Friday, December 26, 2014

excited for 2015?



Only 6 days before the new year starts, I'm so excited for it. I made this long list of books I'm planning to read, we can say they are my bookish goals for 2015. it contains more than 50 book, with all those books I wished I did read before. 

I chosed books in different gendras: children literature, fantasy, science fiction, fiction and non-fiction, there is no young adult, I think I have read enough of it this year. the books are also in different languages, well the languages I know, English, Arabic, French and a book in Spanish, my first book in Spanish, I don't know if I 'm ready to read a book in Spanish, but I'm going to try.

However before the new year starts, I need to finish the three books I'm currently reading: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen, and الاسود يليق بك by احلام مستغانمي.  


  

Sunday, December 21, 2014

classic book review: Women in love by D. H. Lawrence


Women in love by D. H. Lawrence is the first classic book I read, without a teacher telling me so. I read before classics because I should, they were part of the school assignments. I didn’t enjoy them much. I always thought they were long, boring, written with a really sophisticated style, using some ancient adjectives that you can’t even find in the dictionary. 

This book was no exception, it contains (in my version) 542 page, the first half of it was so boring, and after reading two pages of it I had already giving up using the dictionary, I couldn’t find the meaning of most of the words I was looking for. The only thing that did give me strength to continue reading was this article, I had read about reasons you should be reading the classics, other than: Because we said so. Thanks to this article I didn’t give up reading, and I’m glad I didn’t, because the second half of the book was so interesting, and I enjoyed reading it.

The story follows the relationships of Ursula Brangwen and her sister Gudrun with their lovers Rupert Birkin and Gerald. I got really attached to those four characters, after reading 542 page about them, I feel like I know them personally, I don’t love them or hate them I just know them.

Those are some aspects in this book that I did really enjoy:
  • The high intellectual discussions between the characters.
  • The way the author would show us their dark side and their anger; “A sudden desire leapt in his heart to kill her”, “What a perfect voluptuous consummation it would be to strangle her”
  • I liked the way the writer would express the sadness, the depression,  the happiness , the feelings of the characters ; “He would overlook the old grief, he would put away the old ethic, he would be free in his new state”, “Was not death infinitely more lovely and noble than such a life? A life of barren routine, without inner meaning, without any real significance”, “The only window was death. One should look out on the great dark sky of death with emotion, as one looked out of the class room window as a child, and seen perfect freedom in the outside.”, “Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive”
  • I loved how the author would dedicate an entire chapter to discuss some deep ideas as love, death, life, faith.
  • The book is composed of 31 chapters, I enjoyed most the last chapters, but there is also this chapter that I think is my favorite, about Gerald and his dad, both really successful industrialists, where the author did a comparison between their perspective on work and religion.

This book was definitely not an easy read for me, sometimes I felt really confused. I couldn’t tell if they loved or hated each other, there was also this complex relationship between the two male characters I couldn't understand is it just strong friendship or more? In this quote Birkin was trying to explain it to Ursula “having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love”
Sometimes the characters would talk to each other in a different language, I didn’t have a problem when they used French, but when they use other than French, I’m like how am I supposed to know what they are talking about? And how much language do those characters know?


Overall I enjoyed this book much more than I thought, I have already started reading another classic book , it’s Sense and sensibility by JANE AUSTEN, I kind of understand now why people still read those books, they are as fun as the other books but in many ways they are much more interesting.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Book reviews :Will Grayson,Will Grayson-Eleanor and Park


In this post I’ll be reviewing books written by two of my favorite young adult authors, Rainbow Rowell and John Green.
Let’s start with John Green:

                       

So Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the third book I read by John Green, after Looking for Alaska and The fault in our stars, and my first book by David Levithan. The book is collaboration between the two writers. 
The story has two main characters, there is John Green’s Will Grayson which is the narrator of the odd-numbered chapters, I liked him best because of his genius two rules, we, him and I, kind of have the same principles in life, kind of, and there is David Levithan’s Will Grayson the narrator of the even-numbered chapters, which I thought was mean but I changed my opinion on him after I got to know him better through the book. I picked this book basically because I wanted to know more about the books written by John Green. 
Before starting reading I didn’t check any reviews on the book in the internet, the thing that I normally don’t do, and I didn’t know that there was two narrators, which was so confusing at first, I didn’t recognize there was two Will Graysons until the meeting of the two in that weird shop, I kind of felt stupid it was obvious that they were different personalities, they lived in different places, and had different friends. The weird thing was that I lost all interest in finishing the book after that the things became clear to me; I don’t know how I managed to finish it? 
I think the main reason for my sudden disinterest in the story was that the it become all around Tiny (Tiny Cooper is the best friend of John Green’s Will and the love interest of David Levithan’s Will.) and the two Wills become secondary characters, they were still narrators but Tiny was all they were talking about, and things become not that interesting for me to follow, that’s when I noticed that the same thing happened to me when Alaska died in Looking for Alaska  and when August died in The fault in our stars those two events made me care less about how the books will end, I don’t regret reading all those books I enjoyed reading them, it’s just that the end of the three books was not as fun or as interesting as the beginning of them.

I liked this fanart about Will Grayson, Will Grayson so I wanted to share it:




The second book I read is Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell:

                        

I loved so much Fangirl my first book by Rainbow Rowell, I couldn’t help not to read another book by her, so I picked Eleanor and Park and I wasn’t disappointed, I loved it so much.
The book tells the love story of those two high school students, park: a cute Asian boy (he is half Korean), and Eleanor: the new girl at his school. They met at the bus school when Eleanor sits next to Park, I loved how slowly their relationship develops and how they discover their mutual love for comics and music, I loved how awkward they felt around each other. There are other aspects that made this book so interesting:
1. The story takes place in 1986, with no cell phones or internet, if they wanted to talk they needed to meet, and because of Eleanor's family that wasn’t easy.
2. The narrator speaks from the point of view of both protagonists which gives a full vision of what they both felt.
3. The characters were so real, they dealt with the some big issues, they made me realize that there are poor people also living in America.

For me the book was perfect, beside the little shock in the end. the end of the book was so confusing for me, I’m not a native english speaker and my level in English is modest, so I kept rereading the last chapter thinking maybe I missed something ,or maybe I didn’t understand the meaning well, or my version of the book is not complete, but no that was the ending, and after some thinking the love story between Eleanor and Park  did end.
Eleanor took the decision of sending a postcard to park after a year of not answering his letters, for me that was an end to their love story maybe happy, maybe sad we don’t know it was up to what Eleanor wrote on that postcard and how Park would react to it, but what did upset me was that I wanted to know what happened to Eleanor’s family; her mom, her sister, her brothers what happened to hers stepdad ( I really wanted him to end up in jail), I wanted to know more about Park's parents, their story especially his mom's story (actually I liked Park’s parents more than I liked Park). well all in all I wasn’t prepared to this kind of end, which made me sad but that didn’t stop me from reading another book by Rainbow Rowell because I just love her writing.

I think as I made it clear I’m done with reading for John Green, maybe in the far future I will think about reading again for him, as for Rainbow Rowell I will not feel happy until I finish reading all of the books she ever wrote.
   


Wednesday, November 26, 2014

D.I.Y ideas to decorate a kindergarten classroom


We had a very long weekend my sister and I, since she started working as a kindergarten teacher, we had to decorate this little empty room for her cute little students.



We had no idea how, we did not want to copy from the other teachers and we didn't have much material to work with, we searched for some ideas on the internet and this is how things turned out.

First we thought of making letters:



We had to make a list of names of the kids and their photos, so we made those butterflies for it (it was my idea, I'm so proud of it, well not all my ideas turn this good).






