|
+ Indicates a
classic
> Available in Pearce library
+ > The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark
Twain. In this novel Huck takes a
trip down the river with a runaway slave and learns the worth of life.
According to Ernest Hemingway, "All modern American literature
comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
+ > The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark
Twain. The story of an exuberant,
high-spirited boyhood by the Mississippi River that captures the magical
years of the very young.
+ > The Age of Innocence, Edith
Wharton. Brilliant portrayal of New
York society in the 1870s, where money counted more than manners or
morals.
+ > All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich
Maria Remarque. Probably the
best novel about World War I . A young German soldier goes to the front
in France and learns about the horrors of war; but in a larger sense,
Remarque focuses on the loss of self in the machine of war. It is most
graphic and disturbing, but engrossing!
> The Ambassadors, Henry James. A mature American
gentleman, sent to Paris to bring home a wayward young man, finds
himself being seduced by the city.
+ > An American Tragedy, Theodore
Dreiser. Dreiser is a fine
storyteller. This long novel deals with the American dream of a young
man who goes too far in order to achieve his materialistic ideal. Love,
murder, and a fascinating trial make it a gripping story. It’s long,
but well worth the time spent. Also recommended, Sister Carrie,
about another woman who tries to find her way out of her conflict with
the norms of society.
> The Andromeda Strain, Michael
Crichton. An unmanned research satellite returns to Earth and brings
with it a mysterious, lethal disease. The first victims are the
inhabitants of a little town in Arizona where everyone – except an
infant and an elderly derelict – has died of the plague. In a secret
lab five stories beneath the Nevada desert, four American scientists try
to find an antidote to the killer microbe and the reason the infant and
the old man survived. But then the virus breaks out of its hyper sterile
environment and suddenly the scientists are facing a global disaster.
> Animal Dreams, Barbara
Kingsolver. Codi Noline learns secrets
about her past that change her future when she returns home to care for
her ailing father and to teach high school biology. Blending flashbacks,
dreams and Native American myths, this is a suspenseful love story and a
moving exploration of love and courage.
+ > Animal Farm, George
Orwell. A devastating, satirical
attack on the avaricious rulers in an imaginary totalitarian state where
animals turn the tables on their masters.
> The Angel of Darkness, Caleb
Carr. Caleb Carr’s smart, thrilling historical novel The
Alienist was one of the most popular novels of the ‘90s. The
Angel of Darkness is its long-awaited sequel. The infant daughter of
a Spanish diplomat is kidnapped by one Libby Hatch, a fiendish woman who
has murdered nearly a dozen children. The excitement mounts as Dr.
Laszlo Kreizler, John Schuyler Moore, Sara Howard and Stevie Taggert try
to find the child before it’s too late. And a new character is
introduced in an unforgettable courtroom scene – the legendary lawyer
Clarence Darrow.
+ > Anna Karenina, Leo
Tolstoy. Sensual, rebellious Anna
renounces a respectable marriage and a fine position for a passionate
and destructive romantic involvement.
+ > Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne
Frank. Famous diary of a young
Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis with seven others in a attic in
Amsterdam during World War II.
> Appointment in Samarra, John
O’Hara. Taking its title from the
tale of the Merchant of Baghdad who allegedly tried to outwit death,
this chronicle of the days leading up to a supposedly
"inevitable" suicide brought instant fame and recognition to
its previously unknown, twenty-nine-year-old author.
+ > As I Lay Dying, William
Faulkner. A back-country clan
honors their mother’s last wish and begins an epic journey to bury her
in her hometown
> The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest
Gaines. The tape-recorded history
of a remarkable black woman over 100 years old who has experienced it
all -- from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement.
> The Awakening, Kate
Chopin. Receiving outraged reviews
when it was first published in 1899, this short novel was rediscovered
more recently after a rather obscure history. It reveals the
frustrations and confusion of a young wife in Louisiana who falls in
love with a younger man. Chopin was ahead of her time in dealing with
feminine conflicts, but the novel has achieved "an honored place in
American history."
> The Awakening Land, Conrad
Richter. Readers who are familiar with this epic novel of pioneer
America tend to be impassioned about it. The central character of The
Awakening Land is Sayward Luckett, who comes to Ohio from
Pennsylvania with her parents and her sisters in the years after the
Revolution. They are rough, illiterate folk who hack out a life in a
primeval wilderness. Richter’s goal—and he accomplished it
beautifully – was to tell the story of people who are entirely
forgotten yet had an enduring impact on American history.
>Babbitt, Sinclair
Lewis. A satirical novel about a
middle-class businessman in an average Midwestern city. Babbitt becomes
a pathetic yet comical character because of his exaggerated sense of his
importance. Lewis was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
> The Bean Trees, Barbara
Kingsolver. Taylor Greer flees her
harsh life in Appalachia with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get
away. She heads west to the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, and what
follows is at the heart of this memorable novel of love and friendship,
abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in
apparently empty places.
>The Bear: Three Famous Short Novels, William
Faulkner. Three different
approaches to Faulkner, each representative of his work as a whole: Spotted
Horses, Old Man, and The Bear.
> The Bell Jar, Sylvia
Plath. A somewhat depressing story
of a poet’s search for identity and her struggle to free herself from
inner demons and her conflict with the demands of society.
Autobiographical in large part, it foreshadows the unfortunate and
tragic end of its author at a young age after she married a future poet
laureate of England.
+ > Beloved, Toni
Morrison. In post-Civil War Ohio, the
past continues to haunt the ex-slave Sethe and the surviving members of
her family. A fine example of the work of Ms. Morrison, who won the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
> Birds of Prey, Wilbur
Smith. After an intense apprenticeship
at sea, young Hal Corteney, son of Sir Francis, is serving aboard his
father’s privateer. When a Dutch treasure galleon comes in sight, Sir
Francis sweeps down and seizes the ship. Bad luck, because Holland and
England have just concluded a treaty. Accused of piracy, the Corteneys
head for the high seas – and plenty of adventures. Young Hal’s
coming of age includes sea battles, dungeons, temptresses, buried
treasure, plus an epic voyage up the coast of Africa to the Red Sea. An
exciting tale that begins at a breakneck pace and never lets up.
+ > Black Boy, Richard
Wright. Being a black boy in the
thirties gave Richard Wright the fury to write this now classic account
of what hunger, fear, and hatred can do.
> Black Jacks: African American Seamen
in the Age of Sail, W. Jeffery Bolster. Black men have been
working on American ships since the 1620s. Some escaped slaves became
pirates (25% of Blackbeard’s crew was black). Crispus Attucks, killed
at the Boston Massacre, was a sailor. Denmark Vesey, leader of a slave
revolt, was a sailor. And by the early 19th century, a fifth
of all merchant seamen in the North were African American. Historian W.
Jeffrey Bolster has discovered a forgotten part of American history. He
shows us how a life at sea gave black men a degree of freedom they
rarely enjoyed on land. And he explains why, ironically, all that
changed with the Civil War.
> Bless Me Ultima, Rudolfo
Anaya. An outstanding novel of life in
the American Southwest for a Chicano family. This coming of age novel
chronicles the story of an alien New Mexico boy who seeks an answer to
his questions about life in his relationship with Ultima, a magical
healer.
