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Showing posts from September, 2023

Nota Dari Kabul - Syed Azwan Syed Ali

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  Tajuk: Nota Dari Kabul Penulis: Syed Azwan Syed Ali Penerbit: Syed Azwan Syed Ali Tahun diterbitkan: 2021 130 halaman Ulasan: Buku ini menyebabkan saya berasa sangat cemburu dengan Syed Azwan. Saya memang teringin sangat bertandang ke negara-negara Islam yang dilanda konflik termasuk Afghanistan. Nampaknya Syed Azwan sudah sampai dulu ke sana dan Afghanistan merupakan negara ke-35 yang pernah menerima kehadirannya. Dalam gaya bahasa yang mudah difahami, sahabat saya ini berjaya membuka mata kita tentang situasi sebenar di bumi yang diberi julukan 'kubur empayar'. Benarkah kaum wanita Afghanistan ditindas oleh kerajaan Taliban? Adakah Afghanistan sentiasa bergolak dengan insiden pengeboman bunuh diri setiap hari? Bagaimanakah nasib umat Islam Afghanistan yang dipinggirkan dunia selepas Taliban kembali memerintah? Semua persoalan itu dirungkai oleh Syed Azwan menerusi kaca mata seorang wartawan Islam dari Malaysia yang arif tentang selok-belok misi kemanusiaan di bumi bergolak....

Ballads and Narrative Poems

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  Title: Ballads and Narrative Poems Compiled and edited by: T W Moles Publisher: Longmans, Green and Co, London Year published: 1954 175 pages From the introduction: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in one of his essays remarked, "To pass from hearing literature to reading it is to take a great and dangerous step. With not a few, I think, a large proportion of their pleasure then comes to an end; 'the malady of not marking' overtakes them; they read thenceforward by the eye alone and hear never again the chime of fair words or the march of the stately period." If this warning is needed when we read lyrical poetry, it is still more urgent when we read narrative poems; for when we read songs we do tend to hear in our minds the music and rhythm of the lines, but in reading a poem which narrates a story, we may become so interested in the story itself that we fail to notice the chime and the march, and in so doing we lose much of the enjoyment which the poet himself experienced wh...

Sarjana Bangsa - Hasanuddin Md Isa

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  Tajuk: Sarjana Bangsa Penulis: Hasanuddin Md Isa Penerbit: ITBM, Kuala Lumpur Tahun diterbitkan: 2015 329 halaman Dari kulit muka belakang: Cendekiawan ibarat recik api yang membunga api daripada batu yang bertabrakan. Mereka menjagakan fikiran yang lena, mereka merangsang semangat kebangkitan, mereka membangkitkan kesedaran dalam suatu zaman yang beku. Mereka menderaskan aliran darah yang lembam dan beku dalam urat nadi rakyat, dalam fikiran masyarakat, dalam agama turunan Ilahi, dan dalam aneka upacara. Mereka hadir untuk mengubah jalan sejarah dan mengarahkannya ke tujuan berbeza. Mereka menjadi penguasa, pencipta, dan pembangun masyarakat yang jauh lebih baik daripada sebelumnya. Dalam sejarah ketamadunan Yunani, Mesopotamia, lnca, Hwang Ho, dan tamadun besar lain, golongan cendekiawanlah yang menunjangi pembinaan tamadun itu. Maka kita di sini, harus berada pada landasan ilmu demikian andai menginginkan negara-bangsa kita berdiri sama tinggi dengan negara maju. Demikianlah S...

The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates - Xenophon

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Title: The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates Author: Xenophon Librivox Audiobook app Read by LibriVox Volunteers Xenophon's best memorial of his old guide, philosopher, a friend in this work, in which Xenophon brought together in simple and direct form the views of life that had been made clear to himself by the teaching of Socrates. Xenophon is throughout opposing a plain tale to the false accusations against Socrates. He does not idealise, but he feels strongly, and he shows clearly the worth of the wisdom that touches atevery point the actual conduct of the lives of men. (Summary by Craig Campbell) (6 hr 15 min)

The First Forty-Nine Stories - Ernest Hemingway

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  Title: The First Forty-Nine Stories Author: Ernest Hemingway Publisher: Arrow Books, UK Year published: 2004 467 pages From the back cover: "There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like... In going where you have to go and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused." - Ernest Hemingway, from his Preface A collection of Hemingway's first forty-nine short stories, featuring an introduction by the author and lesser known as well as familiar tales, including 'Up in Michigan', 'Fifty Grand', and 'The Light of the World', and The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Winner Tak...

Islands in the Stream - Ernest Hemingway

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  Title: Islands in the Stream Author: Ernest Hemingway Publisher: Arrow Books, UK Year published: 2012 450 pages From the back cover: First published in 1970, nine years after Hemingway's death, Islands in the Stream follow the fortunes of artist and adventurer Thomas Hudson, from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream Island of Bimini to wartime activities off the coast of Cuba during the 1940s. Beguiling, exciting, tragic, it is a superb late work by one of America's greatest writers.  

The Bagpipers - George Sand

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  Title: The Bagpipers Author: George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) Librivox audiobook app Read by Peter Tucker Review from Barnes & Noble: The Bagpipers is a novel by George Sand, first published in 1853. It forms part of her series of pastoral novels which evoke the peasant world of the author's home region of Berry. The series also includes The Devil's Pool, Little Fadette, and François the Waif, which are also available from Hawthorne Classics. The Bagpipers tells the story of two sets of lovers who struggle to find their place in the rural societies of 19th century France.

The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War

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  Title: The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War Author: Ernest Hemingway Publisher: Arrow Books, UK Year published: 2013 174 pages From the back cover: Inspired by Hemingway's adventures as a newspaper correspondent in Spain in the 1930s, The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War magnificently evokes life in a besieged city over a tumultuous decade. Featuring the author's only full-length play, the works recount decadent parties and doomed love affairs amid the rubble, and effortlessly capture the devastating effects of the war on the inhabitants of the city.

A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf

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Title: A Room of One's Own Author: Virginia Woolf Publisher: Penguin, UK Year published: 2019 93 pages From the back cover: A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge in 1928 and became a landmark work of feminist thought. Covering anything from why a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write, to authors such as Jane Austen, Aphra Behn and the Brontë sisters, and the tragic story of Shakespeare's fictional sister Judith, it remains a passionate assertion of female creativity and independence in a world dominated by men.