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1) 1984
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Description
In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved...
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For an ambitious, keenly intelligent woman, lying proves to be the easiest way to get through life, in this Victorian-era classic. Lizzie Greystock is a woman of rare cunning and determination-both of which she uses to better her lot in life. This is especially true when she manages to convince the ailing Sir Florian Eustace to marry her shortly before his demise, leaving Lizzie both a wealthy widow and the mother to Florian's young son. A born...
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Everyman's library volume 134
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While the totalitarianism that provoked George Orwell into writing 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' seems to be passing into oblivion, his harrowing, cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate, and its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade.
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The Palliser novels volume 4
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Phineas Redux Anthony Trollope - When Phineas's wife dies, he becomes discontented with his life as a minor government functionary and longs to return to his exciting former career of politics in London. His luck is as strong as ever; his party is seeking to return to power with fresh blood, and with its support, he is once again elected to Parliament.
However, he makes a bitter enemy within his own party, Mr. Bonteen. When Bonteen is murdered, there...
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Appears on list
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"A towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society-and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs...
7) Animal farm
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Book Chat August 24: Tooth Fairy Day
Book Chat March 11: Drive
Book Chat: March 1, 2023: Pig & Horse Welfare Day
Book Chat March 11: Drive
Book Chat: March 1, 2023: Pig & Horse Welfare Day
Description
Orwell's 1945 fable about the power struggles among animals on a farm parallels the situation in Russia at the time as Orwell saw it; the characters include the ruthless pig Stalin, his idealistic Trotsky-like adversary, and the simple, kindly horse who represents the common man. All animals are equals but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is the account of the bold struggle, initiated...
8) The jungle
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1906 best-seller shockingly reveals intolerable labor practices and unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards as it tells the brutally grim story of a Slavic family that emigrates to America full of optimism but soon descends into numbing poverty, moral degradation, and despair. A fiercely realistic American classic that will haunt readers long after they've finished the last page. Published privately by Sinclair in 1906 after commercial...
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Lexile measure
680L
Description
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human...
10) Fahrenheit 451
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Description
The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden. In this frightening vision of a totalitarian future, a fireman's job is to burn books. Fireman Guy Montag loves his job - until he learns of the ideas that books contain and just what it might mean to think for himself. A classic from one of the greats.
11) Black dogs
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A political commentator in England in 1989 takes stock of his life and allegiances.
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"In the concluding volume of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, Lisbeth Salander lies in critical condition in a Swedish hospital, a bullet in her head. But she's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll stand trial for three murders. With the help of Mikael Blomkvist, she'll need to identify those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she'll...
14) The iron heel
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Ernest Everhard, a young Revolutionary Socialist, fights against the powerful state organization known as The Iron Heel, whose goal is to crush the working class at any cost, so that he and his wife can live freely.
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In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...
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Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts...
18) Dune
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Follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.
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Appears on list
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The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the...
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"William Golding's unforgettable classic of boyhood adventure and the savagery of humanity comes to Penguin Classics in a stunning Graphic Deluxe Edition with a new foreword by Lois Lowry As provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, Lord of the Flies continues to ignite passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary boys marooned on a coral island...
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