Biblioteca de la EOI de Oviedo

Estos son los ganadores/as de la Primera Edición del Concurso: “Lector del Año” de nuestra Biblioteca:

Primer Premio:      Mª Benedicta Vegas Platón

Segundo Premio:   Pedro Alonso García

Segundo Premio:   Marta Blanco Fernández

¡Enhorabuena a nuestros/as  campeones/as!

Título: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

Autor: Mary McCarthy

Obra adaptada: NO

Nivel: Avanzado

Reseña:

 Autobiography is a very appealing literary genre, which invites the readers to know, at first hand, the author’s experiences and inner life. Feelings pour out into the pages of a book through which the writer wants to involve readers in his/her memories.  

 Apart from luring men and women all over the world, autobiographical books play a very important social and historical role. They pass on traditions and knowledge, while shedding light on public and private events, which help the reader to shape an open-minded world approach.   

 Mary McCarthy’s “Memories of a Catholic Girlhood” is a superb autobiography “collected slowly, over a period of years”, as she herself points out, about an orphaned girl who was brought up between two sets of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish grandparents. 

  McCarthy (1912-1989) was an American novelist, essayist and critic, who contributed to the most important general interest magazines in her country, having written acute articles on women’s liberation, communist witch hunt and nuclear weapons, to mention just some issues she was concerned with. 

 Having been educated as a Catholic, her life story is peopled with nuns and priests who exerted, through a humanistic upbringing, a fundamental function in her creative thinking. Far from being an obedient girl, Mary McCarthy developed a sharp criticism in her childhood, which culminated with her atheism as a young woman. 

 The book is highly recommendable, not only because of the opportunity it offers readers to think about their own childhood – there is always something in common between people –, but due to the attractive, brilliant way Mary McCarthy tells her story.

Helga Maria Saboia Bezerra  2ºNA

Valoración: 5/5

Título: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 

Autor: Robert Louis Stevenson

Editorial: Express Publishing

Obra adaptada: Sí

Nivel: Intermedio

Reseña:

This is a classic horror story that was taken to the cinema and was really successful. The major theme of the novel is the dual nature of the human psyche; everyone has a good and an evil side and Dr. Jekyll experimented on it, but the experiments got out of control.

He was a successful doctor and smart young man who worked in a lab and used to think that everyone is two people: the one who does what he thinks he should do, and the one who dreams of doing what he thinks he can´t. He proved it in himself drinking a blue liquid that changed his character and his look. When Mr Hyde emerged at will, he turned into a wild-looking man with hairy hands and face. At first this was funny because nobody knew who he was. But suddenly, Mr Hyde started to do terrible things, he even killed a man.

His friend and lawyer, Mr Utterson began to suspect of Dr Jekyll; some clues pointed to the fact that there was a relationship between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but nobody could imagine that they were the same person. Finally, one day Jekyll ran out of his medicine and Hyde emerged for ever. He knew that he couldn´t change back and he didn´t want to live as Hyde, so he killed himself. The man who the police found was Hyde, but Dr Jekyll had left a letter to his friend Utterson explaining all the story and leaving all his money to him in his will.

From my point of view, the book is quite entertaining and worth-reading although it is predictable from the beginning. I´d recommend it for those who enjoy fiction with a mystery.

Valoración: 4/5

Salomé Menéndez Rego  2ºNI

 Al cumplirse 150 años del nacimiento de Arthur Conan Doyle, padre de Sherlock Holmes, el mundo sigue fascinado con el detective de ficción más famoso de todos los tiempos, que dio a su creador tanta gloria como disgustos.

 Arthur Conan Doyle escribió cuatro novelas y cincuenta y seis relatos cortos sobre las aventuras de Holmes, retratado a menudo con su inconfundible gorra de doble visera fumando una pipa, y su inseparable y fiel amigo, el doctor Watson.

Nacido el 22 de mayo de 1859 en Edimburgo (Escocia), el escritor ha pasado a los anales de la historia de la literatura por haber dado vida a Sherlock Holmes, todo un icono de la cultura popular. Como afirmó una vez el genio argentino de las letras hispanas Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), ‘pensar de tarde en tarde en Sherlock Holmes es una de las buenas costumbres que nos quedan’.

En opinión de John Aidiniantz, comisario del londinense Museo de Sherlock Holmes, al escritor ‘le debía resultar molesto que le preguntaran constantemente sobre Sherlok Holmes, a cuyas historias dedicaba poco tiempo. Le fue difícil dar a conocer otras obras y Holmes le eclipsó. Ese fue el destino de Conan Doyle’.

El caso es que el autor escocés se acabó cansando del personaje, que le robaba tiempo para cosas ‘más importantes’, como sus anheladas novelas históricas o sus libros de ciencia ficción protagonizados por el profesor Challenger. ‘He tenido tanta sobredosis de él, que me sienta como el paté de foie gras’, se lamentó Conan Doyle en cierta ocasión.

‘Estoy pensando en dar muerte a Holmes y acabar con él para siempre. No me deja pensar en mejores cosas’, concluyó el hastiado novelista en una carta enviada en 1891 a su madre. La amenaza se cumplió en 1893, cuando decidió liquidar a Holmes y su archienemigo, el profesor Moriarti, apodado el ‘Napoleón del crimen’, en ‘El problema final’.

Presionado por los lectores, que se negaban a perder al célebre inquilino del londinense 221b de Baker Street, el escocés tuvo que resucitar al detective en ‘El perro de Baskerville’ (1902).

Aunque Holmes representa una pieza clave del puzzle de su revuelta vida, Conan Doyle fue también médico, portero de fútbol, golfista, jugador de crícket, fracasado oftalmólogo en Viena, frustrado aspirante a diputado y creyente en el espiritualismo. A diferencia del sabueso, misógino hasta la médula, el escritor se casó con dos mujeres, Louise Hawkins y Jean Elizabeth Leckie, con quienes tuvo cinco hijos.

Un siglo y medio después de su nacimiento, el Reino Unido celebra con diversos actos una efemérides que coincide con los preparativos de una película sobre Sherlock Holmes dirigida por el cineasta británico Guy Ritchie, ex marido de la cantante Madonna.

Con su regreso a Hollywood, el meticuloso sabueso reafirma su estatus de ‘personaje cinematográfico más interpretado’, según el Libro Guinness de los Récords, que asegura que unos setenta actores han encarnado al mítico personaje en unos doscientos filmes.

La cinta, protagonizada por Robert Downey Jr (Holmes) y Jude Law (Watson), se estrenará este diciembre y suprimirá el legendario ‘Elemental, querido Watson’, frase que Conan Doyle jamás puso en labios del detective, pero que el cine atribuyó a Sherlock Holmes.

Aidiniantz, cuyo coqueto museo reproduce la casa victoriana de Sherlock en un ficticio 221b de Baker Street, cree que el filme ‘prolongará la leyenda de Holmes’, si bien reclama ‘más estatuas’ y atención para el eclipsado autor escocés.

En ese sentido, la ‘Sociedad de Sherlock Holmes’ ha organizado la representación de una función teatral sobre la turbulenta relación de Conan Doyle y el gran mago Houdini, uno de los eventos con los que pretende conmemorar los 150 años del nacimiento del novelista.

En Edimburgo, el Colegio Real de Cirujanos ha montado una exposición acerca del literato y su mentor, el doctor Joseph Bell, que sirvió de inspiración para la creación de Holmes, mientras las bibliotecas de Escocia e Inglaterra promocionan ‘El mundo perdido’ (1912), conocida novela del escritor que trata de dinosaurios.

Arthur Conan Doyle murió de un ataque cardiaco el 7 de julio de 1930 y sus restos reposan en un cementerio de Minstead (sur inglés), en una tumba que le recuerda como ‘patriota, físico y hombre de letras’ pero omite al sagaz detective que le aupó a la fama.

Sherlok Holmes en español

Título: The Grass is Singing

Autor: Doris Lessing

Editorial: Penguin

Obra adaptada: Sí

Nivel: Intermedio

Reseña:

The Grass is Singing is a novel about the problem white people always have had with black people. It tells the story of a married couple who had a difficult and poor life in Africa. The main characters are:

-Dick Turner: a poor white African farmer who married Mary and whose dream was to marry and have childern.

-Mary Turner: a secretary in an office in the town who married Dick and moved to the farm.

-Moses: a black man who worked for Mr Turner in the fields and later in his house as a servant.

At first, Mary wasn´t able to fit in with the lifestyle in the farm. It reminded her of the poverty and the problems her family had had and she was filled with horror. She felt unhappy and bored and treated the natives, who worked as servants for her, badly. But everything changed when Moses arrived at the house. He wasn´t a simple servant as the rest. Mary had hit him with a whip in the fields, so Moses wanted revenge and waited patiently. He won power over her and she was confused; she found him attractive but she was also afraid of him. Finally, she sent him away, and one night he killed her. He didn´t want to escape from the police. After all, the trial suggested that he had murdered her in search for money and jewellery. They couldn´t admit that a white woman could have a relationship, good or evil, with a black man.

The story makes you think about society in the past and the differences between white and black people and rich and poor ones. It´s incredible, looking back, that nowadays the USA President is a black person and that society has changed so much, fortunately.

Valoración: 4/5

Salomé Menéndez Rego  2ºNI