louise.suppa@live.com
Member since February 2014
Books Read
Reviews
Avg Rating
Day Streak
louise.suppa@live.com's Reader Score
Check out their progress!
97
On Your Wishlist
97 × 1 = 97 pts
120
Books Completed
120 × 4 = 480 pts
0
Reviews Written
0 × 6 = 0 pts
The Making of Americans
Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard.
Lolita
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.
Finnegans Wake
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
To the Lighthouse
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
Invisible Man
"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."
The Great Gatsby
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
Women in Love
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.
Native Son
Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room.
The Day of the Locust
Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside his office.
Wise Blood
Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
(From Why Don't You Dance?) In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard.
Dubliners
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.
Ironweed
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.
The Sheltering Sky
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.
Winesburg, Ohio
The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with the window.
Look Homeward, Angel
A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.
Madame Bovary
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.
Emma
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.
Anna Karenina
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)
Crime and Punishment
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)
Vanity Fair
While the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.
Fathers and Sons
"Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?" was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of the posting station at S-.
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family.
The Trial
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.
My Ántonia
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.
The Age of Innocence
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Brideshead Revisited
When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.
The Sorrows of Young Werther
I have diligently collected everything I have been able to discover concerning the story of poor Werther, and here present it to you in the knowledge that you will be grateful for it.On 30th October 1772, Legation Secretary Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem in Wetzlar hot and killed himself with a pistol borrowed from J. C. Kestner, a friend of Goethe. (Introduction)
Nineteen Eighty-Four
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
The Woman in White
This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.
Appointment in Samarra
Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L. for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats.
Tender is the Night
The hotel and its bright, tan prayer rug of a beach were one.On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. [Sentence one, p. 3, of Scribner edition]
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.
The Heart of the Matter
Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.
Deliverance
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.
A Dance to the Music of Time
The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of a camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drainpipes.
The Secret Agent
Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr. Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.
Portnoy's Complaint
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.
Death Comes for the Archbishop
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.
The Adventures of Augie March
I am an American, Chicago born–Chicago, that somber city–and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; and sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.
Ragtime
In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle.
The Old Wives' Tale
Those two girls, Constance and Sopha Baines, paid no heed to the manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never been conscious.
The Call of the Wild
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.
Tobacco Road
Lov Bensey trudged homeward through the deep white sand of the gully-washed tobacco road with a sack of winter turnips on his back.
The Magus
I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf, Queen Victoria.
Under the Net
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.
Song of Solomon
The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.<br> <br> For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
Franny and Zooey
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.
A Separate Peace
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.
Naked Lunch
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil-doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square station, vault and turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train.
White Noise
The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.
This Side of Paradise
Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.
Babbitt
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.
The Name of the Rose
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Bonjour Tristesse
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness.
The Joke
So here I was, home again after all those years. Standing in the main square (which I had crossed countless times as a child, as a boy, as a young man), I felt no emotion whatsoever; all I could think was that the flat space, with the spire of the town hall (like a soldier in an ancient helmet) rising above the rooftops, looked like a huge parade ground and that the military past of the Moravian town, once a bastion against Magyar and Turk invaders, had engraved an irrevocable ugliness on its face.
Martin Eden
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.”
The Master and Margarita
One hot spring evening, just as the sun was going down, two men appeared at Patriarch’s Ponds.At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch’s Ponds.Однажды весною, в час небывало жаркого заката, в Москве, на Патриаршихbrпрудах, появились два гражданина.Op een broeihete lentedag daagden omtrent zonsondergang twee burgers op in het park rond de Patriarchvijver.
The Thirty-Nine Steps
I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.
The Pursuit of Love
There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh.
A Confederacy of Dunces
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.Perhaps the best way to introduce this novel-which on my third reading of it astounds me even more than the first-is to tell of my first encounter with it. (Foreword)
Angela's Ashes
My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born.
Centennial
Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.
Cannery Row
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
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.
Little, Big
On a certain day in June, 19--, a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited.
Ulysses
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Heart of Darkness
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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....
Absalom, Absalom!
From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that---
Daniel Deronda
Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance?
Three Men in a Boat
There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency.
The Diary of a Nobody
My dear wife Carrie and I have just been a week in our new house, "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway -- a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour.
The Catcher in the Rye
"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."
The Grapes of Wrath
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.
A Farewell to Arms
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
The Shell Seekers
She sometimes thought that for her, Nancy Chamberlain, the most straightforward or innocent occupation was doomed to become, inevitably, fraught with tedious complication.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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.
Sister Carrie
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.
All the King's Men
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>
The Rainbow
The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
A High Wind in Jamaica
One of the fruits of Emancipation in the West Indian islands is the number of ruins, either attached to the houses that remain or within a stone's throw of them: ruined slaves' quarters, ruined sugar-grinding houses, ruined boiling houses; often ruined mansions that were too expensive to maintain.
The Death of the Heart
That mornining's ice, no more than brittle film, had cracked and was now floating in segments.
Where Angels Fear to Tread
They were all at Charing Cross to see Lilia off--Philip, Harriet, Irma, Mrs. Herriton herself.
Four Plays
The Bald Soprano: Anti-play Scene: A middle class English interior, with English armchairs.
The Tartar Steppe
One September morning, Giovanni Drogo, being newly commissioned, set out from the city for Fort Bastiani; it was his first posting.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September—a Thursday.
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
Für den folgenden Bericht gibt es einige Neben- und drei Hauptquellen, die hier am Anfang einmal genannt, dann aber nicht mehr erwähnt werden.
A Room of One's Own
But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction -- what has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain.
The Martian Chronicles
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.
Manhattan Transfer
Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken water, slides, settles slowly into the slip.
The Charterhouse of Parma
Le 15 mai 1796, le général Bonaparte fit son entrée dans Milan à la tête de cette jeune armée qui venait de passer le pont de Lodi, et d'apprendre au monde qu'après tant de siècles César et Alexandre avaient un successeur.
Men Without Women
Manuel Garcia climbed the stairs to Don Miguel Retana's office. (THE UNDEFEATED).
Lucky Jim
"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.
The Quiet American
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.
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Mrs Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, <i>If on a winter's night a traveler.</i>Stai per cominciare a leggere il nuovo romanzo Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore di Italo Calvino.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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.
Wise Children
Q. Why is London like Budapest? A. Because it is two cities divided by a river.
His Dark Materials
Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. (Northern lights)Will tugged at his mother's hand and said, "Come on, come on..." (The subtle knife)In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with melt-water splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half-hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. (The amber spyglass)
Austerlitz
In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just one or two days, sometimes for several weeks.
Memoirs of a Geisha
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.'
A Prayer for Owen Meany
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.
Far from the Madding Crowd
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.
Cold Comfort Farm
The education bestowed upon Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of influenza or Spanish Plague which occured in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.
A Tale of Two Cities
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.
The Bell Jar
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Cloud Atlas
Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.
A Fine Balance
The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed.
A Town Like Alice
James MacFadden died in March 1905 when he was forty-seven years old; he was riding in the Driffield Point-to-Point.
Cider with Rosie
I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her.
The Warden
The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of ---; let us call it Barchester.
Cranford
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women.
Brighton Rock
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.Hale knew they meant to murder him before he had been in Brighton three hours. [1956 ed.]
The Code of the Woosters
I reached out a hand from under the blankets, and rang the bell for Jeeves.
Disgrace
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.
The Pillars of The Earth
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)
Noughts & Crosses
'Honestly, Mrs Hadley,' said Meggie McGregor, wiping her eyes.'Honestly, Mrs Hadley,' said Meggie McGregor, wiping her eyes. 'That sense of humour of yours will be he death of me yet!'
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
In eighteenth century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.
The Princess Diaries
Tuesday, September 23 <p>Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie.</p>
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China.
The Stranger
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.
Tales of the City
Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.
It
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.
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
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.
A Brief History of Time
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.
High Fidelity
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.
Earthly Powers
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Silent Spring
In a letter written in January 1958, Olga Owens Huckins told me of her own bitter experience of a small world made lifeless, and so brought my attention sharply back to a problem with which I had long been concerned. (Acknowledgments)There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. (1. A Fable for Tomorrow)
The Shipping News
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.
Snow Falling on Cedars
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.
The Color of Water
As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from -- where she was born, who her parents were.
The Bean Trees
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.
A Thousand Acres
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.
Cold Sassy Tree
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."
Sula
In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from the roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.
Time and Again
In shirt-sleeves, the I generally worked, I sat sketching a bar of soap taped to an upper corner of my drawing board.
Talk Before Sleep
This morning before I came to Ruth's house, I made yet another casserole for my husband and my daughter.
A Wrinkle in Time
It was a dark and stormy night.<br> In her attic bedroom Meg Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.
The Sound and the Fury
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
Nine Stories
There were ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through.
The Way We Live Now
Let the reader be introduced to Lady Carbury, upon whose character and doings much will depend of whatever interest these pages may have, as she sits at her writing-table in her own room in her own house in Welbeck Street.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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?'
No reviews yet
2025 Reading Goal
Books Read
50 books to go!