Hi everybody !

Today I would like to talk about the book Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck.

John Steinbeck is an american author. His novels took place regularly in Californie, the birthplace of Steinbeck. He also often stages common characters, of working class confronted of the Great Depression or of the Dust Bowl. Of Mice and Men was published in 1937. There is a cinematographic adaption with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise (1992).

The book deals with two characters, George Milton and Lennie Small. Both are ranch workers who move from place to place in California in search of a new job during the Great Depression. These two friends have a same dream: they want to have their own farm and raise rabbits. On the one hand there is George described as small but with strong hand. On the other hand there is Lennie Small, unlike his friend he is very tall and strong but it is a mentally disabled (there is a link with his name).

I read this book when I was in 3ème, and I re-read it not very long ago, and it always a pleasure. I was transported into the universe of Steinbeck from the very first page of the novel. But I think that the thing I prefer are the characters because I found their friendship very touching. However my favorite character is Lennie, I don’t know really why, but I think his innonce contributed to my attachment to this character. In brief this book is a masterpiece to read urgently !!

      “Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”

To begin with this novel, we can notice that Ken Grimwood was an american author who was born in 1947 and who died in 2003. Some of his books were really influenced by comics (with science fiction) and the fantasy world. So he aimed to write with this worderful inspiration.

During his short life, we can observe that he was « famous » thanks to one of his books : Replay. It is the most popular novel to Ken, and « Replay » won the World Fantasy Award in 1988. That is why I would like to speak about this novel !

So, this fantasy novel tells about Jeff Winston, a radio journalist. He has 43 years old, and he isn’t really filled by his poor life. One day, he dies suddently because of a heart attack. But he was rather startled to discover that he was alive again ! But there is a problem, he wakes up in his student room and he has 18 years old ! Now, the « Replay » can begin. He knows his previous life again, and can « replay » without mistakes his new life… A kind of circle begins to Jeff and each time, when he arrives to 43 years old, he dies and replay another life, with differents choises.

This book is really interesting because we can observe and learn every time a new, a differente life, where Jeff Winston choises to make some differents actions to never live the same life ! He is able to change things for him and for the other people around him: and now, he wants to live with this aim !

I keep the end of this book for me and you have to read this novel to break the suspens…  Thanks to this novel we can discover the last twenty years of America, and it’s very pleasant ! I love the fantasy world, so this dream world makes me very amazed !

Bye !

This science fiction novel was written by Scott Westerfeld in 2005. It’s a set of books serie : Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras and Secrets. All these books make us a dystopian world.

So, this futuristic novel tells about Tally. She is 16 years old, and like a lot of teenagers, she is a member of « Uglies », a group of people. In this world, when teenagers reach their sixteenth birthday, they must have an operation to become « Pretties ». The « Pretties » people have a happy life with parties, fun evertime and everywhere, and they are free in this paradise, but they loose totaly their personnality… Contrary as « Uglies », who dream and aim to become Pretties.But Tally doesn’t believe in this Pretty’s paradise, she doesn’t want to become a pretty girl and she aims to become a rebel. « The Rebels » aim to go away and accept to stay Uglies to keep their personnality.

So, when Tally’s operation arrives, Tally must make a choice: become a pretties and loose her friends, her familly, her personnality but be accepted in the society, or stay uglies with her personnality and mentality, but be outcast of the society…

I don’t really like this book, because I found it very boring, So I don’t read the other books serie. But the plot makes me very interested, and that why I read this novel. It’s a shame …

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a memoir by Cheryl Strayed ( an american author ) published in 2012.

This memoir describes Cheryl’s 1 000 miles hike of the Pacific Crest Trail ( it begins in the Mojave Desert, goes through California and Oregon and ends in the state of Washington ). When she was 22 years old her mother passed away after battling a lung cancer, after this her siblings remained distant and, later, she divorced her husband. When she was 27 she thought that she had nothing else to lose so she decided to go on a 1000 miles hike with no previous experience, alone and untrained. She captured, in her book, her thoughts during the whole journey, her physical and mental pains, her challenges and realizations.

After a friend mentionned it to me and said it was a great book, I wanted to see if it was as good as it seemed. And it is really an amazing book that you should read.

I am going to present a famous novel of the english literature : Mathilda written by Roald Dahl. This author worths a bit of description because I grew up in his books containing a humorous touch and offering a lot of adventures with original characters. He was born in Wales in 1916, and for a living he was a scenarist and an author, who wrote novels for cildren as well as adults. He became famous by writing novels such as Charlie and the chocolate factory, the BFG, etc…and won prizes : The world Fantasy prize.

Mathilda is a little girl, quiet but very intelligent, endowed with peculiar skills for her age : at the age of 5 she had already read the english classics! Adopted when she was a baby by a couple, she is ignored and mistreated. At school, her precocity doesn’t stay unnoticed  by her teacher named Mrs Honey, and who will bond a mothering relationship with Mathilda and is fascinated. Mathilda would be too lucky to be entirely happy in her school, a tyrannical  headteacher named Agatha Trunchbull, who punishes pupils whenever she is keen on doing it. The girl will develop a new kind of power : to be able to move objects with her thoughts. And she will use it to trick whoever means to harm her, one of the elements which will permit the story to unfold.

Mrs Honey had a cloudy past, she was raised by her Aunt after the death of her father, she even confides to Mathilda that it was quite suspicious. Through this story, there is a lot of love contrasted by violence and injustice, and the touch of magic is typical for the writing style of Road Dahl. I would add that if you wish to read it, you can also watch the film!!

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical novel written by Maya Angelou a writer who played a major role in the African-American civil rights movement, a politic movement of which the aim was to defend the rights of blacks during the apartheid. This movement was symbolized by Martin Luther King.

In this book Maya Angelou, from her real name Marguerite Johnson tells us her childhood where younger she was placed at her grandmother with her brothers because like the majority of the Afro-American family her parents didn’t have enough money to provide their needs. Her grandmother was living in the Arkansas a state in which racism was omnipresent. At the age of seven she goes back to her mother but a tragic event happened to Maya and she returned to her grandmother.

One day Mrs. Bertha Flower an aristocrat introduces the literature to Maya an art which gives her confidence in herself. Good student, Maya is send in a private school in California, she is the only black…

This book only tells us just a part of her life. Despite it I found this book really touching because we learn the story of one of the most emblematic woman during the apartheid. Maya Angelou was such a charismatic woman and when you read her poetry or hear her speeches you don’t think that she may have suffered all of these hardships. This book is a great life lesson, I advise you to read it !

Sarah’s key is a novel written by Tatiana de Rosnay published in 2006. It tells the story of Julia Jarmond an American journalist who decided to move in France. She’s married to Bertrand Tezac a French man. In the tribute of the 60th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup the American journal of which she is the correspondent ask her to write an article about this tragic event.
Julia discovered that the apartment of Bertrand’s grandmother was earning to a Jewish family, Sarah’s family.
Sarah was a ten years old Jewish girl who was send with her family to the Velodrome d’Hiver this night she locked her little brother in a secret closet in their apartment thinking that their parents will come back in a few time.
But after Sarah and her family were send to Drancy, a refugee camp and Sarah starts to feeling guilty because of her brother. In Drancy Sarah has been separated from her family and she is found at Auschwitz. She met Rachel and tries to escape with her but someone decided to denounce them and an officer catch them. The officer is someone who Sarah knows and he decided to let them go. The two girls find refuge with a couple but the neighbors decided to call the Nazi police to denounce the young couple but they only found Rachel not Sarah. So Sarah get back to her house.
Fascinated by the story of Sarah, Julia started to forget her husband.

I appreciated this book because contrary to the others book talking about this event, this book isn’t a diary it’s looks like an investigation

Birmingham in 1973, Doug Anderton, Benjamin Trotter and Philip Chase have them small well organized lives between them King William high school, with their family life, girls’ trouble and concerns of their parents. Doug is the son of a striking leader of the automobile factory, is in love with Claire Newmann, the sister of Miriam who is the secret mistress of his father. Benjamin has sister, Loïs, who begins to build her future life, he has a younger brother too, he is in love with Cicely and writes novels and musics. Philip is serious, is secretly too a lover of Claire and he sees her mother having a relation with his plastic arts teacher and his father, furious to know it, participates, juste like Doug, Ben and Claire in the newspaper of his high school and tries to etablish with Ben his rock band.

Their father work on the automobile factory, speak about social unrest, about strikes and about the terrorism of the IRA while they speak about rock, about punk, about their life to the high shcool, about equality between the sexes… But in these years  when the State gives way to the thatcherism, the problem of England catch up them : Loïs sees his fiancé dying under his eyes during an attempt of the IRA, the newspaper publishes more and mores articles on the strikes, the IRA and the politics.

It is a rather long but very pleasant book to be read : funny even satiric, in the not too much looked for style, in the fascinating intrigue, in the multiple themes, in the growing interest, in the touching heroes.

This novel was published in 2012 by John Green, an american writer and it was published in France in 2013 by Nathan Jeunesse. It’s a book which had e lot of success, he was adapted into a movie with Shailene Woodley and Ansel Legort in the respective roles of Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. The story takes place in Indianapolice and Hazel is old of siwteen years old. She is affected by a disease : cancer.

Her parents obliged him to assist at a group of support for cancer patient. During sessions, she meets Augustus and he is affected by a cancer too. The two adolescents are passionned by a novel wrote by Peter Van Houten and they decided to do a travel for meet the writer and they go there low together but the story ended tragically beacuse Augustus succumb to his disease.

This story is very touching because she deal with the cancer which is a actual disease and the scientits searched Remedies to cured them despite that Cancer are mainly cured nowaday. However, other disease are not cured like Alzheimer. This story deal with to Love too and show that it is necessary to take advantage of people who we love as long as we can.

Hello everybody ,

Today I choose to talk about my favorite novel ! It is entitled Thérèse Raquin, it was written by one of the most famous writer of the 19th century, Emile Zola. This novel was published in 1867. Normally, I do not like love story but this novel make a deep impession on me…

The story starts with three characters : the main character : Thérèse ; Camille and Camille’s mother. Thérèse was raised by Camille’s mother, Camille is sick since he is a little boy, adult, Camille and Thérèse get married. They live in Paris, in their shop where Thérèse sells jewelrys and clothes with Camille’s mother. One day Camille returned to the house with an old friends of him, Vincent. He is a painter and at the first look Thérèse fell in love with him… Zola uses the description and insist on the love at first sight…

So, Thérèse and Vincent start an hidden love relation, they have sexual intercourse in the marital bed. But Thérèse and Vincent want to live thier relation freely so they decided to kill Camille. On one summer night they go eat in a restaurant and they decided to take a walk on a lake in a small boat and Vincent drown Camille.. Nobody saw them.. This extract is very intensive we attend at the drowning !

But after the murder the lovers do not feel free, on the contrary, they become to be crazy and the murder haunt them.. so they kill themselves because they do not manage to be happy.

I recommand you so much this novel !

Fight Club is a well-know novel written by Chuck Palahniuk a famous American novelist (1962-present), Palahniuk describes his books as « Transgressional fiction », Fight Club was in 1999 adapted in a movie by the famous film director: David Fincher with actors like Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter (ex-wife of Tim Burton).. This story is particularly known by the movie, but personally I think the book is excellent, almost better than the movie…

The plot takes place in the nineties, the story tells the life of « the narrator » we never know the real name of the principal character but most of the fans name him as « Jack » (reference to an element of the movie: the narrator often explains his feelings and sensations by a third person speech which stage humans organs like: « If I did have a tumor, I’d name it Marla. ») this character have a very moody life with a commonplace and boring job, he lives alone, had no friends.. He’s such a modern slave, but one day on a nudist beach, he meets one man who is totally opposed to him, his name is: Tyler Durden.. Since this day the two characters become friends and start living together in a run-down big house in an industrial district.. With Tyler, the narrator start to discover the real freedom by making illegal activities like robbery, vandalism and especially by creating: « The Fight Club » a secret club in which peoples (only men) fight each other to become « free » and « stronger ».. This utopic state of mind become dangerous and the narrator start to being afraid of Tyler.. He must make a choice, but the situation is not simply as we can guess..

I really like this novel because I have seen the movie some years ago and I had loved it so when I had known that before this story was a book.. I decided to buy it and read it and I was not disappointed. The story is very cool and interessant and the writings are not difficult, so everybody can read this..

Oh, and if you are interested in Fight Club or if you already know the novel and the movie.. Chuck Palahniuk had written Fight Club 2 in the form of a comic, the plot takes place ten years after the ending of the book.. I didn’t read it, but I think I could be very interressant to know what happens to the characters and also to discovering the story by another form…

  I’m going to talk about the novel 107 ans (one hundred seven years old in English). It was published in 2006. It was written by Diasteme. This is a French novel.

  Diasteme is a novelist, author et dramaturge. He has written « Les papas et les mamans ». 107 years old isn’t a famous novel, isn’t knows by everybody but it’s although a great novel.

  The scene takes place in France. Simon the main character, is aged sixteen years old. He is interned in psychiatric institution because he loved Lucie to much. Simon cheated Lucie so she left him. So to get her back he decided to run away of his house and joins her but she doesn’t know that.

  To joins Lucie Simon did some mad acts like a run away, auto destruction, agressions and he stops eating…We discover a young and complex man.With this novel we enter into Simon’s mind and head. There is question of suicide and suffering of an instable teenager.

  To concluded I loved this novel because this is an introspection of Simon. And an introspection of mad mind. At the end of the story we understand that Simon is whatever mad and even if the others people think that he is healthy they are wrong. He can’t stops to think of Lucie.

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It was written in 1587. It deals with contradictions, perils and ambitions. This drama is one of the most famous dramas written by William Shakespeare who is also one of the most famous playwrights in the world. He wrote Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet etc.

The scene takes place in the medieval Scotland. The main characters are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth his wife. Macbeth is a general. One day three witches say to Macbeth that he will become the king. Macbeth has got ambition. His wife encouraged him to kill the king to make the prophecy come true. So Macbeth kills King Duncan and take the throne. But the problem is that he becomes paranoiac. His fear make him completely crazy. To save his power he commites a lot of murders like in a vicious circle. At the same times Lady Macbeth became also mad, she sees ghosts and she feels so guilty and trapped by their lies. The obcession of power and the ambition brought Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to the lie and to the despair. The play shows this slowly evolution of Macbeth into the evil.

I loved this tragedy because it’s very opprisive and we see the guilt grow up inside the characters. When we read or see the play we are, like characters, despaired and stressed.

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel written by Irish author Michael  Scott. It is a specialist Mythology and folklore, he wrote a lot of science fiction, fantasy and horror books and in Ireland, he was called the « king of fantasy ». I am going to talk about the first book in this series:  The Alchemyst .

The story begins with two siblings, they are twins, the first; her name is Sophie Newman , who she works in a tearoom  and the second  his name is Josh Newman, who works in the book store, where the owner is  Nick Fleming and his wife Perry Fleming. One day while Sophie is on the phone with her friend, she sees a black limousine which stops in front of the book store where his brother works. And several men in black come out of the car to attack the owner of the bookstore.The two twins witness a supernatural power fighting between Nick Fleming and the men in black who are golems controlled by John Dee. After the fighting, Josh and Sophie discover that Nick Fleming is Nicholas Flamel the famous and historical French alchemist:

Nicolas Flamel has a reputation of an alchemist who search the philosopher’s stone and the immortality. And John went in the book store to steal  Codex, where there is Final Evocation but Josh ripped off the two pages that explains the final Evocation, so the two twins are in danger, because John Dee would like to recover them.

Along their journey the twins will discover the existence of some sort of gods call “The Elders”. Some are nice but other who are called “Dark Elder” are cruel and John Dee wants to wake up them for they control the world. Nicholas Flamel will find help with an Elder who she is the Celtic goddess of the war; Scathach and Hecate the goddess with three faces and together they will help the twins to wake up their power, because Josh and Sophie are the twins of an old legend.

I love this book because it mixes a lot of heroes or gods in different legends in the world, like Celtic or some Gods of Egypt or Prometheus and Shakespeare appears like an immortal human and he helps twins in their quest.

