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 THE GROWING PAINS OF ADRIAN MOLE

Author: Sue Townsend

Genre: Novel

Level: Advanced

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole is a novel which belongs to the successful series of books “Adrian Mole, from Minor to Major”. It is written in a diary style and it is aimed to be read by young adults, although this ironic and innocent perspective of a teen doesn’t leave adult readers indifferent.

PLOT

The story happens in Britain in the early eighties, when the country is at war and society is changing. It shows the readers the circumstances and worries of a teenager discovering the adult world.

Adrian is fifteen and lives in a quiet neighborhood with his parents George and Pauline, but his existence is far from being easy. He is not like most of the boys of his age, he is an intellectual and he feels that he doesn’t fit in this world, because he is sensitive, responsible and cares about the world’s problems, and this is not very common among teenagers. He has lots of existential questions and he is a bit depressed due to the fact that he is always thinking about how to solve all the problems that overwhelm him. Firstly, he belongs to a dysfunctional family, in which his parents often argue and even have extramarital affairs. As a result, Adrian will have a new brother and a new sister, and this will affect the family and the economic stability of the Moles.

Adrian´s love life is not easy either, his story is full of ups and downs between him and his girlfriend Pandora. Furthermore, he is quite worried about having his first sexual experience. But Adrian’s problems don’t end here. Besides his family and sentimental matters, he has to worry about taking care of the elderly Bert, after the death of his wife. His future is a big problem as well, because he has to pass his A- levels and he feels he won´t able to. In addition, he wants to be a poet, but he isn’t very successful yet.

Adrian is also concerned about the war and the political situation of his country; his self-esteem issues (he is a bit self-conscious because he has spots, and he is not high or heavy enough for his age); and last but not least, about the people who surrround him, both at home and at school, because he feels misunderstood by all of them.

Before ending  the school year Adrian is fed up with his life, because he is under a big pressure, and he decides to run away from home. Nevertheless, he finally has to go back home and deal with depression. But Adrian will eventually realize that his family and friends really care about him, and what is more, that he is not alone.

PERSONAL OPINION

This book is an interesting insight into the world of a teenager, which will give food for thought to young and adult readers. Although it is supposed to be aimed at young readers,the sense of humor and irony with which it is written, will result funny to adults too, and it shows a different perspective of adolescence and adulthood.

Consequently I think that this book is well worth reading, and I recommend it to those of you who would like to enjoy a bitter-sweet and particular point of view from this special teen.

Title: The Double Bass

Author: Patrick Süskind

Genre: Dramatic monologue

Publisher: Penguin

Level: Advanced

The Double Bass is a dramatic true life monologue from the author of the famous book “The Perfume” that I  read at high school. I chose this book because I enjoy plots which have a sense of humour and which are also realistic.

The book is a monologue by a double-bass player who works in the National  Orchestra of Germany. He is tired of his instrument, which is not very important in the orchestra and which can´t compete against other string instruments. He hates its sounds, form and size; but deep inside, he feels a deep passion towards it and  he always talks about past anecdotes. He also speaks about Sarah, a soprano singer in the orchestra. Sarah is his platonic love who he believes he will never achieve.

The only characters of the drama are the speaker and the double-bass. The entire story revolves around their relationship. The musician is a 35 year old civil servant, who lives isolated in his home; he only leaves it when he has a concert. He is also an expert on classical music; he can spend hours talking about composers, instruments and the history of classical music.

When he describes the double-bass, he is actually describing his feelings, his thoughts and his aspirations, and the most important thing: his loneliness.

Social status is also an important part in the plot.

In conclusion I highly recommend this book if you are a fan of classical music, but if you aren´t, it won’t bore you because the speaker has a great sense of humor. If you want to learn a lot about classical music vocabulary, it’s the best book. And if you feel a bit lonely and doubtful, this book will give you strength to take decisions in your future life

Boy is a 1984 book written by the famous English writer Roald Dahl. It is an entertaining book set between England and Norway. The story happens in the early twentieth century. This book is not an autobiography although it is about the author’s young days at school. The book begins when the author’s father travels from Norway to England. His father made a fortune fast in England and wanted all his children to be educated in an English school. ‘They are the best in the world’, he used to say. But what Roald discovered soon was how to survive from the huge authority in the well-known School for Boys: the incident with the mouse and the sweet-shop and the class with Captain Hardcastle are only a few examples. However not everything was sad. The incident about the tobacco is great fun.

The book is hilarious and easy to read. It comprises 25 chapters ranging from the writer’s childhood at school to his first job. Each story shows parts of the writer’s past and they are sometimes happy, sometimes sad but never boring. Readind this book you can imagine why he wrote tales as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.

If you want to discover one of the most important English tale writers, this is an opportunity not to be missed.

  ‘There is something I must tell you, my dear daughter, I can’t hide it any longer, and I need your help: my name is not Sally Gilmartin; my real name is Eva Delectorskaya and I’ve worked as a secret agent for the British Security Coordination during the Second World War’.            What would you think if your mother, in her sixites, revealed such a secret?

            Would your life, your world, be the same if the person who has brought you up, given you a place in the universe, turned out to be, out of the blue, a spy?

            Restless is a haunting narration of the complicated implications of the role played by the British Secret Services to involve the United States in the World War.

            A gripping spy story of loyalty and betrayal that makes you turn page after page wondering what will come next. And a romantic love story of a young, brave woman betrayed in most ways, making of her life a hell of fear and suspicion in which she will be restless forever, until she gets revenge.

             I highly recommend reading this fast-moving novel that will not deceive anyone.

  The story is set at Manderley Mansion, an imaginary place in Ireland whose owner is Mr De Winter. It takes place in a period of time that spans from Rebecca’s engagement and marriage with Mr De Winter to her life with him after being married.In the book there are several main characters: Rebecca, Mr de Winter, his first wife, the maidwoman, his first wife’s friend and the police. All of them were in trouble since Mr de Winter’s first wife died and this problem won’t be solved until the end of the book.

The story starts when Rebecca was working for a rich woman and she met who would be her husband. After a short and difficult engagement she marries Mr de Winter and goes to Manderley but it is here that her problems begin because he remembers his first wife and because the maidwoman had a very good relationship with the dead woman.

            One day the maidwoman suggests that Rebecca should organise a fancy dress ball and she should wear a dress that was in a painting on a wall at Manderley.

Also there was a room Rebecca was not allowed to enter and which had been Mr de Winter’s first wife’s.

After having found the ship where Mr de Winter’s first wife was, the police and Mr de Winter’s friend try to find an explanation for her death ‘which is unexpected and different from their thoughts’.

Last year I had the opportunity of watching the film, directed by Alfred Hitchcok and which caused me the best impression, over all the photography. Before watching it I had read in the book cover that it had been the winner of two Oscars: best film and best photography.

For all the reasons mentioned above I recommend this book and the film, too.

You won’t be left indifferent.

  “In the house” written by Margaret Johnson, is the book which I have chosen to read this year for my English course.

  This book is a story based on “Big Eye”, a fictional reality TV programme about young people living together for forty days in the same house. Although I don´t like reality TV programmes, I chose this book because it had a CD and therefore I could listen to the story and read it.

   Four boys called Leo, Nigel, Simon and Pete live in the house with only one girl, Annie, who tells us the story. These young people have been chosen to be on the programme but they can know nothing about what happens outside the house, and there are cameras that watch everything they do. People at home watch them on their televisions and they can also phone to say who they think should leave the house.The last person to leave will win a lot of money.

   After reading this book I can tell you that I prefer reading the book than watching the reality TV programme.The reading is interesting because I have practised English and I have enjoyed it. It was interesting to see how Annie´s thoughts and feelings about her friends change in five days. Every character has a different personality and she doesn`t realise it until the end of the story.

The story

This is a real story about Erche Namu, a girl who was born in China, in a small village where Moso customs were really relevant for the population. The book describes the house where she lived with her mother Latso, her two sisters and her brothers very clearly and you can easily imagine the landscape of the village, its mountains, Lake Lagu and their life among crops and animals.

The book shows us that her family was different from her neighbours, because her mother had broken with Moso traditions when she decided to join the communist revolution and she had to abandon Namu´s grandmother’s house. As a result, her mother began her own life in a new place and after some years, Namu was doing more or less the same as her mother, travelling from one village to another and from one country to another. At first, her main aim was her family life, and later her career, because of her good talent for music, especially as singer. She could take part in different events and perform for organizations, such as the Liangsham Minority Singing and Dancing Troupe in Xichang or in the Shangai Conservatory, making good progress until she was forced to abandon her profession as a singer. Then she decided to change her job, and she worked in modelling and also travelled to new countries in Europe and America. Finally she decided to publish her fascinating life and read the manuscript in her mother’s house. During these years, the village and Moso traditions had changed in many ways and she had really become a ‘Treasured Princess’, which was the meaning of her name.

Opinion

An enjoyable and entertaining story developed in the past, with great use of expressions in the passive form, which have been really useful for a clear understanding. Furthermore, the vocabulary is not extremely difficult and the reading easy to follow.

My reflection on the book

Namu´s story and her mother´s story, are real examples about what a woman can do with her own life, breaking traditions to achieve new opportunities and taking their childhood as a good reference for this. The life of Namu reminds me of the relevant changes that Spanish and European women went through last century: most of them lived in small villages and were well prepared to cook, clean the house, take care of their children and families, but one day they decided to look for other options…

Thanks to this, the women of the 21st century can, fortunately, study and make progress to become good professionals in the civil service or in private companies in fields as relevant as science, business, technology, journalism, fashion or politics … and not only on household chores… So I think the quotation from the book, they decided to go into the far mountains and go walking near the rivers far away is a good summary of the plot.

AUTHOR: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

PUBLISHER: Orion Books (1968)

GENRE: Police Story

LEVEL: Advanced

I chose this book because of the authors; I did not know anything about them but, as soon as I read the surnames on the spine of the book and I realised that the authors were Swedish, I took it out of the library shelving.

THEME

The theme of Roseanna is the discovery of a killer in a murder which apparently has no clues.

PLOT

When a Swedish canal is being dredged, a corpse of a naked and strangled woman appears. Nobody knows about her and she is not on the lists of missing people. The police start to work on the case but are unsuccessful, so, in the end, the case is slightly put aside. However, a small group of policemen continue working and after hard investigations, they find some tourist´s photographs and information from Nebraska which help them make progress and catch the murderer after setting different traps, because it is not easy to prove that the suspect has really committed the homicide.

PERSONAL OPINION

Roseanna is more than a novel, it is the forerunner of all the Swedish police novels, so it is well worth reading.

In my opinion, the book is a great combination of different but linked facts which give it an outstanding general look. I mean, while you are reading, you can find breathtaking passages that are likely to catch all your attention, making it difficult for you to stop reading -for example, when the murderer is going to be caught. Besides, it is a highly entertaining book to read because it submerges you into an atmosphere where time does not exist. With this story, time goes by and you do not perceive it.

To sum up, I definitely recommended you to add Roseanna to your collection if you are a lover of police stories because it is really stunning.

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.

THE CALL OF THE WILD
JACK LONDON

Jack London was an American writer born in San Francisco in 1876. Towards 1897 he traveled to Alaska driven by the gold rush, this trip inspired many of his works, such as “White Fang”, which became a movie , and “The call of the wild” whose plot is about the return of a civilized being to their original state and fighting for survival.

“The Call of the Wild” is a story of a dog called Buck, who´s kidnapped and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. Buck has to learn to survive in the lands of Alaska, which are new and unknown lands to him. During his trip Buck has several masters, but of them all, the one who wins Buck´s love and loyalty is John Thornton. Another character in the book is about a wolf that represents the call of the wild. Buck has to decide whether to continue with Thornton or answer the call of the wild.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it´s a really entertaining read. I really liked the story, although it has scenes of violence and cruel struggle but I think this makes it more realistic, since it´s set in a harsh environment for both dog and man.