Have You Read These Top Novels of the 20th Century?

Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
1984, George Orwell
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
On the Road, JackKerouac
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

Slaughterhouse-five, Kurt Vonnegut

Kilgore Trout's Tombstone

Great Books for Young Guys

The Burn Journals, Brent Runyon
In 1991, fourteen-year-old Brent came home from school, doused his bathrobe in gasoline, put it on, and lit a match. He suffered third-degree burns over 85 percent of his body and spent the next year recovering in hospitals and rehab facilities. During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he;d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.

Tales of the Otori, Lian Hearn
16-year-old Tomasu lives in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But, unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assasin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordianry, preternatural skills. When Tomasu's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru, who gives him a new name: Takeo. Under the tuttelage of Shigeru, Takeo learns that he, too, possesses the skill of the Tribe. And with this knowledge, he embarkes on a journey that will lead him to his own unimaginable destiny.

Winterdance, Gary Paulsen
Fueled by a passion for running dogs, Gary Paulsen entered the Iditarod--the eleven hundred and eighty mile sled-dog race through the Alaskan wilderness--in dangerous ignorance and with a fierce determination. For seventeen days, he and his team of dogs endured blinding winds, snowstorms, frostbite, dogfights, moose attacks, sleeplessness, hallucinations--and the relentless push to go on. Winterdance is the enthralling account of a "stunning wilderness journey of discovery and transformation"(Chicago Tribune), lived and told by "the best author of man-against-nature adventures writing today" (Publisher's Weekly).

47, Walter Mosley
The story you are about to read concerns ceratin events that occured in the early days of my life. It all happened over a hundred and seventy years ago. I am no older today than I was back in the year 1832. But this is no whopper I'm telling; it is the story about my boyhood as a slave and my fated encounter with the Amazing Tall John from beyond Africa, who could read dreams, fly between galaxies, and make friends with any animal no matter how wild.

Some Great Books for Young Women

Speak, Lauri Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Beacause there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she would let it, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth.

Sloppy Firsts, Megan McCafferty

When her best friend, Hope Weaver, moves away from Pineville, NJ, hyperobservant Jessica Darling is devastated. A fish out of water at school and a stranger at home, Jessica feels more lost than ever now that the only person with whom she could really communicate has gone. How is she supposed to deal with the boy- and shopping-crazy girls at school, her dad's obsession with her track meets, her mother salivating over her big sister Bethany's wedding, and her nonexistant love life?

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray

Gemma Doyle isn't like other girls. Girls with impeccable manners, who speak when spoken to, who remember their station, and who will lie back and think of England when it's required of them. No, 16-year-old Gemma is an island unto herself, sent to the Spence Academy in London after tragedy stikes her family in India. Lonley, guilt-ridden, and prone to visons of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma finds a chilly reception. But she's not completely alone...she's been followed by a mysterious young man, who warns her to close her mind against the visions.

A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb

In the class of the high school English teacher she's been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who had not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen--terrified, but intrigued--is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.