Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: Poetry

Unfortunately, I don’t have any works of poetry on my reading list. I am not much of a poetry enthusiast. As such, I am altering this week’s theme a bit. Instead, I will be featuring novels by renowned poets, including novelists who wrote poetry.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: King, Queen, Knave
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Translator (from Russian): Dmitri Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage International
Publishing Date: February 16, 2011
No. of Pages: 272

Synopsis: 

‘This novel is the story of Freyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium, Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.

Title: Sons and Lovers
Author: D.H. Lawrence
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publishing Date: 1998
No. of Pages: 474

Synopsis: 

Lawrence’s first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. When the marriage between Walter Morel and his sensitive, high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness of their frustration seeps into their children’s lives. Their second son, Paul, knows that he must struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents’ failure.

Lawrence’s powerful description of Paul’s single-minded efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally through relationships with two women – the innocent, old-fashioned Miriam Leivers and the experienced, provocatively modern Clara Dawes – makes this novel as much for the beginning of the twenty first century as it was for the beginning of the twentieth.

Title: Oryx and Crake
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor Books
Publishing Date: May 2004
No. of Pages: 374

Synopsis: 

Oryx and Crake, the first book of the MaddAddam trilogy, is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey – with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake – through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

Title: Giovanni’s Room
Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: Delta Publishing
Publishing Date: June 2000
No. of Pages: 169

Synopsis: 

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of human heart.

Title: The Golden Gate
Author: Vikram Seth
Publisher: Vintage Books
Publishing Date: April 1987 (1986)
No. of Pages: 307

Synopsis: 

One of the most highly regarded novels of 1986, Vikram Seth’s story in verse made him a literary household name in both the United States and India.

John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper. From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of “self-actualization.” However, Liz begins to fall in love with John’s best friend, and John realizes his journey of self-discovery has only just begun. (Source: Goodreads)