How do yo like your eggs?

Fried? Boiled? Poached? Scrambled?
If you run out of ideas, here are 100 ways to cook an egg.
And if you manage to put all your eggs in one basket without laying an egg or killing the goose that lays the golden egg, then you may consider that your chickens have come home to roost! :)

Pieces of Sky

I stumbled upon this song here, and the post that goes with it is simply amazing! Whoever is behind those lines is a true master of words and emotions. :)

Eskmo - Cloudlight (Official Video) from mc707 on Vimeo.

All I know about Gertrude Stein

"Sometimes I have affairs. But though I enjoy the bed, I feel angry at the fraud; the closeness without the cost. I know what the cost is: the more I love you, the more I feel alone."

This is not Jeanette Winterson's first encounter with the British literary journal GRANTA - in fact, it is her fourth - nor with Gertrude Stein, whose work and daring attitude are analyzed in "Art Objects" and this short story is available entirely to be read on their site here as part of the 115th issue devoted to Feminism (which is not such a bad word, after all :) )



As with other short stories in which Winterson mingles her passions and interest with the almighty creativity (in "Goldrush Girl" she mixes parts of Puccini's opera "La Fanciulla del West - one of her favorite operas - with the story of the two lovers) here, in "All I know about Gertrude Stein" she sets her story in Paris - Jeanette has been musing for a long time whether to settle or not in the city of lights - and names her character Louise (that's a clue for the more avid Winterson readers), while she also juxtaposes anecdotes from the lives of Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas.
If you want to discover how women can love you will truly savour this short story and why not, become a Winterson fan, just like myself.

"But love has no limits. Love seems to be a continuous condition like the universe. But the universe is remote except for this planet we call home, and love means nothing unless it is real and in our hands."

The Schopenhauer Cure - 6 Word Sum Up

Compassionate Friends, Death Overcome by Philosophy

More about this fantastic book here.

D. H. Lawrence Poetry

To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned

The feelings I don't have I don't have.
The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we
neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty
sure they haven't got them
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all
you'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.



A White Blossom

A tiny moon as white and small as a single jasmine flower
Leans all alone above my window, on night's wintry bower,
Liquid as lime-tree blossom, soft as brilliant water or rain
She shines, the one white love of my youth, which all sin cannot stain.

Cherry Robbers

Under the long, dark boughs, like jewels red
In the hair of an Eastern girl
Shine strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled
Blood-drops beneath each curl.

Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings
Three dead birds lie:
Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird, robberlings
Stained with red dye.

Under the haystack a girl stands laughing at me,
With cherries hung round her ears--
Offering me her scarlet fruit: I will see
If she has any tears.

Lucky Girl in the Book Garden

When you enter giveaways, do you really expect to win? I didn't, but I won the 500 follower giveaway, graciously offered by Birgit from The Book Garden YAAY!
The next complicated step was to decide on the books to be ordered by Birgit, which was a tough task, since there are around 70 books on my wish list, but it just dawned on me that in February I am going to host my first Reading Challenge together with Bellezza (more details to be posted soon), so all the three books I chose are about or set in Venice (does that give you a clue about the Reading Challenge?:))
And remember, there's only one Venice and probably just one lucky little girl... ME :) Thank you, Birgit!

Happy Birthday, Your Madgesty!

Madonna - Like a Virgin (Addiction 2011 Mashup Mix)

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Aimez - vous Francoise Sagan?

"Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves."



After a Murakami marathon, I decided to take a break and read something "light" but still enjoyable. Francoise Sagan seemed the perfect choice.
"Avec mon meilleur souvenir", written in 1984, is a book about what Sagan loved the most: gambling and how she won her only possession - a big house in Normandy; speeding up, jazz and her Favorite BIllie Holliday for whom she travelled all the way to New York; writers, especially Tennessee Williams whom she considers to be amongst the greatest writers; the theatre, which she started as a way to amuse her entourage but which ended up being a passion that she would never give up, just like gambling.



The book ends with a love letter to Jean - Paul Sartre in which she acknowledges him as the most important writer in French literature, the one that delivered what he had promised in his books: to be true to his words and beliefs. The sequel? A blind Sartre wishes to meet Sagan...

Everything that Sagan writes about is what moved her along the years. She reveals herself in a tender way, while sincerely narrating about the years long past and the fascinating people that she encountered. We discover between the lines a writer that fears loneliness, and who spends nights on end in the casinos of Saint-Tropez.
Still, Sagan returns to literature, fearing the fact that she might not write and reminding us of the four books that she considers to be her guiding light in a troubled universe. These books are Gide's "The Fruits of the Earth", Camus' "The Rebel", Rimbaud's "Illuminations" and Proust's "Albertine gone".