The Old Man and the Sea is written by Ernest Hemingway, a famous American writer. He was born in 1899 and he died in 1961. At the beginning of his career he was a journalist, it is in Paris that he learns the profession of writer and after that he wrote novels. It is his second novel: The Sun also Rises that gives him success and fame. Thanks to success, he can travel and he travels a lot : in the United States, Africa, Spain, Italy and also in Cuba where is the action of his novel. The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1953 and also in 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Old Man and the Sea is about an old man, his name is Santiago, he is a fisherman and a poor Cuban and with him, there is a young boy who accompagnies him to fishing. And this boy calls Manolin. But fishing has long been bad, and they have taken nothing for 84 days. The parents of Manolin decide that their son will embark on another boat, because they think that Santiago is too old for fishing. But Manolin will join nevertheless the old man in his shack at night to help him repair his fillets and bring him sardines for fishing. One night, the old man tells to young boy that he wants to go fishing alone and he wants to leave far in Gulf Stream, to find fish and end his bad fishing. On the 85th day, he goes fishing and he meets a giant marlin. The old man fought against the marlin for 3 days and he won.

But the marlin is too big to embark in his boat and he lets it tied beside his boat in the water. Attracted by the smell of fish, sharks begins to arrive and they devour the marlin. Santiago attends the scene without being able to do anything, because he is exhausted of his fight with marlin. Finally, he returns to the port, but only with the head and the bone of the fish.

This book shows us a fighting of human against Nature, because the marlin refers to Nature. But I think that Hemingway wanted to show us that human never truly triumphs against nature, but, here, we have a entire failure but also a personal triumph, because the old man knows what it is worth. I find that story realist but at the same time it is like an epic story.

Hi! Today I will talk about the new novel of Romain Puértolas, La petite fille qui avait avalé un nuage grand comme la Tour Eiffel  (sorry I didn’t find the English title). So I know, it’s a french author but this book overwhelmed me (in the good way)and I had to share it with you!

This is the story of Providence, a young and impulsive french woman, and Zahera a little Moroccan girl of 7 years old who has cystic fibrosis. The story of a postwoman stuck because of an ash cloud and a futur backer-astronaut who has a cloud in her lung. A meeting in a hospital because of an appendicitis and a lot of returns Paris-Marrakech. This is a story of an unbounded love which make everything possible, even fly..

Providence is about to take her plane to Marrakech and bring back Zahera, his adoptive daughter, to Paris to try to save her from her disease. But the eruption of an icelandic volcano paralyzes all the air traffic and prevents Providence from fetching his daughter.

She has to find another way but all the rented cars are already rented, trains are overcrowded and she hasn’t her own car. It’ll be impossible to her to keep her promise to fetch Zahera before the sunset but it’s inthinkable to her to dissapoint her daughter.

She can’t resign herself, she will be with Zahera today because later it may be too late and the little girl coul’d die. So she realizes the impossible: she learns to fly.

I thought this book really wonderful: a subtle mix of humor, non-sense, love, sensibility, tenderness and hope. The fact that Providence flies is maybe less grandiose than the reasons that pushed her to accomplish this feat. Zahera is a little girl with a lot of dreams and who wants to learn everything she can about the world, the life. She fights agains the disease with a lot of strengh for a 7 years old. She is very touching and loveable. Providence and her determination gives us a real lesson: if we love, if we really want something, everything becomes possible, nothing can stop you. With her love for her daughter she locks the world, for a few minutes, in a bubble of peace and happiness.

We are getting absorbed in a beautiful adventure with many events to discover.

And who knows, maybe love really gives wings after all?

Today I want to talk about an Agatha Christie’s book entitled Ten Little Niggers (or And then there were none for the American version) and published in 1939.

Ten people who don’t know each other are invited to come to an island by Mr and Mrs Owen because of different excuses ( to meet old friends, job…). But when all the guests arrive no signs of their hosts, there are only two servants to receive them. The first night, all the guests (who are not related) confide one common point: they all have murdered (directly or indirectly) someone and escaped to justice and they are all here to « pay for their crimes ».

One by one, all the guests begin to die and their murders follow a famous nursery rhyme entitled « ten little niggers » whose lyrics are hanging on the wall of all the bedrooms. After each murder one of the ten figurines presents on the table is broken. After the second murder panic and distrust settle down in the house. They are alone on the island and they can’t escape because of the bad weither. They are traped, scared and they suspect each other of being the murderer. All along the plot we can see character’s personnality evolve and until the end we can’t really know who is the murderer.

I love police novels and those of Agatha Christie are so interesting, with a lot of suspense and it’s always a pleasure to read one of her books.

And you, did you read it? What do you think of it?

Snow Angels occurred in a little town of Pennsylvania, in 1974’s winter. It deals with 2 different characters and 2 different stories. On the one hand, there is Arthur Parkinson devastated by his parents’ divorce. On the other hand there is Annie Marchand, Arthur’s babysitter. She is now facing a series of tragic events, especially with her husband Glenn.
There is a beautiful symmetry of the death of these two marriages. ?The story begins with Arthur telling the day when Annie Marchand was assassinated by his husband, 15 years after the drama. Since then, there is a flash back in Arthur’s and Annie’s life. When Arthur heard the gun shot, he knew what had happened. Shortly after his dad divorcing his mum and leaving home, it was now the turn of Annie. Annie, whom Arthur was secretly infatuated with, had left as well, for ever.?Throughout their life, Arthur wonders about his destiny. Why was everything he loved most destroyed? How can he fight his way in this world?
What I particularly love about this book is the fact that O’Nan depicts Middle America, far from the American Dream. What’s more, O’Nan captures the reader even while depicting the tragic daily life of Arthur and Annie.

Hello, I’m going to talk about Factotum, a book written by Charles Bukowski in 1975.
As the title suggests, it is a story about a man who does everything, or almost everything. We follow the wandering of Henry Chinaski, a fallen writer during WW2 in America.
Chinaski is like Bukowski’s alter ego, written in the first person narrative, we discover a wandering life from New Orleans to New York, by way of Los Angeles or Philadelphia. So Chinaski jumps from one job to another without being concerned about it, spending his time drinking and writing about his disappointments, his frustrations, women… For him, what matters the most is to have a place where you can live your life : it doesn’t matter whether it is on the street or in a slum. This wise guy doesn’t care about money, social conventions and so on, thinking that it is reserved for special people.

What I love about this book and this author, it is the way of wrinting of Bukowski : combining obscenity and provocation, in brief, what he is famous for. He writes without any judgments, with honest and straight-forward manner. Moreover, he depicts America of the 40’s and its lost and marginal generation.

“I would rather be ashes than dust ! […] I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”                                                                                                                                       — Jack London

To Build A Fire (1908) is a short story written by Jack London, a famous American author well known for some literature masterpieces as The Call Of The Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906). As you probably guess, London dealt particularly with adventure and wildness in his books’ story since he was himself an adventurer and a sailor. He wrote two different versions of this short story that he published in 1902 and in 1908 respectively : here I am going to focus on the second one which is far more interesting for us to discuss about.

First and foremost, it is worth noting that To Build A Fire is part of the naturalist movement (naturalistic writers used literature as an experiment to discover and analyze the forces or the scientific laws, that influenced the character’s behavior, its emotions in its environment) and because of that, the short story illustrates a major topic : the conflict of Man vs. Nature (the hero struggles against an animal or a force of nature and this struggle has a prominent place inside the story).

The story takes place in the Yukon Territory, near the Klondike River (Canada). An unnamed man is walking on the snow and on the frozen river as well, despite the extreme polar temperatures of the winter (?75 °F or ?59 °C). During this not so long journey of nine hours of hiking, he is accompanied by a husky dog. The man is supposed to catch up on the evening in Henderson Creek his associates (named “the boys”) who have taken another way to go there. Unfortunately, the cold weather and the environment will become an invisible enemy and the man won’t have so many choice to survive : he will have to build a fire.

What it seems to be an easy thing at first is revealed after as being an impossible task to accomplish. As his life is suspended to a thread, he tries in three occasions to build this damn fire but failed miserably under the eyes of the dog, peacefully wrapped up in his fur. At the end of the story, the man understands that his death is unavoidable. He ceases struggling and accepts his fate. The man dies, becoming the victim of this overwhelming, freezing and hostile nature. The dog finally leaves his master to find another who maybe will be able to build a fire.

I think it’s an amazing story of survival. At first, the plot seemed rather boring : I mean, a man walking through the wilderness, from a point A to a point B, that’s not really a plot that knocks your socks off ! Nevertheless, as the man finally gets into a battle with nature for survival, it gets much more interesting. The fact that the man is never actually named is significant. I would personally think that the author did this to keep the reader somewhat detached from him, in an effort to not make his death a big deal for the reader, and also make it easier to dislike him as a character.

