THINGS FALL APART

by Chinua Achebe



I was about ten chapters into Things Fall Apart when it occurred to me. I was enjoying the book, but I felt like I was missing some serious points. The sparse writing had temporarily lulled me into skimming the surface. I hopped on Google and found myself a fabulous study guide that supplied questions to ponder as I continued reading and a resource website that explored Post-Colonial Literature from various parts of the world. Suddenly I was reading a book that went from "quaint" to "powerful".

On the off chance that it’s not completely obvious, I lack a college education in literature. While I often am tempted to remedy that, I am also acutely aware that years of required reading being laid out for me would probably not produce the desired effect, because, quite frankly, I want to read what I want to read when I want to read it. Therefore, I am doing my best to educate myself while indulging in my wide-ranging tastes. Hence, the occasional forays into the world of online study tools. In this case, I was extremely pleased that I did. I think that I would have picked up on more of the themes once I had gotten into the coming of the missionaries, but I’m not sure I would have fully appreciated the entire first section of the book where Achebe describes many of the intricacies of tribal life. I ended up becoming so engrossed that I immediately went out and purchased the two books about the main character’s descendants, Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease, which I plan on reading right away.

Ultimately, I had a hard time drumming up a lot of sympathy for Okonkwo, the main character. Even in the light of his own culture he was a jerk. But I did understand his feelings at the end. And I felt terrible for the Ibo people as their world began changing before their eyes. While the Ibo traditions look harsh and primitive to Western sensibilities, it worked for them and had beauty and nobility despite its flaws. While I have no desire to live in a tribal culture, I find myself envying certain aspects of a simpler life. And every time I read about things like this coming of the missionaries or the displacement of the Native Americans and the like, I always think to myself, “And what makes our way of life so much better? Why do we think we are so superior?” Granted, leaving babies out in the woods to die because of superstitious beliefs is abhorrent on every level, but why do we feel the need to wipe out every aspect of life that doesn’t look like ours? And as I sit in my mid-western suburban home pondering these questions, American troops sit in Iraq. I’m not getting political here. This is a book blog. I’m just saying there’s a lot to think about.

Lezlie

What I've Learned So Far . . .

I'm almost to the 3 month mark of being a blogger. I've been having so much fun that it seems like much longer! The Challenges have been a huge draw for me, and as I looked over my spreadsheet of titles I've committed to and thought about all the great books I've discovered since I wrote up my lists, I started to think my lesson so far had been, "Never make your year's reading plan in January." Not so, my friends!! Lucky me! With the exception of the To Be Read Challenge, all the lists can be altered at will! Oh, glorious day! (I know, I know. The Challenges are not meant to be taken that seriously, but once I've set myself some goals I can be real bull-headed about changing them. Not always a good thing. And I like to follow the rules.)

It took some doing, because I cross-challenged with a lot of books, but some changes were made to accommodate my literary ADD. I'm sorry to say that Far From The Maddening Crowd and Wuthering Heights lost their spots unless I read faster than I think I can. I have a few "Undetermined" spots they still may fill, but they might see the TBR Challenge next year, where I can't remove them again. :-) But in their place are some interesting reads I couldn't pass up. I've added:

-- Finn by Jon Clinch, because it's about Huck's father and I want to read it right after Huck Finn

-- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz because I want to read Was by Geoff Ryman (which I've also added), which is based on Oz

-- Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe, because I'm reading Things Fall Apart right now, and I really want to read more by him

I think I made a few more adjustments also, but those were the ones I was the most excited about. I'm re-energized! My new lesson: "Challenge lists are not written in stone. Be flexible!"

Happy Reading, Everyone!
Lezlie

Booking Through Thursday

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?


Those things will definitely have an impact on my browsing. I'd rather have a new book than an old or used one. I am nearly neurotic about the condition of my personal collection. I closely examine copies I'm thinking about buying for nicks and scratches and bends. I prefer trade paperbacks to hardcovers or mass market paperbacks. I pick up books with interesting-looking covers. I'll read the backs of books with covers I think are ugly just out of curiosity. But as for affecting my actual reading enjoyment, it doesn't change a thing. My final opinion of a book rests with what is written on the pages, corners bent or not.


Play along with Booking Through Thursday here.

Lezlie

Short Stories

I've never been much of a short story reader, but for a long time I have wanted to learn more about them and to develop an appreciation. I joined the Short Story Challenge just for that purpose. It provided a reason for me to interrupt my steady flow of novels for brief moments and begin my short story education. The couple that I've read so far, I've really enjoyed and would like to share them with those of you who have read the reviews and would like to read the stories for yourself. Therefore, I have added links to online texts of the two stories I have reviewed so far and will continue to do so for those that are available. If you've already read my reviews, feel free to come back and read the stories themselves and let me know what you thought of them! Here are links back to the original two for your convenience:

"Battle Royal" by Ralph Ellison
"Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
Lezlie

MISS BRILL

by Katherine Mansfield

What is it about some short stories that they can put you in your place and make you feel like a complete heel without ever directly pointing a finger? "Miss Brill" is a three page vignette of a woman people-watching at a public band performance in a park. She goes there every week and enjoys the miniature "performances" unfolding around her, listening in on snippets of the lives of others, smiling and envisioning wonderful things for those she sees. We've all done that. And we've all passed our snarky little judgments on those we've deemed unworthy for no reason other than we didn't like the way they looked. But guess what? Life is not a private performance. The others we're watching are watching us, too. How many kind-hearted Miss Brill's would I have made cry if they could have heard my thoughtless remarks?

