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A Farewell To Arms
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Ernest Hemingway
WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederick Henry loves English nurse Catherine Berkley
Catherine becomes pregnant
Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy
They go to Switzerland
Catherine dies
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The Optimists Daughter
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Eudora Welty
Pulitzer Prize
Laurel travels to New Orleans
takes care of father who reads him Dickens
Father dies and her and stepmother Fay move body to Mississippi
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Moby Dick
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Herman Melville
aka White Whale
Captain Ahab pursues Moby
others on the Pequod=
Starbuck
Stub
harpooners: Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtego
black Pip
Parsee (fire-worshipper)
only narrator Ishamel survives
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The Lottery
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Shirley Jackson
children gather stones for annual lottery
head of each family draws a slip of paper
Bill Hutchinson gets slip with black spot
each Hutchinson family member draws a slip and Bill's wife Tessie gets black marked slip
Tessie is stoned to death to ensure good harvest
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Atlas Shrugged
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Ayn Rand
railroad worker Dagny Taggart finds government-free utopia at Gat's Gulch, CO
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The Masque of the Red Death
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Edgar Allen Poe
castle masquerade ball during Plague years: Prince Prospero
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To Kill a Mockingbird
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Harper Lee
AL town
lawyer Atticus Finch defends a black man
his daughter Scout Finch narrates
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The Road Not Taken
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Robert Frost
takes the one less traveled and "that has made all the difference
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Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening
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Robert Frost
Vermont
"The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keepAnd miles to go before I sleepAnd miles to go before I sleep"
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
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Truman Capote
Holly Golightly
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The Sun Also Rises
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Ernest Hemingway
Lost Generation 1925 France
journalist Jake Barnes narrates
Lady Brett Ashley is divorcing and may love Jake but plans to marry Michael Campbell
has affair with Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona
others include Greek Bill Gorton and American-Jewish writer Robert Cohn
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A Farewell to Arms
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Ernest Hemingway
WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry loves English nurse Catherine Barkley
Barkley becomes pregnant
Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy
they go to Switzerland, where she dies
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As I Lay Dying
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William Faulkner
husband Anse and kids Cash, Darl, Jewel, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell carry body of Addie Bundren to Jefferson MS
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The Grapes of Wrath
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John Steinbeck
Joad family travels from OK to CA during Great Depression to find work picking fruit
Tom Joad becomes involved in strikes and kills a man
Rose of Sharon has baby
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Rabbit Run
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John Updike
salesman Harry Angstrom leaves alcoholic wife Janice and child to find freedom but returns
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Zane Grey
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Riders of the Purple Sage
The Last of the Plainsmen
Tales of Fishing
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Native Son
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Richard Wright
Bigger Thomas from Chicago slums is victimized for being black
commits two murders
defended by communist lawyer and is sentenced to death
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The Age of Innocence
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Edith Wharton
NY 1870s
Neland Archer marries May Welland but loves her cousin Ellen Olenska
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The Old Man and the Sea
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Ernest Hemingway
Cuban fisherman Santiago catched marlin on 85th day but it is slowly eaten by sharks on way home
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Tortilla Flat
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John Steinbeck
carefree Danny meets w/ simple friends
Pablo
Big Joe Portage
Jesus Maria Corcoran
Pirate
"like the round table"
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This Side of Paradise
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
spoiled Middle Westerner Amory Blaine goes to Princeton
joins literary cults
loves Rosaline Commase but is rejected
serves in WWI
starts career in advertising
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The Color Purple
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Alice Walker
Celie made pregnant twice by dad at age 14
sold to Albert but befriends Shug
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The Yearling
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Marjorie Rawlings
northern FL boy, Jody, loves a fawn but must shoot it when it eats family corn
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Hiroshima
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John Hersey
