UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks

Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices

Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!

Honoré de Balzac

Théophile Gautier

How does All You Can Books work?

All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.

Book Excerpt: 
. . .Garamond; font-size:14pt">he was less sensitive to the loss of his epic poem on the Incas, which began thusly:

 

Oh Inca, oh ill‑fated and unhappy king!

 

This unfortunate inspiration earned him, for all of the remaining time that he stayed at the school, the derisory nickname of poet. Balzac, it must be confessed, never had a gift for poetry, at least for meter; his complex thoughts rebelled against rhythm.

From these intense meditations, from these truly prodigious intellectual efforts of a child of twelve or fourteen years, there resulted a bizarre malady, a nervous fever, a sort of coma entirely inexplicable for the professors, who were not in on the secret of the readings and the works of young Honoré, who appeared to be so lazy and stupid. No one at the school suspected this precocious excess of intelligence, no one knew that in the cell in whic. . . Read More

Community Reviews

Italy's master spinner of the wildly inventive, the incomparable Italo Calvino, includes twenty-six of his favorite imaginary tales in this excellent collection. And since each tale is worthy of its own review, I have chosen one of my personal favorites: The Holes in the Mask by French fin-de-siècle

While reading the Mammoth anthologies of various generic tales, I had somehow come to understand that anthologies contain mostly 'Meh' and some 'That's Good' stories. I used to think that anthologies are built upon a premise that whatever the editor can get hold of, goes into it without a proper tho

This book led me to read more work by authors such as Gogol and Hoffmannn, which has been a wonderful experience. There are not many anthologies that I would give 5 stars, but this is definitely one.

Ho trovato questa raccolta di racconti in una libreria dell'usato, non potevo proprio lasciarla lì! Non solo perchè ha due copertine bellissime e perché è curata da Calvino, ma anche e soprattutto per la selezione dei brani scelti. Ci sono inarrivabili capolavori come Il cuore rivelatore di Edgar Al

Some brilliant tales in this well-selected anthology. My favourites were those by Dickens, Turgenev, Leskov, de Maupassant, James and Bierce. I had to skip past the Walter Scott and Rudyard Kipling stories, though; Scots English and extensive descriptions of a bridge across the Ganges were definite

Neste pequeno registro, vou deixar minhas impressões sobre os melhores contos da coletânea, na minha opinião:

1 - Em terra de cegos (H.G. Wells)

Esta é a segunda vez que eu leio esse conto do H.G. Wells. E é incrível o quanto ele fica melhor a cada nova leitura. A gente acaba percebendo outras nuances

The Venus of Ille is one of my favorite stories in this, as it has the fastidiousness of a French tale, the oddness of a Hoffmann, and the Surreality of a Roussel. I think this is one of Calvino's best. Yes, I don't think one can escape the associations between Calvino and Roussel in some of these.

View More Reviews