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Literature-classics/criti

1984

1984

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1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmare vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. "1984" is still the great modern classic "negative Utopia" - a startling original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny this novel's power, its hold on the imagination of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions - a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.
1984

1984

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Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...

This 75th Anniversary Edition includes:

- A New Introduction by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Take My Hand, winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work--Fiction
- A Foreword by Thomas Pynchon
- A New Afterword by Sandra Newman, author of Julia: A Retelling of George Orwell's 1984

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can't escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...

A startling and haunting vision of the world, 1984 is so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the influence of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions--a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.

-Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read-

2 TOWERS

2 TOWERS

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A rare recording featuring Tolkien himself reading exciting selections and singing enchanting songs from the awesome trilogy of books whose literary light will never fade away.
9 STORIES

9 STORIES

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The "original, first-rate, serious, and beautiful" short fiction (New York Times Book Review) that introduced J. D. Salinger to American readers in the years after World War II, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and the first appearance of Salinger's fictional Glass family.
Nine exceptional stories from one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and frequently affecting, Nine Stories sits alongside Salinger's very best work--a treasure that will passed down for many generations to come. The stories:
  • A Perfect Day for Bananafish
  • Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut
  • Just Before the War with the Eskimos
  • The Laughing Man
  • Down at the Dinghy
  • For Esmé--with Love and Squalor
  • Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes
  • De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
  • Teddy
  • ACRES OF DIAMONDS

    ACRES OF DIAMONDS

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    Why was Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, referred to as the penniless millionaire? This, along with other questions, will be answered in this revolutionary book that contains Conwell's classic Acres of Diamonds message. You will discover how this lawyer, minister, writer, lecturer, educator, and diplomat who represented the City of Brotherly Love left a legacy that is still changing countless lives today. His famous Acres of Diamonds message will also challenge you to seek opportunities to find true wealth right in your own backyard without getting sidetracked by selfishness and greed. The same principles that transformed Russell Conwell into one of the most charitable millionaires during his time, will also revolutionize your life as you read his timeless message contained in this book!
    ADV OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

    ADV OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

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    The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen and a foreword by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Republic of Imagination

    In recent years, neither the persistent effort to "clean up" the racial epithets in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel's wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of a turbulent, yet hopeful epoch in American history, defining the experience of a nation in voices often satirical, but always authentic.

    For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    ADV OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

    ADV OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

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    No home library is complete without the classics! The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a keepsake to be read and treasured.

    The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of twelve short stories by Scottish author Arthur Conan Doyle, is considered a milestone in the genre of detective fiction. With Sherlock Holmes's clever disguises and ability to solve even the most elusive mysteries, as well as Holmes's loyal friend and biographer, Dr. Watson, who narrates most of the stories, Doyle's suspenseful stories and well-developed characters keep readers on the edges of their seats. Now available as part of the Word Cloud Classics series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a must-have addition to the libraries of all classic literature lovers.

    About the Word Cloud Classics series:

    Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics provides a chic and inexpensive introduction to timeless tales. With a higher production value, including heat burnished covers and foil stamping, these eye-catching, easy-to-hold editions are the perfect gift for students and fans of literature everywhere.

    AFTERLIVES

    AFTERLIVES

    $28.00
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    ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

    A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ"

    A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

    "Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away." --

    New York Times

    From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa.

    When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back-until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

    $26.00
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    Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

    Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea what was to happen afterwards, ' wrote Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. In the magical world of Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom, order is turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a tea-party; and a chaotic game of chess makes a 7-year-old a Queen.

    ANIMAL FARM

    ANIMAL FARM

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    75th Anniversary Edition--Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht

    George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel--a scathing satire of a downtrodden society's blind march towards totalitarianism.

    "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

    A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned--a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

    When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

    With a foreword by Ann Patchett

    ANIMAL FARM & 1984

    ANIMAL FARM & 1984

    $25.00
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    This edition features George Orwell's best known novels - 1984 and Animal Farm - with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.

    In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

    Animal Farm is Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution -- an account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm--a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. But are they?

    ANIMAL FARM ANNIV/E 50/E

    ANIMAL FARM ANNIV/E 50/E

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    Since its publication fifty years ago, "Animal Farm" has become one of the most controversial books ever written. It has been translated into seventy languages and sold millions of copies throughout the world. This edition is being published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of its original U.S. publication.

