Literary theme analysis, by a book like {foo}
Books about Individualism
The Stranger
by Albert Camus
A man's journey of existentialism, questioning the meaning of life and death.
Meursault learns of the death of his mother, who has been living in a retirement home. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief. When asked if he wishes to view the body, ... (Wikipedia)
The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A sci-fi exploration of utopian and dystopian societies, and the struggle for a better world.
Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN, 9780061054884,. Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the ... (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)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
An exploration of a young man's struggle to find his identity and place in the world.
The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an ... (Goodreads)
Indignation
by Philip Roth
A young man's struggle to find his place in the world, facing personal and societal pressures.
Set in America in 1951, the second year of the Korean War , Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, New Jersey , who describes his sophomore year at Winesburg ... (Wikipedia)
Howl and Other Poems
by Allen Ginsberg
A collection of poems exploring themes of individualism and modern culture.
The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand
A story of a brilliant architect who refuses to conform to the establishment, challenging the status quo.
In early 1922, Howard Roark is expelled from the architecture department of the Stanton Institute of Technology because he has not adhered to the school's preference for historical convention in ... (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)
E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962
by E.E. Cummings
Collection of iconic poetry from the American modernist, exploring themes of life and love.
At the time of his death in 1962, E. E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited ... (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)
Survival in Auschwitz
by Primo Levi
True story of a man's struggle to survive in a Nazi concentration camp.
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art, ... (Goodreads)
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
An American couple's struggle to stay afloat in suburban conventions and expectations.
Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the ... (Wikipedia)
A Room with a View
by E.M. Forster
A young woman's exploration of love, morality, and societal norms in Edwardian England.
The novel is set in the early 1900s as upper-middle-class English women are beginning to lead more independent, adventurous lives. In the first part, Miss Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her ... (Wikipedia)
Martin Eden
by Jack London
A young sailor's ambition for a better life leads him on a journey of self-improvement and exploration of the upper classes.
Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, ... (Wikipedia)
Too Loud a Solitude
by Bohumil Hrabal
A man's reflections on life and literature, as he crushes books for a living.
The entire story is narrated in the first person by the main character Hanta. Hanta is portrayed as a sort of recluse and hermit, albeit one with encyclopedic literary knowledge. Hanta uses ... (Wikipedia)
Crusade in Jeans
by Thea Beckman
A teenage boy's quest to fight for justice in 15th-century Europe.
Rudolf "Dolf" Wega is a fifteen-year-old who volunteers for an experiment with a time machine . The experiment goes well, but accidentally Dolf is stranded in the 13th century. He saves the life of ... (Wikipedia)
Henderson the Rain King
by Saul Bellow
A man's journey of self-discovery, finding his place in the world through travel and adventure.
Eugene Henderson is a troubled middle-aged man. Despite his riches, high social status , and physical prowess, he feels restless and unfulfilled, and harbors a spiritual void that manifests itself as ... (Wikipedia)
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau
A reflective journey into nature, exploring the power of contemplation and simplicity.
Originally published in 1854, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, is a vivid account of the time that Henry D. Thoreau lived alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. It is one of the most influential and ... (Goodreads)
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
A tale of a dystopian future where the strongest minds take control of society.
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, ... (Goodreads)
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
by Henry David Thoreau
Collection of essays exploring philosophy of civil disobedience and government.
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays is a collection of some of Henry David Thoreau's most important essays. Contained in this volume are the following essays: Civil Disobedience, Natural History of ... (Barnes & Noble)
Beyond Good and Evil
by Friedrich Nietzsche
A philosophical exploration of morality and truth, challenging conventional morality and religious beliefs.
Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is translated from the German by R.J. Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics. Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's ... (Goodreads)
The Road to Serfdom
by Friedrich A. Hayek
Warning against the dangers of collectivism and the power of bureaucracy.
A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a ... (Goodreads)
The Moon and Sixpence
by W. Somerset Maugham
A man's pursuit of a life of art, challenging societal conventions and expectations.
The novel is written largely from the point of view of the narrator, a young, aspiring writer and playwright in London. Certain chapters entirely comprise accounts of events by other characters, ... (Wikipedia)
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah Vowell
An exploration of American nationalism and identity, weaving in personal stories and reflections.
Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. In this insightful and funny collection of personal stories Vowell—widely hailed ... (Goodreads)
The Man Without Qualities
by Robert Musil
A man without a defined identity navigates the complexities of pre-WWI Vienna society. A philosophical exploration of the human condition.
Part I, titled A Sort of Introduction , is an introduction to the protagonist, a 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. His ... (Wikipedia)
Walden & Civil Disobedience
by Henry David Thoreau
A philosophical exploration of solitude, nature and civil disobedience.
Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden , is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings—as well as Civil Disobedience , his protest against the government's ... (Goodreads)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins
An eccentric story of freedom and adventure, exploring themes of identity, fate and love.
Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist , is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. , The novel covers various topics, including free love , feminism , drug use ... (Wikipedia)
Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
A man's attempt to escape the pressures of adult life and find freedom.
Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, formerly a high school basketball star, is now 26, and has a job selling a kitchen gadget named MagiPeeler. He is married to Janice, who was a salesgirl at the store where he ... (Wikipedia)
The Fall
by Albert Camus
A man's journey into alienation and despair, driven by a sense of absurdity in life.
The Fall, ( French :, La Chute, ) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus . First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam , The Fall consists of a series of ... (Wikipedia)
Hope for the Flowers
by Trina Paulus
Two caterpillars search for meaning and purpose in life, eventually transforming into beautiful butterflies and finding true happiness.
It all starts when Stripe, the main character, first hatches from an egg. He begins his life by eating the leaf he was born on. He realizes that there must be "more" to life than just eating leaves. ... (Wikipedia)
Rant
by Chuck Palahniuk
A darkly humorous and surreal look into a world of chaos, taking on societal norms and conventions.
Buster Casey is born in the rural town of Middleton with the senses of smell and taste far more advanced than any other human. He acquires the nickname "Rant" from a childhood prank involving animal ... (Wikipedia)
Anthem
by Ayn Rand
An individual's quest for freedom amidst a dystopian society determined to control thought and behavior.
Equality 7-2521, a 21-year-old man writing by candlelight in a tunnel under the earth, tells the story of his life up to that point. He exclusively uses plural pronouns ("we", "our", "they") to refer ... (Wikipedia)
Agenda 21
by Glenn Beck
A dystopian novel set in a future world where individual freedoms have been sacrificed for the greater good of society under the Agenda 21 plan.
A postapocalyptic thriller from #1 bestselling author Glenn Beck. “I was just a baby when we were relocated and I don’t remember much. Everybody has that black hole at the beginning of their life. ... (Barnes & Noble)
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)
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
by Marilyn Manson
An autobiographical account of Marilyn Manson's rise to fame and struggles with celebrity.
The 150,000-copy national bestselling autobiography of Marilyn Manson, America's most controversial celebrity icon, is offered with a bonus chapter not included in the hardcover. "By turns moving, ... (Goodreads)
Letters to a Young Contrarian
by Christopher Hitchens
A collection of essays offering philosophical reflections on society and the power of dissent.
From bestselling author and provocateur Christopher Hitchens, the classic guide to the art of principled dissent and disagreement In Letters to a Young Contrarian , bestselling author and world-class ... (Goodreads)
Main Street
by Sinclair Lewis
A small-town woman's quest for freedom and self-expression in a repressive society.
With Commentary by E. M. Forster, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Lewis Mumford, Rebecca West, Sherwood Anderson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, Constance Rourke, and Mark Schorer. Main Street , the ... (Goodreads)
The Story of Ferdinand
by Munro Leaf
A gentle bull refuses to fight, instead choosing to sit in a field and smell the flowers.
Young Ferdinand does not enjoy butting heads with other young bulls , preferring instead to sit under a cork tree smelling the flowers. His mother is concerned that he might be lonely and tries to ... (Wikipedia)
The Red and the Black
by Stendhal
A young man's ambitious rise in 19th century French society, as he navigates through its politics and passions.
In two volumes,, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century, tells the story of Julien Sorel's life in France's rigid social structure restored after the disruptions of the French ... (Wikipedia)
Virtual Light
by William Gibson
Cyberpunk thriller, exploring the effects of technology on future societies.
