Isabel Allende might be my favorite latin writer. Her books have often inspired me to the point that I would even name my first daughter “Paula” after her autobiographic book/letter to her daughter, even though she suffers an untimely death, there is something about her kindness and intelligence that makes her short life a full one. I feel the connection to the south american culture in general that is actually very different from mexico or central america, even though everyone just assumes we are all the same. At the same time I also think that she portrays us in a very accurate way so that people from around the world, though they may not feel identified, can actually experience things from our point of view. Thats probably why her books have been translated into several languages.

 

Her first book “La casa de los espiritus” (House of spirits) talks about Chile’s history through three generations of a family, until right after the horrid coup de êtat that made Pinochet a military dictator. Combined with fantasy, romance, activism, and historically accurate events it’s the recipe for a classic. Something very particular about this book is that it starts from the point of view of a girl and her husband, after a while it transitions into her daughter’s point of view, but the husband also keeps on telling his part of the story, and the third part is told from the grand daughter’s point of view. It is very interesting to feel the change in every generation of women and see how similar they are but with their own way of perceiving the world. The book starts very light talking about life in the farm and in the house with fantasy and visiting spirits, it progresses into different themes like arranged marriage and forbidden love, until it reaches the point where it gets political and very graphic when it describes the horrors of the dictatorship. In a way, it may be a cautionary tale.

 

There is a reason why there are so many world war two movies, books, museums, etc. People don’t want to let the world forget the tragedy in the hopes that it doesn’t repeat itself. Isabel Allende does the same thing, she always include that theme in every book she write. And who could blame her? she had to flee her own country just because of her last name, and her father wasn’t even around to raise her, let alone to actually consider herself a relative to Salvador Allende (her uncle). There are infinite stories of torture and lost souls during the time of dictatorships in south america, and I’m not only talking about Chile. They let it happen because they were afraid of communism, it shows that everything in excess is bad no matter what side of the spectrum you are in.

 

Get the book here. Photo Credit.

Images belong to the movie “A Little Princess” 1995, cover design by The little Hibou

 

As I recently told you, I was reading “A Little Princess” by Frances Hogson Burnet, because after watching the 1995 movie I was so enchanted by this story I had to know more. The movie is not completely faithful to the book (as usual), it changes the ending to make it more magical and happy. I’m not going to spoil it for you, so I won’t say how the book ends, but it may be a more realistic conclusion.

For a class project I had to design 3 different versions of book covers for the same book. Since I was currently reading “A Little Princess”, and I also noticed that all of the book covers that actually exist for it are very outdated and not very pretty, I chose to give this book a new face. The first version has images from the movie, and I included a fake bar code and a web page (I don’t know to which publisher this book belongs, so I just put harper to make it look more realistic). For the second version I used a picture of my niece (made by yours truly) and I made it with a happier vive, to give the magical feeling that Sara always talked about when she “pretended” and “supposed”. The third version is very girly and pink, with hand writing and little details and with the image in black and white so that it was very coordinated.

I hope you like my versions of the book covers, maybe I should make it a regular thing to show you how I think a book cover should have been for some of my favorite books. We’ll see.

 

 

Images belong to the movie “A Little Princess” 1995, cover design by The little Hibou

 

My nieces stayed at my house for the weekend because my sister was traveling. Yesterday they wanted to watch a movie, and since one is 4 years old and the other one is 6, they could not agree on the movie. I ended up having to watch two movies: Montecarlo and Tinker Bell. When i was looking for the movies on iTunes, it recommended me “A little princess”, I had already seen it when it came out (I was probably 6 years old) and I remember it beig very sad. After the two movie marathon, the girls went to sleep, but i really wanted to watch “a little princess”.
I have to say, this has got to be the best children’s movie I have ever seen. It has a very good script, excellemt actors, and very realistic emotions. It is set in New York City during world war I. The movie tells the story of a privileged kid, Sara, who lived in India with his loving father. When her father has to go to war, he takes her to New York to live at a boarding school where she would be safe. She quickly becomes very popular among the girls because of her loving nature and ability to tell very vivid stories.
Later on, the headmaster of the school learns that Sara’s father is missing in action and pressumed to be dead. For some reason his assets are held by the government, leaving Sara poor and orphan. She now has to earn her room and board by working as a servant at the school, and all of her belongings are taken away from her.
I will no tell you more if what happens because this movie is so good you have to see it for yourself. It drals with issues of racism, socioeconomical differences, and cruelty to children. In my opinion, the main message of the story is to never lose faith, to confront tragedy wih a graceful face and to remeber that others may have it worse. Sara was a girl who had it all and lost it, she could have easily blamed it on the works, but instead she accepted her situation and tried to make the best of it.

