About reading

Blood from a stone is a book from the crime and mystery novel series of Commissario Guido Brunnetti written by Donna Leon and published by Random House. I chose this book because I enjoy crime and mystery novels.

As other books of the Commissario Guido series, the action takes place nowadays in Venice. The fiction story begins on a cold night shortly before Christmas, when an illegal immigrant is killed. A group of American tourists are the closest witnesses of the scene, but they have only seen how the vendor of fake designer handbags has been shot by two men who disappeared among the crowd.

Commissario Brunnetti will have to find the answer to many questions. He wonders why a street vendor has been murdered by professionals . In addition, Brunnetti bumps into racism and absolute ignorance in relation to the African community which the dead man was a member of. He also wonders, why he has to face so many obstacles from his own superior during the crime investigation. But Commissario Brunnetti counts on some loyal workmates and old friends in order to try to solve this case, which doesn´t seem  easy at all.

I had never read a novel of the saga, but it was not a problem. The characters and their relationships are very well described. Nevertheless, and despite the map of Venice in the book and the detailed description of the city by the author, I had some problems with locations at first.

As I said, I like detective stories, and I was not disappointed with this one.

TITLE:            In My Sister´s Shoes

AUTHOR:      Sinéad Moriarty

GENRE:          General fiction novel

PUBLISHER: Penguin

LEVEL:           Advanced

Kate O´Brien is thirty and after a hard period in London away from her family and friends, working with the aim of raising her professional success as  a television presenter, she comes back to Dublin to celebrate her twin nephews´ birthday. She lives an exciting and independent life until then but now she will have to face up to a dilemma that will change her life.

As a result of the breast cancer that is diagnosed to her sister, Fiona, Kate is forced to abandon her cool life, to give up her exciting job in the London media, and to move back to Dublin. Besides, her brother-in-law Mark spends his time only achieving his own success, her younger brother only thinks in his shocking music, and her widowed dad needs to rebuild his own life. What is more, after the death of her mother due to another breast cancer when they were children, Fiona looked after Kate as if she was her second mother.

That is the reason why Mark blackmails Kate to take care of his twin sons, telling her that she owes Fiona.

Kate´s life starts to turn around the stressful routine of the twins by doing unbelievable tasks , but also having a go at her irresistible ex-boyfriend or investigating her hidden family past.

Gradually we will be hooked in a story that surprises us with unexpected details of the characters.

Heart-warming, gripping, and hilarious, what Sinead Moriarty wants us to do is to see ourselves in each one of the troubles and solutions of her urban heroine. Cleverly, the writer creates a mixture of feelings and daily life challenges that will make us  vibrate, and  laugh at ourselves.

To sum up, this is a highly entertaining book that you can´t miss.

TITLE:  THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT- TIME.

AUTOR: Mark Haddon.

GENRE: Fiction.

PUBLISHER: The Random House Children’s Books.

LEVEL: Advanced.

MAIN CHARACTERS:

Christopher Boone: He is a 15 year old boy who suffers from autism. He is the narrator and the main character.  He lives with his father, Ed. He loves mathematics and science. He also likes pets. He has a rat named Toby as a pet. He attends a special school. Christopher´s illness makes it difficult for him to have a relationship with other people.  He doesn’t like to be hugged, not even being touched. He screams and reacts violently when people touch him. The boy does not like crowds or new places because his head forces him to look at everything that is new to him, and that overwhelms him.

Ed (Christopher’s father) : He takes care of Christopher. He strives to give his son an easy life. He overprotects Christopher.

Siobha : She is Christopher’s teacher. She helps him and his class mates with the difficulties of everyday life. She tries to make life easier. Christopher trusts her. He always asks her everything he does not understand.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE PLOT

Christopher Boone is a fifteen year old boy who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. He lives in Swindon, a big city in the south west of England, with his father.

He goes to a special school. His daily routine consists of going to school and then staying at home with his father studying maths, and science, his favourite entertainments.

One night Christopher discovers one of his best friends, Wellington (the poodle dog of his neighbour, Mrs Shears) dead in his neighbour’s garden. The dog had a pitchfork through its body. The boy feels really sad and decides to find out who killed him.

Christopher likes Sherlock Holmes novels a lot, so he decides to write a book about the murder. The book is titled “The Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time”.

During the investigation he interviews all his neighbours, which is stressful for him, because he has never talked to them before, although they live in the same street.

One day his father discovers the book, and his son´s investigations as well. His father thinks that talking to unknown people is dangerous for his son. So he decides to hide the book, and tells Christopher to abandon the investigation.

While his father is working Christopher starts looking for the book all around their house. He finds it in his father´s room, in the wardrobe. He also discovers, by chance  a lot of letters that his mother had written to him, dated after his father told him that she had died in hospital of a heart attack. Christopher comes to the conclusion that his mother is still alive, and also that his father has lied to him.

He is completely shocked by the discovery to the point that he is unable to move. He stays in bed screaming, shaking and vomiting for hours.

When Ed arrives home from work he notices that Christopher has found the letters that his mother has been writing to him for ages. Ed cleans everything and confesses that his mother is still alive and also that his is responsible for Wellington´s death.

Christopher is afraid of his father, he doesn’t feel sure with him anymore, so he decides to travel to London to look for his mother.

He will go to London by train, so he will face many difficult situations such as going alone to the railway station, buying the ticket to London, catching the correct train and being in the train with a lot of unknown people.

In this novel two different settings can be distinguished: the first one is the detective novel related to Wellington´s murder and also to the important mysteries of Christopher’s family. The second one is related to Christopher´s emotions, his ideas, wishes and fears.

PERSONAL OPINION

Mark Haddon has written a gripping book I could hardly put down.

Before reading the book I knew slightly what autism is. It is one of those diseases that we hear about but we really don’t know how the patients´ daily life is.

The author has created a lovely character who faces living in a hostile world with courage. A hostile world made for “normal” people and not for the marginal people.

What I like most about this book is that the author makes the reader know how the protagonist feels all the time: when he is sad, when happy, when overwhelmed, when he is afraid.

I highly recommend this book.

Even if you haven’t read the book try the crosswords below.

If you want to read it online or download it visit our downloads section.

Frankenstein, set in Europe in the 1790’s, begins with the letters of Captain Robert Walton to his sister. These letters form the framework for the story in which Walton tells his sister the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster as Frankenstein told it to him.

Walton set out to explore the North Pole. The ship got trapped in frozen water and the crew, watching around them, saw a giant man in the distance on a dogsled. Hours later they found Frankenstein and his dogsled near the ship, so they brought the sick man aboard. As he recovered, Frankenstein told Walton his story so that Walton would learn the price of pursuing glory at any cost.

Frankenstein grew up in a perfectly loving and gentle Swiss family with an especially close tie to his adopted cousin, Elizabeth, and his dear friend Henry Clerval. As a young boy, Frankenstein became obsessed with studying outdated theories about what gives humans their life spark. In college at Ingolstadt, he created his own “perfect” human from scavenged body parts, but once it lived, the creature was hideous. Frankenstein was disgusted by its ugliness, so he ran away from it.

Henry Clerval came to Ingolstadt to study with Frankenstein, but ended up nursing him after his exhausting and secret efforts to create a perfect human life. While Frankenstein recovered from his illness over many months and then studied languages with Clerval at the college, the monster wandered around looking for friendship. After several harsh encounters with humans, the monster became afraid of them and spent a long time living near a cottage and observing the family who lived there. Through these observations he became educated and realized that he was very different from the humans he watched. Out of loneliness, the monster sought the friendship of this family, but they were afraid of him, and this rejection made him seek vengeance against his creator. He went to Geneva and met a little boy in the woods. The monster hoped to kidnap him and keep him as a companion, but the boy was Frankenstein’s younger brother, so the monster killed him to get back at his creator. Then the monster planted the necklace he removed from the child’s body on a beautiful girl who was later executed for the crime.

When Frankenstein learned of his brother’s death, he went back to Geneva to be with his family. In the woods where his young brother was murdered, Frankenstein saw the monster and knew that he was William’s murderer. Frankenstein was ravaged by his grief and guilt for creating the monster who wreaked so much destruction, and he went into the mountains alone to find peace. Instead of peace, Frankenstein was approached by the monster who then demanded that he create a female monster to be the monster’s companion. Frankenstein, fearing for his family, agreed to and went to England to do his work. Clerval accompanied Frankenstein, but they separated in Scotland and Frankenstein began his work. When he was almost finished, he changed his mind because he didn’t want to be responsible for the carnage another monster could create, so he destroyed the project. The monster vowed revenge on Frankenstein’s upcoming wedding night. Before Frankenstein could return home, the monster murdered Clerval.

Once home, Frankenstein married his cousin Elizabeth right away and prepared for his death, but the monster killed Elizabeth instead and the grief of her death killed Frankenstein’s father. After that, Frankenstein vowed to pursue the monster and destroy him. That’s how Frankenstein ended up near the North Pole where Walton’s ship was trapped. A few days after Frankenstein finished his story, Walton and his crew decided to turn back and go home. Before they left, Frankenstein died and the monster appeared in his room, mourning the loss of his creator. The monster explained his reasons for vengeance to Walton, as well as his remorse. He then told Walton of his plans to head to the North Pole and burn himself to death, as death would be less painful than life. He leaped from the ship into an ice-raft and was “borne away by the waves.”

If you want to have a good tender time, this is the book.

The plot is about two sisters, the eldest married and with twins, the other, single and with a liberal profession in the TV world. Suddenly cancer appears in the middle of the organized life of the married one and the single sister is going to be involved in it. She will have to make a very difficult decision: to go on with her, till now, glamorous but empty kind of life or to abandon all and take care of her sister’s family with everything it involves.

This book can stir your feelings, from sadness to happiness but always with the respect that this disease deserves. It is perfect to be made into a film, the kind of film that I like watching at five o’clock in the afternoon.

It can be considered as an autobiography because the author shares his adventures and misfortunes during his school days with the readers.
I think that the best adjective to describe it is HILARIOUS but between anecdote and anecdote a hard society is depicted. To be a student in those times was not as easy as now, the intolerance and absurd discipline mixed with the teachers’ irrational authority made that time cruel and hard for most of the students.

However, it is worth reading.

In my sister’s shoes is the last book that I have read. I like this it especially because it is funny reading, a good way to enjoy yourself during these horrible days of bad weather.

What I like most are the amusing dialogues that it has, above all between the main characters, Kate and Fiona or Kate and the children. The book is full of originally situations and stories that make you feel good and laugh a lot.

Consequently, I would recommend this reading above all for Spanish readers who want to read something easy and with pleasure, without having a dictionary next to them because most of the things are well understood.

However, from my point of view, this book keeps a secret: under its funny appearance there is a strong intention that tries to teach the reader an important lesson. Life it is not so easy on many occasions and sometimes destiny can gives you a different choice so we should be prepared to change our minds when the situations are difficult. Kate is a splendid woman who teaches us how sometimes you have to make a decision that doesn’t convince you at all but when there is not choice it is better to adapt to the situation.

Finally I would like to say that sometimes you need to read stories like that because it helps you to forget all your problems and definitely to be much happier.

Yolanda recommends this book. She has read it and done a power point presentation you can see below.

 For the past thirteen years, as England became an increasingly unhappy and fearful place, Prince Charles has been living quietly on a bleak council estate, The Flower Exclusion Zone (known locally as ‘The Fez), with his wife and love of his life, Camilla. He enjoys gardening and poultry keeping while Camilla spends her days doing as little as possible, alongside their fellow ASBO-subjected neighbours.
But life is about to change…Charles refuses to follow his destiny unless his wife can be Queen - and public opinion suggests the people would rather have Jordan than Camilla on the throne. But no sooner has Prince William offered himself as the next monarch, than one Graham Cracknall of Ruislip emerges - claiming to be Charles and Camilla’s secret love child, and therefore the rightful heir to the crown.
When the battle for the Crown begins the dogs on the Fez begin a struggle of their own - one that sweeps across the dog population of England. As Harris, the Queen’s irascible corgi says, ‘we’ve been domesticated for too long, it’s time we showed our bleeding teeth.’
Will sanity prevail over the right royal cock up that England has become? Or will chaos reign supreme? “Queen Camilla” shows Sue Townsend at her very best - sharp, satirical and utterly hilarious from the first page to the last.