   
We made some paper poms, they were not that good but we hung them on the wall anyway, we also made a chain of numbers:







We made a tree of Arabic letters:




We also decorated the door:



We drew pictures of seasons, we took the ideas from youtube:








 Making all those DIY wasn't easy at all, I didn't know writing letters was this hard. we also had a lot of fun doing this work but I think I did enough DIY for this year, what do you think did it turn well? the class still looked empty but we had only two days, and I think the kids will make it full with their drawings and love and noise GOD may help my sister.

Sorry for the quality of the pics.

Friday, November 14, 2014

book review: KALILA WA DIMNA كليلة و دمنة


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2498952._
We all have one of those old books on our bookshelves that we saw there since we were kids but never picked it up to read it, kalila wa dimna is one of those books, everytime I organize my bookshelf I see it and I promise myself that one day I'm going to read it and that day did come. My motive to read it was my love to tales, I like knowing them, telling them to children mostly to my younger cousins.
Kalila wa Dimna is one of the most famous book tales in the world, a lot of the animal stories that we had read or saw on TV when we were kids were inspired by this book. That's why I was so excited to read it and to review it for you.
While reading the book I discovered that the few informations I knew about it where all false, So this is a list of facts I didn't know about Kalila wa Dimna :  
  • Kalila wa Dimna is not an arabic book, it's an indian book that had been translated to so many languages but the most ancient written copy of it that we can find is in Arabic, that's what made the arabic version so famous.
  • The writer of this version is the author Ibn al-Muqaffa'.
  • The book contains tales that takes place in the animal world but not all of them there are some tales about humans.
  • In the introduction of the book the writer tells the readers that this book is not a children book, he has the right to say so because he sent through it political messages to the king of that time P.S Ibn al-Muqaffa' was killed cruelly because of his political opinions.
  • Kalila and Dimna are not two nice girls, I don't know what made me think so maybe their names, actually Kalila and Dimna are two Jackals ابن آوى , they are really smart animals, Dimna can do any thing to reach its goal, which make him the evil one.
  • Kalila and Dimna use tales to explain and convince the others of their thoughts.
  • The edition I did read, which was arranged by Fouad SHAKER, contains eight chapters called bab باب in arabic, Kalila and Dimna are only present in the first two chapters of the book, which are the longest chapters in the book they represent half of it. The other half is about other characters.
  •      
Now my opinion about KALILA WA DIMNA :
1.     The book is full of very beautiful and meaningful tales, but not all the tales in it can be told to a kid, some of it contains violence and sexual themes. ( one story I would say in particular).
2.    It was really hard for me to stay focus while reading the book, firstly because I didn't read in arabic for a while, I didn't even understand some words which is shame because I studied this language for 12 year. Secondly because of the style of writing sometimes I got really confused when someone start telling a tale about an other person telling a tale I even get lost and forget the original story.
3.     If you want to finish this book you need to be so patient and I think this book is worth the patience and the time.

I was so glad to read this book, it made me remember that time when mom and my auntes used to tell me tales especial the tales of Boumhand and Ouchen. Boumhand is a Hedgehog and Ouchen is a Fox they are in tachlhit and their adventures are so funny. I think that in every culture there are stories like this. Does poeple still tell their kids those stories or do they just let them in front of the TV screen?

Saturday, November 8, 2014

My top 5 moroccan songs for 2014

 Music is an important part of my everyday life, sad or happy, while cooking, while reading ,to my way to school. music just makes life better. who disagree?
 Today I'm going to tell you about my favorite Moroccan songs, the songs that I really like those days. so let’s start :

Number 5: bard o skhoun by Mohamed El Hayani


 So Bard o skhoun is one of those songs that never gets old or boring I love this version by jannat I also like the original one my favorite part is :
 هزيت عيني سرقت اشويفة    
اشويفة هادءة و لطيفة      
ولقيت ضحكة كتهبل
فيها شمس و فيها ظل
و يلا هز عيونو فيا
الحفيظ الله مشاو بيا
my sister and I have our own parody of this part that's how much we love this song.

