A smell can evoke memories of a certain time, place or experience – now scientists at University College London are documenting scents as a way of recording culturally significant artefacts. Helen Drew explains.
We read them, we learn from them, some of us even write them. Books old or new, falling apart or unread. Here at University College London's Institute of Archaeology library it’s the largest collection of conservation-related books in London. But it's not just the words written on these pages that are important. According to scientists, the smell of these books has a significance that should also be recorded.
Smells have a big impact on our everyday life: how we feel, how we think and even how we behave, so we started looking into those smells that might have cultural value to us as a society and so our first challenge was to find, identify smell that we knew people valued and the smell of old books and historic libraries appeared as a very clear case.
In this lab scientists from UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage are collecting chemicals on a tiny sensor which they then pop into a machine to separate the individual chemical compounds. These chemicals can then be used to recreate that smell in the future.
What do you think of the smell of books?
They have a rather particular smell for sure and I think it’s lovely, it's sort of musty but it's… it's really enjoyable. I love the smell of old libraries.
The smell of a book becomes associated of what you read in the book, well that can lead to all sorts of associations and sometimes the smell is enough just to remind you of what a book is.
Always when you get a new book and it's like the new smell, it's a kind of part of the experience.
At the moment smell is rarely recorded.
If you go to a gallery or to a museum, a hundred percent of the time the objects communicate with you visually, you can see the shapes, you can see the colours but you cannot touch them and you cannot smell them.
There are also … archives to recreate the potpourri from a National Trust house in the 1700s, so that when visitors walk in, they're transported back in time. The whole project isn't just about recording smells but also the emotions they evoke.
Helen Drew, BBC London news.
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Books. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta Books. Mostrar todas las entradas
jueves, 25 de mayo de 2017
miércoles, 24 de mayo de 2017
Talking point: Libraries
This week's talking point is libraries. Before getting together with the members of your conversation group, go over the questions below so that ideas come to mind more easily the day you get together with your friends and you can work out vocabulary problems beforehand.
Welcome to the Syracuse University Library. We’d like to take a few minutes to introduce you to the resources and services that we have to offer at the SU library. There are five library locations on campus. Bird library is located on University Place next door to the Schine Student Center. Adjacent to Bird you will find the Belfer Audio Laboratory and archives.
The Carnegie Building on the Quad is home to Science & technology and Mathematics libraries. The Geology library is in Heroy Hall. And you’ll find the Architecture Reading Room is Slocum Hall. The sixth storey E.S. Bird Library is considered the main library on campus. It’s home to the Learning Commons, an open active environment, where we can not only find traditional library services like the check-out desk, but you also find our Technology Assistant desk for borrowing laptops, headphones and cameras. You can get help with scanning and printing and photocopying.
And of course there are plenty of places to study either on your own or with a group. Research assistance is available on the drop-in basis, or you can make an appointment to consult with the librarian subject specialist. The Learning Commons is also where you will also find Pages, the library café, where you can grab a cup of coffee or something to eat. The second floor is the great place to relax, read or study. You can browse the stacks. Use the reference collection or browse current periodicals. On the third floor you can get assistance with the Maps and Government Information collections.
The Map Room houses thousands of maps and atlases. On the third floor you’ll also find the microfilm collections. As well as the Geographic and Statistical Information Center. The fourth floor is home to our fine arts collections. You’ll find a media area for viewing our film, video and DVD collections. And a listening area for LPs and CDs collections. Be sure to check out the exhibits and visit the Biblio Gallery.
The fifth floor is a quiet floor with plenty of study tables available. Take the elevator to the sixth floor to find the Special Collections Research Center. There you can browse their exhibits. And get assistance with their collections by signing in in the Reading Room. On the sixth floor you will also find the Safire Room, a great place for quiet study. We hope you have enjoyed this brief tour of the Syracuse University Library. To learn more, visit us at library.syr.edu
- Are libraries a thing of the past and e-Books and other mobile devices the present and future of reading?
- Do libraries put pressure on users to read books quickly?
- Where do you find it easier to study, at home or in a library?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
- Is the Internet a much more resourceful space than a library?
- Do libraries provide enough resources for everybody?
- What is the importance of traditional books?
- How would you describe the atmosphere of libraries?
- Do you find them inspiring and encouraging to research and study?
- What is the role of libraries in society?
Welcome to the Syracuse University Library. We’d like to take a few minutes to introduce you to the resources and services that we have to offer at the SU library. There are five library locations on campus. Bird library is located on University Place next door to the Schine Student Center. Adjacent to Bird you will find the Belfer Audio Laboratory and archives.
The Carnegie Building on the Quad is home to Science & technology and Mathematics libraries. The Geology library is in Heroy Hall. And you’ll find the Architecture Reading Room is Slocum Hall. The sixth storey E.S. Bird Library is considered the main library on campus. It’s home to the Learning Commons, an open active environment, where we can not only find traditional library services like the check-out desk, but you also find our Technology Assistant desk for borrowing laptops, headphones and cameras. You can get help with scanning and printing and photocopying.
And of course there are plenty of places to study either on your own or with a group. Research assistance is available on the drop-in basis, or you can make an appointment to consult with the librarian subject specialist. The Learning Commons is also where you will also find Pages, the library café, where you can grab a cup of coffee or something to eat. The second floor is the great place to relax, read or study. You can browse the stacks. Use the reference collection or browse current periodicals. On the third floor you can get assistance with the Maps and Government Information collections.
The Map Room houses thousands of maps and atlases. On the third floor you’ll also find the microfilm collections. As well as the Geographic and Statistical Information Center. The fourth floor is home to our fine arts collections. You’ll find a media area for viewing our film, video and DVD collections. And a listening area for LPs and CDs collections. Be sure to check out the exhibits and visit the Biblio Gallery.
The fifth floor is a quiet floor with plenty of study tables available. Take the elevator to the sixth floor to find the Special Collections Research Center. There you can browse their exhibits. And get assistance with their collections by signing in in the Reading Room. On the sixth floor you will also find the Safire Room, a great place for quiet study. We hope you have enjoyed this brief tour of the Syracuse University Library. To learn more, visit us at library.syr.edu
martes, 2 de mayo de 2017
Mary Higgins Clark on suspense
Mary Higgins Clark was no overnight success; the writer was 43 when she had her first hit, the 1975 novel "Where Are the Children?" Since then the New York Times bestselling author has written more than 50 books, from mysteries and historical novels to short stories, children books and a memoir. The "Queen of Suspense" talks with Erin Moriarty about her career, and how she never takes her readers for granted.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. How many books has Mary Higgins Clark written?
2. What is the fascination with murder?
3. Where does she get much of her inspiration?
4. What is her family background?
5. Why was she forced to work odd jobs?
6. When did her will-be husband, Warren Clark, proposed to her?
7. What happened when she was 37?
8. What did she do when she got her first book contract?
9. How many times has Where are the Children? been printed?
10. In what way do the main character in her books resemble Mary Higgins Clark?
Take a look at the complete body of work of author Mary Higgins Clark, the queen of suspense. She’s granted an audience to a woman who’s no stranger to mystery, correspondent Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours.
You’d never guess to look at her, but this sweet church-going mother and grandmother has a very dark side.
I mean, you have any idea of how many people have died at your hands?
At least one a book. One a book!
And we are talking about 52 books and counting. She is, of course, Mary Higgins Clark, the writer that many consider the Queen of Suspense. At 89 years of age, her dark imagination continues to fuel bestsellers. Her latest mystery, All By Myself, Alone, will be released this week, by Simon and Schuster, a subsidiary of CBS.
What is the fascination with murder?
Well, there was Adam and Eve. They had two kids, Cain and Abel, and one killed the other. So it’s been in our very nature since Day One.
Her stories are pure fiction, but Higgins Clark gets much inspiration from true life.
I used to go to trials a lot. You can get more out of the trial and the sadness in it and the poignancy in it than you could ever imagine.
The sadness and poignancy of ordinary lives is a common theme, something Mary Higgins Clark learned early, growing up with two brothers in the Bronx in New York during the Depression.
That’s when my father came over on from the ship.
Right here?
Luke Higgins.
And your father, Irish immigrant?
Irish immigrant, and he had a bar and grill, a successful one before everything went sour. But he died at 34 of a heart attack because the business went bad, and that’s what killed him.
She was only 11 years old.
It’s a heartbreak. I think any time one parent goes, it’s never the same. You’re flying on one wing.
Forced to work odd jobs to help support her family, she imagined one day she’d have a career as a writer.
I always thought I would make it. I was a telephone operator after school. ‘Hotel Shelton, good afternoon’, and if I got downtown early enough, I would walk past Fifth Avenue and pick out the clothes I would have when I was a successful writer.
At 22 she married Warren Clark, a boy from the neighbourhood, who proposed to her on their very first date, and she began sending short stories to magazines. She still has the rejection letters, 40 of them.
This one was my favourite, though.
“We are reluctantly forced, purely as a matter of timing, to decline your offering of this story to us at this time.”
That’s a very nice way to turn you down.
Oh, that was the nicest I ever got. There was one, ‘Mrs. Clark, your stories are light, slight and trite.’
That would hurt my feelings.
I thought, ‘I’ll get you, girl.’
Making her writing pay off became a necessity when history repeated itself, and her own husband suddenly died. She was 37 years old, with five children to support. Higgins Clark, who had to pawn her jewellery to pay bills, began writing radio scripts for a living, and novels on the side. Her first, a romantic novel about George Washington and his wife, Martha, did not sell well. But her second book…
Where Are the Children? was the big difference.
And how did that come about?
Well, I looked at my bookshelves and that’s when I realized I had so many suspense novels.
Where are the Children? was a hit.
I think I was 43 when that book came out.
So you were an overnight success?
No, dear heart, I was not an overnight success by any stretch!
She got her first book contract, and was able to buy back the jewellery she pawned, and more.
It became fun, when I started to be successful, to get a piece of jewellery to remind myself that I had worked hard.
She now has quite a jewellery collection, considering that nearly every book over more than 40 years has been a bestseller.
Where are the Children?, having been the big breakthrough, is obviously very dear, because it made all the difference in my life when that one came out.
I read that it is in its 75th printing, is that right?
Yes, yes, it is, because it just keeps going.
And so does Mary Higgins Clark. She is remarried, and lives on four acres in New Jersey in a home complete with an elevator that opens into her writer’s studio. Murder and mayhem may still drive her plots, but at the heart of each book is a character much like the author herself, a hero who turns adversity into advantage, while keeping her readers on the edge of their seats.
When your book is coming out, do you still feel some nervousness, will my readers like it as much as they have in the past?
Oh, of course, because I have never taken a reader for granted. Never. So each book is the best I can write under these circumstances, and then, pray God that it goes over well.
KEY:
1 fifty-two
2 it’s been in human nature since Cain and Abel/day one
3 from real life/trials
4 daughter of an Irish immigrant who grew in the Bronx with two brothers
5 to help support her family after her dad died
6 on their very first date
7 her husband died
8 she was able to buy back the jewellery she had pawned
9 seventy-five
10 they turn adversity into advantage
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1. How many books has Mary Higgins Clark written?
2. What is the fascination with murder?
3. Where does she get much of her inspiration?
4. What is her family background?
5. Why was she forced to work odd jobs?
6. When did her will-be husband, Warren Clark, proposed to her?
7. What happened when she was 37?
8. What did she do when she got her first book contract?
9. How many times has Where are the Children? been printed?
10. In what way do the main character in her books resemble Mary Higgins Clark?
Take a look at the complete body of work of author Mary Higgins Clark, the queen of suspense. She’s granted an audience to a woman who’s no stranger to mystery, correspondent Erin Moriarty of 48 Hours.
You’d never guess to look at her, but this sweet church-going mother and grandmother has a very dark side.
I mean, you have any idea of how many people have died at your hands?
At least one a book. One a book!
And we are talking about 52 books and counting. She is, of course, Mary Higgins Clark, the writer that many consider the Queen of Suspense. At 89 years of age, her dark imagination continues to fuel bestsellers. Her latest mystery, All By Myself, Alone, will be released this week, by Simon and Schuster, a subsidiary of CBS.
What is the fascination with murder?
Well, there was Adam and Eve. They had two kids, Cain and Abel, and one killed the other. So it’s been in our very nature since Day One.
Her stories are pure fiction, but Higgins Clark gets much inspiration from true life.
I used to go to trials a lot. You can get more out of the trial and the sadness in it and the poignancy in it than you could ever imagine.
The sadness and poignancy of ordinary lives is a common theme, something Mary Higgins Clark learned early, growing up with two brothers in the Bronx in New York during the Depression.
That’s when my father came over on from the ship.
Right here?
Luke Higgins.
And your father, Irish immigrant?
Irish immigrant, and he had a bar and grill, a successful one before everything went sour. But he died at 34 of a heart attack because the business went bad, and that’s what killed him.
She was only 11 years old.
It’s a heartbreak. I think any time one parent goes, it’s never the same. You’re flying on one wing.
Forced to work odd jobs to help support her family, she imagined one day she’d have a career as a writer.
I always thought I would make it. I was a telephone operator after school. ‘Hotel Shelton, good afternoon’, and if I got downtown early enough, I would walk past Fifth Avenue and pick out the clothes I would have when I was a successful writer.
At 22 she married Warren Clark, a boy from the neighbourhood, who proposed to her on their very first date, and she began sending short stories to magazines. She still has the rejection letters, 40 of them.
This one was my favourite, though.
“We are reluctantly forced, purely as a matter of timing, to decline your offering of this story to us at this time.”
That’s a very nice way to turn you down.
Oh, that was the nicest I ever got. There was one, ‘Mrs. Clark, your stories are light, slight and trite.’
That would hurt my feelings.
I thought, ‘I’ll get you, girl.’
