Candidates for Book League 2022
1. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
1851
5 time Book League Candidate
22 hour audiobook
If the whale embodies everything that is symbolized by whiteness—that which is terrifying; that which is pure; that which is excellent; that which is horrible and ghastly; that which is mysterious and incomprehensible—does he not embody those traits that are found in the fullness of the perfections in the being of God Himself? - R. C. Sproul
2. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
1819
18 hour audiobook
Gene Edward Veith (Professor of Literature emeritus at Patrick Henry College) states that Scott "invented the historical novel.” Scott was also one of the only fiction writers read by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
In the twelfth century, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe returns home to England from the Third Crusade to claim his inheritance and the love of the lady Rowena. The heroic adventures of this noble Saxon knight involve him in the struggle between Richard the Lion-Hearted and his malignant brother John: a conflict that brings Ivanhoe into alliance with the mysterious outlaw Robin Hood and his legendary fight for the forces of good.
3. Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
1894
6 hour audiobook
4 time book candidate
Mark Twain’s darkest novel—about a master and slave switched at birth—combines a courtroom drama with a provocative fable about race and identity.
4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2006 (our contemporary novel selection)
10 hour audiobook
2 time book candidate Never Let Me Go, by this Nobel Prize and Booker Prize winning author, takes place in the late 20th century, in an England where human beings are cloned and bred for the purposes of harvesting their organs once they reach adulthood.
5. One of Ours by Willa Cather
1922
5 time book candidate
14 hour audiobookOne of Ours is a 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Willa Cather, an American author best known for depictions of life in the Great Plains. This novel follows the personal evolution of a young man named Claude Wheeler, dividing his story into two parts: his life on a family farm in Nebraska, and his experiences as a soldier in France during World War I.
6. Aeneid by Virgil
12 hour audiobook
2nd time Book League candidate
Epic poem - The Aeneid is widely regarded as Virgil's masterpiece and one of the greatest works of Latin literature.
A Latin epic poem written from about 30 to 19 BC by the Roman poet Virgil.
Composed in hexameters, about 60 lines of which were left unfinished at his death, the Aeneid incorporates the various legends of Aeneas and makes him the founder of Roman greatness.
The work is organized into 12 books that relate the story of the legendary founding of Lavinium (parent town of Alba Longa and of Rome). The town is founded by Aeneas, who was informed as he left the burning ruins of Troy that it was his fate to found a new city with a glorious destiny in the West.
7. Dracula by Bram Stoker
1897
New
17 hour audiobook
Bram Stoker’s famous epistolary novel about unmatchable evil. This story not only features Count Dracula but other timeless characters such as Dr. Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker. While largely a creation of Stoker’s acumen in horror writing, many aspects of the book were sourced by folk legend around Vlad the Impaler.
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1604
39 hour audiobook
New
Distant relative to our scrivener?
“Don Quixote. I read that every year, as some do the Bible.” --William Faulkner
Originally published in 1604, this is known as the “first modern novel.” Satiric, adventurous, and keenly self aware, Cervantes Saavedra’s masterpiece has exerted an indelible influence on Western literature
9. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
1939
New
6 hour audiobook
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978.
The story is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing each other and many secrets being exposed throughout the narrative.
10. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
1862
9 hour audiobook
NewIvan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons explores generational differences and their tragic consequences. The story centers around Arkady and Bazarov, two young men who return home from college to a world that has remained static. They have changed but must now redefine old relationships, both their friendship with one another and their relationships with their fathers. The main conflict of the novel is between the nihilistic Bazarov, who espouses a strictly materialistic attitude toward life, and Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, an uncle of Arkady’s, who upholds the aristocratic tradition in the face of Bazarov’s ridicule.