A Power Point Presentation on some of the greatest books ever written. Synopsis for each book is given. To motivate students to read. Done by Bro. Oh Teik Bin, Lower Perak Buddhist Association, Teluk Intan, Malaysia

1. Some of the Greatest Books ever written With A Synopsis For Each

3. Dostoevsky's last novel (1880) is both a crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. Dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - atheist intellectual Ivan, hot-blooded Dmitry, and saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved.

4. Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy’s genius is seen clearly in the multitude of fully realized and equally memorable characters that populate this massive chronicle. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual’s place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad .

5. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

6. Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and filled with the sweep and violence of human passions, LES MISERABLES is not only superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of how the convict Jean-Valjean struggled to escape his past and reaffirm his humanity, in a world brutalized by poverty and ignorance, became the gospel of the poor and the oppressed.

7. Dr Jekyll, a physician conscious of the duality in his nature, and fascinated by the idea of the advantage that would arise if these elements could be clothed in different personalities, discovers a drug by means of which he can create a separate personality that absorbs all his evil instincts.

8. At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

9. A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens’s haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his ‘great expectations’.

10. In this controversial classic fairy tale, a farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality, setting the stage for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned.

11. Written in the 1930s, this grim view of a plastic world, in which science and technology condition the people to passivity, is a warning against false optimism and the dangers inherent in scientific progress. Huxley got it; man's obsession with material goods and movement away from moral and spiritual values leads to a dangerous society. The book is a warning of where our society could be headed.

12. Set against the background of Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, this novel tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land.

13. The Good Earth presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century. Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel -- beloved by millions of readers -- is a universal tale of the destiny of man.

14. The End With Metta, Bro. Oh Teik Bin “ Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” Sir Francis Bacon