Man Walks Into a Room - Six Word Sum Up

I have been planning to read "The History of Love" for more than a year, but it "strangely" happened that I decided to discover Nicole Krauss starting with her first book, "Man Walks Into a Room". I really enjoyed reading it and I can say I found it quite intriguing. You might too.



Losing your memory means finding freedom.

For a more in-depth review, click here.

The European Reading Challenge

I could not have resisted this challenge, simply because the majority of writers I use to read are European, and there are so many books by them or taking place in Europe that I have planned on reading in 2012. Rose City Reader in hosting this challenge in its first year and I am sure it's not going to be the last :)
As you have figured out, the simple thing that you have to do is read books by European authors or books set in European countries. Easy? To make it challenging, each book must be by a different author and set in a different country. There are five levels of participation and I decided to go with Five Star (Deluxe Entourage), but I will most definitely read more than five, thus qualifying for the Jet Setter Grand Prize!

And since we are speaking of challenges, do not forget to join our own (mine and Bellezza's) VENICE IN FEBRUARY :)

Wednesday Meme - What I Am Listening to 5

My newest discovery :)




Meme started by Bellezza.

A Friend with a Story

Birgit from The Book Garden has written a book and she has kindly sent me a copy. What a great surprise! I found the story quite uplifting and optimistic. It felt like a rendez-vous between Madonna's children stories and Coelho's "Like a River Flowing", with advice not to give up and never stop following your dreams. Is there something more important in life? We all have our secret garden inside us and it's up to us to rediscover it and its mysteries. Isn't that a simple, yet utterly true message? To have more smiles on your face, click here.



P.S. Dandelions are not just dandelions! :)

The Bigger, the Better? We shall see!

I have decided to join one more challenge, the one hosted by Birgit from The Book Garden, since huge tomes seem to be a problem for me, always postponing them till next year, and next year... and next year. The books in question have to be of more than 700 pages (yup, that's seven hundred) and they should be read sometime next year, meaning 2012 :) There are several levels of the challenge that you can check here. . I decided on the first level, The Chamomile Lover, since it's always better to read more than you planned rather than read less, and the two chunksters are Pamuk's "The Museum of Innocence" and Murakami's "19Q4". So, are there any huge books haunting your shelves?

What Work of Literature Would You Recommend to Someone Who Doesn't like Literature?

This question is part of the Literary Blog Hop, and it is definitely not an easy one.

If someone doesn't enjoy reading literature, how could you fix this "issue"? A work of literature cannot truly and entirely be revealed unless one finds pleasure in solving its mysteries page by page.
And yet, if there were a book that could turn a non-lover into a passionate lover of literature, that book should be THE BOOK. Is there such a thing? Well, (un)fortunately, not really. Surely, we can recommend our favorite books and that might work, but the true spirit of literature lies in every single book worth reading.
How could anyone not recommend one of Shakespeare's plays (and how difficult it would be to just choose one) or a poem by Wordsworth? They are not among my favorite writers, but can we skip them? Wasn't their writing and our reading that brought us closer to what we now call our favorite writers? How can we say that we like Ionesco if we haven't read any other play? Could we recommend Jeanette Winterson and completely forget about Virginia Woolf? Is that even possible?
To sum up, any work conveying literary value is worth reading in order to savour literature, but one is never enough to fully discover what lies beneath this word: LITERATURE.