Transcript Document

Book Talks
The purpose of this list is to give you classic
and contemporary novels of literary merit.
Main thing you need to do: go to Amazon
and read reviews. Beware of spoilers.
Not every book from the list is in one of
these categories.
Magical Realism/Latin American Lit.
The House of Spirits
Like Water for Chocolate
100 Years of Solitude
Bless Me Ultima
This genre is often about family relationships and
generations and the weirdness within. Love, violence, and war
often appear. People often die in these. You don’t always get
resolution or happy endings, but that doesn’t mean that good
things don’t happen. These blur the line between reality and
history and things happen that defy the laws of physics, but they’re
not fantasy genre.
Dystopian Societies or Settings w/unique/weird perspectives on
life
The Handmaid’s Tale
Brave New World
1984
The Fountainhead –Objectivism- rational self-interest, denounces
altruism. Characters exist as symbols to prove a point. Egoism is
an absolute moral good and therefore anything (people, systems)
that blocks individual freedom is evil
Atlas Shrugged –tries to demonstrate what would happen to the
world if economic freedom were lost –
collapse of production
and rise of corruption.
Period Pieces (usually English) that you’d see on Masterpiece
Theater. Mostly 19th c. lit. for Anglophiles.
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights
Moll Flanders
Edith Wharton’s stuff- an American Jane Austen, except sadder, class cons. and
society
George Eliot’s stuff - rural or small villages in England, v. strong characters,
death/love, things
Thomas Hardy’s stuff
stuff will happen in these books, lots of plot.
E. M. Forster’s stuff
The English Patient
-English people abroad, love
triangle/tragedy/betrayal/war/death
Possession – A. S. Byatt
Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Period Pieces Continued…
Pretty much all of these involve romance, relationships,
and complications therein. Character-driven, but lots of
plot. Social class is often an issue, esp. w/people who
don’t fit in. All have fascinating, complex characters, lots
of imagery, and rich descriptions of people, not all of
whom will survive until the end of the book. Laughter
and tears.
Epic (and usually long) Novels w/casts of 100’s and lots of
adventure
Most things by Dickens and Thackery
Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, Hunchback, Man in the Iron Mask,
Ivanhoe -medieval world, Saxon v. Norman, Xtian Knights v. Jews, Robin
Hood, jousting, v. descrip.
Tom Jones
Last of the Mohicans
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - “Complete with golems
and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even
hand-tohand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important
questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming
with longing and hope.” Begins during WWII and involves comic
book artists.
Small town/Turn of the Century America and the Issues
Therein
Sister Carrie – 18yr old country woman moves to Chicago in 1900
and becomes a kept woman
Babbit, Main Street - Mark Twain-ish, small town life and foibles
of the people, Thornton Wilderish
The Jungle, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - tenement life, immigrants
struggling against the odds
Asian/American Lit.
The Good Earth
- This is the story of the cyclical nature of life, of the
passions and desires that motivate a human being, of good and evil, and of the
desire to survive and thrive against great odds. It begins with the story of an
illiterate, poor, peasant farmer, Wang Lung, who ventures from the
rural
countryside and goes to town to the great house of Hwang to obtain a bride from
those among the rank of slave. There, he is given the slave O-lan as his bride.
Snow Falling on Cedars (also war-related) Japanese woman and
American soldier love story. Probably won’t end well. A trial and
war flashbacks are a large part of it.
All Amy Tan: Chinese women and their daughters, often multigenerational. The different values held by different cultures and age
groups. Some very sad moments, but also hopeful. These won’t leave
you crying at the end. Joy Luck Club is my favorite of her three. Also
The Bonesetter’s Daughter was on the AP open ended question last year.
The Kitchen God’s Wife is okay too.
Outer Space/Other Planets/Our Planet
w/Weird Science
• Ender’s Game - seemingly juvenile lit, but about isolation, importance
of belonging, social responsibility, has space ships and battles, and
some tech stuff
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Cat’s Cradle -Blending his patented wry humor with acute social
insight presented in an absurd fantasy world, Vonnegut has written an
exceptional novel of love, lies, and the self destruction of mankind.
Cat's Cradle is rife with painfully accurate insights into the institutions
that our society holds so dear, such as, religion, politics, and science.
Vonnegut invents for the inhabitants of San Lorenzo a brand new
religion based completely and admittedly on "foma,"or lies.
Outer Space/Other Planets/Our Planet
w/Weird Science (continued)
• Dune – other planet, prophecy of chosen one for leader of
people, social responsibility, politics, battles
• The Left Hand of Darkness -Genly Ai is an emissary from
the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His
mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an
evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge
the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those
that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no
gender--or both--this is a broad gulf indeed.
War, Politics, Fitting into a New Culture
Catch 22
All the King’s Men
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Kite Runner
A Farewell to Arms
The Sun Also Rises
Race, Ethnicity, Religious, Moral Issues
Invisible Man
Cry Beloved Country
Beloved
Bless Me, Ultima
The Kite Runner
Davita’s Harp, The Chosen
The Scarlet Letter
Crime and Punishment
The Color Purple/The Temple of My Familiar
Going to Other Countries, or Journeys Across This One, and
Trying to Deal
Out of Africa
All the Pretty Horses – he rides his horse down to Mexico.
Beautiful story of a young man who falls in love with the daughter
of his boss on a Mexican ranch and the stuff that happens on the way
and afterwards. Full of mood, imagery, setting stuff, adventure
The Grapes of Wrath
Last of the Mohicans
A Farewell to Arms
The Sun Also Rises
The Poisonwood Bible
Books w/an Element of Mystery and a Puzzle to
Solve
• Possession – A Romance – the relationship between two
Victorian Poets and the modern scholars who are trying to solve
the puzzle of this relationship. It’s BEAUTIFUL!! Story is
epistolary, full of
poems & fairy tales. It’s Mrs. Willshire’s
new favorite book.
• The Name of the Rose – Medieval Murder Mystery in a
monastery w/Sherlock Holmes’ precursor
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• American Gods
- this amazingly cool mythologicalinspired story is about whether the immigrants to America (from
all over the world) took their gods with them. The gods
themselves exist as real people. Tons of cameos (it’s like
playing Spot the God: Norse, Egyptian, African) as the character
Shadow takes a job from a very strange man he met on a plane
(Mr. Wednesday) who already seems to know him…It’s Mrs.
Willshire’s other favorite book. Some bits are for mature
audiences, but there are all sorts of gods…
Books by Neil Gaiman that you
should just read…NOW
• Neverwhere – parallel universe in London
• Anansi Boys – based on an African Folk Tale
w/modern twist in modern London and small
island south of Florida and realm of fantasy
• Stardust
Medieval/Fantasy/Renaissance/Fantasy World
w/hero who learns to be one, Faerie Realm,
cool magic stuff
Other Options That I Think are Worth Reading
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The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)
The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
The Alienist (Caleb Carr)
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton)
Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan)
The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
The Age of Miracles (Karen Thompson Walker)
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Laurie R. King)
The Paris Wife (Paula Mclain)
The Invisible Bridge (Julie Orringer)
Haven’t read, but heard they’re good
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Help
Confederacy of Dunces
Life of Pi