The epic history of the Great Depression won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired (and occasionally infuriated) millions of readers. The Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is covered in Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, which was first published in 1939. The Joads, an Oklahoma farm family, are driven from their homestead and compelled to move west to the promised land of California. A story that is intimately human yet magnificent in scope and moral vision, elemental but blunt, tragic but ultimately uplifting in its human dignity, emerges from their struggles and recurrent collisions with the harsh reality of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots. The novel portrays the horrors of the Great Depression and inquires into the very nature of justice and equality in America. It is a depiction of the fight between the powerful and the downtrodden, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoic strength. Steinbeck’s enduring classic work is arguably the most American of all American Classics because it functions simultaneously as a naturalistic epic, captivity tale, read fiction, and transcendental gospel.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You got a God. Don’t make no difference if you don’ know what he looks like.”
“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, and emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
“And her joy was nearly like sorrow.”
“If you’re in trouble or hurt or need–go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help–the only ones.”
“The bank – the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.”
American author Ernest Hemingway created the novella The Old Man and the Sea in Cayo Blanco in 1951. It was later published in 1952. It was Hemingway’s final significant piece of published fiction during his lifetime. This brief book, which is already a modern classic, tells the heartbreaking tale of a Cuban fisherman who perishes while pursuing a massive marlin in the Gulf Stream; it is expressly mentioned in the citation that accompanied the author’s 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is”
“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
Animal Farm, a satirical allegorical novella by George Orwell about a farm, was first released in England on August 17, 1945. It depicts the tale of a band of farm animals who rise up to confront their man farmer in an effort to establish an animal-friendly society.
Animals that have been abused and overworked on a farm take over. They went out to construct a paradise of advancement, fairness, and equality with fiery idealism and passionate slogans. The setting is therefore set for one of the most incisive satiric tales ever written—a sharp-edged fairy tale for adults that charts the progression from the revolt against oppression to totalitarianism that is just as dreadful. As Animal Farm was initially published, it was thought to be directed toward Stalinist Russia. Today, it is glaringly obvious that George Orwell’s masterpiece has a meaning and a message that are still fiercely relevant wherever and whenever liberty is attacked, regardless of the cause.
One morning, a pilot who is stranded in the desert awakens to see the most remarkable tiny fellow standing in front of him. Draw me a sheep, please,” the stranger begs. The pilot also understands that when life’s events are too complex to comprehend, there is no other option except to give in to their mysteries. He takes out a pencil and some paper. And so starts this witty and charming fable, which has forever altered readers’ perceptions of the world by revealing the secret of what is truly important in life.
The Little Prince, offered here in a magnificent new translation with meticulously restored artwork, is one of the few stories that are as widely read and as widely adored by both children and adults. It will captivate readers of all ages because it is the authoritative edition of a global classic.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”
“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
French novelist Albert Camus wrote a novella in 1942 titled The Stranger, which was also released in English as The Outsider. Although Camus expressly disliked the term “existentialism,” its theme and attitude are sometimes regarded as instances of his philosophy, absurdism combined with existentialism.
Camus investigated what he called “the nudeness of man confronted with the ludicrous” through the tale of a regular man who unknowingly becomes involved in a senseless killing on a beach in Algeria. Published for the first time in English in 1946; a new translation by Matthew Ward.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
“I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God.”
“Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.”
“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a unique masterpiece that ranks among the 20th century’s most influential books; as its dystopian purgatory becomes more real, it gets more menacing. The dystopian social science fiction book Nineteen Eighty-Four by English author George Orwell serves as a warning. It was Orwell’s ninth and last book that he finished during his lifetime, and Secker & Warburg released it on June 8, 1949.
The 1949 publication of the book features political satirist George Orwell’s terrifying portrayal of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff’s quest for identity. The novel’s genius lies in Orwell’s prescience of contemporary life—the pervasiveness of television, the linguistic distortion—and his capacity to provide such an in-depth depiction of hell. It has been compulsory reading for students from the moment it was published and is one of the scariest books ever.
Holden Caulfield was recently expelled from a new school after failing the majority of his subjects. Holden quits Pencey Prep after a quarrel with his roommate and ends up in New York City. Holden’s perception of the universe and its people evolves as he finds solace in brief encounters.
He wanders the city like a spirit, always thinking about his young sister Phoebe and his desire to escape the posers (adults) and live a meaningful life. The Catcher in the Rye, like The Outsiders, is a coming-of-age story that portrays the primordial human desire for connections as well as the perplexing feeling of loss we feel as we grow from childhood to adulthood.
The novel was chosen as one of the 100 finest English-language novels that were written since 1923 by Time Magazine in 2005, and it was named one of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century by Modern Library and its readers. It was ranked 15th in the BBC’s The Big Read poll in 2003.
John Steinbeck wrote the novella Of Mice and Men. It was published in 1937 and tells the story of George and Lenny that make an unusual couple. George is “small and quick and dark of face,” but Lennie has the brains of a kid despite his gigantic bulk. Regardless, they are just like family to me.
Laborers in the parched vegetable fields of California labor more than they can, whenever they can. Lennie and George have a plan: they want to buy an acre of property and build their own shack.