I closed the book on this gorgeous story feeling thoroughly chastised. Once again I am reminded of all the work I have ahead of me if I really want to be the kind of person I would admire.

Lezlie

Read the story for free on line! Click here.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

by Oscar Wilde

"What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive."

I thought it would be a bit unnerving to read this book as I pass into the early stages of middle age. I see my hair slowly graying, my skin beginning to loosen ever so slightly. My eyes are not as sharp as they once were and my knees and ankles pop. And I am surrounded by a society that worships youth and beauty. What would I give to the stop the decaying hands of time and stay forever young?

Those were my thoughts as I began the novel. The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of those books that has been in my consciousness for so long that I thought I knew what it was about. How wrong I was! No devil shows up to bargain for Dorian’s soul in exchange for immortality. Dorian’s wish to remain forever young turns out to be merely a passing whim stated out loud then all but forgotten. But something or someone heard, and his eternal youth becomes a beautiful mask to polite society while his originally somewhat naive soul plunges into duplicitous immorality, and the mutating painting becomes a constant reminder of the ugliness beneath the flawless skin.

There is so much going on, so many messages in this book that it is difficult to choose a single aspect to spotlight for a short review. Because most of Dorian’s debaucheries are never explicitly stated, each individual will most likely see a different monster in this tale that is still so relevant today in a society where image seems to be everything. Said Wilde himself, "Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray’s sins are, no one knows. He who finds them has brought them."

Lezlie

Booking Through Thursday

You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?

(Obviously, there can be more than one answer, here–a book with a cliff-hanger is going to engender different reactions than a serene, stand-alone, but you get the idea!)


I think my answer is always the same: Dig right in to the next one!! Just like most of us, I always have too many I want to read and not enough time to read them. And with all these Challenges I've discovered, there's no time to waste! :-)

If you'd like to play along with Booking Through Thursday, click here.

Happy Spring, Everyone! It's finally here!!!
Lezlie

New Project In The Works. . .

Hi, Everyone!

I'm hard at work developing a new, fun and educational reading project. I posted about my U.S. Presidents Reading Project, and a few people had expressed an interest in joining in and wondered if I was going to host an "official" project. I mulled it over, and I've decided to go ahead and take the plunge! I'm working on the blog now. It will be a project in which participants read at least one non-fiction book about each President, taking as long as they would like to do so. I would like the blog to act as a resource for everyone who would like to participate. There will be links to each participant's site, if they so choose, pages for each President and book suggestions for each with convenient links to Amazon for more information. There will be open comments where participants can review the books they've read, leave links to the reviews on their own sites, and leave additional suggestions for books. There will even be a link to the White House website where readers can do some additional exploration. I'm thrilled with the way it is developing and hoping to officially open the project for participation in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know. I can't wait to get it all going! Unfortunately, this is also causing other wild ideas. World Leaders Reading Project, anyone? :-)

Lezlie

CHRIST THE LORD: THE ROAD TO CANA

by Anne Rice



Let it be understood right from the outset that anything I say in this review is not meant as an attack or even an insult to Anne Rice as an author or a person, nor to Christians, Christianity or anyone or anything else. These words are merely my honest feelings about a book I read by an author I happen to like a lot and that just happens to have Jesus as the main character.

Considering my disappointment with Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle, and the first book in this series, Christ The Lord, I’m not certain why I continue to read new Anne Rice books. I think it’s similar to when you know it’s time to end a relationship that no longer brings either of you joy, but you’re not exactly unhappy and you’ve been together for sooooo long . . . . And you’re just certain that things will go back to the way they used to be and feel the way it used to feel. I just don’t know. There are books by Anne that have an honored place on my bookshelves: Interview With The Vampire, Pandora, Blood & Gold, The Mummy. After so much darkness and violence, I respect Anne’s decision to follow her faith and write the story of Jesus. I just wish I liked it more.

The writing is pure Anne Rice, flowery and dramatic and beautiful. But I find the story being unfurled dull and uninspiring and the characters don’t grab me. None of them make me want to see into their minds and souls. And the one mind you do want to see into feels too limited. I think what bothers me the most is this: If a person is going to write the story of Jesus, there should be more to it than what I can get directly out of The Bible. Especially considering the story is told in first person. Jesus is telling me his story himself, and I don’t feel I know him any better than if I just sat down and read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I’m not sure what that says about me, when Jesus doesn’t move me at all, but I’m guessing there is more than one brick already paving my way to hell. It is probably not fair to Anne or this book, but the fact is that I’m longing for the early days, to once again fall under a spell as beguiling as that cast by Lestat and Louis and Armand and Marius. And, with all due respect to Anne Rice and Our Lord, Jesus just isn’t doing it for me. (Yup. That would be the sound of the laying of another brick . . .)

Lezlie

Anne Rice books I loved:

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

by Kenneth Grahame



If this is not the most adorable book on the planet, it has got to be in the top two or three. It just has to be! Maybe my reading has been too grim and serious lately, but The Wind In The Willows put a smile on my face and a spring in my step. What fun I had speeding with Toad in his motorcar, lazily floating the river with Rat and Mole, and listening to the wise words of Badger. If I had kids, I’d read this to them every night!!

