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Post by Dominique on Oct 13, 2007 4:52:27 GMT -5
The classics section has the most descriptions so far so I did some today to try and get it out of the way, hope they're ok looking: The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht Through this play Brecht takes a critical look at the bourgeois class, attempting to foster change in society through theatre techniques; such as signs, songs and projected images, aimed at breaking the illusion (or fourth wall) of the theatre and prompt thought in the audience. The action centres on the criminal Macheath's marriage to Polly Peachum, her family's disapproval and the consequences. This play features the song "Mac the Knife" later made famous by Frank Sinatra. The Illiad by Homer (BC) An epic Greek poem that, along with The Odyssey is thought to be the oldest Greek literature in existence. Set in a number of weeks during the final year of the siege in Troy between the Greek and the Trojans. Homer incorporates a large amount of Greek mythology into the poem, such as The Labours of Hercules. Gods frequently join in the battling and both Greek and Trojan sides have heroes who are part Gods. The Odyssey by Homer (BC) A sequel to The Illiad, this poem focuses on Greek mythological hero Odysseus and his journey to Ithaca after the Trojan war. During his time away from Ithaca his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, must deal with a mob of unruly suitors who assume Odysseus is dead and squat on his land to compete for Penelope's hand in marriage. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde The story of this gothic novel revolves around a young and beautiful man named Dorian Gray, who is introduced into the plot as artist Basil Hallward's latest subject for his paintings. Through Basil Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, who's hedonistic view that the only important thing in life is beauty shocks and alters Dorian. Afraid of his own beauty inevitably dissapating with age, Dorian wishes that the portrait Basil has painted of him would age instead of himself. Disasterous events follow. The main theme of this novel is that each sin has an effect on the soul. Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was quite controversial at the time of its publication due to its homosexual themes. Classics that still need descriptions include: Hedda Gabler by Ibsen The Dolls House by Ibsen Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving Daisy Miller by Henry JamesPortrait of a Lady by Henry JamesDangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de LaclosThe Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe by Edgar Allen Poe Swann's Way by Marcel ProustTreasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe A Modest Proposal by Jonathon SwiftGulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Hamlet, Othello and Romeo and Juliet Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott Dracula by Bram Stoker Walden by Henry David ThoreauThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark TwainEthan Frome by Edith Warton The Age of Innocence by Edith Warton The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne Anyone who helps out will get karma points
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Post by Carma on Oct 16, 2007 10:55:33 GMT -5
hehe I was just wondering which ones are still left? because I'm a bit confused now.. if you have the correct list that would be nice (or else I'm gonna spend some time in checking it..)
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Lu
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Post by Lu on Oct 16, 2007 13:48:30 GMT -5
I was not in the right mood for studying today, so I wrote some descriptions ;D hope they're not so bad. PORTRAIT OF A LADYSet mostly in Europe, it is the story of Isabel archer, a young American woman, who is invited to follow her aunt to England, where she meets her rich uncle and her cousin. Thanks to the latter, who wants to give her economical idependence and freedom, she inherits a large amount of money and then becomes victim of the calculating plans by two American expatriates. The author, a keen observer of upper-class world, focuses with psychologial realism on inner motivation of characters’ behaviour and on differences between the New and the Old world. SWANN’S WAYIt was published in 1913 at author’s expenses. Divided into four parts, it’s the first volume of the semi-autobiographical work In Search Of Lost Time. In the first two parts the narrator recollects his childhood in Combray, the third one, which can be consider a novel itself, tells about Swann’s love for Odette De Crécy, the last part is about narrator’s youth love for Gilberte. Proust’s work searchs into the innermost recesses of the mind allowing emotional memory to draw out the secret truths of the self in a continuos flow of images and impressions And one I wrote when I had some free time but I forgot to post before KITCHENMikage is a free-spirited young woman raised by her grandmother, who has just passed away. She is then taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother Eriko; they together form a family which soon will live its own tragic losses. The kitchen represents family, affection, comforts; Mikage’s words: “The place I like best in this world is the kitchen.” opens a novel sets in contemporary Japan and regarding youth loneliness. Many editions include also Moonlight Shadow, a short story dealing with loss and love. Obviously, feel free to correct all the mistakes
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Post by Dominique on Oct 16, 2007 17:15:46 GMT -5
Thankyou Carma that's the correct list above for all the classics that have yet to be done. I'll go through and make one for the other categories that haven't been done later today if I can. edit: Modern classics not done yet: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward AlbeeFahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 1916 Ulysses James Joyce (1922)Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Diary Of Anne Frank by Anne Frank Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, 1932 A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway A Moveable Feast by Ernest HemingwaySiddhartha by Hermann Hesse, 1922 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse Of Mules and Men by Zora Neal Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 1961As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Light in August by William Faulkner Time and Again by Jack Finney The Trial by Franz Kafka On the Road by Jack Kerouac Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin The Naked and The Dead by Norman Mailer Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov, 1938 The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, 1921 Animal Farm by George Orwell The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Grapes of Wrath by Jonathan Steinbeck Of Mice and Men by Jonathan Steinbeck A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, 1943 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut Night by Elie Wiesel A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, 1948 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf I also just did Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)This infamously controversial book was banned in France, Britain and other countries for its peodofilic subject matter. A fictional prisoner's memoir, the story is narrated by a convicted criminal using the pseudonym of Humbert Humbert. As the story commences he looks back to a failed adolescent romance, using it as justification for his obsession with "nymphets", or young girls he finds sexually attractive. Humbert moves to a small American town where he rents a room from widow Charlotte Haze, after seeing and becoming infatuated with her 12-year-old daughter Lolita. Charlotte unwisely falls in love with Humbert and he agrees to marry her in order to become Lolita's step-father and have the opportunity of molesting her. There are numberous interpretations of this book; Lolita is generally considered the victim but some view the story as a tale of a man falling victim to a corrupt child. Ultimately the work seems to be about tyranny, Humbert traps Lolita in his image of her and refuses to accept her as the child she is. Some think Lolita is a symbol of the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood. It's a bit long! But Lolita is such a complex work to condense into a few sentances!
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 20, 2007 8:49:36 GMT -5
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is one of the most popular American short stories of all time. In the small Dutch settlement of Tarrytown, New York, Sleepy Hollow is a place where legends come to life, and every villager has a story to tell about the strange events that have taken place throughout the years near the Old Dutch Burying Ground. But of all these stories, the Legend of the Headless Horseman is the one that has terrified the villagers the most and Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher from Connecticut, is about to discover why...
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 20, 2007 9:13:43 GMT -5
Daisy Miller:
In a popular tourist resort in Switzerland, Mr. Winterbourne, a young American, meets Daisy Miller. He is immediately taken in by this spontaneous and charming young lady, who does not seem to take care about society's rules and conventions. He eventually follows her to Rome, where he quickly discovers that her free manners have made her the talk of the town. Will he give in to the rumours flying around or will Daisy's charms and unique personality succeed in winning him over?
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 20, 2007 9:38:28 GMT -5
The Dangerous Liaisons:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is one of the greatest and most popular French novels of all times. In an exchange of letters, we discover the story of two French aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who take on a dangerous bet that is likely to destroy the life of many people around them. As the stakes get higher and higher, ruthless scheming, manipulation and treason come into play, resulting in a story that hasn't ceased fascinating readers throughout the centuries.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 20, 2007 9:57:05 GMT -5
A Modest Proposal:
In "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick", Jonathan Swift ironically offers a shocking solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland: to fatten up the country's undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich landowners. Statistics, facts and data are brought up to support this proposal which, according to the author, would immediately solve the problems of overpopulation and famine, while contributing to the economic well-being of the country. This results in a thought-provocative pamphlet, the last he ever wrote about Ireland.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 21, 2007 8:16:31 GMT -5
Walden: On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a simple log cabin he had built in the woods near Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. For two years, two months and two days, Thoreau, who was part of the American Transcendentalist movement along with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott, experimented what life could be like without the constant influence of society. He did not live as a recluse, receiving frequent visitors and making short trips to Concord, but he believed that by living a simple life in harmony with nature, he would be able to better understand the rules that govern society. "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" is a captivating record of his thoughts and impressions during this experiment.
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Post by Carma on Oct 24, 2007 9:02:32 GMT -5
is it possible to write a short description of a book you haven't read? because I've been trying to.. but it's really hard..
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Post by Dominique on Oct 24, 2007 9:28:00 GMT -5
I haven't read a few of the ones I wrote, I just got the main points of wikipedia
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Post by Carma on Oct 24, 2007 9:40:33 GMT -5
hehe, ok, I'll talk to my best friend wikipedia then.. since I have these book slying aroun: The adventures of Tom Sawyer Tom Sawyer is a blond orphan that is taken in by his Aunt Polly. He goes trough a couple of adventures with his friends Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn (whom we know from that other story by Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).Tom Sawyer is mischievous and often foolish and unpredictable. When he isn’t going on an adventure he tries to win his sweetheart Becky Thatcher. It’s the story of a young boy. The sequel to this book is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but Tom isn’t a big part of that story. Adventures of Huckleberry FinnYou might know Huckleberry Finn from Mark Twains other novel, The adventures of Tom Sawyer. Huckleberry Finns story is seen as the first great American Novels and it is much more appreciated than Tom Sawyers story. This story is about Huckleberry and his relationship with a runaway southern slave, Jim, as they flee south on the Mississippi River. The two boys have a journey that brings them together. This book was controversial in it’s time, because of it’s use of language and the subject, slavery.
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Nathalie
Collection of short stories bought by Random House
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Post by Nathalie on Oct 24, 2007 10:57:31 GMT -5
i will try to write ok descriptions of the bell jar, on the road, the lord of the rings and fahrenheit 451 tonight and tomorrow, but as i have not done this before, they will need editing.
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Post by Dominique on Oct 24, 2007 20:03:10 GMT -5
Thanks Carma That's ok Nathalie I'm sure they'll be good But I will fix any little mistakes.
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Isa
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Post by Isa on Oct 28, 2007 17:00:11 GMT -5
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? George and Martha's marriage has turned sour. At a faculty party, they meet a young couple, Nick and Honey, and invite them over for one last drink. Soon enough, George and Martha begin abusing each other verbally in front of their guests, who are for a moment reduced to a hopeless and yet captivated audience. However, as minutes and drinks go by, the stakes get higher and higher, until all four of them are sucked into a very dangerous game.
A Moveable Feast: Back in the 1920s when he was a young and struggling writer, Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris with some other members of the "Lost Generation". Written shortly before he died, Hemingway's memoir of a time when he was poor but happy brings to life the Paris of the old days, along with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and many others. To this day, it remains one of Hemingway's most beloved works.
Brave New World: Set in London in 2540, Brave New World tells the story of a dystopian world brought about by reproductive technology and biological engineering, and in which the government has succeeded in eradicating problems such as poverty and violence by eliminating all things related to human values and identity, such as family, arts and spirituality. To fill the void thus created, the use of drugs and promiscuous sex has become essential to keep everyone in a perpetual state of happiness. Even though it was published back in 1932, it is scary to think how accurate this novel might have been in predicting the future...
Catch-22: Set in the last stages of World War II, Catch-22 tells the story of Yossarian, a bombardier who does not quite understand why thousands of people who don't even know him keep shooting directly at him. In his attempt to leave his squadron, he soon finds out that his own sanity might very well be his worst enemy, as clearly stated in "Catch-22". A funny and cynical novel about bureaucracy and the general insanity of war that can rightly be considered one of the best American novels of the 20th century.
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