The books Ive read recently
Explore the books I’ve read recently, a curated reading list featuring standout works like John Fante’s *Ask the Dust*, Robert Louis Stevenson’s *Treasure Island*, and Alan Moore’s *From Hell*. Dive into a diverse collection spanning fiction, classic literature, biography, and graphic novels—from the gritty prose of Henry Miller and Donald Goines to the timeless stories of Mikhail Lermontov and W. Somerset Maugham. Discover new reads and timeless favorites in this personal book roundup.
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From Hell
by Alan Moore
In graphic novel format, offers a fictional investigation into a series of murders in 1888 London carried out by the infamous Jack the Ripper.
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Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller
The account of a young writer and his friends in free-wheeling Paris.
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Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.
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Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham
A masterpiece of modern literature that mirrors Maugham’s own career. Of Human Bondage is the first and most autobiographical of Maugham's novels. It is the story of Philip Carey, an orphan eager for life, love and adventure. After a few months studying in Heidelberg, and a brief spell in Paris as a would-be artist, Philip settles in London to train as a doctor. And that is where he meets Mildred, the loud but irresistible waitress with whom he plunges into a formative, tortured and masochistic affair which very nearly ruins him.
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Ask the Dust
by John Fante
Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.
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Blood and Thunder
by Hampton Sides
In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of "Manifest Destiny," this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness. In Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won. Book jacket.
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Whoreson
by Donald Goines
The gripping story of Whoreson James, the son of a beautiful black prostitute and an unknown john. Corrupted by the violent Ghetto world, at the age of sixteen he is a fully fledged pimp: cold blooded and ruthless. A startling insight into the mean streets of the tough inner city by America's number one author of the genre.
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A Hero of Our Time
by Mikhail Lermontov
In its adventurous happenings–its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues–A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ’30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin–the archetypal Russian antihero–Lermontov’s novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible. This edition includes a Translator’s Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, who translated the novel in collaboration with his son, Dmitri Nabokov.
