TEN BOOKS TO READ BEFORE YOU DIE
Discover the 10 must-read books that belong on every literary bucket list. From timeless classics to life-changing modern masterpieces, these essential reads will inspire, challenge, and transform you.
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. “The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”—The New Yorker One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.
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The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
by Sylvia Plath
The complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath—essential reading for anyone who has been moved and fascinated by the poet's life and work. "A genuine literary event.... Plath's journals contain marvels of discovery." —The New York Times Book Review Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull
by Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an icon—a phenomenal bestseller celebrating the strength of the individual and the joy of finding one’s way. This is a story for people who follow their hearts and make their own rules...people who get special pleasure out of doing something well, even if only for themselves...people who know there's more to this living than meets the eye: they’ll be right there with Jonathan, flying higher and faster than ever they dreamed.
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The Book of Ruth
by Jane Hamilton
Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love.
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I Know why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
The moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman. ". . . I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood . . . have I found myself so moved . . . Her portrait is a Biblical study of life in the midst of death".--James Baldwin. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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Stones from the River
by Ursula Hegi
From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times). Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar. Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.
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Night
by Elie Wiesel
Presents a true account of the author's experiences as a Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp.
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Traveling Mercies
by Anne Lamott
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Bird by Bird comes a personal, wise, very funny, and “life-affirming” book (People) that shows us how to find meaning and hope through shining the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life. "Anne Lamott is walking proof that a person can be both reverent and irreverent in the same lifetime. Sometimes even in the same breath." —San Francisco Chronicle Lamott claims the two best prayers she knows are: "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She has a friend whose morning prayer each day is "Whatever," and whose evening prayer is "Oh, well." Anne thinks of Jesus as "Casper the friendly savior" and describes God as "one crafty mother." Despite—or because of—her irreverence, faith is a natural subject for Anne Lamott. Since Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her fans have been waiting for her to write the book that explained how she came to the big-hearted, grateful, generous faith that she so often alluded to in her two earlier nonfiction books. The people in Anne Lamott's real life are like beloved characters in a favorite series for her readers—her friend Pammy, her son, Sam, and the many funny and wise folks who attend her church are all familiar. And Traveling Mercies is a welcome return to those lives, as well as an introduction to new companions Lamott treats with the same candor, insight, and tenderness. Lamott's faith isn't about easy answers, which is part of what endears her to believers as well as nonbelievers. Against all odds, she came to believe in God and then, even more miraculously, in herself. As she puts it, "My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers."
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Ariel
by Sylvia Plath
"In these poems...Sylvia Plath becomes herself, becomes something imaginary, newly, wildly and subtly created." -- From the Introduction by Robert Lowell
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Writing Down the Bones
by Natalie Goldberg
With insight, humor, and practicality, Goldberg inspires writers and would-be writers alike to take the leap into writing creatively in this revised edition of the guide.
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East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
The biblical account of Cain and Abel is echoed in the history of two generations of the Trask family in California.