ARTELLANDO na Biblio

Today we would like to recommend  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1775-1817). You can find an abridged version in our library, in the section of books written in English. We have chosen to introduce you to this novel since recently it was chosen to be the most popular book in England.  The first lines of the book are so well-known in England as our " En un lugar de la Mancha....": "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune , must be in want of a wife"                                         But what is this book about? Elizabeth Bennet and her sister Jane are young, beautiful and intelligent. When wealthy bachelor Charles Bingley arrives in the neighbourhood, he  and Jane are immediately attracted to each other. His friend, Mr Darcy, handsome, rich but arrogant is impressed by Elizabeth but she does no...

                                                                                                                          Cervantes and Shakespeare  In twelve days we will be celebrating World Book Day, celebrated on the 23rd of April since 1995.  This date was chosen because  it marks the death of two major writers: William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616).  However, this is not completely true. Therefore, we would like to clarify this "misunderstanding." Although the two writers were contemporaries, they did not actually pass away on the same day, since the United Kingdom and Spain had...

                                                    Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first feminists. Since today is International Women's Day, we will like to remember Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) since she is regarded as one of the founding feminists. Wollstonecraft is best kown for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1792), in which she declares that women are not born inferior to men, but appear to be so because they lack education. She also argues that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and receive the same type of education. She always defended the independence of women and defied all sorts of conventionalisms. She even set up a school for women in which she tried to teach the same subjects men were taught and not only superficial ones. Unfortunately she had to close it down due to financial di...

This year we have a reading club in our library. We are only six member but we hope more people will join us in the future. We are going to start our meetings with the reading of Brave New World , so a brief presentation of this sci-fi classic is required. This novel was published in 1932 by Aldous Huxley. It presents a dystopian vision of the future. It is a world only focused on science and efficiency, where emotions an individuality are forbidden.  Children are created outside the womb and cloned to increase the population. Embryos are chosen for different social classes, making the ones intended for the higher classes physically and mentally strong, whereas those of the lower classes are changed to be imperfect. Ones are bred to be leaders and the others are bred to be menial workers. The main character travels to a "savage reservation" where one of the leaders has a son, John, who has been brought up as people used to live in the past. John is taken to the " brave n...

Rematou este curso tan atípico, e coma outros fíxoo cos seus apuros e as súas ansias de dar un bo final a este intenso ano que nos deixa moitos recordos, algúns deles recollidos neste blog. Desde  diferentes seccións facemos esta publicación conxunta para que enchades o voso verán de lecturas e propostas alentadoras e non nos esquezades ata que voltemos coas pilas cargadas en setembro! FRANKENSTEIN, O PROMETEO MODERNO Por que no aproveitar o verán para reencontrármonos cun gran clásico? Desta volta presentámosvos unha versión inédita en galego da edición do 1818 (considerada canónica) dun clásido da literatura inglesa. Edición de luxo dentro da colección “Clásicos ilustrados en galego”, con ilustracións de Miguel Robledo e tradución de Samuel Solleiro. Considerada a primeira novela de ciencia ficción, a obra de Mary Shelley segue a ser unha obra indispensable, chea de aventuras, intriga e fondas reflexións filosóficas. Mergullámonos nunha viaxe fascinante q...

Previous posts have covered topics such as physics or mathematics. For the awe and wonder they have inspired, it just seems to follow we should turn our attention now to the natural world. In what very well may be must last post for this academic course, I would like to speak very briefly about a lovely little book titled How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher  by Simon Barnes. The author makes a case for the little act of watching birds with curiosity in our everyday life and what comes from that, becoming, not a professional ornithologist by any means, but a bad birdwatcher . It is easy to understand the source of our fascination for them. Nonetheless, leaving flight aside, we have lots of things in common with them. Moreover, interacting with feathery creatures through observation in the wild is much more interesting and rewarding than with other species. To kick-start your curiosity, I would like to leave an excellent  resource  that contains the birdsong of the mos...

Welcome to another science pill in English! If you remember from my last post, I recently embarked on a rediscovery of my past as a science student. My last entry covered several interconnected topics, among them my reading of a great popular maths book. Today I would like to tell you about the one I just finished, entitled The Elegant Universe , by physicist Brian Greene .  Let me just give you a brief overview of the book’s gist. Most of you will recognize this picture of an old fella with his tongue out. As it turns out, this gentleman revolutionized our understanding of mainly gravity, but also space, time, all in all, the universe. Around the same time Einstein was publishing his theories, specially focused on enormous things (planets, stars, etc.), particle physics was making groundbreaking discoveries on a much more minute realm. Looking at things on a tinier and tinier scale led to the realization that, apart from gravity, we also find three ot...

As you know, I love to tell you stories, so I decided to fill this post with a few of my latest interests. I have been reading a lot about popular science lately, especially popular math and physics and I stumbled upon many curiosities. One of them involves a popular incident related to our current situation. I’m sure you’ve all heard about Newton’s apple . For those who haven’t, this is how the story goes: due to the plague outbreak in London (this is the bit that resembles our lockdown further described in  previous posts), Isaac Newton retired to his family home in Woolsthorpe Manor. While sitting in the garden, Newton was pondering on the secrets of the universe when, all of a sudden, an apple fell on his head and had an Archimedes-like eureka moment. Newton related the falling of the apple to the moon and other celestial bodies, finally reaching his famous gravitational laws. As we can suspect, the whole incident may very well be apocryphal or, at least, an emb...

This blog's a bit deserted, innit? Supostamente, a pincelada anglosaxona do blog debería demorarse aínda uns días, pero penso que as circunstancias requiren un sopro de azos, por pequeno que sexa. É por isto que hoxe voume limitar a algunhas curiosidades que evoca a situación actual. Para alivio dalgún lector desprevido, hoxe aparcaremos a cerna en inglés da publicación en favor de algo máis cercano na nosa lingua. O primeiro que espero é que vós e os vosos seres queridos esteades todos ben. Son tempos difíciles, é certo, mais unha simple ollada á nosa historia levaranos a concluír que a resistencia forma parte do ADN galego, co que o noso esforzo común faranos prevalecer, sen dúbida. Dicía que son tempos difíciles, de confinamento. Parece nestes intres unha broma de mal gusto a típica pregunta de que libro levarías a unha illa deserta. Quen nos ía dicir que esa illa sería o noso fogar e teríamos que apañarnos co posto. De certa forma, Internet facilita o noso contacto co exte...

Since I’m equally a storyteller and a teacher, today I’d like to share with you a tale of sorts about the power of coincidence in life and the process of learning a new language. All this was triggered by the publication of these grants by the regional government. Needless to say that I strongly encourage you to participate, as I have already said in most of my classes this week. These grants are a great opportunity to boost your level of English. When I was about your age, I had the chance to be a part of the Comenius program, an exchange scholarship by which a group of students from my year hosted German pupils and, in turn, allowed us to spend a week in Munich with their families. Here’s when the coincidence comes into play. At that time, I never thought I would become a language teacher in the future, and yet here we are. To this day the Comenius experience played a major role in the improvement of my skills in English. I don’t know how I happened, but after that week I ma...

Last year, one of the posts of this blog dealt with Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre. I hope that short article encouraged some of you to read the book. Today, I would like to expand on its influence. This 1847 novel introduced, apart from the eponymous heroine, a secondary character that was the basis for another influential book. In the original, Jane becomes the second wife of Mr Rochester. We are told in Brontë's pages that Bertha Mason, Rochester's first wife, is violently insane and locked in a room on the third floor of the house. However, her depiction leaves many questions unsolved about her past and this sparked the interest of a great female novelist, Jean Rhys, who placed Bertha at the centre of her masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). It is a feminist and anti-colonial response to Brontë's novel, describing the background to Mr Rochester's marriage from the point-of-view of his mad wife, a Creole heiress. Antoinette Cosway (Bertha's maiden...

I was recently reminded of my beloved students of 1.º BAC, especially those enrolled in world literature. During the first term, it came to my attention the subject had them reading a translation of Black Ships Before Troy: The story of the Iliad by Rosemary Sutcliff, perhaps the most compelling adaptation of the Trojan War for young readers, volume originally accompanied by the astonishing illustrations of Alan Lee (see below), famous also for his designs based on Tolkien’s work. But let’s start from the beginning... The reason why this came to mind is because the British Museum is currently holding an exhibition until 8 March 2020 entitled Troy: myth and reality , covering from Helen of Troy's abduction to the deception of the Trojan Horse and the fall of the city. The British Museum needs no introduction: its permanent collection of around eight million works place it among the largest museums in the whole world. Some of its most iconic pieces are the Rosetta Stone,...

     A Christmas Carol is undoubtedly the most beloved story set during this festive season. Published on 19 December 1883, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve, and this novella is considered a true classic. The book recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After these visits, Scrooge is transformed into a gentler man, treating everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion.      However, the truth is that, in spite of the literary value and importance of this very work, its greater significance lies on the social influence it exerted. Two hundred years ago, Christmas celebrations were completely different and the modern observance we hold nowadays is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday. This re‑evaluation of the tradition resulted in the widespread presence of carols ...