Book summary

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

Let us face it: there's a whole lot about this crazy merry-go-round that we call life which may give us the impression that we've taken a couple too many mad pills. So here is the real question: what do you do about that atmosphere? Well, if you're Joseph Heller, you compose Catch-22, one of the most influential books of all time and a powerful indictment of humankind's most mad practice: warfare. The book--Heller's most famous by far--was printed in 1961, at a time when America was between 2......Read More

Hedda Gabler Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen is sort of a big deal. Following William Shakespeare, he is the most frequently produced dramatist ever in history. A Norwegian playwright writing in the last half of the 19th century, Ibsen is known as "the father of modern drama." Because he wrote in a then new realist fashion -- covering everyday topics and ordinary folks -- he set the platform for many realist authors to come, among them the very famous Anton Chekhov. Ibsen demonstrated that with quite realistic settings,......Read More

The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov was a Russian author known for his short stories and plays. The Cherry Orchard was his last play, made by the famed Moscow Art Theatre soon before his death in 1904. You may have discovered that Chekhov was a doctor. He started writing to encourage himself through medical school, also you may see the bedside way from his writing. He is a guy who has seen a great deal, and thinks of people with a combination of affection and ridicule. You are certainly able to see this aspect of......Read More

The Epic Of Gilgamesh S”n-l_qi-unninni

A guy tragically loses his best buddy and goes on a journey to discover the secret of immortality. You can not get a more classic story than that. You can not. Because The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest surviving work of literature from the planet. The version you're reading was written around 1200 BCE (which makes it about 400 years old than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey); however, the story of Gilgamesh dates back almost 3,000 years--when a guy named Gilgamesh was actually king of Uruk, a......Read More

Henry VIII William Shakespeare

Way back in 1613, the Globe Theater, where Shakespeare worked, burst into flames during a performance of his play Henry VIII. The king was making his grand entrance at Wolsey's house when a canon went off to signify his regal blood. We guess the actors fell asleep during fire safety day, because setting fire to a cannon at a wooden, thatched-roof construction doesn't sound like such a hot idea to us. Check out the one theatergoer describes it: "[C]ertain chambers being taken off in his entry,......Read More

The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales is the world's strangest road trip. It tells the story of a group of pilgrims (fancy word for travelers) on their way to Canterbury, who engage in a tale-telling contest to pass the time. Besides watching the interactions between the characters, we get to read 24 of the tales the pilgrims tell. And as it turns out, Medieval storytellers had some 'tude. Geoffrey Chaucer probably wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 1380s and early 1390s, after his retirement from life as......Read More

The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams

The writer, Tennessee Williams, was introduced into fame and made prey to the forties' equal of literary paparazzi because of it. The play revolves around a young guy begrudgingly behind the household his father has abandoned. Additionally, it offers a painfully shy and somewhat crippled sister personality, whose preoccupation with a collection of glass animals draws her away in reality. OK, so you never dwelt at the Great Depression. We did not either. Or abandoned your household for......Read More

The Color Purple Alice Walker

This novel features a little more than images of blossoms, eggplants, which bizarre McDonald's personality. It celebrities Celie, a poor black woman from the rural South, and follows her through about thirty decades of her life--out of repeated sexual abuse by her father as a young woman to even more abuse in the hands of her husband as an adult. If there's one thing that becomes evident from the first couple of chapters of this book, it is that sometimes life just is not fair. Fortunately,......Read More

Cathedral Raymond Carver

"Cathedral" is American writer and poet Raymond Carver's most famous story. It was first printed in The Atlantic Monthly at 1981. We are relying on this version for this manual. Carver, frequently in comparison to Ernest Hemingway, is known for his gloomy and stark portrayals of working-class people trapped in states of isolation. On the surface, "Cathedral" is a story about a disgruntled man whose experience with his wife's blind friend teaches him new ways of seeing. Beneath the surface it......Read More

Dr. Zhivago Boris Pasternak

Back in 1958, Boris Pasternak became only the second author (later Jean-Paul Sartre) to ever refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature. The thing is that while Sartre turned down the prize for philosophical reasons, Pasternak turned it down because the Soviet government would have given him a severe trouble if he'd dared to accept it. Wait, why? It was only one year before, in 1957, that Pasternak published his masterpiece Doctor Zhivago. He wrote the book in Russian, but since the book criticized......Read More

Henry VI, Part 3 William Shakespeare

George Lucas wasn't the first one to start a franchise in the middle of things--or at medias res, if you want to get all fancy about it. Star Wars was so popular that Lucas just had to go back and give us the prequel for the original 3 films. Some critics think Shakespeare did the identical thing: he wrote Henry VI, Parts two and 3 first, and after they were such crowd pleasers, he moved back and did a Part 1. Nowadays, we group Henry VI, Part 3 with other history plays known as the "first......Read More

The Devil In The White City Erik Larson

We are guessing you did not encounter a book called The Devil in the White City and think, "Aha! This sounds like a fun and lighthearted read!" And it is great that you're not hoping to read something uplifting--this is not a book for individuals that wish to feel warm n' fuzzy inside. He is handsome. He is suave. He has a large house in Chicago. He is the definition of a lady-killer. Before 20th-century serial killers such as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy made headlines (and accusations)......Read More

Easter, 1916 W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats's "Easter, 1916" is all about a historical event known as the Easter Uprising, that occurred in Ireland on Easter of (you have it) 1916. Basically, the British promised the Irish that they would give them free rule over their nation in 1914. But then just a small scuffle known as World War Ibroke out, and also the English totally backed down on their promise, telling the Irish that they'd get around to the entire home-rule thing when the war was finished. Well, a few Irish people did......Read More

And Then There Were None Agatha Christie

Welcome! You and nine strangers have only arrived at a mansion on a isolated island, with received invitations from several acquaintances or someone named U.N. Owen. Because that is not creepy. Anyhow, bring out the glowsticks and carbonated beverages, because you are here to paaaartay. Only it looks like your definition of "party" may be only a wee bit different from your own hosts. Turns out, you're really here to get a game. A game where your own life is at stake. (It was a distinct and......Read More

The American Henry James

Long before American tourists had a reputation for wearing board shorts and fanny-packs to the Vatican, Henry James was hoping to get a grip on what makes Americans tick. After all, by the time James fell The American in 1876, the U.S. had had a hundred years to find out a national identity. And James was writing in annually chock-full of important American events. We are speaking the dirtiest presidential election of all time, the founding of baseball's National League, along with the patent......Read More

Arcadia Tom Stoppard

The wide range of topics in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia has made it a popular for faculty freshman-year read-alongs, as a book which, ideally, may appeal to anyone from emo poets to science nerds. Early reviewers of Arcadia's initial run remarked that Tom Stoppard, like the Tin Man at The Wizard of Oz, had at long last discovered his heart. After almost three decades of plays that a saw more as intellectual exercises compared to heartfelt drama (Stoppard's first success was with Rosencrantz and......Read More

The Bacchae Euripides

Euripides (480-406 B.C.) was a misunderstood genius. He is reported to be the author of around 92 plays, but he only won the massive theatrical competition in the festival Dionysus five times. His final win was for his quintessential classic, The Bacchae. Unfortunately, Euripides didn't get to appreciate this final triumph. Being dead kind of got in the way. His son ended up directing the play for his deceased father. To add insult to injury, Euripides died by being ripped apart by a pack of......Read More

Henry VI, Part 1 William Shakespeare

Does Shakespeare make you feel somewhat nervous? Dude is a fairly major deal, after all. But fear not. It has a lot of the very same things which make George Lucas's cinematic masterpieces crowd pleasers for the ages. Much like Episode 1 of all Star Wars, Henry VI, Part 1 has some significant political intrigue going down, such as betrayal, scheming, plotting, along with lightsaber duels. Alright, not too much on the lightsaber duels--however there really are a great deal of battles and......Read More

Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The story is told from the perspective of Vandyck "Van" Jennings, a student of sociology who, along with two friends (Terry O. Nicholson and Jeff Margrave), forms an expedition party to research an area of uncharted land in which it's rumored resides a society consisting entirely of women. The 3 buddies do not fully believe the rumors because they are not able to think of a way how human reproduction could occur without men. The men assume about what a society of girls would be like, each......Read More

The Call Of The Wild Jack London

We'll admit it: we are unabashed dog fans. Give us a video of a corgi and you've ensured that people start squealing. Give us a IRL one-on-one action with real real-deal doggy, and you've basically sent us to cloud nine. Therefore it comes as no surprise that we adore The Call of the Wild. Because: it is about a dog. But if you asked Buck, the protagonist of Call of the Wild, at a magnificent voice: "Who is a fantastic doggy? Who is a fantastic doggy? Who's who, who?" The answer would likely......Read More

The Girl On The Train Paula Hawkins

Whether you're driving to wait tables in a restaurant at Topeka, riding the subway to Wall Street, or in a jeep heading out to search bloodthirsty koalas from the Australian Outback, the daily commute is a near-universal aspect of life. And this sail can be dull. It is the exact same old, same old, day in and day out. Yawn. There are any number of methods to pass the time, but our personal favorite is people watching (or at the Outback, wallaby watching). Individuals watching empowers us to be......Read More

Emma Jane Austen

Published in 1815, Emma was written in the height of Jane Austen's popularity. The Prince Regent, George, did Austen the "favor" of allowing her to devote Emma to him. Austen likely wasn't so excited about the possibility of dedicating her novel to a man who was, by all accounts, dissipated, drunk, and superficial. George set the standards of "gentlemanlike" behavior during his time. According to him, fashionable men were dandies -- the kind who would ride sixteen miles to London only to get a......Read More

Bridge To Terabithia Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia is one of the very classic books you could ever read about friendship, imagination, and reduction. And, with each of these components, the book won Katherine Paterson her very first Newbery Medal at 1978 (she won another for Jacob Have I Loved at 1981). However, like many other excellent children's books, it has come under controversial fire. It happens to deal with some pretty hard subject matter, such as passing and religion (by way of example, some critics think......Read More

The Comedy Of Errors William Shakespeare

The play is about two sets of identical twins separated as babies, along with the absurdity surrounding their casual reunion. Because this play appears premature along Shakespeare's writing timeline, critics have a tendency to discount it as his more juvenile work. It seems "textbook" in ways we are not really utilized to with Shakespeare -- it attracts from two previously classical plays, also has a motto of time, location, and action that only appears once again in Shakespeare's whole......Read More

All The Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy

We start with a funeral of all things. Things are not so great for John, sadly: his father seems quite sick, worn down with his support in World War II. His plan? To ride down to Mexico on a horse with his buddy, 17-year-old Lacey Rawlins. Well, they get different horses. On the way down they experience a child who calls himself Jimmy Blevins. Just like your annoying kid brother that constantly wants to tag along, he looks 13, however, says he is 16. His name is the same as a renowned radio......Read More

Hatchet Gary Paulsen

Gary Paulsen is a successful graduate of the college of hard knocks. From a young age, he was fending for himself, working odd jobs and camping out in the woods alone for months at a time. He has run the Iditarod (the famously grueling, 1,049-mile Alaskan sled-dog race) three times, trained horses at New Mexico, sailed around the Pacific at a beat-up sailboat, also dwelt in some of the harshest environments in the world. Oh, and college definitely wasn't his thing: he flunked from ninth grade,......Read More

David Copperfield Charles Dickens

Dickens's fiction appeared frequently from the popular journals of the day, such as Bentley's Miscellany along with his own periodical, Household Words (which conducted in 1850 to 1859). From 1850, at the age of 38, Dickens had established himself as a real literary celebrity (possibly along the lines of today's J.K. Rowling). Really, such as J.K. Rowling, Dickens's key claim to fame is twofold: first, '' he writes enduring characters which everyone remembers -- and we expect that, after......Read More

The Crucible Arthur Miller

Envision a super-constrictive time in history. Think appropriate social etiquette. Think mass hysteria which makes whole communities funny and paranoid. If, on the other hand, the very first image that popped into your head was of Salem's Anne Hale--bingo, you're 100% correct. This play is a comment on the claustrophobic Puritanical-code-of-conduct-fear-of-witches nonsense of Massachusetts from the 17th centuryand a comment on the claustrophobic, girdles-white-picket-fences-fear-of-Communists......Read More

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

Back in 1964, when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was initially released, the greatest thing possible was a gallivanting around a factory dedicated completely to making chocolate and other candies. Over half a century after, that is still the greatest thing possible. You're probably no stranger to this story about a poor little boy that tours Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory. It is likely Roald Dahl's most well-known book, but that may just be due to the famous 1971 film version, Willy......Read More

The Godfather Mario Puzo

Don Vito Corleone is the head of an American-Italian Mafia family. His household is just 1 of the 5 families in NY. These households are the most powerful crime organisations of the USA. Of those 5 has the Corleone family the greatest power. However, of course, in NY, there is a good deal of competition between the families. It has been 10 years since the lasst war. Ever since then, het power of Don Corleone was created. Everything remained quiet and calm until a man named Sollozzo came along.......Read More

Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk

Even though it wasn't the first bit he composed, the 1996 Fight Club was Chuck Palahniuk's first printed novel. Not able to get his very first novel, Invisible Monsters, printed because it was a little bit too upsetting, Palahniuk set out to write something much longer controversial. Palahniuk enlarged a brief story he had written into a full scale novel, also Fight Club was born kicking and screaming into the world, ready to take names. After achieving success with Fight Club (in no small part......Read More

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury

Picture it: A future in which books are banned and critical thinking is contrary to the law. If you're one of those men and women who simply can not stand college and all of its pesky reading and thinking, this may sound like a pretty sweet deal. Not too fast, Goofus. You only have to get a few pages into Fahrenheit 451 to realize this bookless future is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sure, the dreaded book report may be something of the past, but life seems much cruddier withoutDickens,......Read More

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof Tennessee Williams

The play is about a Mississippi family and was composed during a time which was in love with good ole family values along with the shock-value of blue jeans. Following the destruction and insanity of the two world wars, a lot of America trended toward the concept of the stable nuclear family. Think June Cleaver's own hair and Pleasantville black-and-whiteness. Nonetheless, in the years prior to the creation of Cat, two exceptionally controversial books about the sexual lives of people have......Read More

2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke

Crystal summons of one or the other, and they are, regardless of himself, doing anew motion: the naughty palms knot the initial node on the Earth, the leaderpicks up a stone and attempts to hit the target. His mission is achieved - on the Earth appears a monster endowed withreason. Urgently predicted on the Moon the chairman of the National Council ofAstronautics learns that magnetic intellect seen a strong distortion of themagnetic field in the Tycho crater region, and excavations from the......Read More

The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao Junot D’az

This book is such a literary rockstar that we are pretty sure you already know what it is about. The Short Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao made a huge splash when Riverhead books printed it in 2007. It won a bucketload of awards, including the John Sargent Senior First Novel Prize along with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction. No, this book kept winning larger and more prestigious awards such as the National Book Critics Circle Award along with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Considering......Read More

Henry VI, Part 2 William Shakespeare

Do you remember the very first time you ever wrote something? Maybe it was a brief story for a class, or even a journal entry, or a strangely specific want list for Santa Claus. But what if it was preserved for all the world to see, 400 years from today? Some scholars think this is the very first play Shakespeare ever wrote. It is tricky to say for sure, but many scholars think this play was written way back in 1590-1591, when Shakespeare was 26 years old. That is a decade before he'd get to......Read More

