Book Club Choices 2007
You have four choices - three books under 450 pages and one summer read. You may choose one of your own suggestions. Please vote even if you are not going to able to make all the meetings. Everything is listed alphabetically. There's TONS to choose from. I apologize ahead of time for any grammatical mistakes and writing style. I pulled most of them from amazon and wikipedia. Please have your choices to my by December 11th so I can prepare a list of any ties etc.:
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921) - 304 pages: The novel takes place among New York City's upper class during the 1870s, before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles; when there was a small cluster of aristocratic "old revolutionary stock" families that ruled New York's social life; when "being things" was better than "doing things" - one's occupation or abilities were secondary to heredity and family connections, when reputation and outward appearances came at the exclusion of everything and everyone else, and when 5th Avenue was so deserted by nightfall that it was possible to follow the comings and goings of society by watching who went to which household.
Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922) - 434 pages: This compelling satire details irresistible characteristics of social status in a small Midwestern town. Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their two children are members of the lower middle-class. Their daughter, Alice, wrestles with this economic classification and attempts to make the society folk of the town appreciate her. Because Alice has neither social influence nor wealth and her presence is held in disregard by prospective suitors, Mrs. Adams tries to improve the situation by persuading her husband to leave a job he's held all his life and to establish a new career. After much apprehension and in possession of a glue formula stolen from his previous employer, he resigns his mediocre but satisfying employment which puts him in a predicament that leads to his professional downfall.
American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998) - 432 pages: Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the centuries most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquility. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip.
A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945) - 288 pages: The novel's action takes place during World War II after the occupation of Sicily by Allied forces. Major Victor Joppolo, an American army officer of Italian descent, is part of the Allied military government ruling the town of Adano. In his attempts to reform the town and bring democracy to the people by treating them with respect and decency, Joppolo comes into conflict with his commanding officer, a hard-nosed general who eventually has Joppolo transferred because of his refusal to follow orders. Joppolo's concern for the town is epitomized by his efforts to replace a bell that the fascists had melted down to use for ammunition
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985) - 352 pages: Set primarily in 1849 and 1850, Blood Meridian describes a scalping expedition by a posse of American cut-throats in Mexico. The book is based in part on the account of John Joel Glanton and is historically accurate in general, but some portions are based on Samuel Chamberlin's My Confession, a work that has been criticized as unreliable. The novel's principal antagonist, the demonic Judge Holden, was reportedly an actual person.
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989) -352 pages: Maggie Moran's mission is to connect and unite people, whether they want to be united or not. Maggie is a meddler and as she and her husband, Ira, drive 90 miles to the funeral of an old friend, Ira contemplates his wasted life and the traffic, while Maggie hatches a plant to reunite her son Jesse with his long-estranged wife and baby. As Ira explains, "She thinks the people she loves are better than they really are, and so then she starts changing things around to suit her view of them." Though everyone criticizes her for being "ordinary," Maggie's ability to see the beauty and potential in others ultimately proves that she is the only one fighting the resignation they all fear.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928) - 133 pages: The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 1927 novel by American author Thornton Wilder. It tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in Peru when it collapses, killing them. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983) - 300 pages: Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, and pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication) (1981) - 416 pages: The story is set in the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, at the start of the 1960s. The central character is Ignatius J. Reilly, an intelligent but slothful man still living with his mother in Uptown New Orleans who, because of family circumstances, must set out to get a job for the first time in his life at age thirty. In his quest for employment he has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters.
The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith (1989) - 271 pages:
Robert Forester is a fundamentally decent man who attracts trouble like a magnet, and when he begins watching the domestic simplicity of Jenny's life through her window, the deceptive calm of suburban Pennsylvania is shattered. The novel partly takes its inspiration from Father and Son, the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse, which describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse.
A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication) (1958) - 320 pages: For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family; Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (1970) – 112 pages: 84 Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff about the twenty-year correspondence between herself and Frank Doel of Marks & Company, antiquarian booksellers located at the title address in London, England.
Hanff, in search of obscure classics and British literature titles she had been unable to find in New York City, noticed an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature and first contacted the shop in 1949, and it fell to Doel to fulfill her request. In time, a long-distance friendship evolved, not only between the two, but between Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts, and food parcels to compensate for post-World War II shortages added to the ongoing business transactions. Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978) - 288 pages: A beautiful collection of short stories that explores blacks and whites today, Elbow Room is alive with warmth and humor. Bold and very real, these twelve stories examine a world we all know but find difficult to define.
Whether a story dashes the bravado of young street toughs or pierces through the self-deception of a failed preacher, challenges the audacity of a killer or explodes the jealousy of two lovers, James Alan McPherson has created an array of haunting images and memorable characters in an unsurpassed collection of honest, masterful fiction.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (2002) – 336 pages: Ender Wiggin is a very bright young boy with a powerful skill. One of a group of children bred to be military geniuses and save Earth from an inevitable attack by aliens, known here as "buggers," Ender becomes unbeatable in war games and seems poised to lead Earth to triumph over the buggers. Meanwhile, his brother and sister plot to wrest power from Ender. Twists, surprises and interesting characters elevate this novel into status as a bona fide page turner.
A Fable by William Faulkner (1955) - 384 pages: Seen as a precursor to Catch 22, the book takes place in France during World War One and stretches throughout one week and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment. It tells the stories of "Corporal Zsettslani", who is representative of Jesus.
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967) - 352 pages: Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds he is working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985) - 291 pages: This is the story of two English professors from the same University who are taking sabbaticals in London at the same time. Vinnie Minor is fifty four, of unremarkable appearance, a tenured professor, and the author of several books on children's playground rhymes. She loves London, and enjoys her career, but she feels that at her age, her days of excitement and romance are over. Then she meets Chuck Mumpson, an unsophisticated American tourist, who is a most unlikely choice for her foreign affair. Fred Turner, the other professor, is twenty nine, handsome, untenured, and struggling to find enough money to pay for his sabbatical. In London, he meets the television actress Lady Rosemary Radley who is older than he is, well off, and possessive. Again, she is a very unlikely candidate for his foreign affair. Fred and Vinnie barely know each other, and their stories are told in alternating chapters.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993) -288 pages: The 15 stories collected here, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. Butler's literary ventriloquism, as he mines the experiences of a people with a great literary tradition of their own, is uncanny; but his talents as a writer of universal truths are what make this a collection for the ages.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986) - 320 pages: Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the novel presents a totalitarian theocracy that has forced a certain class of fertile women to produce babies for elite barren couples. These "handmaids," who are denied all rights and are severely beaten if they are uncooperative, are reduced to state property. Through the voice of Offred, a handmaid who mingles memories of her life before the revolution with her rebellious activities under the new regime, Atwood has created a terrifying future based on actual events.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1990) - 220 pages: The Hours is both homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969) - 212 pages: House Made of Dawn tells the story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, a goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.
Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984) - 240 pages: Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike. He ran away again after accidentally -- and fatally -- dropping his infant son.
Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present
Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944) - 432 pages: This novel describes the ultimately unsatisfying rise to prominence of small-town Sam Braden as a Chicago businessman. The novel uses Braden's experiences to represent America's development from the 1880s to the 1940s.
The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965) - 320 pages: The Keepers of the House attacks the hypocrisy of Southern racism and examines the results of rage and revenge through the members of the Howland family. The narrator is Abigail Howland, white granddaughter of William Howland and his first wife, the only one left to face the wrath of the town after the secret is exposed. Complex and defiant, enmeshed in racism and familial obligations, she is compelled to go back through her family history in order to understand herself, her father, and the South.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975) - 387 pages: This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit's bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels. There are also plenty of maps, which convey a complete sense of what happened July 1-3, 1863.
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004) - 424 pages: Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slave-owner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel.
The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938) – 368 pages: In the Late George Apley, Marquand's portrayal of the stultified protagonist demonstrates how early twentieth-century Boston's caste system defeats even the well-intentioned members of the elite who devote their lives to its preservation. Without being political, Marquand emphasizes the origins of the Apley fortune in slave trading, a fortune later augmented by the exploitation of mill hands in the textile industry at Apley Falls.
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919) - 268 pages: The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997) - 304 pages: The novel follows the exploits of a young, optimistic entrepreneur, the eponymous Martin Dressler, in late eighteenth century New York City. There once lived a man named Martin Dressler, a shopkeeper's son, who rose from modest beginnings to a height of dreamlike good fortune. This was toward the end of the nineteenth century, when on any street corner in America you might see some ordinary-looking citizen who was destined to invent a new kind of bottle cap or tin can, start a chain of five-cent stores, sell a faster and better elevator, or open a fabulous new department store with big display windows made possible by an improved process for manufacturing sheets of glass. Although Martin Dressler was a shopkeeper's son, he too dreamed his dream, and at last he was lucky enough to do what few people even dare to imagine: he satisfied his heart's desire.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953) -128 pages: This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973) -192 pages: The Optimist's Daughter is a compact and inward-looking little novel. The optimist in question is 71-year-old Judge McKelva, who has come to a New Orleans hospital from Mount Salus, Mississippi, complaining of a "disturbance" in his vision. To his daughter, Laurel, it's as rare for him to admit "self-concern" as it is for him to be sick, and she immediately flies down from Chicago to be by his side. The subsequent operation on the judge's eye goes well, but the recovery does not. He lies still with both eyes heavily bandaged, growing ever more passive until finally, he simply dies. Together Fay and Laurel travel to Mount Salus to bury him.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988) -433 pages: It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, an English Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the boat over to Australia, and discover that they both like to gamble. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church into the outback in one piece. This bet changes both their lives forever.
Passing by Nella Larsen (1929) -160 pages: It follows Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, two light-skinned black women who try to escape racism. Kendry chooses to sever all ties with her background and passes herself off as white, while Redfield simply denies that racism exists. Both, however, eventually are forced to face the awful truth.
The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963) - 305 pages: This is William Faulkner's final novel. Unlike many of his earlier works, it is a straightforward narration and eschews the complicated literary techniques of his greatest works. It is also uncharacteristically lighthearted. The basic plot of "The Reivers" involves a young boy named Lucius who accompanies a family friend named Boon Hogganbeck to Memphis, where Boon hopes to woo a prostitute named Everbe Corinthia (called Miss Corrie.) Lucius, a young, wealthy, and sheltered boy, comes of age in Memphis. He comes into contact for the first time with the underside of society. Much of the novel involves Lucius trying to reconcile his genteel and idealized vision of life with the reality he is faced with on this trip
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994) - 352 pages: In this touching and atmospheric novel set among the fishermen of Newfoundland, Proulx tells the story of Quoyle. From all outward appearances, Quoyle has gone through his first 36 years on earth as a big schlump of a loser. He's not attractive, he's not brilliant or witty or talented, and he's not the kind of person who typically assumes the central position in a novel. But Proulx creates a simple and compelling tale of Quoyle's psychological and spiritual growth. Along the way, we get to look in on the maritime beauty of what is probably a disappearing way of life.
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995) - 400 pages: This fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, captured in Daisy's vivacious yet reflective voice. Daisy, after a life marked with sudden death and loss, escapes into the conventionality of a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful garden columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy's life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life.
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987) -224 pages: This is the story of the Carver family, formerly of Nashville, whose move to Memphis was the result of the father's betrayal by his best friend and major legal client. Phillip Carver, the narrator, tells of the events that followed from that move, in which his autocratic father destroyed the lives of his wife and all four of his children. In a beautifully constructed symmetry, events come full circle; the revelation of paternal hubris also unmasks treachery and festering resentment and fully illuminates the tragedy of hopes dashed and young lives wasted. Master raconteur Taylor casts implications far wider than his novel's setting about the insidious undercurrents in family relationships.
Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948) - 384 pages: Critics classified the work as a series of short fiction, although the author himself considered it a novel because of the unified setting and the recurrence of several characters throughout the book. The stories depicted Navy officers and enlisted men, Marines, Seabees, and nurses as well as the inhabitants of the islands during the war.
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table Ruth Reichl (1998) - 304 pages:
Reichl discovered early on that since she wasn't "pretty or funny or sexy," she could attract friends with food instead. Raised in Manhattan and Connecticut by a docile father who was a book designer and a mother who suffered from manic depression, Reichl enjoyed such middle-class perks as a Christmas in Paris when she was 13. B. The author studied at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in art history, married a sculptor named Doug, lived in a loft in Manhattan's Bowery and then with friends bought a 17-room "cottage" in Berkeley, Calif., which turned into a commune so self-consciously offbeat that their Thanksgiving feast one year was prepared from throwaways found in a supermarket dumpster.
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992) - 384 pages: Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961) - 288 pages: Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
The Town by Conrad Richter (1951) - 309 pages: The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of Ohio from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy earned Richter immediate acclaim as a historical novelist. It includes The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) and follows the Luckett family's migration from Pennsylvania to Southeastern Ohio. It starts when settler Sayward Luckett Wheeler becomes mother to her orphaned siblings on the frontier, and ends with the story of her youngest son Chancey, a journalist in the years before the Civil War.
The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1950) - 352 pages: A.B. "Bud" Guthrie, Jr.'s novel The Way West tells the sweeping story of a wagon train's laborious passage from Missouri to Oregon in the 1840s. Using spare, straightforward language, Guthrie captures the vast majesty of the Western landscape and the daunting challenges that pioneering families faced along the trail.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum (1900) - 320 pages: Originally published in 1900, it was the first truly American fairy tale, as Baum crafted a wonderful fantasy out of such familiar items as a cornfield scarecrow, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard who used old-fashioned hokum to express that universal theme, "There's no place like home."
Follow the adventures of young Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, as their Kansas house is swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. Here she meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City, where lives the all-powerful Wizard of Oz.
Summer Reads:
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947) - 672 pages: This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)- 656 pages: Upon escaping Nazi persecution and meeting his cousin Sam Clay (also artistically gifted), Joe finds love and inspiration in New York City and launches a blend of pulpy nonsense and high social commentary via his comic book hero the Escapist. The comic book exceeds expectations and the teenage boys become success stories overnight. Chabon's serial presentation guides the reader from Prague to Manhattan with occasional detours through the South Pole and a fictional-yet-optimistically possible world where heroes fight hatred and win. Superb characterization emphasizes the themes of self-discovery and faithfulness to the findings, as Joe and Sam learn from each other, themselves, and their separate lovers and find a world that seems more whole.
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956) -768 pages: A novel about the infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp in the Civil War. It is the vividly (and shockingly) related dying of men, juxtaposed with the stories of those living, and the place of the Civil War in popular culture that earned Andersonville its place on top of the bestseller lists, and a lofty chair in the halls of historical fiction.
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1992) - 576 pages: Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, husbands and wives. Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical--that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922) – 480 pages: The book takes its name from the principal character, George Babbitt, a middle-aged real estate salesman. He lives a successful life professionally, but he is unhappy. He lives in the fictional town of Zenith, Winnemac, a state which lies adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Zenith's chief virtue is conformity, and its religion is boosterism. Babbitt gradually becomes disillusioned with his lifestyle and then rebels against it.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988) - 512 pages: The book follows the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver as they try to rebuild their lives after slavery has ended. One day, a teenaged girl shows up at their house and only says her name is "Beloved." It turns out that the girl is another of Sethe's daughters. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives, but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. Morrison feels these issues were avoided in the traditional slave narratives. In the novel, Beloved, she explores the effects on the characters, Paul D and Sethe, of trying to repress - and then come to terms with - the painful memories of their past.
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952) - 560 pages: This is a contemporary classic, a novel of World War II that seized the imagination of a country recovering from the ravages of a devastating war in a manner unlike any work of American fiction before or since. Its characters have become a vital part of our literary history; its story has taken root in the memory of a nation. A towering achievement, and perhaps the world's best-loved drama of the sea and its sailors, The Caine Mutiny was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years. It has sold millions upon millions of copies in the forty years since it was first published. Here again, for a new generation of readers, is Wouk's timeless masterpiece: the legendary tale of Captain Queer and the unforgettable mutiny aboard the U.S.S. Caine
Collected Stories by Jean Stafford (1970) - 528 pages:
This collection of thirty stories includes some of Jean Stafford's best short fiction from the period 1944-1968. Including such favorites as "In the Zoo," "Children Are Bored on Sunday," and "Beatrice Trueblood's Story," the collection offers the work of this popular writer of the 1940s and 1950s to a new generation of readers and critics.
