Can you recommend any good books written in the 20th century?

Question

I need to choose a good book to read and then be able to talk about it, and I don't know what book to choose. Please help :-)

Answer 1

Wow! thats a difficult question.

What do you like to read. Are you looking for a book thats intellectually challenging, emotionally stimulating, accessible and meaningful?

If you want to feel frightened and horrified by the extent of man's capacity to create and live in the most chaotic and paradoxical of environments, read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. (war novel)

If you want to feel fiercely proud to be human, I would read
a book that explores humankind's capacity for compassion and goodness. Try Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards. (Novel set on the east coast of Canada, bring kleenex)

If you're looking for an inquisitive book that explores a single person's capacity to overcome adversity, read Life of Pi by Yann Martel. (Pi, a young Indian boy, must survive a voyage across the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat with only a tiger for company)

If you want to have some idea of the measure of cruelty that one man can endure, read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (Poor Ivan, locked up in a Siberian Concentration Camp)

Otherwise, do some research. Books are lovely things, but I've heard an interesting rule of thumb.

The amount of a book you force yourself through before you give up, should be 100 pages minus your age.

Don't struggle through a book that doesn't interest you just because it is a great work of literature

Answer 2

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene... it is a great book if you have to write a paper or need a talking point, because there are quite a few points left open for debate and discussion. It is also pretty short, a very good read, and it will stay with you for a long time. I read it for the first time in school, and I have read it many, many times since then.

Answer 3

As you call yoursefl 'beatnick', why not try 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac. Whilst we are on a theme, F. Scott Fitzgerald's (not T.S, Mirela - that was Eliot) 'The Great Gatsby', JD Salinger, 'Catcher In the Rye', Ken Kesey 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'.

All classic 20th century novels centering on the search for the American Dream.

Answer 4

Belle Prater's Boy is exceptional! You dont might desire to confirm the precis with regards to the books in case you dont decide to... purely if your intrested. there's a secret on the midsection of this lyrical novel for youthful adults: what truly befell to Belle Prater, the aunt of 12-3 hundred and sixty 5 days-previous Gypsy Arbutus Leemaster? while Gypsy's cousin, Belle's son Woodrow, is composed of stay in tiny Coal Station, Virginia, he gadgets off a sequence of activities that precipitates a answer to this enigma, besides because of the fact the secret of Gypsy's very own father's dying seven years till now. Ruth White's characters, particularly the pass-eyed, staggering Woodrow, are sharply drawn, and the small-city existence of rural Virginia is splendidly defined additionally in case you finished interpreting that and you enjoyed that and you elect to renowned what befell to Belle Prater you ought to additionally attempt interpreting the sequal referred to as the seek for Belle Prater. This sequel to the Newbery Honor e book BELLE PRATER'S BOY keeps Woodrow's tale. the telephone rings on Woodrow's birthday, and he's beneficial that's his long-lost mom. while the call is traced to Bluesfield, Woodrow and cousin Gypsy take the bus to discover Belle. Cassie, a classmate with 2d sight, and Joseph, the 1st "colored" man or woman they have ever encountered, connect the seek. Alison Elliott's interpreting is spot-on, real to the Nineteen Fifties' Virginia putting. She supplies each and each character a different voice as he or she searches for a secure, loving place interior the international. An interview with the author, offering perception into the writing technique and the self sustaining existence that tale characters many times address, is icing on the cake. All in all they're splendidly written books the two written by Ruth White and can incredibly reccomend them.

Answer 5

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,invisible_man,00.html)

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_catcher_in_the_rye,00.html)

. . . and here are a ton of other novels you should read: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html. The two I mentioned above were written in the 20th century, and you should be able to find more 20th century novels in Time's list.

Answer 6

LIttle Women(actually it may have been written in the 19th century, I am not sure)
The Locket and it's sequel The Carousel by Evans
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Ferenheight 451
Christy by Marshall

Answer 7

The best answer I can give you to this question is to recommend my favourite book. "The Grapes of Wrath" its about the Depression Era in the USA its still relevant today and will give you some great ideas for discussion.

Answer 8

Safely Home by Randy Alcorn (if you want intense and really convicting drama)
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk (if you want something socially against the grain, make ya think outside the box)
Anything by Ted Dekker (if you want something spiritually radical and outside the box)
anything by Lori Wick (if you want a nice, bu moving romantic drama)
James Michener for historical epics.

Answer 9

Paulo Coelho - "The Alchemist"
Iris Murdoch - "The Bell"
Graham Greene - "Waterland"
T.S. Fitzgerald - "The Great Gatsby", "Tender of the Night"

Answer 10

one hundred years of solitude! Gabriel Garcia Marquez, nobel prize