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Recommendations based on Sweet Thursdayby John Steinbeck
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Cannery Row
by John Steinbeck
An exploration of the lives of the inhabitants of a small town in California.
Cannery Row has a simple premise: Mack and his friends are trying to do something nice for their friend Doc, who has been good to them without asking for reward. Mack hits on the idea that they ... (Wikipedia)
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Exploration of the timeless struggle between good and evil, set against a backdrop of a family saga.
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas ... (Goodreads)
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)
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)
On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
A young man's journey across America, seeking adventure and freedom.
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A humorous exploration of life's absurdities, through a madcap journey of a protagonist.
Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but ignored and virtually invisible writer who is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a ... (Wikipedia)
Other Voices, Other Rooms
by Truman Capote
A young man's search for identity, love and acceptance in a mysterious southern mansion.
After his mother's death, 13-year-old Joel Harrison Knox, a lonely, effeminate boy, is sent from New Orleans, Louisiana , to live with his father, who abandoned him at the time of his birth. Arriving ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Junky
by William S. Burroughs
A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)
Skinny Legs and All
by Tom Robbins
A tale of love, loss, and mystery that revolves around a small diner in the American Southwest.
This is a gutsy, fun-loving, and provocative novel in which a bean can philosophises, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers ... (Goodreads)
Mother Night
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A tale of moral ambiguity, exploring the consequences of deception and the power of words.
“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—,Time,, Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American ... (Barnes & Noble)
Franny and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger
A brother and sister's journey towards finding spiritual understanding and inner peace.
The short story concerns Franny's weekend date with her collegiate boyfriend, Lane Coutell. Lane takes her to a fashionable lunch room, where Franny quickly becomes exasperated when he only appears ... (Wikipedia)
The Dharma Bums
by Jack Kerouac
A journey of self-discovery, fueled by a passion for Buddhism and nature.
The character Japhy drives Ray Smith's story, whose penchant for simplicity and Zen Buddhism influenced Kerouac on the eve of the sudden and unpredicted success of, On the Road, . The action shifts ... (Wikipedia)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A single day in a Soviet prison camp, detailing the hardships and struggle of the inmates.
Ivan Denisovich Shukhov has been sentenced to a camp in the Soviet gulag system. He was accused of becoming a spy after being captured briefly by the Germans as a prisoner of war during World War II ... (Wikipedia)
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
A rags-to-riches story of a young boy's adventures, trials, and tribulations.
David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously ... (Goodreads)
The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
A group of expatriates in 1920s Europe, struggling to come to terms with the aftermath of WWI.
On the surface, the novel is a love story between the protagonist Jake Barnes—a man whose war wound has made him unable to have sex—and the promiscuous divorcée usually identified as Lady Brett ... (Wikipedia)
Dandelion Wine
by Ray Bradbury
A small town summer filled with magical moments, unfolding the secrets of life.
Chapter 1 — Spending the night in the cupola of his grandfather's house that gives him a panoramic view of the town, Douglas wakes up early on the first day of summer and performs an elaborate series ... (Wikipedia)
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
by Christopher Moore
A quirky and surreal journey into a small town filled with strange characters.
Pine Cove suffers a major crisis when the town psychiatrist, Val Riordan — who has been haphazardly issuing prescriptions instead of dealing with the real mental problems of her patients — suffers a ... (Wikipedia)
Women
by Charles Bukowski
A collection of stories exploring the lives of various women and their relationships with men.
Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's ... (Wikipedia)
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man's struggle to find his place in society, and the moral dilemmas he faces.
Prince Myshkin, a young man in his mid-twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, is on a train to Saint Petersburg on a cold November morning. He is returning to ... (Wikipedia)
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)
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
A shipwrecked sailor's struggle to survive on an isolated island, and his eventual redemption.
Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") set sail from Kingston upon Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a ... (Wikipedia)
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
A collection of stories about the Vietnam War, interweaving the past and present.
In 1979, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato —a novel about the Vietnam War—won the National Book Award. In this, his second work of fiction about Vietnam, O'Brien's unique artistic vision is again ... (Goodreads)
The Ladies' Paradise
by Émile Zola
A story of ambition and romance set in the world of a 19th Century Parisian department store.
The Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the rise of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the ... (Goodreads)
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
by George Orwell
A struggling poet's quest to remain independent and stay true to himself in a society obsessed with money.
Gordon Comstock has 'declared war' on what he sees as an 'overarching dependence' on money by leaving a promising job as a copywriter for an advertising company called 'New Albion '—at which he shows ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal journey of self-discovery, exploring the inner and outer worlds.
The first part, "The Thieving Magpie", begins with the narrator, Toru Okada, a low-key and unemployed lawyer's assistant, being tasked by his wife, Kumiko, to find their missing cat. Kumiko suggests ... (Wikipedia)
Shibumi
by Trevanian
A master strategist must outwit a powerful secret society in a battle for the future of the world.
Nicholai Hel is an assassin, born in Shanghai in 1925 and raised in a cosmopolitan fashion by his mother, a deposed member of the Russian aristocracy. A general in the Japanese Imperial Army was ... (Wikipedia)
Ghosts
by Henrik Ibsen
A family's struggle to face the consequences of their past and present.
Helen Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she has built in memory of her late husband. Despite his affairs, Mrs. Alving stayed with him to protect her son from the taint of scandal and for fear ... (Wikipedia)
