The Trial FK

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country WHG

The Famished Road BO

The Famished Road is teeming with spirits, yet it is all too real. Often have I read stories with no spirits, yet no realism. Stories that twist themselves in unbelievable ways to contrive an emotional effect. The impression of poverty is the power of the story; Okri uses "magic" to create that impression, to paint the picture of the subjective battle of one's mind against a suffocating poverty. “Always the strained smile of the hunger beneath the brave pride. Always the rats and cockroaches eating away at our dreams.”

The Age of Faith; The Story of Civilization WD

"An age of power gave way to an age of Faith.Not till wealth and pride should return in the Renaissance would reason reject faith and abandon heaven for utopia. But if thereafter reason should fail and science should find no answers but should multiply knowledge and power without improving conscience or purpose, if all utopias should brutally collapse in the changeless abuse of the weak by the strong, then men would understand why once their ancestors, in the barbarism of those early christian centuries turned from science, knowledge, power and pride and took refuge for a thousand years in humble faith, hope and charity."

Infinite Jest DFW

Lonesome Dove: A Novel LM

Pnin VN

An aging man drops a bowl as he is washing some dishes and thinks he has cracked it. And somehow your heart is broken. Turning such a simple, possibly banal moment into high human drama is the conceit (and Nabokov's triumph) of this novel. Pnin is a charming character profile of a lost Russian emigre seeking love from a new country. Nabokov took me from laughing at Pnin, to laughing with Pnin, to crying for Pnin.

The Castle FK

Something put a simple, yet sinister, belief in me when I was young: a person ought to do what is asked of them. The Castle wrestles with this axiom, warning of the madness that lies in putting faith into an insatiable, irrational authority. Get lost with K. in a wintry, meandering, complex (and quintiessentially Kafka) soulscape while answering questions of faith, subjugation, authority, failure and self-actualization.

The Lying Life of Adults EF

Speak Memory VN

Selected Stories of Alice Munro AM

Airships BH

The Weaver's Grave O

Things Fall Apart CA