The summory

week 1  O'Henry's short stories

 O‧Henry endings──
            unexpected, but reasonable
     O‧Henry often used some ambiguities or wordplay to create a totally different end from our thought.
    Although some critics say O‧Henry always use this immutable way in his stories, it's the most major reason why his stories are so famous.

week 2  Harry Potter

    At the 11 year-old birthday, Harry Potter, a boy who had escaped from the notorious, frightening wizard, Voldemort, was bring to the wizard school, Hogwarts.
    The series is about the Harry and his friends' adventure in the wizard world, and the fight with the final boss, Voldemort.

week 3 Les Miserable

    In 1801, a poor farmer named Jean Valjean was put into prison for 19 years because of stealing a loaf of bread and trying to escape.

    Although he was discriminate by the public because he had a yellow passport, Bishop Myriel gave him shelter and then encouraged him to be a promising and honest person.

    But he still obeyed his human nature and robbed 40-sous coin from 12-year-old Petit Gervais.

    For this, he became an escapee.

    After six years, Valjean, replaced by his new name──Monsieur Madeleine, became a wealthy factory owner and was appointed to be the mayor of a town.

    Then he met  Fantine, and promised her to take her daughter, Cosette to her.

    When dealing the case that Fantine had encountered in, he enraged a adjutant guard(檢察官) named  Javert, who guess him to be the escapee, Jean Valjean, and then get into a series of troubles and heart-stuggling...

week 4 Twilight

    Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father, Charlie.

    When Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in class on her first day of school, he seems to dislike her. But when she is nearly crushed by a van in the school's parking lot, Edward instantaneously appears next to her and stops the van with his bare hands.

    This experience arouses Bella's curiosity.

    After investigating, she finds that Cullens family's members are all vampires, which only drink animals' blood, and Edward has the ability to read other's mind, instead of Bella's.

    Bella falls in love with Edward, and is considered to be a member of Cullens family.

    One day when Bella and Cullens family are playing baseball, the vampire from the other place comes. One of the enemy, James notices that Bella is a human, being protected by a vampire family, so he decides to hunt her as an entertainment.

    After a hard fight, Cullens family finally beats James before he kills Bella, but it also brings more crisis and enemy to them...

week 5 Alice Munro

    For the citation(表彰), "master of the contemporary short story", Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.

    Because of the special writing style, some critics have discussed whether Munro's works are short stories. But Alex Keegan gave a simple answer, "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels."

    Her most famous collections are Dance of the Happy, Shades Lives of Girls and Women, and Who Do You Think You Are?

week 6 1984

    In 1984 (the future in the author's mind), Winston Smith lives in Airstrip One (一號空降場) (the former United Kingdom), a province of Oceania (大洋國) after a global atomic war, one of the world's three superstates.
    "Big Brother is watching you."
    It is a world that whatever you done is monitored by the telescreen(雙向電視) of the Party, which believes in the boss──Big Brother.
    Winston Smith hates the Party, he writes the true situation of the world in the diary and want it to last until the Party is destroyed, because every facts can be tampered(竄改) by the Party.
    Then he falls in love with Julia, although having a lover is not allowed for the Party member.
    They enjoy the illicit romance, and go to one of the Inner Party's member, O'Brein, who they consider to be a rebel, to see if they can destroy the Party.
    But he is actually a thought police, he arrests them, and re-education them by some cruel punishment.
    Then he let them out, but they can't face to each other because they are forced to betray each other.

week 7 Robinson Crusoe

    Crusoe sails to the Queen's Dock in Hull in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to study law.

    After a storm, his ship is wrecked. His lust for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. But the ship is taken over by Salé pirates and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor(摩爾人). Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury; a Captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. The ship is en route to Brazil.

    After a few years, Crusoe joins a trip which is about to brings slave from the Africa. But the ship is wrecked in a storm AGAIN!! 

    He takes out the weapons and food in the shipwrecks, and then starts his life on this island and the fight against the cannibals(食人族)...

week 8 Angels & Demons

    One of CERN's(歐洲核子研究組織) scientist, Leonardo Vetra, is murdered. His chest is branded(烙印) with an ambigram(雙向圖) of the word "Illuminati"(光明會). And the antimatter(反物質) was stolen. If it self-destructs, the exposion can lay a city flat.

    Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist(符號學家), is requested to help them find out the bomb, of course, and the murderer. But this makes him get into the fatal trouble between the science and religion...

week 9 Alice in Wonderland

     Alice feels bored while sitting on the riverbank with her elder sister. Then she notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch(懷錶) run past. She follows the rabbit, and suddenly falls a long way to a hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She starts her adventure......

    These are what I have introduce for the past 9 weeks, hope you can pick one in the bookstore, and read it by yourselves!