aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

lauraeknight

lauraeknight

Member since November 2013

211

Books Read

0

Reviews

0.0

Avg Rating

0

Day Streak

lauraeknight's Reader Score

Check out their progress!

881
Total Points

37

On Your Wishlist

37 × 1 = 37 pts

211

Books Completed

211 × 4 = 844 pts

0

Reviews Written

0 × 6 = 0 pts

Lolita

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

4.14 (36)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth.

#32
RANK
17,173
POINTS
Invisible Man

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

4.31 (16)

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me."

#76
RANK
10,197
POINTS
The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.95 (97)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

#1
RANK
45,295
POINTS
Women in Love

Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence

2.8 (5)

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.

#184
RANK
4,128
POINTS
Catch-22

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

4.06 (31)

It was love at first sight.

#31
RANK
19,027
POINTS
Crash

Crash

J. G. Ballard

3.0 (4)

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.

#395
RANK
1,237
POINTS
Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

3.5 (6)

See the child.

#361
RANK
1,490
POINTS
Native Son

Native Son

Richard Wright

3.86 (7)

Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room.

#141
RANK
5,281
POINTS
Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

4.0 (29)

All this happened, more or less.

#34
RANK
16,830
POINTS
Dubliners

Dubliners

James Joyce

3.71 (7)

The Sisters - There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.An encounter: It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us.Araby: North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.Eveline: She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.After the race: The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road.Two Gallants: The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city, and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets.The boarding house: Mrs Mooney was a butcher's daughter.A little cloud: Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and wished him God-speed.Counterparts: The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent: "Send Farrington here!"Clay: The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women's tea was over, and Maria looked forward to her evening out.A painful case: Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern, and pretentious.Ivy Day in the committee room: Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals.A mother: Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, had been walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month, with his hands and pockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of concerts.Grace: Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was quite helpless.The dead: Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.

#183
RANK
4,175
POINTS
Riddley Walker

Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban

3.0 (2)

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.

#563
RANK
403
POINTS
City of Glass

City of Glass

Paul Auster

3.0 (1)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

#419
RANK
1,035
POINTS
A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

4.0 (20)

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

#48
RANK
13,216
POINTS
Ironweed

Ironweed

William J. Kennedy

4.0 (1)

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods.

#341
RANK
1,623
POINTS
The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

4.0 (4)

He awoke, opened his eyes.Si svegliò, aprì gli occhi. La stanza gli diceva poco o niente, profondamente immerso com'era nel non-essere da cui era appena affiorato. Se l'energia di accertare la propria collocazione nel tempo e nello spazio gli mancava, gliene mancava anche il desiderio. Sapeva soltanto di esistere, d'avere attraversato vaste regioni per ritornare dal nulla; c'era, al centro della sua coscienza, la certezza di una tristezza infinita e al tempo stesso rassicurante, perché era la sola ad essergli familiare.

#452
RANK
855
POINTS
Darconville's Cat

Darconville's Cat

Alexander Theroux

5.0 (1)

#607
RANK
285
POINTS
Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee

3.5 (2)

I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?

#425
RANK
1,019
POINTS
An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser

4.25 (4)

Dusk - of a summer night.

#228
RANK
3,003
POINTS
War and Peace

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

4.38 (13)

"Well, Prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family."Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. (Maude/Maude)

#92
RANK
9,029
POINTS
The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.56 (9)

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened just thirteen years ago, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. (Garnett, 1912)Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner of our district, extremely well known in his time (and to this day still remembered in these parts) on account of his violent and mysterious death exactly thirteen years ago, the circumstances of which I shall relate in due course. (Avsey 1994)Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Garnett, Great Books, 1952)Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. (Pevear/Volokhonsky, 1990)

#135
RANK
5,669
POINTS
Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

3.47 (17)

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

#43
RANK
13,880
POINTS
Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

3.18 (11)

Nous étions à l'Etude, quand le Proviseur entra suivi d'un "nouveau" habillé en bourgeois et d'un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre.We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk.We were at prep, when the Head came in, followed by a new boy not in uniform and a school-servant carrying a big desk.We were at prep when the Headmaster came in, followed by a 'new boy' not wearing school uniform, and by a school servant carrying a large desk.We were in class when the head master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.

