4. Use the following words and word combinations to comment on your preferences as a reader:

• good, interesting, famous, popular, exciting, thrilling, entertaining, informative, instructive, fascinating, enjoyable, amazing, trashy, dull, boring;

• a novel, a book about travel, memoirs, a detective story, a poem, an essay, science fiction, a play, a historical novel;

• to occupy one’s spare time, to while away an evening, to learn something, to read a few pages, to waste time on reading, not to care a straw, can(not) do with…, to send one to sleep.

Model: I like reading historical novels. They are usually interesting and informative. A good historical novel gives us ideas and teaches us something useful. I haven’t got much spare time, so I do not read trashy crime stories.

5. Pick out a one-page extract in your favourite book written in Ukrainian. Translate it into English trying to observe its style.

6. Figure out the book genre from its definition and give some names of the writers as examples:

1. A traditional short story that teaches a moral lesson, especially a story about animals. 2. A story about the love of two people or a story that had brave characters and exciting events. 3. A story written to be acted in front of the audience. 4. An ancient story, especially one invented in order to explain natural or historical events. 5. A story about a crime, often a murder, and a detective who tries to investigate who did it. 6. A kind of writing in which imaginary future developments in science and their effect on life are described. 7. A kind of writing made up of stories that take place in a particular time period in the past. Often the basic setting is real, but the characters are fictional. 8. Stories that take place in modern time, right here and now. The characters are involved in events that could really happen. 9. A novel or story about a mysterious event or events which are not explained until the end, so as to keep the reader in suspense. 10. Fiction that contains elements that are not realistic, such as talking animals, magical powers, etc., make-believe is what this is all about. 11. All of the information in these books is true facts. It can be on any subject. 12. The story of a real person’s life, written or told by another person. 13. A story with no known author, originally passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth. 14. A story that usually explains something about the world and involves gods and other superhuman beings. 15. The story of a person’s life, written or told by that person. 16. Verse written to create though feeling from the reader. It often uses rhythm and rhyme to convey its meaning.

7. Read the following extracts from a tale, an essay, science fiction, a biography, a crime story, a fable, a travel book, a play. Decide which extract belongs to which genre of literature / which is written by whom. Say what prompts you the correct answer.

1. “Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?” asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

2. “Recount to me the facts, Inspector, I know nothing at all.” “That’s easily done. Old lady was taken bad after dinner on Tuesday night. Very alarming. Convulsions – spasms – what not. They sent for the doctor. By the time he arrived she was dead. Idea was she’d died of a fit. Well, he didn’t much like the look of things. He hemmed and hawed and put it with a bit of soft sawder, but he made it clear that he couldn’t give a death certificate. And as far as the family go, that’s where the matter stands. They’re awaiting the result of the post-mortem. We’ve got a bit further. The doctor gave us the tip right away – he and the police surgeon did the autopsy together – and the result is in no doubt whatever. The old lady died of a large dose of strychnine.”

3. High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

He was very much admired indeed. “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked on of the town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.

“Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?” asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. “The happy prince never dreams of crying for anything.”

4. An Inoffensive Person walking in a public place was assaulted by a Stranger with a Club, and severely beaten.

When the Stranger with a Club was brought to trial, the complainant said to the Judge:

“I do not know why I was assaulted. I have not an enemy in the world.”

“That,” said the defendant, “is why I struck him.”

“Let the prisoner be discharged,” said the Judge. “A man who has no enymies has no friends. The courts are not for such.”

5. If you are looking at pictures, photographs, ballet, ice shows and other spectacles, films and television programmes, you cannot be curled up in a chair with a book. Moreover, the mind finds it hard to use its interior eye with a lot of noise about, and quiet corners are harder to find than they used to be. In this atmosphere it is impossible for the art of literature to flourish. A feeling for words, a sense of their magical potency, can no longer be acquired. Some interest in ideas,

on which the appreciation of literature also depends, is hardly felt at all.

6. Algernon: How are you, my dear Ernest? What brings you up to town?

Jack: Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere? Eating as usual, I see, Algy!

Algernon: I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o’clock. Where have you been since last Tuesday?

Jack: (sitting down on the sofa): In the country.

Algernon: What on earth do you do there?

Jack: (pulling of his gloves): When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

7. There would not, perhaps, be a more pleasant of profitable study, among those which have their principal end in amusement, than that of travels or voyages, if they were writ, as they might be, and ought to be, with a joint view to the entertainment and information of mankind. If the conversation of travelers be so eagerly thought after as it is, we may believe their books will be still more agreeable company, as they will, in general, be more instructive and more entertaining.

8. Up to the age of ten or thereabouts, I would seem to have been not just a good boy, but, if a mother and aunts are to be believed, a hero. How can it then have been that suddenly, as throughout of a clear sky a loving mother, a devoted aunt, and a most affectionate grandmother should in solemn conclave decide that, having had in ten years just about all that they could put up with, I must be sent, for discipline, to a good, strict boarding school!

(Excerpts from: The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon by H. Fielding, The Time Machine by H. Wells, How Does Your Garden Grow? by A. Christie, Essays of five Decades by J. Priestley, The Happy Prince by O. Wilde, The Man with no enemies by A. Bierce, It’s Me O Lord by R. Kent, The Importance of Being Earnest by O. Wilde)