But how do we know this? What does dark energy mean exactly? Here we are dealing with another serious problem of metaphor identification in scientific discourse: Even this can be problematic in scientific discourse if the linguist is not familiar with the field in question. Consider the third sentence taken from Science: The phospholipids form wormlike micelles in specific concentration ranges of mixed solvent systems, and under these conditions they behave like polymers for electrospinning. Therefore one could argue that this is a personification.
However, it is difficult to describe the metaphor, because the whole sentence is not easy to understand if one is not familiar with the scientific claims it relates to. How can this dilemma be solved? This would mean mixing judgements about truth and word meaning again. Semino, Heymann and Short, who describe the problems of metaphor identification in a corpus of doctor-patient conversations about cancer, also struggle with this problem: Thus, they combine the word meaning approach with the truth approach.
It seems that there is no way of avoiding this aspect. It is very important to distinguish between two processes: Intuitional recognition is based on a combination of knowledge of truth facts in the world and the meaning of a word. In order to develop an analytical approach, one has to separate knowledge about facts in the world and semantic knowledge — and in this analytical procedure one can then distinguish between the truth approach and the word meaning approach.
As I have shown already, both approaches work in many cases but cause problems with specific examples or discourses — especially in scientific discourse, as is also shown by Semino et al. Some metaphors can be identified only via the truth approach, others only via the word meaning approach. Unfortunately, two neatly distinguishable types of metaphor do not exist. Nevertheless, there are tendencies. First, there are sentences with truth conditions. If these truth conditions are violated by facts in the world, we are confronted either with lies or with non-literal language such as irony, sarcasm, or metaphor.
To distinguish these types of speech acts we have to take the knowledge and the intentions of the speaker and the hearer into account. This is a purely pragmatic problem. Other cases rely more on the use and combination of certain words with certain meanings. Such is the case for most of the examples from Science. In these cases, it is necessary to take the word meaning into account.
We can find both kinds of expressions in scientific discourse. In the case of semantic violations we have to make decisions about word meaning. Here another problem arises: Conclusion Metaphor identification is difficult. Although intuition is surprisingly coherent, intuitional decisions always mix knowledge about the world and knowledge about word meaning. To claim that a scientific argument is metaphorical because it is not true in reality is a scientific claim and calls into question the appropriateness of the scientific argument.
To claim that a scientific term is a metaphor because it represents a secondary meaning of the used word is a completely different point, because it is a linguistic observation. It does not automatically question the scientific term or the argument connected with it. It only gives a clue of what might be a metaphorical conceptualization, and this conceptualization can be more or less appropriate. Therefore we need more than intuition in the metaphor analysis of scientific texts.
The truth approach is not sufficient — it has to be avoided or carefully reflected and distinguished from semantic arguments. A consequently semantic argumentation, i. On the Difficult Task of Identifying Metaphors in Scientific Discourse 39 word meaning approach, would be a better basis for metaphor identification in scientific discourse. But once the researcher tries to find valid linguistic criteria to distinguish metaphorical from literal expressions, another problem arises, namely how to claim one primary meaning for a word.
This problem is serious in any context, as has been shown by Steen b: Any linguistic analysis, however careful, leaves doubts about what this analysis means for the scientific concepts. What is most important in any identification procedure is to keep the different identification methods distinct.
In the linguistic decision about the status of a word or phrase as metaphorical, the truth approach and the word meaning approach must be clearly distinguished for the analysis. Furthermore, the linguistic criteria for a metaphor must be analytically separated from judgements about a certain scientific discourse or argument. For scientific discourse, however, the evaluation of a scientific argument as metaphorical or literal has to be added. Therefore, after a metaphor analysis of scientific texts, a critical reading of the texts themselves is necessary.
Thus, I argue for a purely linguistic analysis with purely linguistic criteria for metaphor as the first step in metaphor identification. This, however, can be only the starting point for any work on metaphors in discourse. For a complete analysis of a certain scientific discourse, different approaches and cooperation with different disciplines seems absolutely necessary. Whether the metaphors occuring in scientific texts have anything to do with scientific arguments, is another question that can be approached in discourse analysis — but then at least basic scientific knowledge or cooperation with scientists is required.
The psychological reality of these metaphors can only be established by means of genuine psychological evidence for example from experiments. Die kognitive Metapher als Werkzeug des Denkens. Verschiedene Formen der Metaphorisierung? Linguistischer Workshop Wartin , Czernowitz, Bukrek.
Conflation in the Acquisition of Polysemy: Philosophy in the Flesh. From Etymology to Pragmatics. In current research on discourse analysis and on metonymy there is an idea that is missing: The reasons for this are to be found, in all likelihood, on the one hand, the still dominant idea that text coherence also called text cohesion at the lexical level does take place propositionally and on the other hand, on the also prevalent idea tightly complementary to the first one that metonymy is simply a local cognitive phenomenon, of a mainly referential nature.
However, the evidence suggests, as will be extensively demonstrated in this paper, that metonymy is pervasive in much of our cognitive and discourse activities. Thus, metonymy may underlie the generation of conversational implicatures and the interpretation of indirect speech acts.
It is through the cognitive approach and the application of frame semantics that we are in the position to offer a more plausible explanation of the discourse coherence phenomenon. After introducing the various approaches to semantics and justifying the convenience of a maximalist approach, I discuss the role of metaphor and above all the role of metonymy in discourse, as a pervading source of inferencing and coherence.
Estas dos perspectivas se complementan y refuerzan para pesentarnos un panorama incompleto. Semantics and Discourse There are many ways of doing semantics. We have formal semantics, which makes use of principles of logic in looking at concepts in terms of classes of items subject to logical operations and definable in terms of intensional and extensional meaning. We have interpretive semantics, in which lexical items can be arranged according to their capability to combine with one another on the basis of selection restrictions e. Cognitive semantics has taken two forms: In cognitive semantics concepts are complex structures consisting of a number of elements and their associated roles e.