#88
RANK
9,393
POINTS
Emma

Emma

Jane Austen

4.33 (18)

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

#51
RANK
13,107
POINTS
Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

4.31 (26)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (C. Garnett, 1946) and (J. Carmichael, 1960)All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.All happy families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. (N. H. Dole, 1886)All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Pevear, Volokhonsky, 2000)

#50
RANK
13,161
POINTS
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

4.0 (28)

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter.You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

#14
RANK
25,580
POINTS
Tom Jones

Tom Jones

Henry Fielding

4.0 (3)

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

#194
RANK
3,705
POINTS
Great Expectations

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

4.05 (21)

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

#28
RANK
19,822
POINTS
One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

4.2 (25)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.(Bulgarian)<br>Много години по-късно, пред взвода за разстрел, полковник Аурелиано Буендия щеше да си спомни онзи далечен подиробед, когато баща му го заведе да види леда.(Croatian)<br>Mnogo će se godina kasnije, pred streljačkim vodom, pukovnik Aureliano Buendía sjetiti tog davnog poslijepodneva kada ga je otac poveo da upozna led.(Czech)<br>O mnoho let později, když stál před popravčí četou, vzpomněl si plukovník Aureliano Buendía na ono vzdálené odpoledne, kdy ho otec vzal k cikánům, aby si prohlél led.(Dutch)<br>Vele jaren later, staande voor het vuurpeloton, moest kolonel Aureliano Buendía denken aan die lang vervlogen middag, toen zijn vader hem meenam om kennis te maken met het ijs.(Finnish)<br>Vuosia myöhemmin, seistessään teloitusryhmän edessä, eversti Aureliano Buendía muisti kaukaisen illan jolloin hänen isänsä vei hänet tutustumaan jäähän.(German)<br>Viele Jahre später sollte der Oberst Aureliano Buendia sich vor dem Erschießungskommando an jenen fernen Nachmittag erinnern, an dem sein Vater ihn mitnahm, um das Eis kennen zu lernen.(Hebrew)<br>שנים רבות לאחר־כך, כשיעמוד הקולונל אַאוּרליאנוֹ בוּאֶנדִיָה מול כיתת־היורים, ייזכר באותו ערב רחוק שלקח אותו אביו לראות קרח.(Hungarian)<br>Hosszú évekkel később, a kivégzőosztag előtt, Aureliano Buendía ezredesnek eszébe jutott az a régi délután, mikor az apja elvitte jégnézőbe.(Italian)<br>Molti anni dopo, di fronte al plotone di esecuzione, il colonnello Aureliano Buendía si sarebbe ricordato di quel remoto pomeriggio in cui suo padre lo aveva condotto a conoscere il ghiaccio.(Macedonian)<br>Многу години подоцна, наспроти стрелачкот вод, полковникот Аурелијано Буендија ќе се присети на тоа далечно попладне кога неговиот татко го одведе да узнае што е тоа мраз.(Norwegian)<br>Mange år senere, foran eksekusjonspelotongen, måtte oberst Aureliano Buendía tenke på den ettermiddagen for så lenge, lenge siden, da faren tok ham med for å vise ham isen.(Polish)<br>Wiele lat później, stojąc naprzeciw plutonu egzekucyjnego, pułkownik Aurelio Buendía miał przypomnieć sobie to dalekie popołudnie, kiedy ojciec zabrał go z sobą do obozu Cyganów, żeby mu pokazać lód.(Portuguese)<br>Muitos anos depois, diante do pelotão de fuzilamento, o Coronel Aureliano Buendía havia de recordar aquela tarde remota em que seu pai o levou para conhecer o gelo.(Romanian)<br>Mulţi ani după aceea, în faţa plutonului de execuţie, colonelul Aureliano Buendía avea să-şi amintească de după-amiaza îndepărtată cînd tatăl său îl dusese să facă cunoştinţă cu gheaţa.(Slovak)<br>O veľa rokov neskôr, zoči-voči popravnej čate, plukovník Aureliano Buendía si spomenul na to dávne popoludnie, keď ho otec vzal so sebou a on po prvý raz videl ľad.(Swedish)<br>Många år senare, inför exekutionsplutonen, skulle överste Aureliano Buendía påminna sig den avlägsna eftermiddag då hans far tog honom med för att visa honom isen.(Vietnamese)<br>Rất nhiều năm sau này, trước đội hành hình đại tá Aurêlianô Buênđýa đã nhớ lại buổi chiều cha chàng đi xem nước đá.