> Blood and Honor, W.E.B.
Griffin. In spring 1943, Marine flier
Clete Frade is sent on an undercover mission to neutral Argentina.
Ostensibly, he’s bringing his father’s body home for burial. In
fact, he’s instructed to prevent Nazi ships from refueling in
Argentina’s coastal waters. Once in Buenos Aires, Clete hears of a
plan to establish Nazis in South America after the war and of a racket
that offers to ransom Jews from death camps. The trick for Clete is
foiling all of these nefarious plots without causing an international
incident. As usual, Griffin – a master of the military thriller --
spins a complex, believable plot with lots of tension and plenty of
action.
> The Bluest Eye, Toni
Morrison. A haunting story of a young
black girl who prays every night for blue eyes, thinking that having
them, like the young white girls she sees, will change her life and make
it better.
>Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom
Wolfe. A brilliant satire on the
greed and egocentricity of the Me Decade. Unlike most novels of its
kind, this one gets better as it goes along.
+ > Brave New World, Aldous
Huxley. Classic fantasy of the future
that sheds a blazing, critical light on the shortcomings of the present.
> The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton
Wilder. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
opens in the aftermath of an inexplicable tragedy -- a tiny foot-bridge
in Peru breaks, and five people hurtle to their deaths. For Brother
Juniper, a humble monk who witnesses the catastrophe, the question is
inescapable. Why those five? Suddenly, Brother Juniper is committed to
discover what manner of lives they led -- and whether it was divine
intervention or a capricious fate that took their lives.
> Cannery Row, John
Steinbeck. An earthy fable peopled
by drunks, fancy ladies, benign bums, and social-outcast philosophers.
+ > Catch-22,
Joseph Heller. A savagely funny war
novel: military madness and civilian insanity in World War II.
+ > The Catcher in the Rye, J.D.
Salinger. A novel in which a prep
school dropout rejects the "phoniness" he sees all about him.
This is "one of those rare books" that influenced one
generation after another, causing each to claim it as its own.
+ > Cat’s Cradle, Kurt
Vonnegut. A bizarre mix of satire,
fantasy, and realism deals with atomic scientists, and the end of the
world.
> The Chosen, Chaim
Potok. Friendship between two Jewish
boys, one Hasidic and the other Orthodox, begins at a baseball game and
flourishes despite their different backgrounds and beliefs.
> The Cider House Rules, John
Irving. Wilbur Larch, a physician, philosopher, obstetrician, and
abortionist at St. Cloud’s orphanage struggles through his
relationship with his apprentice and surrogate son.
> Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier. In
the final weeks of the Civil War, Inman, a wounded Confederate veteran,
decides to return home to Ada, the woman he loves, who’s waiting for
him at her farm deep in the Carolina mountains. Like Odysseus, Inman has
his share of run-ins with hostile strangers. Meanwhile, Ada, like
Penelope, is learning to handle loss and loneliness, and is making an
inner journey of her own. The story is definitely mystical as both Inman
and Ada travel into regions where they would never have ventured before.
+ > The Color Purple, Alice
Walker. Written in the form of
letters. We see the world through the eyes of an African-American girl
as she grows up in the Deep South. This is the story of her struggle to
be happy and to love freely. A moving and ultimately triumphant novel.
+ > A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court, Mark Twain.
Mark Twain provides another view of the time of knights and chivalry and
the church’s own style of justice and liberty through the adventures
of a Connecticut man who accidentally lands himself in England in the 6th
century. The satire is wonderful. The book is both hilarious and
chilling in its picture of life during a very trying time for the common
person.
> Contact, Carl Sagan. Readers
of science fiction consistently rank this book among the top 10
"contact" novels. After years of monitoring deep space, a
brilliant and very determined research scientist is finally rewarded
with a transmission from someone, or something, out there. A
multinational team of scientists prepares to journey into the galaxy to
meet this new life-form, but politics, personalities and even religion
soon become entangled in this adventure. Readers have never ceased to
praise Sagan for the rich scientific content he’s brought to his
story.
+ > The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander
Dumas. The classic tale of
19-year-old Edmond Dantes who on his wedding day is framed for a crime
he did not commit. While locked away in a dungeon for 14 years Edmond
learns from another prisoner of a secret treasure on the island of Monte
Cristo. Edmond concocts a daring plan to escape and find the treasure.
Years later, disguised as a wealthy Count, Edmond returns to his native
France to find his enemies and make them pay.
+ > Crime and Punishment, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky. A desperate young man
plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old
women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons,
for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law --
if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest
novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder
mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical,
religious and social commentary.
+ > Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan
Paton. A country Zulu pastor
searches for his sick sister in Johannesburg, and discovers that she had
become a prostitute and that his son has become a murderer. Paton's
deeply moving story of Pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set
against the backdrop of a land and people riven by racial inequality and
injustice, remains the most famous and important novel in South Africa's
history.
> Darkness at Noon, Arthur
Koestler. Set during Stalin’s
purge trials of the 1930s, the novel concerns Nicholas Rubashov, an
old-guard Bolshevik who at first denies, then confesses to, crimes that
he has not committed. The plot examines the dilemma of an aging
revolutionary who can no longer condone the excesses of a regime he
helped establish.
+ > David Copperfield, Charles
Dickens. David Copperfield
succeeds as a novel not simply because of the drama of its hero's
childhood, but because of its powerful theme of innocent idealism
threatened by brutal materialism, and its dazzling array of some of the
most unforgettable characters in our literature.
> Dawn, Elie
Wiesel. A young survivor of Nazism
faces an unbearable moral dilemma when ordered to execute a British
hostage in reprisal for the murder of a Palestinian prisoner.
+> Death Comes for the Archbishop,
Willie Cather. This novel is based on
the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L’Amy and his vicar Father Joseph
Machebeut, friends since their childhood in France. The clerics triumph
over corrupt Spanish priests, natural adversity, and the indifference of
the Hopi and Navajo to establish their church in the wilderness of the
southwestern desert.
> A Death in the Family, James
Agee. Agee’s great novel of a
loving, close-knit family and the courage they display when tragedy
suddenly changes their lives.
>Decider, Dick
Francis. Banker is one of some twenty
or more mysteries by the contemporary English writer, Dick Francis. A
former jockey, Francis often includes horse-racing, and like as part of
the plot in his gripping murder mysteries.
> Deliverance, James
Dickey. Classic tale of four men caught
in a primitive and violent test of manhood. The setting is a remote
white-water river in the Georgia wilderness. Four men on a canoe trip
face a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is
offered his own harrowing deliverance.
> The Devil’s Advocate, Morris
West. Priest dying of cancer is set
to investigate a candidate for sainthood. He is skeptical, but finds the
life of the Italian World War II partisan fighter inspiring, and one is
left thinking about what sainthood is.
+ > Don Quixote, Miguel
De Cervantes. Considered one of
the true classics of world literature, this story details the adventures
of Don Quixote de la Mancha, whose imaginary windmill-tilting travels in
medieval Spain to solve the world's ills have become modern folklore.
> Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert
Louis Stevenson. A bizarre
potion transforms the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll into his alter ego, the
psychopathic Mr. Hyde.
+ >Dr. Zhivago, Boris
Pasternak. This classic describes the
struggles in the life and loves of the poet-physician Zhivago during the
turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
> Dracula, Bram
Stoker. Famous Gothic horror story
of courageous people who set out to destroy vampires.
> Dune, Frank
Herbert. No, you don’t have to be
a science fiction nerd to like this series of books. For many reasons,
these are books worth reading:
- For once in science fiction, women are of
central importance to the plot and not self consciously written in
as equals.
- They are written far more skillfully than
most sci-fi.
- If you have any knowledge of Middle Eastern
culture, you’ll notice some similarities here.
- Fascinating discussions of the
interrelationships of religion and government, leadership and
tyranny abound.
> East of Eden, John
Steinbeck. This sprawling and often
brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley,
follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the
Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve
and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. "A strange and original
work of art."
+ > Emma, Jane
Austen. Classic novel about a self
assured young lady whose capricious behavior is dictated by romantic
fancy.
>Endurance: Shackleford’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred
Lansing. The true story of Ernest
Shackleford’s quest for the South Pole, and his incredible rowboat
voyage across the Polar Sea to bring rescue to his men, stranded for 4
months in a frozen wasteland.
+ > Ethan Frome, Edith
Wharton. Widely regarded as Edith
Wharton's most revealing novel and her finest achievement in fiction.
Set in the bleak, barren winter landscape of New England, it is the
tragic tale of a simple man, bound to the demands of his farm and his
tyrannical, sickly wife, Zeena, and driven by his star-crossed love for
Zeena's young cousin, Mattie Silver.
+ > Fahrenheit 451, Ray
Bradbury. How important are books?
What would happen to our lives if another Hitler decreed that they all
be burned? Bradbury’s disturbing novel examines the forces of
barbarism and philistinism and how they threaten our fragile legacy of
artists and thinkers.
+> A Farewell to Arms, Ernest
Hemingway. In this semi autobiographical novel that takes place
during World War I, an American lieutenant falls in love and runs away
with the woman who nurses him to health. Hemingway, winner of the Nobel
Prize, is known for his journalistic style.
+ > Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas
Hardy The quick and tremendous
success of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874 persuaded Hardy to
give up his first profession, architecture, to concentrate on writing
fiction. Capricious and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, the new young
owner of the Upper Farm, is a disquieting presence in the village of
Weatherbury. Through her relationships with three suitors--the shepherd
Gabriel Oak, the yeoman farmer Boldwood, and dashing Sergeant Troy--she
discovers the difference between seduction and courtship; between
infatuation and romance.
> Fathers and Sons, Ivan
Serge Turgenev. First published in
1862, this novel of a divided Russia, with peasants set against masters
and fathers set against sons, has become one of the most controversial
Russian novels ever written. But its enduring legacy of social insight
and conscience mixed with drama has given it universal appeal.
> Fire Dancer, Colleen Faulkner. It
is 1759 in Pennsylvania, and Mackenzie Daniels has come to Fort
Belvedere to paint the French, Indian and British participants of the
peace talks. There she falls passionately in love with a Shawnee warrior
named Fire Dancer. When the fort is attacked, Fire Dancer spirits
Mackenzie away to his village for safety. Mackenzie is still intensely
in love with Fire Dancer, but Shawnee life is hard for her. And always
lurking in the background is a Shawnee named Okonsa who hates Mackenzie.
Colleen Faulkner’s complex characters push the popular historical
romance genre up a notch.
+ > For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest
Hemingway. This masterpiece of time and
place tells a profound and timeless story of courage and commitment,
love and loss, that takes place over a fleeting 72 hours. Drawing on
Hemingway's own involvement in the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the
Bell Tolls reflects his passionate feelings about the nature of war
and the meaning of loyalty.
Forever Peace, Joe Halderman. It’s
the year 2043, and the war between the American-led Alliance and the
third-world confederation Ngumi is in its eighth year. Most of the
fighting is done by soldierboys, robot killers run by remote control.
Physicist Julian Class is one of the mechanics who operates the remotes.
Meanwhile, his lover, Amelia Harding, discovers that a project to
explore Jupiter has the potential to vaporize the entire universe.
Halderman creates some of the most complex characters in science
fiction, and he writes intelligently about humankind’s violent
tendencies. This novel shows all the signs of becoming a classic.
> The Forsyte Saga, John
Galsworthy. Old-fashioned both in
style and in the codes of behavior by which the characters live and are
judged, nonetheless this would appeal to a reader who wants to get
immersed in a really long read, and follow the members of a large family
through the first decades of this century.
+ > The Fountainhead, Ayn
Rand. On the surface, it is a story of
one man, Howard Roark, and his struggles as an architect in the face of
a successful rival, Peter Keating, and a newspaper columnist, Ellsworth
Toohey. But the book addresses a number of universal themes: the
strength of the individual, the tug between good and evil, the threat of
fascism. The confrontation of those themes, along with the amazing
stroke of Rand's writing, combine to give this book its enduring
influence.
> A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest
Gaines. In this eloquent novel, set in
Louisiana in the 1970s, eighteen old, black men each claim to have shot
a white man, and in the process, experience their first taste of power
and pride.
> The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, R.A.
Dick. Part of the reason Gull Cottage
rented so cheaply was that it was haunted. But after years of living
under the thumb of her oppressive husband and his strong-minded sisters,
the prospect of living with the ghost of a salty old sea captain seemed
like a vacation to Lucy Muir. Still, she hadn’t bargained for the
blustery, opinionated spirit of Captain Daniel Gregg.
+ > Giants in the Earth, Ole
Rolvaag. The classic story of a
Norwegian pioneer family's struggles with the land and the elements of
the Dakota Territory as they try to make a new life in America. A great
and beautiful book that suggests the wealth of human potential brought
to America year after year by the peasant immigrants who passed through
Ellis Island and scattered the length and breadth of the land.
> Go Tell It On the Mountain, James
Baldwin. Autobiographical novel of
a family in Harlem composed of an angry father, a stoic mother, a
rebellious older son, and a sensitive younger one.
> The God of Small Things, Arundhati
Roy. A word-of-mouth publicity campaign among readers made Arundhati
Roy’s first novel a literary sensation. At a funeral, Rahel is
reunited with her twin brother, Estha, 25 years after they were
separated and raised separately. Flashing back to 1969, when the
children were seven years old, Roy reveals the events that forced sister
and brother apart. There’s a drowning, a betrayal, a banishment, a
murder, and a love affair. Roy’s prose is gorgeous, and her
understanding of the human heart is profound.
> Gone With the Wind, Margaret
Mitchell. This is more than a novel; it’s a phenomenon. For more
than 60 years, millions upon millions of readers around the world have
been entranced by Margaret Mitchell’s epic of the indomitable Scarlett
O’Hara. Actually, it’s easy to understand the story’s appeal:
Mitchell presents her readers with a strong cast of characters; her
description of life in the Old South sounds like a kind of Golden Age;
and beneath all the moonlight and magnolias, there’s a steady erotic
undercurrent. Dive in.
