Category Archives: Yleinen

Alice in Wonderland is a prose written by Lewis Carroll, originally Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, in 1865. He was an English author but also a mathematician and logician. Since child Carroll loved writing novels and poems (most of them being funny or satirical). Later on he became a mathematician professor but still continued to write all kinds of texts. Under the name of Lewis Carroll he wrote his most recognizable books Alice in Wonderland and it’s sequel Through the Looking Glass which both tell about Alice’s adventures in Wonderland.

Alice’s adventures in  Wonderland has a theme of overcoming the difficulties of childhood and becoming an adult. At first Alice is a crybaby who cries over things way too easily but as I continued reading she made a lot of progress and became more mature and capable of holding her own against the illogical things in Wonderland. The book is an obvious fantasy and fairy tail story which includes talking animals, normally impossible things like growing and shrinking while eating or drinking something and much more ”curiouser and curiouser” coincidences. Alice in Wonderland is a book one of a kind and none of the books I’ve read haven’t had worlds as surreal. Still novels like Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke give the same kind of thrilling feeling in which you just want to continue reading.

The main character of Alice in Wonderland is Alice, a young girl living in England. She is a daydreamer who loves to show of her knowledge. From many parts of the book the reader can spot parts in which explains Alice’s large imagination. Despite her quick temper she’s still very polite, honest and sweet. She is a perfect image of a well educated little girl from a well earning family. On the other hand Alice is well portrayed by her personality, her appearance isn’t being mentioned in the story. If there wouldn’t be any pictures, a first timer wouldn’t really have much clue about her looks.

I have read quite a few books in English but none of them had included poems or so. ”Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alice in Wonderland, making use of puns and playing on multiple meanings of words throughout the text”, is well said. He uses Alice’s confusion in advance and plays with all kinds of words which were at some places quite hard to understand. Plus Carroll loved poems and used them with delight. He also used a bit old fashioned language and sentences (well, the story was written in the 17th century). As for the narrator in Alice in Wonderland it is omniscient. The narrator tells thoroughly what Alice thinks or does but doesn’t follow other characters as closely.

For a short story Alice in Wonderland took me some time to read. I have, for a long, wanted to read this book but haven’t had the cuts to loan it. It was nice to see from where my favorite Disney Princess movie had had it’s beginning. I think I overestimated the book and were a bit disappointed when finished. Still Alice’s adventures is a classic which I recommend to everyone, young and old.

Nora Roberts is American author who has written several novels from couple of different genres, like romance, fantasy and suspense. Her real name is Eleanor Marie Robertson but she has used stage names as Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb, Sarah Hardesty and Jill March. Best she is known from her romantic novels, which also Luring a Lady is. It was published in 1991.
Luring a Lady is quite typical romantic novel. The events take place in New York and its vicnity. The protagonist is once-divorsed, sophisticated, young and beautiful woman whose name is Sydney Hayward. She has inherited a building company from her grandfather. While learning how to run a business, comes handsome, Hungarian artist called Mikhail Stanislanski to complain about the building he’s living in. And like you may guess, they get to know each other and fall in love after many twist and turns.
As a character Sydney changes a lot during the novel. At first she’s cold and purposeful business woman. She acts like she has been grown to act and doesn’t show much feelings. After spending time with Mikhail and his family she starts to be more open and express her emotions. So Mikhail literally melts the ice queen. Sydney’s relationships are quite distant, for example the relationship between her and her mother or her colleagues. Other significant characters are members of Mikhail’s family, Sydney’s ex Peter (who is also her childhood friend) and the neighbours who live in the same building as Mikhail.
The story is told by omniscient narrator. The language of the novel is very descriptive and things are told really minutely. However, the text is quite light and carefree and it won’t remain to disturb the reader. For that reason it’s a great novel to be read for example on holiday. Text is also very easy to read. The reader doesn’t have to focus on every single sentence to keep up with the story.
The theme of the novel could deal with falling in love of course, but also learning to express emotions and feelings bold as Sydney did at the end of the novel. It shows that under the cool shell human is emotional and sensitive and they shouldn’t just repress and push all the feelings aside even if they may predispose themselves to get hurt sometimes.
I personally liked the novel because it was easy to read and the plot was interesting even if it was also quite predictable. But I recommend it to someone who is searching for some fun, light and romantic novel to read.

”The sequel to the New York Times best seller” they said in the library and I took the book. I read the book called Hollow city, by Ransom Riggs. It was published in 2014. The Hollow city is the second novel of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children. And those two books about the peculiar children are the most famous books from the Ransom Riggs.

I have to say that I have little crush on Ransom Ring. I have watched a few of his interviews and I noticed that he is a smart guy and I like his lifestyle. But back to the case. I really like his writing style. With his mysterious and creepy style of writing, Riggs wrote a good horror book.

The book tells about 10 peculiar children’s life ( Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, Millard, Horace, Olive, Enoch, Hugh, Claire, Fiona) they all have some peculiar talent. For example Horace suffers from premonitory visions and dreams.

The plot is simple. the children from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children are trying to find a cure for their headmistress. On their journey for that well-defined medicine or what ever strange kind of cure they face lot’s of adversities. And they have to learn how to trust each other in that war-torn world full of strange phenomenons.

The language of the book is easy but there are lots of new and difficult words and the terms were from side to side. I think it could had been easier to understand those terms if I had read the first part. The narrator is one of the characters, one of the children.

The book is magnificent and formidable and I am especially fan of thrillers and books that tell about strange things. Reading a novel in English was hard and suffocating at first but when I got a hint of it the text just started to flow in my head and reading became more easier, almost no problem at all.

So, I read the book Under the Dome from Stephen King. Stephen King is a well known novelist and he has always been my favorite author thanks to his unique way of capturing the moment, and this is how I knew I could finish this 1074 page monster in time. Under the Dome was published in 2009, so it’s a relatively new book from Mr. King.
The book tells a story of a small town, Chester’s Mill, getting isolated from the rest of the world by an invisible dome. Nothing seems to be able to destroy the dome, not missiles nor speeding trucks. The residents of Chester’s Mill are stuck inside with some tourists, trying to deal with having no electricity and no way of getting more food supplies. Town’s Second Selectman (Jim Rennie) is spreading chaos by doing pretty much everything a responsible human being wouldn’t do from murdering innocent people to manufacturing drugs. These irresponsible actions cause conflicts between Rennie and the protagonist (Dale Barbara) to the point where Barbara ends up getting himself on Rennie’s hit list.
Barbara has his own storyline going along the main plot. This includes a somewhat romantic relationship with the town reporter Julia Shumway. I enjoy a good love story as much as a cockroach enjoys getting stepped on, but I’m not sure how to feel about this one. I’m not even sure if we’re talking about love here. The conflicts between Rennie and Barbara however were excellent, I could almost feel how Rennie’s slight discomfort with Barbara turned into pure hatred.
The language of the book is actually one of the main reasons I enjoyed reading it so much, it was filled with inspirational little sentences such as “Murder is like potato chips: you can’t stop with just one.” and “If you were seeing a lot of horseshit, there had to be a pony in the vicinity.”, such beautiful words, I just felt like writing them down somewhere. The narrator was omniscient, occasionally letting us know who’d die in the next 30 minutes, it was written well so I enjoyed it a lot.
I really liked this book, the character development was believable and nice, the relationships between the characters were really human like. The ending however left me unimpressed, it felt like King would have just thought to himself ”Well, I’m done. I don’t feel like writing this anymore… I’ll make it end with a huge boom and aliens”. I also really enjoyed reading a book in English, been a while since I last did that, it was a lot easier than I remembered. The book was huge and hard to carry with me, but it was definitely worth it, I’d recommend it to anyone who appreciates a good storyline more than a satisfying ending.

From Russia, with Love is the fifth novel in Ian Fleming’s James bond series. First published in the UK was in 1957.

Much of action takes place in Istanbul, Turkey where James Bond was sent to assist in the defection of Soviet consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova, and where terrorist organization called SPECTRE planned to avenge James Bond’s killing professor Dr.No.

My first feelings about the book was negative and i thought the book would be tough and hard to read but my feelings turned upside down after the first few pages. As aficionado of James Bond i could say i really liked the book. There was lots of things admired, even if it was old-fashioned or old-standing film, whatever. It does not matter from which year is it, it is always a history.  Many things that surprised me in this book and example of it once again was technology. Yes, it was pretty old this time but i really felt myself being in 1957 where was no any computers or smartphones or some real high-technologed robots. It was so different, that is why it made me an enormous interest in the book and gave different concept of old times.   My opinion about secret agent James Bond is that he is more strict and really knows what he is doing and how he is doing his job to survive in the dangerous criminal world, but to some extent he still has the same features as modern James bond.  What about the other characters in the book, to be honest it did not made any big interest while i was reading and it did not played so important role for me.

All and all, the book was worth reading and very different and interesting. I recommend this book for all those people who respects old times and old-fashioned technology. Just take a break from all those modern devices and take a deep dive into old 1957.