Princess of Cléves - Madame de la Fayette

Plot review: Set towards the end of the reign of Henry II of France, The Princesse de Cleves (1678) tells of the unspoken, unrequited love between the fair, noble Mme de Cleves, who is married to a loyal and faithful man, and the Duc de Nemours, a handsome man most female courtiers find irresistible. Warned by her mother against admitting her passion, Mme de Cleves hides her feelings from her fellow courtiers, until she finally confesses to her husband an act that brings tragic consequences for all. Described as France's first modern novel, The Princesse de Cleves is an exquisite and profound analysis of the human heart, and a moving depiction of the inseparability of love and anguish.----from amazon.

Opinion: First, the fact that this is believed to be the first phylosophical novel totally got me. Then I didn´t know what to expect from a novel from that time but I must say that I ended up very surprised! It totally surpassed my expectations!!! I mean... the way it describes so perfectly the life at the french court and from a female point of view!!!!! And the author got really the feeling of the Princess of Cléves and her reasons for how she acts. This is a MUST READ book and I´m amazed of the kind of suspense throught the book based in psychological aspects of the characters.


Final Rating: 9/10

Lemon Pie!

So... suddenly I found myself being really bored and so I decided to cook! This days I find myself with nothing to do and it appears that I have run out of things to do, I alredy completed a huge puzzle that was mostly black with my left hand (and I am right handed...). The conclusion is that I needed to do something more productive. haha... Apart from that I haven´t been reading so much (maybe only Dante) and what I´ve been doing all the time is read manga so probably in the next days I´ll write about the best manga I´ve read in the past few days....

 Well... I thought it looked lame being yellow because normally all lemon pies are yellow!! dah! So I thought "what the fuck!!! I want my pie to be green!" but now that I look at it, you could say that it ended up looking like an artificial green but WTF!!!

....and then with the left over filling I decided to do a mini pie! kawaii!! I must say that I´m proud of my work! ; )

The Mayfair Witches (Lasher) - Anne Rice

First of all, I read this series along with the Vampire Chronicles a long time along but I got a bit obsessed with the second chapter of the second book of the Mayfair Witches trilogy. (maybe I´ll do a review of all those books later on...) And the reason why I´m so obsessed with the second chapter of this book is because it talks about Mona Mayfair that is probably my favorite character of the whole trilogy (maybe I could also include her cousin Mary Jane).

Summary: Returning to the Mayfair clan she introduced in The Witching Hour , Rice offers another vast, transcontinental saga of witchcraft and demonism in the tradition of Gothic melodrama. The eponymous Lasher is a demon spirit who preys on female Mayfairs in his attempt to procreate. Rowan Mayfair, queen of the coven who has borne Lasher's child, has now disappeared. At times this main narrative is lost as the story moves from the Louisiana Mayfairs to the Scottish Donnelaiths and the clandestine London Telamasca society, with copious personal histories and myriad characters. Long sections ramble without a compelling point of view, and are dampened by stock elements: cliched wind storms, sexy witches, the endless supply of money the Telemasca has at its disposal. At times, Lasher is too much in evidence (rattling the china, gnashing his teeth) to be frightening. But embedded in this antique demonism is a contemporary tale of incest and family abuse that achieves resonance. It is maintained through the character of Lasher, both child and man at the same time, who manipulates his victims with his own pain. At their best, Rice's characters rise above the more wooden plot machinations with an ironic and modern complexity: Mona, the young feminist witch with sharklike business instincts; Julien, the dead patriarch, who movingly recalls his male lovers; Yuri, the clever Serbian orphan. Despite lapses into uninspired language, ultimately the novel is compelling through its exhaustive monumentality.--from the hardcover

Personal Opinion:At first I didn´t know what to think of the book but it turned out ok. I personally love the suspense and descriptions of the family. You also get to knnow the opinions and way of life of other family members instead of having only one point of view.

Final Rating: 9/10

The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli

Plot Summary: Widely read for its insights into history and politics, The Prince is one of the most provocative works of the Italian Renaissance. Based on Niccolò Machiavelli’s observations of the effectiveness of both ancient and contemporary statesmen, the rules for governing set forth in his manual were considered radical and harsh by his contemporaries and shocking to many since then. 

Personal Opinion: This is a book I´ve been wanting to read for so long... I always heard of many phrases like "Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer" so eventually I got really curious. And I must say that I wasn´t dissapointed! It´s very interesting to read about the tactics he created after many years of observation. I even get why so many people was and is shocked of what he wrote because I must say that he often explains some unorthodox methods to be able to maintain power. haha Like how he says that you have to kill some people, manipulate people for your own personal gain and his view of the church. But leaving all that aside I think this is a MUST READ book that explains the flow of power back in those days. I personally liked his description of Castruccio and how he easily conquered and won blattles with pure wit and great war strategy.

