Books i read in 2005
Discover a curated 2005 reading list featuring literary classics like George Eliot's *The Mill on the Floss*, Charles Dickens' *Bleak House*, and Cormac McCarthy's *Child of God*. Explore great books from James Joyce, Stephen King, and more in this snapshot of a reader's year in fiction and historical fiction.
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The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
A classic of modern fiction. Set in the 1860s, THE LEOPARD is the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.
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Modern Classics Dubliners
by James Joyce
James Joyce's Dubliners is an enthralling collection of modernist short stories which create a vivid picture of the day-to-day experience of Dublin life. This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by Terence Brown. Joyce's first major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. From 'The Sisters', a vivid portrait of childhood faith and guilt, to 'Araby', a timeless evocation of the inexplicable yearnings of adolescence, to 'The Dead', in which Gabriel Conroy is gradually brought to a painful epiphany regarding the nature of his existence, Joyce draws a realistic and memorable cast of Dubliners together in an powerful exploration of overarching themes. Writing of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, he creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience. James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter's mental illness. If you enjoyed Dubliners, you might like Joyce's Ulysses, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Joyce redeems his Dubliners, assures their identity, and makes their social existence appear permanent and immortal, like the streets they walk' Tom Paulin 'Joyce's early short stories remain undimmed in their brilliance' Sunday Times
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Anton Chekhov's Short Stories
by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
The thirty-four stories in this volume span Chekhov s creative career."
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The Woman in the Dunes
by Kobo Abe
The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.
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The Golem
by Gustav Meyrink
"A favorite of connoisseurs of works of fantasy for many decades." ? St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A compelling story of mystical experiences, strange transformations, and profound terror, this is the most famous supernatural novel in modern European literature, set in Ghetto of Old Prague around 1890. 13 black-and-white illustrations. "Not to be missed." ? Los Angeles Times.
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Salem's Lot
by Stephen King
In a classic tale of horror by Stephen King, a man returns to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, only to find it infested with vampires. Reprint.
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The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
The complete stories of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial. “An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic, numinous, and prophetic.” —The New York Times The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume. “[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man’s cosmic predicament.” —from the Foreword by John Updike
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The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
New chronology and updated further reading. Edited with an Introduction by A. S. Byatt.
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Last and First Men, & Star Maker
by Olaf Stapledon
Two science fiction novels, written during the nineteen thirties, chronicle the future of civilization, foretelling such events as the worldwide fuel shortage and man's exploration of space
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Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post
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The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather
A story of a young woman's awakening as an artist and her struggle to escape the constraints of a small town in Colorado.
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The Holy Terrors
by Jean Cocteau
Cocteau's novel Les Enfants Terribles, which was first published in 1929, holds an undisputed place among the classics of modern fiction.
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The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
For deft plotting, riotous inventiveness, unforgettable characters, and language that brilliantly captures the lively rhythms of American speech, no American writer comes close to Mark Twain. This sparkling anthology covers the entire span of Twain’s inimitable yarn-spinning, from his early broad comedy to the biting satire of his later years. Every one of his sixty stories is here: ranging from the frontier humor of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” to the bitter vision of humankind in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” to the delightful hilarity of “Is He Living or Is He Dead?” Surging with Twain’s ebullient wit and penetrating insight into the follies of human nature, this volume is a vibrant summation of the career of–in the words of H. L. Mencken–“the father of our national literature.”
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Gravity's Angels
by Michael Swanwick
These thirteen stories established Michael Swanwick as one of the brightest stars in the science-fiction firmament. Alongside its companion volume, Tales of Old Earth, Gravity's Angels showcases the very best of Swanwick's considerable talent, including the Sturgeon Award--winner "The Edge of the World." Each story is a unique and engrossing exploration of character, conflict, and conscience.
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Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
One of Charles Dickens’s most critically admired novels, this story of a monumental and life-consuming court case features one of his most vast and varied casts of colorful characters. InBleak House,competing claims of love and inheritance—complicated by murder—have given rise to a costly and decades-long legal battle that one litigant refers to as “the family curse.” The insidious London fog that rises from the river Thames and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, targets of Dickens’s satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens’s familiar panoramic sweep and brilliant characters—including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jarndyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn—the novel is also a bold experimental narrative that unforgettably dramatizes our most basic human conflicts.
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Fires on the Plain
by Shohei Ooka
Anti-war novel as seen from the point of view of a losing army.
