Book mentions in this thread

  • Votes: 37

    Rebecca

    by Daphne Du Maurier

  • Votes: 36

    The Overstory

    by Richard Powers

    WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018 A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe ‘The best novel ever written about trees, and really, just one of the best novels, period’ Ann Patchett An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. An Air Force crewmember in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. This is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe. ‘Breathtaking’ Barbara Kingsolver, New York Times ‘It’s a masterpiece’ Tim Winton ‘It’s not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book’ Margaret Atwood ‘An astonishing performance’ Benjamin Markovits, Guardian
  • Votes: 35

    Wuthering Heights

    by Emily Bronte

    The text of the novel is based on the first edition of 1847.
  • Votes: 33

    Perfume

    by Patrick Suskind

  • Votes: 33

    The Collector

    by K. R. Alexander

  • Votes: 26

    Possession

    by A. S. Byatt

  • Votes: 20

    Endless Love

    by Scott Spencer

  • Votes: 18

    Stephen Florida

    by Gabe Habash

  • Votes: 16

    The Little Stranger

    by Sarah Waters

  • Votes: 14

    The Secret History

    by Donna Tartt

    A transfer student from a small town in California, Richard Papen is determined to affect the ways of his Hampden College peers, and he begins his intense studies under the tutelage of eccentric Julian Morrow. BOMC & QPB Alt. Tour.
  • Votes: 12

    Lolita

    by Vladimir Nabokov

  • Votes: 11

    The Count of Monte Cristo

    by Alexandre Dumas

    The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas. Completed in 1844, it is one of the author's most popular works. The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean, and in the Levant during the historical events of 1815-1838. It begins from just before the Hundred Days period (when Napoleon returned to power after his exile) and spans through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France. The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. An adventure story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness, it focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment. However, his plans have devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty.
  • Votes: 9

    The Historian

    by Elizabeth Kostova

  • Votes: 7

    Preparing the Ghost

    by Matthew Gavin Frank

  • Votes: 6

    Enduring Love

    by Ian McEwan

  • Votes: 6

    Gone Girl

    by Gillian Flynn

    For use in schools and libraries only. When a woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, her diary reveals hidden turmoil in her marriage, while her husband, desperate to clear himself of suspicion, realizes that something more disturbing than murder may have occurred.
  • Votes: 6

    Remainder

    by Tom McCarthy

  • Votes: 6

    The Debt to Pleasure

    by John Lanchester

  • Votes: 6

    The Pisces

    by Melissa Broder

  • Votes: 5

    I Know

    by Michael S Seaver

  • Votes: 4

    A Confederacy of Dunces

    by John Kennedy Toole

    'My favourite book of all time... it stays with you long after you have read it - for your whole life, in fact' Billy Connolly A monument to sloth, rant and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern - this is Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, noble crusader against a world of dunces. The ordinary folk of New Orleans seem to think he is unhinged. Ignatius ignores them, heaving his vast bulk through the city's fleshpots in a noble crusade against vice, modernity and ignorance. But his momma has a nasty surprise in store for him: Ignatius must get a job. Undaunted, he uses his new-found employment to further his mission - and now he has a pirate costume and a hot-dog cart to do it with... Never published during his lifetime, John Kennedy Toole's hilarious satire, A Confederacy of Dunces is a Don Quixote for the modern age, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes a foreword by Walker Percy. 'A pungent work of slapstick, satire and intellectual incongruities ... it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue' The New York Times
  • Votes: 4

    The Brothers Karamazov

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    The violent lives of three sons are exposed when their father is murdered and each one attempts to come to terms with his guilt.
  • Votes: 4

    Looker

    by Laura Sims

  • Votes: 4

    Modern Gothic

    by Medill Higgins Harvey

  • Votes: 4

    Sweet Days of Discipline

    by Fleur Jaeggy

  • Votes: 4

    The Feather Thief

    by Kirk Wallace Johnson

  • Votes: 4

    The Giant's House

    by Elizabeth McCracken

  • Votes: 4

    The Signature of All Things

    by Elizabeth Gilbert

  • Votes: 4

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

    by Robert M Pirsig

    A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions on how to live. The narrator's relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning; the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism. Resonant with the confusions of existence, this classic is a touching and transcendent book of life. This new edition contains an interview with Pirsig and letters and documents detailing how this extraordinary book came to be. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
  • Votes: 3

    Bluets

    by Maggie Nelson

    Bluets is a lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue, while folding in, and responding to, the divergent voices and preoccupations of such generative figures as Wittgenstein, Sei Shonagon, William Gass and Joan Mitchell.
  • Votes: 3

    Hatters Castle

    by AJ Cronin

  • Votes: 3

    Ice

    by Anna Kavan

  • Votes: 3

    Money

    by Jacob Goldstein

  • Votes: 3

    The Song of Achilles

    by Madeline Miller

  • Votes: 3

    Spartina

    by John Casey

  • Votes: 3

    The Girl on the Train

    by Paula Hawkins

  • Votes: 3

    The Iliad

    by Homer

  • Votes: 3

    The Innocent Wife

    by Amy Lloyd

  • Votes: 3

    The Likeness

    by Tana French

    Still traumatised by her brush with a psychopath, Detective Cassie Maddox transfers out of the Murder squad and starts a relationship with fellow detective Sam O'Neill. When he calls her to the scene of his new case, she is shocked to find that the murdered girl is her double. What's more, her ID shows she is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used, years ago, as an undercover detective. With no leads, no suspects and no clues to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old boss spots the opportunity of a lifetime: send Cassie undercover in her place, to tempt the killer out of hiding to finish the job.
  • Votes: 3

    The Shame

    by Makenna Goodman

  • Votes: 3

    The Universal Baseball Association

    by Robert Coover

  • Votes: 3

    What Was She Thinking?

    by Zoë Heller

  • Votes: 2

    A Little Life

    by Hanya Yanagihara

    "A little life, follows four college classmates --broke, adrift, and bouyed only by their friendship and ambition--as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara's stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves." --Back cover
  • Votes: 2

    Altered States

    by Paddy Chayefsky

  • Votes: 2

    Gone With the Wind

    by Margaret Mitchell

  • Votes: 2

    How I Became a Famous Novelist

    by Steve Hely

    A razor - sharp evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame, How I Became a Famous Novelist is a satirical novel masquerading as a tell - all memoir. Sick of life as he knows it, Pete Tarslaw sets out to write a bestselling novel, armed with a formula for success cobbled together from previous bestsellers: he abandons truth, relies heavily on lyrical prose, creates a club with a mysterious mission, includes a murder and invokes ''confusing sadness'' at the end. Once the sales rankings for his novel The Tornado Ashes Club start their meteoric rise - thanks to a Christian evangelist, a recovering teen starlet and Law and Order: Criminal Intent - Tarslaw's inevitable decline looms, and his fall from grace will be nothing short of spectacular. How I Became a Famous Novelist is the hilarious tale of how Pete Tarslaw's ''pile of garbage'' became the most talked about, read, admired and reviled novel in America. It will change everything you think you know - about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people out there who still care about books.
  • Votes: 2

    Hysteria

    by Jessica Gross

  • Votes: 2

    I Love Dick

    by Chris Kraus

  • Votes: 2

    Pale Fire

    by Vladimir Nabokov

  • Votes: 2

    Tampa

    by Alissa Nutting

  • Votes: 2

    The Confessions of Noa Weber

    by Gail Hareven

  • Votes: 2

    The Giver

    by Lois Lowry

    Celebrate Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning classic story of a young boy discovering the dark secrets behind his seemingly ideal world in this 25th Anniversary Edition of The Giver. Includes a new afterword from Lois Lowry, as well as her Newbery acceptance speech. The Giver, Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal-winning novel, has become one of the most influential books of our time. Placed on countless reading lists and curricula, translated into more than forty languages, and made into a feature film, The Giver is a modern classic. Celebrate this beloved contribution to children's literature with the 25th Anniversary Edition. The haunting story of twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity, is as resonant today as when it was first published. Lois Lowry will include a new afterword as well as her Newbery acceptance speech in this beautifully rejacketed edition.
  • Votes: 2

    The Institute

    by Stephen King

    A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 SELECTION From #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, the most riveting and unforgettable story of kids confronting evil since It. In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.” In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute. As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
  • Votes: 2

    The Loser

    by Thomas Bernhard

  • Votes: 2

    The Open Curtain

    by Brian Evenson

  • Votes: 2

    The Pleasure of My Company

    by Steve Martin

  • Votes: 1

    A True Novel

    by Minae Mizumura

  • Votes: 1

    Angela's Ashes

    by Frank McCourt

    The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies. 40,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. First serial, The New Yorker.
  • Votes: 1

    The Artist of the Beautiful

    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  • Votes: 1

    I'll Be Gone in the Dark

    by Michelle McNamara

    ** SOON TO BE A MAJOR NEW DOCUMENTARY SERIES FROM HBO AND SKY ** WINNER OF THE GOOD READS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2018 THE NEW YORK TIMES #1 BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018 The masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the serial rapist turned murderer who terrorised California for over a decade - from the late Michelle McNamara. I'll Be Gone in the Dark offers a unique snapshot of suburban West Coast America in the 1980s, and a chilling account of the wreckage left behind by a criminal mastermind. It is also a portrait of one woman's obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth, three decades later, in spite of the personal cost. Updated with material which takes in the extraordinary events that followed its initial publication, Michelle McNamara's first and last book is a contemporary classic - humane, haunting and heroic.
  • Votes: 1

    Blood Orange

    by Harriet Tyce

  • Votes: 1

    Celestial Navigation

    by David Burch

  • Votes: 1

    I Am Legend

    by Richard Matheson

  • Votes: 1

    Love Creeps

    by Amanda Filipacchi

  • Votes: 1

    Love in the Time of Cholera

    by Gabriel García Márquez

    Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.
  • Votes: 1

    Mariette in Ecstasy

    by Ron Hansen

  • Votes: 1

    Master Of The Senate

    by Robert A. Caro

    'The greatest biography of our era ... Essential reading for those who want to comprehend power and politics' The Times Robert A. Caro's legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Master of the Senate takes Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods- his twelve years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered body in politics, by the time Johnson arrived the Senate had become a parody of itself and an obstacle that for decades had blocked desperately needed liberal legislation. Caro shows how Johnson's brilliance, charm and ruthlessness enabled him to become the youngest and most powerful Majority Leader in history and how he used his incomparable legislative genius - seducing both Northern liberals and Southern conservatives - to pass the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction.
  • Votes: 1

    Milkman

    by Anna Burns

  • Votes: 1

    OCD Love Story

    by Corey Ann Haydu

  • Votes: 1

    Shopgirl

    by Steve Martin

  • Votes: 1

    Strangers on a Train

    by Patricia Highsmith

  • Votes: 1

    The Swan Thieves

    by Elizabeth Kostova

  • Votes: 1

    Care of Wooden Floors

    by Will Wiles

  • Votes: 1

    The Disaster Artist

    by Greg Sestero

  • Votes: 1

    The Goldfinch

    by Donna Tartt

    Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.
  • Votes: 1

    The Land of Laughs

    by Jonathan Carroll

  • Votes: 1

    The Red Parts

    by Maggie Nelson

  • Votes: 1

    The Seas

    by Samantha Hunt

  • Votes: 1

    Why Fish Don't Exist

    by Lulu Miller

    Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.
  • Votes: 1

    You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

    by Alexandra Kleeman

    An intelligent and madly entertaining debut novel reminiscent of The Crying of Lot 49, White Noise, and City of Glass that is at once a missing-person mystery, an exorcism of modern culture, and a wholly singular vision of contemporary womanhood from a terrifying and often funny voice of a new generation. A woman known only by the letter A lives in an unnamed American city with her roommate, B, and boyfriend, C, who wants her to join him on a reality show called That’s My Partner! A eats (or doesn’t) the right things, watches endless amounts of television, often just for the commercials—particularly the recurring cartoon escapades of Kandy Kat, the mascot for an entirely chemical dessert—and models herself on a standard of beauty that only exists in such advertising. She fixates on the fifteen minutes of fame a news-celebrity named Michael has earned after buying up his local Wally Supermarket’s entire, and increasingly ample, supply of veal. Meanwhile B is attempting to make herself a twin of A, who hungers for something to give meaning to her life, something aside from C’s pornography addiction, and becomes indoctrinated by a new religion spread throughout a web of corporate franchises, which moves her closer to the decoys that populate her television world, but no closer to her true nature.