Study guides: popular books, letter a - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

“A Farewell to Arms” is a book written by Ernest Hemingway about the events of the World War I. This is the book that presented Hemingway to the world as a writer. It is a high-quality text about war, love, cynic actions and “lost generation”. Prepare to dive into a world that is ripped apart, makes no sense and smells like cognac. The protagonist of the story is...

“Atlas Shrugged” is a multidimensional novel written by Ayn Rand in 1957. Even though it wasn’t an immediate success, the author considered it her greatest work. She has invested a great deal of mystery, scientific facts, romance and philosophic thoughts into the novel. The plot of the book is a dystopian imagination of the author. It is set in the United States under the...

“Adam Bede” is a novel about rural life and the complicated and tangled relationships between the young people of the imaginary community of Hayslope. With the incredible brilliance the pastoral and heartwarming depiction of the life of countryside is connected with the harsh reality of it. George Eliot touches the almost tabooed themes of infanticide, unwanted pregnancy, social...

Lewis Carroll imagination has produced one of the most fascinating children fantasy stories of all times. Despite his impaired physical appearance, Carroll discovered a talent to animate children having been baby-sitting his younger sisters and brothers. Ever since that time Lewis loved being around children and entertaining them. While teaching at Oxford, the author met Henry George Liddell...

Novels about the war are never an easy reading. Combined with Erich Maria Remarque detailed style and objective perspective, “All Quiet On The Western Front” is a great piece of war narrative that will make your eyes open. It’s easy to romanticize war: our brains are wired to justify sacrifice and turn negative into positive. And many literary creations, despite depicting the...

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a heartbreaking story of a boy soldier of an African country. What makes reading more painful is the knowledge that it is actually an autobiography: Ishmael was a combatant during a civil war in Sierra Leone. We see how traumatizing war can be for the minors and how awfully fast they adjust to its realities, becoming soldiers who enjoy killing and torturing...

John Knowles wrote “A Separate Peace” in 1959. It is a story about many stories. There’s a little bit of war, patriotism, growing up difficulties, morals, and breaking the rules in the text. If one had to summarize the book in one sentence it would be a novel about a challenging process of growing up being locked up in a foster home with a shadow of World War II on its...

“A Raisin in the Sun” is a play written by an American writer Lorraine Hansberry. She was born into a family of well-educated African Americans, who were active and successful examples of those who fought racial discrimination and segregation. These events found their reflection in Lorraine’s writing.  If today talking about tolerance and movement for racial equality has...

Prepare to discover the jewel of American literature impersonated in a play of Tennessee Williams. “A Streetcar Named Desire” is about a confrontation of two or even three different modes of life that happen to be close by but are so far away from each other at the same time. Some might say that the play is a sad but very common life story. That is why the book leaves the biggest...

Virginia Woolf was an English writer and literary critic. She was the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century. Her works became the classics of the “flow of consciousness.” And her essay “A Room of One's Own” became the classics of feminist critics. The essay is based on two reports called “Women and Fiction” that...

Prepare to explore the depth of contemporary mystery writing with “And Then There Were None” written by the legendary Agatha Christie. It is the most known and the best-selling novel of the author. The book is also known under the title of “Ten Little Niggers” which was changed due to the technicalities of the publishing adaption.  A group of different people finds...

“A Lesson Before Dying” is a fictional novel written by Ernest Gaines. The book was nominated for numerous well-respected prizes and awards. It talks about a man who is sentenced to death for the crime he didn't commit. The author was born in Louisiana during the Depression times. He himself was involved with manual labor since early ages and then moved to California, where he...

Anthony Burgess published “A Clockwork Orange” in 1962 and his work was later adapted into a legendary Stanley Kubrick movie. The movie was actually made based on a shortened version of the book, so it’s definitely worth discovering the full story even if you’ve already seen it in pictures. Youth violence, teenage rebellions and different subculture variations dominate...

“All the Pretty Horses” is the book that made its author, Cormac McCarthy, popular after its publishing in 1992. This book is about becoming independent – from your parents, from your own insecurities, from the society that entraps you. It has been nominated and won numerous book awards. Who didn’t try or at least dreamed of running away from parents in the childhood years...

Madeleine L’Engle wrote “A Wrinkle in Time” in 1962. The book is most known for its spectacular illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon that made the edition known and even more frequently read. The protagonist of the story is a young girl Meg Murry. Her father was taken hostage by the evil forces, so she decided to rescue him, which means to travel in time and to another planet...

“A Man for all Seasons” is a play written by an English playwright Robert Bolt. The historical drama of the highest emotional tension tells about great English humanist Thomas More, a statesman, an outstanding lawyer, and philosopher, who gave life for his convictions. History of Thomas More perhaps the most famous and memorable episode of the relationship between humanist and...

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a great summery comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1596. The text reads quite differently from typical author’s creations. It is very light and airy-fairy to the point that it’s hard to tell where is the reality and where is a dream. Get ready, put on your fancy clothes, turn on the music – we are going to the wedding! The...

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Betty Smith. It tells us about the childhood and growing up of a girl from a troubled but loving family that lives in the poor district of New York City. It won the approval of the audience almost immediately for the realistic and vivid depiction of life of Brooklyn and the main heroine’s aspirations, hopes...

If you love to explore the creations of such authors as Sophocles or Euripides, then you surely must discover the works of Aeschylus. He was born in Greece and is often considered the father of Greek drama and tragic dramaturgy genre as it is today. It’s hard to believe, but he was the first to introduce more than one actor on the stage.  “Agamemnon” is the first play of...

One of the pastoral comedies by William Shakespeare that continues the tradition of the jovial worlds of cross-dressing, love dodecahedrons and multiple marriages in the final. Despite we can imagine the classical plotline the traces of which we can see in the other comedies of the Bard, “As You Like It” is particularly enjoyable, because of the variety of independent characters...