Hanks 2008 reading list (part 2)
Discover Hanks' 2008 reading list (part 2), a curated selection of 8 classic books. Explore iconic fiction by Kurt Vonnegut and Albert Camus, plus thought-provoking titles from Chinua Achebe. Dive into this 2008 book list for timeless literary picks.
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Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
âMarvelous . . . [Vonnegut] wheels out all the complaints about America and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful and lovable.ââThe New York Times In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegutâs most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth. âFree-wheeling, wild and great . . . uniquely Vonnegut.ââPublishers Weekly
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Flatland
by Edwin Abbott Abbott
A humorous examination with serious overtones of the concepts of space, time, and dimension.
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Perfume
by Patrick Suskind
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠Set in eighteenth-century France, the classic novel that provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one manâs indulgence in his greatest passionâhis sense of smellâleads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime giftâan absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouilleâs genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the âultimate perfumeââthe scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods.
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus
With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The StrangerâCamus's masterpieceâgives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward. Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. âThe Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Wardâs translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camusâs stoical anti-hero and Âdevious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.â âfrom the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.
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The Plague
by Albert Camus
âIts relevance lashes you across the face.â âStephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times ⢠âA redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.â âRoger Lowenstein, The Washington Post A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.
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No Longer at Ease
by Chinua Achebe
After returning to Africa from his education abroad, Obi Okonkwo feels alienated and disgusted at the fact that he has been thrust into the ruling class, of whom most are corrupt.
