Preview "The Beach House" + Detachment

Today I found something really great in the mail: a book! Yes, I know as a reviewer you receive books in the mail from time to time, but every single one makes me happy and is special to me! The effort authors make to write this book and send it to me, means a lot and is appreciated over here! 

Thank you authors!

The book I received today is "The Beach House" by Helen McKenna. What a beautiful one! I hope I will enjoy it (but I think I will... love the covertext). Review will follow in a few days/weeks.

If you want the book trailer for "The Beach House", here it is! 

I expect this book to be something I enjoy reading. The covertext gives me the idea it's going to be a book with interesting content without being too heavy. It seems to be a story where there will be love and hate, where past and present will intertwine, where people will really discover themselves. Just the kind of stories I like to read! I hope my expectations won't be something to dissappoint me, but most of the time I'm not wrong when I expect a book to be good. We'll see about that when I finished reading it ;)

Before I read this book though, I'll have to finish "The Elephants of Shanghai" by Stephen Jared. A book that I like so far. After that I have to read "Keeping Score - A guide to love and relationships" by Marc Brackett. I know this one is on my list for quite a while, but I didn't read it sooner because I wasn't in the mood to read a book about love and relationships (if you know what I mean ;) ). Totally over it for a while now, so I think I will be able to read and review this one too very soon!

I also wanted to let you know I watched "Detachment" last night. Finally! I really wanted to see this movie for a long while because I'm a teacher myself and I worked for several months as an interim teacher in a school with difficult students near Brussels. Good reason to see a movie like this one and I haven't regretted it! Loved it, though I thought it was strange sometimes. Have to admit I did cry now and again (but hey, I do this all the time when I'm watching movies by myself :p) 

Here you find the trailer of Detachment too ^^ 

xoxo

Books, books and more books

A little while ago I visited the "Boekenfestijn" at Ghent. A place where it's possible to go in with only €10 and come out with 10 books. Unbelievable how cheap books can be, especially when you know this aren't used books or strange books nobody wants. No! Here you can find the best classics for almost no money. No wonder I love this place! It's a pity this "Boekenfestijn" moves from town to town and even from country to country, so you can't visit it every week. Hmmm, maybe that is not sooo bad ;) I would have to build a bigger house to chelter all of my purchrases. To give you an idea of what I bought for only a little more than €40:

You see I don't buy Dutch books anymore. I don't know why exactly, but I'm starting to love English books a lot more than the ones in my mother tongue. Maybe it's because the English language has so much more depth... Don't know ;)
Of this pile, I only read "Adorkable" by Sarra Manning so far. You can find my review below this one :D
The rest will follow... 

Review "Adorkable"

Some information 

Title: Adorkable

Author: Sarra Manning 

Pages: 387

Genre: chick lit

Published: May 2012

Publisher: Atom

My Scource: Boekenfestijn Gent

My score on Goodreads: 5 stars 

Covertext

Jeane Smith's a blogger, a dreamer, a dare-to-dreamer, a jumble sale queen, CEO of her own lifestyle brand and has half a million followers on twitter.

Michael Lee's a star of school, stage and playing field. A golden boy in a Jack Wills hoodie.

They have nothing in common but a pair of cheating exes. So why can't they stop snogging?

My review

"I have bunny slippers just like yours! I'm going to put them on so we can be slipper twins!" A book with phrases like this in it has to be a fun read. And it was! Although it wasn't an extraordinary piece of literature, I enjoyed it a lot! 

In "Adorkable" we meet Jeane Smith, a girl devoted to her own lifestyle brand for dorks. She doesn't need real friends because she has loads of them on the internet. She almost breathes tweets and blogposts about her special life and interests. Jeane is 17, lives alone in a flat, doesn't like people, dresses like an old lady and loves dyeing her hair in the strangest colors. On top of that one of her dearest hobbies is to argue with people.

While performing this hobby she meets Michael Lee, the star of the school. Handsome, smart, friends with almost everybody. Not exactly the guy Jeane wants to talk to. Little problem: Michael's girlfriend is in love with Jeane's boyfriend Barney and vice versa. Michael just needs to talk about this with Jeane although she isn't his favorite person in the world either. 

A strange thing happens when Jeane and Michael start kissing during one of their arguments/discussions. They both think it was some weak moment, but they keep repeating this strange thing and both of them start liking it...

I just loved this story because it was simple but also had a lovely plot. We can really connect with the characters too because they each write a chapter in turn. We see events through Jeane's eyes and then through Michael's eyes. I loved it that Sarra Manning didn't repeat all the events (first the version of Jeane and after that the version of Michael). The story just keeps going but each character tells us a part of it. 

