Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
We're missing a catalog for re-released works...
Bestseller Fiction Classics deserve better.
 |
| (photocredit: Jennerally) |
That's why we've been updating them for you with new covers and decent descriptions.
This all started as a program to enable writers to learn from the classics and so improve their own craft. However, it's popular support has broadened the scope to include the top 100 (or so) all-time popular classic fiction (and a few non-fiction) to enable any writer (or reader) to study from history's greatest.
What we found is that these books - now in the public domain - have been given short shrift, with boring covers, cheap-quality printing, and poor (also boring) descriptions that don't communicate the excitement the millions of readers have shared over the years.
And the ebook versions are mostly some sort of machine-code scene, with no table of contents and sometimes other horrible errors. Sure, they're free - but "you get what you pay for" has never been truer.
So I started this campaign with a couple dozen books, just to see how they do - and now have committed to doing a full release for over 100 books. This will mean they get proper reviews, their own page on a respectful website, and ways you can find any version of these classics that you want - hardback or digital - all with some care to the reader, and respect for the original author and his works.
I just wanted to drop you a note to say I'm working on this. Eventually, they'll all wind up in a catalog that you can download (for free) and so have access to all these versions. The great part is that they don't have to cost an incredible amount to get the best quality possible.
The point is to give writers and readers, as well as the books and their authors, all possible respect. While this may take a good part of the upcoming year to create, it will be a labor of love - and so should go more quickly than someone getting paid to do this. (Of course, these will have small prices on them, which will pay my bills while I re-publish these.)
Thanks again for your support...
Arts
,
book
,
Business
,
E-book
,
Home business
,
Online advertising
,
publishing
,
Writer
Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace - classic fiction
Another super-long classic makes the "Best Books of All Time" list.
About this book:
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature. It is considered Tolstoy's finest literary achievement, along with his other major prose work Anna Karenina (1873–1877).
Tolstoy himself, somewhat enigmatically, said of
War and Peace that it was "not a novel, even less is it a poem,
and still less a historical chronicle". Large sections of the
work, especially in the later chapters, are philosophical discussion
rather than narrative. He went on to elaborate that the best Russian
literature does not conform to standard norms and hence hesitated to
call War and Peace a novel. (Instead, Tolstoy regarded Anna Karenina
as his first true novel.)
The novel begins in July 1805 in Saint Petersburg,
at a soirée given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer—the maid of honour and
confidante to the queen mother Maria Feodorovna. Many of the main
characters and aristocratic families in the novel are introduced as
they enter Anna Pavlovna's salon. Pierre (Pyotr Kirilovich) Bezukhov
is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, an elderly man who is
dying after a series of strokes. Pierre is about to become embroiled
in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's
expense following his mother's death, Pierre is essentially
kindhearted, but socially awkward, and owing in part to his open,
benevolent nature, finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg
society. It is known to everyone at the soirée that Pierre is his
father's favorite of all the old count’s illegitimate children.
Also attending the soireé is Pierre's friend, the
intelligent and sardonic Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky,
husband of Lise, the charming society favourite. Finding Petersburg
society unctuous and disillusioned with married life after
discovering his wife is empty and superficial, Prince Andrei makes
the fateful choice to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail
Ilarionovich Kutuzov in the coming war against Napoleon.
The plot moves to Moscow, Russia's ancient city
and former capital, contrasting its provincial, more Russian ways to
the highly mannered society of Petersburg. The Rostov family are
introduced. Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov has four adolescent
children. Thirteen-year-old Natasha (Natalia Ilyinichna) believes
herself in love with Boris Drubetskoy, a disciplined young man who is
about to join the army as an officer. Twenty-year-old Nikolai Ilyich
pledges his love to Sonya (Sofia Alexandrovna), his fifteen-year-old
cousin, an orphan who has been brought up by the Rostovs. The eldest
child of the Rostov family, Vera Ilyinichna, is cold and somewhat
haughty but has a good prospective marriage in a Russian-German
officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg. Petya (Pyotr Ilyich) is nine and the
youngest of the Rostov family; like his brother, he is impetuous and
eager to join the army when of age. The heads of the family, Count
Ilya Rostov and Countess Natalya Rostova, are an affectionate couple
but forever worried about their disordered finances.
At Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys' country estate,
Prince Andrei departs for war and leaves his terrified, pregnant wife
Lise with his eccentric father Prince Nikolai Andreyevich Bolkonsky
and devoutly religious sister Maria Nikolayevna
Bolkonskaya...
(source: Wikipedia)
(source: Wikipedia)
About the author:
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical
teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him
in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and
anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in
such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a
profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
(source: Wikipedia)
(source: Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:
This was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
Art Talk with NEA Literature Translation Fellow George O'Connell ... - As long as I'm including by omission, let's also leave out the King James Bible, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and the treasure-house of Proust. Of course this is to say nothing of the great Chinese and Japanese classical poets, ...20 Great Russian Novels You Should Read Right Now | Qwiklit - Lev Tolstoy - War and Peace (1863-1869). The Great White Whale of Russian literature, War and Peace is a 1,300 page work that includes hundreds of subplots and characters all intertwining during the failed Napoleonic ...
A look at L3 from Tolstoy to trays. - jaltranslation - is that of Tolstoy's War and Peace - a literary buff's favourite - commenting upon the use of French in the Russian original. It is estimated that 2 percent of the entire book is in French, and it is used in order to reflect the ...
Winter Study: Reading for Life | Williams College - So when the opportunity presented itself to read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace-all 1,296 pages of it-during Winter Study in January, Yniguez jumped at the chance. She and 14 other students are taking part in the class "War and Peace," led ...
TTahko.net | Book Review: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace - Before I get started, I should note that book reviews - at least when it comes to fiction - have not featured and probably will not feature prominently on this blog. However, I've noticed that the blog's 'Literature' category ...
VIAF News | Metadata Discussion Group - IUB Libraries Blogs - OCLC colleagues Smith-Yoshimura and Janifer Gatenby collaborate to illustrate how uniform titles show the romanization of titles rather than the original script of the work and use Tolstoy's War and Peace as an example.
The Oresteia and Waterloo | CHS Research Bulletin - [5] This approach differs from novels such as Tolstoy's War and Peace and Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, both of which situate their main character in the midst of the fighting, as well novels such as George Eliot's Adam ...
bestsellers
,
book
,
classic fiction
,
Leo Tolstoy
,
masterpiece
,
War and Peace
,
Wikipedia
,
writers' club
,
writing
Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility - classic fiction
Where misfortune and romance intertwine to produce popular emotional appeal
About this book:
Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, and
was her first published work when it appeared in 1811 under the
pseudonym "A Lady". A work of romantic fiction, Sense and
Sensibility is set in southwest England between 1792 and 1797, and
portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and
Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a
meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they
experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution
of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and
sensibility have truly merged.
When Mr.
Dashwood dies, his estate, Norland Park, passes directly to his only
son John, the child of his first wife. His second wife, Mrs.
Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, are
left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr. Dashwood extracts a
promise from his son, that he will take care of his half-sisters;
however, John's selfish and greedy wife, Fanny, soon persuades him to
renege. John and Fanny immediately take up their place as the new
owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are reduced to the
position of unwelcome guests. Mrs. Dashwood begins looking for
somewhere else to live.
In the
meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars, a pleasant, unassuming,
intelligent but reserved young man, visits Norland and soon forms an
attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves the match and offends Mrs.
Dashwood with the implication that Elinor is motivated by money
rather than love. Mrs. Dashwood indignantly speeds her search for a
new home.
Mrs.
Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the
home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home lacks many of
the conveniences that they have been used to, however they are warmly
received by Sir John, and welcomed into the local society, meeting
his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings and his
friend, the grave, quiet and gentlemanly Colonel Brandon. It soon
becomes apparent that Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and
Mrs. Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased as she
considers Colonel Brandon, at thirty-five, to be an old bachelor
incapable of falling in love, or inspiring love in anyone else.
Marianne,
out for a walk, gets caught in the rain, slips and sprains her ankle.
