Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Little Women is one of the best loved books of all time. Lovely Meg, talented Jo, frail Beth, spoiled Amy: these are hard lessons of poverty and of growing up in New England during the Civil War. Through their dreams, plays, pranks, letters, illnesses, and courtships, women of all ages have become a part of this remarkable family and have felt the deep sadness when Meg leaves the circle of sisters to be... (more)

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

First published in 1957, this novel epitomized to the world the Beat philosophy. It chronicles a spontaneous and wandering life style founded both on jazz and drug-induced visions.

In Search of Lost Time: Book 1

Swann's Way

by Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest single work of the twentieth century. Since the original prewar translation there has been no completely new rendering of the original French. Now Viking makes Proust's masterpiece accessible to a whole new generation, beginning with Lydia Davis's new translation of the first volume,... (more)

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the... (more)

Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio)

by Marcel Proust, Christopher Prendergast

Sodom and Gomorrah opens a new phase of In Search of Lost Time . While watching the pollination of the Duchess de Guermantes’s orchid, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men. “Flower and plant have no conscious will,” Samuel Beckett wrote of Proust’s representation of sexuality. “They are shameless, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Proust’s men and women . . . shameless.... (more)

In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 3: The Guermantes Way

In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 3: The Guermantes Way

by Marcel Proust

The “Guermantes Way,” in this the third volume of In Search of Lost Time , refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchess de Guermantes’s château near Combray. It also represents the narrator’s passage into the rarefied “social kaleidoscope” of the Guermantes’s Paris salon, an important intellectual playground for Parisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and manners of the Guermantes’s drawing... (more)

In Search of Lost Time Volume V The Captive & The Fugitive (Modern Library Classics)

In Search of Lost Time Volume V The Captive & The Fugitive (Modern Library Classics)

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, D. J. Enright

The Modern Library’s fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time contains both The Captive (1923) and The Fugitive (1925). In The Captive , Proust’s narrator describes living in his mother’s Paris apartment with his lover, Albertine, and subsequently falling out of love with her. In The Fugitive , the narrator loses Albertine forever. Rich with irony, The Captive and The Fugitive inspire meditations on desire,... (more)

Time Regained

by Marcel Proust, Terence Kilmartin, D. J. Enright

Time Regained , the final volume of In Search of Lost Time , begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war’s end, Proust’s narrator returns to Paris and reflects on time, reality, jealousy, artistic creation, and the raw material of literature—his past life. This Modern Library edition also includes the indispensable Guide to Proust , compiled by Terence Kilmartin and revised... (more)

Within a budding grove (His Remembrance of things past)

Within a budding grove (His Remembrance of things past)

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin

First published in 1919, Within a Budding Grove was awarded the Prix Goncourt, bringing the author immediate fame. In this second volume of In Search of Lost Time , the narrator turns from the childhood reminiscences of Swann’s Way to memories of his adolescence. Having gradually become indifferent to Swann’s daughter Gilberte, the narrator visits the seaside resort of Balbec with his grandmother and meets a... (more)

Last tycoon

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, is a restoration of the author's phrases, words, and images that were excised from the 1940 edition, giving new luster to an unfinished literary masterpiece. It is the story of the young Hollywood mogul Monroe Stahr, who was inspired by the life of boy-genius Irving Thalberg, and is an exposé of the studio system in its... (more)

The Shadow Catcher: A Novel

by Marianne Wiggins

The Shadow Catcher is a journey through time, a story-within-a-story that seamlessly interweaves the nineteenth-century life of renowned photographer of the Native American peoples Edward S. Curtis with the present-day story of an unlikely father-daughter reunion from beyond the grave. Told in the first person by a fictional character named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Los Angeles, where Hollywood is in... (more)

Q. Roman.

by Luther Blissett

Billy Bathgate (BOMC)

Trade paperback version of the Random House hardcover.

The Devil Wears Prada

by Lauren Weisberger

A delightfully dishy novel about the all-time most impossible boss in the history of impossible bosses. Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world... (more)

The Temple

by Stephen Spender

“Beyond the wonderful insights ... there is a portrait of the world in the eye of the storm between two world wars. It is a novel of awakening –– awakening to sex, yes ... but also an awakening to the presence of evil in the world and to the possibilities of love and friendship.” –– The Bloomsbury Review

Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985: The Ghost Writer / Zuckerman Unbound / The Anatomy Lesson / The Prague Orgy (Library of America #1

Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985: The Ghost Writer / Zuckerman Unbound / The Anatomy Lesson / The Prague Orgy (Library of America #1

by Philip Roth

For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities, leading the critic Harold Bloom to proclaim Roth "our foremost novelist since Faulkner." Roth's comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assault on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our... (more)

Primary Colors (Unabridged)

by Anonymous

A brilliant and penetrating look behind the scenes of modern American politics, Primary Colors is a funny, wise, and dramatic story with characters and events that resemble some familiar, real-life figures. When a former congressional aide becomes part of the staff of the governor of a small Southern state, he watches in horror, admiration, and amazement, as the governor mixes calculation and sincerity in his... (more)

Empire of the Sun : a novel

by J. G. Ballard

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches... (more)

Heart of Darkness (A Norton Critical Edition)

Heart of Darkness (A Norton Critical Edition)

by Joseph Conrad

The Fourth Edition is again based on Robert Kimbrough’s meticulously re-edited text. Missing words have been restored and the entire novel has been repunctuated in accordance with Conrad’s style. The result is the first published version of Heart of Darkness that allows readers to hear Marlow’s voice as Conrad heard it when he wrote the story. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with a generous... (more)

The learning tree (Crest book)

by Gordon Parks

"A fine novel." THE BOSTON HERALD Photographer, writer, and composer, Gordon Parks has written a moving, true-to-life novel of growing up as a black man in this country in this century. Hailed by critics and readers alike, THE LEARNING TREE tells the extraordinary journey of a family as they struggle to understand the world around them and leave their mark a world that is better for their having been in it.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: roman a clef

or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy

by Louisa May Alcott

by Jack Kerouac

by Marcel Proust

by Ernest Hemingway

by Marcel Proust, Christopher Prendergast

by Marcel Proust

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, D. J. Enright

by Marcel Proust, Terence Kilmartin, D. J. Enright

by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Marianne Wiggins

by Luther Blissett

by Lauren Weisberger

by Stephen Spender

by Philip Roth

by Anonymous

by J. G. Ballard

by Joseph Conrad

by Gordon Parks