Ctc catalog – 2014

Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marcal in a small village on the outskirts of the Center. When his pots are no longer ordered, the three move into the Center. Mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their new apartment. Cipriano and Marcal investigate and what they find transforms the family.

NY, 1998. (Stan Vogel, Faith McDevitt, narrs., Sally Szoke, mon.) 2 cass.

The Tony Award-winning play at the intersection of science and art re-imagines the mysterious wartime meeting between two Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb. German physicist Werner Heisenberg and Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr were old friends and close colleagues who revolu-tionized atomic physics in the 1920's but were now on opposite sides of war.
CTC 3913 The Crimson Edge: Older Women Writing. Zeidenstein, Sondra, ed. Chicory Blue Press, Goshen, CT, 1996. (Roxana Laughlin, narr., Beth Steinberg, mon.) 3 cass.

An anthology edited by Zeidenstein, of fiction, memoir and poetry by seven women writers past the age of sixty. Each author's creative writing is

followed by an Afterword about what is currently on her mind as an artist.

CTC 3943 Daphnis and Chloe. Longus; translated with an introduction and notes by Ronald McCail. Oxford University Press, New York, 2002.

(Ruth Lanzer, narr., Gerry Cohen, mon.) 3 cass.

One of the best known of the early Greek romances; Daphnis and Chloe are drawn to each other but do not know what love is or how to accomplish the physical act. Round their predicament, is the hard toil of peasant life but also its compensations, revelry, music, dance and storytelling. The presences of Eros, Dionysus, Pan and the Nymphs guide the adolescents into the mystery of love, a sensual and religious initiation. Admired by Goethe, this tale has been reinterpreted in music and art by Ravel and Chagall.
CTC 3940 Dictionary of Misinformation. Burnham, Thomas. Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1975. (Amy Wallace, narr., John Hart, mon.)5 cass.

Collectors of information are numerous, but collectors of misinformation are rare. Thomas Burnham, an unusual professor of English, a man who delights in errors has brought together some of the mistaken beliefs many of us have confidently expounded in speech and writing.

A pleasing, persuasive piece of fiction set in Tuscany; a group of well-to-do expatriates decide to put on an amateur production of Don Giovanna. The novelist uses the conventions of operatic drama to reveal the story and characters (via voice mail, for example). The result is both intellectually winning and unpretentiously original.

A novel about English life in 1832, involving radicalism, legality and romance. Honest, forthright and idealistic Felix Holt is driven to educate the working classes. He finds himself opposed by the wealthy opportunistic Harold Transome and in a contest for the love of the over-refined Esther.

Julian Barnes who has been compared with writers such as Joyce, spins out a multiple mystery, an exuberant inquiry into the ways in which art mirrors life and then in turn shapes it; a look at the perverse autopsies that readers perform on books and lovers perform on their beloved; and a glimpse at the nature of obsession and betrayal, both scholarly and romantic.

A heartbreaking novel about a young woman who comes of age in the long shadow of World War II. Forty years later she relates the events of this period, beginning with the death of her favorite cousin, Randall. When he dies on Iwo Jima, she turns to the legacy he left her: his diary and a book.

(Ledlie Laughlin, narr., John Perry, mon.) 6 cass.

A translation of the correspondence between George Sand and Gustave Flaubert; these letters are sufficiently rewarding in and of themselves but disclose the aspects of these extraordinary diverse personalities in a relationship extending over twelve years, including the period of the Franco-Prussian War.
CTC 3755 Ghosting, a double life. Erdal, Jennie. Random House, NY, 2004. (Tracy Yost, narr., Dianne Orlando, mon.) 4 cass.

Jennie Erdal was initially hired to edit a flamboyant London publisher's Russian books in translation but soon found she was secretly writing her boss's love letters, hundreds of newspaper columns, and his two well-reviewed novels. For more than fifteen years, she was the indispensable "ghostwriter" for the exasperating, obsessive, yet charmimg "Tiger". She reveals this oddly intimate relationship and her collusion with wry insight.

Often there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface; a symbol or meaning that escaped you. In this practical and amusing guide, the author shows how easy it is to unlock those hidden truths to discover a world where a road leads to a quest.

Five autobiographical essays depicting the exuberant years of the Jazz Age. Written during the Great Depression, the stories wistfully reflect on the excesses and abandon of the 1920s with a sense of disappointment, passing youth, and paradise lost.

On a stormy night at Lord Byron's Swiss villa, Mary Shelley challenged her host, her husband and herself to write a ghost story. Mary's, became Frankenstein but what became of Byron's story. In a display of scholarship and imagination, Crowley uses biography, literary history, criticism, computer science and cryptography to imagine Byron's lost masterpiece.

One of America's most adored juvenile fiction writers; Alcott also penned anonymous and pseudonymous sensation stories for popular magazines. Her spellbinding tales of intrigue and suspense were uncovered by the detective work of Madeleine Stern and others who searched for clues to Alcott's secret literary life. Originally published between 1863 and 1870.

A play centering on the relationship between Mrs. Warren, a prostitute and her daughter, Vivie, a Cambridge graduate.

This first novel by Langston Hughes, may be his finest prose. A classic of African-American literature, it is the poignant story of a young black boy's awakening to the sad and beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town. Introduction by Maya Angelou; foreword by Arna Bontemps.

From one of the world's best novelists, Amy Tan explores her journey from childhood to the present day. A refreshing meditation on choices, freedoms and luck that affects us all.

Literary sketches of country people and gentry in Three Mile Cross, a

small Berkshire village in late Georgian England far in the country, where

every one is known to every one. Described are its passage through a year of hard frosts, a wet summer, and a balmy fall.

This dazzling study presents the personal background and literary achievements of nine women novelists illustrating how women are "the caretakers of culture", and pioneers of the American experience. These novelists have preserved and satirized the battered national landscape.

On a winter morning in the 1920's, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois, killing a man, and shattering the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagers, one privileged yet neglected and the other a troubled farm boy. Fifty years later, one of the boys, now a man, tries to reconstruct the events and is inevitably drawn back to his lost friend.

Norman Moonbloom, a dropout who can't even make it as a deadbeat, starts to collect rent in Manhatten buildings for his brother, a slumlord. As he makes his rounds, Moonbloom grows familiar with a wild assortment of characters and is drawn into a desperate attempt to improve their lives.

The linked stories in Kate Walbert's debut collection examine the very contemporary predicament of families without geographic roots – where home is on the road. From the patchwork of communication that unfolds between mother and daughter, Walbert creates a narrative for our times.

If you're fascinated by words and language, you'll revel in WordUp!

Drawn from Kyff's syndicated column, which appears in “The Hartford

Courant”, this book treats readers to a zesty smorgasbord; handy tips on usage and fascinating stories behind word and phrase origins.

Short Stories and Essays
CTC 3726 After Henry. Didion Joan. Random House, NY, 1992.

( Marjorie Rogers, narr., Marie Meisel, mon.) 3 cass.

After a brief tribute to Henry Robbins, her late editor, Didion provides her readers with eleven essays focused on Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York City. Topics include the rape of a Central Park jogger, the 1988 Writer's Guild strike, a presidential campaign, California earthquakes, the long reign of Mayor Tom Bradley, and her lecture at her alma mater.