Four books I recommend

I really do like to read! Someone asked me last week ‘Do you read books?’ and my answer was ‘Absolutely, I do enjoy reading books about adventures, fantasy stories, classic books’. And I must confess I certainly don’t read very much. I have only read 5 books in the last 8 months.

Sometimes we think that we don’t have enough time to read, but we have to make time for the things that are important to us. If I watched TV less, I could spend more time reading. Don’t worry about the price of books: you can get them at public libraries or you can acquire them for an e-book from Internet. There’s really no excuse not to start reading on a regular basis. Reading is the best way to enjoy and gain a specific knowledge from any source.

I’ve decided to make a list of books that I have discovered this year.

THE CROOKED LINES OF GOD

I enjoyed reading The Crooked Lines of God a lot. It’s addictive reading by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The main character is the detective Alice Gould and it’s set in a psychiatric hospital which she enters voluntarily as a patient with the purpose of following clues in a murder case. She gets into the hospital by faking a paranoid state, with the support of a doctor who is a friend of hers. She thinks he will give her discharge when she finishes her mission.

Problems arise with the doctors and the other mentally ill patients during her stay, and she tries to prove her sanity. She goes through so many experiences that she begin to have doubts about her own mental health.

I think the main reason it had such an impact on me is because mental health conditions are common and can have serious consequences for both affected individuals and society. This moving story shows that love and friendship can appear anywhere.

KAFKA ON THE SHORE

I read this novel by Haruki Murakami. You might have heard of the author, who also wrote 1Q84. It’s an absolutely riveting read. The book relates Kafka's story. As a teenager, he runs away from his father’s house and tries to find his mother and sister. They don’t have a good relationship because his father always admonishes him that he is about to repeat the Oedipal complex (a child’s attraction to the parent of the opposite sex). He meets a guy who works at a library of Takamatsu, where he finds shelter and spends his days reading books, until the police begin inquiring about him in connection with a brutal murder.

The other main character is Nakata, an older man who can talk with cats since he suffered a rare accident when he was a child in the Second World War.

The end of the novel was a bit disappointing for me because I expected an ending which explains all the relevant aspects of the plot.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: ‘A GAME OF THRONES’ AN ‘A CLASH OF KINGS’

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels written by George R. R. Martin. The author wrote the first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, and then extended his original story to seven volumes. Martin is working on the sixth, The Winds of Winter, which is still in progress. I have read the first novel and now I am reading the second: A Clash of Kings.

The story takes place on fictional continents. The books describe the point of view of the different characters in each chapter of the story. There are two predominant stories: a dynastic war between several families for the control of the kingdom and the return of Daenerys Targaryen with her dragons to claim her rightful throne.

There are lots of characters, but the reader may not safely presume that a certain character will survive. Each family has a slogan which identifies its member and makes it different from the others. I have difficulty remembering all of the principal characters.

THE KITE RUNNER

I can add one more book, whose author is Khaled Hosseini. This story tells the betrayed friendship of Amir and Hassan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban regime.

As a child, Amir fails Hassan because his cowardice doesn’t let him save his friend. He can’t forget his feeling of guilt even after leaving the country, moving to America and becoming a writer.

Eventually, Amir finds the way to redeem his failure by helping Sohrab, Hassan’s son, who is in an orphanage in Kabul.


In conclusion, I can say I love reading in Spanish but I want to improve my English, so I will try to read them in English.

Mayleles