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Son of a thousand men by Valter Hugo Mãe

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Life is made of three stages, birth, growth and death. And in these stages, there are a lot of smaller moments that then make an impact on the following stage, if you are brought into this world in a certain way, your growth might be different and maybe even your death will be unusual. In this book, many characters are brought up in different ways, they growth is not like nay other, no matter how similar. However, the connections one makes in these stages can affect how one perceives the ending. From an old man who held no sons or daughters of his own to a father figure and then to something more. The main character is one simple man who never wished for much but for simple love and caring people that surrounded him. During his growth it was supposed to come but it didn’t, now in the present he is the character that unites all the odd ones out. Camilo is a lonely boy still to young to understand the future ahead and he needs guidance for what might come. He still remembers parts of...
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Beastly by Alex Flinn

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  We all know the tale, arrogant boy meets innocent girl, and she changes him in more ways than one, and they live happily ever after. Tale as old as time, and if that phrase didn’t give you the tip the title will certainly help. “Beastly” is a book with a story told many times and yet is something us readers can’t get enough of, a beauty and the beast retelling, with a modern twist. This was a soft read and unfortunately, I must admit my guilt, I saw the movie before I read the book, but in my defense I did not of its existence until I saw it in the shop, and I simply had to read the actual story. It was unfortunate that I saw the movie before because then that did give me the characters a visual and I did struggle to imagine the original look instead of the movie look. Some of the differences were easy to deal with and change, for example the chat room or how Kendra looks and acts, but the hardest one was the change of the beast. It starts off with the life of Kyle and how hi...
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Death at intervals by José Saramago

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  Death is complex. If death was a person, no other could reach its level of insight. Death is unable to wait, to stop or to rush time, but we humans blame death for doing it so. In this book I saw death with different eyes. For all the times people and I have said death is an evil being, I now change my answer to Death is complex, it can’t only take us this far. This is yet another book I read in Portuguese and although the form of the text did trip me up in the beginning as the narrative kept showing me all these new events my eyes were now stuck to the pages. The one-page long paragraphs may seem intimidating but when you read them it’s like looking at a fish going down a river, simple and quick. The book starts with the big news of Death no longer working. People would not die, if they were by death’s door they would still not die. The ill could improve but the most crucial cases and the elderly were hanging on because Death was on strike. She didn’t want money, and she did...
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Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian

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  Metaphors and perspective is something that is taught through life lessons and sometimes by people close to us. This book teaches these lessons like second nature, students wouldn’t even realize the lesson has started even if the bell rang with this book. The way the book sails through the narrative and makes the reader learn how characters are and how they can even look alike people close to us and create perspective in daily metaphors is astonishing. I read this book in Portuguese and the title is “Espuma dos Dias”. When I began reading it felt like another world like experience for, I couldn’t quite locate where he was or how he looked like however as the interactions appear I started to develop a picture not on the descriptions but on his way of being. Like when someone tells a story, and we can’t stop ourselves but to rethink of a similar event that occurred to us but with different people, places and times. This book was like eavesdropping on someone’s autobiography but b...
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Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

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It was a small but interesting read. It was my first book from Virginia Woolf and I have to say it was inspiring. It is curious to see how storytelling is such an easy thing to do but the act of writing in itself turns something so beautiful into an objectifying topic. The author does an amazing job describing how the different writers behave not only taking their sex into account but the time period and the probability of their status quo in the society. She illustrates possible lives of women who wrote their novels and helps us, the reader, visualize their hardships. I remember from when I was in English Literature A level we discussed how the time period really affected the writers but I think this book opened my eyes to a new degree. I remember studying Margaret Atwood and F.Scott Fitzgerald but these were women from the beginning. They are women who were not allowed to even have a space for themselves to write like their husbands or male family members had in their offices or priv...
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Retrato a Sépia by Isabel Allende

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  This was a surprise. I love this author with all my heart and I know I will be taken through a very eye opening travels and adventures when I have one of her books with me. However this one was underwhelming, not disappointing just smaller then what I was expecting. The first book was something so exciting, she traveled through seas and far away lands that no one knew much about, she dressed as a man to survive and she did it all while still pretty young. Her granddaughter is much more steady. She is someone so manipulated that it’s almost infuriating to see how some events could produce an arc or even a small development and she simply doesn’t. She has such a dark beginning and she is just known for having a very rich and ambitious grandmother, a very united family that she married into just because it was expected. And she loves photography. I love the relation that photography has with the end of the first book. It was nice to see how the passion of the granddaughter is so...
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The Black Corsair by Emilio Salgari

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 A very quick read but not because of its size but because of how it captured me into its world and I was alongside one of our favourite corsairs of the seas, the Black Corsair. He was the most charming character I have ever had the pleasure to meet. The book starts with the escape of two men accused of piracy and this two come to the fortunate meeting of the Black Corsair's ship and with this encounter, the Captain discovers the unfortunate end of his brother the Red Pirate by the hands of the duke Van Guld. This used to be a family of three brothers and as readers sympathise the pain that the Black Corsair shows towards the death of the last member of his family besides himself. Previously his other brother the Green Corsair was caught by surprise by the duke's man and he was also killed via hanging in the main place of Maracaibo. And the Black Corsair promised to put them to rest in their designated place, the sea. He once risked his own neck by entering Maracaibo in the...
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