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!!! 

  

book reviews: Sense and Sensibility and Attachments

My first review of this year is about the last books I read in 2014: Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.

Sense and Sensibility is the first book I read by  Jane Austen, this famous author that I was planning to read for since I watched the movie: "The Jane Austen book club". (I love this movie so much).

Back to the book, Sense and Sensibility is a romantic fiction book, that follows the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters: Elinor and Marianne. Elinor represents the sense in the book, while Marianne represents the sensibility.

Reading classics is always difficult for me, the only thing that helped me with this book was the dialogue, I wished there was more of it. 

On the whole, I was glad that I made it and finished reading this book. I'm planning to read another book by Jane Austen this year, I need to find out why people like and admire her writing so much.    

Now to Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.

Attachments is the third book I read by Rainbow Rowell, and again I wasn't disappointed, I liked this book as much as Fangirl and Eleanor and Park. 

So Attachments is a contemporary book, the story is set in the late 90s about this guy called Lincoln who fell in love with a women just by reading her e-mails and so he tries to confess his love to her. 

I enjoyed so much this book, the story was cute and funny, the only thing I didn't like was the ending, I felt it was so rushed just like the ending of  Fangirl. 

Those were my last books for 2014, I wish this year would be full of good books too. 

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.