One of my favorite episodes was when Mole and Rat rescue Otter’s lost son. During their adventure, they encounter the god Pan, who gives them the Gift of Forgetfulness. At first I wondered why forgetfulness would be considered a gift. Upon further reflection, I became a believer. When something really awful happens to you, it is the Gift of Forgetfulness, in whole or in part, that allows you to eventually carry on. Mothers forget how painful childbirth was, those who have lost a loved one eventually forget some of the hurt but not the person. We even sometimes forget things that were stunningly wonderful and that allows us to continue to be happy in our ordinarily non-exciting lives. Which, in turn, allows us to re-experience that feeling of great joy when something extraordinary again happens. If we continually dwelt in great ecstasy or great sorrow, the beautiful range of emotions would be lost. The Gift of Forgetfulness is a key to the Gift of Living.

Enough waxing poetic. I’m going to go find Mole and Rat and have an adventure! :-)

Lezlie

THE QUEEN'S SECRET

by Jean Plaidy



When it comes to Jean Plaidy, there are times I think I could write just two all-purpose reviews with blanks to fill in for names and places – one for her books that focus more on history and one for her books that focus more on relationships – for that is how the books feel sometimes. One or the other, mostly the same, change the details. But that would be greatly disrespecting the enormous corpus this gifted and prolific author has produced, and it would definitely rob the books of their due. The truth of the matter is while few of them are works that I would deem outstanding, I can always count on Jean Plaidy for a fast, informative and pleasing read. In short, she is a writer I turn to when I want a book I know I will enjoy.

If one is reading the "Queens of England" series in historical order, The Queen’s Secret is the second of twelve volumes. (The first is The Courts of Love.) It is the story of Katherine of Valois, mother of the Tudor dynasty. This is one of the Plaidy books that is more relationship-focused than history-focused. The history you learn is mostly via conversations between characters rather than any actions that Katherine is involved in personally. Her direct story is of her marriage to Henry V and her later secret marriage to Owen Tudor. Therefore, when Joan of Arc makes her mark in France, we only get to see it from a great distance. I had hoped there would be a little more about that, but, on the other hand, it piqued my interest enough that I will most likely be scouting out more books about Joan in the future.

One thing I found very interesting in reading the first two volumes of this series was the marked difference in the feelings regarding family in the two queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine (in The Courts of Love) and Katherine of Valois. Katherine cares only for her children and family, and admires the lifestyle of the common people that allows them to raise their own children. Eleanor barely knew her children and didn’t care. Governing the country came first for her. While Eleanor’s attitude was considered normal for nobility in general and royalty in particular, I think many readers will relate more to Katherine’s pain at surrendering her child to the state and her need to have a real family.

Lezlie

More to come in the Queens of England series:

Non-Fiction Five Challenge

Just the other day I was mulling over my reading list for the year and thinking that I was woefully short of any non-fiction. And along comes Joy with another challenge! I told her she was bad for me, but I meant it in the most "thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me an excuse to join yet another challenge" way! :-)

Here are the rules:


1. Read 5 non-fiction books during the months of May - September, 2008

2. Read at least one non-fiction book that is different from your other choices (i.e.: 4 memoirs and 1 self-help)

3. All choices need not be posted and may change at any time.

I can do that! Right? What's another 5 books? And I need a change from fiction every now and then. I am posting my list of potential candidates and here it is:

***FINISHED***
Completed: 5/5 as of August 28, 2008

1. John Adams by David McCullough
2. His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
3. Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank
4. When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? by George Carlin
5. When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris


Alternates:

The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
Great Books by David Denby
How To Think About The Great Ideas by Mortimer Adler
The Spartans by Paul Cartledge
The Murder Trials by Cicero
Essays by Plutarch
The Persian Expedition by Xenophon
Can I Keep The Jersey by Paul Shirley

Yup. I've got to give serious consideration to hosting that "Finish Your Challenges From Last Year" Challenge next year . . . :-)

If you'd like to join in, get all the info you need here.

Good luck, Everyone!
Lezlie

Booking Through Thursday

How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:

__________ would have been a much better book if ______________________.



This is a hard one for me, as I am a very forgiving reader. (Which may not seem like an honest statement when I post my next couple of reviews. . .) Even books I'm not particularly fond of, I can usually find something I liked about it. I have a hard time boldly stating a book is just plain bad, because deep down there is a little voice always yelling back, "If you think you can do a better job, there's the computer. . ." :-) Disclaimer -- This is just a personal hang-up of mine, and not a statement regarding anyone else's views or their right to state them.

That being said, this question isn't really asking me to rip on a book. Merely state how a specific book could have been improved for me personally. Right? In that case, here goes:

The Watchman by Robert Crais would have been a much better book if the girl Joe Pike had fallen for had been a stronger, more intelligent woman rather than (as I stated in a previous post) a Paris Hilton-like Hollywood idiot. Joe is such a fabulous character and it was really disappointing to see him so attracted to a shallow, self-absorbed person, even if she does improve just a hair at the end. All through the Elvis Cole novels (where he originated from), if I was able to picture him hooking up with anybody at all it would have been some amazing, larger than life woman. I see him with Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), not one of The Girls Next Door.

There. That's my tirade. :-)

It's almost Friday!
Lezlie

Spring Cleaning

Hello, Everyone!

