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Describe a book or article that you enjoyed reading for your studies.

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IELTS essay Describe a book or article that you enjoyed reading for your studies.

  • Structure your answers in logical paragraphs
  • ? One main idea per paragraph
  • Include an introduction and conclusion
  • Support main points with an explanation and then an example
  • Use cohesive linking words accurately and appropriately
  • Vary your linking phrases using synonyms
  • Try to vary your vocabulary using accurate synonyms
  • Use less common question specific words that accurately convey meaning
  • Check your work for spelling and word formation mistakes
  • Use a variety of complex and simple sentences
  • Check your writing for errors
  • Answer all parts of the question
  • ? Present relevant ideas
  • Fully explain these ideas
  • Support ideas with relevant, specific examples
  • ? Currently is not available
  • Meet the criteria
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Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card

Raajdeep Saha

Updated On Mar 15, 2024

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

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Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card

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Table of Contents [ Show ]

  • Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot
  • IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 1
  • IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 2
  • IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 3
  • IELTS Cue Card Part 3 Follow-Up Questions

During Part 2 of the IELTS Speaking test, you will have exactly one minute to prepare and speak on a specific topic like the ‘Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot.’ This is the part 2   IELTS cue card   task after which the follow-up questions will be asked, for  part 3 .

You can learn how to communicate clearly and successfully by reviewing sample answers. Then, based on the cue card topic, This IELTS cue card allows you to share one of your opinions on an area of science that interests you.

This article contains the ‘Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot’ cue card sample answers. You can learn how to answer  IELTS speaking cue card topics  by looking at the 3 given sample answers!

Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot.

You should say:.

What was this book?

Why did you decide to read it? 

What did reading this book make you think about?

Explain why you enjoyed reading this book.

Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 1

I’ve had the chance to read many books outside of my academic studies, and each one has been a learning experience. Some books brought joy, while others evoked sadness. But there’s one book in particular that made me think differently. It’s called “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand.

I was drawn to this book because I wanted to uncover untold stories from the devastating war.

This book tells the incredible story of Lieutenant Louis Zamperini, who faced extreme challenges after his American Air Force bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The author vividly describes Zamperini’s epic struggle against nature, hunger, enemy aircraft, and more. After reading it, I was struck by the resilience of the human spirit displayed by Zamperini, who faced death head-on.

What I enjoyed most about the book was its detailed and vivid description of Zamperini’s experiences. It shed light on a lesser-known aspect of World War II, which historians had overlooked in the past. In my opinion, it’s one of the most inspirational war-related books I’ve ever read.

Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 2

The book I enjoyed reading because it made me think a lot was “1984” by George Orwell.

Why did you decide to read it?

I decided to read “1984” because I had heard a lot about its thought-provoking themes and dystopian setting. Plus, it’s considered a classic, so I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

Reading “1984” made me think a lot about the power dynamics in society and the dangers of totalitarianism. It made me reflect on how governments can manipulate information and control people’s thoughts and actions. The book also raised questions about individuality, privacy, and the nature of truth.

I enjoyed reading “1984” because it challenged my perspective and made me question the world around me. It was fascinating to explore the ideas presented in the book and consider their relevance to our own society. Plus, Orwell’s writing style kept me engaged from start to finish. Overall, it was a thought-provoking and enlightening read that left a lasting impression on me.

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Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer 3

The book that captured my interest and made me think deeply was “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari.

I decided to read “Sapiens” because I wanted to gain a better understanding of human history and our place in the world. I had heard many positive reviews about the book and its exploration of various aspects of human evolution and society.

Reading “Sapiens” made me understand the origins of human civilization, the development of cultures and societies, and the impact of technology and ideology on our species. It also made me reflect on the complexities of human behavior, beliefs, and interactions throughout history.

I enjoyed reading “Sapiens” because it presented complex ideas in a clear and engaging manner. Harari’s storytelling ability and his ability to connect historical events to modern-day issues kept me hooked throughout the book. It challenged my existing beliefs and broadened my perspective on humanity’s past, present, and future. Overall, it was an enlightening read that encouraged me to think critically about the world around me!

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Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot – IELTS Cue Card Part 3 Follow-Up Questions

1. Do you think it is important for children to read books? Why?

Yes, reading books is very important for children as it develops their language skills, expands their vocabulary and knowledge, stimulates their imagination, and promotes reading comprehension and critical thinking. It is an essential part of a child’s overall development and education.

2. What kinds of books do you think children like to read?

Children often enjoy storybooks like fairy tales, fables, adventure stories, myths, and fantasy books. Picture books with colorful illustrations also appeal to them. As they grow older, they tend to prefer chapter books, comic books, joke books, etc.

3. Do you think parents should spend money to buy books for their children?

Yes, buying books for children is a worthwhile investment as it supports their reading habits and interest in books. Reading develops a child’s mind and personality. Hence, parents should allocate a budget for age-appropriate books for their kids.

4. Do you think children should read electronic books, or is it better for them to read traditional printed books?

While e-books are more accessible and environment-friendly, printed books are better for children. Tactile stimulation of holding and flipping pages aids child development. Print books avoid screen fatigue. Most importantly, they promote parent-child bonding through reading together.

5. What kinds of books do you like to read?

I enjoy reading a diverse mix of fiction and non-fiction books on topics like philosophy, psychology, history, business, and spiritual growth. Some of my favorite fiction genres include mystery, thriller, and fantasy novels. I like books that make me think and offer new perspectives.

6. Do you think schools should encourage students to read books apart from textbooks?

Yes, schools must motivate students to read beyond textbooks for all-round development. Reading diverse books improves their reading and comprehension ability, analytical skills, and creativity. Schools can facilitate this by having well-stocked libraries, reading periods, book reviews/discussions, and recommended reading programs.

7. Do you think parents should read books to their children before they can read? Why?

Yes, parents reading aloud to children is extremely beneficial even before they learn to read themselves. It develops listening skills, and imagination and expands their vocabulary. It builds reading readiness, interest, and motivation to read. It promotes parent-child bonding. Reading routines must begin in infancy for maximum impact.

8. Do you think watching TV and playing computer games affects children’s reading habits in any way?

Yes, excessive TV and gaming do affect reading habits negatively. They eat into the time available for reading, make sustained concentration difficult, and shorten kids’ attention spans. Parents must regulate screen time and encourage reading as an alternate activity to develop good lifelong reading habits.

9. Do you think there are any differences between reading electronic books and reading traditional paper books?

While e-books provide convenience, portability, and instant access, paper books offer better comprehension, retention, and feel. Paper books do not cause eye strain or distractions. Flipping pages and annotations are easier. Most importantly, print books feel more real, which enhances the reading experience and enjoyment.

10. What do you think schools should do to encourage students to do more reading?

Schools should have well-equipped libraries, reading time in timetables, reading competitions, book clubs, meet-the-author events, recommended reading lists, reviews, and discussion forums. Appreciating extensive readers is important. The focus should be on reading for pleasure over academic reading only. Rewards, and recommendations by teachers also help.

  • Comprehension  – The ability to understand something.
  • Tactile  – Relating to the sense of touch.
  • Stimulation  – The action of arousing interest or excitement.
  • Sustained  – Continuing for an extended period without interruption.
  • Concentration  – The action or power of focusing all one’s attention.
  • Retention  – The ability to remember things.
  • Annotation  – Adding notes or comments to a text.
  • Extensive  – Covering a large area; having a great range.
  • Academic  – Relating to education and scholarship.
  • Pleasure  – A feeling of happiness, satisfaction and enjoyment.

We highly believe that the given IELTS cue card topic ‘Describe a Book that You Enjoyed Reading without Thinking a Lot’ with the expert-crafted sample answers would have been of much help! Kindly make sure to use your vocabulary and style of speaking to grab that band 8 in the IELTS Speaking test!

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Raajdeep Saha

Raajdeep Saha

Raajdeep Saha, an MBA graduate in Marketing from IMT Ghaziabad and holder of a BCA degree from The Heritage Academy, boasts three years of experience as a Senior Content Marketing Specialist. His focus lies in crafting persuasive content for IELTS, CELPIP, and TOEFL. Simultaneously, he's an accomplished author and poet, with his published work, "OUSHQ," showcasing his literary prowess. He seamlessly marries his marketing acumen with creative storytelling, making him a versatile professional of both corporate and artistic distinction.

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Describe a book that you enjoyed reading because you had to think a lot You should say What this book was why you decided to read it what reading this book made you think about and explain why you enjoyed reading this book v.1

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IELTS essay Describe a book that you enjoyed reading because you had to think a lot You should say What this book was why you decided to read it what reading this book made you think about and explain why you enjoyed reading this book v. 1

  • some people believe that children are given too much free time. They feel that this time should be used to do more school work. how do you think children should spend their free time. givereason for your answer and incliude any relevent example from your own knowledge or experience. most of the people on the world, they think school children need to spend much more time to their leisure activities than school work. Although, they can get more advantage when they having free time. In my opinion they will benefits by doing leisure activities more than school home work. ONE OF THE ...
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Cue Card # 168: Describe a book that you enjoyed reading

Ielts cue card/ candidate task card # 168, describe a book that you enjoyed reading because you had to think a lot..

You should say:

  • what this book was
  • why you decided to read it
  • what reading this book made you think about

and explain why you enjoyed reading this book.

[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]

Model Answer 1:

I don’t really get much time or opportunities to read many books these days, probably because I am just too busy earning my livelihood. But, I guess, I just got little lucky last summer when I got some time off from my job. And that’s when I managed to read a good book which actually made me think a lot.

The book, I am talking about, is called “The Story of My Life” which is written by Helen Keller. Published in 1903 by Doubleday, Page & Co. as a book, it gives a very inspirational account of the world of a blind and deaf girl, whose speech development also ceased soon after, as she grows up. The main characters in this book are the writer herself (Helen Keller) and Anne Sullivan (a teacher who taught Helen Keller). This is such a book that it would be really difficult for a reader to withdraw from it unless he/she finishes it in just one sitting. And at the end of reading it, one sure would be able to put a smile on his/her face and restore spirit at a time when so much negativity envelopes us.

By the way, I didn’t really know much about Helen Keller except that she was some kind of English “writer”. But, when I incidentally read an article about some of the most “inspirational women figures” of the 20th century, last summer, I came to know about her in great more detail, and it was at that time that I decided to read this all-time, American classic, written by this prolific American author.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this book, from start to finish, primarily because it had me think a lot. In fact, I was losing my mind just to even imagine how possibly a woman with such “debilitating disabilities” could actually finish her graduation at a time and age when very few women would attend colleges, and when the disabled would simply be relegated to the background and neglected like some kind of “untouchable creature”?

Model Answer 2:

Over the last few years, I was lucky to have read a few books that were, more or less, interesting and thought-provoking. But, none of them really matched the appeal of the book that was written by Stephen Hawking. So, I guess, it is only fair that I talk about that book here.

The name of this is “A Brief History of Time”, and I read this book about a year ago when I was enjoying my summer holidays at my elder sister’s place. Well, I should have rather said that I only “started” to read this book during that summer holidays, and I continued reading it for the next few days before I could finish it, apparently because it had lots of pages to cover. In fact, if I remember correctly, this book had more than 250 pages.

Now, the size of this book would have been enough of a reason to avoid reading it, but I still chose to read it because I wanted to prove to myself that I was intellectually sound enough to understand and appreciate some of the complex theories of science and their interpretations in relation to the events of our world as well as the universe. I chose to read it also because up until that point, I never read a book that was written by such a world-famous scientist like Stephen Hawking. But, for whatever reason that I chose to read this book, it made me think that God and science can actually co-exist. Besides, it also made me think that how insignificant we really are in this universe.

So, in the end, it is fair to say that I really enjoyed reading this book, mainly because many of the things, which I learned at school a long time ago, were proved to be either outdated or wrong. But, what was even more interesting about reading this book was that I just didn’t know whether to feel dumber or smarter after finishing reading it, because there were just so many new things in it to understand!

Model Answer 3:

Introduction: Reading a thought-provoking book can be a captivating and intellectually stimulating experience. It challenges our thinking, expands our knowledge, and leaves a lasting impact on our perspective. One such book that comes to mind is “1984” by George Orwell. For this topic, I would like to talk about this book.

What this book was: “1984” is a dystopian novel set in a totalitarian society where individuality and freedom of thought are suppressed. It portrays a future world ruled by a government that manipulates information, surveils its citizens, and controls their every action. The story follows the protagonist, Winston Smith, as he rebels against the oppressive regime and seeks to preserve his autonomy.

Why you decided to read it: I chose to read “1984” because of its reputation as a classic work of literature that explores themes of power, surveillance, and the dangers of a totalitarian regime. The book had received critical acclaim for its thought-provoking narrative and its relevance to the contemporary world.

What reading this book made you think about: Reading “1984” prompted me to contemplate the fragility of freedom, the consequences of unchecked power, and the importance of individuality. The novel delves into the psychological effects of living in a surveillance state, where privacy is non-existent, and dissent is met with severe punishment. It made me question the role of government in shaping society, the manipulation of information to control the masses, and the potential dangers of sacrificing personal liberties for the sake of security.

The book also made me reflect on the significance of language and the manipulation of truth. Orwell’s portrayal of Newspeak, a language designed to limit independent thought, highlighted the power of language in shaping our perceptions and constraining our ability to question authority.

And explain why you enjoyed reading this book: I thoroughly enjoyed reading “1984” because it engaged me intellectually and provoked introspection. It challenged me to question the status quo, examine the structures of power, and ponder the consequences of complacency. The story was gripping, and Orwell’s vivid descriptions and powerful prose brought the dystopian world to life.

Model Answer 4:

I believe that autobiographies provide us with a unique insight into the lives and experiences of extraordinary individuals. One such autobiography that was quite thought-provoking and intriguing is “Wings of Fire” by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the former President of India. I enjoyed reading this book to a great extent.

“Wings of Fire” is an autobiography that recounts the life and achievements of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. It takes readers on a remarkable journey, beginning with his childhood in Rameswaram, a small town in South India, and follows his path through various personal and professional milestones. The book explores his early influences, his education, his work at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and his later role as the President of India.

I was drawn to “Wings of Fire” because of my admiration for Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and his contributions to science, technology, and nation-building. His remarkable story of perseverance and dedication was so inspiring for me, and I wanted to gain deeper insights into his life and the experiences that shaped him.

“Wings of Fire” made me reflect on the power of determination, self-belief, and hard work. Dr. Kalam’s journey from a modest background to becoming a renowned scientist and the President of India highlighted the potential within each individual to overcome obstacles and achieve greatness. It prompted me to contemplate the importance of having a clear vision, setting goals, and persevering in the face of challenges. It also made me appreciate the value of intellectual curiosity, lifelong learning, and the pursuit of excellence.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading “Wings of Fire” because it offered a deeply personal account of Dr. Kalam’s life, dreams, and values. His writing style was engaging, and he painted vivid pictures of his experiences, making it easy to connect with his journey on an emotional level. The book was filled with anecdotes, insights, and lessons that left a lasting impact on my perspective.

Moreover, “Wings of Fire” presented a compelling narrative of the power of dreams, innovation, and national development. Dr. Kalam’s unwavering commitment to advancing India’s scientific capabilities and his vision for the country’s progress instilled a sense of pride and optimism in me. It reinforced the belief that individuals can make a significant difference through their dedication, integrity and unwavering commitment to their ideals.

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  • why you decided to read it
  • what reading this book made you think about

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Describe an Exciting Book that You Enjoyed Reading

Describe an Exciting Book that You Enjoyed Reading: IELTS Cue Card

The Cue Card part is the second segment of the Speaking IELTS exam . When responding to an examiner’s question, you must keep a few skills, one of which is the ability to phrase replies according to the cue card topic.

During the IELTS Speaking Test, you will be given a cue card, also known as a task card, which will include 3 to 4 questions as well as some recommendations on how to respond to the questions on the cue card. You will not be given the option to change the question. However, you will be given a minute or two to think of the response and what to say about it.

To help you with your IELTS preparation , read “describe an exciting book that you enjoyed reading” topic sample answers solved by our experts.

Describe an Exciting Book That You Enjoyed Reading IELTS Cue Card Answers

We have given 3 sample answers for this cue card topic to help you understand how to approach it in different ways.

Also Read: Describe a Difficult Thing You Did: Let’s Have a Look at the IELTS Cue Card Answer Techniques!

Describe an Exciting Book that You Enjoyed Reading Sample Answer One

When you read it.

I am keenly interested in reading different books. I read a book recently which I found very interesting. This book was gifted to me by my friend on my birthday. The name of the book is, “The Arms and the Man”. This is a book by George Bernard Shaw.

It is a story of the norms of the war along with some romantic tinge into it. It was a very realistic story for those who fascinate war and take it extremely seriously to fight. I read the complete book at once because I found it very nice and continued till the end. It was fantastic to go through. I will talk about it today.

What Kind of Book is It?

It is a book about anti-war visions and romantic elements. The author has written the whole story alongside war and its impacts. Bernard Shaw has tried to show the real causes and ways to resolve the conflicts between the countries, groups, or people.

The real situations of the soldiers and their perspectives are shown in the story. It is a very interesting book to read as it will build different notions about war and love in your mind. The protagonist of the story is Raina Petkoff who falls in love with a fugitive of the war.

What is it About?

The book is about the romance between a soft and kind-hearted Bulgarian lady, Raina Petkoff, and a fugitive of the war, Bluntschli. The story is about the Serbo-Bulgarian war. The heroine of the story/play is indulged too much into love with Sergius Sarnoff.

She has idolized this person in love. Raina Petkoff was thinking of Sergius and going to sleep when the Swiss Mercenary Soldier, enters the room by climbing the balcony window.

She gets petrified as she was in her nightgown and Bluntschli threatens her with his gun. Bluntschli explains to Raina about the war and the circumstances that arise there. She falls in love with him and managed to get him at the end of the play.

Explain Why You Think it is Exciting?

This book was exciting because it had everything that a reader wants in the story. It has comic elements, romance, love, war, different perspectives of the soldiers, care, and catchy phrases. All of these things make the entire story readable. I built interest in it from the beginning and found it worth reading till the end.

The idealistic thoughts of the heroine of the play, Raina, were broken down by Bluntschli by his pragmatic and cynical attitude towards the happenings of the war. He said that instead of cartridges, soldiers should carry chocolates. All the spheres of the story are attractive and exciting.

Also Read: Describe an Activity That You Usually Do that Waste Your Time: IELTS Cue Card Sample Answer

Describe an Exciting Book That You Enjoyed Reading Sample Answer Two

I enjoy reading books in my spare time or before going to bed. I have been interested in reading since my childhood. Books attract me because of their different stories and morals. Earlier, I did not get much time to read extra books other than my subject textbooks but now I read different books to learn something from them and to enjoy reading. Today, I would like to talk about an inspirational book named, “The Wings of Fire”. This book was gifted to me by my mother. I read the complete book as it was highly motivational. I found it very exciting and can read it again.

What Kind of Book is it?

This book is the autobiography of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. It was published in 1999 and became very popular after he became the President of India. He inspires me a lot with his vision and words. He became the President on 25th July 2002.

In the book, Dr Kalam wrote about the reasons for writing this book. I admire him the most and can say that he is my role model. My biggest reason to admire him is that he has always shown how an ordinary person can reach the highest level of the country and be the greatest leader.

Dr Kalam became not only the best rocket engineer but also the first citizen of the nation. His book is very motivating to all the readers.

This book is about the struggle and success story of the leader of the nation. His success was purely dependent on his willingness and hard work to learn and grow regularly. His discipline has been his greatest thing to grow in every field.

He has described his position as a piece of luck but being an engineer was his sheer hard work and dedication. In his book, his insatiable quest for knowledge and love for all is evident. This book gave uncountable learnings to everyone.

This book was exciting and motivating for me as I admire Dr. Kalam for giving all his life aspects in the book. I would like to read it again to not leave the willingness to grow and learn in my entire life and to achieve greater heights by hard work and determination.

Also Read: Describe an Item on Which You Spent more than Expected: Let’s Develop IELTS Cue Card Answer Strategies

Describe an Exciting Book That You Enjoyed Reading Sample Answer Three

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I am an avid reader. I like to read many books. Whenever I find time for work and studies, I read some good books. It develops different perspectives and lets me learn good diction. The books that I read include some of the textbooks and some books that I purchased according to my interest.

The book that I read recently and enjoyed reading was a motivational book by Robin Sharma. The name of the book is,” Who will cry when you die”. This is an amazing book with 101 chapters for giving life lessons to people. I got to learn new things from every book and this one was worth reading as it has given me the learnings for life. Today, I am going to discuss a very motivational book.

The book by Robin Sharma is a motivational book that gives ultimate ways to live life perfectly. This is a magnificent book that provides an elegant and powerful formula to achieve true success and happiness in life to enrich it with blessings.

All the chapters of the book are highly meaningful for the readers to live their life peacefully and it is crafted in a parable for revealing a set of simple yet surprisingly potent ideas for improving the quality of life. Robin Sharma has been awarded many times for this amazingly captivating book as the book has many inspirational tales in each chapter along with wise and perfect quotations.

The book is about motivational lessons for life. Every chapter deals with a different and quintessential way to live life. The quotations mentioned in between the chapters are exponentially reliable and worthy.

The framing of the chapters is wonderfully attractive and the readers get extremely attached to the lessons given by the book. It has been great in changing my perspectives for different times and circumstances of life.

As they say, this book is a good mine of wisdom and common sense along with a balance of leading life with perfect vision and approach. The mission of the book is to provide the readers with the insights to become visionary leaders, helping them transform their perspectives that thrive in this era of change and modernization.

This book is exciting, magnificent, and amazing for me because it has given me countless reasons and ways to live my life peacefully and happily. The motivation is not provided like lectures in this one but has a catchy way to explain it to the readers. I have learned diction, vocabulary, splendid quotations, multiple approaches, and much more from this book. I used to read chapters before going to bed and it has contributed largely to my life and ways of living.

Also Read: Describe a Foreign Person Who You have Heard: Check to Know How to Ace an IELTS Cue Card Topic

Describe an Exciting Book That You Enjoyed Reading Follow-up Questions

Here are some samples of follow-up questions that the interviewer could ask you after you are done answering the cue card.

#1. Do you prefer reading books or watching movies?

#2. Do you believe it is necessary to read the book before watching the film adaptation?

#3. Are there any novels that both boys and girls can like?

#4. What kinds of novels do Indians enjoy reading?

IELTS Preparation Tips to Expand Your Vocabulary

Develop a reading habit.

When you meet terms in context, it’s easier to develop your vocabulary. Seeing terms in a novel or a newspaper story is considerably more useful than reading them on a word list. You not only learn new terms, but you also get to observe how they’re utilized.

Use The Dictionary & Thesaurus

When utilized correctly, online dictionaries and thesauruses are valuable resources. They can help you remember synonyms that are better terms in the context of your work. Another approach to acquire vocabulary is to look up antonyms, root words, and similar terms in a comprehensive dictionary description.

Also Read: Describe a Time You were Friendly to Someone You did Not Like: Checkout the Best IELTS Cue Card Answers

Play Word Games

Scrabble and Boggle are two classic games that can help you increase your English vocabulary. Crossword puzzles are another option. Follow upsets of these word games with some note-taking if you like to be efficient. Make a list of the different terms you learned while playing the game, and go through it again and again.

Use Flashcards

Using flashcards to learn several words is a rapid method to acquire a broad vocabulary. A broad range of smartphone applications makes flashcards accessible and easy to manage in today’s digital era. It’s fair to set a goal of learning one new word every day. You may always strive for more, but it might not be practical to learn dozens of English terms every day.

Practice Using New Words While Talking

It’s possible to have a large vocabulary without understanding how to utilize it. This implies that you must utilize your dictionary on your initiative. Make a point of utilizing an intriguing term you come across in your reading in an interview. You may practice the art of choice of words and, with a little experimenting, hone down on the perfect word for a specific context by trying in low-stakes scenarios.

Also Read: Describe a Time When You were Waiting for Something Special that Would Happen: IELTS Cue Card

In the article, we covered the speaking test’s cue card topic on “describe an exciting book that you enjoyed reading”, how to begin and conclude the test, what to talk about, and how to respond to the examiner’s questions. You should focus on your preparation since how you prepare for the exam will be reflected in your final score. So, if you’re looking for exact preparation, IELTS Ninja can provide you with all of the material you’ll need to pass the exam.

IELTS Ninja ensures that your study never stops and that you have access to your course whenever and wherever you choose. So hurry ahead and sign up right now to get ready for your next IELTS exam.

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Shilpa is a professional web content writer and is in deep love with travelling. She completed her mass communication degree and is now dedicatedly playing with words to guide her readers to get the best for themselves. Developing educational content for UPSC, IELTS aspirants from breakthrough research work is her forte. Strongly driven by her zodiac sign Sagittarius, Shilpa loves to live her life on her own notes and completely agrees with the idea of ‘live and let live. Apart from writing and travelling, most of the time she can be seen in the avatar of 'hooman' mom to her pets and street dogs or else you can also catch her wearing the toque blanche and creating magic in the kitchen on weekends.

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IELTS Speaking Cue Card

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Describe an exciting book that you enjoyed reading

When did you read it?

What kind of book is it?

What is it about?

And explain why you think it is exciting

I am an avid reader and I have a good collection of books at home. I have been reading books since childhood and that includes many fairy tales and fantasy book series which I consider a huge part of my childhood. It became a habit that I still have and here, I would like to talk about an exciting book that I read recently.

I have read many books and one of the most riveting ones was The Best Laid Plans written by Sidney Sheldon. I am a fan of Sidney Sheldon and over the years, I have read many of his books. They always keep a reader hooked and read on till the end without a break. I read it just last month and it is a suspense, thriller kind of book that made me read through the night as I did not want to put it down before finishing it.

It is a story about the rise of a charismatic attorney Oliver, who gains political fame and his jilted fiancé Leslie, who seeks revenge on him by creating a renowned media empire. It begins with Leslie supporting and helping Oliver by donating money to his political campaigns but is ultimately betrayed by him when he returns from a business trip, married to another woman. This evokes memories of past betrayal, making Leslie vow to take revenge on Oliver. 

What made the book so stirring was how it unfolds the revenge plans of Leslie and what Oliver had to do in order to survive them. It also has a lot of political drama and schemes which makes it much more interesting. I enjoyed every page of it and gasped at every revelation of twists. It was absolutely fantastic and I had a great time reading it.

Vocabulary:

  • Riveting - completely engrossing
  • Jilted - suddenly abandon
  • Evoke - recall(a feeling or memory) to the conscious mind
  • Stirring - causing excitement

Part 3 Follow Up - Questions & Answers

1. do you prefer books or movies.

I read books as well as watch their movie adaptations, but I prefer books always. There is a range of emotions and subtle details in books which are usually trimmed down or rather skipped in movies. But it is not that I don’t movies at all. I am a big fan of movies and I regularly watch them even if they don’t have book adaptations.

2. Do you think it is important to read the book before watching the movie version of it?

I don’t think it is a necessity. Reading a book before or after watching a movie is more of a personal preference. Some people start reading after watching the movie to get more insight into the story and explore the characters more, while others like watching the movie after reading the book to see how it is picturised.

3. Do boys and girls like the same kinds of books?

On average, there is a similarity between the genres of the books that girls and boys read. Especially young girls and boys like fictional fantasies and suspense-thriller books that keep them hooked while reading them. However, the ultimate choice of reading a particular kind of book falls on the individual. Some don’t like fiction, while others like to read only fictional books.

4. What kind of books do Indian people like to read?

I don’t think regions or the country where a person lives have much effect on their reading preferences. It is up to the individual’s choice and how good a book is. For example, Lord of the Rings is famous around the world with readers from different countries, because it is a fantastic book. So, there isn’t just one kind of book that people or Indians in general read. It is entirely an individual choice.

IELTS Speaking Cue Card - Questions

Describe an exciting book that you enjoyed reading

Describe a person you admire the most...

Describe a plan in your life that is not related to work or study..., describe someone you know who has started a business..., describe a gift you would like to buy for your friend..., describe a course that impressed you a lot....

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Describe a Book You Have Read Recently

Posted by David S. Wills | Jan 6, 2018 | IELTS Tips , Speaking , YouTube | 0

Describe a Book You Have Read Recently

Today we’re going to look at a question from IELTS speaking part two, also known as the “long answer” question. In this part of the exam, as you probably know, you are expected to speak for about two minutes on a given topic . The topic will be presented to you on a “cue card” and you will then have a minute to make notes before you speak. Today, the topic is books and we will explore how to describe a book you have read recently .

There are lots of different ways that this question could be phrased, and so, as always, you can’t just memorise an answer. In fact, in IELTS it’s always a bad idea to memorize answers. You have questions like “describe your favourite book” or “describe a book that you read in your childhood,” but today I’m going to give you a more general question.

In this lesson, we will learn several things:

  • How to read the cue card
  • Note-making skills
  • Some useful vocabulary
  • How to answer this cue card fully

The Cue Card: Describe a book you have read recently

As I said, there are many IELTS cue cards about books. You could be asked about your favorite book or a book you really love, but in this case we will just look at a book you have read recently:

Describe a book you have read recently. You should say: what kind of book it is who wrote the book what the story of the book is and explain if it is a good book or not.

Once you have read the cue card, you must think about it quickly. Analyse the topic and ask yourself what exactly you should talk about. In this case, you may ask:

  • Can I talk about any book? – no, only one you’ve read recently
  • Could it be a book that I dislike? – yes, that is possible
  • Must it be a book that I enjoyed? – no, the final part of the question makes it clear that you don’t have to have liked it
  • Should I talk about the plot? – yes, that is fulfilling the third bullet point

You should quickly choose a book, think about how to explain it, and then try to talk about the ideas on the cue card.

describe a book you have read recently [ielts speaking]

Making Notes

So the first thing you should do is make a few notes on the topic. Of course, as we’ve discussed before, you really shouldn’t write too much. Remember – you just have one minute! Don’t write down sentences or else you’ll only have enough to speak for ten or twenty seconds. Instead, write the ideas you want to discuss or the vocabulary you may need.

In this case, of course we first have to think about the book itself. What was its name, and who was the author? It doesn’t have to be an English book, but you do need to be able to give the English title and – if it was written by an English-speaking author, you also must be able to say their name. Here in China, many famous foreigners have Chinese names, or at least their names are adapted to make it easier for Chinese speakers to pronounce, and so they sound weird to an English speaker. For example, my students always talk about “Jobs” when they mean “Steve Jobs.” So make sure you know the name.

Then you need to think about the tasks outlined in the cue card and make notes on them so that you don’t forget any part of it. This is where you need to make useful notes.

So the first thing we need to talk about, according to the cue card, is the “kind of” book. Another way of saying that is “ genre .” This means, is it a mystery novel or a romance? Is it a horror novel or a coming-of-age story? There are so many kinds of novels. Of course, you don’t need to know them all, but being able to talk about the ones that you actually like is important. Go beyond that and consider being able to discuss the book further in terms of adjectives – is it thrilling? Hilarious? Shocking? Provocative? These are some good vocabulary items to note down during your one minute.

When it comes to genre, you can borrow many words from your movie vocabulary . Here is a video about describing movies. Most of those words can be re-used for describing books:

Next you should really think about the plot of the novel. You don’t need to say everything. Instead, summarize it. Think about the main action and key scenes. Talk briefly about the beginning and ending, or any important moments.

When talking about the plot of a film or book, you can use the present simple or past simple. This is because these events exist outside of time as they are immortalized in a text. They are, in a sense, always happening.

For example, you could equally say:

Romeo kissed Juliet
Romeo kisses Juliet.

A great way of learning how to do this effectively is to go on Wikipedia or IMDB and then find descriptions of movies. Obviously, you should not try to memorize these, but you can definitely borrow some language or even structure.

Structuring your Answer

The important things about IELTS speaking part 2 are that you actually answer all parts of the question, and that you do it in between 1 and 2 minutes. The order in which you give the details is not important. Therefore, you can talk about any of the cue card suggestions first or last. However, be sensible and think of a logical order in your head. Make sure these are in your notes so that you don’t forget anything.

Sample Answer – Describe a Book

Here’s my answer to the above question.

Recently, I read a novel called Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, who is the writer of some popular TV shows. It’s hard to give the genre because it’s a quite unusual book; however, it is both a drama and a mystery to some degree. The story is about a plane crash. This happens at the beginning of the book, and after that we get the back story of the people who were on the plane. We don’t know why the plane crashed although it seems like an accident. However, the mystery element comes into the book as the story develops because we are shown too many coincidences. The book also details the relationship between a man and a boy who survive the crash, and this gives the story its heart. I really enjoyed this book. Normally I prefer to read non-fiction books but in this case I was attracted to Before the Fall because I really liked the writer’s TV work and I was curious about how he would handle a novel. Ultimately, I was not disappointed. His ability to tell a good story made him an excellent novelist.

Here’s my recording of the sample answer. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more IELTS videos. I try to post about once every 1-2 weeks.

I answered the “who wrote it” and “what kind of book” parts very quickly at the beginning and spent more time on the plot and my reaction to the book. It’s important you take into consideration while planning that some parts of the question simply aren’t possible to talk about that much.

Note also the verb “detail” in that second paragraph. It’s a reporting verb used in slightly formal speech meaning roughly the same as “tells”.

About The Author

David S. Wills

David S. Wills

David S. Wills is the author of Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult' and the founder/editor of Beatdom literary journal. He lives and works in rural Cambodia and loves to travel. He has worked as an IELTS tutor since 2010, has completed both TEFL and CELTA courses, and has a certificate from Cambridge for Teaching Writing. David has worked in many different countries, and for several years designed a writing course for the University of Worcester. In 2018, he wrote the popular IELTS handbook, Grammar for IELTS Writing and he has since written two other books about IELTS. His other IELTS website is called IELTS Teaching.

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Essay on My Favourite Book for Students and Children

i need my monster Book

500+ Words Essay on My Favourite Book

Essay on My Favourite Book: Books are friends who never leave your side. I find this saying to be very true as books have always been there for me. I enjoy reading books . They have the power to help us travel through worlds without moving from our places. In addition, books also enhance our imagination. Growing up, my parents and teachers always encouraged me to read. They taught me the importance of reading. Subsequently, I have read several books. However, one boom that will always be my favourite is Harry Potter. It is one of the most intriguing reads of my life. I have read all the books of this series, yet I read them again as I never get bored of it.

essay on my favourite book

Harry Potter Series

Harry Potter was a series of books authored by one of the most eminent writers of our generation, J.K. Rowling. These books showcase the wizarding world and its workings. J.K. Rowling has been so successful at weaving a picture of this world, that it feels real. Although the series contains seven books, I have a particular favourite. My favourite book from the series is The Goblet of fire.

When I started reading the book, it caught my attention instantly. Even though I had read all the previous parts, none of the books caught my attention as this one did. It gave a larger perspective into the wizarding world. One of the things which excite me the most about this book is the introduction of the other wizard schools. The concept of the Tri-wizard tournament is one of the most brilliant pieces I have come across in the Harry Potter series.

In addition, this book also contains some of my favourite characters. The moment I read about Victor Krum’s entry, I was star struck. The aura and personality of that character described by Rowling are simply brilliant. Further, it made me become a greater fan of the series.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

What Harry Potter Series Taught Me?

Even though the books are about the world of wizards and magic, the Harry Potter series contains a lot of lessons for young people to learn. Firstly, it teaches us the importance of friendship. I have read many books but never come across a friendship like that of Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. These three musketeers stuck together throughout the books and never gave up. It taught me the value of a good friend.

Further, the series of Harry Potter taught me that no one is perfect. Everyone has good and evil inside them. We are the ones who choose what we wish to be. This helped me in making better choices and becoming a better human being. We see how the most flawed characters like Snape had goodness inside them. Similarly, how the nicest ones like Dumbledore had some bad traits. This changed my perspective towards people and made me more considerate.

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Finally, these books gave me hope. They taught me the meaning of hope and how there is light at the end of the tunnel. It gave me the strength to cling on to hope in the most desperate times just like Harry did all his life. These are some of the most essential things I learned from Harry Potter.

In conclusion, while there were many movies made in the books. Nothing beats the essence and originality of the books. The details and inclusiveness of books cannot be replaced by any form of media. Therefore, the Goblet of Fire remains to be my favourite book.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Reading Books — My Personal Passion: Favorite Books & Authors

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Why I Like Reading Books: a Narrative

  • Categories: Reading Books

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Words: 1014 |

Published: Mar 14, 2019

Words: 1014 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Why i like reading (essay), my favorite type of books, works cited.

  • Coleridge, S. T. (1817). Biographia Literaria: Or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Restless Books.
  • Lawrence, D. H. (2000). Lady Chatterley's Lover. Wordsworth Editions.
  • Maas, S. J. (2012). Throne of Glass. Bloomsbury Publishing.
  • Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. Secker & Warburg.
  • Shakespeare, W. (2008). The Merchant's Tale. In The Canterbury Tales (2nd ed., pp. 121-134). Penguin Classics.
  • Stowe, H. B. (1852). Uncle Tom's Cabin. J. P. Jewett and Company.
  • Tolkein, J. R. R. (2012). The Lord of the Rings. HarperCollins.
  • Tonnard, M., & Van Kesteren, E. (2007). Reading Ed Ruscha: Novels. Ludion.
  • Wells, H. G. (1932). Brave New World. Chatto & Windus.
  • Wood, J. (2014). The Theatre of Absurd. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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essay on a book i enjoyed reading

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Essays About Reading: 5 Examples And Topic Ideas

As a writer, you love to read and talk to others about reading books. Check out some examples of essays about reading and topic ideas for your essay.

Many people fall in love with good books at an early age, as experiencing the joy of reading can help transport a child’s imagination to new places. Reading isn’t just for fun, of course—the importance of reading has been shown time and again in educational research studies.

If you love to sit down with a good book, you likely want to share your love of reading with others. Reading can offer a new perspective and transport readers to different worlds, whether you’re into autobiographies, books about positive thinking, or stories that share life lessons.

When explaining your love of reading to others, it’s important to let your passion shine through in your writing. Try not to take a negative view of people who don’t enjoy reading, as reading and writing skills are tougher for some people than others.

Talk about the positive effects of reading and how it’s positively benefitted your life. Offer helpful tips on how people can learn to enjoy reading, even if it’s something that they’ve struggled with for a long time. Remember, your goal when writing essays about reading is to make others interested in exploring the world of books as a source of knowledge and entertainment.

Now, let’s explore some popular essays on reading to help get you inspired and some topics that you can use as a starting point for your essay about how books have positively impacted your life.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

Examples Of Essays About Reading

  • 1. The Book That Changed My Life By The New York Times
  • 2. I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life By Anangsha Alammyan
  • 3. How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience By Blair Kenney

4. How ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ Saved Me By Isaac Fitzgerald

5. catcher in the rye: that time a banned book changed my life by pat kelly, topic ideas for essays about reading, 1. how can a high school student improve their reading skills, 2. what’s the best piece of literature ever written, 3. how reading books from authors of varied backgrounds can provide a different perspective, 4. challenging your point of view: how reading essays you disagree with can provide a new perspective, 1.  the book that changed my life  by  the new york times.

“My error the first time around was to read “Middlemarch” as one would a typical novel. But “Middlemarch” isn’t really about plot and dialogue. It’s all about character, as mediated through the wise and compassionate (but sharply astute) voice of the omniscient narrator. The book shows us that we cannot live without other people and that we cannot live with other people unless we recognize their flaws and foibles in ourselves.”  The New York Times

In this collection of reader essays, people share the books that have shaped how they see the world and live their lives. Talking about a life-changing piece of literature can offer a new perspective to people who tend to shy away from reading and can encourage others to pick up your favorite book.

2.  I Read 150+ Books in 2 Years. Here’s How It Changed My Life  By Anangsha Alammyan

“Consistent reading helps you develop your  analytical thinking skills  over time. It stimulates your brain and allows you to think in new ways. When you are  actively engaged  in what you’re reading, you would be able to ask better questions, look at things from a different perspective, identify patterns and make connections.” Anangsha Alammyan

Alammyan shares how she got away from habits that weren’t serving her life (such as scrolling on social media) and instead turned her attention to focus on reading. She shares how she changed her schedule and time management processes to allow herself to devote more time to reading, and she also shares the many ways that she benefited from spending more time on her Kindle and less time on her phone.

3.  How My Diagnosis Improved My College Experience  By Blair Kenney

“When my learning specialist convinced me that I was an intelligent person with a reading disorder, I gradually stopped hiding from what I was most afraid of—the belief that I was a person of mediocre intelligence with overambitious goals for herself. As I slowly let go of this fear, I became much more aware of my learning issues. For the first time, I felt that I could dig below the surface of my unhappiness in school without being ashamed of what I might find.” Blair Kenney

Reading does not come easily to everyone, and dyslexia can make it especially difficult for a person to process words. In this essay, Kenney shares her experience of being diagnosed with dyslexia during her sophomore year of college at Yale. She gave herself more patience, grew in her confidence, and developed techniques that worked to improve her reading and processing skills.

“I took that book home to finish reading it. I’d sit somewhat uncomfortably in a tree or against a stone wall or, more often than not, in my sparsely decorated bedroom with the door closed as my mother had hushed arguments with my father on the phone. There were many things in the book that went over my head during my first time reading it. But a land left with neither Rhyme nor Reason, as I listened to my parents fight, that I understood.” Isaac Fitzgerald

Books can transport a reader to another world. In this essay, Fitzgerald explains how Norton Juster’s novel allowed him to escape a difficult time in his childhood through the magic of his imagination. Writing about a book that had a significant impact on your childhood can help you form an instant connection with your reader, as many people hold a childhood literature favorite near and dear to their hearts.

“From the first paragraph my mind was blown wide open. It not only changed my whole perspective on what literature could be, it changed the way I looked at myself in relation to the world. This was heavy stuff. Of the countless books I had read up to this point, even the ones written in first person, none of them felt like they were speaking directly to me. Not really anyway.” Pat Kelly

Many readers have had the experience of feeling like a book was written specifically for them, and in this essay, Kelly shares that experience with J.D. Salinger’s classic American novel. Writing about a book that felt like it was written specifically for you can give you the chance to share what was happening in your life when you read the book and the lasting impact that the book had on you as a person.

There are several topic options to choose from when you’re writing about reading. You may want to write about how literature you love has changed your life or how others can develop their reading skills to derive similar pleasure from reading.

Topic ideas for essays about reading

Middle and high school students who struggle with reading can feel discouraged when, despite their best efforts, their skills do not improve. Research the latest educational techniques for boosting reading skills in high school students (the research often changes) and offer concrete tips (such as using active reading skills) to help students grow.

It’s an excellent persuasive essay topic; it’s fun to write about the piece of literature you believe to be the greatest of all time. Of course, much of this topic is a matter of opinion, and it’s impossible to prove that one piece of literature is “better” than another. Write your essay about how the piece of literature you consider the best positive affected your life and discuss how it’s impacted the world of literature in general.

The world is full of many perspectives and points of view, and it can be hard to imagine the world through someone else’s eyes. Reading books by authors of different gender, race, or socioeconomic status can help open your eyes to the challenges and issues others face. Explain how reading books by authors with different backgrounds has changed your worldview in your essay.

It’s fun to read the information that reinforces viewpoints that you already have, but doing so doesn’t contribute to expanding your mind and helping you see the world from a different perspective. Explain how pushing oneself to see a different point of view can help you better understand your perspective and help open your eyes to ideas you may not have considered.

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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  • Essay on Reading Books

The habit of Reading Books is considered to be one of the most elite habits of all. Books are the means to store precious information either in a textual or pictorial manner. A book is such a wonderful and magnificent object that it takes a whole different amount of passion and discipline to construct a book and the same passion to study and sink that knowledge within. Here are a few sample essays on reading books.

100 Words Essay on Reading Books

200 words essay on reading books, 500 words essay on reading books.

Essay on Reading Books

Reading books is an incredible experience that can transport you to different worlds, introduce you to new ideas and cultures, and broaden your understanding of the world. It's a form of escape from the daily routine, and a way to engage with characters, stories and events that would not be possible in real life. Whether you prefer fiction or nonfiction, books have the power to challenge, inspire, and entertain. With the turn of each page, you gain new knowledge, develop empathy, and engage in introspection. Reading books is a lifelong journey of discovery and growth that can enrich your life in countless ways.

Reading books is an activity that has been enjoyed by people of all ages and cultures for centuries. This pastime offers numerous benefits, both for individuals and society as a whole.

One of the most significant benefits of reading books is the improvement of one's cognitive skills . By reading, we engage our brains, and the more we read, the more we exercise our cognitive abilities, including our ability to concentrate, comprehend, and retain information. This leads to enhanced problem-solving skills, better memory and a greater ability to understand complex concepts.

Another benefit of reading books is the expansion of one's knowledge and understanding of the world. Through reading, we have the opportunity to gain insights into different cultures, time periods, and ways of life. This can broaden our perspectives and help us become more informed and understanding citizens of the world. In addition, books can challenge our beliefs and assumptions, providing opportunities for personal growth and intellectual development.

Reading books is also a great form of entertainment . Whether we are reading a mystery, a romance, or a science-fiction novel, books can provide hours of escape and enjoyment. They allow us to immerse ourselves in different worlds, meet new characters, and experience new emotions. This form of entertainment provides a welcome break from the stresses of daily life and can help reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.

The habit of reading books is not just a hobby but a complete lifestyle . The way it brings development in one’s character and personality from within is just magical. The importance of reading is to give people the ability to self-study but has numerous other benefits. When you read, you explore your true prospect of thinking. You get the venture of how the same lines could deliver a brand new set of thoughts and pictures in your mind just with a little change in the emotions. This is the kind of self-exploration reading provides.

Having a diverse set of knowledge can be of great help as it removes the bar of limited knowledge . Every social group has a different set of interests and by consuming all of that in yourself, you allow yourself to become a part of any group easily. A person who consumes more knowledge is considered the wisest. Your ideas are what draws people to you, wanting them to listen more and makes you one of the interesting people they interact with.

Reading is the most important means of human-to-human communication and getting to know different cultures, leading to the development and maturation of human language abilities, and is the source of development and mature human personality. Reading is very important to increase self-confidence, develop and strengthen character by acquiring a wealth of information and experience that a person needs in all areas of life, and to become an educated person. Not everyone in their lives gets the gift of knowledge and the ability to comprehend what they are looking at. Not everyone is privileged enough to be able to widen their knowledge without the help of someone else.

Reading is an art, and to have this art is equal to having the greatest weapon in your hand. No one can steal your ability to read once you learn it. You become free to consume knowledge about any topic you like.

Significance of Reading

Reading leads to the expansion of human thinking and intellectual capacities and strengthens your spirit. Every genre teaches something whether it is fictional or non-fictional. When fiction teaches you to imagine, self-help teaches you how to live life to the fullest. Reading is not limited to books only, you can read wherever you want, whatever you want and whenever you want and it all will be worth it. Knowledge is never known to be a curse and what is not a curse, is always beneficial.

