Category Archives: Yleinen

Shame is a psychological thriller by the Swedish author Karin Alvtegen. The book is translated from Swedish by Steven T. Murray and published in Great Britain in 2006. The crime novel is originally published in Sweden as Skam in 2005 by Natur och Kultur, Stockholm. Karin Alvtegen is successful author, who worked in set design for film and stage, before she started to write. She was born in 1965, in Jönköping, Sweden and she is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren.

Shame is a story about forgiveness and endless feeling of guilt and fear. The crime novel tells of two women’s life, which are completely different from each other but somehow so similar. Because of their past, both of them experience a strong feeling of fear and shame every day of their lives. Karin Alvtegen has successfully put together thrilling stories of losing someone tragically. The theme of the book is survival from painful grief and living with a sense of guilt.

The other main character is Monika Lundvall, a successful doctor of a distinguished clinic. She lost her big brother without warning twenty-three years ago, when she was only fifteen and her brother, Lasse, was just two years older than her. She never got used to that he was gone. Neither her mother couldn’t move on from that tragedy where she lost her beloved son, a promising young hockey player, who should have lived instead of Monika. ‘’Her mother’s grief over Lasse’s death was deeper than the joy she was able to feel that Monika was still alive.’’

Maj-Britt Pettersson is another main character of the book. Growing up in a religious family, under the eyes of God, was difficult to teenage girl. It made her through all kind of emotions and fear of refusal. It was disgusting and outrageous what her parents forced her to do because of her sexuality. Humiliating herself in front of the hold Congregation was agonizing experience to Maj-Britt. I can’t even understand what she went through in order to get some love from her parents. Because of the shadows of her past, she is a morbidly obese woman, who is hiding over thirty years in her flat from reality and responsibility. She only sees herself as a disgusting and meaningless human being.

Monika and Maj-Britt’s relationship to one another will come up step by step. It was interesting to see how they were connected each other. Both of them are guilty of somebody’s death. The fear of disclosure of the truth was visible. The shame that they felt was deep and it became marked on them. Shame is full of a pain that stems from deep self-contempt and self-inflicted destruction.

The language of the book is touching and descriptive. Because of the omniscient narrator it was sometimes challenging to follow of which of the two main characters were talking about. The novel included a lot of flashbacks which created a fascinating overall view. In my opinion Shame is a splendid work of integration into difficult times and exploration of the human mind. Occasionally it left me speechless. Shame is one of those books you won’t put down until the last page is read. It was absolutely captivating. I recommend this novel for those who are interested in psychological thrill and the cruelty of human.

Reading a novel in English wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. At first I tried to understand every word but after few pages I just focused on reading, not translating everything. I noticed that it was more compelling to read in English.  In summary, my reading experience was terribly good.

Treasure Island is a novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson and its genre is adventure fiction. The book was published in 1883. In this book there is vocabulary in every other page because it is adapted for the Finnish readers.

In this book there are couple main characters and they are Jim Hawkins who is adventurous young boy, Dr. Livesey who is local doctor and wise man, Long John Silver who is eye and foot half former pirate that owns a parrot. Other minor character in this book is Ben Gunn who becomes a friend of Jim´s and tells where the most of the treasure is.

The book tells the story of a boy named Jim Hawkins who goes to the adventure of treasure island. The adventure starts when a pirate named Billy Bones dies and they find his treasure map that tells where the pirate captain Flints treasure is hidden. Jim gathers a crew for the trip and when they arrive to the treasure island his crew wants to take the treasure for themselves. When they arrive to the place where the treasure is supposed to be they find that the treasure is not there. After that Jim manages to escape from the rebelling pirates and finds a man named Ben Gunn who is a former pirate and knows where the most of the treasure is. After when they have suppressed the rebellions they go back to England and they split the treasure as agreed.

I do not usually read books because I do not like to read but in my opinion this book was alright and I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys reading and likes adventure novels. The book was narrated from Jims perspective and text was clear and the vocabularies helped if you did not know what some words meant.

Lizzie McGuire – Totally crushed is a short novel based on the TV series created by Terri Minsky. The book is just one part of the Lizzie McGuire book series and the book which I read included two short stories: Part one (about crushes) and Part two (about old friend). Lizzie McGuire – Totally crushed was released in May 31, 2002 and it has many writers so I am not sure who wrote and what. The book tells about Lizzie’s life, survival guides and episode guides.

Lizzie McGuire is a normal teen-age girl in Hillridge Junior high school. Lizzie has two besties Gordo and Miranda. Together they have to face the all teenage problems: school bullying, crushes and also the problems and responsibilities of growning.