It's a very predictable story but one where you don't mind that. It's just fun to read!

P.S. I think this book would make a good and fun movie :D

Review "The professor"

Some information

Title: The Professor

Author: Charlotte Brontë

Pages: 199

Genre: romance

Published: 1994 (first published: 1857)

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Limited

My Scource: Boekenfestijn Gent 

My score on Goodreads: 5 stars

Covertext

Charlotte Brontë's first novel certainly benefits from the vocal gifts of reader James Wilby. Title character William Crimsworth's attempt to find his own way in a world obsessed with money and manners comes alive as Bronte's vivid images and Wilby's lyrical delivery combine. Met with a rainbow of characters, the listener can easily establish each as an individual and understand how they impact Crimsworth. This recording is a fine introduction to nineteenth-century literature.

My review

As a "Flamande" (to use the word Brontë seemed to like a lot) it was really strange to read a book written by Charlotte Brontë about a professor, named William Crimsworth, who came to BELGIUM to teach English. There was a long time I didn't even know this book existed. Until one day I discovered there's a Brontë-tour in Brussels (http://www.thebrusselsbrontegroup.org/) because Charlotte and her sister Emily visited our beautiful country with their father in 1842. They stayed in a Pensionnat for a while and that's the place where Charlotte fell in love with a Belgian professor, monsieur Heger. With this man in her mind, she wrote her first novel "The professor" (only published after her death in 1855). 

The special thing about this novel was that Charlotte inhabited the voice and consciousness of a man. In all of her later novels she writes about a female main character. Some critics believe her male perspective in this book was flawed... I wouldn't know since I'm not a man, but for me she did a pretty good job in bringing William Crimsworth to life. She gives us an image of a man with a very special character. He knows this too and doesn't deny it. On our way through the story we find an honest man who seems to write his diary. He lets us know everything he does, what he thinks, what the people around him say and/or do. This may sound boring, but I promise you: this book isn't boring AT ALL! Charlotte knows how to keep her readers interested and we can see that she has practiced writing before she began her first novel. Untill the very end of the story you don't exactly know what to expect and that's one of the things a truly loved about this book. 

Now... something on the story. William Crimsworth hasn't exactly known in his life what it feels like to have a loving family, let alone one person in your life who loves you and supports you. His parents died when he was very young and his older brother, although very rich and successful, isn't quite loving or helping either. After a failed attempt to work for his tyrinnical brother, William decides to leave for Belgium. With some help he soon finds a job as English professor in a boarding school for boys. After a while he also starts to teach English in a school for girls. It's in this last school he meets the directress, miss Zoraïde Reuter, and falls in love with her. She seems to answer his love, but soon he finds out that things aren't always what they seem to be. Miss Zoraïde only saw him as a distraction and is secretly engaged to the director of the boys school where Crimsworth also works. 

This is a moment in the book where Charlotte really captures the feelings and thoughts of our main character. We can see him develop from a state of disappointment to a state of anger and finally to a new state of being in love. Indeed William falls for one of his students. Luckily this student isn't just one of the minor girls he tries to teach English, but a colleague who wanted to improve her English, Frances Henri. I'm not going to elaborate about this beautiful moment in Crimsworths live. You just need to read for yourself how William and his beloved student are being torn appart but finally find each other back.

If I have to find one thing I didn't like about this book, it's the fact Charlotte seems to find Belgians ugly and stupid. She grabs every opportunity to say something bad about the Flemish boys and girls in Crimsworths classes... Meuh! ;)

A thing a liked was that Charlotte Brontë used a lot of French in this novel. It just makes it a little bit more "real".

Movie - Ruby Sparks

  

As you all know, I'm a big lover of movies too. When I'm not reading, I'm watching movies or listening to music. Today I saw "Ruby Sparks", a 2012 movie with Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan, and I loved it! 

Author Calvin Weir-Fields has a bestseller on his name. Unfortunately his inspiration is lost at some point. He struggles to get something on paper, needs therapy and doesn't have friends except for his own brother. As part of his therapy Calvin needs to write something about a person he could meet in real life, a person who would like or dislike his dog Scotty. It doesn't matter what kind of story he writes or who it's about, but his therapist just wants to get him back to writing. Calvin doesn't feel the desire to write something again but at the same time he starts to get weird dreams about a wonderful girl, Ruby. It's a girl he totally makes up, he creates her... and he starts to write about her, doing what his therapist asked him to do. He writes about this dreamgirl and makes her a girl he would really like to meet in real life.

