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Around the World in 80 Books
Around the World in 80 Books | David Damrosch
8 posts | 3 read | 1 reading | 7 to read
A transporting and illuminating voyage around the globe, through classic and modern literary works that are in conversation with one another and with the world around them *Featured in the Chicago Tribune's Great 2021 Fall Book Preview* Inspired by Jules Vernes hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard Universitys department of comparative literature and founder of Harvards Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemics restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prizewinners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan, and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature. To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world were entering. Taken together, these eighty titles offer us fresh perspective on enduring problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat, as well as the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books heroines have to strugglefrom the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to Margaret Atwood today. Around the World in 80 Books is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.
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charl08
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...she says that 'considering the total antipathy I had toward matrimony,' the convent was the most honorable decision she could make. She took the veil at age nineteen, despite her fear of routines that 'would limit the freedom of my studies, or the noise of a community that would interfere with the tranquil silence of my books' (97). She did at least get a cell of her own, and she amassed a library of several thousand volumes...

AlaMich Sor Juana is such a fascinating historical figure. 4h
charl08 @AlaMich I'd never heard of her before - any bios you'd recommend? 4h
AlaMich @charl08 I haven‘t read biographies of her per se,but I learned about her over the course of years of studying Spanish. I do have a volume of her poetry, with the original Spanish and the English translation side by side. I would recommend that, if you enjoy poetry. (Edited to add that I just realized that the pictured book is her work.) (edited) 3h
22 likes3 comments
blurb
charl08
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This book should be subtitled 'and add them all to your wishlist.'

Ruthiella I love books like that (despite the dangers)! 😃 8h
37 likes1 stack add1 comment
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charl08
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Many details in the Nights suggest that the tales as we have them are as much a product of Ottoman-era Cairo and Damascus as of Sassanid Persia or Abbasid Baghdad. Thus in "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,' when a woman buys a lavish array of supplies for a feast, these include Turkish quinces, Hebron peaches, Damascus lilies, Aleppo raisins, and pastry from Cairo, Turkey, and the Balkans...

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charl08
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The reliefs carved on tomb walls are filled with evocations of earthly life, and their artists took pleasure in capturing a fleeting moment for all eternity. In a relief from the Fifth Dynasty, carved four and a half thousand years ago, a watchman and his guard baboon have caught a thief who is trying to steal some grain. Above the thief's head we see his plea to the guard: 'YAH! Smite your baboon! Get the baboon off me!'

LeahBergen 😆😆 10mo
humouress Wow; early 'Tintin' 😉
And who knew they had guard baboons?
(edited) 10mo
charl08 @LeahBergen loved this @humouress 😀I just can't imagine a baboon being any kind of help, but🤷🏻‍♀️ 10mo
46 likes3 comments
blurb
charl08
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I'm nine books in and I want to pick up eight of them...

Ruthiella The risk (and the joy) of reading books about books! 😆 11mo
49 likes2 stack adds1 comment
review
Jnnlb
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Panpan

Great concept but book dragged⭐️⭐️

review
KarenUK
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Pickpick

Inspired by Verne‘s Phileas Fogg, yet more of an imaginary journey of reading, it‘s an armchair travelogue to counteract the pandemic‘s restrictions on physical adventuring.
It‘s such a unique take on the ‘books about books‘ genre (my personal catnip),exploring the world through literature, connecting us as humans, through universal emotions, through fictional characters. A true book lovers book, and this would make an amazing reading challenge!

Crazeedi Sounds awesome 3y
vivastory I checked this out a couple of weeks ago 3y
41 likes1 stack add2 comments