Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

by J. K. Rowling

The war against Voldemort is not going well; even the Muggles have been affected. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses. And yet . . . As with all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Harry receives some extraordinary help in Potions from the mysterious Half-Blood... (more)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter: Book 5

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

by J. K. Rowling

I say to you all, once again--in the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. So spoke Albus Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter’s fourth year at Hogwarts. But as Harry enters his fifth... (more)

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban

Harry Potter: Book 3

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban

by J. K. Rowling

test For most children, summer vacation is something to look forward to. But not for our 13-year-old hero, who's forced to spend his summers with an aunt, uncle, and cousin who detest him. The third book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series catapults into action when the young wizard "accidentally" causes the Dursleys' dreadful visitor Aunt Marge to inflate like a monstrous balloon and drift up to the... (more)

Harry Potter: Book 2

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

by J. K. Rowling

In one of the most hotly anticipated sequels in memory, J.K. Rowling takes up where she left with Harry's second year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Old friends and new torments abound, including a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girl's bathroom, an outrageously conceited professor, Gilderoy Lockheart, and a mysterious force that turns Hogwarts students to stone.

Harry Potter: Book 4

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal,... (more)

Cryptonomicon

by Neal Stephenson

With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that... (more)

Alan Turing: The Enigma

by Andrew Hodges

Alan Turing (1912 - 1954) was a British mathematician who made history: His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic... (more)

Sally Lockhart Trilogy: Book 1

The Ruby in the Smoke

by Philip Pullman

"In Dickensian fashion, Pullman tells the story of 16-year-old Sally Lockhart, who becomes involved in a deadly web of events as she searches for a mysterious ruby. The novel is a page turner, peopled with despicable hags, forthright heroes, and children living on the underbelly of 19th-century London. The story's events are exciting, with involved plotting. Settings and characterizations are exquisitely drawn.... (more)

The Difference Engine

by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling

With the computer age arriving a century ahead of its time--during the Industrial Revolution--politician's daughter Sybil, explorer and paleontologist Edward, and diplomat and spy Laurence race toward a rendezvous with history. Reprint. NYT.

What a Carve Up! (Essential.penguin S.)

by Jonathan Coe

'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' - "Guardian". Telling the stories of the wealthy Winshaw family, "What A Carve Up!" is a riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes.

Discworld: Book 1

The Colour of Magic (Discworld)

by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestsellers in England, where they have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen. The Color of Magic is Terry Pratchett's maiden voyage through the now-legendary land of Discworld. This is where it all begins--with the tourist Twoflower and his wizard guide,... (more)

Join Me

by Danny Wallace

On a lark, journalist Danny Wallace placed an ad in a small London paper that offered two simple words: "join me." What followed was astounding. From all over the world, thousands of replies poured in, effectively "joining" Danny-but in what, he had no idea. When "Joinees" began referring to him as "The Leader," Danny quickly understood one thing-he had just created a cult. Join Me quickly became a... (more)

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

by Stephen Fry

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. —Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write... (more)

The Closed Circle (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Closed Circle (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jonathan Coe

The characters of The Rotters’ Club –Jonathan Coe’s beloved novel of adolescent life in the 1970s–have bartered their innocence for the vengeance of middle age in this incisive portrait of Cool Britannia at the millennium.

The Accidental Woman

by Jonathan Coe

Indifferent by choice, indecisive by nature, Maria ploughs her way through fifteen years of womanhood, unable to see what all the fuss is about. Will she ever be able to direct the course of her own life, or will it end as it began - accidentally? Jonathan Coe's first novel, which introduced a wonderful new talent to English fiction.

A Touch of Love

by Jonathan Coe

Robin once had promise. Now he has an unfinished thesis in his drawer. Hidden away in his room in Coventry, he writes a sequence of short stories in four notebooks, each an oblique commentary on his circumstances. Then a comical misunderstanding in a public park lands him in serious trouble.

The Dwarves of Death

by Jonathan Coe

William's life is beset with frustration: his band turns his melodic songs into grotesque parodies of Status Quo, and cool Madelaine dangles out of reach. Things could hardly get worse, it seems - until he becomes the only witness to a bizarre murder. "A very clever, very funny book ...Brilliant" - "Sunday Times". "Like a Hitchcock movie on drugs ...a novel of considerable gusto and panache" - "Observer". "It's... (more)

X12 Novel 1

by Frank Skinner

Stand-up comic and cult TV series star Frank Skinner’s hilarious first novel combines wild fantasy with sudden bumps down to earth, in his unique style of outrageous sex comedy.

Powder

by Kevin Sampson

Liverpool -- 2002. Keva McCluskey is down and almost out. Despondent, embittered by the meteoric rise of a local rival, Sensira, he's close to quitting his dream -- of leading his own group, the Grams, to the acclaim and success it unquestionably deserves. But fortune starts to smile when the Grams get picked up by Guy de Bure, a hot young producer with a point to prove who is launching a new label. So begins the... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: 09/10 reading list

by J. K. Rowling

by J. K. Rowling

by J. K. Rowling

by J. K. Rowling

by J. K. Rowling

by Neal Stephenson

by Andrew Hodges

by Philip Pullman

by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling

by Jonathan Coe

by Terry Pratchett

by Danny Wallace

by Stephen Fry

by Jonathan Coe

by Jonathan Coe

by Jonathan Coe

by Jonathan Coe

by Frank Skinner

by Kevin Sampson

by Kevin Sampson