Books with author Richard A. Fariña

Richard Fariña evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering-among other things-mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth. A portrait of an explosive decade, sparkling with inventive writing and conveying the essence of a generation, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, as Thomas Pynchon wrote, “comes on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch.”

The classic novel of the 1960s--an unerring corrosively comic depiction of a campus in revoltRichard Fariña evokes the Sixties as precisely, wittily, and poignantly as F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age. The hero, Gnossus Pappadopoulis, weaves his way through the psychedelic landscape, encountering--among other things--mescaline, women, art, gluttony, falsehood, science, prayer, and, occasionally, truth. A portrait of an explosive decade, sparkling with inventive writing and conveying the essence of a generation, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, as Thomas Pynchon wrote, "comes on like the Hallelujah Chorus done by 200 kazoo players with perfect pitch."

Young genius Morag Chen doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Or not until a thousand gods show up in front of her, appearing from a clear-blue sky. The Architects are terrifying, they’re hypnotically attractive, and they’re real—but what are they, and what do they want, and why have they stolen the mind of Daniel Calder, the person she is closest to?Ancient gods? Invading aliens? Everyone has a theory, but no one has guessed the truth. In this dark, suspenseful, mind-bending sequel to The Fire Seekers, Morag picks up the narration from Daniel as she works to accept that there’s more than one way to think about the nature of humanity. And she will find that the only way forward is through secrets that Daniel himself seems desperate but unable to convey.A mysterious lab. The house of a dying billionaire. The hidden home of a strange and forgotten people. In each of these places, Morag and Daniel will come a step closer to answers, hope, and a way of fighting back.

In the conclusion to Richard Farr’s richly imaginative Babel Trilogy, Morag and Daniel race toward a terrifying confrontation with an entity that holds the key to humanity’s fate.After narrowly surviving an encounter with the Architects, Daniel Calder experiences visions of global destruction, dreamlike moments of insight, and vivid “memories” of a meeting with a famous scientist—none of which ever happened. When he and his sister, Morag Chen, are attacked by unknown assailants deep in the cavernous city of the I’iwa cave dwellers, they must escape with an enigmatic, centuries-old mathematical calculation.Time is running out. All signs point to the final “Anabasis,” when the Babel myth will reach its terrible culmination. But thousands of miles of hazardous jungle and unforgiving ocean lie between the siblings and their one slim chance to fight back.As they undertake their perilous journey, the apocalypse seems imminent: scores of vanished believers, global telecom failures, societies in chaos. The Architects have set the stage for their conquest, and Morag and Daniel—armed only with a list of mysterious numbers and the dreams of an aging astrophysicist—seem hopelessly outmatched.

The time of our immortality is at hand.An undeciphered language in Crete. A rash of mysterious disappearances, from Bolivia to Japan. An ancient warning at the ruins of Babel. And a new spiritual leader, who claims that human history as we understand it is about to come to an end.Seventeen-year-old Daniel Calder’s world falls apart when a freak accident brings personal tragedy—and he discovers there’s a link between the accident and a wildly successful new cult, the Seraphim. Catapulted into a violent struggle for humanity’s past and future, he’s not even sure who the enemy is, or if he’s battling a phantom that doesn’t exist. But as Daniel puts his life on the line, he is forced to conclude that our very survival as a species will depend on who, and what, we choose to believe.

Winner of the Scandiuzzi Prize"So gripping you will not want to put it down" - Science Teacher (a National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Book)In the Antarctic Winter of 1911 - waiting to assist Robert Falcon Scott in his bid to conquer the South Pole - three extraordinary men decided to amuse themselves with a side-expedition. The point was to test a theory about bird evolution by collecting and studying the eggs of the Emperor penguin. They set out into the perpetual winter dark hauling two sleds with a combined weight of over 700 lb. Everything went wrong."An enthralling tale" -- the Horn Book "Compelling" - Book List

Scenes are for making.From mesacaline trips to campus riots, from sacrilegious rites to the New Left, from amorous conquest to amorous conquest...Gnossos Pappadopoulis makes them all. Who's gnossos?He's a shaggy-haired, pot-puffing product of the Great Society, an amoral collegiate hipster who loathes convention, lusts for kicks and is determined, above all else, never to lose his cool. He's the guy who has been down so long it looks like up. Richard George Fariña (March 8, 1937 - April 30, 1966) was an American writer and folksinger. He was a figure in both the counterculture scene of the early- to mid-sixties and the budding folk rock scene of the same era.

Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard has always dreamt of becoming an explorer. So in the spring of 1910, when Captain Robert Falcon Scott offers young “Cherry” the position of Assistant Zoologist aboard the Terra Nova, Cherry considers himself the luckiest man alive. Cherry’s luck, however, will soon change. Far off in the icy unknown of Antarctica, where temperatures plummet below –77°F, exploration is synonymous with a struggle for life. Frostbite, scurvy, hidden ice chasms, and packs of hungry killer whales are very real dangers. But even these perils don’t prepare Cherry for the expedition he and two other crew members embark upon to collect the eggs of Emperor penguins. Along the way, he will face the elements head-on, risking life and limb in the name of science. Rife with captivating details of survival in an icy wilderness, and illustrated with dozens of photographs from the actual journey, this reimagining of the famous 1910 expedition to the South Pole, told in Cherry’s voice, is an unforgettable tale of courage and camaraderie.

The time of our immortality is at hand.An undeciphered language in Crete. A rash of mysterious disappearances, from Bolivia to Japan. An ancient warning at the ruins of Babel. And a new spiritual leader, who claims that human history as we understand it is about to come to an end.Seventeen-year-old Daniel Calder’s world falls apart when a freak accident brings personal tragedy—and he discovers there’s a link between the accident and a wildly successful new cult, the Seraphim. Catapulted into a violent struggle for humanity’s past and future, he’s not even sure who the enemy is, or if he’s battling a phantom that doesn’t exist. But as Daniel puts his life on the line, he is forced to conclude that our very survival as a species will depend on who, and what, we choose to believe.

Young genius Morag Chen doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Or not until a thousand gods show up in front of her, appearing from a clear-blue sky. The Architects are terrifying, they’re hypnotically attractive, and they’re real—but what are they, and what do they want, and why have they stolen the mind of Daniel Calder, the person she is closest to?Ancient gods? Invading aliens? Everyone has a theory, but no one has guessed the truth. In this dark, suspenseful, mind-bending sequel to The Fire Seekers, Morag picks up the narration from Daniel as she works to accept that there’s more than one way to think about the nature of humanity. And she will find that the only way forward is through secrets that Daniel himself seems desperate but unable to convey.A mysterious lab. The house of a dying billionaire. The hidden home of a strange and forgotten people. In each of these places, Morag and Daniel will come a step closer to answers, hope, and a way of fighting back.

The time of our immortality is at hand.An undeciphered language in Crete. A rash of mysterious disappearances, from Bolivia to Japan. An ancient warning at the ruins of Babel. And a new spiritual leader, who claims that human history as we understand it is about to come to an end.Seventeen-year-old Daniel Calder’s world falls apart when a freak accident brings personal tragedy—and he discovers there’s a link between the accident and a wildly successful new cult, the Seraphim. Catapulted into a violent struggle for humanity’s past and future, he’s not even sure who the enemy is, or if he’s battling a phantom that doesn’t exist. But as Daniel puts his life on the line, he is forced to conclude that our very survival as a species will depend on who, and what, we choose to believe.