Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

I noticed something that wasn’t really surprising, but new for me. Whenever I get interested in a book and I can’t find it anywhere, my expectations from this book grow each day. But in the end, the book doesn’t live up to these expectations!

A month ago I read a book called “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt. I really wanted to read this book since we talked about it in class. After I finished reading the book I froze for a moment, thinking “that’s it?” .
Here’s a summary of the book:

In Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt tells the story of his impoverished childhood and adolescence in Limerick, Ireland, during the 1930s and 1940s. Written from the point of view of the young boy, it is a long list of deprivation and hardship.

Now, when I read the summary, I can’t understand why I thought the book is going to be interesting. OK, the book was slightly interesting, but that’s as far as I go. The book is just so…plain.
Anyway, I’m glad to cross it of my “to read” list. I’m currently reading “Emma” by Jane Austen. I hope this one won’t be disappointing.

Once upon a time…

As a part of a project for school, I had to write about the origins of the most famous fairy tales. Honestly, I never thought that I would be so fascinated by what I used to see as stories for kids! The fairy tales that caught my eye were beauty and the beast, little red riding hood and of-cores Cinderella. So today I decided to share with you some of the most interesting facts about these fairy tales!

Red Riding Hood:
In the oral versions of the tale there are signs for cannibalism, when the wolf leaves the grandmothers blood an meat for the girl to eat. In most of the versions Red Riding Hood rescues herself.
In a version written by Andrew Lang the girls’ hood is golden instead of red, and this golden and enchanted hood saves the girl from the wolf by burning the wolfs’ mouth.

Snow White
In the non-German tales, the dwarfs are usually described as rough thugs who steal, murder etc. but are eventually cured of their evil deeds by seeing Snow White’s beauty. The most interesting detail about this tale actually concerns the evil queen stepmother. In the end of the tale she is hunted down by the dwarfs and forced to dance for hours while wearing a pair of heated iron shoes, which eventually burn her to death.

Now, I’m not going to reveal all the interesting stuff. So if you want to know more, you can find everything you need on the Internet!

cinderella?

Lately I was reading books about the fairy tales origins.  Reading all the different versions of Cinderella reminded me of a book I had on my shelf for ages, and I completely forgot about it. So I spent a few hours on re-reading Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. The book is a little childish, but it is a great read for teens and kids!

Basically the book is another version of Cinderella, but it is much more clear and interesting. I just had to share this information with you, even though it’s a little embarrassing. If you like fairy tales, this book is for you!

Memoirs of a Geisha

I was longing to read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden for ages, and when I finally got to it I was really disappointed. I mean, with all the fuss around the book I expected something outstanding, but this book is nothing special. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good read, but it was nothing I expected it to be.

The book is about a little girl called Chiyo, who lived a simple life in a little village until she and her sister were sold to an Okiya (place where Geisha live). At first Chiyo wasn’t happy and she tried to run away, but with time she became more and more enchanted by the life of a Geisha so she decided she wanted to become one, and that’s how her long journey to adulthood began.

The style of the book is nice and easy to read, and it’s a good way to spend your time. Personally I don’t think that this book is a must, but hey – everyone and what he likes.
I think I’ll watch the movie next, maybe it will make me see the book in a different light.

Reading List

I always wanted to know how many books from the BBC list I’ve read, but I was afraid to find out that I read none of them. Well, today I decided to check it out and the results are a bit embarrassing, but also motivating.

Red = started but never finished
blue = I’m planning on reading it
Green = I’ve read these books

***

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowlin
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (and I’m quite ashamed!)
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling (no judgments please!)
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

All in all, I completed reading 18 out of 100 books. How many books from this list did you read?

Bright star..

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

-John Keats

 

Five Quarters of The Orange

There is no better time for reading then the holidays, don’t you think? In the past week I read a lot , but unfortunately I had no access to the internet, so I couldn’t update. But I’m here now, and I have NO idea where to start! Normal people start from the beginning, but not me!

