Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met... (more)

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

The Last of the Mohicans

by James Fenimore Cooper, James Fenimore Cooper, Les Martin, N. C. Wyeth, Deanna McFadden

The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful... (more)

Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

A young boy flees from an orphanage to London, only to be captured by thieves.

Fathers and Sons

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

FATHERS AND SONS was the most closely studied of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev's works in the Soviet high school curriculum. An inadvertent political agenda favorite, juxtaposing two generations, "the fathers," or the fading aristocracy, and "the sons," or the new fresh blood of the middle class and the nihilists, the novel seemed a perfect vehicle for portraying the brewing unrest of the pre-revolutionary era, and... (more)

Anne of Green Gables: Book 3

Anne of the Island

by L. M. Montgomery, Caroline Parry

Third volume of the series in which Anne goes to college.

Anne of Green Gables: Book 4

Anne of Windy Poplars

by L. M. Montgomery

Anne Shirley has left Redmond College behind to begin a new job and a new chapter of her life away from Green Gables. Now she faces a new challenge: the Pringles. They're known as the royal family of Summerside - and they quickly let Anne know she is not the person they had wanted as principal of Summerside High School. But as she settles into the cozy tower room at Windy Poplars, Anne finds she has great allies... (more)

Anne of Green Gables: Book 5

Anne's House of Dreams

by L. M. Montgomery

Unpredictable Anne marries her true love, Gilbert, and continues with her adventures.

Anne of Green Gables: Book 6

Anne of Ingleside

by L. M. Montgomery

The continued saga of the now adult, Anne, mother of five children.

A Brief History of Time

From the Big Bang to Black Holes

by Stephen W. Hawking

A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, was a landmark volume in science writing and in world-wide acclaim and popularity, with more than 9 million copies in print globally. The original edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the ensuing years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic... (more)

Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression

Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression

by Brooke Shields

In her bestselling memoir, now in paperback, Brooke Shields shares with the world her deeply personal experience with postpartum depression When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter to the world, her joyful expectations were quickly followed by something unexpected -- a crippling depression. In what is sure to strike a chord with the millions of women who suffer from depression after childbirth,... (more)

Angela's Ashes

A Memoir

by Frank McCourt

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and... (more)

The Celestine Prophecy

An Adventure

by James Redfield

THE CELESTINE PROPHECY contains secrets that are currently changing our world. Drawing on the ancient wisdom found in a Peruvian manuscript, it tells you how to make connections between the events happening in your own life right now... and lets you see what is going to happen to you in years to come!A book that has been passed from hand to hand, from friend to friend, since it first appeared in small bookshops... (more)

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

The Booker Prize-winning novel, now a critically acclaimed major motion picture, starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Kristin Scott Thomas. With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the... (more)

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship

by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memior, Autobiography of a Face , she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth &... (more)

The Professor and the Madman

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

The Professor and the Madman , masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- and literary history. The compilation of the OED began in 1857, it was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led... (more)

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Hurston

One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God , is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie... (more)

Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess

Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess

by Fred Waitzkin

The fascinating story of Fred Waitzkin and his son Josh, from the moment six-year-old Josh first sits down at a chessboard until he wins the national championship. Now a feature film starring Ben Kingsley, Max Pomerenc, Joe Mantegna, and Larry Fishburne. (Penguin)

The Winter of Our Discontent

by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune, and his father's loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterizes success in every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery'.

Three Weeks With My Brother

by Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks

In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 37 and 38 respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas and Micah travel the globe, the intimate story of their family unfolds in the details of the untimely deaths of their parents and only sister. Against the backdrop of the... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: !slcl 1/22/2009

A Novel

by Sara Gruen

by Joan Didion

by James Fenimore Cooper, James Fenimore Cooper, Les Martin, N. C. Wyeth, Deanna McFadden

by Charles Dickens

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

by L. M. Montgomery, Caroline Parry

by L. M. Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

From the Big Bang to Black Holes

by Stephen W. Hawking

by Brooke Shields

A Memoir

by Frank McCourt

An Adventure

by James Redfield

by Michael Ondaatje

by Ann Patchett

A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

by Zora Hurston

by Fred Waitzkin

by John Steinbeck

by Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks