Books and literature

Books and literature 

Books

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

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

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

An electronic book is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. Commercially produced and sold e-books are usually intended to be read on dedicated e-reader devices. However, almost any sophisticated computer device that features a controllable viewing screen can also be used to read e-books, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

In the 2000s, there was a trend of print and e-book sales moving to the Internet, where readers buy traditional paper books and e-books on websites using e-commerce systems. With print books, readers are increasingly browsing through images of the covers of books on publisher or bookstore websites and selecting and ordering titles online; the paper books are then delivered to the reader by mail or another delivery service. With e-books, users can browse through titles online, and then when they select and order titles, the e-book can be sent to them online or the user can download the e-book. At the start of 2012 in the U.S., more e-books were published online than were distributed in hardcover.

The main reasons for people buying e-books online are possibly lower prices, increased comfort (as they can buy from home or on the go with mobile devices) and a larger selection of titles. With e-books, electronic bookmarks make referencing easier, and e-book readers may allow the user to annotate pages. Although fiction and non-fiction books come in e-book formats, technical material is especially suited for e-book delivery because it can be searched" for keywords. In addition, for programming books, code examples can be copied.

Advantages of reading books:

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

Advantages of watching movies:

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

British Literature

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

• William Shakespeare
  • the genius of the Elizabethan era
  • born in Stratford upon Avon
  • Anne Hathaway – his wife
  • historical plays: Richard III, Henry IV, Antony and Cleopatra
  • comedies : A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merry Wives of Windsor
  • tragedies : Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth
• Charles Dickens
  • writer
  • social critic
  • “Dickensian” – poor social condition
  • Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas carol
• Jonathan Swift – Irish writer
• Daniel Defoe – The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
• Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes
• William Golding –Lord of the flies

Nobel Prize winners for Literature:

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

American Literature

The representatives of American literature:

• Mark Twain
  • Writer, entrepreneur, publisher, lecturer
  • Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Edgar Allan Poe
  • Writer, editor, literal critic
  • Short stories, detectives, fiction
  • Romanticism
  • The Philosophy of Composition, The Black Cat, Eldorado
• Jack London – The Call of Wild, White Fang
• Ernest Hemingway – the representative of the “lost generation”
• Whom the Bell tolls, An Old Man and the Sea, Green Hills of Africa
• William Faulkner – awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
• Joseph Heller – anti-war satire : Catch –22
• Jack Kerouac – On the Road
• Arthur Hailey – The Airport, The Hotel, The Final Diagnosis

Nobel Prize winners for Literature:

1. Faulkner, J. Steinbeck, E. Hemingway

The reading crisis, like the social security crisis, has become a con-game based on facts. The NEA announces there are fewer literary readers than two decades ago. Books continue to have more competition from non-book technologies. Will people still read in 2060? As with Social Security, there are variables one just doesn’t know how to project forward: fewer people read books but more want to write them, and more and more books are published.

Under conditions of the reading crisis, everything a writer does, no matter how self-serving and reprehensible, becomes a blow in the service of literature. An arbiter of a “revolution” in reading features games, accordionists, and contests at his public events. A best-selling author sends out emails asking acquaintances to buy his new book before it slips off the Times top-seller list—because without these sales-markers, classic works can disappear. A blogger-author roams bookstores putting advertisements in books reminiscent of her own: “If you liked this, you’ll love The Tattle-Tale.” And these figures are held up as models of the hopeful signs for a renaissance in reading.

A library is a collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing.[1] It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a physical building or room, or a virtual space, or both.[2] A library's collection can include books, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, films, maps, prints, documents, microform, CDs, cassettes, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, e-books, audiobooks, databases, and other formats. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to several million items. In Latin and Greek, the idea of a bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē (Greek: βιβλιοθήκη): derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages.

1. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (known as F. Scott Fitzgerald) was a short story writer and novelist considered one of the pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature due almost entirely to the enormous posthumous success of his third book, The Great Gatsby. Perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a definitive social history of the Jazz Age, The Great Gatsby has become required reading for virtually every American high school student and has had a transportive effect on generation after generation of readers. At the age of 24, the success of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, made Fitzgerald famous. One week later, he married the woman he loved and his muse, Zelda Sayre. However by the end of the 1920s Fitzgerald descended into drinking, and Zelda had a mental breakdown. Following the unsuccessful Tender Is the Night, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter. He died of a heart attack in 1940, at age 44, his final novel only half completed. Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure, since none of his works received more than modest commercial or critical success during his lifetime. Although 'The Great Gatsby' was well-received when it was published, it was long after Fitzgerald's death that it was regarded as one of the greatest American novels ever written.

The Great Gatsby

It takes place on Long Island in the early 1920s. It can be labelled as love-story. Gatz is from a lower class farming family who falls in love with the wealthy beautiful Daisy. They are unable to marry, because they are from two very different families, so it is the case of forbidden love. Gatz enlists in the military and till the end of his service is a friend to a wealthy benefactor, who employs him “in a personal capacity.” Gatz’s employment provides for him opportunity to see the world and experience life in a wealthy social class. His adventures allow him to reinvent himself, he changed his name to Gatsby and when his benefactor dies, he inherited a lot of money from him, so he purchases a mansion on Long Island, near the now married Daisy, and the process of recapturing her heart begins.

While Gatsby has got many flaws, it was good for the deep meaning of the story. You can encounter many obvious human traits like snobbery, carelessness to others’ feelings, betrayal and the social differences between the rich and poor.

Even though “The Great Gatsby” haven’t changed my life, it was definitely an interesting story.

The life in the 1920s surely is interesting, sometimes I even listen to some music from these ages. Even the PC game I played named “Fallout” is based on the 1920s-1940s motive.