Book Lists

20th Century's Best Books

Send to My Email      6 likes

20th Century's Best Books includes Angelas Ashes (2006), Lonesome Dove (1986), The Things They Carried (1998), Outsiders (2011), Waiting for Godot (1954).

91 - 120 of 170 results
 << >>

Angelas Ashes

by: Frank McCourt
release date: Jan 01, 2006
Angelas Ashes
Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Lonesome Dove

by: Larry McMurtry
release date: Jan 01, 1986
Lonesome Dove
A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember. Now a blockbuster television event.

The Things They Carried

by: Tim O'Brien
release date: Jan 01, 1998
The Things They Carried
One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.

With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried  is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.

Outsiders

by: S. E. Hinton
release date: Jan 01, 2011
Outsiders
The war is on between the "greasers" & the "socs." Once you cross into enemy territory there are no rules, as fourteen-year-old Pony-boy & his friend Johnny discover when they overstep their boundaries. They pay with their innocence

Waiting for Godot

by: Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the 20th century, was born on 13 April 1906. He died in 1989. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, but the most popular of them all will be, without doubt, the play with which he first made his name, Waiting for Godot. It opened the gates to the theatre of the absurd as four men appear on the stage, apparently with purpose but (perhaps) waiting for someone called Godot. It is stark, funny, bemusing and still deeply affecting half a century since its first production. In this new recording for audiobook, John Tydeman, for many years head of BBC Radio Drama, takes a fresh look at one of the milestones in Western drama. It follows the highly acclaimed recordings of Beckett's Trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable published by Naxos AudioBooks. See also Krapp's Last Tape and Not I, also released for the centenary.

Franny and Zooey

by: J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey
The author writes: FRANNY came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed, in 1957 by ZOOEY. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambiguous one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.

The Red Tent: A Novel

by: Anita Diamant
release date: Jan 01, 2007
The Red Tent: A Novel
Anita Diamant's bestseller The Red Tent boldly reimagines the biblical story of Dinah, a woman who makes only a brief, tragic appearance in the book of Genesis. Diamant's controversial novel has fascinated countless readers and enraged others, who believe it takes too many liberties with Hebrew scripture. Learn more, and see what you think about this:
  • How much of The Red Tent is really based on known biblical history?
  • Why did Diamant make the changes she made to the original biblical story?
  • Why is the story of Dinah so different when told from a woman's perspective?

Farewell to Arms

by: Adam Sexton
Farewell to Arms
The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into key elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the familiar format.

CliffsNotes on Farewell to Arms explores a potent and memorable love story set against the historical and geographical background of World War I.

Following the growth of a rakish, indifferent soldier into a mature man capable of real love for the worldly-wise nurse who falls for him, this study guide provides summaries and critical commentaries for each chapter within the intense and descriptive novel.  Other features that help you figure out this important work include

  • Personal background on author Ernest Hemingway, including honors and awards
  • Introduction to and synopsis of the books
  • Character analyses of primary figures Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley
  • Critical essays on weather symbolism and Hemingway's influence
  • Review section that features fill-in-the-blank questions, quoted passages, and suggested essay topics and practice projects
  • Resource Center with books, articles, video and audio recordings, and Web sites that can help round out your knowledge

Classic literature or modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Mere Christianity

by: C. S. Lewis
release date: Jan 01, 2001
Mere Christianity

This 20th century masterpiece of Christian apologetics, read by acclaimed actor Michael York, is one of C.S. Lewis' best-loved works. In this audio edition of Mere Christianity, believers and non-believers are provided an unequaled opportunity to hear a powerful and rational case for the Christian faith.

Where the Red Fern Grows

by: Scholastic Books
release date: Jan 01, 2005
Where the Red Fern Grows
A complete guide to teaching Where the Red Fern Grows. Includes an author biography, background information, summaries, thought-provoking discussion questions, as well as creative, cross-curricular activities and reproducibles that motivate students.

All Quiet on the Western Front

by:
All Quiet on the Western Front
Paperback book.

Little House on the Prairie

by: Laura Ingalls Wilder
release date: Jan 01, 1998
Little House on the Prairie

In 1935 Little House on the Prairie was published to immediate acclaim, and today it is one of the most beloved children's books. Now, in honor of the sixty-fifth anniversary of this timeless book, comes the Little House on the Prairie Collector's Edition. This gorgeous new volume features, for the first time ever, Garth Williams's classic illustrations in full color. An afterword by Wilder historian William Anderson provides a lively, detailed account of the story behind this most treasured of novels.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

by: Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway's classic novel of the Spanish Civil War

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war; three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. Surpassing his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway creates a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." For Whom the Bell Tolls stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century, and for his efforts he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Ernest Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. As part of the expatriate community in 1920s Paris, the former journalist and World War I ambulance driver began a career that lead to international fame. Hemingway was an aficionado of bullfighting and big-game hunting, and his main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, who suffered unseen scars, both physical and emotional. He covered the Spanish Civil War, portraying it in fiction in his brilliant novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, and he subsequently covered World War II. His classic novella The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. He died in 1961.

The World According to Garp

by: John Irving
release date: Jan 01, 2000
The World According to Garp
20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION
with a new Afterword from the author



The New York Times bestseller



This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny
Fields--a feminist leader ahead of her times.  This is the life and death
of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual
extremes--even of sexual assassinations.  It is a novel rich with "lunacy
and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a
comedy both ribald and robust.  In more than thirty languages, in more than
forty countries--with more than ten million copies in print--this novel
provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line:
"In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."

The Metamorphosis

by: Franz Kafka
release date: Jan 01, 1996
The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka's 1915 masterpiece is presented in this Norton Critical Edition in the acclaimed translation by Stanley Corngold based on the definitive German edition.

The novella is fully annotated and is accompanied by selected textual variants. Backgrounds and Contexts introduces readers to The Metamorphosis in the richest possible setting. The links between the author's life and his work are explored through an examination of his personal writings. Kafka's letters and diary entries illuminate the creative process behind his portrait of Gregor Samsa, his family, and their nightmarish ordeal. Criticism collects seven essays from the period 1970-95 representing the most important currents in literary theory―semiotics, feminism, identity philosophy, New Historicism, and post-Freudian cultural psychoanalysis. The essays offer a variety of perspectives on the novella by Iris Bruce, Nina Pelikan Straus, Kevin W. Sweeney, Mark Anderson, Hartmut Binder, Eric Santner, and Stanley Corngold. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

The Alchemist

by: Paulo Coelho
release date: Jan 01, 2001
The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho continues to change the lives of its readers forever. With more than two million copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has established itself as a modern classic, universally admired.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found.

The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories can, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

The Master and Margarita

by: Mikhail Bulgakov
release date: Mar 19, 1996
The Master and Margarita
Introduction by Simon Franklin; Translation by Michael Glenny

A Clockwork Orange

by: Anthony Burgess
release date: Oct 01, 1996
A Clockwork Orange
"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 classic stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a classic of twentieth century post-industrial alienation, often shocking us into a thoughtful exploration of the meaning of free will and the conflict between good and evil. In this recording, the author's voice lends an intoxicating lyrical dimension to the language he has so masterfully crafted.

"I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr. Burgess has done [in A Clockwork Orange]." -William S. Burroughs

Recognized as one of the literary geniuses of our time, Anthony Burgess produced thirty-two novels, a volume of verse, sixteen works of nonfiction, and two plays. Originally a composer, his creative output also included countless musical compositions, including symphonies, operas, and jazz. The author's musicality is evident in the lyrical and dramatic reading he gives in this recording. Anthony Burgess died in 1993.

The Joy Luck Club

by: Amy Tan
release date: Jan 01, 1999
The Joy Luck Club
Drawn together by the shadow of their past, four women meet once a week to share stories and create joy and luck out of unimaginable catastrophe. 2 cassettes.

Their Eyes Are Watching God

by: Zora Neale Hurston
release date: Jan 01, 1999
Their Eyes Are Watching God

“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly.” —Zadie Smith

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

Rebecca

by: Daphne Du Maurier
release date: Jan 01, 2005
Rebecca
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The new mistress of Manderley's Cornwall estate must constantly compete with the memory of Maxim de Winter's first wife, Rebecca.

Where the Wild Things Are

by: Maurice Sendak
release date: Nov 09, 1988
Where the Wild Things Are

In the forty years since Max first cried "Let the wild rumpus start," Maurice Sendak's classic picture book has become one of the most highly acclaimed and best-loved children's books of all time. Now, in celebration of this special anniversary, introduce a new generation to Max's imaginative journey to Where the Wild Things Are.

Name of the Rose

by: Umberto Eco
release date: Jan 01, 1996
Name of the Rose
This hugely engaging story of murder, superstition, religious politics and drama in a medieval monastery was one of the most striking novels to appear in the 1980s. The Name of the Rose is a thrilling story enriched with period detail and laced with tongue-in-cheek allusions to fictional characters, the most striking of which is the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, who displays many characteristics of Sherlock Holmes. Although he looks at the past through a postmodern lens, Eco catapults his readers into the dark medieval world as Brother William tries to discover why people are dying inexplicably and nastily in the monastery. There is something not altogether right within the library that is the pride of the establishment...The old man Adso, who was an impressionable novice at the time, tells the story.

Invisible Man

by: Ralph Ellison
release date: Jan 01, 1992
Invisible Man
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A black man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.

Pillars Of The Earth

by: Ken Follett
release date: Jan 01, 2007
Pillars Of The Earth
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ken Follett comes this spellbinding epic set in twelfth-century England. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the lives entwined in the building of the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known-and a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.

View our Ken Follett feature page.

Learn more about The Pillars of the Earth miniseries on Starz.

The Sound and the Fury

by: William Faulkner
release date: Jan 01, 1990
The Sound and the Fury
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.

Siddhartha

by: Hermann Hesse
release date: Jan 01, 2011
Siddhartha
In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life -- the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom.

Color Purple

by: Brenna Moore
release date: Jan 01, 1990
Color Purple
Get your "A" in gear!

They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:

· They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.
· They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.
· The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.

And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!



On The Road

by: Kevin Kelly
release date: Jan 01, 2009
On The Road
REA's MAXnotes for Jack Kerouac's On the Road

MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions.

MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers.

Fountainhead

by: Ayn Rand
release date: Jan 01, 2006
Fountainhead
When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero—and about those who try to destroy him.


 

91 - 120 of 170 results
 << >>


  • Aboutread.com makes it one-click away to discover great books from local library by linking books/movies to your library catalog search.

  • Copyright © 2025 Aboutread.com