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Recommendations based on The Diary of a Nobodyby George Grossmith
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Three Men in a Boat
by Jerome K. Jerome
Three friends and a dog embark on a whimsical boat journey down the Thames, encountering unexpected adventures and mishaps.
A comic masterpiece that has never been out of print since it was first published in 1889, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat includes an introduction and notes by Jeremy Lewis in Penguin ... (Goodreads)
The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
A man sells his wife and daughter while drunk, then becomes a successful businessman and mayor, but his past haunts him.
At a country fair near Casterbridge in Wessex Michael Henchard, a 21-year-old hay-trusser, argues with his wife Susan. Drunk on rum-laced furmity he auctions her off, along with their baby daughter ... (Wikipedia)
Brighton Rock
by Graham Greene
A young gang leader's struggle for power, morality, and redemption in the criminal underworld.
Charles "Fred" Hale comes to Brighton on assignment to distribute cards anonymously for a newspaper competition (a variant of " Lobby Lud "; in this case, the name of the person to be spotted is ... (Wikipedia)
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
A humorous and satirical look at journalistic misadventures in Africa.
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the "Daily Beast", has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, ... (Goodreads)
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself
by Judy Blume
An 8-year old's imaginative journey to Florida in the aftermath of World War II.
Sally J. Freedman moves from New Jersey to Miami , Florida with her brother and their mother and grandmother at the end of World War II. This is because of her brother Douglas's health, for he caught ... (Wikipedia)
Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
A story of social climbing and ambition, set against the backdrop of 19th century England.
A novel that chronicles the lives of two women who could not be more different: Becky Sharp, an orphan whose only resources are her vast ambitions, her native wit, and her loose morals; and her ... (Goodreads)
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
A satirical novel about the decline of British aristocracy and the emptiness of modern life.
Tony Last is a country gentleman, living with his wife Brenda and his eight-year-old son John Andrew in his ancestral home, Hetton Abbey. The house is a Victorian pseudo-Gothic pastiche described as ... (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)
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
by Winifred Watson
An unemployed governess embarks on a day of transformation in 1930s London.
Set in London just prior to World War II , the film is about a middle-aged, straitlaced vicar 's daughter and governess Guinevere Pettigrew ( Frances McDormand ), who has been fired from her fourth ... (Wikipedia)
Candide
by Voltaire
A young man's satirical journey through life, encountering misfortune and eventual optimism.
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a ... (Goodreads)
The Way We Live Now
by Anthony Trollope
A satirical tale of greed and corruption, set in the world of high society.
Augustus Melmotte is a financier with a mysterious past. He is rumoured to have Jewish origins, and to be connected to some failed businesses in Vienna. When he moves his business and his family to ... (Wikipedia)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
by John le Carré
A retired spy is called back into action to uncover a mole in the British Secret Service.
Control , chief of the Circus, suspects one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus to be a long-standing Soviet mole and assigns code names with the intention that should his agent ... (Wikipedia)
The Enchanted April
by Elizabeth von Arnim
Four women embark on a journey to a magical Italian villa, discovering joy and transformation.
The novel follows four dissimilar women in 1920s England who leave their rainy, grey environments to go on holiday in Italy. Mrs Arbuthnot and Mrs Wilkins, who belong to the same ladies' club but ... (Wikipedia)
The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
An aging man's journey of self-discovery, revealing the beauty and complexity of life.
60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for "a quiet place to die". In Brooklyn he meets his nephew , Tom, whom he ... (Wikipedia)
The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
A chronicle of the lives of two couples, weaving together tragedy, deceit, and self-deception.
The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the story of those dissolutions, plus ... (Wikipedia)
The New York Trilogy
by Paul Auster
A series of interconnected stories exploring the hidden mysteries of New York City.
A 2006 reissue by Penguin Books is fronted by new pulp magazine -style covers by comic book illustrator Art Spiegelman . The first story, City of Glass , features an author of detective fiction who ... (Wikipedia)
The Twelve Chairs
by Ilya Ilf
A comedic tale of two men's quest for hidden jewels in a chair with a secret compartment.
In the Soviet Union in 1927, a former Marshal of Nobility , Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov, works as the registrar of marriages and deaths in a sleepy provincial town. His mother-in-law ... (Wikipedia)
High-Rise
by J.G. Ballard
In a high-rise building, social boundaries begin to break down as the inhabitants descend into chaos and violence.
Following his divorce, doctor and medical-school lecturer Robert Laing moves into his new apartment on the 25th floor of a recently completed high-rise building on the outskirts of London. This tower ... (Wikipedia)
The Heart of the Matter
by Graham Greene
A British police officer in West Africa struggles with his faith, morality, and loyalty during wartime.
Major Scobie lives in a colony on the west coast of Africa during World War II , and is responsible for local security during wartime. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature ... (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)
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens
A grim tale of a Victorian industrial city, highlighting its struggles of poverty, injustice and strife.
"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else," proclaimed Charles Dickens in explaining the theme of this classic novel. Published in 1854, the story concerns one Thomas ... (Goodreads)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)
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 Plague
by Albert Camus
A small town in Algeria is struck by a deadly plague, testing the courage and faith of its citizens.
The book begins with an epigraph quoting Daniel Defoe , author of, A Journal of the Plague Year, . In the town of Oran, thousands of rats, initially unnoticed by the populace, begin to die in the ... (Wikipedia)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
by Edwin A. Abbott
A two-dimensional world and its inhabitants explore the concept of multidimensionality.
The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a square , a ... (Wikipedia)
Every Man Dies Alone
by Hans Fallada
A man and his wife struggle to resist Nazi oppression in 1940s Berlin.
Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is the gripping tale of an ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule. This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword ... (Goodreads)
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
An orphan's journey of survival and resilience in the face of poverty and injustice.
Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune, raised in a workhouse in the fictional town of Mudfog , located 70 miles (110 km) north of London . , , , He is orphaned by his father's ... (Wikipedia)
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
A thrilling mystery of secrets and hidden identities, with a hero on a quest for the truth.
Walter Hartright, a young art teacher, encounters and gives directions to a mysterious and distressed woman dressed entirely in white, lost in London; he is later informed by policemen that she has ... (Wikipedia)
I, Claudius
by Robert Graves
An epic tale of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, told through the eyes of a dynasty's forgotten leader.
Into the 'autobiography' of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges ... (Goodreads)
Summer
by Edith Wharton
A young woman's romantic and social journey of self-discovery in the high society of 19th century New England.
At the start of the novel, young Charity Royall is bored with her life in the small town of North Dormer. She was born to poor parents from "up the Mountain" who gave her up to the town's learned ... (Wikipedia)