#52
RANK
13,065
POINTS
Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4.17 (18)

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. (Garnett translation)Toward the end of a sultry afternoon early in July a young man came out of his little room in Stolyarny Lane and turned slowly and somewhat irresolutely in the direction of Kamenny Bridge. (Coulson translation)On a very hot evening at the beginning of July a young man left his little room at the top of a house in Carpenter Lane, went out into the street, and, as though unable to make up his mind, walked slowly in the direction of Kokushkin Bridge.At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S____y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K______n Bridge. (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation)

#56
RANK
12,446
POINTS
The Red and the Black

The Red and the Black

Stendhal

3.75 (4)

La petite ville de Verrières peut passer pour l'une des plus jolies de la Franche-Comté.The small town of Verrieres may be regarded as one of the prettiest in the Franche-Comte.

#302
RANK
1,905
POINTS
Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy

4.0 (13)

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.

#84
RANK
9,579
POINTS
Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

3.75 (32)

#22
RANK
22,344
POINTS
The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum

Günter Grass

4.2 (5)

Granted: I'm an inmate of a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of his sight; for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see through blue-eyed types like me.

#215
RANK
3,216
POINTS
Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

3.97 (30)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

#11
RANK
27,935
POINTS
The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

3.53 (19)

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

#26
RANK
20,966
POINTS
The Trial

The Trial

Franz Kafka

3.7 (10)

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.

#114
RANK
7,268
POINTS
Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

4.17 (35)

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

#17
RANK
24,166
POINTS
The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

4.0 (7)

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

#108
RANK
7,700
POINTS
My Ántonia

My Ántonia

Willa Cather

3.67 (9)

I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the “hands” on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake’s experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

#149
RANK
5,018
POINTS
Call it Sleep

Call it Sleep

Henry Roth

3.5 (2)

#498
RANK
621
POINTS
Hunger

Hunger

Knut Hamsun

3.67 (3)

It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set his mark upon him. . .Det var i den tid jeg gikk omkring og sultet i Kristiania, denne forunderlige by som ingen forlater før han har fått merker av den ....

#394
RANK
1,239
POINTS
The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

4.0 (5)

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.

#300
RANK
1,925
POINTS
Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

4.36 (69)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

#3
RANK
37,302
POINTS
Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

4.37 (19)

In the Year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne.

#104
RANK
7,808
POINTS
The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas

4.36 (11)

On the first Monday of April 1625, the market town of Meung, the birthplace of the author of the iRoman de la Rose/i, was in a wild state of excitement.

#139
RANK
5,370
POINTS
Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

4.45 (22)

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarleton twins were.

#36
RANK
15,623
POINTS
Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers

D. H. Lawrence

3.6 (5)

"The Bottoms" succeeded to "Hell Row."

#161
RANK
4,642
POINTS
The Way of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh

Samuel Butler

3.67 (3)

When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick. He must have been getting on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier than which date I suppose I can hardly remember him, for I was born in 1802.

#437
RANK
963
POINTS
I, Claudius

I, Claudius

Robert Graves

4.17 (6)

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

#207
RANK
3,384
POINTS
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter

The Heart is A Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers

4.38 (8)

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.

#178
RANK
4,228
POINTS
Animal Farm

Animal Farm

George Orwell

4.17 (46)

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

#6
RANK
33,773
POINTS
Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser

4.0 (3)

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money.

#333
RANK
1,700
POINTS
A handful of dust

A handful of dust

Evelyn Waugh

4.25 (4)

"Was anyone hurt?"

#390
RANK
1,260
POINTS
As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner

3.25 (11)

Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.

#115
RANK
7,188
POINTS
All the King's Men

All the King's Men

Robert Penn Warren

4.4 (5)

MASON CITY.<br> To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it.</b>

#190
RANK
3,949
POINTS
Howards End

Howards End

E. M. Forster

3.67 (6)

One may as well begin with Helens letters to her sister.

#189
RANK
3,969
POINTS
Go Tell It on the Mountain

Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin

3.5 (4)

Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.

#222
RANK
3,059
POINTS
Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

3.89 (45)

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.

