Monday, May 18, 2015

Recent reads

Last few weeks were a total mess, the only beam of light in them would be the books I read, I don't know how people get through tough time, but for me I just escape, escape to my books land, I know running from my problems won't solve them, but I at least get some time to breath and just stop thinking even for a while. I'm glad I have a whole world to hide at when I need to.
Ok, I think I got lost in my own thoughts, return to the books, So last week I finished reading five books,

The first was a trilogy, called the millennium trilogy, a really famous crime fiction series written by STIEG LARSSON, it consist of three books:
_The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
_The Girl Who Played with Fire.
_The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
I started reading this series after watching on TV a movie adaptation of the first volume, I didn't quite understand the story since I didn't start watching the movie from the beginning but I was amazed by the gloominess and the darkness of it, I was happy when I found out that it was an adaptation of a series.
Reading this series wasn't disappointing at all, the first volume was about Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist trying to solve the mystery of this missing girl, Lisbeth Salander, a hacker with a unique memory and poor social skills plays a huge role in solving this mystery, the second and the third books are mainly about Lisbeth which is amazing because after finishing the first book you grow curious to know more about this girl, the story behind her. 
the trilogy is a crime fiction, so there is always a crime to solve, what I really liked was the fact that the police didn't play much a role in the solving, that's why I was pleased with the first and the second books and got a little bit annoyed in the third one when the police got involved more, I don't know if it's just me but the police formalities can turn anything to boring, but it's ok the story was so fascinating I couldn't stop reading. the other thing I liked about the series was the amount of informations I learned from it about Sweden, economics, sex trade the hackers world and other things, which is not surprising when you read about the author's background. the book is also written by someone who is clearly a feminist the whole trilogy goes around violence against women, this series just open my eyes on a lot of things reading it was just great. 
there was just one thing that made reading a little hard for me, there was so much names to remember since the names are in Swedish they were weird for me some I couldn't even pronounce but after a while I got used to them.

The second book was the classical DRACULA by Bram Stoker, this book turned nothing like I thought it would, the classic story has nothing to do with those musicals on YouTube (that's what happens when you watch just clips of your favorite idol in a musical and draw conclusions by yourself ), what I concluded from my reading is that the story isn't about dracula the vampire, he's just another beast, well a new kind of beasts, but in the end he's just the evil in the story that we need to fight. the story is more about the friendship between those five men (Jonathan, john, art, morris and Dr Van Helsing), and their determination to protected their beloved girls Lucy and Mina from the evil. the concept of the book isn't bad but I found the book so long and slow going, the only thing that prevented me from getting bored was the style of narration which I found interesting, in the book every main character wrote a dairy , well three of them, so the reader is reading part of those diaries. I wished that Dracula also wrote one that way we would know what's in his mind, but Dr Van Helsing described him as having a child's brain, so how could he have one (we don't know if that's true that vampire didn't get a chance to prove anything). when I was thinking about dracula and from where did truly come my misconception about it, I found that it was mainly because the blood exchange between Dracula and his victim in movies, it's pictured as a passionate sexy scene, while in the book it was not, it was a violent scene, I thing that was it. over all the book isn't bad, happy that now I know the classic story, maybe this way I would look cool when someone starts talking about vampires, now I look like someone who reads books to impress people, whatever, to the third book.

So the third book I read was الاسود يليق بك by أحلام مستغانمي, the book tells the story of this millionaire who falls in love with this algerian singer, their push and pull game that they call love. he the male character masters this game or thinks he does. I had confused feeling while reading this book, it took me FIVE months to finish it, firstly because of أحلام مستغانمي style of writing, some poeple LOVE her style, but for me I coudn't enjoy her style, I needed so much effort to stay concentrated, when I was reading I needed to slow my reading so much sometimes even ask the help of my sister, the main cause of this is my poor arabic, which is a shame. secondly and what annoyed me the most was that stupid push and pull between the main characters, GOD I hated it, plus I never even for a second thought that what those two were feeling was love. I didn't start liking the book until the few last chapters, what happened in the end just made total sense. and I felt really proud of myself because I didn't give up and finished reading, to make justice to the book the story wasn't all about that game between the main characters, I actually learned a lot from this book the author talked about algeria and it's current issues and history, which made me think how much alike Morocco and Algeria are. After finishing the book I kind of understand why some people enjoy so much the writing style of أحلام مستغانمي,  she plays with words, uses a lot of metaphors, for someone who didn't read in arabic in a long time, it's normal that he's going to get annoyed with her style. I made a promise to myself to buy and read her next book, even if I finish it in a year this time, it doesn't matter, she's a unique author plus I need to read more in arabic I feel guilty that I let my level get so low.

I finally wrote something on my blog YEAH, sometime only by reading my old posts that I feel I was living at that period and that I'm still alive, maybe that's why people document their lives, maybe!!!