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HARMONY BOOK GROUP Future Selections
Sources for potentential future selections
Literary prizes
| Prize winners, including The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Man Booker Prize, The National Book Award, The PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Nobel Prize for Literature |
| The 100 best books of all time (Norwegian Book Clubs). |
Lists
Summer Project - July and August
| Victor Hugo | Les Miserables ( Lee Fahnestock/Norman MacAfee translation |
| Marcel Proust | Within a Budding Grove (Remembrance of Things Past, part II ) |
| Shakespeare | Henry IV, parts 1 and 2 and Henry V |
| See also the classic male list, some of which would be candidates for a summer project |
Classic Women Authors
Novels
| Author | Title | Reason recommended |
| Jane Austen | anything we haven't alread read |
| Margaret Ayer Barnes | Years of Grace | ((Pulitzer, 1931) |
| Pearl Buck | The Good Earth | ((Pulitzer, 1932) |
| Willa Cather | One of Ours | ((Pulitzer, 1923) |
| Edna Ferber | So Big | ((Pulitzer, 1925) |
| Stella Gibbons | Cold Comfort Farm |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilmore | The Yellow Wallpaper |
| Ellen Glasgow | In This Our Life | ((Pulitzer, 1942) |
| Josephine W. Johnson | Now in November | ((Pulitzer, 1935) |
| Caroline Miller | Lamb in his Bosom | ((Pulitzer, 1934) |
| Daphne Du Maurier | Rebecca |
| Margaret Mitchell | Gone With the Wind | (Pulitzer, 1937) |
| Dorothy Parker | |
| Julia M. Peterkin | Scarlet Sister Mary | ((Pulitzer, 1929) |
| Dawn Powell | The Golden Spur |
| George Sand | Consuelo, Indiana |
| Muriel Spark | Memento Mori |
| Eudora Welty | Delta Wedding |
| Margaret Wilson | The Able McLaughlins | (Pulitzer, 1924) |
| Margaret Mitchell | Gone with the Wind | |
| Willa Cather | Death Comes for the Archbishop | Modern Library: One Hundred Greatest |
| Elizabeth Bowen | Death of the Heart | Modern Library: One Hundred Greatest |
| Mary Renault | The King Must Die or The Bull from the Sea | “She may have produced the outstanding historical novels of this century in these works.” Martin S Day |
| May Sinclair | Mary Oliver or Arnold Waterlow | Significance of Freud and psychoanalysis in these novels |
| Emily Bronte | Wuthering Heights | |
| Anne Bronte | Agnes Grey | The third sister. Day: “An underrated novel.” |
| Ann Radcliffe | The Mysteries of Udolpho or The Italian | Day: “The greatest novelist of atmosphere until the 19th century. Her castle of Udolpho is the epitome of the Gothic School. The Italian is Mrs. Radcliffe’s masterpiece. (per Al, we should read this Udolpho along with Austen's Northanger Abbey) |
| Fanny Burney | Evelina | An epistolary novel whose aim is to show the world as it appears to a young girl of seventeen.
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| Louisa May Alcott | Little Women | |
| Simone de Beauvoir | The Mandarins | French existential writer. Friend of Sartre |
| Aphra Behn | Oroonoko | | The story of an enslaved African prince
| Stella Gibbons | Cold Comfort Farm | Comic novel, parody of D. H. Lawrence |
| Mary McCarthy | The Group | Follows the lives of eight Vassar graduates |
| Elizabeth Gaskell | Wives and Daughters |
| Helen Hunt Jackson | Ramona | Admired for its romantic picture of old California. |
| Flannery O’Connor | The Violent Bear It Away | Works set in the rural South, often depicting alienation in relationship with God. Somewhat like G. Greene. |
| Daphne du Maurier | Rebecca |
| Mary Webb | Precious Bane | A rich and intense impression of her native Shropshire countryside and its people. Invites comparison with Thomas Hardy. |
| Angela Carter | Wise Children or Bloody Chamber or Several Perceptions | |
Plays and Poetry
| Lillian Hellman | Little Foxes |
| Emily Dickinson | Collected Poetry |
| Edith Sitwell | poetry |
| Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Sonnets from the Portuguese |
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| Ibsen |
| Shakespeare |
| Marlowe |
History
| Beryl Markham | West With the Night - Also highly recommended by Linda |
| Annie Dillard | Pilgrim at Tinker Creek |
| Barbara Tuchman | A Distant Mirror |
| U.S. Grant | Memoirs |
Contemporary Female
| Anne Enright | The Gathering | 2007 Man Booker prize winner |
| Alice Munro | Lives of Girls and Women | A Canadian Writer. A novel composed of a series of linked stories. Norton World Masterpieces. Bob was impressed by one of her short stories. |
| Anita Desai | Clear Light of Day | An Indian writer who writes in English and lives in the United States Norton World Masterpieces. (Bob highly recommends this novel.) |
| Cynthia Ozick | Trust | A woman’s rejection of her wealthy American Jewish family |
| Elizabeth Roberts | The Great Meadow | Describes a woman’s spiritual return to the wilderness |
| Ursula Le Guin | Left Hand of Darkness | An SF writer who transcends the genre |
Classic Male
| Thomas Hardy | Tess of the D'Ubervilles |
| | Jude the Obscure |
| Anthony Trollope | The Way we Live Now |
| | Phineas Finn |
| Dante | The Divine Comedy |
| Herman Melville | Moby Dick |
| Chaucer | The Canterbury Tales |
| Pushkin | |
| Stendahl | |
| Chekhov | |
| Evelyn Waugh | Brideshead Revisted
or Decline and Fall |
| William Styron | Sophie's Choice |
| Truman Capote | In Cold Blood |
| Norman Mailer | |
| Goethe | |
| Kafka | |
| John Cheever | |
| Laurence Durrell | The Alexandria Quartet |
| Plato | |
| Aristotle | |
| Darwin | Origin of the Species |
| Tolstoy | Anna Karenina |
| Anonymous | Beowulf |
Contemporary Male
| Michael Chabon | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
or Wonderboys |
| Thomas Pynchon | The Crying of Lot 49
or Gravity's Rainbow |
| Tobias Wolff | Old School |
| Cormac McCarthy | Blood Meridian |
| Richard Ford | Sportswriter
or Independence Day |
| John Berendt |
| Tom Wolfe | Bonfire of the Vanities |
| Jon Clinch | Finn |
| E.L. Doctorow | Ragtime
or The March
or City of God |
| Richard Russo | Straight Man |
| Jeffrey Eugenides | Middlesex |
| Ian McEwan | Saturday |
| Roddy Doyle | The Barrytown Trilogy |
| Jose Saramago | Blindness |
| Joshua Ferris | Then We Came To the End |
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