The Book - a Person’s Friend

The Book -  a Person’s Friend
 
Each year, millions of books are written, sold, read and even presented as gifts on occasions such as birthdays and Christmas. Books accompany people everywhere: we read them while travelling to school or work, on holiday.
Books can be bought in a wide range of bookshops, in big shopping centres, in an internet bookshops in electronic form- these books is called an e-books. Also we can borrow books from a library.
 
Our first books are usually read to us by our parents and grandparents. These are fairy tales or stories and they normally have more pictures than text. They take children to the world of fantasy and teach them to distinguish good from evil. The children’s book by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm are popular worldwide. English classic children’s books like Alice in Wonderland (written by Lewis Carroll) and Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne) are read and loved by many generations of English children. Unfortunately, today’s parents are very busy so they rather seat them in front of TV or a computer instead of reading book to them.
 
Literature can be devided into 2 categories:
Non-fiction books are for example textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, biographies, autobiographies and memoirs, selfhelp books, travel or history art books and cookery books.
Fiction books are about imaginary people or events. There are 2 types of fiction books: poetry and prose. There are for example short stories, novellas, romances, science fiction, westerns, or historical novels.
 
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 kill 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.
 
Many young people prefer watching television, surfing the Web, listening to their iPods, talking on cellphones, and instant-messaging their friends than reading. Instead of reading books they rather watch films. But it still exists amount of young people whose like reading books. Especially girls are more avid readers than boys.  They like to read Teenage Girl Romance Books or novels. Boys usually read adventure stories or science fiction. The most popular books among teenagers are Harry Potter, Lord of the ring.  The favoured place to read among young people is a bed and the most popular time of the day for the reading at bedtime.
 
I prefer watching films instead of reading books, because reading takes days or week, but watching a film just two hours. 
 
Every year, the Swedish Academy announces the Nobel Prize winners for literature. Winning the Nobel Prize for literature is one of the highest honours for a writer. Books by such authors become widely translated and sold. ( Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway)
 
In Slovakia people can read Slovak books or books translated from different languages. They read both fiction and non-fiction genres. Adults like to read detective stories, historical novels or books of travels.
In Western Europe (Belgium, France, England) people like to read comic books- there are more pictures than text and story is usually adventurous and dynamic.
 
In England and other countries of Western Europe publishing companies publish many more books than in Slovakia. There are two main reasons why people in Slovakia don’t buy so many books. The first one is that books are getting more and more expensive and people cannot afford them. This also leads to illegal photocopying, mainly among students. Slovak libraries lack financies to be able to provide better services. The second one  is that  people do not look for information in books as much as they used to in the past. They prefer to look up the information on the Internet. Instead of reading good fiction, the watch films. They need to save as much time as it possible.
 
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 our vocabulary, 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.
Zones.sk – Zóny pre každého študenta
https://www.zones.sk/studentske-prace/anglictina/6072-the-book-a-person-s-friend/