Making her writing pay off became a necessity when history repeated itself, and her own husband suddenly died. She was 37 years old, with five children to support. Higgins Clark, who had to pawn her jewellery to pay bills, began writing radio scripts for a living, and novels on the side. Her first, a romantic novel about George Washington and his wife, Martha, did not sell well. But her second book…
Where Are the Children? was the big difference.
And how did that come about?
Well, I looked at my bookshelves and that’s when I realized I had so many suspense novels.
Where are the Children? was a hit.
I think I was 43 when that book came out.
So you were an overnight success?
No, dear heart, I was not an overnight success by any stretch!
She got her first book contract, and was able to buy back the jewellery she pawned, and more.
It became fun, when I started to be successful, to get a piece of jewellery to remind myself that I had worked hard.
She now has quite a jewellery collection, considering that nearly every book over more than 40 years has been a bestseller.
Where are the Children?, having been the big breakthrough, is obviously very dear, because it made all the difference in my life when that one came out.
I read that it is in its 75th printing, is that right?
Yes, yes, it is, because it just keeps going.
And so does Mary Higgins Clark. She is remarried, and lives on four acres in New Jersey in a home complete with an elevator that opens into her writer’s studio. Murder and mayhem may still drive her plots, but at the heart of each book is a character much like the author herself, a hero who turns adversity into advantage, while keeping her readers on the edge of their seats.
When your book is coming out, do you still feel some nervousness, will my readers like it as much as they have in the past?
Oh, of course, because I have never taken a reader for granted. Never. So each book is the best I can write under these circumstances, and then, pray God that it goes over well.
KEY:
1 fifty-two
2 it’s been in human nature since Cain and Abel/day one
3 from real life/trials
4 daughter of an Irish immigrant who grew in the Bronx with two brothers
5 to help support her family after her dad died
6 on their very first date
7 her husband died
8 she was able to buy back the jewellery she had pawned
9 seventy-five
10 they turn adversity into advantage
lunes, 3 de abril de 2017
Listening test: Books
This is John Kuti's story of his relationships with books throughout his life. Listen and match each of the extracts 1-6 with the corresponding heading A-H. There are two headings you do not need to use.
A - A book for travelling
B - Family life is an obstacle for readers
C – Reading books rediscovered
D - Reading strange books and books nobody had read
E - Taking a long time to read short books
F - The adventure books of my childhood
G - The end of books
H - Working with the TV on
The adventure books of my childhood
I suppose I was an avid reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine.
Looking for strange books and books nobody had read
In adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and stir up my peers with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names, I scoured the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert.
Taking a long time to read short books
Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound knowledge of post-structuralism, existentialism and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading.
The end of books
Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading, you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals and pamphlets and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years.Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away.
Working with the TV on
My new TV is an extra circuit board inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this…
Reading books rediscovered
Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six simultaneously. I don't want to BE any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they've been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.
KEY:
1F 2D 3E 4G 5H 6C
Source: British Council Learning English
A - A book for travelling
B - Family life is an obstacle for readers
C – Reading books rediscovered
D - Reading strange books and books nobody had read
E - Taking a long time to read short books
F - The adventure books of my childhood
G - The end of books
H - Working with the TV on
The adventure books of my childhood
I suppose I was an avid reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine.
Looking for strange books and books nobody had read
In adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and stir up my peers with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names, I scoured the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert.
Taking a long time to read short books
Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound knowledge of post-structuralism, existentialism and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading.
The end of books
Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading, you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals and pamphlets and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years.Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away.
Working with the TV on
My new TV is an extra circuit board inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this…
Reading books rediscovered
Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six simultaneously. I don't want to BE any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they've been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.
Photo: British Council
KEY:
1F 2D 3E 4G 5H 6C
sábado, 11 de marzo de 2017
Reading test: A criminal gang reportedly stole £2 million worth of rare books
In this week's reading test we are going to practise the grammar and vocabulary multiple choice task. To do so, we are going to read the Business Insider article A criminal gang reportedly stole £2 million worth of rare books.
Read the article and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each of the blanks. 0 is an example.
A criminal gang reportedly stole £2 million worth of rare books
A gang of thieves has reportedly stolen over £2 million (0) … of rare books from a warehouse near Heathrow airport in a "Mission Impossible"-style heist, The Mail on Sunday reports. The newspaper reports that over 160 rare books were (1) …, including works by Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci.
Thieves reportedly (2) … the warehouse in Feltham, Middlesex by climbing onto the roof, cutting holes through the reinforced skylights, and then abseiling down into the building. The heist, (3) … took place on the evening of January 29, was captured on the warehouse's CCTV cameras, The Mail on Sunday reports.
Thieves were observed ignoring all other items stored in the warehouse, instead targeting four containers that stored rare books. A source (4) … The Mail on Sunday that the gang of criminals checked the contents of the containers against a list, "throwing (5) … they didn't want away." The books were being stored in the warehouse temporarily as they made their way to the California Book Fair.
The gang then placed the rare books into holdalls and pulled them onto the roof of the building using ropes. The bags were (6) … placed into a van and driven away.
The Mail on Sunday reports that the thieves likely stole the books to order, as it would be difficult to resell the titles. The newspaper says that scientific works of the type stolen in the raid, "are particularly in demand." It speculates that a wealthy collector known as "the Astronomer" (7) … have ordered gangs to steal books for him.
The most valuable book stolen in the raid is a 1566 edition of "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" by Copernicus. The book, (8) … as "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres," set out Copernicus' theory that the Sun is at the centre of the universe, not the Earth.
The owner of the rare Copernicus book stolen in the raid, identified only as a dealer from Padua in Italy, thinks “it was clearly a robbery done to order. It was a specialised gang. They took only books, (9) … ."
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has published two separate lists detailing every book believed to have been stolen in the heist. It lists two dealers (10) … have had stock stolen from them: Librario Bado e Mart s.a.s. di Bado R. e C. from Padua, Italy, and Michael Kühn from Berlin, Germany.
(11) … book that is believed to have been stolen is a 1656 Galileo book titled "Opere di Galileo Galilei," another early scientific work about the universe.
A copy of "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" by Isaac Newton was (12) … stolen in the raid. The book was a landmark work covering physics and mathematics.
0 Example:
a) priced
b) value
c) worth
1
a) caught
b) robbed
c) stolen
2
a) entered
b) entered on to
c) entered to
3
a) that
b) what
c) which
4
a) informed to
b) said
c) told
5
a) some
b) the ones
c) whichever
6
a) after
b) first
c) then
7
a) had to
b) may
c) should
8
a) described
b) known
c) translated
9
a) just those
b) nothing else
c) nothing more
10
a) what
b) which
c) who
11
a) Another
b) One
c) Other
12
a) also
b) as well
c) too
KEY:
1C 2A 3C 4C 5B 6C 7B 8C 9B 10C 11A 12A
Read the article and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each of the blanks. 0 is an example.
A criminal gang reportedly stole £2 million worth of rare books
A gang of thieves has reportedly stolen over £2 million (0) … of rare books from a warehouse near Heathrow airport in a "Mission Impossible"-style heist, The Mail on Sunday reports. The newspaper reports that over 160 rare books were (1) …, including works by Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci.
Thieves reportedly (2) … the warehouse in Feltham, Middlesex by climbing onto the roof, cutting holes through the reinforced skylights, and then abseiling down into the building. The heist, (3) … took place on the evening of January 29, was captured on the warehouse's CCTV cameras, The Mail on Sunday reports.
Thieves were observed ignoring all other items stored in the warehouse, instead targeting four containers that stored rare books. A source (4) … The Mail on Sunday that the gang of criminals checked the contents of the containers against a list, "throwing (5) … they didn't want away." The books were being stored in the warehouse temporarily as they made their way to the California Book Fair.
The gang then placed the rare books into holdalls and pulled them onto the roof of the building using ropes. The bags were (6) … placed into a van and driven away.
The Mail on Sunday reports that the thieves likely stole the books to order, as it would be difficult to resell the titles. The newspaper says that scientific works of the type stolen in the raid, "are particularly in demand." It speculates that a wealthy collector known as "the Astronomer" (7) … have ordered gangs to steal books for him.
The most valuable book stolen in the raid is a 1566 edition of "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" by Copernicus. The book, (8) … as "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres," set out Copernicus' theory that the Sun is at the centre of the universe, not the Earth.
The owner of the rare Copernicus book stolen in the raid, identified only as a dealer from Padua in Italy, thinks “it was clearly a robbery done to order. It was a specialised gang. They took only books, (9) … ."
The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has published two separate lists detailing every book believed to have been stolen in the heist. It lists two dealers (10) … have had stock stolen from them: Librario Bado e Mart s.a.s. di Bado R. e C. from Padua, Italy, and Michael Kühn from Berlin, Germany.
(11) … book that is believed to have been stolen is a 1656 Galileo book titled "Opere di Galileo Galilei," another early scientific work about the universe.
A copy of "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" by Isaac Newton was (12) … stolen in the raid. The book was a landmark work covering physics and mathematics.
0 Example:
a) priced
b) value
c) worth
1
a) caught
b) robbed
c) stolen
2
a) entered
b) entered on to
c) entered to
3
a) that
b) what
c) which
4
a) informed to
b) said
c) told
5
a) some
b) the ones
c) whichever
6
a) after
b) first
c) then
7
a) had to
b) may
c) should
8
a) described
b) known
c) translated
9
a) just those
b) nothing else
c) nothing more
10
a) what
b) which
c) who
11
a) Another
b) One
c) Other
12
a) also
b) as well
c) too
KEY:
1C 2A 3C 4C 5B 6C 7B 8C 9B 10C 11A 12A
martes, 28 de febrero de 2017
J. K. Rowling interview
A rare chance to see an interview with JK Rowling. The Harry Potter author talks about insomnia, the Scottish referendum and what her most favourite recent novel has been.
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Rowling doesn’t know what she will be having for dinner tonight.
2 Rowling is a heavy sleeper.
3 She didn’t enjoy the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
4 Rowling thinks Scotland should remain in the UK.
5 Rowling enjoys reading crime novels.
6 Writer Iain Rankin thinks the Harry Potter novels are crime novels.
7 Rowling has already finished the next novel she is going to publish.
8 Rowling would feel flattered if someone said her novel The Casual Vacancy echoes 18th century literature.
9 Rowling used to be a teacher.
10 Rowling prefers the kindle to paper books.
11 Rowling reads to her children.
12 She doesn’t know what TV programmes her children are watching.
13 Rowling spent one week talking to the guy who wrote speeches for Teddy Kennedy.
14 Rowling was dressed in disguise to buy her wedding dress.
15 Rowling takes offence if someone doesn’t know how to pronounce her name.
Do you enjoy being interviewed?
Not parti…. Depends on who’s doing it. Yes I do. It depends on who’s doing it.
There you are. I haven’t taken offence. What's the worst thing about your life today?
Today?
Yeah, you know, as in now.
I can't think of anything particularly bad about my life right now, to be honest with you. I can't think of anything particularly bad. The very worst thing, the very worst thing actually right now, this second is that we've got nothing in the fridge for dinner, which I… while you were interviewing me I thought, oh hell, what are we going to have for dinner but, big deal, I can't think of anything dreadful in my life.
What keeps you awake at night?
Virtually anything, I'm completely insomniac. If I work too late, I can't get to sleep. If I read something I like or don't like, I can't get to sleep. Yeah, anything will disturb my sleep, absolutely anything.
Have your read Fifty Shades of Grey?
No, I haven't. Have you?
I have. Why haven't you?
Well, if I'm truthful it’s because I promised my editor I wouldn't. Anyway, I’ve read a story of oh… I, you know, I don't need Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve read the real thing.
But why did you have to promise your editor that…
It was a joke. He said, oh, don't read it, so I said alright then I won’t.
I don't think you feel like you're missing out, do you?
Not wildly, no, but well I don't know, it could be amazing but no, I haven’t read it.
Which way were you voting in the Scottish referendum?
I would, I'm pro-union. I would rather we stayed. I think the evolution’s been fantastic for Scotland but I think independence, personally, I’m not pro-independence.
What's the best novel you've read in the last year?
I… I would say… our… Song of Apollo I loved and, yeah.
You have a guilty pleasure when it comes to reading?
Whodunits.
Whodunits.
I don’t feel particularly guilty about them. Whodunits of the golden age I really love. I love… I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers, yeah. I don't feel guilty about that, there’s nothing wrong with it.
There's no shaming.
No shaming in Dorothy, no, there’s no shame in Dorothy.
There were loads of rumours that you were going to write a crime novel?
Yes, it all started by Iain Rankin.
What happened, explain.
Well, I think, I think Iain and I did once have a conversation in which he quite rightly said that the Potter novels are in the main whodunits or, and there’s one whydunit, so we were talking about that and, you know, the construction of that kind of novel and that led to him telling everyone that I was writing a crime novel , which was never…
Never the case.
Well, I never told Iain that I wanted to write… as far as I remember it, I didn't tell him that I wanted to write a crime novel but, yeah, that's where that came from, I think.
And what happened to the political fairy tales for children… There was talk of that.
Yeah, they’re still on my laptop and, yeah, I really like it and I think at some point I will finish it, it's, it's very new completion, but it's going to take its place in the queue so quite a few things on the table.
Do you know what the next will be, what the next publishes will be?
Yeah, I think it will be a different novel for children, which is also quite near completion. It's just because… I don't know why, I just, I just think it will be that one but I wouldn't want anyone to hold me to that because I like to be able, free to change my mind. I spent a long time committed to the next thing I was going to write so it's, it just feels great now that I can choose.
And if you could be compared to any author in your fantasy literary review where they draw an analogy between you, which would be able the author that you would most love to be likened to?
Oh my God, well I've written such different things, so on the children’s side a writer I always loved as a child and I'd love her still was E. Nesbit and on the adult side, I don't really know. I think that The Casual Vacancy is quite, it’s quite Trollope, to coin a nice adjective in a way, so if if anyone wanted to say that it was like one of those 19th century quite parochial novels, Trollope or Dickens or something like that, that would be a very, very, very flattering analogy, yes.