When they find work on a farm in the Salinas Valley, their dream looks to be within reach. But even George cannot shield Lennie from the acts of others, nor can he predict the consequences of Lennie’s unshakeable devotion to the lessons George taught him.
Raskolnikov, a former student who is homeless and miserable, goes through the slums of St. Petersburg and kills someone at random without feeling guilty or sorrowful. He sees himself as a great man, like Napoleon, who goes above and beyond the bounds of morality. Raskolnikov, meanwhile, is being pursued by his conscience as he engages in a risky game of cat and mouse with a dubious police investigator, and he feels the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. The only person who can give the option of redemption is Sonya, a victimized sex worker.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”
The surreal tale of a young fellow who trades his soul for everlasting youth and beauty is the subject of Oscar Wilde’s sole book. A youthful aesthete in late 19th-century England was the subject of a devastating depiction by Oscar Wilde in this well-known work. The book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray descends into a life of crime and excessive sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait develops day by day into a grotesque record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the public. The book uses a combination of a Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction. This captivating tale of terror and suspense has been incredibly popular for more than a century. It is one of Wilde’s most significant works and one of the pioneering examples of its kind.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“To define is to limit.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
The third book written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, was released in 1925. It chronicles the tragic tale of self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman he once loved, in Jazz Age New York. The narrative of the book is provided by Nick Carraway, who describes the happenings of the summer of 1922 after moving into the fictitious Long Island community of West Egg. He resides there among the newly wealthy, while his cousin Daisy and her violently wealthy husband, Tom Buchanan, reside across the water in the more affluent community of East Egg.
Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Jay Gatsby’s glamorous parties as the summer goes on. Nick extends an invitation to Daisy to fulfill Gatsby’s wish, and there they rekindle their romance. Tom meets Gatsby at the Plaza Hotel as soon as he learns of the affair. Gatsby claims that he and Daisy have always been in adoration and that she has never loved Tom despite Daisy’s attempts to calm them down. As the altercation intensifies, Tom divulges what he discovered during an inquiry into Gatsby’s affairs: that the man had made his money by dealing in illicit booze. Daisy has abandoned her desire to divorce her husband, and despite Gatsby’s best efforts to the contrary, his case appears doomed.
Daisy, who just knew that Tom was engaging in an affair, does not know who Myrtle Wilson is until she is hit and killed on the road. Daisy is terrified as she continues to drive, but onlookers notice the car. George Wilson, Myrtle’s widower, arrives in East Egg the following afternoon. Tom informs him that Gatsby killed his wife. Wilson visits Gatsby’s home and shoots both the man and himself. Following the Buchanans’ departure from Long Island, Nick plans Gatsby’s burial. Fitzgerald regarded The Great Gatsby as his finest work when it was first released, yet the novel was neither a critical nor financial triumph.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, an internationally recognized book set in a grim, dystopian future sixty years after its initial publication, continues to be regarded as a masterpiece of world literature. Its message is more pertinent now than it has ever been.
The fireman is Guy Montag. His responsibility is to destroy both the homes where they are hidden and the printed book, the most illicit of all goods. When Montag returns to his boring life and his wife, Mildred, who spends the entire day with her television “family,” he never doubts the devastation and ruins his activities cause. Montag, however, starts to doubt everything he has ever known when he befriends an eccentric young neighbor named Clarisse. Clarisse introduces Montag to a past in which people didn’t live in fear and a present in which people view the world through the ideologies in books rather than the mindless chatter of television.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
Aldous Huxley, an English author, wrote the dystopian book Brave New World in 1931 and had it published in 1932. The novel foreshadows enormous scientific advances in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, mind control, and classical conditioning that combine to make a dystopian society that is challenged by only one person: the protagonist of the story. The novel is basically set in a space-age World State, populated by genetic modification citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel that won Gabriel Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize in Literature, is widely regarded as one of the most important literary works of our time. It is also widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and unique literary achievements ever produced.
Through the history of the Buendia family, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude recounts the rise and fall, birth, and death of the fictitious town of Macondo in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
This work is a masterpiece in the art of fiction because it is inventive, funny, captivating, and sorrowful all at the same time; it is brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical charm that hits the soul; and it is alive with unforgettable men and women.
Generations of readers, authors, and thinkers have been pleased, motivated, and affected by Herman Hesse’s famous book. In this narrative, an affluent Indian Brahmin gives up a life of privilege in search of enlightenment. Hesse combines several philosophical perspectives—including Eastern faiths, Jungian archetypes, and Western individualism—into a singular interpretation of life as it is revealed through the pursuit of true meaning by one man.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”
“Your soul is the whole world.”
The third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy and Pulitzer Prize winner by Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove, is the biggest book ever written about the last resolute wilderness of America. It is a love tale, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier.
Visit the dusty, small Texas town of Lonesome Dove to encounter a memorable cast of heroes, outlaws, whores, ladies, and natives as well as settlers. A book that makes us laugh, cry, dream, and remember, Lonesome Dove is richly authentic, exquisitely written, and always dramatic.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”
“Yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back.”
