Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering
by Wendy Lesser
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Wendy Lesser's new book is "an inspired intellectual romp: part memoir, part criticism, though actually a bracing, larkish reinvention of them both" (Lawrence Weschler). Revisiting her favorite books after the passage of twenty or thirty years, Lesser is stirred by the changes she finds-in the books, in herself, and in the wider world. If NOTHING REMAINS THE SAME is a book about reading, it is also a book about time, with rereading as a special form of time travel. From classic novels such show more as ANNA KARENINA and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY to a charming tale for young adults called I CAPTURE THE CAST show lessTags
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The title, Nothing Remains the Same comes from a letter Mark Twain wrote to William Dean Howells in 1887. What he is referring to is also the premise of Lesser's book - rereading a book at a different stage of life shouldn't be the same experience as the first time. Twain argues that "nothing remains the same." Lesser offers a literary criticism of a handful of books she has reread throughout her life. Each chapter of Nothing Remains the Same takes on a different well known book starting with Henry James's Portrait of a Lady. Sprinkled throughout each chapter are details of Lesser's life, some seemingly unrelated to the book in question, others all about the reading (using it in graduate school, for example).
on rereading childhood books
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19+ Works 1,283 Members
Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review and the author of a novel and a number of nonfiction books. She has written for The New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. To complete this biography, she received one of the first National Endowment for the show more Humanities Public Scholar awards. show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Literature Studies and Criticism, Biography & Memoir, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 028.9 — Computer science, information & general works Library & information sciences Reading and use of other information media Character of reading in libraries
- LCC
- Z1003 .L54 — Bibliography, Library Science and Information Resources General bibliography Biography of bibliographers
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 189
- Popularity
- 172,622
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.69)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- UPCs
- 2
- ASINs
- 3