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968) -480 pages: It is a historical novel, presented as a first person account by Nat Turner, who had in real life led a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.
The novel is based on an extant historical document, the "confession" of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been religiously inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and slay the white race. Styron's ambitious novel attempts to recreate the character of Nat Turner from Gray's account.
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962) - 646 pages: Parochial American Irish culture and society in the 1950's and 1960's provide the intricately detailed back-drop for all his stories, but this book in particular has much greater depth and applicability. The specific tale of Irish-American Roman Catholic priest Hugh Kennedy is nothing more than the subtext for the broader human search for the meaning of life! In this case compelling Faith (or the disturbing loss thereof) is the stuff of meaning for Father Hugh, and the books tracks his course through callow youth and subsequent middle age as he eventually comes to terms with his religion and its place in his life. Throughout this rambling journey of self-discovery, it's the frequently aggravating, sometimes venal, often blindly prejudiced, and ultimately very entertaining menagerie of ethnic characters that gives context to a drifting existence.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002) - 496 pages: Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself increasingly resembles a kind of high-wire act performed without the benefit of any middle-class safety nets. There is, to be sure, a protagonist: forty something Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. But Russo sets in motion a large cast of secondary characters, drawn from every social stratum of his depressed New England mill town. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max and a host of Empire Grill regulars. We're also introduced to Francine Whiting, a manipulative widow who owns half the town--and who takes a perverse pleasure in pointing out Miles's psychological defects.
It would be impossible to summarize Russo's multiple plot lines here. Suffice it to say that he touches on love and marriage, lust and loss and small-town economics, with more than a soupcon of class resentment stirred into the broth. This is, in a sense, an epic of small and large frustrations
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940) - 464 pages: Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought and destitution. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" in search of land, jobs, and dignity. The novel is meant to emphasize the need for cooperative, as opposed to independent, solutions to the social problems brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949) - 640 pages: The novel is set in the summer of 1943. Most of the action occurs on or near a fictional Army Air Force base in central Florida. The action occurs over a period of approximately 48 hours. The events leading up to and surrounding the incident allow for the display of a large number of well-drawn characters. The novel balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days in September 1943 to a racial incident on a U.S. Army airbase in Florida.
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976) - 487 pages: The novel, a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor Mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit.
Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996) - 464 pages:. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend, Richard Ford takes us on a journey that moves from the current day to flashbacks in the life of Frank Bascome. He is a real estate agent in a southern New Jersey town and one of his current clients is a couple who are looking for the ideal home. When Frank thinks he has found the right home, they have reservations. Frank never seems to be able to meet the couple's pie-in-the-sky expectations.
Ireland: a Novel by Frank Delaney (2005) - 559 pages: Ireland by Frank Delaney is the story of a young boy, Ronan O'Mara, who in 1951 at the age of 9 encounters an itinerant storyteller, who regales Ronan and others with magical tales, blending myth and fiction, of Ireland's past. Ronan is so taken with the storyteller and his stories that he starts a quest to find him, a difficult undertaking as the storyteller has no address - the storyteller wanders the countryside, staying with people who will feed him and give shelter in exchange for telling stories. Thus starts a life long passion for Ronan - collecting the folklore of Ireland, and uncovering Ireland's history.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003) - 544 pages: The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tiny suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor
One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923) – 459 pages: It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a native of Nebraska around the turn of the 20th century. Son of a successful Midwestern farmer and an intensely pious mother and guaranteed a comfortable livelihood, Claude Wheeler nonetheless views himself as a victim both of his father's success and of his mother's excessive restraint. One of Ours is thus a portrait of a peculiarly American personality: it is the story of a young man born after the American frontier has vanished, yet whose quintessentially American restlessness seeks redemption on a frontier far bloodier and more distant than that which his forefathers had already tamed.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) -524 pages: This well-written first novel attempts to be several things: a psychological suspense thriller and a satire of collegiate mores and popular culture. Supposedly brilliant students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) are involved in two murders, one supposedly accidental and one deliberate. Ultimately, it works best as a psychological thriller.
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959) - 544 pages: If Huck Finn had gone West during the Gold Rush and lived to tell about it, he might have sounded much like Jaimie McPheeters in describing his incredibly hazardous trek by wagon train to California in 1849. Jaimie shares the storytelling with his father, an intelligent Scottish doctor whose ebullient personality is only slightly undermined by a weakness for gambling and strong drink.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1997) – 607 pages: Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939) - 480 pages: The Yearling is a touching, suspenseful, and realistic story about a boy caught between love for his pet and responsibility to his family. The novel follows a year in the life of this playful and sensitive boy — a year filled with adventure and danger, loss and loneliness. The boy's experiences of sorrow, bitterness, and courage speak of what it means to grow up in a harsh environment.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1921) - 304 pages: The novel takes place among New York City's upper class during the 1870s, before the advent of electric lights, telephones or motor vehicles; when there was a small cluster of aristocratic "old revolutionary stock" families that ruled New York's social life; when "being things" was better than "doing things" - one's occupation or abilities were secondary to heredity and family connections, when reputation and outward appearances came at the exclusion of everything and everyone else, and when 5th Avenue was so deserted by nightfall that it was possible to follow the comings and goings of society by watching who went to which household.
Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1922) - 434 pages: This compelling satire details irresistible characteristics of social status in a small Midwestern town. Mr. and Mrs. Adams and their two children are members of the lower middle-class. Their daughter, Alice, wrestles with this economic classification and attempts to make the society folk of the town appreciate her. Because Alice has neither social influence nor wealth and her presence is held in disregard by prospective suitors, Mrs. Adams tries to improve the situation by persuading her husband to leave a job he's held all his life and to establish a new career. After much apprehension and in possession of a glue formula stolen from his previous employer, he resigns his mediocre but satisfying employment which puts him in a predicament that leads to his professional downfall.
American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1998) - 432 pages: Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the centuries most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquility. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip.
A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1945) - 288 pages: The novel's action takes place during World War II after the occupation of Sicily by Allied forces. Major Victor Joppolo, an American army officer of Italian descent, is part of the Allied military government ruling the town of Adano. In his attempts to reform the town and bring democracy to the people by treating them with respect and decency, Joppolo comes into conflict with his commanding officer, a hard-nosed general who eventually has Joppolo transferred because of his refusal to follow orders. Joppolo's concern for the town is epitomized by his efforts to replace a bell that the fascists had melted down to use for ammunition
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985) - 352 pages: Set primarily in 1849 and 1850, Blood Meridian describes a scalping expedition by a posse of American cut-throats in Mexico. The book is based in part on the account of John Joel Glanton and is historically accurate in general, but some portions are based on Samuel Chamberlin's My Confession, a work that has been criticized as unreliable. The novel's principal antagonist, the demonic Judge Holden, was reportedly an actual person.
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1989) -352 pages: Maggie Moran's mission is to connect and unite people, whether they want to be united or not. Maggie is a meddler and as she and her husband, Ira, drive 90 miles to the funeral of an old friend, Ira contemplates his wasted life and the traffic, while Maggie hatches a plant to reunite her son Jesse with his long-estranged wife and baby. As Ira explains, "She thinks the people she loves are better than they really are, and so then she starts changing things around to suit her view of them." Though everyone criticizes her for being "ordinary," Maggie's ability to see the beauty and potential in others ultimately proves that she is the only one fighting the resignation they all fear.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1928) - 133 pages: The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 1927 novel by American author Thornton Wilder. It tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in Peru when it collapses, killing them. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983) - 300 pages: Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, and pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication) (1981) - 416 pages: The story is set in the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, at the start of the 1960s. The central character is Ignatius J. Reilly, an intelligent but slothful man still living with his mother in Uptown New Orleans who, because of family circumstances, must set out to get a job for the first time in his life at age thirty. In his quest for employment he has various adventures with colorful French Quarter characters.
The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith (1989) - 271 pages:
Robert Forester is a fundamentally decent man who attracts trouble like a magnet, and when he begins watching the domestic simplicity of Jenny's life through her window, the deceptive calm of suburban Pennsylvania is shattered. The novel partly takes its inspiration from Father and Son, the autobiography of the English poet Edmund Gosse, which describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse.
A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication) (1958) - 320 pages: For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed. On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family; Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (1970) – 112 pages: 84 Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff about the twenty-year correspondence between herself and Frank Doel of Marks & Company, antiquarian booksellers located at the title address in London, England.
Hanff, in search of obscure classics and British literature titles she had been unable to find in New York City, noticed an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature and first contacted the shop in 1949, and it fell to Doel to fulfill her request. In time, a long-distance friendship evolved, not only between the two, but between Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts, and food parcels to compensate for post-World War II shortages added to the ongoing business transactions. Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978) - 288 pages: A beautiful collection of short stories that explores blacks and whites today, Elbow Room is alive with warmth and humor. Bold and very real, these twelve stories examine a world we all know but find difficult to define.
Whether a story dashes the bravado of young street toughs or pierces through the self-deception of a failed preacher, challenges the audacity of a killer or explodes the jealousy of two lovers, James Alan McPherson has created an array of haunting images and memorable characters in an unsurpassed collection of honest, masterful fiction.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (2002) – 336 pages: Ender Wiggin is a very bright young boy with a powerful skill. One of a group of children bred to be military geniuses and save Earth from an inevitable attack by aliens, known here as "buggers," Ender becomes unbeatable in war games and seems poised to lead Earth to triumph over the buggers. Meanwhile, his brother and sister plot to wrest power from Ender. Twists, surprises and interesting characters elevate this novel into status as a bona fide page turner.
A Fable by William Faulkner (1955) - 384 pages: Seen as a precursor to Catch 22, the book takes place in France during World War One and stretches throughout one week and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment. It tells the stories of "Corporal Zsettslani", who is representative of Jesus.
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud (1967) - 352 pages: Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds he is working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (1985) - 291 pages: This is the story of two English professors from the same University who are taking sabbaticals in London at the same time. Vinnie Minor is fifty four, of unremarkable appearance, a tenured professor, and the author of several books on children's playground rhymes. She loves London, and enjoys her career, but she feels that at her age, her days of excitement and romance are over. Then she meets Chuck Mumpson, an unsophisticated American tourist, who is a most unlikely choice for her foreign affair. Fred Turner, the other professor, is twenty nine, handsome, untenured, and struggling to find enough money to pay for his sabbatical. In London, he meets the television actress Lady Rosemary Radley who is older than he is, well off, and possessive. Again, she is a very unlikely candidate for his foreign affair. Fred and Vinnie barely know each other, and their stories are told in alternating chapters.
