Fall is always a good time to catch up on some reading. Diwan Bookstores have sent us the perfect list of 4 contemporary classic books to read and kick off winter with.
1. A Farewell to Arms
By Ernest Hemingway
Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.
Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield – weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion – this gripping, semi-autobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.
2. Ham on Rye
By Charles Bukowski
In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski.
From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany, through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library’s collection of D.H. Lawrence. Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast’s coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.
3. Into the Wild
By Jon Krakauer
In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.
Four months later, a party of moose hunters found his decomposed body. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir.
4. Of Mice and Men
By John Steinbeck
Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back and a hope that one day they’ll find a place of their own and live the American dream.
But dreams come at a price. Gentle giant Lennie doesn’t know his own strength, and when they find work at a ranch he gets into trouble with the boss’s daughter-in-law. Trouble so bad that even his protector George may not be able to save him.
