I suppose this will be my last blog entry (at least for now and for this semerter) ;)
I honestly couldn't be more happy that this academic year is almost over! I'm sick and tired of preparing for courses etc. We just have our one last week ahead of us, and than exams and finally our dreamt holidays. Even though I don't have any particular plans for some adventures and I'm going to stay at Poznań and work I'm glad that it will be only working and nothing else, no translations, no tractors, no seeders and any other bizarres machines ;)
My only hope is I'll somehow gather energy for this final year and I'll graduate.
Liza
Marklund is another Swedish author, she’s even less know than Camilla Lackberg
but she’s also very talented. I really enjoyed her whole crime series about
journalist Annika Bengzton.
Annika
works for a Swedish journal called Kvällspressenand she’s a crime reporter.
She’s successful, her boss likes her but doesn’t like the way she works because
she always gets in trouble (she was kidnapped couple of times, someone sent her
a bomb in a letter, her house was set on fire, etc.). Annika’s coworkers hate
her. She has husband and two little kids but her private life is a mess because
her work is the most important thing in her life - of course she denies it. She's struggling to combine motherhood with her career ambitions.
What’s
quite interesting about this series it’s its structure. In first part we meet
Annika as a successful journalist, just after another promotion when she
becomes a director of crime department in Kvällspressen.Her private life is
quite ok and calm – if you don’t take under consideration the fact that in the end she was
kidnapped and almost killed. But in the second part Annika has just started her
carrier in journalism, she begins an internship and she isn’t even sure if
journalism is a right path for her (but the readers know it is). So the
chronology is really disturbed in this series but I’m not sure if it is some
extra value or a flaw… Though it's interesting and worth reading.
After reading The Millennium Series I had felt I want to read something similar so I started looking for new books and I discovered The Black Series (Czarna Seria) - it's series created by polish publishing house which gathers together different authors. It's over 60 books so a lot of reading. I decided to go by authors and I started with Camilla Lackberg because I heard her books are really good and entertaining. Lackberg wrote (for now) 9 crime stories, she's sometimes called the Swedish Agatha Christie.
The plot is always set in Fjällbacka (author's home town). The main caracter is Erika Falck who is a very curious writer and who likes discovering mysterious incidents that happends in Fjällbacka. Erika helps the police to resolve murder cases and she marries policeman Patrik Hedström. It's a couple that lives for finding solutions to murder cases, Partik is doing that professionally and officially and Erika helps him off the record and at the same time she gathers material for her new books...
These books are good written, with rich descriptions and interesting ideas. The solutions at the end of books are not obvious so it keeps reader reading as Lackberg wanted ;)
My family
is quite big so for each occasion, when we’re meeting everyone prepares
something special to eat. My mum is always the one that is responsible
for desserts. As I spent a lot of time helping her when I was younger I’ve
learnt how to bake some cakes.
The most
popular cake in our family is a cheesecake. I have no idea where does the
recipe of my mum’s cheesecake come from, but it’s really old one in a notebook with
yellowed pages and faded ink.
I’ve baked
on my own my first cheesecake when I was 13 or 14 year-old, it turned out that
the cake was as good as my mum’s (or even better) so since then it became my “duty”.
My dad and my brother could eat this cake every weekend and they constantly
asked me to do it so I did it many times and sometimes every weekend for a month. Even though I loved cheesecake and especially
this one, now I can’t even take a small bite, I just have enough of it for a
very long time!
Once for
Christmas I’ve decided not to bake a cheesecake but instead prepare something
new – chocolate cake by Nigella Lawson (Christmas Chocolate Fruit Cake). BTW it’s a great recipe, and I
strongly recommend it!
My family
was furious! My brother was angry, my dad said the chocolate cake is ok, but it
wasn’t what he had wanted, my aunt and cousins ate with pleasure this new cake, but
kept asking “why didn’t you prepare the cheesecake?!”
I guess I’m
stuck with this recipe and baking cheesecakes for ever.
I won’t
give you the recipe, because it’s really long and complicated and I’m pretty sure
if it’s a family secret. But preparation takes over one hour and then another hour
and a half in the oven and plenty of dishes to wash…
Our really long weekend has already passed, I hope you spent nice time. For me it was the time for first garden party of this season ;) I met my cousin and his familly, we ate nice meal and I had opportunity to play with two doughters of my cousin. They are lovely, but after few hours I got tired so I came up with great idea, I looked for some movies of my childhood and chose my favourite one - The Lion King! :)
But these two little girls just broke my heart by saying it's borring ... How anyone could say something like that?! I can't imagine it.
Just take a look :)
I think that nowadays movies for children are not the same. The Lion King, Pocahontas or Little Mermaid these were great, and I will always have a sentiment for them ;)
One day I was looking for some book to read, but I had no idea what book. So my friend lent me one of her books, first part of the Millennium series. I'm not going to desribe it, because probably majority of you has already read it or at least is familiar with the plot.
I wasn't a fan of crime stories at that time, but it has changed ;) I finished quickly this first book and then both other parts. I've seen the movie (american one), but didn't like it. There are also Swedish adaptations, but I haven't had the chance yet to watch it. Though, I've heard it's much better.
All in all, I discoverd whole new universe of books ;) For now, I keep reading only Swedish novels, I enjoy them and I still have a lot of them to read.
We've been talking about memory box during last classes and to be honest I've got one of my own!
Once, when I was in high school, I came up with idea to put all things that has some sentimental value in one place to make sure nothing gone missing (it was before moving to new house). I bought a nice, quite big box and started looking around my room in order to choose some things that I want to keep forever to always remember same events, friends, holidays, parties and of course boyfriends ;)
It's extremly funny what's inside! Do you remember diaries where your friends wrote some cute poems for you? Or someting called "Złote myśli" with questions for your friends? There are also some handmade birhday cards, postcards, pictures, gifts, some useless things with no value at all that I've brought from holidays, concerts or best parties with my friends.