In an effort to keep things easily accessible and visually uncluttered (and just because I'm learning how to do new things on this blog. . .), I've made a few changes:

1. I've added a pic of our old tomcat, Jack. He was feeling left out. :-)

2. I've taken the list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" from the bottom of my main page and it is now available from the sidebar under "Ongoing Reading Projects".

3. In anticipation of doing reading challenges every year until I die, I've made new links by year on the sidebar. Under each year will be links to both my personal pages for that year's challenges and to the Official Challenge sites. (It currently looks a little lonely with only 2008 there.)

4. I've added "Reviews" links to the sidebar which will list and link all the reviews I've done on this site both by author and title. I've also made a separate one for short stories.

5. And last but not least, I've added links directly to Amazon.com of the books I talk about on this blog and a general Amazon.com search box on the sidebar. It's an easy way to see the descriptions of the books and what others had to say about them. Not to mention a convenient technique for further enlarging all of our TBR piles!

I think that's it for now. If any of you have any other suggestions to make this site more usable and/or entertaining, please let me know!!

Happy Reading!
Lezlie

IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN by Sarah Dunant

In the Company of the Courtesan follows celebrated Roman courtesan Fiammetta Bianchini from her escape of the sack of Rome in 1527 through her struggles and reemergence in the city of Vienna. Told from the point of view of her dwarf companion, Bucino, more sensitive readers may want to shy away from this one, as Fiammetta makes no apologies for what she is and the story is often told using the coarse language of her trade. Beautiful pictures are painted, highlighted with a generous sprinkling of vulgarity.

If that is not an issue for you, then you are in for an enchanting read! The book does not focus on her work as a courtesan. There are no detailed boudoir scenes. But we see her life around her profession, how she overcomes tragedy and physical disfigurements that would have ended the careers of the less stoic and how she and Bucino handle the frailties of success when it ultimately comes to them.

While most of the novel focuses on Fiammetta and Bucino and their trials and tribulations, it is an unexpected swerve toward the end that takes the book from "good read" to a higher level. Characters who until then have been interesting become extraordinary indeed, and a story that would have been fascinating but forgettable becomes one that you will not want to end.

Lezlie

By the same author:

Cormac McCarthy

Over on one of the many Yahoo discussions for book challenges, I was asked which of Cormac McCarthy's books I liked the best. I thought I would also share my answer here for those who may be wondering:

I have only read the three noted in my review [of The Orchard Keeper], and I would definitely say "The Road" was my favorite. It is hugely depressing, but I could not get that book out of my head. I still can't. I hesitate to recommend it in general because it is so emotionally disturbing and painful and that is not what people I know tend to seek out for entertainment, but for me personally, it remains one of the best books I have ever read if only for its ability to affect me so deeply.

McCarthy is not an easy author to read for many reasons, but he seems to always be an experience in some way or another. I think he is someone people either love or hate without a lot of middle ground. I read him like the proverbial train-wreck. I get mesmerized and just can't seem to look away. . .

If any of you decide to give McCarthy a try, please stop back and let me know what you read and your thoughts. Inquiring minds want to know!

Lezlie

Penguin Classics "Complete" List By Title

My intent is not necessarily to read this whole list, but to make a healthy dent in it. I'm fascinated with this list and intend to make many choices from it in the coming years. And I love the way my collection of them looks all lined up on the shelf!

I believe this list is from 2005. I got it from Wikipedia. I don't have a list generated by author because I'm lazy. :-)

Books I've read are in bold. If I've written a review, it is linked.


A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H |I | J | K | L |
M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z


A

Adam Bede by George Eliot
The 'Adventures' and 'Memoirs' of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Alexiad by Anna Comnena
Adolphe by Benjamin Constant
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Against Slavery by Various
Agapē Agape by William Gaddis
The Age of Alexander by Plutarch
The Age of Bede by Various
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
The Agricola and the Germania by Tacitus
The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Alfred the Great by Anonymous
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
The Ambassadors by Henry James
America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction by John Steinbeck
The American by Henry James
American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa
American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens
The Analects by Confucius
'Ancient Sorceries' and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
An Apology for Raymond Sebond by Michel de Montaigne
Apocalypse by D.H. Lawrence
Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman
The Aran Islands by J.M. Synge
Armadale by Wilkie Collins
Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes
As I Crossed the Bridge of Dreams by Sarashina
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
At Fault by Kate Chopin
The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle
Au Bonheur des Dames by Emile Zola
Aurora Leigh and Other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
The Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin
Autobiographies by Charles Darwin
The Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin
The Awkward Age by Henry James

[Back to top]

B

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Bacchae and Other Plays by Euripides
The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
Baudelaire in English by Charles Baudelaire
Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie by Kate Chopin
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina
The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Beowulf: A Glossed Text by Anonymous
Beowulf: A Prose Translation by Anonymous
Beowulf: A Verse Translation by Anonymous
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Bhagavad Gita by Anonymous
The Bible by Anonymous
Billiards at Half-past Nine by Heinrich Böll
Billy Budd and Other Stories by Herman Melville
The Birds and Other Plays by Aristophanes
The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac
The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas
The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan
The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos
The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe
The Bostonians by Henry James
Mutiny on the Bounty by William Bligh
Brand by Henrik Ibsen
The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Buddhist Scriptures by Anonymous
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
Burning Bright by John Steinbeck

[Back to top]

