgotten in German literature, Ungar's work has experienced a renaissance over the past decade with new editions appearing in German as well as in Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, and English."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The Maimed (1923)
. The Murder of Captain Hanika (1925)
. The Class (1927)
. The Red General (1928)
. The Arbor (1930)
. Colbert's Journey (1930)

2011-10-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

Novedad Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Título: Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language from the Insect World
Autora: Marlene Zuk
Número de páginas: 272
Editorial: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0151013739

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "How is it that insects, with their robotic demeanor and stripped-down biological toolbox, are able to accomplish so many of the same functions that humans do? In this smart, engaging account of the social behavior (and yes, the sex lives) of ants, crickets, bees, and others, evolutionary biologist Zuk shows us that many of the things we think of as setting humans apart--personality, learning, language--aren't so extraordinary after all. With little more than a brittle exoskeleton and a few clusters of nerves, insects are able to take care of their young, tell one another about far-off places, make group decisions, and recognize distinct individuals, not just of their own species but of ours. In Zuk's breezy style, disquisitions on the mating habits of damselflies or the genetics of fruit flies are made surprisingly palatable--and they yield unexpected insights into human interactions. Zuk approaches her subject with such humor and enthusiasm for the intricacies of insect life, even bug-phobes will relish her account."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn About Sex from Animals (2002)
. Riddled with Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are (2007)

2011-10-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

Novedad Libros del Silencio

Título: Mi madre es un pez

Autores: Katya Adaui · Manuel Astur · Javier Avilés · Jon Bilbao · Javier Calvo · Matías Candeira · Fernando Cañero · Celso Castro · Mercedes Cebrián · Paula Cifuentes · Fernando Clemot · Aixa de la Cruz · Mariana Enriquez · Alfonso Fernández Burgos · Rodrigo Fresán · Esther García Llovet · Óscar Gual · Manuel Jabois · Andrea Jeftanovic · Paula Lapido · Sergio Lifante · Berta Marsé · Eduardo Mendoza · Ricardo Menéndez Salmón · Javier Moreno · Alberto Olmos · Antonio Ortuño · Camilo de Ory · Carlo Padial · Gabriel Sofer · Jordi Soler · Juan Terranova · David Ventura

Editores: Sergi Bellver, Juan Soto Ivars
Número de páginas: 376
Editorial: Libros del Silencio
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: España
ISBN: 978-8493853174

Sinopsis: (Tomada de librosdelsilencio.com) "Reunimos los relatos acerca de la familia de 33 de los autores más destacados en lengua española, como Eduardo Mendoza, Rodrigo Fresán, Ricardo Menéndez Salmón, Alberto Olmos, Javier Calvo, Mercedes Cebrián o Jordi Soler. Con edición y prólogo de Sergi Bellver y Juan Soto Ivars.
«Mi madre es un pez», decía Vardaman en una de las escenas culminantes de Mientras agonizo, novela en la que Faulkner llevaba al extremo las relaciones familiares. Ese tema preeminente en la literatura universal sirve de nexo para esta antología de cuentos con la que pretendemos hacer un retrato de familia del buen momento que vive la narrativa breve. En ella participan escritores de reconocido prestigio, las mejores firmas emergentes y algunas jóvenes promesas que conformarán dentro de unos años el panorama literario en español. En total, más de treinta autores que hacen de esta una antología anfibia y eléctrica, con el cableado dispuesto para conducir la luz del Drama pero que amenaza al lector con un cortocircuito porque puede conectar la experiencia de la lectura con sus propios recuerdos, sombras y proyecciones."

2011-10-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

Novedad Doubleday

Título: Damned
Autor: Chuck Palahniuk
Número de páginas: 256
Editorial: Doubleday
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0385533027

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "'Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,' declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.
This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Fight Club (1996)
. Survivor (1999)
. Invisible Monsters (1999)
. Choke (2001)
. Lullaby (2002)
. Diary (2003)
. Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003)
. Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004)
. Haunted (2005)
. Rant (2007)
. Snuff (2008)
. Pygmy (2009)
. Tell-All (2010)

2011-10-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Radi Os
Autor: Ronald Johnson
Número de páginas: 107
Editorial: Flood Editions
Fecha de publicación: 2005
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0974690247

Sinopsis: (From www.amazon.com) "In his afterword, Guy Davenport comments: 'Radi os is a meditation, first of all, on grace. It finds in Milton's poems those clusters of words which were originally a molecular intuition of the complex harmony of nature whereby eyesight loops back to its source in the sun, the earth, the tree, our cousin animals, the spiralling galaxies, and mysteriously to the inhuman black of empty space.'"

2011-10-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

Novedad Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Título: Pigeon English
Autor: Stephen Kelman
Número de páginas: 288
Editorial: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Reino Unido
ISBN: 978-0547500607

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.barnesandnoble.com) "Lying in front of Harrison Opuku is a body, the body of one of his classmates, a boy known for his crazy basketball skills, who seems to have been murdered for his dinner.
Armed with a pair of camouflage binoculars and detective techniques absorbed from television shows like CSI, Harri and his best friend, Dean, plot to bring the perpetrator to justice. They gather evidence—fingerprints lifted from windows with tape, a wallet stained with blood—and lay traps to flush out the murderer. But nothing can prepare them for what happens when a criminal feels you closing in on him.
Recently emigrated from Ghana with his sister and mother to London’s enormous housing projects, Harri is pure curiosity and ebullience—obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to the pigeon who visits his balcony, quite possibly the fastest runner in his school, and clearly also fast on the trail of a murderer.
Told in Harri's infectious voice and multicultural slang, Pigeon English follows in the tradition of our great novels of friendship and adventure, as Harri finds wonder, mystery, and danger in his new, ever-expanding world."

2011-10-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

Novedad W. W. Norton & Company

Título: Ghost Lights
Autora: Lydia Millet
Número de páginas: 256
Editorial: W. W. Norton & Company
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0393081718

Sinopsis: (Tomada de books.wwnorton.com) "Hal is a mild-mannered IRS bureaucrat who suspects that his wife is cheating with her younger, more virile coworker. At a drunken dinner party, Hal volunteers to fly to Belize in search of Susan's employer, T.-the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream-who has vanished in a tropical jungle, initiating a darkly humorous descent into strange and unpredictable terrain.
Salon raved that Millet's 'writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself.' In Ghost Lights, she combines her characteristic wit and a sharp eye for the weirdness that governs human (and nonhuman) interactions. With the scathing satire and tender honesty of Sam Lipsyte and a dark, quirky, absurdist style reminiscent of Joy Williams, Millet has created a comic, startling, and surprisingly philosophical story about idealism and disillusionment, home and not home, and the singular, heartbreaking devotion of parenthood."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Omnivores (1996)
. George Bush: Dark Prince of Love (2000)
. My Happy Life (2002)
. Everyone's Pretty (2005)
. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (2005)
. How the Dead Dream (2008)
. Love in Infant Monkeys (2009)

2011-10-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Novedad Farrar, Straus and Giroux (EVENTO MADRE)

Título: Parallel Stories [Párhuzamos történetek]
Autor: Péter Nádas
Traduccióm de: Imre Goldstein
Número de páginas: 1152
Editorial: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fecha original de publicación: 2005, en húngaro
ISBN: 978-0374229764
País: Hungría

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans—Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies—across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century.
Three unusual men are at the heart of Parallel Stories: Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi collaboration during the 1940s; Ágost Lippay Lehr, whose influential father has served Hungary’s different political regimes for decades; and András Rott, who has his own dark record of mysterious activities abroad. The web of extended and interconnected dramas reaches from 1989 back to the spring of 1939, when Europe trembled on the edge of war, and extends to the bestial times of 1944–45, when Budapest was besieged, the Final Solution devastated Hungary’s Jews, and the war came to an end, and on to the cataclysmic Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. We follow these men from Berlin and Moscow to Switzerland and Holland, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and of course, from village to city in Hungary. The social and political circumstances of their lives may vary greatly, their sexual and spiritual longings may seem to each of them entirely unique, yet Péter Nádas’s magnificent tapestry unveils uncanny reverberating parallels that link them across time and space.
This is Péter Nádas’s masterpiece—eighteen years in the writing, a sensation in Hungary even before it was published, and almost four years in the translating. Parallel Stories is the first foreign translation of this daring, demanding, and momentous novel, and it confirms for an even larger audience what Hungary already knows: that it is the author’s greatest work."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. A Lovely Tale of Photography
. The End of a Family Story
. A Book of Memories
. Love
. Own Death
. Fire and Knowledge

2011-10-22T23:22:00.000-07:00

Novedad Knopf

Título: 1q84 [Ichi-kyū-hachi-yon]
Autor: Haruki Murakami
Traducción de: Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel
Número de páginas: 944
Editorial: Knopf
Fecha original de publicación: 2009, en japonés
País: Japón
ISBN: 978-0307593313

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Hear the Wind Sing (1979)
. Pinball, 1973 (1980)
. The Elephant Vanishes (1980-1991)
. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (1981-2005)
. A Wild Sheep Chase (1982)
. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)
. Norwegian Wood (1987)
. Dance Dance Dance (1988)
. South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992)
. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1992-1995)
. Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)
. After the Quake (1999)
. Kafka on the Shore (2002)
. After Dark (2004)
. Strange Tales from Tokyo (2005)
. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008)

2011-10-22T11:14:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: In Persuasion Nation
Autor: George Saunders
Número de páginas: 240
Editorial: Riverhead
Fecha de publicación: 2006
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1594482427

Sinopsis: (From Publishers Weekly) "Following his superb story collections Civilwarland in Bad Decline (1996) and Pastoralia (1999), as well as last year's novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Saunders reaffirms his sharp, surreal vision of contemporary, media-saturated life, but keeps most of the elements within his familiar bandwidth. In the sweetly acerbic 'My Flamboyant Grandson,' a family trip through Times Square is overwhelmed by pop-up advertisements. In 'Jon,' orphans get sold to a market research firm and become famous as 'Tastemakers & Trendsetters' (complete with trading cards). 'CommComm' concerns an air force PR flunky living with the restless souls of his parents while covering for a spiraling crisis at work. The more conventionally grounded stories are the most compelling: one lingers over a bad Christmas among Chicago working stiffs, another follows a pair of old Russian-Jewish women haunted by memories of persecution. Others collapse under the weight of too much wit (the title story especially), and a few are little more than exercises in patience ('93990,' 'My Amendment'). But Saunders's vital theme—the persistence of humanity in a vacuous, nefarious marketing culture of its own creation—comes through with subtlety and fresh turns."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996)
. Pastoralia (2000)
. The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2000)
. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005)
. The Braindead Megaphone (2007)

2011-10-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

Novedad Semiotext(e)

Título: Bubbles: Spheres Volume I: Microspherology [Sphären I: Blasen, Mikrosphärologie]
Autor: Peter Sloterdijk
Traducción de: Wieland Hoban
Número de páginas: 664
Editorial: Semiotext(e)
Fecha original de publicación: 1998, en alemán
ISBN: 978-1584351047
País: Alemania

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "An epic project in both size and purview, Peter Sloterdijk's three-volume, 2,500-page Spheres is the late-twentieth-century bookend to Heidegger's Being and Time. Rejecting the century's predominant philosophical focus on temporality, Sloterdijk, a self-described 'student of the air,' reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam). Exploring macro- and micro-space from the Greek agora to the contemporary urban apartment, Sloterdijk is able to synthesize, with immense erudition, the spatial theories of Aristotle, René Descartes, Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Bataille into a morphology of shared, or multipolar, dwelling--identifying the question of being as one bound up with the aerial technology of architectonics and anthropogenesis.Sloterdijk describes Bubbles, the first volume of Spheres, as a general theory of the structures that allow couplings--or as the book's original intended subtitle put it, an 'archeology of the intimate.' Bubbles includes a wide array of images, not to illustrate Sloterdijk's discourse, but to offer a spatial and visual 'parallel narrative' to his exploration of bubbles.Written over the course of a decade, the Spheres trilogy has waited another decade for its much-anticipated English translation from Semiotext(e). Volumes II, Globes, and III, Foam, will be published in the coming seasons."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (1983)
. Der Zauberbaum. Die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse im Jahr 1785 (1985)
. Der Denker auf der Bühne. Nietzsches Materialismus (1986)
. Kopernikanische Mobilmachung und ptolmäische Abrüstung (1986)
. Zur Welt kommen – Zur Sprache kommen. Frankfurter Vorlesungen (1988)
. Eurotaoismus. Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik (1989)
. Versprechen auf Deutsch. Rede über das eigene Land (1990)
. Weltfremdheit (1993)
. Falls Europa erwacht. Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters seiner politischen Absence (1994)
. Scheintod im Denken - Von Philosophie und Wissenschaft als Übung, Frankfurt am Main (1995)
. Im selben Boot - Versuch über die Hyperpolitik, Frankfurt am Main (1995)
. Selbstversuch (1996)
. Der starke Grund zusammen zu sein. Erinnerungen an die Erfindung des Volkes (1998)
. Sphären II – Globen, Makrosphärologie (1999)
. Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus (1999)
. Die Verachtung der Massen. Versuch über Kulturkämpfe in der modernen Gesellschaft (2000)
. Über die Verbesserung der guten Nachricht. Nietzsches fünftes Evangelium. Rede zum 100. Todestag von Friedrich Nietzsche (2000)
. Nicht gerettet. Versuche nach Heidegger (2001)
. Die Sonne und der Tod (2001)
. Tau von den Bermudas. Über einige Regime der Phantasie (2001)
. Luftbeben. An den Wurzeln des Terrors (2002)
. Sphären III – Schäume, Plurale Sphärologie, 2004 (2004)
. Im Weltinnenraum des Kapitals (2005)
. Was zählt, kehrt wieder. Philosophische Dialogue (2005)
. Zorn und Zeit. Politisch-psychologischer Versuch (2006)
. Der ästhetische Imperativ (2007)
. Derrida Ein Ägypter (2007)
. Gottes Eifer. Vom Kampf der drei Monotheismen (2007)
. Du mußt dein Leben ändern (2009)
. Philosophische Temperamente Von Platon bis Foucault (2009)

2011-10-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

Novedad Fantagraphics

Título: Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery
Autor: Alexander Theroux
Número de páginas: 352
Editorial: Fantagraphics
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1606994658

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Any journey with Alexander Theroux is an education. Possessed of a razor-sharp and hyperliterate mind, he stands beside Thomas Pynchon as one of the sharpest cultural commentators of our time. So when he decided to accompany his wife — the artist Sarah Son-Theroux — on her Fulbright Scholarship to Estonia, it occasioned this penetrating examination of a country that, for many, seems alien and distanced from the modern world.
For Theroux, the country and its people become a puzzle. His fascination with their language, manners, and legacy of occupation and subordination lead him to a revelatory examination of Estonia’s peculiar place in European history. All the while, his trademark acrobatic allusions, quotations, and digressions — which take us from Hamlet through Jean Cocteau to Married… with Children — render his travels as much internal and psychical as they are external and physical. Through these obsessive references to Western culture, we come to appreciate how insular the country has become, yet also marvel at its fierce individuality and preternatural beauty — such is the skill of Theroux’s gaze.
This travelogue of his nine months abroad also brims with anecdotes of Theroux’s encounters with Estonian people and — in some of its most bitterly comedic episodes — his fellow Americans whom he at times feels more alienated from than the frosty, humorless Europeans.
Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery is as biting and satirical as it is witty and urbane; as curious and lyrical as it is brash and irreverent. It marks a new highlight in an already stellar career and a book that continues Fantagraphics’ exceptional line of prose works."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Three Wogs (1972)
. Darconville's Cat (1981)
. An Adultery (1988)
. Laura Warholic or, The Sexual Intellectual (2007)

2011-10-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Novedad Random House

Título: Nightwoods
Autor: Charles Frazier
Número de páginas: 272
Editorial: Random House
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-1400067091
País: Estados Unidos

