Across Oceans A Pillow Book

A memoir of a young woman who travels to the remote Japanese countryside and falls in love with a local Japanese monk.

An eleventh-century classic, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon is frequently paired with The Tale of Genji as one of the most important works in the Japanese canon. Yet it has also been marginalized within Japanese literature for reasons including the gender of its author, the work’s complex textual history, and its thematic and stylistic depth. In Unbinding The Pillow Book, Gergana Ivanova offers a reception history of The Pillow Book and its author from the seventeenth century to the present that shows how various ideologies have influenced the text and shaped interactions among its different versions. Ivanova examines how and why The Pillow Book has been read over the centuries, placing it in the multiple contexts in which it has been rewritten, including women’s education, literary scholarship, popular culture, “pleasure quarters,” and the formation of the modern nation-state. Drawing on scholarly commentaries, erotic parodies, instruction manuals for women, high school textbooks, and comic books, she considers its outsized role in ideas about Japanese women writers. Ultimately, Ivanova argues for engaging the work’s plurality in order to achieve a clearer understanding of The Pillow Book and the importance it has held for generations of readers, rather than limiting it to a definitive version or singular meaning. The first book-length study in English of the reception history of Sei Shōnagon, Unbinding The Pillow Book sheds new light on the construction of gender and sexuality, how women’s writing has been used to create readerships, and why ancient texts continue to play vibrant roles in contemporary cultural production.

A unique six-year compilation of British rural news, interspersed with the author's own observations on birds, mammals, fish, and aspects of Britain's countryside today. Most rural subjects are covered in a comprehensive snapshot of country life at the start of the new Millennium. From December 1999 to February 2006, scores of different issues are compressed into hundreds of bite-sized, easily digested articles. From angling to animal rights campaigns, foxhunting to farming, game shooting to wildlife conservation, a diverse collection of views, comment and advice is presented. The batty and the bizarre also get a look-in, as do the controversial and the downright crazy. With its packed pages, A Country Pillow Book could become a bedside companion for the rural researcher or a useful tool for the country-loving insomniac.

In A Kiss across the Ocean Richard T. Rodríguez examines the relationship between British post-punk musicians and their Latinx audiences in the United States since the 1980s. Melding memoir with cultural criticism, Rodríguez spotlights a host of influential bands and performers including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, Bauhaus, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Pet Shop Boys. He recounts these bands’ importance for him and other Latinx kids and discusses their frequent identification with these bands’ glamorous performance of difference. Whether it was Siouxsie Sioux drawing inspiration from Latinx contemporaries and cultural practices or how Soft Cell singer Marc Almond’s lyrics were attuned to the vibrancy of queer Latinidad, Rodríguez shows how Latinx culture helped shape British post-punk. He traces the fandom networks that link these groups across space and time to illuminate how popular music establishes and facilitates intimate relations across the Atlantic. In so doing, he demonstrates how the music and styles that have come to define the 1980s hold significant sway over younger generations equally enthused by their matchlessly pleasurable and political reverberations.

The powerful new novel from Kimberley Freeman. A rich and satisfying story of two women with indomitable spirits and the high costs they have to pay for being strong-minded, from the author of the bestselling LIGHTHOUSE BAY and EMBER ISLAND. A story about love, motherhood, and learning whom you belong to in the world. In 1874, wild and willful Agnes Resolute finally leaves the foundling home where she grew up on the bleak moors of northern England. On her departure, she discovers that she was abandoned with a small token of her mother: a unicorn button. Agnes had always believed her mother to be too poor to keep her, but Agnes has been working as a laundress at the foundling home and recognises the button as belonging to the imperious and beautiful Genevieve Breakby, daughter of a local noble family. Agnes had only seen her once, but has never forgotten her. She investigates and discovers Genevieve is now in London. Agnes follows, living hard in the poor end of London until she finds out Genevieve has moved to France. This sets Agnes off on her own adventure: to Paris, Agnes follows her mother's trail, and starts to see it is also a trail of destruction. Finally, in Sydney she tracks Genevieve down. But is Genevieve capable of being the mother Agnes hopes she will be? A powerful story about women with indomitable spirits, about love and motherhood, and about learning whom you belong to in the world.Praise for Kimberley Freeman's writing: GOLD DUST 'A rich saga with characters you'll never forget. I couldn't put it down.' Kate Morton, author of THE SECRET KEEPER WILDFLOWER HILL 'Utterly engaging.' THE COURIER-MAIL LIGHTHOUSE BAY 'an enchanting love story' MiNDFOOD EVERGREEN FALLS 'Eerie and fascinating ... the plot is brilliant in both time zones.' NEWCASTLE HERALD

Musaicum Books presents to you this unique and meticulously edited sea adventure collection: Content: Captain Charles Johnson: The History of Pirates R. L. Stevenson: Treasure Island Jack London: The Sea Wolf The Mutiny of the Elsinore A Son of the Sun Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe Captain Singleton Tobias Smollett: The Adventures of Roderick Random Walter Scott: The Pirate Frederick Marryat: Mr. Midshipman Easy Masterman Ready; Or, The Wreck of the "Pacific" Edgar Allan Poe: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket James Fenimore Cooper: The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea The Red Rover Afloat and Ashore: A Sea Tale Miles Wallingford Homeward Bound; Or, The Chase: A Tale of the Sea Thomas Mayne Reid: The Ocean Waifs: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea Victor Hugo: Toilers of the Sea Herman Melville: Redburn White-Jacket Moby Dick Benito Cereno R. M. Ballantyne: The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean Fighting the Whales Jules Verne: The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras In Search of the Castaways; Or, The Children of Captain Grant 20 000 Leagues under the Sea Dick Sand: A Captain at Fifteen An Antarctic Mystery L. Frank Baum: Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea Randall Parrish: Wolves of the Sea Charles Boardman Hawes: The Dark Frigate The Mutineers Joseph Conrad: The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' Lord Jim Typhoon The Shadow Line The Arrow of Gold Rudyard Kipling: Captains Courageous Ralph Henry Barbour: The Adventure Club Afloat Rafael Sabatini: Captain Blood The Sea-Hawk Jeffery Farnol: Black Bartlemy's Treasure Martin Conisby's Vengeance Henry De Vere Stacpoole: The Blue Lagoon The Garden of God

For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel