The Goldfinch —By Donna Tartt

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Book Reviews

It is the story of Theodore Decker, a boy from New York. His life was full of obstacles since the very beginning. A good boy that had to shape himself into the different circumstances that were occurring in his life. He had a loving mother and this was the refreshing part of his beginnings. But this love had to mix with an alcoholic and indifferent father, who fortunately abandoned them when Theo was in his teenage years. However, life fell apart when his mother died during an explosion in the Metropolitan Museum, where they were looking for his mother’s favourite Dutch exposition that included the Goldfinch. Theo, injured but conscious, stole the painting from the museum, under the advice of a dying man who was also visiting the exposition with his niece.

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Mothers and Winter are Not Compatible

My Stories

8:30 am today, I had only five minutes to get to school that is only a few meters away. They are insuperable meters when you have to feed, bath and dress three young children. Then the counting starts before putting them on, six gloves, three wool hats, three scarves, six socks. Each of them tiny and elusive, always forgotten in every corner of the house.

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Romance Languages

My Stories

Why is it that the romance languages are so agreeable? Because they sound like a singing melody compared with other languages that could sound dry as an autumn leaf. It is the vocals, the ones we found so abundantly in romance tongues, as if they were fruits swimming in a colourful salad. They fill every word up to the top, by softening the rudeness and aggressiveness of the consonants. Romance languages have dignity. They would never allow two consonants in a word without a vocal guiding them, telling them what to do. And this is how all the brutal force gets to be mitigated by this syrup that intoxicate of those who listen to it. 

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Novel by Milan Kundera

Book Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The absolute absence of weight makes the man to become lighter in the air, to fly higher, distance from the Earth, from his earthy being, that is real only in half and his movements are as free as they are insignificant’ [my own translation]

Milan Kundera loves Nietzsche. He loves his country, Czech Republic, he loves Prague. He speaks with great sadness of the communists times that swelled the ‘before’ of his country to turn it into a group of people with fear. But it also rescues the long-lasting and stubborn braveness of his fellow countrymen who didn’t get drown by the regime despite the consequences. Tomas, the protagonist of this story, was one of them. Tomas scaped to Europe but returned because he could not stand the solitude without Tereza, who went back to Prague tired of his infidelities. Others were more strategic. They migrated for good to Europe, right in the moment they could have done it, leaving the ‘Kitsch’, the communist dream, behind. In Czech Republic the citizens only ambition mundane things. Be born, grow up, fall in love, have children and die. There is no more aspiration that living in this utopia.

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Tokio Blues- By Haruki Murakami

Book Reviews

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Talking about Haruki Murakami is dangerous. Because you take the risk of categorize him and this is not possible. Murakami is a Japanese writer, author of various novels, all of them fantastically written and extremely imaginative and detailed. They have a lot of political, social and literary content. Murakami has hundreds of thousands of followers that constantly advocate for a Literature Nobel Prize. I read that when thousands of people idolized him in Japan in the nineties he hated it. Now the feeling runs through the whole world. I am not sure what he thinks about this.

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When We Were Orphans- By Kazuo Ishiguro

Book Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5.

This review has no spoilers.

I have dedicated this week to Japanese authors. Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki. Although he was raised in England and all reviews refer to him as British, I do think it is precisely his Asiatic background what has allow him to write such beautiful pieces of literature.

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Little Fires Everywhere- By Celeste Ng

Book Reviews

Pop Culture

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I have always been attracted to currents of thinking, not necessarily to adopt them myself, but to know why is something likeable to people. This way I feel that I can get a hitch of what people is thinking and why a trend is a trend. And this is why I bought this book. Because it is a national bestseller. Because it is a television series whose protagonists are Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Because it is everywhere I look. I wanted to know what was it about.

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