The Marymount Literary Connection serves as a forum for students to further discuss the literature they read both at home and at school.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Grade 12 IB September Book Reports (Due by midnight, September 30th)
Please post your 600-word book report as a comment here on the blog. Remember to bring your completed reading log to class on Friday, October 1st, to be handed in.
Frank Lloyd Wright, is a book written by Robert McCarter at nearly fifty years from the death of the worldwide known architect. The author intent was not to write another usual biography but to speak about FLW seen not during his entire life but as an architect working for architecture. Following the transcendentalist American Dream of a building in harmony with nature by finding a middle point between the artificial and natural environment. The book moreover describes Wright similarly to all the architects, who have to confront themselves with the daily life construction problems. These problems are the economic, social, ambiental and political situation of the buyer and of the area where the buyer has decided to build his mansion. In the book Wright his also described as an architect that put a lot of effort in trying to give an architectonical image to the newly born American democracy. In the last part of the book there is also an introduction to Wright’s Italian projects that include the houses in Venice and the shows dedicated to the architect. Frank Lloyd Wright, was born in 1869 in Wisconsin, and was the eldest of two sisters, Margaret and Maginel. As regards the development of his personality, he had a great burden with his parents. His father, William Russel Cary Wright, a native of Massachusetts, was graduated in law, and married to Anne Lloyd Jones, a member of a Welsh wealthy family immigrated to United States. His father had many jobs; whatever he could do to maintain his family was done. However he was also a spendthrift, and for this reason he always had economic problems. This meant that the Wright family had to move from town to town in order to obtain new jobs and consequently money. Wright was in fact forced to move at list three times before the architect was eleven. He would have found a quite situation only when his mother decided to move to his father in the Lloyd Jones mansion. Form that time on Wright would have always been maintained by the mother family until he left the house to go and study as an assistant to a teacher at university. After two years of study he decided to move away from that area and went living in Chicago. He, thanks to his grandfather that introduced him, immediately found a job in one of Chicago’s most important architectural studios. Thanks to this employment Wright got in contact with the world of architecture which inspired him from the start of his career. During his life as an architect Wright was mainly influenced by two style of constructing: the first one is the transcendentalist method, that has also influenced organic architecture. This two styles had a great impact upon Wright, he in fact immediately liked the idea of building in harmony with nature, following the natural areas to build his houses; without imposing any sort of design. The transcendentalist idea’s objective his to make the builders aware of their surroundings, so to not invade too much the natural environment. Wright was then also influenced by the Froebelian method of teaching children geometrical forms. We can see this method in all of Wright’s operas, that are characterized by geometrical forms such as squares and rectangles. In conclusion this book wasn’t written to give a general idea of who is Wright and how he spent his life. But instead the aim of the author was to make the readers aware of Wright’s influences and ideas on the way things should be built. The perfection in the design of house was one of his main characteristic that brought him to became one of the best and more famous architect ever known.
The jewel of St Petersburg is a book written by Kate Furnivall . The book is set in Russia, 1910; describing the period in 416 pages of well written style. Young Valentina Ivanova charms St Petersburg's aristocracy with her classic Russian beauty and her talent as a pianist. She scandalises society when she begins a romantic relationship with Jens Friis, a Danish engineer. He brings to her life a passion and an intimacy she has never known. Unbending in their opposition, her parents push her into a loveless engagement with a Russian count. Valentina struggles for independence and to protect her young sister from the tumult sweeping the city, as Russia is bound for rebellion. The Tsar, the Duma and the Bolsheviks are at each other's throats. Valentina is forced to make a choice that changes her life for ever . In this period life for aristocracy was very tough in fact the poor class was struggling for civil rights by using unconventional manners. Life becomes very difficult for Valentina. Thanks to this book I found myself more interested in understanding and studying more about the Russian Revolution; obviously the book highlighted the life of this aristocratic girl, although Furnivall finds also a space for describing the political problems. Specifically it analyses the period early before the Romanov Dinasty failure. The characters were well described and easily to distinguish one another. Valentina is intelligent, great pianist, independent and outspoken and she would do anything for her little sister Katya. Although these are admirable privileges Valentina is also shown as irrational, naïve and maybe even despicable. These characteristics, though, makes the character human. The working class is best represented by Victor Arkin, the Ivanov family’s former chauffeur. While I wanted to sympathize with him, he repeatedly did one thing after another to destroy Valentina and her family. I found reading the book a bit challenging but overall I understood the entire novel. Kate Furnivall’s books opens the eyes of the readers by letting the readers be more curios and interested in the Russian Revolution topic. In my opinion her books are really interesting and well written, I really advise to read at list one of her novels.
During this long month, I read one of the most famous books of the Irish and International literature: Dubliners.
Dubliners, is a number of short stories, written by the Irish author James Joyce. These short stories tell the reader the life style and the characters of the Dubliners. Joyce portrays the submissive characters of the Dubliners, who are extremely vulnerable and weak. In fact all the characters of this book are awfully fragile. Women in this society are usually mistreated and physically offended, while men get the abuses of the English men
This series of novels, gives to the reader how is the social situation in Ireland, and therefore Joyce wanted to portray Ireland, for the first time badly described by a pure irish man.
The series of novel are divided by age. The first novel talk about children, then in the middle of the book, are described mature charachers, and at the end old people. Joyce describes the abuses that most children get during their life. He shows how they are mistreated and how they suffer. Then Joyce shows how difficoult is the life for mature men and women and also for old people, how they also understand that that have failed in life, and their recognition that their life was a failure.
Although was a quite challenging book, I enjoyed to read it, I really liked the metaphors that the author uses throughout the book, and I was attracted by his great style and his use of vocabularies
Dimitrije Miskovic IB English B2 HL 30.08.2010 Ms. Gelso
Book Report:
As we all know, reading is very useful in our life. According to S.I. Hayakawa, in a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. I like reading so I decided to explore and read ‘Of mice and a men’ by Steinbeck. The book is set in California during the great depression in 1920s. Two main protagonists of this book are two workers called Lennie and George. They are travelling together, and going through many difficult problems, in the end they had to separate. In order to find out how they separated I suggest you to read this essay. At the beginning we can see the main difference between these two characters. The biggest difference is that Lennie was mentally sick and George had to take care about him. Even though Lennie was physically much stronger then George, in certain situations he acted like a spoiled child. On the other hand we have George who was really intelligent, mature and able to lead two lives in the same time. The situations where Lennie acted like a child were when he killed a mouse because he wanted to play with him. Another one can be, when he was asking George to talk to him about their future life. They shared a dream of owning a piece of land where they could have their own animals and have a normal life. In some situations George had to start talking to Lennie about their dream in order to calm him down. Even if all the times George was the one that had to save their heads, in a sense that he had to deal with the situation in order not to be killed. George did it many times and he was always very successful. One thing that was very strange about Lennie was that actually he was violent but he never wanted to be violent. He wasn’t realizing when he was violent and when he was nice to somebody. He couldn’t distinguish the difference between being violent and being a sweet heart. He has shown that he couldn’t understand the difference when he killed the farm’s boss son wife. He wanted to touch her neck but he actually killed her. Another example of he’s stupidity can be when he was playing with the mice and he, instead of playing with him, he killed him. He was always sorry for the things that he did, only when he is already done with them. In the end of the book, George couldn’t deal with the stupid things that Lennie was doing any more. He did a stupid thing that just crossed the line. George would go over that one too, but the whole farm was chasing Lennie so George decided to kill him. George couldn’t imagine Lennie being killed by the other farmers. George started telling him very nice stories about their dream, so he could die and meanwhile be happy. After that Lennie turned to side of sun and he was watching right into the sun. At that moment George killed him. When all the other farmers came there, they found Lennie dead and George who was crying because ha was really sorry. He did something that he didn’t want to do. George had to do this terrible thing because previously Lennie killed son’s wife. In order to conclude this essay, I would recommend this book to everyone. It doesn’t matter what age you are, because this book can teach you a lot about friendships.
Federico Giordani
ReplyDelete30/09/2010
Frank Lloyd Wright, is a book written by Robert McCarter at nearly fifty years from the death of the worldwide known architect. The author intent was not to write another usual biography but to speak about FLW seen not during his entire life but as an architect working for architecture. Following the transcendentalist American Dream of a building in harmony with nature by finding a middle point between the artificial and natural environment. The book moreover describes Wright similarly to all the architects, who have to confront themselves with the daily life construction problems. These problems are the economic, social, ambiental and political situation of the buyer and of the area where the buyer has decided to build his mansion.
In the book Wright his also described as an architect that put a lot of effort in trying to give an architectonical image to the newly born American democracy. In the last part of the book there is also an introduction to Wright’s Italian projects that include the houses in Venice and the shows dedicated to the architect.
Frank Lloyd Wright, was born in 1869 in Wisconsin, and was the eldest of two sisters, Margaret and Maginel. As regards the development of his personality, he had a great burden with his parents. His father, William Russel Cary Wright, a native of Massachusetts, was graduated in law, and married to Anne Lloyd Jones, a member of a Welsh wealthy family immigrated to United States. His father had many jobs; whatever he could do to maintain his family was done. However he was also a spendthrift, and for this reason he always had economic problems. This meant that the Wright family had to move from town to town in order to obtain new jobs and consequently money. Wright was in fact forced to move at list three times before the architect was eleven. He would have found a quite situation only when his mother decided to move to his father in the Lloyd Jones mansion. Form that time on Wright would have always been maintained by the mother family until he left the house to go and study as an assistant to a teacher at university. After two years of study he decided to move away from that area and went living in Chicago. He, thanks to his grandfather that introduced him, immediately found a job in one of Chicago’s most important architectural studios. Thanks to this employment Wright got in contact with the world of architecture which inspired him from the start of his career. During his life as an architect Wright was mainly influenced by two style of constructing: the first one is the transcendentalist method, that has also influenced organic architecture. This two styles had a great impact upon Wright, he in fact immediately liked the idea of building in harmony with nature, following the natural areas to build his houses; without imposing any sort of design. The transcendentalist idea’s objective his to make the builders aware of their surroundings, so to not invade too much the natural environment. Wright was then also influenced by the Froebelian method of teaching children geometrical forms. We can see this method in all of Wright’s operas, that are characterized by geometrical forms such as squares and rectangles.
In conclusion this book wasn’t written to give a general idea of who is Wright and how he spent his life. But instead the aim of the author was to make the readers aware of Wright’s influences and ideas on the way things should be built. The perfection in the design of house was one of his main characteristic that brought him to became one of the best and more famous architect ever known.
WORD COUNT: 622
The jewel of St Petersburg is a book written by Kate Furnivall . The book is set in Russia, 1910; describing the period in 416 pages of well written style. Young Valentina Ivanova charms St Petersburg's aristocracy with her classic Russian beauty and her talent as a pianist. She scandalises society when she begins a romantic relationship with Jens Friis, a Danish engineer. He brings to her life a passion and an intimacy she has never known. Unbending in their opposition, her parents push her into a loveless engagement with a Russian count. Valentina struggles for independence and to protect her young sister from the tumult sweeping the city, as Russia is bound for rebellion. The Tsar, the Duma and the Bolsheviks are at each other's throats. Valentina is forced to make a choice that changes her life for ever . In this period life for aristocracy was very tough in fact the poor class was struggling for civil rights by using unconventional manners. Life becomes very difficult for Valentina. Thanks to this book I found myself more interested in understanding and studying more about the Russian Revolution; obviously the book highlighted the life of this aristocratic girl, although Furnivall finds also a space for describing the political problems. Specifically it analyses the period early before the Romanov Dinasty failure. The characters were well described and easily to distinguish one another. Valentina is intelligent, great pianist, independent and outspoken and she would do anything for her little sister Katya. Although these are admirable privileges Valentina is also shown as irrational, naïve and maybe even despicable. These characteristics, though, makes the character human. The working class is best represented by Victor Arkin, the Ivanov family’s former chauffeur. While I wanted to sympathize with him, he repeatedly did one thing after another to destroy Valentina and her family. I found reading the book a bit challenging but overall I understood the entire novel.
ReplyDeleteKate Furnivall’s books opens the eyes of the readers by letting the readers be more curios and interested in the Russian Revolution topic. In my opinion her books are really interesting and well written, I really advise to read at list one of her novels.
During this long month, I read one of the most famous books of the Irish and International literature: Dubliners.
ReplyDeleteDubliners, is a number of short stories, written by the Irish author James Joyce.
These short stories tell the reader the life style and the characters of the Dubliners. Joyce portrays the submissive characters of the Dubliners, who are extremely vulnerable and weak. In fact all the characters of this book are awfully fragile. Women in this society are usually mistreated and physically offended, while men get the abuses of the English men
This series of novels, gives to the reader how is the social situation in Ireland, and therefore Joyce wanted to portray Ireland, for the first time badly described by a pure irish man.
The series of novel are divided by age. The first novel talk about children, then in the middle of the book, are described mature charachers, and at the end old people.
Joyce describes the abuses that most children get during their life. He shows how they are mistreated and how they suffer.
Then Joyce shows how difficoult is the life for mature men and women and also for old people, how they also understand that that have failed in life, and their recognition that their life was a failure.
Although was a quite challenging book, I enjoyed to read it, I really liked the metaphors that the author uses throughout the book, and I was attracted by his great style and his use of vocabularies
Guido Cafaggi
Dimitrije Miskovic
ReplyDeleteIB English B2 HL
30.08.2010
Ms. Gelso
Book Report:
As we all know, reading is very useful in our life. According to S.I. Hayakawa, in a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. I like reading so I decided to explore and read ‘Of mice and a men’ by Steinbeck.
The book is set in California during the great depression in 1920s. Two main protagonists of this book are two workers called Lennie and George. They are travelling together, and going through many difficult problems, in the end they had to separate. In order to find out how they separated I suggest you to read this essay.
At the beginning we can see the main difference between these two characters. The biggest difference is that Lennie was mentally sick and George had to take care about him. Even though Lennie was physically much stronger then George, in certain situations he acted like a spoiled child. On the other hand we have George who was really intelligent, mature and able to lead two lives in the same time. The situations where Lennie acted like a child were when he killed a mouse because he wanted to play with him. Another one can be, when he was asking George to talk to him about their future life. They shared a dream of owning a piece of land where they could have their own animals and have a normal life. In some situations George had to start talking to Lennie about their dream in order to calm him down.
Even if all the times George was the one that had to save their heads, in a sense that he had to deal with the situation in order not to be killed. George did it many times and he was always very successful. One thing that was very strange about Lennie was that actually he was violent but he never wanted to be violent. He wasn’t realizing when he was violent and when he was nice to somebody. He couldn’t distinguish the difference between being violent and being a sweet heart. He has shown that he couldn’t understand the difference when he killed the farm’s boss son wife. He wanted to touch her neck but he actually killed her. Another example of he’s stupidity can be when he was playing with the mice and he, instead of playing with him, he killed him. He was always sorry for the things that he did, only when he is already done with them.
In the end of the book, George couldn’t deal with the stupid things that Lennie was doing any more. He did a stupid thing that just crossed the line. George would go over that one too, but the whole farm was chasing Lennie so George decided to kill him. George couldn’t imagine Lennie being killed by the other farmers. George started telling him very nice stories about their dream, so he could die and meanwhile be happy. After that Lennie turned to side of sun and he was watching right into the sun. At that moment George killed him. When all the other farmers came there, they found Lennie dead and George who was crying because ha was really sorry. He did something that he didn’t want to do. George had to do this terrible thing because previously Lennie killed son’s wife.
In order to conclude this essay, I would recommend this book to everyone. It doesn’t matter what age you are, because this book can teach you a lot about friendships.
Word Count: 606