A list about books that are un-put-down-able

There are some books you can read in one sitting. The ones you don't feel like putting down and you can't wait to get back to. I'm not including novel series in this, because those are a whole other thing and if I did I'd be forced to fill the list with Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy Novels. I'm going with books published after 1960 as well. I'm only allowing books I managed to finish in a week. Only novels, no short stories and poetry, memoirs, non-fiction etc

in no particular order :

15. Portnoy's Complaint - Phillip Roth - 1969 - USA

Quick Summary: Comedy, sexual frustration and self-consciousness. Portnoy's Complaint is one long monologue to a therapist about different stages of his life. This could get depressing but thankfully his life is hilarious.

14. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - 1989 - UK

Quick Summary: Mostly flashbacks of a butler from the time preceding World War II, in which his master was heavily involved in appeasement. The interactions with the household staff also play a major role.

13. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee -1999- South Africa

Quick Summary : College professor loses his job and reputation. He moves out to the Eastern Cape onto his daughter's farm. Just when he's getting used to it and feeling familiar, events cause further necessary readaptation.

12. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - 1981- UK

Quick Summary: An allegorical novel about India pre and post partition. Set up as a biography and also full of magical realism.

11. White Teeth - Zadie Smith - 2000- UK

Quick Summary : A story about two friends in London and their respective lives as well as a narration about the lives of their families. A humor-filled novel representing the immigrant life in multicultural London

10. Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami - 2002- Japan

Quick Summary: Two separate but related plots, one involving a 15 year old boy who runs away from home and finds shelter in a private library. The other about an old man who can talk to cats and ends up on a road trip.

9. A Man of the People - Chinua Achebe - 1966 - Nigeria

Quick Summary: A novel about a young man who comes to work for the Minister of Culture. Really a satire of the political situation of Nigeria and applicable to the way many post-colonial politicians behave.

8. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 1967 - Colombia

Quick Summary: A story about several generations of the Buendia family as well as other residents of the village of Macondo. A magical realism novel where remarkable things happen and no one is surprised.

7.Catch -22 - Joseph Heller - USA -1961

Quick Summary: One of the funniest novels ever and a walk through of bureaucratic idiocy and the way in which logical reasoning can be twisted to make nonsense seem sensible.

6. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates - USA -1961

Quick Summary: Married life in the 1950's. A lot of the story really delves into marital difficulty and failed ambitions stemming from the inability to understand another's perspective.

5.Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger - India - 2008

Quick Summary: A tale of how the poor in India have it and how the narrator made it good by taking risks no one else would, or would even think to take for that matter

4. The Buddha Of Suburbia - Hanif Kureishi - 1990- UK

Quick Summary: A story about a teenager eager to leave the suburbs of 1970's London and start living. Said to be highly autobiographical.

3. Snow - Orhan Pamuk - Turkey -2002

Quick Summary: A journalist goes to a town to investigate a spate of suicides. He also hopes to (and meets) a woman from his past. The snow cuts off the city and he ends up in discussions with all the different groups in the city.

2. The Damned Utd - David Peace - UK- 2006

Quick Summary: A retelling of Brian Clough's days in charge of Leeds United. All 44 days of it

1.On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan - 2007 - UK

Quick Summary: The night of their wedding a couple reflect on their differences and how they came to be a couple

Oscar Predictions-Film Awards (i)

Best Director Most likely winner : Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. Leaving out Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino pretty much made this Spielberg's to lose. And doesn't reflect too well on the Academy either. Backup Pick : David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. The production company of Weinstein have been campaigning hard for this and it's a good film with the acting performances set up well. The thing about best director is it's the easiest award to give to someone the academy likes because it's ambiguous and the academy doesn't really love Russell. Most deserving : Michel Haneke for Amour. Haneke has the most carefully crafted film here. All in all it is definitely his film in every scene. His presence is all around the film and it is an excellent film. If they give it for the greatest impact a director has on the film, this is it. Best Adapted Screenplay Most li...

(Short) Analysis of the (length of stay for) teams at World Cup 2014 - Groups A and B

I like World Cup, quite a lot, and think it's the best of all the tournaments that exist in football and very possibly in all of sport (at least for any tournament focused on one sport since the Olympics is amazing because of the variety). So I'll be trying to figure out how likely each team is to get out of the group stages and how far they'll probably go if they do. All the odds are from www.bet365.com which is the site I use most for trend spotting in sport (it's like my sport-Bloomberg). Group A Brazil- Automatically qualified as hosts and at 1/20 to qualify have the second best odds of any team to make it out of the group phase behind Argentina (who have probably the softest group). It's with good reason Brazil have such low odds and they're considered favourites. Winning or even coming second in Group A doesn't mean an easy run as it probably would result in a round of sixteen clash against either defending champions Spain or the ...

Best Films of the Decade - 2010s - Third Part

11. Get Out (2017)- Directed and written by Jordan Peele. Horror seems to be an excellent medium to describe racism and it's somewhat amazing how obvious it seems in hindsight. One of the best debuts of a director in recent times, with a script that amps up the tension marvelously and serves up a twist in the tale that was impossible to see coming. Normally horror movies are seen as niche, but this film was popular with the wide audience and also at the award ceremonies further proving everyone was able to be captured by the film's quality. There has been talk of the film fitting into horror-comedy, probably due to Peele's comedy background, but while it is never laughably funny but does serve as a clever satire on the state of racial affairs. 12. The Death of Stalin (2017) - Directed by Armando Iannuci. Written by Armando Iannuci, David Schneider and Ian Martin. Few topics are as ripe for satire as the workings of communist governments (provi...

PONS IdiomasNovember 24, 2011 at 3:55 AM
Hola, quizás os interese saber que tenemos una colección que incluye el relato 'Strangers When We Meet' de Hanif Kureishi en versión original conjuntamente con el relato 'NippleJesus' de Nick Hornby.

El formato de esta colección es innovador porque permite leer directamente la obra en inglés sin necesidad de usar el diccionario al integrarse un glosario en cada página.

Tenéis más info de este relato y de la colección Read&Listen en http://www.ponsidiomas.com/catalogo/nick-hornby---hanif-kureishi.html

a blog about a lot of things

Search This Blog