English Experts

[Flavia.lm]

Question: What did you learn from the last book you read?

Example of answer:
- I read The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks and learned how powerful love can be;
- I read Breaking Dawn a couple of months ago and learned nothing at all (just some new words in English).
- The last book I read was ________, written by __________. By reading this, I learned _________________________.

Now it is your turn!

[isabelladevonne]

I read Eclipse, from Stephenie Meyer, and I just learnt that perfect men don't exist. u_u

[BrunoCosta]

I read A Casa Dos Mortos de Dostoievsky several months ago and i'm re-reading it now.I learned how perfect my personel world is really!Not just oppening the hole book for you guys but what an amazing writting even in portuguese.You learn how important is to have a space to think alone,have some moment to reflect about your life and this is what makes you TO REALLY have your own life.

[Marcio_Farias]

... that one can at will write English without using any instance of the verb to be. In other words, you can talk and write at length without "is's", "are's", "was's", "were's", "been's" and "being's". (One such writer--Ernest Vincent Wright--even wrote a book--The Great Gatsby--without using the letter e. )

Have any of you ever tried to write Portuguese without using the verb ser? It will make you use other active verbs, verbs you didn't even know existed. That will probably make you suffer from many trips to the dictionary as well.

[RasteiraDoSolFirme]

I read the whole Kite Runner in English, and as far I know I won't turn my back to a friend in need.

"A friend in need is a friend indeed."

[leandrocs1310]

I read Salto para a vida by Célia Valente, she count's the story of Léa Manber, a Poland woman that lived persecuted by Nazi, she was Jewess, and now she is in Brazil, counting her story. I learnt there are a lot of people that can give you help when you need, but there are also very cruel persons in the world. I saw in this book the sacrifice that her mother had, and the courageous act of losing her daughter, but to the life, she pushed her daughter to a little window in a wagon of the Death Train, it was exactly the Jump to the Life.

Before that, I kept thinking that I'm passing through an enormous problem, that I don't deserve it, I'm not able to, and these things, but now I thanks God for my life, my problem is nothing, I can get it, I can pass over it, if Léa Manber survived to the War, persecution and death of all her relatives and friends, the destruction of her own home, I can survive to my problem.

[Flavia.lm]

Hi Leandro,

Count = contar (numbers)
Tell = contar (a history, facts, etc)
And the apostrophe shouldn't be there

And I hope God give you enouth courage to overcome whatever is bothering you.

[ENG_rafael]

Well, the last book I read is Germinal, a novel by Émile Zola, that tells us a little bit about how difficult and dangerous was life for who worked at coal mines by the time that French was in its incipient industrial development. That book not only tells us about industrial growth and inauspicious conditions of working, but also about Socialism, how it rose in the heart of those people who worked a lot while a little class became rich and richer day after day. I loved reading that book because it was a good way of understanding how Socialism works without having to study it in fact.

Recently I also read a book called Keep The Alpidistra Flying, a novel by George Orwell, that tells us about a man who decided to declare fight against money. During the reading, the main character understood that without the enough amount of money we are nothing, just insects or less than it, our honor and self-respect depend on how enough is our income. To be honest, at the beginning I thought that book was a little silly, I mean, quite exaggerated, but after finishing the lecture, I began to agree with the writter.

For sure reading books is an excellent way of learning. If you want to change some life, you need some book. Unfortunatelly, I have no longer time to read, but always some opportunity appears, I open a book!
Best regards!

[Dany Mysterious]

The last book that I read was "the body speaks" written by Pierre Wiel and Roland Tompakow. It's about the several ways that our body can express feelings, without we never realizing it. it's a very interest book and after read it I can see better how many "languages" we can express through our body! Amazing! I recommend it!

[Dourado]

The last book I read was The Drunkard's Walk and I learned that basically everything is random and we don't have nearly enough information (meaning numbers of repetitions) to analyze a trend correctly (eg: if we flip a coin twice, we ca't say for sure that we will get one head and one tails, even though chances are 50% for each).

Oh! And that if I go to some game show like "Porta dos Desesperados" (I think only people over 25 will get this ), where we are presented with 3 doors and have to pick the one with the prize behind it, we should always change doors when asked. Our chances of winning will double!