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Recommendations based on A Sport and a Pastimeby James Salter
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Winesburg, Ohio
by Sherwood Anderson
Portrayal of small town life, exploring its inhabitants' inner struggles and struggles with conformity.
Winesburg, Ohio depicts the strange, secret lives of the inhabitants of a small town. In "Hands," Wing Biddlebaum tries to hide the tale of his banishment from a Pennsylvania town, a tale represented ... (Goodreads)
The Moviegoer
by Walker Percy
A young man's journey of self-discovery, as he confronts the meaninglessness of life.
The Moviegoer tells the story of Jack "Binx" Bolling, a young stock-broker in postwar New Orleans . The decline of tradition in the Southern United States , the problems of his family and his ... (Wikipedia)
The Adventures of Augie March
by Saul Bellow
Young man's search for identity amidst the chaotic and unpredictable life of the Depression-era Midwest.
The story describes Augie March's growth from childhood to a fairly stable maturity. Augie, with his brother Simon and the mentally abnormal George have no father and are brought up by their mother ... (Wikipedia)
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.
The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
An American couple's struggle to stay afloat in suburban conventions and expectations.
Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the ... (Wikipedia)
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)
Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
A man's attempt to escape the pressures of adult life and find freedom.
Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, formerly a high school basketball star, is now 26, and has a job selling a kitchen gadget named MagiPeeler. He is married to Janice, who was a salesgirl at the store where he ... (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)
Appointment in Samarra
by John O'Hara
A wealthy man in 1930s America tries to escape his fate, but ultimately meets it in a tragic way.
O’Hara did for fictional Gibbsville, Pennsylvania what Faulkner did for Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi: surveyed its social life and drew its psychic outlines, but he did it in utterly worldly ... (Goodreads)
Seize the Day
by Saul Bellow
A man's journey to reclaim his life, confronting the choices of his past.
Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity. ... (Goodreads)
So Long, See You Tomorrow
by William Maxwell
A tale of friendship, betrayal, and regret set in rural Illinois during the 1920s.
On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment the tenuous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book ... (Goodreads)
Light in August
by William Faulkner
A story of redemption and hope set in the Jim Crow South.
The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young ... (Wikipedia)
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.
Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)
Play It As It Lays
by Joan Didion
A woman's search for identity amidst the glamour and emptiness of 1960s Hollywood.
The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, followed by short reminiscences of her friend Helene, and ex-husband, film producer Carter Lang. The further narration is ... (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)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell
A young boy confronts personal and social challenges as he navigates adolescence.
Jason Taylor is a 13-year-old with a stammer in the small village of Black Swan Green in Worcestershire . The first chapter starts with a rule Jason's father has: "Do not set foot in my office" and ... (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)
Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust
Autobiographical novel tracing the narrator's reminiscences of an aristocratic upbringing.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar ... (Goodreads)
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)
Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Epic tale of two former Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
It is the late 1870s. , Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae, two famous retired Texas Rangers , run the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in the small Texas border ... (Wikipedia)
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
An epic love story spanning decades, exploring the power of true love.
The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's ... (Wikipedia)
Death Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather
An epic tale of faith and courage, set in the deserts of New Mexico during the 19th century.
The narrative is based on two historical figures of the late 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf , and rather than any one singular plot, is the stylized re-telling of ... (Wikipedia)
Ulysses
by James Joyce
Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.
It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
by Marcel Proust
A young man's coming of age in a world of high society, exploring the depths of his own heart.
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the ... (Goodreads)
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)
Native Son
by Richard Wright
A young African American man's exploration of his identity, facing the harsh realities of systemic racism.
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black ... (Goodreads)
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
A young man's journey across America, seeking adventure and freedom.
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)
The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje
A World War II love story, exploring the depths of human emotion in the midst of tragedy.
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, ... (Goodreads)
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A journey into the depths of the human psyche, exploring the darkness of colonialism.
Aboard the Nellie , anchored in the River Thames near Gravesend , Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he became captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow ... (Wikipedia)
