Entrevista: Maria V. Snyder

Ser livrólico é ser fã. E ser fã significa que se fazem coisas um pouco ridículas de quando em vez, como por exemplo ficar duas horas numa fila com sapatos de salto alto que magoam para ter um livro autografado e fazer uma entrevista de três perguntas.

E isto foi o que aconteceu no passado Domingo quando fui à Waterstones de Deansgate para me encontrar com a autora Maria V. Snyder, como eu no entanto, estavam mais cem pessoas na fila e a autora, que me confessou não esperar tanta afluência, fez das tripas coração e gastou pelo menos cinco minutos com cada leitor, passando assim as duas horas que tinha marcadas para dar autógrafos.

Por respeito às pessoas que estavam na fila e à escritora limitei-me a três perguntas.

1- Há uns tempos li numa entrevista que actua todas as cenas de luta. Ainda o faz?

Sim, actuo todas as cenas de luta. Faço-o para ter a certeza que os movimentos que descrevo são viáveis e que a luta se poderia processar dessa maneira.

2- Escreve tudo directamente no computador ou ainda escreve à mão?

Computador.  Sem dúvida. Não teria tempo de outra maneira.

3- Ainda está a escrever o próximo livro da saga?

Não, o livro vai ser lançado em Janeiro do próximo ano. Isso significa que já está para revisão com a minha editora.

Maria V. Snyder lançou este ano Shadow Study o quatro livro da saga Yelena Zaltana, sexto volume d'As Crónicas de Ixia ou primeiro da trilogia Soulfinders (conforme preferirem chamar à colecção e conforme a editora onde os compram).

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Passatempo: Serpentina, de Mário Zambujal (Exemplar Autografado)

Boa noite Encruzilhad@s,

É com enorme prazer que vos trazemos um novo passatempo em parceria com a RG Livreiros, e com mais um nome já conhecido do panorama da literatura nacional. 

Aproveitando a vinda do autor a Cascais numa nova sessão da iniciativa "A Voz da Escrita Com...", da responsabilidade da livraria em parceria com a Biblioteca Municipal de Cascais - Casa da Horta da Quinta de Santa Clara, será sorteado um exemplar autografado do mais recente romance de Mário Zambujal -  "Serpentina".

"A Voz da Escrita Com..." realizar-se-á amanhã, dia 10 de Abril pelas 21H00 na biblioteca e conta com a vossa presença! Mais informações no evento do facebook, consultável através do link. 

"Para Mário Zambujal, o mais importante é saber que os leitores se divertem com os seus livros. É nisso que se concentra quando agarra na caneta e se põe a imaginar peripécias, enredos e personagens. "Serpentina" não fugiu à regra e arrisca-se a ser o romance mais divertido do ano. Nele acompanhamos as reviravoltas na vida de Bruno Bracelim - primeiro a partida da família para o Canadá, quando ainda menino, e depois um acidente de trânsito, já em adulto - e divertimo-nos com as situações armadilhadas de um destino tão imprevisível quanto animado. Num estilo inconfundível, eis um supremo divertimento em que a imaginação e o humor se entrelaçam com a reflexão e a emoção. "

De resto, só nos resta desejar-vos sorte e um óptimo fim-de-semana!

Atenção: A pedido da RG Livreiros este passatempo só está disponível para residentes na área de Grande Lisboa.

Regras do passatempo 

1) O passatempo decorre até às 23h59 do dia 25 de Abril de 2015.

2) Todos os dados solicitados (incluindo Nick de Seguidor) devem ser devidamente preenchidos e completos.

3) Os participantes deverão seguir publicamente as páginas de Facebook do Encruzilhadas Literárias e da RG Livreiros

4) Só serão aceites uma participação por pessoa e morada, na área de Grande Lisboa. 

5) O/A vencedor/a será sorteado de forma aleatória (random.org), sendo o resultado anunciado na página do blog e o contacto efectuado por e-mail. 

6) O Encruzilhadas Literárias e a RG Livreiros não se responsabilizam pelo extravio ou danos causados pelos CTT nas encomendas enviadas.

