Book Report
Class & Number: 1104 Name: 김 세훈
Title The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
Author Sue Townsend
Publisher & Year Do-sol & 1994
Vocabularies
worn out: be weakened
a ton: a lot of money
see light at the end of the tunnel: nevertheless many hardships, eventually, get over them all
devastated by this blow: be very embarrassed because of something critical
go through life: spend life
racist fanatics: frantic racist
Reflection
When I first read this book, I was very embarrassed because I should find almost all of the words on the text. The translator had said that the one who has level of third grade student of middle school's English should read the book smoothly.
However, whether I am worse than my juniors, there were many words that I saw them first time after I was born. You lied me!!! Park Jong Seo!!! I am so called first grade in English words, but it was enough to make feel the top of English words endangered.
Anyway, I think Adrian mole's diary is filled up with all trivial situations without some big events like split of his parents out. All he said every day and day was about acne, wet dreams, Pandora, Berry, or other trivial things.
Also I thought that the story line is so dark, miserable, and harsh. Everything Adrian try was spoiled. Including being almost stolen his first love by his best friend, Nigel(retake after a little bit, anyway) or extorted his money to classmate…, I will skip other more tragic things because I don't want to fill up my book report with tragedies.
Many students blamed after reading this book because it is so hard to get what is the main story line is.(Further more, it was extremely harsh as a story of a 14 years old student.) The worse thing is a fact that teachers made questions from this book at final exam.
And I was the one who agreed with their opinion, at first. So many obscene situations or descriptions helped me to organize bad opinion about this book. Especially, the situation that his father and mother, each person got their own lover exclude themselves made me doubt this book about this is real for kids.(And I don't like he called him an intellectual himself.)
However, many descriptions and expressions with humor made me smile during reading this book and eventually it changed my sight of looking this book.(I like humor like this type) In positive sight, one and one, each story was so good. Although his parents made decision to divorce, he never gave up using interesting expressions. I have a question that he is really an ordinary person.
I can feel love of family throughout this book, too. The scene that grandmother scolded at Berry Kent and take Adrian's money back was a little impressive. Also, although the parents of Adrian had had a big fight, they reunify, finally. I'm really sorry for the father being a DISABLED.(This fact was very shocking.)
Even at the dark scene, his family was pretty interesting to me. I don't know why but they keep making me smile. Like, after mother leaved the house, Adrian wore red socks, which was banned in school, because of just despair. However, he scolded by headmaster, and he said that to his father. His father got angry and give him a call(of course father was not rational), and have an argument, roughly. That situation was spreaded, and Adrian became a hero for students' right. All this process is so funny because he wore red socks because of just he was crazy for a while. However, he could get score from Pandora.
This book expressed an adolescent's mind very well with funny and fresh sentences(like intellectual poet, or story about sending two poems to BBC but being refused all two times, more thing is that the poems' construction. They give us nothing, just laugh.). Many people said that this book is not so good, but in slightly different sight, this book is very good. It is a love story, but has many factors for comedy. I like this type of things, so this book was suitable to me. Of course there are some crisis but even they are funny, and eventually, the story ends with a happy ending. I like happy things. If I get some time, I'll read the next diary, too. However, no more diary about acne please.
