Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

Comic complications ensue when an intruder unleashes the primitive passions long subdued by London intellectuals who play at the conventions of love set by a society devoid of emotion.

A fiftieth anniversary edition of the famous novel that inspired the film tells the story of Zorba, a philosophizing, larger-than-life mine owner who confronts life with exuberance and wit. Reprint. 10,000 first printing. NYT.

Dirk Gently: Book 2

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

by Douglas Adams

Sequel to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. A passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport goes up in a ball of flame and Dirk Gently becomes very inquisitive.

Dirk Gently: Book 1

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

by Douglas Adams

There is a long tradition of Great Detectives, and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. But his search for a missing cat uncovers a ghost, a time traveler, AND the devastating secret of humankind! Detective Gently's bill for saving the human race from extinction: NO CHARGE.

Men at Arms (Sword of honour)

by Evelyn Waugh

Guy Crouchback begins his career as an officer in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. Despite his high spirits and chivalry, he sees only the trimmings and none of the action. His idealism undaunted, Guy finds himself in West Africa and, in his first campaign, manages to blot his copybook.

A Pale View of Hills (Vintage International)

A Pale View of Hills (Vintage International)

by Kazuo Ishiguro

The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

by Yann Martel

Here are four unforgettable stories by the author of Life of Pi. Written earlier in Martel's career, these tales display that startling mix of dazzle and depth that have made Yann Martel an international phenomenon. Inventive in form and timeless in content, each story is moving and thought-provoking. A Canadian university student visiting Washington, D.C., experiences the Vietnam War through an intense musical... (more)

The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Donna Tartt

Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement—both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond... (more)

Ulysses

by Danis Rose, Hans Walter Gabler, Claus Melchior, Wolfhard Steppe, James Joyce, Jeri Johnson

This revised volume follows the complete unabridged text as corrected in 1961. Contains the original foreword by the author and the historic court ruling to remove the federal ban. It also contains page references to the first American edition of 1934.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by James Joyce

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man portrays Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, providing an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. At its center are questions of origin and source, authority and authorship, and the relationship of an artist to his family, culture, and race. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death

by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simulta

The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. A wonderful, wonderful book.

The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

"AN OLD-FASHIONED, BIG-HEARTED NOVEL . . . with its epic yearning caught in the 19th century, somewhere between Trollope and Twain . . . The rich detail makes for vintage Irving." --The Boston Sunday Globe "The Cider House Rules is filled with people to love and to feel for. . . . The characters in John Irving's novel break all the rules, and yet they remain noble and free-spirited. Victims of tragedy, violence,... (more)

Flesh And Blood

by Michael Cunningham

In Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham takes us on a masterful journey through four generations of the Stassos family as he examines the dynamics of a family struggling to "come of age" in the 20th century. In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl, and together they produce three children: Susan, an ambitious beauty, Billy, a brilliant... (more)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim

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)

The Unconsoled (Vintage International)

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Only the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day could have created this daring and stunningly inventive new novel. The Unconsoled gives readers what is at once a riveting psychological mystery, an acute satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public self has taken on a life of its own. "Ishiguro writes with his characteristic grace and off-beat pungency."--Los... (more)

The Water is Wide

by Pat Conroy

The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence–unless, somehow, they can learn a new life. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them,... (more)

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

The hilarious and tragic story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who feels passion only for the young "nymphet" Dolores Haze, whom he renames Lolita.

To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this story - a black man charged with raping a white girl in the Deep South of the 1930s. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a staple of American literature and has been made into a feature-length film of the same name.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: 20c

by Iris Murdoch

by Nikos Kazantzakis

by Douglas Adams

by Douglas Adams

by Evelyn Waugh

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Yann Martel

by Donna Tartt

by Danis Rose, Hans Walter Gabler, Claus Melchior, Wolfhard Steppe, James Joyce, Jeri Johnson

by James Joyce

Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death

by Kurt Vonnegut

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by John Irving

by Michael Cunningham

by Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim

by Michael Ondaatje

by Kazuo Ishiguro

by Pat Conroy

by Vladimir Nabokov

by Harper Lee