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Review: The Restoration of Otto Laird, by Nigel Packer

The Restoration of Otto Laird
by Nigel Packer 

Edition: 2014
Pages: 352

Editor: Sphere 

Summary: 

Elderly architect Otto Laird lives a peaceful existence in Switzerland. Once renowned for his radical and controversial designs he now spends his days communing with nature and writing eccentric (and unposted) letters to old friends. But his charmed life is rudely interrupted when he learns that one of his most significant buildings, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block in south London is to be demolished.

Otto is outraged and wants to do everything in his power to save the building. So, he reluctantly agrees to take part in a television documentary that will mean returning to London for the first time in twenty-five years to live for a week in Marlowe House. As he becomes reacquainted with the city he called home for most of his life, his memories start to come alive. And as he explores his past, ponders his present and considers the future -- for himself and his building -- he embarks on a most remarkable journey.

Rating: 3/5

Review: 
I will start this review by saying that I received an online copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange of a honest review.

Sometimes writers have beautiful stories to be told. Sometimes they don't even know they are doing it. This stories about moments and characters just appear in the pages of amazingly well written books and push us inside of narratives that can completely distract us from the world we live in. Reading "The Restoration of Otto Laird" was like being inside the mind of an old man, with so much to tell but at the same time so lost in his memories and disgraces and so afraid of the world. Otto is an interesting man, trapped on a time where he was ahead of his peers and prepared to be an avant-garde personality in the British (and European) architecture world.
The first pages show the reader how far away from this reality Otto is in the beginning of the story, living haunted by past decisions and indecisions, the mixed feelings of the desire of activating the dream once more and the need to let it go and stay in the past.
 The book is constructed as if we were inside of the mind of this scared and inconsequential and inconvenient man that is only trying to finish his own story and make peace with the past. It's not only the words and what is being said that make the reader feel that way, but the fact that all speech is paused, rhythmical and long. This makes this book sometimes difficult to read as if you are looking for something quick to read because it keeps going on ramblings - sometimes beautifully connected, sometimes just mixed about everything, from family to work, from colleagues to diseases, from dreams to anchievements. 
Marlowe House and its foundations creates a parallelism between an human being and a building dealing with the same issues and involving the reader in all the conclusions and reflections that appear in every page. 
The unposted letters are manifests from a free mind willing to break strings with conventions and social rules that doesn't make us more happy but only unfaithful to who we are. They are also a enlightenment about the different moods that Otto is experiencing during all these confronts with his past, that appear through an young face that reminds a love from the past, a worn road which used to be the one of more dynamics and used decades ago, some forgotten articles in newspapers that rekindle untreated wounds (but still with possible repair.
"The Restoration of Otto Laird" is a great book that I enjoyed to read without any doubt, but you should take time to enjoy it and not rush through it. It was a beautiful trip to a past on a previous London, where a man still looking for himself finds a way to discover the true about what moved him and created the privileged opportunity to follow him on this marvelous crossroad. 
 

Cláudia

About the author:
 

Addicted to the library Claudia loves to read on the move and we can usualy find her sitting in a train or bus reading while commuting to and from work. But don't be fooled she is also keeping an eye on the landscape and all around her. She is an avid defender of sustainability and volunteering and it's as easy to find her starting a new project as it is to find her chatting with her friends. She is a dreamer and loves good stories so she keeps looking for them in her personal life.

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Resultado do passatempo: Uma Fortuna Perigosa, de Ken Follett

Boa noite Encruzilhad@s,

Com a Páscoa e para quem não se pode render a chocolate, deixamos uma surpresa docinha. Após análise de todas as participações, já sabemos quem será o/a felizardo/a que ganhará um exemplar de "Uma Fortuna Perigosa", de Ken Follett - o mais recente lançamento do autor em Portugal pelas mãos da Editorial Presença!.

Sem mais demoras, e porque queremos que possas celebrar ainda dentro da época festiva, os nosso parabéns a:

Alina Dobrovolska, de Aveiro!

Para os restantes, irão surgir mais passatempos, basta que estejam atentos e participem na hora H! ;)

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Review: When Mystical Creatures Attack!, by Kathleen Founds

When Mystical Creatures Attack!

by Kathleen Founds


Edition: 2014
Pages: 206

Publisher: University of Iowa Press 

Summary:
In When Mystical Creatures Attack!, Ms. Freedman’s high school English class writes essays in which mystical creatures resolve the greatest sociopolitical problems of our time. Students include Janice Gibbs, “a feral child with excessive eyeliner and an anti-authoritarian complex that would be interesting were it not so ill-informed,” and Cody Splunk, an aspiring writer working on a time machine. Following a nervous breakdown, Ms. Freedman corresponds with Janice and Cody from an insane asylum run on the capitalist model of cognitive-behavioral therapy, where inmates practice water aerobics to rebuild their Psychiatric Credit Scores.

The lives of Janice, Cody, and Ms. Freedman are revealed through in-class essays, letters, therapeutic journal exercises, an advice column, a reality show television transcript, a diary, and a Methodist women’s fundraising cookbook. (Recipes include “Dark Night of the Soul Food,” “Render Unto Caesar Salad,” and “Valley of the Shadow of Death by Chocolate Cake.”) In “Virtue of the Month,” the ghost of Ms. Freedman’s mother argues that suicide is not a choice. In “The Un-Game,” Janice’s chain-smoking nursing home charge composes a dirty limerick. In “The Hall of Old-Testament Miracles,” wax figures of Bible characters come to life, hungry for Cody’s flesh.

Set against a South Texas landscape where cicadas hum and the air smells of taco stands and jasmine flowers, these stories range from laugh-out-loud funny to achingly poignant. This surreal, exuberant collection mines the dark recesses of the soul while illuminating the human heart.

Rating: 1/5

Review: 
I received a copy of this ebook trough NetGalley in exchange of a honest review. 
I was very curious about "When Mystical Creatures Attack!" because not only the cover was different but also the synopsis created some anticipation. 
Unfortunately, this wasn't a good reading for me and I'm going to explain why. The idea of having the story told by letters, small notes, emails and similar written ways was appealing but it didn't result in a favorable way. As we are told, the story starts with the nervous breakdown of Ms. Freedman and she is sent to a clinic to treat herself. Due to her disappearing, some of her students (who actually don't have such great relationship with her) were worried and started a flow of messages that (may or may not) reached her. However, this part of the story didn't continue and went in a direction somewhat chaotic, disconnected and rushed. The messages talked essentially about things that happened in the past but that could exist as independent notes. 
In a book without other ways to tell its story, the link between every passage should have been carefully thought. At the same time, there were many temporal gaps between each chapter, some shorter and others very long which (and even if they were created that way on purpose to create a dynamic in the plot) gave different rhythms to the story and an odd experience for the reader. Other thing that annoyed me was the fact that sometimes we were reading the thoughts of the characters and others the letters and there wasn't a proper identification between the two modes. 
The characters, specially Janice, were not much easy to like and sometimes it was difficult to me to continue following their story. And that story even didn't followed the first plot, since (a little spoiler here so please skip ahead if you don't want to read it) the teacher disappeared in almost half of the book and we continued with that odd girl with the power to annoy me (end of spoiler).
In the end, I was expecting a book that approach mental illness with a responsible perspective, that showed with humor but responsibility that the mind is still something fragile and that some people need help to deal with that without being considered crazy. And that the help should come from concerned professionals and not from some jailers. And believe me, I saw all the metaphors and ironies and jokes created around it and the diverse tentative that Kathleen Founds did to make the book enjoyable and all the things I refereed that were needed. I just have a different vision from her and couldn't enjoy it. Maybe next time.

 

Cláudia

About the author:
 

Addicted to the library Claudia loves to read on the move and we can usualy find her sitting in a train or bus reading while commuting to and from work. But don't be fooled she is also keeping an eye on the landscape and all around her. She is an avid defender of sustainability and volunteering and it's as easy to find her starting a new project as it is to find her chatting with her friends. She is a dreamer and loves good stories so she keeps looking for them in her personal life.

Read More