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FWMusic

FWMusic

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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.

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Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano

Malcolm Lowry

4.2 (5)

Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus.

#289
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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.

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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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Underworld

Underworld

Don DeLillo

3.4 (5)

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.Parla la tua lingua, l'americano, e c'è una luce nel suo sguardo che è una mezza speranza.

#362
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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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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.

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Catch-22

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

4.06 (31)

It was love at first sight.

#31
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On the Road

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

3.4 (15)

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.

#55
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The Sot-Weed Factor

The Sot-Weed Factor

John Barth

5.0 (2)

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and the fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talanted, and yet more talanted than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with <i>Joves</i> and <i>Jupiters</i>, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similies stretched to the snapping point.

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Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

3.5 (6)

See the child.

#361
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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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Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

4.0 (29)

All this happened, more or less.

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Libra

Libra

Don DeLillo

4.5 (2)

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Wise Blood

Wise Blood

Flannery O'Connor

3.0 (3)

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.

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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.

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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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The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles

4.0 (4)

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.

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Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson

3.67 (3)

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.

#305
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Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee

3.5 (2)

I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?

#425
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1,019
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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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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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The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

4.33 (6)

Die Geschichte Hans Castorps, die wir erzählen wollen, - nicht um seinetwillen (denn der Leser wird einen einfachen, wenn auch ansprechenden jungen Mann in ihm kennenlernen), sondern um der Geschichte willen, die uns in hohem Grade erzählenswert scheint (wobei zu Hans Castorps Gunsten denn doch erinnert werden sollte, dass es seine Geschichte ist, und dass nicht jedem jede Geschichte passiert): diese Geschichte ist sehr lange her, sie ist sozusagen schon ganz mit historischem Edelrost überzogenund unbedingt in der Zeitform der tiefsten Vergangenheit vorzutragen.

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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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One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

4.2 (25)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.(Bulgarian)<br>Много години по-късно, пред взвода за разстрел, полковник Аурелиано Буендия щеше да си спомни онзи далечен подиробед, когато баща му го заведе да види леда.(Croatian)<br>Mnogo će se godina kasnije, pred streljačkim vodom, pukovnik Aureliano Buendía sjetiti tog davnog poslijepodneva kada ga je otac poveo da upozna led.(Czech)<br>O mnoho let později, když stál před popravčí četou, vzpomněl si plukovník Aureliano Buendía na ono vzdálené odpoledne, kdy ho otec vzal k cikánům, aby si prohlél led.(Dutch)<br>Vele jaren later, staande voor het vuurpeloton, moest kolonel Aureliano Buendía denken aan die lang vervlogen middag, toen zijn vader hem meenam om kennis te maken met het ijs.(Finnish)<br>Vuosia myöhemmin, seistessään teloitusryhmän edessä, eversti Aureliano Buendía muisti kaukaisen illan jolloin hänen isänsä vei hänet tutustumaan jäähän.(German)<br>Viele Jahre später sollte der Oberst Aureliano Buendia sich vor dem Erschießungskommando an jenen fernen Nachmittag erinnern, an dem sein Vater ihn mitnahm, um das Eis kennen zu lernen.(Hebrew)<br>שנים רבות לאחר־כך, כשיעמוד הקולונל אַאוּרליאנוֹ בוּאֶנדִיָה מול כיתת־היורים, ייזכר באותו ערב רחוק שלקח אותו אביו לראות קרח.(Hungarian)<br>Hosszú évekkel később, a kivégzőosztag előtt, Aureliano Buendía ezredesnek eszébe jutott az a régi délután, mikor az apja elvitte jégnézőbe.(Italian)<br>Molti anni dopo, di fronte al plotone di esecuzione, il colonnello Aureliano Buendía si sarebbe ricordato di quel remoto pomeriggio in cui suo padre lo aveva condotto a conoscere il ghiaccio.(Macedonian)<br>Многу години подоцна, наспроти стрелачкот вод, полковникот Аурелијано Буендија ќе се присети на тоа далечно попладне кога неговиот татко го одведе да узнае што е тоа мраз.(Norwegian)<br>Mange år senere, foran eksekusjonspelotongen, måtte oberst Aureliano Buendía tenke på den ettermiddagen for så lenge, lenge siden, da faren tok ham med for å vise ham isen.(Polish)<br>Wiele lat później, stojąc naprzeciw plutonu egzekucyjnego, pułkownik Aurelio Buendía miał przypomnieć sobie to dalekie popołudnie, kiedy ojciec zabrał go z sobą do obozu Cyganów, żeby mu pokazać lód.(Portuguese)<br>Muitos anos depois, diante do pelotão de fuzilamento, o Coronel Aureliano Buendía havia de recordar aquela tarde remota em que seu pai o levou para conhecer o gelo.(Romanian)<br>Mulţi ani după aceea, în faţa plutonului de execuţie, colonelul Aureliano Buendía avea să-şi amintească de după-amiaza îndepărtată cînd tatăl său îl dusese să facă cunoştinţă cu gheaţa.(Slovak)<br>O veľa rokov neskôr, zoči-voči popravnej čate, plukovník Aureliano Buendía si spomenul na to dávne popoludnie, keď ho otec vzal so sebou a on po prvý raz videl ľad.(Swedish)<br>Många år senare, inför exekutionsplutonen, skulle överste Aureliano Buendía påminna sig den avlägsna eftermiddag då hans far tog honom med för att visa honom isen.(Vietnamese)<br>Rất nhiều năm sau này, trước đội hành hình đại tá Aurêlianô Buênđýa đã nhớ lại buổi chiều cha chàng đi xem nước đá.

