Thursday, August 22, 2013

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Title: Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Adaptor: Margaret Naudi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year Published: 2008
Format: Paperback 80 Pages

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The Human mind is dark, bottomless pit, and sometimes it works in strange and frightening ways. That sound in the night...is it a door banging in the wind, or a murdered man knocking inside his coffin? The face in the mirror...is it yours, or the face of someone standing behind you, who is never there when you turn around?

These famous short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, that master of horror, explore the dark world of imagination, where the dead live and speak, where fear lies in every shadow of the mind...

Thought:

This book is very helpful for people who want to learn English. Oxford University Press has published this book in several stages, from starter to stage 6. The book that I have is on the 3rd stage with 1000 headwords. So yes, I didn't get any trouble reading it. There are also several pictures inside the book which actually help the reader to imagine the situation better. At first, I thought this book would be very frightening, judged by the cover. Another editions of this book are pretty scary. Here they are:




But I was wrong. This book is just like the opposite of bed time story. There are five short stories: The Fall of the Hause of Usher, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, William Wilson, and The Tell-Tale Heart. All of them have similar story, and even similar plot. Even this book is easy-to-read, doesn't mean it's good for children. Well, as an adult, I can understand what the message from each story, but children...they might get a nightmare. You may tell these stories to warn them. There is also glosarry, activities, and the oxford bookworms library grading and sample extracts inside this book. Totally for learner right? ; )

About the Author:

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, USA. His parents died when he was young, and he went to live with the Allan family in Richmond. He spent a year at university, and then two years in the army. In 1831 he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and his cousin Virginia. For the next few years life was difficult; he wrote stories and sold them to magazines, but it brought him little money. But he did find happiness with Virginia, whom he married in 1836.
From 1838 to 1844 Poe lived in Philadelphia, where he wrote some of his most famous stories, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and worked for different magazines. Then he moved to New York City, where his poem The Raven soon made him famous. But Virginia died in 1847, and Poe began drinking heavily. He tried to kill himself in 1848, and died the following year.

Poe is best known for his horror stories, but they are just a small part of his work. He can be called the father of the modern detective story, because of his story The Murders in the Rue Morgue--the first story to show how the detective thinks. (The Mystery Writers of America give a prize called an 'Edgar' to the writer of the best mystery each year.) He wrote poetry, funny stories, and stories about time travel--a kind of early science fiction. He also wrote about other writers of his time. But to most people the name Edgar Allan Poe means stories of death and madness, horror and ghosts.

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