english reading journal 7 ,49680005,L, 吳冠英

David Lurie is a professor of "Communications" at a Cape Town university. His specialty is Romantic poets, in particular Byron. At age 52, twice divorced and finding satisfaction, if not fulfillment, in "orchestrated liaisons" with whores, Lurie is a trivial version of the "Byronic(拜倫式的)" hero he studies. Despite his professorship, Lurie, by his own admission, is no teacher. He prefers the title"scholar." He is in fact a operator, a controller.

One evening he has a chance encounter with one of his students, a 20 year-old co-ed named Melanie. He invites her for dinner and seduces her. Melanie is quickly repulsed by the idea of romance with a man more than twice her age. Lurie, though, pursues her with what he perceives to be heroic passion. Melanie soon falls into depression. Her tatooed, goateed boyfriend-another Byronic cartoon-and her fundamentalist father--another teacher by profession, controller by action--confront Lurie and urge Melanie to file harassment charges against him. In an act of deluded Romantic persecution, Lurie confesses without apology to the affair, practically daring university authorities to dismiss him from his post. They oblige.

english journal 6 , 49680005,吳冠英,L

The novel which i chose to read after "never let me go" is "Disgrace"

The author of this book is J.M.Coetzee who won the Nobel prize for literature at 2003.

This novel was published by "Vintage" at 2000.It contains about six thousands words on 219 pages.

It seems to be a long story,but the central issue or in the other word the main theme of this book is really appetizing to me , that is "racial discrimination in south africa".

A professor who was teaching Romantic poetry at an University in Cape town south africa began the whole story.David lurie,as a professor,who has twice divorced,and horribly ,has a impulsive affair with his student,also know as "teacher-student relationship".

For a time,his daughter played a role who influence and harmonise his discordant life.But when the balance of power in the country was about to change and shift.He and his daughter decame victims of a savage and disturbing attack.

reading journal 5,吳冠英,L

This two weeks, I finish the final part of "Never Let Me Go".

This part describes Tommy's and Ruth's becoming donors and Kathy's becoming a carer. Kathy cares for Ruth and then, after Ruth completes (a euphemism for death), Kathy takes care of Tommy. Before her death, Ruth expresses regret over coming between Kathy and Tommy, and urges them to pursue a relationship with one another and to seek to defer their donations based on their love. Encouraged by Ruth's last wishes, Kathy and Tommy visit Madame, where they also meet their old headmistress, Miss Emily. During this visit, they learn why artistic production had always been emphasized at Hailsham: the teachers wanted to prove that the clones had souls, that they possessed intellect, creativity, and humanity. The clones learn that Hailsham in general was an experiment, an effort to improve the conditions for clones and perhaps alter the attitudes of society, which prefers to view the clones merely as non-human sources of organs. Miss Emily reports that the teachers failed in their efforts, and consequently Hailsham was closed. The novel ends, after the death of Tommy, on a note of resignation, as Kathy accepts her own inevitable fate as a donor and her eventual "completion."

english readig journal 4 ,吳冠英,L

Last two weeks I finished the chapter 4,5,6 and 7.

In this four chapters, the characters, whom become young adults, decide to move to the "Cottages", residential complexes where they start to have contacts with the external world and they have much more time and are relatively free to do what they want and what they like.

At this moment, a romantic relationship develops between Ruth and Tommy, while Kathy explores her sexuality but without forming
any stable connections. While these young adults at the Cottages, they travel to Norfolk to investigate the reported sighting of Ruth's
"possible" ( that is, the person from which she was cloned ). When they approach this woman, they realize that they were wrong and all go
home. All of them feel very disappointed and upset.

English Reading Journal3 ,L,吳冠英

It's a shame that i started my English reading just at last week.

It's too late and also impratical to find or make any excause for myself.

The book that I chose to be my reading task is a novel named "Never let me go" writen by Kazuo Ishiguro.

The name of the book " Never let me go" usually make peaple associated with some sentimental stories or something romantic,

but actually it is a science fiction contains literary components.

The autor "Kazuo Ishiguro",a Japanese-British writor who won the Booker Prize in 1989 with his previous novel "The remains of the

day",try hard to convey the central issue of the free will through this novel and pondered it by every charactors in the story.

The novel describes the childhood of Kathy H, a young woman of 31, focusing at first on her youth at an unusual boarding school and

eventually, her adult life. The story takes place in a dystopian britain, in which human beings are cloned to provide donor organs for

transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors, though the adult Kathy is temporarily working as a "carer,"

someone who supports and comforts donors as they are made to give up their organs and, eventually, submit to death.

"above excerpt from the introduction of the book"

The novel can be divided into three parts, chronicling the three phases of the lives of its main characters

I have completed the chapter1,2 and 3 already.

The begenning of the story is set at Hailsham, a boarding school where the children are brought up and educated. The teachers there

mysteriously encourage the students to produce various forms of art. The best works are chosen by a woman known only as Madame

and are said to be collected in a gallery. That Hailsham is not a normal school is also indicated by the emphasis on frequent medical

checks and other odd details.

The story is very charming to me , it aroused my curiosity and keeping me to read it as a before-sleeping job.