Title:     The Grapes of Wrath

Autor:   John Steinbeck

Kind of book:    Novel

The book describes the trip across America of the Joads, a farming family that are forced to move from Oklahoma to California as a result of The Great Depression of the 1930s in The United States.

During that period many small farmers, ruined and starved too, had decided to go to California looking for a better life. They wandered from place to place trying to find work and food for their families. But there were thousands of other families and the Californians were afraid that all those people would take their land, so they treated the Okies badly.

The main character is Tom Joad, the elder son, who has just gone out of prison and joins to his family in this journey. He looks for a job and supports his family with the money he gets.

The story is very interesting because it shows us a part of The United States history. There was a time of oppression suffered by migrants who had to fight for their rights.

I like that, in spite of their situation, the Joads continued trying to help others, even when things in their own life were so horrible.

The book is easy to read, although there are a lot of American expressions used in a colloquial way, but they are explained in a section at the end of the book. There is plenty of dialogues and it´s a good story, so I would recommend this book.

This is a story from ‘Man from the South and other stories’ by Roald Dahl. It’s a mixture of unrelated stories but with something in common - all of them have a moral.

Man from the South is about a strange old man who was spending time by the hotel swimming-pool. There, he met a young sailor and proposed him to make a bet.  If the sailor could light his lighter ten times without any mistakes, he would win the old man’s Cadillac, but if he failed, he would lose one of his fingers. The guy accepted it, but when they were finishing the game, a woman appeared and made them stop. She said she owned the Cadillac and the man had no money because she had won it all from him. Then she showed her hand with only one finger. 

As for the characters, they are very different. The old man is strange, mysterious and he has a problem with bets. The sailor is a typical young man who doesn’t like to lose at anything. We don’t have a lot of details about the narrator.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the story. The moral of the story is related to the sin of avarice. In this case, if you are too greedy you will lose a lot of fingers! All the stories from the book have the same end: a moral. I think that it is interesting to read something you learn from, or at least you think about . What I like the most about this book is that when I finished each story, I stopped for a while and started to think about the story, realising that all the little details have a sense. I also loved ‘The Landlady’ and ‘Beware of the Dog’.

Finally I would recommend this book to everybody, above all ‘The Landlady’ and ‘Beware of the Dog’, because it has different short stories with different and amazing plots, and if you don’t like one of them, I am sure that you will prefer the next.

The book I have chosen is called “Night without end”. This book was written by Alistair Maclean and is a thriller novel published in 1959. Specifically, the edition I have read is a retold for students by Margaret Naudi. This novel is “considered one of MacLean´s very best”.

The main characters are three men: Peter Mason, Jackstraw and Joss. They were working in a weather station in the Arctic when suddenly, they heard a huge noise. They left the weather station to know what had happened. They found out that the noise had been an accident of a plane. When they reached the plane, they fortunately found ten survivors, but they also found several dead men but with one of them dead by a bullet not the crash, so it was clear that there were some murderers among all of them.

The rest of the story runs on trying to guess who is or are the murderers. Peter Mason, Jackstraw and Joss are men who are experienced in working in extreme conditions, but they have never managed a situation as described in the book. The leader of the three is Peter Mason, who, with the help of his two fellow workers, will try to find out what is happening and why a plane appears in the middle of the Arctic. At the end, they get to know that there were two murderers who forced the pilots of the plane to land in the ice-cap because in the plane there was a top secret guided-missile mechanism which is valued about a million pounds.

The rest of characters (the survivors) are secondary characters (Corazzini, Marie Legarde, the boxer…), and the writer does not describe them in detail.

In my opinion, the story is really good and has been fast and easy to read because you want to know what is happening and who the murderers are from start to finish, something typical of the thriller genre, but the writer hides it until the end, so you read and read and this is done very fast.

On the other hand, I think that the writer should be slower with the changes between one setting and another, because in some situations the reader is in the plane but suddenly, in the next line, the story continues in the shelter.

In general terms, I liked the book and would recommend it to other students.

I have only read this book of Alistair MacLean, but I have been searching some information on the internet about him and he was (he is dead) a specialist in the thriller genre, so I would read other books by this author because the thrillers are my favorite books and films, but honestly, I see more movies than I read books.

INTRODUCTION

TITLE: This time it´s Personal

AUTHOR: Alan Battersby

GENRE: Thriller

PLOT

Nathan Marley, a private investigator in New York, gets involved in a case of Russian Community illegal immigration.  It all begins when José De La Cruz, the brother of Stella Delgado who is Marley´s personal assistant, is charged with the murder of Alexei Romanov, a Russian community man with a fine reputation.

In this situation, and with José in hospital, seriously injured and unable to remember anything, Marley and Stella work side by side searching for the truth, to clear Jose´s name  because they are sure that he is only a harmless boy, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Finally, with NYPD and Romanov´s widow help, they not only find out the real murderer, but they also make a connection between the murder and lots of dead young Russian men, who were found out on the beach. In this way, they also uncover a huge illegal immigration and dirty money operation; and fortunately, José is declared innocent.

CHARACTERS

Nathan Marley: he describes himself as “an ordinary-looking guy, bald, overweight and on the wrong side of forty”. He works as a private investigator in New York City, but in the past he used to be a NYPD officer. He is intelligent because he does his job very well and has a lot of contacts in the NYPD.

Stella Delgado: Stella is a young Puerto Rican woman in her late twenties, who works as Marley’s personal assistant. She is a woman who never gives up, because she had a really difficult childhood, but then it took her years of night school study to catch up on her education. During the story, she works hard to prove her brother’s innocence.

José De La Cruz; he is Stella’s brother, a young Puerto Rican harmless boy, who has had a really tough childhood. Nowadays he is looking desperately for a job for the summer season.

Mrs. Romanov:  he is the Alexei Romanov’s widow, and as she has a lot of contacts in the Russian Community, she is a precious help to Nathan and Stella investigation.

OTHER INFORMARTION

I really enjoyed the story because it is a thriller book, which is the genre that I usually read in the Spanish language. Besides, the author knows how to keep the intrigue throughout the story.

The best part of the story is for me when that the dangerous criminal Mossolov is found to be a woman.

From this story I have learned how important the Russian Community in the U.S.A. is. Also I have learned important things about illegal immigration.

CONCLUSION

I would read more books by this author because as I said before, he knows how to keep the intrigue, and it is easy to read his story without confusing parts. So I would recommend this book to everyone, because reading books is a funny way to learn English.

Introduction

Title: He knows too much

Author: Alan Maley

Genre: Mystery

Publisher: CAMBRIDGE University Press

Level: Intermediate; Cambridge English Readers Level 6

    Plot

It is a mystery book because you can´t find out what will really happen to the character until the end. Furthermore it keeps you intrigued in each chapter.

The story takes place between England and India during the 80’s and 90’s, a time of abundant capitalism.

 The book is about an English executive, Dick Sterling (the main character of the book), who tries to discover why he was unjustly dismissed from the company where he had been working for 20 years. During his research he discovers that his boss and other workers were committing tax fraud in their company, and also they kept other secrets. In the course of his investigation his marriage breaks up, but finally he manages to find love again and he realizes that revenge is not always good.

    Characters

• Dick Sterling à He is the general manager in Madras, India, of Trakton, a multinational manufacturing company. He is a hard worker and he doesn´t support the injustice. He is the main character.
• Keith Lennox à Dick´s boss at Trakton. He is very ambitious and a big liar.
• Visvanathan (Vish) à He is the office manager at Trakton. He is an unscrupulous person who could do anything to achieve his aims.
• Molly à Vish´s wife. She also works at Trakton. She is a big liar and cajole.
• John Verghese à He is the son of Molly and Keith.
• Sally Sterling à Dick´s wife. She is rich and a very independent person.
• Barbara Lennox à Keith´s wife. She is living a big lie.
• Ramanathan (Ramu) à Dick´s personal assistant at Trakton. He is an honest man who helps to Dick with his investigation.
• Nagarajan and Ned Outram à Nagarajan is in Accounts at Trakton, and Ned is a former employee at Trakton. Both were dismissed in the same way as Dick.
• Lakshmi à Nagarajan´s daughter. She and Dick fall in love, and she is a great support to him.
• Sir Percy Hanock à Former chief executive of Trakton, once head of Delhi office.
• Sir Jeremy Jackson (Jacko) à retired professor of comparative philology at Cambridge. He helps Dick with the investigation about John Verghese.

    Personal opinion and Conclusion

It is an entertaining and surprising book, because in each chapter you can discover a new clue that helps you to get hooked on the story little by little.

For me, the best part of the book is the end, because you think that Dick is going to take revenge on his enemies, but finally he doesn´t need to use the information that he has discovered, because everything is discovered by chance.

After reading this book I learned that revenge isn´t the best way to resolve problems, because I think that eventually everyone is put in their rightful place.

 Finally I would recommend reading this book because it is easy to understand and is entertaining; moreover, the book makes you think about how we should act against injustice.

“Night Without End”, written by Alistair MacLean and  retold by Margaret Naudi, is an exciting intrigue book set in Greenland.

The story begins with the suspicious crash-landing of a passenger airliner in the middle of the Greenland ice cap.

The crashed plane is discovered by a group of scientists who rescue the surviving passengers and take them to their station, but soon the scientists discover that among the passengers there are two murderers, so all the passengers are suspicious.

As they don´t have enough food for all of them, they decide to go to a station near the coast but in the middle of the journey the murderers are discovered and they, who have a really expensive and important military object, abandon the rest of the passengers and the scientists and go to the coast where some friends are waiting for them in a boat to escape.

Then, another group of scientist find the abandoned passengers and scientists, and all of them find the murderers before reaching the coast. Then they kill one of them and don´t help the other, who finally dies at the bottom of a crevasse.

Finally, the passengers and the scientists survive.

The main characters of this story are the following:

-          Peter Mason: the scientist who tells the story.

-          Jackstraw and Joss: the other two scientists.

-          Hillcrest and his men: the scientists who find the abandoned passengers and scientists

-          Marie LeGarde: a passenger and a famous actress.

-          Zagero and his father: both are passengers, the first is a boxer and the second is his manager.

-          Senator Brewster: he is a passenger.

-          Mrs Dansby Gregg: she is a passenger and a rich woman.

-          Helene: a German girl who serves Mrs. Dansby-Gregg

-          Margaret Ross: the stewardess of the airline.

-          Theodore Mahler: he is a diabetic passenger.

-          The reverend Smallwood and Mr. Corazzini (a businessman): both are passengers and professional killers.

This entertaining book shows that, in the end,  good people always beat the bad ones.

 The chapter I enjoyed the most was the tenth chapter where the killers are discovered. It made come to my mind the famous proverb “first falls a liar than a cripple”.

 I recommend this book to all the people who enjoy reading intrigue books because once you start to read, it is difficult to stop because when you finish a chapter, there are a lot of things to resolve and you continue reading to see what happens.

TITLE:            In My Sister´s Shoes

AUTHOR:       Sinéad Moriarty

GENRE:          General fiction novel

PUBLISHER:   Penguin

LEVEL:           Advanced

I had never heard of Sinead Moriarty until I read this book and I have to admit that it has been one of the most uplifting books that I have read in a while.

In My Sister’s shoes is the story of two sisters, Kate and Fiona O’Brien. On the one hand, Kate is living her dream in London. She’s finally got her own show on a small channel and her own flat.  In other words, she has everything she has ever wanted and she has worked very hard to get it.

On the other hand, Fiona is Kate’s older sister. She never left Dublin like her sister and she is happy with her little family close by. But when Fiona gets cancer, the same cancer which killed her mother years before, Kate is forced to leave her job and come back to Dublin to help look after the twins, Bobby and Jack.

The story is extremely heart-warming, and shows the love and support of sisters and the closeness of family when you need them most. Basically, it shows the relationship between the two sisters with family secrets and changes. It teaches you that no matter what your family does, they will always be your family, and they’ll always love you, just as you’ll always love them, no matter what.

Sinead Moriarty has an extremely easy style to read and she has the ability to make you laugh one minute and to cry the next. The emotions that both sisters go through are portrayed so well…For instance, their fear and determination and the realization that Fiona is the same age as their mum when she died. There is also a younger brother called Derek who always presents a bit of light relief. He is an aspiring rapper and along with his ever optimistic friend Gizmo he is still waiting for his big break, making his father despair. Some of the things that they got through just had me laughing out loud!

The story is written in the first person and is told by Kate so you feel you really get inside the character’s head, and this one is done especially well. I really felt that I had been on an emotional rollercoaster by the time I finished.
It´s a beautiful story with the right amount of comedy and tragedy. The book is very easy to read without being “simple”. It’s definitely a book which is addictive and you feel you just want to keep on reading the story and find out more and more about the characters because once you start reading it you cannot  put it down.

In conclusion, In My Sister’s Shoes could have been a bit of a depressing read, especially with the descriptions of Fiona’s treatment. Nevertheless, it is not depressing at all, it is moving, funny and I definitely recommend that you add this to your collection!

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.