#7
RANK
32,779
POINTS
Deliverance

Deliverance

James Dickey

3.5 (2)

Before: It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose. The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on its corners and laid the river out to run for us through the mountains 150 miles north.

#294
RANK
1,981
POINTS
Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

2.5 (4)

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seemed to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.

#239
RANK
2,790
POINTS
Light in August

Light in August

William Faulkner

4.2 (5)

Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'

#229
RANK
3,000
POINTS
Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather

4.0 (2)

One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome.

#355
RANK
1,544
POINTS
Of Human Bondage

Of Human Bondage

W. Somerset Maugham

4.0 (2)

The day broke grey and dull.

#267
RANK
2,283
POINTS
The Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet

Lawrence Durrell

2.0 (2)

The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind."BALTHAZAR" - Landscape-toes: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed oyster and violet reflections.<br><br>"MOUNTOLIVE" - As a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and found himself attached to the High Commission as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting; but he was already conducting himself as a young secretary of legation, fully aware of the responsibilities of future office.<br><br>"CLEA" - The oranges were more plentiful than usual that year.

#476
RANK
718
POINTS
A Room with a View

A Room with a View

E. M. Forster

3.86 (7)

"The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"<br>

#138
RANK
5,466
POINTS
Lord Jim

Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad

3.5 (2)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandler’s water-clerk he was very popular.

#265
RANK
2,295
POINTS
Ragtime

Ragtime

E. L. Doctorow

4.0 (3)

In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle.

#269
RANK
2,209
POINTS
The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild

Jack London

3.65 (20)

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.

#35
RANK
16,258
POINTS
To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

4.41 (64)

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

#2
RANK
43,048
POINTS
The Color Purple

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

4.07 (15)

You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.

#44
RANK
13,645
POINTS
Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

4.03 (38)

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

#9
RANK
29,660
POINTS
Charlotte's Web

Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

4.27 (26)

Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

#8
RANK
30,417
POINTS
Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh

A. A. Milne

4.19 (21)

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

#24
RANK
22,158
POINTS
Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison

4.14 (7)

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.

#166
RANK
4,574
POINTS
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey

4.5 (16)

"They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them."They're out there.

#59
RANK
11,902
POINTS
The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

3.44 (25)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

#33
RANK
17,074
POINTS
The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp

John Irving

3.82 (11)

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.

#110
RANK
7,476
POINTS
Schindler's List

Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally

4.0 (5)

In Poland's deepest autumn, a tall young man in an expensive overcoat, double-breasted dinner jacket beneath it and - in the lapel of the dinner jacket - a large ornamental gold-on-black enamel <i>Hakenkreuz</i> (swastika) emerged from a fashionable apartment building in Straszewskiego Street, on the edge of the ancient center of Cracow, and saw his chauffeur waiting with fuming breath by the open door of an enormous and, even in this blackened world, lustrous Adler limousine.

#181
RANK
4,181
POINTS
The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

4.14 (7)

Howard Roark laughed.

#151
RANK
4,904
POINTS
The Jungle

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair

4.0 (3)

#167
RANK
4,560
POINTS
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

3.8 (10)

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

#96
RANK
8,737
POINTS
Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

3.25 (8)

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.Náš věk je v podstatě tragický, a tak ho odmítáme tragicky brát.

#127
RANK
6,333
POINTS
In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

4.33 (12)

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.

#111
RANK
7,398
POINTS
Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey

J. D. Salinger

3.0 (3)

Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend - the weekend of the Yale game.The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.

#208
RANK
3,379
POINTS
Jazz

Jazz

Toni Morrison

3.25 (4)

Sth, I know that woman.

#339
RANK
1,630
POINTS
Orlando: A Biography

Orlando: A Biography

Virginia Woolf

3.25 (4)

He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

#313
RANK
1,816
POINTS
The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe

4.33 (3)

"And then say what?" (Prologue)At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor ... twelve-foot ceilings ... two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help ... Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund.

#248
RANK
2,633
POINTS
Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut

3.86 (7)

Call me Jonah.

#129
RANK
5,995
POINTS
A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace

John Knowles

3.75 (4)

I went back to Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.

#154
RANK
4,836
POINTS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

4.32 (28)

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

#30
RANK
19,439
POINTS
O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!

