What if you could transform your life simply by changing your words?Would you like to cultivate unshakeable confidence, fulfilling relationships and lasting financial success?My Little Book of Positive Affirmations is your practical guide to reprogramming your mind and attracting happiness, success and serenity. This book is packed with powerful affirmations designed to strengthen every aspect of your life: personality, career, love, finances, and much more...

Rediscover this deep, practical anatomy of the novel from 'the strongest ... literary critic we have' (New York Review of Books) in this new revised 10th anniversary edition.What do we mean when we say we 'know' a fictional character?What constitutes a 'telling' detail?When is a metaphor successful?Is realism realistic?Why do most endings of novels d...

What makes a story a story? What is style? What's the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation.Raging widely from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings, Woods takes the reader through the basic elements of the art of fiction, step-by-step. He sums up two decades of insight...

Hoe fictie werkt is een fonkelend en scherp boek over hoe romans en verhalen in elkaar zitten. Het gaat in op vertelperspectief, het juiste gebruik van details, hoe een personage wordt opgebouwd, dialogen, realisme en stijl. James Wood, een van de meest prominente literaire critici van onze tijd, buigt zich over de vraag hoe dat eigenlijk in zijn werk gaat: het schrijven en lezen van literaire fictie. Wat bedoelen we precies wanneer we zeggen dat we een personage 'kennen'? Wanneer is een d...

In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, James Wood's How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power.Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional c...

Che cos'è che rende così speciale una storia? Che cos'è esattamente lo stile? Qual è la connessione tra il realismo e la vita reale? Sono solo alcuni degli interrogativi ai quali James Wood fornisce una risposta in questo brillante saggio. Spaziando lungo tutto l'arco della storia letteraria, ma soffermandosi soprattutto sull'Ottocento e il Novecento, rispettivamente la stagione d'oro del romanzo borghese e il secolo dell'incertezza e della crisi del realismo, Wood accompagna il lettore, p...

In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that, of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives, and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works – among others, Chekhov’s story ‘The Kiss’, W...

This vintage book contains a fantastic collection of stories taken from Greek mythology. Derived partly from the classical originals and partly from excellent versions of them written in German, these stories were intended primarily to interest young readers in the wonders of Greek mythology. They thus make perfect stories to read to children at bedtime. The tales contained herein include: “Orpheus and Eurydice”, “The Sleep of Endymion”, “The Tale of the Beautiful Psyche”, “Cupid and the G...

From The New Yorker's book critic, "one of the most intelligent and passionate literary critics working today. . . . a masterful 'greatest hits' collection" (Angela M. Giles, Los Angeles Review of Books ).Ever since the publication of his first essay collection, The Broken Estate James Wood has been widely regarded as a leading literary critic of the English-speaking wo...

Un brillante estudio sobre la magia de la novela y una celebración por su poder duradero, de la mano de James Wood, uno de los grandes críticos contemporáneos.Uno de los críticos más destacados y elegantes de nuestro tiempo analiza la maquinaria de contar historias para plantearse algunas preguntas fundamentales: ¿Qué queremos decir cuando decimos que «conocemos» a un personaje de ficción? ¿Qué detalles son reveladores? ¿Cuándo funciona una metáfora? ¿Es el realism...

I surprised you as you took your usual shower. I seized your arms and bound you to the bar, and then left you alone immediately after. You are left for a few minutes to wonder what is going on. Stirred and hot from the shower, but wetter still at your vulnerability and the anticipation of what is to come...An erotic first-person short story from bdsm author James Wood.

The selected essays of James Wood - our greatest living literary critic and author of How Fiction Works'James Wood is a close reader of genius... By turns luscious and muscular, committed and disdaining, passionate and minutely considered' John BanvilleJames Wood is one of the leading critics of the age, and here, for the first time, are his selected essays. From the career-defining 'Hysterical Realism' to his more personal reflect...