The Big Read - Audio Guides

Did you know that the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services have made a series of audio guides to some of the the biggest books of the 20th Century that were written by American Authors. They've named the series The Big Read and there are 14 titles in the series.

The audio CDs include commentary on the selected title as well as readings from the book. Look for these CDs in the Classics Section of the library.

The titles chosen by The Big Read include:

Great Gatsby By Fitzgerald, F. Scott Scribner, Charles Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph 1995/06 - Rebound by Sagebrush 9780881030709 CHECK CATALOG ...More

Farewell to Arms By Hemingway, Ernest 1995/06 - San Val 9780808519256 CHECK CATALOG By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. ...More

Bendiceme Ultima = Bless Me, Ultima By Anaya, Rudolfo A. Smithers, Alicia 1994/09 - Grand Central Publishing 9780446601771 CHECK CATALOG Una obra maestra de la literatura hispánica de “uno de los artistas literarios Chicanos más importantes de la nación” (Denver Post). Esta es la absorbente historia de Antonio, un muchacho enfrentando los conflictos de su vida con la ayuda de Ultima, una curandera que cura con hierbas y magia. En cada vuelta de la vida de Tony, allí está ella para nutrir su alma. A masterpiece of Hispanic literature from "one of the nation's foremost Chicano literary artists" (Denver Post). This is the involving story of Antonio, a boy facing the conflicts in his life with the help of Ultima, a curandera who cures with herbs and magic. At each turn of Tony's life, she is there to nurture his soul. ...More

The Age of Innocence By Wharton, Edith 1996/01 - Bantam Classics 9780553214505 CHECK CATALOG Newland Archer saw little to envy in the marriages of his friends, yet he prided himself that in May Welland he had found the companion of his needs--tender and impressionable, with equal purity of mind and manners. The engagement was announced discreetly, but all of New York society was soon privy to this most perfect match, a union of families and circumstances cemented by affection. Enter Countess Olenska, a woman of quick wit sharpened by experience, not afraid to flout convention and determined to find freedom in divorce. Against his judgment, Newland is drawn to the socially ostracized Ellen Olenska, who opens his eyes and has the power to make him feel. He knows that in sweet-tempered May, he can expect stability and the steadying comfort of duty. But what new worlds could he discover with Ellen? Written with elegance and wry p ...More

The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories By London, Jack Leitz, Robert C. Labor, Earle 1998/07 - Oxford University Press, USA 9780192835147 CHECK CATALOG ...More

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man By Tolstoy, Leo Slater, Ann Pasternak 2003/09 - Modern Library 9780679642930 CHECK CATALOG This new edition combines Tolstoy's most famous short tale, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, with a less well known but equally brilliant gem, "Master and Man, both newly translated by Ann Pasternak Slater. Both stories confront death and the process of dying: In "Ivan Ilyich, a bureaucrat looks back over his life, which suddenly seems meaningless and wasteful, while in Master and Man, a landowner and servant must each confront the value of the other as they brave a devastating snowstorm. The quintessential Tolstoyan themes of mortality, spiritual redemption, and life's meaning are nowhere more movingly and deftly explored than in these two tales. This unique edition also includes a critical Introduction and extensive notes by Ann Pasternak Slater, a Fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford. ...More

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter By McCullers, Carson 1993/05 - Modern Library 9780679424741 CHECK CATALOG When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. "From the Paperback edition." ...More

Fahrenheit 451 By Bradbury, Ray 1993/01 - Simon & Schuster 9780671870362 CHECK CATALOG Celebrate the 40th anniversary of this timeless classic with a special edition featuring a new foreword by the author and a message that is as relevant today as when it was first published. Since the late 1940s, Ray Bradbury has been revered for his works of science fiction and fantasy. With more than 4 million copies in print, Fahrenheit 451 - originally published in 1953 - remains his most acclaimed work. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book paper burns. Fahrenheit 451 is a short novel set in the (perhaps near) future when "firemen" burn books forbidden by the totalitarian "brave new world" regime. The hero, according to Mr. Bradbury, is "a book burner who suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas and cry out silently when put to the torch". Today, when libraries and schools are still "burning" certain books, Fa ...More

My Antonia By Cather, Willa Sharistanian, Janet 2009/04 - Oxford University Press, USA 9780199538140 CHECK CATALOG ...More

Grapes of Wrath By Steinbeck, John 1992/10 - Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media 9780606001748 CHECK CATALOG A Great Books Discussion Selection ...More

The Joy Luck Club By Tan, Amy Andrews, Richard Baxter, Judith 1995/05 - Cambridge University Press 9780521485623 CHECK CATALOG In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and 'say' stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. ...More

The Maltese Falcon Journal By Potter Style 2008/09 - Potter Style 9780307409324 CHECK CATALOG ...More

Their Eyes Were Watching God By Hurston, Zora Neale Washington, Mary Helen Gates, Henry Louis 2003/12 - Harper Perennial 9780060931414 CHECK CATALOG Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person-- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. ...More

To Kill a Mockingbird By Lee, Harper 1988/10 - San Val 9780881030525 CHECK CATALOG The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior-to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 15 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature. ...More

Time for a Classic!!!!!

It's hard to believe summer is over already. It seems like school just ended and summer vacation just began. But then it does every year. Summer always gives the library a change of pace. We see a lot of people all day long for summer reading. People are checking out whatever they like to read for pleasure. And our evenings are usually pretty quiet.