It doesn't really matter what's inside. It just has to let us remiscent of good times;)
Whole my life I was quite responsible and pretty serious (most of times ;P ). I like having everything planned in advance and this is my problem - I don't let myself being really spontaneus. I have to overthink something before I do it. Don't even ask me how many times I missed something because when I finally decided to do it, it was too late!
Well, I don't have many regrets about stupid and crazy things I've done in the past. But on the other hand, I have plenty of regrets about things I could have done but I didn't. I spent too much time thinking instead of actually doing something.
What's worse?! Regretting doing something that turned out to be really stupid, maybe irresponsible or even dangerous or regretting not doing something and wondering what could have happend if I've done it?
I had a huge trouble to find something to write about this week. My creativity is dead, maybe because this awful weather! It's not that I don't like winter. There are some moments like Christmas, New Year's Eve or winter break when I really enjoy snow and the rest of it. But now, I'm sick and tired of this slush on the streets. I think that's enough. We all know what's behind windows, but it seems like snow has started melting, but of course I don't want to jinx it!
On the other hand, winter is associated with one of my greatest passion - skiing ;)
Mountain in winter are beautiful. Just take a look ;)
Mountain in winter are fun!
And at the end - family portrait ;)
Well, all I can say is that winter is great, just not in the city ;)
I’ve read few novels written by Lesley Lokko, but two of them are my
favourite: „Sundowners” (polish title: „Świat u stóp”) and „Saffron skies”
(„Szafranowe niebo”). Lesley Lokko spent her childhood in
Africa and then moved to the United States and Great Britain. Those experiences
are reflected in all of her novels.
It’s hard for me to
decide which book is the best (of course only in my opinion), but I’ll present
you „Sundowners”, because it was the first of those two I read.
The story starts in
the Republic of South Africa where Rainne de Zoete lives. Her mother died when
she was ten years old and few weeks later her father was missing so Rianne had
to move in to her aunt, Lisette, the sister of her dad. Family de Zoete owns
many mines of diamonds and other gemstones which means it’s an extremly wealthy
and powerful family in South Africa. Rianne’s life changes dramatically when
her aunt decides to send her niece to a prestigieus boarding school in Great
Britain. Adapting to a new life far from home is really difficult for a sixteen
year-old-girl. Not only standard of life has changed but also human
environement – different races in one school is a phenomenon undoubtly
impossible in South Africa of 80s but completly normal in UK so it’s schocking
for Rianne. Her new room is smaller than her bathroom in Lisette’s house and
what’s more she has to share it with three other girls. They don’t know that
they’ll become friends for life.
„Sundowners” is a
novel about the friendship lasting lifetime and exposed not once for
difficulties. It’s a story relating 30 years of lives of four friends living
across continents and having their ups and downs. The plot is both emotional
and funny. Moreover, even though the author underlines in the introduction that
this novel is fictional, some events and caracters described there are real.
This novel touches also real social problems mainly apartheid in South Africa
and the fight for tolerance and abolition of racial segregation.
Now I’m a fan of
books, but as a child I hated reading, and each homework involving reading was
like a nightmare to me. Suddenly, it has changed, and whose fault was that? My
PE teacher that made me and my classmates running outside when the weather
wasn’t so good (it was really cold), and I got ill, it was a pneumonia, I
stayed at home for 3 weeks, I knew all TV commercials by heart and I was bored
to death. Then, I realized that some of my friends mentioned an extraordinary
book which was so engaging that once you start reading you just continue until
the end and I thought “maybe I could try and it won’t kill me”. I told my mum
to buy my this book. It felt like a desperate move, but I had no other idea
what to do with my time. My mum was skeptical, she didn’t believe that I might
actually read something that I didn’t have to read. I begged her, so she
finally bought that book for me. And it turned out that reading could be fun!
You just have to choose something you like. So I guess I will write from time
to time about my choices of books.
Oh and the book that
changed my life – it was Harry Potter ;) I still have a strong sentiment for
this series. And it really changed my life, because now, I couldn’t imagine myself
without reading.
This week I haven’t planned to write about
risk, extreme sports and things like that, but then I bumped into this
video ;) please watch it and you will realize that people are really awesome ;)
I have to admit that I was shocked, I can’t
even name some of those sports and activities ! It’s crazy ! I don’t have
fear of heights, deep water or open spaces, but I can’t imagine myself doing
those things, to me it just seems to be too dangerous, I wouldn’t even dare to
try.
The scariest thing I’ve seen in this video is
a girl that jumps from some rocks or mountains (0.30). At first, I thought that
she was going to crash against these rocks. It’s amazing because she smiled and
jumped, totally relaxed and without any hesitation.
And, about those usual sports, like football
or basketball, but done in unusual way. I only can think of how long they must
have practiced to be able to do these tricks. Let’s say I could play football (if
only i liked that) but I don’t think I would be so determined and patient to
practice for such a long time in order to be able to do some tricks.
I really admire such passion that pushes people to do unimaginable things. But, as far as it’s about me and sports I only enjoy doing sports for fun, without any fear and I don’t think It’s
ever going to change. I won't be an adrenaline junkie ;)
New semester at university and new challenges to complete. For my English class, I'm supposed to write a blog. Every week at least one entry. I'm still not sure about what it's going to be (books? music? TV series? struggling with my master thesis? memories?), so I named it my simply simple thoughts just because probably I'll write whatever comes to my mind at the moment of deadline. However, I hope it's not going to be boring and you will find there something interesting ;)
