Best books I read in 2003
Discover the best books of 2003 with this curated list of top reads. Find must-read fiction, nonfiction, and hidden gems from a year of great literature.
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Embers
by Sandor Marai
Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. In a secluded woodland castle an old General prepares to receive a rare visitor, a man who was once his closest friend but who he has not seen in forty-one years. Over the ensuing hours host and guest will fight a duel of words and silences, accusations and evasions. They will exhume the memory of their friendship and that of the General’s beautiful, long-dead wife. And they will return to the time the three of them last sat together following a hunt in the nearby forest--a hunt in which no game was taken but during which something was lost forever. Embers is a classic of modern European literature, a work whose poignant evocation of the past also seems like a prophetic glimpse into the moral abyss of the present
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A History of Britain - Volume III
by Simon Schama
The compelling opening words to The Fate of Empire set the tone and agenda for the final stage of Simon Schama's epic voyage around Britain, her people and past. Spanning two centuries, crossing the breadth of the empire, and covering a vast expanse of topics -- from the birth of feminism to the fate of freedom -- he explores the forces that shaped British culture and character, from 1776 to 2000. The story opens on the eve of a bloody revolution, but not a British one. The French Revolution never actually crossed the Channel, though its spirit of fiery defiance and Romantic idealism did, sparking off a round of radical revolts and reforms that gathered momentum over the coming century -- from the Irish Rebellion to the Chartist Petition. If the British Empire helped to make Britain stable and rich, did it live up to its promise to help the ruled as well as the rulers? The Fate of Empire makes stops at celebrations, like the Great Exhibition, and catastrophes, like the Irish potato famine and the Indian Mutiny. Amidst the military and economic shocks and traumas of the twentieth century, and through the voices of Churchill, Orwell, and H.G. Wells, Schama asks the question that still haunts the British -- is the immense weight of British history a blessing or a curse or a millstone around the neck of the future?
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A Distant Mirror
by Barbara W. Tuchman
A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary
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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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The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title, that may also include a folder with miscellaneous notes, discussion questions, biographical information, and reading lists to assist book group discussion leaders.
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Till We Have Faces
by Clive Staples Lewis
This is the story of Orual, Psyche's embittered and ugly older sister, who posessively and harmfully loves Psyche. Much to Orual's frustration, Psyche is loved by Cupid, the god of love himself, setting the troubled Orual on a path of moral development.
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The Cornish Trilogy
by Robertson Davies
Woven around the pursuits of the energetic spirits and erudite scholars of the University of St. John and the Holy Ghost, this dazzling trilogy of novels lures the reader into a world of mysticism, historical allusion, and gothic fantasy that could only be the invention of Canada's grand man of letters.
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Love Me
by Garrison Keillor
Leaving his wife to pursue an idealized life as a writer, Larry Wyler finds his early successes quickly deteriorating and returns home to write for an advice column, through which he learns unexpected life lessons.
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