My personal February entertainment was filled with Valentine theme books, music, and shows.
In the reading department, I loved reading a fabulous series with Jane Austen as the main character, a detective nonetheless, Jane and the Canterbury Tales by the amazing writer Stephanie Barron. I read a few of these books last year and fell in love with every single one of them right away. Stephanie Barron treats the reader with an intricate mystery plot with Jane Austen herself solving the mystery. Being as attentive to human behavior as she was, this was a very flowing facet of her character. The historical facts are thoroughly researched, the knowledge of Jane Austen's life is followed accurately through her letters, the fascinating descriptions of the period are described in detail and give the reader a stunning view of Jane Austen's society. All of these perfections would make anyone want to read any book. But there is more. The double treat of the book is the style and language that it is written in. I think even Austen herself would be envious of the eloquence of the style and the beauty of the words. For me this touch made the series not just another mystery series I enjoyed, but a classic read that keeps me wanting for more.
Other books I read:
The 5 Love Languages: The secret to love that lasts by Gary Chapman - A straightforward and simple introduction to the different kinds of ways we express and would like to receive love.
Catching Alice by Clare Naylor - A fun book that started off as a relaxing kind of read, but then it introduced serious themes that were thoughtful and interesting. A brokenhearted Alice leaves her native land of England and accepts her American friend's invitation to work and live in L.A. She enjoys the beautiful weather, the gorgeous people, the trendy organic foods, the fashionable styles, and much more. When the honeymoon period is over however, she realizes that all that comes with a prize and isn't at times what it looks. Through it all, she also understands what true love means to her. I have to say the author not only understood the California culture well, but she did a good job in portraying its highs and lows pretty accurately.
The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow - A great addition to the Holocaust literature. It is set against the backdrop of Hitler's rise of power and the discrimination against the Jewish community, this book is also a coming-to-age story. Karl, a 14 year old boy, Jewish by heritage but not in practice, has to learn how to survive the bullying and the increase of discrimination of his friends, and then the whole community in general. Early on in the book he meets and becomes friends with the real-life boxing champion Max Schmeling, who helps him through out the book learn boxing as well as learn how to grow up. The characters were very well developed and felt very real. What they said and did I could imagine myself do. The plot was interesting and since it was set during the rise of Nazi power, it felt I was there right in the beginning. This was a beautifully written book with themes that can teach each of us lifelong lessons.
In the TV department, I watched various shows. Gillian and I continue to follow Once Upon A Time each Tuesday on our date night. We still love it! I'm also enjoying Hart of Dixie, Bunheads, and an old show, but new to me, which I don't watch very regularly, The Gilmore Girls. I love the dialogue in this show, and even though it is very fast and I may not catch even half of the references to American culture in each episode, I've really enjoyed it. However, my favorite show for the month of February has to be Lie to Me. Netflix has all of its three seasons, and I felt very upset when it was over and I learned that the show was cancelled after three seasons. It is one of my favorite shows dealing with the understanding of the psychological behavior of individuals. The two main characters are psychologists who have studied the human facial and body language to an extent that they can tell the various thoughts going into each of their clients' minds. And I love the chemistry between each of the characters.
Music was a big part of this month's entertainment. I had a thirst for Puccini and Rossini, as well as all of the other bel canto composers. As always and forever, I enjoyed listening to Bellini's Norma most of all. Classical wasn't the only branch of music I listened to however. I had a great time listening to Josh Groban's new CD, All That Echoes with my favorite song being Brave and his rendition of Falling Slowly. Beautiful! I also explored some of the new folk bands such as Mumford and Sons (I Will Wait), Lumineers (Ho Hey), and Hunter Hays (Love Makes Me).
What an amazing world we live in. We have access to the masterpieces of the past, we can enjoy the talents of today, and we have a chance to be part of the future. Wow! Enjoy it!
Showing posts with label TV shows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV shows. Show all posts
Monday, March 4, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
My January entertainment
January was an eclectic month concerning my personal choices of entertainment. I read a few books, watched a lot of TV shows, listened to a variety of music that would make it quite impossible for a psychologist to pinpoint my musical interest, and made very little progress in my writing.
