Culture in the English-speaking world

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 🙂

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the final novel of the Harry Potter -series. It includes seven novels. I have read only one Harry Potter -novel before this one, which is the first novel of the series. J.K Rowling has written all the books in this series. On the other hand i have watched all Harry Potter -movies which are based on the books. This and the final books tells about a boy named Harry who has struggled all his life after he learned he is a famous wizard. In this last book Harry is fighting against Voldemort who has killed Harry’s parents and he is about to kill Harry too. Voldemort is gaining support and increase to his power all the time. For Harry to live he has to beat Voldemort and that is not going to be an easy task. Harry and his two best friends start to hunt these ’horcruxes’ which able Voldemort to split his soul in to peaces and makes him immortal. This trio is able to destroy most of these horcruxes but soon enough harry find out that he is one himself. When Voldemort tried to kill Harry, a part of his soul attached to Harry. So for Harry to beat Voldemort he has to die himself.

At begin when i started to read this book it was kind of hard for me. So much new words and sentences whom i didn’t quite understand. But towards the end it started to go much better. In these books there are a lot of weird glossary for example these horcruxes. For me these kind of things are easy to know because I have watched all movies and I have read one book before. I really enjoyed reading this book because i really enjoy Harry Potter series. Though comparing this book against the movie, the books tells everything much more in detail.

Shards Of Alderaan is one the many books in the ”Star Wars- Young Jedi Knights”-series. Book is written by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Monesta. It was released in January 1, 1997 and it was first in the saga. Theme of the book is definitely friendship and you can tell it by reading the book, four heroes fighting against the evil forces, Shadow Academy. Main characters in the book are Han Solo´s and Princess Leia`s twins Jacen and Jaina. They both are heroes with their friends Tene Ka and Lowbacca The Wookiee.  Their mission is to safe shattered planet from the evil forces of Shadow Academy. Book was very easy to read. The Narrator is omniscient and plot was really easy to follow. Plot was in some cases even a little bit boring. Story and characters were stereotypical. Hero saves the day type of books are not really my thing. Book didn’t capture the atmosphere of the orginal series. But reading experience was okay. Despite the stereotypical characters, they were portrayed well. Connections between the twins felt real. Good things in book where that there was no unnecessary characters. ”Star Wars- Young Jedi Knights” is a big series with one big plot so the first book cant really be over the top. Book was kinda beginning of this saga and it introduced the characters, and showed who are good and bad guys. But for star wars spinoff it was okay. It continues the story of the last film and it takes us to the world of new generation of heroes. But the relationships between all the characters was not so good until the end where Jacen, Jaina, Anakin, Tenel Ka and two enthusiastic Wookiees says: -”To the family” and the real adventure starts. Despite the lack of plot and stereotypical characters book was still entertaining and easy to read. And also it was really fresh to read book in English.

The Red Pyramid was published in 2010. This Egyptian themed novel is work of Rick Riordan, an American author.

The Red Pyramid is a fantasy novel that has many common elements typical for its genre. Egyptian culture with its gods and pharaohs are great ideas to build a plot around and the battles with spells and magic keep the action rolling fluently through the book. Riordan has controlled the fantasy elements in a way that they don’t overflow the book, which gives a believable feel for the storyline. In my opinion, when it comes to content, The Red Pyramid is very similar to Percy Jackson books, also written by Riordan.

The book tells the story of Carter and Sadie Kane, two British children that get pulled into the world of Egyptian gods and magic. Sadie and Carter are siblings that have been living in different places of the world away from each other, for almost all of their lives but join together again to start an adventure. The main antagonist of the storyline is the god of disorder, Set. Set is as villain as one can get with plans to destroy the earth and rule the universe. Also if you want to imagine magical crocodiles and talking statues play around in the modern world, this book is made for you.

The book is actually a recording of Sadie and Carter are telling their story to the reader. This makes the book really fun to read because the siblings quite often pause the storytelling and start some funny conversations. Sadie and Carter tell the story in their own turns, so you get two views of the events. With more than one narrator a book easily becomes quite hard to understand but this is not the case with The Red Pyramid. Of course there were times when the identity of the narrator was unclear, but it was easy to sort out by taking a look at the top of the page and find either ”Sadie” or ”Carter”.

My overall opinions of the book are really positive. The book at no point got boring with the action rolling the whole time also teaching cool facts of egyptology. Overall the biggest selling point for me was the way fantasy and ordinary things were welded together. On the negative side I was a bit disappointed of the way Riordan handled the ”non-magic” people in the book. All the pedestrians see the Egyptian monsters as everyday animals. For example at the airport everybody except our heroes were seeing a moose when in fact a monster had been released. In every other aspect the book shines and offeres an enjoyable reading experience. I’ll be looking forward to the next part of the Kane series!