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "A woman living in an abandoned rural lodge is suddenly forced to raise her dead sister's two wild young children. Neither of them has spoken a word since witnessing their mother's brutal murder, and they’ve developed a fondness for breaking things and starting fires. These mute, trouble-making kids are among Charles Frazier’s finest characters. And when their ne'er-do-well father is acquitted and released from jail, the action in this lush and lively novel flares. With sharp dialogue, unexpected humor, and a powerful ability to depict the scents and sounds of loamy Carolina backwoods, while toying with fire and water as his themes, Frazier has crafted an impressive story, proving that Cold Mountain was no fluke."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Cold Mountain (1997)
. Thirteen moons (2006)

2011-10-18T23:19:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Dogs & Water
Autor: Anders Nilsen
Número de páginas: 96
Editorial: Drawn and Quarterly
Fecha original de publicación: 2004
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1897299081

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "A young man wanders a war-torn tundra accompanied only by a stuffed bear. As he wanders, he encounters various animals and humans who all prove inferior to the lifeless bear as a real companion—imaginary friends are the best ones in a world where everyone competes for meager resources. Nilsen has crafted a haunting fable of humanity and loneliness, confronting tropes about journeys and destinations. 'I know this whole venture is not about having a goal,' he tells the bear at one point. 'But doesn't the whole idea of a journey become kind of meaningless if there's not a sense of some destination?' Each encounter is more troubling than the last: a bus shows up but a passenger shoots at the narrator. A pack of reindeer try to steal the bear. In return, the narrator blinds one of the majestic stags with a rock. A human who shows up in the bleak terrain tries to steal the narrator's pack. The narrator is finally accepted by a pack of wild dogs that lives off the remains of both the humans and animals already encountered. Nilsen's open, simple yet graceful art captures the eerie, empty sense of loss that permeates this unsettling, memorable story."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Ballad of the Two Headed Boy (1999)
. Big Questions (1999-2010)
. Sisyphus (2003)
. Don't Go Where I Can't Follow (2006)
. Monologues for the Coming Plague (2006)
. The End (2007)
. Monologues for Calculating the Destiny of Black Holes (2009)

2011-10-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

Novedad Prestel

Título: Neo Rauch & Rosa Loy: Hinter Den Gärten/Behind the Gardens
Autores: Karlheinz Essl, Tilo Baumgartel, Bernhart Schwenk, Günther Oberhollenzer
Número de páginas: 160
Editorial: Prestel
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Alemania
ISBN: 978-3791351421

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "This book presents works from the first joint exhibition of the artists Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy. Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy live and work as a successful artist couple on the international stage. They have been married since 1985 and each of them produces independent works which profit from the differences as well as the similarities between the two artists. Neo Rauch's works make reference to advertising graphics, the aesthetics of comedy, and the theatre. By contrast Rosa Loy focuses her attention in her paintings on the mystery of woman, a new femininity, and a new romanticism. For the very first time the couple's works are being presented in a joint exhibition. The exhibition and catalogue featuring work not previously shown will be designed by the artists themselves."

2011-10-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

Novedad New Directions

Título: Lightning Rods
Autora: Helen DeWitt
Número de páginas: 192
Editorial: New Directions
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-0811219433
País: Estados Unidos

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "'All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.' Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top — and to the very heart of corporate insanity — with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office.
An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling — as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. The Last Samurai (2000)
. Your Name Here (2007)

2011-10-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

Novedad Knopf

Título: The Cat's Table
Autor: Michael Ondaatje
Número de páginas: 288
Editorial: Knopf
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-0307700117
País: Canadá/Sri Lanka

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Michael Ondaatje's finely wrought new novel chronicles a young boy's passage from Sri Lanka to London onboard the Oronsay, both as it unfolds and in hindsight. Glancing off the author's own biography, the story follows 11-year-old Michael as he immerses himself in the hidden corners and relationships of a temporary floating world, overcoming its physical boundaries with the expanse of his imagination. The boy's companions at the so-called Cat's Table, where the ship’s unconnected strays dine together, become his friends and teachers, each leading him closer to the key that unlocks the Oronsay's mystery decades later. Elegantly structured and completely absorbing, The Cat's Table is a quiet masterpiece by a writer at the height of his craft. --Mia Lipman"

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The Dainty Monsters (1967)
. The Man with Seven Toes (1969)
. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970)
. Rat Jelly (1973)
. Coming Through Slaughter (1976)
. Elimination Dance (1978)
. There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do (1979)
. Secular Love (1984)
. All along the Mazinaw (1986)
. Two Poems (1986)
. In the Skin of a Lion (1987)
. The Cinnamon Peeler (1989)
. The English Patient (1992)
. Handwriting (1998)
. Anil's Ghost (2000)
. The Story (2006)
. Divisadero (2007)

2011-10-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

Novedad Knopf

Título: Blue nights
Autora: Joan Didion
Número de páginas: 208
Editorial: Knopf
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-0307267672
País: Estados Unidos

2011-10-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Gravel Vol. 1: Bloody Liars

Autores: Warren Ellis, Mike Wolfer
Ilustrado por: Raulo Caceres, Oscar Jimenez
Número de páginas: 192
Editorial: Avatar Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2009
ISBN: 978-1592910694
País: Reino Unido/Estados unidos

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "William Gravel carves a bloody path of death in his first full-color collection! Gravel Volume 1 features the first eight issues (#0-7) of this on-going series from Warren Ellis and co-writer Mike Wolfer with art by Raulo Caceres and Oscar Jimenez, as well as a special cover gallery! Long-buried and lost in antiquity, a unique book of magic once existed, filled with such extraordinary and arcane spells, supernatural rites and inherent power that its possessor would be either unequaled, or driven irrevocably insane. Recently unearthed, the Sigsand Manuscript has been divided into six pieces and distributed among the Minor Seven, Britain's great Occult Detectives. With the Sigsand in their grasp, the Seven now wield more power than they were ever meant to possess... And William Gravel is not happy about it. Once a member of their Order but unceremoniously replaced within their ranks, the SAS Sergeant Major and Combat Magician is on a mission of revenge, redemption and quite possibly rebirth, as he takes on the members of the Minor Seven one-by-one... And God help each of Gravel's former colleagues should they decide not to relinquish their sections of the Sigsand to the one man who might have the supernatural skills and restraint to use the reconstituted manuscript without accidentally destroying the Earth in the process. They all promised to use the unholy power wisely, but Gravel knows they are all Bloody Liars!"

2011-10-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Novedad Doubleday

Título: Zone One
Autor: Colson Whitehead
Número de páginas: 272
Editorial: Doubleday
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
ISBN: 978-0385528078
País: Estados Unidos

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "In what Whitehead describes as his Autobiographical Fourth Novel (as opposed to the more usual autobiographical first novel), the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist John Henry Days explores the in-between space of adolescence through one boy's summer in a predominantly black Long Island neighborhood. Benji and Reggie, brothers so closely knit that many mistake them for twins, have been coming out to Sag Harbor for as long as they can remember. For Benji, each three-month stay at Sag is a chance to catch up with friends he doesn't see the rest of the year, and to escape the social awkwardness that comes with a bad afro, reading Fangoria, and being the rare African-American student at an exclusive Manhattan prep school. As he and Reggie develop separate identities and confront new factors like girls, part-time jobs and car-ownership, Benji struggles to adapt to circumstances that could see him joining the ranks of Those Who Don't Come Out Anymore. Benji's funny and touching story progresses leisurely toward Labor Day, but his reflections on what's gone before provide a roadmap to what comes later, resolving social conflicts that, at least this year, have yet to explode."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The Intuitionist (1999)
. John Henry Days (2001)
. The Colossus of New York (2003)
. Apex Hides the Hurt (2006)
. Sag Harbor (2009)

2011-10-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

Novedad Drawn and Quarterly

Título: The Death-Ray
Autor: Daniel Clowes
Número de páginas: 48
Editorial: Drawn and Quarterly
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1770460515

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.drawnandquarterly.com) "Teen outcast Andy is an orphaned nobody with only one friend, the obnoxious but loyal Louie. They roam school halls and city streets, invisible to everyone but bullies and tormentors, until the glorious day when Andy takes his first puff on a cigarette. That night he wakes, heart pounding, soaked in sweat, and finds himself suddenly overcome with the peculiar notion that he can do anything. Indeed, he can and as he learns the extent of his new powers, he discovers a terrible and seductive gadget - a hideous compliment to his seething rage - that forever changes everything.
The DEATH-RAY utilizes the classic staples of the superhero genre - origin, costume, ray-gun. sidekick, fight scene - reconfiguring them in a story that is anything but morally simplistic. With subtle comedy, deft mastery and an obvious affection for the bold Pop Art exuberance of comic book design, Daniel Clowes delivers a contemporary meditation on the the darkness of the human psyche."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. #$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection (1989)
. Lout Rampage! (1991)
. Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993)
. Pussey!: The Complete Saga of Young Dan Pussey (1995)
. Orgy Bound (1996)
. Ghost World (1997)
. Caricature (1998)
. David Boring (2000)
. Twentieth Century Eightball (2002)
. Wilson (2010)
. Mister Wonderful (2011)

2011-10-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

Novedad Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Título: We the Animals
Autor: Justin Torres
Número de páginas: 144
Editorial: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0547576725

2011-10-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: The Face
Autor: David St. John
Número de páginas: 80
Editorial: Harper
Fecha original de publicación: 2004
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 0060593679

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "St. John's ninth collection is roughly plotted around a midlife crisis: 'Each day, in the mirror, that face smeared a bit more brutally/ Across the glass.' In order to push the narcissism to its limits, St. John confronts his speaker with a forthcoming biopic of his own life, complete with poor scripting by an ex-, 'Infanta,' and a young cinematographer 'with a pierced dick.' Fuguing around writing process-oriented repetitions of 'assembling' and 'dissembling,' the speaker utters an Eliotic cri de coeur ('I have invented a whole philosophy of shatterings'), complains about the script ('That tapestry of travesty') and alternately fantasizes about and feels revulsion for the 'hot' young woman cast to play him, with 'a certain angel-butch Joan-of-Arcish kind of thing.' September 11, as a key recent event in the speaker's life, is presented as a set piece with 'flakes of flint falling/ Through long fingers of flame. Black leaves. Feuilles de noire.' Faulty cell phone communication, straight talk on cultural decline ('remind us why anyone gives a shit, OK?') and a lengthy diversionary prose poem listing varieties of masks follow, until, at the premiere of the movie of his life, the speaker 'hurls,' crawls outside and sees a vision of his own face assemble in the sky. Despite some entertainingly arch moments (on literary couples: 'all that flesh made word') and anecdotes of self-abnegation, most readers will have put it together and walked out long before that."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. For Lerida (1973)
. Hush (1976)
. The Olive Grove (1980)
. The Shore (1980)
. A Folio of Lost Worlds (1981)
. The Man in the Yellow Gloves (1985)
. No Heaven (1985)
. The Orange Piano (1987)
. Terraces of Rain: An Italian Sketchbook (1991)
. Study For The World's Body (1994)
. Where the Angels Come Toward Us (1995)
. In the Pines: Lost Poems 1972-1997 (1999)
. The Red Leaves of Night (1999)
. Prism (2002)

2011-10-10T23:12:00.001-07:00

Novedad Guggenheim Museum Publications (Evento Madre)

Título: All
Editores: Maurizio Cattelan, Nancy Spector
Número de páginas: 248
Editorial: Guggenheim Museum Publications
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Italia
ISBN: 978-0892074167

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster and tragic poet of our times, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art--most notoriously with 'The Ninth Hour,' his 1999 sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite. Cattelan's subjects range widely, being derived from popular culture, history and organized religion; while bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique. Maurizio Cattelan: All accompanies the Guggenheim Museum's retrospective survey of the artist. For the exhibition, the museum has devised a site-specific installation intended to sidestep the totalizing effect of a retrospective, and for this catalogue the museum has produced an equally unique response to this dilemma and to the conventions of the catalogue format. All is a faux-leather-bound hardcover with gold stamping and thin paper that is designed to resemble an old textbook or bible. The volume catalogues almost every work of Cattelan's from the late '80s to the present within a double-column page format, reproducing them in full color with accompanying entries. One of the wittiest and most beautiful art books of recent years, All includes a detailed critical overview by Nancy Spector, documenting not only Cattelan's artistic output but also his ongoing activities as a curator, editor and publisher, plus a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography. Needless to say, All is indeed the definitive Cattelan bible.
Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960) began his career as a furniture designer, transitioning to art through his realistic sculptures. He has had solo exhibitions at some of the most distinguished museums in the world, such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He has also founded and edited magazines such as Charley, Permanent Food and Toilet Paper."

2011-10-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Novedad Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Título: The Marriage Plot
Editor: Jeffrey Eugenides
Número de páginas: 416
Editorial: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0374203054

Sinopsis: (Tomada de amazon.com) "Even among authors, Jeffrey Eugenides possesses a rare talent for being able to inhabit his characters. In The Marriage Plot, his third novel and first in ten years (following the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex), Eugenides describes a year or so in the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the early 80s. There is Madeleine, a self-described 'incurable romantic' who is slightly embarrassed at being so normal. There is Leonard, a brilliant, temperamental student from the Pacific Northwest. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major from Eugenides’ own Detroit. What follows is a book delivered in sincere and genuine prose, tracing the end of the students’ college days and continuing into those first, tentative steps toward true adulthood. This is a thoughtful and at times disarming novel about life, love, and discovery, set during a time when so much of life seems filled with deep portent. --Chris Schluep"

Otros títulos notables del autor/editor:
. The Virgin Suicides (1993)
. Middlesex (2002)

2011-10-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

Novedad Anagrama

Título: A la vista
Autor: Daniel Sada
Número de páginas: 240
Editorial: Anagrama
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: México
ISBN: 978-8433972293

Sinopsis: (Tomado de www.anagrama-ed.es) "Ponciano Palma y Sixto Araiza lo planearon todo muy bien. Había que despertar aún más la codicia nunca dormida de Serafín Farías, el dueño de la empresa de transportes, el explotador. Le hablaron de unos terrenos espléndidos que podría comprar a precio de ganga. Hacia allí fueron los tres, y en aquel lugar lejano y desértico Ponciano y Sixto mataron a tiros a Serafín Farías. Creían haber cometido el crimen perfecto, comenzarán a deambular por el siempre sorprendente México sadiano, y por otro inesperado desierto interior, en una huida hacia todos lados, en pos de ilusiones falsas o verdaderas. Una tragedia cómica, o comedia trágica, donde brilla una vez más uno de los más grandes escritores mexicanos contemporáneos, un constructor de barrocos edificios verbales, pero también fiel a la palabra de los narradores populares."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Los lugares (1977)
. Lampa vida (1980)
. Un rato (1984)
. Juguete de nadie y otras historias (1985)
. Albedrío (1989)
. Tres historias (1990)
. Registro de causantes (1992)
. Una de dos (1994)
. El límite (1997)
. Porque parece mentira la verdad nunca se sabe (1999)
. Albedrío (2001)
. Luces Artificiales (2002)
. Ritmo delta (2005)
. El amor es cobrizo (2005)
. La duración de los empeños simples (2006)
. Casi nunca (2008)
. Aquí (2008)
. Ese modo que colma (2010)

2011-10-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

Novedad Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Título: The Submission
Autora: Amy Waldman
Número de páginas: 320
Editorial: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0374271565

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com): "Amy Waldman has performed a rare and dangerous feat in writing an airtight, multi-viewed, highly readable post-9/11 novel. When a Muslim architect wins a blind contest to design a Ground Zero Memorial, a city of eleven million people takes notice. Waldman, a former bureau chief for the New York Times, explores a diversity of viewpoints around this fictional event, bringing in politicians, businessmen, journalists, activists, and normal people whose lives--whether by happenstance, choice, or even due to their country of origin--get caught up in the controversy. Incredibly, she manages to keep all the balls in the air without ever fumbling. The story is moving and keeps the pages turning, but there are also bigger themes at work: of individuals versus groups; about the purpose of art, commerce, government, and journalism in society; of how people respond to grief and terror. The result is honest, compelling, and breathtaking.--Chris Schluep"

