This brief The Story of Edgar Sawtelle review gives the reader insight into what this book is about. This novel is of a family saga and it explores the deep and rooted connection between humans and dogs, and the power of fate through a boy’s journey into the wild.

Born mute, and speaking only in sign, the character Edgar Sawtelle lives with his parents on their farm in a remote area in northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles raised and trained a breed of dog that although fictional, comes to life in the companionship between Almondine, Edgar’s lifelong companion, and Edgar. Edgar and Almondine are able to communicate with one another in a way that Edgar’s parents are unable to do. When Claude, Edgar’s uncle, unexpectedly returns, turmoil unfolds and takes over the Sawtelle’s once-peaceful home. When Edgar’s father dies suddenly, Claude remains at the farm – and gains Edgar’s mother’s affections.

Stricken with grief and filled with shock, Edgar attempts to prove Claude had a role in his father’s death, but his plan backfires and he flees into the wilderness where he comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and for the three dogs who follow him. Edgar’s strong need to face his father’s murderer, and devotion to the dogs, Edgar ventures back home.

Here’s a The Sound and the Fury summary: The story is about a family with old wounds the time could not heal. It is told over a few decades in four different sections, set in the 1920’s around a southern family. The Compsons are struggling with an absent mother and a father who passed away early. The oldest son commits suicide while one of the daughters becomes pregnant before marriage. Of the two other brothers, one is cruel and insensitive, and the other is mentally challenged.

You hear from most of the family as they tell the story. You get the most honest story from Benjy because he is mentally handicapped and does not distort the truth for his own good. You also hear from Quentin and Jason, who is the evil one of the brothers. Caddy is the central person in the book. She is the sister that the brothers are fixated with and the stories all revolve around her.

You also hear about the mother, Mrs. Compson, who can not take care of herself, never mind a family. The father; Mr. Compson, passed away early in the lives of the children and did not do enough to keep the family in their aristocratic lifestyle and are now just about poor. The one person in the family that has any control of events is Dilsey the housekeeper.

This is truly a great read, hard to put down once you start. The way Faulkner constructs his characters are so well developed you feel that you known them like your own family.

The novel is set in the South during the 1920s, when the Compson family is struggling. The father dies early; the mother is always absent and complaining; their oldest son kills himself while away at college after falsely admitting to incest; their daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock; another son is harshly insensitive and cruel; and a third son is mentally challenged.

In this The Road book summary we are inspired to really get to know the whole story and learn the fate of the two characters. This post-apocalyptic novel chronicles the journey of a father and son as they travel alone through burned America where nothing moves and everything is dark. They set out on a destination to reach the coast where the father believes it to be warmer and offer more safety. Their travels only consist of a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes on their back, food they have scavenged, and one another.

During their journey, they find that they are not alone and come across other humans who have survived but have been forced into cannibalism to sustain their own lives. The reader is forced to imagine a future in which no hope remains and just when you want to give up, you are compelled to keep turning the pages.

The father and son are all that one another has and each are sustained by love of and for the other. Their journey gives us an insight into the best and worst of what we as a human race are capable of: destruction, desperate determination, and survival in its most gentlest form.

The epic story of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England and the lives of the people entwined with it and each other is a sensuous, enduring narrative, and a gripping tale of faith, ambition, bloodshed and betrayal.

The Pillars of the Earth covers four decades of 12th Century England inviting the reader into the flamboyant middle ages where the building of a cathedral and the lives of the people entwined unfolds. It is a story of good and evil, treachery and intrigue, violence and beauty. It is about knights who are less than noble, heroes who want to do right, valiant heroines and both men of virtue and of immoral integrity under the eyes of God who highlight this story. These characters manipulate and are manipulated by the political turmoil and unease between the reigns of Henry I and Henry II.

The reader cannot help but cheer for the outcome of the do-gooders and root for the fall of the evil. It is sensual, gripping, ambitious and speaks of faith, bloodshed and betray, all to bring the reader even closer to the emotions felt for each character.

Since Elie Wiesel wrote about the atrocities of the Holocaust, he has woken up the world to the realities of this unfortunate time in history. He has dedicated his life to taking his survival story and shining a light of hope. This Nobel winner does well to inspire by his works while admonishing in a way that keeps him on a positive path.

Elie Wiesel writes about his experiences being a teenager who is a Holocaust survivor in both candor and horror but the truth that is told is deeply poignant. It is translated by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife, and she presents this memoir in the spirit true to the author’s original intent. In a new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of this story and his lifelong passion and dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets what man is capable of.

