Shadowing Practice: Spring Book Recommendations 🌱🌸 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello it's Ruby and today I'm going to be sharing some spring book recommendations with you.
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These are some wonderful books to read in the spring and
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which I think have the greatest impact and like emotional weight in the spring.
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There is something really joyful about reading seasonally but especially in spring because there's so much anticipation in the season.
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Like today for example it's incredibly misty, we've had a lot of rain yesterday but because of the blossom
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and because of the kind of daffodils that are blooming and
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because of the catkins which lengthen so much
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and the birds are flying everywhere there's like an excitement around this growth
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and this newness and there are books I think
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that we can read to really multiply that anticipation and
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that kind of appreciation for spring and
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when we read pieces of writing about spring or kind of books
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that invoke a feeling of spring it lets us be more
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attentive to the season as it unfolds in front of us
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which is why I'm really excited to be sharing these recommendations with you.
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I'm going to start with this one
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which is quite maybe quite an obvious one excuse the fact
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that I hand pound this which is why it does not look wonderful complete with these beautiful endpapers.
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This is Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.
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Thomas Hardy is of course famous for his pastoral settings.
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His novels are set in the countryside.
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Thomas Hardy lived in the Dorset countryside and because of
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that pastoral setting his books are just really wonderful to read in the spring.
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Jude The Obscure is my favourite of the Thomas Hardy novels but Far From the Madding Crowd is my favourite spring one.
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This is about a woman called Bathsheba who inherits a farm and then runs it as a woman,
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as a young single woman at that and as you'd expect she runs into a number of problems running the farm,
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these like small but very very significant problems
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which like threaten the whole of her livelihood but also of the people
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that kind of work at the farm that she manages.
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The main plot is around love and three different suitors which like are all pursuing her.
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I just really love Bathsheba as a character though.
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It is a sorrowful book as again is the case with much Thomas Hardy
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but if you've been wanting to give Thomas Hardy a go this is the time to do it with this specific book.
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Next here I've got The Beautiful Years by Henry Williamson which I read while I was in Devon last month.
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This is the first in a four-part series
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which follows the main character through the whole of his life
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so this is the ages of seven to nine
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and even though it's obviously multi-seasonal
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because like we go through every season of his life in
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terms of how it's weighted there is much more writing in like the spring
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and summer sections more than spring there is summer writing in this
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which kind of reflects the childhood experience of the very long
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summers where you're away from school the reason though I still
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recommend it even though maybe this will be better suited under a summer read is
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because in terms of anticipation this book inspires that.
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Like I don't really love summer at all, it's my least favorite season but this made me excited for the growth,
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the abundance, the beauty naturally of summer and spring
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because it is a transitional state between winter and summer does embody that anticipation and I think this book heightens that.
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There are just such vivid natural descriptions and Henry Williamson clearly knows a lot about birds,
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a lot about nature, like the natural world in which he's writing.
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He was writing from rural North Devon and it's I just love how precise it is.
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It's not like he's just talking about birds, he's talking about chaffinches but then he's specifically talking about the way that their song sounds and it's so atmospheric,
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it feels nostalgic.
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I think it's a wonderful way to appreciate the coming of spring and appreciate the birds as they start to appear.
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These two books are also kind of bird related.
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So the first is 12 birds to save your life which I recently finished and loved.
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It's a story of grief but told through species of birds and so each chapter is about a specific bird.
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The book is part memoir as Charlie Corbett grieves the death of his mother
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and it's a story of grief told through these 12 species of birds
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so every chapter is a different bird like house sparrow,
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house martin and I also love how each chapter starts with pieces of literature which describe that bird.
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It's such a hopeful book you learn a lot about birds
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but it's also filled with such wisdom and it's that's so kind of intimate and personal as you could probably suspect.
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He talks about his own intimate relationship with each of these birds
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and specific memories that he has with these birds
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and then he uses the way that they interact in the world to help find solace in what he's dealing with.
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This is just- it's such a beautiful book and I can't believe it took me this long to read it.
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I also read this as I was grieving the loss of somebody and it was very comforting as a book.
