A Book for Every BecomingA Book for Every Becoming Because we are always becoming something new—this collection cel
Because the right book at the right time can change everything.
Items in this hypelist
Abandonment

Plainsong
Kent Haruf · 2000
A high school teacher left alone to raise his two young sons, becomes involved in the lives of Victoria, a homeless, pregrant teenager, and two elderly bachelors.
Being Accused

True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey · 2007
“I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.” In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
Adolescence

In Youth is Pleasure
Denton Welch · 2021
<b>'Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me' Alan Bennett</b><br><br><b>'Vivid ... surprising ... an exquisite balance of pain and beauty' <i>Guardian<br></i></b><br>Orvil Pym does not fit in. A waifish, eccentric, sensitive fifteen-year-old, he hates school and longs to be alone. Spending his Summer holidays in a genteel Surrey hotel with his mysterious father and two brothers who don't understand him, he explores ancient churches, spies on a man rowing in the river and collects antiques, escaping into his own singular aesthetic world. First published in 1945, this is an unforgettable portrayal of a young man's sensuous coming-of-age.<br><br>'A heightened, sensual journey ... it is Orvil's vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble ... beautifully odd ... spectacular' <i>Independent</i>

Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?
Lorrie Moore · 1994
Berie Carr, an American visiting Paris with her husband, reminisces about the events of the summer of 1972, when, as a fifteen year old, she and her beautiful best friend, Sils, worked in an upstate New York amusement park. 17,500 first printing.

The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 2001
Gap Year

Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell · 2005
<p>'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies ...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanitys dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.</p>

Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 2003
A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this thrilling adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. More than just the tale of a hair-raising voyage, Melville's riveting story passionately probes man's soul.nbsp; A literary classic first published in 1851, Moby-Dicknbsp;represents the ultimate human struggle.

All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy · 2010
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

Patience
John Coates · 2012
A lightly handled story of sex, marriage and Catholicism maintains a gay innocence as Patience Gathorne-Galley wakens to her unused potentialities. Learning of her husband's mistress and very aware of ubiquitous Sin, she is very much surprised to discover that there is such a thing as love when she meets Philip who gives her her first lesson in sex. With the help of her worldly sister and her lawyer husband, Patience uses her faith's weapons to dissolve her marriage to Edward and then discovers she has been living in adultery, with Edward's first wife still alive. But there are other gambits, other obstacles before she is free to take her three little girls, marry Philip and present him with a new baby. Sort of silly if you look at it one way but for some giddy and amusing moments this has a certain spark.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 2006
<p> <i>One Hundred Years of Solitude</i> tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction. </p>

Dusty Answer
Rosamond Lehmann · 2015
<b>Rosamond Lehmann's first novel, now a classic of British literature, tells a luminous story of friendship, discovery, and forbidden love</b><br> <br> This debut novel, set in the early 1900s, tells the story of Judith Earle, a solitary only child growing up in a sprawling house in the Thames Valley. From an early age, she is fascinated by the six cousins who live next door.<br> <br> There's boring, faithful Martin, of the red cheeks and perennially scabby knees; beautiful, aristocratic Charlie, whom Judith secretly adores and who will die in the First World War; reckless Julian, who turns lying into an art; enigmatic Roddy, who visits only occasionally; and Mariella, whose marriage to her first cousin will end tragically, and who lives with the scandal of her mother running off with another man. Every year, the Fyfe family returns to this idyllic corner of England. Childhood friendships blossom into adolescent romance as the cousins fall in love with Judith--and she with them. But her world transforms forever when she meets a beautiful fellow student named Jennifer.<br> <br> A novel in many ways ahead of its time, <i>Dusty Answer</i> is about love: first love, love on the rebound, taboo love, the loss of love. With its gentle indictment of England's class system, it is also about what goes on behind the closed doors of genteel society, and the self-deceptions we spin in order to give our lives meaning.