Willa Cather

4.0 (4)

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.

#353
RANK
1,553
POINTS
The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

3.67 (9)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

#94
RANK
8,851
POINTS
The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

4.0 (18)

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home.

#54
RANK
12,788
POINTS
Babbitt

Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis

4.0 (1)

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.

#327
RANK
1,710
POINTS
Where Angels Fear to Tread

Where Angels Fear to Tread

E. M. Forster

3.67 (3)

They were all at Charing Cross to see Lilia off--Philip, Harriet, Irma, Mrs. Herriton herself.

#444
RANK
937
POINTS
The Little Prince

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

4.5 (24)

Once when I was six years old I saw a beautiful picture in a book about the primeval forest called "True Stories".

#45
RANK
13,583
POINTS
The Wanderer

The Wanderer

Alain-Fournier

5.0 (3)

He appeared at our house on a Sunday in November 189... (Davison translation)

#467
RANK
769
POINTS
Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

4.27 (11)

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir ESTRAGON: (giving up again) Nothing to be done.

#119
RANK
6,910
POINTS
The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

4.42 (19)

On Friday, 12th June, I woke up at six o' clock and no wonder; it was my birthday

#21
RANK
22,484
POINTS
Four Plays

Four Plays

Eugene Ionesco

3.0 (3)

The Bald Soprano: Anti-play Scene: A middle class English interior, with English armchairs.

#421
RANK
1,034
POINTS
#550
RANK
451
POINTS
The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury

4.0 (7)

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

#205
RANK
3,509
POINTS
Our Lady of the Flowers

Our Lady of the Flowers

Jean Genet

2.67 (3)

#551
RANK
449
POINTS
Fureur Et Mystere

Fureur Et Mystere

René Char

3.0 (1)

#622
RANK
233
POINTS
Gulliver's travels

Gulliver's travels

Jonathan Swift

3.25 (12)

My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons.

#38
RANK
15,047
POINTS
The Black Sheep

The Black Sheep

Honoré de Balzac

4.0 (2)

In the year 1792 the townsfolk of Issoudun were fortunate enough to have a doctor of the name of Rouget, who had the reputation of being an extremely wily man.

#468
RANK
747
POINTS
Sybil

Sybil

Benjamin Disraeli

3.0 (2)

'I'll take the odds against Caravan.'

#303
RANK
1,904
POINTS
David Copperfield

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens

4.86 (14)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

#80
RANK
9,935
POINTS
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll

3.92 (24)

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

#15
RANK
24,659
POINTS
The Plague

The Plague

Albert Camus

3.57 (7)

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran.Les curieux événements qui font le sujet de cette chronique se sont produits en 194., à Oran.Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier.

#186
RANK
4,086
POINTS
Lucky Jim

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis

4.0 (4)

"They made a silly mistake, though," the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory.

#286
RANK
2,033
POINTS
The Quiet American

The Quiet American

Graham Greene

4.33 (3)

After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat; he had said, ‘I’ll be with you at latest by ten,’ and when midnight struck I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and went down into the street.

#297
RANK
1,947
POINTS
The Executioner's Song

The Executioner's Song

Norman Mailer

4.0 (3)

Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree.

#347
RANK
1,574
POINTS
The Periodic Table

The Periodic Table

Primo Levi

4.33 (3)

There are the so-called inert gases in the air we breathe.

#483
RANK
682
POINTS
Money

Money

Martin Amis

3.0 (4)

As my cab pulled of FDR Drive, somewhere in the early Hundreds, a low-slung Tomohawk full of black guys came sharking out of lane and slopped in fast right across our bows.

#471
RANK
730
POINTS
An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.5 (2)

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees.

#478
RANK
706
POINTS
Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

3.5 (2)

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.

#403
RANK
1,170
POINTS
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Milan Kundera

3.25 (4)

In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square.

#436
RANK
964
POINTS
L. A. Confidential

L. A. Confidential

James Ellroy

4.0 (2)

An abandoned auto court in the San Berdoo foothills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninety-four thousand dollars, eighteen pounds of high-grade heroin, a 10-gauge pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic and a switchblade he bought off a pachuco at the border -- right before he spotted the car parked across the line: Mickey Cohen goons in an LAPD unmarked, Tijuana cops standing by to bootjack a piece of his goodies, dump his body in the San Ysidro River.

