The boys have just returned from a holiday on the island of São Tomé with their father and they tell me they have spent a wonderful week exploring this island, a former Portuguese colony in the equatorial area. In fact the country is called São Tomé e Príncipe, the main island being São Tomé where the capital city is located; Príncipe (meaning prince, thus called after a prince of Portugal) is much smaller, but even more beautiful, or so people …
Category: Impressions
I rarely read a book twice, as there are always so many new and exciting reading adventures waiting for me – but for some time now I had been wanting to read George Orwell’s “1984” again, especially after reading the amazing “The handmaid’s tale” by Margaret Atwood. This book strongly reminded me of “1984” and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, two books that strongly impressed me in my youth. As an incredible coincidence, I also saw the movie “1984” …
In my earliest memories I always see myself with my Barbie dolls, so I suppose I must have been given my first when I was about three, but I cannot be sure. By the time I was five or six I already had a few dolls, and they all corresponded to what became known as the Barbie “stereotype”: the doll portrayed a blonde, blue eyed, long legged, slim and ample bosomed woman, a sort of “ideal” woman such as those …
Juliet Marillier is one of the few writers I’m unconditional about, such a as Barbara Erskine or Carlos Ruiz Zafon. There are of course other writers I love, or rather writers who have written some of my favourite books, such as “1984” (George Orwell), “Brave New World” (Aldous Huxley), “Love in the time of cholera” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), and also authors whose books I have faithfully read for a time such as Isabel Allende, and lately Mario Vargas Llosa…and then …
Invariably, in every article about Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, journalists write he is married to a wife 24 years his senior. Whatever they say about him, or her, at a certain point there it is: his wife is so much older than him, she has children his age, she has several grandchildren, they met when he was very young and she was his teacher at school…I must say I am fed up with this kind of chauvinistic …
On a magazine cover a well known actor says “the most important thing in life is to dream”and I tend to agree. As I read this Christina Perri is singing ” A thousand years” on my iPad, a beautiful song about one love spanning several lifetimes (uncoincidentally, included in the soundtrack of the Twilight saga, that introduced the concept of “good” and romantic vampires). The lyrics of the song remind me of a most romantic (and interesting) book I read …
Victim or spy, devoted mother or courtesan, princess or base-born, cunning or naive – Mata Hari is a highly controversial figure in many aspects, but I’m certain everyone would agree that she was a fascinating woman. I first heard about her in my childhood. I remember Granny mentioning her name, and telling me she was a spy who had lived in the beginning of the 20th century. I also got the idea that she was a mysterious character, but over …
Thirty two years ago “Last Christmas” by Wham was playing on every radio and the video clip often passed on TV. We loved to watch it – it was colourful and happy, but with a nostalgic feeling of a lost love. All the ingredients for success! And the scenery was magnificent. You may remember the story: as the song begins, we can see a house on a snowy environment and a group of young people arriving – one of them is …
So many things in my life remind me of my grandfather and take me back to the times when I was young and living with him and Granny. Coming to Morocco, for instance, immediately took me back to 1980 and the cruise we did together to Gibraltar and Morocco, aboard the Portuguese ship Funchal. It was during Easter holidays and the cruise would last for a week. We first stopped in Gibraltar where I took the usual photo with the …
When I was young they were simply called “records”. Only much later, as CDs invaded our world, were they renamed “vinyl records” or simply “vinyl”. Suddenly the old records that we had put away in our attics and basements became something valuable, and soon our children were asking us if we had kept any from the old days, and where had we put them. Actually for me this revival began a few years ago when my son Afonso was still …