C

Caleb Williams by William Godwin
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft
The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London
The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
Candide by Francois Voltaire
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales: The First Fragment by Geoffrey Chaucer
Capital by Karl Marx
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Castle Rackrent and Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
Chance by Joseph Conrad
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches by Lucian
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens
Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
Chronicles by Jean Froissart
Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott
Chronicles of the Crusades by Jean de Joinville
The Cid, Cinna, The Theatrical Illusion by Pierre Corneille
The Cistercian World by Various
City of God by Augustine of Hippo
The Civil War by Julius Caesar
The Civil Wars by Appian
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Classical Literary Criticism by Various
Claudius the God by Robert Graves
Clotel, or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown
The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works by Anonymous
The Clown by Heinrich Boll
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Collected Poems by Arthur Rimbaud
Collected Stories by Isaac Babel
Collected Short Stories, Volume I by W. Somerset Maugham
Collected Short Stories, Volume II by W. Somerset Maugham
Collected Short Stories, Volume III by W. Somerset Maugham
Collected Short Stories, Volume IV by W. Somerset Maugham
Colonial American Travel Narratives by Various
The Comedians by Graham Greene
The Comedies: Adelphoe, Andria, Eunuchus, Heauton Timorumenos, Hecyra and Phormio by Terence
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Coming, Aphrodite! by Willa Cather
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English by Geza Vermes
The Complete English Poems by John Donne
The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
The Complete Fables by Aesop
The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald
The Complete Odes and Epodes by Horace
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
The Complete Plays by Christopher Marlowe
The Complete English Poems by George Herbert
The Complete Poems by William Blake
The Complete Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Complete Poems by James Weldon Johnson
The Complete Poems by John Keats
Complete Poems by D.H. Lawrence
The Complete Poems by Andrew Marvell
The Complete Poems by John Milton
Complete Poems by Marianne Moore
The Complete Poems by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Complete Saki by H.H. Munro
Complete Short Fiction by Oscar Wilde
Complete Short Stories by Graham Greene
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
Complete Writings by Phillis Wheatley
Con Men and Cut Purses by Lucy Moore
The Conference of the Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar
A Confession and Other Religious Writings by Leo Tolstoy
Confessions by Augustine of Hippo
The Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
The Confusions of Young Torless by Robert Musil
Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line by Charles W. Chesnutt
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar
The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Conversations of Socrates by Xenophon
Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Philip Sidney
The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac
Cousin Pons by Honoré de Balzac
The Crab-Flower Club by Cao Xueqin
Cranford and Cousin Phillis by Elizabeth Gaskell
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London
Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
Cymbeline by William Shakespeare

[Back to top]

D

Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic
The Damned by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Dangling Man by Saul Bellow
Daphnis and Chloe by Longus
De Anima by Aristotle
De Profundis and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Dean's December by Saul Bellow
Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of King Arthur by Anonymous
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
The Desert Fathers by Various
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
D.H. Lawrence and Italy by D.H. Lawrence
The Dhammapada by Anonymous
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume
The Diary of Lady Murasaki by Murasaki Shikibu
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol
The Digest of Roman Law by Justinian
Discourse on Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Discourses by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Distracted Preacher and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy
The Divine Comedy Volume I: Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy: Purgatory by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy Volume III: Paradise by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, Part 3: Paradise by Dante Alighieri
A Doll's House and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen
Domesday Book translated by Geoffrey Martin
Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope
Don Juan by Lord Byron
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Discourse on Method and Related Writings by René Descartes
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Dr. Wortle's School by Anthony Trollope
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Dreams in the Witch House by H. P. Lovecraft
The Drinking Den by Emile Zola
Dubliners by James Joyce
Duluth by Gore Vidal

[Back to top]

E

The Earliest English Poems by Various
Early American Drama by Various
Early American Writing by Various
Early Christian Writings by Various
Early Greek Philosophy by Various
The Early History of Rome by Titus Livy
Early Irish Myths and Sagas by Various
Early Plays by Eugene O'Neill
Early Poems by Robert Frost
Early Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Early Socratic Dialogues by Plato
Early Writings by Karl Marx
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
Egil's Saga by Anonymous
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt
Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard
Elective Affinities by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Electra and Other Plays by Sophocles
The Emigrants by Gilbert Imlay
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
Emma by Jane Austen
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
English Romantic Verse by Various
England Made Me by Graham Greene
The Enneads by Plotinus
The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings
The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous, prose translation by Nancy Sandars
The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous, verse translation by Andrew George
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
The Erotic Poems by Ovid
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
The Essays by Francis Bacon
Essays by Michel de Montaigne
Essays by Plutarch
Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer
Esther by Henry Adams
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
The Europeans by Henry James
The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
Evelina by Frances Burney
Exemplary Stories by Miguel de Cervantes
Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley
The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell

[Back to top]

F

Facundo by Domingo F. Sarmiento
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Fasti by Ovid
Father and Son by Edmund Gosse
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton
Felix Holt, the Radical by George Eliot
The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford
The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories by Henry James
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
First Love by Ivan Turgenev
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit
Five Plays by Thomas Middleton
The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
Flaubert in Egypt by Gustave Flaubert
Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Four Comedies by William Shakespeare
The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason
Four Histories by William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies by William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies and Octavia by Seneca
The Four Voyages by Christopher Columbus
The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird by D.H. Lawrence
Fragments by Heraclitus
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David
The Frogs and Other Plays by Aristophanes

[Back to top]

