Slowly but surely...

I've finished a book! After starting I don't know how many books and never finishing them, I'm very proud of myself. It was the second volume in the Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce, In the hand of the Goddess. It was alright, nothing earth-shattering, but it was such an easy read that I finally made through the last page. So for the next book I've decided to scrap the rules, and forget about Mt. "To be Read". I've picked The Knife of Never letting Go and so far it's going good. I still don't feel great, I'm going through some pretty hard times, but knowing that I can read again makes me feel a tiny bit better!

The Electric Picnic 2009

After few days away from the blogosphere, it's scary to come back and try to fit in again. So much it's been going on and I haven't been part of it. Not that I'm much of a blogger socialite, but looking at my 1000+ unread posts on my Reader, I feel overwhelmed and intimidated. I'll take a step at a time and just post some photos of the festival I was telling you about. It was so much more than I expected. It's not just about the music, even though the thing that will stay with me forever and which is standing out from the whole experience, was seeing Florence and the Machine live. I tried to get tickets to see them again in Dublin but it was physically impossible. They sold out in minutes. So here's few photos I took personally:


I also really enjoyed Julie Feeney. She's so unique, and such a great performer, even though ever so shy when it comes to the talking bits.

Another gig I loved was the Flaming Lips. Such a show!
But if I have to be perfectly honest, the reason that made me decide to go was the presence of my beloved drag queens. They had their own tent, called Poptopia, and they were amazing.

Photo taken from Facebook, can't remember from who!

Especially Veda Beaux Reves. She should be a huge rock star, she looked stunning on that stage and the reviewer on The Irish Times loved her too!


I was saying there was so much more than music. It's not called Music and Arts Festival for nothing.The whole festival was so artistic. It looked to me like a big fun fair for adults. Everywhere you turned there was something to photograph, especially in the Body and Soul Area. It was so pretty!
This is a part of the stage there.
This is me inside the sculpture of an elk!

This is Natasha's food stall. She makes everything completely raw, with no dairy, no wheat, no gluten, no sugar. And it's delicious. The chocolate cake was the best chocolate cake I've ever had. No kidding.
The rest of the food stalls were also really good, if not cheap. The tofu burgers at the Vegan and Vegetarian place were a favourite. So were the "bloody mary" crumpets at the Strumpets with Crumpets stall. I wish I took a picture of those. But my camera battery barely lasted to take pictures of Florence on the last day.
More pretty things on the stalls.


A new thing I tried there was the silent disco. SO MUCH FUN!

I bought myself a wholly hat because it was freezing at night. Here it is, where is sort of makes me look like a hobbit.
So many parents were carrying their kids around in these carts, and so many kids were dressed up as fairies. So cute:)
The ground was very very very very veeeeery muddy, sometimes resembling quick sands. It was great fun. You would have been very brave (or very foolish) not to wear a pair of wellies. I don't think I've ever seen that many people wearing wellies all in one place. The variety was incredible, I was jealous of basically every other girl who passed by me. I had nice pink flowery ones, but they leaked so I in the end I had to buy sensible green farmer-style ones, which weren't fashionable, but they kept me dry and warm!

I only have good memories about this festival. Even though the last day our tents got flooded, and we were covered in mud from head to toe and had to leave the tents there. Even though at night I barely got any sleep because the wankers beside us stayed up 24/7, drinking and being really annoying (I wondered if they saw anything else in the festival beside their gazebo). Even though I was freezing at night, and I didn't take any shower for 3 days, and my hair looked horrible all the time cause there was no power to use straighteners and if you wanted to use 10 minutes of hairdryer you had to pay 10 euro!
So despite all this, I can't complain one bit. It was awesome. I'd do it all again tomorrow. (although I'd bring warmer pjs, stronger tents and would find a quieter spot to camp!)

