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smjm

smjm

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Lolita

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

4.14 (36)

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.

#32
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17,173
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To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

3.43 (14)

"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.

#118
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6,984
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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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11,322
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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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45,295
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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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6,487
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Native Son

Native Son

Richard Wright

3.86 (7)

Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room.

#141
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5,281
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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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1,538
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Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

4.0 (29)

All this happened, more or less.

#34
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16,830
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The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

4.0 (4)

The two women were alone in the London flat.

#244
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2,727
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Dubliners

Dubliners

James Joyce

3.71 (7)

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.

#183
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4,175
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The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

4.5 (6)

Selden paused in surprise.

#234
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2,928
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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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13,880
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The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu

4.0 (4)

In a certain reign (whose can it have been?) someone of no very great rank, among all His Magesty's Consorts and Intimates, enjoyed exceptional favor.

#382
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1,327
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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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13,107
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Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

4.31 (26)

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)

#50
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13,161
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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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25,580
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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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Great Expectations

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

4.05 (21)

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

#28
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19,822
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Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4.17 (18)

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)

#56
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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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4,757
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The Red and the Black

The Red and the Black

Stendhal

3.75 (4)

La petite ville de Verrières peut passer pour l'une des plus jolies de la Franche-Comté.The small town of Verrieres may be regarded as one of the prettiest in the Franche-Comte.

#302
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1,905
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy

4.0 (13)

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.

#84
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9,579
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Buddenbrooks

Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann

3.67 (3)

#404
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1,162
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Old Goriot

Old Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

3.75 (4)

Madame Vauquer (<i>nee</i> De Conflans) is an elderly person who for the past forty years has kept a lodging house in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the Latin Quarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.

#354
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1,552
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Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

3.75 (32)

#22
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22,344
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The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum

Günter Grass

4.2 (5)

Granted: I'm an inmate of a mental institution; my keeper watches me, scarcely lets me out of his sight; for there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can't see through blue-eyed types like me.

#215
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3,216
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Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

3.97 (30)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

#11
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27,935
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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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20,966
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Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons

Ivan Turgenev

3.67 (3)

"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-.

#337
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1,656
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The Trial

The Trial

Franz Kafka

3.7 (10)

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.

#114
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7,268
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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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24,166
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Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

4.08 (12)

Okonkwo was well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat.

#86
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9,558
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My Ántonia

My Ántonia

Willa Cather

3.67 (9)

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.

#149
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5,018
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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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5,703
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The Good Soldier

The Good Soldier

Ford Madox Ford

3.57 (7)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

#281
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2,079
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The Awakening

The Awakening

Kate Chopin

3.38 (7)

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside, kept repeating over and over: <br>"<i>Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!</i> That's all right!"

#145
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5,151
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Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

4.44 (9)

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.

#155
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4,825
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The Last Chronicle of Barset

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Anthony Trollope

4.25 (4)

'I can never bring myself to believe it, John,' said Mary Walker, the pretty daughter of Mr George Walker, attorney of Silverbridge.

#538
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478
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The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

4.0 (5)

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.

#300
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1,925
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The Sorrows of Young Werther

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4.0 (4)

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)

#375
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1,353
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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
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510
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Snow Country

Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata

3.25 (4)

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

#469
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746
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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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37,302
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The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper

4.25 (4)

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.

#212
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3,308
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Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe

4.5 (6)

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining-parlor, in the town of P_______, in Kentucky.

#160
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4,691
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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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19,894
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The Woman in White

The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins

4.43 (7)

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

#199
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3,610
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Dracula

Dracula

Bram Stoker

4.33 (18)

#99
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8,436
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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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15,623
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Darkness at Noon

Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler

4.33 (3)

The cell door slammed behind Rubashov.

#371
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1,380
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The Way of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh

Samuel Butler

3.67 (3)

When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick. He must have been getting on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier than which date I suppose I can hardly remember him, for I was born in 1802.

#437
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963
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I, Claudius

I, Claudius

Robert Graves

4.17 (6)

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

#207
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3,384
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Appointment in Samarra

Appointment in Samarra

John O'Hara

4.0 (1)

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.

#445
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921
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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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4,610
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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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33,773
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A handful of dust

A handful of dust

Evelyn Waugh

4.25 (4)

"Was anyone hurt?"

#390
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1,260
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All the King's Men

All the King's Men

Robert Penn Warren

4.4 (5)

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>

#190
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3,949
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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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32,779
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Light in August

Light in August

William Faulkner

4.2 (5)

Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'

#229
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3,000
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The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett

4.11 (9)

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.

#195
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3,692
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Of Human Bondage

Of Human Bondage

W. Somerset Maugham

4.0 (2)

The day broke grey and dull.

#267
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2,283
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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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3,011
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Kim

Kim

Rudyard Kipling

3.17 (6)

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.

#227
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3,006
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Ragtime

Ragtime

E. L. Doctorow

4.0 (3)

In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle.

#269
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2,209
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Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys

3.5 (6)

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

#211
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3,313
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The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Postman Always Rings Twice

James M. Cain

3.6 (5)

They threw me off the hay truck about noon.

#351
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1,560
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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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43,048
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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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13,645
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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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30,417
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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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22,158
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Song of Solomon

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison

4.14 (7)

The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.

#166
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4,574
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The Jungle

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair

4.0 (3)

#167
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4,560
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Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

3.38 (13)

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.

#116
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7,152
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum

3.8 (10)

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

#96
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8,737
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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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7,398
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Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey

J. D. Salinger

3.0 (3)

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.

#208
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3,379
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Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton

3.86 (7)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. (Author's Introductory Note)The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners.

#156
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4,799
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Orlando: A Biography

Orlando: A Biography

Virginia Woolf

3.25 (4)

He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

#313
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1,816
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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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9,700
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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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12,788
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This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise

F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.0 (5)

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.

#291
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2,004
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The Beautiful and Damned

The Beautiful and Damned

F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.2 (5)

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.

#344
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1,614
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Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run

John Updike

4.25 (4)

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.

#221
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3,113
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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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13,583
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The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

4.42 (19)

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

#21
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christie

4.0 (5)

Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September—a Thursday.

#241
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A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf

3.5 (6)

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.

#250
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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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The Pilgrim's Progress

The Pilgrim's Progress

John Bunyan

3.67 (6)

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.(Introduction to the Penguin edition by Roger Sharrock) -- The Pilgrim's Progress is a book which in the three hundred years of its existence has crossed most of the barriers of race and culture that usually serve to limit the communicative power of a classic.

#193
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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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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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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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The Thirty-Nine Steps

The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Buchan

4.0 (3)

I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.

#266
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The Pursuit of Love

The Pursuit of Love

Nancy Mitford

4.6 (5)

There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh.

#453
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Lucky Jim

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis

4.0 (4)

"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.

#286
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Atonement

Atonement

Ian McEwan

4.1 (10)

The play – for which Briony had designed posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.

#102
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American Pastoral

American Pastoral

Philip Roth

4.0 (3)

The swede.

#387
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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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The Hobbit

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkien

4.37 (30)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

#10
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Birdsong

Birdsong

Sebastian Faulks

4.17 (6)

The boulevard du cange was a broad, quiet street that marked the eastern flank of the city of Amiens.

#217
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The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

4.33 (12)

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.

#82
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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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The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown

3.15 (20)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

#37
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Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables

L. M. Montgomery

4.58 (12)

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

#57
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The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

3.93 (15)

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

#58
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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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Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm

Stella Gibbons

4.2 (5)

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.

#285
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Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen

3.5 (10)

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.

#105
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Mark Haddon

4.07 (14)

It was 7 minutes after midnight.

#103
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The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

4.09 (11)

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf.

#100
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Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

3.67 (9)

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

#120
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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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Swallows and Amazons

Swallows and Amazons

Arthur Ransome

4.5 (2)

Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer holidays.

#367
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A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

4.1 (10)

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

#47
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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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Watership Down

Watership Down

Richard Adams

4.55 (11)

The primroses were over.

#68
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Hamlet

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

4.09 (11)

<B>Act 1, Scene 1</B><BR><I>Enter</I> <B>Barnardo</B> <I>and</I> <B>Francisco</B><I>, two sentinels.</I><BR><BR><B>Barnardo</B><BR>Who's there?

#39
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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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All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

4.5 (10)

We are at rest five miles behind the front.

#137
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My Name is Red

My Name is Red

Orhan Pamuk

5.0 (2)

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well.

#391
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The Warden

The Warden

Anthony Trollope

3.67 (3)

The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of ---; let us call it Barchester.

#454
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The Code of the Woosters

The Code of the Woosters

P. G. Wodehouse

4.6 (5)

I reached out a hand from under the blankets, and rang the bell for Jeeves.

#329
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J. K. Rowling

4.59 (27)

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.

#20
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

J. K. Rowling

4.61 (28)

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.

#16
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J. K. Rowling

4.62 (26)

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.

#25
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The Pillars of The Earth

The Pillars of The Earth

Ken Follett

4.6 (10)

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)

#175
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Treasure Island

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

3.55 (11)

Squire Trelawny, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admiral Benbow" inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

#91
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Black Beauty

Black Beauty

Anna Sewell

3.67 (6)

The first place that I can well remember, was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.

#109
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The Thornbirds

The Thornbirds

Colleen McCullough

5.0 (2)

On December 8th, 1915, Meggie Cleary had her fourth birthday.