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993) -288 pages: The 15 stories collected here, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. Butler's literary ventriloquism, as he mines the experiences of a people with a great literary tradition of their own, is uncanny; but his talents as a writer of universal truths are what make this a collection for the ages.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1986) - 320 pages: Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the novel presents a totalitarian theocracy that has forced a certain class of fertile women to produce babies for elite barren couples. These "handmaids," who are denied all rights and are severely beaten if they are uncooperative, are reduced to state property. Through the voice of Offred, a handmaid who mingles memories of her life before the revolution with her rebellious activities under the new regime, Atwood has created a terrifying future based on actual events.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1990) - 220 pages: The Hours is both homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (1969) - 212 pages: House Made of Dawn tells the story of a young American Indian named Abel, home from a foreign war and caught between two worlds: one his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons and the harsh beauty of the land; the other of industrial America, a goading him into a compulsive cycle of dissipation and disgust.
Ironweed by William Kennedy (1984) - 240 pages: Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers' strike. He ran away again after accidentally -- and fatally -- dropping his infant son.
Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present
Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944) - 432 pages: This novel describes the ultimately unsatisfying rise to prominence of small-town Sam Braden as a Chicago businessman. The novel uses Braden's experiences to represent America's development from the 1880s to the 1940s.
The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau (1965) - 320 pages: The Keepers of the House attacks the hypocrisy of Southern racism and examines the results of rage and revenge through the members of the Howland family. The narrator is Abigail Howland, white granddaughter of William Howland and his first wife, the only one left to face the wrath of the town after the secret is exposed. Complex and defiant, enmeshed in racism and familial obligations, she is compelled to go back through her family history in order to understand herself, her father, and the South.
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (1975) - 387 pages: This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit's bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels. There are also plenty of maps, which convey a complete sense of what happened July 1-3, 1863.
The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2004) - 424 pages: Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slave-owner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel.
The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (1938) – 368 pages: In the Late George Apley, Marquand's portrayal of the stultified protagonist demonstrates how early twentieth-century Boston's caste system defeats even the well-intentioned members of the elite who devote their lives to its preservation. Without being political, Marquand emphasizes the origins of the Apley fortune in slave trading, a fortune later augmented by the exploitation of mill hands in the textile industry at Apley Falls.
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1919) - 268 pages: The novel and trilogy traces the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in a fictional Mid-Western town, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (1997) - 304 pages: The novel follows the exploits of a young, optimistic entrepreneur, the eponymous Martin Dressler, in late eighteenth century New York City. There once lived a man named Martin Dressler, a shopkeeper's son, who rose from modest beginnings to a height of dreamlike good fortune. This was toward the end of the nineteenth century, when on any street corner in America you might see some ordinary-looking citizen who was destined to invent a new kind of bottle cap or tin can, start a chain of five-cent stores, sell a faster and better elevator, or open a fabulous new department store with big display windows made possible by an improved process for manufacturing sheets of glass. Although Martin Dressler was a shopkeeper's son, he too dreamed his dream, and at last he was lucky enough to do what few people even dare to imagine: he satisfied his heart's desire.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953) -128 pages: This tale of an aged Cuban fisherman going head-to-head (or hand-to-fin) with a magnificent marlin encapsulates Hemingway's favorite motifs of physical and moral challenge. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: Hemingway's style, too, reverts to those superb snapshots of perception that won him his initial fame
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1973) -192 pages: The Optimist's Daughter is a compact and inward-looking little novel. The optimist in question is 71-year-old Judge McKelva, who has come to a New Orleans hospital from Mount Salus, Mississippi, complaining of a "disturbance" in his vision. To his daughter, Laurel, it's as rare for him to admit "self-concern" as it is for him to be sick, and she immediately flies down from Chicago to be by his side. The subsequent operation on the judge's eye goes well, but the recovery does not. He lies still with both eyes heavily bandaged, growing ever more passive until finally, he simply dies. Together Fay and Laurel travel to Mount Salus to bury him.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988) -433 pages: It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, an English Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory. They meet on the boat over to Australia, and discover that they both like to gamble. Lucinda bets Oscar that he cannot transport a glass church into the outback in one piece. This bet changes both their lives forever.
Passing by Nella Larsen (1929) -160 pages: It follows Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, two light-skinned black women who try to escape racism. Kendry chooses to sever all ties with her background and passes herself off as white, while Redfield simply denies that racism exists. Both, however, eventually are forced to face the awful truth.
The Reivers by William Faulkner (1963) - 305 pages: This is William Faulkner's final novel. Unlike many of his earlier works, it is a straightforward narration and eschews the complicated literary techniques of his greatest works. It is also uncharacteristically lighthearted. The basic plot of "The Reivers" involves a young boy named Lucius who accompanies a family friend named Boon Hogganbeck to Memphis, where Boon hopes to woo a prostitute named Everbe Corinthia (called Miss Corrie.) Lucius, a young, wealthy, and sheltered boy, comes of age in Memphis. He comes into contact for the first time with the underside of society. Much of the novel involves Lucius trying to reconcile his genteel and idealized vision of life with the reality he is faced with on this trip
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (1994) - 352 pages: In this touching and atmospheric novel set among the fishermen of Newfoundland, Proulx tells the story of Quoyle. From all outward appearances, Quoyle has gone through his first 36 years on earth as a big schlump of a loser. He's not attractive, he's not brilliant or witty or talented, and he's not the kind of person who typically assumes the central position in a novel. But Proulx creates a simple and compelling tale of Quoyle's psychological and spiritual growth. Along the way, we get to look in on the maritime beauty of what is probably a disappearing way of life.