Jack London possesses an amazing writing style that allows him to transcend the sensations, the struggle, the doubt, the strengths and the weaknesses of the character and the feeling of cold directly to the reader. London also managed to make this story powerful thanks to his personal path since he took part in the Klondike Gold Rush during the winter of 1897-1898. The description and the personification of all the elements which surround the character succeeded in making nature alive as a real character of the story. Finally, I decided to write an article about this short story in an effort to honor the 100^th birthday of the author’s death since Jack London died on 22 November 1916.

   The Help is a novel written by Kathryn Stockett and published in 2009. It is quite known since then, it was a best-seller, but I really wanted to talk about it because I think it is really worth it. It deals with racial segregation in the USA in the 1960’s, which is a serious and important topic. The story occurs in Jackson, Mississippi, a southern state where segregation was present everywhere.

   We follow the life of two main characters, Aibileen and Minny who are both African-American and who work as maids for white families. The third protagonist is Skeeter, she is a young white woman who studies journalism and she has a different mentality comparing to the other white women she spends her time with. Indeed, even though she also has a maid, she cares about her and behaves well with her, not like the rest of her friends. When she comes back to her house after finishing her studies, she finds out that Constantine, her maid, left without saying anything. Then, she decides she wants to collaborate with black women to write a book about the maids’ living conditions, life, etc… At first, this project seems impossible due to the racial laws of the time but a surprising friendship will appear.

   This book is quite hard to read in english because it is written in an oral way so I actually recommend to read it in french. I loved this powerful story because it showed that even if there was segregation, some black and white people could still be wise enough to work together in order to change things. The events that happen are well told because the author was herself born in Jackson and raised by a black woman. A movie was adapted from the book in 2011, the cast is amazing, the actors embody their characters so well. Even if you’ve seen the movie, you can still read the book because there are some differences regarding the point of views, etc…

   Delicacy is a novel written by David Foenkinos in which a young woman called Nathalie is the main character. At the beginning of the book, she lives an enviable life : she’s in a wonderful relationship with her husband and has a great job. Unfortunately, everything falls apart after seven years of marriage when her husband is hit by a car during his jogging and dies after getting in a coma. Even with her family and friends, Nathalie can’t find some comfort and feels like she will not be able to live without her husband. One day she decides that she has to keep living and so, go back to work. There she is everyday confronted to her boss Charles who is desperately in love with her and Markus, one of her co-workers, who she has kissed one day for no reason.

   What I loved in this book was Foenkinos’ writing style : very simple and beautiful. Also, there was a little bit of humour, which is always nice. Something I had never seen before : between two chapters there are sometimes lists or quotes related to what happened in the previous chapter. I found it surprising, unusual and thought it was a great way to keep the reader reading by adding something that changed from the chapters. The short chapters and simple writing makes the novel accessible and easy to read. You can find some great quotes in it and you can read the whole book in just a few days because it is a short novel.

 Hi everybody,

Today I’m going to speak about a novel entitled « War horse » written by Michael Morpurgo, published in 1982 and adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2011.
I haven’t seen this movie but someone told me that he was amazing and very touching. So if he really respect the book it will be interessant to see it. I have read this book in college and if I remember, I think I’ve cried several times. This is such a sad story but it’s allow us to have another vision, perspective and another point of view of the First World War. And the fact that the narator was a horse makes us feel the story differently and it’s allows us to put ourselves in the place of the horse.

So this novel was obviously  inspired by true events. The story talked about a horse named « Joey » who was bought by American soldier at the beginning of the first world war to be a war horse.
We are going to have empathie for Joey and we will also focus on him. You have to know that the entire story is seen and told by the horse, so we can see things differently.
So joey goes to war and lives many adventures, he sees horror and atrocity of the war (during the battle, the bombing raid….).
Joey will go a long way during years, he will be ill, heart … he has just one wish: go back home and be alive.

So if you want to know what happened to this horse and know if he will survive you have to read or watch the movie.
Trust me you won’t be disappointed.

Hi everybody,

Today I’m going to speak about a novel entitled  » The perfect murder « written by Peter James (my favorite writter at that time) and published in 2010.
This book is one of the lastest novels published by Peter James.

 So this novel talked about a couple ( Victor and Joan ) that can no longer stand. They are married since twenty years old but things did not happend like they had hoped years ago. Now Victor want to kill his wife and Joan feels the same. So both planned a way to kill his spouse. In some point of view it’s two perfect crime but characters have to keep calm because things can degenerate.
However things will not happened as good as previous and it’s going to be a hell for one of them.
During the story there are suspens and we want to know the following and see the future of the characters because if you will read it you ‘ll see that characters behaviour evolve.

 So if you like suspens, crime … I recommend this book and furthermore this novel is very fast to read.

This novel isn’t a fiction, it retraces Charlotte Salomon’s life, a german-jewish painter deported at the age of 26 while she was pregnant. After a childhood in Berlin marked by a family tragedy, Charlotte is progressively excluded by the nazis in every german society spheres. She liveS a founding love passion, before she has to leave everything behind to take refuge in the South of France just after the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Thereafter, the outcasted women decide to undertake a composition of 769 individual works that we could describe as autobiographical (different from self-portraits) named « Leben? oder Theater?: Win Singspiel » (Life? or Theater?: A Song-play) realized with a fascinating modernity. Knowing herself in danger, she entrust her drawings to her doctor telling him that it represents « her entire life » . Today, these works are kept in Amsterdam . This book is a thrilling portrait of a talented young woman, totally inhabited by her art which makes her fight despair and the barbarism of her time, but also it’s a mention of a tragic fate. The book also represents the story of a search driven by a writer haunted by this artist. Indeed, it contains some first person narrative passages where the author talks about his research on Charlotte, the places he went linked to her..

I admire the emotion and the beauty of the text, mixing prose and poetry. The short sentences punctuated each time by a point induces a slow but pleasant rhythm. I loved this book, it is so well-written and so touching. Moreover it made me discover this wonderful artist. I truly recommend it.

Hey everybody ! Let me talk you about one of the Two books we have to read and study this year for the Litterature exams.

Oedipus the King (also called in Latin Oedipus Rex) is a myth rewritten many times into differents forms. Indeed, after the Sophocles’s play, the classical Authors made a new version (like Corneille or Sénèque) or Philosophers Authors like Voltaire.

But Igor Stravinski has also composed an opera called « Oedipus Rex » in 1920.

Let’s talk about the Sophocles’s version today :

Sophocle wrote Oedipus the King in 429 Before Christ, and after Odipus at Colonus which is also very well-known in the litterature field.

It’s about Oedipus, who became king of Thebes, a city in Greece after he killed the Sphinx which condamned the city. Oedipus managed to solve the riddle asked by it.

Therefore, he became the Jocasta’s Huband, the queen of Thebes. But there is a problem : Peoples are suffring from the plagues : That’s why Oedipus sent Creon, his brother-in-law to Delphi to Talk to the Appollo’s oracle and finding solutions : We discovered that it’s because of the recent Laius’s death, the former King of the country. Oedipus will investigate and meet Tiresias, a mind-reader to find the culprit of the murder. But the surprise is really astonishing because it’s Oedipus himself who would have killed Laius. Althoug he doesn’t take care Tiresias said, he will discover that it’s the truth..

But it’s not the most surprising : Indeed, whereas he was educated by the queen and King of Corinth(an another country), they’re not his real parents : When he was young, an oracle said : « He will kill his father and will marry his mother ».                                     

And the curse occured unfortunately.

Discovering all this informations in the same time, with the Joscasta’s death, he decided to pluck his eyes : But became blind is not the only thing we wants : he begs to be exiled with his two daughters: Antigone, and Ismene.

We saw also the Pasolini’s film version directed in 1967:

It’s really close to the Sophocle’s version : Nevertheless, we can see a « before » with Oedipus as a baby and his birth and an « after » with the exil of Oedipus. But there is a lot of anachronism like Twenties’s cars, or Fireworks… Pasolini decided to adapt his life in his film : Indeed, the actress of Jocasta represent his mother and as his father was a soldier, Laius has a service’s man suit . He directed in Marocco, in Bologne in the Italia, his birth and studies city , and gives to Oedipus a different character : Indeed, Whereas the Sophocle’s Oedipus is really authoritative and smart, the Pasolinis’s Oedipus seems to be really excessive(he screams everytime!!) and doesn’t always thinks.

It gives to the movie a humorous character and sometimes ridiculous.

But, it’s anyway a good adaptation.

Here’s the trailer :

[youtube]https://youtu.be/qcSwIU_pCYE[/youtube]

« Fantastic Beasts and where to find them » is the new David Yate’s  fantasy movie, written by J.K Rowling. It was realeased on November, 16.

We are on Harry Potter’s universe but on an other continent, the USA, and 100 years before. Wizard’s world are in danger, they are threatened by « Salem’s Faithful » wich is an organisation who want to killed all the wizards. Furthermore, a mysterious force sows chaos in the streets of New-York. We met Norbert Dragono, a british wizard, who arrive in N.Y with his bag filled with fantastic animals. His bag reminds us of Dr Who’s tardis. She « is bigger inside » and abound of many recesses for his Beasts. Many things arrive to him, he is arrested, to showing his power at « No-Maj », muggle for us, and to have lost some fantastic animals. He is suspected to be the origin of the chaos in new-york by the Magical Security Percival Graves’s directess.

It’s a fabulous story where I was able to find all the Harry Potter’s universe and spell like « actio » « pertricus totalus », my favorite things when I was younger. If you want to became a child, go see this movie now !

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first book from the Narnia series, it’s a fantasy novel written by C.S Lewis and published in 1950.

The story takes place in 1940 during World War II, to escape for what’s happening in London at that time, 4 siblings ( Edmund, Lucy, Peter and Susan Pevensie ) are sent by their parents to live with Professor Kirke in the countryside. One day when all the kids were playing hide and seek, Lucy found an old wardrobe and hides in it, while hiding she found out that this wardrobe is a magic portal which leads to a forest in a land called Narnia. All the siblings will, then, go to Narnia and their adventure will begin there.

I absolutly love all kinds of magical / dystopian novels and the Narnia series is a part of my collection.  These novels are a classic and if you haven’t read it yet, you probably already saw one of the 3 extremely long movie adaptations, talking about this, the The Silver Chair is apparently going to come out in 2017…

Today, I would like to speak about a novel written by a French author whose name is Pierre Lemaitre: Au revoir là-haut (Goodbye up there). This novel received in 2013 (the year of its publication) the well-known Goncourt Price. This book belongs to the picaresque genre. One of the features of this genre is that the protagonist is an unfortunate character and he generally lives outside the society. In Au revoir là-haut there are two leading characters named Albert Maillard and Edouart Péricourt. They were French soldiers during World War One (the first chapters unfold this period). As we all know, France « won » this conflict. But after, the country essentially concentrated on the dead – by spending a lot of money to honorably bury the victims and to build memorials- and not on the survivors. The reader follows these two former soldiers and is going to discover how they want to make money.

Before giving my opinion about the book I would like to precise that the title of this novel was inspired by the last words of Jean Blanchard, a soldier who was unfairly accused of desertion and shot. Indeed, he wrote to his wife: (approximately translated)  « I fix an appointement for you in heaven where I hope that God will reunite us. Goodbey up there, my dear wife ».

This book was very interesting to read. I didn’t imagine that some survivors of the War were so forgotten. There was not enough money to pay them and they lived in poverty. Moreover I also learned about the « coffins trafic ». Soldiers were buried everywhere because there were too many deads and it was forbidden to exhume the corpses but some families wanted to bury their relative in the cemetery of the town they lived in so they became law-breakers by exhuming the corpse at night and re-burying it elsewhere.

Au revoir là-haut was adapted into a comic that I’ve not read but I saw it and the drawings are really beautiful and I heard that it was very faithful to the book. A movie is also going to be released (I don’t precisely know the date) and I will surely watch it!

Did you know this book? Do you want to read it?

Hi Everybody !

Today I would like to talk about the book This is where I leave you  written by Jonathan Tropper and published in 2009.

Jonathan Tropper is an american author, he wrote The book of Joe, Everything Changes… Tropper created with David Schikler the television serie Banshee. His book This is where I leave you also has a film adaptation realesed by Shawn Levy with Jane Fonda and Adam Driver.

The book talks about a family in mourning. Before his death Morton Foxman expressed a last will : that his family celebrates Shiv’ah, a Jewish tradition. Seven days of mourning, together in the same house. They are all different, on the one hand Judd is in depression, on the other hand there is Wendy with his hyperactive children and her husband all time on his phone. The disputes break out with family secrets. The week risks being very long…

This is where I leave you is not big litterature but this book gives us a huge palette of personnalities, thanks to that we sometimes recognize a member of our family. This book made me laugh and it does good at this moment. This is where I leave you is a big portrait of life : hard moments, happy, sad (…). I am really impatient to read another Jonathan’s novel !

 » Family I hate you ! « 

Hi Everybody !

Today I would like to talk about the book I am a Pilgrim written by Terry Hayes.

Terry Hayes is an English screenwriter, producer and author. He wrote several scenarios adapted for the cinema by th biggest studios of Hollywood of which From Hell, Dead Calm and also Mad Max 2. I am a Pilgrim is his first novel, it was published on 2013 and it is a thriller.

A young woman murdered in a hotel of Manhattan. A zoologist, father, decapitated in Soudi Arabia. A series of murders all linked up with a man : Pilgrim. Under this name a man hides who in the past ran a unity of secret service and who before leaving, has writing a boof of reference on criminology and legal science. But past catches him, with all his secrets.

I have hesitated for a long time before reading it beacause it seemed to me violent. So yes, this book is violent, but the suspens makes addicted. It is not big litterature but the novel remains very rich in characters, in places, the book is also very interesting because there are different points of views. The link with our reality is well present, and it is what returns the terrible book.

“You can kill a thinker, but you can’t kill the thought »   

Terry Hayes.

Hello !

Alright Kids, it’s New Year, time to take good resolutions and…
No wait, don’t change, stay yourself.

Well, today I’ve decided to speak about one of my christmas present, a little book called « Fushigi Na Toshokan » or « The Strange Library » in english. That’s a short story written by Haruki Murakami a famous japanese writer. See ? I don’t only read mangas !

This little book had a big impact on me you know ? No, don’t think it’s exceptionally clever or something that denunce something. It’s more of a fantasy or a-totally-what-the-hell-is-going-on book ! Yeah that’s the least I can say, it’s pretty disturbing at first, but then it becomes usual.

For the story, a boy named… Er who has no-name if I’m right, goes one day to the local library to borrow some books about a question he wondered about during his way-back home : how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire ? With that you already understand the context and the genre of the story ! That’s what he does, but it turned out to be more complicated… To read books about it, he has to go in a special room, in some underground tunnel… where he’ll find himself trapped ! Here he’ll meet strange characters like a sheep man (who’s really good at cooking donuts…) and another crazy psycopath ! I don’t tell what he does ’cause it’s important in the story -and pretty gore. Of course, then he’ll try to escape this strange library…

This book although short was really rich in madness ! (But don’t think all japanese are writting crazy things !) It was moreover entertaining and pretty funny at some moments. Because it’s a short story, all things aren’t equally developped and sometimes and it seems to be said quickly, but it stays cool to read. The character tries to find a way back to normality and that’s really interesting, you’re totally with him when you’re reading the book (plus it’s told with 1rst-person narrative) so you’re fully in it.

In a nutshell that’s a nice little story to pass time for example.

Well, that’s all for me, see you guys !

Alright people, today the book I’m gonna present you is pretty different from what I’ve done before. Indeed that’s a scary book, a dark fantasy one. As you maybe know I’m really fond of fantasy books (just like my dear Harry Potter) and this one I discovered wandering in the library was my new crush. That’s one of the reason that explain why I really love libraries, since you can find things that you wouln’t find normally. On the book was written « do not read at night » what I found really attractive, I took it and read it late in the night (you can call me crazy I accept it). That was freaking disturbing and scary (not so much but a little anyways) therefore I loved it so much ! What’s strange is great for my mind, I can’t explain it :’)
So this book is the first in a serie of 13 called « The Wardstone Chronicles ».

Tom Ward is the main character and is the seventh son of his father (who’s himself a seventh son), what makes him different from his brothers or sisters. Thus he has special abilities that allow him to see things that others can’t just like ghosts, witches and things that aren’t real. When you are like that, you can be a Spook, which mean that you hunt magical and demoniacal creatures and save people from these of course.
We’ll follow his adventures as the Spook’s apprentice, because he has to learn the job naturally. Living with him, he’ll learn all he has to know to become a good Spook. Of course his life won’t be a bed of roses…

For the moment I didn’t read everything but sure I’ll do it someday because the story was very catchy and… spooky (I had to do it excuse me). Yeah really some phrases and sentences weren’t reassuring ya know, so that was a kind of tense and really scary atmosphere. When you start reading this book, when the action is fully launched you’re totally in it and you’re eager to know what’s going to happen next ! To be honest I was really stressed while reading that but in a good way. Yep really entertaining it was.

In a nutshell go to the library, borrow this book, read it at night and you’ll live a great fantasy adventure. Aw that’s true, there’s a film adapted from the book called « Seventh Son »… I heard it was a dung. Just with the trailer you understand that they transformed it into an action-packed film with too many SFX.
Yeah as always books are better !

See you later 😉

« My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.  But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black— black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster. »

[The official back cover of the book]

 

Today I’m going to speak about Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, a not famous author but promising and talented. The novel is American and published in 2015. We are in a sterile universe of Madeline Whitter, a teenager with a rare disease that affects her immune system and forces her to live at home, locked up, without contact with the outside world.

     Madeline Whittier is a teenager with SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficit), a rare disease that, with the slightest bacteria, can kill her and his father and brother are died when she has 4 months. Maddy (her nickname) is therefore confined to her room disinfected since her youngest age : she has never been able to feel the slightest ray of sunshine caressing her skin. She adapts, she has friends on the internet, she reads a lot of books and creates articles, she takes lessons online. She lives normally because she only knows that. I felt this confinement and the weariness of the repeated tasks : Maddy always plays the same games, often watches the same films, it’s a sort of comfort because it is the only thing she knows and she can share with someone (her mother or nurse), but it’s also depressing because the heroine feels prisoner, useless, with no future. But one day, the outside intrigues her and offersher unknown desires so far. The outside has a name : Oliver (Olly). He is his age and has just moved in front her house. He’s a good character, and he also has family problems. We learn in the same time of Maddy that his sister, his mother and him are beaten by their father. The conversations between Olly and Maddy are simple but invigorating. Maddy tries to resist to Olly, but how can she refrain from observing her only source of comfort and joy ? She knows very well that no matter the nature of this possible relationship, she is doomed to failure : who would like a friend whom one can not frequent or a girlfriend that you can not even touch ? And yet, it is well known that Olly may well be the only person on earth to take an interest in Maddy. She can’t talk about her existential problems with her mother without adding more guilt, so Olly is the first person with whom she can open up. And for Olly, Maddy represents something healthy and cheerful, the opposite of what he finds in his home when he’s returning from classes.

     I had already heard of the SCID but it is a little known and a little neglected by the media or literature. Nicola Yoon touched a sensitive point with this disease, because if we complain about our small everyday problems, we realize how we are ridiculous. This story is just beautiful. I encountered a multitude of emotions over the pages. Compassion, frustration, joy, anger, sadness, hope,… I wanted to fight for Madeline as she did herself. It is the desire to live one’s life, to take risks, to exceed the limits. A life without having lived is a waste of time. And in front, we have fear, anxiety. Everything, Everything reads very quickly and has its small peculiarities. Nicola Yoon brings us even closer to her character, she has personalized certain thoughts, we find them in the form of drawings, explanatory diagrams, diaries, notes with humor and freshness. I had started this book with no hope for the heroine, the SCID being incurable. I was expecting the relationship between Maddy and Olly to stop, it was clear to me that even though Olly was in love with Maddy he could not stay with her, because a relationship without touching one another, kissing oneself, without dating really, seems to me impossible. As much to say that I had not seen this end coming, until this famous mail from the doctor of Hawaii. Frankly, the idea that her mother had not recovered from the trauma of the loss of her husband and her son had not even occurred to me. For me she suffered (normal) but I thought that the shock had passed. So, I understood the reaction of Maddy who saw her life pass under the nose, but I had compassion for her mother who never recovered from this accident.

     It was a great discovery. This novel is cute, poetic, and filled with love. It is the kind of light romance that must be read from time to time and that does good to morale.

« The greatest risk is not taking one ».

    Today I’m going to speak about When the night becomes day, a shocking and realistic novel by Sophie Jomain on the desire to die. The novel is French and published in 2016. The author seizes on a serious subject, that of euthanasia, through a young woman, Camille, who has suffered fromsevere depression since her teenager.

     There are novels that one does not want to let go, and that one is nostalgic to close, once the last page read. This is the case here. If the question of euthanasia is not new, the way the author treats it comes out of sight and revision. When the night becomes day is written from the point of view of Camille, a young woman of twenty-nine years old. She recounts her life as in a newspaper, she invites us in her head and introduces us to the one that accompanies her from her early memories of youth until the present of her story : her suffering. Yet the young woman, an only child, lives in a loving family, with parents with a comfortable financial situation and infinite love for their daughter. But Camille can not bear : a violent physical rejection that causes her to make several suicide attempts and lead to violent physical pain like headaches or vomiting.This hatred towards her body begins at twelve years when she is very skin. Then as a teenager, she becomes obese and then alternates phases of anorexia and obesity for several years. When she decides to ask for euthanasia in Belgium, she is almost thirty-years old. This is accepted despite the fact that she does not have an incurable disease, as doctors consider it an incurable depression. She then goes to a medical-psychiatric clinic about two months before her scheduled death.

     The story continue and we attach ourselves to Camille, we hope that each pages will be sweeter for her. And this is the case. With the arrival at the clinic, the novel is less black, one even smiles and one has the impression that the weight that carries Camille is less heavy. But it is without counting the days and hours that pass, bringing the young woman closer to her death. The story told is very violent. From the very first lines, the reading is difficult. We’re wondering if we should continue. When we continue to read, we follow Camille gradually from childhood to her twenty-nine years old. We see the difficulty of adulthood, the first emotions in love, the doubts, the difficult self-acceptance, etc… The author describes extremely well the pain of Camille and the rejection of her body, all the more so as the author tells the story in the first person. And yet, one can not imagine the pain she feels. For the character, the violence of these questions is multiplied. We do not know if it is she who has never accepted her body, or if society has never allowed, accepted her. The author has found the words and the way to speak of a very hard subject, and still taboo in France, without falling into the psychological tearing or the excess. It’s written with accuracy and for my part, I understand the choice of Camille. In a sort of introduction, Camille summarizes her life and the why of her choice. The rest is the countdown between the date of her death with the management of the situation, the declaration for theparents and their reactions, her accompaniment with the medical team, and also more.

     I like to read real stories, or those that could have been. I think it’s because the world is so complex, so rich, so diverse, so tragic and so beautiful, that its own stories enchant me enough. I can’t get out of the story, detach myself from the characters. I live through the characters and their emotions. When the night becomes day is a fictive story, and yet it has taken me to the guts like an autobiographical novel. It’s a short story but really touching with a tormented character that is sometimes difficult to understand. But really a great story. The issue of euthanasia is addressed in an interesting way. 

I’ve recently read a novel very touching, so I’ve decided to write an article about it. The Color Purple is a novel written by Alice Walker and published in 1982. It faced censorshipduring the 90’s since it was judged as inappropriate and too violent.

With epistolary form, the book tells the story of Celie, a 14 year old afro-american young lady. Deprived of education during her childhood, she lives with Alphonso, the man who took her away from her family. As she isn’t aware of « the good and the bad », she let him rape her and get her pregnant twice. She has a little sister, Nettie, who’s 12 years old. One day, a man comes to ask for Nettie’s hand. Alphonso refuses and proposes to give Celie instead of his younger girl. The man, named Albert, accepts. But he will treat Celie as bad as you can imagine. With him, she has another child : Harpo. After growing up, he falls in love with Sofia, a women with « shapes ». Anyway, Harpo tries to submit her to him, as his father asked. But Sofia resists. Celie first encourages his son to keep trying to submit the girl (the only thing she learnt is the fact that women are inferior to men…) But soon after she realises she was wrong and stands with Sofia. Then, Celie’s husband brings his lover at their house because she has health problems. At first, Shug (his lover), treats Celie as someone less than nothing. But gradually, the two women get to know each other and their friendship begins. Although Shug feels better, she stays to protect Celie from her husband. Both become more and more intimate: they have an ambiguous relationship now. But if Celie thinks that everything will be easier now, she is wrong. Many other difficulties are waiting for her… It’s up to you to discover which ones ! 