Elie’s story offers more than just the specifics of the daily atrocities. It also presents insight into what the Holocaust was, what it represented, and philosophizes what its legacy will be. He is able to bring the reader back to when he was that actually teenager being brought to camp and the terror felt is as real as a reader can experience.

If you’ve like to read more than just this Night Book Review, be sure to check out this title from Oprah’s Book Club.

The story begins in the tiny Greek village of Bithynios in 1922. Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, Calliope’s grandparents, grow up, flee to the port of Smyrna, and then, during their passage to the United States, the Stephanideses make a rash decision. Acting on an incestuous passion, they start their new life by declaring themselves as husband and wife, not brother and sister as they know each other to be.

The narrator and main character, Calliope Helen Stephanides, is a bright schoolgirl and coddled daughter of a hard-working Greek family who own a chain of hotdog stands in Detroit. Calliope, in her introduction into puberty, does not find the usual development of womanly curves. Instead what develops is a masculinity, a husky voice and shadow of a mustache which is of course shocking and unsuspected. Calliope is the rarest form of hermaphrodite. From a two-sided view as well as the obvious odd experiences, she is prompted to write about her roller coaster ride.

From there, the reader is served with many conflicting emotions, including compassion, and is presented with vivid references in literary style being told from a point of view not like what we are used to. In true style of the author, the story may have you shifting uneasily in your seat but you still have to see the story to the end.

Sidney Poitier was the first black actor to win an Academy Award for best actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963. His landmark roles in films include The Defiant Ones, A Patch of Blue, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, With Love. He has starred in over forty films, directed nine, and even penned four. He is the author of two autobiographies including this. Poitier has also been awarded the Screen Actors Guild’s highest honor, the Life Achievement Award, for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment. He is married, has six daughters, four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.

Sidney Poitier tells of his life in splendid candor and reflects on life in such a spiritual sense filled with passion and intellect that has been his inspiration. Poitier speaks of his poverty-stricken childhood of poverty on idyllic Cat Island in the Bahamas and attributes it for preparing him with a sense of self-worth, family values, and simple ethics that he has held tight to his whole life.

Poitier broke many barriers by portraying important, dignified characters in some of the most morally significant films of our time. He cites his personal journey is what propelled him. He explores with the reader such themes as sacrifice and commitment, pride and humility, rage and survival, and paying the price for artistic integrity. His writing is nothing short of magnificence and is engaging and down to earth. He also shares his provocative thoughts on racism in Hollywood, the media, raising children, and how we are all a part of “the grand scheme”. This auto biography attests to the rewards of being true to one’s self while living passionately in your beliefs.

Gabriel García Márquez’s influence and importance lie in bringing Latin-American fiction to wider audiences and has become a pioneer. He was born in Colombia and is a Nobel winner. He is known for telling fantastic tales of romance and heroism against an historic Latin American backdrop.

Set in an unnamed Caribbean seaport, a most remarkable story of unrequited love spanning half a century is told in both brilliance and heartbreak. Readers are moved by this true to heart classic which is told both in a spiritual and simplistic nature.

The Mexican, Caribbean and South American locations are detailed vividly and although told in a rather exotic nature, readers can still somehow relate and be drawn in as the author is aware that emotions are universal. As the characters develop, a wide scale of tempers and passion are discovered and even some humor is hidden among the pages.

The story takes place in fictitious Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi where imagined lives of residents are told exploring love, family, and suffering. Published in 1932, Light in August is the seventh in the series of William Faulkner’s novels set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The book tells the story of an orphan, Joe Christmas, whose mixed black-white heritage condemns him to life as an outsider who is hated by some folks and pitied by others.

Simon McEachern, the farmer who raises Joe, but who frequently whips him, is savagely beaten by Joe who then leaves home. Joe then wanders for 15 years and eventually meets a white woman, Joanna Burden, whose life is devoted to aiding blacks. But her evangelistic nature is a reminder to Joe of what Simon was. Still tormented from his childhood, Joe murders Joanna and subsequently flees. But a companion reveals his whereabouts and he is killed and castrated.

The story is written in 13 narratives, you hear from each person involved in the journey to carry out Addie’s last request to be buried with her family in the town of Jefferson. You’ll see the brilliance of Faulkner as he weaves all the different story lines as each person tells their tail of the same story. Hearing the many different story lines you will feel compelled to decipher the information and come to your own conclusion.

“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” – William Faulkner

As he was writing this book As I Lay Dying, Faulkner worked the night shift at the power plant yet it took him just over seven weeks to complete his masterpiece.