Today, I’d like to show you two movie trailers. One new, one old. One for the fun-loving and one for the thinkers. Or if you like both (like me), go for it and enjoy both of them!
The first one is an animated movie. It’s Monsters University by Disney Pixar. I really enjoyed this movie. It has everything a good Disney Pixar movie needs. But also nothing particularly special.
The second movie is The Theory of Flight (1998) and it stars Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh. This movie was truly heartbreaking and Ms. Bonham Carter’s performance was great. Still, the movie sometimes felt a little lengthy.
Wie bereits angekĂĽndigt, gibt es zwei Blog Posts zu diesem Buch. Das ist nun der Zweite in Deutscher Sprache. Es geht in dieser Review um das Buch Die Rosen von Montevideo von Carla Federico welches ich bei Lovelybooks gewonnen habe.
Montevideo 1843. Der Frankfurter Bankierssohn Albert Gothmann verliebt sich Hals über Kopf in die lebenslustige Rosa, Tochter einer der ältesten spanischen Familien Uruguays. Doch ihre Liebe zwingt sie zum Verzicht auf ihre Heimat, ein Schicksal, das fortan alle Nachfahrinnen ihrer Familie teilen. Sind die Frauen stark genug, um für ihre Leidenschaft zu kämpfen?
Meine Gedanken zum Buch:
Die Rosen von Montevideo spielt hauptsächlich im Uruguay und Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Autorin Carla Federico beschreibt die historischen Vorgänge dieser Zeit sehr umfassend und gibt so einen guten Einblick in die Zeit in der das Buch spielt. Auch die Landschaft in Südamerika ist meiner Meinung nach gut beschrieben. Sobald es um kleinere räumliche Einheiten geht, werden die Beschreibungen der Handlungsorte etwas karger.
Da Die Rosen von Montevideo eine Familiensaga ist die sich über mehrere Generationen spannt, gibt es mehrere Hauptfiguren. Anfangs konnte ich mich noch gut in die Lage der ersten Hauptfigur Rosa hinein versetzen, aber je weiter die Geschichte voranschritt und je mehr Figuren dazukamen, desto schwerer fiel es mir mich mit den Figuren zu identifizieren. Außerdem fällt auf, dass die Figuren sich sehr ähnlich (wenn nicht schon stereotyp) sind. Das lässt sich allerdings nicht nur durch Verwandtschaft erklären. So sind sich zum Beispiel Albert, Luis und Antonio von ihren Eigenschaften her wirklich sehr ähnlich, obwohl nur Luis und Antonio miteinander verwandt sind. Ähnliche Parallelen lassen sich auch bei den Frauen ziehen.
Was die Parallelen betrifft, so gab es von diesen in der Handlung mehr als genug. Anfangs war die Verwendung von Parallelen wirklich ein gelungenes Stilmittel, das ich sehr zu schätzen wusste. Mit der Zeit wurden diese Parallelen jedoch zur Qual und eigentlich nur noch langweilig. Hier ist weniger oft mehr.
Generell muss ich sagen, dass mit Die Rosen von Montevideo für meinen Geschmack wohl zu viel auf einmal versucht wurde. Die Mischung aus Liebesgeschichte, Drama, Historienroman und Familiensaga hat mich einfach überwältigt. Hier wäre locker Stoff für drei Bücher vorhanden gewesen. Ich will damit nicht sagen, dass mir das Buch gar nicht gefallen hat. Es hat mich vor allem im ersten Drittel gut unterhalten und auch die historischen Hintergrundinformationen waren sicher gut recherchiert.
Mein Fazit: Ein Roman für historisch Interessierte die drei Generationen junger Frauen auf ihrem holprigen und und von Parallelen geprägten Kampf ums Glück begleiten wollen.
In honour of Canada‘s birthday we are having a Canada Day Blog Hop extravaganza!
Each blog will host their own giveaway – Canada themed of course!
Giveaway’s will run from June 27th to July 1st
This is my first giveaway and I am very excited about it. I love Canada and when I read about this blog hop, I thought “This is it!”
In honour of my Canadian family (Hi Grandma, Grandpa, aunties, uncles and cousins! *wave*) I’m giving away one of my favourite books about Canada and which one will be a surprise 🙂 I will tell you about it as soon as the winner has it!
Rules:
You have to be 16 or older to participate
You can participate as long as The Book Depository ships to your country for free
I am not responsible for lost or damaged items
There will be one winner who will receive an English language book of my choosing
You you have to enter through the Rafflecopter
The winner will be notified via e-mail. If the winner does not respond within 72 hours, another winner will be drawn.
And now head over to all the other sites offering more great giveaways (I cannot get this code to work so just head over to Rabid Reads to see all the other participating pages): http://rabidreads.ca/2013/06/canada-day-blog-hop-3.html
Okay, it’s decided. I’m doing two separate blog posts on this book. This one in English and a second one in German. They are basically the same (content wise). I’m doing this because I need to post an all-German blog post for this reading challenge I’m in which is all about this book I am reviewing: Die Rosen von Montevideo by Carla Federico. 🙂 I won this book at Lovelybooks.
