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Lauren Weedman's hilarious essays read like a compendium of what not to do as a fully-realized, functional adult. From the uproarious account of her time at the Daily Show, where she developed an entirely one-sided infatuation with Jon Stewart, to the time she read her boyfriend's diary with disastrous results, Lauren's work is filled with the wit, honesty, and personality that make for great personal writing.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.7 - AR Pts: 16
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Description
First Published in 1916, this story is one of the masterpieces of modern fiction. James Joyce's semi-autobiographical first novel, this is the story of Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artistic life. Joyce's brilliant rendering of the impressions and experiences of childhood broke new ground in the use of language and in the structure of the...
3) Villette
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Charlotte Bronte's last and most autobiographical novel, Villette, explores the inner life of a lonely young Englishwoman, Lucy Snowe, who leaves an unhappy existence in England to become a teacher in the capital of a fictional European country. Drawn to the school's headmaster, Lucy must face the pain of unrequited love and the question of her place in society.
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Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune-in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest. Stegner portrays more than thirty years in the life of the Mason family in this masterful, harrwoing saga of people trying...
5) Martin Eden
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Recounts the story of Martin Eden, a young seaman struggling to obtain social and intellectual recognition as a writer.
6) In Our Time
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When In Our Time was published in 1925, it was praised by Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and it earned Hemingway a place beside Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories "Indian Camp," "The...
7) Under fire
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Under Fire (1916) is a novel by Henri Barbusse. Written from notes taken while Barbusse was serving in the First World War, the novel was quickly, recognized as, a powerful tale of perseverance and comradery in the face of unspeakable suffering. Intended to promote the cause of pacifism, Under Fire is deeply critical of the rich and powerful men whose inability to live peacefully, leads time-and-again to the sacrifice of countless human lives. "Each...
9) Big Sur
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Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, Jack Kerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his most troubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism, addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records his ever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in a powerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time after Jack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northern California and...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.5 - AR Pts: 13
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Description
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, in Jeannette Walls's magnificent, true-life novel based on her no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, all alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.8 - AR Pts: 10
Description
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss...
14) The painted bird
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Originally published in 1965, Jerzy Kosinski's first novel is a harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II. It examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love.
15) On the road
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Follows the counterculture escapades of members of the Beat generation as they seek pleasure and meaning while traveling coast to coast. As he travels across 1950s America, aspiring writer Sal Paradise chronicles his escapades with the charismatic Dean Moriarty. Sal admires Dean's passion for experiencing as much as possible of life and his wild flights of poetic fancy
16) Playing days
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"In print for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits's Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author's season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player's estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood.Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But...
17) Swann's way
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The first volume of Proust's seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time, also known as Remembrance of Things Past, Swann's Way is the auspicious beginning of Proust's most prominent work. A mature, unnamed man recalls the details of his commonplace, idyllic existence as a sensitive and intuitive boy in Combray. For a time, the story is narrated through his younger mind in beautiful, almost dream-like prose. In a subsequent section of the volume, the...
18) Freshwater
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Traces the experiences of a deeply troubled young woman who alarms her devout Nigerian family as she succumbs to multiple personality disorder and begins to display increasingly dark and dangerous traits in accordance with her fractured personalities.
19) Shantaram
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Shantaram volume 1
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Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, betrayal and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in Shantaram, a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means "man of God's peace," which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving...
20) Tropic of cancer
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An autobiographical novel, first published in France in 1934, detailing the author's life among Paris bohemians during the late 1920s and early 1930s. During this period, he intermittently suffers from hunger, homelessness, squalor, loneliness and despair over his recent separation from his wife.