Blogging Break

I haven't written anything in a while. I haven't read much either. I start a book and then I put it down, and start another another one. I'm definitely not in the mood for reading, let alone talking about books. I hope this feeling goes away quickly because it doesn't feel like me. I want things to go back to normal, but I'm in such a state of internal turmoil these days, that I don't know when it will happen.
On the other hand music is easier, it makes me forget about things, and it heals.
I have been to a wonderful festival of music and arts called Electric Picnic last weekend, which happens in Ireland, in a big country field, like Glastonbury. It was my first time and it was amazing. I was walking in mud with wellies most of the time. We were camping out and barely got any sleep for three days. And it was all worth it!
I fell in love with Florence and the Machine. Such a powerful voice. I listen to her music on repeat now.
If you don't know her yet, check her out, but keep in mind that she sounds a million time better live. Mind-blowing!

Drumming Song

Rabbit Heart

Cosmic Love

Gotta go now, I'll be back to post some photos of the festival. And when things get calm again, I'll be a bookworm again.xxx

A trip to the National Gallery: Harry Clarke's Illustrations

I went to the National Gallery the other day, with a new friend of mine. It's not something you do normally, when you're living in a place. It's what tourists do. Besides, I had been to the gallery two times already. But it turned out a completely new experience this time. I watched the paintings more carefully. We admired them, laughed at them, we were moved by them.
But what sticked with me most of all was a little temporary exhibition of an artist called Harry Clarke. In 1916 he illustrated Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, and now 10 of these illustrations are exhibited in our Nation Gallery until 20 September.
If you are anywhere near Dublin, I urge you to go see them, cause they are amazing!

These are in colour:

These in black and white:




They were so rich and detailed, so imaginative and wild. I wished I could have bought the reproduced booklet, but it was too late and the shop was closed. I'll definitely go back and buy it so I can look at them whenever I want and be amazed by them again and again.

Catching Up Part I

I think it's time I face my fears and start blogging again!:P
I have stayed away, kinda overwhelmed by the amount of reviews I have to write. So what I'm gonna do is skip the detailed ramblings and cut to the essential. I want to say something about everything I read lately, but it's gonna be short! Hopefully.
During holidays I was on fire! I read non-stop, it was brilliant.
But before getting to the holiday read I have to catch up on some even older reads:

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
It was good, but not great. Didn't like the writing much, maybe it has to do with the Italian translation. It felt a bit redundant, melodramatic, and old fashion. I liked the story, just not the way it was told. Also the fact the twists were told instead of shown took away from the wow factor. I foresaw one of the main ones, it wasn't too hard. It was entertaining, though, and I get why many people loved it. The premises were good, the pages were easy to turn. It just probably didn't feel very close to the narrator. It also rambled about secondary plots that weren't useful for the main one and were a bit confusing. There was definitely a lack of good female characters, which is usually a big factor for me for liking or not liking a book.
For the good bits: Fermin. I loved him! I liked the ending. I liked how the two lives of Daniel and Julian paralleled. I liked the role of books. And the faith of Hugo's pen...
But, what's with the angels? So many of them. Obviously he likes angels very much.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery was a pleasant, amusing mix of domestic storytelling and philosophy. I'm not a big fan of philosophy, but I am of good writing.
I loved Renee, the concierge of an exclusive Paris apartment building and Palome, the 12 year-old girl who lives in it. They were very similar as they both hid from the world, pretending to be someone they're not. They're both exceptional in their own way.
The essence of the book could be about the importance of little things, of the little miracles, the "small always in the never". Like the blossom that falls off its plant; the feeling of the rain on your shoulders; the music that stops everything in a bubble of eternity.
Some of the philosophical stuff was useless talk to me (is a table really a table or the idea of a table?). It bored the hell of out me, but if you don't linger too much on those parts, it's definitely worth a read.

Missing Angel Juan by Francesca Lia Block.
My honeymoon with FLB's writing is still on. More of Witch Baby, all by herself in the huge New York. Who could ask for more? Still magical, still ethereal, still urban fairytale. I want to write like her!








Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles de Lint.
I finished it!!! Wow!
I shouldn't even be talking about it cause I've raved enough about it, but the thing is that the last story was actually a short novel and it was BRILLIANT!
It's called Seven Wild Sisters and if you can find it anywhere on its own BUY IT! Here's the cover for it.
Reading it put a happy feeling in me. It really made me feel good about being alive and being able to read stories like this one. It wasn't extraordinary. It was simple, in a comforting way. Like eating fresh bread with butter and honey, or any of your favourite food, on a summer day, lying on the grass. There are fairies, there is danger too. But you know there will be a happy ending.
So so so recommended.


Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.
OK, how do I do this? It's Neil Gaiman, so it's hard, but I have to be honest. I didn't fall in love with this one. I enjoyed the characters (Door!). I loved the idea, the humour, the wild imagination. But I didn't connect with the story that much. I was a bit like Richard, never knowing what the hell was going on and why people were doing what they were doing. It all came together in the end, and I wish there were more books set in London Below, but for the most part I was like "so...why are they doing this now?" It's still Neil Gaiman so it was pretty good, just not super good.



And that's the end of my efforts to catch up! More to come, soon (maybe).

Some photos...

Hi everyone, I'm back to my usual cloudy life...and blogging:)
As promised I'll post some pics of my beautiful holiday in Italy. I didn't have my camera, so I only took few pictures with somebody else's camera in Sicily, while I didn't take any in Tuscany.
I was for a week in Levanzo, a small island off the coast of Trapani. It's my favourite place in the entire world. It's my little paradise. This year my father rented a house away from the town. To reach it you had to climb up a very steep road, called "pittata".Or you could just use my dad's quad :D

Here's the entrance to the house, from the inside. There's also a lovely kitchen garden.
This is the house.
And this is me with my dad's partner's son, Ruggiero, in the veranda. It was one of our favourite reading spots.
Usually my father collect lots of sea shells and sea food snorkeling around. This was part of his loot one day. I think I'm gonna try and make one of those things you hang from the ceiling, with them. I forget what you call them:P a mobile! One day...And now I'd like to show you some photos I didn't get a chance to post last year. We saw some dolphins while we were on the boat. It was beautiful! Click on them to see better!
This is a little guy my dad caught. He was released soon after we finished playing with him:)
This is our fierce cat.
A view of the village.

And a little taste of what the sea looks like:)

There. Gotta run to work now. Hope you enjoyed them:)

A quick update

I'm back to civilization and internet, although not at home. I had a wonderful time in Sicily and I will post some photos when I can use my laptop. For now I thought I'd write few lines about what I've read recently. I can hardly keep my mouth (fingers?) shut! I loved absolutely everything and I finished both books so fast that I had to borrow the next book to read on my flight to Pisa.

The Time Traveler's Wife is everything that I thought it'd be, only I didn't think it's be such a page-turner. My flight to Sicily was more than 3 hours long and I didn't feel them at all! I kept reading like a mad thing till I finished it. I cried a bit almost at the end, and felt sort of melancholic from then on, but it was beautiful and it was worth it! Now I can't wait to watch the trailer for the movie.

The Hunger Games was also incredibly absorbing, adventurous and even sort of romantic. I thought it was the perfect summer read, mostly because it made me feel good that I was lying on the beach sunbathing while those poor souls had to fight for their lives with little water and food.Ahah!I can't wait to read the sequel, obviously. Has it lived up to the expectations?

My third book is La Danza del Gabbiano, the new inspector Montalbano book by Andrea Camilleri. I thought it was very good, better than the last two. It was also a very quick read.

Now I've borrowed Fahrenheit 451 and I'm already half-way through. All I can say now is that I'm happy it shows just how horrible a society without books would become. Ugh!

So, yes, I'm loving my summer holiday reading so far! But I miss blogging and reading other people's blogs. Hope everything is good in the bookblogging sphere.

Any new amazing unmissable books I should know about?