Study guides: popular books - Page 4 | Just Great DataBase

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson is primarily a detective story that features the case of a fisherman possibly murdered by his colleague and former friend amidst the storm. Almost everyone is convinced that the suspect, an American Japanese named Kabuo Miyamoto is guilty of it. But as the story unwinds, we understand that there is much more behind the ordinary investigation. We learn the...

While “The Old Man and the Sea” closes Ernest Hemingway writing career, it also opens his talents from other perspectives and was one of the reasons for him being awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature.  To put it in a nutshell, this short novel is about an old Cuban fisherman. Santiago didn’t have luck with fishing for many days. After eighty-four days of failure, he finally...

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup is a memoir he tried to write as precisely as possible. This book contains no morals like in “Uncle Toms Cabin” and no epiphany. The goal of Northup was to describe the institute of slavery in all its ugliness. Born a free black person and being a skilled carpenter and musician, Solomon was once offered a short-term job in the travelling circus...

"The Sun Also Rises” was published in 1926 and at that time its author, Ernest Hemingway, received dubious feedback on his creation. Today it is considered to be one of the best novels created by Hemingway and an outstanding representative of modernist literature. The book is centered on a trip of a group of expatriates, one of them is Jake Barnes, who travel to Spain for the festival...

If there’s a book that has managed to portray the reality of American Great depression times, that is for sure “Of Mice And Men”. When making through another day is a victory, when a friendship is broken and a man’s life is lost, when the superior’s family is causing trouble but there’s no way to stop it without putting yourself in danger... The life...

“The Three Musketeers” is a historical novel about four names the whole world knows about: d’Artagnan, Athos, Parthos, and Aramis. Alexandre Dumas was exposed to the great political events in French history, which gave him lots of material to base his text on.  One-of-a-kind France, formidable villains, political intrigues, mystique characters – all this and much...

The Trial is a surrealistic novel by Franz Kafka that tells us the story of a single average man fighting with the incredibly complicated and incomprehensible bureaucracy. The horror of the story is in the fact that each single element like trial, interrogation or searching for a lawyer makes perfect sense, but altogether they look like a nightmare where anyone understands what is happening...

Having received two majors of English and religious studies, John Green initially intended to become a priest. But life has introduced its changes and on his way of getting an extreme popularity as a young adult writer, he wrote a good number of book reviews for living. His fiction works are now turned into movies and video blogs and are known all over the world. The events of the “Paper...

The Way of The World by William Congreve is a play that is mostly dedicated to displaying a single vice: lust and infidelity. The play starts from a classical plot: the two young people in love want to marry, but to do so Mirabell must get permission of Millamant’s aunt. Everything seems very clear, especially when we see the character of Lady Wishfort, the aforementioned aunt, seemingly...

Antigone is an eternal work of art that transcends time, literary style, authorship, and taste. It’s one of the signature Sophocles plays tightly intermingled with Oedipus and Colonus. The events of the play happen in Ancient Greece. After the death of Thebes ruler Oedipus, his sons are faced with a tough task of dividing and conquering. Since it has never been an easy thing to do...

The revolutions are always a source of great literary inspiration and occupy a large part of world literature plots. But there isn’t much written about the Islamic Revolution. Marjane Satrapi from Iran wrote “Persepolis” as a recollection of her own memories. It’s a series of two books, the first of which is “The Story of a Childhood” and it talks about what...

For quite a while Jane Austen has lived behind the scenes of her works. Writing behind the closed door of her bedroom and publishing the books anonymously might have been a necessity of the English morals and censorship tendencies at that time. But it also allowed her to escape the unnecessary over interpretation of her novels. The readers of those times experienced each book on its own, instead...

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...

It’s hard to be satirical about such tragic events as war, especially if it’s the World War II that took lives of millions of people. But Kurt Vonnegut managed to write a marvelous satirical novel that also has elements of fantasy and science fiction.  “Slaughterhouse-Five” is a book about an American soldier named Billy Pilgrim. It is the last years of the WW II and...

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a marvelous example of women literature that can do better upon the reader than most of the self-help books. Zora Neale Hurston made a name for herself as a writer and secured a place in the best American books ranks thanks to this novel. Composed by an African-American author, it conveys the reality of an American society of the early 20th century...

Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Raven” in 1845. It is cited and recognized for many reasons, including its style, melodically composed text and ambiance. Inside the book, there are many reflections of folk culture, religious symbols, Antique characters and classical plots.  At first, the reader finds himself in a middle of a dark room late at night. There’s a man who is...

It’s high time to get a taste of Australian literary creations with the best novel of Markus Zusak. Since 2005 “The Books Thief” sold millions of copies and became a world-renowned bestseller.  The events of the book are happening around the times of the World War II. Thus the unusual choice of the narrator of the story doesn’t strike as weird as it could have &ndash...

There are just few books that are absolutely obligatory to read at any high school throughout the US and one of them is “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. The book is a multifaceted story of three kids who manage to lead a fun teenager life together while discovering very grown up concepts. Morality, rape, racial injustice, friendship, unfairness, fear, differences. Life is fickle...

Discover yourself and look at the world around you differently with this spiritual book by Herman Hesse. Published in 1922 it still preserves its relevance for those who are looking for something beyond everyday routine life. The novel is about Siddhartha, son of Brahmin, that has all the components for a happy life: he is handsome, he is from a well-respected family, he has means for living a...

Lord Jim is a romantic adventure novel by Joseph Conrad that even shares some traits with Gothic novels. Despite the exotic setting and the extraordinary events that puts the story far into the territory of historical fiction, the themes raised in it are very close to everyone of us. The life of a romantic person, who has to face the harsh reality with all the unfairness of life and inability to...