The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This book can be found on the Sybervision and the Observer Book Lists.
This is one of those "forced to read in college" books for me. I didn't get it at the time and that makes me want to go back and see if I better understand it now. At the time I had felt that the beginning was extremely slow and that had a tendency to drive people away from the book (at least that's how I felt). However, the book does get better fairly quickly. The novel follows a woman, Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and conceived a child from the affair within Puritan society. The strict rules of this religious society forces Hester to wear a bright red "A" to announce to everyone her improprieties. The novel explores how religion plays into her life as well as the guilt and sin associated with it. This is definitely a novel I plan on revisiting someday.
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