Here are a few of her words of wisdom:

“Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.”

“I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.”

"I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love."

More Banana(s)...

"Everything in life has some good in it.And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more – it’s sad, but that’s the truth."

Not long ago I posted a few impressions on N.P., by Banana Yoshimoto. It was my first read by the Japanese writer, but it seems, not my last. At the end of June I was the lucky winner of Bellezza's Giveaway and so, I dipped into my second book. Needless to say, whenever I read a second, third, etc. book by the same writer, I compare them. "The Lake" was a bit different from "N.P.", but still, dealing with the same recurrent themes of feeling alone in the world, the impossibility of communication, the drowning need to commit suicide because there's too much "otherness" and little "you" in the world.



"When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place."

"The Lake" is about Chihiro, a graphic artist who finds herself falling in love with Nakajima, a student in biotechnology with whom she previously shared glimpses and smiles from their opposite windows. Her feelings oscillate between "Just being with Nakajima made me feel as if we were detached from history, and had no particular age" and the impulse to remain independent. However, Nakajima's attitude towards sex makes her wonder what had happened in his past that traumatized him so deeply.

"When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening."

Do we discover in the end the mystery surrounding him and the ghostly lake, that force that relentlessly calls for both characters? We definitely do. Do we see them having a cup of tea in a small cafe in Paris? We might...

"Here we were, two ridiculously fragile people, sliding along on a very thin layer of ice all the time, each of us ready to slip and take the other down at any moment, the most unsteady of couples – and yet I believed what I had said. It would be all right."

This is not an ordinary love story, but it's definitely a simple one. Not that simple means dull!

"Love isn't only a matter of fussing over each other, hugging, wanting to be together. Some things communicate, inevitably, precisely because you keep them in check."

Un peu de Paradis :)

Nouvelle Vague & Vanessa Paradis - ''Couleurs sur Paris'' (2010) - ''Week-end à Rome''

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Man and Wife

"The stars are like photographs. You can read into them what you will. You can believe that they measure all you have lost, or you can believe that they represent all you have loved, and continue to love."

"Life holds hostage all those we love."

"It was all or nothing with this woman. That's why I loved her - and I can say that now. I loved her. But she wasn't cut out for an affair. The right girl in so many ways, she was the wrong girl to play that role. She was a romantic. Say what you like about those starry - eyed souls, about the upheaval and destruction they always leave in their wake, but there is one thing about romantics that nobody can deny. They never settle for second best."

"Sometimes we have to stay away from the things we love, and learn to appreciate the things we need."

Oranges ARE the Only Fruit :)

To play with Jeanette Winterson's words, this month you can only have oranges... No, I am not imposing on you to only eat oranges, but to only read books that were longlisted, shortlisted or winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction. The lists of books are on the side bar, and you can find more information on the Orange Prize here.
The Orange Prize is all about women writers and the books that you can discover are fascinating: "Gut Symmetries" or "The Powerbook" (Jeanette Winterson), "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (Tracy Chevalier), "The Lovely Bones" (Alice Sebold), "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Audrey Niffenegger) and the list can go on.
I have read books nominated long before knowing about the prize, but a few weeks ago I discovered there's an Orange January/July challenge and I am taking part right at this very moment, reading "The Night Watch", by Sarah Waters.
Hopefully, the next one will be "The History of Love" :)

The Ice Man

"When I cry, the ice man kisses my cheek, and my tears turn to ice. He takes those frozen teardrops in his hand and puts them on his tongue. "See how I love you," he says. He is telling the truth."

Once you rediscover Murakami, there is no going back. :)

"The Ice Man" is a story that you can't forget easily. It's about love that persists below zero degrees. It starts in a ski resort, with HER being drawn towards HIM.
“…I couldn’t help myself. I had to talk to him. This was my last night in the hotel and if I let this chance pass I probably would never have another."



After dating every week in Tokyo, talking only about her, they finally fall in love and decide to get married.
“I fell deeply in love with him, and he came to love me, the present me, apart from any past or future. And I came to love the Ice Man for who he is now, apart from any past or future…the Ice Man was the first person I’d ever truly loved”
Because no one accepts the Ice Man, and by consequence the narrator, she does not have friends or family to talk to, so loneliness invades her.
The story ends “in the coldest, loneliest place in the world”, the South Pole, where she eventually discovers that her heart is frozen, and also that... but here's the whole story. Enjoy! :)

Sputnik Sweetheart

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do."