Some people say, my child just simply isn’t interested in books and he/she is never going to read this, there's no point trying. Is there ever such a thing as a child who wouldn't and couldn’t enjoy a book?
No, no, well I mean unless that child is, God forbid, in a coma or something, no, I don’t, I don't accept that and I think the way in is to read them, read them books, start by reading them books. Some children, I mean as an ex-teacher, I can certainly testify to the fact that some children are very intimidated by the process of reading, of having to physically read, and some children have problems with that but you can still lead them to a love of books by you just finding a good story and reading it to them, it's not that difficult. Unless, of course, the parent has literacy problems, so sometimes then it is difficult but then you would hope that at the child's school there is a teacher who loves books enough that they will read to the class.
Is the kindle the future of literature or is it the death of publishing?
It’s somewhere in-between. It's certain in my view, I think it certainly has… there's no doubt it’s had a huge impact on publishing but for all the do-mongering among writers and and and publishers, some of them, not all of them, about kindle we should all be encouraging that people do still want to read on whatever device it is, so let's just be grateful for that, for number one. Me personally I will never… I will always be faithful to paper, I love a physical book, I love a, but I do understand the appeal of the digital book, particularly when you're travelling, particularly when you're away from home, so I think it can be both, yeah.
If parents want their kids to read, should they stop them watching telly?
It wouldn’t hurt but I think that personally I believe in a fairly balanced approach, I don't believe in making the television taboo or banning it completely, but I read to my kids nightly ideally, it doesn’t always happen, when the time is very late, you know, people need to be put down, put to bed but yeah, I read to my kids and they are allowed to watch telly but I'm watching what they're watching, you know, so it's not uncontrolled.
Who have you been most star-struck about meeting?
Oh, Barack Obama and there's a guy called Bob… I’m going to get his name wrong, which is terrible. He knew Bobby Kennedy and he was a speech writer for Teddy and he was unbelievably fascinating, I could have talked to him for days and days on end, it's something like Shrum. Anyway, he’s amazing. Yeah, I could have sat and talked to him for a week so, yes, that was bigger than star struck, he was just such a fascinating man.
Have you ever had to actually go out in disguise to avoid people stopping you in the street and talking to you about Harry Potter?
I've never done it for those reasons but I did buy a wedding dress in disguise.
And you bought your wedding dress in…
Yeah, my own wedding dress. I’m not around in a wedding dress for fancy dress purposes, no. I was… that’s the only time I've ever done that, I was just… I just wanted to be able to get married to Neil without any rubbish happening, so yeah.
What was your disguise, what did it consist of?
I don't want to tell you in case I need to use it again.
Glad you won’t be buying it back together I don't think so.
No, I won’t be buying a wedding dress again, but I might want to buy something else, I don't want everyone else to know about, and as it worked I'm going to, I'm going to…
Are you eternally grateful that people think that you’re called JK Rowling when your name is really Jo Rowling? Is that helpful?
I answer to both. I can't remember the last time I corrected someone when they said Rolling, in fact in America I don't think everyone thinks I'm JK Rowling, so I just answer to both. Rolling is a fairly horrible name anyway so, you know, some might argue it’s improved by by being mispronounced. Are you relieved now that your original publisher said you should be JK rather than Jo in terms of being able to protect your anonymity.
I really like, yeah, I do really like having my pen name and… yeah, I do, there's something about it. There’s something about having my identity. It makes me feel there's a nice division between Jo, the writer, and Jo, the mother, which is the main split in my life, you know, Jo the mother is the place where I want to be most private, it is the place where I suppose I'm the least writerly in a way and I'm the least the public persona, so yeah, it's nice to have a split.
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4T 5T 6T 7F 8F 9T 10F 11T 12F 13F 14T 15F
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Rowling doesn’t know what she will be having for dinner tonight.
2 Rowling is a heavy sleeper.
3 She didn’t enjoy the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
4 Rowling thinks Scotland should remain in the UK.
5 Rowling enjoys reading crime novels.
6 Writer Iain Rankin thinks the Harry Potter novels are crime novels.
7 Rowling has already finished the next novel she is going to publish.
8 Rowling would feel flattered if someone said her novel The Casual Vacancy echoes 18th century literature.
9 Rowling used to be a teacher.
10 Rowling prefers the kindle to paper books.
11 Rowling reads to her children.
12 She doesn’t know what TV programmes her children are watching.
13 Rowling spent one week talking to the guy who wrote speeches for Teddy Kennedy.
14 Rowling was dressed in disguise to buy her wedding dress.
15 Rowling takes offence if someone doesn’t know how to pronounce her name.
Do you enjoy being interviewed?
Not parti…. Depends on who’s doing it. Yes I do. It depends on who’s doing it.
There you are. I haven’t taken offence. What's the worst thing about your life today?
Today?
Yeah, you know, as in now.
I can't think of anything particularly bad about my life right now, to be honest with you. I can't think of anything particularly bad. The very worst thing, the very worst thing actually right now, this second is that we've got nothing in the fridge for dinner, which I… while you were interviewing me I thought, oh hell, what are we going to have for dinner but, big deal, I can't think of anything dreadful in my life.
What keeps you awake at night?
Virtually anything, I'm completely insomniac. If I work too late, I can't get to sleep. If I read something I like or don't like, I can't get to sleep. Yeah, anything will disturb my sleep, absolutely anything.
Have your read Fifty Shades of Grey?
No, I haven't. Have you?
I have. Why haven't you?
Well, if I'm truthful it’s because I promised my editor I wouldn't. Anyway, I’ve read a story of oh… I, you know, I don't need Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve read the real thing.
But why did you have to promise your editor that…
It was a joke. He said, oh, don't read it, so I said alright then I won’t.
I don't think you feel like you're missing out, do you?
Not wildly, no, but well I don't know, it could be amazing but no, I haven’t read it.
Which way were you voting in the Scottish referendum?
I would, I'm pro-union. I would rather we stayed. I think the evolution’s been fantastic for Scotland but I think independence, personally, I’m not pro-independence.
What's the best novel you've read in the last year?
I… I would say… our… Song of Apollo I loved and, yeah.
You have a guilty pleasure when it comes to reading?
Whodunits.
Whodunits.
I don’t feel particularly guilty about them. Whodunits of the golden age I really love. I love… I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers, yeah. I don't feel guilty about that, there’s nothing wrong with it.
There's no shaming.
No shaming in Dorothy, no, there’s no shame in Dorothy.
There were loads of rumours that you were going to write a crime novel?
Yes, it all started by Iain Rankin.
What happened, explain.
Well, I think, I think Iain and I did once have a conversation in which he quite rightly said that the Potter novels are in the main whodunits or, and there’s one whydunit, so we were talking about that and, you know, the construction of that kind of novel and that led to him telling everyone that I was writing a crime novel , which was never…
Never the case.
Well, I never told Iain that I wanted to write… as far as I remember it, I didn't tell him that I wanted to write a crime novel but, yeah, that's where that came from, I think.
And what happened to the political fairy tales for children… There was talk of that.
Yeah, they’re still on my laptop and, yeah, I really like it and I think at some point I will finish it, it's, it's very new completion, but it's going to take its place in the queue so quite a few things on the table.
Do you know what the next will be, what the next publishes will be?
Yeah, I think it will be a different novel for children, which is also quite near completion. It's just because… I don't know why, I just, I just think it will be that one but I wouldn't want anyone to hold me to that because I like to be able, free to change my mind. I spent a long time committed to the next thing I was going to write so it's, it just feels great now that I can choose.
And if you could be compared to any author in your fantasy literary review where they draw an analogy between you, which would be able the author that you would most love to be likened to?
Oh my God, well I've written such different things, so on the children’s side a writer I always loved as a child and I'd love her still was E. Nesbit and on the adult side, I don't really know. I think that The Casual Vacancy is quite, it’s quite Trollope, to coin a nice adjective in a way, so if if anyone wanted to say that it was like one of those 19th century quite parochial novels, Trollope or Dickens or something like that, that would be a very, very, very flattering analogy, yes.
Some people say, my child just simply isn’t interested in books and he/she is never going to read this, there's no point trying. Is there ever such a thing as a child who wouldn't and couldn’t enjoy a book?
No, no, well I mean unless that child is, God forbid, in a coma or something, no, I don’t, I don't accept that and I think the way in is to read them, read them books, start by reading them books. Some children, I mean as an ex-teacher, I can certainly testify to the fact that some children are very intimidated by the process of reading, of having to physically read, and some children have problems with that but you can still lead them to a love of books by you just finding a good story and reading it to them, it's not that difficult. Unless, of course, the parent has literacy problems, so sometimes then it is difficult but then you would hope that at the child's school there is a teacher who loves books enough that they will read to the class.
Is the kindle the future of literature or is it the death of publishing?
It’s somewhere in-between. It's certain in my view, I think it certainly has… there's no doubt it’s had a huge impact on publishing but for all the do-mongering among writers and and and publishers, some of them, not all of them, about kindle we should all be encouraging that people do still want to read on whatever device it is, so let's just be grateful for that, for number one. Me personally I will never… I will always be faithful to paper, I love a physical book, I love a, but I do understand the appeal of the digital book, particularly when you're travelling, particularly when you're away from home, so I think it can be both, yeah.
If parents want their kids to read, should they stop them watching telly?
It wouldn’t hurt but I think that personally I believe in a fairly balanced approach, I don't believe in making the television taboo or banning it completely, but I read to my kids nightly ideally, it doesn’t always happen, when the time is very late, you know, people need to be put down, put to bed but yeah, I read to my kids and they are allowed to watch telly but I'm watching what they're watching, you know, so it's not uncontrolled.
Who have you been most star-struck about meeting?
Oh, Barack Obama and there's a guy called Bob… I’m going to get his name wrong, which is terrible. He knew Bobby Kennedy and he was a speech writer for Teddy and he was unbelievably fascinating, I could have talked to him for days and days on end, it's something like Shrum. Anyway, he’s amazing. Yeah, I could have sat and talked to him for a week so, yes, that was bigger than star struck, he was just such a fascinating man.
Have you ever had to actually go out in disguise to avoid people stopping you in the street and talking to you about Harry Potter?
I've never done it for those reasons but I did buy a wedding dress in disguise.
And you bought your wedding dress in…
Yeah, my own wedding dress. I’m not around in a wedding dress for fancy dress purposes, no. I was… that’s the only time I've ever done that, I was just… I just wanted to be able to get married to Neil without any rubbish happening, so yeah.
What was your disguise, what did it consist of?
I don't want to tell you in case I need to use it again.
Glad you won’t be buying it back together I don't think so.
No, I won’t be buying a wedding dress again, but I might want to buy something else, I don't want everyone else to know about, and as it worked I'm going to, I'm going to…
Are you eternally grateful that people think that you’re called JK Rowling when your name is really Jo Rowling? Is that helpful?
I answer to both. I can't remember the last time I corrected someone when they said Rolling, in fact in America I don't think everyone thinks I'm JK Rowling, so I just answer to both. Rolling is a fairly horrible name anyway so, you know, some might argue it’s improved by by being mispronounced. Are you relieved now that your original publisher said you should be JK rather than Jo in terms of being able to protect your anonymity.
I really like, yeah, I do really like having my pen name and… yeah, I do, there's something about it. There’s something about having my identity. It makes me feel there's a nice division between Jo, the writer, and Jo, the mother, which is the main split in my life, you know, Jo the mother is the place where I want to be most private, it is the place where I suppose I'm the least writerly in a way and I'm the least the public persona, so yeah, it's nice to have a split.
Key:
1T 2F 3F 4T 5T 6T 7F 8F 9T 10F 11T 12F 13F 14T 15F
lunes, 16 de enero de 2017
Listening test: Blaenavon, the Book Town boom
Listen to a news report on the Welsh city of Blaenavon. Choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
0 Example:
Blaenavon
A. is an industrial village.
b. is in a prosperous region.
C. is trying to become rich and successful again.
1 For James Hanna New Orleans (...) than Blaenavon.
A. has better food and weather
B. has more honest people
C. is more violent
2 According to the reporter, Blaenavon
A. has never been known for its cultural life.
B. has tropical weather.
C. is well-known for its sophisticated cuisine.
3 James Hanna’s plan
A. consists of opening 40 bookshops.
B. involves selling second-hand books.
C. met the local council’s objections.
4 According to John Rodger, Blaenavon
A. declined because a lot of supermarkets were opened in the town.
B. had around 6,000 inhabitants in 1985.
C. has lost half of its population.
5 James Hanna's idea of transforming Blaenavon resulted from his
A. fascination for the Welsh landscape.
B. friendship with Richard Booth.
C. love for books.
6 Hay-on-Wye, the famous book town on the Anglo-Welsh border,
A. attracts literary tourists from around Britain.
B. became well-known in the 1970’s.
C. has a literary festival that lasts for 20 days.
7 Blaenavon
A. is a World Heritage Site.
B. is not attractive to tourists these days.
C. still has the most advanced ironworks in the world.
8 About the local population James Hanna says
A. hardly any of them reads books.
B. they are now outnumbered by foreign visitors.
C. they represent about 50% of bookshop customers in the town.
A visitor to the Welsh village of Blaenavon would never guess that it played a leading role in creating modern Britain. Today, the industrial activity that brought prosperity to this remote region has entirely disappeared. However, the community is now attempting to revive its fortunes with an unusual approach. The architect of its plan for regeneration is a bookseller called James Hanna. He has come a long way to revive Blaenavon's fortunes and now faces a series of formidable challenges. One of the least of these is to adapt to a way of life radically different from that of his native New Orleans.
Well, the weather, of course, is much better here and the food is superb! It is a jolt. It is a culture shock. I grew up in the American South and, frankly, I think being here is comparable to the '50s, or maybe `60s, in the rural South. So it's different, it's enjoyable. The people are honest and open and there's not the... in New Orleans, well, we were, for a number... I think two or three different times, we were the murder capital of the States and, you know, there may be a Saturday night fight here, but that's about it.
James Hanna was, of course, being sarcastic about the weather and the food. Relentless rain is the typical forecast for the valleys of South Wales, and their working-class communities are not known for sophisticated cuisine. In fact, the poor reputation of the area's cultural life was one reason why considerable skepticism met James Hanna’s plan for reviving Blaenavon — to open 14 shops selling second-hand books. But even if local residents are not great readers, the local council welcomed James Hanna with open arms. John Rodger, a council project director, explained why.
This community grew over 100 years. It was a kind of Klondike based on the iron and coal industry and these industries declined dramatically. So the population of this community fell from about 12,500 in 1921 to about 6000 in 1995; a town which was economically in decline, socially in decline and physically in decline. When you add to that the changes in distribution, the pressures from out-of-town supermarkets and this sort of thing, we ended up with half of the shops in town boarded up. We were looking for some sort of re-use for these shops, which would be of interest to tourists, and Book Town fits that like a glove.
The challenge facing James Hanna might seen immense, but he has a blueprint to follow. Hay-on-Wye, the famous book town on the Anglo-Welsh border, has already established itself as a Mecca for bibliophiles under the leadership of its unofficial 'king', Richard Booth, a close friend of and major inspiration for James Hanna. Since the '70s Hay-on-Wye has attracted literary tourists from around the world and its flourishing bookstores have stimulated the growth of hotels, restaurants, cafes and a literary festival. Booth's formula is now being applied in over 20 communities around the world. A major boost to Blaenavon's chances of enjoying similar success to Hay-on-Wye is its unique industrial heritage. The local ironworks — once the most advanced in the world — and the nearby Big Pit mining museum are the core of an officially designated World Heritage Site, and they already attract a steady flow of tourists. James Hanna is optimistic that he can induce many of these visitors to buy books. In fact, the village's recently-opened bookshops are already attracting a strikingly cosmopolitan range of customers and some of them even come from the surrounding area.
We had people here from Cyprus, India, South Africa, Italy, Greece, literally around the world. We have 50 per cent what I would call local, meaning within 30 or 40 miles of here, then 50 per cent coming from, literally, every place. It is really interesting, when we opened, because I had heard from some of the locals, "Why are you opening a book town in Blaenavon? Nobody here reads." Well, in fact that couldn't be more untrue. When we did open, we found that (the) valleys were flocking to us like they'd been hungry and we were feeding them. It was absolutely amazing. They came in thanking us for coming here.
KEY: 1C 2A 3B 4C 5B 6B 7A 8C
0 Example:
Blaenavon
A. is an industrial village.
b. is in a prosperous region.
C. is trying to become rich and successful again.
1 For James Hanna New Orleans (...) than Blaenavon.
A. has better food and weather
B. has more honest people
C. is more violent
2 According to the reporter, Blaenavon
A. has never been known for its cultural life.
B. has tropical weather.
C. is well-known for its sophisticated cuisine.
3 James Hanna’s plan
A. consists of opening 40 bookshops.
B. involves selling second-hand books.
C. met the local council’s objections.
4 According to John Rodger, Blaenavon
A. declined because a lot of supermarkets were opened in the town.
B. had around 6,000 inhabitants in 1985.
C. has lost half of its population.
5 James Hanna's idea of transforming Blaenavon resulted from his
A. fascination for the Welsh landscape.
B. friendship with Richard Booth.
C. love for books.
6 Hay-on-Wye, the famous book town on the Anglo-Welsh border,
A. attracts literary tourists from around Britain.
B. became well-known in the 1970’s.
C. has a literary festival that lasts for 20 days.
7 Blaenavon
A. is a World Heritage Site.
B. is not attractive to tourists these days.
C. still has the most advanced ironworks in the world.
8 About the local population James Hanna says
A. hardly any of them reads books.
B. they are now outnumbered by foreign visitors.
C. they represent about 50% of bookshop customers in the town.
A visitor to the Welsh village of Blaenavon would never guess that it played a leading role in creating modern Britain. Today, the industrial activity that brought prosperity to this remote region has entirely disappeared. However, the community is now attempting to revive its fortunes with an unusual approach. The architect of its plan for regeneration is a bookseller called James Hanna. He has come a long way to revive Blaenavon's fortunes and now faces a series of formidable challenges. One of the least of these is to adapt to a way of life radically different from that of his native New Orleans.
Well, the weather, of course, is much better here and the food is superb! It is a jolt. It is a culture shock. I grew up in the American South and, frankly, I think being here is comparable to the '50s, or maybe `60s, in the rural South. So it's different, it's enjoyable. The people are honest and open and there's not the... in New Orleans, well, we were, for a number... I think two or three different times, we were the murder capital of the States and, you know, there may be a Saturday night fight here, but that's about it.
James Hanna was, of course, being sarcastic about the weather and the food. Relentless rain is the typical forecast for the valleys of South Wales, and their working-class communities are not known for sophisticated cuisine. In fact, the poor reputation of the area's cultural life was one reason why considerable skepticism met James Hanna’s plan for reviving Blaenavon — to open 14 shops selling second-hand books. But even if local residents are not great readers, the local council welcomed James Hanna with open arms. John Rodger, a council project director, explained why.
This community grew over 100 years. It was a kind of Klondike based on the iron and coal industry and these industries declined dramatically. So the population of this community fell from about 12,500 in 1921 to about 6000 in 1995; a town which was economically in decline, socially in decline and physically in decline. When you add to that the changes in distribution, the pressures from out-of-town supermarkets and this sort of thing, we ended up with half of the shops in town boarded up. We were looking for some sort of re-use for these shops, which would be of interest to tourists, and Book Town fits that like a glove.
The challenge facing James Hanna might seen immense, but he has a blueprint to follow. Hay-on-Wye, the famous book town on the Anglo-Welsh border, has already established itself as a Mecca for bibliophiles under the leadership of its unofficial 'king', Richard Booth, a close friend of and major inspiration for James Hanna. Since the '70s Hay-on-Wye has attracted literary tourists from around the world and its flourishing bookstores have stimulated the growth of hotels, restaurants, cafes and a literary festival. Booth's formula is now being applied in over 20 communities around the world. A major boost to Blaenavon's chances of enjoying similar success to Hay-on-Wye is its unique industrial heritage. The local ironworks — once the most advanced in the world — and the nearby Big Pit mining museum are the core of an officially designated World Heritage Site, and they already attract a steady flow of tourists. James Hanna is optimistic that he can induce many of these visitors to buy books. In fact, the village's recently-opened bookshops are already attracting a strikingly cosmopolitan range of customers and some of them even come from the surrounding area.
We had people here from Cyprus, India, South Africa, Italy, Greece, literally around the world. We have 50 per cent what I would call local, meaning within 30 or 40 miles of here, then 50 per cent coming from, literally, every place. It is really interesting, when we opened, because I had heard from some of the locals, "Why are you opening a book town in Blaenavon? Nobody here reads." Well, in fact that couldn't be more untrue. When we did open, we found that (the) valleys were flocking to us like they'd been hungry and we were feeding them. It was absolutely amazing. They came in thanking us for coming here.
KEY: 1C 2A 3B 4C 5B 6B 7A 8C
domingo, 25 de diciembre de 2016
Extensive listening: The origins of A Christmas Carol
Michael Slater explains the background to Charles Dickens's novel, A Christmas Carol, reveals his reasons for writing it and discusses its monumental success. Filmed at the Charles Dickens Museum, London.
You can activate the CC subtitles on the player to read a full transcript.
You can activate the CC subtitles on the player to read a full transcript.
sábado, 8 de octubre de 2016
Reading test: Bruce Springsteen, Born to Write
In this week's reading test, we are going to practise the traditional multiple-choice reading comprehension task. To do so, we are going to read The Guardian article Bruce Springsteen, Born to Write.
Read the text and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
Bruce Springsteen, Born to Write
Virtually all rock memoirs follow a similar pattern of rise and fall, before ending with acceptance – brought on by sobriety, spirituality, the death of peers, or just the plain realisation that it’s not worth hating your bandmates any more. Virtually all, too, are at their best in their early pages – covering the early years – when the passion for music still burns bright, when it’s all still fun, when the star is rising, rather than burning out.
Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run, out at the end of September, looks as if it might be a little different. For a start, there’s his status: no bass player with a second-rate hair-metal band, he. It’s hard to imagine this will be full of changes, often one of the only selling points of lesser rock biogs. His status, too, is current: no one else has spent as long as Springsteen selling out stadiums, year after year, to ecstatic receptions. No one else of his stature seems to feel the need to commune with their flock with such frequency.
Then there are the precedents: among his generation (and his commercial and critical peers), both Bob Dylan and Neil Young have produced books that moved away from the traditional rock volume. Dylan told an irregular narrative that avoided many major events, telling the stories less told. Young’s focused heavily on his passions – audio fidelity, green motoring – while his relationship with Crosby, Stills and Nash was dismissed with startling brevity.
Less controversial than either of them – in his public image, at least – Springsteen is likely to offer his fans a more straightforward read. The introduction to Born to Run, which he released on his website recently, promises to answer the two questions that occupy the mind of anyone watching someone undeniably great working a stage: how do they do that, and why do they do that?
Why, after 50 years as a musician, after more than 40 playing the song that gives the book its name, does Springsteen still need to hear 90,000 people singing “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!” back at him? The foreword offered some clues: “DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for … fame? … love? … admiration? … attention? … women?… sex? … and oh, yeah …. a buck. Then … if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just … don’t … quit … burning.”
Springsteen has long appeared one of the most knowable of rock stars. So many of his songs, if not autobiographical, have appeared to give direct information on his childhood, his family, his town, his country. One album, Tunnel of Love, dealt with his disillusionment with his first marriage. Songs are songs: they are a truth, they are not the truth. But it’s not only in the songs: there are books compiling his many interviews. And this rock Charlemagne has his own Einhard, in the form of writer Dave Marsh, who has conveyed his thoughts to the world. Even while writing this book, he cooperated with Peter Ames Carlin on the really very decent biography, Bruce, published in 2012.
So, on the face of it, one really shouldn’t need this book. Don’t we all know about his dad, his struggles, his superstardom and so on? Yes, but we still only know the facts of the legends. Born to Run gives us the chance, at last, to know why Springsteen needed to build those legends.
0 Example:
Rock bands
A hate one another.
B play their best music towards the end of their careers.
C tend to have ups and downs.
1 Bruce Springsteen’s book will be different because
A his band is relatively unknown.
B he doesn’t play the bass.
C of his current position in the music world.
2 Other musicians of Springsteen’s generation
A avoided talking about their enthusiasms.
B discussed key events in their careers.
C published unconventional books.
3 Bruce Springsteen’s fans
A are expecting the book to answer very simple questions.
B are expecting the book to offer lots of anecdotes.
C can already read the book on the artist’s website.
4 Springsteen
A doesn’t feel the need to communicate with his public any more.
B has a song called Born to Run.
C has taken 50 years to write the book.
5 Springsteen’s songs
A always deal with personal problems.
B are anything but autobiographical.
C help us understand the person behind the artist.
6 Born to Run
A is a biography.
B was written by Bruce Springsteen himself.
C was written by Peter Ames Carlin.
7 The book will tell us
A how Springsteen managed to become famous.
B the most important facts of Springsteen’s life.
C what motivates Springsteen to do what he does.
KEY:
1C 2C 3A 4B 5C 6B 7C
Read the text and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
Bruce Springsteen, Born to Write
Virtually all rock memoirs follow a similar pattern of rise and fall, before ending with acceptance – brought on by sobriety, spirituality, the death of peers, or just the plain realisation that it’s not worth hating your bandmates any more. Virtually all, too, are at their best in their early pages – covering the early years – when the passion for music still burns bright, when it’s all still fun, when the star is rising, rather than burning out.
Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, Born to Run, out at the end of September, looks as if it might be a little different. For a start, there’s his status: no bass player with a second-rate hair-metal band, he. It’s hard to imagine this will be full of changes, often one of the only selling points of lesser rock biogs. His status, too, is current: no one else has spent as long as Springsteen selling out stadiums, year after year, to ecstatic receptions. No one else of his stature seems to feel the need to commune with their flock with such frequency.
Then there are the precedents: among his generation (and his commercial and critical peers), both Bob Dylan and Neil Young have produced books that moved away from the traditional rock volume. Dylan told an irregular narrative that avoided many major events, telling the stories less told. Young’s focused heavily on his passions – audio fidelity, green motoring – while his relationship with Crosby, Stills and Nash was dismissed with startling brevity.
Less controversial than either of them – in his public image, at least – Springsteen is likely to offer his fans a more straightforward read. The introduction to Born to Run, which he released on his website recently, promises to answer the two questions that occupy the mind of anyone watching someone undeniably great working a stage: how do they do that, and why do they do that?
Why, after 50 years as a musician, after more than 40 playing the song that gives the book its name, does Springsteen still need to hear 90,000 people singing “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!” back at him? The foreword offered some clues: “DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for … fame? … love? … admiration? … attention? … women?… sex? … and oh, yeah …. a buck. Then … if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just … don’t … quit … burning.”
Springsteen has long appeared one of the most knowable of rock stars. So many of his songs, if not autobiographical, have appeared to give direct information on his childhood, his family, his town, his country. One album, Tunnel of Love, dealt with his disillusionment with his first marriage. Songs are songs: they are a truth, they are not the truth. But it’s not only in the songs: there are books compiling his many interviews. And this rock Charlemagne has his own Einhard, in the form of writer Dave Marsh, who has conveyed his thoughts to the world. Even while writing this book, he cooperated with Peter Ames Carlin on the really very decent biography, Bruce, published in 2012.
So, on the face of it, one really shouldn’t need this book. Don’t we all know about his dad, his struggles, his superstardom and so on? Yes, but we still only know the facts of the legends. Born to Run gives us the chance, at last, to know why Springsteen needed to build those legends.
0 Example:
Rock bands
A hate one another.
B play their best music towards the end of their careers.
C tend to have ups and downs.
1 Bruce Springsteen’s book will be different because
A his band is relatively unknown.
B he doesn’t play the bass.
C of his current position in the music world.
2 Other musicians of Springsteen’s generation
A avoided talking about their enthusiasms.
B discussed key events in their careers.
C published unconventional books.
3 Bruce Springsteen’s fans
A are expecting the book to answer very simple questions.
B are expecting the book to offer lots of anecdotes.
C can already read the book on the artist’s website.
4 Springsteen
A doesn’t feel the need to communicate with his public any more.
B has a song called Born to Run.
C has taken 50 years to write the book.
5 Springsteen’s songs
A always deal with personal problems.
B are anything but autobiographical.
C help us understand the person behind the artist.
6 Born to Run
A is a biography.
B was written by Bruce Springsteen himself.
C was written by Peter Ames Carlin.
7 The book will tell us
A how Springsteen managed to become famous.
B the most important facts of Springsteen’s life.
C what motivates Springsteen to do what he does.
KEY:
1C 2C 3A 4B 5C 6B 7C
martes, 14 de junio de 2016
Stacy Ratner, Founder of Open Books
Stacy Ratner, founder of Chicago-based Open Books, has built a high-impact literacy nonprofit by applying everything she learned as a serial tech entrepreneur.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What are the real working hours for Stacy?
2 What does Open Books collect?
3 How many students benefit from the literacy programmes Open Books funds?
4 What did Stacy use to do as a child in summer?
5 Who did she work for when she was at law school?
6 What difficulties do people with literacy problems have?
7 What did Stacy have difficulty in finding when she had already decided to set up Open Books?
8 How many students benefit from the Creative Writing Workshops?
9 What is the prize for those participants in the worshops who decide to read their work?
10 How many people work for Open Books?
When the Open Books idea came along in 2006 and I started really working on that, that was the first moment to say, "This is what I have really had in my heart my whole life and now I think I would like to do it," I would say nine-to-five, but it is really like 7 in the morning 'til 9 at night, every day for as long as I can continue to work those kind of hours because I think this is really the thing that I am supposed to work on.
Open Books is a non-profit literacy organization headquartered in Chicago. We collect used books. We sell those in our two bookstores and online. We use that money to fund literacy programs, reading and writing, for about 5,000 students a year, across the city.
I liked to read. That will not be a surprise to anybody. My parents were both teachers and so many summers we would be out of the country. We lived in Denmark for several summers; we lived in Israel for several summers. I was the kind of kid who reads a lot and plays with my brother.
I really cared a lot about working with words, so I wanted to be a copy editor from the time I was about six, and I went off to college to become a copy editor many years later.
Halfway through my first year of law school the big legal publishing firm in Boston closed and moved to Minneapolis. So, there I was in law school thinking I'm not really sure what comes next.
My brother said, "I am going to start a company. Do you want to work with me in my first start start-up?" and I said, "Like when we were little and we would have companies and you would be CEO and I would be everything else?" And he said, "Exactly like that." So we did. He was the CEO of our first company and I was everything else until we could hire some people.
I decided that the really big challenge I wanted to devote myself to was something in the non-profit sphere and literacy was on the list because literacy has been sort of a thread throughout everything in my life.
And when we say "basic" literacy we are talking about beginning at the level of difficulty reading the label on a can of food, difficulty filling out a job application, difficulty deciphering a bus schedule. And one of the reasons that we’ve chosen to focus on children is of course those are the adults of tomorrow.
The Open Books concept from the beginning was: Let's have a used bookstore. If my cost for picking up a bag of books is a couple of dollars and I can sell each of those books for a couple of dollars I have just made a profit on that particular bag of books and now I can make it work to scale.
It was so hard to find the right space because we had very specific set of needs. We were looking for a retail facility which could also have offices and classrooms, which was near public transportation, that was in a part of the city that students could access, that had ideally some processing space and a loading dock because the books had to come in and out.
That was really the driving challenge for the first three years. I looked at envelope factories. I toured a not-entirely-cleared-out funeral home that was on the market. True. And when we eventually did find the first Open Books location it was a Wizard of Oz "no place like home" moment.
Creative Writing Workshops is our largest program in terms of students served – about 4,000 a year. Those are two-hour writing workshops for third through twelfth grades. And at the end of the session, those who choose to can share their work with the class.
The year turned on and the water, uh . . .
They then each go into our bookstore and choose a book to take home. And then a few weeks later they get a published, bound anthology of all the writing that the class did.
Is it a whole bunch of Portuguese stuff or just that one?
Oh, just this one.
Cool.
We now have 18 people on staff, 500 volunteers a year. Every single one of those people is here because they care deeply about the mission. So, my job as founder is going to be to support all of that. We are all heading for the same ideal vision, which is, turn Chicago into 100 percent literacy. We all want to be a part of that.
Key:
1 from 7 in the morning till 9 at night
2 used books
3 5,000
4 Travel round the world, read and play with her brother
5 Her brother
6 Difficulty reading the label on a can of food, difficulty filling out a job application, difficulty deciphering a bus schedule.
7 The right space/premises for the business
8 4,000 a year
9 They can choose a book from the store and they have their work published
10 18
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What are the real working hours for Stacy?
2 What does Open Books collect?
3 How many students benefit from the literacy programmes Open Books funds?
4 What did Stacy use to do as a child in summer?
5 Who did she work for when she was at law school?
6 What difficulties do people with literacy problems have?
7 What did Stacy have difficulty in finding when she had already decided to set up Open Books?
8 How many students benefit from the Creative Writing Workshops?
9 What is the prize for those participants in the worshops who decide to read their work?
10 How many people work for Open Books?
When the Open Books idea came along in 2006 and I started really working on that, that was the first moment to say, "This is what I have really had in my heart my whole life and now I think I would like to do it," I would say nine-to-five, but it is really like 7 in the morning 'til 9 at night, every day for as long as I can continue to work those kind of hours because I think this is really the thing that I am supposed to work on.
Open Books is a non-profit literacy organization headquartered in Chicago. We collect used books. We sell those in our two bookstores and online. We use that money to fund literacy programs, reading and writing, for about 5,000 students a year, across the city.
I liked to read. That will not be a surprise to anybody. My parents were both teachers and so many summers we would be out of the country. We lived in Denmark for several summers; we lived in Israel for several summers. I was the kind of kid who reads a lot and plays with my brother.
I really cared a lot about working with words, so I wanted to be a copy editor from the time I was about six, and I went off to college to become a copy editor many years later.
Halfway through my first year of law school the big legal publishing firm in Boston closed and moved to Minneapolis. So, there I was in law school thinking I'm not really sure what comes next.
My brother said, "I am going to start a company. Do you want to work with me in my first start start-up?" and I said, "Like when we were little and we would have companies and you would be CEO and I would be everything else?" And he said, "Exactly like that." So we did. He was the CEO of our first company and I was everything else until we could hire some people.
I decided that the really big challenge I wanted to devote myself to was something in the non-profit sphere and literacy was on the list because literacy has been sort of a thread throughout everything in my life.
And when we say "basic" literacy we are talking about beginning at the level of difficulty reading the label on a can of food, difficulty filling out a job application, difficulty deciphering a bus schedule. And one of the reasons that we’ve chosen to focus on children is of course those are the adults of tomorrow.
The Open Books concept from the beginning was: Let's have a used bookstore. If my cost for picking up a bag of books is a couple of dollars and I can sell each of those books for a couple of dollars I have just made a profit on that particular bag of books and now I can make it work to scale.
It was so hard to find the right space because we had very specific set of needs. We were looking for a retail facility which could also have offices and classrooms, which was near public transportation, that was in a part of the city that students could access, that had ideally some processing space and a loading dock because the books had to come in and out.
That was really the driving challenge for the first three years. I looked at envelope factories. I toured a not-entirely-cleared-out funeral home that was on the market. True. And when we eventually did find the first Open Books location it was a Wizard of Oz "no place like home" moment.
Creative Writing Workshops is our largest program in terms of students served – about 4,000 a year. Those are two-hour writing workshops for third through twelfth grades. And at the end of the session, those who choose to can share their work with the class.
The year turned on and the water, uh . . .
They then each go into our bookstore and choose a book to take home. And then a few weeks later they get a published, bound anthology of all the writing that the class did.
Is it a whole bunch of Portuguese stuff or just that one?
Oh, just this one.
Cool.
We now have 18 people on staff, 500 volunteers a year. Every single one of those people is here because they care deeply about the mission. So, my job as founder is going to be to support all of that. We are all heading for the same ideal vision, which is, turn Chicago into 100 percent literacy. We all want to be a part of that.
Key:
1 from 7 in the morning till 9 at night
2 used books
3 5,000
4 Travel round the world, read and play with her brother
5 Her brother
6 Difficulty reading the label on a can of food, difficulty filling out a job application, difficulty deciphering a bus schedule.
7 The right space/premises for the business
8 4,000 a year
9 They can choose a book from the store and they have their work published
10 18
domingo, 5 de junio de 2016
Extensive listening: The beauty of being a misfit
To those who feel like they don't belong: there is beauty in being a misfit. In her TED talk early this year, The beauty of being misfit, author Lidia Yuknavitch shares her own wayward journey in an intimate recollection of patchwork stories about loss, shame and the slow process of self-acceptance.
"Even at the moment of your failure, you are beautiful," she says. "You don't know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly. That's your beauty."
You can read the transcript here.
"Even at the moment of your failure, you are beautiful," she says. "You don't know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly. That's your beauty."
You can read the transcript here.
sábado, 20 de febrero de 2016
English e-books
This is what English e-books says about English e-books:
"This site has been created to help people learn English language. Adapted books – one of the best and interesting way to increase your vocabulary. Here you can find English ebooks of different levels in epub, mobi, fb2, rtf and txt formats.
Read ebooks on you eBook reader or PC/mac, we are supporting all of them, you only should choose appropriate type, for e.g.: choose mobi for Kindle, fb2/epub for Nook or PocketBook, epub for Nook; you can read on PC/mac books in rtf, or use txt as the simplest format for reading using any device, even on your mobile-phone."
In English e-books you will find adapted readers from elementary to advanced level, and some of which come complete with audio in mp3 format.
The quickest way to find your way round the site is by scrolling down to the bottom of the home page and clicking on the tag Find book, where you will see a comprehensive list of titles classified by author, genre, level, length and audio availability.
H/T to Cristina Cabal.
"This site has been created to help people learn English language. Adapted books – one of the best and interesting way to increase your vocabulary. Here you can find English ebooks of different levels in epub, mobi, fb2, rtf and txt formats.
Read ebooks on you eBook reader or PC/mac, we are supporting all of them, you only should choose appropriate type, for e.g.: choose mobi for Kindle, fb2/epub for Nook or PocketBook, epub for Nook; you can read on PC/mac books in rtf, or use txt as the simplest format for reading using any device, even on your mobile-phone."
In English e-books you will find adapted readers from elementary to advanced level, and some of which come complete with audio in mp3 format.
The quickest way to find your way round the site is by scrolling down to the bottom of the home page and clicking on the tag Find book, where you will see a comprehensive list of titles classified by author, genre, level, length and audio availability.
H/T to Cristina Cabal.
jueves, 18 de febrero de 2016
The man who discovered Harry Potter
In 1996, after many rejections, author JK Rowling at last finds a publisher for her first Harry Potter novel. BBC's Witness talks to editor, Barry Cunningham, who spotted the boy wizard's potential and helped create a phenomenon that would revolutionise childrens' book publishing, selling more than 450 million copies.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What was the weather like when Barry Cunningham got the manuscript?
2 Which element in the book Bill most liked?
3 Who helped Bill decide to buy the book?
4 How did Rowling react when Bill phoned her?
5 What advice did he give Rowling?
6 How long did they take to realise how big the Harry Potter phenomenon was?
7 What dream did Rowling have after her first book was published in US?
I guess the story started when I got the manuscript (1) one rainy night in Soho and I didn't know of course that it had been turned down by 22 or something other publishers. I took it home and read it at night. People often say, how much do you have to read before you know something is good? Actually, I think you know after two or three chapters. And I was just gripped, I was gripped by Harry's situation.
The thing that I really liked about the story was (2) the friendship. You know, I liked the owls and the boarding school and the magic and Hogwarts but it was the friendship between the children that really, that really moved me.
I gave the manuscript to (3) my daughter, Alice, the night I got it and she couldn't stop reading, so I had to tear it off her the next morning. So well, I think I am going to buy this, what do you think? She says, it’s a good idea.
So I rang up the agent and we haggled for ten minutes on a relatively low amount of money and I bought the first two books and that was that, really. That was the end of perhaps the most significant purchase made in publishing in the last 50 years. I laugh about it now, but, you know, I never would have guessed.
When I first rang her up, like many authors, they don’t believe it's a publisher ringing them. They think it's a joke. So after I convinced her I actually was Barry Cunningham and I actually was ringing from a publisher in London, (4) she was lost for words. I didn't know how long the journey had been, of course. I didn't know how many publishers had turned her down, and agents indeed. So, and then I invited her down to London and she said, yes, yes! I said, do my mind a little bit of a detour? She said, no, no! She said very, very nervously, how do you feel about sequels? And I said, well, you know, I think we’re just going to get the first one out first and then we’ll think about that.