+ > The Good Earth, Pearl
Buck. This modern classic presents a
graphic view of China when the last emperor reigned and the vast
political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant
rumblings for the ordinary people.
+ > The Grapes of Wrath, John
Steinbeck. A powerful novel by the 1962
Nobel Prize – winner about the desperate flight of tenant farmers from
the Midwest during the Depression. The Joad family struggles to retain
their humanity and dignity in the face of the hostility they find in
California.
+ > Great Expectations, Charles
Dickens. Pip secretly aids an escaped
prisoner who later rewards him with a life of wealth.
> This Hallowed Ground, Bruce
Catton. The Civil War classic by
one of America’s best Civil War historians.
> Hard Times, Charles
Dickens. A fierce indictment of the
callous greed of Victorian industrial society and its inhumane
educational system.
> The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson
McCullers. This story of a deaf-mute
and the townspeople who confide their secrets to him launched McCullers'
career. It is an unsentimental yet compassionate portrayal of a
cross-section of humanity in a small Southern town.
+ > Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer,
Joseph Conrad. Two
brilliant short novels that explore the human soul, its capacity for
good, and its inclination for evil. The basis for the famous war film Apocalypse
Now.
> Hiroshima, John
Hersey. Pulitzer Prizewinner John
Hersey’s interviews with survivors of Hiroshima’s bomb when the
ashes were still warm.
> The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur
Conan Doyle. The most famous adventure
of the peerless detective Sherlock Holmes concerns a family living under
the ancient curse of a spectral hound.
> The House of Mirth, Edith
Wharton. At age 29, the lovely Lily Bart is dangerously close to
spinsterhood, yet the man she loves is not quite rich enough to satisfy
her.
> The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel
Hawthorne. A darkly tragic novel about
a wealthy and hypocritical judge and the misfortunes he causes.
> House Made of Dawn, N. Scott
Momaday. One of the central works from the Native American
Renaissance of the 1960s. Abel, an Indian who returns home to California
after fighting in World War II, is rootless, given to excessive bouts of
sex and drugs. His only link with his heritage is his grandfather,
Francisco, now a very old man. Momaday takes Abel (and the reader) back
and forth in time until Abel understands that following the rhythms of
his ancestors is the only way he’ll be able to create a stable life
for himself. Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel.
> Howard’s End, E.M.
Forster. This is a symbolic novel about
England’s fate. No dry novel this, as it draws one into people,
places, and objects as they stand for things beyond themselves. The
first line of the book, "It isn’t going to be what we
expected", is apropos in describing this worthy book.
> The Human Comedy, William
Saroyan. Warm, captivating story of an
American family in wartime.
> Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow. A
visionary poet named Von Humboldt Fleisher has an enduring impact –
even beyond the grave – on the life and career of his young protégé.
Bellow won a Pulitzer Prize for this novel.
> The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor
Hugo. The haunting tragedy of
Quasimodo, the monstrous bellringer of medieval Paris’s greatest
cathedral.
> I, Claudius, Robert
Graves. This novel about the first five
Roman emperors (Augustus through Nero) is meticulously researched and
hugely entertaining. Full of murders, mysterious deaths, palace
scandals, political shenanigans and yes, a few virtuous souls. The
portraits of Tiberius and Caligula alone (who make Hitler and Capone
seem boringly one-dimensional) are essential reading for the student of
exotic idiosyncrasy.
> I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya
Angelou. The moving and beautiful
autobiography of a talented black woman confronting her own life with
dignity.
> In Cold Blood, Truman
Capote. Originally published in 1965,
Capote claimed this work marked the invention of a new literary form:
the non-fiction novel. His claim is debatable. In any case, his book is
a chilling, suspenseful, recounting of the 1959 slaughter of an entire
family -- the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas. Based on lengthy
interviews and correspondence with the killers, the story begins before
the murders and ends with the murderers’ executions. You won’t be
able to put it down.
> In Country, Bobbie
Ann Mason. Sam Hughes, a contemporary
girl, searches to understand who her father was and what the Vietnam War
that killed him was about.
> Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer. In
April 1992, Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old from the suburbs of
Washington, D.C., walked into the Alaskan wilderness in search of
"pure experience" with nothing but a small-caliber rifle and a
10-pound bag of rice. Four months later a moose hunter found McCandless’
emaciated corpse. Krakauer discloses the mystery of what happened in
between and the events that led up to McCandless’ fatal adventure.
> Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer. In
1996, Outside magazine asked Jon Krakauer – himself a lifelong
mountain climber – to sign up with a company that escorted amateurs to
the summit of Everest. It turned out to be the most disastrous ascent
ever made, taking the lives of 12 climbers, Sherpa guides and
outfitters. Krakauer is a master storyteller who conveys the mind
numbing terror of the climbers caught in a killer storm on the mountain.
Most readers get through this dramatic, horrific and completely
absorbing book in a day. You just can’t tear yourself away from it.
> Intruder in the Dust, William
Faulkner. This novel of a young,
white Mississippi boy’s attempts to save an elderly black man accused
of murder is sharp commentary on the difference between race relations
in the North and the South.
+ > Invisible Man, Ralph
Ellison. Strange, gripping saga of a
black man who struggles from the South to the North, always encountering
other people’s preconceived notions about him.
+ > Ivanhoe, Sir
Walter Scott. A story of chivalry in
which the Norman hero Wilfred finally wins his true love, the Saxon
Rowena, with the help of the Black Knight (Richard the Lion-Hearted in
disguise) and brings about a temporary peace between the Normans and
Saxons. Suspenseful and adventurous.
+ > Jane Eyre, Charlotte
Bronte. Penniless and orphaned, Jane
must make her way in a mid-nineteenth century world where single women
have few choices. She becomes governess at Thornfield, but the dark and
brooding Mr. Rochester has a secret that threatens to destroy them both.
> Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton
Trumbo. This underground classic about
the horrors of World War I is a strong polemic against war.
> The Joy Luck Club, Amy
Tan. This novel chronicles the
friendship of four Chinese women, who have raised daughters in America,
and how the death of one member allows each to reveal the personal
tragedy of her life in China and her struggle to adjust to American
ways.
+ > Jude the Obscure, Thomas
Hardy. The tragic tale of a young man
whose dreams are thwarted because of his social class.
+ > The Jungle, Upton
Sinclair. This is an excellent book to
stir you up if you are feeling complacent about life. Graphic, grim
descriptions of utter poverty and impossibly unsanitary conditions in
meat-packing plants grab hold of you and won’t let you go. An accurate
portrayal of life for immigrants in industry in Chicago in the early
1900s.
> Katherine, Anya
Seton. The most romantic story in the
world: incredibly beautiful heroine, incredibly aristocratic and
attractive hero, married to someone else. The fact that it’s set in
the fourteenth century and that they are real historical figures (he is
the Duke of Lancaster, otherwise known as John of Gaunt) diminishes
neither the romance nor the drama.
> The Killer Angels, Michael
Shaara. A gripping, Pulitzer
Prizewinning novel of the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg, as seen
by the members of the Union and Confederate armies.