“The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”
“It’s a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.”
“It’s like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added”
Cormac McCarthy return to the Texas-Mexico border, the scene of his acclaimed Border Trilogy, in his fiery new book. We live in an era where drug dealers have replaced cattle rustlers and little towns are now open-fire zones. Llewellyn Moss one day discovers a pickup truck encircled by a bodyguard of dead men. Two million dollars in cash and a shipment of heroin are still in the rear. When Moss steals the money, he starts a domino effect of catastrophic brutality that neither the law, represented by the seasoned and disheartened Sheriff Bell nor Moss can stop. McCarthy concurrently strips down the American crime thriller and broadens its concerns to cover issues as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily present as this morning’s headlines as Moss seeks to elude his pursuers, including a mystery mastermind who tosses coins for human lives. A victory, No Country for Old Men.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”
“The point is there ain’t no point.”
“How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?”
“People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don’t deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things”
This is how Robert Fagles’ superb translation of the Odyssey gets started. The Odyssey is literature’s most grandiose depiction of the journey through the life of the average person if the Iliad is the world’s biggest war epic. A timeless tale of humanity, as well as a test of moral fortitude for each individual, Odysseus’ ten-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, required him to rely on his cunning and cunning to survive in the face of supernatural and natural forces.
We now have an Odyssey to read aloud, savor, and appreciate for its sheer lyrical skill. Fagles has caught the fire and poetry of Homer’s original in the stories and legends that are presented here in a bold, modern style. The excellent Introduction and textual analysis by famous classicist Bernard Knox provide the general readers and scholars alike with additional perspectives and background information, enhancing the power of Fagles’ translation.
This Odyssey is meant to enthrall both classicists and the general audience, as well as to enthrall a new generation of Homer scholars. In a striking new modern-verse translation, Robert Fagles, recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, gives us Homer’s most well-known and approachable poem.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”
“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.”
“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”
“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier;
I have seen worse sights than this.”
East of Eden, which was dubbed “the first book” by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck in his journal, does certainly have mythic simplicity and primal intensity. This expansive and frequently cruel book is set in the fertile Salinas Valley of California and chronicles the connected fates of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose descendants helplessly recreate the fall of Adam and Eve and the toxic rivalry of Cain and Abel.
To cultivate and nurture his family on the new, lush land, Adam Trask migrated from the East to California. However, the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, drives his wife to the verge of insanity, leaving Adam to raise his boys by himself until they are men. The love of everyone surrounding one youngster helps him develop, whereas the other boy grows up alone and surrounded by enigmatic darkness.
East of Eden, first published in 1952, is Steinbeck’s most famous book. It explores his most persistent themes, including the enigma of identification, the inexplicability of passion, and the terrible effects of love’s absence. East of Eden, a literary classic from Steinbeck’s latter years, is both a family drama and a contemporary retelling of the Book of Genesis.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”
“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta), the classic novel of the Lost Generation, is one of Ernest Hemingway’s greatest works and a prime illustration of his restrained yet effective writing style. Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley, two of Hemingway’s most iconic characters, are introduced in this work, which takes a moving glimpse at the disillusion and angst of the post-World War I age. The story follows the flashy Brett and the foolish Jake as they travel with a ragtag gang of foreigners from the raucous nightlife of 1920s Paris to the bloody bullrings of Spain. It is a time of moral decay, spiritual decay, unfulfilled love, and dissipating illusions. The Sun Also Rises, which was first published in 1926, contributed to Hemingway’s reputation as one of the best authors of the twentieth century.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“you can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
This breathtakingly beautiful and powerful book is a heartfelt drama about individuals, relationships, and the limits of love. With the help of a young woman named Ayla, Jean M. Auel transports us back to the beginning of modern humans and the brutal yet breathtaking Ice Age planet they lived with the people who called themselves The Clan of the Cave Bear.
A woman from the Clan, who are considerably different from her own kind, finds the young girl traveling alone in an unknown and frightening region after a natural calamity. They think Ayla, who is blonde and has blue eyes, is odd and unattractive since she is one of the Others, those who have migrated into their ancestral territory. However, Iza is unable to let the girl die and takes her with them. As Ayla learns the customs of the Clan and Iza’s method of healing, the old Mog-ur Creb and Iza grow to adore her, and the majority accept her. However, the ruthless and arrogant young man who will take over as their next leader sees her peculiarities as a threat to his power. He grows to hate the odd girl of the Others who lives among them and is resolved to exact revenge on her.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The earth we leave is beautiful and rich; it gave us all we needed for all the generations we have lived. How will you leave it when it is your turn? What can you do?”
“The difference in the brains of men and women was imposed by nature, and only cemented by culture.”
“As Creb looked at the peaceful, trusting face of the strange girl in his lap, he felt a deep love flowering in his soul for her. He couldn’t have loved her more if she were his own.”
“He’s part me and part Clan, and so is Ura. Or rather, she’s part Oda and part that man who killed her baby.”
“The little girl’s gentle touch struck an inner chord in his lonely old heart.”