Study guides: popular books, letter t - Page 6 | Just Great DataBase
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...
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...
If you think that nothing new can be said about King Arthur, try this book by T. H. White. More than six thousand pages are dedicated to carefully dismantling everything you knew before about the King Arthur and his knights and rebuilding this knowledge in the new, unusual but brilliant shape. To fully understand the book, we should know the time when it was written - right after the World War...
Henry James wrote “The Turn of the Screw” in 1898. James is a well-known author of the world’s classic literature. He is a fine psychologist, very attentive and thorough in his observations of life. He masterfully implements these skills in the process of writing gothic stories. “The Turn of the Screw” is a mystical novel about the ghosts, written in the style of...
The deeply touching novel by Potok tells us the story of the two boys, their friendship, family issues and their coming of age they go through together. Danny and Reuven are both boys from Jewish families, but while Danny is the son of an ultra-orthodoxical rabbi, Reuven is a descendent of the more modern family. The boys befriend each other on the baseball match between their schools and this...
The great poet of all times, William Shakespeare, is known not only for his distinctive style, but also for great productivity. Even though this is one of the reasons why some experts still have doubts over the real authorship of his works. “Tempest” is believed to be his last work and might as well be his best. It is also much more organized in style and is believed to signify...
No matter how rigid and defined the setting is, “The Ambassadors” is a book about emotions and emotional freedom. We meet the main character, Lambert Strether, a middle-aged and very ordinary man, who decides to marry a very proper woman. But his fiancée-to-be sets a condition: he shall find her delinquent son in Paris and return him home, preventing him from a scandalous...
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a comedy that can be seen as controversial if we apply today’s moral standards to it. It involves things that are now considered forced marriage, abusive relations and domestic psychological violence. We should take into consideration that the severe misogyny was the usual thing in Shakespearean times and a strong-willed woman who...
“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...
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel that describes the family life of Czech couple, Tomas and Tereza, where Tomas is obsessed with his work and is an incurable womanizer, who considers flirt, sex and affairs a necessary part of his life, completely disconnected from love. Other characters are his lover and friend Sabina and her own second lover Franz, who loves her sincerely. The author...
“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 Prelude by William Wordsworth is an epic autobiographical poem the author dedicated all his life to. What is interesting is that The Prelude was meant to be only the first part, the introduction of a philosophical trilogy of poems that reflects Woodsworth’s worldview. But, unfortunately, the poet passed away in his eighties, leaving only The Prelude completed. The literature critics...
The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare is one of his several “problem plays”. It starts as a classical tragedy, but ends in a comedic and light-hearted way, despite even this can undo the death of the innocent at the beginning. The main plot turns were borrowed from Robert Greene’s pastoral novel Pandosto. The names of characters and places are changed, but the...
Lewis Carroll wrote a continuation for his “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” six years after the original book was published. “Through the Looking-Glass” picks up the story of a curious and fearless young girl six months after the previous book has left it. And this time the adventures are even more crazy and fascinating than before! This time Alice steps through...
It’s worth reading “The Alchemist” just to see what Paulo Coelho is capable of writing in just two weeks of time. It didn’t happen immediately after publishing, but like many of the other author’s creations, the book became a bestseller and is now available to read in over 70 languages. It has even found its place among the self-help book sections due to its content...
Political influence and power games have always been at the center of literary inspiration sources. A famous Italian political expert, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a great treatise “The Prince” on the philosophy of politics that talks about this topic in innovative ways and unusual approaches. The book is divided into 26 chapters that each describe different state models, various types...
“The Natural” is a novel about baseball and suddenly it is a novel about almost paranormal mystery. The author brilliantly merges so familiar and close-to-earth game with all the typical struggles and rivalry in the team with something much, much more subtle, that gives the book the fleur of Gothic mystery. The story tells us the biography of a young rising star of baseball that...