Lucy
Jamaica Kincaid · 2002
<p><b>The coming-of-age story of one of Jamaica Kincaid's most admired creations--available now in an e-book edition. </b><br><br>Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to America to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple. She begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade at the same time that the mysteries of own sexuality begin to unravel. Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new heroine who is destined to win a place of honor in contemporary fiction.</p>

Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes · 1994
Charlie embarks on a compelling but dangerous journey from retardation to genius. Oscar-winning film Charly starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom -- a mentally challenged man receives an operation that turns him into a genius ... and introduces him to heartache. When we first meet Charlie he is about to embark on a compelling but dangerous journey from retardation to genius. He has only a vague understanding of what will happen, but he is aware that knowledge and the ability to write are of paramount importance. So he doesn't hesitate for a moment to cooperate in a radical experiment designed to increase his intelligence, the key -- he hopes -- to being valued as a human being and to being loved. Daniel Keyes's powerful and highly original story of a young man whose quest for intelligence and knowledge parallels that of Algernon (the mouse who is an earlier subject of a similar experiment) remains unique in imaginative literature. We follow Charlie Gordon's mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. We watch with excitement as he becomes the focus of attention by the scientific world, his intellectual capacities far surpassing those of the psychologists and neurosurgeons who engineered his metamorphosis. We also follow the progress of his romance with two women, one who knew him before the experiment as well as with another, who knows him only as the attractive, bright, and sympathetic man he has become. And, finally, we hope against hope that what happens suddenly, unexpectedly, to Algernon will not happen to Charlie.

On the Road Jack Kerouac (English Edition)
Editorial Aleph · 2015
The legendary 1951 scroll draft of On the Road, published word for word as Kerouac originally composed it Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120 foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac's revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period. It was not until more than six years later, and several new drafts, that Viking published, in 1957, the novel known to us today. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road, Viking will publish the 1951 scroll in a standard book format. The differences between the two versions are principally ones of significant detail and altered emphasis. The scroll is slightly longer and has a heightened linguistic virtuosity and a more sexually frenetic tone. It also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends instead of the fictional names he later invented for them. The transcription of the scroll was done by Howard Cunnell who, along with Joshua Kupetz, George Mouratidis, and Penny Vlagopoulos, provides a critical introduction that explains the fascinating compositional and publication history of On the Road and anchors the text in its historical, political, and social context.

The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 2016
A 50th-anniversary Deluxe Edition of the incomparable 20th-century masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two distinct yet interwoven parts: one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem. Each part is brimming with historical, imaginary, frightful, and wonderful characters. Written during the darkest days of Stalin’s reign, and finally published in 1966 and 1967, The Master and Margarita became a literary phenomenon, signaling artistic and spiritual freedom for Russians everywhere. This newly revised translation, by the award-winning team of Pevear and Volokhonsky, is made from the complete and unabridged Russian text.

Purple Hibiscus A Novel
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2012
<p><b>“One of the most vital and original novelists of her generation.” —Larissa MacFarquhar, <i>The New Yorker</i><br><br> From the bestselling author of <i>Americanah</i> and <i>We Should All Be Feminists</i></b><br><br> Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.<br><br> As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.<br><br><i>Purple Hibiscus</i> is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.</p>
Adultery

The Summer Without Men
Siri Hustvedt · 2011
"Exuberant . . . A lighter, more lilting meditation on men and women. . . . terrific writing . . . mulling the gifts and limits of art, sex, marriage." — San Francisco Chronicle "And who among us would deny Jane Austen her happy endings or insist that Cary Grant and Irene Dunne should get back together at the end of The Awful Truth? There are tragedies and there are comedies, aren't there? And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women, if you ask me. A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment." Mia Fredrickson, the wry tragic comic, poet narrator of T he Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia's husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a "pause." This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. The June following Mia's release from the hospital, she returns to the midwestern town of her childhood. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her—her mother and her close friends, "the Five Swans," and her young neighbor with two small children and a loud angry husband—and the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop whose scheming and petty cruelty carry a threat all their own. From the author of What I Loved comes Siri Hustvedt's provocative and revelatory novel about the age-old question of the differences between the sexes. "Honest, witty and empathetic." — The New York Times Book Review "Satisfying." — Boston Globe "Breathtaking . . . hilarious." — Booklist (starred review)

Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 2014
Tolstoy's epic novel of love, destiny and self-destruction, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition from Penguin Classics. Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself. This acclaimed modern translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky won the PEN/ Book of the Month Club Translation Prize in 2001. Their translation is accompanied in this edition by an introduction by Richard Pevear and a preface by John Bayley 'The new and brilliantly witty translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is a must' - Lisa Appignanesi, Independent, Books of the Year 'Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English, and their superb rendering allows us, as perhaps never before, to grasp the palpability of Tolstoy's "characters, acts, situations"' - James Wood, New Yorker

Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 2002
<b>The notorious and celebrated novel that established modern realism</b><br> <br>For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, <b>Madame Bovary</b> remains a powerful and scintillating novel.<br><br>This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes and an introduction by Geoffrey Wall. It includes a preface by Michele Roberts. <br><br>For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Age Gap Between Lovers

