Study guides: popular books - Page 5 | Just Great DataBase

Herman Melville was born into a wealthy importer family. But all of the sudden the business failed and his life changed drastically. Trying to make a living, he signed up for his first sea journey when he was nineteen. His experience as a part of a whaling expedition and then living on an exotic island among the tribe of cannibals gave the author an immense material for writing topics. His most...

The Secret Sharer is the short story by Joseph Conrad that is considered a true masterpiece of the genre. On its pages the author presents his audience the tension of the adventure novel, the mystic secret of a Gothic novel and the investigation worthy of a detective story. It tells us about the events in the life of a young captain on his ship, who feels not enough confidence to be accepted by...

Fierce travel lovers and curious minds, get ready to feed your imagination with some unique and exotic thoughts. Jonathan Swift created a satirical book that both makes fun and glorifies the art of traveling.  Lemuel Gulliver is a part of a ship crew who due to a series of misshapen events ends up visiting different islands and their inhabitants of various sizes and customs. From Lilliput...

Bram Stoker wrote “Dracula” in 1897 turning folk myth into a literary character and it turned out one of those cases when the protagonist became way more famous than the author himself. The popularity of the book opened the floor to the abundance of the vampire fiction novels and films that followed in the 20th and 21st century. Count Dracula invites London lawyer Jonathan Harker to...

“Walden” was written by Henry Thoreau in 1954. It is a recollection and a kind of social experiment about a man living in simple conditions far away from civilization. The book opens with a story about author’s real experience living near Walden Pond for a couple of years. “Walden” can have many possible interpretations. For some, it’s a spiritual voyage down...

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks is a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking romantic story that has inspired lots of movie directors and given hope to countless people who don’t believe in lifelong love. The story is quite trivial: an old man reads to a lady in the nursing home. What he reads seems to be a diary of a romantic relationship: from the very first acquaintance through...

“Bartleby The Scrivener” is also often called “A Story Of Wall Street”. It is written by Herman Melville in 1853 and published in a magazine in two parts. The book version was published in 1856. Have you ever been confronted with objections? Some people are more successful with overcoming them while others are not. But what would you do if the objections of the other...

Joseph Heller wrote his satirical “Catch-22” novel in 1961 under a very loyal and democratic President Kennedy leadership. Other ways it’s hard to imagine such a critical piece being published under the governance of Truman or Eisenhower.  The plot is centered around the protagonist Captain John Yossarian during the Second World War. Location is at one of the American Air...

“The Song of Roland” is the oldest French rhymed text. It is the historical epic poem that depicts the events of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. It is a fascinating text that is a must read for any citizen of the world. Even those who aren’t fond of poetry must read “The Song of Roland”. It is exciting, thrilling, impressive and useful for your general knowledge of...

“Medea” belongs to the authorship of a great Ancient writer Euripides. It is based on a story of a woman whose husband leaves her for another princess. In despair, she kills his new wife and her own children. There are cultures that consider ungratefulness to be the worst sin. In such cultures, Medea would have been acquitted of crime and understood very well. However, in the modern...

“Ethan Frome” is a work of Edith Wharton published in 1911. Those of you who know the author by her novel “The Age of Innocence” will be greatly surprised by the difference in style between these two works of art. The text is about small American town with its trivial life, people lost under piles of snow, and dust, and heavy sky. A simple and silent farmer lives here...

Anti-slavery movement is present in many aspects of American cultural life. Literature and journalism are ones of the most important of them. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a well-known novel Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote as a manifest to the importance of the issue.  What is the depth of the meaning to be free? And if today you might get lost in the variations of self-discovery and...

“Arms and the Man” is a jovial comedy by George Bernard Shaw that portrays such serious issues as war, unrequited love and scandal so lightheartedly that we can’t help laughing. The clever usage of double entendre jokes only enhances this atmosphere. The real Serbo-Bulgarian war turns into a story told by the veterans to boast in the company of fellow soldiers: funny and with...

Science fiction isn’t the most frequent genre of the literary creations and it can be hard to find good reads on that isle. Luckily, Daniel Keyes wrote a great representative of this genre that is admired by millions of readers since 1958.  “Flowers of Algernon” is a book about a mentally disturbed patient whose name is Charlie Gordon. The protagonist works at a bakery. He...

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw is a play telling the audience about the life of a half-historical half-mythical character of Joan of Arc, a heroine and saint of France. The author follows her story from the moment of her revelation to her execution, canonization and afterlife. Despite Shaw shows Joan as an actual saint, able to create miracles or involuntarily curse people who don’t...

“Pygmalion” is probably one of the most famous plays by George Bernard Shaw that laid the foundation for a famous Broadway musical “My Fair Lady”. It was published in 1913 and named after a Greek myth about a sculptor who tried to make his beautiful sculpture come to life.  Similarly to the myth, the protagonist of the play, professor Henry Higgins, spends 6 months...

If you are into aliens and extraterrestrial life, then the “Childhood End” by Arthur Clarke is a must read for you. Unlike what the Hollywood tries to portray in its action movie production, the book talks about a peaceful invasion by the race called Overlords. The book is a relatively short story that comprises almost half the century of Earth history under the rule of Overlords. It...

Edmond Rostand created “Cyrano de Bergerac”, that actually is not centered around the real life of this historic character. It is written in verse style, reminding the classical rhyme composition. The play drastically changed the landscape of realistic and dull theatrical production of the 19th century and was an immediate success. Cyrano is a poet who lived in France during the 17th...

Richard Nathaniel Wright is one of the most famous African American writers of the mid-20th century. He became the first black-skinned writer whose books were read by all of America. “Black Boy” is an autobiographical novel, which tells about author`s childhood. This work gave him the right to be called “the true father of all modern Negro literature.” Richard Nathaniel...

“Tuesdays with Morrie” belongs to the authorship of Mitch Albom. The book talks about the experience of author’s teacher Morrie Schwartz who was dying from ALS. The memoir found its place among many bestseller lists and was made into a movie in 1999. Morrie Schwartz was Albom’s favorite professor at the university. Despite the great connection between them, Mitch kept on...