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Is love important to you? For Jim and Della it certainly is. 

Título: Meet me in Istanbul

Autor: Richard Chisholm

Editorial: Heinemann

Obra adaptada: SI

Nivel: Intermedio

Review: The story takes place during a holiday in Istanbul. The book is about a man who visits his fiancée in Istanbul where she is working. In the beginning everything happens as normal, but when he arrives there, he finds out that she is dead. He cannot believe it and with the help of a friend, he starts to investigate. The main character is a good man in love who only wants to visit his fiancée, a successful and hardworking woman; but she finds out something strange in her job and then the problems start. 

I really liked this book because I could not put it down from the beginning. It was easy to read because the language is not difficult and it was quite enjoyable and absorbing.  The book is highly recommendable because it is really entertaining. I am sure everybody will find it interesting.

Valoración: 5/5

Sheila Cidón Brincones 2ºNI

Título: The Prisioner of Zenda

Autor: Anthony Hope

Editorial: Pearson

Obra adaptada: SI

Nivel: Intermedio

Review:  ”The Prisioner of Zenda” contains all the features of a good adventure book: chance, surprise, danger, skill and love.

The book opens with adventure-loving young Rudolf Rassendyll at home in England, looking for excitement. One day he reads in the newspaper that a new King, Rudolf the Fifth, is going to be crowned in Ruritania and he decides to go there. When he arrives, he stays in the town of Zenda where he meets the new King and discovers that he looks just like him. The King finds this similarity really amusing at first, but then it becomes really important.

From my point of view the story is quite moving and well-written. There is a lot of new vocabulary and some adjectives are a bit difficult to understand, but that doesn´t affect the reading.

If you like adventure books, you shouldn´t miss this one!

Valoración: 4/5

Jesús Franco Ampuero  2ºNI

Título: Restless

Autor: William Boyd

Obra adaptada: NO

Nivel: Avanzado

Review: Restless, is a well-developed thriller which is set in two dissimilar periods, during World War II and in the 1970s. The gripping plot starts in Oxford in 1976 where a young single mother, Ruth Gilmartin, is working as an English foreign language teacher. She has a traditional and a bit dull life until she is given some documents by her mother, Sally Gilmartin, in which she tells Ruth about her real past.

Sally is in fact the Russian emigrant Eva Delectorskaya, who was offered the chance of a British passport if she worked as a spy for the British government in order to convince the United States to join the World War II. This way while Ruth is reading the papers, the reader discovers how Eva was training to become a perfect spy, the details of her work and why she had to run away to England and live under an assumed identity.  But why is Eva revealing all this information to Ruth? This is the key that makes you keep reading until the end.

Although the end is not too fascinating, the character of Eva is quite believable and her life’s story is highly entertaining. When I finished the book I realised that Ruth is only the way that the writer, William Boyd, has to catch our attention and keep the tension up, but the fact is that it works. Despite the fact that I’m not a real bookworm the book is very readable and I couldn’t put it down. Therefore I recommend you to read it.

Valoración: 4/5

Beatriz Fernández López  2ºNA

Título: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Autor: Stieg Larsson

Obra adaptada: NO

Nivel: Avanzado

Review: This book is well written, with a well-developed plot. It is the first novel in a completed series of three (The Millennium Trilogy) by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson. It is a classic mystery in many ways. It is also a bit violent. It’s rather long but very easy to read. Starting slowly, it soon becomes a compelling read with well-developed characters, a great sense of place, and all of the plot twists and turns that make mysteries fun to read. The story keeps the reader absorbed from beginning to end. 

The plot focuses on a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who investigates a missing person from years before and his researcher, Lisbeth Salander, the person from the book title who helps discover the truth. She is violent and antisocial but also an extremely intelligent hacker and researcher, specialized in investigations of persons.  

Don’t miss it. I would definitely recommend this book and I will buy the others of the series.

Valoración: 5/5

Isabel Rivera Galicia  2ºNA

Título: Big Fish

Autor: Daniel Wallace

Obra adaptada: NO

Nivel: Avanzado

Review: If you are looking for a story full of adventures, fantasy and naturalness narrated with a magic realism, your book is Big Fish.

This is a story about the reunion between a father and his son, before the father’s death. In fact, it brings them closer together and the relationship becomes intense and admirable. Edward Bloom, the father, has turned his life and his stories into big adventures to such an extent he doesn’t know how to separate fiction and reality, human and myth. 

The book is carefully written, with amazing descriptions. The writer has made the good choice of creating a fantastic and readable novel which mixes past and present flawlessly.I t is an absolutely gripping novel, you can’t put it down. Don’t miss your chance to read it, it will make the time pass touching the deepest of your heart.

Valoración: 5/5

Sandra Lombao Alvarez  2ºNA

Rubén Amón | París 

El mercado editorial francés tendría un aspecto decrépito a no ser por la actualidad de las escritoras. Seis de ellas ocupan las 10 primeras plazas de las listas de ventas. Y sin contar a Yasmina Reza, habitual en las clasificaciones de los últimos años a cuenta de su dimensión polifacética y de la influencia que ejerce en la cultura francesa y de ultramar. Leer más »

Esta es la lista de  “Los 10 más vendidos en Francia”, según ‘Le Figaro’, la mayoría de los cuales podrás encontrar en la Biblioteca para llevar en préstamo:

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1.- Marc Lévy: 1.735.000 libros.     

2.- Guillaume Musso: 1.385.000   

3.- Katherine Pancol: 871.000            

4.- Anna Gavalda: 784.000          

5.- Fred Vargas: 633.000                

5.- Muriel Barbery: 620.000         

7.- Amélie Nothomb: 584.000         

8.- Bernard Weber: 566.000                    

9.- Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: 552.000        

10.- Marie Ndiaye: 450.000

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Algunos títulos de estos autores que encontrás en la sección de “libros recomendados” (francés):

Saturday 20 February 2010   Nicholas Wroe

A life in writing

‘In the last book Wallander is really solving a case about himself and that has provided the real ending. Full stop’

Henning Mankell’s great creation, the Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, is a depressive, unhealthy, ugly and violent man who is unable to sustain relationships with those closest to him and operates in a world of almost unrelieved bleakness and despair. Yet he is so attractive to a worldwide audience that Mankell has sold more than 35 million books and has seen his character make a remarkably smooth transition from page to screen with acclaimed Swedish TV adaptations preceding the critical and ratings success of Kenneth Branagh’s recent BBC version.

While news that the BBC is to commission a second set of six films appears a logical next step, it also marks something of a crossroads for both Wallander and Mankell. The new series will adapt the last three of Mankell’s nine Wallander novels (after apparently ending the series in 1999, Mankell wrote a 10th and “definitely” final book which will be published in English next year). It will then, like one of the two Swedish Wallander series before it, feature new, non-Mankell, storylines. Wallander, like Marple, Morse, and a handful of other legendary detectives before him, has begun to float free of his creator to assume an apparently independent existence. Leer más »

 Click on the books to find out a bit more about them:

http://www.henningmankell.com/