G

The Gambler, Bobok, A Nasty Story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos
The Georgics by Virgil
Ghosts and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen
The Gilded Age by Mark Twain
Gisli Sursson's Saga and The Saga of the People of Eyri by Martin Regal
God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson
The Gods Will Have Blood by Anatole France
The Golden Ass by Apuleius
The Golden Bough by James Frazer
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
The Golden Days by Cao Xueqin
The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War by Jaroslav Hasek
Gorgias by Plato
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan
The Grandissimes by George Washington Cable
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Greek Sophists by John Dillon
Grundrisse by Karl Marx
The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
The Guide by R.K. Narayan
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Gunnar's Daughter by Sigrid Undset
Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

[Back to top]

H

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Hand of Ethelberta by Thomas Hardy
A Harlot High and Low by Honoré de Balzac
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells
He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
The Heart of Midlothian by Walter Scott
Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw
Hedda Gabler and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part I by William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part II by William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part III by William Shakespeare
Henry VIII by William Shakespeare
The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre
Heracles and Other Plays by Euripides
Herland, The Yellow Wallpaper, and Selected Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
Heroides by Ovid
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Hesiod and Theognis by Hesiod and Theognis
Hindu Myths by Anonymous
Hippocratic Writings by Various
The History of Alexander by Quintus Curtius Rufus
The History of the Church by Eusebius
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe
The History of Mary Prince by Mary Prince
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
A History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours
A History of My Times by Xenophon
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
History of the Thirteen by Honoré de Balzac
The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The Histories by Herodotus
The Histories by Tacitus
Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev
Homeric Hymns by Homer
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt
The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories by Anonymous
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Hungry Hearts by Anzia Yezierska
The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll

[Back to top]

I

I, Claudius by Robert Graves
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
The Iliad by Homer
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
The Immoralist by Andre Gide
The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
In the Land of Time by Lord Dunsany
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust
In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings by Olaudah Equiano
Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
Italian Food by Elizabeth David
Italian Hours by Henry James
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott

[Back to top]

J

Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Japanese No Dramas by Various
Jazz Age Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus
The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious by Sigmund Freud
Joseph Andrews/Shamela by Henry Fielding
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
The Journals of Captain Cook by James Cook
Journals and Letters by Frances Burney
The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales by Gerald of Wales
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by Samuel Johnson
Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene
J R by William Gaddis
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Jugurthine War and The Conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

[Back to top]

K

Kenilworth by Walter Scott
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
King Harald's Saga by Snorri Sturluson
King John by William Shakespeare
King Lear by William Shakespeare
King Lear: The 1608 Quarto and 1623 Folio Texts by William Shakespeare
Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov
The Koran: With Parallel Arabic Text by Anonymous
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God by Anonymous
Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter II: The Wife by Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset

[Back to top]

L

The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France
La Bête Humaine by Emile Zola
La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon by Jane Austen
Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov
A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy
The Last Days of Socrates by Plato
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Last Word and Other Stories by Graham Greene
The Later Roman Empire by Ammianus Marcellinus
The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins
The Laws by Plato
The Laws of Manu by Anonymous
Laxdaela Saga by Anonymous
Lazarillo de Tormes by Anonymous and The Swindler by Francisco de Quevedo
Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume I by Thomas Malory
Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume II by Thomas Malory
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Peter Abelard
The Letters of John and Abigail Adams by Abigail Adams and John Adams
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh
Letters on England by Voltaire
Letters to Father by Suor Maria Celeste
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by E.T.A. Hoffmann
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
A Life in Letters by Anton Chekhov
A Life in Letters by Henry James
The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Life of St. Columba by Adomnan of Iona
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself by Teresa of Avila
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson
The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob by George Eliot
A Literary Review by Søren Kierkegaard
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Lives of the Artists: Volume I by Giorgio Vasari
Lives of the Artists: Volume II by Giorgio Vasari
Lives of the Later Caesars by Anonymous
The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
The Long Valley by John Steinbeck
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale by Owen Chase
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
The Lost World and Other Thrilling Tales by Arthur Conan Doyle
Love by Stendhal
Love Visions: The Book of the Duchess; The House of Fame; The Parliament of Birds; The Legend of Good Women by Geoffrey Chaucer
Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister by Aphra Behn
Loving/Living/Party Going by Henry Green
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings by Bret Harte
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Lysistrata and Other Plays by Aristophanes

[Back to top]

M

The Mabinogion by Anonymous
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
McTeague by Frank Norris
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
Makers of Rome by Plutarch
Maldoror and Poems by Lautreamont
Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan
The Man Within by Graham Greene
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
The Man-Eater of Malgudi by R.K. Narayan
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Marquise of O-- and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist
The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Martin Eden by Jack London
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
Mary, Maria, Matilda by Mary Wollstonecraft
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Master and Man and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
The Master Builder and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Maxims by La Rochefoucauld
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Medea and Other Plays by Euripides
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings by René Descartes
Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality by Various
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin
Memoirs by William Tecumseh Sherman
Mephisto by Klaus Mann
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
The Messiah by Gore Vidal
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Metaphysics by Aristotle
The Metaphysical Poets by Various
Micromegas and Other Short Fictions by Voltaire
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Minister's Wooing by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Misanthrope and Other Plays by Jean-Baptiste Moliere
The Miser and Other Plays by Jean-Baptiste Moliere
Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty by John W. De Forest
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
A Modern Instance by William Dean Howells
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Monkey's Wrench by Primo Levi
The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Mozart's Journey to Prague and a Selection of Poems by Eduard Morike
Mrs Craddock by W. Somerset Maugham
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