Then she proceeded to tell me the story of all the books and how Harry would actually grow up. That was very kind of revolutionary in those days because mostly sequels would just be the same book set in a different environment. But I was worried, you know. She was a single mum, she had no real income, children's books weren’t the goldmine that they've become now and so I gave her the infamous advice, really, that she would never make any money out of children's books and (5) she should really think about getting a day job as well.
After we published we started absolutely to get the feedback that this was going down very well, that children were recommending it to each other, that it had a very good critical response. But, you know, I don't think we realized, I don’t think Jo realized probably for (6) a year after that that this phenomenon was growing as fast as it did. And that’s when she got a huge number of offers from the United States, and they paid very large amounts of money for the American rights. And I think it is at that point we realized that something was changing in the world of children's books.
There is no question. It is a publishing phenomenon. Some of the people here have been queueing for 18 hours.
If you like, Beatlemania for Potter world began.
I also remember that after the third book was published in the United States she said, she said (7) I had a dream last night, and it was about the first meeting that we had and it never happened, that you never took the book, you never published it. And the whole thing still seems to me like a wonderful dream. And really the story of Harry Potter is like its own story. It is a kind of fairytale.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What was the weather like when Barry Cunningham got the manuscript?
2 Which element in the book Bill most liked?
3 Who helped Bill decide to buy the book?
4 How did Rowling react when Bill phoned her?
5 What advice did he give Rowling?
6 How long did they take to realise how big the Harry Potter phenomenon was?
7 What dream did Rowling have after her first book was published in US?
I guess the story started when I got the manuscript (1) one rainy night in Soho and I didn't know of course that it had been turned down by 22 or something other publishers. I took it home and read it at night. People often say, how much do you have to read before you know something is good? Actually, I think you know after two or three chapters. And I was just gripped, I was gripped by Harry's situation.
The thing that I really liked about the story was (2) the friendship. You know, I liked the owls and the boarding school and the magic and Hogwarts but it was the friendship between the children that really, that really moved me.
I gave the manuscript to (3) my daughter, Alice, the night I got it and she couldn't stop reading, so I had to tear it off her the next morning. So well, I think I am going to buy this, what do you think? She says, it’s a good idea.
So I rang up the agent and we haggled for ten minutes on a relatively low amount of money and I bought the first two books and that was that, really. That was the end of perhaps the most significant purchase made in publishing in the last 50 years. I laugh about it now, but, you know, I never would have guessed.
When I first rang her up, like many authors, they don’t believe it's a publisher ringing them. They think it's a joke. So after I convinced her I actually was Barry Cunningham and I actually was ringing from a publisher in London, (4) she was lost for words. I didn't know how long the journey had been, of course. I didn't know how many publishers had turned her down, and agents indeed. So, and then I invited her down to London and she said, yes, yes! I said, do my mind a little bit of a detour? She said, no, no! She said very, very nervously, how do you feel about sequels? And I said, well, you know, I think we’re just going to get the first one out first and then we’ll think about that.
Then she proceeded to tell me the story of all the books and how Harry would actually grow up. That was very kind of revolutionary in those days because mostly sequels would just be the same book set in a different environment. But I was worried, you know. She was a single mum, she had no real income, children's books weren’t the goldmine that they've become now and so I gave her the infamous advice, really, that she would never make any money out of children's books and (5) she should really think about getting a day job as well.
After we published we started absolutely to get the feedback that this was going down very well, that children were recommending it to each other, that it had a very good critical response. But, you know, I don't think we realized, I don’t think Jo realized probably for (6) a year after that that this phenomenon was growing as fast as it did. And that’s when she got a huge number of offers from the United States, and they paid very large amounts of money for the American rights. And I think it is at that point we realized that something was changing in the world of children's books.
There is no question. It is a publishing phenomenon. Some of the people here have been queueing for 18 hours.
If you like, Beatlemania for Potter world began.
I also remember that after the third book was published in the United States she said, she said (7) I had a dream last night, and it was about the first meeting that we had and it never happened, that you never took the book, you never published it. And the whole thing still seems to me like a wonderful dream. And really the story of Harry Potter is like its own story. It is a kind of fairytale.
sábado, 6 de febrero de 2016
Five Shakespeare's plays on video for B1-B2 students
The British Council has uploaded five Shakesperean plays on video in the Literature UK section of their site Learn English Teen.
2016 sees the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and to mark the occasion The British Council has put together a number of resources so that (young) students of English get to know Shakespeare and his works better.
The five plays are Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing and The Tempest. The set of materials for each play consists of a 5-minute video, listening comprehension and vocabulary exercises, key and transcript.
An article which explains five famous Shakesperean phrases ('To be or not to be...'; 'Blood will have blood') can also be found here.
Click on Literature UK to get to the plays or on the image below.
2016 sees the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and to mark the occasion The British Council has put together a number of resources so that (young) students of English get to know Shakespeare and his works better.
The five plays are Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado about Nothing and The Tempest. The set of materials for each play consists of a 5-minute video, listening comprehension and vocabulary exercises, key and transcript.
An article which explains five famous Shakesperean phrases ('To be or not to be...'; 'Blood will have blood') can also be found here.
Click on Literature UK to get to the plays or on the image below.
martes, 26 de enero de 2016
10 Questions for Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie talks with TIME about his book Luka and the Fire of Life and describes his life after the fatwa calling for his death.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true of false.
1 Salma Rushdie has written Luka and the Fire of Life for his two sons.
2 Salma Rushdie objects to a specific area of literature for young readers.
3 For Rushdie 'crowd' is the word that best summarizes India.
4 The main problem Rushdie is finding to write his memoirs is that he has to ask permission to too many people to mention specific events.
5 In 1999 the fatwa calling for Rushdie's death was ended.
6 Rushdie still has heavy security procedures around him.
7 He's written the screenplay for Water, Fire, Earth.
I’m Tim Morrison for Time Magazine, and this is 10 Questions with author Salma Rushdie, The new book is called Luka and the Fire of Life. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you, nice to be here.
We can just start with the first one, which is about your new book. Eugene Hong is a reader in Normal, Illinois, wants to know how is Luka and the Fire of Life different from your earlier work.
Well, the one of my book set it has a lot of common with is Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In fact, the two are kind of paired because they are the two books that I wrote basically for my two sons, and in that sense they are different from all the others because they have this desire to be… to talk to younger readers and not just to grownups, but the thing that I found when I wrote the first one, it was 20 years ago when my older son was 12, 13 years old, was that there’s this very interesting area I think in fiction now which is, exists on this kind of blurred boundary between books for adults and books for younger readers, you know, and obviously Harry Potter’s the most famous example of that, but there are, Philip Pullman’s works, there are lots of other books and I thought that’s a very interesting place to try and put a book, where a young person can read it and get one kind of pleasure and an adult can read and get a different kind of pleasure.
Now you were born in Bombay, which is now Mumbay…
Yeah.
… in India. We have a question from a reader who asks, it’s often said that it’s impossible to describe India in one word, could you please try?
Well, I think the thing that I felt when I started writing about India way back when I was writing Midnight’s Children, if you go to India, you are immediately struck by the crowd. The crowd is the great fact, you know, and so my question that I ask myself was how do you represent in a book, on a page, how do you represent that multitude, you know, how do you represent a crowd, and so I thought the answer is that you tell a crowd of stories, that you’ll literally overcrowd your narrative on purpose, overcrowd your narrative with too much incident, too many people, too much going on, so that your main story kind of has to push its way through the crowd, you know. So I think the one word would be crowd or multitude.
Now you’ve recently said that you were working on your memoirs. Do you find it harder to write about your life than it is to write fiction, or easier or about the same?
Well, it’s very different, that’s what it is. It’s easier in some ways because you know the story. It’s harder in other ways because you’re dealing with living people and so questions of appropriateness and taste come in because you’re not only dealing with your own private life, you’re dealing with other people’s private lives, and so the question of what is right to talk about and what is wrong is the thing which comes up every sentence more or less. You know, you have to make those decisions more or less instinctively but you do have to make them all the way along. That’s very different.
And the story you’re telling here is your entire life?
You know, because this event happened in my life after the publication of The Satanic Verses, that became, of course, a very large kind of global event.
It’s been a while, I mean, just to add the chronology the book The Satanic Verses came out in 1990… 89…
That year, well, 88 in England, 89 here.
In 89 the ayatollah of Iran declared a fatwa calling for your death and it was 10 years really before the the Iranian government…
It was 9… 1998, it’s over. Yes, it’s when it sort of ended.
It’s when it sort of ended.
Yeah, but the truth is that an enormous amount of what happened has never come out in public. A lot of it was just undercover, you know, and so there’s a bit of me, there’s the writer bit of me which is sitting on this good story, and if you’re sitting on it, at a certain point you have to tell the story. So the starting point was that, tell the story of that event, which was about 9 years, start to finish 10 years. But, of course, in order to tell that story properly you have to go back and tell earlier stories, how did this person become the person who wrote that book…
Sure.
... and where did it come from.
After this entire sort of ordeal, is going back to normal really an option? Can that really happen?
Well, I mean, as you know, it has happened. I mean, it’s what I have been for the last dozen years meeting and more, I mean, put it like this, my younger son, Milan, for whom I wrote Luka and the Fire of Life, really for him, that was the a period that has not, it’s not been part of his life. You know, he’s had a more or less normal childhood which has not been involved with security procedures and so on, you know, and his older brother, of course, grew up through those years and had a very different experience.
But are sort of security precautions, aren’t really much part of your day?
No, they’re not, not at all, really. In fact the subject only comes up when I’m talking to journalists.
I’m sure it does. Which, if any, of your books would you like to see made into a movie?
Well, actually, we have… there’s a project right now to make a film of Midnight’s Children and I’ve actually, I’ve written the screenplay and it’s going to be directed by the Canadian-Indian director Deepa Mehta who made… she filmed the film Water, Fire, Earth, you know that trilogy, but Water, of course, it was Oscar-nominated and so on, and that’s you know, we’re in the process of setting that up, so hopefully we can make that.
Our last question comes from a reader in Sao Paolo, Brazil, who wants to know what will you do the day you decide you’re no longer interested in writing?
That, I don’t foresee that day. I mean, the question is a very good question because what would I do. You know, well, I can’t think of anything else I would do, so I’d better do this.
Alright, Salman Rushdie, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.
KEY: 1F 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true of false.
1 Salma Rushdie has written Luka and the Fire of Life for his two sons.
2 Salma Rushdie objects to a specific area of literature for young readers.
3 For Rushdie 'crowd' is the word that best summarizes India.
4 The main problem Rushdie is finding to write his memoirs is that he has to ask permission to too many people to mention specific events.
5 In 1999 the fatwa calling for Rushdie's death was ended.
6 Rushdie still has heavy security procedures around him.
7 He's written the screenplay for Water, Fire, Earth.
I’m Tim Morrison for Time Magazine, and this is 10 Questions with author Salma Rushdie, The new book is called Luka and the Fire of Life. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you, nice to be here.
We can just start with the first one, which is about your new book. Eugene Hong is a reader in Normal, Illinois, wants to know how is Luka and the Fire of Life different from your earlier work.
Well, the one of my book set it has a lot of common with is Haroun and the Sea of Stories. In fact, the two are kind of paired because they are the two books that I wrote basically for my two sons, and in that sense they are different from all the others because they have this desire to be… to talk to younger readers and not just to grownups, but the thing that I found when I wrote the first one, it was 20 years ago when my older son was 12, 13 years old, was that there’s this very interesting area I think in fiction now which is, exists on this kind of blurred boundary between books for adults and books for younger readers, you know, and obviously Harry Potter’s the most famous example of that, but there are, Philip Pullman’s works, there are lots of other books and I thought that’s a very interesting place to try and put a book, where a young person can read it and get one kind of pleasure and an adult can read and get a different kind of pleasure.
Now you were born in Bombay, which is now Mumbay…
Yeah.
… in India. We have a question from a reader who asks, it’s often said that it’s impossible to describe India in one word, could you please try?
Well, I think the thing that I felt when I started writing about India way back when I was writing Midnight’s Children, if you go to India, you are immediately struck by the crowd. The crowd is the great fact, you know, and so my question that I ask myself was how do you represent in a book, on a page, how do you represent that multitude, you know, how do you represent a crowd, and so I thought the answer is that you tell a crowd of stories, that you’ll literally overcrowd your narrative on purpose, overcrowd your narrative with too much incident, too many people, too much going on, so that your main story kind of has to push its way through the crowd, you know. So I think the one word would be crowd or multitude.
Now you’ve recently said that you were working on your memoirs. Do you find it harder to write about your life than it is to write fiction, or easier or about the same?
Well, it’s very different, that’s what it is. It’s easier in some ways because you know the story. It’s harder in other ways because you’re dealing with living people and so questions of appropriateness and taste come in because you’re not only dealing with your own private life, you’re dealing with other people’s private lives, and so the question of what is right to talk about and what is wrong is the thing which comes up every sentence more or less. You know, you have to make those decisions more or less instinctively but you do have to make them all the way along. That’s very different.
And the story you’re telling here is your entire life?
You know, because this event happened in my life after the publication of The Satanic Verses, that became, of course, a very large kind of global event.
It’s been a while, I mean, just to add the chronology the book The Satanic Verses came out in 1990… 89…
That year, well, 88 in England, 89 here.
In 89 the ayatollah of Iran declared a fatwa calling for your death and it was 10 years really before the the Iranian government…
It was 9… 1998, it’s over. Yes, it’s when it sort of ended.
It’s when it sort of ended.
Yeah, but the truth is that an enormous amount of what happened has never come out in public. A lot of it was just undercover, you know, and so there’s a bit of me, there’s the writer bit of me which is sitting on this good story, and if you’re sitting on it, at a certain point you have to tell the story. So the starting point was that, tell the story of that event, which was about 9 years, start to finish 10 years. But, of course, in order to tell that story properly you have to go back and tell earlier stories, how did this person become the person who wrote that book…
Sure.
... and where did it come from.
After this entire sort of ordeal, is going back to normal really an option? Can that really happen?
Well, I mean, as you know, it has happened. I mean, it’s what I have been for the last dozen years meeting and more, I mean, put it like this, my younger son, Milan, for whom I wrote Luka and the Fire of Life, really for him, that was the a period that has not, it’s not been part of his life. You know, he’s had a more or less normal childhood which has not been involved with security procedures and so on, you know, and his older brother, of course, grew up through those years and had a very different experience.
But are sort of security precautions, aren’t really much part of your day?
No, they’re not, not at all, really. In fact the subject only comes up when I’m talking to journalists.
I’m sure it does. Which, if any, of your books would you like to see made into a movie?
Well, actually, we have… there’s a project right now to make a film of Midnight’s Children and I’ve actually, I’ve written the screenplay and it’s going to be directed by the Canadian-Indian director Deepa Mehta who made… she filmed the film Water, Fire, Earth, you know that trilogy, but Water, of course, it was Oscar-nominated and so on, and that’s you know, we’re in the process of setting that up, so hopefully we can make that.
Our last question comes from a reader in Sao Paolo, Brazil, who wants to know what will you do the day you decide you’re no longer interested in writing?
That, I don’t foresee that day. I mean, the question is a very good question because what would I do. You know, well, I can’t think of anything else I would do, so I’d better do this.
Alright, Salman Rushdie, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.
KEY: 1F 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F
martes, 5 de enero de 2016
10 Questions for Dan Brown
The author of the Da Vinci Code and other Robert Langdon novels talked to Time Magazine about his latest book, The Inferno.
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Transhumanism studies designer babies, for example.
2 The population on Earth has increased one third in the last 85 years.
3 Dan Brown is in favour of some form of population control.
4 There are multiple references to the Catholic Church in Brown’s latest book.
5 The piece of art Brown mentions consists of diamonds and human bones.
6 To get inspiration, Dan Brown writes his books upside down.
7 Dan Brown is planning to write twelve more Robert Langdom books.
Hi, I’m Belinda Luscombe from Time. Dan Brown is one of the most successful authors of all time. More than 80 millions copies of his novel, The Da Vinci Code, have been sold. He’s got a new book coming out. It’s called Inferno. Mr Brown, welcome.
Thank you very much.
In your new novel one of the themes is transhumanism. Can you explain what that is?
Sure. Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that is growing very quickly right now. It is… essential it deals with the ethics and science of using advanced technologies like genetic engineering, for example, to improve human physiology. And some people consider it the most progressive and exciting philosophy out there. And some consider it the most dangerous idea in the world. The villain of Inferno is both a transhumanist and a Dante fanatic, and we find that those two that blend is actually a kind of chilling mix.
One of the issues you address in this book is overpopulation. Why that particular issue?
I’m not gonna say much about overpopulation, but I will say this. There is a statistic that I heard a number of years ago that horrified me, and I wanted to add it to this novel, and it is this. That if you know somebody who’s 85 years old today that person was born into a world that had one-third as many people as the world does today. The population has tripled in the last 85 years. Futurist don’t consider don’t consider overpopulation one of the issues of the future. They consider it the issue of the future.
Now, the book does not seem to me, and I could be wrong, to be entirely in disfavour of extreme population control measures. Am I reading it wrong?
I would say you’re reading it correctly. When it, when you say it’s not in disfavour I try very hard to argue both sides of every equation and let readers make up their own mind. Population explosion on this planet is a very, very serious problem, and could well require some serious solutions.
Do you have one that you favour in particular, like a one-child policy, like in China, or is there…
No, no again on this. That is for readers to debate. I certainly have no solution to that problem. If I did, I should not be writing novels, I should be in the Council of Foreign Relations right now.
Are we seeing a beginning of a… you feeling your popularity could be used for something other than just, you know, entertainment, but, but…
You know, that’s an interesting question. I, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought of that. But certainly I am aware of that when I write something, a lot of people read it, a lot of people talk about it. And at some level I feel that if you’ve been given a podium of any sort you should say something meaningful and helpful.
You’re known for your, your first novel which took some, people felt, took some digs at the Catholic Church. And you do have one reference to the Catholic Church, in this book and their opposition to contraceptives. Is that becoming a trademark, like why go there?
It’s only one reference in a whole book. It is, and it all, I mean, I put that in there because I’m horrified of the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception. I think it’s dangerous. I’m a huge fan of Belinda Gates and what she’s doing. I mention her as well. And I was just sort of pointing out what had happened in Africa with respect to contraception. I think it’s something people should know.
In this book you make a reference to a Damian Hirst work, For The Love of God. He’s a little more modern than you normally…
He is.
…and why, why bring that work in?
I love the blend of old and new and Damien Hirst does that beautifully. The idea that this skull with the diamonds was in the Studiolo, in the Palazzo Vecchio was just an image of an object in space that to me was just very striking, and I’m a fan of his work.
People might say that you’re almost like the Damian Hirst of literature, that you know, you make this stuff, it’s incredibly popular, it’s incredibly lucrative, and it attracts, you know, a certain amount of criticism. Is that a fair comparison?
I would be flattered to be in the same line with Damien Hirst.
You know, I quote For The Love of God.
Tell me.
Oh, his mother said, For The Love of God, what are you making now?
Is that true?
Yeah.
That’s true.
I actually like the piece even more now.
Do you, as part of your process, sometimes you hang upside down? Do you still do that?
That is true. That has been reported and is actually true. I do use gravity boots, initially for physiological reasons, just coz I sat a lot, and I found that it made me feel better, and, and later realizing that hanging upside down can really make you think in different ways. It probably inspired all the ambiagrams in Angels and Demons. Lot of upside down in that book.
How many more adventures do you think Robert Langdom has?
That’s a good question. There are… I have a file of at least a dozen ideas. Well, we’ll see how much energy I have.
And there’s about two years per novel, right, so…
That would be nice. I think there’s a little more than that. I’ve heard a have a formula but I’m hoping somebody tells me what it is, cuz I’d like to write these a lot faster.
Mr Brown, thank you so much.
My pleasure.
KEY:
1T 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F
Self-study activity:
Watch the interview and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Transhumanism studies designer babies, for example.
2 The population on Earth has increased one third in the last 85 years.
3 Dan Brown is in favour of some form of population control.
4 There are multiple references to the Catholic Church in Brown’s latest book.
5 The piece of art Brown mentions consists of diamonds and human bones.
6 To get inspiration, Dan Brown writes his books upside down.
7 Dan Brown is planning to write twelve more Robert Langdom books.
Hi, I’m Belinda Luscombe from Time. Dan Brown is one of the most successful authors of all time. More than 80 millions copies of his novel, The Da Vinci Code, have been sold. He’s got a new book coming out. It’s called Inferno. Mr Brown, welcome.
Thank you very much.
In your new novel one of the themes is transhumanism. Can you explain what that is?
Sure. Transhumanism is an intellectual movement that is growing very quickly right now. It is… essential it deals with the ethics and science of using advanced technologies like genetic engineering, for example, to improve human physiology. And some people consider it the most progressive and exciting philosophy out there. And some consider it the most dangerous idea in the world. The villain of Inferno is both a transhumanist and a Dante fanatic, and we find that those two that blend is actually a kind of chilling mix.
One of the issues you address in this book is overpopulation. Why that particular issue?
I’m not gonna say much about overpopulation, but I will say this. There is a statistic that I heard a number of years ago that horrified me, and I wanted to add it to this novel, and it is this. That if you know somebody who’s 85 years old today that person was born into a world that had one-third as many people as the world does today. The population has tripled in the last 85 years. Futurist don’t consider don’t consider overpopulation one of the issues of the future. They consider it the issue of the future.
Now, the book does not seem to me, and I could be wrong, to be entirely in disfavour of extreme population control measures. Am I reading it wrong?
I would say you’re reading it correctly. When it, when you say it’s not in disfavour I try very hard to argue both sides of every equation and let readers make up their own mind. Population explosion on this planet is a very, very serious problem, and could well require some serious solutions.
Do you have one that you favour in particular, like a one-child policy, like in China, or is there…
No, no again on this. That is for readers to debate. I certainly have no solution to that problem. If I did, I should not be writing novels, I should be in the Council of Foreign Relations right now.
Are we seeing a beginning of a… you feeling your popularity could be used for something other than just, you know, entertainment, but, but…
You know, that’s an interesting question. I, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought of that. But certainly I am aware of that when I write something, a lot of people read it, a lot of people talk about it. And at some level I feel that if you’ve been given a podium of any sort you should say something meaningful and helpful.
You’re known for your, your first novel which took some, people felt, took some digs at the Catholic Church. And you do have one reference to the Catholic Church, in this book and their opposition to contraceptives. Is that becoming a trademark, like why go there?
It’s only one reference in a whole book. It is, and it all, I mean, I put that in there because I’m horrified of the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception. I think it’s dangerous. I’m a huge fan of Belinda Gates and what she’s doing. I mention her as well. And I was just sort of pointing out what had happened in Africa with respect to contraception. I think it’s something people should know.
In this book you make a reference to a Damian Hirst work, For The Love of God. He’s a little more modern than you normally…
He is.
…and why, why bring that work in?
I love the blend of old and new and Damien Hirst does that beautifully. The idea that this skull with the diamonds was in the Studiolo, in the Palazzo Vecchio was just an image of an object in space that to me was just very striking, and I’m a fan of his work.
People might say that you’re almost like the Damian Hirst of literature, that you know, you make this stuff, it’s incredibly popular, it’s incredibly lucrative, and it attracts, you know, a certain amount of criticism. Is that a fair comparison?
I would be flattered to be in the same line with Damien Hirst.
You know, I quote For The Love of God.
Tell me.
Oh, his mother said, For The Love of God, what are you making now?
Is that true?
Yeah.
That’s true.
I actually like the piece even more now.
Do you, as part of your process, sometimes you hang upside down? Do you still do that?
That is true. That has been reported and is actually true. I do use gravity boots, initially for physiological reasons, just coz I sat a lot, and I found that it made me feel better, and, and later realizing that hanging upside down can really make you think in different ways. It probably inspired all the ambiagrams in Angels and Demons. Lot of upside down in that book.
How many more adventures do you think Robert Langdom has?
That’s a good question. There are… I have a file of at least a dozen ideas. Well, we’ll see how much energy I have.
And there’s about two years per novel, right, so…
That would be nice. I think there’s a little more than that. I’ve heard a have a formula but I’m hoping somebody tells me what it is, cuz I’d like to write these a lot faster.
Mr Brown, thank you so much.
My pleasure.
KEY:
1T 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F
lunes, 4 de enero de 2016
Listening test: Agatha Christie
In this week's listening test we are going to pracise the heading-matching kind of task.
Listen to some extracts of a biography on Agatha Christie and match headings A-J with the corresponding extract. There are two headings you do not need to use. 0 is an example.
A - A best-selling author -0 Example
B - A larger-than-life character
C- A real-life mystery
D - Background
E - Her formula to creativity
F - Her start as a writer
G - Pioneering in many ways
H - Record-breaking intuition
I - Restarting her life after disaster
J - Thinking up plots in an unusual way
A best-selling author -0
She wrote 80 detective novels, six romances (under a pseudonym), 13 plays, and 154 short stories. All of her books are still in print, selling around 500,000 copies a year, and she's the eighth most borrowed author from British libraries. With more than 2 billion of her books around the world, she is one of the most published authors in history outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible.
Background -1
Her life is as interesting as her writing career. She was born Agatha May Clarissa Miller in Devon, England in 1890, the youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. As a child she never attended school. She was home-schooled and started creating games to keep herself occupied at a very young age.
Her start as a writer - 2
At the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I fighter pilot. That’s where her name comes from. During the war, she worked as a nurse. She came up with the idea of writing a detective novel while working in a hospital. The ”Mysterious Affair at Styles" gave the world Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer, a meticulous, tidy always neat and orderly little man with a waxed moustache. Christie wrote more than 30 novels featuring Poirot. Among the most popular were "Murder on the Orient Express" (1934), and "Death on the Nile" (1937).
A real-life mystery - 3
In 1926, her husband asked for a divorce because he had fallen in love with another woman. What happened after that could have been an exciting scene from an Agatha Christie novel. On December 3, 1926, Agatha kissed her daughter goodnight, then promptly got in her car and left. Her abandoned vehicle was found a few miles away, but the writer herself had completely vanished. Lakes were dredged, 15,000 volunteers combed the area. All of England was involved in the case of the famous missing writer. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel registered under the name of her husband's mistress explaining to police that she had lost her memory. Whether it was true or not nobody knew.
A larger-than-life character - 4
Another of Christie's most well-known and beloved characters was introduced in "Murder at the Vicarage" in 1930. Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster, solved all kinds of mysteries with intense concentration and intuition. Miss Marple lived her entire life in the fictional village of St. Mary's Mead, a prototypical English village whose chief occupation was gossip. She never had any formal training as a detective and relied primarily on her keen intelligence, powers of observation, and knowledge of the human nature. She never married and was a sweet, frail-looking sort of person from a by-gone era. She did typical maiden auntie things, like knitting. The character was based, in part, on Agatha Christie’s step-grandmother and “some of my step-grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl" – as she herself stated.
Record-breaking intuition - 5
One of Agatha Christie’s Guinness World Records is connected to Miss Marple and her adventures. The Complete Miss Marple is the thickest book of the world. The massive volume is a collection of 12 novels and 20 short stories. It is 4032 page long, its spine is 322 mm and it weighs 8.02 kilograms. It is bound inmaroon leather with gilt writing on the cover. Reading at a pace of 30 pages an hour, it would take around 134 hours to finish the book. As for more numbers about the book: Miss Marple solves 43 murders: 12 poisonings, 6 strangulations, 2 drownings, 2 stabbings, 2 people pushed to their deaths, 1 rather grisly burning, 1 blow to the head, and 1 arrow through the heart. In all, 68 crimes are committed, including the murders. There are 11 philandering spouses, 21 romances, 22 false accusations, and a whopping 59 red herrings. And, as solid evidence of either Miss Marple's ability to keep a cool head in all this or the English obsession with tea, characters drink 143 cups of tea.
Her formula to creativity - 6
Agatha Christie was a very productive writer. When asked about how she was able to create so many books, she once called herself “a sausage machine, a perfect sausage machine.” For many years she was on a tight schedule of two books per year, including one that was always released right before the holiday season, which was marketed as “Christie for Christmas.”
“People often ask me what made me take up writing ... I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There's nothing like boredom to make you write. So by the time I was 16 or 17, I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I finished the first book of mine ever to be published.” – she said.
Pioneering in many ways - 7
She liked doing extraordinary things. She and her first husband Archie were some of the first British people to ever try surfing. They first met surfing in Hawaii in 1922. “I learned to become expert, or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!” she wrote about surfing in her autobiography.
Key:
A - A best-selling author -0 Example
B - A larger-than-life character - 4
C - A real-life mystery - 3
D - Background -1
E - Her formula to creativity - 6
F - Her start as a writer – 2
G -- Pioneering in many ways - 7
H - Record-breaking intuition - 5
I -Restarting her life after disaster
J -Thinking up plots in an unusual way
Listen to some extracts of a biography on Agatha Christie and match headings A-J with the corresponding extract. There are two headings you do not need to use. 0 is an example.
A - A best-selling author -0 Example
B - A larger-than-life character
C- A real-life mystery
D - Background
E - Her formula to creativity
F - Her start as a writer
G - Pioneering in many ways
H - Record-breaking intuition
I - Restarting her life after disaster
J - Thinking up plots in an unusual way
A best-selling author -0
She wrote 80 detective novels, six romances (under a pseudonym), 13 plays, and 154 short stories. All of her books are still in print, selling around 500,000 copies a year, and she's the eighth most borrowed author from British libraries. With more than 2 billion of her books around the world, she is one of the most published authors in history outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible.
Background -1
Her life is as interesting as her writing career. She was born Agatha May Clarissa Miller in Devon, England in 1890, the youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. As a child she never attended school. She was home-schooled and started creating games to keep herself occupied at a very young age.
Her start as a writer - 2
At the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I fighter pilot. That’s where her name comes from. During the war, she worked as a nurse. She came up with the idea of writing a detective novel while working in a hospital. The ”Mysterious Affair at Styles" gave the world Hercule Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer, a meticulous, tidy always neat and orderly little man with a waxed moustache. Christie wrote more than 30 novels featuring Poirot. Among the most popular were "Murder on the Orient Express" (1934), and "Death on the Nile" (1937).
A real-life mystery - 3
In 1926, her husband asked for a divorce because he had fallen in love with another woman. What happened after that could have been an exciting scene from an Agatha Christie novel. On December 3, 1926, Agatha kissed her daughter goodnight, then promptly got in her car and left. Her abandoned vehicle was found a few miles away, but the writer herself had completely vanished. Lakes were dredged, 15,000 volunteers combed the area. All of England was involved in the case of the famous missing writer. She was found three weeks later in a small hotel registered under the name of her husband's mistress explaining to police that she had lost her memory. Whether it was true or not nobody knew.
A larger-than-life character - 4
Another of Christie's most well-known and beloved characters was introduced in "Murder at the Vicarage" in 1930. Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster, solved all kinds of mysteries with intense concentration and intuition. Miss Marple lived her entire life in the fictional village of St. Mary's Mead, a prototypical English village whose chief occupation was gossip. She never had any formal training as a detective and relied primarily on her keen intelligence, powers of observation, and knowledge of the human nature. She never married and was a sweet, frail-looking sort of person from a by-gone era. She did typical maiden auntie things, like knitting. The character was based, in part, on Agatha Christie’s step-grandmother and “some of my step-grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl" – as she herself stated.
Record-breaking intuition - 5
One of Agatha Christie’s Guinness World Records is connected to Miss Marple and her adventures. The Complete Miss Marple is the thickest book of the world. The massive volume is a collection of 12 novels and 20 short stories. It is 4032 page long, its spine is 322 mm and it weighs 8.02 kilograms. It is bound inmaroon leather with gilt writing on the cover. Reading at a pace of 30 pages an hour, it would take around 134 hours to finish the book. As for more numbers about the book: Miss Marple solves 43 murders: 12 poisonings, 6 strangulations, 2 drownings, 2 stabbings, 2 people pushed to their deaths, 1 rather grisly burning, 1 blow to the head, and 1 arrow through the heart. In all, 68 crimes are committed, including the murders. There are 11 philandering spouses, 21 romances, 22 false accusations, and a whopping 59 red herrings. And, as solid evidence of either Miss Marple's ability to keep a cool head in all this or the English obsession with tea, characters drink 143 cups of tea.
Her formula to creativity - 6
Agatha Christie was a very productive writer. When asked about how she was able to create so many books, she once called herself “a sausage machine, a perfect sausage machine.” For many years she was on a tight schedule of two books per year, including one that was always released right before the holiday season, which was marketed as “Christie for Christmas.”
“People often ask me what made me take up writing ... I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts. There's nothing like boredom to make you write. So by the time I was 16 or 17, I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel. By the time I was 21, I finished the first book of mine ever to be published.” – she said.
Pioneering in many ways - 7
She liked doing extraordinary things. She and her first husband Archie were some of the first British people to ever try surfing. They first met surfing in Hawaii in 1922. “I learned to become expert, or at any rate expert from the European point of view – the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board!” she wrote about surfing in her autobiography.
Key:
A - A best-selling author -0 Example
B - A larger-than-life character - 4
C - A real-life mystery - 3
D - Background -1
E - Her formula to creativity - 6
F - Her start as a writer – 2
G -- Pioneering in many ways - 7
H - Record-breaking intuition - 5
I -
J -
lunes, 21 de diciembre de 2015
Listening test: Harper Lee
This week's reading test deals with American writer Harper Lee. Listen to the news report and choose the option A, B or C which best completes each sentence. 0 is an example.
Example:
0 How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. was the first book by Harper Lee.
B. was written in the 1970’s
C. wasn’t always a popular book.
1 How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. deals with social issues.
B. is based on a well-known film.
C. sold 40 million copies the year of its release.
2 Go set a Watchman
A. has become the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com ever.
B. was written before How to Kill a Mockingbird.
C. was written by Harper Lee at the age of 55.
3 Harper’s Lee second novel
A. has been widely acclaimed.
B. is considered a masterpiece by some critics.
C. might affect the writer’s reputation.
4 In How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. a child tells the story.
B. the main character has been falsely accused of committing a crime.
C. the main character is a black man.
5 In Go set a Watchman
A. the character of Atticus has become a racist.
B. the character of Atticus still lives in Alabama.
C. the story takes place 30 years after the ending of How to Kill a Mockingbird.
6 In Go set a Watchman readers think Atticus
A. is a symbol of racism in America today.
B. is still a hero.
C. may have a positive influence on today’s America.
7 Harper Lee biographer, Charles Shields, has said
A. Atticus is a perfect man.
B. Atticus reflects many people’s attitudes to racism.
C. the controversy has slowed the sales of the book.
American writer Harper Lee’s first - and until now, only - book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is one of America’s best-loved novels. The 1960 publication explores racism and injustice in the American South. It was an instant best-seller. Two years later it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Readers around the world have bought 40 million copies of the book since its release. “To Kill a Mockingbird” also inspired an Oscar-winning movie of the same name. Harper Lee’s second book “Go Set a Watchman,” was released, 55 years after the first. Lee had announced in February that she would publish a sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The new novel became the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com since the final book in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. Lee wrote “Watchman” in 1957, before she wrote “Mockingbird.” Her editor at the time encouraged her to rewrite “Watchman” from the point of view of a child. She agreed. That effort became “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
But so far, Ms. Lee’s second novel has received mixed reviews. It has also led to debate. Some observers are questioning how “Go Set a Watchman” will affect Ms. Lee’s legacy, as well as the legacy of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The Wall Street Journal described the novel as a “distressing book.” The Los Angeles Times called it “an apprentice effort.” And a U.S. public radio critic said it was “a kind of a mess that will forever change the way we read a masterpiece.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird” takes place in the 1930s in a small town in the southern state of Alabama. Six-year-old Scout Finch narrates the story. Her father, lawyer Atticus Finch, defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Lee wrote the character of Atticus as a strong believer in justice. He bravely faces, and fights, deep prejudice and hate among the people in his town. The story of “Go Set a Watchman,” is set about 20 years after the ending of the first book. An adult Scout returns from New York to visit her father in Alabama. Some readers are protesting the character of Atticus as he is written in “Go Set a Watchman.” They say he is a racist. And, they say that that is unacceptable. In a letter to The New York Times, one man wrote, “As a native of Alabama, I had held up Atticus in my own mind as a redemptive figure, a symbol of hope, a hero who was brave enough to fight for what is right despite the poisonous and dangerous pools of racism long associated with whites in the Deep South.” Others consider this latest version of Atticus good for today’s America. Harper Lee biographer Charles Shields spoke to the New York Times about the book. He said this Atticus could help support a national discussion about racism. He said, “It turns out that Atticus is no saint, and none of us are, but a man with prejudices.” So far, any negative press has not slowed sales of Harper Lee’s work. The number one and two spots on Amazon’s bestseller list are filled by “Go Set a Watchman” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Key:
1A 2B 3C 4A 5B 6C 7B
Example:
0 How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. was the first book by Harper Lee.
B. was written in the 1970’s
C. wasn’t always a popular book.
1 How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. deals with social issues.
B. is based on a well-known film.
C. sold 40 million copies the year of its release.
2 Go set a Watchman
A. has become the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com ever.
B. was written before How to Kill a Mockingbird.
C. was written by Harper Lee at the age of 55.
3 Harper’s Lee second novel
A. has been widely acclaimed.
B. is considered a masterpiece by some critics.
C. might affect the writer’s reputation.
4 In How to Kill a Mockingbird
A. a child tells the story.
B. the main character has been falsely accused of committing a crime.
C. the main character is a black man.
5 In Go set a Watchman
A. the character of Atticus has become a racist.
B. the character of Atticus still lives in Alabama.
C. the story takes place 30 years after the ending of How to Kill a Mockingbird.
6 In Go set a Watchman readers think Atticus
A. is a symbol of racism in America today.
B. is still a hero.
C. may have a positive influence on today’s America.
7 Harper Lee biographer, Charles Shields, has said
A. Atticus is a perfect man.
B. Atticus reflects many people’s attitudes to racism.
C. the controversy has slowed the sales of the book.
American writer Harper Lee’s first - and until now, only - book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is one of America’s best-loved novels. The 1960 publication explores racism and injustice in the American South. It was an instant best-seller. Two years later it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Readers around the world have bought 40 million copies of the book since its release. “To Kill a Mockingbird” also inspired an Oscar-winning movie of the same name. Harper Lee’s second book “Go Set a Watchman,” was released, 55 years after the first. Lee had announced in February that she would publish a sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The new novel became the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com since the final book in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. Lee wrote “Watchman” in 1957, before she wrote “Mockingbird.” Her editor at the time encouraged her to rewrite “Watchman” from the point of view of a child. She agreed. That effort became “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
But so far, Ms. Lee’s second novel has received mixed reviews. It has also led to debate. Some observers are questioning how “Go Set a Watchman” will affect Ms. Lee’s legacy, as well as the legacy of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The Wall Street Journal described the novel as a “distressing book.” The Los Angeles Times called it “an apprentice effort.” And a U.S. public radio critic said it was “a kind of a mess that will forever change the way we read a masterpiece.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird” takes place in the 1930s in a small town in the southern state of Alabama. Six-year-old Scout Finch narrates the story. Her father, lawyer Atticus Finch, defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Lee wrote the character of Atticus as a strong believer in justice. He bravely faces, and fights, deep prejudice and hate among the people in his town. The story of “Go Set a Watchman,” is set about 20 years after the ending of the first book. An adult Scout returns from New York to visit her father in Alabama. Some readers are protesting the character of Atticus as he is written in “Go Set a Watchman.” They say he is a racist. And, they say that that is unacceptable. In a letter to The New York Times, one man wrote, “As a native of Alabama, I had held up Atticus in my own mind as a redemptive figure, a symbol of hope, a hero who was brave enough to fight for what is right despite the poisonous and dangerous pools of racism long associated with whites in the Deep South.” Others consider this latest version of Atticus good for today’s America. Harper Lee biographer Charles Shields spoke to the New York Times about the book. He said this Atticus could help support a national discussion about racism. He said, “It turns out that Atticus is no saint, and none of us are, but a man with prejudices.” So far, any negative press has not slowed sales of Harper Lee’s work. The number one and two spots on Amazon’s bestseller list are filled by “Go Set a Watchman” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Key:
1A 2B 3C 4A 5B 6C 7B
sábado, 31 de octubre de 2015
Speechyard
Speechyard is a platform that allows English students, specially those at an intermediate and advanced level, learn English through films, series and books.
You have to sign up with your Facebook account or email address and then select your language, which will be used for translations.
Go to the content tab to choose either films or series or books. In the learning page you can learn the words and expressions that you have previously selected while watching a film or reading a book. And you can use the community page to practise your English with other learners.
There are thousands of full movies, series and books to choose from.
This video explains how Speechyard works.
H/T The English blog.
You have to sign up with your Facebook account or email address and then select your language, which will be used for translations.
Go to the content tab to choose either films or series or books. In the learning page you can learn the words and expressions that you have previously selected while watching a film or reading a book. And you can use the community page to practise your English with other learners.
There are thousands of full movies, series and books to choose from.
This video explains how Speechyard works.
H/T The English blog.
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