Notes

Sunday night. The first tornado warning of the season is over in Champaign-Urbana. This one came pretty close. The tornado did not hit the town but strong winds touched ground and caused damages. When the tornado alarm went off I was watching “The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition”. I was deep into the movie and it took me a little while to realize that it wasn’t a whaler blowing the horn. After the proper safety stop looking for shelter and listening at the radio report, I continued with Endurance. If you have not seen it, just watch it, I am still speechless. ...

The smile of Burt Lancaster is small delicious book collecting eleven short tales by Victor Alexandre. The different tales elaborate on eternal human elements. Ambition, despotism, fate, oppression, pride, deception, revenge are some of the few spicing ingredient of his tales. Victor usually writes about socio-political matters, but this book shows an interesting fiction facet of his writing. His tales are powerful and addictive. Once you read one, the next one is waiting and you need to read it. The first tale, “El fabricant de somnis” (The dream maker) gets your attention setting you up for a nice and sweet ending twist. ...

This is the first book I read from Amélie Nothomb (translation here). Daughter of a Belgian ambassador, she was born in Kobe, Japan. The book is an auto-biography of a western girl born in Japan. It fascinated me that it only covers her early years. I felt for her easy fluent, sweet, and charming writing. A fascinating description of the magic Japan she was born in through her young innocent eyes. I cannot erase two episodes from my mind: the struggle to decide the first word to pronounce, and her sadness when she learned that May 5 is Tango no Sekku (the Boy’s festival) but there is no girl’s festival at all. You can find more information about her books here. ...

Teo is the main character of a collection of books for kids. It is amazing how Teo’s illustrated books by Violeta Denou are ageless. I still remember spending hours reading again and again “En Teo va en avió” (Teo catches a plane).

Yup, flying over the Atlantic always provide some spare time to put to good use. That’s what I did reading O Zhair, the latest Paulo Coelho’s book. You can read an extract of the first chapter here.