Candide Voltaire

Envision your preferred white-hot humor that lampoons all in their path--state, Amy Schumer. Now, roll into the acerbic observations of your treasured public intellectual--state, Ta-Nehisi Coates. In the end, add the type of world-building which rockets books to the top of the bestseller list--such as our guy George R.R. Martin. You simply ended up with someone kind of like Voltaire, the literary power of nature behind Candide. Nothing is safe from the scathing commentary Voltaire provides in......Read More

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Douglas Adams

What if the world ended tomorrow--where could you get your favourite beverage? That is the situation faced by Arthur Dent, totally normal English man (favored drink: Tea). Arthur is not a fanatic--he is really pretty dull--but once Earth is destroyed, Arthur is thrust into a series of mad adventures which he is totally unprepared for. That might sound as a catastrophe (after all, Earth is where our favourite food is made), but take it out of us: it is totally a humor. To know The Hitchhiker's......Read More

Cyrano De Bergerac Edmond Rostand

Take out your hankies--you're going to be equally yelling with laughter and yelling with severe sadness before this play is finished. Seriously: select an emotion and Cyrano de Bergerac will have you sense it. You wish to swoon? You would like to feel scorn? Pity? Cyrano's body difficulties are you covered. Stress? There's a dang battle scene that is filled with humor (and blood and guts). Nevertheless, the significant emotion you'll feel throughout the reading (or viewing, in case you're......Read More

The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

At a 1962 interview, Sylvia Plath commented that personal experience was interesting only when it wasn't "a sort of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience." She worried that personal experience ought to be made "related, and related to the bigger things, the larger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on" (origin). In other words, personal experience is only interesting if a connection is made to big-picture problems such as atomic warfare or the Holocaust. The simple fact......Read More

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

When we meet our narrator Huck Finn, he is in Missouri getting "sivilized" ("civilized") by 2 sisters, an unnamed widow and also a girl named Miss Watson. Nonetheless, it's hard out there for a street urchin, and he spends a lot of the time avoiding bathrooms and teaming up with Tom to punk innocent bystanders--such as Miss Watson's slave Jim. When Huck's spidey sense starts a'tingling, '' he signals over all of his money to Judge Thatcher. In time: Huck's deadbeat dad shows up and needs the......Read More

The Chosen Chaim Potok

It is the story of two Jewish adolescent boys coming of age in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York between 1944 and 1949. The novel is loaded with Jewish history, also contains an assortment of views on Judaism. Author Chaim Potok, such as the 2 adolescents in his novel, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His mother and father were strictly observant Orthodox Jews and his household did not encourage his interest in writing -- they did not need some of their sons engaged with secular pursuits. This......Read More

Dune Frank Herbert

Envision a dune. If you're like most people, you likely see a large heap of sand. However, this one man, Frank Herbert, watched something else completely. The article was never finish, however, the research took hold of Herbert's head, and also an idea for a story began massaging at the back of his mind. Well, not exactly history. Herbert would shell out another six decades researching and writing the story sparked by an easy visit to the Oregon Coast. Then the story will originally be printed......Read More

Fences August Wilson

August Wilson was born Fredrick August Kittle on April 27, 1945. His parents were Frederick Kittel, a German immigrant, and Daisy Wilson, an African woman woman. The playwright never saw much of his father growing up. He was mostly raised by his mother, in an apartment with no hot water, at Pittsburgh's Hill District, a largely black neighborhood. When he was 20, August Kittle formally became August Wilson. He ditched his absent father's name altogether, aligning himself with his mother, her......Read More

Antigone (The Oedipus Plays) Sophocles

Antigone selects up at the same (uber-dismal) location that Oedipus in Colonus leaves away. Oedipus has just passed away from Colonus, and Antigone and her husband choose to return to Thebes with the intention of assisting their brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, avoid a prophecy that predicts they will kill each other in a struggle for the throne of Thebes. But upon her arrival in Thebes, Antigone finds that the two of her brothers are dead. Antigone defies the legislation, buries her brother,......Read More

Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko is a fairly rad chick, also quite the accomplished writer to boot--but she likely would not tell you any of that himself. When she released Ceremony in 1977, she was unwilling to accept the name of "first female Native American novelist." As she points out in this interview, a whole lot about Native American history has been lost. "There could have been a Native American girl long ago that we don't know about," Silko speculates. Sounds like someone's been eating her fair......Read More

Dubliners James Joyce

For the majority of the last hundred decades, in case you wanted an interactive geographical adventure of Dublin--the sights, the sounds, and particularly the folks--you could not do much better than read the fifteen connected short stories of James Joyce collection. Most editions of the collection contain two or three city maps from the landing pages, but it becomes fairly clear early on that the stories themselves produce a much better map of the Irish capital because they dig deep into the......Read More

Henry IV, Part 1 William Shakespeare

Henry IV Part 1 is the story of Prince Hal (the future King Henry V of England), a fifteenth century crazy child who carouses with offenders and commoners, helps his loser chums rob his father's treasury, and spends all his time at seedy bars. This, needless to say, all takes place before Prince Hal's glorious "reformation," when he transforms himself out of a total disgrace into a noble leader, that will help set down a rebel uprising that threatens his father's reign, also kills the man whose......Read More

Brokeback Mountain Annie Proulx

Remember that film Brokeback Mountain from some time back? It awakened a great deal of controversy, nabbed itself an Academy Award nomination or two, also had fair stand-up comments quoting it's renowned "I really wish I knew how to quit you lineup." We bet you remember that. However, what you may not know is that because Hollywood is currently legally prohibited from generating first ideas, the film Brokeback Mountain was really based on a brief story called "Brokeback Mountain" composed by......Read More

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain

The very first time we meet Tom Sawyer, he is in Aunt Polly's pantry, stealing from the jam jar. But Tom gets from the punishment by tricking the regional boys into paying him for the liberty of whitewashing the fence. Tom heads off to love himself. On his way back home, he sees a woman standing in Jeff Thatcher's home. He falls hopelessly in love and starts displaying to her. The following day, in Sunday school, Tom employs the loot he made with the fencing strategy to get a lot of "tickets"......Read More

Eumenides Aeschylus

It is like Mockingjay. In other words, it is the next installment of a trilogy of blockbuster hits... except that the crowds that pushed out the theater to see the highest of The Eumenides were toga-wearing Ancient Greeks. Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia trilogy (Part I'm Agamemnon, and Part II is Libation Bearers) to be achieved back-to-back-to-back, on one moment. Those Athenian audiences had quite the attention period. Each collection of plays in Ancient Greece will normally be connected by a......Read More

Everyday Use Alice Walker

It is pretty fitting that Alice Walker's "Regular Use" is contained in a brief story collection known as In Love and Trouble. You know, because it has got love... and difficulty, trouble, trouble. Walker released this collection of stories in 1973, just a decade before she won the Pulitzer Prize for just a tiny book you have heard of predicted The Color Purple. Like this super famous novel, "Regular Use" explores African women's struggles with racial identity and racism through a particularly......Read More

A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

Remember that film, The Perfect Storm? Where a whole group of natural phenomena coincide in just the right way to make George Clooney really sad on his small boat in the center of a freakishly raging sea? Well, that is pretty much the exact same thing which occurred in 1843, when A Christmas Carol was printed. Alright, see you later! ... Oh, sorry, you're right, we must likely unpack that small analogy before peaceing out entirely. Just what exactly were the components of the perfect storm......Read More

East Of Eden John Steinbeck

He has written about mice and men, and a few wrathful grapes, however at his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck sets his sights a bit high and takes on the Book of Genesis. That is right--our guy Steinbeck might have been writing in 1952 and based his story during that awkward time when the 19th century became the 20th, but his subject matter comes from manner further back. But even though Steinbeck stepped into religious territory, Easy of Eden is still chock full of all the classic Steinbeck......Read More

