true nervous very very dreadfully
nervous I had been an M but why will you
say that I am mad the disease had
sharpened my senses not destroyed not
dulled them above all was the oh hey
guys
this is Alex thanks for clicking and
welcome to this lesson on what books
should I read so very often students are
asking me especially at the intermediate
and advanced levels they say Alex or
teacher I want to improve my English I
want to improve my vocabulary can you
give me some suggestions of books and
authors to check out what's easy enough
for me
but challenging enough so that I can
improve today I'm gonna give you a
couple of book suggestions in addition
to that I'm also going to give you 10
vocabulary words that I picked out from
the books so today to start out I was
reading tales of mystery and imagination
by famous American author Edgar Allen
Poe and this is actually an excellent
excellent collection of stories however
it might be a little bit too advanced
for intermediate speakers and even for
advanced speakers it's it poses a
challenge it poses a challenge for
native speakers so what do you do if
you're interested in reading Edgar Allen
Poe or other classic authors but you
might find the language of the the real
book to be too challenging or too
difficult well thankfully there are
actually a couple of companies out there
who make graded versions of books such
as the Edgar Allen Poe tales of mystery
and imagination Sherlock Holmes to kill
a mockingbird dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde
any number of classics you can think of
and I'm gonna show you a couple of those
today so give me one moment okay this is
a penguin reader so penguin readers are
really really excellent because what
they do is they take famous authors
famous books
and they make them accessible to an
English as a second language learner so
again if you're interested in starting
out to read English this is an excellent
way of doing that so today I'm going to
give you two suggestions and if you're
interested in horror if you're
interested in mystery if you're
interested in detective stories you
really can't do much better than Edgar
Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle now you
might not be familiar with the name
Arthur Conan Doyle but you are probably
familiar with the name Sherlock Holmes
and Arthur Conan Doyle is actually the
author of the Sherlock Holmes stories
now these two books here tales of
mystery and imagination by Edgar Allan
Poe and Sherlock Holmes short stories by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are both short
story collections so if you feel a
little bit intimidated by reading a
complete novel another thing that's
great about these is a lot of these
stories are five pages six pages so you
can sit down you can learn a lot of
vocabulary a lot of grammatical
structure just with six pages of reading
and you'll feel that you have read a
complete story
okay so again I really really recommend
these especially if you're into murder
mysteries detective fiction and you want
something that is very short but gives
you enough so that you can learn a lot
and what I'm gonna do now is actually
give you guys ten vocabulary words that
I have chosen from these two books and
I'll give you the definitions we'll talk
about some examples and then you can
finish the quiz and test your
understanding as usual alright let's get
to it
okay so the first word that we have here
is disturbed now disturbed is a verb
which means to interrupt someone or to
make someone nervous or a little scared
so for example if you see a bloody crime
like Anna Sherlock Holmes story that
might disturb you it might make you feel
a little weird a little nervous someone
can also
come in and disturb you while you are
working the next word is horizon horizon
is a noun and when you think of a
picture of the ocean of the sea and you
think of the Sun in the back the horizon
is that line it's the line where the
land or the sea seems to meet the sky
okay so it's that line in a picture the
next word is immense this is an
excellent vocabulary word this is an
adjective which just means extremely
large so you can say the buildings in
New York are immense extremely large the
next word is merci which is a noun
now merci is something that you show
towards a person or that you have for
someone so merci is kindness and a
willingness to forgive so for example if
you're fighting with someone and you're
you're beating them and they say stop
stop stop
have mercy show me mercy this means like
show sympathy for me be kind please
forgive me I give up okay you might see
this a lot in like war movies and stuff
like gladiator and all that stuff okay
misery misery is a noun the adjective is
miserable
so misery just means great unhappiness
so you can live in misery and there's
actually a book by Stephen King of the
same title so you can check that out if
you're into Stephen King and stuff like
that so next word is consult this comes
from consultation which is the noun form
consult is to ask for advice or
information so in the Sherlock Holmes
stories people with problems come to
consult with Sherlock Holmes if you're
having some kind of difficulties some
kind of physical illness
you should probably consult a doctor the
next word is Forge now to forge is to
illegally copy something usually we talk
about forging money or forging a
person's signature so maybe when you
were a child
and you had to get permission to go
somewhere but you you knew your parents
would not let you go there maybe you
would Forge your parents signature
illegally copy it essentially don't do
that
soil ok soil that we're talking about
the noun which is the top layer of earth
where plants grow so if you want to
start a garden in your house you have to
go and buy some soil ok tremble this is
a verb which means to shake because of
worry or fear or excitement
you can also tremble because you're cold
ok very very useful verb and finally
word that most of my students in my life
have had a difficult time pronouncing
and it's thoroughly thoroughly so
thoroughly ok this is an adverb which
means completely or wholly so I was
thoroughly surprised to hear the news
completely the police searched the room
thoroughly ok so let's just do a quick
listen and repeat with pronunciation of
this vocab guys so from the top disturb
horizon immense mercy misery consult
Forge soil tremble thoroughly ok now
that you have looked at these vocabulary
items you might be interested to know
where can I get the books that Alex is
talking about attached to this video you
will find a link to the Amazon website
you will also find a link to a list of
authors who are in the public domain now
what this means is that there are
authors whose works whose fiction is
freely available on the internet for
everyone to read because the copyright
is so old and finally you will also find
a link to the penguin read
website which you can check out if
you're interested in finding out which
books are available in the penguin
readers collection alright guys so as
always you can test your knowledge of
this material by doing the quiz on
engvid.com and don't forget to subscribe
to my youtube channel nevermore
you