I’m going to tell the plot of the Part one because the Part two is way other category than the first one. It does not belong the ”crush on” -theme and the name of the book is Totally crushed, right? So the plot briefly: Everybody knows it except Lizzie itself, the biggest nerd in Hillridge Junior high Larry Tudgeman also known as ”Tudge” has a really big crush on Lizzie. Lizzie has been into Ethan Craft since like always, duh?  But in Ethans eyes Lizzie is invisible and Lizzie’s ex-friend and current enemy Kate who is the most popular girl in school has a thing with Ethan. So dramatic! When Lizzie finds out that she is the target of Tudge’s secret love she is horrified. Why me, why the biggest nerd ever, why me!?!?! However Lizzie is a nice girl and she can’t be rude to anyone so she decided to give a change for Tudge. Who knows if Tudge is a real love machine. Lizzie and Tudge goes on a date to museum which first made Lizzie skeptical because she thinks museum is the most boring place ever. But at the end Lizzie was actually surprised how interesting the exhibit where they were was. Then Lizzie really thought that she got rid of Tudge after one date but no. Now Tudge has made a rumour about how Lizzie is his new girlfriend and the whole school talks about it. Heck no! Now Lizzie has to be rude to Tudge and break his heart. Lizzie tries nicely tell to Tudge about her feelings and about how she does not want to be Tudge’s girlfriend. And she made it perfectly! Tudge seemed to be very sympathetic about the whole thing. They decided to move on as a friends and at the end Tudge finds a really nice girl to himself and Lizzie is truly happy for him. Yay! A happy ending.

The book was very easy to read. The language was just from the TV shows nowadays what everybody understand. Like just from the movie ”Mean Girls” if you have seen it. ”So fetch!”. It was like a slang in most parts of the book. No hard and unknown words. But to be honest, I take the easy way out. Ain’t nobody got time for reading books. But however I really liked the book. I think the book was kind of aimed for the youngsters with all the crush on things and girly things but who cares. I can do girly things sometimes. I haven’t read or seen the Lizzie McGuire show and books before so that was something new for me. I liked the way writer has wrote the book and described all things. The book reminded me of my life when I was in elementary school and how every girl got a crush on the same boy and only talk we have was about boys. Ah lets have a silent moment for a childhood memories. Just kidding. I would recommend the book for anyone who is looking for some old girly things. Boys and makeup, omg! The theme of the book was definitely growing. It gave tips for teenagers. The book was kind of short but it has all the things what a good book has to have. Nothing less or more. I truly enjoyed the book and I don’t even like reading so that tells something. Bye!

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles was published in 1891. It’s really popular and world-renowned novel which has fascinated many generations. I chose the book because I have seen BBC’s TV-serie of it and it was very impressive.

The novel is located to Wessex, England which is a fictional town created by author. Tess lives there with her family and she is the oldest child. They are poor, uneducated but proper peasants. The father of the family, John, hears that he may have noble blood and after their only horse dies by accident they send Tess to visit their noble relations to get help. Tess does not succeed in meeting Mrs d’Urberville, but her son Alec takes a fancy to Tess and offers his help to her. Tess isn’t interested in Alec but receives his helping hand. Then some night Alec rapes Tess and she comes back home.  At home Tess gives birth to a sickly boy who lives only a few weeks.

After more than two years twenty-year-old Tess has found employment outside the village, where her past is not known. There she befriends with three milkmaids and falls in love with Angel Clare. They get married and Tess has the courage to tell to Angel about Alec. Angel can’t tolerate Tess’ past and moves to Brazil and leaves her. After a while Tess’ father dies and Alec occurs to take care of her family if Tess comes to his mistress. Tess doesn’t have any choices and she accepts Alec’s offer. Then Angel comes back and Tess murders Alec. She gets caught and is escorted to prison. The story closes with Tess’ execution.

The protagonist of the book is Tess Durbeyfield. The novel tells about her tragic and really unfair life. She does nothing by egoism or greediness but still her misfortune makes her life terrible. The person who totally ruins her life is Alec so I could say that he is the antagonist.

I think that the central conflict of the plot is when Tess gets raped. After that situation everything changes: an innocent girl becomes a murderer. At that time getting raped was woman’s fault and she lost her reputation in the eyes of community. So only way to get justice was to murder a raper. Tess did so and suffered the consequences from it. She was executed but still the novel shows that she got her revenge. That’s why I think that an important theme of the novel is the sexual double standard.

I wouldn’t evaluate the story’s ending any way even if I like very much happy endings. In my opinion tragic ending just made the story more touching. It also shows how totally changed she was in comparison to the beginning.

The narrative point of view is third person limited and it’s same in the hole book. The language of the novel was old and abstruse. There were many old words which I had never heard before. Therefore I had to check out many words from the dictionary and reading was quite slow. But at least I learned much more English.

