Books like '1982, Janine'
Readers who enjoyed 1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 88 ratingsHarry Potter's life is miserable. His parents are dead and he's stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he's a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... -
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsJorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley... -
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsThe seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy... -
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsAlthough his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface, Andre Maurois writes: "Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives... -
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Matilda by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 87 ratingsMatilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived...Categorized as:
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome 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 prestigious Hugo Award for best short story...Categorized as:
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The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsFull of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight, he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father’s “killer,” and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house... -
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsCaptured by a giant! But the BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants—rather than the BFG—she would have soon become breakfast... -
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsHave you ever dreamed of being locked in a department store at night? The endearing story of Corduroy paints a picture of the adventures that might unfold (for a teddy bear at least) in such a situation. When all the shoppers have gone home for the night, Corduroy climbs down from the shelf to look for his missing button...Categorized as:
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Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 95 ratings‘Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.’People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day...Categorized as:
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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:
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Collected Stories by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe only hardcover edition of Roald Dahl’s stories for adults, the Collected Stories amply showcases his singular gifts as a fabulist and a born storyteller.Later known for his immortal children’s books, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The BFG, Dahl also had a genius for adult short fiction, which he wrote throughout his life...Categorized as:
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Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 25 ratings"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity... -
Perestroika by Tony Kushner
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe second half of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America, Perestroika steers the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches from the opportunistic eighties to a new sense of community in the nineties... -
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Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRussian novelist Victor Pelevin is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most brilliant young writers at work today. His comic inventiveness and mind-bending talent prompted Time magazine to proclaim him a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyber-age...Categorized as:
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Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsLeaf by Niggle is a short story about a painter who is working on a picture leaf by leaf. Niggle, the painter, is a kind hearted soul and goes out of his way to help his friends and neighbours but eventually finds that this prevents him from completing his masterpiece. He has a hard decision to make; when engrossed in his work, his neighbour asks him to fix his roof using his art supplies...Categorized as:
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The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe story of a train filled with toys and gifts for little boys and girls that breaks down before reaching the children. After asking several passing trains for help over the hill, a little blue train agrees to help the stranded toys. Even though she is small, the blue train tries her best to bring the toys to the children on the other side of the hill...Categorized as:
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The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Amichai, C.K. Williams
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsYehuda Amichai is Israel's most popular poet as well as a literary figure of international reputation. In this revised and expanded collection, renowned translators Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell have selected Amichai's most beloved and enduring poems, including forty new poems from his recent work... -
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsThis epic work of the imagination has captured the hearts of millions of readers worldwide since it was first published. Its special story within a story is an irresistible invitation for readers to become part of the book itself. The story begins with a lonely boy named Bastian and the strange book that draws him into the beautiful but doomed world of Fantastica...Categorized as:
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End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems...Categorized as:
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The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHans Thomas and his father set out on a car trip through Europe, from Norway to Greece—the birthplace of philosophy—in search of Hans Thomas's mother, who left them many years earlier. On the way, Hans Thomas receives a mysterious miniature book—the fantastic memoir of a sailor shipwrecked in 1842 on a strange island where a deck of cards come to life...Categorized as:
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The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsThe Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles was the second children’s novel ever written by Julie Andrews, the beloved star of Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Perfect for young readers who love whimsical stories about magic!The Whangdoodle was once the wisest, the kindest, and the most extraordinary creature in the world...Categorized as:
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Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsHere is a handsome edition of one of Borges' "ficciones," in a translation first published in "Labyrinths" in 1962. It's an important story in the Borges' canon, incorporating most of the author's philosophical and esthetic preoccupations in a typically brief compass...Categorized as:
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Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession...Categorized as:
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Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders..Categorized as:
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Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
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Collected Stories by Gabriel García Márquez
