aListofBooks

Ultimate Best Books

rachelweber

rachelweber

Member since August 2013

118

Books Read

0

Reviews

0.0

Avg Rating

0

Day Streak

rachelweber's Reader Score

Check out their progress!

472
Total Points

0

On Your Wishlist

0 × 1 = 0 pts

118

Books Completed

118 × 4 = 472 pts

0

Reviews Written

0 × 6 = 0 pts

The Soft Machine

The Soft Machine

William S. Burroughs

2.0 (3)

I was working the hole with the Sailor and we did not bad fifteen cents on average night boosting the afternoons and short timing the dawn we made out from the land of the free but I was running out of veins . . .

#458
RANK
817
POINTS
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
RANK
17,053
POINTS
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
RANK
10,131
POINTS
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
RANK
45,169
POINTS
Women in Love

Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence

2.8 (5)

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.

#184
RANK
4,129
POINTS
Catch-22

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

4.06 (31)

It was love at first sight.

#31
RANK
18,918
POINTS
Neuromancer

Neuromancer

William Gibson

3.0 (5)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

#272
RANK
2,177
POINTS
Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

3.0 (8)

I am living at the Villa Borghese.

#201
RANK
3,557
POINTS
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
RANK
12,480
POINTS
Native Son

Native Son

Richard Wright

3.86 (7)

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

#141
RANK
5,225
POINTS
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
RANK
1,509
POINTS
Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

4.0 (29)

All this happened, more or less.

#34
RANK
16,774
POINTS
Libra

Libra

Don DeLillo

4.5 (2)

#512
RANK
566
POINTS
The Golden Notebook

The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

4.0 (4)

The two women were alone in the London flat.

#244
RANK
2,678
POINTS
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
RANK
4,152
POINTS
City of Glass

City of Glass

Paul Auster

3.0 (1)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

#419
RANK
1,035
POINTS
A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess

4.0 (20)

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

#48
RANK
13,157
POINTS
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.

#452
RANK
855
POINTS
In Memoriam to Identity

In Memoriam to Identity

Kathy Acker

3.0 (1)

#617
RANK
255
POINTS
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
RANK
1,308
POINTS
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
RANK
37,182
POINTS
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
RANK
19,858
POINTS
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
RANK
3,574
POINTS
Dracula

Dracula

Bram Stoker

4.33 (18)

#99
RANK
8,420
POINTS
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
RANK
15,547
POINTS
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
RANK
4,584
POINTS
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
RANK
33,707
POINTS
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
RANK
32,703
POINTS
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
RANK
3,663
POINTS
From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity

James Jones

5.0 (2)

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

#306
RANK
1,887
POINTS
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
RANK
42,962
POINTS
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
RANK
29,610
POINTS
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
RANK
30,375
POINTS
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
RANK
22,158
POINTS
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
RANK
4,535
POINTS
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
RANK
17,058
POINTS
The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp

John Irving

3.82 (11)

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.

#110
RANK
7,457
POINTS
The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

4.14 (7)

Howard Roark laughed.

#151
RANK
4,904
POINTS
Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

3.25 (8)

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

#127
RANK
6,304
POINTS
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
RANK
7,382
POINTS
Jazz

Jazz

Toni Morrison

3.25 (4)

Sth, I know that woman.

#339
RANK
1,630
POINTS
The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe

4.33 (3)

"And then say what?" (Prologue)At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor ... twelve-foot ceilings ... two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help ... Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund.

#248
RANK
2,614
POINTS
Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut

3.86 (7)

Call me Jonah.

#129
RANK
5,979
POINTS
Rebecca

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

4.31 (13)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

#83
RANK
9,654
POINTS
Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch

William S. Burroughs

2.83 (6)

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil-doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square station, vault and turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train.

#271
RANK
2,191
POINTS
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
RANK
2,769
POINTS
Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

3.53 (15)

"Who is John Galt?"

#147
RANK
5,051
POINTS
Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run

John Updike

4.25 (4)

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

#221
RANK
3,113
POINTS
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
RANK
13,563
POINTS
The Second Sex

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir

4.75 (4)

Woman?

#309
RANK
1,853
POINTS
Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

4.27 (11)

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir ESTRAGON: (giving up again) Nothing to be done.

#119
RANK
6,904
POINTS
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.

#298
RANK
1,937
POINTS
The Blue Lotus

The Blue Lotus

Hergé

3.25 (4)

#400
RANK
1,181
POINTS
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
RANK
22,458
POINTS
#399
RANK
1,173
POINTS
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
RANK
2,784
POINTS
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
RANK
2,577
POINTS
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
RANK
3,802
POINTS
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
RANK
24,613
POINTS
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.

#292
RANK
1,954
POINTS
The BFG

The BFG

Roald Dahl

4.0 (12)

Sophie couldn't sleep. A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right onto her pillow.

#89
RANK
9,332
POINTS
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
RANK
11,520
POINTS
The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown

3.15 (20)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

#37
RANK
15,254
POINTS
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.

#117
RANK
7,094
POINTS
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
RANK
12,306
POINTS
The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

3.93 (15)

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

#58
RANK
12,156
POINTS
Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.35 (17)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

#61
RANK
11,537
POINTS
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
RANK
7,991
POINTS
The Secret History

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

4.25 (8)

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. (Prologue)Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

#254
RANK
2,411
POINTS
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
RANK
8,324
POINTS
The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

4.0 (8)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

#81
RANK
9,888
POINTS
Possession

Possession

A.S. Byatt

3.67 (6)

The book was thick and black and covered with dust.

#247
RANK
2,618
POINTS
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
RANK
13,287
POINTS
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
RANK
7,270
POINTS
A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

4.0 (4)

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.Perhaps the best way to introduce this novel-which on my third reading of it astounds me even more than the first-is to tell of my first encounter with it. (Foreword)

#179
RANK
4,189
POINTS
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
RANK
19,480
POINTS
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Anne Tyler

4.5 (2)

While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her.

#392
RANK
1,247
POINTS
London Fields

London Fields

Martin Amis

4.0 (2)

This is a true story but I can't believe it's really happening.

#473
RANK
729
POINTS
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

3.67 (9)

La idea del eterno retorno es misteriosa y con ella Nietzsche dejó perplejo a los demás filósofos...The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?Die Ewige Wiederkehr ist ein geheimnisvoller Gedanke, und Nietzsche hat damit manchen Philosophen in Verlegenheit gebracht: alles wird sich irgendwann so wiederholen, wie man es schon einmal erlebt hat, und auch diese Wiederholung wird sich unendlich wiederholen!

#142
RANK
5,224
POINTS
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.

#280
RANK
2,088
POINTS
Matilda

Matilda

Roald Dahl

4.62 (13)

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers.

#85
RANK
9,558
POINTS
Gormenghast

Gormenghast

Mervyn Peake

4.0 (3)

Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other -- other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is <i>child</i>.

#414
RANK
1,045
POINTS
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
RANK
4,416
POINTS
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Jung Chang

4.0 (4)

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China.

#279
RANK
2,102
POINTS
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
RANK
12,961
POINTS
In Search of Lost Time

In Search of Lost Time

Marcel Proust

4.0 (7)

For a long time, I would go to bed early. [Fr., Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure.]

#209
RANK
3,294
POINTS
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
RANK
1,337
POINTS
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
RANK
9,462
POINTS
High Fidelity

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby

3.0 (3)

My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:<br>1) Alison Ashworth<br>2) Penny Hardwick<br>3) Jackie Allen<br>4) Charlie Nicholson<br>5) Sarah Kendrew.

#237
RANK
2,812
POINTS
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
RANK
14,665
POINTS
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
RANK
6,503
POINTS
#358
RANK
1,512
POINTS
Silent Spring

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson

5.0 (2)

In a letter written in January 1958, Olga Owens Huckins told me of her own bitter experience of a small world made lifeless, and so brought my attention sharply back to a problem with which I had long been concerned. (Acknowledgments)There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. (1. A Fable for Tomorrow)

#350
RANK
1,543
POINTS
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
RANK
1,780
POINTS
Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

4.09 (23)

It was a pleasure to burn.

#42
RANK
13,953
POINTS
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
RANK
5,148
POINTS
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
RANK
13,447
POINTS
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
RANK
1,705
POINTS
Rubyfruit Jungle

Rubyfruit Jungle

Rita Mae Brown

4.0 (3)

No one remembers her beginnings.

#440
RANK
958
POINTS
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
RANK
4,792
POINTS
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
RANK
10,562
POINTS
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
RANK
5,229
POINTS
A Wizard of Earthsea

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin

4.17 (6)

The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.

#251
RANK
2,564
POINTS
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Richard Fariña

4.0 (1)

To Athené then.

#517
RANK
540
POINTS
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
RANK
1,607
POINTS
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
RANK
8,097
POINTS
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
RANK
9,838
POINTS
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
RANK
14,528
POINTS
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
RANK
7,686
POINTS
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
RANK
11,086
POINTS
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
RANK
11,072
POINTS
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
RANK
10,859
POINTS
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
RANK
35,607
POINTS
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
RANK
23,690
POINTS
Brave New World

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

4.07 (30)

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

#19
RANK
22,926
POINTS
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson

3.11 (9)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming, 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'

#187
RANK
4,067
POINTS
Housekeeping

Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

3.75 (4)

My name is Ruth.

#334
RANK
1,698
POINTS
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
RANK
26,611
POINTS

2025 Reading Goal

0/50

Books Read

50 books to go!