There's something to be said for creating a work of literature that can stand the test of time. Many writers of today go to great (and painstaking) lengths in the attempt to accomplish that transcendency--a universality that touches us to the core, and ensures that the author (and the work) will be remembered for a long time to come.

It seems rather simple: To reach out and touch another person. But, a great writer really does much more than that. He/She touches a whole range of readers--each with a myriad of joys/sorrows, hopes/fears, successes/failures. How does one writer touch each of those individuals in very specific ways? How did writers of the past achieve lasting value in their writings? What can we learn from their struggles (and successes)?

In his article about Pride and Prejudice, John Thornton writes: "Jane Austen is a novelist with an extremely narrow focus that extends, surprisingly, into a wide range of concerns. Her books can be viewed most simply as eerily good romance novels, more broadly as sharp critiques of nineteenth-century vanity, cruelty and folly, and--broadest of all--as an indictment of a social system and economic system dedicated to the marginalization and commodification of a full half of the human experience."

Take the Pride and Prejudice quiz to test your novel knowledge, and then join our discussion of Jane Austen's novels.

Cover Art © W.W. Norton & Co.

Why does the American dream sometimes seem so unattainable in literature? From whence does this cynicism come?

In The Big Sleep, we read: "You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now."

Read more quotes from the novel, or read the review. Have you read this book? What did you think? How would you compare it to the movie (1946 and 1978)? Would you recommend the movie or the books to others?

Cover Art © Penguin.

The sky is threatening rain--perfect for curling up in a blanket with a good book. I love to see the flash of lightning off in the distance or up close--I can almost touch it. The rain is so thick in the air as the rain splats against the window panes--the moisture seems to engulf me. I can't help but think of all the poets and writers who have been enchanted and inspired by the rain's song:

• "Proud music of the storm... Personified dim shapes--you hidden orchestras, / You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert, / Blending with Nature's rhythms all the tongues of nations" - Walt Whitman, Proud Music of the Storm
• "I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain, / Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, / Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed" - Walt Whitman, The Voice of the Rain
• "[T]he rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spiderwebby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild" - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• "Darkness had come, and it was still raining. He could hear the rain dashing against the window-panes, and could see it falling through the dull yellow rim of light cast by the lighted street lamp." - Kate Chopin, Her Letters

Hopefully, if a storm finds you, you're curled up by the fire with a good book! Into every life, rain will fall, but books are here to offer solace.

Henry David Thoreau is one of the most studied writers in American literature--not for fiction, but for a nonfiction collection about his stay at Walden Pond.

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817--he would be known as an American writer, poet, philosopher and naturalist. There's no small debate about how realistic his stay at Walden Pond was--the book has been one of the most studied works in American literature classrooms, along with Thoreau's other essays and poems, (Civil Disobedience is just one of the popular/memorable ones).

In Walden, he writes, "Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world."