A tree grows in Brooklyn
The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
6mentions
6people
2008–2024years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fiction:
1) Betty Smith "A tree grows in Brooklyn". Maybe a bit too sentimental, but still very pleasant to read. Apparently this book was a WWII classic, but I never heard about it before.
2) Kazuo Ishiguro "An artist of the floating world". Maybe, not as strong as his other best two novels, but pretty interesting anyway.
3) Olga Tokarczuk "The Books of Jacob". An extremely long, but at the same time incredibly interesting book. It tells the complex story of a Jewish sect in Central Europe in the 18th century. It was a long read but it was definitely worth it.
- Not the only one for sure, but A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The plain-spoken honesty in that book contains multitudes.
- My children like the George R. R. Martin books, the Philip Pullman books, the Harry Potter series, and other books much in that genre category. They also read "classic" literature as they get older, for example Oliver Twist or Tom Sawyer. Two of my sons have really liked A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (which I have never read) and I really liked The Chosen by Chaim Potok (which I reread a few years ago, and still thought was very good).
- Usually I will find out what book famous people has read, what are their favorite books, hope that any book which bring influence on them, will bring good influence on me too.. also, as famous n successful people combined with their experience, I'm sure they have better taste on their choice too.
Stephen King's Favorite: This Book Will Save Your Life by A. M. Homes Saturday by Ian McEwan The Mad Cook of Pymatuning: A Novel by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel by Stef Penney When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel by Kate Atkinson
J.K. Rowling's Favorite: The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Skellig by David Almond The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle
Jeffrey Eugenides, author, Pulitzer prize winner "Herzog," by Saul Bellow "Love in a Fallen City," by Eileen Chang "The Lay of the Land," by Richard Ford
Oprah Winfrey's Favorite: White Oleander by Janet Fitch The Color Purple by Alice Walker A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
For complete list visit http://www.famouspal.com
- Literacy is essential to living in society without getting scammed or taken advantage of.
There's a scene in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" that illustrates practical necessity of reading comprehension for the average person, where a grandmother tells a mother to save enough money over time and make sure the granddaughter can read. An excerpt follows:
--
"Will it work, this saving?"
"I swear by the Holy Mother it will."
"Then why haven't you ever saved enough money to buy land?"
"I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language; 'This is thine!' He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man's to sell. It was ... how do you say it in the English ... a schwindle."
"Swindle."
"Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will read on the paper that the land is yours. Only then will you pay."
--
Yes, you can certainly be relatively more educated than you started by going to school, even if you are not literate by the end. But reading comprehension and literacy is a crucial skill that has practical value for living a better life.
- "A Canticle For Leibowitz"; "The Stranger"; "The Fall"; "Childhood's End"; "Riddley Walker"; "The Martian Chronicles"; "The Sea of Tranquillity"; "Animal Farm"; "Catch 22"; "The Catcher in the Rye"; "A Clockwork Orange"; "Dr. Strangelove"; "To Kill A Mockingbird"; "The Little Prince"; "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"; "Lord of the Flies"; "Charlotte's Web"; "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"; "All Quiet on the Western Front"; "The World According to Garp"; "Invisible Man"; "Flowers for Algernon"; "Sophie's Choice"; "The Road"; "All the Light We Cannot See"; "The Goldfinch"; "Atonement"; "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
