Culture in the English-speaking world

And Then There Were None is written by Agatha Christie. It was published in 1939 by Collins Crime Club. The book is considered as Christies best book – a masterpiece.

The book is kind of a mix up of a detective story and a since it captured excellently the fearsome thoughts of the characters but also had some brain work for someone who sees theirselves as clever detectives. The horror of the book crept up on me when suddenly started happening ”unnatural”, meaning that the characters’ heads were figuratively speaking falling apart of all the stress from the incidents happening around. The excitement and curiosity of the murderer sustained my interest towards the book.

There are ten main characters, who have never met, seen nor talked to each other but they all have one thing in common: they were responsible for murdering someone, excluding one. They are brang to an isolated, peculiar island called Soldier Island, where they will see the last glances of life. The characters are all from different enviroments and some have trouble coming along.

After they had had their first dinner at the island Mr Rogers, the butler of the island, turned on the gramophone just as his employer had told. The voice from the gramophone told accusations toward every person for being part of a murder, excluding one. After that there started to happen weird events and deaths and within days there were none left.

The book is narrated by an all-knowing outside the story narrator but sometimes also someones in the story pondering different occurenses and characters. The language on the book is fairly simple and easy to follow with a couple of exceptions like old words in example the word ”queer” was used often used as the synonym of the word ”bizarre” so I had to look up a word or few to get the meaning.

At first the book was an extremely dulling experience because I had a bunch preconceptions. But, luckily, the book turned out interesting with its intensity of events and the curiosity of knowing the murderer was bugging me. Reading an English novel didn’t really differ from my experiences of reading a Finnsih novel. Only problem was a few words I wasn’t familiar of. If anyone is a bookworm and haven’t read this I suggest you do.

If I say the name Johannes Vermeer, I suppose that you’ll think about a work of art where a girl watches over her shoulder. The girl is in a dark room and tired. She has a blue and yellow cap so that her hair has been covered, and on her ear she has a big earring. The book which I read tells about the model of painting and her life.

Girl with a pearl earring is a historical novel written by US Tracy Chevalier and it has published year 1999. Novel’s story line is invited by Chevalier, so it’s not happened in 17th century in real life. Writer Chevalier has told that she had bought a poster when she was young and years later she wanted to create a life to the painting’s model. She got inspiration from the model’s look which she images ”ambiguous look”. When I look at the painting, I agree with Chevalier. Model’s face is unclear, she looks tired and innocent but yet hard experienced, tearful and full of thoughts. The novel is same kind of than the painting, full of many feelings and thoughts, but at the same time it is so empty.

Girl with a pearl earring ­novel tells about Griet’s life, the model of the Vermeer’s painting has appointed Griet by Chevalier. Griet is 16-­year­-old and she lives with her family in Holland. Her father has been recently blinded in an accident, so they need promptly money. Griet’s parents has to find her employment as a maid in Vermeer’s household. Living with Vermeer’s family isn’t bed of roses, for example Griet doesn’t get respect from the other maid and Johannes’ wife. Also because Griet is a maid, she is treated in ”maid attitude”. Johannes’ wife doesn’t trust her and Griet has to sleep in a locked room, which result in different things. Chevalier has created Griet’s life herself and reasons why the masterpiece was painted.

First when I had finished the novel, I thought that it doesn’t have any deep importance. It told just about Griet’s life as a maid. But now I have realized that it was some kind of growing up story. Griet was very young, unexperienced when she left home to the unknown world. Working and living in the big and unknown family made Griet to try new things which resulted in meeting new people. She faced a boy every day in a meat hall, and they made friends. One thing led to other which got Griet to think about her past and future. Troubles grew Griet mentally and now when I analyse the 16-­year-­old Griet and the Griet at the end of novel, she is so much more adult. She experiences both good and unpleasant things while living in Vermeers, what changes her personality harder.

Although novel sets in 17th century, I think this could be happened in the 2000s. Griet fights with difficult and unknown things. She scruples with things which don’t have true answers. She can’t ask opinion from her friends or parents, she just needs to ask herself what she wants for real in her life. Only way to make a decision is to hear her own heart’s voice. These things are normal today, teenagers want to be distinct and become independent, but at the same time they want to get care from parents. Young people want to get attention from boys or girls though they are not quit with their body. These things might result to uncertain decisions, which will be repented in the end. Difficult things, for everyone.

