About a book: 2014

Saturday 1 November 2014

J.K. Rpwling is publishing a new Harry Potter story on Halloween

Good news for Harry Potter fans – J.K. Rowling is to publish a new Potter story online as a treat for Halloween.

Click here to read the article.

Friday 24 October 2014

50 Best films about writers, ranked

Hollywood is famous for its treatment of writers. They are the low man on the totem pole, the person banned from the set, the guy who wrote the Great American novel drinking himself to death in Los Angeles, rewriting dumb scripts. It’s funny, as Hollywood — along with movies around the world — is obsessed with portraying “writers” on screen, which is a weird profession to lionize as writing is the least visually pleasing job of all.

Click here to read the article
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The benefits of reading books

Saturday 18 October 2014

550 Free Audio Books

Download 550 free audio books, mostly classic, to your MP3 player of computer.

Click here.

Reading should be one of life’s joys, not a duty

Read the article. Click here.

Sunday 28 September 2014

Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome was first published in 1889. It is the fictional story of three London friends and a dog taking a leisurely boat trip up the River Thames, from Kingston-upon-Thames to Oxford. It is narrated by ‘J.’, whose companions are George (awarded no surname), William Samuel Harris and the dog, Montmorency.

During a sociable evening in J.’s room, the three men convince themselves that they each have various illnesses. Their collective diagnosis is overwork, and they prescribe themselves a fortnight’s holiday. A stay in the country and a sea voyage are both ruled out, and they settle instead on a boating trip, travelling on the Thames by day and camping out in the hired boat at night.

They set out the following Saturday. George must work in the City in the morning, and so arranges to join them later that day. The other two, accompanied by the dog and a mountain of luggage, get a cab to Waterloo station, but are unable to find the correct train to Kingston. Eventually they bribe the driver of another train to take them there instead, one of the many humorous set-pieces that make the book more than a straightforward travelogue. George completes the trio at Weybridge, with a dubious-looking parcel tucked under his arm, which turns out to be a banjo and instruction book.

The story is a tapestry of incidents that occur, anecdotes on various topics (including the unreliability of weather forecasts), loosely connected digressions (such as J.'s uncle’s inability to hang pictures), and descriptive pieces on the places that they pass. It is in these descriptive pieces that the author’s original intention of writing a guidebook is most apparent. What he actually achieved was a classic of British humorous writing. Although the book was written over a century ago, it has an enduring, timeless quality.

You can also watch the film.

Source: Book Drum

Thursday 25 September 2014

Reading is a great way to improve your English

This week the website Learn English is all about literature! Reading is a great way to improve your English - so check out these novels, short stories and poems!

1) Lit2Go - free classic novels, stories and poems from the University of Southern Florida. Read online, listen or download and print them.http://goo.gl/MoKqzY

2) Library of American Short Stories - a great mix of classic and modern short stories http://goo.gl/Y553ZZ

3) Project Gutenberg Australia - Lots of modern classics from Fitzgerald, Orwell, Woolf and more http://goo.gl/heGjSF

4) Booktrust - more than 40 free short stories from award-winning contemporary authors. http://goo.gl/y9LbC2

5) And of course, let's not forget the Stories & Poems sections on LearnEnglish and Learn English Teens!
http://goo.gl/OjoV1o
http://goo.gl/wZOWsI

Source: Learn English-British Council