It is possible to divide all these different ways of dealing with semantics into two basic approaches: Only cognitive semantics fits the latter category, since it tries to capture all the complexities of conceptual organization. I will argue that, precisely because of these ambitious goals, only a maximalist approach can be productively used to account for discourse activity.
However, the definition, as it stands, misses a lot of the richness of what we know about mothers, as evidenced by a number of extensions of the concept: While biological mothers and surrogate mothers carried their babies inside their wombs, foster mothers and adoptive mothers only take care of them. Still, in a sense the different kinds of mother are mothers, although they do not comply with all the aspects of the definition. A surrogate mother bears a baby, but there is no reason why she should want good things to happen to the baby just because at one time the baby was inside her.
However, a foster mother, who has not had the baby inside her, is expected to love and care for her child. A maximalist approach also takes into account metaphorical and metonymic uses of concepts. For Lakoff , a metaphor is a set of correspondences what he calls a conceptual mapping between two discrete conceptual domains: She had been gaining ground throughout the debate, but then she faltered and her opponent was able to beat her. Now consider these sentences: The difference is that 1.
In fact, in 1. The full meaning impact of all these sentences can only be accounted for on the basis of a richer description of motherhood than the one provided by a minimalist analysis. My mother is not married to my father , the biological model cf. What is more, there are important pragmatics and discourse consequences of this form of maximalist analysis. Take the following extensions of the previous examples: Mothers in taking care of their children often give them everything they ask for.
However, note the impossibility of: This apparently trivial aspect of the semantic organization of linguistic expressions, i. The Role of Metonymy in Discourse Meaning and Structure The study of metonymy is also part of the maximalist approach to meaning to the extent that it is possible to argue that metonymic connections are part of our conventionalized knowledge of the world.
The buses are on strike , and actors and their roles Hamlet was superb last night , among many others. One of the main concerns of cognitive linguists working on metonymy has been to provide clear definitional and typological criteria which separate metonymy from metaphor and from literal uses of language cf. Barcelona, ; Ruiz de Mendoza, More recently, some work has been devoted to the connection between metonymy and pragmatic inferencing cf. Some of the crucial findings in these studies are the following: Thus, it is proposed that there are several kinds of non- referential metonymy: Ruiz de Mendoza, ; ii propositional metonymies like She waved down a taxi meaning that she stopped a taxi by waving at it cf.
Lakoff, ; iii illocutionary metonymies e. The poor dog left with its tail between its legs, where part of a conventional scenario stands for the full scenario in which the dog is beaten and probably humiliated in such a way that the animal has to leave to avoid further harm; cf. Ruiz de Mendoza; Otal, Thus, it is possible to explain some asymmetries in the use of resultative predicates on the grounds of the semantic constraints imposed by high-level metonymic mappings.
The difference in meaning between the two sentences and their degree of felicity is evident from the following respective paraphrases based upon the proposed metonymy: It is also possible to find a metonymic motivation for such phenomena as the subcategorial conversion of nouns e. However, he used limited evidence coming from a small body-part corpus and his findings have only partial value. Their proposal is based upon the formal distinction between two basic metonymy types and the conceptual operations which hinge upon them. In The ham sandwich is waiting for his bill, the order is a subdomain of the customer who has placed the order; this is a source-in-target metonymy.
In the first case, we have a cognitive operation of reduction of the amount of conceptual material that is needed to find the right referent for the expression since the actual referent is a subdomain of the source, the target is conceptually smaller for the purposes of the Metonymic operation. In the second case we have an operation of conceptual expansion the source gives us access to a conceptually richer target. It may either expand or reduce the metaphoric source or the metaphoric target. These examples will illustrate the four patterns there are of course a number of subpatterns, since the reduction operation may work on the whole source and target or on just part of it: He beat his breast, uttered in a situation in which the protagonist has not actually beaten his breast.
The source has the underspecified situation in which a person beats his breast as an open show of sorrow about something wrong that he has done. The target has the person that we are talking about. What is missing in current research on metonymy is the study of the discourse potential of metonymic activity. The reason for this is to be found, in all likelihood, in the still dominant idea that metonymy is simply a local cognitive phenomenon, of a mainly referential nature. Thus, it may underlie the generation of conversational implicatures and the interpretation of indirect speech acts: But we know that it is part of a conventional scenario or idealized cognitive model pertaining to the use of taxi services: From the point of view of metonymy, the act of stopping a taxi provides us with a point of access to the whole scenario, in such a way that the person asking the question may reason: In effect, what we have in 2.
In the context of that action scenario, the addressee of an utterance like 2. The reasoning process may take the following form: Bach; Harnish, ; Grice, would address the problem of the inferential process used by the first speaker in 5. Neo-Gricean pragmaticists, like Levinson would deal with this implicature- derivation process on the basis of some sort of conventional heuristics that is part of our reasoning equipment. More specifically, Levinson Relevance theorists, following Sperber; Wilson , would account for 2. There may be a number of reasons.
Imagine a context in which the speaker would have preferred to be given a lift by a friend and felt frustrated that he had been turned down. In Relevance Theory it is taken for granted that when we communicate we try to strike a balance between processing economy and contextual effects i.
Even this brief account of the Gricean and post-Gricean standard explanations of inference reveals one fundamental problem: Thus, in all cases we know because a conversational maxim is violated, or because there is a conventional heuristic, or because the speaker tries to achieve relevance that we have to engage in special interpretative procedures when faced with examples such as 2.
I suggest that metonymic mappings, like those postulated by cognitive linguists, are a clear case of such procedures. Implicatures, on the other hand, require more complex reasoning schemas with implicit premises and implicated conclusions, as in the following exchange uttered in the context of a party: The conclusion is that it is time to finish the event.
However, in my proposal, even implicature-derivation is a matter of metonymy. The difference is that the metonymy is not of the referential kind, but simply a situational metonymy. In the case of reasoning schema [1], it is a low-level situational metonymy, based on a specific scenario with specific conventional information about taking taxis. However, in the case of [2] we have a high-level situational metonymy based on a generic action scenario, i.
Understanding metonymy is also crucial in order to explain some phenomena of discourse cohesion. Panther; Thornburg note that while the English grammar makes it possible to repeat the Noun Phrase instead of making use of the anaphoric pronoun in 4. Cohesion has often been treated as a grammatical phenomenon, in contrast to coherence that was based on world knowledge e.
However, the fact that anaphora, one of the procedures to create cohesion Halliday; Hasan, , , may depend on metonymic activation, seems to point to a different treatment of the issue, one in which cohesion is seen as being conceptually grounded. This may apply to all other cases of anaphora: They do all they can for me. It is very well known that singular words which refer to groups of people e. They can also be used in the singular form, depending on how we want to think of them. It does all it can for me.
However, the singular form is better on other occasions: My family are great There is a relationship between the foregoing discussion and one crucial finding in the context of what has been called metonymic anaphora e. Stirling, , i. The finding was first made by Ruiz de Mendoza and has been considerably refined in Ruiz de Mendoza; Otal It is the fact that anaphoric reference to a metonymic noun phrase always makes use of the matrix or most encompassing domain of the metonymic mapping.
The issue of anaphora in connection to metonymy was first raised by Fauconnier and Nunberg who give partial answers to the problem. Thus, Fauconnier believes that there is a pragmatic function that connects a metonymic source and its corresponding target, and that anaphora usually selects the metonymic target i.
If the source is animate, then it serves as the antecedent e. However, this analysis is incapable of determining the potential antecedent when both source and target are either animate of inanimate: Arnold Schwarzenegger has just been elected governor of California. Will he be up to the job? Nunberg tries to come to terms with the issue of metonymic anaphora by making a distinction between two different types of linguistic mechanism: The former is the process by means of which an indexical is used to refer to an object that corresponds somehow to the contextual element chosen by a demonstrative.
The latter occurs whenever the name of a property that applies to something in one domain is used to refer to the name of a property that applies to things in another domain Nunberg, He gives the following examples: The two sentences are produced while the speaker is holding out a key. According to Nunberg, the distinction between deferred indexical reference and predicate transfers is enough to explain cases of metonymic anaphora: This only fits the left front door and is parked out back.
However, this account cannot be applied to all cases of metonymic anaphora. The main problems lie with the notion of predicate transfer: Could you please hand it over to me? It must be borne in mind that semantic compatibility between the metonymy and the predicate of the expression is what makes us select the second and not the first matrix domain for the anaphoric operation cf. But evidently this is not the case. The adjoined predicate expresses a property of books books can be handed over.
However, it is not kettles but the fire that we use to heat the water that is turned on or off. The Domain Availability Principle captures all cases of metonymic anaphora. In this interpretation, it may not start makes use of the matrix domain for the anaphoric operation. The case of I am parked out back and have been waiting for 15 minutes is different. The combination of the most relevant pragmatic principles, from which discourse studies should never divert, with the insights of cognitive semantics, mostly the application of the immense potential of metonymic grounding, as shown in the last section of this paper, can result in a very fruitful set of discoveries that affect discourse in its central issues.
Introduction to Text Linguistics, London, Longman. Understanding Utterances, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Relevance Relations in Discouurse. Cohesion in English, London, Longman. Language, Context and Text: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: Is Abstract Reasoning Based on Image-schemas?
Metaphor and Thought, 2nd. The Principles of Pragmatics, Londres, Longman. Transfers of Meaning, Journal of Semantics, From Pragmatics to Discourse. Metonymy and Pragmatics, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Discourse Semantics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Communication and Cognition, Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 10 Coherence and Anaphora: From Etymology to Pragmatics: This study attempts to analyse the structural role of metaphor in a specific text- type.
For this purpose, we chose a specific genre, a popular magazine about scientific topics, the National Geographic NG , and one of the typical texts of that magazine, the story of a natural disaster, an earthquake. Hypothesizing that every text displays a specific metaphoric configuration that will, in a sense, constitute the metaphorical identity of that text, the study explains how we can identify in a specific text the structure of its metaphorical relations.
Having identified the conceptual keys which link the experiential domains activated by the text in the conceptualization of a disastrous event like an earthquake, the study then explores the interaction between common metaphorical conceptualizations and their text-specific configurations through narrative processing. Using a Labovian framework, the research perspective attempts to describe how the metaphoric conceptualization of earthquakes is linked to text development and narrative processing.
Thus, working along the interface between cognition and discourse, the study demonstrates the utility of uncovering in text the relationship between universal human conceptualization, social experience and discourse structure. It has been suggested that when conceptual metaphor is present in text, it has a functionally complex role. The aim of the analysis is two-fold. First of all, the intention is to analyze the structural role of metaphor in a specific text-type.
For this purpose, we have chosen a specific genre, a popular magazine about scientific topics, the National Geographic NG , and one of the typical texts of that magazine, the story of a natural disaster. Hypothesizing that every text displays a specific metaphoric configuration that will, in a sense, constitute the metaphorical identity of that text, it will attempt to explain how we can identify in the text types of this genre the structure of metaphorical relations. As an additional query, this research perspective seeks to verify if there is some connection between narrative structure and the presence of cognitive metaphor, and how that interaction is related to reader expectations and reader reception.
Using a Labovian framework, it will attempt to understand how cognitive metaphors appear in specific configurations at specific moments of the narrative structure. This step should allow us to understand the text from the point of view of its reception. In other words, we shall propose that text decoding depends on how the reader grasps the interaction between common metaphorical conceptualizations and their text-specific configurations through narrative processing. Thus, of all the semantic and cognitive possibilities that a particular domain can evoke, some aspects emerge as salient while others remain latent.
The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another e. As suggested in Ponterotto , a cognitive metaphor is a sort of astigmatic eye, which changes focus according to specific orientation. Focusing means naturally that while one element is foregrounded, other elements are pushed into the background.
For example, if one looks at the articles in the NG related to the topic of climatology, specific conceptualizations seem to emerge. Let us consider the description of rivers and their behaviour. In a study by De Zuane , a macrometaphor for geographical phenomena was identified in the CM: Examples of similar utterances which we have found in other articles of NG are: The river rose 25 feet and thousands of acres of paddy fields were ruined. From the plains of Anatolia to the eastern Sahara, nurturing rivers are lifeblood to this arid region Middle East Water Vesilind This unique freshwater system is the pulsing heart of northern Botswana's wilderness Lanting However, a careful observation of the texts reveals that both CMs are sometimes present in the same text.
For example, when describing the consequences of river overflow and flooding, a text may tell the story of how the river as a source of life is transformed into a tool of destruction. Analysis I shall attempt to demonstrate this by means of analysis of the earthquake story found in the NG article: Prelude to the Big One Canby ; see appendix. Their game was in the last inning. We can also note Charteris-Black There are several advantages to placing individual metaphors from different domains of language use within a hierarchical model. The first of these is economy of description.
If we can account for many metaphors with reference to a smaller number of conceptual metaphors, and many conceptual metaphors with reference to a still smaller number of conceptual keys, we will arrive at a more economical model for the description of metaphor. This permits us to understand cross-domain similarities in ways of conceptualising experience. Conceptual Keywords as Cross-domain Links Now the following question arises. How are these CMs related to each other in the textual space? Are they competing for interpretive control?
Or rather are they complementary, co-constructors of meaning and co-orienters of reader interpretation? To answer this question, we would like to refer to the analytic suggestions made by Charteris-Black relative to cross-domain similarities. In his study, he posits the existence of conceptual keys which link domains of social experience; e. For example, he notes that discourses of sports reporting, politics and religion share the notion of struggle. These conceptual keys show that each of these discourse types has metaphors that communicates a fundamental outlook that characterizes the discourse.
The notion of a struggle is shared across the domains—but the specific domain determines the salient discourse goals of the struggle. In politics the discourse goals are social ideals and values, in sports reporting they are victory in competitive sport, in financial reporting they are profits and in religion they are attaining a place in paradise. There is a superordinate conceptual relation between these discourses since they all share the notion of the struggle as necessary to achieve these objectives. In the earthquake text, if we consider social events like sport, war and music as experiential domains, we can note that events within those experiential domains games, battles and symphonies have a similar event structure.
The events all present: The following table clearly summarizes the similarity of event structure in the three domains that emerge in our text: Call to arms 1. Announcement event event 2. Combat of basic motif structure 2. Increase and acceleration of end of play cessation of contrast of energy, activity combat voices and tension 3.
Deceleration and conclusion restoration of harmony and move to conclusion Thus, all three events baseball games, battles and symphonies share similar structural aspects which allow them to be forceful candidates for source domains of a CM. Establishing the Referential Framework As argued in Ponterotto when discussing advertising, headlines or titles have the function of establishing a framework for discourse reference.
In this case, the title activates reference to the cataphoric, exophoric and anaphoric levels related to the social discourse about earthquakes. The cataphoric reference regards the noun phrase Prelude to the big one. As people familiar with American culture will easily recognize, the noun phrase refers to the giant earthquake that is hypothesized to eventually strike Los Angeles. The exophoric reference resides in the noun phrase the big one, embedded in the cataphoric reference, which has become a fixed and repeated utterance in American discourse, carrying affective connotations of anxiety and fear regarding past and future earthquakes.
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The anaphoric reference is to a specific earthquake which occurred on October 17, , the topic of this article. That referential frame however is also sustained by the subtle role played by the lexical term prelude which seems to trigger all three referential operations.
The lexeme prelude functions therefore as a cross-referential keyword, cohesively constructing the overall referential perspective. Moreover, it should be remembered that the word prelude has a polysemic nature, encoding the meanings: The word prelude is part of the lexical set normally associated with many experiential domains, including sports, war and music.
It could be suggested then that, for this specific text, the word prelude functions as a key concept which links the three domains. Announcement of domain 2. Combat basic motif structure 3. Victory and end of 3. Increase and play cessation of contrast of voices combat 3. Restoration and conclusion This procedure then, which tries to describe interrelationships between apparently unrelated domains of experience, is based on the identification of a conceptual key.
The initial referential framing around the event of earthquakes, which triggers reader assumptions about implicit meaning, is anchored in reader recognition of conventional social patterns of events. This aspect emerges also from the study by Ruiz de Mendoza and Diez Velasco , who note: Inferential activity is regulated by cognitive operations. A cognitive operation is a mental mechanism whose purpose is to derive a full semantic representation out of a linguistic expression or another symbolic device, such as a drawing in order to make it fully meaningful in the context in which it is to be interpreted.
Thus, we have identified: By putting it altogether, we derive the following description of the relationship between common metaphorical conceptualizations and text-specific configurations: Establishing the Narrative Structure How does conceptualization move from one possibility to another? In other words, how is it that at one moment, one element is highlighted while the other elements remain hidden? How does a formerly covert element come to centre stage?
Let us remember that this movement occurs in discourse. I would like to suggest therefore that it is determined by the interaction of metaphoric conceptualization and discourse structure. On the one hand the metaphoric configuration is stable and sustains the phases of the discourse. On the other hand, the text orients the metaphoric conceptualization and directs the discourse movement among the options made available by the specific metaphorical configuration. As previously mentioned, although the NG speaks about scientific topics taken from various sub-fields of geography, it is nonetheless a popular journal addressed to non- expert readers.
One will find therefore that its discursive format, rather than being totally argumentative, as in a scientific journal, is often basically that of narrative. A NG article tells stories, and often those stories recount the vicissitudes of a disastrous natural event, like an earthquake, a flood, a destructive bolt of lightning, etc. Consequently, it would be logical to analyze the NG text from the perspective of narratological theory.
Y esta es una de ellas. Al final es condenado a dos cadenas perpetuas. Ellis Boyd Redding o Red para los amigos es un convicto pelirrojo que puede conseguirte lo que necesites desde afiches, chicles, cigarrillos o drogas. Con el tiempo, Red y Andy se vuelven buenos amigos y Andy le confiesa que es inocente de lo que se le acusa. Entonces ya se pueden imaginar como es la historia corta.
Andy le gustaba jugar al ajedrez, tallar figuras con piedras y minerales y le gustaban los afiches de las estrellas de cine del momento, siendo Rita Hayworth la primera elegida que le pide a Red que le consiga. Pero Red nota que Andy es diferente, parece estar hecho de otro material, uno que parece inquebrantable. Sin duda vale mucho la pena leer esta historia.
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In the Tall Grass. For those who do not know, Joe uses a pen name because he did not want to rely on his father's fame. Still, eventually it became known that Joe is Joseph Hillstrom, King's eldest son. This has been quite an experience. Becky and Cal are twins. They have done everything together and their parents think they will be connected for the rest of their lives.
But one day, Becky reveals to her brother that she is pregnant but she does not tell who's the father. So the twins decide to move to live with their uncles until the child is born. When they are on the road they hear the voice of a child, who seems to be lost and is asking for help. The voice seems to come from the side of the road. The twins decide to get off the car and help the child, in the middle of the tall grass.
What could I expect from father and son writing an horror story together? I have not read anything from Joe Hill, but I will do it soon. What I got is one of the most disturbing and asphyxiating short stories I've read in a long time. I mean, it's a story that catches you and maintains a constant tension. It is narrated in two voices and divided into small chapters. I expected suspense and horrifying stuff and I got it. I could not ask for less. Becky and Cal got into the tall grass to help a lost child. What else is hidden in this desolate landscape?
How a story begins in apparent normality to become strange and horrifying is one of the things I like most about King's works. It's capable of turning something normal into an horrible and hard to forget experience. And that's why it's worth reading. I loved to discover Joe Hill's work too.
Stephen King y Joe Hill. La voz parece provenir de una zona despoblada a un costado del camino. Lo que he sentido ha sido un suspenso y un horror escalofriante. Voyage of the Dogs. Lopside is a barkonaut -a dog that has been trained to help and resolve problems on missions in space. He is part of a crew in the spaceship Laika that is going to a distant outpost. But something really bad happen and Lopside and his barkonaut friends: Daisy, Bug and the leader Champion should try to resolve the damage on the ship and survive at the same time. At first I was really excited to read about dogs in space but as the story progressed I found myself really thinking about what could happen if a group of dogs and humans were really in trouble in space.
Who could help them? Is there a way to survive after a fatal incident? So it really put me to think about the message this books was giving. I don't think you should sugarcoat what happens so I really appreciate it. I felt it more real and plausible. All the barkonauts have personality and a rol to play here: Champion as the leader, Bug as the technician, Daisy as the strong and active and Lopside with intelligence to resolve problems.
Also there's a human that is relevant to the story: Roro, the one that adopted Lopside when he was abandoned. I loved to read about the perspective of Lopside and their interaction with the pack. I think it's really well done. The aspects of the technical matters of the spaceship are really well done and I don't think it's hard to understand at all. So kudos to the author for that. Emotional moments and stories of dogs are here too and it's a great addition. I really enjoyed this novel as an adult and I think kids will love it too.
Lopside es un barkonauta, un perro que ha sido entrenado para ayudar y resolver problemas en misiones en el espacio.
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Es parte de un equipo en la nave espacial Laika que se dirige a un planeta distante. Al principio estaba muy interesada por leer un libro infantil con perros en el espacio. Todos los barkonautas tienen personalidad y un rol: And I happen to start with this book. Bathsheba is a hunting whale and, like her sisters, she hunts humans, as they do with her species.
As the third apprentice of the ship Alexandra and armed with harpoons, the whales plow the waters in the opposite direction of humans, they navigate the surface of the Abyss the sky and the air and the depths of the ocean are the whale's sky. Until one day Bathsheba and the crew are faced with a prophecy about a demon that they must kill, the most famous whalekiller of all. This story is the argument of Moby Dick, but this time from the perspective of the whales.
I don't know really how much I am missing or I am not visualizing in its entirety for not having previously read the classic of the white whale. But I also believe that it is a story with a very original point: That is why it is a story that becomes interesting for its content and ideas but not more. I wanted more depth in the characters and it's not a story that you will read in one sitting, it really depends on you.
The book contains illustrations by Rovina Cai and although I could appreciate some, being an advanced digital copy I could not see them all and many of them were drafts. Surely in the final edition they would be amazing and an excellent addition to the story. With this I do not say that it is a bad book, but as a story I liked it but it did not touch me that much. I think that as a short tale it works very well although its writing is rather dry and its characters little developed. But I also believe that in its originality it is worthy of your time.
Unsplash Lo que nos encontramos al iniciar esta historia es el argumento de Moby Dick, pero esta vez desde la perspectiva de las ballenas. Pero igualmente creo que es una historia con un punto muy original: Por tener un aire a cuento realmente no profundiza mucho en sus personajes y no es una historia que te invite a leer sin detenerte.
In the first book we learned that she is not like other girls of the eighteenth century and in this book we are going to have adventures with her on the continent. In her hopes of becoming a lady doctor, Felicity Montague is in Scotland trying to get an interview in a hospital. Meanwhile, she got a job in a bakery. But when the young baker ask her to be his wife, she panicked. Because she does not want to be a wife, she wants to study and become a doctor but nobody would pay attention to the pretensions of a woman.
But Felicty, as headstrong as she is, is willing to try. I noticed in Monty's book that the plot seems to be going in one direction but it changes into an adventure with a lot of problems. As the previous book, the story is set in the eighteenth century, but there is not much description of the places and the characters do not talk like they supossed to.
