Study guides: popular books - Page 11 | Just Great DataBase

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered his best work. The novel was awarded many times and still is considered an example of classical modern literature. The story isn’t autobiographical, but the course of the plot certainly reveals the emotions that Fitzgerald himself experienced when writing it. His life was rather harsh at the times of working on Tender is the Night...

The Mill of the Floss is the family drama novel written by George Eliot. Some of the parts of the story are considered autobiographical, but the plot shows us the relationships that can happen in every rural patriarchal family of that times. The story starts from the family that lives on the mill and consists of the miller, his wife and two children. From the very beginning we see that the...

A poem or historical romance in verse “Marmion” by Walter Scott is the largest in volume poem among poetic works. “Marmion” brought the author to the top of his poetic glory. Scott undoubtedly considered himself to be the successor of the creative traditions of the ancient Scottish bards, as he speaks in the epistles to the six songs of the poem “Marmion.&rdquo...

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray is a piece of literature about the rigid social order, impossible expectations and the characters of different initial statuses who all try to live up to these expectations. Both men and women are obsessed with their social image and reputation: they are ready to do anything to achieve something more than they have now. Almost every single act shows the...

Lois Lowry wrote “The Giver” in 1993. The next year this strong book received the highest award in the young adult literature field, the Newbery Medal. Born on Hawaii Island and educated at Brown and Maine, it’s hard to say where the author drew inspiration to write about such serious and solemn concepts. At the beginning of a book the reader finds himself in a utopian society...

“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...

Volpone is a satirical comedy by Ben Jonson that laughs off human greed and immorality. Even the names of the characters that can be translated as “sly fox” and “fly” hint us that they aren’t the people, but more of an embodiment of the vices the author wants to show. Volpone is a skilled and rich con artist who uses his looks and manners to lure rich people and...

Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine that advocates the fight of the people of the Thirteen Colonies against the British egalitarian government. Short and plain, it had a great influence on the society. Thomas Paine, following the ideas of Enlightenment, made his statement based on pure logic, so that his pamphlet indeed looks like a product of simple common sense, not the...

Beowulf is definitely a must read as one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems written around 700 A.D. Today it’s hard to say what exactly was in the original text since it has been rewritten and reworked a couple times before reaching modern day publishing. But the book didn’t lose its relevance, historic value and linguistic beauty and is being admired now more than ever. It all begins...

We all know Don Quixote as the most famous representative of the chivalric irony genre. On the contrary, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is a real chivalry poem written it the 14th century. It is a beautiful and symbolic adventure into the life and morals of the 14th century written by an unknown author. The language of the medieval times might be difficult to read but that only...

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...

There’s no way to describe Scottish literature better than Robert Stevenson did it in his gothic novel “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. It is a lengthy story that constitutes the culmination of author’s mastery. We are only left wondering what would be the fate of Stevenson’s talent if the destiny were just a little more kind to this man and his life...

Who said that drama died together with Shakespeare? Arthur Miller proved that it’s still alive and kicking with his majestic play “Death Of A Salesman” that won numerous prizes and has been performed almost a thousand times.  Reading this book is a tough thing to do – because you just can’t resist the temptation to be in the theatre among the spectators of this...

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...

During his life Ken Kesey has been very interested in alternative perception, altered states of human mind and mental disorders. He based a lot of his works on it. Throughout his life he’s made himself a rebellious reputation of avid drug experimenter and wrote a couple of texts on that.  One of them, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, was written right after the...

“The Awakening” by Kate Chopin is an American novel that focuses on the confrontation of developing women’s views and outdated society attitudes towards it. The fact that even today in some communities the book still provokes confrontation means that the feminism still has a long way to go.  The protagonist of the story is Edna Pontellier. And while her husband thought too...

Prepare to explore the culture, life, and people of Middle Ages in these 24 stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The author was close to the King and wrote the text while being at the height of his career in the justice of the state. His experiences are reflected in the stories. If you think that this is a boring book to be used for bedtime reading – you couldn’t be more wrong. So...

The father of detective genre, Edgar Allan Poe, is known and loved for his short stories that keep the reader in suspense till the every last page. “The Cask of Amontillado” is surely one of the most popular among one of them. In 1846 it was published in a lady’s magazine but was highly acclaimed by the audience of all genders, ages, and ethical origins.  The master of...

Arthur Miller is a strong name in the history of American drama performances. He was always good with words and knew how to see through the American society. He also had a strong political opinion and disagreed profoundly with an unsound anti-communistic agenda of the 1950s.  In his plays he showed how different kinds of obsessions can be picked up by the population and lead to unreasonable...