👉Active grammar: plurals of nouns
1. Do you often visit exhibitions?
2. What kind of exhibitions do you prefer? (art, books, animals…)
3. Do you read exhibition reviews in the press or on the Internet?
Read the article about Minsk International Book Fair and say:
1. What country did Theresa Suslov represent at the Minsk International Book Fair?
2. What American writers were chosen to represent the country and why?
3. Have you read any of these books?
Annual Minsk International Book Fair
by Theresa Suslov
For the last twenty years, the city of Minsk has held an international book fair. This event allows people in Minsk and surrounding areas to browse and purchase books, mingle with like-minded people, listen to poetry read by both Belarusian poets and those from abroad, and finally, meet with people from all around the world and learn about their cultures.
The book fair was held inside the large BelExpo exhibition hall. Inside were over one hundred booths which housed representatives exhibiting and discussing literature from their native countries. Some of the larger booths were occupied by representatives from France, Iran, Russia, Germany and of course, Belarus. Other countries represented at the fair were Cuba, Poland, Italy, India and many more.
I was honoured to have been asked to help represent the United States of America at the book fair. The theme and title of our exhibit was The Eighty Eight Books That Shaped America. These eighty eight books were chosen by the Library of Congress as having been influential in the shaping of American identity.
Books at this exhibit spanned two centuries, offering literature from the birth of the nation through present day. The books chosen and exhibited were a combination of fiction and non-fiction. Some examples of the fiction represented were books by Mark Twain, such as Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, and Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The fiction transported readers to various times in the history of the United States. John Steinbeck wrote about the Depression Years of the 1930s. Ms Zora Neale Hurston also lived and wrote during that time, an era dubbed the Harlem Renaissance when black writers and artists in the United States were becoming recognised for their phenomenal talents.
Non-fiction books allowed readers a window into many of the nation’s social issues and civil movements. For example, there was the writing of Frederick Douglass, a former slave who had taught himself to read and write. He wrote a moving chronicle of the daily horrendous struggles of those caught in the web of slavery.
Other non-fiction works touched on timeless themes such as
ways to effectively manage money, women’s health and ways to combat alcoholism.
The book fair provided three wonderful days for book lovers to experience the world in one convenient place.
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