Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Call Number: Stacks: PS3527.A15 L6 1992
Recommended by: Ogerta Lala, International student from Albania

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta”

Awesome , written by an evil inspired brain. The first part of the book is poetry, the second, is delirium and insanity. This book is the place where the perversion turns into a mythological picture, the forbidden sensual desire turns into a demonic girl. The story begins in Europe where the depressed Humbert lives his secret passions that comes from his roots. America is the magical land where he meets Dolores Haze. The protagonist has a dream: to join his young soul mate, Lolita. But the difficulties are huge: his personality, his insane passion, his tremendous jealousy and of course, the society of 1960. That’s why Humbert decides to marry Ms. Haze, the mother of Lolita, who very soon dies in a tragic car accident. Humber pretends to be the natural father of the girl and that’s how their long dangerous adventure on the highways of the U.S starts. During the reading of the book we will know the mature, the shy, the selfish Humbert and at the same time we will know his insane and unnatural love for Lolita. On the other side is the little Lolita, orphaned, alone, without a childhood and family. A little girl who knows very well her seductive power, her sensual skills while continuing to be innocent. This book is one of those books that should be read and discovered.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Stacks PL248.P34 M3713 2009

Recommended by: Ogerta Lala, International student from Albania, Haggerty English Language Program

This special book is one of the most liked and appreciated by the literary critics but very soon it will be a literary icon like “Madam Bovary” and “Anna Karenina”. This novel takes place in Istanbul -- the Istanbul of 1975, divided between modern and archaic mentality. Kemal, a young boy, part of the high society, was engaged with Sibel. She was an aristocratic girl, educated in Paris. They were the perfect couple that had everything -- love, money, and entertainment. But a turning point happened in Kemal’s life when he met a very young girl called Fusun. She was so different from Sibel. She was only an 18-year-old shop girl with a lot of beauty and splendor that Kemal had become obsessed. All his world was overthrown and he became prisoner of his passion for Fusun. He never thought that his love for her was so immense that he could forget Sibel, his family, his business and everything else. This love was impossible as he went through pain, dreams and ended with a museum. The end of this destructive love was incredible and arduous. The book was wonderful and at the end of it you felt like you lost something special. That was what I felt after finishing this book. I felt I lost a best friend and Kemal lost her Fusun. It is a must-read.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Recommended by: Emily, STL Information Desk student assistant
Call Number: Stacks PS3608.O832 T46 2007
Audiobook Media/Audio Computer Disk PS3608.O832 T456 2007c

This beautifully written novel takes place in Afghanistan
and chronicles two main characters: Miriam and Laila.
Miriam grew up with her mother, a former housekeeper to
the richest man in town who happened to be her father. She
only saw him occasionally, and after her mother committed
suicide he sold her to a man almost forty years older than
her for marriage. As if all she was going through was
not enough, her new husband mistreated her and abused her
repeatedly. Miriam’s husband lives in another village and
she is relocated against her desires to live with him. In
that village, a girl named Laila lives with her family.
She is a beautiful and smart young girl and is madly in
love with her best friend. She has her whole life ahead of
her with countless opportunities, but when war breaks out
in the village, her family is killed by bombs and she is
wounded, she must make the most difficult decision of her
life; in Afghanistan it is socially acceptable for a man
to have several wives, so she decides to marry Rasheed,
Miriam’s husband. After marriage, both women are
frequently abused and must work together to get along with
each other, and try to overcome society’s and their
husband’s harsh rule.

This novel gave great insight as to the struggles women
are forced to go through, and although the story may seem
bleak at times, it is a must-read.

Wolves Eat Dogs [sound recording] by Martin Cruz Smith

Media/Audio Computer Disk PS3569.M5377 W65 2005
Recommended by: Susan Kraat, Librarian

Martin Cruz Smith’s Wolves Eat Dogs is a very good listen,
even as it is a sobering account of life in post-Chernobyl
Chernobyl, the Zone of Exclusion in the Ukraine commonly
referred to simply as the “Zone.” Detective Arkady Renko
(remember Gorky Park?) travels from Moscow to the Ukraine,
to solve a crime involving Russian gangsters and
radioactive chemicals. Smith describes the criminal world
of Moscow, the new Russian capitalism, and the regional
apocalypse in the Ukraine that remains since the 1986
nuclear meltdown. The despair is tangible and
unrelenting, bearable because of the author’s compelling
prose and bleak sense of humor. Ron McLarty reads with
exactly the right tone and has a clever ear for dialect.

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Recommended by: Susan Kraat, Librarian
Call Number: PS3545.A748 A4 1963

I first read All the King’s Men, while vacationing in Maine this summer. No, I had never been assigned to read it, or picked it up until now. In preparation for our trip, I noticed that more than one “best novel” list included Robert Penn Warren’s classic tale of southern politics, based upon Huey Long, former governor (and senator) of Louisiana. It is a vivid story of ambition, blackmail, deception, hubris, and murder, told by a narrator who attempts to distance himself from the dirty nature of his work, as well as from his past. The poetic language draws you into a world of southern politics and competing ideologies from the first page, and never disappoints. This is a story about a man of humble origins who rises to power, uses his oratory skills and his influence to commit dark deeds in the name of idealism, and who must suffer for his sins in the end. It tells of the struggle between the old South and the new South, and lets us know that politics remains a dirty business. But after the turmoil and bloodshed there is still a bit of hope at the end. Penn Warren quotes Dante at the beginning of the book: “Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde” I did not look for the translation until the end and I am glad that I waited.

The whistling season by Ivan Doig

Recommended by: Millie Marino, STL staff
Call number: Stacks PS3554.O415 W48 2006


In 1909, the recently widowed father of the Milliron family, a farmer of the Montana Prairie, answers a newspaper ad for a housekeeper who "can't cook, but doesn't bite."
What follows is the charming and often humorous story of a one-room schoolhouse, its eloquent and unlikely teacher and an endearing set of characters that practically beg us to go back to those simpler days. These are days when children create scrapbooks from the daily newspaper, call adults 'sir', chop wood and clean stables and roll in mud. Could it be that these children are a bit too good to be true? But how refreshing! Doig 's leisurely paced novel has everything in small amounts: mystery, tragedy, romance, and even a well-crafted villain.

Cuando era Puertorriqueña (When I was Puerto Rican) by Esmeralda

Recommended by: Wilma Feliciano, Professor of Spanish
Call Number: F128.9.P85 S2718 1994 (Spanish)

Call Number: F128.9.P85 S27 1994 (English)

The bittersweet coming-of age story of a girl trapped in a conflicted cultural identity: Is she black or white, rural or urban, Puerto Rican or American? The story begins on the island with family turmoil and tenderness in an idyllic setting dotted by economic distress, then moves to New York where the protagonist suffers a bewildering transition to American culture and loss of innocence.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Recommended by: Megan Coder, Librarian
Call Number: Stacks PS3562.A316 N36 2003

The Namesake tells the story of a young Indian couple, arranged by marriage, who emigrate to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1970s. Of course this takes some adjustment, especially for the wife Ashima, while her husband Ashoke pursues his engineering degree. They soon start a family and their first born is a son that they name Gogol, after the Russian author Nikolai Gogol. In this coming of age story, the reader gets to know Gogol from childhood to adulthood and his struggle to identify with his Indian and American roots. You will have to read this book to find out why Ashoke holds Nikolai Gogol close to his heart and if Gogol ever learns to accept his namesake.

The Empress of Weehawken by Irene Dische

Recommended by Peter D.G. Brown, Professor of German
Call Number: PS3554.I825 E47 2007

This is a debut novel written from the point of view of Dische's German grandmother, proudly "Aryan" and anti-Semitic, who marries a Jewish doctor and emigrates to New Jersey with him in the 1930s. It's a very funny and poignant semi-fictional account of three generations of this quirky German-American family of truly bizarre intellectuals.

El llano en llamas (The Burning Plain and Other Stories) by Juan Rulfo

Recommended by Wilma Feliciano, Professor of Spanish

Call Number:
In English: PQ7297.R89 L2613 1982

El llano en llamas (The Burning Plain and Other Stories) by Juan Rulfo, debunks the myth that the Mexican Revolution resulted in significant benefits for the lower classes. Rulfo lost his parents and family hacienda to wars in early 20th c Mexico, leaving him as orphaned and anguished as his characters. His work counterposes the promises of the Revolution to the doleful reality of peasant life in Mexico. A master of concise and lyrical expression, Rulfo’s characters define themselves by their painful prose in a style that infuses nature ( moon, wind, murmurs, land) with violence and poetry.

Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)

Recommended by Wilma Feliciano, Professor of Spanish
Call Number: PQ7298.15.S638 C66 1993


Set during the Mexican Revolution, Tita, the protagonist, starts a revolution for women's rights from the kitchen, heart and soul of the family. Her culinary wizardry unleashes uncontrollable forces with a mix of magical realism and quixotic characters. Intoxicating flavors of fantastic lust, grief, jealousy and passion permeate this sensual fanciful, earthy and sublime story that decries the limited options open to Mexican women. Poignant conclusion: Tita breaks tradition for herself and future generations with an ironic weapon: dishes that are sensual, ancestral and explosive.

Bless Me Ultima / Bendíceme, última

Recommended by: Heather Whalen Smith, Librarian
Call Number: Stacks: PS3551.N27 B58 1972
Audio Book: Media/Audio: PS3551.N27 B58 2004c

In Spanish
Bendíceme, última
Call Number: Stacks: PS3551.N27 B5818 1994

Bless Me Ultima is the coming of age story of a six year old Chicano boy, Antonio Luna y Marez, growing up in New Mexico during and directly after World War II. The story starts with the arrival of Ultima, a curandera, to the Luna Marez household. Throughout the book, Antonio is faced with a number of tragedies, experiences the conflicting hopes of his parents and wrestles with issues of faith and doubt.

Not so quiet: stepdaughters of war by Helen Zenna Smith

Recommended by: Matt L., Student
Call Number: Stacks PR6031.R45 N6 1989

This novel, originally published in 1930, tells the story of Nellie Smith and her fellow ambulance drivers in the Volunteer Aid Detachment during the First World War as they transport wounded soldiers from the French battlefield, as well as find a way to cope with the agony, filth, exhaustion, and brutality of war they witness on a daily basis. At the same time, Nellie, the story's narrator, struggles with her family and their peers back home, who are extremely enthusiastic about the young women and their participation for the war effort. Anyone looking for a compelling war story should definitely check it out.

Orsinian Tales by Ursula K Le Guin

Recommended by: Jill S., student
Call Number: PS3562.E42 O7

While Ursula K Le Guin is well known for her science fiction writing (particularly Earthsea). This, however, is a collection of short stories that take place in the fictional eastern European nation, Orsinia. Each story follows an every day working person from the middle ages up to the 1960s. Her writing reminds me of Kafka or Anton Chekhov. It is a book that is probably overlooked by Earthsea fans since it is not science fiction or fantasy and also overlooked by those that don't like science fiction or fantasy since it is written by Ursula K. Le Guin, but both groups should read it!