During the Big Bad Wolf PH book sale, I didn’t delve only on regional literature. I also indulged in English books. Whereas part one of this book haul is dedicated for regional literature, this part is for books originally written in English by either American or British authors. Here are the books that I was able to dig from the said book fair.
If you want to know how my Big Bad Wolf experience went, click here. For the first part of this book haul, click here.
Title: The Good Earth
Author: Pearl S. Buck
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Publishing Date: 2016
No. of Pages: 357
Synopsis: “In the reign of the last emperor a servant woman married a humble man. Together they began an epic journey.
When O-lan, a servant girl, marries the peasant Wang Lung, she toils tirelessly through four pregnancies for their family’s survival. Reward is meagre, but there is sustenance in the land – until the famine comes. Half-starved, the family joins thousands to beg on the city streets. All seems lost, until O-lan’s desperate will to survive returns them home with undreamt-of wealth. But they have betrayed the earth from which true wealth springs, and the family’s money breeds only mistrust, deception – and heartbreak for the woman who had saved them.”
Title: Them
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher: Modern Library
Publishing Date: 2006
No. of Pages: 538
Synopsis: “As powerful and relevant today as it was on its initial publication, Them chronicles the tumultuous lives of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her “potent, life-gripping imagination,” Joyce Carol Oates traces the aspirations and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who is filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent destinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to survive in a world or violence and danger.”
Title: Naked Lunch
Author: William Burroughs
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publishing Date: 2005
No. of Pages: 289
Synopsis: “The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the US to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. The vignettes (which Burroughs called “routines”) are drawn from Burroughs’ own experience in these places, and his addiction to drugs (heroin, morphine, and while in Tangier, “Majoun”—a strong marijuana confection—as well as a German opioid, brand name Eukodol, of which he wrote frequently).” Excerpt from Goodreads.com
Title: Nostromo
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Wilco Publishing House
Publishing Date: 2006
No. of Pages: 505
Synopsis: “A gripping tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion, set amid the mist-shrouded mountains of a fictional South American republic, employs flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men. Conrad’s deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique are at their best in this, one of his greatest works.” From Goodreads.com
Title: Bridge of Sighs
Author: Richard Russo
Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries
Publishing Date: September 2008
No. of Pages: 642
Synopsis: “Louis Charles Lynch (also known as Lucy) is sixty years old and has lived in Thomaston, New York, his entire life. He and Sarah, his wife of forty years, are about to embark on a vacation to Italy. Lucy’s oldest friend, once a rival for his wife’s affection, leads a life in Venice far removed from Thomaston. Perhaps for this reason Lucy is writing the story of his town, his family and his own life that makes up this rich and mesmerizing novel, interspersed with that of the native son who left so long ago and has never looked back.”
Title: Waterland
Author: Graham Swift
Publisher: Picador Classic
Publishing Date: 2015
No. of Pages: 355
Synopsis: “Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man – let me offer you a definition – is the story-telling animal.
Tom Crick is a passionate teacher, but before he is forced into retirement by scandal, he has one last history lesson to deliver: his own. Spanning more than two hundred years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a visionary tale of England’s mysterious Fen country. Taking in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the discovery of a body and a tragic family romance, this is an extraordinary novel about the heartless sweep of history and man’s changing place within it.”
Title: Around the World in Eighty Days
Author: Jules Verne
Publisher: Templar Publishing
Publishing Date: 2011
No. of Pages: 223
Synopsis: “Set out on a thrilling voyage with the quintessential English gentleman, Phileas Fogg. To fulfill a wager made at the Reform Club in London, Fogg and his newly appointed manservant, Passepartout, embark on the race of a lifetime to circumnavigate the globe in just eighty days! Travelling by steamboat, train, and even elephant, and with adventure around every bend, the intrepid duo find themselves rescuing a young Indian woman from sacrifice, escaping kidnap, and battling hurricane winds – and all the while tenacious Detective Fix of Scotland Yard is in hot pursuit, believing Fogg to be the criminal mastermind behind a Bank of England robbery. Rich in humour and excitement, Around the World in Eighty Days deservedly remains one of Jules Verne’s most popular books.”
Title: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Author: Robert Tressell
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publishing Date: 2005
No. of Pages: 590
Synopsis: “A group of English working men are joined one day by Owen, a mysterious journeyman-prophet with a strange vision of a just society. Slowly, he wins the trust and hearts of his fellow workers, rousing them from their dour complacency with his spirited attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system.”
Title: If You’re Reading This I’m Already Dead
Author: Andrew Nicoll
Publisher: Quercus
Publishing Date: 2013
No. of Pages: 422
Synopsis: “Otto was once many things, but now, sitting in his caravan, drinking what is left of his coffee (dust), listening to the Allies rain their bombs on his city, he is simply scared. And so he’s decided to write the story of his life.
It is an extraordinary story, a story about how, with the help of his friends (and a camel), an acrobat of Hamburg became the King of Albania, and fell in love along the way.”
Title: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Publisher: Vintage
Publishing Date: 1999
No. of Pages: 258
Synopsis: “Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over.
Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he’s willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.”
Title: The English Patient
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Publisher: Vintage International
Publishing Date: 1993
No. of Pages: 302
Synopsis: “With unsettling beauty and intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II.
The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, obsessively tends to her last surviving patient. Caravaggio, the thief, tries to reimagine who he is, now that his hands are hopelessly maimed. The Indian sapper Kip searches for hidden bombs in a landscape where nothing is safe but himself. And at the center of this labyrinth lies the English patient, nameless and hideously burned, a man who is both a riddle and a provocation to his companions – and whose memories of suffering, rescue and betrayal illuminate this book life flashes of heat lightning.”
Title: The Revenant
Author: Michael Punke
Publisher: Picador
Publishing Date: October 2015
No. of Pages: 252
Synopsis: “The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds of miles of uncharted American frontier. Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.”
These are just among the great finds at the Big Bad Wolf sale. If you haven’t been there yet, you still have time to scavenge the piles of books before the sale closes on February 25. Happy hauling!
The Pine-Scented Chronicles 