[Back to top]

N

The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
Nana by Emile Zola
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
The Narrative Poems by William Shakespeare
Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō
Nature and Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Nature of Gods by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A New-England Nun by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
A New-England Tale by Catharine Maria Sedgwick
New Science by Giambattista Vico
News from Nowhere and Other Writings by William Morris
The Nibelungenlied by Anonymous
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
A Nietzsche Reader by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
Nineteenth-Century American Poetry by Various
Njal's Saga by Anonymous
Noli Me Tangere by Jose Rizal
No Name by Wilkie Collins
North American Indians by George Catlin
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Northland Stories by Jack London
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Notes from Underground, The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Notes on the State of Virginia by William James
Notre-Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo
Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch

[Back to top]

O - Q

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
The Octopus by Frank Norris
The Odd Women by George Gissing
The Odyssey by Homer
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
Old Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
On the Good Life by Marcus Tullius Cicero
On Government by Marcus Tullius Cicero
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
On Love and Barley by Matsuo Bashō
On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius
On Painting by Leon Battista Alberti
On Revolution by Hannah Arendt
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
On to the Alamo by Richard Penn Smith
On War by Karl Von Clausewitz
Once There Was A War by John Steinbeck
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith
The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman
The Oresteia by Aeschylus
The Oresteian Trilogy by Aeschylus
Orient Express by Graham Greene
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Orkneyinga Saga by Anonymous
Orlando Furioso: Part I by Ludovico Ariosto
Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works by Aphra Behn
Othello by William Shakespeare
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Pan by Knut Hamsun
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
Paradise Lost by John Milton
A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant
Parzival by Wolfram Von Eschenbach
The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck
The Pathfinder by James Fenimore Cooper
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry by Various
The Penguin Book of French Poetry by Various
The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse by Various
The Penguin Book of Victorian Verse by Various
Pensees by Blaise Pascal
Pericles by William Shakespeare
Anabasis: A Persian Expedition by Xenophon
The Persian Letters by Montesquieu
Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII by Plato
Phedre by Jean Racine
Philosophical Dictionary by Francois Voltaire
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke
Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
The Physiology of Taste by Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities by Herman Melville
Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant
Pinocchio: The Tale of a Puppet by Carlo Collodi
The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper
The Pit by Frank Norris
The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays by J.M. Synge
Plays by Anton Chekhov
Plays and Fragments by Meander
Plays Pleasant by George Bernard Shaw
Plays Unpleasant by George Bernard Shaw
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, To That Which Is to Come by John Bunyan
Piers the Ploughman by William Langland
Plutarch on Sparta by Plutarch
The Poem of the Cid by Anonymous
Poems by Li Po
Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Poems and Prose by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poetics by Aristotle
The Politics by Aristotle
Poor Folk and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Portable Arthur Miller by Arthur Miller
The Portable Beat Reader by Various
The Portable Dante by Dante Alighieri
The Portable Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton
The Portable Faulkner by William Faulkner
The Portable Graham Greene by Graham Greene
The Portable Hannah Arendt by Hannah Arendt
The Portable Henry James by Henry James
The Portable John Adams by John Adams
The Portable Mark Twain by Mark Twain
The Portable Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
The Portable Sixties Reader by Various
The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader by Various
The Portable Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Pragmatism and Other Writings by William James
The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper
Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
The Princess Casamassima by Henry James
La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de Lafayette
Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues by George Berkeley
The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope
The Private Journal of William Reynolds by William Reynolds
The Professor by Charlotte Brontë
Prometheus Bound and Other Plays by Aeschylus
The Promised Land by Mary Antin
Protagoras and Meno by Plato
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved by Thomas Hardy
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
The Quest of the Holy Grail by Anonymous
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
The Quiet American by Graham Greene

[Back to top]

R

Raffles by E. W. Hornung
Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward by Horatio Alger, Jr.
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
The Ramayana by Anonymous
Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream by Denis Diderot
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories by Stephen Crane
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
Redburn by Herman Melville
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
Renaissance Women Poets by Isabella Whitney
The Republic by Plato
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich
Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Richard II (play) by William Shakespeare
Richard III (play) by William Shakespeare
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
The Rig Veda by Anonymous
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan
The Rise and Fall of Athens by Plutarch
The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius
The Rope and Other Plays by Plautus
Rob Roy by Walter Scott
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Roderick Hudson by Henry James
The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus by Cassius Dio
The Romance of Tristan by Beroul
Romantic Fairy Tales by Various
Rome and the Mediterranean by Titus Livy
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Romola by George Eliot
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
The Roots of Ayurveda by Various
Roughing It by Mark Twain
Roxana, Or The Fortunate Mistress by Daniel Defoe
The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam
R.U.R. by Karel Capek
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck

[Back to top]