#413
RANK
1,055
POINTS
Atonement

Atonement

Ian McEwan

4.1 (10)

The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.

#102
RANK
8,015
POINTS
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

4.53 (45)

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

#4
RANK
36,649
POINTS
The Hobbit

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkien

4.37 (30)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

#10
RANK
28,114
POINTS
The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

3.77 (13)

<b>PROLOGUE - Clare:</b> It's hard being left behind.<b>FIRST DATE, ONE<BR></b><i>Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)</i><BR><BR><b>Clare:</b> The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

#95
RANK
8,814
POINTS
The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

4.33 (12)

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.

#82
RANK
9,741
POINTS
Memoirs of a Geisha

Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden

4.54 (13)

One evening in the spring of 1936, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me to a dance performance in Kyoto.Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, 'That afternoon when I met so-and-so ... was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.'

#62
RANK
11,539
POINTS
A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

4.5 (8)

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God;- I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

#117
RANK
7,140
POINTS
The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

3.93 (15)

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

#58
RANK
12,202
POINTS
Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.35 (17)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

#61
RANK
11,543
POINTS
Dune

Dune

Frank Herbert

4.53 (17)

<i>A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. . . .</i><br><br><b>from "Manual of Muad'dib" by the Princess Irulan</b>In the week before their departure to Arakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

#98
RANK
8,587
POINTS
Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen

3.5 (10)

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.

#105
RANK
7,800
POINTS
The Shadow of the Wind

The Shadow of the Wind

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4.57 (7)

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.Todavia recuerdo aquel amanecer en que mi padre me llevo por primera vez a visitar el Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados. 

#245
RANK
2,705
POINTS
A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

4.27 (11)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

#70
RANK
10,734
POINTS
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

4.07 (14)

It was 7 minutes after midnight.

#103
RANK
8,001
POINTS
The Secret History

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

4.25 (8)

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. (Prologue)Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

#254
RANK
2,431
POINTS
The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

4.09 (11)

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf.

#100
RANK
8,334
POINTS
Bridget Jones's Diary

Bridget Jones's Diary

Helen Fielding

3.57 (7)

<b>I WILL NOT</b><br> Drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

#126
RANK
6,425
POINTS
Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

3.67 (9)

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

#120
RANK
6,811
POINTS
The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

3.93 (15)

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

#49
RANK
13,208
POINTS
The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

4.0 (8)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

#81
RANK
9,924
POINTS
Possession

Possession

A.S. Byatt

3.67 (6)

The book was thick and black and covered with dust.

#247
RANK
2,647
POINTS
A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

4.1 (10)

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

#47
RANK
13,299
POINTS
Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

4.75 (4)

Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.

#252
RANK
2,541
POINTS
The Remains of the day

The Remains of the day

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.11 (9)

It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.

#163
RANK
4,613
POINTS
Watership Down

Watership Down

Richard Adams

4.55 (11)

The primroses were over.

#68
RANK
11,051
POINTS
Hamlet

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

4.09 (11)

<B>Act 1, Scene 1</B><BR><I>Enter</I> <B>Barnardo</B> <I>and</I> <B>Francisco</B><I>, two sentinels.</I><BR><BR><B>Barnardo</B><BR>Who's there?

#39
RANK
14,680
POINTS
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl

4.44 (16)

These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket.

#29
RANK
19,506
POINTS
All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

4.5 (10)

We are at rest five miles behind the front.

#137
RANK
5,615
POINTS
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Anne Tyler

4.5 (2)

While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her.

#392
RANK
1,247
POINTS
The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game

Hermann Hesse

4.0 (3)

It is our intention to preserve in these pages what scant biographical material we have been able to collect concerning Joseph Knecht, or Ludi Magister Josephus III, as he is called in the Archives of the Glass Bead Game.

#357
RANK
1,535
POINTS
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

3.67 (9)

La idea del eterno retorno es misteriosa y con ella Nietzsche dejó perplejo a los demás filósofos...The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?Die Ewige Wiederkehr ist ein geheimnisvoller Gedanke, und Nietzsche hat damit manchen Philosophen in Verlegenheit gebracht: alles wird sich irgendwann so wiederholen, wie man es schon einmal erlebt hat, und auch diese Wiederholung wird sich unendlich wiederholen!

