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  & 7 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Stephen King

Description: An interesting guide on writing. Reading it managedAn interesting guide on writing. Reading it managed to make me spend a week writing every day....

2007-08-10

  & 350 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Author: Dan Brown

Description: A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncoverA murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient society who, in the moments before his death, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his granddaughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle. ...

2006-05-23

  & 30 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Description: The Nation : "A work of immense narrative power that can sweep the reader up and holdThe Nation : "A work of immense narrative power that can sweep the reader up and hold him enthralled for days and weeks."
Kansas City Star : "J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy remains the ultimate quest, the ultimate battle between good and evil, the ultimate chronicle of stewardship of the earth. Endlessly imitated, it has never been surpassed."
Newsweek : "A remarkable book"
Time Magazine : "One of the great fairy-tale quests in modern literature"
The Chicago Tribune : "A sustained feat of imagination that has entranced millions"
The Washington Post : "Tolkien"s stories take place against a background of measureless depth…That background is ever-present in the creator"s mind and it gives Frodo and company a three-dimensional reality that is seldom found in this kind of writing." ...

2006-05-23

  & 173 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: finished

Authors: William Golding E. L. Epstein

Tags: psychology classic sad

Description: William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wreckedWilliam Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition....

2006-05-23

  & 307 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: finished

Author: J.D. Salinger

Tags: classic generation

Description: Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous withSince his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation....

2006-05-23

  & 151 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Tags: humor classic tolkien

Description: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.

The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest. It is from this life-or-death game in the dark that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, would eventually spring. Though The Hobbit is lighter in tone than the trilogy that follows, it has, like Bilbo Baggins himself, unexpected iron at its core. Don't be fooled by its fairy-tale demeanor; this is very much a story for adults, though older children will enjoy it, too. By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come--and so is the reader....

2006-05-23

  & 348 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: liked

Author: George Orwell

Tags: classic futuristic fascism

Description: In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the ThoughtIn a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be....

2006-05-23

  & 47 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Douglas Adams

Description: "After adapting his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy scripts from the BBC radio series"After adapting his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy scripts from the BBC radio series into two successful novels, author Douglas Adams reshaped a rejected "Doctor Who" script he'd written into this third novel in the original trilogy. Reluctant space traveler Arthur Dent finds himself drawn into a race to save the universe from the people of Krikkit, who, upon discovering that they're not alone in the universe, set out to destroy it. Adams does an excellent job with the reading, although his voice drops too low when characters whisper. This reading comes from the British version of the novel, which contains profanity deleted for U.S. release."...

2006-05-23

  & 63 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Douglas Adams

Description: "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, the fourth book in the Hitchhiker's "trilogy,""So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, the fourth book in the Hitchhiker's "trilogy," is a much different read than the books preceding it. Gone are the skips and jumps from one galaxy and time to another, the almost constant evasions of certain death, the madcap hilarity that ensued whenever Zaphod, Ford, Trillian, Arthur, and Marvin got together (or split up), and the maddening pace of a well-told tale going happily along with little care whether or not the story ever approached an appropriately witty conclusion. This is basically the story of the young lady who figured out the secret of happiness just seconds before Earth was destroyed by a Vogon fleet preparing the way for a hyperspace bypass. It is also Arthur Dent's story. Sure, we got to now Arthur fairly well in the first three books, but he does spend an inordinate amount of time saying things like: What?, I don't understand, Is it possible to get a cup of tea? and That's it then, we're all going to die. Once you get him out of that well-traveled bathrobe, Arthur Dent turns out to be a real person-a little weird, of course, but real, rather complex, and surprisingly interesting nonetheless."...

2006-05-23

  & 193 users

• Current

Type: fiction

Status: I recommend

Author: Douglas Adams

Description: "Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid"Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a master of intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue. The Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations and stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for science fiction fans, this book (and its follow-ups) is also sure to please fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and British sitcoms."...

2006-05-23