If you're doing A Level English these are the best
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Barcode: 9780582823105
So, like most people, i used CGP notes while doing my GCSE's and found them mostly good (especially on the poem anthologies) - the humour though, while sometimes fun on many occasions got in the way of serious learning and the notes were brief when dealing with full length plays and novels.
Step in York Notes. For my A Level English i got one of these books for each of my set texts and they were massively helpful in prompting class discussions, writing essays and revising for the exams. They offer detailed chapter summaries and analyse them in an extremely informative way.
There's quotes too, maybe a little too few, but the ones they pick out are good and then at the end of the book you get a wealth of extra info relating to characters, themes and symbolism. If you're an A Level English student or a parent who wants their kids to do well, i'd get these notes - they make your life a lot, lot easier.
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Lacking in detail
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The book gives an acceptable brief summation of each chapter; however, advanced analysis is quite limited, and bizzarely, only the even chapters are analysed. In all, it is quite a poor resource for more advanced study.
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The Great Gatsby
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When I first start reading chapter one and two I wanted to give up reading the book because I couldn¡¯t understand what the author was talking about. When he said ¡°Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,¡± he told me, ¡°just remember that all the people in this world haven¡¯t had the advantages that you¡¯ve had¡± and ¡°In consequence, I¡¯m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.¡± I didn¡¯t understand it until later. It means that it¡¯s not wise to judge people by the looks because sometimes you might misunderstand that person and create some problems. However, I think the story was mainly about how wealth, popularity, love, loss, betrayal and emptiness. The whole story is kind of depressing because two characters dies and Daisy betray Gatsby again when she ran over Myrtle. Everyone¡¯s life is depended on money but nothing else. People tend to care about money than the social problems between groups of people. There is a social problem that caused through many years. People divide themselves in to three groups, high class, Midd class and low class. If you¡¯re not very wealthy, people would just ignore you but when your fairly rich people would remember your name. If your like some millinery person than you become famous. Someone of the chapters¡¯ mood changes by the weather. For example, when Nick invites Daisy to his house and have cup of tea, Gatsby feels all nervous which then the weather changes to cloudy and rainy but when Gatsby was satisfied the weather becomes sunny. Even though it¡¯s depressing I would recommend other people to read it, which that is who haven¡¯t read this book yet. How the author describes things are great, you can feel what the author is going through. It feels like you were there in the past.
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A good reference book
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I used the York Notes Advanced on F.Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" whilst studying my AS levels, and whilst I found it useful for glossing over some of the easy issues, I didn't feel it went into enough depth in some areas. However, I find York Notes Advanced to be one of the best reference books around and would recommend getting one for any book you may study.
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