AP World Independent Reads: 800s - Literature
800s
In Other Words by
National Best Seller From the best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize winner, a powerful nonfiction debut--an "honest, engaging, and very moving account of a writer searching for herself in words." --Kirkus Reviews (starred) In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love story--of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery always eluded her. Seeking full immersion, she decides to move to Rome with her family, for "a trial by fire, a sort of baptism" into a new language and world. There, she begins to read, and to write--initially in her journal--solely in Italian. In Other Words, an autobiographical work written in Italian, investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice. Presented in a dual-language format, this is a wholly original book about exile, linguistic and otherwise, written with an intensity and clarity not seen since Vladimir Nabokov: a startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.
Call Number: 813 LAHISBN: 9781101875551Publication Date: 2016-02-09
800s
Murder in the Cathedral by
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE T. S. Eliot's most famous drama, a retelling of the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury Written in 1934, Murder in the Cathedral tells of the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T. S. Eliot's celebrated play solidified his reputation as the most significant poet of his time.
Call Number: 812.912 ELIISBN: 9780156632775Publication Date: 1964-03-18
800s
The World As We Knew It by
Nineteen leading literary writers from around the globe offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their lives--including essays by Lydia Millet, Alexandra Kleeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and more In this riveting anthology, leading literary writers reflect on how climate change has altered their lives, revealing the personal and haunting consequences of this global threat. In the opening essay, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet mourns the end of the Saguaro cacti in her Arizona backyard due to drought. Later, Omar El Akkad contemplates how the rise of temperatures in the Middle East is destroying his home and the wellspring of his art. Gabrielle Bellot reflects on how a bizarre lionfish invasion devastated the coral reef near her home in the Caribbean--a precursor to even stranger events to come. Traveling through Nebraska, Terese Svoboda witnesses cougars running across highways and showing up in kindergartens. As the stories unfold--from Antarctica to Australia, New Hampshire to New York--an intimate portrait of a climate-changed world emerges, captured by writers whose lives jostle against incongruous memories of familiar places that have been transformed in startling ways.
Call Number: 808.84 BRAISBN: 9781646220304Publication Date: 2022-06-14
800s
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * From the bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, VULTURE, PEOPLE, BOSTON GLOBE, VANITY FAIR, ESQUIRE, & MORE "Rojas Contreras reacquaints herself with her family's past, weaving their stories with personal narrative, unraveling legacies of violence, machismo and colonialism... In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history."--New York Times Book Review For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets": the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the secrets." In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often amusing guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.
Call Number: 818 ROJISBN: 9780385546669Publication Date: 2022-07-12
