Choosing a book title
Book Titles to choose from:
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Suskind
Patrick Süskind's Perfume is a classic novel
of death and sensuality in Paris
'In
eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and
abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable
personages. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name has been
forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those
more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or,
more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were
restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm
of scent . . .'
Choice by Renata Saleci
We are encouraged from all sides to view our lives as being full of
choices. Like the products on a supermarket shelf, our careers, our
relationships, our bodies, our very identity seem to be there for the choosing.
But paradoxically, this seeming freedom to choose can create extreme anxiety,
and feelings of inadequacy. Choice explores how late capitalism's shrill
exhortations to 'be oneself' can be a tyranny which only leads to ever-greater
disquiet. Drawing on diverse examples from popular culture - from dating sites
and relationship self-help books, to our obsession with imitating celebrities'
lifestyles - and fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Salecl shows
that choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable
outcome. With wisdom, humour and sensitivity, she examines the complexity of
the essential human capacity to choose which has become mired in consumerist
ironies.
1984 by George Orwell
One of
Britain's most popular novels, George Orwell's dystopian tale Nineteen
Eighty-Four is set in a society terrorised by a totalitarian ideology
propagated by The Party.
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen.'
Winston
Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One.
Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act
of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does
not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite
the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin
to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will
not tolerate dissent - even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they
invented Room 101. . .
Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell's terrifying vision of a
totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical
regime. The novel also coined many new words and phrases which regular appear
in popular culture, such as 'Big Brother', 'thoughtcrime', 'doublethink' and
'Newspeak'.
'More
relevant to today that almost any other book that you can think of' Jo Brand
'Right
up there among my favourite books...I read it again and again' Margaret Atwood
George
Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) was an accomplished social, political and literary
commentator and essayist known for his non-fiction works The Road to Wigan
Pier and Homage to Catalonia. His most famous novels, Animal Farm
and 1984 have influenced a generation of twentieth century political
satirists and dystopian novelists. This edition of Orwell's seminal novel is
introduced by Professor Peter Davidson.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The
hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books
are burned by a special task force of firemen.
Guy
Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the
source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is
discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of
the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters,
is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read
books.
The
classic novel of a post-literate future, ‘Fahrenheit 451’ stands alongside
Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ as a prophetic account of
Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity. Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines
with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which
over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and
shock.
The Outsider by Albert Camus
A
peerless work of philosophical fiction that is as shocking today as when it was
first published, the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Albert Camus' The
Outsider is translated by Joseph Laredo.
Meursault
will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he
shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers,
society is baffled. Why would this seemingly law-abiding bachelor do such a
thing? And why does he show no remorse even when it could save his life? His
refusal to satisfy the feelings of others only increases his guilt in the eyes
of the law. Soon Meursault discovers that he is being tried not simply for his
crime, but for his lack of emotion - a reaction that condemns him for being an
outsider. For Meursault, this is an insult to his reason and a betrayal of his
hopes; for Camus it encapsulates the absurdity of life.
In
The Outsider (L'Étranger), his classic existentialist novel,
Camus explores the predicament of the individual who refuses to pretend and is
prepared to face the indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.
Albert
Camus (1913-1960) is the author of a number of best-selling and highly
influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include The
Fall, The Outsider and The First Man. Awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1957, Camus is remembered as one of the few writers to have
shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame
has been international.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo
Ishiguro
WINNER
OF THE BOOKER PRIZE (Film featured Antony Hopkins and Emma Thompson)
In
the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a
leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his
past . . .
A
contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's
beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English
House, of lost causes and lost love.
An elderly butler is on a five-day motoring trip through the West
Country in the 1950s. The climax of his journey is to be a reunion with his
former housekeeper. This 1989 Booker Prize-winner attempts to capture a period
in British history and draw a portrait of a man in old age.
Far From the Madding Crowd by
Thomas Hardy
"Far from the Madding Crowd" is Thomas Hardy's first major
literary success. Gabriel Oak is an
up-and-coming shepherd in the prime of life at twenty-eight years of age. With
the savings of a frugal life, he has leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls
in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud and
somewhat vain young beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs Hurst. She
comes to like him well enough, and even saves his life once, but when he makes
her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence
too much and him too little. Gabriel's blunt protestations only serve to drive
her to haughtiness. After a few months,
she moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off.
Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William
Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty whose ardour Bathsheba
unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed
on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine
sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words "Marry me".
Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with
Bathsheba, and soon proposes marriage. Although she does not love him, she toys
with the idea of accepting his offer; he is, after all, the most eligible
bachelor in the district. However, she postpones giving him a definite answer.
When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness, she fires him.
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| My favourite book cover |
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
The cult classic that can still
change your life… Let the dice decide!
This is the philosophy that
changes the life of bored psychiatrist Luke Rhinehart – and in some ways
changes the world as well.
Because once you hand over your
life to the dice, anything can happen.
Entertaining, humorous, scary,
shocking, subversive, The Dice Man is one of the cult bestsellers of our time.
The
rules are all around you. The rules that
stop you seducing your neighbour downstairs, that stop you hitting your boss,
that stop you leaving your family and leaving your family; the rules that stop
you living. The dice don’t do rules; the
dice do life.
Luke
Rhinehart is a psychiatrist, a husband and a father, his life locked down by
routine and order – until he picks up the dice.
The dice govern his every decision and freedom. As the cult of the dice grows around him the
old order fades; chance becomes his religion, the dice his god.
If
you haven’t lived the life of the dice, you haven’t lived at all. Let the dice decide; and roll with it.
