This book comes with three short stories, all of which are written on very interesting concepts. However, the first two short stories just failed to grab my attention, and I ended up taking long breaks while reading them. I couldn't get off the ground, really. The third short story, though, was very good. I was enrapt in it from beginning to end. If the other two stories were as pregnant with dramatic irony and misdirection and genuine curiosity as this one was, I would have given the book 5/5 on entertainment.
For language learning, it's an ok book. There's nothing particularly special about it; it's a book written for adults and doesn't shy away from literary grammar, but it also doesn't go out of its way to be difficult to understand. If anything, I have to take a couple points off here because the stories, especially the second of the three, have a large number of old household items/old nouns that I just wouldn't expect a learner to know. It may be useful to learn them, but stopping to write them down/look them up just felt like it was hindering the reading I wanted to do.
Interesting short stories, but not life-changing
This book comes with three short stories, all of which are written on very interesting concepts. However, the first two short stories just failed to grab my attention, and I ended up taking long breaks while reading them. I couldn't get off the ground, really. The third short story, though, was very good. I was enrapt in it from beginning to end. If the other two stories were as pregnant with dramatic irony and misdirection and genuine curiosity as this one was, I would have given the book 5/5 on entertainment.
For language learning, it's an ok book. There's nothing particularly special about it; it's a book written for adults and doesn't shy away from literary grammar, but it also doesn't go out of its way to be difficult to understand. If anything, I have to take a couple points off here because the stories, especially the second of the three, have a large number of old household items/old nouns that I just wouldn't expect a learner to know. It may be useful to learn them, but stopping to write them down/look them up just felt like it was hindering the reading I wanted to do.