The Plague is the best book I've stumbled across in my 55 years. I read Camus' The Stranger years ago and was bowled over by its quiet brilliance; The Plague was even better. The abhorrent and rapidly-spreading disease takes root in an Algerian city on the Mediterranean coast. The story has distinct imagery of Nazi concentration camps, and is as much allegory as novel. There is beauty in the tragedy, which is why the book has long endured.

What a great book! I've long lamented my lack of knowledge about classic literature by women, but when I sit down to read, it's usually crime fiction that I grab. Yesterday the cats woke me at 4 am, again, I couldn't get back to sleep, and was in the right headspace for a shortish novel. O Pioneers surprised me with its fully-developed characters, its passion for wild, untamed prairie, and its engrossing story of love, loss, passion, and tragedy.