aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

Genre: American (126 books)

The best classic books from the American genre.

JR

JR

William Gaddis

3.5 (2)

#470
RANK
745
POINTS
The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans

Gertrude Stein

2.0 (3)

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard.

#477
RANK
717
POINTS
The Bostonians

The Bostonians

Henry James

4.0 (1)

"Olive will come down in about ten minutes; she told me to tell you that."

#481
RANK
688
POINTS
Martin Eden

Martin Eden

Jack London

5.0 (2)

The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes that smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious hall in which he found himself. He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him. The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. “He understands,” was his thought. “He’ll see me through all right.”

#491
RANK
648
POINTS
You Shall Know Our Velocity

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Dave Eggers

3.0 (1)

I was talking to Hand, one of my two best friends, the one still alive, and we were planning to leave.

#496
RANK
627
POINTS
Call it Sleep

Call it Sleep

Henry Roth

3.5 (2)

#498
RANK
621
POINTS
More Than Human

More Than Human

Theodore Sturgeon

4.5 (2)

The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear.

#509
RANK
588
POINTS
Libra

Libra

Don DeLillo

4.5 (2)

#512
RANK
566
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
Nightwood

Nightwood

Djuna Barnes

3.33 (3)

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 woman of great strength and military beauty, lying upon a canopied bed of a rich spectacular crimson, the valance stamped with the bifurcated wings of the House of Hapsburg, the feather coverlet an envelope of satin on which, in massive and tarnished gold threads, stood the Volkbein arms—gave birth, at the age of forty-five, to an only child, a son, seven days after her physician predicted that she would be taken.

#519
RANK
537
POINTS