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How and why do we spend so much time talking about forgotten books, books we've skimmed or books we've only heard about? In this mischievous and provocative book, Pierre Bayard contends that the truly cultivated person does not need to read books: understanding their place in our culture is enough.
A French psychoanalyst and literary scholar offers a dramatic re-reading of Agatha Christie's classic novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, challenging Hercule Poirot's conclusions about the identity of the killer and presenting a startling new solution to the crime. Reprint.
A comprehensive guide to the ancient beliefs and spiritual power of subterranean spaces • Examines in depth the myths, symbology, deities, and beliefs connected to the underworld from many different cultures and mystery traditions • Investigates the role of the underworld in initiatory rites and mystical practices, such as the Orphic Mysteries, the chambers of reflections in Freemasonry, the cult of the Black Madonna, and the cult of Isis • Discusses the telluric currents that run through ley lines, the significance of underground waterways, Hollow Earth theory, and the denizens of the subterranean realms, such as dragons, gnomes, and dwarfs Ancient cultures around the world understood...
Written in the irreverent style that made How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read a critical and commercial success, Pierre Bayard takes readers on a trip around the world, giving us essential guidance on how to talk about all those fantastic places we've never been. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Places You've Never Been will delight and inform armchair globetrotters and jet-setters, all while never having to leave the comfort of the living room. Bayard examines the art of the “non-journey,” a tradition that a succession of writers and thinkers, unconcerned with moving away from their home turf, have employed in order to encounter the foreign cultures they wish to know and talk about. He describes concrete situations in which the reader might find himself having to speak about places he's never been, and he chronicles some of his own experiences and offers practical advice. How to Talk About Places You Haven't Been is a compelling and delightful book that will expand any travel enthusiast's horizon well beyond the places it's even possible to visit in a single lifetime.
A noir set in the seediest backwaters of the French publishing industry, The Collaborators tells the story of a hapless drifter who, after years of not particularly heroic effort, finally manages to write a book. A good book? A bad book? Well, it's complicated-and soon the complications he's set in motion spiral entirely out of control. Praised by Pierre Bayard in How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, and finally available in English by one of our greatest translators, The Collaborators is both a sinister thriller and a comedy of outrageous proportions. Under the title Ferdinaud Celine, The Collaborators was published in French in 1997 to great acclaim.
A hungry wolf attends a performance of Swine Lake, performed by the Boarshoi Ballet, intending to eat the performers, but he is so entranced by the story unfolding on the stage that he forgets about his meal.
In his brilliant reinvestigation of the classic case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pierre Bayard uses the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key to unravel the mystery, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes-and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle-got things all wrong. Part intellectual entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head.
Presents strategies for discussing books in social situations that readers have forgotten or haven't read, offering examples by writers such as Graham Greene and Umberto Eco.
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Gregorian chant, the Catholic Church's very own music, is proper to the Roman liturgy, but during the course of its long history it has experienced periods of ascendancy and decline. A century ago, Pope Pius X called for a restoration of the sacred melodies, and the result was the Vatican Edition. This book presents for the first time in English the fully documented history of the Gregorian chant restoration. The original French edition was published by the Abbey of Solesmes in 1969.This book describes in careful, vivid detail the strenuous efforts of personalities like Dom Joseph Pothier, Dom Andre Mocquereau, Fr. Angelo de Santi, and Peter Wagner to carry out the wishes of the pope. The attentive reader will not fail to note that many of the questions so fervidly debated long ago are still current and topical today. Robert A. Skeris' introduction to this edition illuminates the current discussion with documentation, including the Preface to the Vatican Gradual and the Last Will and Testament written by Dom Eugene Cardine.