Clubes de Lectura de la Biblioteca de Ávila

“Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.” ““Hope”, he said. “Damn thing never leaves you alone.”” “In the morning when the Sun returns. It’s possible for us to hope.” In this dystopian, speculative novel, we see the world through the lens of Klara, an Artificial Friend specially designed to take care of teenagers. Her child-like curiosity about the world and its inhabitants makes us wonder about what makes us human and unique. Set in a world intentionally vague (it could be anytime, anywhere) Ishiguro invites us to think about Artificial Intelligence, gene-editing, mass redundancies, loneliness, faith, and hope. Klara begins her days in a store with another android, Rosa, her friend, and Manager, a kind of mother figure. Through the window she observes how the humans interact and tries to learn their ways, always paying attention to the comings and goings of the Sun, a god-like...

Level 5. Upper Intermediate B2 FCE New York, Christmas 1998. Private Detective Nathan Marley is hired by an attractive wealthy woman to get a briefcase full of jewellery from a locker at Grand Central Station. But something smells fishy. The lady, Angela Lake, isn´t telling the truth and thus, Nat finds himself in the middle of a complex criminal operation involving computer hacking, fraudulent insurance claims, kidnapping and the chaos of the American post service during Christmas season. An entertaining black novel full of the cliches of the genre: a rude smart inspector helped by another ex-policeman and clashing against an old colleague in charge of the official investigation, a witty secretary solving many of the problems, an evil criminal and his bodyguards, and a couple, deep in debt, trying to save themselves. LRB We've read about The Chrysler building  chryslerbuilding.com chryslerbuilding1930.com Image source: Chrysler Building, An Art Deco Style Skyscraper, New York City...

Level 3. 3rd ESO In this book you’ll learn many interesting facts about the Green Island. Written in an easy and informal way you can improve your English while reading about this amazing country. By the time you finish it you’ll know all about Irish mythical legends, its rich culture and its agitated history. You’ll feel as if you had just visited some iconic landscapes such as the Giant’s Causeway, the Cliffs of Moher or the Burren and finished the trip on a pub drinking a foamy Guinness. You’ll also be able to cook “champ”, prepare a delicious Irish Coffee and know what “dulse” is. The book examines the complicated period known as the Troubles, when the country struggled to gain its independence from Britain, without forgetting crucial past and present times like the Great Famine and the Celtic Tiger renascence. It also talks about famous Irish writers and dancers and the weird sports Irish people play.  Whether you’re planning a trip or simply want to know more about this incre...

“… why some fleeting, random moments persist in memory while other, supposedly more important moments vanish forever. …flotsam from the unvanished but long vanished past” “If the story turns out to be so astounding and so powerful that your jaw drops open and you feel that it has changed or enhanced or deepened your understanding of the world, does it matter if the story is true or not?” Paul Auster’s last novel is moving, upsetting and open ended; it leaves you wondering about nothing and everything and with the feeling of having just read an obituary. It talks about life, death and fate, about getting old and above all, about how we deal with grief and how our minds think and create the narrative of our lives, present and past. Why do we remember some things and not others? How can fiction help so much with reality? Do we remember real memories, or do we create them? These and other similar questions aren’t answered in Auster’s intimate novel. You must think the answer yourself. The ...

Level 3 Lower Intermediate “And we went inside and shut out the night.” One icy winter's evening in Budapest, John Taylor is on his way home from the office when a man runs into him and knocks him over. The man turns to say sorry and John is amazed at what he sees: the man is John's double. The double rushes away but leaves no footprints in the snow. Over the next year it becomes clear to John that the meeting was no accident and that his double has a very important message to give him.  https://www.cambridge.org/jp/cambridgeenglish/catalog/secondary/cambridge-english-readers/how-i-met-myself-level-3-paperback Biography David A Hill trained and worked as a primary school teacher in the UK before moving into ELT; he has an M.Phil in Applied Linguistics from Exeter University. David has taught EFL full time in Italy and Serbia, and worked for the British Council for 18 years, 12 of which as the Council's state sector teacher trainer for Northern Italy. Since 1998 he has worke...

“She cannot work with needle and thread-her fingers become stiff and strange to her. Paint is what she loves best, and chalk, and ink. She turns the hoop over and inspects the underside. She has always had a secret liking for this part of the embroidery, the “wrong” side, congested with knots, striations of silk and twists of thread. How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.” “She is a different person from yesterday … She has changed her shape, shed her skin, been painted over, or remade in a new form.” While reading Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” Maggie O’Farrell realised how quiet the Duchess was and decided to give her voice. Looking at her portrait, by Alessandro Allori, she resolved to write a novel where the narrator and the protagonist seem to intermingle. And that is what we get in The Marriage Portrait, Lucrezia De Medici’s thoughts, dreams, and nightmares, and above...

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.” “Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” “It would have been better for her not to have such a heart. Yes, but worse for the rest of us.” Books, letters, notes, they all connect people. It only took one second-hand book by Charles Lamb for Dawsey to pen a letter to Juliet (its previous owner), a letter that would begin a flow of correspondence from Guernsey to London and back.  Books were also the reason why a group of neighbours (who had made up a literary society to fool the Germans invading their island) became the best of friends by arguing and discussing about their favourite authors. When nearly everything has been taken from you: food, wood, children, pets, radios… literature, in all its shapes, is what keeps you sane and in touch with your humanity.   Thanks to this multiple perspective narration we get to know what happened, even though in a fi...