Waggoner Library

Somebody, please tell me who I am / Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis.

Wounded in Iraq while his Army unit is on convoy and treated for many months for traumatic brain injury, the first person Ben remembers from his earlier life is his autistic brother.

The storytelling animal : how stories make us human / Jonathan Gottschall.

"undiscovered and unmapped country. It's easy to say that humans are "wired" for story, but why? In this book, the author offers a unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life's complex social problems, just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, he tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic? Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more "truthy" than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler's ambitions were partly fueled by a story. But as is shown in this book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral; they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. This book finally reveals how stories shape us."--Book Jacket

Quick, said the bird : Williams, Eliot, Moore, and the spoken word / Richard Swigg.

When William Carlos Williams said, "It's all in / the sound," when T. S. Eliot hailed the invigorating force of the "auditory imagination," or when Marianne Moore applauded "the clatter and true sound" of Williams's verse, each poet invoked the dimension that bound them together. In this volume the author makes the case for acoustics as the basis of the linkages, kinships, and inter-illuminations of a major twentieth-century literary relationship. Outsiders in their home terrain who nevertheless continued to reach back to their own American vocal identities, Williams, Eliot, and Moore embody a unique lineage that can be traced from their first significant works (1909-1918) to the 1960s. In reconstructing the auditory dimension in the work of the three poets, this book does not neglect the visual text. Whether in the form of Moore's quirky patternings, Eliot's expandable verse-frames, or Williams's springy stanzas, the printed shape on the page is here brought together with the spoken word in vital interplay: the eye-read text cut against by sequential utterance in a restoration of the poetry's full effect. By seeing and hearing the verse at the same moment, together with reading side-by-side discussions of the quarrels, friendships, mutual borrowings, and shared energies of Williams, Eliot, and Moore, the reader gains a new understanding of their individual achievements. By sound and sight, this work takes the reader straight into the physical textures of the finest works by three outstanding figures of twentieth-century American poetry.

Tennessee Williams / editor, Brenda Murphy.

"This collection of essays offers a diverse selection of criticism of one of the most significant American playwrights of the twentieth century."-About this volume.

Flannery O'Connor / editor, Charles E. May.

Charles Dickens / editor, Eugene Goodheart.

A collection of essays relating to the life and writings of Charles Dickens.

F. Scott Fitzgerald / editor, Don Noble.

A collection of essays dealing with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The visible : poems / Bruce Bond.

Black tupelo country / Doug Ramspeck.

"Black Tupelo Country, a poetry collection, explores the themes of animism, superstition, and anachronism as they occur in rural Midwestern landscapes and urban strip malls. Many poems explore how the natural and supernatural worlds interconnect in language and perception, and the human tendency to read nature into fears and longings"--Provided by publisher.

Dismal rock / by Davis McCombs.

Mechanical fireflies / Doug Ramspeck.

Blind rain : poems / Bruce Bond.

Chanson de Roland. English & French (Old French)

Peal : poems / by Bruce Bond.

Possum nocturne : poems / by Doug Ramspeck.

A new history of French literature / edited by Denis Hollier ; with R. Howard Bloch ... [et al.].

The Cambridge companion to Voltaire / edited by Nicholas Cronk.

"As a leading thinker of the European Enlightenment, Voltaire is a central figure in France's collective cultural memory. The popularity of Candide has made him perhaps best known as a writer of tales. Yet these represent only a fraction of his entire œuvre. Voltaire created a style of authorship which made him the most famous writer in Europe and turned his name into a brand for a certain style of writing and thinking. This Companion covers his plays, fiction, pamphlets, correspondence, biblical criticism, and historical, political and philosophical thought, to give a wide-ranging view of his writings. The most comprehensive book on Voltaire available in English, it makes accessible the most recent research in France as well as the English-speaking world, in a series of original essays and a guide to sources. The essays demonstrate why Voltaire remains an essential point of reference in defining the modern intellectual today."--Publisher description.

The Cambridge companion to Chekhov / edited by Vera Gottlieb and Paul Allain.

This companion of specially commissioned essays explores the world of Anton Chekhov and the creation, performance, and interpretation of his works. The companion begins with an examination of Chekhov's life, his Russia, and the original productions of his plays at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart : a casebook / edited by Isidore Okpewho.

The Inferno, by Dante / editor, Patrick Hunt.

Tree of smoke / Denis Johnson.

CIA officer William "Skip" Sands travels to Vietnam in 1967 as part of a team running deceptive operations against North Vietnam, but his involvement in their latest assignment is complicated by a Canadian nurse and two brothers whose misguided beliefs threaten the entire operation.