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka · 2006
<b>Nominated for the Man Booker Prize<br><br>“A charming comedy of eros . . . A ride that, despite the bumps and curves in the road, never feels anything less than jaunty.” —<b><i>Los Angeles Times</i><br><br></b>“Charming, poignantly funny.” —<i><b>The Washington Post Book World</b></i><br></b><br>'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'<br><br>Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their émigré engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she will stop at nothing in her pursuit of Western wealth.<br><br>But the sisters' campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of Europe's darkest history and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget . . .
Ageing Parents

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen · 2001
<p><b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>Bestseller * </b><b>NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER *A <i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BEST BOOK OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: TOP TEN</b><br><br><b>“A spellbinding novel” (<i>People</i>) from the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of <i>Crossroads, The Corrections</i> is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.</b><br><br>After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.<br><br>The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself that, despite certain alarming indicators, he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man—or so her mother fears.<br><br>Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.</p>
Agoraphobia

The Woman in the Dunes
Kobo Abe · 1991
<i><i>The Woman in the Dunes</i>,</i> by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.<br> <br> After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.
No Ambition

The Crimson Petal and the White
Michel Faber · 2003
At the heart of this panoramic, multidimensional narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Faber leads readers back to 1870s London, where Sugar, a 19-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for escape to a better life.
OCD about Life

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 2009
An experimental novel far ahead of its time, "Tristram Shandy" was originally published from 1759 to 1767 in nine volumes. Shandy narrates the story of his life, beginning with his conception and diverting to his family, particularly his unconventional father Walter and his gentle Uncle Toby. Shandy cannot explain anything concisely, and Sterne utilizes many narrative devices to accommodate Shandy's digressions on countless subjects, especially human disconnection and his doubts about truly knowing himself. His disorderly account is rich in minor characters, especially Dr. Slop, Toby's servant Corporal Trim, and the parson Yorick. Despite being full of coarse humor and satire, Sterne's work was immediately and wildly popular in London, perhaps because it disregarded all the conventions of fiction, explored all of its potential, and dryly expressed its restrictions.
Anger

The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 2024
On the eighty-fifth day of no catches, old Cuban fisherman Santiago sets out past the shallows of his usual fishing grounds to break his streak of bad luck. Without his younger apprentice Manolin to help him, Santiago struggles to reel in the biggest catch of his life—a giant marlin that pulls his boat along for three days and three nights. Once his prey is captured, Santiago must fight off other dangers to make his way home again.
Angst

Siddharth
Hermann Hesse · 2016
<p> नोबल पुरस्कार प्राप्त लेखक की अविस्मरणीय कृति "शांति हमारे भीतर ही प्राप्त होती है, हमारे बाहर नहीं... निर्वाण हेतु स्वयं प्रयत्न करो और इसकी प्राप्ति के लिए दूसरों पर निर्भर मत रहो I " - सिद्धार्थ हर्मन हेस के इस उपन्यास में मानव जीवन के कर्मों से प्राप्त अनुभवों को सत्य की अनुभूति के लिए सर्वोत्तम मार्ग के रूप में दिखाया गया है I यह अनुभूति बौद्धिक विधियों को अपना कर, भौतिक सुखों को भोग कर अथवा सांसारिक दुखों से गुज़र कर प्राप्त नहीं की जा सकती, बल्कि इन अनुभवों की सम्पूर्णता ही जीवन-मुक्ति की और ले जाती है। सिद्धार्थ को भी इसी राह पर चल कर ज्ञान का बोध हुआ । यह कथा एक ब्राह्मण पुत्र सिद्धार्थ की है, जो सन्यास ग्रहण करने के लिए अपने साथी गोविंद के साथ गृह त्याग देता है और दोनों ज्ञान की खोज में निकल पड़ते हैं । सिद्धार्थ लम्बे समय तक प्रेम और व्यापार की गतिविधियों में ड़ूबे रह कर निर्वाण से अछूते रहे । किन्तु फिर भी वे क्रियाएँ सिद्धार्थ को मार्ग से भटकने वाली न होकर उन्होंने विभिन्न अनुभवों द्वारा सीख देने वाली सिद्ध हुई । अंत में, सिद्धार्थ को ज्ञान का बोध किसी गुरु के माध्यम से न होकर एक नदी के ज़रिये हुआ।</p>