My Reading Experience

The kind of books that got me into reading are self-help books. They inspired me in a way no other genre could. The writer Mark Manson is the greatest of all time to me. If you'll just search for self-help books over the internet then among the best sellers, two of the books would be his. The kind of discipline they brought into my life transformed me into a completely different person. These kinds of books give us an opportunity to dive deep into ourselves and learn about our true potential which is what happened to me and brought me into writing.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

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The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

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Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

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The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction. 

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions. 

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Operations manager.

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Bank Probationary Officer (PO)

Investment director.

An investment director is a person who helps corporations and individuals manage their finances. They can help them develop a strategy to achieve their goals, including paying off debts and investing in the future. In addition, he or she can help individuals make informed decisions.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

An expert in plumbing is aware of building regulations and safety standards and works to make sure these standards are upheld. Testing pipes for leakage using air pressure and other gauges, and also the ability to construct new pipe systems by cutting, fitting, measuring and threading pipes are some of the other more involved aspects of plumbing. Individuals in the plumber career path are self-employed or work for a small business employing less than ten people, though some might find working for larger entities or the government more desirable.

Construction Manager

Individuals who opt for a career as construction managers have a senior-level management role offered in construction firms. Responsibilities in the construction management career path are assigning tasks to workers, inspecting their work, and coordinating with other professionals including architects, subcontractors, and building services engineers.

Urban Planner

Urban Planning careers revolve around the idea of developing a plan to use the land optimally, without affecting the environment. Urban planning jobs are offered to those candidates who are skilled in making the right use of land to distribute the growing population, to create various communities. 

Urban planning careers come with the opportunity to make changes to the existing cities and towns. They identify various community needs and make short and long-term plans accordingly.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Naval Architect

A Naval Architect is a professional who designs, produces and repairs safe and sea-worthy surfaces or underwater structures. A Naval Architect stays involved in creating and designing ships, ferries, submarines and yachts with implementation of various principles such as gravity, ideal hull form, buoyancy and stability. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

Pathologist.

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning). 

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian . 

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

Information security manager.

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

Business Intelligence Developer

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The Book I Enjoyed The Most (Essay Sample)

Table of Contents

The Book I enjoyed the most

Introduction.

Reading your favorite book promotes a relaxation method to overcome stress and anxiety. The reason behind is that it seeks to make you calmer as you read the details of the book’s content that satisfies your interest. The chosen book that I enjoy reading is Cinderella, which is a fairy tale themed book that presents about a person who met her love interest that changed her life permanently. This is the book that I enjoyed the most that has been able to ensure that it significantly fulfill one’s desire to allow their dreams to have a temporary relief. This is because every person has the tendency to utilize their fantasy in order to satisfy their dreams in a temporary way. This is the reason why I enjoy reading the book that seeks to measure my interest as well as to improve the way I perceive things in life.

I love the book, which is why I consider enjoying it because there is significance from the plot of the story that can relate to my personal life. There is a reflective interest applied by the book that enhances my knowledge and belief that I will be able to relate my personal issues with the book’s scenes. This is because the context is focused on a person’s childhood interest wherein it presents who a child struggles with their childhood challenges. It reflects the chance to know the logical way of improving your cognition in order to accomplish a certain task. All throughout the book’s storyline, it seeks to enhance the advantage of measuring the way that you could cope up with several stressful activities that makes your life better (Rowling, 1997).

One thing that is interesting is when you are going to establish friendship with your enemies. With the combination of fantasies through magical presentation, the context stimulates your senses and promotes your intellectual understanding. The reason behind for this action is to know the strengths and weaknesses as you are learning more about their behavior and character. This is comparable in real life when a person engages a relationship with other individuals to know their real character. Discovering your real friends is important because you will know who will you trust and cooperate. However, the thing that seems inappropriate is the issue regarding violent crashes between the main character and the antagonist of the film. This is the reason why the movie version restricted the audiences by preventing children aged 13 and below not to watch it because it stimulates violence against other individuals.

Why I enjoyed reading it? This is because it helps me bring back my childhood memories and learn new things. The lesson learned from the book I enjoyed reading the most is all about knowing you should choose as your company. The reason behind is that trust is very valuable to every relationship that you establish with other individual or group. When trust is broken, your friendship or relationship could no longer make sense towards a certain individual who betrayed you while establishing friendship. The book I enjoyed the most is recommended to other readers because they can learn more about balancing their friendships with other individuals. In addition, it is important to explore new things because learning helps a person to improve skills and knowledge whenever there are ideas that are fresh.

  • Rowling, J.K. (1997). Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury.

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

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You Are Here by David Nicholls; Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; Day by Michael Cunningham.

What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in March

Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Francesca Specter, author and journalist

I was lucky enough to be sent an early copy of David Nicholls’ forthcoming novel, You Are Here , a publication well-timed for those who adored the recent One Day Netflix adaptation . Nicholls’ latest book has long been on my radar, as I’ve written extensively about its central themes of solitude and loneliness.

You Are Here’s lovers, Marnie and Michael, are aged 38 and 42, out of the heat of wedding-and-baby season yet far from later life. This meant a refreshing absence of typical romcom tropes (eg proposals, weddings, a birth). Instead, the plot is framed around a coast-to-coast walk, while dramatic tension is created by the spectre of an estranged wife. The romance has sincerity and authenticity, notably in a river wrestling scene where one party is wearing zip-away waterproof shorts/trousers. There were echoes of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy , another book I loved.

For my neighbourhood book club, I read Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea , a feminist, postcolonial prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Antoinette Cosway, Mr Rochester’s “madwoman in the attic” first wife (whom he renames Bertha), is a powerful narrator with timeless resonance: “There are more ways than one of being happy, better perhaps to be peaceful and contented and protected.” It made me rethink the romanticisation of Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester (last January, we read Wuthering Heights … same story with Heathcliff).

While I’ve never loved the short story medium, a friend convinced me that Alice Munro’s Runaway would be the exception. He was right. The Nobel prize-winning author’s prose is pithy with unforgettable details, like a lost goat’s reappearance amid the celestial halo of a car headlight. I enjoyed how several characters reappear across stories, too, like encountering an old friend.

Helen, Guardian reader

I have been reading Other Women by Emma Flint , a crime novel that is based on the real-life murder of Emily Beilby Kaye by her married lover in the 1920s. It is beautifully written, but harrowing and full of tension. Kaye is reimagined as Beatrice, a woman who falls in love with a colleague, having been “left over” after the first world war – she was what was considered to be marriageable age when most eligible men were away at war. It was interesting to read about a character based on such women, who strived to make a life and career and were almost invisible in society.

Alba Arikha, author

It’s been 10 years since Michael Cunningham wrote a book and, being a fan, I awaited his most recent one, Day , with trepidation. Over three consecutive Aprils, from 2019 to 2021, we follow a Brooklyn family during and after the onset of Covid. Just like in his other work, there is something haunting about Cunningham’s writing. It makes one acutely aware of the imperceptible fragility of life: the way we speak to each other, who we are, and what we make of it. The book is a powerful example of dysfunctionality, and what happens when cues are missed or ignored. But it’s also about desire, the spaces we attempt to inhabit and escape from, not always successfully.

Because I’ve always wanted to read him, and in preparation for a writing class I’ll be teaching this summer in Greece, I dived into a collection of Isaac Babel’s short stories, Of Sunshine and Bedbugs . I found myself airlifted 100 years back into the ebullient, rich and colourful port city of Odessa, in the company of Jewish thugs, sex workers, cart drivers, milkmaids and rabbis. Though pogroms loom in the background, humour and irreverence preside.

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I began reading How to Make a Bomb by Rupert Thomson on a flight from London to NYC and finished it just before landing. The midlife crisis of Philip, a history professor, and his decision to “dispense with structure, and open himself to possibility and chance” is completely gripping. There are no full stops in this beautifully written novel, and as a result, the fragmentary rhythm catapults one breathlessly forwards.

For nearly two decades, Ann Wroe has written obituaries for the Economist. I remember my late mother mentioning her with quiet admiration. Which is one of the reasons why I picked up her book Lifescapes . And I found that same quietude rustling through the pages, alternating between prose, poetry, memoir and biography. “The smallest things may offer vital clues,” Wroe writes of her obituaries, which she calls “catching souls”. Chronologies do not interest her. But those clues, from objects to images, strangers to ghosts, the sacredness in blood to the sound of snow, do. There is a magical quality to her unusual, almost ethereal writing. A soul catcher she is and I’m still thinking about it.

Two Hours by Alba Arikha is published by Eris (£1 4.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Rupert, Guardian reader

As a teenager in the 60s I followed Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s relationship along with the rest of the world. Now I have had the chance to revisit the subject again, by reading Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis , a fascinating double biography that delves deeper into the lives of that (in)famous couple and all of the people who surrounded them. There is a relentless, almost obsessive quality to Lewis’s writing that had me reading well into the night. I highly recommended this book.

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Here's how to set your reading goals and read more books in 2024

Mansee Khurana headshot

Mansee Khurana

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Even if you're someone who reads regularly, it can be hard to keep up your reading goals. Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Even if you're someone who reads regularly, it can be hard to keep up your reading goals.

Trying to read more can be a hard habit to stick to – even if you're someone who regularly reads a lot.

Just ask Nadia Odunayo, the founder and CEO of The StoryGraph, a book recommendation website with over a million users. Odunayo said that when she started The Storygraph in 2019, reading more felt like an essential goal.

"It felt like it very much became part of my identity as a reader, " Odunayo told Morning Edition . "Like, I run a books company, I need to make sure I'm reading."

In a few years, Odunayo went from reading 13 books a year to well over 70.

While she feels like that's a realistic goal for her, it's not an achievable goal for everybody.