I started January with two Latin American writers who know how to write about passion and love - Isabel Allende's "Daughter of Fortune" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in Time of Cholera." The first one deals with a lovesick heart of a Chilean young woman who follows her love all the way to California during the Gold Rush. The book offers beautiful description of the period, accurate historical background, and a maze of characters, each unique and full of flaws, but through who we think about issues of true love, obsession, independence, choice, and many more social commentaries and matters. The latter book also deals with love and tries to define it by offering descriptions of its many variations. There are three main characters who represent the idealists, the realists, and the confused. To know our author's results on which character is the solution to the quandary of love, you've got to read the book. An amazing read both of them.
I also read a couple of young teen books which I had picked up for Gillian, but had never read before. "Wish you were Eyre" by Heather Vogel Frederick was the last book in the Mother-daughter Book Club series. Filled with humor, plenty of teen issues, and a love for Paris, this book made a fantastic read for me. There are plenty of questions in the end of the book that brought a lot of discussion between Gillian and me. We both loved it and couldn't stop talking about it for hours. Each book discusses a beloved classic, with lots of information for the characters of the classic as well as the author. The characters in the book relate their lives and experiences to what they are reading for that month, thus the Mother-daughter Book Club. If you are looking for a good series to read with your preteen, this is it. Gillian and I spent many hours of bonding reading and discussing it.
The other two YA books I read were "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and "Reached" by Ally Condie. Found is the first book of the science fiction The Missing series that involve teens that have been transported from the past. They belong to various royal families in the past that were lost without a trace,and Haddix brings excitement to the table by making the readers enjoy her theories of what happened to them. Gillian and I loved this book and we are looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Reached was the final book in the Matched trilogy. Condie is an amazing author when it comes to poetic language and flowing sentences. Her characters grew in this last installment of the series and the plot had twists and turns that made it interesting full of issues about freedom, self realization, creativity, the right to choose, and many more. The one thing that made this book hard to read, however, was that it was too long and filled with unnecessary details. Toward the end I felt tired and disappointed that the characters were not a bit more exciting. You could tell that Ally Condie's mind is pensive, calm, and poetic, but with not many hair-raising experiences occupying it.
Watching TV shows captured my attention this month to the extent that it overpowered my desire to read, something that has never happened before. I blame it to my being tired from the holidays. I finished watching the last episode of Downton Abbey season 3 with tears in my eyes. I had watched the whole season since November, but out came the Christmas special, the last episode, and it turned our Downton Abbey world upside down. With the exception of Matthew Crawley dying in the end of the episode, everything else in this season was absolutely brilliantly written. The characters were developed more and we could feel a human connection with each of them, even with the manipulating Thomas and cruel O'Bien. I can't wait for the next season - the 20's 30's and the rise of America.
A few other shows I enjoyed watching were Hart of Dixie - a fun show with plenty of quirky characters and over the top stereotypes, Bunheads - a great range of characters that includes high school girls, mother-daughter-in law, ballerinas, handsome boys, and enjoyable issues. However, the favorite for the month remains Once Upon a Time. I watched the first season on Netflix, and liked it so much that I tried to find the second season on line. Afterward I realize that this would be a great show to share with Gillian, so every Tuesday now, we send the boys upstairs, and Gillian and I sit to watch two to three episodes together. She looks forward to it each week and this has been the best and most relaxing kind of bonding we have experienced recently. The show is clean enough to share with her age group, and it is very fun to watch, filled with lots of very creative twists on the existing fairy tales, amazingly beautiful costumes, and lots of love stories. I was touched the other day when we had a conversation about it. When we first saw the picture of the actor who plays Snow White's prince, we were kind of dissapointed because he was blond and not very striking in the way we were used to have the prince represented. As we watched the series, we fell in love with the prince, and at one point Gillian said: I think the reason we love this prince so much it's because he is so tender and kind and pure, and those qualities come from the inside. We are loving who he truly is inside, which is even more beautiful than what he looks from the outside." Wow!
During the first half of January, I stayed a lot inside resting, reading, and playing with Charlton. While inside, I got to listen to a lot of good music from classical to bluegrass to pop. One of my favorite songs was a new single by Maroon 5 -Daylight, and Matchbox 20's Overjoyed (well, all of their new CD from last year). I'm also not ashamed to declare that I have enjoyed spending hours dancing with Gillian to the music of One Direction, especially their new CD Take Me Home, with awesome songs such as Live while you're young, and my favorite Little Things. Gillian's favorite is called What makes you beautiful, so in her honor here it is:
I started January with two Latin American writers who know how to write about passion and love - Isabel Allende's "Daughter of Fortune" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in Time of Cholera." The first one deals with a lovesick heart of a Chilean young woman who follows her love all the way to California during the Gold Rush. The book offers beautiful description of the period, accurate historical background, and a maze of characters, each unique and full of flaws, but through who we think about issues of true love, obsession, independence, choice, and many more social commentaries and matters. The latter book also deals with love and tries to define it by offering descriptions of its many variations. There are three main characters who represent the idealists, the realists, and the confused. To know our author's results on which character is the solution to the quandary of love, you've got to read the book. An amazing read both of them.
