Andrés Moreno, 1ºL- NI, has sent me this document with some information he has gathered about that little animal, the sugar glider, which gives its name to the title of the book “The Sugar Glider”, by Rod Neilsen, Cambridge English Readers, Level 5.
We have already recommended you this book, which will probably keep you wanting to read until the end.
Now that the Christmas holidays are round the corner, in such horrible weather and with very little money to waste (that’s what the experts say) I think the best you can do is stay at home and do some reading. I want to recommend a book of short stories you can borrow from the library : Tooth and claw by Saki.
Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) was born in August 1870. He was a journalist and a writer, and is famous for his brilliant short stories. He was killed in the First World War in 1916.
You can read all the stories or just pick one up. Reading it won’t take you more than fifteen minutes but I’d like you to send a comment or write a post answering the questions below about one of the five stories in the book and say whether you like the story or not and why.
If you prefer you can write a review of a book you have read.
Sredni Vashtar. Write a detailed description of one of the two main human characters.
The Story-Teller. Explain why the children liked the bachelor’s story better than their aunt’s story.
Tobermory. What is the moral of this story?
Gabriel-Ernest / The She-Wolf. One of these stories deals with the old topic of the werewolf, in the other one a wolf is the centre of attention. Which story do you like best and why?
The White Tiger is the winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Its author, Aravind Adiga, was born in Madras in 1974 and was raised partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities. A former correspondent in India for TIME magazine, his articles have also appeared in publications like The Financial Times, The Independent, and The Sunday Times. He lives in Mumbai.
SYNOPSIS
Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.
The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.
Well, the first time I had one of his books in my hands I was alone in some airport, early in the morning, hanging out at the gate and waiting for the delayed 6.10 plane.
I was just falling asleep and I really needed something to keep my eyes wide open and my antennae bleeping to the things that were happening around –just in case I fell asleep and missed the flight home-. God, it was cold, there was really nothing to do and just wished I could snap my fingers and be home.
I got a bit lucky as, at the same time both, the café and the book shop opened so I went to the shop, picked a book my boyfriend at the time had told me about and sat in that airport forlorn café, my coffee, my wee muffin and my copy of “Enduring Love” having come to about ten quid (and believe me if I tell you the book was only four pounds).
From that moment onwards, I could not keep my eyes off that paperback. Everything was so striking, unexpected, gripping and beautifully constructed that I simply forgot the world around me. Page after page, it made my skin crawl more than most horror movies could –which is quite a funny thing as I would describe the book as a love story, (maybe a bizarre love story?)-
What was real and what was not? It had me guessing and thinking the whole way home and so, what was going to be a long flight home became a wonderful, pleasant time.
Since then I’ve read “Amsterdam”, “The comfort of strangers” and “Atonement” and, although I cannot favour one over the others, I can say that “Enduring Love” is probably my favourite, maybe simply because it was my first McEwan read and it made me a McEwan fan for life.
