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Ultimate Best Books

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    Oblomov

    Oblomov

    Ivan Goncharov

    4.33 (3)

    Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov was lying in bed one morning in his flat in Gorohovy Street, in one of the big houses that had almost as many inhabitants as a whole country town.

    #502
    RANK
    604
    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
    1,547
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    #531
    RANK
    503
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    Romancero Gitano

    Romancero Gitano

    Federico García Lorca

    3.0 (1)

    #578
    RANK
    349
    POINTS
    Holes

    Holes

    Louis Sachar

    4.44 (9)

    There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.

    #93
    RANK
    8,994
    POINTS
    Under the Net

    Under the Net

    Iris Murdoch

    3.0 (2)

    When I saw Finn waiting for me at the corner of the street I knew at once that something had gone wrong. Finn usually waits for me in bed, or leaning up against the side of the door with his eyes closed.

    #495
    RANK
    627
    POINTS
    Darconville's Cat

    Darconville's Cat

    Alexander Theroux

    5.0 (1)

    #607
    RANK
    285
    POINTS
    Waverley

    Waverley

    Walter Scott

    3.5 (2)

    The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the prudent.

    #529
    RANK
    510
    POINTS
    #558
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    424
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    The Death of the Heart

    The Death of the Heart

    Elizabeth Bowen

    3.5 (2)

    That mornining's ice, no more than brittle film, had cracked and was now floating in segments.

    #530
    RANK
    504
    POINTS