Created by Štejfová Kateřina
The Hobit, The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some distant time in the past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.[2]
The title refers to the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron, who in an earlier age created the One Ring to rule the other Rings of Power given to Men, Dwarves, and Elves, in his campaign to conquer all of Middle-earth. From homely beginnings in the Shire, a hobbit land reminiscent of the English countryside, the story ranges across Middle-earth, following the quest to destroy the One Ring mainly through the eyes of the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin.
Tolkien's work, after an initially mixed reception by the literary establishment, has been the subject of extensive analysis of its themes and origins. Influences on this earlier work, and on the story of The Lord of the Rings, include philology, mythology, Christianity, earlier fantasy works, and his own experiences in the First World War.
The Lord of the Rings has since been reprinted many times and translated into at least 38 languages. Its enduring popularity has led to numerous references in popular culture, the founding of many societies by fans of Tolkien's works, and the publication of many books about Tolkien and his works. It has inspired numerous derivative works, including paintings, music, films, television, video games, and board games, helping create and shape the modern fantasy genre, within which it is considered one of the greatest books of all time.
Award-winning adaptations of The Lord of the Rings have been made for radio, theatre, and film. It has been named Britain's best novel of all time in the BBC's 2003 poll The Big Read.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Discworld, published 1983 - 2015
Harry Potter and... (1997 - 2016)
William Golding - Lord of the Flies (1954)
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.
Roald Dahl -The Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Ian Fleming - the character of James Bond 007 (1957), 12 novels, such as Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Goldfinger, Thunderball etc.
The character—also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-O-seven")—has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth $19.9 billion, making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including the musical accompaniment, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and two wins. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as "Bond girls".
Arthur C. Clarke - A Space Odyssey
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy
- dissatisfied with the establishment, critised snobs and people in power: John Wain (Hurry on Down), Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), John Osborne (Look Back in Anger - a theatre play)
Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) - the Queen of Crime. 80 detective novels, plays. The detective Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Orient Express, Death on the Nile etc
Ian Mc Ewan - The Comfort of Strangers, Atonement, Saturday, Saturday, The Child in Time, The Cement Garden.
In his books you can feel the creeping danger, you don´t know where it will jump from.
Cloud Atlas
White Teeth - 200
The Autograph Men - 2002
Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.
Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices — is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Two Minutes Hate", "Room 101", "memory hole", "Newspeak", "doublethink", "unperson", and "thoughtcrime", as well as providing direct inspiration for the neologism "groupthink".
George Orwell - 1984
Lady Chatterlay´s Lover (1928, forbidden until 1960). The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working class man and an upper class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words. Her husband was paralysed from the waist down due to a Great War injury, and he neglected his wife Constance also on the emotional side. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors. Constance realizes that love can only happen with the element of the body.
Mrs. Dalloway - Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she had married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh. Loneliness, faith, doubt, passing of time, stream of consciousness. The book was was banned in some communities because of the homosexual attraction of Clarissa to Sally.
About a Boy
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, [bɜːrdʒəs] (1917 – 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer.
Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. In 1971, it was adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, but he also composed over 250 musical works; he considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he achieved considerably more success in writing.
The novel is is a dystopian satirical black comedy published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English.[2] According to Burgess, it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
- mixture of genres within one literary work, hints on other texts/historical materials, wiping-off differences between the "high" and "low" literature, authors are sceptical about the current value system and hierarchy
Graham Swift - Waterland, Shuttlecock, Last Orders
1901 - 1939 - MODERNISM - a philosophical movement which developed in the early 20th century out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty (of Enlightenment thinking), conservatism and belief in the idea of objective truth, influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin (1809 - 82) (On Origin of Species), Nietze, Freud, Marx (Das Kapital - 1867). Many modernists also rejected religious belief. Factors that shaped Modernism: transformation in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I.
Art: impressionism, cubism also important for the writers. Precursors of modernism were Dostoevski (Crime and Punishment), Ch. Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal), A. Rimbaud (Illuminations).
Innovations, like the stream-of-consciousness. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, rewriting and parody.
- an Irish writer
Conversations with Friend (2017)
Normal People (2018)
All the action of Ulysses takes place in and immediately around Dublin on a single day (June 16, 1904 - Bloomsday, national holiday, re-Joyce, Dublin!).
- spent lots of time abroad (India, South Africa)
The Jungle Book - is a collection of stories. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India.
A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is of law and freedom; the stories are not about animal behaviour, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle", but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village. Critics have also noted the essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature.
The Jungle Book has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media. Critics such as Swati Singh have noted that even critics wary of Kipling for his supposed imperialism have admired the power of his storytelling. The book has been influential in the scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a friend of Kipling's.
Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in “one of the darkest places on earth.” Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.
The Forsyte Saga - a sequence of novels, first published under that title in 1922, is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by J. Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize in 1932. They chronicle the vicissitudes (nepříjemné zvraty osudu) of the leading members of a large upper-middle-class English family that is similar to Galsworthy's. Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, its members are keenly aware of their status as "new money". The main character, the solicitor Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions, but that does not succeed in bringing him pleasure.
The Man of Property, In Chancery, To Let, in 2002 made into TV serial
13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both French and English.
Beckett's multi-faceted work offers a bleak, tragi-comic outlook on existence and experience, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. It became increasingly minimalist in his later career, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His best-known work is his 1953 play Waiting for Godot.
Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
Waiting for Godot - play in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives.
