Čitanje..... / Reading....(outfit post/ odjevna objava)

I've had good luck with reading this month. I started reading The Amulet of Samarkand  by Jonathan Stroud and I quite enjoy it. I'm still under impression of The Sea Lady. It is such an amazing novel. I finally got to reading Maya Angelou and I loved her, Jazz by Toni Morrison was as deep and profound as Beloved.  Have you read any of these? Perhaps the novels are what I will remember this month for. Do you have any reading recommendations for me?

Imala sam sreće s čitanjem ovog mjeseca. Počela sam čitati Amulet iz Samarkanda i baš u njemu uživam. Još sam pod dojmom romana Margaret Drabble (u orginalu The Sea Lady kod nas još koliko znam nije preveden). konačno sam počela čitati Mayu Angelou. Jazz Toni Morrison je dubok kao i  Voljena.  Jeste li čitali koji od ovih romana? Možda ću romani ono po čemu ću najviše pamtiti ovaj mjesec. Imate li kakve preporuke za čitanje za mene?

skirt/suknja, shirt/ košulja: no name, nije markirana,mini bag/torbica : dresslink ,  shoes/ cipele: Peko

“That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference. I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.”
 Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

minibag/ torbica: dresslink

“I had a chance at him now. Things were a bit more even. He knew my name, I knew his. He had six years' experience, I had five thousand and ten. That was the kind of odds that you could do something with.”

.....

“Jabor finally appeared at the top of the stairs, sparks of flame radiating from his body and igniting the fabric of the house around him. He caught sight of the boy, reached out his hand and stepped forward.

And banged his head nicely on the low-slung attic door.”

.....

“Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.”

 Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

A BIT OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE WRITER JONATHAN STROUD

IN HIS OWN WORDS- QUOTED FROM HIS SITE

 I was born in Bedford, England, on 27th October 1970. When I was six my family moved to St Albans, near London, which is where I grew up. From very early on I enjoyed scribbling stories and drawing, and for a long time the two sides were equally balanced: pictures interested me as much as words. Between the ages of seven and nine I was often ill, and spent long periods in hospital and at home in bed. During this time I escaped from boredom and frustration by reading furiously: books littered my bedroom floor like bones in a lion's cave. I tended to enjoy stories of magical adventure more than ones about real life – I think this was because they provided a more complete escape. Around this time I fell in love with fantasy.

Throughout my school years I experimented with different kinds of writing, often illustrated. (See Early Stuff for some examples.) I tried comics, gamebooks, board games, and later poems and plays. Without being entirely aware of it, I was searching for the kind of writing that suited me best. Meanwhile, I was getting more and more interested in other people's writing. Finally I went to York University, to read English Literature.

Like many English graduates, I left university without a clue what to do. But I got an editorial job at Walker Books, in London, and began to learn about children's books. For several years I worked as an editor: helping authors with their ideas and their texts, consulting with designers and artists about the visual side, helping to create books of many kinds. I worked on encyclopaedias, history books, game books and even a children's Bible. This taught me a lot of things about structure, pace and style; meanwhile, in my free time, I was busy writing also. I did several puzzle books for Walker, and began working on a novel too. When Buried Fire was published in 1999, I knew that I had found what I truly wanted to do, but it took until 2001 before I finally took the plunge, gave up being an editor and tried to write full time.

The same year I married Gina, and we now have a daughter and two sons.

Most days I go up to my study (see My Working Day), and shut myself away from the world while I write. But I also enjoy doing as many events and author visits as possible: it's essential that a writer reminds himself of who he's writing for . . .

“I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni, N’gorso the Mighty, and the Serpent of Silver Plumes! I have rebuilt the walls of Uruk, Karnak, and Prague. I have spoken with Solomon. I have run with the buffalo fathers of the plains. I have watched over Old Zimbabwe till the stones fell and the jackals fed on its people. I am Bartimaeus!”

....

“When I set out from the boy's attic window, my head was so full of competing plans and complex stratagems that I didn't look where I was going and flew straight into a chimney.

Something symbolic in that. It's what fake freedom does for you.”

 Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

skirt/suknja, shirt/ košulja: no name, nije markirana, minibag/torbica: dresslink  shoes/ cipele: Peko




“We cannot unweave, and remake. For chance and choice happen. They coincide, they coalesce, they mix, and then their joint outcome grows as hard and as fixed as cement. Like a fossil in stone, it hardens, in its own indissoluble, immutable shape.”

Margaret Drabble, The Sea Lady


A BIT OF INFORMATION ABOUT MARGARET DRABBLE

quoted from Britannica

Margaret Drabble (born June 5, 1939, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England) is an English writer of novels that are skillfully modulated variations on the theme of a girl’s development toward maturity through her experiences of love, marriage, and motherhood.

Drabble began writing after leaving the University of Cambridge. The central characters of her novels, although widely different in character and circumstance, are shown in situations of tension and stress that are the necessary conditions for their moral growth. Drabble was concerned with the individual’s attempt to define the self, but she was also interested in social change. She wrote in the tradition of such authors as George Eliot, Henry James, and Arnold Bennett.

Drabble’s early novels included A Summer Bird-Cage (1962), about a woman unsure of her life’s direction after dropping out of graduate school, and The Millstone (1965), the story of a woman who eventually sees her illegitimate child as both a burden and a blessing. Drabble won the E.M. Forster Award for The Needle’s Eye (1972), which explores questions of religion and morality. Her trilogy comprising The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989), and The Gates of Ivory (1991) follows the lives of three women who met at Cambridge during the 1950s. In The Peppered Moth (2000) Drabble detailed four generations of mothers and daughters in a Yorkshire family. The Sea Lady (2007) traces the relationship of a man and a woman who met as children before either became famous—he as a marine biologist and she as a feminist—and ends with their reunion. The Pure Gold Baby (2013) centres on a young single woman in the 1960s who must give up her aspiration to be an anthropologist in order to raise her developmentally disabled daughter. Aging and mortality are the themes of The Dark Flood Rises (2016), which focuses on a 70-something woman and her friends.

In addition to her novels, Drabble wrote several books on the general subject of literature, as well as journal articles and screenplays. The relatively few short stories she wrote in the 20th century were collected in A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman (2011). She also edited the Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985, 2000).

In 1982 Drabble married her second husband, British biographer Michael Holroyd. Her sister was acclaimed writer A.S. Byatt. Drabble was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1980 and advanced to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2008.

Thank you for reading and visiting!