Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades... (more)

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)

by Truman Capote

Contains: Breakfast at Tiffany's House of Flowers A Diamond Guitar A Christmas Memory

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson, on the relationship of art and obscenity, and on the shape of music, film, and media generally, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. Reedited by Burroughs scholar Barry Miles and Burroughs's... (more)

The Beautiful and Damned

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

First published in 1922, The Beautiful and the Damned followed Fitzgerald's impeccable debut, This Side of Paradise, thus securing his place in the tradition of great American novelists. Embellished with the author's lyrical prose, here is the story of Harvard-educated, aspiring aeshete Anthony Patch and his beautiful wife, Gloria. As they await the inheritance of his grandfather's fortune, their reckless... (more)

Last Exit to Brooklyn

by Jr. Selby, Hubert, Selby Hubert

An unforgettable cast of characters inhabits the housing projects, bars and streets of Brooklyn: Georgette, a hopelessly romantic and tormented transvestite; Vinnie, a disaffected and volatile youth who has never been on the right side of the law; Tralala, who can find no escape from her loveless existence; and, Harry, a power-hungry strike leader with a fatal secret. Living on the edge, always walking on the wild... (more)

The Man with the Golden Arm (50th anniv.)

The Man with the Golden Arm (50th anniv.)

by Nelson Algren

Seven Stories Press is proud to release the first critical edition of Nelson Algren's masterpiece on the 50th anniversary of its publication in November 1949. Considered Algren's finest work, The Man with the Golden Arm recounts one man's self-destruction in Chicago's Polish ghetto. The novel's protagonist, Frankie Machine, remains a tragic American hero half a century after Algren created this gritty and... (more)

A Walk on the Wild Side.

by Nelson Algren

With its depictions of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, A Walk in the Wild Side has found a place in the imaginations of all generations since it first appeared. As Algren admitted, the book "wasn't written until long after it had been walked . . . I found my way to the streets on the other side of the Southern Pacific... (more)

Myra Sims

by Janis Owens

Admirers of Owens's first novel, My Brother Michael, may be disappointed with her attempts to retell the same story, this time from the eponymous Myra Sims's point of view. (Myra's brother-in law, Gabriel Catt, narrated the previous book, an account of his unquenchable love for the woman who became his brother's wife.) This version, again an affecting tale of incest, adultery and hard-won love among the lowborn... (more)

Play It As It LaysJoan Didion

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: american modern classics

Play It As It Lays: A Novel

by Joan Didion

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library)

by Truman Capote

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

by William S. Burroughs

The Beautiful and Damned

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Last Exit to Brooklyn

by Jr. Selby, Hubert, Selby Hubert

The Man with the Golden Arm (50th anniv.)

by Nelson Algren

A Walk on the Wild Side.

by Nelson Algren

Myra Sims

by Janis Owens

Play It As It Lays

by Joan Didion