But this one wasn't as fun as I expected. Narrated from Felicity's point of view we will get to know her problems to be taken seriously as an intelligent woman who knows about medicine and then we will travel with her to Stuttgart for the wedding of Johanna Hoffman, who used to be Felicity's friend but they got distanced. But as you can imagine, things are just starting: Pearl is me reading the first quarter of the book The female characters of the story are here to stay but they did not grip me that much. Johanna, Sim and Felicity make a great group and each one is well rounded, but I still have not felt a genuine interest in their problems.
Felicty's voice is fine but not great although everything around her is valuable and important.
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- Eliza Rapsodia’s 'read-in-english' books on Goodreads (66 books).
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The book gives a clear message of female power and value, in which there is no correct way to be a woman and everything resides in what she wants to do with her life and that she has to take the reins of her own destiny: And the book also deals with topics such as racism and colonialism and that is one of the most interesting things the book can offer. The relationship of the female characters is great. I appreciate we could get to see another spectrum of the LGBT community asexuality. I can't say if it's good rep or not but I think it's so important to show it. In the end it was a book that got me entertained, but I wanted more.
I do not know if it's a matter of expectations, but for a five hundred page novel I felt the pacing was off and I needed something that made me sit down and keep reading because I saw myself several times being bored and not interested. Will I recommed it? Yes, if you loved the first one. I wanted to love it more but I just couldn't.
Pero creo que es importante mostrarlo. This story began in when I started reading all the books for the first time, one per year. Last year I failed, b 4. Last year I failed, but this one I fulfill my promise. I already feel nostalgia that this series is over and maybe, in many years, I'll hop back on the Hogwarts train to meet again with Harry and his friends. This book is so sad. Harry and his friends are in danger as Voldemort and the Death Eaters walk at ease, killing who they want and chasing their opponents.
No one is safe. That is why Harry is determined to finish with the task that Dumbledore left him and with the greatest secrecy, he will be in charge of eliminating the rest of the horcruxes with the help of Ron and Hermione. With more than pages, we have a relative calm before things get very bad and that's why the book may have an irregular pacing.
I really liked learning more about the past of characters like Albus Dumbledore and all the mystery about the Deathly Hallows. As the plot unfolds, the motivations of the characters and their relationships are developed more: The novel takes us to a grand finale. I only had the referent of the movie which I saw when it came out and destroyed my poor soul and I loved seeing how the Battle of Hogwarts differs in several points to what we saw on screen.
I do not think it's a surprise for many but first I must say that I was very surprised to see how Rowling was giving explanations so everything made sense. Although sometimes I felt some details are hard to swallow, everything was explained and wrapped up in the end. Needless to say, my favorite character was always Snape you'll know why and if I explain why is spoiler, so I let it be. Epic moments, painful and heartfelt deaths, beautiful but sad scenes and there is also time to laugh. There's a little bit of everything. I know I'm late for the party but it's inevitable to feel sad when we get to the famous epilogue.
I would have loved that the end had more pages before reaching that moment in the future. Still I believe that the ending meant the end of an era for many. And for me too. The book is as good as might be expected, with aspects that can be improved, but a worthy conclusion to a saga that marked a whole generation of children like me. Of course I recommend it. I consider it a nonsense the size of a Hungarian dragon.
How amazing is Minerva McGonagall. She deserves an altar like, NOW. Este libro es sobradamente triste. Tenemos una relativa calma antes de que las cosas se pongan muy mal y por eso el libro puede tener un ritmo irregular. Sin duda hay de todo para sufrir y ser feliz. Hay de todo un poco. Y eso es todo. Claro que la recomiendo. No voy a leer el libro de Harry Potter and the cursed child. The Hate U Give. Not only because of the mix of sensitive topics such as racism, p 3.
Not only because of the mix of sensitive topics such as racism, police brutality and injustice, but because it was insipired by the BlackLivesMatter movement. It wasn't a surprise when the movie was announced and that the novel held the first place several weeks in the best-selling lists like the New York Times.
Despite having all these credentials, I think it's a nice and well-intentioned novel, but it could have been much better than it was. Nowadays the criminal gangs still fight for the territories to sell drugs, control the illegal rents and "protect" the people. But that's not true. Even though I don't live there anymore, I am still sad and preocupied for my neighborhood. What does all this have to do with the review? Because I could feel empathy because my experience is very similar. Starr Carter lives as I lived in a conflictive zone. In Garden Hights you can hear gunshots. There are gangs and drug dealers.
The Carter family is made of an ex-convict father who now runs a store and a mother who is a hardworking nurse. Through the efforts of their parents, Starr and her brothers Seven and Sekani study at a prestigious school called Williamson, in which Starr feels she must behave like a different person. Things go wrong when Khalil, the childhood friend of the protagonist is killed by a white policeman. Just when she was with him in his car. It's not only that is close and relatable, it points to conflicts that start with social inequality. If people do not have access to education, health and housing, that is called inequality and with lack of opportunities, it causes many people to fall into illegality.
And we see that. You can choose, but not everyone can say the same. Starr's family, her friends and neighborhood are a result of what inequality does. And then is added the neuralgic theme of the novel: Because discrimination is never good, no matter the color. Starr's family, their relationships with friends and neighbors became credible and close. I think it's been a long time since I saw YA parents so present and that's refreshing. Through the dialogues between the characters and their different reactions and conflicts is what develops the social commentary.
Racism and prejudices are present and Starr feels fear, anger and a pressing guilt that is affecting her daily life and she must face them and speak up. Although there is a lot of good, the novel has flaws that really do bad to its quality. It is a book with a very powerful message, but it is not perfect. The story starts really strong but then the consistency is lost because it approaches so many topics, has a lot of unnecessary drama and we feel that loses the north of what it wants to tell.
That is why I feel the book is SO long and is even boring. Still I did not feel a genuine connection with any of them. The narration is quite simple, without much description and not impressive. There were times that it was hard for me to understand certain expressions and very specific words english is not my first language.
