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Thanks for dropping by.......and welcome to the
website for Raven Books. You'll find a variety of
books, book-related
news, a daily posting celebrating writers and writing, and plenty of
suggestions for what to read next. We hope you enjoy browsing! (This
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using Firefox)
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February 8th Today
is
the
birthday
of Jules Verne, born in Nantes, France, in 1828.
He is often referred to as The
Father of Science Fiction, describing inventions in his novels
that were similar to modern
 airplanes and helicopters, submarines,
automobiles, the internet, air conditioning, television, projectors,
jukeboxes, skyscrapers where people used electricity to listen to the
radio and send faxes, and yet he wrote his stories by candlelight.
Verne was a very prolific author producing
short
stories, essays, plays and poems, along with the 54 novels that
comprise the Voyages Extraordinaires.
He
is
best
remember for Journey to
the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
(1868), and Around the World
in Eighty Days (1873). He is the third most
translated author in the world.  Parrot & Olivier
In America,Peter Carey From the two-time Booker Prize-winning author, an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville, and an irrepressibly funny portrait of the impossible friendship between a master and a servant. Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatised child of survivors of the Revolution; Parrot the son of an itinerant English printer who always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be joined by their travels in America. When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons but in reality to save his neck from one more revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, and their picaresque travels together and apart - in love and politics, prisons and the world of art - Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy, in theory and in practice, with dazzling wit and inventiveness.   The Shaking Woman,Siri Hustvedt While speaking at a memorial event for her father, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. She managed to finish her talk and the paroxysms stopped, but not for good. Again and again she found herself a victim of the shudders. What had happened? Chronicling her search for the shaking woman, Hustvedt takes the reader on a journey into contemporary psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalysis. She unearths stories and theories from the annals of medical history, literature and philosophy, and delves into her own past. In the process, she raises fundamental questions: what is the relationship between mind and body? How do we remember? What is the self? In a seamless synthesis of personal experience and extensive research, Hustvedt conveys the often frightening mysteries of illness and the complexities of diagnosis. As engaging as it is thought-provoking, The Shaking Woman brilliantly illuminates the age-old dilemma of the mental and the physical, and what it means to be human. |
 Bait A
young
man
tries to record his mother’s memories before she is lost to
him forever. They are both haunted by the collapse of the former
Yugoslavia, the devastation that was their home in Serbia before they
left...
 And I Quote.... The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. ~ Bertrand Russell Part of me wants my father to leave me here while another wants him to take me back, to what I know. I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be… Read Claire Keegan's short story, Foster. Harry Eyres examines three new books explore our fascination with the monstrous and why the line between the real and imagined is being blurred. Yesterday on Open Book. Mariella talked to Australian novelist Peter Carey about his new novel, Parrot & Olivier In America. Listen online.  The late Michael Crichton left £20m worth of paintings including works by Jasper Johns, Picasso and Lichtenstein. |
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Poetry Corner |
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Dust Of Snow
Robert Frost The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. |
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