Reading Journal_17

Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl

*Genre: Fiction-horror, irony

*Source: The book from 'The short story collection of Roald Dahl'. I bought this book from Popular bookstore.

*Rating: 4.5 out of 5

*I have read the whole story(this is short story from the book called 'The short story collection of Roald Dahl")

*2 new vocabulary words:

1.slaughter: n. the killing of animals
v. to kill a large number of people or animals violently

2.lamb: n. a young sheep, meat from a young sheep
n. (infromal) used to describe or address sombody with affection or pity


This URL is a short film about 'Lamb to the Slaugher' from Youtube.
You can understand more about the story well.

Question 12: What is an exciting or horrifiying or sad or funny part of what you have read?

Since the genre of this story is horror, there really are some horrifying parts of the story which is when Mary, the main character who was betrayed with her baby from her husband, killed his husband with one swing using the frozen lamb. That was horrifying part not just because of the murder scene becasue I found very different two sides of mary's personalities. Before she had had serious conversation with her husband, she was described as kind and sweet wife who always support husband and help him. However, she turned into very evil murder who eventually hid every proves that from the criminal after she murdered husband and pretended that she is innocent.

Reading Journal-16

The Landlady by Roahld Dahl

*Genre: The short story (the fiction)

*Source: International English class from Ms. Farrer

*Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

*I have read the whole story

*2 new vocabulary words:

1. Swanky: adj.(informal, disapproving) fashionable and expensive in a way that is intended to impress people.

2. Dotty: adj. slightly crazy or silly.



The link is lead to the youtube website that you can watch the video of the Landlady.

*Question 12: What is an exciting or horrifiying or sad or funny part of what you have read?

Since the mood of the story is scary and horrifying, there is no funny part or exciting part of the story at all. Instead of that, there are many horrifying parts of the story. One of the parts was when the landlady was half-way up the stairs, and paused with one hand on the stair-rail, turning her head and smiling down at Billy with pale lips. Then, she travelled slowly all the way down the length of Billy's body,to his feet , and then up again. The other part was when she mentioned that she stuffs all her pets after they pass away. That makes me to think that she could be able to stuff not only pets but also humans.
Imagining person like the landlady is very horrifying. I don't think I would go in private house to stay for days when I am travelling just for in case.

Reading Journal-15

The Hitchhiker by Roald Dahl

*Genre: Non-fiction, short-story

*Source: From International English class (Teacher: Ms.Farrer)

*Rating: 4 out of 5

*I have read whole story

*2 new vocabulary words:

1. hefty: adj.(of a person or an object) big and heavy.

2. twerp: n. (old-fashioned,informal) a stupid or annoying person.

Question from Homework website:
What is the setting?
When? Where?
How important is the setting to the story?
What effect does it have?

The story shows us the setting from the beginning of the story.
The narrator and the Hitchhiker (fingersmith) met the road which is head up to London. So, overall board setting is London. But, the narrow and specific setting is in the narrator's car which is BMW. There is no specific time setting but from the description of the hitchhiker by the narrator (He was wearing cloth cap on his head and greyish-coloured jackiet.), it happens during this day a few years ago or nowadays like 21th century.
Like many stories, the setting of the story makes it more interesting. Since in the car is very limited to move, there is more chance to make a dialogue each other. The story is unfloded by conversation between the narrator(the driver) and the Hitchhiker.

Reading Journal-14

Howl's Moving Castle by Daiana Whynne Jones.
Published by 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

*Genre: Fiction, Novel

*Source: Kinokuniya bookstore

*Rating: 4 out of 5

*I have read ch.1~ch.3 of the story.

*2 New vocabulary words:

1. allure: n. pleasing or exciting quality that they have.

2. velours: n. silk or cotton fabric similar to velvet.

About few years ago, I watched the Japanese animation called 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Miyajaki Hayao. At that time, I didn't know that the animation was based on the book called 'Howl's Moving Castle'. My English tutor recommended this book to read since she also grew up with this book. The very beginning of this book is almost similar as the animation.

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Because I was too young to fully understand this marvellous book (story), I kept in my mind that the animation (story) called 'Howl's Moving Castle' is very boring and not very good story to appreciate. However, now, I grew up more than few years ago, I realised that there are many morals inside the story that the author wanted to tell readers. This story has topic about againsting the war, opposing to judge a man by appearane. Hence, people can think more about those topics due to reading this book.

Reading Journal-13

The wonderful story of Henry Sugar by Roald DahlPublished by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London wc2r, England

*Genre: Fiction

*Source: Form Borders

*Rating: 5 out of 5

* I haver read whole story

*2 new vocabulary words:

1_) disciple: noun. a person who believes in and follows the teachings of a religious or political leader

2_) crouch: verb. to lower your body close to the ground by bending your legs under you

* Roahld Dahl is my one of favorite authors. The reason why I like his stories is his fantastic descripnations. Actually, it's first time to read his story which is written for teenagers. I have read only his stories which are written for children such as charlie and chocolate factory, Matilda,Fantastic Mr. Fox and BFG....etc.

* Question14 : Start as what you want to.
My question for everyone is 'What if you can see everything without hiding your two eyes completely?
If I were a girl who can see with my eyes closed, I will first try to figure out what happended to me. Of course, as everyone can imagine firstly, there are many advantages that I can get from sepcial ability that I got. But what people recognise is that closing eyes also have some advantages. We can close eyes not to see something while watching scary movies or sleeping. Also, my habit is to close my eyes to not to see something but dark so that I can concentrate easily and think deeply. However, if I can see with my eyes closed, I can't make doing that.
So, think carefully what you want to be.

Reading Journal-12

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant

*Genre: Literature

*Source: From Mrs. Farrer

*Rating: 4 out 5.

* I have read whole story.

* 2 New vocabulary words:

1. Exultant: adj. (formal) feeling or showing great pride or happines especially
because of something exciting that has happened

2. petulantly( petulant): adj. (written) bad tempered and unreasonable, especially because you cannot do or have what you want.

Many vocabulary words from this story was very hard and some words are not familiar to me. So I had to look up my dictionary to understand the whole story.
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Actually, I have already read the story before, so it was easy to understand more than before while I was reading.

The author is Guy de Maupassant who is from France.
This story is very famous and still, read by many readers.

The story is simple enough to understand for readers. However, what the author and the story want to tell readers is complicated and deep enough.

From the story, the necklace, which is the symbol of this story, represent desire and vanity of many humans. So, the author is trying to say how humans' desire and vanity are hopeless, and how only one mistake can change human's life through the necklace. Also, the author is trying to say how human can be changed so easily by the many kinds of environments.

From this story, Human is shown as a greedy existence which always follows hopeless beautiness not seeing the beautiness of the inside.
The greed and desire can take away discriminating power to see the real truth from human.
So, without having any discriminating power to see the real truth of something, it is hard to discriminate the real and fake things for humans.
The desire and greed of human can't eliminate easily.
However, the author ask a question to the readers 'If Matilde didn't lose her necklace?' at the end of the story so, that the readers can think deeply about the story.

Reading Journal-11

PLUGGING INTO THE SUN - SUNLIGHT BATHES US IN FAR MORE ENERGY THAN WE COULD EVER NEED

by GEORGE JOHNSON
From NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SEPTEMBER 2009: VOL. 216 . NO3

Publishing Group President John Q. Griffin

* Genre: Magazine

* Source: Bookstore Magazine

* Rating: 3 out of 5

* I have read all article

* 2 New Vocabulary words :

1. Plateau - an area of flat land that is higher than the land around it

2. Deluge- a sudden very heavy fall of rain ; a flood

* The image at the top is the picture of solar power energy.
And this website is the youtube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DboEhc5D9aE
This video explained well about solar panels, history of solar power and efficiency of solar power.

* Question 16: Design a starter of your own

CAN SOLAR SAVE US? - PROBABLY, EVENTUALLY, WITH LOTS OF GOVERNMENT HELP.

Nowadays, there are many efforts to find efficient ways to save the environment. Since humans have used some parts of science worngly, they think it's time to cure the Earth. AFter scientists researched many studies, alternative energies were found and used society.

One of the most efficient and good alternative energies is uing the sunlight which is called 'Solar Energy'. Since people have used fossil-fuels too much, the environment became worse. Using fossil-fuels such as coal or oil emits lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) which results in golbal warming. So, peopl are studying more about Solar Energy which is renewable and can be used a s an alternative.

Another benefit of solar energy is that there is no limitation. Since the Sun will always shine on the Earth, solar energy is free and there is no limitation to using it. So, excluding the worst hypothesis-if the SUn stops shining on the Earth foreever, this is a very good solution to global warming. Solar Energy is also Independent and it doesn't require much work from jumans since the Sun shines by itself. Of course, this energy is not as harmful as using fossil-fuels.

However, there are also side effects from this source of energy. Solar Powered equipment is the most expensive to build from all alternative energies. Humans also have to consider the area which they might install solar powered machines in and think about the fact that a tnight, there is no production of sunlight.

We don't know how much help that Solar Power Energy can help us instead of using fossil-fuels yet, but I'm sure that the environment won't worry anymore since there is much effort by humans for it.