Study guides: popular books - Page 8 | Just Great DataBase

“Angela's Ashes” is memoirs by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt that depicts his poor childhood in Limerick. It is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The book, which brought the author Pulitzer Prize for 1997. Poverty drove the Irish across the ocean to America, and it drove them back during the Great Depression. The family of Frank McCourt was forced to leave...

It might seem that our world is overwhelmed with misshapen romance examples: from movies, theaters to bookshops and Broadway shows, it’s all about broken hearts and misinterpreted feelings. Yet Jane Austen managed to write a novel that is different from any others. The book “Emma” is famous for many things, but one detail that stands out is the protagonist of the story. Emma...

“Call of the Wild” is a short adventure novel by American writer Jack London published in 1903. The novel relates to Jack London's early work. Often it is classified as children's literature since the main here is a dog. However, the maturity and depth of the ideas of the novel make it relevant to adult readers. This animated story reveals such problems as survival of the...

The story of Silas Marner by George Eliot goes all the way through from heartbreaking to heartwarming. The story is full of both realistically depicted issues of the rural society of that time and humor and hope that gradually help Silas (and us) find consolation and rebuild life anew. The story starts at its lowest: Silas Marner is falsely accused of theft and the society ostracizes him...

Ernest Hemingway’s best work, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was written in 1940 and continues to be translated, adapted, filmed and admired by the new generation today.  Robert Jordan arrives in Spain in 1937. He is a young American teacher who decided to help those he felt related to. Almost immediately he is tasked with damaging the bridge to undermine the enemy’s...

This novel written by Mark Twain is sometimes called the “Don Quixote vice versa”. This comparison indeed has something in it. The engineer from the Mark Twain’s time, Hank Morgan, is somehow transported to the times of King Arthur. But unlike Don Quixote, the last knight errant, Morgan considers himself the only pragmatic man in the land of hopeless romantics. He immediately...

“The Sound And The Fury” is a major creation of a great American writer William Faulkner. The author has perfected his writing style while compiling the novel, especially the parts that employ the stream of consciousness tool. The book was published in 1929 and it took the novel a couple of years to gain acknowledgment of the critics.  Words. Lots of words, different words, in...

William Faulkner has earned himself a title of the frontman of the modern literature. Experimenting with different forms and literary maneuvers, he created new ways to deliver a message and not once managed to surprise the reader. When writing “As I Lay Dying”, he invested a lot of thoughts and planning into making it clear and concise in form, yet deep and fascinating in meaning. He...

Light in August by William Faulkner is considered to be an American gothic novel. The author explores the themes of race, class, religion and status on American South. All the characters are for some reason outcasts in the society. They are different people with different backstories, but the fact that they are individuals standing against the bigoted and faceless crowd unites them. The gothic...

“Alas, Babylon” was written by Pat Frank in 1959 and it became a bestseller almost immediately. As Tolkien for the fantasy genre or Orwell for the future dystopian books, Pat Frank became a “grandfather” of all postapocalyptic fiction. “Alas, Babylon” shows us the bleak future after the nuclear war that devastated the world. The small town in the middle of...

“A Rose for Emily” is one of the most quotable and well-known works of William Faulkner. It is centered on author’s favorite topic – change, strangeness, openness, and flexibility. Even though some might find other meanings in it and they will be right. Located in a fictional city, the story can be summarized as a gothic plot about courage and patience. The events happen...

Jane Austen is one of the most famous figures in English romanticism of the first half of the 19th century. She is still considered to be the “first lady” of English literature. Her “novels of customs” are conquered for the third century by sincerity, subtle psychology and true English humor. “Northanger Abbey” is a literary parody on a gothic style and at the...

“Benito Cereno” is a thrilling novel about the events on the fictional Spanish slave ship. It is a part of Herman Melville’s book “The Piazza Tales” and is considered one of the brightest jewels of this book. One of the main features of it is the constant tension and suspect that our main character, the captain of the ship passing by, feels on San Dominick. The...

Cat’s Cradle is a novel by Kurt Vonnegut that is science fiction by style and the bitter satire by nature. The main theme of it is the huge impact of technical progress on humanity and the possible hazards that it can bring. The author uses as characters the children of the (fictional) scientist who worked on the nuclear bomb that was used in Hiroshima. This is deeply symbolic, because the...

Thanks to Mark Twain there exist very few people who say that they don’t know American literature. Published in 1884, his novel “Huckleberry Finn” became one of the most notable representatives of American books with its dominating notions of color, religion, manners, and tolerance.  In his early years, Mark Twain had a direct exposure to slavery: his family moved to...

Today is a good time to remember the childhood with this amazing Mark Twain book. Published in 1876, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” managed to make the author famous for the decade and centuries to come. Its plot and characters have become universal for all ages and continents. The book is about Tom Sawyer – antisocial and difficult teenager who lives with his aunt. Aunt Polly...

The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy the Gentleman is the book as long and descriptive as its name is. The name though is true to the core: Tristram Shandy depicts his life with the incredible accuracy, but he has his own opinion about each and every event of it including his own birth. This narrative style, that portrays an absent-minded gentleman who shifts from one topic to another so...

“Ulysses” is a legendary masterpiece of the Irish father of contemporary drama James Joyce. Published as a complete piece in 1922, today the book is considered to be the greatest work of modern literary genres. The author wrote a text that has not two layers, but dozens and hundreds of them.  “Ulysses”, which was given the name that derives from the ancient Odysseus...

Winesburg, Ohio is quite a difficult work to read, because, at first glance, its short stories are connected to each other only through some random characters. But the broader picture shows that the story can become whole even without the single plotline going through every short story. They are the pieces of human lives, sad, funny, tragic or romantic. Any story is deliberately taken out of the...

Cannery Row is still one of the most beloved and readable pieces of the classical literature, because of its overly sweet and somehow even naive atmosphere. Many critics call “Cannery Row” nostalgic, but the tone of their reviews is mostly positive. The town with clumsy but lovely Mack and his boys - who are former prisoners and generally homeless people from the one hand and behave...