    It features 100 full-color and halftone illustrations by world-renowned artist Ralph Steadman. As vital and relevant as it was fifty years ago, "Animal Farm" is a devastating satire of the Soviet Union by the man V. S. Pritchett called "the conscience of his generation." A fable about an uprising of farm animals against their human masters, it illustrates how new tyranny replaces old in the wake of revolutions and power corrupts even the noblest of causes.

    This anniversary edition includes Orwell's proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition and his preface to the 1947 Ukranian edition. These appendices evoke the historical context in which Orwell conceived and wrote his classic novel.

    ANNA KARENINA DLX/E

    ANNA KARENINA DLX/E

    $20.00
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    The must-have Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of one of the greatest Russian novels ever written

    Described by William Faulkner as the best novel ever written and by Fyodor Dostoevsky as "flawless," Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

    While previous versions have softened the robust and sometimes shocking qualities of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear and Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This authoritative edition, which received the PEN Translation Prize and was an Oprah Book Club(TM) selection, also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this Anna Karenina will be the definitive text for fans of the film and generations to come. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper.

    For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    AS I LAY DYING

    AS I LAY DYING

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    At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member -- including Addie -- and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.
    ASK THE DUST

    ASK THE DUST

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    Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.

    ATLAS SHRUGGED ANNIV/E

    ATLAS SHRUGGED ANNIV/E

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    The astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did.

    Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, "Atlas Shrugged" is unlike any other book you have ever read. It is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder - and rebirth - of man's spirit.

    With this acclaimed work and its immortal query "Who is John Galt?" Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. This is the book that made her not only one of the most popular novelists of our century, but also one of its most influential thinkers.

    BEST AMER ESSAYS 2022

    BEST AMER ESSAYS 2022

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    A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.

    Alexander Chee, an essayist of "virtuosity and power" (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.



    BK OF DAYS

    BK OF DAYS

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    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A deeply moving and brilliantly idiosyncratic visual book of days by the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, featuring more than 365 images and reflections that chart Smith's singular aesthetic--inspired by her wildly popular Instagram.

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Variety, Pitchfork, PopSugar

    In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message "Hello Everybody!" Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith's world, photographs of her daily coffee, the books she's reading, the graves of beloved heroes--William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, Albert Camus. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith's unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to this book are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother's keychain, and a husband's Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith's archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

    With over 365 photographs taking you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, playful--and complete with an introduction by Smith that explores her documentary process--A Book of Days is a timeless offering for deeply uncertain times, an inspirational map of an artist's life.

    BOXED-HOBBIT & THE LORD OF-4V

    BOXED-HOBBIT & THE LORD OF-4V

    $59.99
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    Darkness Will Bind Them...watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 on Prime Video.

    Immerse yourself in Middle-earth with J. R. R. Tolkien's classic masterpieces behind the films, in this gorgeous pocket-sized, leatherette-bound box set--the perfect gift for Lord of the Rings devotees.

    This four-volume, pocket-sized box set contains Tolkien's epic works The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King). The set comes shrink-wrapped with all four books in a leatherette-bound box with gold foil stamping; each book features a leatherette cover with stamped title and their compact size (4 1/4" x 5 7/8") makes them perfect to carry anywhere.

    In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is whisked away from his comfortable, unambitious life in Hobbiton by the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves. He finds himself caught up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.

    The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the dwarf; Legolas the elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.

    Tolkien's epic tales are at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale--a story of high and heroic adventure set in the unforgettable landscape of Middle-earth.

    BOXED-SHERLOCK HOLMES COLL 6V

    BOXED-SHERLOCK HOLMES COLL 6V

    $59.99
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    Step into the cobbled streets of Victorian London with this deluxe slipcased collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, presented in six handsome clothbound volumes.

    Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective Sherlock Holmes has captivated readers for over a century. This 6-volume boxset brings together his most famous cases, featuring cipher messages, stolen treasure and a mysterious beast roaming the moors...

    Inspired by Victorian-era bookbinding, each volume is clothbound in beautiful autumnal shades and gold-foil embossing. The slipcase has luxurious cloth accents on the top and bottom and makes a wonderful display piece in any home library.

