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Carol Ann Weaver
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Bernard Bailyn
Carol Ann Weaver
I loved it! The part on slavery was so powerful.
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Instead of a Letter
Diana Athill
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
James Agee and Walker Evans
It took me four tries to read this,but listening to it made all the difference. I am a believer now.
The Outermost House
Henry Beston
Loved this book. I listened to the audiobook, and his words are like butter. So beautifully written.
This House of Sky
Ivan Doig
This is such a beautiful book. Loved it. We listened to it on a road trip through the West! Perfect.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers
Published when its author was only twenty-three, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter still stands as one of the most acclaimed debuts in the history of American fiction. Set in the 1930s, in a southern town much like the one in which McCullers was raised, it revolves around the enigmatic figure of John Sin...show more
Dune
Frank Herbert
What are you doing to me? I have never been able to read this in the past, but I was totally hooked! Great page-turner.
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I would never be able to understand and still cannot fully. But these first-person narratives are so helpful.
Diary of a Provincial Lady
E. M. Delafield
Fun and light-hearted to read after some more serious ones on this list!
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
Alex, the frightening narrator of this brutal and brilliant novel, is an amoral, Beethoven-loving gang leader in a near-future
dystopian Britain. Whether adolescent girls or a schoolteacher returning from the library, the gang’s victims are treated with an exuberantly vicious disregard: They might ...show more
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett may have invented the hardboiled detective story, but nobody wrote it better than Raymond Chandler. With his stylized prose and flair for similes, he gave his detective Philip Marlowe a voice that would become the hallmark of the genre. Marlowe is the protagonist in all of Chandler’...show more
The Long Loneliness
Dorothy Day
The Long Loneliness, published in 1952, is the autobiography of Dorothy Day, the American political activist, pacifist, and cofounder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and movement. While Day has lately been put forth for canonization by the church, she might bridle at that idea: “Don’t call me a sai...show more
Orlando
Virginia Woolf
Woolf’s words invariably dance across her pages with an enthusiasm that engenders delight. None of her books is more joyful than Orlando, a mock-biography that follows the fortunes of its protagonist across four centuries, from the era of Elizabeth I to the stroke of midnight on the eleventh of Octo...show more
Tender Is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
Love this book. So well-written. I read House of Mirth years ago, but this has always been on my list.
The Common Reader
Virginia Woolf
Fascinating read. Virginia Woolf was brilliant. It was fun to read her thoughts on people I have read over the years.
Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons
Imagine a Jane Austen heroine stumbling into an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, with the hillbillies portrayed by method actors. That will give you something of the flavor of this giddy tale, which presents a picture of country life that is roaringly bizarre—and hilarious. Flora Poste is a sophi...show more
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
By Simone de Beauvoir’s own account, Sartre had a critical role in the genesis of The Second Sex. When she told him that she was about to embark upon a memoir of her childhood, he suggested she consider how being a woman had shaped her upbringing and engagement with the world. After some resistance,...show more