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers makes us feel just like slackers. She also wrote and published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter at 1940, when she was twenty-three years old. Yeah. The novel was a breakout hit and jump-started McCullers' exceptionally successful literary career. During the upcoming twenty-ish decades, she wrote novels, short stories, plays, reviews, articles, poems, as well as Hollywood scripts. In case you were not impressed enough already, she did all of this while combating......Read More

Death In Venice Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a novella about a writer who falls in love with a young Polish boy, which has been raising eyebrows ever since its publication in 1912. To be clear, when we state author, we are referring to an adult one--that means this love is all types of forbidden. Before you consider burning your copy of the book in outrage, though, consider this: This book is really about artwork. And desire. And how art and want are super entangled with each other. Can it be a sexy mess?......Read More

Hard Times Charles Dickens

In England, at the middle of the nineteenth century (a.k.a. Victorian times) Charles Dickens was totally fed up with Utilitarianism and Political Economy. Whoa, don't panic! Shmoop to the what-on-earth-is-that-big-capitalized-word rescue! Political Economy is exactly what they predicted economics back in the day, and Utilitarianism is the idea that we ought to put up society to do the greatest good for the most number of individuals. It sounds great when we say it like this, but how can anyone......Read More

As I Lay Dying William Faulkner

William Faulkner composed his fifth novel, As I Lay Dying, in only six months in 1929--in case you wished to feel bad about the past six months of your lifetime. Sounds easy (and depressing) sufficient, however you need to remember: this is Faulkner. Nothing is straightforward. As I Lay Dying is famed because of its experimental narrative technique, which Faulkner began in his previous novel The Sound and the Fury. In As I Lay Dying, fifteen figures--many of them with the last name......Read More

Great Expectations Charles Dickens

One chilly and misty evening, a tiny boy meets an escaped offender on the marshes near England's coast. No, it is not the launching of a TV crime drama (though it may be)--it is the beginning of one of Charles Dickens' most renowned novels: Good Expectations. With two chapters Weekly, Great Expectations (along with other serialized novels like it) were as close as Victorian England got to Breaking Bad or Mad Men. People waited patiently each week to the next "incident" to arrive at the......Read More

The Clouds Aristophanes

Think that John Oliver devised the art of providing a healthy dose of cultural opinion when making folks laugh? Nope, sorry--folks have been doing this for centuries, also Aristophanes is one of the masters. His comment about the philosopher Socrates (who appears as a personality) was so pointed that a few (like any unknown dude named Plato) believed that the play was responsible for producing the bad rep which eventually got Socrates attempted and implemented. Consequently, in the event that......Read More

The Aeneid Virgil

After the destruction of Troy, the Trojan prince Aeneas leads a small band of survivors in search of a new home in Italy. Unfortunately, as they sail on their way, they get spotted by the goddess Juno. Juno hates the Trojans because of an old grudge, and because they are destined to become the Romans, who'll ruin Carthage, her favorite city. Fortunately, Aeneas has connections. In fact, his mom, Venus, is the goddess of connections. She introduces him to Dido, the beautiful queen of Carthage,......Read More

Crime And Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky

Welcome to the novel whose name sounds like a cross between a game show and a episode of Law & Order: SVU...but is really one of the most read, most studied, and many (in)famous works of literature from the entire world. In fact, the best method to read Crime and Punishment would be to not only feel all that pressure except to enjoy it. This is a novel all about the vice grip of extreme pressures: the pressures of society, of class, of psychology, of morality, of Christianity, and of what it......Read More

The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath pretty much has a V.I.P. pass to each "Top 100 Books of All Time" list in the world. It is a massive deal. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and aided John Steinbeck nab the Nobel Prize in 1962--they gave Steinbeck the Nobel for (among other things) that his "keen social perception." This comprehension of society's ills is razor sharp, and cuts deep. And lots of this has to do with the fact that this novel is brutally honest. In the time of the Dust Bowl, when tens of......Read More

Grendel John Gardner

Now's the time to ask yourself what you really know about heroes. No, really: what do you know to be true about them? Got it? Now collect all that up into a little mental sack and throw it from your mind. Inside this Grendel, Gardner--a pretty challenging guy in real life, too--compels us to look closely at what we've believed about noble behavior since the earliest of times. And what better means to do this than to go back to Beowulf, the earliest epic poem composed in (what passes for)......Read More

The House Of Mirth Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth was printed in 1905 by Edith Wharton, a well-known author in the famous and wealthy New York family. Wharton, in most of her novels, investigates and exposes the opulent society where she dwelt. She understood the intricacies of high society such as the back of her hands, and wealthy New York society is indeed the popular topic of House of Mirth. The novel follows Lily Bart, a beautiful young lady on the search for a wealthy husband, as she navigates the social landscape and......Read More

The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit, a little, beardless monster with hairy feet who's quite social and enjoys the conveniences of home. His mother was a member of the Took family, that are considered a tiny intermittent because they were rumored to have intermarried with a fairy and because they adore adventure. Bilbo himself is quite well off and fond of food and clothes. His property is a beautifully furnished hole in the floor. Bilbo invites him to tea the next day; Gandalf makes a peculiar mark on......Read More

1984 George Orwell

In the year 1984, London is the primary town of the state of Oceania known as Airstrip One. Oceania, alongside Eurasia and Eastasia, is one of the 3 totalitarian superpowers into that the entire world is currently split. The ruling power in Oceania is popularly known as the Party and headed from the mysterious Big Brother, whose face appears all around the city on posters reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." His job would be to change, or "rectify," documents and documents so as to make them......Read More

Bleak House Charles Dickens

Just before writing Bleak House at 1852, Charles Dickens took a break from being a novelist. He was in the middle of his profession, had already written some exceptionally popular books (including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol), and was already a super-famous guy (also on his way to being the most well-known person in the world). However, he took a couple of years off. Not to unwind or something, but to work on some other stuff: finding funding for cleaning up London slums, being a public......Read More

As You Like It William Shakespeare

Cross-dressing ladies, a professional "idiot," and mass weddings galore. No, this is not another incident of Maury; it is Shakespeare's classic comedy, As You Like It. 1599, however, was a particularly awesome season for our favourite dramatist. Aside from penning As You Like It, he also whipped up a couple of other plays--Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, also Henry V. You may have heard of them. For people who aren't comfortable, the Globe is pretty much the most well-known theater of......Read More

Heart Of Darkness Joseph Conrad

We really can not say it better than Joseph Conrad himself. A crazy story of a journalist who becomes director of a station at the (African) inside and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. Thus described, the topic seems funny, but it is not. No--not funny in any way. Place in the African Interior and based on Conrad's own experiences as the captain of a Belgian steamer, Heart of Darkness is not much enjoy the rousing adventure story that it sounds like. of colonialism. And in......Read More

A Good Man Is Hard To Find Flannery O'Connor

It is somewhat hard to know how to present a story as totally polarizing as "A great Man is Hard to discover." Many people today think that it's a cynical story, uncompromising in the way it brings out human pettiness and manipulation. Others think it's a uproarious black humor--such as a movie by the Coen Bros or some twisted R. Crumb comicbook. Still others think that it's an uplifting depiction of the mystical ways God works through human beings over and over their own wills. However you......Read More

Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Regardless of what Hollywood would like you to think, there was no flash of lightning, no bolt through the head, no scientist yelling "It is alive! ," without a flat-top haircut. Throughout the summer of 1816, eighteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwinwas hanging outside at a Swiss lake home with her fan and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley; renowned English poet, Lord Byron; along with Byron's doctor John Polidori. (And a few others, but these are the essential names.) Thus, you're bored......Read More

A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen

Envision what Law and Order will be like at verse--Oh, dearest judge, do not slam your gavel; for when you do, justice will probably overtake. (No. Only... no.) Or what Orange is the New Black will be like when the offenders broke out from bizarre, flowery soliloquies in the drop of the hat. Or if Authentic Detective were put at a castle or among the upper-upper classes... because that is just where play took place. Ibsen is frequently called "the father of modern drama" because he helped......Read More

The Fall Of The House Of Usher Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author in the first half of the 19th century famous for scaring the hell out of the readers. He's the master of dismemberment, underground crypts, murder, suffocation, ghosts, the living dead, haunted mansions, bloodstream, and all the other amazing features of your favourite horror films. He has been hugely popular in France, and several scholars attribute this popularity to the stunning translations of his work by the poet Baudelaire, that left Poe poetic......Read More

The Diary Of A Young Girl Anne Frank

Welcome to one of the most well-known and influential books ever released. The writer? A fifteen-year-old woman named Anne Frank. The book? Her journal. Yup. This is easily the most famed diary ever maintained. This journal is the story of Anne-- a young Jewish woman and aspiring author in hiding from the Nazis. Anne's journal, a devastating and relatable coming-of-age story, was left behind in the Secret Annex, but kept protected by a buddy, Miep Gies. Anne's father, Otto Frank, was the......Read More

Beloved Toni Morrison

A mother slits her baby girl's throat because she has this deranged notion that she is saving her daughter from a fate worse than death. Sounds like one of those crazy mothers who ends up on the day news, right? Close. It's actually a real story: back in 1856, a runaway slave named Margaret Garner murdered one of her kids--a two-year-old girl--with a butcher knife, to be able to keep her away from slave catchers. She'd have murdered her other children and himself, too, but she was captured......Read More

The Cask Of Amontillado Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, an American short-story author, essayist, and poet, printed "The Cask of Amontillado" in 1846. It is a story of revenge, murder, torture, and addiction put in a vast underground Italian catacomb (underground Peninsula). Additionally, it is a trip into the mysterious and dark recesses of the individual mind. He along with his brother and sister had been orphaned soon before Poe's second birthday, and so were each taken in by various families. Maybe this can help explain why he......Read More

Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner

Is the story of a legend along with the men and women who let it over and over again. In September 1909, 20-year-old Quentin Compson proceeds to visit Rosa Coldfield, an elderly girl in his hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi. That exact same night, Quentin goes through the story again with his father, Mr. Compson, that tells the story in another standpoint. Five months after, when he goes to Harvard, he reinvents the story with his roommate, Shreve. In 1833, Thomas Sutpen came to Jefferson and......Read More

Hamlet William Shakespeare

If extraterrestrials were to visit Planet Earth, we would probably place a copy of Hamlet within their own welcome basket. It is that great. Well over 400 years following William Shakespeare composed the play between 1599 and 1601, readers and audiences are still connecting with it. Shakespeare was a groundbreaking pioneer at the time and wrote plays which were totally different from anything the world had ever seen before. He investigated the human soul and what happens when it's challenged.......Read More

Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt

Well, it is certainly not a genie in a bottle or a space filled with Grammy awards or a museum in Ireland. It is the archetypal rags-to-riches caliber of their stories. It is when a generally obscure person rises from poverty to Gatsbyesquewealth and fame. Our boy Frank McCourt, a child from the slums of Limerick who suffers from starvation and poverty during the majority of his early life, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in his robe because of his comic memoir (yeah, that is right--comedian),......Read More

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

Released in 1925, The Great Gatsby is place in nyc and Long Island during the Prohibition era (remember, the Prohibition era was a time where alcohol was prohibited, however old you had been -- yowsa). Flappers? It has got them. Parties? You bet? Cool cars? Absolutely--but more on this in a moment. The issue is, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald did not see the Jazz Age as all about fashionable music and sparkly clothes. He associated the whole period with materialism ("I need things! A Great Deal of......Read More

Angels In America Tony Kushner

Ever since the introduction of the monster megahit Angels in America, Kushner has been one of the most widely admired playwrights on the planet. Angels investigates the AIDS epidemic in the gay community in the 1980s. It was known as by theater critic Frank Rich of the New York Times "a radial rethinking of American political play." This revolutionary bit of theater basically won every award a play could potentially triumph: a Pulitzer, a Tony, a Drama Desk, a New York Critics Circle -- the......Read More

Henry V William Shakespeare

Composed around 1599, Henry V is the last play in William Shakespeare' second tetralogy, a set of history plays which contains Richard II, Henry Part 1, and Henry IV Part two. In the previous works, Shakespeare portrays Henry's days as a crazy and reckless adolescent. In Henry V, "Wild Prince Hal" has long since grown up into a competent king who's determined to invade France and lay claim to the French throne. Though written about the early 1400s, for countless years audiences have discovered......Read More

Alice In Wonderland Lewis Carroll

Alice is sitting on a riverbank with her sister sense exhausted when a White Rabbit works by, assessing its pocket-watch and declaring that it is late. Alice jumps upward, follows it down a huge bunny hole, and embarks on a collection of wacky and wild adventures on earth known as Wonderland. Initially Alice is trapped in a hallway of locked doors, not able to go through the only door to which she has a secret because it is tiny and she is too large. She decides to make it her aim to locate a......Read More

The Catcher In The Rye J. D. Salinger

Over the course of 3 days, a rich kid who can not stop getting expelled from every college he attends wanders around Manhattan trying to get (1) drunk and (2) lucky. No, it's not the storyline of an unreleased Gossip Girl season (RIP). It is the storyline of Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's beloved, prohibited, reviled, worshiped, and--well, let us just say polarizing 1951 novel about a depressed prep school boy with a heart of gold. After rocketing almost immediately to the top of the......Read More

Flowers For Algernon Daniel Keyes

It is a story as old as time, or at least as old as Warner Bros.: a super-smart laboratory mouse along with his sidekick strategy to conquer their captors and take over the entire world in Flowers for Algernon. Alright, so our main man, Charlie, is a bit more into living an experimental operation than creating minions bow to his greatness--and he also is not a mouse (although his sidekick is)--but writer Daniel Keyes is surely interested in what happens when you futz around with intellect of the......Read More

The Awakening Kate Chopin

It is no big shocker which The Awakening garnered some genuinely abysmal reviews when it was initially released. You're a dude, because you have a) a job as b) a literary writer. You're sure of a couple of concrete truths: that guys like yourself are the superior sex, which girls are too malleable and weak-minded to be independent, so which becoming a wife and mother is the #1 fantasy of 100 percent of the fairer gender, which dudes are cursed with sexual appetites, which ladies have only......Read More

American Dream Edward Albee

If you would like to learn why Norman Mailer is one of the most controversial authors of all-time, then look no further than A American Dream. Even the writing procedure was odd: Mailer wrote one thing each month, releasing it in serialized form from the pages of Esquire. Though Mailer was motivated by the serialized literature popularized of authors such as Charles Dickens, his predecessors typically composed the entire novel beforehand--not a little bit each time they tore a page off their......Read More

Doctor Faustus Christopher Marlowe

This one's got it all, people: devils, damsels, and dastardly deeds. Doctor Faustus is the story of a fantastic scholar who determines a modest magical mojo will fix his ennui. The catch? He has to signal his soul over to the devil so as to get that mojo workin'. The legend of Faustus was already well-known in Europe by the time Christopher Marlowe turned it into a play in 1594. It had been making the rounds as a folktale in Germany since the early 1500s, and was translated into English and......Read More

Go Tell It On The Mountain James Baldwin

James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), is an intense, time-warping novel that goes back and forth in memory over more than seventy years, peeks inside the brains of multiple personalities... and still all takes place during the course of one twenty-four hour period. Additionally, it somehow manages to touch on pretty much every controversial topic in US society. It divides into racism, both in Nyc and the Jim Crow South. It explores the poverty and anger that racism......Read More

All The King's Men Robert Penn Warren

Since the novel is not linear, it's easy to get confused at different factors. In keeping with the anti-chronological character of All the King's Men, this summary is going to do a little bit of time traveling, but we will keep you up to speed on the time period where the events are happening. When we first meet our protagonist, Jack Burden, '' he's remembering a road trip to Mason City with Willie Stark, Tom Stark (Willie's son), and Lucy Stark (Willie's spouse). The year is 1933, three years......Read More

Around The World In Eighty Days Jules Verne

When you think about science fiction authors, what springs to mind? If you mentioned super nerds with epic distance fantasies, you're not totally wrong. But that is not the entire picture, either. To prove our point, without further ado, we'd love to present you to Jules Verne, writer of Around the World in Eighty Daysalong with the granddaddy of science fiction. There's no distance, no aliens, nothing futuristic to be discovered. Great looking, wealthy, ridiculously merry, and unfalteringly......Read More

Barn Burning William Faulkner

"Barn Burning" is a brief story by American writer William Faulkner. It was first published in Harpers in June of 1939. (Click here to see the situation. ) Faulkner, winner of a Nobel Prize for literature, and two Pulitzer Prizes, is a literary giant, best known for his novels As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, also for the Brief story "A Rose for Emily." Like "Emily," "Barn Burning" is often taught and anthologized. It won the O. Henry prize the season it was printed, and has been......Read More

Brave New World Aldous Huxley

Have you ever been on a vacation that simply did not go well? Maybe you got food poisoning, or you struggled with your loved ones, or got bad news in the home? Or maybe you found your boss' illegitimate kid and long-lost spouse, brought them home with you, and continued to harness them before your lifetime fully unraveled? Alright, maybe we are getting a bit too special here. However, this vacation-gone-wrong is pretty much exactly what happens to bad Bernard Marx at Aldous Huxley's Brave New......Read More

Daisy Miller Henry James

Despite all of this wonderful greatness, the novella was originally refused for publication. (Keep this in mind the next time you go on a job interview.) The difficulty was, the American writer believed the story would rage American readers. Instead, James had to sell the story to the English, who had been thrilled by the charm and humor of their latest import. According to the writer, editor, and writer William Dean Howells, English readers were allegedly divided between "Daisy Millerites and......Read More

Beowulf Unknown

It's composed in Old English, the language spoken in Britain before the Norman Conquest in 1066--which is, before the extensive influence of French on the English we speak today. Still, Beowulf has come to be known as the foundational epic of English and British culture, in much the same way in which the Iliad is a foundational epic for historical Greece. Beowulf is a tough mixture of Big crucial Ideas that, like Old English language, might be unknown to you initially. The idea is that your......Read More

The Hound Of The Baskervilles Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Did you know that in The Hound of the Baskervilles, world-famous detective Sherlock Holmes is a zombie? It's true. In a manner of speaking. As we mention in our "In a Nutshell" section for The Return of Sherlock Holmes, writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (spoiler alert!) Kills off his famous detective in the conclusion of the short story "The Final Problem," published in 1894. We may all love Sherlock Holmes, the classic Victorian gentleman detective who uses his colorful observations to reason......Read More

All Quiet On The Western Front Erich Maria Remarque

The narrator gives us a highlights and background characters. Kat, who is twenty five, is the respected leader of the team and can be admired by Paul because of his practical abilities and gut instincts. He is contrasted with Himmelstoss (a former postman), who's largely incompetent, but has adopted every ounce of power his army rank has given him. Paul goes back to visit his buddy Kemmerich at the hospital, only to see him die. Hospital orderlies quickly eliminate his entire body so another......Read More

A&P John Updike

The narrator is assessing markets when he realizes that three barefoot women in bathing suits have walked into the store. The leader of the trio, that has her bathing suit straps down, grabs his attention. She walks like a princess throughout the store, never turning to look at the narrator or his coworker, Stokesie. The narrator has pleasure watching the jolt of the other customers, that are not utilized to seeing bathing suits in the A&P. She gets into the narrator's checkout lane and begs......Read More

Antony And Cleopatra William Shakespeare

Antony and Cleopatra were fairly much the Brangelina of early times,only much more striking. Inside this catastrophe--composed by none other than Shakespeare himself around 1608--Mark Antony (no, not who Marc Anthony) and Cleopatra drop in love. Straightforward enough, right? Wrong. These two are not your typical star-crossed fans. Oh no. They both rule over two of the most significant empires in history: Rome and Ancient Egypt. The play opens into Cleopatra's palace in Alexandria, Egypt.......Read More

The Giver Lois Lowry

Imagine if you had been told that, as old twelvemonths, you had to get a job... and then keep it for the rest of your life. Terrifying? Try this: imagine if you had been always been viewed over by an obscure brute force. Yikes? All of this is dreadful, however The Giver is the gift that keeps on giving (you nightmares): envision a society in which there are not any emotions. No love, no hatred, to bliss, no jealousy, no aggravation. Excuse us while we spend the following day beneath our......Read More

The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, a freelance author and 1942 Smith graduate, intertwines anecdotes and observations from her own life with facts and evaluation from her research, creating a work with which the feminine reader can readily identify. Her starting point was her own personal experience. Friedan had everything a woman from the 1950's was supposed to have--a fantastic husband, wonderful kids, financial security, and a great house--but she was not entirely happy. Society stated......Read More

The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie

The narrator introduces himself to us: he's a hydrocephalic, meaning that he was born with water on the mind. He's also a budding artist and expects to use his voice to connect with individuals. His family is too poor to afford veterinary attention, or so the narrator's father shoots the bad pup. The child is, of course, devastated. Poverty does really suck. Rowdy spends quite a little time with the narrator's family, because his own is abusive. The two move to a powwow together where Junior......Read More

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

The name The Handmaid's Tale sounds sort of... perky. Like it may be a saucy portion of the life 'n' times of a Christmas. Or a zany romp where many servants compare the goings-on of their companies. Words such as perky, saucy, and zany would never Be utilized to describe the contents of Margaret Atwood's most renowned work. Instead, this novel might be classified as frightening, gloomy, and cruel and unusual. The Handmaid's Tale, a best-selling book first released in 1985, was advertised as a......Read More

Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy

You remember the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. From the story a beautiful young woman has to choose between three guys: one is too dull and creepy, so one is too sexy and sleazy and one is juuuuuuuuust right. Oh, wait. Sorry. That's Far from the Madding Crowd we are talking about. Within this novel by Thomas Hardy, we haven't a love triangle but a love rectangle, where three different guys vie for the love of super-pretty Bathsheba. This all goes down in the English countryside,......Read More

Ethan Frome Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome, first published in 1911, shows off Edith Wharton's down in the dumps chops. This lady was as successful as they come, and most of her things wasn't at the super uplifting category of literature. In addition to the zillions of other things she composed, you may have known of her Pulitzer Prize-winning society novel The Age of Innocence. Kind of a big deal, because she was the first woman ever awarded the Pulitzer. And in case that wasn't baller sufficient, she was also the first......Read More

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Jules Verne

Everyone in Europe and America is speaking about a mysterious monster which has been sinking ships. Last, the United States government decides to intervene and commissions the Abraham Lincoln to catch and identify the monster. The three guys find themselves on top of the mysterious monster, which is in fact a submarine vessel. They are taken on board and put in a cellphone. The guys meet Captain Nemo, the commander of the boat, known as the Nautilus. He informs them they could remain on board......Read More