At the end of 19^th century, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an adventure novel “Treasure Island”. It was published as a book at 1883. Book became very popular especially among young people. Now I’m going to tell the plot shortly.

Book’s story tells about a young man named Jim Hawkins, who goes for a wild adventure to the treasure-island.  Jim’s mother lives in England in public house, where she accommodates an old sailor, who finally drinks himself to death. The sailor was carrying a treasure map with him. The map tells where the treasure has been hidden a long time ago.

Jim starts to gather crew for the ship named “Hispaniola”. There’s a man named Long John Silver among the crew. John is another protagonist of the book.

Ship gets to the island, but some of the men start a mutiny. Soon they all find out that a treasure isn’t there anymore. Jim and John Silver manage to overthrow the mutiny and soon they get to know where the treasure has been moved. Men involved in mutiny were left to the island. After getting the treasure Jim and John travel back to England and they go to the separate ways.

Characters of the book were a little bit boring, except the protagonists Jim and John. They were only characters which I was able to empathize with. They also are the characters of which history has told more specific than the others.

So, my opinion about the book is that it’s pretty complicated to read because story has been split to six chapters. Good thing is that time doesn’t jump to the past or to the future between chapters. The books language was clear enough and that was also a positive surprise for me. The most pleasant thing is that book was not too short. Also it was not too long. Text and narrative were clear enough.

My final opinion is that the book is worth reading, but it is not the great favorite of mine.

The fault in our stars is award-winning-author John Green’s sixth novel. The book was published in January 2012, and it has so far received a huge amount of success around the world. The novel tells about 16-year-old cancer patient Hazel Grace Lancaster’s life. The story is included, as well as falling in love and moments of joy but also the loss of a loved one and grief processing. It is aimed to young adults.

The main character is a young woman named Hazel Grace Lancaster, who has thyroid cancer. Cancer has destroyed Hazel’s lungs, which makes her inhaling difficult. Her struggle against cancer has been long and rocky, but her parents have always been supportive. Hazel loves to read and her favorite book is called An Imperial Affliction.

Another main character of the book is a young man named Augustus Waters, whose osteosarcoma caused him to lose his leg. So Augustus is also a cancer patient. Augustus metaphor is, “You but the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing”. Overall Augustus is cheerful personality and he doesn’t let the cancer negatively affect his live.

In the book Hazel and Augustus meet at the cancer patients’ support group. First, Hazel does not like Augustus, but pretty soon they fall in love with each other. During the book they experience together the most incredible things, both good and bad. However, in their minds revolve around the possibility of cancer recurrence. But how to deal with grief when a loved one dies?

Themes of the book are love and hope. The story is basically a traditional love story which fits into its genre very well. The whole book is written in Hazel’s view and therefore it is even more touching. The fault in our stars is a true love story of the century, which has agitated the people around the world.

I personally like the book very much. I could even say that I love it! Although the subject of the book is quite heavy, reading it made ​​me remember how the little joys of life should be enjoyed. In life, there will always be ups and downs. The book is also quite easy to read, which makes reading experience even more comfortable. I could even say that the book is the best love story in several decades!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars

J.K. Rowling published the very first Harry Potter book in 1997 called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The book is a first part of the sevenfold book series.

The book represents outstanding fantasy with incredibly discriptive and ingenious telling. I think there is no book similar to this.

The story begins only with Harry Potter and later on Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger enters also in. Harry’s mom and dad died when he was just a baby. He became orphaned and moved in to his relatives house with no idea who he really was. On his eleventh birthday he was told he was a wizard and he is going to Hogwarts to study wizardy.

Harry, Ron and Hermione meets the first time in Hogwarts which is a school for wizards. During their first year they get in many complicated situations together and become bestfriends. Harry is prestige by his name and every one in the wizard world knows him, or at least his last name. Hermione has always known that she is gifted and maybe that’s why she is a bit arrogant. Ron, well Ron, he is a kid who has no survival instinct and always gets in trouble.

Naturally Harry himself is telling the story from his perspective. The language of the book is very easy to read exept spells are a bit hard to understand at a time ”Accio Horcrux books!”. The spells are mostly derived from Latin.

I enjoyed reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in English. Notice that I am not a book worm and I haven’t red Harry Potters even in Finnish at all. I really don’t know why because I liked it very much this time! But I bet the books are better in English than in Finnish so I think I am going to continue further in English. Reading in English was not a problem, ofcourse there was words I did not understand but it didn’t bother me that much.

