My Favourite Books
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The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Read it for the first time when I was 18 and loved it, the first perfect story I ever read. Absolutely flawless. Then I read it 8 years later going in this time with a bit of apprehension that my favorite book would be demolished because my taste had shifted and I had grown more coarse over the years. Nope! The goddamn book was still magnificent. I know itās not everyoneās cup of tea but itās mine, give me all the tea and Iām so glad to have a book I absolutely love...until 8 years later when we come for a refresher again.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
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Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Prophetic and due a reread
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human faceāfor ever.
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A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

A great manly romance with war scenes. I can die in peace.
Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Iām not brave any more darling. Iām all broken. Theyāve broken me.
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Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Wow, just blown away by the characters, especially Elizabeth.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
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Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare

How can someone write so brilliantly? This bard was on steroids. Yeah I said it.
Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.
These violent delights have violent ends and in their triump die, like fire and powder which, as they kiss, consume.
Romeo:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Romeo:
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet:
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo:
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet:
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Romeo:
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
Juliet:
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo:
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
Juliet:
You kiss by the book.
PulpRoman's rating:

If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin

Baldwinās best book. A gold mine.
Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don't know if I can explain this. You go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven't seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you'd have to think awhile before you could answer. But at the same time, and even on the self-same day-- and this is what is hard to explain--you see people like you never saw them before.
Only a man can see in the face of a woman the girl she was. It is a secret which can be revealed only to a particular man, and, then, only at his insistence. But men have no secrets, except from women, and never grow up in the way women do. It is very much harder, and it takes much longer, for a man to grow up, and he could never do it at all without women. This is a mystery which can terrify and immobilize a woman, and it is always the key to her deepest distress. She must watch and guide, but he must lead, and he will always appear to be giving far more of his real attention to his comrades than he is giving to her. But that noisy, outward openness of men with each other enables them to deal with the silence and secrecy of women, that silence and secrecy which contains the truth of a man, and releases it. I suppose that the root of the resentmentāa resentment which hides a bottomless terrorāhas to do with the fact that a woman is tremendously controlled by what the manās imagination makes of herāliterally, hour by hour, day by day; so she becomes a woman. But a man exists in his own imagination, and can never be at the mercy of a womanās.
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The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy
My first bout with Tolstoy, this was thought provoking af and kinda dark but it resembled life so well. Being a Christian myself, I vibe with Leo a lot. Dang I just want someone who gets it to write about the things that matter well and this is it. Tolstoy cuts away all the junk showcasing the fragility, ill chances and free will that is all tangled up in this existence.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel - Zora Neale Hurston
Beautifully written. A romance and female coming of age story. A must read.
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Miguel Street - V.S. Naipaul
I so want to read more of Naipaul, his writing is so vivid and rings true of authentic Caribbean life. This isnāt the paradise you see on the tourist board commercials, this is a glimpse of the real deal.
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This is Jamaica summed up in a book. Even if it depicts the 60s and 70s much still resembles the modern day. Better than the movie...itās true.
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Oxherding Tale - Charles Johnson
I donāt even know how to describe it. This book is so meta-physical, philosophical yet written in a lovely prose with a dream-like plot.
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Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
How can someone write so eloquently?!?! Itās like a dream. I mean like he snatched the words from a different dimension amd stitched together to create this wonderful work. I have never seen the Sudan but everything is so clear and beautiful and brutal and HOT.
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Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Terribly unforgettable. Raskolinov and Sonia stick in the mind.
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Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Nostalgia for something youāve never experienced, itās lovely like the melody of your favorite song.
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Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Read when my interest in Biafra was at its peak.
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To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Childhood memories, that southern wholesomeness that is quite unique and the reality that life isnāt the same for everyone or whatās written on the post card.
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All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
The best war novel Iāve read, acquired in my pursuit of hearing the history of the āenemyā
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Lady Susan - Jane Austen
A novella, a wicked woman by the Victorian sense, Lady Susan might be one of my favorite female characters.
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A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
A grand feat accomplished. In many ways, this fiction blends with the non-fiction of the French Revolution in my mind. Everything is illuminated.
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A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
Again. How can someone write so... maybe aliens helped him.
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
A absolute madman, in the best way possible.
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The Dead - James Joyce
A slice of life novella, captures the essence of living and being quite so well, despite the name.
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Can a novel be good if you already know the ending? Yes, in this case anyway.
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The Machine Stops - E. M. Forster
Read it. It's about our time and probably deeper into the future.
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The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Classics)... - Langston Hughes
Brilliant. Funny, rhythmic and filled with short sweet pleasures.
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A Raisin In the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
I mean this is just perfection the whole way through. I laughed, I thought and I enjoyed every single beat. I've read the play, listened to the audio and watched the movie with my family...its just great.
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A Golden Age: A Novel (P.S.) (2009)
A book assigned from school that I ended up reading three more times over the years. A treasure still on my book shelf.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)... - Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Some comments and what my ratings mean...
7/10 - I would recommend it to a friend.
8/10 - A great piece of art.
9/10 - Once in a generation.
10/10 - Flawless, why can't all books be like this.
A work in progress, wanted to publish when I reached a 100 but that might take five years, so I'll do it now.
7/10 - I would recommend it to a friend.
8/10 - A great piece of art.
9/10 - Once in a generation.
10/10 - Flawless, why can't all books be like this.
A work in progress, wanted to publish when I reached a 100 but that might take five years, so I'll do it now.
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