A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess

Should you pay attention to the covers of a number of publications, you know you can (a) get some super-toned arms, (b) start your meditation practice, or (c) transform your home into a clutter-free minimalist paradise. In other words, for the average person, three weeks is sufficient time to either achieve something small or start something bigger. Evidence #1 that Anthony Burgess is anything but an average human: he wrote his most famous novel in only three weeks. Evidence #2 that Anthony......Read More

The Age Of Innocence Edith Wharton

All of New York's high society has been gathered for a production of Gounod's opera Faust,such as Newland Archer, recently engaged to fairly May Welland. The appearance of May's cousin, the controversial Countess Olenska, who's--gasp! --separated from her husband, causes a stir in New York society also turns Newland Archer's world upside down. Countess Olenska settles at a bohemian area and leads an unconventional way of life. Remember that unconventional in 1870s New York basically means she......Read More

The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown

You know when you read a bestseller and think, "Hey, this thriller is awesome with all its intrigue and car chases and murders, but what it reallyneeds is a few theological lectures and art history thrown in?" No? Then you obviously weren't looking for a beach read in 2003, when The Da Vinci Code arrived on the scene, then climbed to the tippy top of the New York Times Bestseller list and proceeded to stay there for two whole years. We may sound like we're being snarky (us? snarky? never!) ,......Read More

Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell

You can not get Gone With the Wind into Short. It's enormously--perhaps even ridiculously--long. Seriously: The only real difference on the planet that can contain this beast of a book is probably the Coco de Mer. Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel is a terrific, sweeping tale about the catastrophe of the Civil War, the end of civilization as the South's known it, and love turned to dust. It is, in short, a book in which everything goes horribly wrong. You'd think that as long and as tragic as......Read More

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon was a writer and illustrator of children's books, who one day decided to write a new book for adults instead. An image popped into his head -- of a dead poodle in someone's front yard, stabbed with a pitchfork -- and he believed it was just about the funniest thing in the world (origin). However, before we give him the old "you're nuts" therapy, let us take a look at what that turned into. From this picture alone, Haddon established the hugely successful The Curious Incident of the......Read More

Glengarry Glen Ross David Mamet

Sure, observing someone stab another person at the trunk or seeing him skirt the legislation could be interesting, but toss a little competition from the combination, and things could get downright thrilling. This is the form of planet David Mamet is known for producing--a world filled with conflict and tension in which folks behave badly, and we as the audience only get to sit back and appreciate. Wait--did you think it was all just driving around and showing individuals fine homes? Nope. That......Read More

Dracula Bram Stoker

Back in 1897, Bram Stoker took fundamental European folk stories and turned them into one of the most well-known horror books of all time. However, the CW is not going to be speccing a script about this man anytime soon--at least, not Dracula as Stoker composed him. Stoker's Dracula is not young and sparkly-hot; he is creepy, old, also has a penchant for turning into bats and clouds of mist. Creepy, older, and occasionally downright dull (only stop with the rail schedules, Mina)--yes. But just......Read More

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick

The matter about Philip K. Dick's opinion on reality is the fact that it only remains reality as long as you don't blink. In that respect, his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is sort of just like a three-shell game. Take your eyes off Dick's shifting, twisting, and shuffling palms for a second, and you never know what you'll find beneath the cup: a android posing as a flesh-and-blood person, a movie-star turned galactic deity, or a once bustling town turned grey atomic wasteland?......Read More

Electra Sophocles

Sophocles was a Greek playwright residing approximately around 400 BC. He along with his two contemporaries, Aeschylus and Euripides, are a few of the most essential Ancient Greek playwrights. Aeschylus, that was older than Sophocles, was the big man around town (or at least, the huge playwright around town) when Sophocles made his entry onto the theatre scene. In the tender age of 28, Sophocles bested his eponymous taking first prize from the significant theatre competition of the year,......Read More

Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

Is Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina a Fantastic Russian novel or the greatest Russian novel? It's hard to say (because there are a bunch of contendersfor this name), but even in the event that you've never read a word of any Russian novel, chances are that you've heard of this bad boy... er, bad woman. Because while other Russian novels grapple with massive themes like war, peace, crime, and punishment, Anna Karenina serves up all the huge Problems with a side order of tasty, titillating and......Read More

Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand

Rand set out to describe her personal philosophy in this book, that follows a set of pioneering industrialists who go on strike against a corrupt government and a judgmental society. After finishing this novel Rand turned to nonfiction and printed works on her doctrine for the rest of her livelihood. Rand really only released four novels in her whole career, and also the novel that came out before Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, was printed in 1943. Therefore there was a fairly long publishing......Read More

For Whom The Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, is a classic warfare romance (that is a war play and a love, in one). Set in the hills of Spain in 1937, it tells the story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting for the Republicans (that is one facet of the Spanish Civil War, not the American political party) who is ordered to blow up a bridge as part of a bigger offensive. A good deal of sweat, blood, and tears went into this book, and we mean actually. It is really wrapped in, and......Read More

Breakfast At Tiffany's Truman Capote

Breakfast at Tiffany's is the story of a young girl in World War II-age New York that hobnobs with famous men and women, gets into a great deal of trouble, also breaks many hearts along the way, all while fighting to find her place in the entire world. And it is one of Truman Capote's most famous works, thanks in substantial part to the movie adaptation of this. This was her portrayal of Holly Golightly that made the movie a hit, and Hepburn's black glasses and small black gown soon became......Read More

The House Of The Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804. This birthdate and set tells us pretty much everything we need to know about Hawthorne: he is an American (born on the fourth of July!) And he's got roots in Salem (of witchcraft fame). Hawthorne became one of the earliest major writers in the United States, and he made his name at least in part by writing about the early colonial period in Massachusetts. This particular novel, The House of the Seven Gables, mixes a lot of......Read More

Endgame Samuel Beckett

Endgame was Samuel Beckett's very first full-length play following his renowned Waiting for Godot. When it first came out in 1958 it received somewhat mixed reviews (as had Godot a couple of years before), with a few critics charging that Beckett was just doing the exact same thing repeatedly. Renowned literary critic Harold Bloom composed that Endgame "stays a bigger play than any other dramatist has given us in this century." For one thing, Endgame is a good example of theatrical......Read More

The Birthmark Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th-century New England writer best known for writing The Scarlet Letter. Many of his works reflect his somewhat Puritan background and are highly moralistic. Hawthorne often holds certain moral values up as exemplary and, at the same time, points out that the guy is failing miserably in attaining them. In fact, he is frequently cited as a key player in the "Dark Romanticism" genre, where man's failures and flaws have been examined and criticized. See "Genre" for more......Read More

The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov was the last novel the fantastic Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky actually composed, and it has all the energy and passion of a person's last words. First appearing in serial form in 1879-80, it is generally considered one of the best novels ever written in any terminology. The storyline of the novel revolves around the murder of possibly one of the most despicable characters ever made, Fyodor Karamazov, the father of the Karamazov brothers. This plot serves as the......Read More

1776 David McCullough

American "rebels" have fired on British soldiers in Lexington and Concord, and King George III of England suggests sending tens of thousands of additional troops, such as German mercenaries known as Hessians, to America to quell the uprising. George's policies prove controversial at the Houses of Parliament, but in the Long Run the Members of Parliament approve George's plan. Around the exact same time, the American military is assembled beyond the town of Boston. George Washington, the leader......Read More

The God Of Small Things Arundhati Roy

Released in 1997, The God of Small Things quickly skyrocketed Arundhati Roy to globally critical and popular acclaim. Her first (and to date only) novel won the 1997 Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards at the English-language literary universe. Interestingly, Roy was educated as an architect and had never before considered herself a novelist. The novel, which Roy composed between 1992 and 1996, has sold more than 6 million copies and has been translated into 40 languages.......Read More