> Kim, Rudyard
Kipling. An orphan boy who has grown up
in India trades his Indian life for schooling and adventure.
> The Last of the Mohicans, James
Fenimore Cooper. Cooper’s most famous
novel concerning the desperate struggle of the Native Americans against
the pressures and restrictions of white civilization.
> The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula
Le Guin. An ordinary guy’s dreams
have an unfortunate habit of coming true in disastrous ways.
> Laughing Boy, Oliver
La Farge. This novel reveals the clash
of Native American and American society in Navajo country. While the
author is not a Native American himself, his scholarly interest and
experience with the Navajos have enable him to write an authentic story.
Love, suspense, and mystery pervade this work.
>Les Miserables, Victor
Hugo. A monumental saga of a reformed
convict and a savage indictment of social injustice in 19th-century
France. Against the background of the fiery revolution in 1840s' Paris,
escaped convict Jean Valjean seeks to outwit his nemesis, the relentless
inspector Javert, and redeem his past. This is Hugo’s masterpiece.
+ > Lord Jim, Joseph
Conrad. A haunted sailor in search
of an identity is driven from port to port, island to island.
+> Lord of the Flies, William
Golding. English schoolboys marooned on
an uninhibited island test the values of civilization when they attempt
to set up a society of their own.
> Lord of the Rings, J.
R. R. Tolkien. When Tolkien set out to
write these books, he wanted to create a mythology for Great Britain,
not make some money writing fantasy books. This is not a lightweight
"Dungeons and Dragons" storytelling, but an incredibly
complete world created entirely from the author’s imagination. The
three volume series is over a half-million words long, but the reading
goes quickly.
> Lost Horizon, James
Hilton. One woman and three men are
kidnapped and brought to mysterious Shangri-La, an uptopia in Tibet
where no one grows old. The travelers are transformed as they shed the
trappings of their former day-to-day lives and reach greater spiritual
and intellectual understanding of themselves and the world.
> The Loved One, Evelyn
Waugh. Waugh -- arguably the best
prose stylist of this century -- went to Hollywood in 1948 and visited
Forest Lawn, the grotesque cemetery. He was so amazed and appalled that
he wrote this satirical expose of "the American way of death".
The book also makes fun of California mores, American and British
expatriates. It’s clever and droll (after a puzzling first chapter),
but it’s also serious; as well as brevity and wit, it has soul.
> M is for Malice, Sue Grafton. When
this story opens, California private investigator Kinsey Millhone is
feeling a little depressed. So much so that she goes back to her old
boyfriend, Robert Dietz. But then a new case comes along to lift her
spirits. Years ago Guy Malek, heir to the Malek Construction company
(worth $40 million) disappeared. Now the father has died, and the family
needs Guy back so the will can be enacted. Guy’s brothers hire Kinsey
to track down the prodigal son, and she finds him without too much
trouble. Of course, as soon as Guy is back, all the real trouble begins.
+ > Madame Bovary, Gustave
Flaubert. This landmark
nineteenth-century novel tells of a woman who defies the standards of
conventional French society. In her extramarital affairs, she seeks
unsuccessfully to find the emotional experiences she has read about in
romantic novels.
> The Magus, John
Fowles. Exotic, erotic, maddeningly
mysterious, this novel will keep you guessing up to and maybe even
beyond the ending. The story of a "magician" who contrives and
controls characters, set in Greece and England. It’s hard to put down.
> The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas
Hardy. Michael Henchard is the
respected mayor of Casterbridge, a thriving industrial town--but years
ago, under the influence of alcohol, he sold his wife Susan to a sailor
at a country fair. Although repentant and sober for 21 years, Henchard
cannot escape his destiny when Susan and her daughter return to
Casterbridge.
> The Member of the Wedding, Carson
McCullers. A sensitive portrayal of
twelve-year old tomboy Frankie and the turbulent emotions triggered by
her brother’s upcoming marriage.
+ > Middlemarch, George
Eliot. A great but long Victorian novel
about a woman who marries an old pedant and has to live with her
mistake. But the plot, while excellent, is only part of the story
because the portrait of the social fabric of England is richly and
subtly woven. One of the great works of English literature.
> A Midnight Clear, William
Wharton. At Christmastime near the end of World War II, a squad of
young American soldiers encounters a squad of German soldiers. Both
groups are cold and scared, and nobody wants to kill or be killed.
Together, they hatch a scheme so the Germans can surrender with dignity.
But the best-laid plans sometimes go all wrong…This novel was made
into an excellent but little-known movie.
+ > Moby Dick, Herman
Melville. Ahab’s quest for the great
White Whale is an allegory of the individual’s struggle with fate.
Called "the Greatest American Novel," Moby Dick sails across
the seven seas and through an ocean of philosophical dilemma, with a
seaman named Ishmael and his tour aboard Captain Ahab's ship. Ready for
adventure, the crew soon find themselves in the middle of a nightmare,
for Ahab has one all-consuming passion--to find and kill the great white
whale.
> Moon is Down, John
Steinbeck. In this masterful account
set in Norway during World War II, Steinbeck explores the effects of
invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors. Occupied by Nazi
troops, a small, peaceable town comes face to face with evil imposed
from the outside--and betrayal born within the close-knit community.
+ > Mrs. Dalloway,
Virginia Woolf. This is a beautifully
written exploration of one day in a character’s life through her
activities, thoughts, and feelings. Virginia Woolf immerses you in this
woman’s world by having you experience the most minor details and
private moments of her day. In the end, you have an intimate
understanding and respect for Mrs. Dalloway’s perspective on life.
>Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles
Nordoff and James Hall. The most
stirring sea adventure ever told – the historic voyage of the H.M.S.
Bounty that culminated in Fletcher Christian’s mutiny against Captain
Bligh. An unforgettable yarn of the high seas.
+ > My Antonia, Willa Cather.
Infused with gracious passion for the land, this classic work embraces
its uncommon subject--the hard life of the pioneer woman on the
prairie--with poetic certitude, rendering a moving portrait of an entire
community. Rediscovered by scores of readers every year, it remains a
powerful ode to the pioneer spirit and a tribute to the romantic
possibilities of the land.
+ > Native Son, Richard
Wright. Right from the start, Bigger
Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty
larceny: by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells
the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he
kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in
the 1930’s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the
poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner
cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
Uncompromisingly realistic.
> The Natural, Bernard
Malamud. The wildly comic and
ultimately heartbreaking adventures of Roy Hobbs, the mythical baseball
prodigy.
> Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala
Markandaya. The story of a simple woman
in a village in India who, married as a child bride, worked with her
husband to wrest a living from the ravaged land.
> Night, Elie
Wiesel. The searing personal memoir of
a boy who lived through the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, a
witness to the evils of the Nazi regime.
>Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell. Published
in 1949, Nineteen Eighty Four is Orwell’s terrifying vision of a
totalitarian future. Its hero, Winston Smith, is a worker at the
Ministry of Truth, where he falsifies records.
+ > Of Human Bondage, Somerset
Maugham. Philip Carey, a sensitive boy
born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and
uncle, yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually
pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to
study medicine, he begins a doomed love affair that will change the
course of his life. There is no more powerful story of the human longing
for connection and freedom.
