Bookmans Does Book Dominoes

This one is the last one of today...I promise

Organizing the Bookcase

Yeap, you guessed it, today is the "post all the videos of books you loved, yet you forgot to post" day. This one was shared by my local library almost a year ago!...well maybe less than that because is partially what inspired me to start this blog. I thought, there is a bunch of people like that love books as much as I do, why not share?.
Anyway, when I saw this one I remember thinking: I could've done that with my old library! but as I mentioned in On my love of books...I had to leave it behind :'(. Anyway...enjoy!

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Complete Movie)

Shame on me, I watch this movie and completely forgot to share it. Have you seen it? is the most wonderful short film dedicated to books and what they will do for us. Seriously, you just have to watch this! Did I mention it won an Oscar? Tell me waht you though about this, did it make you cry? laugh? all of them? it did to me :D

This shows the way I see my reading world!

A friend of mine shared this today...I just have to continue the sharing!

Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore

Book Summary (from Bookbrowse.com)

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff. 

Ever since the day when he came upon six-year-old Joshua of Nazareth resurrecting lizards in the village square, Levi bar Alphaeus, called "Biff," had the distinction of being the Messiah's best bud. That's why the angel Raziel has resurrected Biff from the dust of Jerusalem and brought him to America to write a new gospel, one that tells the real, untold story. Meanwhile, Raziel will order pizza, watch the WWF on TV, and aspire to become Spider-Man. 

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung-fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes -- whose considerable charms fall to Biff to sample, since Josh is forbidden the pleasures of the flesh. (There are worse things than having a best friend who is chaste and a chick magnet!) And, of course, there is danger at every turn, since a young man struggling to understand his godhood, who is incapable of violence or telling anything less than the truth, is certain to piss some people off. Luckily Biff is a whiz at lying and cheating -- which helps get his divine pal and him out of more than one jam. And while Josh's great deeds and mission of peace will ultimately change the world, Biff is no slouch himself, blessing humanity with enduring contributions of his own, like sarcasm and café latte. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight. 

Lamb is the crowning achievement of Christopher Moore's storied career: fresh, wild, audacious, divinely hilarious, yet heartfelt, poignant, and alive, with a surprising reverence. Let there be rejoicing unto the world! Christopher Moore is come -- to bring truth, light, and big yuks to fans old and new with the Greatest Story Never Told!

My review

This is the first book I’ve read from the author, and boy did I have a good time. It took me longer than I thought; just because, well…you know…people have to work sometimes. Anyway, this was a fun book to read. Biff is an irreverent character, to the point that sometime you just can’t believe he would say that to anyone, let alone any of the important characters of the book. 

It starts with Biff being brought back to life to modern times in order to write his Gospel. He’s been given the gift of tongues so he can write it in something different than Aramaic. The Gospel itself starts with him meeting Joshua when they were kids, and them becoming best friends. They also meet Mary of Magdala being kids, and she will be the life love of both kids. About the time they are turning 13 and Mary 12, she is betrothed to Jakan, a Pharisee’s son that will represent this group all through the book,   in order to save her family (now, I can’t just tell you why). Is then that Biff and Joshua will leave Nazareth in order to find the Wise men that visited Joshua when he was born, a.k.a Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar which will teach them about Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism respectively.

The funny part? The way Moore “explains” the birth of sarcasm. Biff will also introduce the concepts of a pencil and evolution. I found the explanation to why do we have rabbits during Easter just hilarious. Sometimes the humor passes the line from irreverent to really dark, so I guess that if you are really attached to your believes, there is a chance you might be offended by some of the events described here. But if you keep in mind that a. this is just a novel, and b. is meant to be funny, I’m pretty sure you will have a great time. And that's just in the Gospel part. The interaction between Raziel and Biff is just priceless.

One of my favorite parts is when they are in a Buddhist temple with Gaspar, and they meet the Abominable Snowman or the Yeti. The ludicrous situation is painted in such a pretty way when describing the personality of this creature that you almost wish he would’ve existed to meet him. I'm trying hard not to give away a lot from the book. I can't tell the number of times this week that I went on people saying :"I'm reading this book and the funniest thing happened, let me read a paragraph to you..." And I don't want to do this to you, so, this is me trying hard not to copy paste from the book.

