en-US Fri, 28 Apr 2017 13:31:19 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 17470674
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.

--back cover]]> 227 Ray Bradbury 0007491565 Jjcromer 4 4.01 1953
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 251688 Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's... And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

Also included are three of Capote's best-known stories:
� House of Flowers - Ottilie is entranced by a beautiful young man, and leaves her life and friends to live with him and his old grandmother, who seems to hate her.
� A Diamond Guitar - Hear the story of the prized possession of a younger prison inmate, a rhinestone-studded guitar.
� A Christmas Memory - A poignant tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.]]> 142 Truman Capote Jjcromer 4 3.87 1958
author: Truman Capote
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé � with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]> 302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Jjcromer 4 4.20 1953
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 7613
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals � inspired by his philosophy of Animalism � plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]> 129 George Orwell Jjcromer 4 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Jjcromer 5 3.94 2001
author: Yann Martel
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 592657 278 James Dickey 038531387X Jjcromer 5 3.88 1970
author: James Dickey
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Jjcromer 4 4.20 1962
author: Ken Kesey
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 1885 Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679783268]]> 279 Jane Austen 1441341706 Jjcromer 5 4.28 1813
author: Jane Austen
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Jjcromer 4 3.70 1954
author: William Golding
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 31072
Under the Volcano remains one of literature's most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition, and a brilliant portrayal of one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him.]]> 423 Malcolm Lowry 0060955228 Jjcromer 0 to-read 3.78 1947
author: Malcolm Lowry
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 113441 The Day of the Locust is a novel about Hollywood and its corrupting touch, about the American dream turned into a sun-drenched California nightmare. Nathanael West's Hollywood is not the glamorous "home of the stars" but a seedy world of little people, some hopeful, some despairing, all twisted by their by their own desires -- from the ironically romantic artist narrator, to a macho movie cowboy, a middle-aged innocent from America's heartland, and the hard-as-nails call girl would-be-star whom they all lust after. An unforgettable portrayal of a world that mocks the real and rewards the sham, turns its back on love to plunge into empty sex, and breeds a savage violence that is its own undoing, this novel stands as a classic indictment of all that is most extravagant and uncontrolled in American life.]]> 208 Nathanael West 0451523482 Jjcromer 5 3.74 1939
author: Nathanael West
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1939
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 11908 586 Saul Bellow 0143039571 Jjcromer 0 to-read 3.83 1953
author: Saul Bellow
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 126583 251 John O'Hara 0375719202 Jjcromer 4 3.82 1934
author: John O'Hara
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1934
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Jjcromer 0 to-read 4.17 1962
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5527 All the King's Men is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty". The novel tells the story of charismatic populist governor Willie Stark and his political machinations in the Depression-era Deep South. It is commonly thought to have been loosely inspired by the real-life story of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, who was assassinated in 1935. Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men in 1947. The novel has received critical acclaim and remained perennially popular since its first publication. It was rated the 36th greatest novel of the 20th century by Modern Library, and it was chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 best novels since 1923. All the King's Men portrays the dramatic and theatrical political rise and governorship of Willie Stark, a cynical populist in the 1930s American South.]]> 439 Robert Penn Warren Jjcromer 5 4.08 1946
author: Robert Penn Warren
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Jjcromer 5 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 5114
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" is a story about the Glass family, narrated by Buddy, the second oldest brother. Buddy is attending his brother Seymour's wedding to a gal named Muriel, but he's on Army leave during active duty in World War II. At the wedding, everyone is stunned when Seymour does not show up.

The action of the story picks up when several characters end up carpooling together following the failed wedding. The others (the Matron of Honor and her husband, and a couple of stragglers) are talking about Seymour and the disappointment of his not showing up, and Buddy never tells them that he is secretly Seymour's brother, so they talk more openly with him than they otherwise would.

They criticize Seymour and speculate about his character flaws and deficiencies, but Buddy finds their assessments quite judgmental and biased. He then decides to tell the car who he really is, shaming them for their loose criticisms.

He finds Seymour's journal, and he discovers a strange message from their sister Boo Boo for Seymour on their bathroom mirror: "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom/ taller far than a tall man." This is a fragment from the Greek poet Sappho.

"Seymour: An Introduction" is a kind of elegy for Seymour from Buddy, told in the form of an introduction to the reader. The reader makes Seymour's acquaintance while knowing that Seymour technically isn't alive when the story is published, having killed himself in 1948.

This portion of the story is told in stream of consciousness, and it discusses Eastern religious mysticism.]]> 256 J.D. Salinger 0316766941 Jjcromer 4 4.13 1955
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 76171 The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.]]> 256 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0140185852 Jjcromer 4 3.91 1924
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1924
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 135479 Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ...

Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...]]> 306 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Jjcromer 5 4.17 1963
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Jjcromer 5 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 321552 776 Irving Stone 0451171357 Jjcromer 2 4.08 1961
author: Irving Stone
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1961
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 2865
Girl with a Pearl Earring centers on Vermeer's prosperous Delft household during the 1660s. When Griet, the novel's quietly perceptive heroine, is hired as a servant, turmoil follows. First, the 16-year-old narrator becomes increasingly intimate with her master. Then Vermeer employs her as his assistant—and ultimately has Griet sit for him as a model.]]> 233 Tracy Chevalier 0452287022 Jjcromer 5 3.93 1999
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 930
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 434 Arthur Golden 0739326228 Jjcromer 4 4.07 1997
author: Arthur Golden
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Jjcromer 5 4.14 1989
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 43641
Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.]]> 368 Sara Gruen 1565125606 Jjcromer 2 4.11 2006
author: Sara Gruen
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Jjcromer 4 3.89 2003
author: Mark Haddon
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 3 309 J.K. Rowling 0439554934 Jjcromer 3 4.47 1997
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Jjcromer 4 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 960
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.]]> 736 Dan Brown 1416524797 Jjcromer 1 3.95 2000
author: Dan Brown
name: Jjcromer
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2013/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]>