Once upon a time, in another life, there was a little girl who loved books. At four she read the newspapers headlines, as if she were in a hurry to learn how to read, so that she could learn all the stories in all the books in the world. On Sundays, when her father was home, he would sit her on his lap and she would show him her progress, and he would unfailingly kiss the top of …
Tag: books
Under my bed I keep a few plastic boxes filled with memories of the past: my childhood diaries, old photos, love letters from sweethearts long gone from my life, even if not totally forgotten, wallets from high school and university days, drawings and the sweetest messages from my boys on Mother’s Day. I even found a sort of play written by Beli and me during a Criminal Law class that had me laughing to tears at how our incredible …
An avid reader since my early years, I naturally began – as I suppose everyone does – with fairy tales and went on to read every book I managed to get my hands on, from romantic stories to crime novels such as Agatha Christie’s and the adventures of a charming thief called Arsène Lupin (yes, very French!); from my father’s collection about UFOs and other forms of extraterrestrial life to my grandfather’s Portuguese classics such as Eça de Queiroz; at …
I have just finished reading Barbara Erskine’s latest book The Ghost Tree and as always I am left with the feeling that I would never want it to end; I would have gone on and on. When you have one of Barbara’s books in your hands you feel as if you’re holding something precious; at first, when you receive it – and you have really been looking forward to getting that box from Amazon! – It contains all the …
Looking back to her childhood and teenage years, she thinks she probably read too many fairytales; she remembers believing they could come true. As a precocious child she read many stories, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty and from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to The Little Mermaid; as a teenager she thrived on romantic stories which most of the times had happy endings, and when they did not, such as The Little Mermaid or, later, one of her favourite …
