Summer books don't have to all be guilty pleasures or beachy reads. Sometimes, summer offers the best opportunity to tackle that classic novel you've been meaning to get around to. This month's theme, "Classics," focuses on those books you might find on long forgotten high school or college reading lists.
*Side Note: I'm a bit busy this week (new job is nearing and my brain is melty) so all the summaries come from elsewhere.
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
Young Civil War soldier Henry Fielding endures the nightmare of battle as he comes to grips with his fears and feelings of cowardice. Stephen Crane's powerful, imaginative, emotionally compelling description of war established him as a major American writer and propelled him to immediate international celebrity.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
1984
George Orwell
The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for modern political abuses.
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III's England, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet -- a country squire of no great means and his scatterbrained wife -- must marry off their five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are the headstrong second daughter Elizabeth and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy, two lovers in whom pride and prejudice must be overcome before love can bring the novel to its magnificent conclusion.
The Republic
Plato
Ostensibly a discussion of the nature of justice, The Republic presents Plato's vision of the ideal state, covering a wide range of topics: social, educational, psychological, moral, and philosophical. It also includes some of Plato's most important writing on the nature of reality and the theory of the "forms."
More Classic Reads
And Then There Were None
- Agatha Christie
The Count of Monte Cristo
- Alexandre Dumas
Emma
- Jane Austen
For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Les Miserables
- Victor Hugo
The Prince
- Niccolo Machiavelli
The Odyssey
- Homer
Rome and Juliet
- William Shakespeare
A Tale of Two Cities
- Charles Dickens
War and Peace
- Leo Tolstoy
*Side Note: I'm a bit busy this week (new job is nearing and my brain is melty) so all the summaries come from elsewhere.
The Red Badge of CourageStephen Crane
Young Civil War soldier Henry Fielding endures the nightmare of battle as he comes to grips with his fears and feelings of cowardice. Stephen Crane's powerful, imaginative, emotionally compelling description of war established him as a major American writer and propelled him to immediate international celebrity.
Fahrenheit 451Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.
1984George Orwell
The novel is set in an imaginary future world that is dominated by three perpetually warring totalitarian police states. The book's hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary in one of these states. His longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. Smith has a love affair with a like-minded woman, but they are both arrested by the Thought Police. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Smith are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independent mental existence and his spiritual dignity. Orwell's warning of the dangers of totalitarianism made a deep impression on his contemporaries and upon subsequent readers, and the book's title and many of its coinages, such as NEWSPEAK, became bywords for modern political abuses.
Brave New WorldAldous Huxley
"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.
Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen
In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III's England, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet -- a country squire of no great means and his scatterbrained wife -- must marry off their five vivacious daughters. At the heart of this all-consuming enterprise are the headstrong second daughter Elizabeth and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy, two lovers in whom pride and prejudice must be overcome before love can bring the novel to its magnificent conclusion.
The RepublicPlato
Ostensibly a discussion of the nature of justice, The Republic presents Plato's vision of the ideal state, covering a wide range of topics: social, educational, psychological, moral, and philosophical. It also includes some of Plato's most important writing on the nature of reality and the theory of the "forms."
More Classic Reads
And Then There Were None
- Agatha Christie The Count of Monte Cristo
- Alexandre DumasEmma
- Jane AustenFor Whom the Bell Tolls
- Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby
- F. Scott FitzgeraldLes Miserables
- Victor Hugo The Prince
- Niccolo MachiavelliThe Odyssey
- Homer Rome and Juliet
- William ShakespeareA Tale of Two Cities
- Charles Dickens War and Peace
- Leo Tolstoy
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