My first encounter with Haruki Murakami happened years ago, when I was offered two of his books, "The Elephant Vanishes" and "A Wild Sheep Chase". I liked them, but I also found them a bit strange and I wasn't very eager to go back to other works. That was until I decided to read "Norwegian Wood" for The Japanese Literature Challenge (and discovered that there's a Murakami Challenge taking place as well)but things almost never turn out as planned, so I started reading "Sputnik Sweetheart" instead and I was MESMERIZED. Sure, different times, different self, but what an incredible writer I have rediscovered!!!!




"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

Murakami's writing is quite different from that of a European writer and the way he takes you into the story and leaves you to wander between the real and the surreal is truly unique.
The story is about Sumire, a twenty two year old girl, with plans to become a (famous) writer and K., her best friend and madly in love with Sumire but whose love is never returned. Once Sumire meets Miu, a sophisticated businesswoman, the plot starts to develop and we find Sumire drawn towards Miu, while K. is the spectator of their (strange) relationship. The love traingle turns into a mystery when Sumire suddenly disappears on a Greek island and Miu calls K. to help find her. This is the moment when K. discovers things "out of this world" about Miu and a possible answer to Sumire's disappearance.

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

Murakami gave the story such a surprising ending when six months later Sumire calls just to say “Hey, I’m back. Come and get me.”, then the phone cuts off. Is it a hallucination or Sumire is really back, and back from where exactly?
I found the whole story intriguing and it left me thinking if such things are possible... What things? Well, you'll have to read the novel if you want to know more.:)

"The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time."

Emotional

Banana ... Yoshimoto

"I saw the sky and sea and sand and the flickering flames of the bonfire through my tears. All at once, it rushed into my head with tremendous speed, and made me feel dizzy. It was beautiful. Everything that happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy." (N.P.)

I heard about Banana Yoshimoto a few years ago, when Humanitas published her novel "Kitchen", but I didn't manage to read it or other books by this author,whose real name is Yoshimoto Mahoko, until this week, when I came across N.P.



N.P. (North Point) is the name of an old song and the book of ninety seven stories that an obscure writer called Takase Sarao wrote before committing suicide, and the newly found ninety eighth story makes its translator kill himself as well. The characters seem to linger between possessing and being possessed, moving towards one another with the slow pace of the burning sun during a hot summer day.
Kazami, the narrator of the story befriends Takase's twins, Otohiko and Saki, but later in the novel develops a strange relationship with Sui, the lover but also daughter of Takase himself. Between incest and melancholy, the characters go in search of passion just to find the obsession of suicide, as a curse for those who get near the ninety eighth story... Will they go beyond this presumed curse to find just the sad love story of a summer? It's for you to discover...

Book Binge

"If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited."
— Schopenhauer



More often than not I am trying to stick to these words, but then I find myself wondering: "What makes a book worth reading?". I usually read books whose authors I am familiar with and I really enjoy their style, but this has also been the year of new discoveries: ONE DAY by David Nicholls is still among my top ten favorite books; Tony Parsons is a writer I will keep on reading, since I love the authentic way in which he portraits relationships and people in their 30s with the (un)necessary struggles they have to face; I finally read Borges - Aleph - a collection of stories - and I found him too cryptic for my taste; I had a second and yet unforgettable encounter with Alice Sebold and her "Lucky" memoir and with Marc Levy whose third book "Le premier jour" I am about to finish, but what thrilled me the most in these six months (bookwise) was reading the letters of Anais Nin and Henry Miller. The passion between them was out of this world and I am sure it's going to be one of those books I will always return to.
What other books await me? I will be going back to Haruki Murakami due to the Japanese Literature Challenge I entered and I will keep on reading about teaching ESL reading for my dissertation. Also, I will try to discover why FRENCH WOMEN DON'T GET FAT, but that's for another post :)

Word of the Day 5

JAYWALKING

Lucky

"I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand"



"Lucky" is the story of a girl being raped; it is in fact Alice Sebold's memoir of her own rape that had taken place eighteen years before the publication of the book. If you are familiar with "The Lovely Bones", then this book, rather unfortunately, is better written, with short sentences that aim for the heart finding you with tears in your eyes. If you haven't read anything by Sebold, then it's high time you got down to some powerful, yet sad reading. Why? Simply because life is not just about laughter.

P.S. Careful! This is not a comfortable book. Some phrases might leave you speechless, since Sebold's confessions are gut-wrenching and disturbing.

"I knew, now that I had been raped, I should try to look good for my parents. Having gained the regulation freshman fifteen meant that my skirt that day fit. I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined."

"No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

Getting Old(er) and Wise(r)...