    Stories include:
    - A Study in Scarlet
    - The Sign of Four
    - The Valley of Fear
    - The Hound of the Baskervilles
    - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
    - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
    - The Returns of Sherlock Holmes
    - His Last Bow

    ABOUT THE SERIES: The Arcturus Collector's Classics series are high-quality, clothbound box-sets of classic works of literature. With elegant embossed cover-designs and colored endpapers, these editions make wonderful gifts or collectibles to treasure forever.

    BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

    BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

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    Fyodor Dostoyevsky's powerful meditation on faith, meaning and morality, The Brothers Karamazov is translated with an introduction and notes by David McDuff in Penguin Classics.

    When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspicion for parricide; Ivan, the intellectual, whose mental tortures drive him to breakdown; the spiritual Alyosha, who tries to heal the family's rifts; and the shadowy figure of their bastard half-brother Smerdyakov. As the ensuing investigation and trial reveal the true identity of the murderer, Dostoyevsky's dark masterpiece evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur and everyone's faith in humanity is tested.

    This powerful translation of The Brothers Karamazov features and introduction highlighting Dostoyevsky's recurrent themes of guilt and salvation, with a new chronology and further reading.

    "There is no writer who better demonstrates the contradictions and fluctuations of the creative mind than Dostoyevsky, and nowhere more astonishingly than in The Brothers Karamazov."--Joyce Carol Oates

    "Dostoyevsky was the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life."--Friedrich Nietzsche

    "The most magnificent novel ever written."--Sigmund Freud

    BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

    BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

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    The final masterpiece from the celebrated author of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot...

    This extraordinary novel, Dostoyevsky's last and greatest work, tells the dramatic story of four brothers--Dmitri, pleasure-seeking, impatient, unruly . . . Ivan, brilliant and morose . . . Alyosha, gentle, loving, honest . . . and the illegitimate Smerdyakov, sly, silent, cruel. Driven by intense passion, they become involved in the brutal murder of their own father, one of the most loathsome characters in all literature. Featuring the famous chapter, "The Grand Inquisitor," Dostoyevsky's final masterpiece is at once a complex character study, a riveting murder mystery, and a fascinating examination of man's morality and the question of God's existence.

    Translated by Constance Garnett
    Edited and with a Foreword by Manuel Komroff
    and an Afterword by Sara Paretsky

    CANNERY ROW

    CANNERY ROW

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    Steinbeck's tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society, dependant on one another for both physical and emotional survival

    A Penguin Classic

    Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, including longtime friend Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Dora, Mack and his boys, Lee Chong, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and poignant works. In her introduction, Susan Shillinglaw shows how the novel expresses, both in style and theme, much that is essentially Steinbeck: "Scientific detachment, empathy toward the lonely and depressed . . . and, at the darkest level . . . the terror of isolation and nothingness."

    For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    CARMILLA 2/E

    CARMILLA 2/E

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    "To this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Sometimes, I start from a reverie, certain I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door."

    Isolated in a remote mansion in a central European forest, Laura longs for companionship--until a carriage accident brings another young woman into her life: the secretive and sometimes erratic Carmilla. As Carmilla's actions become more puzzling and volatile, Laura develops bizarre symptoms, and as her health goes into decline, Laura and her father discover something monstrous.

    Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's compelling tale of a young woman's seduction by a female vampire was a source of influence for Bram Stoker's Dracula, which it predates by over a quarter century. Carmilla was originally serialized from 1871 to 1872 and went on to inspire adaptations in film, opera, and beyond, including the cult classic web series by the same name.

    CARNIVAL OF SNACKERY

    CARNIVAL OF SNACKERY

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    A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice: There's no right way to keep a diary, but if there's an entertaining way, David Sedaris seems to have mas­tered it.

    If it's navel-gazing you're after, you've come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leap­ing to his death. There's a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party--lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.

    These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was just a harm­less laughingstock, at least on French TV. Time marches on, and Sedaris, at his desk or on planes, in hotel dining rooms and odd Japanese inns, records it. The entries here reflect an ever-changing background--new administrations, new restrictions on speech and conduct. What you can say at the start of the book, you can't by the end. At its best, A Carnival of Snackery is a sort of sampler: the bitter and the sweet. Some entries are just what you wanted. Others you might want to spit discreetly into a napkin.