Tangerine Bread // Budin de Manadarina

, by Paula Loreti

What I've read so far in 2017

Hello everybody! How are you? Today I wanted to make a post about the book I've read all this year. While I write this I am aware of all the books that I want to read this year and that I probably won't be able because I don't have enough time, so sad haha. Anyway, hope you like this post and I'll love to know what you read this year or if you ever read any of these books!

Jorge Luis Borges - El Aleph

"The Aleph" is a short story by the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges.In Borges' story, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion. The story traces the theme of infinity found in several of Borges' other works, such as "The Book of Sand".
To be completely honest, I don't like Borges that much. I mean, I truly believe he was a genius and he had a marvelous mind and so much imagination. But, maybe because I don't read that much fiction I don't enjoy really much his stories. Though it has some interesting tales, and beautiful phrases. My favourite out of this book is:

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.”

To the Lighthouse centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. The plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the literary technique of multiple focalization, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art and the problem of perception. Since I had literature last year in college and the professor named Woolf I wanted to read this book. Although is a slow read, I found a lot of things that relate to Woolf's life and it has so much passion and sadness in it, it really caught my attention. My favourite quote from this book is:

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”

Ham on Rye is a 1982 semi-autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Written in the first person, the novel follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s thinly veiled alter ego, during his early years. Written in Bukowski’s characteristically straightforward prose, the novel tells of his coming-of-age in Los Angeles during the Great Depression. This is such a complex book, that plays a lot with historical events and moments of a young Bukowski. I think this is kind of those books that either you hate and love at the same time. He writes a lot of things that can be an insult to women, and I was really angry at a lot of parts in this book, but then I tried to understand that he was born in a really different time, so I enjoyed a little more this reading. You can also know and emphasize a lot more with this life and his experiences. My favourite quote from this book is:

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”

All the Bright Places is a 2015 young adult novel by Jennifer Niven. Finch and Violet Markey are two teenagers that want to escape from their small Indiana town. Violet counts down the days until she can move away and escape the memories of her sister's death, while Theodore struggles with severe mental illness. The suffering pair find their quirky friendship transformed into a poetic and beautiful romance. I loved how this book talk about important things, such as depression, suicide, love, getting over the loss of a loved one, but still managed to find fun and life among all those terrible feelings. Still, I don't know if I would recommend this book if you're struggling with any of those matters, because it can bring back some bad memories. I just read that next year there'll be a movie about this book so I'm looking forward to see it. It was hard to chose a phrase of this book, but I think this is the one that I liked the most:

“I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you’re standing next to the right person.”

The great thing about this trilogy is that you can read it in any order or read just one, and you will understand everything that's happening.

Anna and the French Kiss is the 2010 debut novel of Stephanie Perkins. Anna Oliphant is a senior in high school who is forced by her father to attend the fictional boarding school 'School of America in Paris' - nicknamed SOAP by students. She is heavily against having to leave Atlanta for Paris, specifically due to leaving her best friend, Bridgette, and Toph, whom she has a crush on. Anna wishes to become a film critic, being a major movie fan. On her first night at SOAP, she meets her next-room-over neighbor Meredith (Mer), who consoles her after finding Anna crying in her room. After Anna leaves Meredith's room, she bumps into a beautiful boy who introduces himself as Étienne St. Clair, and has an English accent. Out of the three books, this is definitly my favourite. It's so romantic and you can really imagine Paris and everything that happens, because of how great Perkins's description of all the moments and the places. The quote that I really liked was:

“How many times can our emotions be tied to someone else's - be pulled and stretched and twisted - before they snap? Before they can never be mended again?”

Lola and the boy next door follows the story of budding designer Lola Nolan who doesn't believe in fashion, but in costume. The more expressive the outfit – the more sparkly, more wild – the better. And life is pretty close to perfect for Lola, especially with her hot rocker boyfriend. That is, until the Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket return to the neighbourhood and unearth a past of hurt that Lola thought was long buried. So when talented inventor Cricket steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally face up to a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door. Of all the three books, this is the one that I didn't like that much. I never felt close with the character of Lola, probably because of the costume and all that stuff that doesn't go with my personality, but it's fun to read and it's nice to see how much all the characters in the book grow and become more mature and better persons to themselves and to each other. This line is lovely and it's also a great advice:

“Life isn’t about what you get, it’s about what you DO with what you get.”

Isla and the happily ever after is about hopeless romantic Isla that have had a crush on introspective cartoonist Josh since their first year at the School of American in Paris. And after a chance encounter in Manhattan over the summer, romance might be closer than Isla imagined. But as they being their senior year back in France, Isla and Josh are forced to confront the challenges every young couple must face, including family drama, uncertainty about their college futures, and the very real possibility of being apart. This is such a cute and easy reading book and it's nice to see how the story of Josh, Anna and Lola come across at some point. The best quote of the book for me is this:

“Everyone is worthy of love."

Sharp Objects is a 2006 novel by American author Gillian Flynn and her debut novel. Camille Preaker works as a journalist at a small and rather un-prestigious newspaper. Her job isn't always particularly satisfying, as she often has to report on stories about human neglect and crimes such as murder. Camille gets along somewhat well with her boss Curry, who supported her during a recent hospitalization due to self-harm. Camille has carved many words onto her body - having previously hallucinated them on her skin. When he asks her to return to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to cover the murder of one preteen girl and the disappearance of another, Camille initially refuses. Curry perseveres and eventually persuades her to take the story. The first book that I read of Flynn was gone girl and it's incredible how she always managed to surprise you. It happened to me like a hundred times when I thought that it was OBVIOUS that something was happening, and then was the exact opposite of it. So, if you like books of suspense and that they are a little creepy, you'll love Gillian Flynn. It's hard to find a good quote in this kind of books, but I really enjoy searching them, so I chose this one:

“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”

Yes, another book of Gillian haha. This is such a twisted story yet really interesting. As I said in sharp objects, you are surprise page by page, and you can't stop reading because you need to get to the bottom of what really happened to the characters. This is the book that I least liked of her, but it's still really good.Dark Places is a mystery novel by Gillian Flynn published in 2009. The novel deals with class issues in rural America, intense poverty and the Satanic cult hysteria that swept the United States in the 1980s. Libby Day, the novel's narrator and protagonist, is the sole survivor of a massacre in Kinnakee, Kansas, a fictional rural town. After witnessing the murders of her two sisters and mother, in what appears to be a Satanic cult ritual, she escapes through a window and later testifies in court against her teenage brother. Twenty-five years after the massacre, Libby, in need of money, meets with a group of amateur investigators who believe that her brother is innocent of the crime. The phrase that I liked the most may be a little weird, but I believe so much that we all have good and bad inside of us, and we choose which one we are going to let win each day, so that's why this is the sentence that I want to share with you, because I think that sometimes we just don't want to admit it:

“The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.”

This is my favourite book ever. And I can't believe it took me 19 years to find it (I just wanted to made that clarification). East of Eden is a novel by Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, published in September 1952. The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather. A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character.

The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of World War I, though some chapters are set in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War. In the beginning of East of Eden, before introducing his characters, Steinbeck carefully establishes the setting with a description of the Salinas Valley in Central California.

Then he outlines the story of the warmhearted inventor and farmer Samuel Hamilton and his wife Liza, immigrants from Ireland. He describes how they raise their nine children on a rough, infertile piece of land. As the Hamilton children begin to grow up and leave the nest, a wealthy stranger, Adam Trask, purchases the best ranch in the Valley. Adam has a brother and we can read flashbacks from his life story.A parallel story introduces a girl named Cathy Ames, who grows up in a town not far from the brothers' family farm.

What I truly loved about this book is how it constantly remind you that you always have a choice. You can be condicionated by a lot of circunstances, but you choose if you want to be good or bad, if you want to be more that your faults and your flaws, or if you want to take pride in your heart, instead of making something good out of it.

It's so hard to chose just one phrase or sentence out of this book because it has so so many amazing quotes, but I guess this is the one that I want to share with you:

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?"

While I was taking the pictures I forgot that this year I read this book (sorry brother haha). o Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism. Maybe you read the book or seen the movie (both of them are amazing), but it's a story that you must know about. This a book that can literally change your mind about a lot of thing, and also shows you how important it is to stand up for what you believe, no matter what anybody else thinks, as long as is the right thing, like defending an innocent man. This quote of the books must be one of the best words ever written, because is something so simple, yet so important:

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

And since nowadays we see how all problems in the world are solved with violence, I want to add this one:

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

I have a big list of books I want to read before the year is gone, so hopefully on december I can bring you a new post with a lot of new books to tell you about.

Currently I am reading On the road by Jack Kerouac, what about you? Let me know in the comments what you're currently reading!

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