But the fact that Joshua has this naïveté yet a great and sarcastic humor sense has to be the thing that sold the book. There would be entire conversations in the book that I just couldn’t help but laugh, people (my boyfriend included, thank you very much) like there was something wrong with me…to be fair, they were talking about Russia’s elections, so I guess my giggling next to them was kind of out of context. Oh well…

The Joy of Books

I found this today, I just had to share it:

The Land of the Painted Caves, by Jean M. Auel

I’ve decided to work a little bit more on my reviews. I realized that I was giving more opinions and almost zero synopsis. How are you guys going to know if the book is worth it if all I say is: I like it!!!! (Most of the time I do, jiji…or for the Anglophones hihi :p). So I will try to add a synopsis, either the one from the back of the book or another website (e.g. Wikipedia) with slight modifications if possible to avoid spoilers. Once again, when is a saga, this is hard to avoid, but I promise I will do my best.

Synopsis (from Wikipedia)

In this three-part book, Ayla is 20 (in part 1), about 23 (in part 2) and 26 (in part 3) (My book said 36, typo?) and is training to become a spiritual leader for the Zelandonii. Most of the first and second parts of the book involve Ayla's acolyte training to become Zelandoni. The third part of the book contains most of the action of the story and plot line.

In the first part, Ayla is in a Summer Meeting, and she begins to learn what an acolyte does. Ayla and the First decide to start Ayla's Donier Tour, which is a tour of the sacred caves in the wider region. Jondalar, Jonayla, and their animals as well as many others decide to travel. The second part is mainly about the caves that they visit. In many of the Sacred caves the Ancients, the people before the Zelandonii, left drawings. During this time, Ayla meets many other Zelandoni, and one of them gives her a pouch of dried herbs smelling faintly of mint. Ayla also discovers that the Clan visits some of the sacred caves as well. In the third part of the book, Ayla is marking the passage of the sun and moon's phases as part of her training as an acolyte. One night she is distracted and decides to share Pleasures with Jondalar, starting a baby. However, most of her Cave leaves for the Summer Meeting, but Ayla stays behind until Midsummer so she can finish her observation of the celestial bodies. During this time she takes care of Marthona, her mother-in-law, as well as the others in her Cave.

My review

First of all I have to say something, I read this one in French, whereas I read the other 5 in Spanish, so it took me a little longer than usual. The first part of the book starts a little bit slow, but true to her nature Auel takes us back several times to past events. I’ve seen other people’s reviews, and I know a lot of them are not happy about this fact, but they seem to have forgotten the fact that the last books are separated by more than a couple of years. Unless you read them in a row (like me) being remembered as to why this particular event has a big significance, should be appreciated. 

The part of the Donier tour was my least favorite. You see, I really enjoy the description of daily routines, how Auel embellishes what was for them a daily process. Making a dress, cooking. The reason why I liked this saga so much, is because it makes it easier to imagine day-to-day characters back in Cro-Magnon era. However, when Ayla visits the 5^th or so cave…it stops being such a novelty. 

I expected a little bit more of development for the part where they finally capture the band of “ruffians”. With such an elaborated description of other rituals, I thought we would see a type of judgment of the sort…instead the faith of these guys is determined and settled in a few pages. I think the author could’ve dedicated more time to events like this one, or even Jonayla’s confrontation to the horse hunters, instead of talking again about the paintings in the caves. With that in consideration, I have to say that I really admire Auel for actually going and visiting the caves, and somehow I understand that she wanted to put all the knowledge acquired in the book.

Now, I will agree with Wikipedia. The last part was the one with more action going on. Ayla finally gets to be a Zelandoni, officially, after being called by the Mother, and a lot of things happened in the Summer Meeting, but there were a couple of things that really bother me at this part.  First of all **spoiler alert** I am majorly disappointed at Jondalar! I mean, the whole time I thought, oh he is so kind, so dedicated to Ayla, and then boom, because he has “needs” he goes sleeping around. Yeesh. And then Ayla decides she doesn’t want to be there anymore, her daughter will be better off without her. Give me a break!. Until this moment I loved Ayla as a heroine. I mean the second book (The Valley of Horses) was amazing. She is alone, yet she gets by perfectly. And then, she gets heartbroken and thinks she better die? No, no, this was not nice, for me it killed the all powerful woman image I had from Ayla. That and the way Auel sent Brukeval and Marona to disappear, was just to sudden. I did like, however, the way the word “father”is presented, how the role of the man in conception is portrayed. And how finally Ayla understands her visions from the first book. For those of you that, like me, are wondering what was the root all along, well…I don’t know for sure. I found another blog that suggests that it might be derived from Mandragora, but honestly I cannot know. However I know they are several plants with similar effects used by Amazonian communities, although I am not versed on the exact names or preparations.