RECOMMENDED READINGS -ADVANCED 1 LEVEL-2014

     Hi guys, some of you asked me to post the list of readings for this course .

I didn't manage to create a link on blogger, but here they are, thanks to the old good method "copy and paste".

                                       

 RECOMMENDED READINGS -  NA1

CONTEMPORARY NOVEL

No1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. The agency is located in Gaborone, capital of Botswana. Its founder is a Motswana woman, Mma Precious Ramotswe, who features as the stories' protagonist and main detective. The episodic novels are as much about the adventures and foibles of different characters as they are about solving mysteries. Each book in the series follows on from the previous book. They have been adapted for radio, television, and internet.

The Sunday Philosophy Club series - Alexander McCall Smith

 These novels capture the charm of Edinburgh featuring the insatiably curious philosopher and woman detective.  Whether investigating a case or a problem of philosophy, the indefatigable Isabel Dalhousie, one of fiction’s most richly developed amateur detectives, is always ready to pursue the answers to all of life’s questions, large and small.

His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels, coming together to form an epic, by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights (1995, published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming-of-age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events

Restless - William Boyd

Espionage novel. The novel depicts the tale of a young woman who discovers that her mother was recruited as a spy during World War II. The book continually switches between time periods and, in doing so, from first to third person.

Atonement - Ian MacEwan

Atonement is a family saga (and partially a war) novel written by author Ian McEwan and published in 2001. Set in four temporal periods and locations it is the story of a young, upper-class and English girl's half-innocent mistake, that ruins lives, and her adulthood in its shadow and reflection on the nature of writing to understand and respond to her need for atonement.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

Bruno is a 9-year-old boy growing up during World War II in Berlin.^[3] He lives in a huge house with his loving parents, his twelve-year-old sister Gretel (whom he refers to as a Hopeless Case), and maidservants. His father is a high-ranking SS officer who, after a visit from Adolf Hitler (referred to in the novel as "The Fury", Bruno's misrecognition of the word "Führer") and Eva Braun, is promoted to Commandant, and to Bruno's dismay, the family has to move away to a place called "Out-With" (which turns out to be Auschwitz Concentration Camp)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time takes place in the year 1998 in and around the town of Swindon, England. The fifteen-year-old narrator of the story, Christopher John Francis Boone, discovers the slain body of his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, on the neighbor’s front lawn one evening and sets out to uncover the murderer. His investigation is at times aided, and at other times hampered, by the mild form of autism he lives with

Never Let me Go - Kazuo

Is set in a dystopian world in which human clones are created so that they can donate their organs as young adults. The novel follows the life story of Kathy, a clone who is raised at a boarding school for future “donors.”shiguro

High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

Rob Fleming is a London record store owner in his mid-thirties whose girlfriend, Laura, has just left him. At his record shop, named Championship Vinyl, Rob and his employees, Dick and Barry, spend their free moments discussing mix-tape aesthetics and constructing desert-island, "top-five" lists of anything that demonstrates their knowledge of music.

About a Boy -  Nick Hornby

It is a 1998 coming of age novel about tow boys, Will, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus, an eccentric introverted , bullied 12-year-old with a suicidal mother. Will, never having to work thanks to the royalties from his father’s Christma’s song hit, has a lot of spare time. Most of this is pent smoking, watching TV, listening to albums and looking for female companionship.....

Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt

This is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of Frank McCourt's impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York and in Limerick, Ireland.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13/34 - Sue Townsend

The book is written in a diary style, and focuses on the worries and regrets of a teenager who believes himself to be an intellectual. The story is in 1981 and 1982, and in the background it refers to some of the historic world events of the time, such as the Falklands Warand the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana as well as the birth of Prince William. Mole is also a fierce critic of prime ministerMargaret Thatcher, listing her as one of his worst enemies.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year- Sue Townsend

The day her children leave home, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. She's had enough - of her kids' carelessness, her husband's thoughtlessness and of the world's general indifference.

CLASSICS

Farenheit 451  - Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury published in 1953. It is regarded as one of his best works. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found The title refers to the temperature that Bradbury understood to be the autoignition point of paper.

1984 - George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian^[1] novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain) is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.^[2] Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist.

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, summons the animals on the farm together for a meeting, during which he refers to humans as parasites and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called 'Beasts of England'. When Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion. The animals revolt and drive the drunken and irresponsible Mr Jones from the farm, renaming it "Animal Farm". They adopt Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal".

Brighton Rock - Graham Green

Brighton Rock is a novel by Graham Greene, published in 1938, and later made into films, a 1947 film and a 2010 film. The novel is a murder thriller set in 1930s Brighton. Although ostensibly an underworld thriller, the book is also a challenge to Roman Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of sin and the basis of morality.

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst and alienation.  The events he narrates take place in the few days between the end of the fall school term and Christmas, when Holden is sixteen years old.  Pencey is Holden’s fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. At Pencey, he has failed four out of five of his classes and has received notice that he is being expelled

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Set in the prosperous Long Island of 1922, The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties within its narrative. That era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity, is plausibly depicted in Fitzgerald's novel. Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.

In Cold Blood - In Cold Blood Truman Capote

A 1966 book by American author Truman Capote; it details the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a successful farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children. When Capote learned of the quadruple murder, before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime

Good Bye to Berlin – Isherwood

The novel, a semiautobiographical account of Isherwood's time in 1930s Berlin, describes pre-Nazi Germany and the people he met. It is episodic, dealing with a large cast over a period of several years from late 1930 to early 1933. It is written as a connected series of six short stories and novellas The reader is introduced to this world in the first section, “A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930).” This first of two diaries in the novel introduces objects and people that the narrator can observe from the window of his room.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

In 1930s Edinburgh, six ten-year-old girls, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice are assigned Miss Jean Brodie, who describes herself as being "in my prime", as teacher. Miss Brodie, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out", gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. Under her mentorship, these six girls whom Brodie singles out as the elite group among her students—known as the "Brodie set"—begin to stand out from the rest of the school

The Happy Prince and other Stories  - Oscar Wilde

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (sometimes called The Happy Prince and Other Stories) is a collection of stories for children byOscar Wilde first published in May 1888. It contains five stories, "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant", "The Devoted Friend", and "The Remarkable Rocket". It is most famous for its title story, "The Happy Prince".

NON-FICTION

Undercover economist – Tim Harford

Who really makes money from fair trade coffee? Why is it impossible to buy a decent second hand car? How do the Mafia make money from laundries when street gangs pushing drugs don’t? Who really benefits from immigration? Looking at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways, The Undercover Economist is a fresh explanation of the fundamental principles of the modern economy, illuminated by examples from the booming skyscrapers of Shanghai to the sleepy canals of Bruges.

Ghosts of Spain - Giles Tremlett

Ghosts of Spain is a big book, both in terms of length (over 400 pages) and subject matter. It covers more or less every aspect of modern Spain: religion and monarchy; sex and family; drugs, politics and terrorism; as well as history-changing events – Franco’s death, King Juan Carlos’ ascent to the throne and the transition; 11M; and key personalities from the 20th century: Jesus Gil, Sabino Arana, Manuel Fraga, Camaron de la Isla, Pedro Almodovar.

Touching the Void - Joe Simpson

In 1985, Yates and Simpson attempted a first-ascent of the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande in alpine style. Several teams had previously tried and failed to climb this face. Yates and Simpson were successful in their attempt, and after summiting they descended via the difficult North Ridge. Disaster struck on the descent when Simpson slipped down an ice cliff and landed awkwardly, crushing his tibia into his knee joint, thus breaking his right leg.