The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles and The Slow Waltz of the Turtles

My friend recommended Katherine Pancol‘s books to me so I grabbed the first one The yellow eyes of crocodiles and started to read.

The beginnig of the book moved on a little slowly but I was persistent and continued reading. After a while I started to enjoy the story. It was a story of growth, a survival story of a woman and a story of her family relations. After almost 700 pages, as the book ended, I was pleased that I didn’t give up. I liked Josephine and hoped the best for her. And I decided to read the second part of the trilogy, The Slow Waltz of the Turtles.

I don’t know why but the second book was a little different. There was violence, murder, subordination, exercise of power and more. I was confused, where did this come from and why? There was Josephine and her problems with love and life, but I started to read a novel about relationships and life. I didn’t start to read a crime novel. It almost felt like Katherine Pancol didn’t know what she wanted to write so she put in a little bit of everything. And, after almost 800 pages I was dissapointed. I didn’t want all those ugly things to happen in these books, the story didn’t seem like that. Of course life is not always pretty, but all the things that happen to Josephines sister Iris, well, just too much, when you think about this trilogy.

I’m still thinking if I want to read the third part, The Squirrels of Central Park are Sad on Mondays. I guess I have to, so I’ll know what’s going to happen to Josephine. But before that I’m going to take a little break and read something else. These books are so chucky that you just don’t read them like that, in a couple of days. I have to prepare myself before I read the last one, because it’s going to be heavy, I’m sure of that.

Hero

I admit, I’m a bit of a fan of the books of Rhonda Byrne. I’ve read The Secret, The Power and The Magic. Now it was Hero.

I think that there’s two ways to react to these book. You either think they’re an absolute nonsense or you find something interesting from them. The latter happened to me. Belive me, at first I was very skeptical.

I started to think about my own attitude towards life and realized that I was a very negative person. I truly belive that your thoughts do affect your physical health. I’ve experienced it myself. When I’m stressed my stomach hurts and I have a headache, I get a rash and I feel physically bad.

Hero made me think too. Maybe I could achieve my dreams. There are a lot of people who have started when they had nothing. They were tenacious and they made their dreams come true. Your dream can be small or big and most of the time fear prevents you from doing what you would like to do.

The best part, the best offering, of these books is that they made me think of my own behavior and they made me want to be a better person. I want to improve.

Hero made me think about my dreams and I saw that most of them are very realizable. I just have to start doing them.

Sometimes you are so focused on the negative things in your life that you need a wake-up. You get blind and you just spind around in the same circle of negativity and you don’t see anything else. Sometimes you need someone else to say to you that you can do things differently. To me this someone was Rhonda Byrne.

Dallas Buyers Club

I’ve used to seeing Matthew McConaughey as the handsome, gorgeous (sometimes a bit too slick) guy who shows his muscles and is an archetype of a healthy person. Well, not in this movie. In Dallas Byers Club, as Ron Woodroof,  he’s so skinny and almost unrecognizable. Quite an transformation, I say. Matthew McConaughey gives the best performance of his career so far. And there’s a  another great and touching performance in this movie too, from Jared Leto as Rayon.

The movie deals with some heavy subjects, AIDS, the dark side of medicine business and testing, prejudice, rejection, friendship, a strong will to keep on living. All Ron’s friends abandon him when they hear he is HIV-positive. Ron himself battles with his emotions, he has a hard time believing he has HIV. He also battles with his homophobic views and prejudices. But he wants to live, he has a strong zest for life and he’s not ready to give up. That persistence is the positive message of this movie. And also acceptance, you can, and sometimes you have to, change your opinions and views about life and other people. Even if something or someone is different, it doen’t mean it’s inferior.

The end is evidently sad and Dallas Byers Club is a tough film. But it’s also touching, brilliant and inspiring, I liked it very much. Undoubtably one of the best movies I’ve seen in a while.