Back to the book review and my opinions. Like always, it is hard to describe my feelings in words because the novel doesn’t make me feel one certain emotion. I have meditated those many feelings and I have become to the result that the novel is not just like other novels I have read. It is not just the literature and story of a maid, it is more. It is like its cover, a work of art. The way you experience it depends on your attitude, view and artistry. If I wasn’t interested in the art and I wanted to read exciting novel which had a lot of happening, I would have other feelings. But luckily, I liked it, it was very compelling, time just flied because I felt like I was Griet. Chevalier has succeeded to express Griet’s feelings and milieu so closely. It is amazing to think that Griet lived four hundred years ago and the book has been written just ten years ago. Always when I opened the book and involved myself deeply in story, I felt that it was like a time travel to the past.

One negative point I want to say. If I had read this book in Finnish, I suppose that it could have been little bit boring. Now when it was in English it was easy to read, maybe because of it didn’t have any difficult plot twist or relationship problems. There was just normal life in the book which was easy to understand. Other thing which I’m not quite satisfied is the character’s names. There were so much other people and difficult foreign names that I wasn’t always sure who was who. Thus I didn’t get certain image of every person.

To summary my opinions, Girl with a pearl earring was good novel. At the same time so boring and flavorless, but still great plot. I appreciate Chevalier that she has dared to write so outrage and beautiful story about the model of painting.

Lähteet: Wikipedia

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010) is a novel written by two young-adult fiction authors John Green and David Levithan. John Green is the author of well-known novel The Fault In Our Stars. David Levithan’s production includes works like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Every You, Every Me.

The novel tells a story about two teens, both of them named Will Grayson. Other one tries to live his life without being noticed and the other has an online relationship with a guy he has never met. Boys have different lives which are suddenly going new directions. And then there is Tiny Cooper, huge and determined high school student and playwright. He is best friend of Will1 and later Will2’s boyfriend. So Tiny is gay and he definitely doesn’t hide it or his largeness.

In the book every second chapter is about Will Grayson1 and every other is about Will Grayson2 and those chapter have written with small letters. Green wrote capitalized Will Grayson’s story (Will1) and Levithan wrote about lower case will grayson (Will2). Novel’s narrator is first-person, Will1 or Will2, so narrator and point of view change always when new chapter begins. The plot of novel itself is pretty simple so characters’ growth and development comes out well.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a story about friendship and life. It’s about menthal growth and exceeding yourself. But I have to say that two stories which have main characters with the same name is a little bit challenging equation, but you get used to it quite quickly. In spite of all I liked the novel. Characters were all different and that’s why they complete each other so well. Especially I liked Will Grayson2 who exceeds himself in the end of the story only because of Tiny Cooper and his greatness. The novel ends to the Tiny’s play which is totally worth reading. All in all novel was good and I can recommend it to everyone and I’m sure that I’ll read more John Green’s and mayde David Levithan’s novels.

Life of Pi is written by Yann Martel and was published in 2001. It was also adapted into a film by Ang Lee in 2012.

The book tells about how a 16-year-old Indian boy called Pi and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger called Richard Parker form an unlikely friendship. After surviving a sorrowful shipwreck, they live together in lifeboat for 227 days.

I didn’t really like Pi, but I thought that Richard Parker was a well written character. He really was a tiger, not a human being like animals in many books tend to be. I also adore how much research the writer must have done for the book.

I hated the first part of the book, which was mainly about Pi being a smartass and struggling with three different religions that he all somehow practised. There were also these really long and boring stories about how animals behave. Pi grew up in a zoo and his knowledge was what helped him to survive but if I wanted to know all the things he did I would just go and read a non-fictional book about animals or something. I almost stopped reading because I was so annoyed.

The second part, where all the action took place, was easily the best part of the book. Pi fights for his life and uses all the survival tactics he possibly can imagine. Somehow, eventually it all works out and both Richard Parker and Pi get their happy endings. The part started repeating itself after some time but was quite amusing anyway, and if it was the only part of book I would have liked it a lot more than I did.

In the third and final part, Pi meets the marital officials who investigate the shipwreck and tells them his story. The officials don’t believe a word he says, so he tells them another story where there are people instead of animals. The book leaves it to the readers to choose which one they prefer and believe to be true.  It kind of bothered me that the book didn’t take a stance on which one was true. I was also confused with the whole narrator within narrator thing, and I think the writer tried too hard with that.

In this article I will be reviewing the novel ”Licence Renewed”. It is written by John Gardner, and it was published in 1981. It was the first James Bond-novel since 1968 (Colonel Sun). John Gardner has written multiple Bond-novels during 1981-1996, and he is best known for them. Gardner got the copyrights to use James Bond as a character by Ian Fleming Publications, and he wrote fourteen continuation novels of the original James Bond-novels. So he sort of ”revived” the novel series after over ten years.

The character ”James Bond” was originally created by Ian Fleming in 1953 (Casino Royale). Fleming wrote a total of twelve novels featuring Bond. Fleming used himself and Hoagy Carmichael as the basis of the character. Bond is described as tall, dark and mysterious. He is a spy also known as 007, his code number. ”-That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold.” This is how Bond was described in ”Moonraker”. He’s quick thinking and strong gadgetry are some of the main characteristics of 007.

In this particular novel, Bond is making a return after fifteen years. The story is rather similar to the other novels. The world needs a saviour against evil, in this case two people: Nuclear physicist Anton Murik, and a terrorist called Franco. M, Bonds commander, assigns Bond to  stop whatever it is they’re planning. The story stays interesting because of Bonds cool improvisation and jokes. Bond also has a woman in every novel, and his love-hate-relationship with M is fun to follow.

Towards the end of the novel, Bond finds out what Murik and Franco are planning; Murik wants to take over six nuclear plants around the world, and he wants Bond to kill Franco. Obviously that is not going to happen.

This novel was a pretty basic fiction novel, therefore it was not on my A-list. I would much rather read something real, from which I could learn something.

Inferno is a novel released on Mai 14, 2013, written by the US-American author Dan Brown. The thriller is the forth book in the Robert Langdon series. It follows the international bestsellers Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.

The main characters are Robert Langdon, the doctor Sienna Brooks, a man just named “the provost” and the WHO-general director Elisabeth Kingsley.

The main part of the novel is set in Florence, Italy, where the Harvard University professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital without any memory of the last two days, suffering from a head shot wound. As a women tries to kill him he and Sienna escape and tare trying to find out the reason for people obviously chasing Langdon. On their research, they find a strange object attached to Roberts belongings a map of hell based on Dantes novel “Inferno”, which leads them into the deep world of old florence and Dante, always chased by the authorities. As they find out the connection between Dante, “Inferno” and Bertrand Zobrist, a billionaire geneticist, they find out about a possible plague which is supposed to kill a big amount of the world’s population. Their research takes them, with the help of a strange assistant of Elisabeth Kingsley’s, further to Venice, where Robert and Sienna get separated as Robert get caught and Sienna escapes. Now, in the hands of their chasers, the hears the truth about the pursuit and Sienna, who was the love of the plagues creator Zobrist, dying from suicide a week ago in Florence. Now they have to fear that Sienna finds the plague earlier then they and helps to release the plague. The search goes on in Istanbul, Turkey, because Langdon’s first guess, Venice, was wrong. In a video, that Zobrist created short before his death, he specified the date of the release as the following day and gives the final clue to the location, the Hagia Sophia. There, they have to witness, that the bag, where the plague was held, is already broken and the plague released.
It discovers that Sienna didn’t brooke the bag, she even tried to stop the virus, but it was too late. She just didn’t want to cooperate with the WHO because she fears that some governments will use the information as a weapon. She also informs about the type of the virus, which changed the human race forever.
The main point of the book is by no mains gripped from pure air, as it is the world’s overpopulation and how the human race will go down on itself and also, how powerless and ignorant we are stopping it. (“The human mind has a primitive ego defince mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called denial.”- Dan Brown, Inferno)
One other point is the danger of human ambition to improve ourselves mire and more not seeing what dangers for our society that would bring.

My point of view is that this book was truly amazing to read. It was like a blockbuster, just in a written form. Though it’s difficult to read, it was really exciting. I must admit that I read it twice to understand the entire plot and the connections and the second time, because not that much time passed, it got a bit boring but for my understanding it was worth it. The plot seemed to be based on a good research and true facts. That is one thing I truly admire Dan Brown for, because no matter how far from reality the story might be, the base has always something of historical facts in it. So if you’re interested in history, I can thoroughly recommend “Inferno” or any of the other Dan Brown novels.
So don’t hesitate and read the book and form yourself an opinion of this great book, because donÄt forget:
“There comes a moment in history when ignorance is no longer a forgivable offence….a moment when only wisdom has the power to absolve”

-Dan Brown, Inferno