FIVE HELPFUL BLOG POSTS TO READ

FIVE HELPFUL BLOG POSTS TO READ

1. THE HAIR SHEDDERS GUIDE TO A CLEAN HOME

https://intothegloss.com/2019/01/best-vacuum-and-tools-for-pet-and-hair-shedding/?utm_source=bloglovin.com&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+intothegloss%2FVUQZ+%28Into+The+Gloss%29

2. 10 OUTFITS TO GET YOU OUT OF A DENIM RUT

http://theglitterguide.com/2018/03/22/10-outfits-denim-rut/

3. MESSY LOW BUN TUTORIAL

https://takeaim.nu/messy-low-bun-tutorial/

4. THE FASHION STORES WHERE I SECRETLY BUY ALL MY HOME DÉCOR

https://www.mydomaine.co.uk/fashion-decor-shops/slide10

5. HOW TO BE PARISIAN IN HOME DECOR – 5 EASY AND DREAMY TRICKS

http://www.dailydreamdecor.com/2019/01/how-to-be-parisian-in-home-decor-5-easy-and-dreamy-tricks.html

TOP FIVE: BOOKS

TOP FIVE: BOOKS

It’s World Book Day and I can’t believe I’ve never shared with you my favourite books – so here is my Top Five…

1. LOLITA - VLADIMIR NABOKOV

This is, despite it’s uncomfortable subject matter, without a doubt, my favourite book of all time. I read it in college for the first time for my English Literature class (my choice though, it wasn’t assigned) and instantly fell in love with it. I read it several times, in fact this is one of the few books I’ve read more than once. The combination of a compelling story along with the most beautifully written prose I’ve ever read, makes this my benchmark against which all other books I read are judged. I recommend it to everyone, despite the raised eyebrows. And may I remind you, probably the most amazing thing about this book; Nabokov wrote this in English, which is not his native tongue. He wrote, what some consider to be the greatest work of the 20^thcentury, in a language not his own!

Find more information here…

2. MARIANNE DREAMS - CATHERINE STORR

I first read this book when I was ten and I thought it was the best thing I’d ever read, and every few years I get it out again and think, ‘man, I had good taste, this still holds up.’ I was an odd kid, with a love of the supernatural and a thirst for the kind of adventure that could just turn up on your doorstep, and this book ticked all my boxes. It’s a story about a girl who dreams what she draws, but it’s dark, almost too dark for a children’s book, but also wonderful. 

Find more information here…

3. ASK THE DUST - JOHN FANTE

This book, I believe, is the reason, my boyfriend and I are together. I recommended this book to him and I think he’s loved me for it ever since. I read it in my late teens, recommended to me while searching for books by Bukowski (who is Fante’s biggest fan) but I can’t remember whom I read first. This book spoke to me, not because of circumstance but because of tone. I felt Bandini’s fear and nerves, I sympathized with his unrequited love and feelings of hopelessness and neglect, confusion about how to be in the world and how to succeed in life. Bandini is probably one of the characters in the literary world I worry and care for the most. I haven’t re-read this for a long time – I hope I still feel the same when I do.

Find more information here…

4. THE OUTSIDER - ALBERT CAMUS

The opening to this book is a stinger and it doesn’t get any easier to read, but it is brilliant. I always find it hard to judge the writing of a translation but I feel that the English version of this book at least keeps the tone and sentiment of the original, although it probably sounds more deep and beautiful in the French language. I read this and a few other existentialist books at the same time during my teens but this was the one that stuck, it stuck with a few others too because it is the inspiration for a lot of works of art and music. 

Find more information here…

5. NAÏVE. SUPER - ERLEND LOE

This book is amazing in it’s simplicity. It is about a man in his twenties who suddenly becomes disillusioned and confused by the world and his attempts to reset his thinking. It’s a truly modern book (almost ahead of it’s time). This is another book that my boyfriend and I bonded over and I would recommend it to anyone maybe feeling a little lost who needs some reassurance in the world but doesn’t want to read a self help book because sometimes they can be patronizing and this book gives the complete opposite notion.

Find more information here…

BOOK 188: THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG: MURIEL BARBERY

BOOK 188: THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG: MURIEL BARBERY

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (French: L'Élégance du hérisson) is a novel by the French novelist and philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery. The book follows events in the life of a concierge, Renée Michel, whose deliberately concealed intelligence is uncovered by an unstable but intellectually precocious girl named Paloma Josse. Paloma is the daughter of an upper-class family living in the upscale Parisian apartment building where Renée works.