I admit that sometimes it is quite hard to read, but I assure you it’s worth reading it ! And if you’re not especially a fan of books, you can also watch the movie directed by Spielberg.

Biography:

Guillaume Musso was born in 6 june 1974 at Antibes and it is a French writter. Guillaume begin writting at the age of 19 years old. He is fascineted by USA and he live in New York some months. At 1999 to 2003 he becomes professor of Economic and Social Sciences, in Phalsbourg.

In may 2001 his first novel was published, this is Skidamarink , a trhiller. After a serious accident, he imagine in 2004 a story of a children who is come back of the death. This is a big succes. Guillaume Musso is a first French novelist most read and his book are translated into several languages.

The book Central Park was published in 27 march 2014, this is a detective novel.

Central Park:

New York at 8 o’clock ! A young woman Alice is a policeman of Paris and Gabriel is a jazzman pianist american and they wake up handcuffed, on a bench of Central Park. They don’t know each other and they don’t have a memory of their evenig. Alice make a party with her friend in Paris and Gabriel was doing concert in Dublin. Alice and Gabriel ask many questions of this situation? But Alice remark a task of blood in his skirt and she has a one ball less in his pistol. So ALice and Gabriel will have to work together, for discover the thruth.They will cross a many steps for understand waht is happened. At the end we are going discover the thruth and we can know the past of Alice upsetting and we can suprised by the story and the end change the story of character.

If you like an enigme we can learn this book and there are very suspense !

Tim Willocks, what a man. This writter is not only a writter, he’s also a doctor and a profesionnal martial art, and we can see it truought his books. We find a part of his personnality in each one of his charaters, wich I admet, is intresting to discover. He worked with Steven Spielberg, and his firts novel has been adapted in a movie. But we are here talking about Doglands, a novel that brought him « la Pépite du Roman » in Europe for the teen section in 2012.

Doglands is his first novel for the children and teens, he wrote it in 2011 and it was published in 2012 by Syros in France. This books talks about a dog that is supposed to run for his masters. But he’s not the right breed so, he have to run away and abandon his mother. He brings his sister and his brother with him, and the story is basically about his travel to find the « doglands », a place where every dog is happy, a sort of heaven if you want. Poetic right ?

But the intresting thing about this book is the way the writter… write. Let me explain : the way the story is related, it seems that the dog speak. We see everything like this dog and we understand like him, everything is explain as if it was a dog that explain it to us. Get it ? That’s quite twisted, but to understand clearly, the only thing I have to say is : read it, as always. And as always, the end is cute, I wasn’t expecting that, could be better, but well, the whole book is plaisant so, we forgive the end.

Just, read it.

French title ? I know, weird for an american witer, that’s what I thought when I read it for the first time. I studed it for my first second year in high school. First I wasn’t exited about reading that kind of book, the story wasn’t intresting in my opinion, but I was glad that it’s a small book, so I studed it with more or less enthusiasm. I understood why the title was in french, the story takes place in France actualy, but then we learn that there is two title, I don’t know why, the author is quite peculiar. The story takes place in Aveyron in Langudoc, that’s might be a reason.

Basically that’s the story of a child that lived in a forest for his entire life until a hunter find him in, arond 9 or 10 years old. Then a psychologiste take him to Paris and try to educate him until his 19/20 years old. We understand it quickly so I think that I can say it, the child is autistic. So the doctor can’t really do anything, in his case that’s difficult and he tried a lot of possibilities to nurture him.

Honestly, this book is really good. Even me I was touched by the end, some passages are satisfying because he finally succeed in something (we are talking about saying « milk » in front of a glass of milk for the fist time at 17 years old), but some others are ruthless and grievous… But, well, we love the feel of pain in our heart so, let’s read it. It’s kind of funny in certain passages.

The Long Walk is a dystopian novel published in 1979 by Stephen King but at this time, he uses the pseudonyme of Richard Bachman. But before we begins to start with the novel, let’s talk about the author, Stephen King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and also fantasy. King is a famous writer known throughout the world. Acclaimed by the critics for the novels like Shining or Mr.Mercedes, It is important to reminds us that in 1979, King is a writer like someone else but he was perceived like a distinguished writer notably for the novel Carry. And during the 1979’s year he decided to write the novel The Long Walk.

First of all, The Long Walk set in a dystopian alternative present. The story deals with a totalitarian regime in USA. Every year, a long walking is organized by the totalitarian regime, we can considered this walk like a kind of road-trip. Secondly, hundred teenagers participate voluntarily. If for any reasons, they decide to stop their walk. At the end of three warnings, they are killed in front all the population. Throughout this walk, We following the path of Garraty (the hero of the story) and his friends Mcvries, Baker… Garraty is a likable guy who tries to survive in this death march.

To conclude, this book is an impressive novel, the novel is gory but intense. King gives us a big lesson of morality with the story that’s one the many reasons why I wanted to speak about this book. The story takes place on more than two days. So we have the time to attach us to the characters. For finish, for me, The Long Walk is a great novel which deserves to be seen at least once.

Hi everybody ! It’s Halloween time and I really want to talk about a horror story after the name of my favourite writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Hello ! Today, I would like to talk about the psychological thriller « In a dark, dark Wood ». This novel was written by Ruth Ware, a british author, in 2015. The story speaks about Nora and Clare, who where best friends 10 years ago. But, a day, after the school, Clare disappeared. Now, Nora is a young writer who lives solitary in London. One day, she receives a strange invitation to Clare. Clare will be married and want to celebrate this, in this home… Inside the Woods… Dark Woods. Nora hasn’t seen this best friend for 10 years, and wants to see the « new » Clare. But something goes wrong to the party of « truth or dare » with the other people who where invited . Some things can’t stay secret for ever… It was a great gripping read, scary and amazing. I love this kind of book !! The Woods reminds me the fantasy world, and the strange atmosphere is very creppy !

Hi everybody!

Today I will present you a dystopian novel written by the famous and talented Stephen King and published in 1979: The Long Walk. 

Each year, 100 minor boys are volunteer to participate to a famous competition in the US, a totalitarian country: The Long Walk. Their aim is to be the last to walk and, by the way, the last alive. Indeed, it’s forbidden to stop to walk, or to walk too slowly, otherwise the walker gets one warning. If the walker gets three warnings, he is killed by soldiers who supervise them (each hour one warning is cancelled  if they walk « correctly »). The Long Walk never stop even if it’s rainy or if it’s the night. The end of it is only possible when only one walker is alive.  They start in the State of Maine, near the Canadian border.

What is interesting in this book is the evolution of characters. We are following Ray Garraty, the main character and his « circle of friend », participants with whom he has created a relationship. During all the story,  one question is recurrent: why are they participating to this competion? For what reasons? And, indeeed, the answer is not simple to find, maybe she doesn’t exist.

I liked this book because, first characters are very appealing, and, even if you know that only one will survive you hope that there will be an other end. But the major strengh of this book is obviously all the questions it raises. This long walk is a mass murder because each year 99 people are killed but the population is very excited to see this event. A large crowd is here to see the passage of walkers and if they can see one of them be killed, they are more happier. It’s only a game to them and it’s quite alarming.  This book questions us on a lot of human reactions and behaviors and also on our relations with the others.

I hope you enjoyed this article and share your reactions and feelings if you already read the book 🙂

Today, I would like to talk about a novel written by William Wilkie Collins entitled The New Magdalen. First, I’m going to speak a little bit about the author and about the title of the novel. Then, I’m going to present the plot and give my opinion about this book.

W.W. Collins lived in the 19^th century. He was a friend of Charles Dickens (they wrote some books together). Several of his books were criticized because of their “immorality”. Effectively, he talked about sensitive subjects (women in the society for instance) or made some criticisms about the society. But even if some of his novels were judged with disapproval, he became well-known. Indeed, he is considerate as one of the first English writer of detective/suspense novels. Now, I must tell you something about the title: when you read it, you probably asked yourself “if the main character is the new Magdalen, who is the original one?” Mary Magdalene (there are different spellings) is in fact a biblical character. I didn’t know a lot about her so I made some researches and, to recap, in popular tradition, she was considered as a repentant prostitute. And if you’ve read this book, you can understand the reference to Mary Magdalene (but I’m going to explain it soon).

