Timeless classics and modern masterpieces that challenge, inspire, and leave a lasting impact. Ideal for thought-provoking discussions.
The Call of the Wild and White Fang
Jack London, 1903, 1906
304 pp.
March 2009
If you love dogs, really love dogs, you'll find Jack London's two novellas terrific reads. London tells both stories from the point of view of the dog (or wolfdog), and strangely enough it works...so well that it's hard to put the either book down.
London can be raw, evoking Tennyson's "nature, red in tooth and claw" and evolution's brutal survival of the fittest. The dogs in both stories undergo cruelty by humans and rival dogs, violence London doesn't shy away from describing. Yet both fight ferociously to gain mastery over their rivals. It's a ferocity and dominance London openly celebrates as a reflection of primitive strength and will.
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner, 1936
313 pp.
February 2009
This is the ultimate book of memory—a family history that tries to piece together the past and come to grips with the present. But memory in this case gets filtered through various characters...so we're never ultimately sure what we get—even though we may think we have it all.
Absalomis the story of Thomas Sutpen, who in 1833 strives to create a dynasty out of a swamp, and who ultimately self-destructs. The story opens years later as old Miss Rosa Coldfield first tells the story of the Sutpen family tragedy to young Quentin Compson.
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
143 pp.
January 2009
Confession time. I don't really like The Great Gatsby. But I think I'm alone in the universe on this—and it's for that reason that I'm recommending it as this month's Great Work.
Critics have long considered The Great Gatsby one of the quintessential American novels because it is bound up in the uniquely American myth of self-identity.
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton, 1948
320 pp.
December 2008
Who hasn't read this, years ago as a school assignment? Believe me, it's worth another read—in fact, I'd forgotten how much I loved this book.
Beloved Countrytells the story of Stephen Kumalo, a black minister in South Africa, who tries to save his sister from prostitution, his son from a murder charge, and his tribe from disintegration.
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie, 1981
560 pp.
November 2008
No other book in the English language is quite so decorated as Midnight's Children. It won the Booker Prize in 1981...then won the Booker of the Bookers in 1993...then the Best of the Bookers 15 years later. No other work has walked away with those awards.
Like Toni Morrison's Beloved or Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel has become one of a handful of contemporary classics.