Most influential books under 100 pages

Author	Lao Tzu
ISBN	0679724346

The Wisest Book Ever Written...
Complete on Audio...The Entire 81 Chapters (and Introduction to) Stephen Mitchell's exquisite new tradition of Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way -- the classic manual on the art of living revered as one of the wonders of the world. Dating from the 6th century...

Author	Charlotte Perkins Gilman
ISBN	1558611584

‘It is stripped off - the paper - in great patches . . . The colour is repellent . . . In the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about . . .’

Based on the author’s own experiences, 'The Yellow Wallpaper'...

Author	René Descartes
ISBN	0872204227

By far the most widely used translation in North American college classrooms, Donald A. Cress's translation from the French of the Adam and Tannery critical edition is prized for its accuracy, elegance, and economy. The translation featured in the Third Edition has been thoroughly revised from the...

Author	Anonymous
ISBN	0141026286

Andrew George's "masterly new translation" (The Times) of the world's first truly great work of literature

Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world’s oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries....

Author	John Steinbeck
ISBN	0142000698

Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large...

Author	Robert Frost
ISBN	0486275507

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

These deceptively simple lines from the title poem of this collection suggest Robert Frost at his most representative: the language is simple, clear and colloquial, yet dense...

Author

James Joyce

Can a story leave your heart aching like this after just a few short pages?! I’ve just learned that it can indeed. The beautiful, expressive prose delighted me. The nostalgic quality charmed me. The melancholic air indulged my current state of emotion while reading. I don’t know what I was expecting,...

Author

Aldous Huxley

The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book...

Author	Richard Connell
ISBN	1599869691

A Goodreads Pop Quiz:

QUESTION: What do Gilligan, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Homer Simpson and this Star Trek alien** have in common?


ANSWER (select the one that best applies):

1. None of them could act their way out of a puff of smoke.

2. They all starred in adaptations...

Author	Virginia Woolf
ISBN	0141183535

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs...

Author	Annie Proulx
ISBN	0743271327

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, "Brokeback Mountain" is her masterpiece. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender...

Author	T.S. Eliot
ISBN	0571068944

The Four Quartets is a series of four poems by T.S. Eliot, published individually from 1936 to 1942, and in book form in 1943; it was considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work. Each of the quartets has five "movements" and each is titled by a place name -- BURNT NORTON (1936), EAST COKER (1940), THE...

Author	Ursula K. Le Guin
ISBN	0886825016

Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.
The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the...

Author	Jean-Jacques Rousseau
ISBN	0486434141

If humans are benevolent by nature, how do societies become corrupt? And how do governments founded upon the defense of individual rights degenerate into tyranny? These are the questions addressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, a strikingly original inquiry...

Author	Helene Hanff
ISBN	0140143505

This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share...

Author	Arthur Schnitzler
ISBN	0141182245

“Am I sure? Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.”


The Bride (1918) by Klimt

It all begins with a confession of sorts as his wife Albertine tells him of a fantasy she had involving a man that she saw on their...

Author	Ambrose Bierce
ISBN	0874068134

The condemned man stands on a bridge, his hands bound behind his back. A noose is tied around his neck. In a moment he will meet his fate: DEATH BY HANGING. There is no escape. Or is there? Find out in . . . An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital...

Author	Valerie Solanas
ISBN	1859845533

SCUM Manifesto was considered one of the most outrageous, violent and certifiably crazy tracts when it first appeared in 1968. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published this work just before her rampage against the king of Pop Art made her a household name and resulted in her confinement...

Author	Algernon Blackwood
ISBN	1587156520

Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows,...

Author	David Foster Wallace
ISBN	0316068225

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously?...

Author	Haruki Murakami
ISBN	0385354304

From internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami—a fantastical illustrated short novel about a boy imprisoned in a nightmarish library.
 
Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's...

Author	Guy de Maupassant
ISBN	0976140748

Our woe is upon us.

This chilling tale of one man’s descent into madness was published shortly before the author was institutionalized for insanity, and so The Horla has inevitably been seen as informed by Guy de Maupassant’s mental illness. While such speculation is murky, it is clear...

Author	David Henry Hwang
ISBN	0822207125

Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and soon to be back on Broadway in a revival directed by the Lion King's Julie Taymor, starring Clive Owen

"A brilliant play of ideas... a visionary work that bridges the history and culture of two worlds."--Frank...