Let’s talk about the story line. The story unfolds during the Franco-Prussian (also named Franco-German) War (1870-1871); in the middle of the Victorian era in Britain (1837-1901). The two leading characters are named Mercy and Grace. They are English and meet on the Franco-German front: Mercy is a military nurse who takes Grace in. Mercy has a degrading past: she is a reformed prostitute –reference to Mary Magdalen- and it is very difficult for her to find a job and have a decent situation. Concerning Grace, she has to go to England to become Lady Janet’s female companion (Lady Janet has never seen her). When a smell falls on Grace, Mercy decides to take Grace’s place, Grace’s identity, so she can go to England where nobody knows her. But a few times later, there is an unexpected event which is going to change Mercy’s life…

This a story about a fallen woman, about sexual discrimination and about a world ruled by social origins. This story is touching and makes us feel a lot of emotions. The reader takes pity on Mercy and thinks that it’s terrible that the social conventions are more important than love or friendship.

This book doesn’t have much sense. Or its florishing list of references that are reunited in its plot for no apparent reason is just too enigmatic and cerebral for us. I still can’t make a decision, whether this story is nonsensical or so meaningful that I can’t figure it out. Anyway, it made me immersed in its world like no other.

The reader follows two distinct but interrelated plots, led by two different characters between whom the story goes back and forth.

?On one hand, a 15-years-old young boy just ran away from home where he lived alone with his father. He knows he has a sister and a mother but can’t remember their faces. His main goal in life is to escape a curse his own father strangely told him: he is going to kill his father and sleep with both his mother and sister. Doesn’t it remind you of something? Right, Oedipus’ curse. To prevent this run away, he chose himself a new name and will be known as Kafka Tamura, in honour of Franz Kafka. His real identity will never be revealed to the reader. He has odd fancies: he doesn’t want to need much food, hence him getting used to eat his meals in very small amounts: he believes that his stomach will be accustomed to it, becoming smaller and smaller. He sometimes interracts with his alter ego, « the boy named Crow« . His escape will lead him to a quiet and private library where he takes shelter. It is ruled by a welcoming, haemophiliac and mentor-like Oshima, as well as a snobbish and distant Miss Saeki. He is attracted to her, although she is old enough to be his mother, whom she may as well be… The police will be interested in Kafka, after a violent murder was committed in the house he just left.

“Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

 

?On the other hand, Nakata is a mentally deficient old man who lost his intellectual faculties when he was younger, during a mysterious incident implying mushrooms and a flash of green light in the sky. However, he discovers that although he can’t have abstract thoughts anymore, he is now able to talk with cats. He even surprises himself as he understands that the fishes falling from the sky for two days aren’t anyone else’s fault but his. His quest begins after he tries to find a cat that mysterously disappeared. He deeply convinces himself that he has to find the « entrance stone« , as well as discovering what it actually opens. His path will bring him to a small library…

“If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
? Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

To sum up, these two initiatory journeys involve a recurring song, a cat killer whose threat is « Kill me or the cat gets it« , a few characters who are abstract concepts indeed, a truck driver wearing hawaiian shirts, a prostitute who knows Hegel‘s work by heart, a wooden hut lost in the woods, a backdrop of Beethoven’s music, the narrow relation between reality and dreams, a blend of cultures, Tokyo’s districts, the role of subconscious mind… It made me dizzy!

“Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.”   –Kafka on the Shore, H.MURAKAMI

Brave New World is a novel published in 1931. It’s a kind of « science fiction » Novel and recover of the dystopia. He was written in London and deal of the humans creation. The story takes place in London on a « Center of incubation and packaging » where baby, before have been conceived, are packed in bottles according to different groups. In this system, it is question of caste system. For exemple, the inferior groups, named « Epsilon » and « Delta » are mass-produced and are condamned to doing manual work, So much say that the superior groups, named « Alpha » and « Beta » are the dirigeants and are assigned the highest functions in this system. We can observed a big inequality. Huxley tries to show us that it could arrive because science is in progress and humain prodution could be or will be remplaced by the technological and scientific advances.

It is a novel which is told has the first person and it deal with the life and adventurs of a young orphan  until his maturity. Before being published,  he was published in a Dickens’ Magazine named « All the Year Round ». The story begin on 1812 in Kent and the protagonist named Philil Prrip also know as Pip, he lives on a Middle classe and would rising up above this one and he bing his young maturity in London after have received his « Great Expectations ». It is necessary to know that it is a autobigraphical novel because Dickens spent his youth in Kent too. This novel is an violent book beacause he deal with differents subjects such as the poverty or the death. This novel is full of twists and show that Dickens tell of his life’s events and indirectly on the men society

I am going to talk about a fantasy-vampire serie written by Julie Kagawa. It was published in 2012. It is an original novel who talks about vampires, nothing to do with Twilight! ^^

Allie, a young woman, is trapped in a post apocalyptic world where vampires reduced the humans to cattle that are meant to feed their rulers with blood. Those humans are called  the registered, they are integrated in the society, whereas the unregistered live in ghettos surrounded by rabids (humans turned into monsters) and starve to death. Allie is bound to live an adventure that will change her life, she is saved by a vampire, but the only way is to be bit and to be turned into the monster she hated the most…

Living as a bloodthirsty creature, she will have to make sacrifices, and learn how to keep her humanity being a vampire.. On the run, Allie will adapt in a group of resistance pretending to be human. But in this adventure, she will lose the only family she had, and the forbidden, falling in love with a human…

This is a fantastic story, the characters let their feelings flow all through the novel, even if it has been a long time since I read this book!! 🙂

This is a book of dark fantasy, written in 2011 and was published in June. Ransom Riggs is a photo collector, and this book would have been published only containing vintage photos, who remained on the pages but are actually the illustration of a fantastic and horrific story.

To introduce this novel, I can say that the main athmosphere is a lot of mysteries and action, that will unfold as you go through the story. Jacob, an ordinary boy, grew up with his grandfather’s stories. He told him amazing adventures about killing monsters, sailing seas, and the little boy’s imagination was bubbling. Abraham talked about an orphanage, where he had been saved from the monsters, Jacob one day wanted to find out more about his grand father’s past. The only problem is, Jacob didn’t know that his life was about to change forever, and very fast. He would be caught in a deliriousl but real adventure : protect the orphanage from the incoming danger, to save the children. What is so peculiar in this orphanage? Were they still alive, after all these years?  Was his grandfather’s stories only fiction ?

I highly recommend this book, the story is amazing and the pictures are very unusual and interesting, I just can’t wait to go and watch the film!

Today, I’m going to talk about a book I read a long time ago which is What we see when we read, released in 2014. It was written by Peter Mendelsund, an American art director and classical pianist.
This book is neither a novel nor an art book. Indeed, it includes big print text and illustration (made by the author), so it makes the book easy to read. Despite its 440 pages, it takes about 3 hours to read it.
You may wonder, what does it deal with? Actually, the title fully describes the topic. It asks questions about the way we read. What is the role of our imagination? Of our memory ?  Why don’t we see the same thing than our neighbor ? What happens in our head when we read ?
Through all these questions, the author never gives an answer. He just wants us to find the answer. It makes us think about the power of words and literature. He explains all of this on whites and blacks pages. In other words, he tells us how to read to develop increasingly our imagination.
What I find interesting about that, is the fact that he provides examples which are meaningful to all such as Tolstoï, Flaubert, Herman Melville, Marcel Proust… but you don’t have to read these books to understand what he is talking about. I advise you to read this book if like me you don’t have time anymore to read anything else than Sophocle and Gide!

For my first article, I’m going to talk about Winter Journal, a book written by Paul Auster. He was an actor, a filmmaker but mostly an author.
Winter Journal was released in 2012 and was his last book. It is not really a novel, neither an autobiography nor a brief. Thirty years after his first book, Auster depicts fragments of his life since he was six.

The author himself said that his book was like a poem, written at the 2nd person. It is as if he were talking to someone (which could be anyone). Given that he was himself a director, he scrolls his life as a scenario, with long sentences which sometimes have not a real sense of the rest of it.
He talks about the passing of time and his sensory data. He tells us about feelings that were lost and found, life’s pleasures and accidents, women reciting Baudelaire’s poems from New York to Paris. Moreover, the book ends the same way it starts.
To sum up, although the author doesn’t consider the book as an autobiography, there is all his life in it and also all his feeling about every important moment of his life such as what he likes eating, place where he lived, his dreams…

“We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.”