Sir Frank Kermode has been writing peerless literary criticism for more than a half-century. Pieces of My Mind includes his own choice of his major essays since 1958, beginning with his extraordinary study of "Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev" and ending with a marvelous consideration of Shakespeare's Othello and Verdi-Boito's Otello. Important essays on Hawthorne, on Wallace Stevens, on problems in literary theory and analysis, on Auden, on "Secrets and Narrative Sequence," and three previously unpublished essays (including one on "Memory" and one on "Forgetting") fill out this rich and rewarding volume. Pieces of My Mind also contains recent considerations of the work of major modern writers--Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, Tom Paulin, and others. Of Kermode's last book, Shakespeare's Language, Richard Howard wrote that it was "a triumph of inauguration and the crowning action of his splendid career of criticism. It is, and will doubtless remain, the first book one should read about Shakespeare's plays, and with those plays." Pieces of My Mind has equal authority and power, and it will be equally praised.

Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.

I was sexually abused as a young child and spent many years trying to remember and then trying to forget, while dealing with the aftermath. I struggled with relationships and intimacy, had multiple psychiatric ward stays, several different diagnoses, suicide attempts and periodic unprofessional psychiatric care. How could I become an authentic whole woman? I spent close to 30 years as a counselor facilitating both small and large groups. I also volunteered as a Peer Support Worker, both at the Canadian Mental Health Association at their Clubhouse and on the In-Patient Psychiatric Unit. For most of those years I was part of the "walking wounded." I came out to to Vancouver after college, and fell in love with the West Coast. From the age of 21 I never lived anywhere else. I currently live on scenic Vancouver Island with my tortoiseshell cat among my book shelves and piles of books.

These are the things Dustin knows about Willow: - She is the love of his life - He would do anything for her - They are happy together These are the things Willow knows about herself: - Dustin is the love of her life - When he is gone, her world crumbles - She has to leave him When Dustin returns home one day to find Willow has disappeared, leaving just a note behind to say goodbye, he can't believe it's happening. Ever since they met at seventeen, they've been head over heels - and now they have their daughter Zara to complete their family. But as Dustin sets about finding Willow, determined to bring her back home, he begins to feel like he's trying to solve a puzzle without all the pieces. Could there really have been things he didn't know about Willow? Or was he just not looking closely enough in the first place? Emotional and full of hope, this is the perfect book for readers who loved The Shape of Us, The Day We Met and If Only I Could Tell You.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

When Tom DeBaggio turned fifty-seven in 1999, he thought he was about to embark on the relaxing golden years of retirement -- time to spend with his family, his friends, the herb garden he had spent decades cultivating and from which he made a living. Then, one winter day, he mentioned to his doctor during a routine exam that he had been stumbling into forgetfulness, making his work difficult. After that fateful visit, and a subsequent battery of tests over several months, DeBaggio joined the legion of twelve million others afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. But under such a curse, DeBaggio was also given one of the greatest gifts: the ability to chart the ups and downs of his own failing mind. Losing My Mind is an extraordinary first-person account of early onset Alzheimer's -- the form of the disease that ravages younger, more alert minds. DeBaggio started writing on the first day of his diagnosis and has continued despite his slipping grasp on one of life's greatest treasures, memory. In an inspiring and detailed account, DeBaggio paints a vivid picture of the splendor of memory and the pain that comes from its loss. Whether describing the happy days of a youth spent in a much more innocent time or evaluating how his disease has affected those around him, DeBaggio poignantly depicts one of the most important parts of our lives -- remembrance -- and how we often take it for granted. But to DeBaggio, memory is more than just an account of a time long past, it is one's ability to function, to think, and ultimately, to survive. As his life becomes reduced to moments of clarity, the true power of thought and his ability to connect to the world shine through, and in DeBaggio's case, it is as much in the lack of functioning as it is in the ability to function that one finds love, hope and the relaxing golden years of peace. At once an autobiography, a medical history and a testament to the beauty of memory, Losing My Mind is more than just a story of Alzheimer's, it is the captivating tale of one man's battle to stay connected with the world and his own life.

Trying to clear the brain and keep from going insane. Just an outlet for release. What still remains is my mystery.

Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karatas has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he'd hoped, at the age of twelve, he comes to Istanbul-"the center of the world"-and is immediately enthralled both by the city being demolished and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father's trade, selling boza on the street, and hopes to become rich like other villagers who have settled on the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But chance seems to conspire against him. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, his relations all make their fortunes while his own years are spent in a series of jobs leading nowhere; he is sometimes attracted to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the lodge of a religious guide. But every evening, without fail, he still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the "strangeness" in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for. Told from the perspectives of many beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, and a mesmerizing narrative sure to take its place among Pamuk's finest achievements.