Classics for Pleasure

8 best books like Classics for Pleasure (Michael Dirda): The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, In a French Kitchen: Tales and Traditions of Everyday Home Cooking in France, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, Women in Sunlight, Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings, Fox 8, Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages, Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

Author	Harold Bloom
ISBN	1573225142

Literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list-it is a vision. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the great works...

In a French Kitchen: Tales and Traditions of Everyday Home Cooking in France

Author	Susan Herrmann Loomis
ISBN	1592408869

A delightful celebration of French life and the cooks who turn even the simplest meals into a celebration.

One by one, readers are invited to meet the busy people of Louviers and surrounding villages and towns of Loomis's adopted home, from runway-chic Edith, who has zero passion for cooking...

The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

Author	Pico Iyer
ISBN	0679738347

When Pico Iyer decided to go to Kyoto and live in a monastery, he did so to learn about Zen Buddhism from the inside, to get to know Kyoto, one of the loveliest old cities in the world, and to find out something about Japanese culture today -- not the world of businessmen and production lines, but the traditional...

Women in Sunlight

Author	Frances Mayes
ISBN	0525526633

The story of four American strangers who bond in Italy and change their lives over the course of an exceptional year, from the bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun.

Don't miss Frances Mayes in PBS's Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special!

She watches from her terrazza as the three...

Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings

Author

Jonathan Swift

Ted Danson reads the official tie-in to Hallmark Entertainments NBC-TV television event!
Imagine the greatest adventure of all time....
Rediscover the immortal story of Lemuel Gulliver and his fantastic voyage. Join him on his journey to the land of the six-inch-high Lilliputians...and...

Fox 8

Author	George Saunders
ISBN	0812995325

A darkly comic short story, a fable about the all too real impact that we humans have on the environment

Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself...

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

Author	Gaston Dorren
ISBN	0802128793

English is the world language, except that most of the world doesn't speak it--only one in five people does. Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's 7.4 billion people in their mother tongues, you would need to know no fewer than twenty languages. He sets out to explore these...

Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies

Author	Edward O. Wilson
ISBN	1631495542

Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior...