Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

-
Image
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...
5 comments

Coco avant Chanel - Paris in July 2016

-
Paris in July 2016 is a challenge hosted by Thyme for Tea. This year I have been very busy, and have not had time to read anything much connected to Paris. I am still on Nana by Emile Zola, and hopefully I will be able to finish it.

The Content Reader

In the meantime I did watch a French movie, Coco avant Chanel. It is about the life of Coco Chanel before she became famous. It actually ends with her first fashion show. It starts when she and her sister are put in an orphanage by their widowed father, never to see him again. They strife to achieve something with their lives, singing in a bar or show place during the night, and sewing during the day to make ends meet. Her sister Adrienne, meets a baron and they fall in love. She is settled in as his mistress in a big house, but they can not married due to objections from his family. Through the baron and her sister she meets Étienne Balsan and she becomes his mistress. After a while he leaves the city to go back to his ancestral home. When the sister leaves, she takes her last money to go to Balsan for a visit, that become permanent.



Through Balsan she meets an Englishman, Boy Capel, and falls in love. They start a love affair, although he is to marry a rich heiress. She finally manages to leave Balsan's place and goes to Paris to open up a hat shop. It is during the time with Balsan she starts dressing in her own peculiar way and starts making hats for his friends. This is the start of her business in Paris, where she finally, after a devastating event in her life, goes into making clothes. The relationship between Coco and Balsan is quite interesting and they seemed to have been wanting the best for each other.

I really liked this film and the story of Coco Chanel is a fascinating picture of a woman with determined views on which she did not hold back. She fought herself for everything she achieved in her life, and that is impressive. Especially, since there were not any women in the fashion industry at the time. The actors are excellent and Audrey Tautou as Coco, looks very much like the real person. If you are interested in these kind of films, I can really recommend it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Magical Room, Saloons in 1920s Paris by Ingrid Svensson

-
Image
Better late than never as they say. This post was supposed to go up last year. At a museum in Sweden I found a book about 1920s saloons in Paris. Very interesting and it generated the post:  Paris in July - French Saloons.    As promised then, here is the first of two posts about four of the main hostesses.  Still picking from the "Magical Rom" and events from Paris in the 1920s. There were four main characters who put their mark on the literary scene of the time; Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney, Adrienne Monnier, and Sylvia Beach. For most of you, they are already well known. These ladies had one thing in common, as well as many of the women holding salons, in that they were all lesbians. This was maybe one reason why they ended up in Paris, being more liberal (although you had to be discreet) than many other countries, and the US specifically. They were very creative and talented and did a lot for the cultural scene in Paris, introducing new talents and hel...
Read more

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson

-
Image
This is one of those popular help yourself books that seems to overflow these days. However, it defies all the good advices we have been given during the last years, that is; stay positive. Manson says: "Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it."  Right! That is life after all. "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." Sigmund Freud  With this quote in mind Manson argues that values such as "pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive", are poor guidelines for a persons life. After all, some of the greatest moments in our lives are " not  pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive". Which leads him to the belief, and I am bound to agree with him, that it is the individual who is responsible for everything in his/her life. We just have to act due to external circumstances. We are not always in control of all aspects of our...
Read more

How To Read Novels Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster

-
Image
I am not a professor in literature, but I would like to be. Unfortunately, this will never happen, so, I have to go along trying to read novels and literature like a professor. Thomas C. Foster's book is therefor a very useful tool. He has also written How To Read Literature Like A Professor , which sounds like another useful read. It is not only a book for readers. I would say it is also useful for aspring writers. How do you make a novel interesting? What does it have to contain? Who should be the narrator and what should he/she do? The content gives a hint on what makes up a good book.  Pickup Lines and Open(ing) Seductions, or Why Novels Have First Pages - are we not fascinated by how certain writers manage to hook you on the first sentence? This seems to be one of the most important sentences in a book and Foster mentions a few excellent openings. I love good openings and cannot help but quote them here, although I am sure you are already familiar with them (I only knew 2,4 a...
Read more