The plot centers around Chevette Washington, a young bicycle messenger who lives in the ad hoc , off-the-grid community that has grown on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the aftermath of a ... (Wikipedia)
The Ordinary Princess
by M.M. Kaye
A young princess who rejects her royal identity and embarks on an adventure to find her own special destiny.
Along with Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, ... (Goodreads)
Matched
by Ally Condie
In a dystopian society, Cassia is matched with her perfect partner but begins to question the system when she falls in love with someone else.
Seventeen-year-old Cassia Reyes lives in a futuristic, seemingly utopian world in which the citizens' lives are strictly controlled by the government called "The Society." At the age of seventeen, ... (Wikipedia)
Civil Disobedience
by Henry David Thoreau
Reflection on moral responsibility in the face of unjust laws.
Resistance to Civil Government, called Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that ... (Goodreads)
Sometimes a Great Notion
by Ken Kesey
A powerful story of a family's struggle against the odds and the forces of change.
The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the coastal town of Wakonda, on the Oregon coast, in the early 1960s. The union loggers in Wakonda go on strike in demand of the ... (Wikipedia)
Platform
by Michel Houellebecq
Satirical exploration of the modern world and its discontents.
The story is the first-person narrative of a fictional character named Michel Renault, a Parisian civil servant who, after the death of his father and thanks to a hefty inheritance, engages in sexual ... (Wikipedia)
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
by Friedrich Nietzsche
A philosophical exploration of the human condition and the pursuit of morality.
This volume presents Nietzsche's remarkable collection of almost 1400 aphorisms in R. J. Hollingdale's distinguished translation, together with a new historical introduction by Richard Schacht. ... (Goodreads)
The Immoralist
by André Gide
A man's journey of self-discovery and liberation from societal norms and morality.
The Immoralist is a recollection of events that Michel narrates to his three visiting friends. One of those friends solicits job search assistance for Michel by including in a letter to Monsieur D. ... (Wikipedia)
Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong
A woman's journey of liberation, embarking on a journey to find her true self.
Bored with her marriage, a psychoanalyst’s wife embarks on a wild, life-changing affair After five years, Isadora Wing has come to a crossroads in her marriage: Should she and her husband stay ... (Goodreads)
The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories
by Jack London
Adventure stories of survival in the wild, featuring animals and humans alike.
Of all Jack London's fictions none has been as popular as his dog stories. In addition to The Call of the Wild, the epic tale of a Californian dog's adventures during the Klondike gold rush, this ... (Goodreads)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Dale Wasserman
A power struggle between a rebellious patient and a tyrannical nurse in a mental institution challenges the status quo.
Comedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, ... (Goodreads)
Ecce Homo
by Friedrich Nietzsche
A philosophical treatise on the meaning of life and the power of the individual.
In late 1888, only weeks before his final collapse into madness, Nietzsche (1844-1900) set out to compose his autobiography, and Ecce Homo remains one of the most intriguing yet bizarre examples of ... (Goodreads)
The Rebel
by Albert Camus
Philosophical meditation on the individual's search for meaning in an absurd world.
By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the "essential dimensions" of human ... (Goodreads)
We the Living
by Ayn Rand
Epic story of survival and defiance in Stalinist Russia.
The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post- revolutionary Russia . Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will ... (Wikipedia)
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)
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
by Ayn Rand
A philosophical exploration of the concept of egoism, advocating for rational self-interest.
Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life–the life proper to a rational being--as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as ... (Goodreads)
In the Country of Last Things
by Paul Auster
A dystopian journey through a post-apocalyptic world, filled with desperation and hope.
The novel takes the form of a letter from a young woman named Anna Blume. Anna has ventured into an unnamed city that has collapsed into chaos and disorder. In this environment, no industry takes ... (Wikipedia)
Sackett's Land
by Louis L'Amour
A man's journey of survival and adventure in the wild west, searching for his destiny.
After discovering six gold Roman coins buried in the mud of the Devil’s Dyke, Barnabas Sackett enthusiastically invests in goods that he will offer for trade in America. But Sackett has a powerful ... (Goodreads)
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