2011-10-06T17:58:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Neon City Blues seguido de La muerte de Vicky M. Doodle
Autor: Emiliano González
Número de páginas: 128
Editorial: Alfaguara
Fecha original de publicación: 2000
País: México
ISBN: 9681907981

Sinopsis: (Tomada de la contraportada) "Un escritor experimenta el más increíble placer sexual cuando se entera de que sus obras han sido rechazadas por una joven y atractiva editora. A partir de ese momento comienza una relación donde la culpa, el remordimiento o el pecado no existen.
Neon City Blues y La muerte de Vicky M. Doodle son dos novelas breves en las que Emiliano González crea atmósferas, ámbitos y tramas que no se sujetan a localismos ni a ejercicios narrativos predecibles; por el contrario, se trata de una prosa con estilo audaz y original.
Una obra profundamente perturbadora."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Miedo castellano (1973)
. La inocencia hereditaria (1986)
. Almas visionarias (1987)
. La habitación secreta (1988)
. Casa de horror y magia (1989)
. Orquidáceas (1992)

2011-10-06T04:10:00.000-07:00

Premio Nobel de Literatura 2011

¡Para Tomas Tranströmer!
"because, through his condensed, transluscent images, he gives us fresh access to reality"

Estocolmo, Suecia (1931)

Algunos títulos notables del autor:
. 17 poems [17 dikter] (1954)
Hemligheter på vägen (1958)
. The Half-Finished Heaven [Den halvfärdiga himlen] (1962)
. Windows and Stones [Klanger och spår] (1966)
. Night Vision [Mörkerseende] (1970)
. Paths Stigar (1973)
. Baltics [Östersjöar] (1974)
. Sanningsbarriären (1978)
. Det vilda torget (1983)
. For the Living and the Dead [För levande och döda] (1989)
. Sorgegondolen (1996)
. Den stora gåtan (2004)

2011-10-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

2011-10-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

Novedad Skira/Rizzoli

Título: Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever

Autores: Kevin McGarry, Jeffrey Deitch, Lauren Cornell, Linda Norden
Número de páginas: 160
Editorial: Skira/Rizzoli
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0847837427

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Since the debut of his first feature-length video, the 2004 A Family Finds Entertainment, Ryan Trecartin (b. 1981) has been hailed as one of the most exciting artists of his generation. His movies layer the visual and the aural in virtuosic combinations of color, form, drama, and montage to produce a sublime, stream-of-consciousness effect that feels bewilderingly true to life. This volume, the first monograph on Trecartin, includes extended illustrated sections on his seven-part epic Any Ever, 2009–10, as well as I-Be Area, 2007, and A Family Finds Entertainment. A trio of essays by curators Lauren Cornell, Kevin McGarry, and Linda Norden focus on Trecartin’s repurposing of language, his open-source approach to personality and gender, and his extended amplifications of consumer culture. An interview with Trecartin by artist Cindy Sherman provides a revealing glimpse into his collaborative process."

2011-10-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Novedad Princeton Architectural Press

Título: OneFiveFour

Autores: Lebbeus Woods
Número de páginas: 136
Editorial: Princeton Architectural Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0910413800

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Lebbeus Woods is a true visionary, whose drawings are among the richest and passionate as any in the history of architecture. For his first monograph, OneFiveFour, Woods painstakingly drew a book of two-page spreadsthat weave text, architectural elements, math, and physics into a unique vision of a new humanism for the information age. The powerful immediacy of the art makes it one of the most influential books we have ever published. Critic Michael Sorkin says it best: 'In the mesmerizing, astonishingly wrought images of Lebbeus Woods...we are plunged into unfamiliar territory, a world of architecture beginning again....His ever-expanding discourse of the almost impossible is aninspiration not just to build, but to think.'"

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. The New City (1992)
. Anarchitecture Architecture Is a Political Act (1992)
. War and Architecture (1996)
. Radical Reconstruction (2001)
. Earthquake! A Post-Biblical View (2001)
. Histaormina (2001)
. Gr(o)und (2002)
. Experimental Architecture (2004)
. The Storm and the Fall (2004)
. System Wien (2006)

2011-10-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

Novedad Twelve

Título: Hitch 22
Autor: Christopher Hitchens
Número de páginas: 448
Editorial: Twelve
Fecha original de publicación: 2010. en el Reino Unido
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0446540346

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Booklist): "Hitchens, who, in his earlier books, has expressed contempt for both God and Mother Teresa (although not in that order), is often described as a contrarian. In fact, in his book Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), he himself noted that he 'can appear insufferable and annoying,' albeit without intending to. This memoir, bracing, droll, and very revealing, gives him yet another description: storyteller. He writes with a voice you can hear clearly, warmed by smoke and whiskey, and draws readers into his story, which proves as personal as it is political. As with many memoirs, it is not the public moments that are so fascinating, though there are plenty of those. Hitchens takes readers with him to Havana and Prague, Afghanistan and Iraq; tests himself by being waterboarded (he was disappointed in his early capitulation); and hobnobs with politicians and poets. He almost gets himself beaten up by defacing a poster in Iraq with a Hitler mustache. But the most intriguing stories are the personal ones, both from his early days, at home and at boarding school, and from his later life, when he learns that his mother was Jewish, which, if only technically, makes him Jewish as well. This revelation leads Hitchens on a quest to learn the story of his family, many of whom died in the Holocaust. How this new identity squares with his oft-proclaimed atheism sheds a different light on the meaning of religious identity. (He struggles mightily with his political identity as well.) Few authors can rile as easily as Hitchens does, but even his detractors might find it difficult to put down a book so witty, so piercing, so spoiling for a fight. He makes you want to be as good a reader as he is a writer. --Ilene Cooper"

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles (1987)
. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988)
. "The Monarchy" (1990)
. The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995)
. No One Left to Lie To (1999)
. Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (2000)
. The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001)
. Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
. Why Orwell Matters (2002)
. Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays (2004)
. Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (2005)
. God Is Not Great (2007)
. Is Christianity Good for the World? (2008)
. Arguably (2011)

2011-10-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Novedad Ecco

Título: The Family Fang
Autor: Kevin Wilson
Número de páginas: 320
Editorial: Ecco
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0061579035

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com): "For outré performance artists, Caleb and Camille Fang, everything in life is secondary to art, including their children. Annie and Buster (popularly known as Child A. and Child B.) are the unwilling stars of their parents’ chaotically subversive work. Art is truly a family affair for the Fangs. Years later, their lives in disarray, Annie and Buster reluctantly return home in search of sanctuary—only to be caught up in one last performance. The Family Fang sparkles with Kevin Wilson’s inventive dialogue and wonderfully rendered set-pieces that capture the surreal charm of the Fang’s most notable work. With this brilliant novel, the family Fang is destined to join the families Tenenbaum and Bluth as paragons of high dysfunction.--Shane Hansanuwat"

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (2009)

2011-10-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Novedad Ecco

Título: The Sisters Brothers
Autor: Patrick Dewitt
Número de páginas: 336
Editorial: Ecco
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0062041265

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "Dewitt's bang-up second novel (after Ablutions) is a quirky and stylish revisionist western. When a frontier baron known as the Commodore orders Charlie and Eli Sisters, his hired gunslingers, to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, the brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually to Warm's claim in the Sierra foothills, running into a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers. Eli's deadpan narration is at times strangely funny (as when he discovers dental hygiene, thanks to a frontier dentist dispensing free samples of 'tooth powder that produced a minty foam') but maintains the power to stir heartbreak, as with Eli's infatuation with a consumptive hotel bookkeeper. As more of the brothers' story is teased out, Charlie and Eli explore the human implications of many of the clichés of the old west and come off looking less and less like killers and more like traumatized young men. With nods to Charles Portis and Frank Norris, DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and, perhaps unexpectedly, moving."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Help Yourself Help Yourself (2007)
. Ablutions (2009)

2011-09-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Creta Lateral Travelling

