…masqué jusqu’a la fin

have you ever noticed what an amazing quality it is to be able to write the sleeve text of books?

then you must also have noticed how you can be fooled by those texts after having read the book, right?!

well, not in this case, however…

i was @ one of the nicest book stores in the Netherlands, Donner in Rotterdam to buy a birthday gift. when arriving @ the cash register, there are always these books @ low prices, so, as i wasn’t doing anything while the girl was wrapping my present, i picked up this book. now, i didn’t read “Shadow of the wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (yet!), but stated on the front is “for lovers of” as promotion…

so when turning it around and reading the back cover it says the following:

“Paris, 1991. Years after the argentinian writer Raul de la Torre committed suicide in the french capital, the young critic Ariel Lenormand decides to write a book about him. After a short while however, this proves to be a life-threatening undertaking. Because: which secret lies beneath the surface of his literary work? Was the death of his second wife really an accident? And what made the writer commit suicide?…” Continue Reading…

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…cinema always!

when reina and i went to the exile on main street exhibit in the bonnefantenmuseum in maastricht, i love to browse through the giftshop. not for ugly small statues or keychains, but for the surprising booktitles, they usually have in these shops.

again i found an amazing book. i love cinema and movies always; the title of the book is Cinema Now! it covers all kinds of independent or different moviedirectors, a lot of whom i appreciate very much. almodovar is the best example, but some orientals, mexicans and a lot of other nationalities pass by. of course, it is always a matter of taste, which could be the reason we were kind of looking strangely at the mentioning of The Host. we found that to be a hilarious (but in a very wrong way) horrormovie. but anyway.

a lot of my favourite movies are in it, like Babel, Volver and Memento for example, but it gives fantastic opportunity to check out new ones; movies by Bruno Dumont, Jacques Audiard and Lucrecia Martel, but mostly it is a book like a good cookbook: when you read it you get hungry…

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…culinaria

actually, i am writing this also to ask for some help.

it must have been at least ten years ago, when i received a beautiful, and at that time quite foreseeing birthdaypresent, a book called Culinaria USA. what struck me immediately about it was that, as i had been to the states a number of times, it didn’t not just give recipes and food, but also recognisable stories and information about the region. so it very often also gives you insight into the relationship between culture, region/wheather/climate and food/eating. which is actually what fascinates me about food in the first place.

why do people start to eat snails? well, probably, because at one point there was not so much food around. good marketing consequently makes sure everyone considers it a delicacy! the inverse relationship between sambal/chilly paste and bacteria has also been researched a number of times. in other words, we love to travel, also to learn about those relationships between food and culture.

so this book was exactly what i love. at that point it had been available at the Bijenkorf, but no more. sad. until a couple of months later i found the Italian one in a small bookstore. and gradually, i found most of them, until recently this one:

and it is amazing once again. singapore, malaysia and indonesia. why can’t there be a netherlands maritime university in kuala lumpur or on bali?!

now i know i miss a couple of them; i have USA, Italia, Spain, France, Germany, European specialties, Hungary, Caribean and Southeast Asia. so please, if you know there are more, let me know; as a bonus i will cook for you …

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…and what illusions they are

when i was in brasil last year, i bought, in a, by the way, amazing multimedia store a book, in english, cause i am only starting my portuguese lessons in a couple of weeks, . of course you are a little dependent on the choices made for you, as not too many customers read in another language than portuguese. i even found a book, Rituals, by a dutch writer in english, but that is completely besides the point, just remarkable.

so then i found this book, Book of illusions by Paul Auster.

you know how you pick up a book or article and you are fascinated right away? well, that happened to me with this book. and of course with some books, the backcover description is amazing and grabs you instantly, but you get disapointed the more you read in the book.

not in this case however. the fate of David Zimmer is tragic, losing his Continue Reading…

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