The dashing, handsome John Willoughby sees the accident and assists
her. Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and outspoken
views on poetry, music, art and love. Mr. Willoughby's attentions are
so overt that Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood begin to suspect that the
couple are secretly engaged... (source: Wikipedia)
About the author:
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was
an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the
landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read
writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social
commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and
critics.
Austen's
works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the
18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.
Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of
women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive
reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her
nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public,
and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a
great English writer. (source: Wikipedia)
About the Midwest Journal Writers' Club:
This
was created by popular request to enable any beginning or established
author to improve their skills by studying quality editions of
classic bestselling fiction. Join at http://midwestjournalpress.com
Related Sites
werewolf » Zombie Love: Chewing on the Entrails of Genre - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is Austen spiced with a zombie sub-plot which seems to directly offset a specific aspect of Austen's writing: decorum and class; conversely Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters would, ...'Circuits of sense and sensibility' | Harvard Gazette - Harvard biologist traces neural circuits involved in worm learning | A Harvard biologist succeeds in mapping a neural network for learned olfactory behavior, using a roundworm model to trace the dislike of a particular smell to ...
Close Reading of Sense and Sensibility | General Incivility - For this post, I will analyze the conversation Marianne and Elinor have about Edward in Chapter 4 (Volume I). After Marianne implies that Edward and Elinor will soon be engaged, Elinor immediately gives Marianne a lengthy ...
Leah Price explains how immortalizing Caroline Bingley on a bank ... - Reading different volumes of the same novel gives Miss Bingley and Darcy something in common, just as anyone reading Sense and Sensibility can guess Marianne Dashwood's fate once she reflects that “Our own library is ...
Downton Abbey & Jane Austen; Or, in Praise of Lady Mary | Journal ... - For example, in both Downton Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, actor Dan Stevens plays characters who are trying to honor promises that are absolutely essential to women's livelihoods.[1] In the second season of Downton, ...
Class, Money, and Marriage in Pride and Prejudice | BritLit - Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, is one of the most loved novels ever written. It continues to be near the top of lists of 'most loved.
The Weight of the Albatross: Coleridge's - Blogs @ Baylor University - The Weight of the Albatross Coleridge, unbeknownst to most people, struggled for a large portion of his life with an.
bestsellers
,
book
,
classic fiction
,
England
,
Jane Austen
,
Lady
,
Mississippi River
,
publishing
,
Sense and Sensibility
,
writers' club
,
writing
Jane Austen's Emma - New Classic Fiction For Study
Yet another Midwest Journal Writers' Club Selection now available.
About this book:
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." In the very first sentence she introduces the title character as "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich." Emma, however, is also rather spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives; and her imagination and perceptions often lead her astray.
Austen
,
book
,
classic fiction
,
Emma
,
Jane Austen
,
publishing
,
writers club
,
writing
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Another Midwest Journal Writers' Club Selection
About this book:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel. Written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.
Alice is feeling bored while sitting on the
riverbank with her sister, when she notices a talking, clothed White
Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit
hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many
locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small
for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden.
She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME",
the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key
which she has left on the table. A cake with "EAT ME" on it
causes her to grow to such a tremendous size her head hits the
ceiling...
alice
,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
,
best seller
,
bestsellers
,
book
,
books
,
classics
,
Fantasy
,
fiction
,
Hunting of the Snark
,
Lewis Carroll
,
midwest journal
,
rabbit
,
United States
,
Wonderland
,
writers club
How to Help Writers Study Their Craft - in spite of...
It's begun - another publishing journey par excellance.
(Or - as Bill and Ted would say - "A Most Excellent Journey.")
Republishing classics isn't as easy as it sounds. And the howls I get sometimes when modern authors criticize all this editing I do in order to bring quality work to them - can get annoying.
However, much as the old bandage has to come off in order to treat the cut or scrape, so must one endure innocent barbed comments, lightly or brusquely thrown.
The point of this is to create a study-series where an author would only need to download copies of these books and learn from the all-time great writers of history. Like sitting at the feet of the masters...
bestsellers
,
book
,
ebook
,
editing
,
itunes
,
kobo
,
lulu
,
nook
,
publishing
,
writing
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
Posts
