Peter Laslett's comment, in The World We Have Lost, that in the early modern period 'every relationship could be seen as a love-relationship' presents the governing idea of this book. In an analysis that includes Shakespeare's sonnets and a wide range of his plays from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter's Tale, David Schalkwyk looks at the ways in which the personal, affective relations of love are informed by the social, structural interactions of service. Showing that service is not a 'class' concept, but rather determined the fundamental conditions of identity across the whole society, the book explores the inter-penetration of structure and affect in relationships as varied as monarch and subject, aristocrat and personal servant, master and slave, husband and wife, and lover and beloved, in the light of differences of rank, gender and sexual identity.

Vikram and The Vampire is a collection of tales and legends from India. It was originally written in Sanskrit. Like Arabian Nights, it is a set of tales, within a frame story. According to Isabel Burton, the Baital Pachisi "is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of facetious fictitious literature.". The story revolves around the semi-legendary King Vikram, identified as Vikramaditya (c. 1st century BC). Vikram promises a tantric sorcerer (Vamachara) to bring him the Baital (or Vetala in Sanskrit), a huge vampire. Baital hangs on a tree and inhabits and animates dead bodies. Vikram faces many difficulties in bringing the Baital to the tantric.

I thought these were fake books, but nope, they got informationon fantastic beasts which is a lot of fun to read. Any HarryPotter fan would love these.

Nick Hornby's brilliant third novel offers a painfully funny account of modern marriage and parenthood, and asks that most difficult of questions: what does it mean to be good?

Is there no explanation of the mystery of The Haunted Hotel? Is The Haunted Hotel the tale of a haunting -- or the tale of a crime? The ghost of Lord Montberry haunts the Palace Hotel in Venice --- or does it? Montberry's beautiful-yet-terrifying wife, the Countess Narona, and her erstwhile brother are the center of the terror that fills the Palace Hotel. Are their malefactions at the root of the haunting -- or is there something darker, something much more unknowable at work?

It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but the very funny novel High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This funny novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early-thirtysomething English guy who runs a London record store.

George Bernard Shaw was called, with good reason, the "English Nietzsche". Though Nietzsche was an aristocrat and Shaw a socialist, both cherished the dream of the superman and looked forward to the day when he would be realised. Both, however, were characterised by their mordant wit and intellectual cynicism, in which "Man and Superman" abounds. Shaw manages to compress a number of disparate themes into a relatively taut dramatic format, even throwing in a scene in which Don Juan, the Devil and a gang of anarchist brigands make an appearance. The central event of the plot involves the wealthy Tanner, a member of the "Idle Rich Class" making himself subservient to the Life Force and seeking the perfect woman to marry, who would guarantee him a very special offspring, his ideal, the superman himself.

Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent an astonishing variety of geographical areas, occupations, and religious affiliations. This pioneering study explores the origins, historical development, and distinctive characteristics of autobiography in the Arabic tradition, drawing from texts written between the ninth and nineteenth centuries c.e.

Tragic masterpiece explores mind of an artist in alternately joyful and despairing letters recounting an unhappy romance. Goethe addresses issues of love, death, and redemption in an influential portrayal of a character who struggles to reconcile his artistic sensibilities with the demands of the objective world.

This book was written in 1719 and it was inspired by a true story of a man (Alexander Selkirk) who was rescued after having spent 3 years on a Pacific Island in 1709. The book is written in the first person as a diary of the life of Robinson Crusoe. The language and phrasing can be a little odd at times because it is a very old book but I do not think it is too difficult to understand. It was the fist "shipwreck and rescue" type of book and many others were written later on the same theme.

Moby Dick belongs to the first rank of world literature. Melville read widely and deeply within the Western tradition, and brought it all together in his complex masterpiece. Within the framework of a simple tale of obsession, Melville offers commentary on the corpus of philosophy, history, theology, and literature that is our inheritance. All of these themes swirl around the central question of the novel: should we affirm the world, with all of its evil, or should we defy it?