en-US Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:54:17 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 35743 580 GĂĽnter Grass 0099483505 Idkap 4 3.96 1959
author: GĂĽnter Grass
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1959
rating: 4
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]]> 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Idkap 4 4.00 1925
author: Franz Kafka
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 4
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]]> 43945 Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. 'The Puzzled Penis', Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) it is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.]]> 274 Philip Roth Idkap 3 3.71 1969
author: Philip Roth
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1969
rating: 3
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]]> 7604 Librarian's note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141182537.

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Dolores Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita, Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lust.]]> 368 Vladimir Nabokov 0679723161 Idkap 5 3.87 1955
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1955
rating: 5
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]]> 70241 Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.]]> 224 J.G. Ballard 0312420331 Idkap 3 3.62 1973
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1973
rating: 3
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]]> 28676 American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.]]> 399 Bret Easton Ellis 0679735771 Idkap 3 3.82 1991
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1991
rating: 3
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]]> 5759 218 Chuck Palahniuk 0393327345 Idkap 4 4.19 1996
author: Chuck Palahniuk
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> 227463 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."]]> 192 Anthony Burgess Idkap 4 3.98 1962
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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]]> 10644930
In 2011, Jake Epping, an English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, sets out on an insane — and insanely possible — mission to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

Leaving behind a world of computers and mobile phones, he goes back to a time of big American cars and diners, of Lindy Hopping, the sound of Elvis, and the taste of root beer.

In this haunting world, Jake falls in love with Sadie, a beautiful high school librarian. And, as the ominous date of 11/22/63 approaches, he encounters a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald...]]> 849 Stephen King 1451627289 Idkap 3 4.33 2011
author: Stephen King
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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]]> 38501 288 Charles Bukowski 006117758X Idkap 4 4.17 1982
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1982
rating: 4
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]]> 4980 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.]]> 303 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334206 Idkap 4 4.08 1973
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1973
rating: 4
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]]> 662 This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?

Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.

Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life — from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy — to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction — to the philosopher who becomes a pirate — to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph — to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad — to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.

You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.

This is a mystery story, not about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.]]> 1168 Ayn Rand 0452011876 Idkap 4 3.67 1957
author: Ayn Rand
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1957
rating: 4
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Idkap 4 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 4
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]]> 592657 278 James Dickey 038531387X Idkap 4 3.88 1970
author: James Dickey
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1970
rating: 4
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]]> 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Idkap 3 3.70 1954
author: William Golding
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 3
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]]> 7613
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.]]> 129 George Orwell Idkap 4 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 4
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]]> 6295
Howl and Other Poems is a collection of Ginsberg's finest work, including "Howl," one of the principal works of the Beat Generation as well as "A Supermarket in California," "Transcription of Organ Music," "Sunflower Sutra," "America," "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound," and some of his earlier works. ]]> 56 Allen Ginsberg 0872863107 Idkap 4 4.14 1956
author: Allen Ginsberg
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1956
rating: 4
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]]> 5135 Point Counter Point. By presenting a vision of life in which diverse aspects of experience are observed simultaneously, Huxley characterizes the symptoms of "the disease of the modern man" in the manner of a composer--themes and characters are repeated, altered slightly, and played off one another in a tone that is at once critical and sympathetic.

First published in 1928, Huxley's satiric view of intellectual life in the '20s is populated with characters based on such celebrities as D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murry, as well as Huxley himself.]]> 432 Aldous Huxley Idkap 4 3.86 1928
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1928
rating: 4
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]]> 249 Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, "one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century."]]> 318 Henry Miller 0802131786 Idkap 4 3.69 1934
author: Henry Miller
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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]]> 38502 Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a collection of articles written by Charles Bukowski for the underground, L.A.-based newspaper Open City, which operated from 1967 to 1969. Bukowski uses his own life as the basis for his series of articles, and characteristically leaves nothing out.]]> 204 Charles Bukowski Idkap 4 3.97 1969
author: Charles Bukowski
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1969
rating: 4
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]]> 70401 307 Jack Kerouac 0140042598 Idkap 4 3.63 1957
author: Jack Kerouac
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1957
rating: 4
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]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Idkap 4 4.20 1962
author: Ken Kesey
name: Idkap
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919–2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Idkap 5 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Idkap
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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