> Of Mice and Men, John
Steinbeck. Poignant and powerful story
of short-tempered George and child-like Lennie, a mismatched pair who
share a dream of a better life on a farm of their own.
> Oliver Twist, Charles
Dickens. The story of the little orphan
boy who wants more created a sensation when it was first published.
Popular fiction of the time glamorized the life of London’s
professional criminals, but Dickens's portraits of Fagin, who turns
little boys into professional thieves, and Bill Sikes, the brutal
burglar, and the villainous Monks stripped away the romance and showed
the underworld for what it truly was. Furthermore, his heartrending
account of the death of Oliver Twist’s mother and Oliver’s wretched
childhood in the workhouse proved to be an especially forceful critique
of England’s inhuman Poor Laws.
> The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora
Welty. The daughter of a New Orleans judge spars with her stepmother
and the woman’s white-trash relatives.
> On the Beach, Nevil
Shute. A story that questions how to
live one’s last day when faced with nuclear extinction.
> On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Two
young drifters, Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s self-portrait) and Dean
Moriarty (Kerouac’s portrait of his best friend, Neal Cassady), travel
coast to coast, picking up jobs and girls along the way and keeping an
eye open for the next wild party. On the Road was the bible of
the Beat Generation, the book that urged young people in the 1950s to
live for the moment. Today it’s still hard to resist the appeal of
Kerouac’s characters, whose souls are "wrapped up in a fast car,
a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road."
+ > One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn. A day in the life of a
prisoner in a Soviet work camp and his heroic struggle to survive.
> One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken
Kesey. The counterculture embraced this
allegory of individualism versus the establishment, which, as a film,
gave Jack Nicholson one of his more memorable roles. Cowed by sadistic
Nurse Ratched, the inmates of a mental hospital are galvanized by a new
patient, the free-spirited McMurphy, who enters a pitched battle of
wills with the nurse.
>One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel
Garcia Marquez. This Latin American
novel portrays seven generations in the lives of the Buendia family.
Garcia Marquez employs a technique called magic realism – the use of
magic, myth, and religion to intensify reality.
> Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen. From
1914 to 1931, Danish aristocrat Baroness Karen Blixen owned and operated
a coffee plantation in Kenya. After the plantation failed, she returned
to Europe and began to write under the pen name Isak Dinesen. She
portrays in rich detail the vast land around her, alive with strange and
wonderful human populations; the thrilling terror of a nocturnal lion
hunt; a shooting accident among the Africans on her farm and its
repercussions; raising and freeing an orphaned antelope fawn; getting to
know the Africans and the colonial adventurers who found their way into
her life.
+ > The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter
Van Tilburg Clark. A searing study of
mob justice in the Old West.
+ > A Passage to India, Edward
Morgan Forster. Set in India in the
last decades of the British Raj, this story of an Indian falsely accused
of attempting to rape an Englishwoman crystallizes the political,
racial, sexual, and philosophical issues raised by the confrontation of
West and East.
> The Perfect Storm: A True Story of
Men Against the Sea, Sebastian Junger. When meteorologists say a
storm is "perfect," they mean it couldn’t be any worse. Such
was the case in the last days of October 1991, when an impossibly
violent gale caught the sword fishing boat Andrea Gail off the coast of
Nova Scotia. In 100-foot waves and 80-mile-an-hour winds, the six crew
members didn’t have a chance. Sebastian Junger takes us into the heart
of this terrifying storm, imagines the final moments of the Andrea Gail
and recounts the heroism of the National Air Guard jumpers who attempted
daring rescues by leaping from helicopters into the storm-tossed sea.
> The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar
Wilde. Wilde’s story about a young
man (whose portrait ages while he himself stays ever young) is as
striking and provocative as it was when it shocked the Victorians.
Beautifully, even sumptuously, written, it is full of the witticisms
that later animated Wilde’s play, The
Importance of Being Earnest.
+ > The Plague, Albert
Camus. The bubonic plague ravages the Algerian port of Oran in this
symbolically rich diagnosis of spiritual and political disease. Short
but extremely challenging reading.
+ > The Portrait of a Lady, Henry
James. Intelligent, beautiful and very
rich, Isabel Archer rejects every marriage proposal she receives –
until she meets the wrong man.
+ > A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
James Joyce.
A novel about a young man growing up in Ireland and rebelling against
family, country, and religion to become an artist. Joyce’s use of
stream-of-consciousness has influenced many modern writers.
> The Power of One, Bryce
Courtenay. Peekay, a white boy born
in 1939 in South Africa as the seeds of apartheid are newly sown, begins
an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern
prejudice. Set in a world torn apart, where man enslaves his fellow man
and freedom remains elusive, The Power Of One is the moving story
of one young man's search for the love that binds friends and the
realization that it takes only one to change the world.
>A Prayer for Owen Meany, John
Irving. Diminutive Owen Meany spends
his life in a small New Hampshire town believing he is "God’s
instrument," a special person assigned a role he cannot change or
avoid. Owen’s consciousness of his special status puts him in
situations that are funny, poignant, occasionally even tragic. Adept at
manipulating people, Owen is able to keep his best friend out of the
Vietnam War, but he is also unintentionally responsible for the death of
his friend’s mother. This is John Irving in classic form – bizarre,
irreverent, controversial. Simon Birch was the movie adapted from
this novel.
+ > Pride and Prejudice, Jane
Austen. Mrs. Bennett scrambles to find
husbands for her five daughters in a gentle satire of human weakness and
prejudice.
> The Prince and the Pauper, Mark
Twain. The fates of two boys who look
exactly alike -- one poor, one of royal family -- become intertwined.
> Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark
Twain. In this funny but biting novel,
a young slave woman exchanges her light-skinned child with her master’s.
> The Quiet American, Graham
Greene. A terrifying portrait of a
high-minded young American in Saigon during the last days of the French
occupation.
> Rebecca, Daphne
Du Maurier. Almost surreal in its
dream-like images (a mansion overlooking the stormy ocean, a
spectre-like servant…), this mystery tells the story of a young woman
who is haunted by her husband’s first wife, now deceased. A classic
thriller!
> The Reivers, William
Faulkner. A very funny book, Faulkner’s
last novel before he died, explores the maturation of a boy into manhood
-- one of his major themes. A stolen car, a wild and crazy ride from
Jefferson, Mississippi to a Memphis whorehouse, several brawls, and
maybe the most wonderful horse race in American Literature, make this a
delight to read. One caution: don’t let the seemingly slow start put
you off; stay in the saddle and enjoy the ride.
+ > The Return of the Native, Thomas
Hardy. Vast, brooding Egdon Heath is
the setting for this 19th – century examination of the
frailties of human love.
+ > Robinson Crusoe, Daniel
Defoe. For more than two centuries,
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has delighted readers with its delicate
portrayal of physical and emotional survival. Shipwrecked upon a
deserted island, a sailor most somehow build a new life. This is the
story of a castaway's triumph over nature itself--and over the fears,
doubts, and loneliness that are ingrained in the human psyche.
> A Room with a View, E. M.
Forster. Adventures in Italy and at home in England give a young
woman the courage to reject an insipid suitor and marry the man she
truly loves.
> The Runaway, Terry
Kay. For years, the little Southern
town of Crossover had been run by "Logan’s Law," a system of
justice put in place by Logan, the sheriff. During Logan’s reign,
three black men disappeared, one of them the father of a local boy named
Son Jesus. In the 1940s, 12-year-old Son Jesus and his white friend Jim
find human bones in an old sawmill. They are the remains of Son Jesus’
father. Now all the latent racial nastiness in Crossover bubbles to the
surface, and even Son Jesus and Jim find their friendship strained. A
tense, unsettling novel in the tradition of To
Kill a Mockingbird.
> The Screwtape Letters, C. S.
Lewis. An apprentice demon learns the ropes of bringing a soul to
damnation.
> Sense and Sensibility, Jane
Austen. The novel centers on the sisters Elinor and Marianne
Dashwood, who are forced to leave their home with their mother and
younger sister, Margaret, and move in reduced circumstances to the West
of England. Elinor, the sensible sister, and Marianne, the over imaginative
romantic, must rely on a good marriage as a means of support. As their
excellent schemes are intruded upon, Austen subtly explores the marriage
game of her times, as both sense and sensibility affect the sisters'
chances of happiness and comfort.
> A Separate Peace, John
Knowles. Two young prep school
roommates learn to cope with the emotions of adulthood when one of them
is struck down by a crippling accident.
> Serpico, Peter Maas. "The
only oath I ever took was to enforce the law – and it didn’t say
against everybody except other cops." An admirable philosophy that
nearly cost Frank Serpico his life. In the late sixties, the enigmatic
New York City cop launched a one-man fight against the graft and
corruption he saw around him every day on the force. In this gripping
biography, Peter Maas chronicles Serpico’s career, how he stood up for
what he believed, how his life was in danger from the crooked cops he
worked with, and how he ultimately triggered the most comprehensive
investigation of police practices the U.S. has ever seen.
> The Sheltering Sky, Paul
Bowles. The story of three American
travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World
War II examines the way Americans apprehend an alien culture and the way
their incomprehension destroys them.
> Shogun, James
Clavell. There is everything here --
romance, adventure, cruelty, loyalty, treachery, war. The setting is
seventeenth century Japan and the hero is a shipwrecked English sailor
who is at first horrified, later entranced by the customs of the
Japanese. The contrast between the attitudes of the West and those of
the East to activities such as eating, washing, fighting, making love is
really the theme of the novel, and the ways and even the thought
processes of these Japanese of three hundred years ago are most
convincingly portrayed. It moves fast, and is packed with incident.
> Siddhartha, Hermann
Hesse. Emerging from a kaleidoscope of
experiences and pleasures, Siddhartha ascends to a state of peace and
mystic holiness.
+ > Silas Marner, George
Eliot. A poor weaver falls upon evil
days but finds redemption through the love of a little girl.
+ > Sister Carrie, Theodore
Dreiser. A young woman goes to Chicago
to start a new life, and a great deal happens. Dreiser almost overwhelms
you with how hard life can be, but absorbs you with his storytelling so
much that you want to read every detail. It is interesting to read the
book knowing that it was considered scandalous when it was released in
1900. This is not National Enquirer-type-stuff, but you’ll care about
Carrie more because it isn’t.
+ > Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt
Vonnegut. Disturbing, surrealistic
novel based on the World War II firebombing of Dresden. Billy Pilgrim,
an optometrist from Ilium, New York, shuttles between the cellars of
Dresden and a luxurious zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.
> Something Wicked this Way Comes, Ray
Bradbury. To a nice, quiet, normal Midwestern town comes Cooger and
Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show. Lured by a flyer, two best friends,
Jim and Will, both 13 years old, go to the show and get caught up in a
carnival of unrelenting evil. Before the night is over, the boys will be
at each other’s throats on an out-of-control carousel. But worse still
is the vision each will have of his own death and of the damnation of
the entire town. A novel so shocking, thrilling and vivid, it’s been
known to give readers nightmares.
> The Song of Solomon, Toni
Morrison. Of all the novels Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison has
written, this certainly is one of her best. Through four generations of
an African American family, she recovers black America’s hidden
history. The story focuses on the Dead family: the father who hungers
for money, land and social status; the mother who longs for love; and
the son, Milkman, who has two obsessions: flying, and his family’s
secrets. With the help of his eccentric Aunt Pilate, Milkman will
discover things about his ancestors he never expected.
+ > Sons and Lovers, D.H.
Lawrence. This novel about the maturing
of Paul Morel, an English coalminer’s son living in the industrial
Midlands during the early twentieth century, portrays his ardent desire
to escape from his unhappy family life and from his mother’s
possessive dominance.
> Sophie’s Choice, William
Styron. In this ambitious bestseller
(made into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep), Styron tells
of a young Southerner who wants to become a writer; of the turbulent
love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman;
and of an awful wound in the woman's past, one that impels Sophie toward
destruction.
+ > The Sound and the Fury, William
Faulkner. The tragic story of the
Compson family told from 4 points of view. Notoriously
"difficult," this is actually one of Faulkner's more
accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannounced time
shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything is here:
the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict
between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on
time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered
in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. A narrative tour
de force.
> A Stillness at Appomattox, Bruce
Catton. The last book of Catton’s
trilogy on the Civil war.
+ > The Stranger, Albert
Camus. A man who is virtually unknown
to both himself and others commits a pointless murder for which he has
no explanation.
> Sula, Toni
Morrison. Black, smart and poor, Sula
and Nel share their girlhood years as best friends in a downtrodden,
small-town neighborhood. But their friendship is tested when Nel chooses
to stay and become a pillar of their tightly knit black community while
Sula escapes to college in the city and comes to mock the world of her
roots. Morrison’s second novel is an extravagantly beautiful work that
brilliantly evokes not only a bond between two lives, but the ultimately
mad world in which their relationship must struggle to exist.
+ > The Sun Also Rises, Ernest
Hemingway. This was Ernest Hemingway's
first big novel, and immediately established Hemingway as one of the
great prose stylists, and one of the preeminent writers of his time. It
is also the book that encapsulates the angst of the post-World War I
generation, known as the Lost Generation. This poignantly beautiful
story of a group of American and English expatriates in Paris on an
excursion to Pamplona in Spain contains brutally realistic descriptions
of bullfighting and revolves around the flamboyant Lady Brett Ashley and
the hapless Jake Barnes. In an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual
dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions, this is the Lost
Generation.
> The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia
Highsmith. Like a figure from a Henry James novel, Tom Ripley has
been sent to Italy to bring a prodigal young American back home to his
wealthy father. On the surface, Ripley is charming, sophisticated, a
perfectly correct gentleman. In fact, the only time his emotions rise to
the surface is when he’s in the act of killing a carefully selected
victim. Cool, detached and daring, Ripley leaves a trail of corpses from
America to Europe – and he’s never so calculating as when he’s
disposing of a corpse. A real shocker of a crime novel made into a movie
with Matt Damon.
+ > Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas
Hardy. This novel
speaks to feminist issues that reverberate from Victorian times to
today. The heroine, a pretty country lass with spirit and intelligence,
falls under the perfidious influence of a randy kinsman from whom only
murder can extricate her. The gloom of the English Midlands mirrors the
sad history of an essentially good woman struggling against the mores of
her time.
+ > Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora
Nepal Hurston. This classic of black
literature, written in 1937, tells with sympathy and immediacy the story
of Janie Crawford. Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, she
sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the
'30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and
into a journey back to her roots.
+ > Things Fall Apart, Chine
Achebe. This novel by one of Nigeria’s
greatest contemporary novelists tells the story of one man'’ struggle
to retain traditional values while others in his tribe adopt the new
values brought by the English colonial administrators and missionaries.
It is a gripping drama, as well as a fascinating description of
traditional Ibo society. The sequel, No Longer at Ease,
chronicles the struggles of his westernized son as he tries to make it
in the new colonial society.
+ >The Three Musketeers, Alexander
Dumas. One of the most famous historical novels ever written is also
one of the world’s greatest adventure stories, and its heroes have
become symbols for the spirit of youth, daring, and comradeship. The
action takes place in the 1620s at the court of Louis XIII, and combines
fiction with historical fact. Dramatic, stirring, and romantic, the
story of the Musketeers—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, with their
companion, the headstrong d’Artagnan – and their famous code of
"one for all and all for one," remains an unsurpassed tale of
adventure and heroism, as Dumas explores the eternal conflict between
good and evil.
+ > To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper
Lee. At great peril to himself and his children, lawyer Atticus
Finch defends an African-American man accused of raping a white woman in
a small Alabama town.
> To the Lighthouse, Virginia
Woolf. An optimistic, even triumphant novel of a woman’s vision
for her family, symbolized by a long-delayed journey to a lighthouse.
+ > A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty
Smith. The Nolans lived in the Brooklyn
slums from 1902 to 1919. This is a story of Francie, their daughter, and
the beginnings of wisdom.
>The Trial, Frank
Kafka. In this novel a man is tried for
a crime he knows nothing about, yet feels guilty and is executed. W.H.
Auden described Kafka as "the author who comes nearest to bearing
the same kind of relation to our age (that) Dante, Shakespeare, and
Goethe bore to theirs…"
+ > 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules
Verne. An embittered genius takes
refuge from humanity aboard his fantastic submarine, the Nautilus.
+ > Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet
Beecher Stowe. More than an outdated work of propaganda, this 1852
novel of slavery poses the question: "What is it to be a moral
human being?"
> Under the Volcano, Malcolm
Lowry. This modern masterpiece, a
troubling exploration of the theme of commitment, questions the
individual’s ability to continue to function as a human being in the
face of tragic events and seemingly inescapable doom.
>Vanity Fair, William
Thackery. A novel of 19-century
upper-middle-class British society that portrays 20 years in the lives
of two young women very opposite in character: gentle, sentimental
Amelia and lively, cunning Becky.
> Vertical Run, Joseph R. Garber. First
thing in the morning David Elliot’s boss tried to kill him, and his
day has just gone downhill from there. Armed with only his wits and some
office supplies, which in the right hands can be surprisingly deadly,
the former Green Beret must outwit a squad of trained killers to get out
of his Park Avenue office building and find out why everyone wants him
dead. This is an action-packed thriller.
> The Virginian, Owen
Wister. This is the Western novel that
started the whole genre. The Virginian is the quintessential American
cowboy: brave, honest, cool, always in control, but quick to draw his
six-shooter if insulted. He’s a handy man to have on a ranch and soon
becomes foreman. He rescues and woos the schoolteacher from back east,
Miss Molly Wood. Sure, he bides his time with his nemesis, Trampas, but
you know that in the end there’s going to be a dramatic showdown in
some dusty street. A great all-American read. By the way, this is the
book that gave us the expression "When you call me that, smile."
> The Voyage of the Armada, David
Howarth. History buffs will like this
account of the doomed Spanish Armada. The author tries to see the
conflict from the Spanish point of view, and the naval battles are
vividly drawn.
>Waiting to Exhale, Terry
McMillan. Terry McMillan’s hilarious
and irreverent story of four African-American women-four friends who are
trying to make it in this world and manage with help from one another.
+ > Walden, Henry
David Thoreau. Reasons to read this
book: You’ll realize how badly most of the 1500 people that will quote
it during your college years twist out-of-context quotations from it to
suit their own devices. If you’ll let yourself be impressionable for
just a bit, you’ll want to be one of those 1500 people because of the
power of what Thoreau has to say.
> Walkabout, James
Vance Marshall. Imagine you’re an
American girl lost with your younger brother in the outback of Australia
after a plane crash. During your struggle to escape the bush and return
to civilization, you encounter a young Aborigine engaged in his
Walkabout, a six month journey alone through the wilderness to test his
manhood. In a very real sense, the Stone Age meets the Twentieth Century
and they interact. What transpires makes clear that we have a great deal
to learn from people who live close to the earth.
+ War and Peace, Leo
Tolstoy. A historical novel of the
Napoleonic Wars that celebrates the Russian spirit and shows the effect
of war and peace on every social class in Russian society.
>Washington Square, Henry James. A
dashing but penniless bachelor begins courting a plain, socially awkward
but rich New York heiress.
> Watership Down, Richard
Adams. Picturesque saga of a maverick
band of rabbits who search for a new home and a better society.
> The Way of All Flesh, Samuel
Butler. A milestone in the history of
the English novel, The Way of All Flesh tells the story of Ernest
Pontifex, who manages to break free of the stultifying Victorian value
system into which he was born.
> Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean
Rhys. Beautiful, wealthy Antoinette
Cosway’s passionate love for the arrogant Mr. Rochester threatens to
destroy her idyllic Caribbean existence and her very life, in a novel
which is based on Jane Eyre.
> Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood
Anderson. A celebration of small-town
life, depicting its surface innocence and revealing its deeper, darker
strata.
> The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria
Naylor. Weaving together the lives of
six women, Naylor creates a powerful and moving portrait of the
strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in today’s America.
>The World According to Garp, John
Irving. The sexy, comic, doomed life of
Garp, the illegitimate son of a school nurse. Part gonzo fiction, part
Greek tragedy. Robin Williams played Garp in his first movie role.
+ > Wuthering Heights, Emily
Bronte. Wuthering Heights is a classic
tale of possessive and thwarted passion, one of the forerunners of
today's soap operas and romance novels. The tempestuous and mythic story
of Catherine Earnshaw, the precocious daughter of the house, and the
ruggedly handsome, uncultured foundling her father brings home and names
Heathcliff, is played out against the backdrop of English moors no less
wild and raw than the love they develop for one another.
> A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael
Dorris. A fierce saga of three
generations of Indian women beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets,
yet bound together by kinship, set in the Pacific Northwestand on a
Montana Indian reservation.
> Zorba the Greek, Nikos
Kazantzakis. A hyper-intellectual learns about passionate living
from a rough, sometimes crude, Greek peasant.
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