What books would /lit/ recommend for someone who is learning English?
I'm teaching a Japanese girl at my college English, and I want to give her something relatively simple, but not hogwash.
Highschool curriculum stuff
A celebrity memoir perhaps? Tina Fey maybe?
>>7593543
>bourgeois make-up and hairstyle
>big manga doe eyes
>passive pose
>not even running forward to stab capitalist-roaders through the guts with a giant fountain pen
0/10 would not make revolution with
>>7593543
Some Poe?
>>7593608
Let a girl have her fun.
>>7593604
Why Tina Fey?
>>7593609
Perhaps.
>>7593618
Tina Fey because her autobiography isn't like a straight up grocery store book although it's not exactly a gr8 literary memoir either, and she is funny and makes great comedies
>>7593543
robinson crusoe help me to learn english, so that.
>>7593609
Poe ain't so tricky but he's got a thing for archaic language/natural shifts since 19th century. I'm inclined toward more modern?
Zack's Alligator.
The Divide series I presume'd aid in her learning. It's verbarianally simple fantasy.
Artemis Fowl ftw.
>>7593657
I've heard of Artemis Fowl before, good things. It's been awhile since I've read them, but what about A Series of Unfortunate Events?
Anne of Green Gables was standard English-language reading in post-war Japanese schools for years. Partly it was selected because of it's political neutrality, but also because of its easy-to-read flow and idyllic setting.
She may have already read it, but if not, get her a copy.
>>7593874
From wikipedia:
>The novel has been very popular in Japan, where it is known as Red-haired Anne,[13][14] and where it has been included in the national school curriculum since 1952. 'Anne' is revered as "an icon" in Japan, especially since 1979 when this story was broadcast as anime, Anne of Green Gables.[15] Japanese couples travel to Prince Edward Island to have civil wedding ceremonies on the grounds of the Green Gables farm. Some Japanese girls arrive as tourists with red-dyed hair styled in pigtails, to look like Anne.[16] In 2014, Asadora 'Hanako to Anne' (Hanako Muraoka is the first translator in Japan) was broadcast and Anne became popular among old and young alike.
>>7593543
Hemingway. The pinnacle of simple writing.
She probably would like Descartes
>>7593543
Harry Potter, seriously.
I read the first two books when I was younger and my English was way shittier, it was a cool experience.
>>7594179
I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>7594192
Autism: The Post
A dictionary.
Finnegans Wake
>>7593543
Just give her something with simple writing, like Hemingway. How about the old man and the sea?
>>7594301
>>7593912
>>7593593
Alright, I'm considering The Old Man and The Sea. Anything else by Hemingway that would be good?
On an semi-note, I taught her her the phrase 'ay ay, captain' and she uses it a lot, and also has taken to calling me 'captain'. Life is good.
>>7594192
Delicious pasta
>>7596037
I actually met the man who did these paintings in China. Interesting fellow. I'm considering buying one of his paintings online.
>>7593543
Dickens, Twain, Orwell, Caroll
>>7596052
From where?
>please dont say taobao
>>7596119
>>7596136
His name is Da Zhong Zhang
Leona Craig Art Gallery
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