Number 4 : kouyi by Latifa Raafat



سال عني من حين لحين
ديرني فبالك و ذكرني
و شكون من غيرك يا الحنين
يعرف حالي و يعذرني
عاشقك من مدة و سنين
وخا تقسى و تهجرني و يا خييي
سال عليا عفاك
عفاك يا خيي خيي فكر فيا عفاك
عفاك يا خيي خيي
Khouyi 3malni men hbabek, this song is so beautiful, I love the sound of the word khouyi, we can’t translate it to brother it has a much deeper meaning than brother, too bad we don’t use this word much those days.

Number 3: Fathallah lamghari - faynak a lahbib


I love so much this song, the weird thing is that the lyrics are sad, they are about a man searching for his lover who left him, but listening to it makes me so happy,  and the cause is the singer; fathallah lamghari. he's one of those singers that  just looking at them makes you happy, he has a contagious smile. I heard other singers cover this song, but no one can sing it as good and as simple as he does.  

Number 2: Bahija Idriss - Atchana


This song is so sweet, talks about a woman that suffers from a one sided love. the lyrics are so beautifully written and have such a deep meaning.
عطشانة
الماء يجري قدامي
صافي مثل البلار
وأنا قضيت أيامي
عطشان مكوي بالنار
بالله عليك يا الهانئ
ما ترجع حتى تجاوب
قلبي في حبك ذايب
فيها عجايب فيها مصايب

 Number 1 is: Bachir Abdou-Wanta dayz



 I love bachir ABDO's voice so much, and in this song in particular. I can't get enough of it. the lyrics and the melody are so nice. I'm addicted to this song.
وانت دايز طلل علينا ،وانت دايز طلل علينا
وانت دايز طل علينا شوفنا واش احنا لاباس طلل علينا
والمركب لين وصل لين وصل بينا
والمركب لين وصل لين وصل بينا
والمركب لين وصل بينا بحور الدنيا وسط الناس طلل علينا

طالبين سويعه لينا ،طالبين
وايلي فوتي القياس
شوف اوكان وفكر وا فكر فينا
حن خلي قلبك يرطاب
خلي الهنا يرجع يرجع يرجع لينا
بعار الله مالك الابواب

 Those are my best 5 moroccan songs for now, I think as moroccans we are so blessed to have such a beautiful and rich repertoire. so what are your favorite moroccan songs?



Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Books This Month: Anna and the french kiss - Fangirl


This month I picked to read two books that I have been hearing a lot about, a lot of my favorite booktubers had reviewed them, they are Anna and the French kiss and Fangirl. 



The first one I've read was Anna and the French kiss by Stephanie perkins, the book tells the story of Anna a high school student in the city of Atlanta Georgia, her parents send her of to a boarding school in Paris, Anna doesn't want to go but her dad forces her to, from there the story starts, she meets new friends, discovers new places, a new language and most importantly she finds love. 
In general the book was good, I really liked the parts where the author was describing the historical places to which Anna went, she made me wish visiting them one day, I also liked how the characters of Anna and her friends were interesting, every one had a passion for something movies, history, soccer, music, drawing. the only thing I disliked about the book was the drama there was to much drama for my taste, I wished there was less drama and more about France, the culture, the language. 



The second book I've read was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, (I love her name) the main character's name is Cath a college student, and also a fanfiction writer, she's famous for her story Carry on simon which is a fanfiction of the novel Simon Snow ( Simon Snow is like Harry Potter in the world of Cath).  
 I was so excited to read this book, as fanfiction reader I always wondered what is like to be a fanfiction writer. this book didn't disappoint me at all. the main caracter is so reliable which made reading so fun and easy. the book also covered some really important issues; fanfiction and plagiarism, the relationship between sisters specially twins, being a college student and becoming an adult,... all in all it was the best YA book I have read so far.

Both books were good and made me happy while reading them but if I had to choose between Anna and the French kiss and Fangirl who's better in my opinion obviously I'll choose Fangirl.