A Gifties Reads
Discover the ultimate reading list with A Gifties Reads! Explore handpicked books loved by Gifties for every reader's taste. Find your next favorite read today.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J. K. Rowling
Collects the complete series that relates the adventures of young Harry Potter, who attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he and others of his kind learn their craft.
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Atonement
by Ian McEwan
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A symphonic novel of love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness that provides all the satisfaction of a brilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect from the acclaimed Booker Prizeâwinning, internationally bestselling author. On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a momentâs flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Ceciliaâs childhood friend. But Brionyâs incomplete grasp of adult motivesâtogether with her precocious literary giftsâbrings about a crime that will change all their lives. As it follows that crimeâs repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece. Donât miss Ian McEwanâs new novel, Lessons.
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Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
âA free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!ââThe New York Times Catâs Cradle is Kurt Vonnegutâs satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planetâs ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Catâs Cradle is one of the twentieth centuryâs most important worksâand Vonnegut at his very best. â[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.ââHarperâs Magazine âOur finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.ââAtlantic Monthly
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Candide
by Francois Voltaire
"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging, and exile, Voltaire knew personally what suffering entailed. In Candide he whisks his young hero and friends through a ludicrous variety of tortures, tragedies, and a reversal of fortune, in the company of Pangloss, a "metaphysico-theologo-comolo-nigologist" of unflinching optimism. The result is one of the glories of eighteenth-century satire. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Galapagos
by Kurt Vonnegut
âA madcap genealogical adventure . . . Vonnegut is a postmodern Mark Twain.ââThe New York Times Book Review GalĂĄpagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the GalĂĄpagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, and totally different human race. In this inimitable novel, Americaâ s master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awryâand all that is worth saving. Praise for GalĂĄpagos âThe best Vonnegut novel yet!ââJohn Irving âBeautiful . . . provocative, arresting reading.ââUSA Today âA satire in the classic tradition . . . a dark vision, a heartfelt warning.ââThe Detroit Free Press âInteresting, engaging, sad and yet very funny . . . Vonnegut is still in top form. If he has no prescription for alleviating the pain of the human condition, at least he is a first-rate diagnostician.ââSusan Isaacs, Newsday âDark . . . original and funny.ââPeople âA triumph of style, originality and warped yet consistent logic . . . a condensation, an evolution of Vonnegutâs entire career, including all the issues and questions he has pursued relentlessly for four decades.ââThe Philadelphia Inquirer âWild details, wry humor, outrageous characters . . . GalĂĄpagos is a comic lament, a sadly ironic vison.ââSt. Louis Post-Dispatch âA work of high comedy, sadness and imagination.ââThe Denver Post âWacky wit and irreverent imagination . . . and the full range of technical innovations have made [Vonnegut] Americaâs preeminent experimental novelist.ââThe Minneapolis Star and Tribune
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
First published in 1865, these endearing tales of an imaginative child's dream world by Lewis Carroll, pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, are written with charming simplicity. While delighting children with a heroine who represents their own thoughts and feelings about growing up, the tale is appreciated by adults as a gentle satire on education, politics, literature, and Victorian life in general. All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess. . . and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.
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Enduring Love
by Ian McEwan
From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonementâa brilliant and compassionate novel of love, faith, and suspense, and of how life can change in an instant. "A remarkable novel, haunting and original and written in prose that anyone who writes can only envy." âThe Washington Post The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that dayâsomething that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.
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Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris
A recent transplant to Paris, humorist David Sedaris, bestselling author of "Naked", presents a collection of his strongest work yet, including the title story about his hilarious attempt to learn French. A number one national bestseller now in paperback.
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Read the cult-favorite coming of age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory. Now a major motion picture starring Logan Lerman and Emma Watson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a funny, touching, and haunting modern classic. The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky, Perks follows observant âwallflowerâ Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up. A years-long #1 New York Times bestseller, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and Best Book for Reluctant Readers, and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or âwallflowersâ of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
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The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER ⢠One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. ⢠The definitive corrected text, including Faulkner's Appendix One of The Atlanticâs Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the characterâs voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulknerâs masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. âI give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire.... I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.â âfrom The Sound and the Fury
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacâs classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation âAn authentic work of art.ââThe New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouacâs adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naĂŻvetĂŠ and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouacâs love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hopeâa book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
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Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Huxley's story shows a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous warning to the world's population, this literary classic is a must-read.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides ⢠Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wildeâs story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the authorâs most popular work. The tale of Dorian Grayâs moral disintegration caused a scandal when it ďŹrst appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novelâs corrupting inďŹuence, he responded that there is, in fact, âa terrible moral in Dorian Gray.â Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wildeâs homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Grayâs relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, âBasil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to beâin other ages, perhaps.â
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Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin
This American classic has been corrected from the original manuscripts and indexed, featuring historic photographs and an extensive biographical afterword.