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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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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.

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The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Laurence Sterne

4.5 (4)

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; - that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; - and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: ---Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, ---I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me."

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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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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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Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

3.75 (32)

#22
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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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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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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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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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Candide

Candide

Voltaire

4.13 (8)

There lived in Westphalia, at the country seat of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, a young lad blessed by Nature with the most agreeable manners.In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia there lived a youth, endowed by Nature with the most gentle character.

#177
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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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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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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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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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Henderson the Rain King

Henderson the Rain King

Saul Bellow

3.0 (1)

What made me take this trip to Africa? There is no quick explanation. Things got worse and worse and worse and pretty soon they were too complicated.

#376
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Henderson the Rain King

Henderson the Rain King

Saul Bellow

3.0 (1)

What made me take this trip to Africa? There is no quick explanation. Things got worse and worse and worse and pretty soon they were too complicated.

#376
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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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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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As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner

3.25 (11)

Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.

#115
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The bridge of San Luis Rey

The bridge of San Luis Rey

Thornton Wilder

3.8 (5)

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.

#258
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The Heart of the Matter

The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene

5.0 (1)

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.

#389
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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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Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

2.5 (4)

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.

#239
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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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The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer

Walker Percy

3.67 (3)

This morning I got a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch.

#373
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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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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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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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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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Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

4.03 (38)

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

#9
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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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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey

4.5 (16)

"They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them."They're out there.

#59
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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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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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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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The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie

3.6 (5)

"To be born again " sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."

#320
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Jazz

Jazz

Toni Morrison

3.25 (4)

Sth, I know that woman.

#339
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A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Flannery O'Connor

4.0 (1)

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida.

#295
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White Noise

White Noise

Don DeLillo

3.75 (4)

The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.

#238
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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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Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre

3.0 (1)

Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it.

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The Charterhouse of Parma

The Charterhouse of Parma

Stendhal

3.33 (3)

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.

#435
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The Plague

The Plague

Albert Camus

3.57 (7)

The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194- at Oran.Les curieux événements qui font le sujet de cette chronique se sont produits en 194., à Oran.Le matin du 16 avril, le docteur Bernard Rieux sortit de son cabinet et buta sur un rat mort, au milieu du palier.

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If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Italo Calvino

4.4 (5)

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.

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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.

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American Pastoral

American Pastoral

Philip Roth

4.0 (3)

The swede.

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Bible: King James Version

Bible: King James Version

KJV

3.93 (13)

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.Bibliographical introduction. Mainly, no doubt, because of the predominance of French as the language of educated people in England from the time of the Norman Conquest until the middle of the fourteenth century, the Bible, as a whole, remained untranslated into English until the last years of the life of Wyclif.

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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.

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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.

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The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown

3.15 (20)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

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A Prayer for Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

4.5 (8)

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.

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Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy

4.25 (8)

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

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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.

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Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.35 (17)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

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A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

4.27 (11)

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.

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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.

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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.

