Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father’s vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.

Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers—from Lucretius to Woody Allen—Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

Best Nonfiction Book of the Year,

Chosen by as one of the 25 best books of the year

Best Reads of 2008,

Chosen as one of the twenty best nonfiction books of 2008,

Chosen by Amazon as one of its Significant Seven for February 2008 and one of the 50 best books of the year

Powell’s Books New Favorite, Staff Pick

Finalist for the Washington State Book Award, 2009

In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, and painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation in literature.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal’s to Maggie Nelson’s , Renata Adler’s to Proust’s ) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his “ridiculous” ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs. Books are his life raft, but when they come to feel unlifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness and self-consciousness—perfect, since so much of what ails him is acute self-consciousness. And he shares with us a final irony: he wants “literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn’t lie about this—which is what makes it essential.”

A captivating, thought-provoking, utterly original way of thinking about the essential acts of reading and writing.

Great books are born of grand passions. The best literature is made when authors refuse to rest easy, but instead dig into their obsessions in order to express not just what’s true, but what’s truer still. This greatness is apparent on every page of David Shields’s , a culturally searching declaration of the power and limitations of literature that’s also a highly idiosyncratic, deeply personal soul search by one super smart man who consumes and considers books as if his life depends on it.

Part memoir, part manifesto, is as wide-ranging as it is intimate, and much of its power lies in the ambitiousness of Shields’s reach. It’s a book that defies definition. My category for it is simply . It’s a serenade wrapped inside a cross-examination; an intellectual book that reads like a detective novel. In its pages, one reads about subjects as diverse as Tiger Woods, the theory that someday tiny robots will roam inside our bodies to reverse the damage caused by aging, Renata Adler’s Speedboat, and the private journals of Shields’s unsuspecting college girlfriend.

This is a long way of saying that is a book with balls. It doesn’t ask for permission to be what it is: an original, opinionated, gentle-hearted, astonishingly intelligent collage of the ideas, reflections, memories, and experiences of a writer so avidly determined to understand what literature means that the reader must know too.

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2013:

An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria—before it spreads to the rest of the world. 1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city’s medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition. His allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife—but she has secrets of her own. Based on a true story that has been lost to history, set during the last days of imperial Russia, THE WINTER STATION is a richly textured and brilliant novel about mortality, fear and love.

Wyldcliffe Abbey School for Young Ladies, housed in a Gothic mansion on the bleak northern moors, is elite, expensive, and unwelcoming. When Evie Johnson is torn away from her home by the sea to become the newest scholarship student, she is more isolated than she could have dreamed. Strict teachers, snobbish students, and the oppressive atmosphere of Wyldcliffe leave Evie drowning in loneliness. Evie's only lifeline is Sebastian, a rebellious, mocking, dangerously attractive young man she meets by chance. As Evie's feelings for Sebastian grow with each secret meeting, she starts to fear that he is hiding something about his past. And she is haunted by glimpses of a strange, ghostly girl—a girl who is so eerily like Evie, she could be a sister. Evie is slowly drawn into a tangled web of past and present that she cannot control. And as the extraordinary, elemental forces of Wyldcliffe rise up like the mighty sea, Evie is faced with an astounding truth about Sebastian, and her own incredible fate. Gillian Shields's electrifying tale will dazzle readers with suspense, mysticism, and romance.

¿Puede una noche de alcohol cambiar tu vida para siempre? Puede envolverte, cambiarte, ¿atarte?, una salida con amigas, bailar con un extraño nunca trajo tantas consecuencias… María Alejandra Triana una tranquila estudiante de medicina nunca imagino que el amor llegaría así a su vida… No sin antes enseñarle que el amor no es como en los cuentos de hadas y que en ocasiones amar duele y también destruye…

Contar historias y expresar sentimientos a través de la pluma es su pasión, pero cuando la casa editorial para la cual trabaja le exige escribir el próximo Best Seller erótico, la vida de Evangeline Runner da un giro de ciento ochenta grados. No le basta con tener que cuidar una problemática hermana—que apenas conoce— , ahora tiene que escribir sobre lujuria, un sentimiento que nunca antes ha experimentado porque, a sus veintiséis años, su experiencia sexual es mínima y prefiere mantenerse alejada del género masculino. Maximiliano Farell tiene todo lo necesario para ser un protagonista de libros: es profesional reconocido, guapo, elegante, arrogante como ninguno y… experto en sexo. Ella necesita ayuda para escribir su libro. Él puede dársela pero, tiene una condición. ¿Ella podrá, a cambio del conocimiento, entregarse a sus deseos aun sabiendo que para él, en cuestión de sexo, nada se explica y todo se practica?

El romance erótico nos lleva a evocar una serie de imágenes que conectan nuestra mente con sensaciones y fantasías que nos enlazan a nuestra esencia romántica, nos llevan a evadirnos de alguna forma y nos permiten ser parte de diferentes vidas. Sexo, erotismo y amor son aspectos de un mismo fenómeno, manifestaciones de lo que llamamos vida. El erotismo y el amor son formas derivadas del sexo, sublimaciones, perversiones y emociones placenteras que transforman la sexualidad llevándonos a un profundo conocimiento interior. Las historias de romance erótico que conjugan el enamoramiento, la formación de relaciones amorosas y eróticas, juegan un papel importante en nuestras vidas. Desde el punto de vista literario, el romanticismo es el ideal del amor, es el encuentro de la pareja perfecta, es el anhelo escondido, la búsqueda, el triunfo del amor sobre la adversidad, la esperanza de que hay alguien para nosotros en el camino de la vida, de que no estamos solos.

En el momento que Maximiliano Farell firmó su decálogo, Eve supo que había vendido su alma al diablo, un diablo sexy, apuesto y arrogante que no solo le enseñaría cómo descubrir el sexo a plenitud, sino que ataría su vida durante noventa días. Ahora su misión más importante, aparte de terminar su novela, es evitar enamorarse del hombre que noche tras noche la envuelve en un manto de sensaciones y sentimientos que nunca antes había experimentado. Inmerso en su rol de maestro del sexo, Max ha evadido su realidad, dejando de lado el hecho que su vida pende de un hilo, en lo único que puede pensar es en ella, en la forma en como su cuerpo responde al suyo en como lo complementa, desarrollando sentimientos que no está dispuesto a corresponder ¿Qué sucederá cuando el día noventa llegue cumpliéndose el plazo pactado? ¿Cederán ante sus sentimientos o se enfrentarán a ellos?