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Recommendations based on Ordinary Peopleby Judith Guest
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles
A coming-of-age story about two boys and their complex friendship set during World War II.
Gene Forrester returns to his old prep school, Devon (a thinly veiled portrayal of Knowles's alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy ), , 15 years after he graduated, to visit two places he regards as ... (Wikipedia)
A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
A woman's struggle to come to terms with her past and present in a post-war New Orleans.
After the loss of her family home to creditors, Blanche DuBois travels from the small town of Laurel, Mississippi , to the New Orleans French Quarter to live with her younger married sister, Stella , ... (Wikipedia)
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 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)
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)
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)
The Lords of Discipline
by Pat Conroy
A young man's struggle to survive the brutal hazing rituals of a Southern military college.
Will McLean, returning to the Carolina Military Institute in Charleston, South Carolina an unknown number of years after his graduation, tells the story of his life at the Institute. In 1966, Will ... (Wikipedia)
She's Come Undone
by Wally Lamb
A young woman's trial-filled journey to self-acceptance and self-preservation.
Dolores Price is heartbroken when her handsome, but irresponsible father, Tony, leaves their suburban home for another woman. She and her mother, Bernice, move into her uptight Catholic grandmother's ... (Wikipedia)
Pet Sematary
by Stephen King
A family's terrifying journey of life and death, as the line between the living and the dead blurs.
Louis Creed, a doctor from Chicago , is appointed director of the University of Maine 's campus health service. He moves to a large house near the small town of Ludlow with his wife Rachel, their two ... (Wikipedia)
Prep
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A teenage girl's struggle to find her place and identity in an elite prep school.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep , is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ... (Goodreads)
Where the Heart Is
by Billie Letts
A journey of resilience and courage, as a young woman faces her struggles with poverty and hardship.
This novel opens with Novalee and Willy Jack, her then boyfriend, traveling from Tennessee to California , where Willy Jack claims he was promised by his cousin, J. Paul, a job working at a train ... (Wikipedia)
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
A young Indian-American's journey of reconciling two different cultures and his own identity.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta , India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Ashoke is an engineering student at the ... (Wikipedia)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
Exploring the lives of diverse characters in a small Southern town, unearthing secrets and desires.
The book begins with a focus on the relationship between two close friends, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos, deaf-mutes who have lived together for several years. Antonapoulos becomes mentally ... (Wikipedia)
The Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and resilience as she takes on motherhood and a new life.
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she ... (Goodreads)
Inherit the Wind
by Jerome Lawrence
A courtroom drama about a teacher accused of violating a law against teaching evolution.
A meaningful play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution. The accused was a slight, frightened man who'd deliberately broken the law. ... (Goodreads)
Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
A young girl's coming of age amidst poverty, abuse, and a broken family.
The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's 15-year-old mother Anney gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the ... (Wikipedia)
Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman
An exploration of the relationship between the individual and the divine, viewed through the lens of nature and its rhythms.
A collection of quintessentially American poems, the seminal work of one of the most influential writers of the nineteenth century. ... (Goodreads)
The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
A young couple's story of love and sacrifice as they give up their most prized possessions for one another.
On Christmas Eve , Della Young discovers that she has only $1.87 to buy a present for her husband Jim. She visits the nearby shop of a hairdresser, Madame Sofronie, who buys Della's long hair for ... (Wikipedia)
Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
Nine short stories of insight into the human condition and its mysteries.
Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for ... (Goodreads)
Drown
by Junot Díaz
A collection of interconnected stories of a young Dominican-American struggling to find his place in the world.
With ten stories that move from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey, Junot Diaz makes his remarkable debut. Diaz's work is unflinching and strong, ... (Goodreads)
The Taming of the Shrew
by William Shakespeare
A wealthy man seeks to marry off his shrewish daughter, but finds a suitor who can match her wit.
Renowned as Shakespeare's most boisterous comedy, The Taming of the Shrew is the tale of two young men, the hopeful Lucentio and the worldly Petruchio, and the two sisters they meet in Padua. ... (Goodreads)
O Pioneers!
by Willa Cather
A tale of a family's struggles and triumphs, as they pioneer a new life in a changing landscape.
The book is divided into five parts, each of which has numerous chapters. On a windy January day in Hanover, Nebraska, Alexandra Bergson is with her five-year-old brother Emil, whose little kitten ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's Choice
by William Styron
A survivor of the Holocaust is confronted with a devastating moral dilemma.
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding house in ... (Wikipedia)
Peachtree Road
by Anne Rivers Siddons
A multigenerational saga of a wealthy Atlanta family, exploring themes of love, loss, and the changing South.
Tenth anniversary edition! Set amidst the grandeur of Old Southern aristocracy, here is a novel that chronicles the turbulent changes of a great city–Atlanta--and tells the story of love and hate ... (Goodreads)
Jaws
by Peter Benchley
A small beach town is terrorized by a great white shark, leading to a thrilling battle of man versus nature.
The story is set in Amity, a fictional seaside resort town on Long Island , New York. One night, a massive great white shark kills a young tourist named Chrissie Watkins while she skinny dips in the ... (Wikipedia)
Terms of Endearment
by Larry McMurtry
A mother-daughter relationship is tested by love, loss, and life's challenges.
Widowed Aurora Greenway ( Shirley MacLaine ) keeps several suitors at arm's length in Houston , focusing instead on her close, but controlling, relationship with daughter Emma ( Debra Winger ). ... (Wikipedia)
The Complete Anne of Green Gables 8-Book Box Set
by L.M. Montgomery
Follow the life of Anne Shirley, an imaginative and talkative orphan, as she grows up on Prince Edward Island.
Favorites for nearly 100 years, these classic novels follow the adventures of the spirited redhead Anne Shirley, who comes to stay at Green Gables and wins the hearts of everyone she meets. Includes ... (Goodreads)
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
by J.D. Salinger
Examination of family relationships, growing pains, and human connections.
The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences ... (Goodreads)
Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
Two men wait for a mysterious figure who never arrives, reflecting on their lives and existence.
Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, have met near a leafless tree. Estragon spent the previous night lying in a ditch and receiving a beating from some unnamed assailants. The two men discuss a variety ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
