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Ultimate Best Books

KevN

KevN

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Invisible Man

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

4.31 (16)

"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."

#76
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The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

3.48 (23)

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.

#65
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11,280
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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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45,173
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Women in Love

Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence

2.8 (5)

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.

#184
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4,129
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Catch-22

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

4.06 (31)

It was love at first sight.

#31
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18,918
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Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

3.0 (8)

I am living at the Villa Borghese.

#201
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3,557
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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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6,408
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The Day of the Locust

The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West

3.67 (3)

Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside his office.

#356
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1,509
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A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

4.0 (20)

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

#48
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13,157
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An American Tragedy

An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser

4.25 (4)

Dusk - of a summer night.

#228
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2,954
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Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

3.47 (17)

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

#43
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13,830
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Emma

Emma

Jane Austen

4.33 (18)

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.

#51
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13,066
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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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25,540
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Tom Jones

Tom Jones

Henry Fielding

4.0 (3)

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

#194
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3,676
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Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

4.25 (8)

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.

#159
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4,732
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Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

3.75 (32)

#22
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22,294
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The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

3.53 (19)

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

#26
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20,944
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Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

4.17 (35)

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.

#17
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24,104
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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 Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

4.0 (7)

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

#134
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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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37,186
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Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

4.37 (19)

In the Year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne.

#104
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7,769
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Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

3.87 (31)

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. i- preface by P.B. Shelley/i

#27
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19,862
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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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15,547
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The Heart is A Lonely Hunter

The Heart is A Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers

4.38 (8)

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.

#178
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4,199
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Tender is the Night

Tender is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald

4.13 (8)

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]

#164
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4,584
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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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33,712
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Howards End

Howards End

E. M. Forster

3.86 (7)

One may as well begin with Helens letters to her sister.

#189
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3,940
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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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32,704
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From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity

James Jones

5.0 (2)

When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh.

#306
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1,887
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Muriel Spark

3.8 (5)

The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment, the boys were likely to be away.

#226
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2,982
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A Room with a View

A Room with a View

E. M. Forster

3.86 (7)

"The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!"<br>

#138
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5,430
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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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16,219
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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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4,348
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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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42,966
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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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13,596
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Charlotte's Web

Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

4.27 (26)

Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

#8
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30,376
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Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh

A. A. Milne

4.19 (21)

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

#24
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22,108
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For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

4.0 (12)

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.

#73
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10,358
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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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17,062
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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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7,457
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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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Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

3.25 (8)

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.Náš věk je v podstatě tragický, a tak ho odmítáme tragicky brát.

#127
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6,304
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In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote

4.33 (12)

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.

#111
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7,382
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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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9,654
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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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19,386
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The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds

H. G. Wells

3.67 (9)

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

#94
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8,830
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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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12,731
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The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

4.4 (20)

On Friday, 12th June, I woke up at six o' clock and no wonder; it was my birthday

#21
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22,476
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The Abyss

The Abyss

Marguerite Yourcenar

3.5 (2)

#482
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683
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The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

4.0 (7)

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.

#192
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3,802
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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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15,021
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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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11,415
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Sybil

Sybil

Benjamin Disraeli

3.0 (2)

'I'll take the odds against Caravan.'

#303
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1,904
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David Copperfield

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens

4.86 (14)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

#80
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9,899
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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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24,617
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Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda

Peter Carey

3.5 (2)

If there was a bishop, my mother would have him to tea.

#403
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1,170
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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

4.53 (45)

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

#4
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36,627
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The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

3.77 (13)

<b>PROLOGUE - Clare:</b> It's hard being left behind.<b>FIRST DATE, ONE<BR></b><i>Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)</i><BR><BR><b>Clare:</b> The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.

#95
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8,812
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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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Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.35 (17)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

#61
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11,537
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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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8,547
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The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett

3.93 (15)

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

#49
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13,196
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The Remains of the day

The Remains of the day

Kazuo Ishiguro

4.11 (9)

It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days.

#163
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4,587
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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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19,480
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Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak

3.5 (6)

On they went, singing "Rest Eternal," and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.

#162
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4,601
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The Stand

The Stand

Stephen King

4.6 (10)

Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston."Sally."

#121
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6,690
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Trainspotting

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh

3.2 (5)

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

#213
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3,250
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Cannery Row

Cannery Row

John Steinbeck

3.29 (7)

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.

#158
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4,770
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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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9,969
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Beloved

Beloved

Toni Morrison

4.07 (14)

124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.

#66
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11,086
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Little Women

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

3.68 (19)

“Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

#23
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22,209
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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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35,612
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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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23,699
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Love in The Time of Cholera

Love in The Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez

4.5 (8)

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

#106
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7,728
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