#142
RANK
5,250
POINTS
Nausea

Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre

3.4 (5)

These notebooks were found among the papers of Antoine Roquentin. (<i>"Editors' Note"</i>)The best thing would be to write down events from day to day.

#280
RANK
2,097
POINTS
Suite Française

Suite Française

Irene Nemirovsky

5.0 (3)

Hot, thought the Parisians.

#385
RANK
1,307
POINTS
Disgrace

Disgrace

J. M. Coetzee

3.29 (7)

For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.

#235
RANK
2,866
POINTS
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J. K. Rowling

4.59 (27)

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.

#20
RANK
22,497
POINTS
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

J. K. Rowling

4.61 (28)

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.

#16
RANK
24,360
POINTS
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J. K. Rowling

4.62 (26)

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.

#25
RANK
21,805
POINTS
Treasure Island

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

3.55 (11)

Squire Trelawny, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admiral Benbow" inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

#91
RANK
9,087
POINTS
The Stand

The Stand

Stephen King

4.6 (10)

Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston."Sally."

#121
RANK
6,723
POINTS
Black Beauty

Black Beauty

Anna Sewell

3.67 (6)

The first place that I can well remember, was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.

#109
RANK
7,629
POINTS
Matilda

Matilda

Roald Dahl

4.62 (13)

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers.

#85
RANK
9,573
POINTS
The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

4.0 (6)

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.Maj je v Ajemenemu vroč, morast mesec.

#231
RANK
2,966
POINTS
The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Jean M. Auel

5.0 (3)

The naked child ran out of the hide-covered lean-to toward the rocky beach at the bend in the small river.

#203
RANK
3,553
POINTS
The Alchemist

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

3.0 (17)

The boy's name was Santiago.

#130
RANK
5,908
POINTS
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

3.71 (14)

Mother died today. (Stuart Gilbert translation)Maman died today. (Matthew Ward translation)Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

#53
RANK
13,007
POINTS
Tales of the City

Tales of the City

Armistead Maupin

4.0 (3)

Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.

#380
RANK
1,337
POINTS
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig

3.67 (3)

I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning.

#225
RANK
3,012
POINTS
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle

4.0 (2)

We were coming down our road. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with a stick. It was Missis Quigley's gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything.

#366
RANK
1,434
POINTS
High Fidelity

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby

3.0 (3)

My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:<br>1) Alison Ashworth<br>2) Penny Hardwick<br>3) Jackie Allen<br>4) Charlie Nicholson<br>5) Sarah Kendrew.

#237
RANK
2,812
POINTS
The Prince

The Prince

Niccolò Machiavelli

3.83 (6)

All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities.It is customary for those who wish to gain the favour of a prince to endeavour to do so by offering him gifts of those things which they hold most precious, or in which they know him to take especial delight.

#148
RANK
5,032
POINTS
Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

John Milton

4.2 (5)

#174
RANK
4,315
POINTS
Night

Night

Elie Wiesel

4.29 (7)

They called him Moshe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life.

#124
RANK
6,509
POINTS
Goodbye to All That

Goodbye to All That

Robert Graves

5.0 (2)

As a proof of my readiness to accept autobiographical conventions, let me at once record my two earliest memories.

#487
RANK
672
POINTS
The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X

5.0 (1)

When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night.

#318
RANK
1,780
POINTS
Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land

Robert A. Heinlein

4.29 (7)

Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith.

#188
RANK
4,012
POINTS
The Good Earth

The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck

3.86 (7)

It was Wang Lung's marriage day.

#128
RANK
6,268
POINTS
Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt

4.5 (6)

My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born.

#123
RANK
6,672
POINTS
Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

4.09 (23)

It was a pleasure to burn.

#42
RANK
13,959
POINTS
Bastard Out of Carolina

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison

3.0 (1)

I've been called Bone all my life, but my name's Ruth Anne.

#343
RANK
1,617
POINTS
The Shipping News

The Shipping News

Annie Proulx

3.63 (8)

Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.

#165
RANK
4,603
POINTS
Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars

David Guterson

4.17 (6)

The accused man, Kabuo Miyamoto, sat proudly upright with a rigid grace, his palms placed softly on the defendant's table - the posture of a man who has detached himself insofar as this is possible at his own trial.

