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Houston Montrose Great Books - Ballot for Mar 2, 2006
(plan is to vote on and select 6 titles out of those submitted) Titles suggested for March 2 2006 ballot include:
submitted by Steve S.
SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawerence (394 pages)
publ in 1913
"first modern portrayal of the Oedipus complex". "Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist."
RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow (270 pages) publ in 1975
Received the first National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1976 as well as the Arts and Letters Award given by the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters . Bestseller.
Set in the decade prior to World War I, Ragtime "rags" an array of historical figures that include Houdini, William Howard Taft, J.P. Morgan, Sigmund Freud, and others. Historic and imaginative events are woven so skillfully that by the end of the novel the nature of historical truth is called into question.
submitted by Seth
JARHEAD: A MARINE'S CHRONICLE OF THE GULF WAR AND OTHER BATTLES by Anthony Swofford (272 Pages) publ 2003
Received Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award in 2004. Bestseller. No other awards found for book or author. One member of our group has read it and says it is discussable.
Portrays the intensity of military life in all its maddening contradictions. Reviews are very varied from declaring it a classic to declaring it "cartoonish". One reviewer perhaps explained these differences of opinions by saying the book is "mediocre and inaccurate with glimpses of brilliance".
submitted by Alice
LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel
(336 pages) publ 2002
Man Booker Prize Winner 2002. Bestseller.
"This is a story of survival. A little kid shipwrecked tries to survive in the middle of the Pacific ocean...with a wild murderous tiger...alone in a boat."
A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
(288 pages) published 1989
Author is a Nobel Prize Winner
"A chronicle of the descent of a Central African nation (Zaire) from postColonial disruption to New African corruption to utter chaos & hooliganism as seen through the eyes of Salim, a Muslim Indian shopkeeper... "
submitted by Sophia
ON THE ROAD
by Jack Kerouac (307 pages) first publ 1957
thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. the soul of the Beat movement and literature
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES: NOTES ON A LATIN AMERICAN JOURNEY by Ernesto Che Guevarra (175 pages) publ 1993
Travel diaries that capture the essence and exuberance of the young legend, Che Guevara. "By the end of the journey, a politicized Che Guevara has emerged to predict his own revolutionary future" - Time
submitted by Lisa
GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson
(publ 2006) (256 pages)
Pulitzer Prize 2005
from Publisher's Weekly: "...a mesmerizing account of meditations on creation and existence fully illumined" by a preacher in the small Iowa town of Gilead —in the form of a letter to his young son, to whom he imagines reading it when he is grown.
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salmon Rushdie
(originally published 1981) (552 pages)
Awarded the Booker Prize in 1981, author's most highly regarded work of fiction, though not his best known. The foundations of religious authority are a central concern in the novel. The narrator's use and abuse of scriptural authority... points to his (and Rushdie's) desire to unsettle some of the easy dichotomies that individual people as well as entire cultures use to make sense of themselves. Rushdie turns his paradoxical gaze on the idea of nation as well.
Great Books study guide and more info available HERE
submitted by Hedwiga
DINNER WITH FRIENDS by Donald Margulies
(112 pages) (a play) Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2000
Dinner with Friends is a funny yet bittersweet examination of the married lives of two couples who have been extremely close for dozens of years. Although it seems to be treading on familiar ground, Dinner keeps changing its perspective to show how one couple's breakup can have equally devastating effects on another's stability.
Available in the Houston Library
RABBIT IS RICH by John Updike
(432 pages) 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner
Rabbit. Burly, mundane, middle-aged, average-joe Rabbit. Rabbit who, after years of effort, has achieved the American dream: He's rich. "...several crucial themes: Children, middle age, and spiritual and physical "wealth." Rabbit is rich, but is he rich spiritually? Rabbit is growing old, but is it in a fulfilling way? Rabbit's bum of a son, Nelson, where is he going? "The books don't need to be read in order, but there are certain slim plot threads that are carried over and some scenes have extra resonance as they echo earlier events. But isn't that the same with any life..."
Available in the Houston Library