Montevideo 1843. Albert Gothmann, a banker’s son from Frankfurt, falls in love with cheerful Rosa, daughter of one of the oldest Spanish families in Uruguay. This love forces Rosa to part with her native land – a fate that her descendants will share with her. Will these women be strong enough to fight for their happiness?
My Thoughts:
The book Die Rosen von Montevideo is mainly set in 19th century Uruguay and Germany. Carla Federico manages to give good insight into the time the book is set in by describing various historical happenings. I also liked how she depicted the South American landscape. As soon as Ms. Federico starts to write about smaller spacial entities, the descriptions are getting a little more vague.
As Die Rosen von Montevideo is a family saga that spans several generations, there is more than one main character. In the beginning, it was easy to empathize with the first main character Rosa but the farther I read, the harder it got to identify with all those characters. The characters are very similar to one another (some are very stereotypical). This is something that cannot only be explained by the characters being relatives because Albert, Luis and Antonio have very similar character traits but only Luis and Antonio are related. Similar parallels can also be drawn among the female characters in the novel.
Concerning parallels: There were more than enough of them in this novel. What started out as a great stylistic device, soon turned into something that pained me and in the end even bored me. Sometimes, less is more…
It seems to me, that with Die Rosen von Montevideo Ms. Federico tried too much at once. The mix of love story, drama, historical fiction and family saga was too much for me. In my opinion, this book contains ideas that could have filled 3 books. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like the book. I particularly enjoyed the first third and I also liked the historical background information.
My conclusion: A book for readers who are interested in history and who want to follow 3 generations of young women on their long and hard fight for happiness.
Here’s another book I got a few weeks back – Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark. I got this book in a little competition on Vintage’s Twitter Page, where we had to find three differences between the original book cover and an altered book cover. I like games like that. Thank you for the book!
A few updates:
My TBR (To Be Read) pile is growing and growing and I’m looking forward to the time after those exams are over 🙂
I’ve also recently finished reading Carla Frederico’s Die Rosen von Montevideo and I’m thinking about how I’m gonna solve the problem of writing about a German-language book in an English-language blog. I’ll probably make the blog post bilingual or I’ll make two posts.
And I’m still reading A Thousand Perfect Things by Kay Kenyon and I’m still enjoying it. I’m halfway through but there’s always things that keep me from reading. I hope to finish it after my exams. 🙂
It is 1887, and an unsettled London prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Maribel, beautiful bohemian wife of maverick political Edward Campbell Lowe and self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, debates how to make her own mark on the world, while experimenting with the new art of photography. However, the wife of an outspoken member of parliament, whose views inspire enmity and admiration in equal measure, should not be hiding the kind of secrets Maribel has buried in her past.
When a notorious newspaper editor beings to take an uncommon interest in her, Maribel fears he will destroy not only Edward’s career but both of their reputations.
You haven’t read all Neil Gaiman books? Me neither. Well, now seems to be the perfect time. As Neil Gaiman’s new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane is out since yesterday (June 18th), it seems Amazon decided to lower the price on many Neil Gaiman Kindle books. You can get books like The Graveyard Book, Coraline or Stardust for under 5 Euros (I think they also are under $5 for US customers, I only see the price they charge for European customers and that’s usually higher and they are still under $5. Unfortunately, I cannot see the price information for the UK, but I think the same applies here. Just check.).
Just head over to your country’s Amazon site and search for Neil Gaiman Kindle books 🙂 Happy Shopping!
(It could be that other e-book platforms also lowered their price for the books. Go check!)
Right now, I have to study a lot. I’ve got three exams coming up. But I’m also reading, so you’ll get some new reviews soon.
Here’s the first trailer of Disney’s Frozen. I’m waiting for this movie to come out and I hope it will be great. I already like the trailer, although it doesn’t tell anything about the story.
It’s a busy time for me right now. I’ve got lots of exams coming up at the end of June and the beginning of July. Nevertheless, I have good news:
I won a pre-release copy of Neil Gaiman‘s The Ocean at the End of the Lane from The Independent. YAY 🙂
Here it is:
I can’t guarantee that I’ll get to read it before the official release on Tuesday, as I’ve got lots of studying to do and I also joined a reading challenge where I have to read a 774-page book and do lots of tasks until the end of June (and that book also arrived today – whoa). I’ll still try though. Maybe I’ll have to pull an all-nighter.
It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed – within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.
For the past week, I’ve been munching away more than 20 Chocolate Chip Cookies. When a friend of mine told me she’ll make some, I felt instantly inspired and had to make some too. I knew that my dad wouldn’t want to eat them, so I only made half the recipe. But still… I had 20+ cookies to eat and I only gave away about three I think. You think that’s selfish? Nah… There aren’t that many people around me to feed. So it took me about a week to finish them all. And they were yummy.
Here you can see pictures of the last cookie vanishing:
While you watch, I’ll tell you something about the recipe. Because you’ll probably get hungry on the way down…
This time however, I wanted to have an even more crisper cookie (I love them crispy) and so I decided to alter the original recipe a little bit. I made no changes to the process, only to the ingredients (and I only made half of the recipe). So here are the ingredients exactly as I used them:
All That Magic 