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Recommendations based on The Riderby Tim Krabbé
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
The Commitments
by Roddy Doyle
A group of Irish youths form a soul band, learning lessons of friendship and responsibility.
Two friends — Derek Scully and "Outspan" Foster — get together to form a band, but soon realise that they don't know enough about the music business to get much further than their small neighbourhood ... (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)
The Art of Fielding
by Chad Harbach
A college baseball team's success and failures are intertwined with the lives of five individuals.
Henry Skrimshander begins the novel as a 17-year-old playing on a Legion baseball team in Lankton, South Dakota. Although physically short and not muscular, Henry has an unusual gift for fielding, ... (Wikipedia)
2001: A Space Odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
An interstellar journey of exploration, confronting humanity's place in the universe.
A mysterious alien civilization uses a tool with the appearance of a large crystalline monolith to investigate worlds across the galaxy and, if possible, to encourage the development of intelligent ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Joy in the Morning
by P.G. Wodehouse
A lighthearted romantic comedy following the misadventures of an English couple.
The novel opens with a brief flashforward of Bertie and Jeeves driving home, with Bertie remarking that there is an expression, something about Joy, that describes what he has just been through. ... (Wikipedia)
Dead Souls
by Nikolai Gogol
A satirical tale of a man's quest for wealth, exposing the corruption of 19th century Russian society.
The story follows the exploits of Chichikov, a middle-aged gentleman of middling social class and means. Chichikov arrives in a small town and turns on the charm to woo key local officials and ... (Wikipedia)
The Boys from Brazil
by Ira Levin
An international thriller involving a sinister plot to clone Hitler and create a Fourth Reich.
Yakov Liebermann is a Nazi hunter (loosely based on Simon Wiesenthal ) who runs a center in Vienna that documents crimes against humanity, perpetrated during the Holocaust . The waning interest of ... (Wikipedia)
The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
A poetic journey through the afterlife, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.
The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining ... (Goodreads)
Carry On, Jeeves
by P.G. Wodehouse
A series of comedic stories filled with eccentric characters, witty banter and outrageous scenarios.
The titles of the first story in this collection—'Jeeves Takes Charge'— and the last—'Bertie Changes His Mind'—sum up the relationship of twentieth-century fiction's most famous comic characters. In ... (Goodreads)
Independent People
by Halldór Laxness
A stubborn Icelandic sheep farmer strives for independence and freedom, but his obsession leads to isolation and hardship.
Independent People is the story of the sheep farmer Guðbjartur Jónsson, generally known in the novel as Bjartur of Summerhouses, and his struggle for independence. The "first chapter summons up the ... (Wikipedia)
Dubliners
by James Joyce
Collection of stories about everyday life in Dublin, exploring the Irish psyche.
This work of art reflects life in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and by rejecting euphemism, reveals to the Irish their unromantic realities. Each of the 15 stories offers glimpses into the ... (Goodreads)
Player Piano
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A dystopian novel exploring the consequences of a world dominated by machines.
Player Piano is set in the near future, after a third world war . While most Americans were fighting overseas, the nation's managers and engineers faced a depleted workforce and responded by ... (Wikipedia)
Tortilla Flat
by John Steinbeck
A comedy of friendship and adventure, focusing on a group of paisanos living in California during the Great Depression.
Above the town of Monterey on the California coast lies the shabby district of Tortilla Flat, inhabited by a loose gang of jobless locals of Mexican-Indian - Spanish-Caucasian descent (who typically ... (Wikipedia)
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
A story of a young lecturer struggling to make it in academia, while learning the importance of self-discovery.
Jim Dixon is a lecturer in medieval history at a red brick university in the English Midlands . He has made an unsure start and, towards the end of the academic year, is concerned about losing his ... (Wikipedia)
The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles
An exploration of the human condition, as a couple travel through the Sahara desert.
The story centers on Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
The Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
An ambitious Wall Street banker's moral downfall in New York City.
The story centers on Sherman McCoy, a successful New York City bond trader . His $3 million Park Avenue co-op , combined with his aristocratic wife's extravagances and other expenses required to keep ... (Wikipedia)
Smiley's People
by John le Carré
Retired spy Smiley is thrust back into the world of espionage to uncover a deadly conspiracy.
John le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him – and his hero, British ... (Goodreads)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
All Quiet on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
A soldier's harrowing experience of the horrors of war.
The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I . The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to ... (Wikipedia)
Johnny Got His Gun
by Dalton Trumbo
A young soldier's harrowing journey through physical and psychological trauma of WWI.
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I , awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell . He gradually realizes that he has lost his ... (Wikipedia)
Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
Interconnected stories of ordinary lives in 1970s New York, inspired by a high-wire artist's death-defying feat.
The events of the story are told in a largely non-linear fashion, with several different narrators telling the story from different perspectives. The story is interspersed with fictionalized accounts ... (Wikipedia)
Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz Smith
A thrilling murder mystery, set in the Soviet Union, uncovering secrets and conspiracies.
The story follows Arkady Renko , a chief investigator for the Moscow militsiya , who is assigned to a case involving three corpses found in Gorky Park , an amusement park in Moscow. The victims - two ... (Wikipedia)
Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
A tale of family, heritage, and identity, exploring the power of memory and its impact on the present.
Song of Solomon opens with the death of Robert Smith, an insurance agent and member of The Seven Days, an organization that kills white people in retaliation for the racial killing of black people. ... (Wikipedia)
A Tale for the Time Being
by Ruth Ozeki
An exploration of the connections between two lives, bridging time, space and cultures.
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her ... (Goodreads)
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
by Elena Ferrante
Two friends navigate the changing relationships of their youth and adulthood, and the consequences of their choices.
In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her abusive ... (Goodreads)
Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
A small-town hockey team and its community grapple with the consequences of a traumatic event.
Peter Andersson, in his forties, is the general manager of the ice hockey club in Beartown, a small town located somewhere in Sweden. Peter grew up in Beartown and was a junior hockey star. He went ... (Wikipedia)
A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
A mosaic of characters, lives, and relationships as they intertwine and evolve over time.
Jennifer Egan’s spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. ... (Goodreads)
The Unwritten, Vol. 2: Inside Man
by Mike Carey
Tom Taylor, the inspiration for a famous boy wizard, navigates a world where fiction and reality blur. He must uncover the truth about his own past to save his friends.
In this volume, Tom arrives at Donostia prison in Southern France and falls into the orbit of another story: The Song of Roland. Unfortunately for Tom, it's a story that ends with a massacre. .Tom ... (Goodreads)
