Books like 'Seize the Day'
Readers who enjoyed Seize the Day by Saul Bellow also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century psychological classics literary-fiction university urban existentialism realistic family
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The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"There is a distinguished mind at work beneath the totally acceptable dullness of clerking. The mind is that of Pessoa. We must be given the chance to learn more about him...Categorized as:
classics existentialism literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Collected Stories by Raymond Carver]()
Collected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRaymond Carver’s spare dramas of loneliness, despair, and troubled relationships breathed new life into the American short story of the 1970s and ’80s. In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations... -
![The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky]()
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 94 ratingsNow in a special edition to mark the twentieth anniversary of a beloved cult classic! Read the #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story that takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory... -
![Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike]()
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThe only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's storiesthose published during his lifetime and those released after his death...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism humor literary-fiction philosophical satire university -
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![Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace]()
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 60 ratingsA gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America... -
![Oscar And The Lady In Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt]()
Oscar And The Lady In Pink by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratings"First published in France as Oscar et la dame rose by Editions Albin Michel, S.A., 2002"--T.p. verso... -
![The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck]()
The Grapes of Wrath/The Moon is Down/Cannery Row/East of Eden/Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Grapes of Wrath / The Moon Is Down / Cannery Row / East of Eden / Of Mice and... -
![The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFrom the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales—eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time—display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism humor literary-fiction philosophical satire university -
![Self-Help by Lorrie Moore]()
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe publication of "Self-Help" introduced readers to Lorrie Moore's refined blend of humor and insight, and made her one of the best-loved writers of her generation. These stories, told in a voice that is at once witty, melancholy, and bravely honest, paint a tableau of lovers and family, of loss and pleasure, desire and memory... -
![What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver]()
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsAlternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark... -
![What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies]()
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsFrancis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis's life were not always what they seemed... -
![Night in Question by Tobias Wolff]()
Night in Question by Tobias Wolff
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAuthor most recently of a stunningly clear-eyed memoir, This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff's new collection of short stories maintains a similar steady gaze on his fictional creations. The author steels himself with a fine sense of irony and an awareness of moral ambiguity against the unjust suffering that is part of life... -
![Fear by Stefan Zweig]()
Fear by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFinding her comfortable bourgeois existence as wife and mother predictable after eight years of marriage, Irene Wagner brings a little excitement into it by starting an affair with a rising young pianist. Her lover’s former mistress begins blackmailing her, threatening to give her secret away to her husband. Irene is soon in the grip of agonizing fear... -
![The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera]()
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 75 ratingsIn The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical realistic university -
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![Immortality by Milan Kundera]()
Immortality by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThis breathtaking, reverberating survey of human nature finds Kundera still attempting to work out the meaning of life, without losing his acute sense of humour. It is one of those great unclassifiable masterpieces that appear once every twenty years or so.'It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult audiobook -
![What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg]()
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick... -
![Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee]()
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 35 ratings"Twelve times a week," answered Uta Hagen when asked how often she'd like to play Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In the same way, audiences and critics alike could not get enough of Edward Albee's masterful play. A dark comedy, it portrays husband and wife George and Martha in a searing night of dangerous fun and games... -
![A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway]()
A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1933; it was also included in his collection Winner Take Nothing (1933).James Joyce once remarked: "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'?... It is masterly...Categorized as:
classics high-school literary-fiction realistic university 20th-century audiobook book -
![The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth]()
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis novel in verse about a group of California yuppies was one of the most highly praised books of 1986 and a bestseller on both coasts... -
![What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges]()
What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJust about everything in Endora, Iowa (pop. 1,091 and dwindling) is eating Gilbert Grape, a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving. His enormous mother, once the town sweetheart, has been eating nonstop ever since her husband's suicide, and the floor beneath her TV chair is threatening to cave in...Categorized as:
classics drama family humor literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
The Wall by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratings'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace--their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult -
![No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsJean-Paul Sartre, the great French existentialist, displays his mastery of drama in NO EXIT, an unforgettable portrayal of hell.The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for all eternity...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical university 20th-century -
![The Fall by Albert Camus]()
The Fall by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsElegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism literary-fiction philosophical university urban 20th-century -
![Crave by Sarah Kane]()
Crave by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in an unnamed city from which voices and images spring, Crave charts the disintegration of a human mind under the pressures of love, loss and desire.Produced by Paines Plough and Bright Ltd (Guy Chapman and Paul Spyker), Crave premiered at the Traverse Theatre for the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. It received its English premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London in September 1998... -