#204
RANK
3,552
POINTS
The House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende

4.5 (4)

Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

#253
RANK
2,511
POINTS
The Color of Water

The Color of Water

James McBride

5.0 (1)

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from -- where she was born, who her parents were.

#370
RANK
1,385
POINTS
The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees

Barbara Kingsolver

4.5 (4)

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.

#263
RANK
2,313
POINTS
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

4.4 (5)

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York.

#176
RANK
4,293
POINTS
A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley

3.8 (5)

At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road.

#249
RANK
2,598
POINTS
The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan

4.4 (5)

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.

#144
RANK
5,157
POINTS
Ellen Foster

Ellen Foster

Kaye Gibbons

4.0 (2)

When I was little I would think of ways to kill my Daddy.

#416
RANK
1,044
POINTS
War and Remembrance

War and Remembrance

Herman Wouk

4.0 (1)

A liberty boat full of sleep hung-over sailors came clanging alongside the U.S.S. Northhampton, and a stocky captain in dress whites jumped out to the accommodation ladder.

#396
RANK
1,237
POINTS
Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak

4.47 (15)

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him wild thing. And so he said, "I'll eat you UP!" And so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

#46
RANK
13,453
POINTS
Time and Again

Time and Again

Jack Finney

4.0 (2)

In shirt-sleeves, the I generally worked, I sat sketching a bar of soap taped to an upper corner of my drawing board.

#466
RANK
770
POINTS
The Alienist

The Alienist

Caleb Carr

4.33 (3)

<i>January 8th, 1919</i><br> Theodore is in the ground.

#349
RANK
1,571
POINTS
Talk Before Sleep

Talk Before Sleep

Elizabeth Berg

3.5 (2)

This morning before I came to Ruth's house, I made yet another casserole for my husband and my daughter.

#513
RANK
554
POINTS
Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

4.33 (6)

This is the tale of a meeting of two lonely, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

#157
RANK
4,798
POINTS
Mountains Beyond Mountains

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Tracy Kidder

5.0 (1)

Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, "We met because of a beheading, of all things."

#439
RANK
959
POINTS
The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster

4.14 (14)

There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.

#143
RANK
5,235
POINTS
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

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

J. D. Salinger

5.0 (1)

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 brother, Seymour.At times, frankly, I find it pretty slim pickings, but at the age of forty I look on my old fair-weather friend the general reader as my last deeply contemporary confidant, and I was rather strenuously requested, long before I was out of my teens, by at once the most exciting and the least fundamentally bumptious public craftsman I've ever personally known, to try to keep a steady and sober regard for the amenities of such a relationship, be it ever so peculiar or terrible; in my case, he saw it coming on from the first.

#372
RANK
1,374
POINTS
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Richard Fariña

4.0 (1)

To Athené then.

#517
RANK
540
POINTS
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

3.9 (10)

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

#101
RANK
8,146
POINTS
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce

3.33 (9)

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....

#107
RANK
7,735
POINTS
Beloved

Beloved

Toni Morrison

4.07 (14)

124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.

#66
RANK
11,165
POINTS
The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James

4.0 (3)

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.

#172
RANK
4,384
POINTS
Little Women

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

3.68 (19)

“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

#23
RANK
22,254
POINTS
The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

4.56 (18)

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor.

#69
RANK
10,861
POINTS
The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

3.58 (45)

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want the truth."

#5
RANK
35,727
POINTS
The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

4.31 (35)

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

#18
RANK
23,799
POINTS
The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

4.56 (36)

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

#13
RANK
26,139
POINTS
Persuasion

Persuasion

Jane Austen

3.6 (15)

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.

#112
RANK
7,342
POINTS
Love in The Time of Cholera

Love in The Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez

4.5 (8)

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

#106
RANK
7,754
POINTS
Brave New World

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

4.07 (30)

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

#19
RANK
23,022
POINTS
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson

3.11 (9)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming, 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'

#187
RANK
4,083
POINTS
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami

4.0 (3)

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along to and FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's <i>The Thieving Magpie</i>, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

#261
RANK
2,338
POINTS

2025 Reading Goal

0/50

Books Read

50 books to go!