Books Ive Read This Year-2008 Part 1
Explore my 2008 reading journey with this curated list of books I've read this year. Discover top picks, hidden gems, and personal reviews in Part 1 of my annual reading recap.
Book
The Zebra-Striped Hearse
by Ross Macdonald
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all Archer is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law's—and Archer's—in a powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.
Item Not Found
ID: B001O3UZUC
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0201550911
(Type: books)
Book
Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift
A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Gulliver's Travels describes the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon. In Lilliput he discovers a world in miniature; towering over the people and their city, he is able to view their society from the viewpoint of a god. However, in Brobdingnag, a land of giants, tiny Gulliver himself comes under observation, exhibited as a curiosity at markets and fairs. In Laputa, a flying island, he encounters a society of speculators and projectors who have lost all grip on everyday reality; while they plan and calculate, their country lies in ruins. Gulliver's final voyage takes him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, gentle horses whom he quickly comes to admire - in contrast to the Yahoos, filthy bestial creatures who bear a disturbing resemblance to humans. This text, based on the first edition of 1726, reproduces all the original illustrations and includes an introduction by Robert Demaria, Jr, which discusses the ways Gulliver's Travels has been interpreted since its first publication. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 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.
Item Not Found
ID: 1416537627
(Type: books)
Book
The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William Styron
Presents a fictionalized account of the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia.
Book
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Known primarily for her classic and haunting story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an enormously influential American feminist and sociologist. Her early-twentieth-century writings continue to inspire writers and activists today. This collection includes selections from both her fiction and nonfiction work. In addition to the title story, there are seven short stories collected here that combine humor, anger, and startling vision to suggest how women's "place" in society should be changed to benefit all. The nonfiction selections are from Gilman's The Man-Made World: Our Androcentric Culture and her masterpiece, Women And Economics, which was translated into seven languages and established her international reputation as a theorist. Also included in a delightful excerpt from Gilman's utopian novel, Herland, an acidly funny tale about three American male explorers who stumble into an all-female society and begin their odyssey by insisting, "This is a civilized country . . . there must be men." Gilman's analyses of economic and women's issues are as incisive and relevant today as they were upon their original publication. This volume is an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover a powerful American writer.
Book
T is for Trespass
by Sue Grafton
Sociopath Solana Rojas uses a stolen identity as a private caregiver to gain access to her intended victims while endeavoring to outmaneuver private investigator Kinsey Millhone.
Book
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.
Item Not Found
ID: 1400078113
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 043995178X
(Type: books)
Book
A Bell for Adano
by John Hersey
This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey's story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity.
Book
Magic
by Tami Hoag
Strange things were happening in Drake House: A perfect rose appearing on a pillow...an antique dress materializing out of nowhere...a mysterious spirit roaming the halls... Five years after Rachel Lindquist had left California to chase her dreams, she returned home to care for her aging mother, only to find herself chasing a ghost! Addie Lindquist insisted a presence haunted Drake House and had hired noted parapsychologist Bryan Hennessy to investigate, but Rachel knew better than to believe in what she couldn't see—or to surrender to the strong current of desire pulling her towards Bryan. Bryan had dealt with skeptics before, but convincing Rachel was the biggest challenge of his life. The enchanting beauty had lost faith in everything that wasn't practical, and that included matters of the heart. As Bryan fought her reluctance to succumb to feelings she couldn't control, a second, more sinister force began to stalk them, threatening to drive them from Drake House and from each other—a force that could be banished only by a man who believed in the power of love and...Magic.
Item Not Found
ID: 0743286731
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0806530669
(Type: books)
Book
Inkheart
by Cornelia Caroline Funke
Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father Mo, a bookbinder, can "read" fictional characters to life when an evil ruler named Capricorn, freed from the novel "Inkheart" years earlier, tries to force Mo to release an immortal monster from the story.
Item Not Found
ID: 1592404049
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: B000UDNBQW
(Type: books)
Book
Villette
by Charlotte Bronte
From the author of Jane Eyre, a strikingly modern story of a young woman starting over—with an introduction by Weike Wang, PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of Chemistry “Villette! Villette! Have you read it?” exclaimed George Eliot when Charlotte Brontë’s final novel appeared in 1853. “It is a still more wonderful book than Jane Eyre. There is something almost preternatural in its power.” Arguably Charlotte Brontë’s most refined and deeply felt work—Virginia Woolf called it Brontë’s “finest novel”—Villette draws on its author’s own experiences as a governess, and her profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings. It tells the story of parentless, friendless Lucy Snowe, who flees from an unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a boarding school in the small French town of Villette. Soon Lucy’s struggle for independence is challenged by both her friendship with a worldly English doctor and her feelings for an autocratic schoolmaster. Brontë’s strikingly modern heroine must decide if there is any man in her society with whom she can live and still be free. The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance. AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES • THE AWAKENING • THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY • THE HEADS OF CERBERUS • LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET • LOVE, ANGER, MADNESS • PASSING • THE TRANSFORMATION OF PHILIP JETTAN • VILLETTE • THERE IS CONFUSION • THE SELECTED POEMS OF EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY