文笔优美适合阅读的原版英文书籍推荐

文笔优美适合阅读的原版英文书籍推荐I'll list some of the books and plays I read when I was younger. I'm not recommending that people read these books in this order; but if you've read any of the books, then this list may help you estimate the relative difficulty levels of other books.Ages 1-8(I didn't read books because I was moving back and forth between China and America and relearning the two languages each time.)Age 8-12Charlotte's Web by E.B. WhiteCharlotte's Web is the story of a little girl named Fern wholoved a little pig named Wilbur—and of Wilbur's dear friendCharlotte A. Cavatica, a beautiful large grey spider who livedwith Wilbur in the barn.With the help of Templeton, the rat who never did anything foranybody unless there was something in it for him, and by awonderfully clever plan of her own, Charlotte saved the lifeof Wilbur, who by this time had grown up to quite a pig.Stuart Little by E.B. WhiteStuart Little is no ordinary mouse. Born to a family of humans,he lives in New York City with his parents, his older brotherGeorge, and Snowbell the cat. Though he's shy and thoughtful,he's also a true lover of adventure.Stuart's greatest adventure comes when his best friend, a beautiful little bird named Margalo, disappears from her nest. Determined to track her down, Stuart ventures away from homefor the very first time in his life. He finds adventure aplenty. But will he find his friend?Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard AtwaterIt tells the story of a poor house painter named Mr. Popper and his family, who live in the small town of Stillwater in the 1930s. The Poppers unexpectedly come into possession of a penguin, Captain Cook. The Poppers then receive a female penguin from the zoo, who mates with Captain Cook to have 10 baby penguins. Before long, something must be done lest the penguins eat the Poppers out of house and home.Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, Garth WilliamsTucker is a streetwise city mouse. He thought he’d seen it all. But he’s never met a cricket before, which really isn’t surprising, because, along with his friend Harry Cat, Tucker lives in the very heart of New York City—the Times Square subway station. Chester Cricket never intended to leave his Connecticut meadow. He’d be there still if he hadn’t followed the entrancing aroma of liverwurst right into someone’s picnic basket. Now, like any tourist in the city, he wants to look around. And he could not have found two better guides—and friends—than Tucker and Harry. The trio have many adventures—from taking in the sights and sounds of Broadway toescaping a smoky fire.Chester makes a third friend, too. It is a boy, Mario, who rescues Chester from a dusty corner of the subway station and brings him to live in the safety of his parents’newsstand. He hopes at first to keep Chester as a pet, but Mario soon understands that the cricket is more than that. Because Chester has a hidden talent and no one—not even Chester himself—realizes that the little country cricket may just be able to teach even the toughest New Yorkers a thing or two.The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Jules Feiffer"It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time," Milo laments. "[T]here's nothing for me to do, nowhere I'd care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing." This bored,bored young protagonist who can't see the point to anything is knocked out of his glum humdrum by the sudden and curious appearance of a tollbooth in his bedroom. Since Milo has absolutely nothing better to do, he dusts off his toy car, pays the toll, and drives through. What ensues is a journey of mythic proportions, during which Milo encounters countless odd characters who are anything but dull.The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. LewisWhen Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are sent to stay with a kind professor who lives in the country, they can hardly imagine the extraordinary adventure that awaits them.It all begins one rainy summer day when the children explorethe Professor's rambling old house. When they come across a room with an old wardrobe in the corner, Lucy immediately opens the door and gets inside. To her amazement, she suddenly finds herself standing in the clearing of a wood on a winter afternoon, with snowflakes falling through the air. Lucy has found Narnia, a magical land of Fauns and Centaurs, Nymphs and Talking Animals -- and the beautiful but evil White Witch, who has held the country in eternal winter for a hundred years.Maniac Magee by Jerry SpinelliJeffrey Lionel "Maniac" Magee might have lived a normal life if a freak accident hadn't made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run--and not just run away, but run. This is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he changes the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.Crash by Jerry SpinelliCrash Coogan, a seventh-grade football star, has been an aggressive person from the time he was very young; sometimes, he is too aggressive. He enjoys his rough, macho behavior until he meets an unusual neighbor who forces him to think about his life and his way of treating others.A rare glimpse into the life of a bully in an unforgettable story about stereotypes and surprises.Hatchet by Gary PaulsenLost Brian Robertson, sole passenger on a Cessna 406, is on his way to visit his father when the tiny bush plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. With nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present, Brian finds himself completely alone. Challenged by his fear and despair -- and plagued with the weight of a dreadful secret he's been keeping since his parent's divorce -- Brian must tame his inner demons in order to survive. It will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed.Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson RawlsBilly, Old Dan and Little Ann -- a Boy and His Two Dogs...A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee country. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains -- and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. Glory and victory were coming to them, but sadness waited too. And close by was the strange and wonderful power that's only found...An exciting tale of love and adventure you'll never forget.Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. RowlingFor twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held aninfamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killingthirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heirapparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort.Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he mightbe headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black'sdownfall as well. And the Azkban guards heard Black mutteringin his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of hismagical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top ofit all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.Age 12-15Ender's Game by Orson Scott CardIn order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alienrace's next attack, government agencies breed child geniusesand train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew"Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, hissadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyoneelse, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidatesfor the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--youngEnder is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School forrigorous military training.Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the world survives, that is.Holes by Louis SacharStanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfatherand has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.The Giver by Lois LowryJonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community. When Jonas turns 12 he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.The Hobbit by J. R. R. TolkienBilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.Animal Farm by George OrwellGeorge Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture. It is the account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones's Manor Farm into Animal Farm--a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that proves disastrous. The climax is the brutal betrayal of the faithful horse Boxer, when totalitarian rule is reestablished with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But some Animals Are More Equal Than Others...The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. SalingerThe hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield.Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adultvoices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the mosteloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remainingmarvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulatedcry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers andclowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the painto, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside,with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handleit to keep.Dune by Frank HerbertHere is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph ofthe imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis,Dune is thestory of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysteriousman known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plotagainst his noble family--and would bring to fruitionhumankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.Age 15-18A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le GuinThe first book of "Earthsea" is a tale of wizards, dragons andterrifying shadows. The island of Gont is a land famous forwizards. Of these, some say the greatest - and surely thegreatest voyager - is the man called Sparrowhawk. As a reckless,awkward boy, he discovered the great power that was in him -with terrifying consequences. Tempted by pride to try spellsbeyond his means, Sparrowhawk lets loose an evil shadow-beast in his land. Only he can destroy it, and the quest leads him to the farthest corner of Earthsea.Lord of the Flies by William GoldingWilliam Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition.Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutBilly Pilgrim, a traumatized American POW, becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens. Under their watchful gaze, he must relive his life over and over again, coming at last to some understanding of the human comedy.Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.The Joy Luck Club by Amy TanFour mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection betweenmothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald"He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was . . ."The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, stands among the greatest of all American fiction. Jay Gatsby's lavish lifestyle in a mansion on Long Island's gold coast encapsulates the spirit, excitement, and violence of the era Fitzgerald named 'the Jazz Age'. Impelled by his love for Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby seeks nothing less than to recapture the moment five years earlier when his best and brightest dreams - his 'unutterable visions' - seemed to be incarnated in her kiss.A moving portrayal of the power of romantic imagination, as well as the pathos and courage entailed in the pusuit of an unattainable dream, The Great Gatsby is a classic fiction of hope and disillusion. This edition is fully annotated with a fine Introduction incorporating new interpretation and detailing Fitzgerald's struggle to write the novel, its critical reception and its significance for future generations.Neuromancer by William GibsonThe Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace . . .Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for alast-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerfulartificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.A Farewell to Arms by Ernest HemingwayThe 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. Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while hisdescription of the German attack on Caporetto—of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of loveand pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell toArms,written when he was thirty years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.Death of a Salesman by Arthur MillerEver since it was first performed in 1949,Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremems of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room.All My Sons by Arthur MillerJoe Keller and Herbert Deever, partners in a machine shop during the war, turned out defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped punishment and went on to make a lot of money. In a work of tremendous power, a love affair between Keller's son, Chris, and Ann Deever, Herbert's daughter, the bitterness of George Keller, who returns from the war to find his father in prison and his father's partner free, and the reaction of a son to his father's guilt escalate toward a climax of electrifying intensity.Fences by August WilsonTroy Maxson is a former star of the Negro baseball leagues who now works as a garbage man in 1957 Pittsburgh. Excluded as a Negro from the major leagues during his prime, Troy's bitterness takes it's toll on his relationships with both his wife and son who now wants his own chance to play.Life of Pi by Yann MartelThe son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true?Advanced ReadingThese are books I only read because we were studying them in class, although I've come to love each one.Macbeth by William ShakespeareMacbeth is one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies,encompassing witchcraft, bloody murder, ghostly apparitions aswell as high poetry, blended in such a way as to demonstratethe assured dramatic touch of Shakespeare's maturity.Macbeth's tragedy is that of a good, brave and honourable manturned into the personification of evil by the workings ofunreasonable ambition.Waiting for Godot by Samuel BeckettWaiting for Godot revolves around two seemingly homeless menwaiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir andEstragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road,inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. Theresult is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, andnonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation ofmankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s languagepioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured theexistentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remainsone of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.Death in Venice by Thomas MannGustav von Aschenbach is a revered author whose work is known for its discipline and formal perfection. At his Venetian hotel he encounters the strikingly handsome young teenager Tadzio. Aschenbach is disturbed by his attraction to the boy, and although he watches Tadzio, he dare not speak to him. Despite warnings of a cholera epidemic Aschenbach stays in Venice; he sacrifices his dignity and well-being to the immediate experience of beauty as embodied by Tadzio. After exchanginga significant look with the boy on the day of Tadzio's scheduled departure, Aschenbach dies of cholera. As in his other major works, Mann explores the role of the artist in society. The cerebral Aschenbach summons extraordinary discipline and endurance in his literary work, but his private desires overwhelm him.One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia MarquezOne of the 20th century's enduring works,One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement of a Nobel Prize winning career.The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdrystory of the family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (豆瓣)To the Lighthouse is a novel whose overt simplicity of plot hides a complex mix of autobiographical detail, searching social questions and deep philosophical enigmas. The author's innovative use of nonlinear plot, stream- of-consciousness, and varying narrators, transforms the apparently 'normal' incidents in the life of the Ramsay family into a mythic reflection on time, gender, morality, and death.。