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Ultimate Best Books

Malinda

Malinda

Member since March 2014

79

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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
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Catch-22

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

4.06 (31)

It was love at first sight.

#31
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A Passage to India

A Passage to India

E. M. Forster

3.88 (8)

Except for the Marabar caves--and they are twenty miles off--the city of Chrandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.

#125
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6,487
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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
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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
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Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

3.75 (32)

#22
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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
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3,216
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Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

4.08 (12)

Okonkwo was well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat.

#86
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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
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Herzog

Herzog

Saul Bellow

3.0 (3)

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

#277
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#63
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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
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Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

4.5 (6)

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining-parlor, in the town of P_______, in Kentucky.

#160
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4,691
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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
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The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.29 (17)

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.

#60
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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
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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
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33,773
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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
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32,779
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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
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Sophie's Choice

Sophie's Choice

William Styron

3.0 (1)

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.

#173
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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
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43,048
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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
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13,645
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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
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29,660
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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
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4,574
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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
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17,074
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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
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The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

4.14 (7)

Howard Roark laughed.

#151
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4,904
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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
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Rebecca

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

4.31 (13)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

#83
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9,700
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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
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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
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The Blue Lotus

The Blue Lotus

Hergé

3.25 (4)

#400
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Asterix the Gaul

Asterix the Gaul

René Goscinny

3.38 (8)

#198
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#455
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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
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15,047
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The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

4.47 (15)

On February 24, 1815, the watchtower at Marseilles signaled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, coming from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples.

#64
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11,441
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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
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24,659
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré

3.4 (5)

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all.

#242
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré

3.4 (5)

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all.

#242
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2,747
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The BFG

The BFG

Roald Dahl

4.0 (12)

Sophie couldn't sleep. A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right onto her pillow.

#89
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9,357
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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
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8,015
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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
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28,114
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Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Louis de Bernières

4.75 (4)

Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.

#196
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The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown

3.15 (20)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

#37
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Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.35 (17)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

#61
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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
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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
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8,001
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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
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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
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Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island

Bill Bryson

3.83 (5)

My first sight of England was on a foggy March night in 1973 when I arrived on the midnight ferry from Calais.

#308
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.42 (12)

To Sherlock Holmes she is always ithe/i woman.

#113
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Watership Down

Watership Down

Richard Adams

4.55 (11)

The primroses were over.

#68
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A Town Like Alice

A Town Like Alice

Nevil Shute

4.5 (4)

James MacFadden died in March 1905 when he was forty-seven years old; he was riding in the Driffield Point-to-Point.

#304
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1,904
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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
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19,506
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The Pillars of The Earth

The Pillars of The Earth

Ken Follett

4.6 (10)

The small boys came early to the hanging. (Preface)In a broad valley, at the foot of a sloping hillside, beside a clear bubbling stream, Tom was building a house. (Chapter 1)

#175
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4,301
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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
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The Thornbirds

The Thornbirds

Colleen McCullough

5.0 (2)

On December 8th, 1915, Meggie Cleary had her fourth birthday.

#185
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4,124
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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
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3,553
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The Alchemist

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

3.0 (17)

The boy's name was Santiago.

#130
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5,908
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Kane and Abel

Kane and Abel

Jeffrey Archer

3.67 (3)

April 18, 1906 - Slonim, Poland - She only stopped screaming when she died.

#331
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1,704
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Sophie's World

Sophie's World

Jostein Gaarder

3.56 (9)

Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school.

#230
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2,995
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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
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3,012
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It

It

Stephen King

4.56 (9)

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made out of a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

#153
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4,872
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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
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1,434
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Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton

4.0 (8)

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering.

#152
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The Van

The Van

Roddy Doyle

5.0 (1)

Jimmy Rabbitte Sr. had the kitchen to himself.

#501
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607
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The Horse Whisperer

The Horse Whisperer

Nicholas Evans

4.0 (4)

There was death at its beginning as there would be death again at its end.

#257
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2,391
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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
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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
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2,313
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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
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2,598
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Cold Sassy Tree

Cold Sassy Tree

Olive Ann Burns

4.5 (2)

Three weeks after Granny Blakeslee died, Grandpa came to our house for his early morning snort of whiskey, as usual, and said to me, "Will Tweedy? Go find your mama, then run up to yore Aunt Loma's and tell her I said git on down here. I got something to say. And I ain't a -go'n say it but once't."

#365
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The Alienist

The Alienist

Caleb Carr

4.33 (3)

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

#349
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1,571
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Don Quixote

Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

4.89 (9)

Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I would wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable.Prologue: Idle reader: I don't have to swear any oaths to persuade you that I should like this book, since it is the son of my brain, to be the most beautiful and elegant and intelligent book imaginable.Chapter 1: In a village in La Mancha, the name of which I cannot quite recall, there lived not long ago one of those country gentlemen or hidalgos who keep a lance in a rack, an ancient leather shield, a scrawny hack and a greyhound for coursing.

#78
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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
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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
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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
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Brave New World

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

4.07 (30)

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

#19
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23,022
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The Chronicles of Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia

C. S. Lewis

4.11 (28)

There is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. (From <i>The Magician's Nephew</i>, first in chronological order)Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. (From <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</i>, first in publication order)

#12
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2025 Reading Goal

0/50

Books Read

50 books to go!