Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.

The Immoralist (Dover Thrift Editions)

by Andre Gide, Richard Howard

In The Immoralist , André Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him... (more)

I'm OK--You're OK

by Thomas A. Harris

Transactional Analysis delineates three observable ego-states (Parent, Adult, and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. "Happy childhood" notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the Not ok feelings of a defenseless child, dependent on ok others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a "position" about ourselves and... (more)

Faulkner Mosquitoes

by William Faulkner

A delightful surprise, Faulkner wrote his second novel "for the sake of writing because it was fun." Mosquitoes centers around a colorful assortment of passengers, out on a boating excursion from New Orleans. The rich and the aspiring, social butterflies and dissolute dilettantes are all easy game for Faulkner's barbed wit in this engaging high-spirited novel which offers a fascinating glimpse of Faulkner as... (more)

Myra Breckinridge

by gore vidal

Gore Vidal's classic controversial novel. With no advance publicity, the highly satirical story of a man-hating transsexual quickly became a sensational bestseller. Those who understood it were amused; those who didn't were shocked.

Despair

by Vladimir Nabokov

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication-- Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.

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)

La Metamorfosis / The Metamorphosis: Version Completa / Complete Version (Clasicos De Siempre / Relatos Y Novelas / Always Classics / Stories and Novels)

La Metamorfosis / The Metamorphosis: Version Completa / Complete Version (Clasicos De Siempre / Relatos Y Novelas / Always Classics / Stories and Novels)

by Franz Kafka

-Al despertar Gregorio Samza una manana, se encontro en su cama convertido en un montruoso insecto.-Tal es el abrupto comienzo, que nos situa de raiz bajo unas reglas distintas, de LA METAMORFOSIS, sin duda la onra de Franz Kafka 1883-1924 que ha alcanzado mayor celebridad.

Think on These Things

by J. Krishnamurti

‘The material contained in this volume was originally presented in the form of talks to students, teachers and parents in India, but its keen penetration and lucid simplicity will be deeply meaningful to thoughtful people everywhere, of all ages, and in every walk of life. Krishnamurti examines with characteristic objectivity and insight the expressions of what we are pleased to call our culture, our education,... (more)

Wise Blood

by Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood , Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher names Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own... (more)

An Open Book

by John Huston

Newark Star-Ledger , 8/14/06

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

by Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher

Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined,... (more)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

An inmate of a mental institution tries to find the freedom and independence denied him in the outside world.

The StandStephen King

The Stand

by Stephen King

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides... (more)

Delta of Venus

by Anaïs Nin

This is a collection of short stories which explore the ultimate in sexual possiblility, from a female angle.

Spindle's End

by Robin McKinley

In the tradition of Beauty and Rose Daughter, Newbery Award-winning author Robin McKinley "lends a fresh perspective to a classic fairy tale, developing the story of Sleeping Beauty into a richly imagined, vividly depicted novel" ( School Library Journal ) BRILLIANT...<a> sumptuous world. ( New York Times Book Review ) MYTHIC GRANDEUR...with magical detail and all-too-human feeling. ( Publishers Weekly ... (more)

Clea (Alexandria Quartet)

by Lawrence Durrell

In the final volume of the "Alexandrian Quartet", Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle - on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal. The story is supplemented by music from Debussy, Ravel, Britten and Piazzola.

Mountolive (Alexandria Quartet)

by Lawrence Durrell

<Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with JUSTINE, BALTHAZAR, and CLEA.>--The four linked novels that comprise English author Lawrence Durrell's masterpiece, THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, are set in Alexandria, Egypt, around the time of WWII. The four novels explore the city's polyglot society, full of intrigue, mystery, and sensuality, telling essentially the same story from different points of... (more)

M : The Man Who Became Caravaggio

by Peter Robb

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year As vividly and unflinchingly presented herein with "blood and bone and sinew" ( Times Literary Supplement ) by Peter Robb, Caravaggio's wild and tempestuous life was a provocation to a culture in a state of siege. The end of the sixteenth century was marked by the Inquisition and Counter-Reformation, a background of ideological war against which, despite all odds,... (more)

THE FRONT RUNNER

by Patricia Nell Warren

First published in 1974, The Front Runner raced to international acclaim - the first novel about gay love to become popular with mainstream. In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man. Then Billy Sive, a... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: perceptual bias

by Thomas Pynchon

by Andre Gide, Richard Howard

by Thomas A. Harris

by William Faulkner

by gore vidal

by Vladimir Nabokov

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Franz Kafka

by J. Krishnamurti

by Flannery O'Connor

by John Huston

by Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher

by Ken Kesey

by Stephen King

by Anaïs Nin

by Robin McKinley

by Lawrence Durrell

by Lawrence Durrell

by Peter Robb

by Patricia Nell Warren