18 books like Big Sur

What to read after Big Sur — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Mexico City blues Jack Kerouac · 1959 · ★ 3.7 · 244p · ≈ 8h · Moderate A series of poems deals with music, life, religion, literature, dreams and mortality. Shares: Beats, Beat generation, Literary Criticism

On The Road Jack Kerouac · 1957 · ★ 3.6 · 255p · ≈ 8h · Moderate Described as everything from a "last gasp" of romantic fiction to a founding text of the Beat Generation movement, this story amounts to a nonfiction novel (as critics were later to describe some works). Unpublished writer buddies wander from coast to coast in search of whatever they find, eager for experience. Kerouac's spokesman is Sal Paradise (himself) and real-life friend Neal Casady… Shares: American Autobiographical fiction, Beat generation

Factotum Charles Bukowski · 1975 · ★ 3.9 · 205p · ≈ 6h · Moderate One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany… Shares: Beats, Beat generation

Jack Kerouac Tom Clark · 1984 · 254p · ≈ 8h · Moderate All the components of the Jack Kerouac legend are here: the excesses of alcohol and drugs; the soul-searching; the characters - Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lucien Carr, John Clellon Holmes and William Burroughs, Jack's mother, Gabrielle, and the other women in Kerouac's life. There is also a record of the travels that became the basis for On the Road and Visions of Cody,… Shares: Beats, Beat generation

Go John Clellon Holmes · 1952 · ★ 4.0 · 311p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Go is a 1952 semi-autobiographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. (Holmes referred to the book as a roman à clef.) It is considered to be the first published novel depicting the Beat Generation. Set in New York, it concerns the lives of a collection of characters largely based on the friends Holmes used to hang around with in the 1940s and 1950s in Manhattan. An underworld of drug-fueled parties,… Shares: Beats, Beat generation

East Of Desolation Henry Patterson · 1968 · ★ 3.6 · 210p · ≈ 7h · Moderate Classic adventure from the undisputed master of action and adrenalin-pumping suspense.When a plane crashes in the icy Greenland desert with no passengers on board, and no means of identification, Joe Martin is hired to fly to the scene of the crash by the insurance company involved and the beautiful widow of the dead pilot. But the routine mission spirals into hair-raising suspense when a… Shares: Unabridged Audio - Fiction, Modern fiction

The Browning cyclopaedia Edward Berdoe · 1898 · 578p · ≈ 19h · Challenging This is a guide to the study of the works of Robert Browning. The book reflects the various references that would help in working or studying of the works of Robert Browning. Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism

The Englishman's Boy Guy Vanderhaeghe · 1996 · ★ 3.5 · 333p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Winner of the 1996 Governor-General's Literary Award. Shares: Unabridged Audio - Fiction, Literary collections

Routledge Revivals David E. E. Sloane · 2017 · 332p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Originally published in 1979, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian looks at how Mark Twain addressed social issues through humour. The Southwest provided the subject for much of Twain’s writing, but the roots of his style lay principally in north-eastern humour. In the mid-1800s the northern United States underwent social changes that reflected in the writing of the literary humourists like Twain.… Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism, American literature

Language of Natural Description in Eighteenth-Century Poetry John Arthos · 1949 · 476p · ≈ 15h · Challenging Originally published in 1949, this title was written in order to help establish a better understanding of the ‘stock diction’ of eighteenth-century English poetry, and, in particular, of the diction commonly used in the description of nature. The language characteristic of so much of the poetry of this period had been severely criticized for a long time. But in the twenty or thirty years prior to… Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism

Perilous Cemetery Nancy Black · 2019 · 421p · ≈ 14h · Moderate Published in 1994: In The Perilous Cemetery adventure, Gawain is required to fight the devil himself. In repayment for having cured a young woman of madness, the devil keeps her entombed in a grave by day and requires her by night to fulfil his sexual desires. Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism

A Q zheng zhuan Lu Xun · 1926 · ★ 4.6 · 68p · ≈ 2h · Challenging Chinese and Thai on opposite pages. Shares: Modern fiction, Literary Criticism

吾輩は猫である 夏目漱石 · 1905 · ★ 3.7 · 475p · ≈ 15h · Challenging Written over the course of 1904 through 1906, Soseki's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. The New Yorker called it "a nonchalant string of… Shares: Modern fiction, Literary Criticism

Modern Arthurian literature Alan Lupack · 1992 · 504p · ≈ 16h · Moderate First published in 1992. This is a collection of works around the legend of King Arthur from both English and American sources. They range from the sixteenth century to the 1980s and includes authors such as Spenser, Swift, Fielding, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Swinburne, Morris, Carr, Hawthorne, Pyle, Richard Wilbur and Wendy M. Mnookin. Shares: Literary collections, American literature

The Portable James Joyce James Joyce · 1947 · 535p · ≈ 17h · Challenging Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism

Botanic Garden by Erasmus Darwin Adam Komisaruk · 2017 · 404p · ≈ 13h · Moderate The career of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) affords an extraordinary glimpse into the intellectual ferment of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain. As a popular poet, practicing physician, inventor of speaking machines and mechanical birds, essayer of natural history from geology to meteorology, and proponent of an evolutionary theory that inspired his famous grandson Charles, he… Shares: Literary collections, Literary Criticism

To Have and Have Not Ernest Hemingway · 1741 · ★ 3.8 · 262p · ≈ 8h · Demanding This 1936 novel tells the story of an American fishing boat skipper who dabbles in a little smuggling to make ends meet. In need of money for his family the captain reluctantly becomes agrees to smuggle a group of Chinese immigrants from Cuba to Florida. This is Hemingway’s only novel to be set in the United States. Shares: Ficción, American literature

From Puritanism to postmodernism Richard Ruland · 1991 · ★ 4.0 · 470p · ≈ 15h · Moderate Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a… Shares: Literary Criticism, American literature

About the book Big Sur →