Featuring a number of erudite characters, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is full of allusions to literary works, music, films, and paintings. It incorporates themes relating to philosophy, class consciousness, and personal conflict. The events and ideas of the novel are presented through the thoughts and reactions, interleaved throughout the novel, of two narrators, Renée and Paloma. The changes of narrator are marked by switches of typeface. In the case of Paloma, the narration takes the form of her written journal entries and other philosophical reflections; Renée's story is also told in the first person but more novelistically and in the present tense.

First released in August 2006 by Gallimard, the novel became a publishing success in France the following year, selling over two million copies. It has been translated into more than forty languages, and published in numerous countries outside France, including the United Kingdom (Gallic Books, London) and the United States (Europa Editions, New York), and has attracted critical praise.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was well received by critics. In the earliest known review, for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Maurizio Bono writes that "[t]he formula that made more than half a million readers in France fall in love with [The Elegance of the Hedgehog] has, among other ingredients: intelligent humor, fine sentiments, an excellent literary and philosophical backdrop, taste that is sophisticated but substantial" French magazine Ellereviewer Natalie Aspesi pronounced it one of "the most exhilarating and extraordinary novels in recent years". Aspesi, however, tagged the novel's title as "most curious and least appealing". Praising the novel in his review for The Guardian, Ian Samson wrote that "The Elegance of the Hedgehog aspires to be great and pretends to philosophy: it is, at least, charming." In an earlier review in the same paper, Groskop opined that the novel is a "profound but accessible book ... which elegantly treads the line between literary and commercial fiction". She added that "clever, informative and moving, it is essentially a crash course in philosophy interwoven with a platonic love story". A review in The Telegraph conjectured that "[i]f [the novel were] a piece of furniture, it would be an IKEA bestseller: popular, but not likely to be passed down the generations". A review in The Times Literary Supplement went further, calling the book "pretentious and cynical, with barely any story. It reads more like a tract than a novel, but lacks even a tract's certainty of purpose. The characters are problematic: most are puppets, and those that aren’t are stereotypes".

Michael Dirda of The Washington Post complimented Barbery, saying, "Certainly, the intelligent Muriel Barbery has served readers well by giving us the gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet Elegance of the Hedgehog." Louise McCready of The New York Observer praised Anderson's translation of the novel as "smooth and accurate". Caryn James of The New York Times hailed the novel as "studied yet appealing commercial hit", adding that it "belongs to a distinct subgenre: the accessible book that flatters readers with its intellectual veneer".[7] Los Angeles Times' Susan Salter Reynolds wrote that "[The Elegance of the Hedgehog] is a high-wire performance; its characters teeter on the surreal edge of normalcy. Their efforts to conceal their true natures, the pressures of the solitary mind, make the book hum".

FILM ADAPTATION

The novel was adapted into a film The Hedgehog (Le hérisson) released in France in July 2009, starring Josiane Balasko as Renée Michel, Garance Le Guillermic as Paloma Josse, and Togo Igawa as Kakuro Ozu, with a score by Gabriel Yared. The rights for the film were bought by NeoClassics Film and it was released by the company in America on 19 August. Its reception at festivals was positive and it won the Filmfest DC 2011, the Best of Fest Palm Springs 2011, the Seattle International Film Festival 2010, and the 2010 Col-Coa Film Festival. Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times called it "Whimsical and touching... Mona Achache's adaptation is wistful perfection". Stephen Holden of The New York Times said it "suggests a sort of Gallic Harold and Maude".

BOOK 180: JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT: LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE

LITERARY STYLE: Céline's first novel is probably most remarkable for its style. Céline makes extensive use of ellipsisand hyperbole. His writing has the flow of natural speech patterns and uses the vernacular, while also employing more erudite elements. This has influenced French literature considerably. The novel enjoyed popular success and a fair amount of critical acclaim when it was published in October 1932. Albert Thibaudet, perhaps the greatest of the entre-deux-guerres critics, said that in January 1933 it was still a common topic of conversation at dinner parties in Paris.

