Archives: Books
Archives: Books
The Hunger Games (Series)
A generation of teenagers have grown up now with Katniss Everdeen as a model of principled rebellion against unjust authority. Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of novels about a dystopian world where citizens are made to fight to the death-to distract from their poverty and lack of freedom-is a modern young adult phenomenon. Their themes and lessons are timeless. This is the first book in the series.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhikerâs Guide (âA towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can haveâ) and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebroxâthe two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphodâs …
The Help
Aibileenis a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, whoâs always taken orders quietly, but lately sheâs unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. Sheâs full of ambition, but without a husband, sheâs considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town…
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conradâs Heart of Darkness (1899) reveals the monstrous truth of European control and influence in the Congo region of Africa during the height of colonialism. The bookâs protagonist, a sailor named Charles Marlow, pilots a boat on the Congo River for a Belgian ivory-trading firm known simply as the Company. In the African interior, he sees what the European traders have done to local inhabitants, enslaving and butchering them without cause. Marlowâs final encounter with Mr. Kurtz, the mysterious, sinister head of an important trading post, serves as the linchpin to this much-studied tale about the capacity of one nation to …
Hatchet (Series)
This award-winning contemporary classic is a page-turning, heart-stopping adventure and recipient of the Newbery Honor. Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his motherâs infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, Brian is the sole survivor. Alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present, it takes all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive. This is the first book in the series.
Harry Potter (Series)
Harry Potter may well be the most famous character in literature. Many of his friends and enemiesâHermione, Ron, Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape, Voldemortâare likely not far behind. âThe boy who livedâ has, since Harry Potter and The Philosopherâs Stone was published in 1997, become a household name in every corner of the world, as J.K. Rowlingâs series of childrenâs novels grew to become one of the most outrageously popular book series of all time. As an orphan with a scar on his forehead, Harry surprisingly finds out, on his eleventh birthday, that he is a wizard, and entitled to study at the …
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Handmaidâs Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its image and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The Handmaidâs Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and a tour de force.
Gulliver’s Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, In Four Parts, By Lemuel Gulliver (1726) is meant to be a travelogue, wherein a voyaging English surgeon recounts how he is repeatedly washed ashore on new lands inhabited by strange people (the Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, Liliputians, and the Brobdingnagians among them). Each experienceâsome more dangerous than othersâteaches Gulliver something about the nature of humanity and politics, and he returns to England each time with new understanding. Read more closely, though, Gulliverâs Travels is Jonathan Swiftâs satirical representation of British Enlightenment thought and government via Gulliverâs various encounters with âutopianâ societies.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgeraldâs third book, The Great Gatsby, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers and is considered by many to be the great American novel. It is the story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby, his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, and lavish parties on Long Island at a time when, as The New York Times noted, âgin was the national drink and sex the national obsession.â
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is the rags-to-riches story of Pip, a young orphan. At first taken in by the Gargerys, he learns a lesson while helping an escaped convict. Later, as he is employed by the reclusive spinster Miss Havisham as a playmate for her adopted daughter Estella, he believes that he is being groomed to marry the beautiful girlâbut soon finds that the situation is not what he imagined. In his shifting world, Pip learns he will come into a fortune from a mysterious source, which could further change his fate… Full of memorable characters both kind and villainous, Dickensâs story, a …
The Grapes of Wrath
The greatest novel about the Dust Bowl, by one of the greatest writers the western hemisphere has ever produced. This social realist masterpiece follows the travails of the Joad family as they abandon their Oklahoma farmstead and head out for California during the economic and climate troubles of the 1930s. Their futile pursuit of a better life in the face of endless troubles can be seen as a metaphor for the American Dreamâas well as an indictment of the systems which left so many real-life families like the Joads in such abject poverty. Ma Joad has to hold her family …
Gone with the Wind
The definitive story of love and war in the South, Gone with the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947. Scarlett OâHara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life. A sweeping story of tangled passion and courage, in the pages of Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia and brings to life unforgettable characters that have captured readers for more than eighty years.
Gone Girl
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunneâs fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nickâs clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isnât doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wifeâs head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the mediaâas well as Amyâs fiercely doting parentsâthe town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly …
The Godfather
With its brilliant and brutal portrayal of the Corleone family, The Godfather burned its way into our national consciousness. This unforgettable saga of crime and corruption, passion and loyalty continues to stand the test of time, as the definitive novel of the Mafia underworld. A #1 New York Times bestseller in 1969, Mario Puzoâs epic was turned into the incomparable film of the same name, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is the original classic that has been often imitated, but never matched. A tale of family and society, law and order, obedience and …
The Giver
The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.
Gilead
Gilead is an epistolary novel: a single, episodic letter from the Reverend John Ames to his seven-year-old son. Ames, a Congregationalist minister in tiny Gilead, Iowa, is dying of a heart condition, and he is documenting his life for the son he will not see to reach adulthood. He talks about his own childhood in Gilead: his father, a Christian pacifist, and his grandfather, a radical abolitionist who âpreached his people into the war.â He writes of the death of his first wife, who died giving birth to their child, and of Lila, an uneducated woman with whom he falls in …
Ghost
Jason Reynoldsâs powerful novel Ghost was a National Book Award Finalist for Young Peopleâs Literature. Running is all Ghost has ever known. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasonsâit all started with running away from his father, who, when Ghost was a very little boy, chased him and his mother with a loaded gun, aiming to kill. Since then, Ghost has been the one causing problemsâand running away from themâuntil he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medalist who sees something in Ghost: crazy natural talent. If Ghost can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in …
Game of Thrones (Series)
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots …
Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1818) is Mary Shelleyâs Gothic masterpiece about a young and ambitious student, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a colossal and hideous monster by re-animating a corpse. After his initial spark of creative frenzy, Frankenstein is dissatisfied with and disgusted by his creature,and he abandons it as soon as it awakens. Forced to face an unforgiving world on its own, the creature sets out on in search of understanding and revenge. Told in letters by an arctic explorer documenting his encounter with the doctor who is in search of his runaway, Frankenstein is a multi-layered story of what makes us humanâand what makes us …
Foundation (Series)
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future–to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire–both scientists and scholars–and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy …