Best Books I Read in 2005
Discover the best books read in 2005, from C.S. Lewis's Narnia set and Harry Potter to literary classics by Nabokov, Bradbury, and Wodehouse. Curated favorites.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
by Harold Bloom
A critical review of the work features the contributions of Joseph B. Wagner, Ronald Berman, Elizabeth Preston, and other scholars, discussing the themes and characters of the novel.
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The novel that first established Nabokov's reputation with a large audience tour-de-force of comic satire on sex and the American ways of life.
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Carry On, Jeeves
by P. G. Wodehouse
A Jeeves and Wooster collectionThese marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie s raging hangover ( If you would drink this, sir& it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce th
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Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
Exam board: EdexcelLevel & Subject: AS and A Level English LiteratureFirst teaching: September 2015First examination: June 2017
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Chronicles of Narnia Movie Tie-in Rack Box Set Prince Caspian (Books 1 to 7), Th
by C. S. Lewis
This rack edition box set will feature movie stills from the PRINCE CASPIAN film on the box. All seven rack books inside have cover artwork by Cliff Nielsen and black-and-white interior illustrations by Pauline Baynes.
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Madame de Pompadour
by Nancy Mitford
When Madame de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, no one expected her to retain his affections for long. A member of the bourgeoisie rather than an aristocrat, she was physically too cold for the carnal Bourbon king, and had so many enemies that she could not travel publicly without risking a pelting of mud and stones. History has loved her little better.Nancy Mitford's delightfully candid biography re-creates the spirit of eighteenth-century Versailles with its love of pleasure and treachery. We learn that the Queen was a "bore," the Dauphin a "prig," and see France increasingly overcome with class conflict. With a fiction writer's felicity, Mitford restores the royal mistress and celebrates her as a survivor, unsurpassed in "the art of living," who reigned as the most powerful woman in France for nearly twenty years.
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Dandelion Wine
by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928. Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future. Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.