INFLUENCE AND LEGACY: Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 film The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) opens with a quote from Journey to the End of the Night. The film concludes with a visual of the last paragraph of the book, passing under bridges, arches, and locks along the city's river.

Will Self has written that Journey to the End of the Night "is the novel, perhaps more than any other, that inspired me to write fiction".

The song "End of the Night" by The Doors references this book, as it had a great influence on the work of Jim Morrison.

Charles Bukowski makes reference to Journey in a number of his novels and short stories, and employs prose techniques borrowed from Céline. Bukowski wrote in Notes of a Dirty Old Man that "Céline was the greatest writer of 2000 years".

Céline's literary style greatly influenced Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 dystopian science fiction film Alphaville, protagonist Lemmy Caution dismisses a taxi driver's offer of route options to his destination by stating that he is on "a journey to the end of the night". The film depicts the use of poetry as a weapon against a sentient computer system.

MY VERDICT:

I can understand why this is cited as a great novel, however I did not enjoy it at all. This book probably, of all the books I’ve ever read, took me the longest to complete. The only reason I can give, is because of the disheartening subject matter that although travelling around the world to many different situations almost each one was more, or as, depressing as the last. There is no hope is this book, no humour, no let up, and because of that I found it difficult to get through. The protagonist is more unlikable the longer the story progresses and I found it hard to sympathize with him even when he was in sympathetic situations. I can see that it is well written, I believe there’s no argument on that part, but above all I want to be able to enjoy reading a book and I did not enjoy one part of this.

http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/2017/01/19/vt-wonen/

FILM 1674: MARGUERITE

TRIVIA: Shot entirely in the Czech Republic.

The name of the title character is a gallicised form of Margaret Dumont, the dignified lady with the figure of an old-time opera singer who was the foil for the Marx Brothers' gags.

FILM 1669: ELLE

TRIVIA: The initial plan was to produce the movie in the United States, but there were problems finding a female lead. Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone, Julianne Moore and Diane Lane were offered the role, but they all passed on the opportunity. Marion Cotillard and Carice van Houten were also considered. According to Paul Verhoeven, most actresses immediately rejected the part as soon as they had read the script, instead of waiting for a few days, which is normal. One of the actresses said she felt uncomfortable because of things that had happened to her in the past, one didn't give any reasons but just said, 'certainly not'. Verhoeven relocated the shoot of Elle to France after being turned down by Hollywood actresses. Verhoeven revealed that Isabelle Huppert read the book, called up the writer and the producer and said she wanted to do the movie. When they were discussing it, she brought up Verhoeven's name. Huppert chose Verhoeven, not the other way around. Verhoeven told The Guardian that the only American actor who would have been game, he thinks, is Jennifer Jason Leigh, "she would have had absolutely no problem, She's extremely audacious. But she's an artistic presence and we were looking for names", he said.

Paul Verhoeven's first French-language film.

Before the production began, Paul Verhoeven went to a Dutch language institute to learn French, in order to better communicate with the cast and crew. He said it was simply necessary, because according to tradition, making a French movie should be done with an all-French crew. He initially spoke English with them, but this didn't work efficiently. Fortunately, Verhoeven had once been to a French school in his youth, so he picked up the language quickly.

Based on the novel "Oh..." by Philippe Djian.

FILM 1668: BELLEVILLE RENDEZ-VOUS 

TRIVIA: Among the anti-Disney riffs in the film are a Mickey-shaped turd in a toilet, and a wallet-picture of a character in Disneyland with a lollipop that says SUCKER.

A caricatured Django Reinhardt playing guitar can be seen early in the black and white portion of the film. As in reality, the cartoon uses only two fingers to play, due to a burn suffered in 1928. Eventually, he brings his foot up and plays with his toes. The film's soundtrack sounds as though it was greatly influenced by Django's music (and he recorded a song called Belleville with Stéphane Grappelli).

There is also an animated caricature of dancer/singer/performer Josephine Baker, a black American entertainer who left the U.S. in the 1920s to escape its virulent racism, and became a tremendous star in Europe. She was very famous in Paris, and often appeared in shows half-nude, the way she's represented in this film.

Visible in their apartment are pictures of the Triplets with some period stars including Charles Chaplin, there's also a picture of the Triplets on the beach with Olive Oyl.

On the wall of the Triplets' living room is a calendar showing October of 1926 -- almost four decades out of date at the time of the story.