Reading path
The Shape of Ruin
These novels belong to a tradition that replaced God with weather: the slow, impersonal pressure of class, blood, and circumstance that shapes a life before anyone in it has made a meaningful choice. Zola named the tradition and Hardy gave it its landscape; Dreiser brought it to Chicago, Gissing to the literary world, Hamsun to the starving mind walking a strange city with empty pockets. The tragedy in these books is of a kind that cannot be appealed, because there is nobody to appeal to.
In the app a path keeps your place, marks what you have read, and hands you the next work when you are ready for it.
The first button needs the app on this device; the second gets it there.
The route
- 1. Madame BovaryGustave Flaubert, 1857
- 2. Thérèse RaquinÉmile Zola, 1868
- 3. GerminalÉmile Zola, 1885
- 4. The WoodlandersThomas Hardy, 1887
- 5. The Mayor of CasterbridgeThomas Hardy, 1886
- 6. HungerKnut Hamsun, 1890
- 7. Tess of the d'UrbervillesThomas Hardy, 1891
- 8. New Grub StreetGeorge Gissing, 1891
- 9. The Red Badge of CourageStephen Crane, 1895
- 10. Jude the ObscureThomas Hardy, 1895
- 11. McTeagueFrank Norris, 1899
- 12. Sister CarrieTheodore Dreiser, 1900
- 13. The House of MirthEdith Wharton, 1905
- 14. Martin EdenJack London, 1909
- 15. An American TragedyTheodore Dreiser, 1925
- 16. BlondeJoyce Carol Oates, 2000
- 17. The House of MirthEdith Wharton, 1905
- 18. Sister CarrieTheodore Dreiser, 1900
- 19. The JungleUpton Sinclair, 1906
- 20. Cousin BetteHonoré de Balzac, 1846
- 21. The Call of the WildJack London, 1903
- 22. Ethan FromeEdith Wharton, 1911
- 23. The MaiasEça de Queirós, 1888
- 24. Rickshaw BoyLao She, 1936
- 25. The DwarfCho Se-hui, 1978
- 26. A Pair of Blue EyesThomas Hardy, 1873
- 27. The Return of the NativeThomas Hardy, 1878
- 28. The Bride Of LammermoorSir Walter Scott, 1819
- 29. Colonel ChabertHonoré de Balzac, 1832