Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

"Anthony Burgess reads chapters of his novel A Clockwork Orange with hair-raising drive and energy. Although it is a fantasy set in an Orwellian future, this is anything but a bedtime story." -The New York Times Told by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism.Anthony Burgess' 1963... (more)

Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novelThe Broom of the System.Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our... (more)

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Acclaimed graphic artist Peter Kuper presents a brilliant, darkly comic reimagining of Kafka’s classic tale of family, alienation, and a giant bug. Kuper’s electric drawings—which merge American cartooning with German expressionism—bring Kafka’s prose to vivid life, reviving the original story’s humor and poignancy in a way that will surprise and delight readers of Kafka and graphic novels alike. “A brilliant... (more)

The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

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.

House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski

This book, Mark Z. Danielewski's experimental first novel, has been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, which aims to recogise and reward new writing across fiction and non-fiction. A special report featuring reviews, extracts and online resources for all the titles, plus talkboards and an online poll can be found <online>.

Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

Novel by Thomas Pynchon, published in 1973. The sprawling narrative comprises numerous threads having to do either directly or tangentially with the secret development and deployment of a rocket by the Nazis near the end of World War II. Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop is an American working for Allied Intelligence in London. Agents of the Firm, a clandestine military organization, are investigating an apparent... (more)

If on a Winters Night

by Italo Calvino

A postmodern novel which combines a love and a detective story with a sardonic dissection of the publishing industry in an allegory of reading. Two readers attempt to finish the same book, but are comically and repeatedly frustrated.

White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)

White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)

by Don Delillo

Jack Gladney, a professor of Nazi history at a Middle American liberal arts school, and his family try to handle normal family life as a black cloud of lethal gaseous fumes threatens their town.

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

by Donald Miller

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. . . . I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened. In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned... (more)

The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies? Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births,... (more)

The New York Trilogy (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

The New York Trilogy (Contemporary American Fiction Series)

by Paul Auster

Combining dark humor, Hitchcock-like suspense, and film-noir prose, these three unique novels--united--form a powerful and thought-provoking puzzle.

Generous Orthodoxy, A: Why I am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, ... Emergent, Unfinished Christian

Generous Orthodoxy, A: Why I am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, ... Emergent, Unfinished Christian

by Brian D. McLaren

By celebrating strengths of many traditions in the church (and beyond), this book will seek to communicate a "generous orthodoxy."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

by Tom Stoppard

Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is the fabulously inventive tale of "Hamlet" as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of "Waiting... (more)

V.

by Thomas Pynchon

The wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men--one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose--and "V.," the unknown woman of the title.

Only Revolutions: A Novel

by Mark Z. Danielewski

Sam: They were with us before Romeo & Juliet. And long after too. Because they’re forever around. Or so both claim, carolling gleefully: We’re allways sixteen. Sam & Hailey, powered by an ever-rotating fleet of cars, from Model T to Lincoln Continental, career from the Civil War to the Cold War, barrelling down through the Appalachians, up the Mississippi River, across the Badlands, finally cutting a... (more)

Invisible Cities (A Harvest/Hbj Book)

by Italo Calvino

Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Life After God

by Douglas Coupland

Offering spiritual guidelines for a modern generation that has broken away from organized religion, a collection of inspirational stories seeks to reintroduce God as a supportive figure in a fast-paced society. Reprint. Tour.

Crash

by J. G. Ballard

In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an intentionally orchestrated car crash... (more)

The Broom of the System

by David Foster Wallace

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with... (more)

Mao II: A Novel

by Don Delillo

Escaping the failed novel he has been working on for years, reclusive writer Bill Gray enters the world of political violence, terrorists, revolutionaries, and modern-day chaos. By the author of Libra. Reprint. NYT.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: postmodern

by Anthony Burgess

by David Foster Wallace

by Franz Kafka

by Thomas Pynchon

by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Thomas Pynchon

by Italo Calvino

by Don Delillo

by Donald Miller

by Margaret Atwood

by Paul Auster

by Brian D. McLaren

by Tom Stoppard

by Thomas Pynchon

by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Italo Calvino

by Douglas Coupland

by J. G. Ballard

by David Foster Wallace

by Don Delillo