Autor: Agustín Fernández Mallo
Número de páginas: 138
Editorial: Bolsa de Pipas/Sloper
Fecha original de publicación: 2004
País: España
ISBN: 978-8493417598

Sinopsis: (Tomada de la contraportada) "Creta Lateral Travelling es uno de mis textos más abstractos, pero también uno de los que más me gustan, quizá por que en él cuajan o empiezan a cuajarse toda una serie de ideas que sin darme cuenta venían rondándome desde hacía años acerca de la poesía y la narrativa sin llegar a hacer plena diana. No sé si aquí esa plena diana se da, pero por lo menos sí se aproxima razonablemente. Es un libro en el que está embrionariamente casi todo lo que vendría y, en ese sentido, lo considero importante en mi trayectoria." Agustín Fernández Mallo

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Yo siempre regreso a los pezones y al punto 7 del Tractatus (2001)
. Creta lateral Travelling (2004)
. Joan Fontaine Odisea [mi deconstrucción] (2005)
. Nocilla Dream (2006)
. Carne de Píxel (2007)
. Nocilla Experience (2008)
. Nocilla Lab (2009)
. Postpoesía: Hacia un nuevo paradigma (2009)
. El hacedor (de Borges), remake (2011)

2011-09-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

Novedad Harper

Título: This Beautiful Life
Autora: Helen Schulman
Número de páginas: 240
Editorial: Harper
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0062024381

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college town to New York City, they’re not quite sure how they’ll adapt—or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town.
Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school.
But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared—a jumble of adolescent emotion—he forwards the video to a friend, who then for-wards it to a friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world.
The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots’ sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices, and how they choose to react, individually and at one another’s behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy.
This Beautiful Life is a devastating exploration of the blurring boundaries of privacy and the fragility of self, a clear-eyed portrait of modern life that will have readers debating their assumptions about family, morality, and the sacrifices and choices we make in the name of love."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Not a Free Show (1988)
. Out of Time (1994)
. The Revisionist (1998)
. P. S. (2001)
. A Day at the Beach (2007)

2011-09-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

Novedad Anagrama

Título: El hombre que vendió su propia cama
Autor: Vicente Molina Foix
Número de páginas: 200
Editorial: Anagrama
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: España
ISBN: 978-8433972309

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.anagrama-ed.es) "Tras su celebrado Con tal de no morir, el autor nos entrega un segundo libro de relatos en el que vuelve a brillar la peculiar fusión de lo cotidiano y lo extraño, lo humorístico y lo patético, en títulos como «A su edad», una incisiva parábola contemporánea, o «Un sueño de la diosa», con su sugestivo trasfondo hindú. Una muchacha con un perfume cítrico y un crítico de cine amargamente autocrítico acompañan la perplejidad del viajero protagonista de «La ciudad dormitorio», mientras que las crisis conyugales adquieren perfiles turbadores en «El cuento de Gógol» y «El buda bajo el agua». En la segunda mitad, cuatro extensos relatos que son un homenaje a Henry James, ya que, partiendo de las ocurrencias y esbozos que el novelista americano anotó en sus diarios como posibles argumentos de narraciones que nunca escribió, Molina Foix ha desarrollado cuatro de ellos: una saga familiar de trepidante peripecia cosmopolita («La segunda boda»), la conmovedora historia de amor de una pareja de profesores ingleses («Los otros labios»), la carrera de un pintor tan presuntuoso como huidizo («El cuadro familiar»), y en el que da título al libro, la relación que un hombre mantiene, a través de unos muebles, con su pasado y con el porvenir de sus ilusiones."

Otros títulos notables del autor:

. Museo provincial de los horrores (1970)
. Busto (1973)
. La comunión de los atletas (1979)
. Los padres viudos (1983)
. Los abrazos del pulpo (1985)
. La Quincena Soviética (1988)
. Los espías del realista (1990)
. La misa de Baroja (1995)
. La mujer si cabeza (1997)
. Vanas penas de amor (1998)
. El vampiro de la calle México (2002)
. El Abrecartas (2007)
. Con tal de no morir (2009)

2011-09-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

Novedad Vintage

Título: Machine Man
Autor: Max Barry
Número de páginas: 288
Editorial: Vintage
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Australia
ISBN: 978-0307476890

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Scientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It's not a tragedy. It's an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts.
Prosthetist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a man on his way to becoming artificial everything. But others see a madman. Or a product. Or a weapon.
A story for the age of pervasive technology, Machine Man is a gruesomely funny unraveling of one man's quest for ultimate self-improvement."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Syrup (1999)
. Jennifer Government (2003)
. Company (2006)

2011-09-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: The Two Kinds of Decay
Autora: Sarah Manguso
Número de páginas: 192
Editorial: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fecha original de publicación: 2008
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0374280123

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "In 1995, when Rome Prize–winning poet and fiction writer Manguso (Siste Viator) was a junior at Harvard, she suffered the first attack of a rare autoimmune disease called CIDP, which would turn her body against itself. CIDP attacks the myelin coating of the peripheral nerves. The result is increasing numbness, followed by paralysis spreading from the extremities inward, until the sufferer can no longer control his or her breathing, and dies. In short, lyrical chapters—the book free-associates between memories, while sticking to a rough chronological order—Manguso recounts the harrowing indignities of her treatments, frequent relapses, descents into steroid-induced clinical depression, crucial college sexual experiences had and missed, and trips back and forth between schools, hospitals and her parents' Massachusetts home. What makes this lightning-quick book extraordinary is not just Manguso's deadpan delivery of often unthinkable details, nor her poet's struggle with the damaging metaphors of disease, but the compassion she acquires as she comes to understand her pain in relation to the pain of others: suffering, however much and whatever type, shrinks or swells to fit the shape and size of a life. (June)"

Otros títulos notables de la autora:

. The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002)
. Siste Viator (2006)
. Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007)

2011-09-25T12:13:00.001-07:00

Novedad Anagrama

Título: El cuerpo en que nací
Autora: Guadalupe Nettel
Número de páginas: 200
Editorial: Anagrama
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: México
ISBN: 978-8433972316

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.anagrama-ed.es) "Inspirada en la infancia de la autora, El cuerpo en que nací es la historia de una niña con un defecto de nacimiento en un ojo. Su vida, durante los años setenta, se ve influida por su escasa visión pero también por la ideología dominante en esa época: el matrimonio abierto de sus padres, las escuelas activas, las comunas hippies, la libertad sexual y su correlato. Las diferencias físicas y psicológicas que la distinguen hacen que la protagonista se identifique con los seres que viven al margen de las modas y de las convenciones sociales. Escrita a modo de soliloquio en el diván de un psicoanalista, la narradora nos hace partícipes de sus recuerdos más íntimos y de las interpretaciones que hace de su propia vida. Se trata de una historia llena de sentido del humor pero también de realismo, en la que el mundo infantil se presenta mucho más ominoso de lo que parece a simple vista. Una novela de iniciación a la vida y a la literatura, un bildungsroman situado entre América Latina y Europa en sus facetas menos obvias. El exilio sudamericano, la migración magrebí, las prisiones de la ciudad de México constituyen parte del contexto de esta conmovedora novela que recorre el camino de vuelta hacia la dignidad y hacia la aceptación de uno mismo."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Juegos de Artificio (1993)
. Les jours fossiles (2003)
. El Huésped (2006)
. Pétalos y otras historias incómodas (2008)

2011-09-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

Novedad W. W. Norton & Company

Título: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Autora: Mary Roach
Número de páginas: 336
Editorial: W. W. Norton & Company
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0393339918

Sinopsis: (Tomada de Publishers Weekly) "Roach (Stiff) once again proves herself the ideal guide to a parallel universe. Despite all the high-tech science that has resulted in space shuttles and moonwalks, the most crippling hurdles of cosmic travel are our most primordial human qualities: eating, going to the bathroom, having sex and bathing, and not dying in reentry. Readers learn that throwing up in a space helmet could be life-threatening, that Japanese astronaut candidates must fold a thousand origami paper cranes to test perseverance and attention to detail, and that cadavers are gaining popularity over crash dummies when studying landings. Roach's humor and determined curiosity keep the journey lively, and her profiles of former astronauts are especially telling. However, larger questions about the 'worth' or potential benefits of space travel remain ostensibly unasked, effectively rendering these wild and well-researched facts to the status of trivia. Previously, Roach engaged in topics everyone could relate to. Unlike having sex or being dead, though, space travel pertains only to a few, leaving the rest of us unsure what it all amounts to. Still, the chance to float in zero gravity, even if only vicariously, can be surprising in what it reveals about us."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003)
. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005)
. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008)

