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noblsbuw85

noblsbuw85

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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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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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Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

3.0 (8)

I am living at the Villa Borghese.

#201
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Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

3.5 (6)

See the child.

#361
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Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

4.0 (29)

All this happened, more or less.

#34
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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 Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.56 (9)

Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his tragic and obscure death, which happened just thirteen years ago, and of which I shall speak in its proper place. (Garnett, 1912)Aleksei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner of our district, extremely well known in his time (and to this day still remembered in these parts) on account of his violent and mysterious death exactly thirteen years ago, the circumstances of which I shall relate in due course. (Avsey 1994)Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Garnett, Great Books, 1952)Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. (Pevear/Volokhonsky, 1990)

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Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

3.18 (11)

Nous étions à l'Etude, quand le Proviseur entra suivi d'un "nouveau" habillé en bourgeois et d'un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre.We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk.We were at prep, when the Head came in, followed by a new boy not in uniform and a school-servant carrying a big desk.We were at prep when the Headmaster came in, followed by a 'new boy' not wearing school uniform, and by a school servant carrying a large desk.We were in class when the head master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.

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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.

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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.

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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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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)

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Dracula

Dracula

Bram Stoker

4.33 (18)

#99
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The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.29 (17)

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a “Penang lawyer.” Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. “To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,” was engraved upon it, with the date “1884.” It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry—dignified, solid, and reassuring.

#60
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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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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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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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The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent

Joseph Conrad

3.67 (3)

Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr. Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.

#388
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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 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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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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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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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 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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Rebecca

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

4.31 (13)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

#83
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

4.32 (28)

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

#30
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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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O Pioneers!

O Pioneers!

Willa Cather

4.0 (4)

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.

#353
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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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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

5.0 (1)

How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago?

#259
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The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

4.45 (11)

One hot spring evening, just as the sun was going down, two men appeared at Patriarch’s Ponds.At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch’s Ponds.Однажды весною, в час небывало жаркого заката, в Москве, на Патриаршихbrпрудах, появились два гражданина.Op een broeihete lentedag daagden omtrent zonsondergang twee burgers op in het park rond de Patriarchvijver.

#214
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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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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.

#71
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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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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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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

4.42 (12)

To Sherlock Holmes she is always ithe/i woman.

#113
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton

4.0 (8)

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering.

#152
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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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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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Othello

Othello

William Shakespeare

4.43 (6)

Never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

#97
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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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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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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 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 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.

#90
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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.

#293
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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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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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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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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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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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2025 Reading Goal

72/50

Books Read

Goal achieved! 🎉