The movie was inspired on a book also called “A little princess” by Frances Burnett, which I also started reading (you can get it free on the kindle here). I found a very good quote that described why Sara thought that every girl was a princess:

“it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.”

We should always remember this the next time we want to judge someone, because we never know their circumstances. Sara may be at times unrealistically kind, but we have a lot to learn from her if we want to lead a happy life.

Photo Credit: Stills from the movie “A Little Princess” 

Fahrenheit 451 was the degree at which the books would burn including the house that hid them. Ray Bradbury presents us a futuristic dystopian society in which the main prohibition was to possess or read a book. Its the classic novel about censorship, and it presents us with the scenario of what would happen to all of us if we did not have books to read. Although the issue goes beyond just banning books, in a more subtle way, people are discouraged to have a critical thinking or to question things. Since we are now living in the century this book was probably written about, we know that books are not banned, in fact they are publishing an insane amount every year. But it has so many resemblance with society nowadays, the problem wasn’t really censorship, it was that people stopped caring. They where so overwhelmed by technology that they spent countless hours watching TV mindlessly, only considering what made them happy and comfortable.

While the book does have a plot, it concentrates more in the message that it wants to conceive. The writing is a little too adorned for my taste, it has so many metaphors that I often got lost on the train of thought and forgot what he was talking about. The plot is not very eventful, it mainly consists of long conversations between people trying to explain or understand what happened, or how society got to where they where. The main character Guy Montag, who is a Fireman (meaning he burnt books), starts questioning everything and he starts a journey to discover the reason why everything is so messed up. He quickly discovers that the issue is more complicated than just the absence of books. The story doesn’t have a conclusion, it is more like a cautionary tale.

 

 

Let me start by warning you that this is a japanese book translated to english. I am usually very skeptic about translations, because we lose the real words that the writer wrote, but in this one I had to make an exception since there was no way I would be able to read it in japanese. The story takes place in the 1960′s Tokio, Japan; while it has nothing to do with the antiwar revolutions that took place all over the world during that decade, it serves as a context for the story and is always there in the background. It is in a way a very psychological novel, it explores the behavior of people that suffer great loss and have to figure out how to continue with their lives. The main character Toru Watanabe is faced by a very tragic event early in his life: his best friend committed suicide. He then starts questioning the concept of death as part of life and feels somewhat lost and doesn’t have a path to follow in life. The book starts 20 years later from the story, when Toru is haunted by the memories of those defining years. Mainly revolving around Toru’s love life, the book takes us to an emotional depth inside every eccentric character.

The  book is very graphic in the sexual scenes, so I have to tell you that if you are sensitive to this, this will not be too strong to read. Other than that it is a very good book about love, grief and the pursuit of a mental peace.

Find the book here.

Click on Read more (Or continue reading) for the complete review that contains SPOILERS:

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This campaign basically describes the reason why I love reading so much. It is not the fact that you identify yourself with the main character, because that doesn’t always happen, it is the way you get out of your own mind and start living through someone else’s eyes. While you read, you discover new worlds, new ways of living and new ways to see the world. You may not agree with the characters, but you get to understand the root of their behavior and the reason to why they do what they do or think what they think. The concept for this campaign is simple and genius, and the execution is done perfectly. It was made by a Lithuanian Agency called Love for Mint Vinetu, a bookstore for used books. This are the campaigns that made me decide to design for advertising, mixing the creative side with the business side effectively.

Mint Vinetu is actually a very special place. It is a little bookstore with a cafeteria, that sells used books and they can also find you books that you are looking for. It seems like the perfect place to curl up with a book and hot chocolate, or to hang out with your book club.

Last summer I was somewhat of a basket case. I had finally realized that I did not want to be an Architect (after two years in arch school), but the problem  was that I had no idea what I wanted to be. I fell on the whole I don’t know who I am or what i want to be face. As I usually do when I want to find something, I bought books on subjects that interested me. Most of them were fashion design books, but the curious thing is that they focused on the illustration or advertising part. Long story short, in the end I realized that my thing was something in between advertisement and graphic design, I’m still trying to decide what specific thing I want to do, but at least I have a path to follow at school. I decided to switch my major to marketing and advertisement with a minor in graphic design. When I think of it now, I still don’t understand why that wasn’t obvious to me from the beginning. I learned to use photoshop to mount my friends faces next to cute actors when I was like 11 or something, and I’ve always lo

ved to draw. I guess in a way I was going for the formal type of career, which is so not me, so I don’t know why I decided on that on the first place. The important thing is that I’m finally on track, and I found something I love to do. For everyone trying to find themselves, my advise is: don’t try to complicate things, just try anything that interests you until you find what you really enjoy and that’s what you should choose. Don’t rush into anything. Not to get too out of subject, one of the books I got was My Wonderful World of Fashion by Nina Chakrabarti, which was the most fun because it was actually a coloring book for 8 year old girls. It has amazing illustrations, it seams unfair I didn’t have books like that when I was a kid.

Since, I may be a little grown up for just coloring inside the lines, I wanted to make it a little bit more interesting. So I used one of my favorite illustrations from the book to color it digitally. It is a mixture of hand coloring in my iPad and then a little photoshop. I really like how it turned out, it looks magical to me, it definitely has that feel.

Imagine what would happen if out of nowhere the government would pass a law that would ban alcohol everywhere. You may think that all partying is over and life is probably going to get pretty boring. Actually that happened back in the 20′s in United States. They passed the eighteenth amendment that prohibited any:

“manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States…”

But of course that didn’t keep people from consuming alcohol. May I say, that probably made everything all the more fun. The parties never stopped, they where taken place at speakeasies, which were bars or clubs where they sold illegal alcohol. People had to know secret passwords or have keys to get in, which made them more exclusive. The people that sold and provided alcohol were called bootleggers or basically gangsters (you can compare them with nowadays narcs). All of this increased organized crime in the cities and was probably one of the factors that led to the great depression, because they couldn’t collect tax money from alcohol. Nevertheless, put all of this together and you get a pretty exciting decade, no wonder they call it the roaring 20′s. Imagine living in New York City during this time and being a bright young thing.

This book takes us back to 1929. We follow the story of three girls: Cordelia, Letty and Astrid. The first two are small town girls from Ohio, they know they are made for much bigger things and determine to scape and make it in New York. Astrid is a socialite from long island, who likes to have fun with her frivolous friends. All I can say is that we get action, romance and drama. I don’t want to ruin anything by telling you what happens when all of this girls get into the speakeasy scene. This story has twists and turns everywhere, and you won’t be able to put it down until you finish it.

You can get “Bright Young Things” here

Press “Read more” if you want the review of the ending. *SPOILER ALERT*

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I just finished reading the first 4 books of the Pretty Little Liars series, and I decided to make a joint review because they all follow one same story line in four parts.

The story takes place in a very high class suburb, with your typical mean girls clique.  Of course, they had a Queen B or Leader that manipulated them and treated then like minions while the others pretty much worshiped her. This girl was called Alison DiLaurentis, and she was our basic it girl (blonde, beautiful and bitchy). One day, Alison goes missing and the mystery of what happens is never solved, and her friends start growing apart.

Three years passed and Alison’s friends: Spencer, Aria, Emily and Hannah have sort of moved on with their separate lives. Then one day out of the blue, they start getting messages signed by -A and talking about secrets they had only shared with Alison. This A person starts haunting them and threatening to tell all their secrets. They are forced to relive their past, but at the same time this person seems to also know their present secrets. The story follows the four girls as they try to solve the mystery of who is A and what happened the night Alison went missing.

This was  my non-spoiler summary of the books, for people who plan on reading it and don’t want to have the mystery ruined. I hate it when people tell you the end of a book when you didn’t ask for it and they just want to shove it in your face. As for my thoughts on the book, I think it is a very fun and light reading; it doesn’t have a profound message, but its okay, some books are just made for entertainment. I like how you get to read the story in each girl’s point of view and you get the feel of the difference in every character’s thoughts, personality, fears, insecurities, etc. It may be a little unrealistic at times, because nobody can know exactly what four different girls are doing all the time, and know exactly when something scandalous happens. Never the less, this is a very amusing mystery, with clues everywhere and false hints.

Get the books 1-4 of the Pretty Little Liars series here.

Press on the Read more button if you want to read about my opinions of how the story ends (Spoiler alert)

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