S

The Saga of the Volsungs by Anonymous
Sagas of Warrior-Poets by Diana Whaley
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert
Satires and Epistles, Persius, Satires by Horace
The Satyricon and The Apocolocyntosis by Petronius and Seneca
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
The School for Scandal and Other Plays by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The Schreber Case by Sigmund Freud
The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
Sea and Sardinia by D.H. Lawrence
The Sebastopol Sketches by Leo Tolstoy
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History by Procopius
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson
Selected Journalism: 1850-1870 by Charles Dickens
Selected Letters by Marianne Moore
Selected Letters by Sevigne
Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova
Selected Poems by Charles Baudelaire
Selected Poems by Robert Browning
Selected Poems by Robert Burns
Selected Poems by Lord Byron
Selected Poems by John Clare
Selected Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Selected Poems by John Dryden
Selected Poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Selected Poems by Thomas Hardy
Selected Poems by Victor Hugo
Selected Poems by John Keats
Selected Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Selected Poems by Pierre Ronsard
Selected Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson
Selected Poems by Rabindranath Tagore
Selected Poems by Alfred Tennyson
Selected Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva
Selected Poems by William Wordsworth
Selected Poems and Fragments by Friedrich Holderlin
Selected Political Speeches by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Selected Short Stories by Honoré de Balzac
Selected Stories by E.M. Forster
Selected Stories by O. Henry
Selected Stories by Ring Lardner
Selected Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore
Selected Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Selected Tales by Henry James
Selected Tales and Sketches by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Selected Verse by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Selected Works by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Selected Writings by Thomas Aquinas
Selected Writings by Meister Eckhart
Selected Works by John Wilmot
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne
Seven Viking Romances by Various
The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
She by H. Rider Haggard
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de Las Casas
The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
The Shorter Poems by Edmund Spenser
Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Sidney's the Defence of Poesy and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism by Various
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu
Sixteen Satires by Juvenal
Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens
Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev
The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
The Song of Roland by Anonymous
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose by Oscar Wilde
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
South by Ernest Shackleton
Speaking of Siva by Anonymous
Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec
The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James
The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper
The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin
The Storm by Daniel Defoe
Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger
The Story of My Life by Giacomo Casanova
The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Studies in Classic American Literature by D.H. Lawrence
Studies on Hysteria by Sigmund Freud
Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell
Summer by Edith Wharton
Sunjata by Bamba Suso
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
Symposium by Plato

[Back to top]

T

Ta Hsueh and Chung Yung by Anonymous
The Táin by Anonymous, translated by Ciarán Carson
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights by Anonymous
Tales of Belkin and Other Prose Writings by Alexander Pushkin
Tales of Hoffmann by E.T.A. Hoffmann
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce
Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches by Mark Twain
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
A Texas Cowboy by Charles A. Siringo
Theaetetus by Plato
The Theban Plays by Sophocles
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft
The Third Man and The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski
The Thomas Paine Reader by Thomas Paine
Three Gothic Novels by Horace Walpole
Three Plays by August Strindberg
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
Three Plays for Puritans by George Bernard Shaw
Three Roman Plays by William Shakespeare
Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert
Timaeus and Critias by Plato
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare
To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck
To Jerusalem and Back by Saul Bellow
Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain
The Transformation and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
The Travels by Marco Polo
Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson
Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
The Treasure of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg
Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers by Henry James
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
Two Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard
Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy
Typhoon and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad

[Back to top]

U - Z

The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud
Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Under Fire by Henri Barbusse
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges
Unto the Last and Other Writings by John Ruskin
Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington
The Upanishads by Anonymous
Utilitarianism and Other Essays by John Stuart Mill
Utopia by Thomas More
The Valley of Fear and Selected Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
The Victim by Saul Bellow
Victory by Joseph Conrad
The Village of Stepanchikovo by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
The Vinland Sagas by Anonymous
The Virginian by Owen Wister
A Vocation and a Voice by Kate Chopin
Volpone and Other Plays by Ben Jonson
The Voyage of Argo by Apollonius of Rhodes
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
The War with Hannibal by Titus Livy
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895 by Anton Chekhov
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Washington Square by Henry James
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
Waverley by Walter Scott
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau
What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy
What Maisie Knew by Henry James
The Wild Ass's Skin by Honoré de Balzac
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
The Whithered Arm and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy
The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
The Wolfman and Other Cases by Sigmund Freud
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Women's Early American Historical Narratives by Various
Women's Indian Captivity Narratives by Various
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
A Year in Thoreau's Journal by Henry David Thoreau
Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell
Youth, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau

[Back to top]

THE ORCHARD KEEPER by Cormac McCarthy

I told J.C. the other day that my initial reaction to this book was, "Huh?" But that I had read 2 previous Cormac McCarthy books and was used to this feeling. I was sure it would all come together in the end. Well, I've finished the book and here is my review: Huh?

I like to think I am a relatively intelligent reader. But when I get to the end of a book and couldn't even begin to tell anyone what it was about, what happened or how it ended, I can't help but wonder if it was the book or was it just me. I can't honestly say I didn't like it at all. McCarthy's writing has a magic all its own that keeps you turning pages even as you think to yourself, "I'm not getting this at all . . ." But for some reason, this one left me completely blank.

I like Cormac McCarthy. The Road is still seared into my memory, and Child of God, involving one of the most disturbing characters I've ever encountered in my reading (a necrophiliac), was one of my oddest, creepiest literary experiences. I wouldn't run around recommending Child of God, but images of it stay with me like an accidental trip through a nightmarish circus freak show. I will read others by him in the future, and I will probably revisit this one someday to see if I can figure out what I missed. Or if I missed anything at all. And maybe that in itself is the point.

Lezlie