Final Rating: 9/10

Gossip Girl - Cecily von Ziegesar

Okay.. I know this books aren´t on my original list but after watching some seasons of the tv show I became curious with the original story and when I see the beginning of a story I always want to know the end. (yeah.. I´m weird like that...haha) But when I started reading the books I was surprised to find that the novels are very different from the tv show but in a good way. There are so many things they explain in the novels and you get to know the characters so much better, for example in the tv shows they appear like this elite perfect bunch of teenagers that are always betraying one another and only interested in having fun but in the novels you get to know their imperfections. Now I´m so much sympathetic for Blair and don´t like Dan so much now haha. I totally hate his attitude of "Oh.. I´m so smart and I love to write depressing stuff all the time" and then Serena is also a very confusing character now.

But oh well, I´m very hooked up on it know and I´ll read the 13 books till the end. haha (Right now, I´m on the sixth book but it´s been really hard to get them on english and I only seem to find them in portugese... : ( You say, oh but who cares?? go ahead and read them on portugese! but NO!!! I like to read books on their original language so they are able to preserve their magic. haha) And I´m also reading another book that is not in the list but should be! I´ll tell you about that book soon!!! I won´t be able to update tomorrow because I´m gonna go out and eat "fiambre" in honor of all the spirits.

It´s like the best dish ever and you MUST TASTE IT!!! if you ever come to Guatemala. And I always have to battle to finish it. haha But it´s SO DELICIOUS!!! And by the way HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! (Today I´m in the mood of using caps all the time : ))

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Plot Summary: Mired in poverty, the student Raskolnikov nevertheless thinks well of himself. Of his pawnbroker he takes a different view, and in deciding to do away with her he sets in motion his own tragic downfall. Dostoyevsky's penetrating novel of an intellectual whose moral compass goes haywire, and the detective who hunts him down for his terrible crime, is a stunning psychological portrait, a thriller and a profound meditation on guilt and retribution.

Personal Opinion: A great phylosophical novel (which I love to read!) and it revolves around the life of a young student that dropped out of college. He is suddenly faced with a moral dilemma and in the way he tries to prove his theory that certain people have the right to kill to achieve some higher purpose and he often puts Napoleon as an example. The background for the novel is San Petersbourg... and... he is faced with many obstacles to escape his crime. He finds himsef in some kind of phylosophical battle with a police detective (I personally love that part haha). What I find more interesting is that somehow he doesn´t feel regret for his crime because he thinks he had a good reason. But then thanks to his sister and some other characters he finally realizes his crime and the he turns himself in to the police where they didn´t have any idea. I kind of don´t like the end but oh.. whatever...


Final Rating: 8/10

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

I had a hard time finishing this book, probably because I had so many things on my ming but here it is!!

Plot Review: "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end.

Personal Oppinon: This is a very unusual book about a subject that is rarely mentioned in our today culture. I found the book very enlightening about the life of an intersex person. But that didn´t stop me from laughing at the book´s narrative of how the main character is omniscient and seems to know everythig that went through the minds of everybody even though the narrator wasn´t even present. This gives the story some kind of fantastycal touch. haha I also found very interesting the description of Detroit and how they suffered riots in the 60´s. This is a must read in american literature.

Final Rating: 7/10

Nana

I don´t know if you´ve heard of it but this has been my favorite manga so far. (It´s from Ai Yazawa of course...) But finally I decided to watch the anime. Actually, I´ve always wanted to see it but it´s just too long to watch and in my case it´s faster to me to just read the manga. I´ve probably read the manga twice and then randomly read my favorite chapters (so sad that she hasn´t finished the story). But what I like the most of all her mangas is the fashion. You can´t get enough Vivienne Westwood clothes in all her characters. haha

If you want to watch you can allways download it or do as I do and watch it from youtube. haha

Favorite Song!

  Kent - Thinner by lissofia

This is my favorite song right now, I just can´t stop listening to it. Btw, the new album of Hakan Hellstrom "2 steg från paradise" is out.

 CHECK IT OUT HERE!!!

19 - 21

Lately, I´ve been watching movies every waking moment of the day so I haven´t been able to read as much as I would want to. So I tought I could post a little something that I just found out. First, I haven´t told how I´m also addicted to reading shoujo manga by reading all the mangas that get into my hannds, maybe later I´ll tell you about my favorite mangas. But now I wanted to tell you how I discovered korean webtoons by reading this webtoon called "Pink Lady" that was cancelled. So I tried to find another webtoon and I found this one.

It has excellent graphics and you can find it HERE!. This great scanlation group has a lot of webtoons if you want to check them out. This one I told you about has all the clasic characteristics of a shoujo manga so tell me if you like it!