There is an omnipresent allusion and constant reference to shoes and I find it distracting. I mean, they talked about a specific shoe and I had no idea. There are also many references to pop culture like Harry Potter, The Fresh Prince, the music of Tupac Shakur which gives the title to the novel and many other references to music, video games and more. The hate u give is a good read, one that talks about real life problems that should be addressed. I feel that many people gave the book such high ratings for this reason, but it is not enough for me.
Despite it has good and powerful intentions, it could have been much shorter, more effective and much better than it was. El Espectador Les voy a contar una historia: En Garden Hights a menudo se escuchan tiros. Hay pandillas y venta de drogas. La familia Carter tiene a un padre ex convicto que ahora administra una tienda de barrio y una madre que es una enfermera que trabaja mucho.
Por el esfuerzo de sus padres, Starr y sus hermanos Seven y Sekani estudian en un colegio prestigioso llamado Williamson, en el que Starr siente que debe comportarse como no es en realidad. En la novela se toca el punto: Y eso lo vemos. Que se puede elegir, pero no todos pueden decir lo mismo. La familia de Starr, sus amigos y su vecindario son un reflejo de lo que hace la desigualdad. Es un problema en el que el racismo y los prejuicios juegan un papel determinante.
Starr siente miedo, rabia, culpa y una impotencia que afectan su vida diaria y debe enfrentarlos para poder seguir adelante. Y eso nos muestra escenas y momentos que ponen los problemas sobre la mesa. Aunque hay mucho bueno, la novela tiene fallas que hacen mella en su calidad, porque es una novela con un mensaje muy potente, pero no es perfecta ni de lejos. Por esto la novela se hace larga para lo que cuenta y en algunos momentos es hasta aburrida.
What If It's Us. So, imagine what would have happened if they wrote a book together. I had not read anything by Adam Silvera yet, but he is preceded by lots of good reviews and I will probably read something by him soon. I have already read Becky with Simon vs the homo sapiens agenda, and that was a book that I liked but did not impress me. Ben and Arthur met in New York at a post office. Ben was going to send a box of memories and stuff to his ex when he came across with a really cute boy.
Arthur is from Georgia and is only in town for the summer and Ben is a New Yorker who is stuck in summer school. They see each other for a brief moment but they leave the post office and that was it. Until Ben decides that he must find Arthur again. I think it's good to go without expectations, because surely you will not be dissapointed.
I think this story addresses real life issues about relationships, friendships and family, but that could have been much better than it was. The plot starts with two people that meet by fate and then talks about love, its plausibility and if we are destined to have certain things happen to us and and people that come to our lives and may not remain forever. That's why I expected a lot more of what I got. The main characters, Ben and Arthur, have chapters from their point of view, so we can get to know them individually. Although I liked them, I could not connect with them. Sometimes I found myself confusing their voices and not remembering who was talking.
Their family dynamics are fine and I appreciate to see more of that, even if it was scarce. The romance is adorable and on point, if you know that they are teenagers and they are just starting a relationship. But I could not shake the feeling that the novel is a case of too many pages and very little content. I had moments when I was extremely bored. It is a novel of pages for like two weeks or so of plot. Almost five hundred pages. That's why I think it's too long. Not only we have Ben and Arthur together, we have moments with their family, friends, at work and at school, which is good.
We also have conversations by text messages and phonecalls by Facetime. Because of this, the secondary characters fell kind of flat for me. The novel also has too many references to musicals, movies and pop culture, and that can be annoying. Undoubtedly, there is an important moment in the novel in which the famous musical Hamilton is very important and if you have not seen it, I suppose it will not make sense to some readers. And this has been my case, unfortunately. It's like it's trying to hard to actual and relatable.
Then the book ends and I think it has a very good finale. And that's why I am so conflicted about this story. Because I think it starts very strong and has a lot of potential but is wasted with a rather poor execution. The characters I liked but not loved, although I think their family dynamics are well handled and I enjoyed to see more of that, but their history has TOO many pages and could have been shorter and probably, a lot better.
Ben y Arthur se han cruzado en Nueva York en una oficina de correos. Se ven unos momentos, se enteran que ambos son gays y desde ese encuentro no vuelven a verse. Hasta que Ben decide que debe volver a encontrar a Arthur y espera poder lograrlo. Aunque en general no me han disgustado, tampoco me han encantado. La parte del romance me ha parecido correcta, si se tiene en cuenta que son adolescentes y llevan poco de conocerse.
Tuve momentos en los que estaba sumamente aburrida. Por eso creo que es muy largo para lo que cuenta. Por esto los secundarios no llegan a ser muy relevantes tampoco. Y este ha sido mi caso, infortunadamente. Entonces el libro se acaba y creo que ha sido un buen final. Y por eso me genera tanto conflicto esta novela. The Miseducation of Cameron Post. So I decided to read it Well, I start by saying that I expected to like it, but that never happened. The beginning was promising. The novel is divided into three time lines, beginning in Cameron Post is a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Montana.
She has a best friend named Irene and a normal family, her parents and her grandmother. We get to know Cameron and her family and the beginning of the summer of She is discovering things about her own sexuality that make her feel strange, and she knows she's not perfect and doesn't want to. Despite everything I've said, the book just did not grip me. I did not find anything in Cameron's story that would make me want to know more about her life and her problems. The secondary characters, although well drawn, did not interest me either except Grandma Post, I think she is the best.
The situations are well described, but they were not interesting or enjoyable. I felt that Cameron's story was an adult trying to talk like a girl. Religion is very important in the story and I think it is well treated. I kept reading, two years passed and we are in , but I did not feel a significant impulse to continue reading.
I tend to be a patient reader and maybe it get interesting at the end, but when neither the narration, nor the characters, nor the story get my interest I just think it's better to stop. Other readers have said words like "heavy" or "dry" to describe the writing and I have to agree.
