December 1, 2008
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Written by Mark Twain
“Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn’t no back-down to her, I judge.”
—Chapter 28, Overreaching Don’t Pay
Fun Facts
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a continuation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
- Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
- Mark Twain’s time as a riverboat pilot inspired his pseudonym and gave him material for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
- The novel has been banned many times by schools and libraries because of its language.
December 8, 2008
Siddhartha
Written by Herman Hesse
“All the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was one world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.”
—Chapter Om (11), p.135-136
Fun Facts
- Siddhartha is from Sanskrit, it is a combination of two words siddha (gotten) and artha (wealth). Together they suggest “one who has found meaning” or “one who has achieved his or her goals.”
- Siddhartha is Hesse’s ninth novel. Hesse wrote it after spending some time in India during the early 1900s and first published it in 1922.
- Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.
- Hesse’s parents expected him to follow the family tradition in theology. Hesse entered the Protestant seminary at Maulbronn in 1891, but was expelled.
December 15, 2008
A Christmas Carol
Written by Charles Dickens
“‘There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’”
—Stave Three, Page 45
Fun Facts
- A Christmas Carol is part of a series of five Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848).
- The work has been adapted for theater, opera, film, radio and television.
- Contemporaries noted that the story’s popularity helped redefine the importance of Christmas and the sentiments associated with the holiday.
- Dickens wrote in the wake of British government changes to the welfare system. He wanted this book to reveal the plight of the poor and society’s responsibility to help them.
