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heart Oh my...That last entry of mine was quite the whiny rant wasn't it? It was also a long time ago. Almost two years, I think. Dang...Well, might as well start fresh!
heart Alrighty, let's see...Hmm, I have no clue what to talk about. sweatdrop Hmm, think Naoar! Think!...Aha!
heart Recently, I just read some very interesting books. The first one was Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. It's this wonderful story that incorporates magical realism(my latest reading flavor) and cooking(Yum!). Every chapter has a recipe in it as it follows the story of Tita, a girl who longs to marry her love, Pedro, but cannot because her mother enforces the tradition of the youngest daughter having to serve her mother till she dies. Tita's emotions and feelings are only expressed in her cooking which leads to amazing results.
heart After that I read Village of the Vampire Cat. It's one book from a children series by Lensey Namioka. It gives a wonderful cultural account of feudal Japan. While I have not read the other books in the series, and honestly have no intention of doing so sweatdrop , I can speak for this one in that it was a wonderful read. It's a decent length, 200 hundred pages, appropriate for its intended age group. But I finished it myself in one night, due to the quick pace that drags you along for the ride. It reads like a murder mystery. Two traveling ronin, Zenta and Matsuzo arrive at the town of Zenta's old sensei with the intent of visiting with him. Instead of the pleasant town of Kenta's memories, they find a worn down town threatened by quack medicine peddlers and living under the fear of the elusive Vampire Cat. The Cat is responsible for a series of grisly murders of young girls. Kenta and Matsuzo must work hard to rid the town of the peddlers and stop the Cat before it strikes again. The book posses some wonderful twists in its plot line and, children's book or not, the Cat absolutely left me terrified.
heart After finishing that book I read another one(you can tell that I've been quite busy, can't you?) called The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Baneriee Divakaruni(ignore that wailing moan, its just my spell check dying). It's an endearing tale of magical realism(again) that among the throngs of love and passion, details the struggles and difficulties faced by Indian immigrants in America. With a heart warming cast and studly leading male the book brings to light the struggles faced by those on all sides of the immigrant dream. Each chapter carries the theme of a different spice and its magical properties. In other words, more yummy food!
heart Right now I'm reading 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I'm only a little over half way done with this book so I'll wait to share my thoughts with you till I'm done. If you can't tell, I have one hell of a class right now. Haha, well not so much the class itself as much as a wonderful teacher. When she noticed that not only was I enjoying the books(its a class on world literature), but that I was a bored by the slower pace of the class, she gave me a list of other books that I could read. She's been doing a wonderful job encouraging me and my voracious appetite. I love these books and what's even better is I feel challenged and I'm learning so much more! The books have a higher level of vocabulary and have interesting plots that include cultural and historical references intertwined with amazing literary techniques! But yeah...I've been typing a lot and really ought to give my self a break...
heart Thank you~Naoar