I also read a couple of young teen books which I had picked up for Gillian, but had never read before. "Wish you were Eyre" by Heather Vogel Frederick was the last book in the Mother-daughter Book Club series. Filled with humor, plenty of teen issues, and a love for Paris, this book made a fantastic read for me. There are plenty of questions in the end of the book that brought a lot of discussion between Gillian and me. We both loved it and couldn't stop talking about it for hours. Each book discusses a beloved classic, with lots of information for the characters of the classic as well as the author. The characters in the book relate their lives and experiences to what they are reading for that month, thus the Mother-daughter Book Club. If you are looking for a good series to read with your preteen, this is it. Gillian and I spent many hours of bonding reading and discussing it.
The other two YA books I read were "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and "Reached" by Ally Condie. Found is the first book of the science fiction The Missing series that involve teens that have been transported from the past. They belong to various royal families in the past that were lost without a trace,and Haddix brings excitement to the table by making the readers enjoy her theories of what happened to them. Gillian and I loved this book and we are looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Reached was the final book in the Matched trilogy. Condie is an amazing author when it comes to poetic language and flowing sentences. Her characters grew in this last installment of the series and the plot had twists and turns that made it interesting full of issues about freedom, self realization, creativity, the right to choose, and many more. The one thing that made this book hard to read, however, was that it was too long and filled with unnecessary details. Toward the end I felt tired and disappointed that the characters were not a bit more exciting. You could tell that Ally Condie's mind is pensive, calm, and poetic, but with not many hair-raising experiences occupying it.
Watching TV shows captured my attention this month to the extent that it overpowered my desire to read, something that has never happened before. I blame it to my being tired from the holidays. I finished watching the last episode of Downton Abbey season 3 with tears in my eyes. I had watched the whole season since November, but out came the Christmas special, the last episode, and it turned our Downton Abbey world upside down. With the exception of Matthew Crawley dying in the end of the episode, everything else in this season was absolutely brilliantly written. The characters were developed more and we could feel a human connection with each of them, even with the manipulating Thomas and cruel O'Bien. I can't wait for the next season - the 20's 30's and the rise of America.
A few other shows I enjoyed watching were Hart of Dixie - a fun show with plenty of quirky characters and over the top stereotypes, Bunheads - a great range of characters that includes high school girls, mother-daughter-in law, ballerinas, handsome boys, and enjoyable issues. However, the favorite for the month remains Once Upon a Time. I watched the first season on Netflix, and liked it so much that I tried to find the second season on line. Afterward I realize that this would be a great show to share with Gillian, so every Tuesday now, we send the boys upstairs, and Gillian and I sit to watch two to three episodes together. She looks forward to it each week and this has been the best and most relaxing kind of bonding we have experienced recently. The show is clean enough to share with her age group, and it is very fun to watch, filled with lots of very creative twists on the existing fairy tales, amazingly beautiful costumes, and lots of love stories. I was touched the other day when we had a conversation about it. When we first saw the picture of the actor who plays Snow White's prince, we were kind of dissapointed because he was blond and not very striking in the way we were used to have the prince represented. As we watched the series, we fell in love with the prince, and at one point Gillian said: I think the reason we love this prince so much it's because he is so tender and kind and pure, and those qualities come from the inside. We are loving who he truly is inside, which is even more beautiful than what he looks from the outside." Wow!
During the first half of January, I stayed a lot inside resting, reading, and playing with Charlton. While inside, I got to listen to a lot of good music from classical to bluegrass to pop. One of my favorite songs was a new single by Maroon 5 -Daylight, and Matchbox 20's Overjoyed (well, all of their new CD from last year). I'm also not ashamed to declare that I have enjoyed spending hours dancing with Gillian to the music of One Direction, especially their new CD Take Me Home, with awesome songs such as Live while you're young, and my favorite Little Things. Gillian's favorite is called What makes you beautiful, so in her honor here it is:
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