Maybe other people will love it, but it's not my case. Maybe I'll try with the movie. La novela se divide en tres lineas temporales, comenzando en Hasta que algo malo sucede. Conocemos a Cameron, su entorno familiar y el inicio del verano de junto a su amiga Irene. Ella va descubriendo cosas sobre su propia sexualidad que la hacen sentirse rara y algo ansiosa. I saw the talent she has to narrate and build characters, even though with the last book of that trilogy I was deeply disappointed. Still I requested this book to read it.
And believe me, I am pleasantly surprised. The small town of Twin Lakes is still shocked by a tragic event: Her friends, Mia Ferguson and Brynn McNally, are the principal suspects and everyone blame them for it. Five years have passed but Summer's ghost is still present. Mia and Brynn are dead and alive: Not knowing what happened is a question that does not let them live in peace. Until one day, Mia and Brynn meet again.
Broken things is a novel with a premise that might seem typical at first, but the key is that it's a well done and interesting novel: The novel is narrated alternating the past and the present from the points of view of Mia and Brynn. We get to know them very well and through them the ghost of Summer is present, the friend who united them and separated them.
When they were thirteen, Summer brought with her The Way into Lovelorn , a book that obsessed them so much that they began to write a fanfic of how the story would continue. Summer's death destroyed the lives of Mia and Brynn. Both are trapped in a spiral where everyone blames them, although they know they are not guilty. I think Lauren Oliver did a great job. Both characters are very well constructed, their voices are defined and we can understand and get to know Summer herself: Brynn and Mia's reunion is the point when the story develops into a mistery: Although they are not as developed as the two main protagonists, they add to the story.
We are intrigued to discover the clues contained in the history of Lovelorn and if they will help to reveal the truth. Although I feel that the novel does not escape certain topics and common places in YA and I found a lack of closure in Brynn's story, I truly belive Lauren has written a good and engaging story. She plays with the mystery, pointing the finger to certain people and their motivations. Broken things is a well worked novel, with consistent characters; a novel that talks about love, friendship and guilt.
I definitely recommend it. Hasta que Mia y Brynn vuelven a reencontrarse. Vermont, donde sucede la historia. El pasado, el presente y la muerte de Summer han destrozado las vidas de Mia y Brynn. Vamos descubriendo como sus vidas han sido un desastre desde entonces: En este aspecto creo que Lauren Oliver se luce con creces.
Aparecen otros personajes como Owen, el antiguo amigo de Mia, Abby, la nueva amiga de Mia y Wade, el primo -primo de la madre- de Brynn. Y creo que ha sido una experiencia lectora intrigante y amena. Sin duda la recomiendo mucho y he vuelto a recuperar mi fe en Lauren Oliver. Annihilation Southern Reach, 1. I knew about this book but I never really thought about reading it, but the m 3.
I knew about this book but I never really thought about reading it, but the moment came and I read it. Also the book has now a movie adaptation on Netflix with Natalie Portman and I want to watch it soon. Southern Reach, a state agency has been commissioned to send expeditions to investigate the area. Eleven expeditions later, any of the members have survived or have returned feeling normal. Now, two years after that the eleven expedition failed, it is the turn of the twelft, with four women a psychologist, a biologist, an archaeologist and a surveyor.
This beginning of this trilogy is narrated from the point of view of the biologist. She will narrate her past and her present, beginning with her and her companions arriving at Area X. Undoubtedly the strong point of this story is the setting. As much as we do not know the name of any of the women, from the point of view of the biologist we can get to know them a bit and explore the true protagonist of the story, which is Area X. This novel creates a really powerful mystery about what has happened there and the beings that live in the woods.
Area X has many unusual things and I think it has been the best thing of the novel. I think the narrator the biologist is an example of an unreliable one and as readers, we have more questions that answers. I loved discovering things with the protagonist, even though I did not empathize with her and I guess that was the idea. I thought she had a really cold perspective and despite the fact that she is revealing things from her past, the truth is that I didn't really care for her.
Despite all of this, I think this is a really interesting novel and I will be reading the second installment of the trilogy. El Area X tiene muchas cosas poco comunes entre su flora y su fauna y creo que ha sido muy interesante irlo descubriendo. La novela es bastante corta pero logra dejarme la suficiente intriga para saber que va a suceder en los siguientes libros. I knew about him almost a d 4. I knew about him almost a decade ago, through someone who told me about his existence.
And now, many years later, I decided to read Mort. In the Discworld, Mortimer is a all knees, skinny boy that frankly is not made for the family work. So his father takes him to a job fair and they will wait until midnight, if necessary. Hours later, when they are about to leave, a skeletal figure appears, with blue lights inside empty sockets, a blue-edged scythe and a horse that likes sugar cubes.
The father accepts right away and the adventure of Mort begin. Sadly, today is the day I talk about Terry and today we also commemorate three years of his passing. Sometimes, books arrive when they have to and it is for me something happy and sad. Discworld is a flat world like a disk , held on the back of four elephants that travel on top of a large turtle called A'Tuin. There are all kinds of creatures and even magic has a peculiar colour. Discworld works are 41 novels divided into several sagas that can be read independently of one another, but there are several reading guides online you can check out.
That's the reason why I started with this book and not with The Colour of Magic the novel that started it all. Basically because I heard amazing things about this one. And it didn't dissapoint. I was quite an experience. The situations and problems in which the boy and other characters like Albert, Ysabell and DEATH itself are filled with humor, sharp reflections masked with fun moments. Reflections on life, death, destiny within a funny novel with a cast of interesting characters. View More by This Author.
A chance encounter with a pretty stranger on Charlotte Street leaves Jason accidentally in possession of her disposable camera, though not of her name. At Dev's insistence, they develop the photos. Thereby hangs a tale, which wends its witty way through a road trip to Yorkshire with an auto mechanic, several run-ins with an angry political puppeteer, and a foray to a posh event promoting juices with acai.
The combination of Dickensian plot twists and Hornbyesque humor and hope makes for a thoroughly entertaining read. Customer Ratings We have not received enough ratings to display an average for this book. More by Danny Wallace.