#185
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Matilda

Matilda

Roald Dahl

4.62 (13)

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers.

#85
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I Capture the Castle

I Capture the Castle

Dodie Smith

5.0 (3)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

#332
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The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

4.0 (6)

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month.Maj je v Ajemenemu vroč, morast mesec.

#231
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The Godfather

The Godfather

Mario Puzo

5.0 (7)

Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court No. 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.

#170
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The Clan of the Cave Bear

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Jean M. Auel

5.0 (3)

The naked child ran out of the hide-covered lean-to toward the rocky beach at the bend in the small river.

#203
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Sophie's World

Sophie's World

Jostein Gaarder

3.56 (9)

Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school.

#230
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Testament of Youth

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain

5.0 (1)

When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.

#515
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Tales of the City

Tales of the City

Armistead Maupin

4.0 (3)

Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.

#380
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1,337
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James and the Giant Peach

James and the Giant Peach

Roald Dahl

4.0 (12)

Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life.

#87
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The Van

The Van

Roddy Doyle

5.0 (1)

Jimmy Rabbitte Sr. had the kitchen to himself.

#501
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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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The Histories

The Histories

Herodotus

4.5 (2)

This is the showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos so that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.

#282
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On the Social Contract

On the Social Contract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

4.0 (3)

My purpose is to consider if, in political society, there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be.

#290
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The Prince

The Prince

Niccolò Machiavelli

3.83 (6)

All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities.It is customary for those who wish to gain the favour of a prince to endeavour to do so by offering him gifts of those things which they hold most precious, or in which they know him to take especial delight.

#148
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Confessions

Confessions

Saint Augustine

4.0 (3)

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and to your wisdom there is no limit.You are great, O Lord, and very worthy of praise; mighty is your power and your wisdom isimmeasurable.'Vast are you, Lord, and vast should be your praise' - 'vast what you do; what you know beyond assaying.'

#315
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King Lear

King Lear

William Shakespeare

4.4 (5)

I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

#122
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Night

Night

Elie Wiesel

4.29 (7)

They called him Moshe the Beadle, as though he had never had a surname in his life.

#124
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#490
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Goodbye to All That

Goodbye to All That

Robert Graves

5.0 (2)

As a proof of my readiness to accept autobiographical conventions, let me at once record my two earliest memories.

#487
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X

5.0 (1)

When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night.

#318
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The Good Earth

The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck

3.86 (7)

It was Wang Lung's marriage day.

#128
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Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt

4.5 (6)

My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born.

#123
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Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

4.09 (23)

It was a pleasure to burn.

#42
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Bastard Out of Carolina

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison

3.0 (1)

I've been called Bone all my life, but my name's Ruth Anne.

#343
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The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels

Michael Shaara

4.4 (5)

<b>1. THE SPY</B><BR><BR>He rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted.

#299
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Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars

David Guterson

4.17 (6)

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.

#204
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

4.4 (5)

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York.

#176
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A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley

3.8 (5)

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.

#249
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The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan

4.4 (5)

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.

#144
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Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak

4.47 (15)

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him wild thing. And so he said, "I'll eat you UP!" And so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

#46
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The Alienist

The Alienist

Caleb Carr

4.33 (3)

<i>January 8th, 1919</i><br> Theodore is in the ground.

#349
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Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions

Kurt Vonnegut

4.33 (6)

This is the tale of a meeting of two lonely, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

#157
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A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

4.0 (12)

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.

#72
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The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster

4.14 (14)

There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself—not just sometimes, but always.

#143
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Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

J. D. Salinger

5.0 (1)

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.

#372
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz

3.8 (5)

They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.

#220
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The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge

W. Somerset Maugham

4.5 (2)

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it.

#381
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Nine Stories

Nine Stories

J. D. Salinger

4.0 (4)

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.

#273
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Drown

Drown

Junot Diaz

5.0 (1)

#523
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A Little Princess

A Little Princess

Frances Hodgson Burnett

4.43 (7)

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father, and was driven rather slowly through the big thorough-fares.

#169
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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

3.9 (10)

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

#101
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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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Ulysses

Ulysses

James Joyce

2.46 (13)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

#79
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Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

2.78 (18)

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.

#41
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce

3.33 (9)

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....

#107
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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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The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James

4.0 (3)

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.

#172
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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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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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The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

4.56 (18)

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor.

#69
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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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The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

4.56 (36)

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

#13
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Persuasion

Persuasion

Jane Austen

3.6 (15)

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.

#112
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Brave New World

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

4.07 (30)

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

#19
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A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway

4.38 (8)

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.

#74
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10,392
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The Chronicles of Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia

C. S. Lewis

4.11 (28)

There is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. (From <i>The Magician's Nephew</i>, first in chronological order)Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. (From <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</i>, first in publication order)

#12
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