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Ultimate Best Books

All :: Novels

    Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

    Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    3.83 (12)

    Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.

    #67
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    11,072
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    Far from the Madding Crowd

    Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.25 (8)

    When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.

    #191
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    3,895
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    Gilead

    Gilead

    Marilynne Robinson

    4.0 (3)

    I told you last night that I might be gone sometime and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old.

    #293
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    1,974
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    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
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    2,088
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    The Wings of the Dove

    The Wings of the Dove

    Henry James

    3.0 (2)

    She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face postiively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without the sight of him.

    #407
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    1,149
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    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
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    13,563
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    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
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    7,685
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    The Odyssey

    The Odyssey

    Homer

    4.18 (11)

    By now the other warriors, those that had escaped headlong ruin by sea or in battle, were safely home.Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.

    #40
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    14,649
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    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
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    11,520
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    Men Without Women

    Men Without Women

    Ernest Hemingway

    4.5 (2)

    Manuel Garcia climbed the stairs to Don Miguel Retana's office. (THE UNDEFEATED).

    #374
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    1,355
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