tells of nuclear bombing throught the eyes of six people, including priest, minister, and two doctors
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The Great Gatsby
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jazz Age Long Island
Jay Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan but she stays with husband Tom
Daisy runs over Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson
Tom shoots Jay
narrator Nick Carraway
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Arrowsmith
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Sinclair Lewis
won Pulitzer Prize
Martin Arrowsmith
bacteriologist goes to Vermont farm and West Indies
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
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Carson McCullers
eccentric tomboy Mick Kelly
goodhearted Biff Brannon
drunken Jake Blount
black intellectual Dr. Benedict Copeland
All admire deaf mute Singer, who commits suicide
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Fahrenheit 451
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Ray Bradbury
written during Cold War
presents future American society
reading is outlawed
firemen= book burners
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The Pearl
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John Steinbeck
CA Indian pearl-fisher and wife Juana's baby bitten by scorpion
they pay doctor with large pearl
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East of Eden
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John Steinbeck
Salina Valley
Adam Trask and Cathy have two sons
Cal kills Aron by telling him mom is a prostitute
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Gone With the Wind
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Margaret Mitchell
Civil War Georgia
Scarlett O'Hara of Tara plantation loves Ashley Wilkes but he marries Melanie Hamilton
Scarlett is widowed twice, then marries Rhett Butler
Alexandra Ripley wrote 1992 sequel Scarlett
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The Catcher in the Rye
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JD Salinger
Holden Caulfield runs away from his prep school and drifts about NY
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The Feminine Mystique
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Betty Friedan
women loses identity in a system requiring them to live through their husband and children
post WWII
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The Raven
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Edgar Allen Poe
poet is startled by raven tapping at chamber door
raven perches on bust of Pallas Athene and answers questions about dead lover
"Nevermore"
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The Enormous Room
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E. E. Cummings
WWI French concentration camp where Cummings was imprisoned on false treason charge
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Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
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Edgar Allen Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher:
narrator visits Roderick Usher
twin sister Madeline Usher emerges from burial vault
house and family destroyed
Berenice:
man Egaeus prepares to marry his cousin Berenice
Berenice=sick, healthy=teeth
Berenice dies, Egaeus obsesses and unburies her to pluck out her teeth
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Of Mice and Men
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John Steinbeck
strong giant half-wit migrant worker Lennie accidentally kills woman who seduces him
is shot by friend George to protect him from lynch mob
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The Sound and the Fury
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William Faulkner
4 sections narrated by Compson family
idiot Benjy
Harvard student Quentin, whose ties with sister Caddy shattered by her loveless marriage
Jason, who keeps money Caddy sends to support daughter Quentin
black cook Dilsey
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Main Street
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Sinclair Lewis
Carol Kennicott tires of physician husband Will and tries to bring culture to dull Gopher Prairie, Minnesota
Based on Sauk Centre
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Roots
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Alex Haley
many generations of slaves from Gambia, including Kunta Kinte
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Catch-22
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Joseph Heller
Pianosa Island during WWII
Yossarian can only stop bombing missions if insane but wanting to stop is sane
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The Joy Luck Club
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Amy Tan
4 Chinese American immigrant families who play Mahjong for money while eating a variety of foods
3 mothers and four daughters
4 parts= 4 sections= 16 chapters
structured like a Mahjong game
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The Fountainhead
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Ayn Rand
architect Howard Roark turns down commissions rather than sacrifice integrity
possibly based on Frank Lloyd Wright
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The Scarlet Letter
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Salem
Hestor Pryne
wears A for adultery
husband=Richard Chillingsworth
minister=Arthur Dimmesdale
adultery w/ Hestor
Daughter=Pearl
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The House of Mirth
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Edith Wharton
orphan Lily Bart loves Lawrence Seldon but reject him because he is poor
blackmailed and falsely accused by other men
becomes milliner and takes overdose of sleeping pills
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Light in August
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William Faulkner
part-black Joe Christmas employed by Joe Brown has affair with Joanna Burden and kills her
Christmas is killed by mob
pregnant Lena Grove comes to Jefferson looking for her lover
Reverand Gail Hightower loses his church because of devotion to the past
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