Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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21 May in Literature

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21 May 1910 French author Colette published her novel The Vagabond in serial form.

At this time she was already a successful writer with a series about a girl named Claudine. From the beginning she published her novels under the name "Willy" which was the pen name of her husband, Henri Gauthier-Villars. During her marriage she grew from a provincial country girl to a sophisticated Parisienne. She took theatre lessons and began acting. The couple divorced in 1910 and the Vagabond series was partly based on the failed marriage.

After the divorce, she supported herself a a music-hall actress. She continued writing and published both essays and articles. She wrote for the newspaper Le Matin and married its editor Henry de Jouvenel, in 1912. The couple divorced in 1924 and later she married a much younger man, Maurice Goudeket. She continued writing and won many awards and honours. Her novel Gigi (1944) was adapted for stage and screen, and, it seems, included one of her rare happy endings! Colette died in Paris in 1954.


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