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TIME Magazine's All-Time 100 Novels
Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer the following titles from TIME Magazine's list of ALL-TIME 100 Novels. (Updated 4/28/2016) #adults
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A Handful of Dust, and Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh2 of Waugh's novels: the first a commentary on the well-mannered death struggles of the upper class; the second satirizes England's sacred cows
The Sot-Weed Factor
by John BarthThe Sot-Weed Factor is a 760 page historical novel written by the National Book Award winning author John Barth and first published in 1960.
The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem.
On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father's estate to roguish impostors; love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities.
A hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices, The Sot-Weed Factor has lasting relevance for readers of all times.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale HurstonJanie is an independent African American woman who grows up with a grandmother who is determined to keep her from the sexual and racial violence of her own past.
Janie's first marriage is filled with hard labor, so she runs off with Joe, a handsome and wealthy storekeeper.
Joe becomes mayor of the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, but Janie is still unfulfilled by her new relationship.
After Joe's death, she lives with another man who brings passion into her world, if not stability.
Soon tragedy strikes and Janie learns to face it head-on with optimism and strength.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
The Sheltering Sky
by Paul BowlesThe Sheltering Sky is a landmark of twentieth-century literature. In this intensely fascinating story, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans' incomprehension of alien cultures leads to the ultimate destruction of those cultures. A story about three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky explores the limits of humanity when it touches the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
The Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. SalingerThe Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen-year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.
Light in August
by William Faulkner"Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window." --William Faulkner Light in August, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner's most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn WaughA man's involvement with the family of his close friend, beginning when he was at University and continuing through his life. Set in England between the 2 world wars.
Neuromancer
by William GibsonTwenty years ago, it was as if someone turned on a light. The future blazed into existence with each deliberate word that William Gibson laid down. The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer didn't just explode onto the science fiction scene--it permeated into the collective consciousness, culture, science, and technology.Today, there is only one science fiction masterpiece to thank for the term "cyberpunk," for easing the way into the information age and Internet society. Neuromancer's virtual reality has become real. And yet, William Gibson's gritty, sophisticated vision still manages to inspire the minds that lead mankind ever further into the future.
Things Fall Apart
by Chinua AchebeTHINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria.
The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society.
The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.
These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.
THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 9-10 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
The Power and the Glory
by Graham GreeneA Mexican state has outlawed the Church and is killing off the priests. One priest escapes and is faced his sins and the choice between his vocation and safety.
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolfsweeping, lyrical, novel that moves brilliantly among the thoughts and feelings of the Ramsey family and their summer house guests.
The Sportswriter
by Richard FordAs a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people--men, mostly--who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. In the course of the Easter week in which Ford's moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with his spirits soaring.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Slaughterhouse Five or the Children’s Crusade
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great anti-war books.
Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.
Naked Lunch
by William S. BurroughsDelirious, nonlinear ravings of a junkie in hell. Also includes excerpts from the Boston trial where it was declared not obscene in 1966.
Tropic of Cancer
by Henry MillerAn American expatriate, Henry Miller, describes his life in France where he has a knack for drinking and meeting women but is poor.
American Pastoral
by Philip RothAmerican Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall - of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. Seymour "Swede" Levov - a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory - comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even the most private, well-intentioned citizen, it seems, gets to sidestep the sweep of history. With vigorous realism, Roth takes us back to the conflicts and violent transitions of the 1960s. This is a book about loving - and hating - America. It's a book about wanting to belong - and refusing to belong - to America. It sets the desire for an American pastoral - a respectable life of space, calm, order, optimism, and achievement - against the indigenous American Berserk.
The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William StyronThe &“magnificent&” Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times–bestselling novel about the preacher who led America&’s bloodiest slave revolt (The New York Times).The Confessions of Nat Turner is William Styron&’s complex and richly drawn imagining of Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia that led to the deaths of almost sixty men, women, and children. Published at the height of the civil rights movement, the novel draws upon the historical Nat Turner&’s confession to his attorney, made as he awaited execution in a Virginia jail. This powerful narrative, steeped in the brutal and tragic history of American slavery, reveals a Turner who is neither a hero nor a demon, but rather a man driven to exact vengeance for the centuries of injustice inflicted upon his people.Nat Turner is a galvanizing portrayal of the crushing institution of slavery, and Styron&’s deeply layered characterization is a stunning rendering of one man&’s violent struggle against oppression. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.
Snow Crash
by Neal StephensonOnly once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison -- a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cyber-sensibility to bring us the gigantic thriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Inc., but it the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous... you'll recognize it immediately.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else."
Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic.
With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935.
Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
Call It Sleep
by Henry RothA sensitive boy's growing up is one strand in a complex web of his parent's tense life, their immigrant strangeness in a new land.
Ubik
by Philip K. Dick"From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from."--Lev Grossman, TimeGlen Runciter runs a lucrative business--deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all."More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo."--Roberto Bolaño
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
by John Le CarréIn the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse--a desk job--Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service--with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants. Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.
Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award.
Loving, Living, Party Going
by Henry Green3 stories that explore British class distinctions through the medium of love, by one of the most admired writers of his time
Gone with the Wind
by Margaret MitchellSince its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel.Widely considered The Great American Novel, and often remembered for its epic film version, Gone With the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A superb piece of storytelling, it vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and Reconstruction. This is the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, who arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life. A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage, in the pages of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell brings to life the unforgettable characters that have captured readers for over seventy years.
Falconer
by John CheeverStunning and brutally powerful, Falconer tells the story of a man named Farragut, his crime and punishment, and his struggle to remain a man in a universe bent on beating him back into childhood. Only John Cheever could deliver these grand themes with the irony, unforced eloquence, and exhilarating humor that make Falconer such a triumphant work of the moral imagination.From the Trade Paperback edition.