https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol0qjhIc114&feature=youtu.be

In this video we continue the theme of our blog: reviewing books. Each of the members of the ISYS 100 Books Blog presented a chosen book; briefly discussing the plot and providing a recommendation.

Contributions
 Ming Da :blog creation and contribution, video editing and report contribution.

Charlie Williams: Blog creation and conception, report contribution and involvement in video.

Rachel Hewish: Video idea to discuss book reviews, blog creation, report contribution and involvement in video.

Photo-Wisdom by Lewis Blackwell

In an age in which, increasingly, we all take or view photographs, this book is an inquiry and inspiration as to why we do this.
Lewis Blackwell speaks about how photography has become a language that can be understood the world over, by all cultures. This book, through its various contributors, delves into why visual grammar works, even though we may not understand how it works.
The book is comprised of the thoughts, commentaries & selective works of 50 photographers from the world over. No two photographers are alike. Their specialities range from landscape to photojournalism, from portraiture to still life.
They each give their insight into how they chose their profession, or rather how their profession chose them. Each photographer delves into the stories behind some of their selective works, and what statements are made and stories told through the visual medium.
The insights are quite fascinating, sometimes delving into the philosophical aspects of photography, and sharing their wisdom on what makes a truly special photograph.
Each photographers profile is completely original, and was comprised from sometimes several interviews & conversations especially for this book.
My personal favourite is Massimo Vitali, who’s crowded beach lifestyle images he explains are the perfect environment for examining human behaviour, as it shows people at their most relaxed, with really nothing to do but to be who they are.

TIME MAGAZINES TOP 10 BOOKS 2015

We hope you have been enjoying our book reviews, but perhaps

they have not been your most loved genre of books?

Here is a complied list of TIME magazines top 10 books of 2015 - From July 2015.

1. A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson

2. Seveneves - Neal Stephenson

3. I take you - Eliza Kennedy

4. Get in Trouble - Kelly Link

5. Trigger Warning - Niel Gaiman

6. H is for Hawk - Helen McDonald

7. The Story of Alice - Robert Douglas - Fairhurst

8. The Brothers - Masha Geesen

9. The Folded Clock - Heidi Julavits

10. How Music got Free - Stephen Witt


The link is provided here: http://time.com/3935938/best-books-2015-so-far/

Book review: Dracula - Bram Stroker

Written in the later years of the 19th century, Dracula has gone on to become a cult classic, & is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time.
The story is presented & told through a collection of characters journal entries, letters, memos & newspaper articles. This style of writing means the story is told first hand, the writing (as one would in a journal) is straight forward & we get the advantage of having multiple narrators.

The beginning of the story is told through the journal entries of an English solicitor named Jonathan Harker, who has travelled to meet Count Dracula, to discuss a real estate transaction, in his castle in Transylvania. After several strange occurrences, Harker flees the castle to head back to England.

The rest of the story mostly takes place in England, & explores the terror that Count Dracula unleashes on the lives of those involved. It is told from the journal entries from Mina (Harker's fiancee), Lucy (Mina's friend), Dr Seward, Quincy Morris, Arthur Hollywood & Abraham Van Helsing. Each of the characters have their own values & opinions, & each tells of a unique point of view on different events.

It is interesting to note that Dracula is said to be based on a real person. Vlad the Impaler was a Transylvanian nobleman & ruler of Wallachia in the mid 15th century. He received the nickname, "The Impaler" after his reputation of excessive cruelty & practices of impaling his enemies.


There is a very good reason this book is rated so highly. It is a fantastic read, & even though many of you already know the ending, the journey to get there is very worth it.

Count Dracula, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film, Dracula.

Book review: Looking for Alibrandi

“Melina Marchetta's stunning debut novel Looking for Alibrandi is one girl's story of her final year at school, a year she sets herself free. Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family – and the identity she has been searching for”.

- Penguins Books.

A moving and revealing book, unusual for its honesty and its insight into the life of a young person on the brink of adulthood. Multi-award-winning, a bestseller and made into an award-winning feature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic.

The novel ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ is widely used in High-schools across Australia as a part of the English curriculum ‘study of Novel’ as it is relevant and explores a range of themes with an interesting plot synopsis.

The novel was extremely successful and became a film in 2004 as Josie was brought to life through the use of lighting, music and sound techniques the viewer could engage with the meaningful text on a deeper level.

Watch the 2004 movie trailer here:

Book Review: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain published in the United Kingdom in December 1884. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism.

It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels, Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. It is a direct sequel to another american classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The book follows Huck's adventure down the Mississippi River with Jim, a companion and a escapee slave. On the journey, he discovers that the world is different than what he anticipated as he continued down the river.

The book is eminent for its colorful description of various kinds of people, from the rich bureaucrats  to the slaves and places along the Mississippi River. The story is set in a Southern antebellum (pre-civil war period) society.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism and the notion of individualism and identity, ideals of companionship and betrayals. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains a classic and has also been the continued object of study by literary critics across the world since its publication. It was however criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slurs.

Meet the Writer: Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in November 30, 1835, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. 

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper . He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In 1865, his humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention.

Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but later evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he writing style included combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons, for example, in Huckleberry Finn, racial themes and slurs were often repeated throughout.

Review: A Lot of Hard Yakka

A Lot of Hard Yakka

A Lot of Hark Yakka is a sports-biography by former cricketer and now sports-journalist Simon Hughes. Hughes recounts his misadventures of an english county cricketer in the 1980s and 90s. Despite never quite making it as a successful cricket, Hughes spent time with many of the players who did, indeed, the first line of the book states "I haven’t set the world alight, but I’ve hung around with people who have." For a cricket fan this book is a must as it reveals much about famous cricket players Gatting,Brearley, Botham, Gatting, Emburey, Edmonds, Daniel, Haynes. However, this book greatest strength is in its humour, as it is told in a highly self-depracating money, with funny story after another.

 A Lot of Hark Yakka is a must for any cricket for, but is not restricted to that readership as it is a highly engaging and funny story of a man who never quite reached the heights he had hope for; whilst still enjoying his journey on the way.

Meet the Writer: J.D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American writer who won acclaim early in life. He led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980.

Salinger was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school. Several were published in Story magazine in the early 1940s before he began serving in World War II. In 1948, his critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his later work. In 1951, his novel The Catcher in the Rye was an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.

Salinger identified closely with his characters, as seen through many of his classic works, and used techniques such as interior monologue, letters, and extended telephone calls to display his gift for dialogue. Such style elements also gave him the illusion of having, as it were, delivered his characters' destinies into their own keeping. Recurring themes in Salinger's stories also connect to the ideas of innocence and adolescence, including the corrupting influence of Hollywood and the world at large, the disconnect between teenagers and "phony" adults, and the perceptive, precocious intelligence of children.

Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. In November 2013, three unpublished stories by Salinger were briefly posted online. One of the stories, called "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", is said to be a prequel to The Catcher in the Rye.