The Book Thief Marcus Zusak

Based on its name, you may think that The Book Thief is a spy thriller or a Holmes-style detective story. Yep, a ten-year-old woman is the name's thief. Along with the books she is stealing are not top-secret documents-- they're only... books. If you have caught sneaking books today, you'd get in serious trouble (or at least collect a shocking library good). But we adore Liesel Meminger, and we root for her and her thieving ways throughout her narrative. This young German woman growing up in......Read More

Ghosts Henrik Ibsen

Just imagine where the premiere of Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts took place. You won't get it, because it is completely crazy. The very first operation of Ghosts occurred in Chicago on May 20th 1882, in a location called Aurora Turner Hall. It was the first time that an Ibsen play was performed in the United States. The actors were mostly Norwegian and Danish amateurs; the play was conducted in Norwegian for Scandinavian immigrants. But wait, isn't Ibsen assumed to be a big deal? Like, the Father......Read More

Antigone Jean Anouilh

Welcome to Thebes, Shmoopers. The population of this town is pretty thickly doomed--when they're not sleeping with their own mothers (lookin' at you, Oedipus) or acting all high and mighty and assuming that their legislation is far better than the gods' (cough, Creon, cough cough), they're burying their brother when devoting their brother is forbidden--c'mon, Antigone; we've been over this. Antigone is the third volume in what is maybe the most messed up Greek tragic trilogy of all time:......Read More

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle

Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a few novels throughout his lifetime, none of his works were as well-received as his first collection of 'Sherlock Holmes' stories where he established the famous, plausible detective with his level-headed assistant, Doctor Watson. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a compilation of twelve brief Sherlock Holmes stories which was printed on October 31st, 1892, also composed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The character, Sherlock Holmes, was formerly introduced to......Read More

The Count Of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

Switch off the TV. Forget going to the pictures. Facebook can not compete here. The Count comes with covert islands, dashing adventure-seekers, fistfuls of poison, deep disguises, Italian bandits, complex prison escape plans, Romeo-and-Juliet-like enjoy scenes, and much more. Dantès spends two years in Chateau d'If (a hardcore prison) for a crime he has not committed, and then he spends a long time then seeking revenge on these 3 dudes. The Count was initially serialized (such as a lot of......Read More

Bartleby The Scrivener Herman Melville

Released in 1853, "Bartleby the Scrivener" is one of American author Herman Melville's most often-read and studied works (that is really saying a whole lot, considering that the man also penned several classics, such as Moby-Dick and Billy Budd). "Bartleby" is really a departure from the sea-faring adventures that Melville frequently presented to readers; in reality, this can be a story where the most fascinating thing that happens is in fact the simple fact that nothing really happens. The......Read More

Hills Like White Elephants Ernest Hemingway

This small story is notorious for packaging a oversized punch: it is read in countless classrooms in various schools and large schools, contained in innumerable "Best Short Stories Ever"-kind anthologies, and inspires millions of readers to doubt the following truths universally acknowledged: Tons o' description ] good writing, and day-drinking whilst traveling through Spain is consistently a super-romantic approach to pass the time. To be fair, clearly, it is a story by Hemingway--a man famous......Read More

Cold Mountain Charles Frazier

Ever play one of those RPG video games in which you're on some kind of pursuit? We know that you've remained awake mannertoo late going through a great deal of trendy (and mad) landscapes, attempting to get to some significant castle or Mount Doom. Think about Cold Mountain as the literary second cousin of these games. The principal character--a man named Inman--has deserted the Confederate Army following an accident and is attempting to work his way home. Home is the Cold Mountain region of......Read More

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson

We are living in a universe that lurves a fantastic good vs. evil story. As well as the Rebel Alliance (yay!)) . . The Hunger Games has the routine Joes/Katnisses of the planet (huzzah!) Persecuted by a whole lot of sadistic richy McRichersons with questionable taste in makeup (blergh). So of course we all like Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a book whose name has become synonymous with the struggle between Big Bad and Substantial Great. Right? Right? People today have a tendency to......Read More

The Alchemist Paulo Coelho

While sleeping close to a sycamore tree at the sacristy of an abandoned church, Santiago, a shepherd boy, has a recurring fantasy about a kid who informs him that he'll come across a hidden treasure if he travels to the Egyptian pyramids. An old lady tells Santiago that this fantasy is prophetic and that he should follow its instructions. Santiago is unclear, however, because he loves the life span of a shepherd. Next Santiago meets a mysterious older man who seems able to read his thoughts. He......Read More

The House Of The Spirits Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende has been accused of everything from literary piracy to governmental exploitation for The House of the Spirits, that was printed in Spain in 1982 and translated into English in 1985. The book follows four generations of a Chilean family members and their participation with the tumultuous political events of the 1970s. Even though it was her debut novel, The House of the Spirits became an immediate best seller and won a few awards in Chile, the writer's native country. Considered......Read More

Agamemnon Aeschylus

The very first words of the play are spoken with the Watchman sitting on the roof of the palace of Agamemnon at Argos, Greece. The matter is, Agamemnon is not there. (For more information on the Trojan War, check out this site, or read all about it at our "Thorough Overview.") Then, just as the Watchman is telling us just how far his entire life stinks, he sees that a sign fire burning in the space; this usually means that Troy has been seized. The Watchman goes off to alarm Clytemnestra,......Read More

Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift

You may have heard folks call Gulliver's Travels that a satire. A satire is a (generally humorous) fictional work which uses sarcasm and irony to poke fun in the general patheticness of humankind -- our weakness, our stupidity, all that jazz. But if you love twenty-first century satire (like we do), you need to check out the eighteenth century -- these men were huge supporters of a fantastic satire. In actuality, a number of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, such as poet Alexander......Read More

Animal Farm George Orwell

Today, Animal Farm is a classic. (In fact, we have a sneaking suspicion that you're here because you're being needed to read it.) However, when Orwell wrote the book in 1943-44, he could barely find a publisher. In reality, no one took him up on it before 1945, and even then readers were not too keen on it. You see, Animal Farm takes a blow in the Soviet Union, especially its leader Josef Stalin--however, the Soviet Union was an ally in the U.S.'s fight against Nazi Germany at World War II.......Read More

Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes

The wealthy Alonso Quixano enjoys a fantastic adventure story. Actually, he spends all of his nights and days reading books about medieval knights and their dragon-slaying, princess-saving journeys. One day, however, this man's brain totally snaps and he decides to dress up in a dusty suit of armor and then ride around the countryside looking for adventures. Sound crazy? Well, that is sort of the point. When Part 1 of Don Quixote was first published in 1605, it was an instantaneous hit. In......Read More

Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller

Ambition. It is one of those things which may be either your best friend or your worst enemy. On one hand, ambition can inspire us to get out of bed in the morning and follow our dreams. On the other hand, ambition will keep us from recognizing our own limitations, trapping us at the delusional grandeur of envisioned achievements. Death of a Salesman is a tragedy about the gaps between the Loman family's fantasies and the reality of their own lives. The play is a scathing review of the......Read More

A Farewell To Arms Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms was printed in 1929 by Ernest Hemingway, a Nobel Prize-winning American writer. Like the protagonist, Hemingway served at the Italian Army as a Red Crossambulance driver during World War I, got wounded, also spent time in an American Army in Milan, where he fulfilled with a nurse. Similar to characters in A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway was profoundly influenced by his own experiences at war. Actually, Hemingway is considered to be part of the "The Lost Generation." The phrase......Read More

Cloud 9 Caryl Churchill

We may as well tell you: Cloud 9 is the most bizarre, most uptight play we have ever read. Seriously, who may even stay awake through a play that concerns itself with a massive incestuous orgy at the center of a London park, a game of hide-and-seek in Victorian Colonial Africa which segues into adultery and pedophilia, masturbating grandmothers, a fairly slick necrophilia-themed pickup lineup, along with a sexually frustrated ghost who wishes to have an orgy... with his lesbian sister. What is......Read More

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