One day the unexpected happens and Calvin DOES meet this immaginative girl, Ruby Sparks. The girl he created stands in his living room and acts like she's been his girlfriend for a while. She looks exactly like he imagined her in his dreams and has the past/history he gave her. Not believing what he sees, Calvin thinks this is the moment where he's finally gone totally crazy. Strange thing is... all the people around Calvin also see his "girlfriend" and talk to her. She's real. He made her real without knowing it...

I really loved this story and wished there was a book upon which this story was based. Sadly there isn't one, or I haven't been looking good enough. This movie made me laugh out loud sometimes. Other times it made me sad. One thing stayed the same during the entire movie: I really didn't want the story to end (the story of the film, but also Calvin's story) and I wanted to know how it would all end. 

About that end I'm not going to say a thing. I think you should discover it for yourself and let me know what you thought about it! 

Enjoy!

Chick Lit Central: The Blog!: Around the world with Kitty Pilgrim...plus a book giveaway

Chick Lit Central: The Blog!: Around the world with Kitty Pilgrim...plus a book giveaway

Review "A beautiful mess"

Some information

Title: A beautiful mess

Author: Ali Berlinski

Pages: 211

Genre: chick lit, autobiography

Published: May 2013

Publisher: Pubslush Press

My source: won it from Chick Lit Club (thank you!!!)

My score on Goodreads: 3 stars

Covertext

Biracial and bicoastal, Berlinski spent her childhood flying between the families of her divorced parents, without ever feeling like she fit in anywhere. Fortunately, she never lost her sense of humor, which is apparent on every page of her first book, a riotous and revealing look at the consequences of divorce, too much air travel, cultural diversity and conflicting and conflicted parents. With an open heart and an honest soul, she recounts her somewhat misspent youth and a wildly exciting (though equally torturous) love affair with the guy of her dreams. She loves, she loses and she packs it in, leaving behind the guy, two dysfunctional families, and a comfortable life to move to a foreign country and start all over again. 

She’s Carrie Bradshaw reimagined as a third grade teacher in Brooklyn with zero interest in Manolo Blahniks. She’s a tough New Yorker with a tender twist of California sunshine in her blood that knows when to fight and when to surrender. Her journey will be oddly familiar and utterly unique to anyone who’s ever believed that love would save them—if not with this guy, then maybe with the next.

As her grandfather once said, “Well, it may not be the party you hoped for, but since we’re here, we might as well dance.” So now she lives in Spain and, despite everything, Berlinski keeps on dancing.

My review

Funny, witty, well written,... I loved to read this book, but I have to admit it wasn't what I expected it to be. Author Ali Berlinski tells us the story about a part of her life, but sometimes it seemed a little chaotic. There were storylines from different periods in her life put together, whereby I wasn't always able to make a clear timeline in my head. I know I'm a reader who needs structure. A book may be chaotic, but for me there needs to be structure in the chaos. I have to believe this chaos is leading me towards something. In "A beautiful mess" I found the chaos, but I didn't always see the structure. This gave me the feeling I was just reading something without it would lead to something bigger or something special. This is not really criticism, it's just something I liked a little less.

"A beautiful mess" is written and told by Ali Berlinski. She's our writer and main character at the same time. This makes this book other than the chick lit books I'm used to, but I liked this style. Ali tells us about her difficulties finding her real "me", her real identity. She struggles when people ask her "who are you?", "where do you come from?", "what nationality do you have?",... Every single time she needs to do a lot of explanation. As you can see on the drawing on the cover, she's child of a polish father and a filipino mother. After they're divorced, both of them found a new partner. To make it really difficult, Ali's father marries her former nanny, Julie. A woman Ali always considered as a second mother. 

Because of the seperation, Ali sometimes lives on the east coast, sometimes on the west coast. On top of that her father has some older sons from a marriage before he married Ali's mother. In this family, Ali is the youngest child. Her mother on the other hand, has two children from her new marriage after her divorce from Ali's father. In this part of the family Ali is the oldest child. When you put the two families togheter, she's a middle child. Along with all the advantages of a divorce (two birthday parties, getting presents for each occasion twice,...) Ali finds there are a lot of negative aspects too. 

As you can see, Ali tells us everything. She doesn't back out when it becomes difficult or hard or maybe even shameful. We get to know her and her family just like we would live with them too. This is an aspect about this book I really liked. You can understand Ali very good, even though you don't always have to agree with her (at least I didn't agree all the time). A thing I didn't like, is the fact the end is a little abrupt. I expected she would give us more of a closing to her story or the expectation of a second book. But she did neither of those things. Some people like open endings, I just don't. That's a matter of personal taste. And as Ali lets us know throughout the book, it's good to have a personal taste!