Space, in chains / Laura Kasischke.

"Space, in Chains speaks in ghostly voices, fractured narratives, songs, prayers, and dark riddles as it moves through contemporary tragedies of grief and the complex succession of generations. In her eighth book of poetry, Laura Kasischke has pared the construction of her verse to its bones, leaving haunting language and a visceral strangeness of imagery. by turns mournful and celebratory, Kasischke's poetry insists upon asking hard questions that are courageously left unanswered."--Cover, p. [4].

Kingdom animalia : poems / by Aracelis Girmay.

The lemon table : stories / Julian Barnes.

A collection of tales featuring aging characters facing the ends of their lives includes "The Silence," in which a composer longs for companionship, and "Knowing French," in which an octogenarian begins corresponding with an author.

Fiskadoro / Denis Johnson.

A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters / Julian Barnes.

Offers an idiosyncratic, revisionist history of life on planet Earth, from a playful account of Noah by a stowaway on the Ark, to the spiritual odyssey of a American astronaut.

Heavenly bodies / Cynthia Huntington.

Arthur & George / Julian Barnes.

Chronicles the lives of two boys--the son of a Midlands vicar and the creator of the world's most famous detective--as they pursue separate destinies until meeting and forming a remarkable alliance.

Talking it over / Julian Barnes.

The pale king : an unfinished novel / David Foster Wallace.

"The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. Imagined with the interior force and generosity that were David Foster Wallace's unique gifts, The Pale King grapples directly with ultimate questions - life's meaning, the value of work, the importance of connection - and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time." -- Page 4 of cover.

Core samples from the world / Forrest Gander ; with photographs by Raymond Meeks, Graciela Iturbide and Lucas Foglia.

A compendium of poetry, photography and haibun (Japanese essay-poem).

Fast animal / Tim Seibles.

Love, etc. / Julian Barnes.

The stars at noon / Denis Johnson.

How long / by Ron Padgett.

Jesus' son : stories / by Denis Johnson.

Denis Johnson chronicles the wanderings of a young man as he struggles with addictions to drugs and alcohol. Separated into eleven stories, the young man eventually snaps out of his downward spiral and checks into rehab.

Train dreams / Denis Johnson.

Presents the story of early twentieth-century day laborer Robert Grainer, who endures the harrowing loss of his family while struggling for survival in the American West against a backdrop of radical historical changes.

Night of the republic/ Alan Shapiro.

Swamplandia! / Karen Russell.

Twelve year old Ava must travel into the Underworld part of the swamp in order to save her family's dynasty of Bigtree alligator wrestling. This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava's father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety eight gators as well as her own grief. Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, the author has written a novel about a family's struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking.

This is how you lose her / Junot Díaz.

This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obssessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

The virgin suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides.

The five Lisbon sisters are brought up in a strict household, and when the youngest kills herself, the oppression of the remaining sisters intensifies. As Therese, Mary, Bonnie and Lux are pulled deeper into isolation by their domineering mother, a group of neighborhood boys become obsessed with liberating the sisters. But what the boys don't know is, the Lisbon girls are beyond saving.

Life on Mars : poems / Tracy K. Smith.

A collection of poems in which Tracy K. Smith examines the discoveries, failures, and oddities of humans.

Devotions / Bruce Smith.

"These poems visit high schools, laundromats, motels, films, and dreams in order to measure the American hunger and thirst. They are interested in the things we profess to hold most dear as well as what's unspoken and unbidden. While we're receiving a call or while we're passing through an X-ray machine, the personal is intersected--sometimes violently, sometimes tenderly--with the hum and buzz of the culture. Whether in New York or Tuscaloosa, Seattle or Philadelphia, past or present, the culture carries the burden of race and 'someone's idea of beauty.'"--Book cover.

The yellow birds : a novel / Kevin Powers.

In the midst of a bloody battle in the Iraq War, two soldiers, bound together since basic training, do everything to protect each other from both outside enemies and the internal struggles that come from constant danger.

The marriage plot / Jeffrey Eugenides.

Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while at the same time an old friend of hers resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

The stranger's child : a novel / Alan Hollinghurst.

England, England / Julian Barnes.

The sense of an ending / Julian Barnes.

"Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, ... contends with a past he never thought much about--until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present"--Flap p. 1 of cover.

Open city : a novel / Teju Cole.

Feeling adrift after ending a relationship, Julius, a young Nigerian doctor living in New York, takes long walks through the city while listening to the stories of fellow immigrants until a shattering truth is revealed.

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