Lord of the Flies is English author William Golding’s first novel which was published in 1954. Lord of the Flies is William Golding’s best-known book, but he has wrote many others too and has won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. At the time when Lord of the Flies was published it wasn’t a great success but later it became a best-seller. Two films have been done based on the book, in 1963 and 1990. The name ”Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of Beelzebub which means Satan.

Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of English school boys who end up on an uninhabited island when their airplane crashes there. The world is in war and the plane was in evacuation mission. The only survivors of the plane crash are smaller and older schoolboys, ”biguns” and ”littluns” as book calls them, but there is no adults. At first boys enjoy the situation and the fact that there isn’t any grown-ups bossing them. But then boys understand that they need a leader to keep order and they have to decide a chief among them. A boy named Ralph comes elected but Jack, other bigun, isn’t happy about that because he would have liked to be in charge too, which later leads to rebellion. In the beginning boys’ life in the island is pretty easy and they all live in agreement. They develop a social system on their own, where others are hunters and others take care of the fire or drinking water. However, things start to change and little by little those innocent schoolboys began to behave like savages and they forget how to behave in civilization. Killing pigs for dinner becomes a routine for hunters and nobody follows the rules they have settled. I won’t tell you if the boys get rescued from the island or not, you can find out that by yourself by reading the book, which I highly recommend.

I admire the way Golding describes the thoughts of the boys; he knows precisely what is in boys’ heads. There is some quite horrible events in the book, too, and Golding tells about them very realistically. It’s interesting to see how boys turn from sophisticated citizens to animalistic savages in raw nature and in such a short time. The book hooks the reader to continue reading; you have to know what happens next.

Lord of the Flies is absorbing description about how dramatically people can change in a new and strange environment and all the learned norms are forgotten just like that. Man is capable to do terrible things in lust of power and it’s shocking to see how even little kids are so greedy for power.

Lord of the Flies was published over 60 years ago and its language is a bit difficult. Reading the book took a lot of time because there were so many unfamiliar words and phrases and I had to use translator pretty often. I think the book was very interesting and well done but I might have gotten more out of it if I had read it in Finnish some other time. I liked the book very much and it was instructive and thought-provoking.

The Little Prince is a short novel written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published 1943 and it has been translated for over 250 languages and it has sold overall over 140 million copies. The book is the most famous work from de Saint-Exupéry.

I haven’t read any books similar to this. It is a poetic tale and it would have been hard to read even in Finnish. I can’t tell if it fits into its genre, but yes it really was poetic. And it was a mind-blowing experience to read, but some chapters and paragraphs were very hard to understand, even the translation sites couldn’t help me. But eventually I started to understand the text, mostly because its reiteration.

The main characters of the story are the author himself and, of course, the Little Prince. They became friends after Antoine crashes into Sahara Desert. The Little Prince starts telling stories from his adventures around the galaxy and tells about his home planet, which has three volcanoes and one flower. In one point Antoine the Pilot in forgotten and the book concentrates in the Prince and his tales. He tells about happiness very metaphorically, which causes the hard-readiness. The plot isn’t really a big whoop in the story, because it really just tells us that the pilot crashes, becomes friends with the Prince, then repairing his engine and then the Prince leaves.

The language of the book. Oh gosh. I thought I was pretty good in English and understand words and know what they mean. I was terribly wrong. I know that this is very hard English but in almost every sentence was a word I couldn’t understand. But in the plus side my vocabulary increased. The pilot tells the story, which means that Antoine himself tells it and about his experiences. I don’t know how badly he was dehydrated, but a little prince appears from another planet? Quite amusing to me.

The reading experience was delightful, yet hard. As I said the were hard words and chapters but in the end I understood it. And even though the book was a big fat metaphore, I still enjoyed reading it.

I chose book called James Bond-From Russia With Love. I have seen a movie that is made on the basis of the book. This was the first book that I read in English. First book seemed challenging because of the language used in the book was very old. The book was published in 1957. It is the fifth Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel. It was published in Finnish in 1966. The book was made into a movie version of Secret Agent 007 in Istanbul in 1963.

After a difficult start reading began as it started to go smoothly.  English reading suddenly began to feel natural to quickly. The film and the book were quite similar, but you can clearly see that the film is made after the book. Next, I would tell briefly abut the book characters.

James Bond author Ian Fleming’s, the tension developed by the fictional British spy. James Bond’s code name is 007 . M is the James Bond books and films occurring fictional MI6 intelligence director. Tatiana Romanvill is also a significant role in the book.

Next, I briefly explain the plot. The plot includes a secret decoder collector stealing from the Soviet Union, its selling them back and revenge James Bond. Bond must hang up on a number of criminal organization Spectre true professionals. The worst resistance is cold-blooded and unerring assassin.

Finally, I can say that the book was a pleasant reading and English language did not confer any problems 🙂