100 Best Book Club

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales follows a story-telling contest among a group of pilgrims from various levels of society on their way to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Beckett. Throughout these tales, Chaucer weaves elements of humor, satire, ethics, sin, and redemption, often pitting two story-tellers against one another. The Canterbury Tales was written in Middle English, a common language, at a time when most books were written in Latin or Italian.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare shows how wonderful and silly love can be. To trick Titania into handing over an Indian boy she is raising, Oberon orders Puck to find a plant that causes love at first sight, and through Oberon's meddling and Puck's trickery, the characters fall into and out of love with the wrong people. In the end, Oberon sets things right, and the fiasco of the previous evening becomes nothing more than A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

In The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton tells the story of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis and his struggle with right and wrong in a society in which he is an outsider. As Ponyboy, his brothers, and the lower-class gang of "greasers" battle the "Socs," the rich kids, Hinton touches on social issues that were just gaining notice during the 1960s and that are still relevant to today's teens, making The Outsiders as pertinent today as it was a half-century ago.
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey's first novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest tells Chief Bromden's story of life in a mental hospital. Bromden's strictly ordered environment is disrupted by the introduction of a force of unwavering individuality, a new patient named Randle Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy soon galvanizes the other patients against Nurse Ratched's oppressive control, but things turn sour as the patients' personal independence collides with Nurse Ratched's authoritarian power.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a parable about what it means to be human. Steinbeck's story of George and Lennie's ambition of owning their own ranch, and the obstacles that stand in the way of that ambition, reveal the nature of dreams, dignity, loneliness, and sacrifice. Ultimately, Lennie, the mentally handicapped giant who makes George's dream of owning his own ranch worthwhile, ironically becomes the greatest obstacle to achieving that dream.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein follows Victor Frankenstein's triumph as he reanimates a dead body, and then his guilt for creating such a thing. When the "Frankenstein monster" realizes how he came to be and is rejected by mankind, he seeks revenge on his creator's family to avenge his own sorrow. Mary Shelley first wrote Frankenstein as a short story after the poet Lord Byron suggested his friends each write a ghost story. The story so frightened Byron that he ran shrieking from the room.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

In William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, witness the decline of the once-noble Compson family of mythical Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness narrative penetrates the psychological and moral deviations that contribute to the family's decay. Three brothers — Benjy, Quentin, and Jason — relate the story, followed by Dilsey, the family cook who brings order to a chaotic home. The novel depicts the modern world as a place where the old values of the past are meaningless and the values of the present are destructive.

Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/The-Sound-and-the-Fury.id-125.html#ixzz0bCtbZuPO