Study guides: books, letter t - Page 3 | Just Great DataBase

Margaret Atwood, born in Canada, wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1985. The book touches upon increasing influence of religious conservatism in the society at that time. After the world has openly admitted to sexual revolution, there were parties and people who openly criticized it and made sex, contraception, women voting and other rights look indecent and unnecessary. Even...

Not everybody knows that Tolkien first wrote “The Hobbit” and only then started working on the “Lord of the Rings”. It wasn’t his first text, but it brought together the author’s memories of the World War I, knowledge of philology, ancient myths, as well as the characters from previous stories. The full title of the book is “The Hobbit, or There and Back...

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle is one of his most famous - or maybe the most famous - novels about Sherlock Holmes. The case of the mysterious Hound inspired many movie directors to show and reinterpret it in different environments and with different accents. Why The Hound of the Baskervilles is so interesting for the audience? There is no single answer but we’ll try...

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is the novel that is often classified as social satire. It tells the readers the story of a well-educated, beautiful and virtuous woman of upper class, named Lily Bart and her downfall from the upper class to the very social bottom. The problem of Lily is simple and very common for the noble women with proper upbringing of that times: she is twenty-nine already...

“The House of Seven Gables” is a Gothic novel, full of impossible coincidences, haunted places and family curses. Do not expect too much realism from it, just prepare for the great and enjoyable story of the family whose patriarch was once cruel and unfair to the wrong person. The vivid description of the grim and rusty House of the Seven Gables that opens the book immediately sets...

“The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende is a family saga that describes the life of four generations, no less. It starts from the story of del Valle sisters, one of which possesses paranormal powers and then grows into the story of the whole new town emerging at the coast when their family has to move from their hometown. The story of the family and their house, later becoming...

Sandra Cisneros wrote “The House on Mango Street” in 1984. Even though many of you already imagine a nice house on a calm and pretty Mango Street – the book is nothing like that. The book is a compilation of colorful characters each of whom encounters the poverty, exile, humiliation, shame, restrictions and hard work. The protagonist of the book is a young girl Esperanza...

Despite such a title, the main character is a perfectly healthy man. Dostoyevsky ironically portrays the attitude of the society to the hero, whose only flaw is his kindness, open-heartedness and naivete. He is young, handsome and rich - moreover, he is the Prince. Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin just lacks the skill of deception and plotting that is so valuable amongst the upper-crust society. So, his...

The “Iliad” is a great story of the battle of Troy written by Homer. It is a marvelous book and it doesn’t matter if Homer wrote it by himself or just collected the numerous poems and songs of vagarious artists of that time. It is often called the first work of world literature that talks about all problems of humanity.  Imagine a war between the Greeks (Achaians) and the...

“The Importance of Being Earnest” is a play written by Oscar Wilde and first performed in 1895. Despite its enduring popularity, this work of art was banned due to author’s social and personal preferences that couldn’t be accepted by the community he lived in. Reading Wilde books isn’t an easy thing. It feels like you are stealing from yourself. It’s a great...

“The Joy Luck Club” is the first book written by an American author of Chinese origins Amy Tan. The novel tells the story of four women and their daughters who talk about their lives as immigrants in San Francisco. Do you know anything in Chinese? Have you ever played a mahjong game? This could have greatly helped you in understanding the book better. It’s a challenge, but...

Rudyard Kipling carefully made, almost out of tropical lianas and vines, a story of times called “The Jungle Book”. It is about friendship, love, and betrayal. Yet it is easy to read due to all the exotic creatures and the celebration of life that takes place in a middle of an untouched jungle forest. Mowgli isn’t just a boy abandoned by a civilization and brought up by animal...

The Killer Angels is a novel about war. Though it is a fiction one, the events of the novel are depicted so realistically that for a long time the book was one of the essential literary pieces to read in many military institutions, like US Army Officer Candidate School, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina and many others. It is also one of the two fictional novels recommended in...

The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan is to some extent an autobiographical work. The main character, as the author, is also a daughter of Chinese immigrants to America, she lost her father and knew nothing about her mother’s previous life. So, The Kitchen God’s Wife may seem an attempt to reinterpret author’s own family story. The tale of mother and daughter, who live...

Not everybody likes historical novels. And not every story makes a good inspiration source for a book. But some events are best to learn about from the literary genre. The Afghan war is one of them. An American author of Afghan origins wrote “The Kite Runner” where he talks about the Soviet intervention, a fallen regime, and the establishment of a Taliban movement. The novel is fine...

One of the short stories by Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Little Dog” is considered one of the most famous and most brilliant. Like the majority of Chekhov’s works, this one tells us the story about relationships between the people, shortly but very precisely showing us the typical personalities and situations from the new angle. The plot of it seems trivial: the adultery...

“The Last of the Mohicans” is one part of a number of historical novels written by James Fenimore Cooper. The events of the book take place in the second part of the 18th century when the French-Indian War took place. It is a must read for most American high school students and one of the best books about this period all over the world.  In the beginning the reader finds himself...

The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy the Gentleman is the book as long and descriptive as its name is. The name though is true to the core: Tristram Shandy depicts his life with the incredible accuracy, but he has his own opinion about each and every event of it including his own birth. This narrative style, that portrays an absent-minded gentleman who shifts from one topic to another so...

The Light in The Forest by Conrad Richter is a fiction novel telling us the story about the white boy, captured by Native Americans and raised as one of their tribe and then captured by the white people and re-assimilated. The book raises questions of cultural values and the general human values that are above any cultural differences - such as compassion and mercy. The author plays with the...

How many times have you heard people say they would only learn French for having the benefit of reading “The Little Prince” in original language? Published in 1943, the book remains a manifesto of childhood purity and simplicity of life seen through young eyes. Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a French aristocrat and aviator, who spent long time in North America exile after France had...