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (1995) - 400 pages: This fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, captured in Daisy's vivacious yet reflective voice. Daisy, after a life marked with sudden death and loss, escapes into the conventionality of a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful garden columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy's life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life.
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1987) -224 pages: This is the story of the Carver family, formerly of Nashville, whose move to Memphis was the result of the father's betrayal by his best friend and major legal client. Phillip Carver, the narrator, tells of the events that followed from that move, in which his autocratic father destroyed the lives of his wife and all four of his children. In a beautifully constructed symmetry, events come full circle; the revelation of paternal hubris also unmasks treachery and festering resentment and fully illuminates the tragedy of hopes dashed and young lives wasted. Master raconteur Taylor casts implications far wider than his novel's setting about the insidious undercurrents in family relationships.
Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener (1948) - 384 pages: Critics classified the work as a series of short fiction, although the author himself considered it a novel because of the unified setting and the recurrence of several characters throughout the book. The stories depicted Navy officers and enlisted men, Marines, Seabees, and nurses as well as the inhabitants of the islands during the war.
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table Ruth Reichl (1998) - 304 pages:
Reichl discovered early on that since she wasn't "pretty or funny or sexy," she could attract friends with food instead. Raised in Manhattan and Connecticut by a docile father who was a book designer and a mother who suffered from manic depression, Reichl enjoyed such middle-class perks as a Christmas in Paris when she was 13. B. The author studied at the University of Michigan, earned a graduate degree in art history, married a sculptor named Doug, lived in a loft in Manhattan's Bowery and then with friends bought a 17-room "cottage" in Berkeley, Calif., which turned into a commune so self-consciously offbeat that their Thanksgiving feast one year was prepared from throwaways found in a supermarket dumpster.
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1992) - 384 pages: Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1961) - 288 pages: Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
The Town by Conrad Richter (1951) - 309 pages: The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of Ohio from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy earned Richter immediate acclaim as a historical novelist. It includes The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) and follows the Luckett family's migration from Pennsylvania to Southeastern Ohio. It starts when settler Sayward Luckett Wheeler becomes mother to her orphaned siblings on the frontier, and ends with the story of her youngest son Chancey, a journalist in the years before the Civil War.
The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1950) - 352 pages: A.B. "Bud" Guthrie, Jr.'s novel The Way West tells the sweeping story of a wagon train's laborious passage from Missouri to Oregon in the 1840s. Using spare, straightforward language, Guthrie captures the vast majesty of the Western landscape and the daunting challenges that pioneering families faced along the trail.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum (1900) - 320 pages: Originally published in 1900, it was the first truly American fairy tale, as Baum crafted a wonderful fantasy out of such familiar items as a cornfield scarecrow, a mechanical woodman, and a humbug wizard who used old-fashioned hokum to express that universal theme, "There's no place like home."
Follow the adventures of young Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, as their Kansas house is swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. Here she meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City, where lives the all-powerful Wizard of Oz.
Summer Reads:
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1947) - 672 pages: This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with the best of the back-room deal-makers. Though Stark quickly sheds his idealism, his right-hand man, Jack Burden -- who narrates the story -- retains it and proves to be a thorn in the new governor's side. Stark becomes a successful leader, but at a very high price. The award-winning book is a play of politics, society and personal affairs, all wrapped in the cloak of history
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001)- 656 pages: Upon escaping Nazi persecution and meeting his cousin Sam Clay (also artistically gifted), Joe finds love and inspiration in New York City and launches a blend of pulpy nonsense and high social commentary via his comic book hero the Escapist. The comic book exceeds expectations and the teenage boys become success stories overnight. Chabon's serial presentation guides the reader from Prague to Manhattan with occasional detours through the South Pole and a fictional-yet-optimistically possible world where heroes fight hatred and win. Superb characterization emphasizes the themes of self-discovery and faithfulness to the findings, as Joe and Sam learn from each other, themselves, and their separate lovers and find a world that seems more whole.
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1956) -768 pages: A novel about the infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp in the Civil War. It is the vividly (and shockingly) related dying of men, juxtaposed with the stories of those living, and the place of the Civil War in popular culture that earned Andersonville its place on top of the bestseller lists, and a lofty chair in the halls of historical fiction.
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1992) - 576 pages: Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, husbands and wives. Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical--that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922) – 480 pages: The book takes its name from the principal character, George Babbitt, a middle-aged real estate salesman. He lives a successful life professionally, but he is unhappy. He lives in the fictional town of Zenith, Winnemac, a state which lies adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Zenith's chief virtue is conformity, and its religion is boosterism. Babbitt gradually becomes disillusioned with his lifestyle and then rebels against it.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1988) - 512 pages: The book follows the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver as they try to rebuild their lives after slavery has ended. One day, a teenaged girl shows up at their house and only says her name is "Beloved." It turns out that the girl is another of Sethe's daughters. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives, but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. Morrison feels these issues were avoided in the traditional slave narratives. In the novel, Beloved, she explores the effects on the characters, Paul D and Sethe, of trying to repress - and then come to terms with - the painful memories of their past.
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (1952) - 560 pages: This is a contemporary classic, a novel of World War II that seized the imagination of a country recovering from the ravages of a devastating war in a manner unlike any work of American fiction before or since. Its characters have become a vital part of our literary history; its story has taken root in the memory of a nation. A towering achievement, and perhaps the world's best-loved drama of the sea and its sailors, The Caine Mutiny was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years. It has sold millions upon millions of copies in the forty years since it was first published. Here again, for a new generation of readers, is Wouk's timeless masterpiece: the legendary tale of Captain Queer and the unforgettable mutiny aboard the U.S.S. Caine
Collected Stories by Jean Stafford (1970) - 528 pages:
This collection of thirty stories includes some of Jean Stafford's best short fiction from the period 1944-1968. Including such favorites as "In the Zoo," "Children Are Bored on Sunday," and "Beatrice Trueblood's Story," the collection offers the work of this popular writer of the 1940s and 1950s to a new generation of readers and critics.
