Bibliodiversidade - Reading Diversely

June has been my best reading month of the year so far, not just because I was able to fit in a reasonable amount of reading time but because all the books I have read this month were very good books and I discovered a few new authors that I really liked and will be wanting to read more. So let us take a look at my June reads, one by one: The Fist of God, Frederick Forsyth : I had loved Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, the first book I read from this author, and also the first one I read through Bookcrossing . So it is no wonder that I also really liked this one. Even though the theme is very different (The Day of the Jackal is about an attempted murder of General de Gaulle and this one is about the first Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait), they both share an attention to detail, accuracy of information, suspense and a great ability to mix historical facts with a fiction plot, all with a ...

Entre 4 e 6 de Junho, realiza-se o Festival Literáro de Bragança. Os detalhes estão aqui . * * * From the 4th of June until the 6th, Bragança hill host a literary festival. You can look at the details here .

May was not as good a reading month as April, not because of the numbers (I read 6 books against 7 in April, which is pretty good for me) but because of the satisfaction those books gave me (something far more important than the number). So without delay, here they go: Angels & Demons | Dan Bown : This was my palate cleanser after reading Janet Murray's  remarkable Strong-minded Women (see my last monthly readings post for more details). I was really disappointed with the last fifth of the book. It started as a really well crafted thriller, with a lot of historical references to real places and facts (mixed with some made-up information, but that's OK, since this is fiction, after all) and I had a good time googling Roman architecture and art pieces as I went reading. Although "movie-script writing" is not what I usually look for in a book, I once in a while like to re...

I am so lucky that the first stop of the Literary Travel was scheduled for the town where I live! Last week, a full theatre (who said literary events do not sell out in inland Portugal?) hosted two of my favourite authors: Chilean Luís Sepúlveda and Portuguese Valter Hugo Mãe (actually born in Angola, when it was still a Portuguese colony). For nearly two hours, we listened to the two authors talking about books, politics and life. My favourite book from Valter is so far (I still have many to read) A Máquina de Fazer Espanhóis (of which I know only a Spanish translation: La Máquina de Hacer Españoles ). From Luís Sepúlveda the choice is harder because I have read so many that really spoke to me. The Old Man who Read Love Stories is certainly one of them (which I learned last week that was based on his own experience of living 7 months with an Amazonian tribe), but so is Mundo del Fin del Mundo , Patagonia Express , or As Rosas de Atacama (again, I can't find an English t...

Two women reading on a verandah at Ingham, QLD, ca. 1894-1903. I was not able to write a post about the March reads in time, so I am joining two months into one post, March and April. I read 3 books in March: The Tailor of Panama | John le Carré (UK): this was quite an enjoyable read, even though spying and international intrigue are not among my favourite genres. But I had this book lying around for too long and decided I had to read it before letting it go again through Bookcrossing , which is where it came from. One of the things I found very interesting is how the core of the story remains so up-to-date: intelligence services from developed countries looking for new purposes by messing around in the third world, a small lie becoming bigger and bigger until it is appropriated by those services/governments and the media as a means to justify a military invasion... As my reading progressed, I had the creepy notion I already knew the story, and it was not from the movi...

Written World by Rob Gonsalves I was talking with my daughter the other day about dreams and nightmares and at some point we started discussing our favourite dreams - you know, those that leave you disappointed when you wake up because they were being so good. It was then that I realised that some of my best dreams are related with books. There is this one where I am in downtown Lisbon, wandering inside one of those ancient buildings that used to host big stores selling textiles, dress fabrics and knitting yarns, where I often went with my mother when I was a child. The only difference is that in my dream, the fabrics, yarns and all the rest have been replaced by... books! Endless wooden shelves filled with books disposed in a sort of labyrinth, that leave me in complete awe! I start browsing through the titles and find books I have read long ago, books that I used to love but at some point have lost, or others that I have been longing to read for years. There is this other dream ...

I have two children, aged 10 and 13 and I have been reading to them since they were babies. They have grown up watching me read whenever I have a spare moment: during breakfast, while waiting on lines, in the bathroom, while cooking (yes, it is possible and no, people don't usually complain about my cooking abilities...). My house is filled with books, in fact, there isn't a single room in the house where you can't find at least a few. I've been taking the children to the library since they were toddlers. They were both homeschooled until fourth grade and learned to read by themselves. Even after they became proficient readers, I never stopped reading to them whenever they asked me. All this to say that they should both love to read, right? Well, not really. While the youngest one loves books to the point that I sometimes have to take them from her so that she can finish breakfast in time not to miss school, the oldest one is completely different. Months can go by wi...

I must say that as much as minimalism appeals to me, I am still a long way from managing to apply it to books. Don't get me wrong, I don't plan to read less, on the contrary. But I do want  to accumulate less. That is why I regularly donate books to my local library and I am an active bookcrosser (if you don't know what Bookcrossing is, you can check it out here ). This being said, I obviously keep buying books on a regular basis - in fact, this is one of the few sorts of shopping I like to do... But I am also a big library user and I frequently lend and borrow books from friends and family - especially my mum, who was the one who passed the book bug on to me! These are the new entries on my TBR (To Be Read) list during the first trimester of the year, a total of 16 books (the photo shows only 15, as one is an e-book): A Rainha Ginga | José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola) - received as a gift Caderno Afegão | Alexandra Lucas Coelho (Portugal) - borrowed Uma Escuridão ...

Today, less than a week after receiving a campaigning journalism award in London, begins the trial of Rafael Marques de Morais in Angola on charges of criminal defamation. The trial follows claims made in his book Blood Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola (Portuguese version downloadable for free here ), which detailed hundreds of killings and torture cases carried out by security guards and members of the Angolan army against local people and small-scale miners in the diamond fields of the Angolan Cuango region. Shortly after publishing the book, Marques filed a lawsuit in Angola against nine Angolan army generals, accusing them of crimes against humanity. He alleged that the generals and company directors were complicit because they were reaping great profits from blood diamonds but doing nothing to stop the violence. In response, the corporations filed their own lawsuit against Marques in Portugal, Angola’s former colonial ruler and the place where the book was publ...

Just take a look at this wonderful bookshop I've been to this week. I found it on the web, when looking for bookshops in Brussels, in the vicinity of the area where I was travelling to for work. You can imagine how happy I was when I found this Librairie Ptyx was located just around the corner of the street where I was going to stay! I thought its name, "ptyx", was a pun with the French word "petit" ( small ) but the nice guy working there told me it was instead a word with no actual meaning, taken from a famous and mysterious sonnet from XIXth century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé , the "sonnet in x". My TBR pile now has two more books: La Place de l'étoile | Patrick Modiano , which I am currently reading Le Petit Nicolas et ses Copains | Sempé and Gosciny * * * Vejam só a livraria tão bonita onde estive esta semana. Encontrei-a na internet, quando andava, precisamente, à procura de livrarias nas imediações do bairro de Bruxelas par...