2011-09-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

Novedad W. W. Norton & Company

Título: The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
Autora: Maggie Nelson
Número de páginas: 304
Editorial: W. W. Norton & Company
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0393072150

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "A fresh new voice in art and cultural criticism takes on the day's most pressing questions about representations of violence in art.
Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?
Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. Shiner (2001)
. The Latest Winter (2003)
. Jane: A Murder (2005)
. Something Bright, Then Holes (2007)
. Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007)
. Bluets (2009)

2011-09-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: Alguien que anda por ahí
Autor: Julio Cortázar
Número de páginas: 231
Editorial: Alfaguara
Fecha original de publicación: 1977
ISBN: 978-8420421018
País: Argentina

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.alfaguara.com/es) "Instalado de nuevo en sus obsesiones, el autor las somete a nuevos presupuestos y perspectivas, para entrar en ellas con mayor profundidad o con mayor eficacia ante la necesidad de exorcizar nuestros entornos. Todas las armas valen para convertir esta recopilación en un campo de ironías infinitamente reflejadas entre el lector y el escritor."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. La otra orilla (1945)
. Los Reyes (1949)
. Diario de Andrés Fava (1950)
. Bestiario (1951)
. Final del Juego (1956)
. Las armas secretas (1959)
. Los premios (1960)
. Historias de cronopios y de famas (1962)
. Rayuela (1963)
. Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales (1965)
. Todos los fuegos el fuego (1966)
. La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos (1967)
. 62/modelo para armar (1968)
. Último round (1969)
. Prosa del observatorio (1972)
. Libro de Manuel (1973)
. Un tal Lucas (1979)
. Queremos tanto a Glenda (1980)
. Deshoras (1982)
. Los autonautas de la cosmopista (1982)
. Divertimento (1986)
. El Examen (1986)
. Papeles inesperados (2009)
. Cartas a los Jonquières (2010)

2011-09-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

Novedad Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Título: A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman
Autora: Margaret Drabble
Número de páginas: 256
Editorial: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Reino Unido
ISBN: 978-0547550404

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Margaret Drabble’s novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony—all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs; in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. An introduction by the Spanish academic José Fernández places the stories in the context of her life and her novels. This collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career."

2011-09-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Novedad Alfaguara

Título: La gran novela latinoamericana
Autor: Carlos Fuentes
Número de páginas: 448
Editorial: Alfaguara
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: México
ISBN: 978-8420407647

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.alfaguara.com/es) "Este ensayo propone un recorrido por la evolución de la novela en Latinoamérica, desde el descubrimiento del continente hasta nuestros días. Quienes emprendan esta ruta hallarán en ella a las grandes figuras de la novela latinoamericana y sus temas constantes: la naturaleza salvaje, los conflictos sociales, el dictador y la barbarie, la épica del desencanto, el mundo mágico de mito y lenguaje, pero sobre todo su vocación de canibalizar y carnavalizar la historia, convirtiendo el dolor en fiesta, creando formas literarias y artísticas entrometidas unas en las otras, como lo son las de Borges, Neruda y Cortázar, sin respeto de reglas o géneros. Literatura de textos prestados, permutados, mímicos, payasos. Textos en blanco, asombrados entre el desafío del espacio de una página, lenguaje que habla del lenguaje, de Sor Juana y de Sandoval y Zapata, a José Gorostiza y a José Lezama Lima.
Obra de referencia y materia de estudio, este ensayo es una lección magistral de literatura y prueba de que, en efecto, 'el significado de los libros no está detrás de nosotros. Al contrario: nos encara desde el porvenir'."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Los días enmascarados (1954)
. La región más transparente (1958)
. Las buenas conciencias (1959)
. La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962)
. Aura (1962)
. Cantar de ciegos (1964)
. Zona Sagrada (1967)
. Cambio de piel (1967)
. Cumpleaños (1969)
. Todos los gatos son pardos (1970)
. El tuerto es rey (1970)
. Los reinos originarios (1971)
. Terra Nostra (1975)
. La cabeza de la hidra (1978)
. Agua quemada (1983)
. Gringo Viejo (1985)
. Cristóbal Nonato (1987)
. La Campaña (1990)
. Dos educaciones (1991)
. El espejo enterrado (1992)
. Geografía de la novela (1993)
. Los hijos del conquistador (1994)
. La Frontera de Cristal (1995)
. Los años con Laura Díaz (1999)
. Instinto de Inez (2001)
. En esto creo (2002)
. La Silla del Águila (2003)
. Inquieta compañía (2004)
. Contra Bush (2004)
. Los 68 (2005)
. Todas las familias felices (2006)
. La voluntad y la fortuna (2008)
. Adán en Edén (2009)
. Carolina Grau (2010)

2011-09-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

Novedad Doubleday

Título: Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History
Autor: Ben Mezrich
Número de páginas: 320
Editorial: Doubleday
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-0385533928

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "n this true story of love and adventure, nothing can stop Thad Roberts from keeping a promise to his girlfriend Rebecca--not even NASA security. When he's in the lab, Roberts is a brilliant NASA co-op intern, but the other interns know him better for devising thrill-seeking activities, like cliff diving and sneaking into the shuttle simulator. When he realizes that scientists consider moon rocks worthless once they’ve been in experiments, Roberts starts to wonder… if they’re worthless, how could stealing them be wrong? Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (which inspired the movie The Social Network), starts each section with excerpts of Roberts’s love letters to Rebecca from prison, providing a love-drunk context for Roberts’ journey as the moon rock heist balloons from idle fantasy to stark reality. Behind-the-scenes looks at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and thriller-like action that ranges from the U.S. to Belgium make for an enthralling read for anyone who ever dreamed about being an astronaut--or promised to give someone else the moon."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Threshold (1996)
. Reaper (1998)
. Fertile Ground (1999)
. Skin (2000)
. Skeptic (2000)
. The Carrier (2001). Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (2002)
. Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions (2004)
. Busting Vega$: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees (2005)
. Rigged: The Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, From Wall Street to Dubai (2007)
. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal (2009)

2011-09-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

Novedad Random House

Título: Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy
Autor: John Julius Norwich
Número de páginas: 528
Editorial: Random House
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Reino Unido
ISBN: 978-1400067152

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "With the papacy embattled in recent years, it is essential to have the perspective of one of the world’s most accomplished historians. In Absolute Monarchs, John Julius Norwich captures nearly two thousand years of inspiration and devotion, intrigue and scandal. The men (and maybe one woman) who have held this position of infallible power over millions have ranged from heroes to rogues, admirably wise to utterly decadent. Norwich, who knew two popes and had private audiences with two others, recounts in riveting detail the histories of the most significant popes and what they meant politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and to the world.
Norwich presents such brave popes as Innocent I, who in the fifth century successfully negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil authorities could not defeat, and Leo I, who two decades later tamed (and perhaps paid off) Attila the Hun. Here, too, are the scandalous figures: Pope Joan, the mythic woman said (without any substantiation) to have been elected in 855, and the infamous 'pornocracy,' the five libertines who were descendants or lovers of Marozia, debauched daughter of one of Rome’s most powerful families.
Absolute Monarchs brilliantly portrays reformers such as Pope Paul III, 'the greatest pontiff of the sixteenth century,' who reinterpreted the Church’s teaching and discipline, and John XXIII, who in five short years starting in 1958 'opened up the church to the twentieth century,' instituting reforms that led to Vatican II. Norwich brings the story to the present day with Benedict XVI, who is coping with a global priest sex scandal.
Epic and compelling, Absolute Monarchs is the astonishing story of some of history’s most revered and reviled figures, men who still cast light and shadows on the Vatican and the world today."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Mount Athos (1966)
. The Normans in Sicily (1967, 1970)
. Sahara London (1968)
. A History of Venice (1981)
. The Architecture of Southern England (1985)
. Fifty Years of Glyndebourne 1985)
. A Taste for Travel (1985)
. Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988)
. Venice: a Traveller's Companion (1990)
. Byzantium; v. 2: The Apogee (1992)
. Byzantium; v. 3: The Decline and Fall (1995)
. A Short History of Byzantium (1997)
. The Twelve Days of Christmas (1998)
. Shakespeare's Kings: the Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages (2000)
. The Middle Sea: a History of the Mediterranean (2006)
. Trying to Please (2008)
. The Big Bang : Christmas Crackers , 2000-2009 (2010)
. Paradise of Cities, Venice and Its Nineteenth-century Visitors (2003)

2011-09-17T23:49:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: I Want You # 2
Autora: Lisa Hanawalt
Número de páginas: 44
Editorial: Buenaventura Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2010
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1935443070

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.lastgasp.com) "Lisa Hanawalt's sophomoric issue of I Want You deals with such topics as: Shopping with She-Moose, The Pimple Under Ideal Conditions, North American Wildlife and Hats, Bad Pets, Worst Sandwiches, How to Ruin a Yoga Class, more."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. I Want You # 1 (2009)

2011-09-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

Novedad Spiegel & Grau

Título: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human
Autor: Grant Morrison
Número de páginas: 464
Editorial: Spiegel & Grau
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1400069125

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "According to Supergods, Superman comics say less about Superman than they do about Clark Kent. Superman was conceived as a symbol of strength and individualism for the Depression-era middle class--perhaps a more compelling portrait of the era than much literature of the time. But this is just one of the many superhero mythologies author Grant Morrison unpacks to give colorful historical and cultural context. Morrison, a prolific comics storyteller with a career spanning 20 years writing for both Marvel and DC Comics, may be the world's most qualified superhero scholar. (Morrison's reinvention of the Man of Steel, the All Star Superman series, is arguably the best comic of the past decade.) But Supergods isn't a book that appeals strictly to fanboys. Like his comics, Morrison's prose is swift yet powerful, and it's the broader strokes of the Supergods narrative that resonate most. The book succeeds at being a great history of comic books over the past century, but it's an even more convincing exploration of humankind as a whole."

2011-09-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

Novedad Soho Press

Título: The Funny Man
Autor: John Warner
Número de páginas: 288
Editorial: Soho Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1569479735

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "The funny man is a middling comic in an unnamed city. By day he takes care of his infant son, by night he performs in small clubs, sandwiched between other aspiring comics. His wife waits tables to support the family. It doesn’t sound like much, but they’re happy, more or less. Until the day he comes up with it. His thing. His gimmick. And everything changes. He’s a headliner, and the venues get bigger fast. Pretty soon it’s Hollywood and a starring role in a blockbuster, all thanks to the gimmick.
Which is: He performs with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. Jokes, impressions, commercials—all with his fist in his mouth to the wrist. The people want him—are crazy for him—but only with his fist in his mouth.
And the funny man, he is tired of having his fist in his mouth.
Thus, as the novel begins, his career’s in tatters, his family’s left him, and he’s on trial for shooting an unarmed man six times. But for the second time in his life, against all odds, he’s found love. This time with another celebrity, who may or may not be sending him coded messages, and may or may not be equally in love—or even know he exists. A coruscating satire of our culture of celebrity, this debut novel documents one individual’s slide from everyman to monster, even as it reveals the potential for grace—and mercy—in his life."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. My First Presidentiary (2001)
. Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant (2005)
. So You Want to Be President? (2008)

2011-09-15T02:08:00.001-07:00

Novedad Soho Press

Título: Luminarium
Autor: Alex Shakar
Número de páginas: 432
Editorial: Soho Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2011
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1569479759

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Fred Brounian and his twin brother, George, were once co-CEOs of a burgeoning New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, in the summer of 2006, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George has fallen into a coma, control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate, and Fred has moved back in with his parents. Broke and alone, he’s led by an attractive woman, Mira, into a neurological study promising to give him 'peak' experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. As the study progresses, lines between the subject and the experimenter blur, and reality becomes increasingly porous. Meanwhile, Fred finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother.
Moving between the research hospitals of Manhattan, the streets of a meticulously planned Florida city, the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the uncanny, immersive worlds of urban disaster simulation; threading through military listserv geek-speak, Hindu cosmology, the maxims of outmoded self-help books and the latest neuroscientific breakthroughs, Luminarium is a brilliant examination of the way we live now, a novel that’s as much about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping our reality as it is about the undying bond between brothers, and the redemptive possibilities of love."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. City in Love (1996)
. The Savage Girl (2001)

2011-09-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

Leyendo

Título: I Want You # 1
Autora: Lisa Hanawalt
Número de páginas: 32
Editorial: Buenaventura Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2009
País: Estados Unidos
ISBN: 978-1935443025

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.lastgasp.com) "Lisa Hanawalt's highly anticipated comic book debut tackles interspecies romance, freeway accidents, bug sex, and animal obsessions with a sense of humor equally sophisticated and crass. But don't be fooled: This is one of the most genre-defying, formally inventive comic books of the last decade. It features narrative comics, illustrated lists, newspaper-style color comics, plus so much more. And Hanwalt draws some of the most attractive, skillfully rendered animals in absurd hats you'll ever see."

Otros títulos notables de la autora:
. I Want You # 2 (2010)

2011-09-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

Novedad Oxford University Press

Título: The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope
Autor: Roger Scruton
Número de páginas: 240
Editorial: Oxford University Press
Fecha original de publicación: 2010
País: Reino Unido
ISBN: 978-0199747535

Sinopsis: (Tomada de www.amazon.com) "Ranging widely over human history and culture, from ancient Greece to the current global economic downturn, Scruton makes a counterintuitive yet persuasive case that optimists and idealists -- with their ignorance about the truths of human nature and human society, and their naive hopes about what can be changed -- have wrought havoc for centuries. Scruton's argument is nuanced, however, and his preference for pessimism is not a dark view of human nature; rather his is a 'hopeful pessimism' which urges that instead of utopian efforts to reform human society or human nature, we focus on the only reform that we can truly master -- the improvement of ourselves through the cultivation of our better instincts.
Written in Scruton's trademark style-- erudite, sweeping in scope across centuries and cultures, and unafraid to offend-- this book is sure to intrigue and provoke readers concerned with the state of Western culture, the nature of human beings, and the question of whether social progress is truly possible."

Otros títulos notables del autor:
. Art And Imagination (1974)
. The Aesthetics Of Architecture (1979)
. The Meaning Of Conservatism (1980)
. Fortnight's Anger (1981)
. The Politics Of Culture and Other Essays (1981)
. A Short History of Modern Philosophy (1982)
. A Dictionary Of Political Thought (1982)
. The Aesthetic Understanding (1983)
. Kant (1983)
. Untimely Tracts (1985)
. Thinkers Of The New Left (1986)
. Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic (1986)
. Spinoza (1987)
. A Land Held Hostage: Lebanon and the West (1987)
. The Philosopher On Dover Beach and Other Essays (1989)
. Francesca (1991)
. A Dove Descending and Other Stories (1991)
. Conservative Texts (1992)
. Xanthippic Dialogues (1993)
. Modern Philosophy (1994)
. The Classical Vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism (1995)
. Animal Rights and Wrongs (1996)
. An Intelligent Person's Guide To Philosophy (1996); republished in 2005 as Philosophy: . Principles and Problems
. The Aesthetics Of Music (1997)
. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture (1998)
. On Hunting (1998)
. Spinoza (1998)
. Perictione in Colophon (2000)
. England: An Elegy (2001)
. The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the terrorist threat (2002)
. Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (2004)
. News From Somewhere: On Settling (2004)
. The Need for Nations (2004)
. Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (2005)
. A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism (2006)
. Immigration, Multiculturalism and the Need to Defend the Nation State (2006)
. Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged (2007)
. Beauty (2009)
. I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine (2009)
. Understanding Music (2009)