With school back in session we know that some of these things are going to change. Late afternoons and evenings will become the busiest times of our day. The non-fiction collection will get used a lot more. We'll have more reference questions as students come in looking for help on school reports. The Internet machines will fill up fast after school gets out. And the books that are considered 'classics' will start to check out a whole lot more than usual.

It's this last point I want to write about - the classics. I love that in the fall students come clamoring into the library to pick up a classic (even if it is just to be sure they get the shortest one we have) because this is my favorite section of the library.

I love to recommend the classics by putting some of them out on the staff pick shelves we have across from the circulation desk. Unfortunately they don't check out very quickly even when they are highlighted that way. So I thought I'd try this. Since school's just starting and high school English students will be starting to think about which classic to read for their book report, isn't it the perfect time to offer some recommendations? Well, I think so. So here's a few of my favorites.

The Return of the Native By Hardy, Thomas 1982/02 - Bantam Classics 0553212699 CHECK CATALOG This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy's most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moon where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve. But Eustacia's dreams of escape are not to be realized--neither Wildeve nor the retuming native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation. Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardy's characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny. In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate in this masterpiece of tragic passion, a tale that perfectly epitomizes the author's own unique and melancholy genius. ...More

Wuthering Heights By Bronte, Emily Johnson, Diane 2000/11 - Modern Library 0375756442 CHECK CATALOG Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. The epic story of Catherine and Heathcliff plays out against the dramatic backdrop of the wild English moors, and presents an astonishing metaphysical vision of fate and obsession, passion and revenge. "Only Emily Bronte," V. S. Pritchett said, "exposes her imagination to the dark spirit." And Virginia Woolf wrote, "Hers...is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts...by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar." This edition also includes Charlotte Bronte's original Introduction. ...More

Pride and Prejudice By Austen, Jane Quindlen, Anna 2000/10 - Modern Library 0679783261 CHECK CATALOG "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." So begins "Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners--one of the most popular novels of all time--that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the "most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author's works," and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as "irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be." ...More

Cry, the Beloved Country By Paton, Alan Scribner, Charles, Jr. 1995/11 - Scribner Book Company 0684818949 CHECK CATALOG Paton's deeply moving story of Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the backdrop of a land and people riven by racial inequality and injustice, remains the most famous and important novel in South Africa's history. Published to coincide with the Miramax film release in December, starring James Earl Jones and Richard Harris. ...More

Our Mutual Friend By Dickens, Charles Cotsell, Michael 1998/07 - Oxford University Press, USA 0192835238 CHECK CATALOG Charles Dickens's last completed novel tells the story of a young man who must marry a stranger in order to win his inheritance. Wanting to learn the lady's nature, John Harmon fakes his own death and takes on a new identity. As the complexities of the deceit are revealed, Dickens gives us his most profoundly cynical, yet brilliantly funny, insight into the corruption of wealth on human nature. 40 illustrations. ...More

King Lear (Penguin) By Shakespeare, William Hunter, George K. Spencer, T. J. B. 1981/12 - Penguin Books 0140707247 CHECK CATALOG As well as the complete scripts (established by scholars working on the New Cambridge Shakespeare), the student will find a running synopsis of the action, an explanation of unfamiliar words, and a wide range of classroom-tested activities to help turn the script into drama. ...More

Tess of the D'Ubervilles By Hardy, Thomas 1995/04 - NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company 1853260053 CHECK CATALOG Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. ...More

Native Son By Wright, Richard Rampersad, Arnold 2003/12 - Harper Perennial 0060929804 CHECK CATALOG Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny: by chance, it was for murder and rape. "Native Son" tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America. ...More

Animal Farm By Orwell, George Woodhouse, C. M. Baker, Russell 1996/04 - Signet Book 0451526341 CHECK CATALOG In this controversial classic fairy tale, a farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality, setting the stage for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned. Illustrations and Orwell's proposed but unpublished preface are included in this anniversary edition. Reissue. ...More

Frankenstein By Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Hindle, Maurice 2003/05 - Penguin Books 0141439475 CHECK CATALOG A Great Books Discussion Selection ...More

Jude the Obscure By Hardy, Thomas Hardy, Hart 1992/12 - Everyman's Library 0679409939 CHECK CATALOG (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and its unflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a storm of controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly in response, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writing altogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though we have come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuing century, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power to shock us and disturb our dreams. ...More

Jane Eyre By Bronte, Charlotte Bell, Currer Jong, Erica 1997/07 - Signet Book 0451526554 CHECK CATALOG With her 1847 novel, "Jane Eyre, " Charlotte Bronte created one of the most unforgettable heroines of all time. Not only is this the classic story of unforgettable love, but it is also the memorable tale of one woman's fight to claim her independence and respect in a society that seems to have no place for her. ...More

Okay, so obviously I can't stop at a few - just be glad I stopped when I did. The classics are some of the most amazing books I have ever read - and, probably, will ever read. I have so many left to get to. It's very, very exciting!

I hope everyone finds great books to read during the new school year. As for me, I think I need to get my hands on a copy of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy.

Or perhaps The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope.

No, maybe it should be North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Oh, it's so hard to decide.


Elizabeth