Classic Literature

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Book cover: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Author(s): 
Harriet Beecher Stowe

There are a plethora of resources for you to find out the plot of this book out on the web and in the bookstores (eg. Cliffs Notes!!). Many contain "spoilers". And this is OK — after all it's a classic. Moreover, the book is good even if you know what is going to happen. I had the enjoyable luxury of reading this book without having run across the spoilers and with no real knowledge of the plot. I was not required to read it in school — oh happy fault.

Fahrenheit 451

Book cover: 'Fahrenheit 451'
Author(s): 
Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451 is on the reading list of almost every high school in America, and with good reason. It is thought provoking and hip. There are reasons to love this book and reasons to worry about it. It is Bradbury's reaction against censorship and the blossoming of television. Some of the things he writes about have come true in our time, which makes his story all the more intriguing. First the story: it is in the future, but not too far off, with global war looming. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Book cover: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
Author(s): 
Harper Lee
This modern classic, set in the segregated South of the 1930s, is the story of two young children who learn about life and the great character of their father, Atticus Finch, as he struggles with a difficult case in which he must defend a black man wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. The story is told through the eyes of the younger child, a nine year old girl. This charming perspective, related in an authentic Southern dialect, makes for a surprisingly innocent way of tackling some rather tough topics.

Brave New World

Author(s): 
Aldous Huxley
Free love, birth control, test tube baby factories, cloning, mutants, and sex, sex, sex. There are good reasons to have your mature students read this book, but you must do YOUR homework and read it first. Huxley, writing during the giddy early days of the eugenics movement, has written a remarkable novel. His story portrays that movement's ideas taken to their logical consequences. There is a complete disconnect between sex and procreation. Sex is STRICTLY for pleasure (not even for unity).

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