Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback. With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers. Atlas Shrugged is the astounding... (more)

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

Pride And Prejudice, the story of Mrs. Bennet's attempts to marry off her five daughters is one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household at Longbourn in Hertfordshire when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these—the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr.... (more)

Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously... (more)

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 Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray , by Oscar Wilde , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and... (more)

Practical English Usage

by Michael Swan

An excellent guide to the problem areas of English.

No Laughing Matter

by Joseph Heller

MEMOIR It all began one typical day in the life of Joe Heller. He was jogging four miles at a clip these days, working on his novel God Knows, coping with the complications of an unpleasant divorce, and pigging out once or twice a week on Chinese food with cronies like Mel Brooks, Mario Puzo, and his buddy of more than twenty years, Speed Vogel. He was feeling perfectly fine that day -- but within twenty-four... (more)

K-Pax

by Gene Brewer

His name is Prot. Nobody knows where he's from. And everyone wants to go there.Psychiatrist Gene Brewer doesn't have a diagnosis for the mysterious new patient who calls himself "prot" (rhymes with goat).But this strange and likeable man cannot be-as he claims-from the planet K-PAX.Or can he?Prot knows facts about space that are confounding the experts.He is soon revealing Dr. Brewer's own deepest pains and most... (more)

Detective John Rebus: Book 1

Knots and Crosses

by Ian Rankin

While investigating a series of gory killings of young, innocent girls, Edinburgh police detective John Rebus discovers his own ties to the killer and is brought up against his own memories. Reprint. AB. K.

The White Mountains

by John Christopher

35th Anniversary Editon with new Text and a New Preface by the Author! Long ago, the Tripods -- huge, three-legged machines -- descended upon Earth and took control. Now people unquestioningly accept the Tripods' power. They have no control over their thoughts or their lives. But for a brief time in each persson's life -- in childhood -- he is not a slave. For Will his time of freedom is about to end --... (more)

Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, Fourth Edition

Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society, Fourth Edition

by Peter Trudgill

This is a classic book on a fascinating subject. Peter Trudgill examines the close link between language and society and the many factors that influence the way we speak. These range from gender, environment, age, race, class, region and politics. Trudgill's book surveys languages and societies from all over the world drawing on examples from Afrikaans to Yiddish. He has added a fascinating chapter on the... (more)

Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell

by Aldous Huxley

Two classic complete books -- The Doors of Perception (originally published in 1954) and Heaven and Hell (originally published in 1956) -- in which Aldous Huxley, author of the bestselling Brave New World , explores, as only he can, the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. These two astounding essays are among the most profound studies of the effects of mind-expanding drugs... (more)

Tales of the Otori: Book 3

Brilliance of the Moon

by Lian Hearn

A beautiful, haunting evocation of the medieval Japan of Lian Hearn's imagination, this thrilling follow-up to Grass for His Pillow and Across the Nightingale Floor delves deeper into the complex loyalties that bind its characters from birth. Filled with adventure and surprising twists of plot and fortune, this final volume travels beyond the Three Countries, to the outside influences that threaten to intrude... (more)

Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America, The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster; And In Watermelon Sugar

Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America, The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster; And In Watermelon Sugar

by Richard Brautigan

A Brautigan omnibus, reissued in paperback in celebration of its twentieth anniversary, this one-volume edition includes three contemporary classics that embody the spirit of the 1960s.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

by Ammon Shea

An obsessive word lover’s account of reading the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover. “I’m reading the OED so you don’t have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on...” So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED . The word lover’s Mount Everest, the OED has... (more)

The Hidden Years

by Wendy Pini, Richard Pini

Completely new stories from the World of Two Moons--unknown and unrecorded--until now. Share the ill-omened birth of Skywise the stargazer, the tempest as grown-up chief's-daughter Ember strives for her own freedom, the joys and sorrows of a human cub growing among the Wolfriders, and more. Full color.

Tales of the Otori: Book 2

Grass for His Pillow

by Lian Hearn

Praised for its epic scope and descriptive detail, Across the Nightingale Floor , the first book of the Tales of the Otori, was an international bestseller and critical success, named by the London Times as "the most compelling novel to have been published this year." With Grass for His Pillow, Book Two of the Tales of the Otori , we return to the medieval Japan of Hearn's creation-a land of harsh beauty and... (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)

Elfquest Reader's Collection #14a: Mindcoil

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: in english

by Ayn Rand

by Jane Austen

by Joseph Heller

by James Joyce

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

by Kurt Vonnegut

by Oscar Wilde

by Michael Swan

by Joseph Heller

by Gene Brewer

by Ian Rankin

by John Christopher

by Peter Trudgill

by Aldous Huxley

by Lian Hearn

by Richard Brautigan

by Ammon Shea

by Wendy Pini, Richard Pini

by Lian Hearn

by Stephen Fry

by Wendy Pini, Dennis Fujitake, John Ostrander