PRESENTATIONS OF THE BOOKS

THE GREAT GATSBY

Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is set during the Roaring Twenties, in 1922 and tells the story of one man's pursuit of the American Dream. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is an upper class American man who moves from the West to New York to try his luck as a bond trader. He meets an eccentric, exceptionally wealthy neighbor named Jay Gatsby, and becomes embroiled in Gatsby's plan to rekindle a lost love with a woman named Daisy Buchanan, who happens to be Nick's cousin.

The protagonist, Jay Gatsby, is involved in illegal activities, including bootlegging, or selling liquor during prohibition, when liquor sales are illegal in the United States. He throws lavish parties and eventually meets and begins an affair with his beloved Daisy. Daisy's husband, Tom, is carrying on an affair with a garage owner's wife; a woman named Myrtle Wilson. Driving home from New York, Daisy strikes and kills Myrtle while driving Gatsby's car. She is unaware that she has killed her husband's mistress and leaves the scene of the crime. Myrtle's husband is despondent and tries to find his wife's killer. Daisy's husband, Tom, directs him to Gatsby's house, where he shoots and kills Gatsby, and then himself, thus resolving Daisy's affair. 

The Magician's Nephew Summary

Two neighborhood children meet and become friends during a summer in London in the late 1800s. The two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, play together in the attic connecting the row of houses where they live. One day while attempting to enter an abandoned house through the attic, the two children take a wrong turn and surprise Digory’s mysterious uncle, who spends a great deal of time locked in his study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow ring which causes her to vanish. Uncle Andrew then explains to the horrified Digory that the rings are a device to travel between worlds. Uncle Andrew believes that the yellow rings carry people to other worlds, and the green rings carry people back to this world. Fearing for Polly’s safety, Digory touches another yellow ring (while taking two green ones with him) to bring Polly home.

The yellow ring transports Digory to a wood where he finds Polly. The two children discover many pools of water in the wood that allow people to enter different worlds. Digory and Polly decide to explore one of the pools and arrive at a desolate city called Charn. While exploring the abandoned castle in this new land, the children discover a series of waxworks of the past rulers of Charn as well as a bell with a hammer. Despite Polly’s protests, Digory strikes the bell which both shakes the castle and wakes Queen Jadis. As the children and Jadis leave the crumbling castle, the children realize that Jadis is evil. Although they attempt to escape her, Jadis follows the children back to London. Upon meeting Uncle Andrew, Jadis makes him her new slave and starts on her mission to conquer the earth, starting with London.

Polly and Digory make use of the rings to take Jadis back to the wood, with the plan to force her back into Charn; unfortunately, they accidentally bring along a cab-driver, his cab horse, and Uncle Andrew as well. All of them enter one of the pools, thinking it leads to Charn. However, they enter into a world not yet formed. They witness a lion called Aslancreate a new world: Narnia. Jadis attempts to injure Aslan by hitting him with an iron bar, which she has ripped from a lamppost, but the bar rebounds and grows into a new lamppost. Aslan assigns Digory the task of protecting Narnia from Queen Jadis. To do this, Digory must travel to a far away garden to pluck an apple, from which Aslan will grow a protective tree.

INFERNO

Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. The book was published on May 14, 2013, ten years after publication of The Da Vinci Code (2003), by Doubleday.^[1] It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction and Combined Print & E-book fiction for the first eleven weeks of its release, and also remained on the list of E-book fiction for the first seventeen weeks of its release. A film adaptation was released in the United States on October 28, 2016.