The most interesting book I’ve read this week was Five Quarters of The Orange by Joanne Harris. I have to admit that I’m a HUGE fan of her books, so in some points I may not sound as objective as I should.

Anyway, I had great expectations from this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. Well, maybe I was a little disappointed by the way the mystery resolved, but the rest of the book was brilliant.

The book tells the story of Framboise Simon, a widow who return to the small village where she grew up, under a different name so no-one

will make the connection between her and a tragedy that took place during the German occupation decades before. The story line moves back and forth from the 40′s to the 90′s, revealing important details when you don’t expect it.

I think that this book is her best so far, twisted and surprising, rich and dark. I don’t want to spoil the adventure for you, so I won’t tell you much more about this novel. But I will tell you this – if you like some mysteries, you should read this book.

Happy new year, everyone!

Just Pay It Forward!

It’s not in our power to change the world. Or is it?
It all started with an assignment in Social Studies: “Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action”. Trevor McKinney, a 12-years-old boy, came up with an idea that was so simple, pure and..affective.

The idea was to do a good deed for three people you wouldn’t help under normal circumstances and in exchange, ask each of them to “pay it forward” to three more and they would help three more people and so on. This way the idea would spread quickly. But there is one problem – the project would work only if the people you helped would really “pay it forward”, and that requires a blind trust in people. How unreal is that?

But Trevor had hope, and he tried to help 3 people, but it seemed like every try ended with failure. What Trevor didn’t know that things are never what they seem to be. Time passed by, and it looked like the project was dead, until a reporter came to Trevor’s school looking for the boy who started the “pay it forward” movement. It was soon discovered that the people Trevor helped did what he asked of them and his idea spread all over the US without him knowing.

Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde is one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read. From the first sentence to the tragic ending, every single word made me shiver and wonder what would come next. After reading the book [a huge delay, since the book was published about 10 years ago] I was curious if there is a movement like that in real life. Apparently, there is! “Pay It Forward” is a foundation that is based on the idea in the book. The first thing that popped in my head was “why didn’t I hear about it sooner?”

Anyway, I think that the book is amazing, and trust me – I’m not exaggerating! If you read this book, I would really like to hear what you think of it!

Marley & Me / John Grogan

Winter is my favorite time of the year. I love everything about it – the crisp air, the drenching clothes and even then freezing winds. Well, I love almost everything. As always, I get really sick in this time of the year. It’s practically inevitable. But there is one good thing about it – the extra time for reading [what a delight]!

So anyway, today I’m going to tell you about my latest obsession – Marley & Me by John Grogan. Actually, it is one of the books from my “to-read list”, and I read it twice in a row (doesn’t happen a lot. I usually wait a little bit before re-reading a book). I was really surprised to learn that this book was a biography, it surly didn’t look like one.

The book is about life with the world’s worst dog. Marley is big, strong and unstoppable. In other words – a source for troubles. Despite all that, John and Jenny consider him as a part of the family. Marley shares with them all the moments of joy and sadness, and the book describes their story till the inevitable goodbye.

The book is touching, funny and it’s a wonderful book to spend your time with, especially for dog-lovers. I bet that anyone who reads it, would be as captivated as I was.

If you want to know more about the book, click here to read the interview with John Grogan about  ”Marley & Me”.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven / Mitch Albom

During your life you meet many people, and without even knowing, you change their lives. Eddie is 83 when he dies. Then he gets to heaven, and he has to deal with his past by meeting 5 people whose life were changed because of him or his life was influenced by them.

The book is short and is ideal  for a trip or something like that. It was truly amazing to see how one ,insignificant moment in your life can change everything for someone else. It was also interesting to see what people imagine heaven is like. I’ve read many books about afterlife, and they all were completely different.The only problem in this book, is the atmosphere. It was so…monotonous. I can’t really explain this.

All in all, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a nice book, and if you have some time to spare, you should read it.

P.S: I crossed Big Girls Don’t Cry by Francesca Clementis from my “to read list”. It wasn’t as good as I thought it would, so I won’t elaborate on it.