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (1968) -480 pages: It is a historical novel, presented as a first person account by Nat Turner, who had in real life led a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.
The novel is based on an extant historical document, the "confession" of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been religiously inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and slay the white race. Styron's ambitious novel attempts to recreate the character of Nat Turner from Gray's account.
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962) - 646 pages: Parochial American Irish culture and society in the 1950's and 1960's provide the intricately detailed back-drop for all his stories, but this book in particular has much greater depth and applicability. The specific tale of Irish-American Roman Catholic priest Hugh Kennedy is nothing more than the subtext for the broader human search for the meaning of life! In this case compelling Faith (or the disturbing loss thereof) is the stuff of meaning for Father Hugh, and the books tracks his course through callow youth and subsequent middle age as he eventually comes to terms with his religion and its place in his life. Throughout this rambling journey of self-discovery, it's the frequently aggravating, sometimes venal, often blindly prejudiced, and ultimately very entertaining menagerie of ethnic characters that gives context to a drifting existence.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo (2002) - 496 pages: Empire Falls is a tale of blue-collar life, which itself increasingly resembles a kind of high-wire act performed without the benefit of any middle-class safety nets. There is, to be sure, a protagonist: forty something Miles Roby, proprietor of the local greasy spoon and the recently divorced father of a teenage daughter. But Russo sets in motion a large cast of secondary characters, drawn from every social stratum of his depressed New England mill town. We meet his ex-wife Janine, his father Max and a host of Empire Grill regulars. We're also introduced to Francine Whiting, a manipulative widow who owns half the town--and who takes a perverse pleasure in pointing out Miles's psychological defects.
It would be impossible to summarize Russo's multiple plot lines here. Suffice it to say that he touches on love and marriage, lust and loss and small-town economics, with more than a soupcon of class resentment stirred into the broth. This is, in a sense, an epic of small and large frustrations
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1940) - 464 pages: Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought and destitution. In a nearly hopeless situation, they set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" in search of land, jobs, and dignity. The novel is meant to emphasize the need for cooperative, as opposed to independent, solutions to the social problems brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949) - 640 pages: The novel is set in the summer of 1943. Most of the action occurs on or near a fictional Army Air Force base in central Florida. The action occurs over a period of approximately 48 hours. The events leading up to and surrounding the incident allow for the display of a large number of well-drawn characters. The novel balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days in September 1943 to a racial incident on a U.S. Army airbase in Florida.
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (1976) - 487 pages: The novel, a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor Mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit.
Independence Day by Richard Ford (1996) - 464 pages:. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend, Richard Ford takes us on a journey that moves from the current day to flashbacks in the life of Frank Bascome. He is a real estate agent in a southern New Jersey town and one of his current clients is a couple who are looking for the ideal home. When Frank thinks he has found the right home, they have reservations. Frank never seems to be able to meet the couple's pie-in-the-sky expectations.
Ireland: a Novel by Frank Delaney (2005) - 559 pages: Ireland by Frank Delaney is the story of a young boy, Ronan O'Mara, who in 1951 at the age of 9 encounters an itinerant storyteller, who regales Ronan and others with magical tales, blending myth and fiction, of Ireland's past. Ronan is so taken with the storyteller and his stories that he starts a quest to find him, a difficult undertaking as the storyteller has no address - the storyteller wanders the countryside, staying with people who will feed him and give shelter in exchange for telling stories. Thus starts a life long passion for Ronan - collecting the folklore of Ireland, and uncovering Ireland's history.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003) - 544 pages: The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tiny suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor
One of Ours by Willa Cather (1923) – 459 pages: It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a native of Nebraska around the turn of the 20th century. Son of a successful Midwestern farmer and an intensely pious mother and guaranteed a comfortable livelihood, Claude Wheeler nonetheless views himself as a victim both of his father's success and of his mother's excessive restraint. One of Ours is thus a portrait of a peculiarly American personality: it is the story of a young man born after the American frontier has vanished, yet whose quintessentially American restlessness seeks redemption on a frontier far bloodier and more distant than that which his forefathers had already tamed.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) -524 pages: This well-written first novel attempts to be several things: a psychological suspense thriller and a satire of collegiate mores and popular culture. Supposedly brilliant students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) are involved in two murders, one supposedly accidental and one deliberate. Ultimately, it works best as a psychological thriller.
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959) - 544 pages: If Huck Finn had gone West during the Gold Rush and lived to tell about it, he might have sounded much like Jaimie McPheeters in describing his incredibly hazardous trek by wagon train to California in 1849. Jaimie shares the storytelling with his father, an intelligent Scottish doctor whose ebullient personality is only slightly undermined by a weakness for gambling and strong drink.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1997) – 607 pages: Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939) - 480 pages: The Yearling is a touching, suspenseful, and realistic story about a boy caught between love for his pet and responsibility to his family. The novel follows a year in the life of this playful and sensitive boy — a year filled with adventure and danger, loss and loneliness. The boy's experiences of sorrow, bitterness, and courage speak of what it means to grow up in a harsh environment.
posted by Greycats | 8:34 PM
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