Odunayo says setting realistic expectations about how many books you want to read can be the key to success. But making sure you pick the right a mount of books to read in a year can be tricky.

"It was a combination of making the time, but also being excited about a lot more books, " Odunayo said.

Why it's OK to judge a book by its cover (and more tips on how to find a great read)

Why it's OK to judge a book by its cover (and more tips on how to find a great read)

A Economist/YouGov poll found that 46% of Americans finished zero books last year and 5% read just one last year. Out of the 1,500 American's surveyed in the poll, only 21% read more than ten books.

With March being National Reading Month – it is a good time to think about revisit your reading goals from the beginning of the year. Whether you've just gotten into reading, or you're churning through multiple books a week, here's some tips to keep in mind as you're setting your reading goals.

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Expand your reading horizons by thinking about what types of books you're reading. Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Expand your reading horizons by thinking about what types of books you're reading.

Think genres, not numbers

Reading goals don't always have to be numerical. Goals such as wanting to read books from more diverse authors or reading more of a specific genre can be better than just focusing on a number. Brea Grant, one of the hosts of the podcast Reading Glasses , says she realized she didn't want to set a number goal when she found herself reading books she didn't like, or finishing books just for the sake of hitting a number.

"That's not fun because that's going to eventually turn you off from reading," Grant said.

Here are the Books We Love: 380+ great 2023 reads recommended by NPR

Here are the Books We Love: 380+ great 2023 reads recommended by NPR

Sites like The StoryGraph features reading challenges that users can participate in to expand their reading habits. One challenge recommends books from 10 different countries for users who want to read from more diverse authors.

You can also create your own goals. If you're an avid fantasy romance reader, for example, you may want to see how many science fiction books you can incorporate into your reading habit.

Sometimes, it can be as simple as reading books on a topic you're interested in. Grant, a filmmaker, decided that this year that she wanted to read more books about filmmaking.

"I didn't go to film school, and I realized that I haven't even read that many books about filmmaking, even though I've been a filmmaker for so many years," Grant said. "So I think that focusing on reading more books about my craft is a better goal than a specific number of books."

essay on a book i enjoyed reading

Reading might seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be! Jackie Lay /NPR hide caption

Reading might seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be!

Find more ways to make reading a community affair

Reading can often seem like a solitary hobby, but it doesn't have to be.

Check your local area for book clubs and reading-related events. Or find someone to talk to about books – and you don't even have to ask about what they are currently reading. You can ask them about their favorite book, or the book that impacted their life the most.

"That's another way that people can show that they're bookish without necessarily being like 'I read 400 books this year'," Mallory O' Meara, who hosts the Reading Glasses podcast with Grant, said.

If you'd rather get lost in a book alone, O'Meara says you might enjoy finding new spots to read in your city. It might feel intimidating going into a coffee shop or bar alone, but it can be a fun way to explore your neighborhood while doing something you love.

How to start a book club: Tips and reading suggestions

"We really encourage people to make it an activity," Grant said. "Get a cozy blanket, get a cup of tea, something that you look forward to at the end of the day."

Whatever you prefer, Grant says it's always important to remember why you want to read more, and not get too caught up in feeling like you have to read a certain number of books.

"Reading is a hobby, and you want to get the maximum enjoyment out of it," Grant said.

Don't be afraid to adjust your goal

At the beginning of the year, it's easy to set high expectations of yourselves. You think you can workout everyday, or read a book every week. But as the year goes on, you might want to adjust that number to a goal you know you can reach.

"There's a lot of things we won't achieve in life," Grant said. "Make reading something you know you can get done."

Finding that perfect number can be hard.You want something that challenges you, but doesn't feel unrealistic. Additionally, life can get in the way. These challenges could include large work projects or family obligations that you didn't anticipate at the beginning of the year.

How to get the most out of your library

Pop Culture Happy Hour

How to get the most out of your library.

Suzanne Skyvara, who leads marketing at Goodreads, a book recommendation site where over six million users participate in its annual reading challenge, recommends adjusting your number later in the year if you need, and encourages not to think of changing your goal as "failing."

"If you're finding that you've set the goal too high in the middle of the year and it's becoming demotivating you can bring it down, which re-energizes me and gets me back on track," Skyvara said.

After all, reading should be a hobby, not homework.

"The goal should always be to enjoy your reading life more," O' Meara said. "To read more books that you either love or teach you something or you connect with in some way."

Correction March 28, 2024

This article was updated to fix the amount of Goodreads users particpating in the the site's annual reading challenge.

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Ielts cue card # 232 - describe a kind of book you enjoy reading, describe a kind of book you enjoy reading..

  •  what kind/genre of books you like to read
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  •  what effects these books have brought on you

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The Cowardice of Guernica

The literary magazine Guernica ’s decision to retract an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals much about how the war is hardening human sentiment.

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In the days after October 7, the writer and translator Joanna Chen spoke with a neighbor in Israel whose children were frightened by the constant sound of warplanes. “I tell them these are good booms,” the neighbor said to Chen with a grimace. “I understood the subtext,” Chen wrote later in an essay published in Guernica magazine on March 4, titled “From the Edges of a Broken World.” The booms were, of course, the Israeli army bombing Gaza, part of a campaign that has left at least 30,000 civilians and combatants dead so far.

The moment is just one observation in a much longer meditative piece of writing in which Chen weighs her principles—for years she has volunteered at a charity providing transportation for Palestinian children needing medical care, and works on Arabic and Hebrew translations to bridge cultural divides—against the more turbulent feelings of fear, inadequacy, and split allegiances that have cropped up for her after October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in Hamas’s assault on Israel. But the conversation with the neighbor is a sharp, novelistic, and telling moment. The mother, aware of the perversity of recasting bombs killing children mere miles away as “good booms,” does so anyway because she is a mother, and her children are frightened. The act, at once callous and caring, will stay with me.

Not with the readers of Guernica , though. The magazine , once a prominent publication for fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, with a focus on global art and politics, quickly found itself imploding as its all-volunteer staff revolted over the essay. One of the magazine’s nonfiction editors posted on social media that she was leaving over Chen’s publication. “Parts of the essay felt particularly harmful and disorienting to read, such as the line where a person is quoted saying ‘I tell them these are good booms.’” Soon a poetry editor resigned as well, calling Chen’s essay a “horrific settler normalization essay”— settler here seeming to refer to all Israelis, because Chen does not live in the occupied territories. More staff members followed, including the senior nonfiction editor and one of the co-publishers (who criticized the essay as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism”). Amid this flurry of cascading outrage, on March 10 Guernica pulled the essay from its website, with the note: “ Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it. A more fulsome explanation will follow.” As of today, this explanation is still pending, and my request for comment from the editor in chief, Jina Moore Ngarambe, has gone unanswered.

Read: Beware the language that erases reality

Blowups at literary journals are not the most pressing news of the day, but the incident at Guernica reveals the extent to which elite American literary outlets may now be beholden to the narrowest polemical and moralistic approaches to literature. After the publication of Chen’s essay, a parade of mutual incomprehension occurred across social media, with pro-Palestine writers announcing what they declared to be the self-evident awfulness of the essay (publishing the essay made Guernica “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness,” wrote one of the now-former editors), while reader after reader who came to it because of the controversy—an archived version can still be accessed—commented that they didn’t understand what was objectionable. One reader seemed to have mistakenly assumed that Guernica had pulled the essay in response to pressure from pro-Israel critics. “Oh buddy you can’t have your civilian population empathizing with the people you’re ethnically cleansing,” he wrote, with obvious sarcasm. When another reader pointed out that he had it backwards, he responded, “This chain of events is bizarre.”

Some people saw anti-Semitism in the decision. James Palmer, a deputy editor of Foreign Policy , noted how absurd it was to suggest that the author approved of the “good bombs” sentiment, and wrote that the outcry was “one step toward trying to exclude Jews from discourse altogether.” And it is hard not to see some anti-Semitism at play. One of the resigning editors claimed that the essay “includes random untrue fantasies about Hamas and centers the suffering of oppressors” (Chen briefly mentions the well-documented atrocities of October 7; caring for an Israeli family that lost a daughter, son-in-law, and nephew; and her worries about the fate of Palestinians she knows who have links to Israel).

Madhuri Sastry, one of the co-publishers, notes in her resignation post that she’d earlier successfully insisted on barring a previous essay of Chen’s from the magazine’s Voices on Palestine compilation. In that same compilation, Guernica chose to include an interview with Alice Walker, the author of a poem that asks “Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews,” and who once recommended to readers of The New York Times a book that claims that “a small Jewish clique” helped plan the Russian Revolution, World Wars I and II, and “coldly calculated” the Holocaust. No one at Guernica publicly resigned over the magazine’s association with Walker.

However, to merely dismiss all of the critics out of hand as insane or intolerant or anti-Semitic would ironically run counter to the spirit of Chen’s essay itself. She writes of her desire to reach out to those on the other side of the conflict, people she’s worked with or known and who would be angered or horrified by some of the other experiences she relates in the essay, such as the conversation about the “good booms.” Given the realities of the conflict, she knows this attempt to connect is just a first step, and an often-frustrating one. Writing to a Palestinian she’d once worked with as a reporter, she laments her failure to come up with something meaningful to say: “I also felt stupid—this was war, and whether I liked it or not, Nuha and I were standing at opposite ends of the very bridge I hoped to cross. I had been naive … I was inadequate.” In another scene, she notes how even before October 7, when groups of Palestinians and Israelis joined together to share their stories, their goodwill failed “to straddle the chasm that divided us.”

Read: Why activism leads to so much bad writing

After the publication of Chen’s essay, one writer after another pulled their work from the magazine. One wrote, “I will not allow my work to be curated alongside settler angst,” while another, the Texas-based Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah, wrote that Chen’s essay “is humiliating to Palestinians in any time let alone during a genocide. An essay as if a dispatch from a colonial century ago. Oh how good you are to the natives.” I find it hard to read the essay that way, but it would be a mistake, as Chen herself suggests, to ignore such sentiments. For those who more naturally sympathize with the Israeli mother than the Gazan hiding from the bombs, these responses exist across that chasm Chen describes, one that empathy alone is incapable of bridging.

That doesn’t mean empathy isn’t a start, though. Which is why the retraction of the article is more than an act of cowardice and a betrayal of a writer whose work the magazine shepherded to publication. It’s a betrayal of the task of literature, which cannot end wars but can help us see why people wage them, oppose them, or become complicit in them.

Empathy here does not justify or condemn. Empathy is just a tool. The writer needs it to accurately depict their subject; the peacemaker needs it to be able to trace the possibilities for negotiation; even the soldier needs it to understand his adversary. Before we act, we must see war’s human terrain in all its complexity, no matter how disorienting and painful that might be. Which means seeing Israelis as well as Palestinians—and not simply the mother comforting her children as the bombs fall and the essayist reaching out across the divide, but far harsher and more unsettling perspectives. Peace is not made between angels and demons but between human beings, and the real hell of life, as Jean Renoir once noted, is that everybody has their reasons. If your journal can’t publish work that deals with such messy realities, then your editors might as well resign, because you’ve turned your back on literature.

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Like My Book Title? Thanks, I Borrowed It.

Literary allusions are everywhere. What are they good for?

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essay on a book i enjoyed reading

By A.O. Scott

You see it everywhere, even if you don’t always recognize it: the literary allusion. Quick! Which two big novels of the past two years borrowed their titles from “Macbeth”? Nailing the answer — “ Birnam Wood ” and “ Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow ” — might make you feel a little smug.

Perhaps the frisson of cleverness ( I know where that’s from!), or the flip-side cringe of ignorance ( I should know where that’s from! ), is enough to spur you to buy a book, the way a search-optimized headline compels you to click a link. After all, titles are especially fertile ground for allusion-mongering. The name of a book becomes more memorable when it echoes something you might have heard — or think you should have heard — before.

This kind of appropriation seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Before the turn of the 20th century, titles were more descriptive than allusive. The books themselves may have been stuffed with learning, but the words on the covers were largely content to give the prospective reader the who (“Pamela,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Frankenstein”), where (“Wuthering Heights,” “The Mill on the Floss,” “Treasure Island”) or what (“The Scarlet Letter,” “War and Peace,” “The Way We Live Now”) of the book.

Somehow, by the middle of the 20th century, literature had become an echo chamber. Look homeward, angel! Ask not for whom the sound and the fury slouches toward Bethlehem in dubious battle. When Marcel Proust was first translated into English, he was made to quote Shakespeare, and “In Search of Lost Time” (the literal, plainly descriptive French title) became “Remembrance of Things Past,” a line from Sonnet 30 .

Recent Proust translators have erased the Shakespearean reference in fidelity to the original, but the habit of dressing up new books in secondhand clothing persists, in fiction and nonfiction alike. Last year, in addition to “Birnam Wood,” there were Jonathan Rosen’s “ The Best Minds ,” with its whisper of Allen Ginsberg’s “ Howl ,” Paul Harding’s “ This Other Eden ” (“ Richard II ”), and William Egginton’s “ The Rigor of Angels ” (Borges). The best-seller lists and publishers’ catalogs contain multitudes ( Walt Whitman ). Here comes everybody! (James Joyce).

If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own. I didn’t say that: Morrissey did, in a deepish Smiths cut (“ Cemetry Gates , ” from 1986), which misquotes Shakespeare and name-checks John Keats, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde — possibly the most reliably recycled writers (along with John Milton and the authors of the King James Bible) in the English language.

Not that any of them would have minded. When Keats wrote that “ a thing of beauty is a joy forever ,” he surely hoped that at least that much of “ Endymion ” would outlive him. It’s a beautiful sentiment! And he may have been right. Does anyone read his four-part, 4,000-line elegy for Thomas Chatterton outside a college English class, or even for that matter inside one? Nonetheless, that opening line may ring a bell if you remember it from the movies “ Mary Poppins ,” “Yellow Submarine” or “ White Men Can’t Jump .”

Wilde’s witticism and bons mots have survived even as some of his longer works have languished. If it’s true (as he said) that only superficial people do not judge by appearances, maybe it follows that shallow gleaning is the deepest kind of reading. Or maybe, to paraphrase Yeats, devoted readers of poetry lack all conviction , while reckless quoters are full of passionate intensity .

Like everything else, this is the fault of the internet, which has cannibalized our reading time while offering facile, often spurious, pseudo-erudition to anyone with the wit to conduct a search. As Mark Twain once said to Winston Churchill, if you Google, you don’t have to remember anything.

Seriously though: I come not to bury the practice of allusion, but to praise it. (“ Julius Caesar ”) And also to ask, in all earnestness and with due credit to Edwin Starr , “ Seinfeld” and Leo Tolstoy : What is it good for?

The language centers of our brains are dynamos of originality. A competent speaker of any language is capable of generating intelligible, coherent sentences that nobody has uttered before. That central insight of modern linguistics, advanced by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s and ’60s, is wonderfully democratic. Every one of us is a poet in our daily speech, an inglorious Milton ( Thomas Gray ), a Shakespeare minting new coins of eloquence.

Of course, actual poets are congenital thieves (as T.S. Eliot or someone like him may have said), plucking words and phrases from the pages of their peers and precursors. The rest of us are poets in that sense, too. If our brains are foundries, they are also warehouses, crammed full of clichés, advertising slogans, movie catchphrases, song lyrics, garbled proverbs and jokes we heard on the playground at recess in third grade. Also great works of literature.

There are those who sift through this profusion with the fanatical care of mushroom hunters, collecting only the most palatable and succulent specimens. Others crash through the thickets, words latching onto us like burrs on a sweater. If we tried to remove them, the whole garment — our consciousness, in this unruly metaphor — might come unraveled.

That may also be true collectively. If we were somehow able to purge our language of its hand-me-down elements, we might lose language itself. What happens if nobody reads anymore, or if everyone reads different things? Does the practice of literary quotation depend on a stable set of common references? Or does it function as a kind of substitute for a shared body of knowledge that may never have existed at all?

The old literary canon — that dead white men’s club of star-bellied sneetches ( Dr. Seuss ) — may have lost some of its luster in recent decades, but it has shown impressive staying power as a cornucopia of quotes. Not the only one, by any means (or memes). Television, popular music, advertising and social media all provide abundant fodder, and the way we read now (or don’t) has a way of rendering it all equivalent. The soul selects her own society ( Emily Dickinson ).

When I was young, my parents had a fat anthology of mid-20th-century New Yorker cartoons , a book I pored over with obsessive zeal. One drawing that baffled me enough to stick in my head featured a caption with the following words: “It’s quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles.” What on earth was that? It wasn’t until I was in graduate school, cramming for an oral exam in Renaissance literature, that I found the answer in “ L’Allegro, ” an early poem by Milton, more often quoted as the author of “Paradise Lost.”

Not that having the citation necessarily helps. The cartoon, by George Booth, depicts a woman in her living room, addressing members of a multigenerational, multispecies household. There are cats, codgers, a child with a yo-yo, a bird in a cage and a dog chained to the sofa. Through the front window, the family patriarch can be seen coming up the walk, a fedora on his head and a briefcase in his right hand. His arrival — “Here comes Poppa” — is the occasion for the woman’s Miltonic pep talk.

This black-and-white cartoon shows a woman in a black dress and polka dot apron standing in the front room of her home addressing its inhabitants, which include a young child, several elderly people, a couple of cats and a dog leashed to a sofa. Through a large window, we can see the woman’s husband approaching on the front walk in an overcoat and hat and with a briefcase in one hand.

Who is she? Why is she quoting “L’Allegro”? Part of the charm, I now suspect, lies in the absurdity of those questions. But I also find myself wondering: Were New Yorker readers in the early 1970s, when the cartoon was first published, expected to get the allusion right off the bat? They couldn’t Google it. Or would they have laughed at the incongruous eruption of an old piece of poetry they couldn’t quite place?

Maybe what’s funny is that most people wouldn’t know what that lady was talking about. And maybe the same comic conceit animates an earlier James Thurber drawing reprinted in the same book. In this one, a wild-eyed woman bursts into a room, wearing a floppy hat and wielding a basket of meadow flowers. “I come from haunts of coot and hern!” she exclaims to the baffled company, disturbing their cocktail party.

That’s it. That’s the gag.

Were readers also baffled? It turns out that Thurber’s would-be nature goddess is quoting “ The Brook ,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (I’ve never read it either.) Is it necessary to get the reference to get the joke? If you chuckle in recognition, and complete the stanza without missing a beat — “I make a sudden sally/And sparkle out among the fern,/To bicker down a valley” — is the joke on you?

It’s possible, from the standpoint of the present, to assimilate these old pictures to the familiar story about the decline of a civilization based in part on common cultural knowledge. Sure. Whatever. Things fall apart ( Yeats ). In the cartoons’ own terms, though, spouting snippets of poetry is an unmistakable sign of eccentricity — the pastime of kooky women and the male illustrators who commit them to paper. This is less a civilization than a sodality of weirdos, a visionary company ( Hart Crane ) of misfits. But don’t quote me on that.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for The Times’s Book Review, writing about literature and ideas. He joined The Times in 2000 and was a film critic until early 2023. More about A.O. Scott

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