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCollected here are twenty-six of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most brilliant and enchanting short stories, presented in the chronological order of their publication in Spanish from three volumes: Eyes of a Blue Dog, Big Mama's Funeral, and The Incredible and Sad Tale of lnnocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother...Categorized as:
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The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly by Luis Sepúlveda
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA cat. A seagull. An impossible task.A worldwide bestseller and the subject of a feature film, THE STORY OF A SEAGULL... is finally out in paperback!Her wings burdened by an oil slick, a seagull struggles to the nearest port to lay her final egg. Exhausted, she lands on a balcony where Zorba the cat is sunning himself... -
Dialogues with Leucò by Cesare Pavese
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA series of dialogues between mythological figures, treating the question of human destiny as the personal content of myths. In his foreword, Pavese elaborates on his method in the Dialogues: "What is more acutely disturbing than to see familiar scenes troubled into new life? . . . A true revelation, I am convinced, can only emerge from stubborn concentration on a single problem... -
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 66 ratings'A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following...Categorized as:
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Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 86 ratingsUnder the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London...Categorized as:
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The Grey King by Susan Cooper
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 42 ratings"Fire on the Mountain Shall Find the Harp of Gold Played to Wake the Sleepers, Oldest of the Old..." With the final battle between the Light and the Dark soon approaching, Will sets out on a quest to call for aid. Hidden within the Welsh hills is a magical harp that he must use to wake the Sleepers - six noble riders who have slept for centuries...Categorized as:
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The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRay Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss...Categorized as:
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Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 53 ratings"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images... -
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Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsOne of the New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year: These traditional stories of Italy, retold by a literary master, are “a treasure” (Los Angeles Times)... -
Mount Analogue by René Daumal
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn this novel/allegory the narrator/author sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably toward heaven. Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality...Categorized as:
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The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, Jefferson Mays
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe definitive edition of Calvino’s cosmicomics, bringing together all of these enchanting stories—including some never before translated—in one volume for the first timeIn Italo Calvino’s cosmicomics, primordial beings cavort on the nearby surface of the moon, play marbles with atoms, and bear ecstatic witness to Earth’s first dawn...Categorized as:
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How to Become King by Jan Terlouw
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSeventeen years after the king of Katoren dies, a boy aspires to win the crown and is tested with seven impossible tasks by six Ministers...Categorized as:
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Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis collection of pithy, brilliantly acerbic pieces is a companion to Sixty Stories, Barthelme's earlier retrospective volume. Barthelme spotlights the idiosyncratic, haughty, sometimes downright ludicrous behavior of human beings, but it is style rather than content which takes precedence...Categorized as:
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Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table... -
The Magus by John Fowles
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThis daring literary thriller, rich with eroticism and suspense, is one of John Fowles's best-loved and bestselling novels and has contributed significantly to his international reputation as a writer of the first degree. At the center of The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire...Categorized as:
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The Book of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe acclaimed translation of Borges's valedictory stories, in its first stand-alone edition Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. Now Borges's remarkable last major story collection, The Book of Sand, is paired with a handful of writings from the very end of his life...Categorized as:
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Watership Down by Richard Adams
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsLibrarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN13 9780380395866 here.Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home...Categorized as:
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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsWhen a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God...Categorized as:
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Lanark by Alasdair Gray
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis work, originally published in 1981, has been hailed as the most influential Scottish novel of the second half of the 20th century. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying...Categorized as:
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Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOnce upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who were very lonely. They decided to get a cat, but when the old man went out searching, he found not one cat, but millions and billions and trillions of cats! Unable to decide which one would be the best pet, he brought them all home... -
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernières
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe epic finale of the Latin American trilogy following The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and Senor Vivo and the Coca LordWhile the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests and reformed - though by no means inactive - whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment... -
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven... -
Stone Junction by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsCharging like a runaway semitrailer on a downhill grade and spanning the era from Haight-Ashbury's Summer of Love into the darkness of 1980s Manhattan, Stone Junction is a wise and wildly imaginative novel about Daniel Pearse, an orphaned child who is taken under the wings of the AMO -- the Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws... -
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis is a gutsy, fun-loving, and provocative novel in which a bean can philosophises, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine...Categorized as:
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