Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2022 - Classics with Character Name
- Mahogany S.
- Friday, November 11, 2022
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2022 Reading Challenge prompt "read a book with the character's name in the title".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2022 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Giovanni's Room
Published in 2013
"Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality"--Page 4 of cover.
The Great Gatsby
Published in 2021
"One of the great American novels-and one of America's most popular-featuring a new foreword by Min Jin Lee, the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko Jay Gatsby seemingly has everything. Everybody who's anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his West Egg, Long Island, mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing, and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby--young, handsome, fabulously rich--always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel"-- Provided by publisher.
Madame Bovary
Provincial Ways
Published in 2010
Offers a new translation of Flaubert's classic tale, in which the title character turns to spending and a series of affairs to combat the boredom of married life and, heartbroken and crippled by debts, takes drastic action that results in tragedy.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Published in 2008
Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice.
Iola Leroy, Or, Shadows Uplifted.
Published in 2012
The daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter, Iola Leroy led a life of comfort and privilege, never guessing at her mixed-race ancestry - until her father died and a treacherous relative sold her into slavery. This stirring tale of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction traces a young woman's struggles and triumphs on the path to self-discovery. Confronted with the truth of her origins, Iola Leroy rejects the secrecy and shame inherent to a life of passing as white. Instead, she devotes herself to the improvement of black society in this compelling exploration of race, politics, and class. The New York Times noted that this 1892 work was "probably the bestselling novel by an African-American before the twentieth century." It bears the additional distinction of being among the first novels published by an African-American woman. Author Frances E. W. Harper, a popular lecturer and poet, was a leader in the suffrage and temperance movements and a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women. In Iola Leroy, she advocates female self-sufficiency and independence within the context of a gripping work of historical fiction.
Kim
Published in 2012
India, in the late nineteenth century. In Lahore, Kim is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier and nursemaid, who have both died in poverty. Kim begs in the streets, occasionally working for a horse trader, who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Few people realise that Kim is white, and that he carries on him documents from his father. Kim befriends an aged Tibetan Lama and becomes his disciple...and so begins his journey. An adventure both spiritual and educational, which leads also to espionage.
Lolita
Published in 1989
A novel that studies the moral disintegration of a man whose obsessive desire to possess his step-daughter destroys the lives of those around him
Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly
Published in 2001
Story of slavery and redemption in the pre-Civil War South.
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Published in 2013
Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Published in 2014
"The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen In recent years, neither the persistent effort to "clean up" the racial epithets in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel's wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of a turbulent, yet hopeful epoch in American history, defining the experience of a nation in voices often satirical, but always authentic"-- Provided by publisher.
Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ
Published in 2016
"As one of the bestselling stories of all time, Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ has captivated and enthralled millions around the world--both in print and on the big screen. Now Lew's great-great-granddaughter has taken the old-fashioned prose of this classic novel and breathed new life into it for today's audience. The story follows Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman whose childhood friend Messala betrays him. Accused of trying to murder the new Roman governor in Jerusalem, Judah is sentenced to the galley ships and vows to seek revenge against the Romans and Messala. But a chance encounter with a carpenter from Nazareth sets Judah on a different path."--Amazon.com.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Published in 1998
The author's classic novel about the Faust myth, in which a young dandy trades his soul for eternal youth.
Orlando
A Biography
Published in 1973
As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed.