Books

In comparison with the passive consuption of TV culture, reading is a highly active hobby. Reading is another source of knowledge and culture. A book answers a whole series of our questions.

During our life we meet both fiction and non-fiction. When we read for pleasure, we usually pick up a book of fiction, such as novels (science fiction, westerns, travel books, thrillers, crime fiction, psychological and historical novels, adventure tales, love stories), short stories and tales or poetry.

Here are various ways to choose a book for reading. Some of us read a book for its subject and setting, others for the autors or on personal recommendation. Also reasons why we read may be different – we read for relaxation and pleasure, or we look for information and advice. We can buy books, or we can borrow them from friends and from a library. If we need information, it is good to have various dictionares, outlines, encyclopedies, technical and scientific literature, atlases, textbooks, biographies, autobiographies and history and art books.

Advantages of reading books:

• Getting information- encyklopedies -books help us to learn about foreign countries as well as exotic lands with their wonderful plants and animals, about the people and their habits and characters.
• Values – we learn how to discern what is good, intelligent and as well what is bad.
• Wisdom – People better understand the situations and know how to make decisions.
• Empathy – we may becoem more sympathetic
• Improvement of our memory
• Imagination – reading improves our imagination.
• Language
• Vocabulary – Reading increases our vocabulary
• Therapy –books can help us to forget about our problems, to get over sadness, they may cheer us up.

Advantages of watching films:

• save some time – watching film needs less time than reading books.
• it might be even cheaper than buying books
• we can spend time with our friend and be away from home
• watching movies on TV allow us to do another activity apart of watching

British Literature

The representatives of British literature: The oldest literature monument of the Anglo-Saxon period is old Germanic legend about Beowulf (from the 8th century). This heroic poem is about the strong hero Beowulf.

William Shakespeare

• the genius of the Elizabethan era
• historical plays: Richard III, Henry IV, Antony and Cleopatra
• comedies : A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor
• tragedies : Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth

Other writers

• Jonathan Swift – Irish writer
  • famous satire – Gulliver’s Travels
• Daniel Defoe – The Life and Adventures ofRobinson Crusoe
• George Gordon Byron – The Pilgrimage of Childe Harold
• Walter Scott – Ivanhoe, Rob Roy
• Charles Dickens** – Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
• Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre
• Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights
• Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
• John Galsworthy – The Forsythe Saga
• Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes
• Willima Golding –Lord of the flies

Nobel Prize winners for Literature:

• John Galsworthy, Sir Winston Churchil, Rudyard Kipling, William Golding

American Literature

The representatives of American literature:

• Edgar Allan Poe – detective and fantasy stories e.g. The Pit and the Pendulum
• Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
• Jack London – The Call of Wild, White Fang
• John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
• Ernest Hemingway – the representative of the “lost generation”
• Whom the Bell tolls, An Old Man and the Sea, Green Hills of Africa
• William Faulkner – awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
  • Sanctuary
• Joseph Heller – anti-war satire : Catch –22
• Jack Kerouac – On the Road
• Arthur Hailey – The Airport, The Hotel, The Final Diagnosis

Nobel Prize winners for Literature:

• W. Faulkner, J. Steinbeck, E. Hemingway