By Beatrix S
There are some books that really teach us useful things and their reading experience helps us grow somehow. These are the books everyone should read; they are the brilliant novels that have managed to stay popular no matter how much time has passed.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
by Anne Frank is the diary of a girl killed by the German forces in World War II. The diary shows how the girl’s family managed to hide from the Germans. The girl, who wrote the diary, Anne Frank, was only 14 when she wrote the diary and was an aspiring journalist. She managed to give a lot of details about how the war began, how strict measures were taken against the Jews, and how she coped with the change. The book was published in 1947 and published by her father, the only survivor of the family. This book is one of the books everybody should read no matter what age; it's a book about hope, youth, and love during a merciless time.
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of the author’s best-known novels. The book starts with an aviator who has some problems and has to land in the Sahara Desert; there, he meets a prince. The book can look puerile at first glance but it’s really about how adults never manage to communicate with children and never listen to them. It also speaks about prejudice and how people don’t appreciate those that are different. It was published in 1943 and it’s a classic book all adults and children should read.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde was published in 1890 and it’s the book that made this author so famous. This is actually the only novel published by Oscar Wilde and one that has benefited from a lot of screen adaptations over the years. The book is about a young man, Dorian Gray, who sells his soul to keep his beauty and to make sure that his portrait ages instead of him. He then pursues acts of pure hedonism, living his life only for pleasure and admiring only beauty as his friend Lord Henry Wotton has taught him.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez is a brilliant book about true love, families, bonds, and life. The book is definitely not your ordinary book about love; it’s well-written in a manner possible only by Gabriel García Márquez, a way that keeps the reader seduced and wanting to read more. The book was published in 1967 and it’s one of the most beautiful and complicated stories ever told. A story about family, actually about 7 generations of Buendía Family, presents the superstitions, myths, and the character of the Latin Americans. This is one of those books that people speak a lot about after they finish it, still trying to live in the atmosphere created by it; it’s a masterpiece of literature and a must-read for any person who takes their reading seriously.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey was nominated as one of the best English language books ever written. The book is a portrait of the life people had to spend in asylums and how doctors treated them. McMurphy, an inmate, is a man fortunate enough to avoid prison and come to the asylum instead. The book focuses on the rebellions of this man, who is considered as having mental problems by the psychiatrists, although there is no sign in the book that shows that. The book was published in 1962 and soon became one of the world’s favorite books, as a reflection of what happened in the psychiatric hospitals at that time.