Genre :: Literary Fiction (94 books)

  • Fathers and Sons

    #364

    Fathers and Sons

    by Ivan Turgenev

    (3 Reviews)

    58 Points

    "Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?" was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the...

  • Babbitt

    #367

    Babbitt

    by Sinclair Lewis

    (1 Review)

    57 Points

    "The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods."

  • The Joke

    #381

    The Joke

    by Milan Kundera

    (2 Reviews)

    54 Points

    "So here I was, home again after all those years. Standing in the main square (which I had crossed countless times as a child, as a boy, as a young man), I felt no emotion whatsoever; all I could..."

  • American Pastoral

    #389

    American Pastoral

    by Philip Roth

    (3 Reviews)

    52 Points

    "The swede."

  • The Magnificent Ambersons

    #397

    The Magnificent Ambersons

    by Booth Tarkington

    (2 Reviews)

    51 Points

    "Major Amberson had "made a fortune" in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then."

  • The Bean Trees

    #406

    The Bean Trees

    by Barbara Kingsolver

    (4 Reviews)

    49 Points

    "I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbines's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign."

  • Nightwood

    #407

    Nightwood

    by Djuna Barnes

    (2 Reviews)

    49 Points

    "Early in 1880, in spite of a well-founded suspicion as to the advisability of perpetuating that race which has the sanction of the Lord and the disapproval of the people, Hedvig Volkbein—a Viennese..."

  • Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

    #408

    Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

    by J. D. Salinger

    (1 Review)

    49 Points

    "One night some twenty years ago, during a siege of mumps in our enormous family, my youngest sister, Franny, was moved, crib and all, into the ostensibly germ-free room I shared with my eldest..."

  • Naked Lunch

    #427

    Naked Lunch

    by William S. Burroughs

    (6 Reviews)

    44 Points

    "I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil-doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square station,..."

  • The Savage Detectives

    #429

    The Savage Detectives

    by Roberto Bolaño

    (3 Reviews)

    43 Points

    "I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists."