Category Archives: Novels

Jurassic park written by Michael Crichton. First published in Great Britain in 1991 by the Random Century Group. Michael Crichton wrote 17 books and directed many movies. He died to throat cancer in 2008.

The book is mix of thriller and scifi story. It was made into a very exciting film in 1993 by Steven Spielberg.

Main characters of the book are Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcom, Donald Gennaro, John Hammond and Tim and Lex Murphy. Other characters are Bob Morris, Dennis Nedry, Ed Regis, John Arnold, Robert Muldoon, Henry Wu and Dr Harding. They all are linked to each other because John Hammond invited everyone of them to visit the island. Alan and Ellie are investigating together history of the earth and plants.

Plot of the story centralizes on the island John Hammond has turned into Jurassic Park. He invites different kind of experts from different kind of professions to investigate the island and to make sure it’s safe to open to public. Everything seems to be fine until something sudden happens.

Story is told by omniscient narrator. Language of the book isn’t very hard and the back of the book contains explanations for difficult words so it’s easy to check if some word is difficult or challenging.

What I think about this book? I think that the book was very interesting since there was so much hype when the movies came and I hadn’t seen them. Book was rather short but I didn’t think it was a problem. There were pictures that clarified what happened in the text which was very good idea. And the explanations that were behind the book were very useful given the fact that I didn’t need them very much. But to someone who is poor in English it’s very good thing. Reading an English novel was pretty fun. It was different from reading a Finnish novel. But in a good way.

Titanic – Death on the Water, published in 2012, is a novel written by Tony Bradman and his son Tom Bradman. It’s a blend of fiction and fact about the sinking of the world-famous, “unsinkable” ship, Titanic. The main character Billy Fleming is fictional but the book is based on facts, so Billy and the story of him could have been real.

Billy is a 14-year-old Irish boy whose father, “Da”, has worked in the shipyard building the hull of Titanic. Billy is expected to follow in his Da’s footsteps, especially after the death of his Da. He’s scared but he decides to leave school and do what he’s expected to – start working on the shipyard for the wage that his family desperately needs for living. As it happens, they’re looking for bellboys to work on Titanic – that’s when Billy nerves himself and takes the job. So the adventure begins.

The story of Titanic is well-known by everyone, so it’s not hard for readers to guess what’s going to happen when Billy starts his job on the ship. Before reading the book, the only question you don’t have an answer to is whether Billy is going to survive or not. When I first started reading Death on the Water, getting that answer was the only thing I was looking for. But as the story went on, it swept me away with it’s realistic narration and it started to feel like I was on board myself with the characters – and the question, whether Billy will stay alive or not, wasn’t the only thing in my mind anymore.

Titanic – Death on the Water gave me a whole new point of view on the story of Titanic. As most of us, I had only seen the 1997 movie of Titanic and it had left me a certain image of the ship and what happened on it. This book, however, told the story from a point of view of a 14-year-old bellboy who wasn’t ready to face that kind of disaster, far away from home and with no one to rely on. It was eye-opening to think about the sinking from a different point of view than I, and most of us, had been used to.

The narration of the book was really gripping and its language was easy to understand. The book is only 130 pages so it doesn’t take long to read it – but in spite of the shortness of the story, it still makes an impression on the reader.

The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner is a fantasy novella by author Stephenie Meyer. The book is published in 2010. It tells about a newborn vampire, Bree Tanner, who also performs in the third book of Twilight, Eclipse. She is the narrator of the book, so it is written from the viewpoint of Bree. The novella follows her on the road to her death.

Bree was fifteen years old girl when she became a vampire. Riley found her living in the streets. He offered help and took her to his leader Victoria, who turned her into a vampire. Victoria was planning to create an army of newborn vampires to destroy Bella and the Cullens, who killed her lover. Bree and the other newborn vampires were living in a cave. They were told lies about vampires and they didn’t knew what Victoria was up to. Later Bree fell in love with Diego, an older vampire of the Riley’s vampire gang. Bree tried figure out Victoria’s true plans with Diego. Soon they realised that Victoria had been lying to them about everything. They decided to run away from the army with Bree’s other vampire friend, ’Freaky’ Fred, but Diego wanted to tell Riley that Victoria had been lying to him. He didn’t return from his meeting with Riley. Bree was told that Diego was joined in to their army. When the battle with The Cullens began Bree realised that Diego has probably been killed by Victoria and Riley. She surrendered to the Cullen’s, but in the end the Volturi destroyed her.

The main theme of this book is friendship. The characters have to solve who they can trust and who they can’t, who truly is their friend and who isn’t. Other themes is, for example, revenge and war.

I really like the Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and all the other vampire series but this book wasn’t that good. This was too confusing and not so interesting like the others. I expected a little bit more.

The fault in our stars is the multi-million worldwide bestseller and that’s explain why so many of us (english students of course five), chose this book to read. Not only because the book is just 300 pages but because it is very intelligently and funnily written and I don’t know any girls who wouldn’t have even a little bit interested to the epic love story.  This epic love story is written by John Green who gave his first inspiration to write this book when he was working in the children’s hospital. Easter Earl, a girl who died at the age of 16 to thyroid cancer and was also Green’s friend, was one of those children who inspired Green to write this novel.

The book is published in January 2012 and it has also been made the film in June 2014, which is based on the book. I think the film raised the popularity of the book even more and I myself for example found the book after I had seen the movie.

The fault in our stars is the story about 16-year-old girl Hazel Grace Lancaster, who suffers from thyroid cancer. Her illness is incurable and her doctor recommend Hazel to go Cancer Kid Support Group. In support group Hazel meets a boy Augustus Waters, who is embodiment of the perfect boyfriend except that he has a cancer too. Young couple bring together a book named An Imperial Affliction, which tells truthfully about cancer and dying. However John Green’s book doesn’t bathe in misery on the contrary he manages to tell the story about cancer sarcastic funnily without being tasteless. You can also notice from the book it is based on real events because the author can describe the feelings of cancer patient so credibly. “I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okey?” says the main character at the desperate moment and in my opinion this is the good evidence about how well John Green knows what it feels like to be sick. I will not spoil you how the book will end but I recommend to prepare several of tissues.

Critics have praised the book all over the world and especially they have liked new perspective of cancer and romance. The fault in our stars is called melancholy, philosophical, intelligent and touching. The Time magazine is criticized the novel “damn near genius”. So decidedly this book is readable!

I think this novel describes perfectly the real life with a good days and also not so good days and after reading The Fault In Our Stars everyone can put the things order of importance in our life. At least I woke up after the book how happy I should be on my health. Because “the world is not a wish-granting factory” as the book several times mentioned.

Sources: Wikipedia.org

An oldish detective story lays in a bookshelf like any other book which has written almost hundred years ago. That prestigious book attracts as well younger as older readers all the more being a gloomy rescue of an autumn evenings and a sensitive breeze of a spring at the same time. Proficiency that both confuses and carries through a labyrinth of simple clues that are stashed very well. This British writer manage to entwine us with complicated but still so obvious plot –yes, of course I am talking about Agatha Christie`s writing, about Evil under the sun.

In the beginning of the book the main character, a colonist from Belgium Hercule Poirot, is typically having a holiday with a fistful of peculiar people until gloominess shows up. Characters personify persons of the real life in the sense that they have as many features and hence being careful with unreliability could be seen as the message of this book. On the other hand Christie gets an innocent person seeming like a quilty and therefore the point could be the phrase “Nothing is what it seems “. In spite of that similarity with our everyday life there is not a person to whose status a reader can easily fit oneself and that is how Christie gets a reader start to ponder the crime like he would be all-seeing and then attractiveness of the plot  abides. Without this Poirot`s explanation in the end could feel too confusing namely the story is not effortless to understand.

In the case that you have read many stories of Christie and because of similarity of the characters this story starts to feel too much worn out is the milieu compensatory. Who does not want to have breakfast in bed circled with blue water areas and green hills? The writer makes use of weather phenomena; When it is an ordinary day the sun is shining but when sunshine is over the murderer is behind unsuspecting visitor`s back and this is the way that turns readers into right frequency. This is a slightly flat way of writing but on account of this means the reader can catch the plot quickly.

Beautiful use of language confirms mysterious sensibility of the book. British English is even more than just an experience intrinsically. Sometimes you can notice how Christie has hidden into a one word a big clue. Actually it is not hidden but you did not think it could be remarkable and thus this book teaches also vigilance. Which comes to the name of the book it expresses very well Christie`s dramatic style although serenity of landscape moderates it and there is suitably drops of drama in the story. In the beginning the story does not  seem to flare up like sparkling wine but as rapidly as a child can fall asleep you can notice that there is drama like in a soap opera.

All in all Evil under the sun does not differ much from other Christie`s stories but nevertheless this writing belongs to a collection in which the main point is an equivalent clue which so easily deceives you time after another. I think Evil under the sun is much more than just evil. It shows how ornate a story could be without too many ways of influencing. Once in a while you can long for something new, providing that you have read other writings, so you have to focus on following clues like you were a real detective. Fortunately this may improve you as a reader. But why should this book be read? The way of spelling is above all ingenious and this kind of way have neither before nor after seen. In my opinion never have been written a book which does not teach anything.