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Recommendations based on Het smeltby Lize Spit
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Stoner
by John Williams
An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.
William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (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)
Summer House with Swimming Pool
by Herman Koch
A doctor's summer vacation with his family turns into a nightmare when a patient dies after visiting their rented house.
The blistering, compulsively readable new novel from Herman Koch, author of the instant New York Times bestseller, The Dinner., When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph ... (Goodreads)
The Discovery of Heaven
by Harry Mulisch
An epic tale of three men's search for a divine stone, testing the boundaries of faith and science.
An angel -like being is ordered to return to Heaven the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments . The divine being, however, cannot himself travel to Earth, and on several occasions in the book ... (Wikipedia)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A young boy's quest to find the lock that matches a mysterious key his father left behind.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and ... (Goodreads)
What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
A young African refugee's journey from Sudan to America, struggling to survive and keep his culture alive.
Achak is separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War when the Arab militia, referred to as murahaleen (which is Arabic for the deported), wipes out his Dinka village, Marial Bai . ... (Wikipedia)
Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the boundaries between the real and surreal.
Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between both plots, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters. The odd-numbered chapters tell the 15-year-old ... (Wikipedia)
Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A young man's journey to trace his family's past, uncovering the secrets of the Holocaust.
Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), a young American Jew, who is vegetarian and an avid collector of his family's heritage, journeys to Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who saved his ... (Wikipedia)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
The Circle
by Dave Eggers
A cautionary tale of a powerful tech company that blurs the boundaries between privacy and surveillance.
Mae Holland, a recent college graduate, lands a job at The Circle, a powerful technology company run by the "Three Wise Men"—Tom Stenton, a ruthless businessman; Eamon Bailey, a likeable public ... (Wikipedia)
The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
A journey through a web of intertwining stories, searching for the meaning of love.
Approximately 70 years before the present, the 10-year-old Polish-Jewish Leopold (Leo) Gursky falls in love with his neighbor Alma Mereminski. The two begin a relationship that develops over the ... (Wikipedia)
Autumn
by Ali Smith
A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.
Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
Augustus
by John Williams
Epic historical novel about the life and reign of the first Roman Emperor Augustus.
Told through various letters and fragments, Augustus begins when Gaius Octavius Thurinus is 17 and is called away from his mother by his great-uncle, Julius Caesar , who reveals he intends to groom ... (Wikipedia)
The North Water
by Ian McGuire
A gruesome, dark journey on a whaling ship to the icy north, uncovering the depths of human depravity.
A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little ... (Goodreads)
The World According to Garp
by John Irving
A humorous and heart-wrenching journey of life, love and literature.
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a ... (Goodreads)
Butcher's Crossing
by John Williams
An adventure tale of a young man in the American West, searching for a place to belong.
William Andrews, a Harvard student in the early 1870s, , is not happy with the mundanities of everyday life. After becoming inspired by the poetry and philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, , he decides ... (Wikipedia)
On Love
by Alain de Botton
A philosophical exploration of love, exploring its nature and forms.
"The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter
A romantic story of fate, secrets, and destiny, spanning from Italy in the 1960s to present day.
"The best novel of the year." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece” (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the ... (Goodreads)
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
South of the Border, West of the Sun
by Haruki Murakami
A married man's reflections on a once-in-a-lifetime love affair, and his struggle to reconcile the past with the present.
Alternate cover edition, here,. Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. ... (Goodreads)
The Death of Bunny Munro
by Nick Cave
Bunny Munro, a sex-addicted salesman, takes his young son on a road trip after his wife's suicide. Darkly humorous and disturbing.
Set adrift by his wife's sudden death and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of - with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one ... (Goodreads)
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
A man is arrested and put on trial for a crime that remains unclear throughout the novel.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not ... (Wikipedia)
The Discomfort of Evening
by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
A Dutch family's grief and trauma after the death of their son. Told through the eyes of a young girl who grapples with her own fears and desires.
WINNER OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE,A stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literature,Ten-year-old Jas lives with her strictly ... (Barnes & Noble)
The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
An exploration of the Indian class system, told from the perspective of a lower-caste man.
The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India. Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background, born in the village of ... (Wikipedia)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Süskind
A murder mystery set in 18th century France, exploring the depths of human obsession.
An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of ... (Goodreads)
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
A philosophical exploration of the nature of existence and human freedom.
Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the ... (Goodreads)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
The Possibility of an Island
by Michel Houellebecq
Exploration of existential questions in a dystopian future, through the eyes of an immortal.
There are three main characters - Daniel and two of his clones. Daniel is a successful comedian who can't seem to enjoy life despite his wealth. He gets bored with his hedonist lifestyle, but can't ... (Wikipedia)
