Books – maturitná téma

Books

Reading is  a popular leisure time activity for many people.

The first books were handwritten = manuscripts. In the ancient times there was only the Holy Bible, only rich people had books, many people were illiterate.

In16th century Johann Gutenberg invented book-printing, books available to almost everyone.

Pros: opportunity to learn something, improving communication skills, challenges imagination, pleasure to life, reading is possible everywhere (travelling, breaks at school, on holiday.

Nowadays there is a big assortment of books, but they are too expensive.

At school – some books are obligatory to read, not favorite among students. 

Literature is divided into 2 categories: non-fiction, fiction books. 

Non-fiction (for information - textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographies, autobiographies, self-help books, travel/history/art books, cookery books…)

Fiction(about imaginary people or events), 2 types – poetry and prose: poems, tales, short stories, novels, romances, crime/spy novels, mysteries, science fiction, westerns, thrillers, historical novels.

We can buy books in a bookshop, second-hand bookshop, the Internet or we can borrow them from a library (registration fee for yearly membership, a library card). Nowadays electronic books are very fashionable, too.

Books enrich our lives. We read for pleasure, we train our imagination. Books make us think, amuse us and give answers to some questions. We improve ourvocabulary, too. Some people think that books will die out one day, because everything will be read in electronic form. Others argue that reading is a hobby for many people and books are a part of the cultural heritage of every nation.

The Nobel Prize for literature: It is a prize awarded every year to a writer whose work is considered to be a unique literary achievement. Nobel Prize winners = W. Faulkner, J. Steinbeck, E. Hemingway

BRITISH AUTHORS: Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury tales), renaissance author from Stratford -upon-Avon William Shakespeare (tragedies Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth; histories Henry IV, V, VI, VIII; comedies The merry wives of Windsor, A midsummer’s night dream, Much ado about nothing), Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Charles Dickens(The Pickwick papers, A Christmas carol, David Copperfield, The adventures of Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit), Robert Burns(national poet of Scotland, poem Auld lang syne –sung at Hogmanay = New Year), John Milton(Paradise lost), George Gordon Byron(Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage), Charlotte Bronte(Jane Eyre), Emily Bronte(Wuthering heights), Oscar Wilde,James Joice, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(Sherlock Holmes)...

Famous English writers
There are many famous English writers. For example:
- William Shakespeare
- Charles Dickens
- Bronte sisters /Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte/
- Ernest Hemingway
- Oscar Wilde...

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564 – 1616)
- he was an actor, poet, playwright 

- he was born in Stratford upon Avon and died when he was 52 years old
- he came from a fairly rich family – he attended a grammar school but he didn’t have university education
- he got married when he was 18 years old – his wife was older than him when they got married – she was 26 years old => they had 3 children – 2 daughters and 1 son. Their son died when he was 11 years old – the death of his son influenced his work
- some people don’t believe that Shakespeare could write all his works because he didn’t have university education – they think that somebody else wrote it

His work:
- he wrote for money
- he used excellent language /he used metaphors, jokes…/ in his work and he invented many new words and sayings which we still use in our everyday lives => for example “Love is blind”
He wrote 139 plays.

- Romantic plays
- Romeo and Juliet
- Tragedies
- Othello
- Macbeth
- King Lear
- Hamlet
- Comedies
- All’s Well That Ends Well
- Historical plays- Henry VIII.
- Richard III.

He also wrote:
- poetry 
- sonnets

AMERICAN AUTHORS: Mark Twain(Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Ernest Hemingway (The old man and the sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun also rises), J.D. Salinger(The catcher in the rye), Beat generation (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac – On the road), John Updike(Rabbit, run), Joseph Heller(Catch 22)...

ERNEST HEMINGWAY was one of the great American writers of the century. He was born on 21 July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His family was strict and very religious. He graduated and he went to Kansas City and worked as a journalist for the Star newspaper. Hemingway was fascinated by war. Many of his books were about war. He married four times. Two more marriages failed and he began to drink heavily. Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun.

The old man and the Sea -An old Cuban fisherman Santiago goes to the sea after 84 days without a catch. He goes without the Boy, which was helping him for first forty days. Two days and two nights a gigantic marlin, which has caught itself on the Boy-made bait, trails his boat to the sea. Almost after he kills the fish with a harpoon and at the point of his power he fixes it to the boat, the sharps begin to attacking on the dead Merlin. Although an Old man is struggling with them, they eat a fish. He returns to the village half-dead of tiredness.