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Nausea

Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre

3.4 (5)

These notebooks were found among the papers of Antoine Roquentin. (<i>"Editors' Note"</i>)The best thing would be to write down events from day to day.

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Disgrace

Disgrace

J. M. Coetzee

3.29 (7)

For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.

#235
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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.

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The Alchemist

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

3.0 (17)

The boy's name was Santiago.

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The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

3.71 (14)

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.

#53
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig

3.67 (3)

I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning.

#225
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A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

4.0 (3)

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.

#240
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

3.8 (5)

As usual, at five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters.

#206
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Cry, the Beloved Country

Cry, the Beloved Country

Alan Paton

4.5 (2)

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.

#275
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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.

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The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer

4.0 (11)

When the sweet showers of April have pierced/<br>The drought of March, and pierced it to the root,/<br>And every vein is bathed in that moisture/<br>Whose quickening force will engender the flower;/<br>And when the west wind too with its sweet breath/<br>Has given life in every wood and field/<br>To tender shoots, and when the stripling sun/<br>Has run his half-course in Aries, the Ram,/<br>And when small birds are making melodies,/<br>That sleep all the night long with open eyes,/<br>(Nature so prompts them, and encourages);/<br>Then people long to go on pilgrimages,/<br>And palmers to take ship for foreign shores,/<br>And distant shrines, famous in different lands;/<br>And most especially, from all the shires/<br>Of England, to Canterbury they come,/<br>The holy blessed martyr there to seek,/<br>Who gave his help to them when they were sick.When in April the sweet showers fall<br>And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all<br>The veins are bathed in liquor of such power<br>As brings about the engendering of the flower,<br>When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath<br>Exhales an air in every grove and heath<br>Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun<br>His half-course in the sign of the <i>Ram</i> has run,<br>And the small fowl are making melody<br>That sleep away the night with open eye<br>(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)<br>Then people long to go on pilgrimages<br>And palmers long to seek the stranger strands<br>Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,<br>And specially, from every shire's end<br>Of England, down to Canterbury they wend<br>To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick<br>To give his help to them when they were sick.<br><br><b>(translated by Nevill Coghill, 1951)</b>Once upon a time, as old stories tell us, there was a duke named Theseus;  Of Athens he was a lord and governor, And in his time such a conqueror, That greater was there none under the sum.

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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.

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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.

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Leviathan

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

4.0 (3)

Nature (the ary whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal.

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Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

John Milton

4.2 (5)

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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.

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The Varieties of Religious Experience

The Varieties of Religious Experience

William James

4.0 (1)

This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh.It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this desk, and face this learned audience. To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction from the living voice, as well as from the books, of European scholars, is very familiar. At my own University of Harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large or small, of lectures from Scottish, English, French, or German representatives of the science or literature of their respective countries whom we have either induced to cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing as they were visiting our land. It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The contrary habit, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we have not yet acquired; and in him who first makes the adventure it begets a certain sense of apology being due for so presumptuous an act. Particularly must this be the case on a soil as sacred to the American imagination as that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair of this university were deeply impressed on my imagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser’s <i>Essays in Philosophy</i>, then just published, was the first philosophic book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awestruck feeling I received from the account of Sir William Hamilton’s classroom therein contained. Hamilton’s own lectures were the first philosophic writings I ever forced myself to study, and after that I was immersed in Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. Such juvenile emotions of reverence never get outgrown; and I confess that to find my humble self promoted from my native wilderness to be actually for the time an official here, and transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious names, carries with it a sense of dreamland quite as much as of reality.

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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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Sula

Sula

Toni Morrison

5.0 (3)

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.

#330
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Hawaii

Hawaii

James A. Michener

5.0 (1)

Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others.

#311
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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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Jayber Crow

Jayber Crow

Wendell Berry

5.0 (1)

I never put up a barber pole or a sign or even gave my shop a name.

#576
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The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

3.56 (15)

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

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Gilead

Gilead

Marilynne Robinson

4.0 (3)

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

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A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

5.0 (2)

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat.

#345
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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.

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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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Absalom, Absalom!

Absalom, Absalom!

William Faulkner

3.0 (5)

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---

#216
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Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

4.67 (3)

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.

#233
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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 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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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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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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Midnight's Children

Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie

4.22 (9)

I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time.

#150
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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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Housekeeping

Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

3.75 (4)

My name is Ruth.

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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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