Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned - a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first... (more)

Out of Africa

by Isak Dinesen

In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions,... (more)

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind.... (more)

1984

by George Orwell

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.

To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how excellent much of it is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now," John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "Tender Is the Night is in the early stages of being my favorite book, even more than This Side of Paradise." And Archibald MacLeish exclaimed: "Great God, Scott...You are a fine... (more)

Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)

Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)

by Jerome K. Jerome

The famous story of three men and a dog setting off in an open boat on a hilarious voyage up the Thames. The story is full of mishaps - falling into the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze - but also offers comments on the world. This excursion was undertaken at the end of the last century and comments on the times have acquired a deeper fascination.

Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf: wild, strange, shy and alienated from society. His despair and desire for death draw him into a dark, enchanted underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters - romantic, freakish and savage by turn - the misanthropic Haller gradually begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth. This blistering portrayal of a man who feels himself to be half-human and half-wolf was the... (more)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Essential Penguin)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Essential Penguin)

by James Joyce

In this highly autobiographical novel, Joyce introduces us to Stephen Dedalus, the character who reappears in his widely acclaimed work, "Ulysses". "A Portrait of the Artist" portrays Stephen's childhood and youth in Dublin as he struggles to rid himself of the religious, political and moral constraints of his background and forge his own identity as an artist and as a man. The novel raises questions of origin and... (more)

Goodbye to All That (Essential Penguin)

by Robert Graves

Robert Graves' superb autobiography tells the story of his life at public school and as a young officer during the First World War. 'It is a permanently valuable work of literary art, and indispensable for the historian either of the First World War or of modern English poetry ...Apart, however, from its exceptional value as a war document, this book has also the interest of being one of the most candid... (more)

Go-Between, the (Essential Penguin)

by L. P. Hartley

A man in his 60s looks back on his boyhood for the first time in 50 years, recalling events that took place on a summer visit to a Norfolk country house at the turn of the century.

Dubliners (Essential Penguin)

by James Joyce

The Diary of a Nobody (Essential Penguin)

The Diary of a Nobody (Essential Penguin)

by George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith

The diary of an office clerk and righteous family man, Mr Pooter, whose entries provide a portrait of the class system and the inherent snobbishness of the suburban middle classes in the 1880s.

by Virginia Woolf

Clarissa Dalloway is the elegant, vivacious wife of a Member of Parliament. On a hot summer's day in London at the end of the First World War, she is preparing for a party that evening - her old lover, Peter Walsh, has just returned from India. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is going mad with shell-shock. In prose of astonishing beauty, Virginia Woolf explores how other people live, love and hate... (more)

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Tags: penguin essentials

Animal Farm

by George Orwell

Out of Africa

by Isak Dinesen

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1984

by George Orwell

To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

Tender Is the Night

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)

by Jerome K. Jerome

Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Essential Penguin)

by James Joyce

Goodbye to All That (Essential Penguin)

by Robert Graves

Go-Between, the (Essential Penguin)

by L. P. Hartley

Dubliners (Essential Penguin)

by James Joyce

The Diary of a Nobody (Essential Penguin)

by George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith

by Virginia Woolf