Books about Unimaginable from Amazon.com

"The Library of Babel" is arguably Jorge Luis Borges' best known story--memorialized along with Borges on an Argentine postage stamp. Now, in The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel, William Goldbloom Bloch takes readers on a fascinating tour of the mathematical ideas hidden within one of the classic works of modern literature.
Written in the vein of Douglas R. Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach, this original and imaginative book sheds light on one of Borges' most complex, richly layered works. Bloch begins each chapter with a mathematical idea--combinatorics, topology, geometry, information theory--followed by examples and illustrations that put flesh on the theoretical bones. In this way, he provides many fascinating insights into Borges' Library. He explains, for instance, a straightforward way to calculate how many books are in the Library--an easily notated but literally unimaginable number--and also shows that, if each book were the size of a grain of sand, the entire universe could only hold a fraction of the books in the Library. Indeed, if each book were the size of a proton, our universe would still not be big enough to hold anywhere near all the books.
Given Borges' well-known affection for mathematics, this exploration of the story through the eyes of a humanistic mathematician makes a unique and important contribution to the body of Borgesian criticism. Bloch not only illuminates one of the great short stories of modern literature but also exposes the reader--including those more inclined to the literary world--to many intriguing and entrancing mathematical ideas..
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What if the experience of falling in love didn't have to end?
What if love never died?
And what if it could happen to you?

Here is a modern-day love story, the passionate account of a shared journey between Kenny and Julia Loggins along the path that illuminates all others. It is about power and paradox, sacred selfishness and vulnerability, pain and transformation, sexuality and jealously, passion and compassion, fear and spirit, creativity and a brand new kind of courage.

Through intensely personal journals and love letters, lyrics and poetry, Kenny and Julia Loggins offer their intimate but universal shared experience, capable of transforming any life it touches. Here is a verbal expression of this profound spiritual warmth -- a book essential for anyone who wants to have love and to make it last.

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Price: $3.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

He's the hero who could be you... but in these stories, being a burglar, a college professor, and an astronaut will have to do! Whether it's half-sized as a child or doubled as twins, the Uni-Power transforms its lucky recipient into Captain Universe - countering crises that range from a masked marauder to the edge of apocalypse! Guest-starring the Hulk, doing the non-mutant cosmic super-hero thing years before Spider-Man made it popular! Collects Marvel Spotlight #9-11, Incredible Hulk Annual #10, Marvel Fanfare #25, Web of Spider-Man Annual #5-6, Marvel Comic Presents #148, and Cosmic Power Unlimited #5..
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An inspirational guide to lifelong romance shares the co-authors' experiences and addresses such issues as passion, interpersonal connections, fear, secrets, trust, and self-destructive patterns.".
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When attempting to represent a catastrophic event in history the tendency is to disavowal the event by referring to it as unimaginable, or otherwise such events are assigned to the domain of fiction or fantasy. For example, in response to 9/11 and the images of the planes flying into buildings, many responded it was like I was watching a movie. How then, when our knee-jerk response is to assign catastrophic events to the incomprehensible or the domain of utter fantasy, do we convey the reality of these events? What rhetorical strategies are at our disposal? How are catastrophic events, such as the Holocaust or Hiroshima represented, when we no longer have an immediate relationship to them? When the last survivors of these catastrophic events are gone, how will we relate to representations of these events? What rhetorical strategies will prove most useful in conveying the historical significance of these events, even when the physical traces are gone? This book addresses these questions..
Price: $99.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is Unimaginable and Unavoidable (subtitle) Irresponsible Writings on Non-Duality By Guy Smith Foreword by Tony Parsons This first book by Guy Smith addresses the appearance of separation from first-hand experience in an original series of prose, verse and 'notices'. Challenging and original, it constitutes a blast of freedom written in the period six months after awakening. Guy Smith is 24 years old and lives in Bristol. "I love this book! It is passionate, uncompromising, irreverent, intimately openhanded and wonderfully without any sense of order or progression. Throughout the whole work there is very little that the cunning guru mind can get hold of and turn into a belief system. There is a powerful invitation within these outpourings which seems to harbour and generate a feeling of the sensuous, the impersonal, the unbounded mystery that lies beyond the words. This is not a book to wade through steadily, but rather a deep pool in which to dip one's foot . . . and maybe fall in. There is a proliferation of so-called Advaita/Non-dual literature available today, and virtually all of it is borne out of a fundamental misconception about the nature of being. However, during the last decade some rare, clear voices have emerged out of the mist, and Guy's work is surely an inspiring and unique confirmation of this wonderful message." From the Foreword by Tony Parsons.
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Perhaps you too have experienced the nausea brought on by the arrival of an invitation to a high school reunion.

Bookstore clerk and culture junker Verity Presti will soon attend her fifteenth reunion with her boyfriend, the unfortunately but aptly named Charlie Brown, who lives with his parents while training to be an urban shaman—a modern-day medicine man somewhat capable of exorcising ghosts from apartments and cubicles, predicting baseball scores, and channeling lost pets. Verity, angst-ridden and burdened with fifteen years of magnificent failure, will be reunited with Craig and Carolyn, sickeningly perfect high school sweethearts, married now and perfectly sick of each other; Verity’s former crush Stan and his wife, Laurel, a frustrated author of angry haikus; and Will, a rage-aholic KJ (that’s “karaoke jockey”) whose only soft spot is the one he still has for Verity. A growing anxiety permeates the round of cocktail parties that precedes the reunion, causing old affections and animosities to boil over and threaten the dubious complacency of these seven lovable losers.

With her trademark sarcasm and uncanny ability to skewer the oddities of contemporary hipster life, Stella has created a cast of endearingly eccentric characters who embody the insecurities and foibles that all of us—former prom desperados, band nerds, the burnout brigade, and loner stiffs—have and hope nobody else will notice.


From the Trade Paperback edition..
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