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Sara Lisa starts of the book with such an honest vision of what for her is good writing that the whole reading of the book made me question what I considered good writing. I read in two, three languages (portuguese, english and sometimes spanish) and every time I get a sense that it really depends on how the writing takes me along the journey. I have read some books with very complicated writing, at least for me but I could tell that the plot was a beautiful story of grief and companionship. However this book was so simple in it’s writing that I felt like I was talking to a friend. She discusses with the reader that she wants to be a great writer, one of the greatest but so far what she has a comparison are the artists and authors who are unhappy. Not miserable because of money, love, drinking, drugs or any outside world effect, but they are truly unhappy people. Destiny heard her and delivered to her someone who had everything to be the unhappiest person but always carried a smile o...

  The world looks big and vague, we know we have barriers between one another, the barriers can be language, distance and even an ocean. Barriers can be visual or not. To grow up isolated from what the actual meaning of freedom is, when it’s given, it can be so confusing that even a simple decision of interests can be conflicted. This book by Luisa Sobral made me think on how the perspective of one, can change so many times due to the new information that little by little construct a pyramid of knowledge, now the big question is which steps are true and which steps are disguised as truth. Innocence of a child is a beautiful thing. The world seems brighter and the ones that care for us seem like the most wonderful people we have ever met. We as children joke and wish for time to be faster so we can be seated at the same level as our supposed heroes but when we reach that line, it’s not quite what we were expecting. We wanted to have the tough conversations with our parents, to rev...

  What would we do for the ones we love? This can be love for family, friends who are basically our family and our loved ones who can become our entire worlds with each passing day. First time ever meeting characters who can both be so stubborn but so dedicated to their loved ones and willing to do anything for their safety. Both Lachlan and Lark know that the reality of the world is not pretty, and it isn’t fair. Both want to avoid and protect their family but for that to happen, sacrifices and compromises must be made. I do adore how quick our sweet aunt Ethel is to scheme and put in motion the whole plot of the book and how much that character affected me. Family for me is important and their opinions are something that I take to heart every time, just like Lark who although knows their viewpoints on Lachlan and his “part-time” occupation, puts their well being and care first. Lachlan is the same when it comes to protecting his brothers, his stubbornness in how to achieve that...

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...

  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...

  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...

  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...

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...

  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...

 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...

 Another book by Isabelle Allende and this just proves why she is the best at what she does. This specific book made me start a whole path through discovery not only on myself but on what I want people to remember me as. I want to be remembered as someone who was caring to the people they loved, who was hardworking and determined till the very end. Isabelle Allende made me want to do more for myself. The beginning is so nice that we feel like we are transported back to our childhood homes, we imagine how she was surrounded by such beauties of nature. It is truth that the beginning is in the middle of a pandemic and the way she survives such a hard time shows how resilient her family was and how hard the whole group worked just to keep afloat. She is a quick learner and thanks to that she can catch up to all the other learning qualities of any children. The people that surround her are the proof that it's by nurture that we become who we are. Violeta became who she was because o...

 This was an awful read in the beginning but it got better as I went along. It took a while but I managed to find a good part of the book interesting and I ended the book being somewhat satisfied. The beginning has a lot to be desired. The main character is very repetitive and it came to a point that her lines were so cringe I had to close the book just to make a mental pause. She starts off as a desperate woman, someone who we are supposed to feel empathy. She wants to be liked, she wants to get this amazing job however she does not put in the work. She is desperate for this job and yet she zooms out of the conversation just to look over the furniture and the living area. She wants to go under the radar to avoid problems so she makes up a lie and is never clear about anything. Really that whole thing with the glasses was so dramatic. She then goes off with the whole crush thing and how handsome he is. I did a drinking game over how many times she said the word handsome, (please do...

 A book that drives you forwards is a book worth pointing out and recommending. Daughter of fortune is a book written by a woman and that drives a woman to go forward. As I started reading it was clear to be a historical piece, one focus solely in one small girl that we as the reader will follow. The small girl is someone we see as malleable, she bends quickly to the will of the grownups surrounding her. We only start seeing her as her own person when she "falls in love" with Joaquin. However before I analyse the idea of Joaquin in the book I want to point out the other characters that care for Emilia. Her supposed guardians. The women offer a variety of skills that will be very useful further in the story. She learns not only the idea of what a woman represents but what one can do behind closed doors. Her caretaker she teaches her the art of cooking and that is one of the factors that will allow her survival amongst her own adventure. The man that care for her adore her as...

 Don't let it's small size fool you, the story may look like a quick read but it sure will make you think. Women in greek mythology have a variety of adjectives associated to them, but one that is consistant is temptation. Women are seen as the most tempting prize in the world. Na achievement to keep hidden from the world and in this case even from themselves. Galatea tells the tale about a woman that is brought to life from stone to the request of a sculptor to the gods. He requests his creation to be brought to life and the goddess of love Aphrodite grants his desire, however this act has it's consequences. Galatea gains life but it wins desires, worries, and her own mind and personality. The couple eventually gain a daughter with the mother's beauty and a curious mind however as the time passes, the sculptor gets jealous of every eye that sets on his beautiful wife, and one time that she tries to run away he locks her up in a hospital and from then on, he visits her ...

 This books is one of those experiences that sometimes you have to look around and pray that you haven't entered the world of the book.  While I was reading I realise the irony of certain situations and how history repeats itself alongside so many diferent cycles. The cycle of womanhood and motherhood are not the same as fatherhood and manhood however they are a cycle, and with that it means they share an ending and a beginning.  Animal farm made me think of the injustices in the labour department but then I saw how the book never talked about what was going on behind the walls, what they were up to that the others could not actually see, how they were learning not only developing skills in the world of humankind but also the technique to manipulate their fellow comrades. The manipulation upon the mind makes the reader go back to check oon what was previously said. I myself had to go back and read their 6 commandments to see if it was really true what had been said. I que...