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![The Progress of Love by Alice Munro]()
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 2013A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents... -
![A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley]()
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrederick Exley's inimitable "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes has assumed the status of a classic since its first publication in 1968. Mordantly and poignantly, Exley describes the profound failures of his life; professional, sexual, and personal... -
![Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro]()
Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**A woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband's past - and instead discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger... -
![Like Life by Lorrie Moore]()
Like Life by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Like Life's eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore's characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can't quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall... -
![Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante]()
Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMy first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the east by Los Angeles Street, on the south by Pershing Square, and on the north by Civic Center... -
![Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai]()
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism family literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century book -
![One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello]()
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe great Pirandello's (1867-1936) 1926 novel, previously published here in 1933 in another translation, synthesizes the themes and personalities that illuminate such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author... -
![The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir]()
The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThree long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism literary-fiction philosophical university 20th-century adult -
![Pastoralia by George Saunders]()
Pastoralia by George Saunders
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsWith this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination.The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed version of America, where elements of contemporary life have been merged, twisted, and amplified, casting their absurdity-and our humanity-in a startling new light...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction philosophical satire university 20th-century 21st-century -
![No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIn these four plays, Jean-Paul Sartre, the great existentialist novelist and philosopher, displays his mastery of drama. NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical satire university -
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![The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka]()
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThe Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical university 20th-century -
![Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsBroad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn... -
![The Joke by Milan Kundera]()
The Joke by Milan Kundera
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe authoritative version of the brilliant first novel by the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A great novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried, in a completely revised translation that is nothing less than the restoration of a classic... -
![A Heart So White by Javier Marías]()
A Heart So White by Javier Marías
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know...Categorized as:
classics drama family literary-fiction university 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti]()
Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Auto-da-Fé" is the story of Peter Kien, a distinguished, reclusive sinologist living in Vienna between the wars. With masterly precision, Canetti reveals Kien's character, displaying the flawed personal relationships which ultimately lead to his destruction... -
![Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro]()
Open Secrets: Stories by Alice Munro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn these eight tales, Munro evokes the devastating power of old love suddenly recollected. She tells of vanished schoolgirls and indentured frontier brides and an eccentric recluse who, in the course of one surpassingly odd dinner party, inadvertently lands herself a wealthy suitor from exotic Australia... -
![Molloy by Samuel Beckett]()
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMolloy, the first of the three masterpieces which constitute Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy, appeared in French in 1951, followed seven months later by Malone Dies (Malone meurt), and two years later by The Unnamable (L’Innommable). Few works of contemporary literature have been so universally acclaimed as central to their time and to our understanding of the human experience... -
![In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass]()
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories by William H. Gass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIN THIS SUITE of five short pieces -- one of the unqualified literary masterpieces of the American 1960s -- William Gass finds five beautiful forms in which to explore the signature theme of his fiction: the solitary soul’s poignant, conflicted, and doomed pursuit of love and community...Categorized as:
classics family literary-fiction philosophical 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary -
![The Outsider by Albert Camus]()
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 85 ratingsMeursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical realistic university -
![On Love by Alain de Botton]()
On Love by Alain de Botton
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life" we are told at the outset of Alain de Botton's On Love, a hip, charming, and devastatingly witty rumination on the thrills and pitfalls of romantic love. The narrator is smitten by Chloe on a Paris-London flight, and by the time they've reached the luggage carousel, he knows he is in love...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction philosophical realistic 20th-century adult audiobook -
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![The Trial by Franz Kafka]()
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsWritten in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information...Categorized as:
classics drama existentialism high-school literary-fiction philosophical satire university -
![Proof by David Auburn]()
Proof by David Auburn
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsProof is the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.One of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science.It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help... -
![Rabbit at Rest by John Updike]()
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWinner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son and daughter-in-law are acting erratically, his wife Janice wants to work, and Rabbit is searching his soul, looking for reasons to live... -
![The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth]()
The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions...Categorized as:
classics existentialism humor literary-fiction philosophical satire university 20th-century -
![The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum]()
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement... -
![Light Years by James Salter]()
Light Years by James Salter
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach...
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