Book Report

1. information about the author and his times;

2. a summary of the book;

3. comments on it.

sample

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Jules Verne (1828-1905), the author of Around the World in Eighty Days, Was Born in Nantes, France. He had an innate love for the sea and for travel and adventure when he was a child. Later, he devoted himself to literature and wrote several scientific romances, which gained him the name—Father of Modern Science Fiction.

Verne’s novels are usually full of scientific facts and details and they pleased the public fascinated by all the scientific developments of the nineteenth century. They foretell with uncanny accuracy the inventions and advanced technology of the twentieth century, and have become the literary stepping-stone for generations of science fiction writers. Verne’s story Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) brought him his first success. The following year, he published Journey to the Center of the Earth, which also made a great hit. After that, A trip to the Moon (1865), 20,000

Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and The Mysterious Island(1875), were turned out one after another and they brought Verne worldwide popularity.

Verne’s heroes are always those who risk their lives for scientific research and progress, and they have a great influence on the readers. For the first time, people began to believe that journeys into space or under the sea might really be possible. Many even tried to bring that day nearer by their own efforts. Jules Verne inspired a whole generation of scientists and he probably traveled more widely in his imagination than any other writer. This we can see quite clearly in Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

This is a book of science fiction which tells us an exciting story about an English gentleman, Mr. Phileas Fogg, who makes a bet with his club-mates and manages to travel around the world in eighty days. It gives us a vivid description of the many difficulties and incidents which happen on his journey. Mr. Fogg and his servant Passepartout start their journey from London and travel eastward. Mr. Fox, a detective, who is investigating a bank robbery case, suspects Mr. Fogg of being the robber and follows him all through the journey in an attempt to arrest him as soon as he gets the warrant. So Mr. Fogg, a man with courage and intelligence, tries to deal with all the troubles caused by Mr. Fox, and in the meantime, manages to overcome the difficulties on his way, such as

missing a train or a steamboat, being caught in a storm on the sea, attacks by the Indians, etc. With the help of his servant, Mr. Fogg saves an Indian woman Aouda, who would otherwise become a victim of the “Suttee”. The story ends happily with Mr. Fogg winning the bet and his marriage with Aouda.

From this story, we can see the author’s deep love for the sea, travel and adventure, which played and important role in his life. We are also astonished and convinced by his fertile imagination and scientific and geographical knowledge.

The story is so well-knit and fascination that the reader cannot put down the book before he finishes reading it. Though the book is full of scientific facts and details, the reader does not feel bored or confused at all, for in it profound truths are explained in simple language with accuracy and clarity. By reading his novels, the reader can both enjoy himself and obtain knowledge. And that is why, perhaps, that Verne’s novels have won great popularity all over the world ever since they were published.

 

第二篇：Model ~~ Book report

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[Model Book Report]

A Report on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1971, New York, NY: Bantam Books), Maya Angelou tells the story of her earliest years. Angelou, a dancer, poet, and television producer as well as a writer, has continued her life story in three more volumes of autobiography. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the start of Maya Angelou's story; in this book, she writes with crystal clarity about the pains and joys of being black in America. This report will present a brief synopsis of the content of the book, comments on the writing style and my reactions to the author’s descriptions of her heartbreaks and triumphs.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings covers Maya Angelou's life from age three to age sixteen. We first meet her as a gawky little girl in a white woman's cut-down lavender silk dress. She has forgotten the poem she had memorized for the Easter service, and all she can do is rush out of the church. At this point, Angelou is living in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother arid uncle. The town is rigidly segregated: "People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream" (p.40). Yet Angelou has some good things in her life; her adored older brother Bailey, her success in school, and her pride in her grandmother's quiet strength and importance in the black community. There is laughter, too, as when a preacher is interrupted in midsermon by an overly enthusiastic woman shouting, "Preach it, I say preach it!" The woman, in a frenzied rush of excitement, hits the preacher with her purse;

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his false teeth fly out of his mouth and land at Angelou's feet. Shortly after this incident, Angelou and her brother are taken by her father to live in California with their mother. Here, at age eight, she is raped by her mother's boyfriend, who is mysteriously murdered after receiving only a suspended sentence for his crime. She returns, silent and withdrawn, to Stamps, where the gloom is broken when a friend of her mother introduces her to the magic of great books. Later, at age thirteen, Angelou returns to California. She learns how to dance. She runs away after a violent family fight and lives for a month in a junkyard. She becomes the first black female to get a job on the San Francisco streetcars. She graduates from high school eight months pregnant. And she survives.

I was impressed with the vividness of Maya Angelou's writing style. For example, she describes the lazy dullness of her life in Stamps: "We revolved in a sameness wheel. They turned into themselves so steadily and inevitably that each seemed to be the original of yesterday's rough draft" (p.93). She also knows how to bring a scene to life, as when she describes her eighth-grade graduation. For months, she has been looking to this event, knowing she will be honored for her academic successes. She is even happy with her appearance: Her hair has become pretty, and her yellow dress is a miracle of hand-sewing. But the ceremony is spoiled when the speaker — a white man — implies that the only success available to blacks is in athletics. Angelou remembers: "The man's dead words fell like bricks around the auditorium and too many settled in my belly.... The proud graduating class of 1940 had dropped their heads" (p.152). Later, Angelou uses a crystal-clear image to describe her father's mistress sewing:" worked the thread through

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the flowered cloth as if she were sewing the torn ends of her life together" (p.208). With such vivid details and figures of speech, Maya Angelou re-creates her life for her readers.

I also reacted strongly to the descriptions of injustices suffered by blacks two generations ago. I was as horrified as the seven-year-old Maya when some

"powhitetrash" girls torment her dignified grandmother, calling her "Annie" and mimicking her mannerisms. In another incident, Mrs. Cullinan, Angelou's white employer, decides that Marguerite (Angelou’s real name) is too difficult to

pronounce and so renames her Mary. This loss of her name — a "hellish horror" (p.91) — is another humiliation suffered at white hands, and Angelou leaves Mrs. Cullinan's employ soon afterward. Later, Angelou encounters overt

discrimination when a white dentist tells her grandmother, "Annie, my policy is I'd rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger's" (p.160) — and only slightly less obvious prejudice when the streetcar company refuses to accept her application for a conductor’s job. We see Angelou over and over as the victim of a white society.

Although I was saddened to read about the injustices, I rejoiced in Angelou's triumphs. Angelou is thrilled when she hears the radio broadcast of Joe Louis's victory over Primo Camera: "A Black boy. Some Black mother's son. He was the strongest man in the world" (p.114). She weeps with pride when the class valedictorian leads her and her fellow eighth-graders in singing the Negro

National Anthem. And there are personal victories, too. One of these comes after

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her father has gotten drunk in a small Mexican town. Though she has never driven before, she manages to get her father into the car and drives fifty miles through the night as he lies intoxicated in the backseat. Finally, she rejoices in the birth of her son: "He was beautiful and mine. Totally mine. No one had bought him for me" (p.245). Angelou shows us, through these examples, that she is proud of her race — and of herself.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a remarkable book. Angelou could have been just another casualty of race prejudice. Yet by using her intelligence,

sensitivity, and determination, she succeeds in spite of the odds against her. And by writing with such power, she lets us share her defeats and joys. She also teaches us a vital lesson: With strength and persistence, we can all escape our cages — and sing our songs.

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