English A1 EXTENDED ESSAY books

[IBsurvivor2012]

Heyyy...

I'm planning to do my EE in English A1..

Books I thought of are:

1. The five people you meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

2. The God of Small Things – Arundathi Roy

3. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

4. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

5. Thousand Splendid Suns

6. Alchemist

7. Shadow of the wind (originally in spanish, hence will also choose a bk written originally in english)

8. Eat Pray Love

9. A walk to remember

10. The Giver

11. Tuesdays with Morrie

Please give me your views regarding the books mentioned above.. Which one according to you is the best to do an ee in? Need advise and suggestions ASAP...

Thanks..

Edited September 1, 2011 by superexcited

[Arrowhead]

The five people you meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom: A decent book but very abstract, especially when that poor bloke keeps flying from one place to another and meeting different dead people who are helping him through his death. The ideas and what you take away from it is very transcendental and while I can see a great EE on this book, I see it if you couple it with another Albom book, maybe Tuesdays with Morrie?

The God of Small Things – Arundathi Roy: Haven't read it.

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger: This book is just so overdone, you might as well move on and do something different. I'm sure someone somewhere has written an essay or an EE or a WL about whatever you come up with.

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak: An inspirational book, one I could definitely see a fantastic EE in. Shortlist this as one of your finals if not the book. The narration alone in this book can make for some fantastic analysis.

Thousand Splendid Suns: Another great book, you can write a fantastic EE with this one as well, but I dunno, I've read a lot of people writing EEs on this book in the past few years since it really came to prominence. So I might hold off on that.

Alchemist - A marvellous book with more in the subtext than any other book I've picked up since. You could write anything and everything from this book and adequately derive it with evidence if you looked or squinted enough. It's like a lighter The Metamorphosis and a much less creepy Kafka work.

Shadow of the wind (originally in spanish, hence will also choose a bk written originally in english) - I LOVED THIS BOOK! I cannot believe I finally found someone who has read it as well and liked it! You know, you can really write a unique EE if you compared the concepts in this book and The Book Thief. Both of them are somewhat circulated around the concept of knowledge and the need for guardians and so on. There are so many parallels between these two books, beyond the fact that they're best-sellers and tear-jerkers no matter how many ever times I read them.

Eat Pray Love - While I think the message in this book is fundamental and instrumental, I didn't particularly like this one from a literary standpoint specifically. Although when Julia Roberts was in the movie, I was so happy I peed a little. Again, I don't think this book is necessarily an amazing EE-material, but it's still an amazing book.

A walk to remember - Meh, too much teenage angst and star-crossed lovers for my taste. Nicholas Sparks never ceases to make me cry, but I have to say that some of his works go beyond the realm of the ordinary (well actually all of his works do, but some make the continued suspension of disbelief a chore rather than a pleasure). While I think this book is very emotional and a memorable coming-of-age story, I think you can do better with Sparks alone. The Notebook is much more poignant when it comes to symbolism and growing up and the true, everlasting kind of love whilst in A Walk to Remember I could never shake the feeling that he just felt sorry for her. Dear John is a really good Sparks book too, the symbolism with coins is haunting, to this day I get chills, but this book is on the same level as The Notebook as far as fantastic characterisations are concerned. The Last Song was an alright read, but like A Walk to Remember I don't consider it to be one of his better works.

The Giver - Dunno, sorry.

[IBsurvivor2012]

The five people you meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom: A decent book but very abstract, especially when that poor bloke keeps flying from one place to another and meeting different dead people who are helping him through his death. The ideas and what you take away from it is very transcendental and while I can see a great EE on this book, I see it if you couple it with another Albom book, maybe Tuesdays with Morrie?

The God of Small Things – Arundathi Roy: Haven't read it.

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger: This book is just so overdone, you might as well move on and do something different. I'm sure someone somewhere has written an essay or an EE or a WL about whatever you come up with.

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak: An inspirational book, one I could definitely see a fantastic EE in. Shortlist this as one of your finals if not the book. The narration alone in this book can make for some fantastic analysis.

Thousand Splendid Suns: Another great book, you can write a fantastic EE with this one as well, but I dunno, I've read a lot of people writing EEs on this book in the past few years since it really came to prominence. So I might hold off on that.

Alchemist - A marvellous book with more in the subtext than any other book I've picked up since. You could write anything and everything from this book and adequately derive it with evidence if you looked or squinted enough. It's like a lighter The Metamorphosis and a much less creepy Kafka work.

Shadow of the wind (originally in spanish, hence will also choose a bk written originally in english) - I LOVED THIS BOOK! I cannot believe I finally found someone who has read it as well and liked it! You know, you can really write a unique EE if you compared the concepts in this book and The Book Thief. Both of them are somewhat circulated around the concept of knowledge and the need for guardians and so on. There are so many parallels between these two books, beyond the fact that they're best-sellers and tear-jerkers no matter how many ever times I read them.

Eat Pray Love - While I think the message in this book is fundamental and instrumental, I didn't particularly like this one from a literary standpoint specifically. Although when Julia Roberts was in the movie, I was so happy I peed a little. Again, I don't think this book is necessarily an amazing EE-material, but it's still an amazing book.

A walk to remember - Meh, too much teenage angst and star-crossed lovers for my taste. Nicholas Sparks never ceases to make me cry, but I have to say that some of his works go beyond the realm of the ordinary (well actually all of his works do, but some make the continued suspension of disbelief a chore rather than a pleasure). While I think this book is very emotional and a memorable coming-of-age story, I think you can do better with Sparks alone. The Notebook is much more poignant when it comes to symbolism and growing up and the true, everlasting kind of love whilst in A Walk to Remember I could never shake the feeling that he just felt sorry for her. Dear John is a really good Sparks book too, the symbolism with coins is haunting, to this day I get chills, but this book is on the same level as The Notebook as far as fantastic characterisations are concerned. The Last Song was an alright read, but like A Walk to Remember I don't consider it to be one of his better works.

The Giver - Dunno, sorry.

Thanks a ton... Your post has definitely given me direction and clarity. Was thinking on the same track.. Feels great to get a confirmation

[TurtleR]

I think Arrowhead already gave you a lot of info, but I've also read The Giver and its amazing, that is definitely EE material.

[Daedalus]

1. The five people you meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

2. The God of Small Things – Arundathi Roy. All I know about this book is that it won the Booker Prize -- ergo, go for it.

3. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger. This is more like 8th grade reading material ... not complex enough, I think, plus decades of analysis will leave you without anything original to say.

4. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

5. Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini. I've only read his other novel, but based on that and some of the reviews this would be an excellent choice. Comparing it to another book might expedite the thesis-finding part of the process.

6. Alchemist - Paolo Coelho. Terrible, overrated book, thin both physically and in in the sense of having basically no plot, no characters, and no themes. Not recommended.

7. Shadow of the Wind (originally in spanish, hence will also choose a bk written originally in english)

8. Eat Pray Love

9. A Walk to Remember - Nicholas Sparks. This is, quite simply, not literary enough.

10. The Giver - Lois Lowry. This is actually a very good book, but again, written more for children or, at best, young adults than adults I think. Possibly worth analyzing in conjunction with another dystopian novel, like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World, though you will run into the doing-what-has-been-done-before problem.

11. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom. This is a non-fiction novel and, to the best of my knowledge, can't be used for an English A1 ee.

The ones without comments are the ones I either haven't read or haven't read and know nothing about.

Here are some good fairly contemporary writers and novels you might want to think about: David Mitchell (e.g. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), Ian McEwan (e.g. Atonement - possibly overdone though), Isabel Allende (e.g. City of the Beasts), Mario Vargas Llosa (e.g. Conversation in the Cathedral), Margaret Atwood (e.g. Oryx and Crake), Philip Roth (e.g. American Pastoral), J.M. Coetzee (e.g. Disgrace), Jonathan Franzen (e.g. Freedom), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude), and Haruki Murakami (e.g. IQ84 coming out October, or Kafka on the Shore). I could go on, but the point is, you want books with a lot of 'meat' - longer books, if possible, and books that have a lot of literary material, a lot of interesting prose that almost begs for analysis.