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Recommendations based on Sabbath's Theaterby Philip Roth
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Everyman
by Philip Roth
A man's life story told through his relationships, questioning the meaning of life and mortality.
The book begins at the funeral of its protagonist. The remainder of the book, which ends with his death, looks mournfully back on episodes from his life, including his childhood, where he and his ... (Wikipedia)
Mason & Dixon
by Thomas Pynchon
Epic tale of two surveyors in colonial America, exploring the boundaries of knowledge and identity.
Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon ... (Goodreads)
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
A man's experience of the American Dream gone wrong, as his daughter's political radicalism unravels his family life.
Seymour Irving Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey , in 1927 as the elder son of a successful Jewish American glove manufacturer, Lou Levov, and his wife Sylvia. ... (Wikipedia)
The Human Stain
by Philip Roth
A professor's life unravels after a scandal, exploring the limits of identity and redemption.
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town an aging Classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to ... (Goodreads)
Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore
A collection of comedic stories depicting everyday life with a unique, wry sense of humor.
A long-awaited collection of stories–twelve in all--by one of the most exciting writers at work today, the acclaimed author of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Self-Help. Stories remarkable in ... (Goodreads)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Hemingway
Collection of short stories depicting the human experience in all its complexities.
THE ONLY COMPLETE COLLECTION BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as ... (Goodreads)
Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A collection of four works exploring the human psyche, morality, and existentialism through the lens of Russian society.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)
The Sportswriter
by Richard Ford
A sportswriter navigates through life after the death of his son, reflecting on his past relationships and current struggles.
As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people–men, mostly--who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers ... (Goodreads)
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
A journey through the absurdist world of entertainment, drugs, addiction & death.
There are four major interwoven narratives: , These narratives are connected via a film, Infinite Jest , also referred to in the novel as "the Entertainment" or "the samizdat ". The film is so ... (Wikipedia)
Pastoralia
by George Saunders
Short stories exploring the complexities of modern life, through characters struggling to survive in an ever-changing world.
With this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination. The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed ... (Goodreads)
The Black Dahlia
by James Ellroy
A 1940s Los Angeles detective story, exploring the depths of a gruesome unsolved murder.
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California ... (Goodreads)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
Tender Is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A young couple's tumultuous journey through love, wealth and tragedy.
Dick and Nicole Diver are a glamorous couple who rent a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the nearby resort are Rosemary ... (Wikipedia)
Herzog
by Saul Bellow
A man's existential journey to make sense of his life and relationships.
Herzog is set in 1964 in the United States, and is about the midlife crisis of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, , he is just emerging from his second divorce, this one ... (Wikipedia)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
In Our Time
by Ernest Hemingway
A collection of short stories exploring themes of war, nature, and human relationships.
First published in 1925, earning Hemingway praise as a promising American writer. Contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories. This volume introduces readers to ... (Goodreads)
Women
by Charles Bukowski
A collection of stories exploring the lives of various women and their relationships with men.
Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's ... (Wikipedia)
The Savage Detectives
by Roberto Bolaño
A poetic journey of two young poets searching for a mysterious figure through Latin America.
The novel is narrated in first person by several narrators and divided into three parts. The first section , "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", set in late 1975, is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
by Sophocles
Ancient tragedy of a family's fall from grace due to a fateful prophecy.
English versions of Sophocles’ three great tragedies based on the myth of Oedipus, translated for a modern audience by two gifted poets. Index. ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.
The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
Underworld
by Don DeLillo
A sweeping narrative of two people, their pasts and their parallel paths through history.
The prologue is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World , a home run by Bobby Thomson on October 3, 1951, that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their ... (Wikipedia)
Rabbit at Rest
by John Updike
A story of family and mortality, exploring the struggle of growing old and facing death.
This novel is part of the series that follows the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from 1960 to 1990. Rabbit at Rest focuses on the years 1988–89. Harry, nearly 40 years after his glory days as a high ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Stories and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
by Aeschylus
Tragedy of a cursed family and their struggle to find the truth and justice.
Alternate cover edition can be found, here,, here,, here,, here, In the Oresteia—the only trilogy in Greek drama which survives from antiquity—Aeschylus took as his subject the bloody chain of murder ... (Goodreads)
