Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

[Daveo]

The Bull from the Sea (Theseus #2) by Mary Renault..

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In this sequel to The King Must Die Theseus defies the Gods’ and claims the throne of Athens a move that culminates in the terrible, fateful destruction of the house of Minos - the Minotaur.

[Daveo]

Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk

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Istanbul is a shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer.

Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2006, was born in Istanbul, in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms.

His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy-or hüzün- that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost Ottoman Empire.

As he companionably guides us across the Bosphorus, through Istanbul's historical monuments and lost paradises, its dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways, he also introduces us to the city's writers, artists and murderers.

Like the Dublin of Joyce and Jan Morris' Venice, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

[Daveo]

The Imperial War Museum Book of War Behind Enemy Lines by Julian Thompson.

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Brings to life the stunning history of British special forces missions behind enemy lines in World War II.

[Daveo]

Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know by David I. Steinberg....

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In the past two decades, Burma/Myanmar has become a front-page topic in newspapers across the world.

This former British colony has one of the most secretive, corrupt, and repressive regimes on the planet, yet it houses a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is and in and out of house arrest.

It has an ancient civilization that is mostly unknown to Westerners, yet it was an important and legendary theater in World War II.

A picturesque land with mountain jungles and monsoon plains, it is one of the world's largest producers of heroin.

It has a restive Buddhist monk population that has captured the attention of the west when it faced off against the regime.

And it recently experienced one of the worst natural disasters in modern times, one effect of which was to lay bare the manifold injustices and cruelties of the regime. Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know(r) offers a concise synthesis of this forbidding yet fascinating country.

David Steinberg, one of the world's eminent authorities on the region, explains the current situation in detail yet contextualizes it in a wide-ranging survey of Burmese history and culture.

Authoritative and balanced, it will be standard work on Burma for the general reading public.

[Daveo]

La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler,

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Schnitzler explores human sexual behavior in a series of ten vignettes of couples preparing for romantic interludes and assignations

[Daveo]

Money Number one by Neil Hutchinson. . .

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"A must for male visitors to the Land of Smiles." Bernard Brink (Bangkok Post) "A fun read with an important message.

I would recommend that the single male, with fire in his heart and conflagration in his jocks should study the book before having his first beer.

He will save more than the price of the book.

Should be incorporated in the price of incoming plane tickets and made compulsory reading.

[Daveo]

The Kenneth Williams Diaries by Kenneth Williams. . .

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'I'll put you in my diary!' comedian Kenneth Williams was known to threaten on occasion, although tantalisingly he kept the journal to himself during his lifetime. Here at last, in one spellbinding volume, are four million words of it.

For more than forty years, from his sixteenth birthday until the eve of his unexpected death in 1988, the beloved actor and outrageous 'Carry On' star Kenneth Williams kept a candid diary.

Devastatingly honest about himself, he is equally unsparing in his verdicts on his fellow man.

In his descriptions of Tony Hancock, Maggie Smith, Joe Orton and countless others, his waspish sense of humour, love of anecdote and ear for dialogue are given full rein. Malicious, hilarious and harrowing, 'The Kenneth Williams Diaries' are a unique portrait of one of Britain's most popular - and most misunderstood - performers.

[Daveo]

A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 by Alistair Horne

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The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962.

It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil.

More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture.

Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algerian independence, and yet ,as Alistair Horne argues in his new preface to his now-classic work of history, it's repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world. Indeed from today's vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990's and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity.

A Savage War of Peace is the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum.

It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian's art.

[Daveo]

Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous by Royston Lambert...

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Who was Antonius?

Why did he become a god?

Lambert's Beloved & God tackles all the mysteries the story presents.

With many illustrations of the people & places concerned in the affair & of the splendid & fascinating artefacts which it produced, this account, based on thoro research, is a compelling read. This book investigates the mysteries that surround how this obscure Greek boy came to dominate the powerful emperor Hadrian.

The author recreates the glory & decadence of the Roman Empire ripe for decline.

Antinous was the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The author demonstrates that Hadrian's private sexual life & his obsession with his young lover Antinous did have an impact on policy & his public actions, particularly the establishment of Antinous as a state sponsored god, to be worshiped by the citizens of the Roman Empire.

When Antinous, around age 20, was accidentally drowned on the Nile, the 54 year old Hadrian was devastated & his grief changed the Empire

[Daveo]

Lorca: A Dream of Life by Leslie Stainton. .

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With a rare blend of grace, warmth, and scholarship, Leslie Stainton raises the stakes of our appreciation for the greatest of Spain's modern poets, Federico Garcia Lorca. Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters unknown to prior biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and dozens of newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to Life as few writers can.

She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalucia; his residencies in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent interaction with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and the composer Manuel de Falla; and, finally, Stainton shows how Lorca's marginal political activity during the Spanish Civil War still cost him his life.Throughout, Stainton meticulously but unobtrusively relates the oeuvre to the life.

Her biography is quickly becoming the standard one-volume work on the poet.

[Daveo]

Earl Mindell's New Vitamin Bible by Earl Mindell...

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America's #1 Vitamin Book-With Extensive New Material, Special Sections, and a Total Guide to Good Health This classic guide has been completely updated to put the information you need at your fingertips: to live healthier, better, and longer. Discover: * how to maximize the effectiveness of your vitamins and supplements-by taking them in the right combinations and avoiding problems * new anti aging vitamins and supplements-they will keep your skin and body healthy and young-looking * the art of personalizing your dietary regimen-to fit your lifestyle, your health profile, and even your job * natural alternatives to hormone replacement therapy (HRT), Viagra, Prozac, and Valium * expanded sections on nutraceuticals, homeopathy, and aromatherapy-and how to find the best practitioners in these fields * healing regimens-for heart patients, stroke victims, diabetics, and arthritis sufferers * new warnings-about dangerous drug interactions and "miracle cures." Plus! Expanded sections on herbal teas and tinctures, beauty aids, diets, salt and sugar intake, and new ways to boost your energy level, fertility, and sex life.

[Daveo]

The Battle for Singapore: The True Story of the Greatest Catastrophe of World War II by Peter Thompson........

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The Fall of Singapore on February 15, 1942 was a military disaster of enduring fascination and seemingly unshakable myth.

The book uncovers the controversial truths which have remained hidden behind self- serving lies and distortions for 60 years.

[Daveo]

Creation by Gore Vidal. . .

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Once again the incomparable Gore Vidal interprets and animates history, this time in a panoramic tour of the 5th century B.C. and embellishes it with his own ironic humor, brilliant insights, and piercing observations.

We meet a vast array of historical figures in a staggering novel of love, war, philosophy, and adventure . . . "There isn't a page of CREATION that doesn't inform and very few pages that do not delight."

[Daveo]

Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann. .

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The biography sensitive to the tragic pattern of the story of a great subject: Oscar Wilde - psychologically and sexually complicated, enormously quotable, central to an alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.

[Daveo]

Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe & Alexander Theroux..

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One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope.

He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted.

"The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares.

"The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh.

It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics.

Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.

[Daveo]

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple..

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On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure.

As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, “No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests.” Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only.

Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history. Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company’s own Indian troops, thereby transforming an army mutiny into the largest uprising any empire had to face in the entire course of the nineteenth century.

The Siege of Delhi was the Raj’s Stalingrad: one of the most horrific events in the history of Empire, in which thousands on both sides died.

And when the British took the city, securing their hold on the subcontinent for the next ninety years, tens of thousands more Indians were executed, including all but two of Zafar’s sixteen sons.

By the end of the four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was sentenced to exile in Burma.

There he died, the last Mughal ruler in a line that stretched back to the sixteenth century. Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege.

The Last Mughal is a revelatory work—the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi—and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.

[Daveo]

Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson. .

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EDWARD VIII was heralded as the definitive biography of the ex-King and awarded the prestigious Wolfson Prize when it was first published in 1974.

Since then no book on the subject has come close to Frances Donaldson's in scholarship or detachment.

 

[Daveo]

Devil of a State: A Novel by Anthony Burgess.

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Anthony Burgess's novel 'Devil of a State' (1961) is about the Borneo territory of Brunei (then a British protectorate, now an independent state), which Burgess renamed Naraka, Malayo-Arabic for hell (for legal reasons the name was changed to 'Dunia' and the action transposed to East Africa).

It is the last in the series of Burgess's 'exotic' novels.

[Daveo]

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't by Nate Silver...

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Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger, all by the time he was thirty.

He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.  Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty.

Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure.

If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future. In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA.

He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good - or just lucky?

What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition.

In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary and dangerous - science. Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking.

They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth.

Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise. With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.

[Daveo]

A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorp

This book Asia books is 495 baht - our price 180 baht plus 50% trade in for credit when you finished with it @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street. A child of the Great Depression, legendary mathematician Edward O. Thorp invented card counting, proving the seemingly impossible: that you could beat the dealer at the blackjack table. As a result he launched a gambling renaissance. His remarkable success and mathematically unassailable method - caused such an uproar that casinos altered the rules of the game to thwart him and the legions he inspired.

They barred him from their premises, even put his life in jeopardy. Nonetheless, gambling was forever changed. Thereafter, Thorp shifted his sights to "the biggest casino in the world" Wall Street. Devising and then deploying mathematical formulas to beat the market, Thorp ushered in the era of quantitative finance we live in today.

Along the way, the so-called godfather of the quants played bridge with Warren Buffett, crossed swords with a young Rudy Giuliani, detected the Bernie Madoff scheme, and, to beat the game of roulette, invented, with Claude Shannon, the world's first wearable computer. Here, for the first time, Thorp tells the story of what he did, how he did it, his passions and motivations, and the curiosity that has always driven him to disregard conventional wisdom and devise game-changing solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.

An intellectual thrill ride, replete with practical wisdom that can guide us all in uncertain financial waters, A Man for All Markets is an instant classic - a book that challenges its readers to think logically about a seemingly irrational world.

[Daveo]

First Frost (Detective Jack Frost Prequel #1) by James Henry. . .

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It's Denton, 1981.

Britain is in recession, the IRA is becoming increasingly active and the country's on alert for an outbreak of rabies. Detective Sergeant Jack Frost is working under his mentor and inspiration DI Bert Williams, and coping badly with his increasingly strained marriage.

Probably not helped by the fact that he never goes home...

[Daveo]

The Oxford Companion to English Literature by Margaret Drabble. . .

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The first edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey, was published in 1932, and quickly established itself as the standard source of reference for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, the text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date. The sixth edition, published in 2000, was extensively revised, expanded, and updated.

Almost 600 new entries covered new writers, genres, and issues, and existing entries were reworked to incorporate the latest scholarship.

In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism.

The Companion remains an unrivaled work that places English literature in its widest context: no other book offers such extensive exploration of the classical roots of English literature, and the European and non-European works and writers that have influenced its development. The sixth edition has now been revised to ensure that it remains absolutely up to date: the invaluable appendices - the chronology, and lists of winners of major literary awards - have been updated, as have many of the entries. Informed by the latest scholarly thinking, and comprehensively cross-referenced to guide the reader to topics of related interest, the Companion retains its position as the best guide to English literature available.

[Daveo]

It's a Wonderful Word: The Real Origins of Our Favourite Words by Albert Jack

UK price 8.99 - our price 160 baht plus 50% trade in for credit when finished with it @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

Did you know that an assassin is a hashish-eater and a yokel a country woodpecker? That Dr Mesmer mesmerized patients back to health or that Samuel Pepys enjoyed a good game of handicap? While we're at it, what have spondulics to do with spines or lawyers with avocados? Here Albert Jack collects more than 500 of the strangest, funniest-sounding, and most delightful words in the English language, and traces them back to their often puzzling origins. While brushing up on your gibberish or gobbledygook, discover why bastards should resent traveling salesmen, why sheets should remain on tenterhooks, and why you should never set down a tumbler before finishing your drink. From blotto to bamboozle and from claptrap to quango, Albert Jack's addictive anecdotes bring the world's most colorful language to life and are guaranteed to surprise and entertain.

[plee587]

Hello, 

I've walked by your shop many times but never made the move to go in. Would you happen to have any books by TE Lawrence or about TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) aside from "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" or "Revolt in the Desert." Thanks.