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I just really love and appreciate how it uses these studies of birds
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and descriptions of birds to focus like outward
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and like focus on these very tiny things
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and like the the cycles of nature
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which return every year the other one is the lost bells um who also wrote the lost words
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and um this oh my gosh i i love this book it's part art book
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and then it gives you a poem about each of these birds
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and it's just so comforting to read um i read this a couple years ago
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but i've dipped into it since the poems are quite simple
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but they they read like lullabies or nursery rhymes
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so for example don't call her a crow or rook
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or raven for she's a jackdaw gray-headed outlaw fighting the class
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war dipping down on quick wings to hijack a wedding ring
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or ransack a knick-knack of course snatch up a gimrak while giving it the guffal.
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The next one I've got on here and this is actually really difficult to explain why this is a spring book.
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I wasn't initially going to put it on the list
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but it kept on coming back to me as like this is a great one for spring um
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so you're gonna have to just trust me on the links to spring
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because they are so so so tentative
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because there aren't any even any links to spring apart from the fact
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that this book is very hopeful and um it's budding
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and I think because of that in my head it feels like a book about spring.
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It's collected letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sacreville West
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and these are love letters and they are so beautiful like just I cannot even tell you how stunning these are.
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They're so tender and
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it's amazing to have both sides of the epistolarium because that's like a large problem when it comes to apostolary writing,
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like letters that remain, is that usually you will have like a lot from one person
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or all from one person but not from the other person
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and so the very fact that letters remain from both of them
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and that both kept the letters is just such a beautiful testament to the way
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that these letters were important to each of them, like you keep them because they're important to you.
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And just if you like Virginia Woolf this is fabulous, I think this is my favourite piece of wolf's writing.
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Next I've got another classic we've got Emma by Jane Austen.
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In general I feel like spring is the Jane Austen season
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and it's always the season that I crave reading a bit of Jane Austen.
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I also caveat I used to say very adamantly that I hated Jane Austen.
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I'm well aware of this I know that I would say this
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and I have had to admit and like very sheepishly now
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that I actually do like Jane Austen it's just
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that I didn't like Pride and Prejudice which then clouded my perception of whether I liked her.
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The problem is that I read Pride
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and Prejudice three times trying to like it and just didn't
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and I think it's more that I just didn't like Pride and Prejudice.
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I also then didn't like Persuasion which kind of clouded my head further but I did like Mansfield Park, I loved Sense and Sensibility,
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Northang Abbey was like okay and I loved Emma
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and I also I also loved her juvenile writing
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so I've read most of her corpus now
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and I do actually really like Jane Austen and
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so I have to like backtrack on what I said before about not liking her work
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and actually this spring I'm going to give Pride
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and Prejudice another go for the fourth time
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because I haven't read it since I was 16
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and I think your literary tastes change a lot between being a teenager
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and an adult so yeah I'm actually going to see
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if I like it
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and I will give you a review I might even do a whole dedicated review on Pride
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and Prejudice and whether I like it.
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Maybe I'll do a reading vlog of it.
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Anyway I'm getting distracted.
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I'd say the two best Jane Austen's to read in the spring are Emma and Sense and Sensibility.
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Of course I'm biased because they're my two favourite ones.
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Now Emma was, by Jane Austen's own admission, meant to be a character that you don't like.
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She was created to be unlikable.
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Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home
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and happy disposition seem to unite some of the best blessings of existence
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and had lived nearly 21 years in this world with very little to distress or vex her.
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Emma is obsessed with pairing people up
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and she has a very high opinion of herself
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and her ability to do this pairing so she's a matchmaker within within this community where she lives.
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Where does she live actually?
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Oh it's Highbury of course in Surrey.
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It's in I think maybe it's clouded by the fact that the film adaptation from 2020 of Emma is,
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even with the scenes that are set at Christmas and autumn, it feels like a spring film
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and I think that's maybe also partially why I think of this as a spring-like book
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but again because things grow quite slowly
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and things are like blossoming in the same way as the spring blossoms it feels like a spring narrative.
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This is the most obvious book on the list which is The Secret Garden which is literally about spring, the whole point of this book is about spring,
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in which Mary Lennox comes from India after her parents die
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and she is living in this old ancient manor house in Yorkshire and she's very bored,
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she like doesn't know anybody, she's in the middle of nowhere and
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she is sent out every day into the gardens
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and she's just told to amuse herself and
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while she is exploring the gardens in the depths of winter she finds a garden, the secret garden, locked behind this locked door with these high brick walls
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and she goes inside she starts to plant things and she
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slowly as a result of this becomes like a better person and she becomes more agreeable and
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that's as she like sees the beauty in the natural world and just as spring grows and flourishes
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Mary also does and it's just it's such a beautiful such a beautiful book
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and it really makes you value spring
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because like the book is set over the course of one spring
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and you see it arriving
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and it's a really beautiful book to read in early spring as kind of spring is on the precipice about to arrive.
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I've got two poetry anthologies next I won't talk about these in much depth
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because I've talked about these to no end on this channel
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but the two best poets for spring are also my two favorite poets Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson.
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Mary Oliver because she often writes about nature in her poetry
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and it's so hopeful like her poetry is beautifully hopeful
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and much of it especially her early works focuses on the natural world.
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Some of her poetry anthologies
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are more political so American Primitive for example is a more political collection and I personally don't like that one as much.
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I really like her nature poetry.
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This is a lovely one for the spring
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and just again appreciating the natural world which is at the crux of enjoying spring I think.
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And then the other one is Emily Dickinson.
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Emily Dickinson is so attentive to the seasons, to flowers, to birds and those images often feature in her poetry,
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especially her early works, which are are very nature focused
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and even though like her later works are my favourites of her poems,
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her early works are still wonderful and her early works are lovely to read in the spring.
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There is this particular one about, I think it's February, it's called February.
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Oh also, sorry, this leaf is from her house in Amherst.
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I took it when I was there and pressed it between the pages of my copy.
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So her most famous spring poem is maybe Dear March, Come In, which is beautiful.
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I'm going to read you the first two stanzas of this.
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Dear March, come in, how glad I am, I looked for you before.
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Put down your hat, you must have walked, how out of breath you are.
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Dear March, how are you, and the rest?
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Did you leave nature well?
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Oh March, come right upstairs with me, I have so much to tell.
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I got your letter in the birds, the maples never knew that you were coming.
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I declare how red their faces grew, but March, forgive me
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and all those hills you left for me to hew there
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was no purple suitable you took it all with you." Another of my favorites for spring is Beatrix Potter.
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I reread the Beatrix Potter stories every single year, not necessarily all of them but they're so comforting and
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because they're so rooted in the natural world and
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because she's literally using the animals that she sees
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and she's using for inspiration uh her house in the lake district
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and like the views out that she sees
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and the little details of like the ponds
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and like all of this is based on her real life um
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which i realized when i visited her house over the spring
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and so reading reading her stories just it feels like the embodiment of spring
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and i feel like i never feel more ready for spring
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and exciting for spring than when I'd just read one of these and they're
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so nostalgic oh my gosh like I reread a bit to
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explore the story for the first time in maybe like 2021 I started reading them every spring
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and it was so like I got this this wave of nostalgia
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when I read it because I hadn't read them since I was six
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and like I just can't recommend going back to these enough even their stories from children like they're still
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so wise and they're funny and they're clever and they're dark
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and you forget just how dark they are and the other thing
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which again I've spoken about a lot on here but I loved this little biography of Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane.
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There are more famous biographies out there and
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I'm gonna try- I want to read another of her biographies
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but this is a very quick one
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and you can kind of get a sense of her life
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and a sense of the natural world that she loved
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so much in the Lake District and the way that even though she lived in London she was enamored with
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with the lakes and with the natural world of England
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and it's again just a beautiful one to read in the spring
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because it makes you appreciative of nature and I think we enjoy spring most when we are appreciative of nature.
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The penultimate book was I think this was the best book I read in 2024,
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Ophelia Swam by Kelly Swain which is also almost impossible to find
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because they only stock it at Blackwell's in Oxford but I think you can order it on Blackwell's online.
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It's so wonderful like just this book needs so much more attention and like I just it's so good.
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So it's based on Hamlet as you can probably guess from the title Ophelia.
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In the story Ophelia doesn't drown and instead she swims downstream and she's taken in by this group of nuns in Godstow.
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She is enlisted into this nunnery where she learns the botanical craft
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and in particular she's shown a tremendous amount of kindness by Lady Grace,
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Sister Grace, who is based on Lady Grace Mildmay who was a real 16th century female botanist
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and apothecary and I love the fact that it's kind of harkening back to an actual incredible woman from the 16th century.
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It's so clever there are so many allusions to like Shakespeare
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and 16th century life
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and I think the writing is beautiful again there's lots of lots of nature writing in here
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and because she's learning botany she's so like sensitive to the touch of the flowers
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and it kind of fits as well with Ophelia
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because the image of the flowers is very much associated with Ophelia in Hamlet.
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It goes through several years and so you do get descriptions from several springs
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and even though the whole book isn't about spring it's the spring parts
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that for me in my memory at least really shine through.
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I cannot recommend this book enough and I really hope you're able to get your hands on a copy of this.
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Then the very final book is more of a pamphlet but it's fantastic and I don't have a copy of it.
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I keep on meaning to buy a copy
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and I need to buy a copy but called The Nettle Eater by Tom Heron.
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I borrowed this from the library at Arvon
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when I was on a writing course
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and it's- I read it in a morning
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and it just- it was unlike and it is unlike anything I've ever read before.
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It's so strange, like it feels psychedelic.
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It's basically the story of this man who abandoned civilization
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and goes to live in the wild for a year and he survives exclusively on nettles.
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It's not realistic at all, it's not like a realistic narrative and it moves very fast,
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it's so lyrical, you're never quite sure what's happening but it's just beautiful and again just in terms of connection to nature,
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connection to the natural world, this showcases that but in the most unique, poetic, beautiful way.
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I cannot recommend enough if you love like lyrical writing and
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if you maybe like the grotesque or Tim Burton perhaps you might like this.
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It's also very witchy, it kind of has a witchy feel to it.
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I am actually also going to do a shameless self promo with this
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because people have been asking me to bring this back and I'm going to because it is spring.
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This is a spring nature journal that I kept
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in 2023 and I wrote these kind of like daily poems
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and letters and observations of how the spring was coming
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and changing and I sold a very limited print run of these in 2023
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and because lots of people have been asking me about it I'm going to re-release 50 of these.
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Honestly it makes me so like I'm so honoured and
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so like grateful that people are actually interested to read this as well.
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I wasn't going to print it at all at first
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but I was showing it often in my videos
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because I'd always be keeping it and I had
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so many people asking like would you consider printing it as a facsimile
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and like I've had so many lovely messages from people who did read it
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so I will leave a link below
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but the delivery time will be two weeks
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because I will get them printed in the meantime but I'm sorry self promo done I will not talk about that again.
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But anyway those are my top spring book recommendations.
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I hope you were able to walk away with a new book from this list
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and I hope that you have more than just a productive week.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Este vídeo tiene 273 frases y 3545 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 20:49. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 170 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. El 83 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| poetry sustantivo | /ˈpoʊ.ə.tɹi/ | poesía |
| poem sustantivo | /ˈpoʊ.əm/ | poema, poesía |
| hopeful adjetivo | /ˈhoʊpfl̩/ | esperanzado |
| anticipation sustantivo | /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/ | previsión, anticipación |
| cloud sustantivo | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | nube, nimbo |
| comfort sustantivo | /ˈkʌm.fət/ | comodidad, confort |
| clever adjetivo | /ˈklɛv.ɚ/ | hábil, listo |
| recommendation sustantivo | /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/ | recomendación |
| grief sustantivo | /ɡɹiːf/ | pesar, pesadumbre |
| biography sustantivo | /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/ | biografía |
| blossom verbo | /ˈblɑ.səm/ | florecer |
| narrative sustantivo | /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/ | narrativa |
| arrive verbo | /əˈɹaɪv/ | llegar, arribar |
| explore verbo | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | explorar |
| poet sustantivo | /ˈpoʊ.ət/ | poeta, poetisa |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| go through verbo | atravesar |
| put down verbo | menospreciar |
| send out verbo | emitir |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 68 contracciones y formas reducidas, como I'm, I've, they're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “th”: threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, anthology /ænˈθɑləd͡ʒi/, apothecary /əˈpɑθəˌkɛəɹi/, lengthen /ˈlɛŋθən/
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: anticipation /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, partially /ˈpɑɹʃəli/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: anticipation /ænˌtɪs.əˈpeɪ.ʃən/, recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, biography /baɪˈɑɡɹəfi/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como poetry, poem, hopeful.
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa | you've been wanting · have been asking |
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | are set · was created · is obsessed |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | this which is · list which is · world which is |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | i've dipped · I've read · haven't read |
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.