What I'm Reading: The Bitter Taste of Time, by Béa Gonzalez.
Status: Just finished!
Rating: 4/5

I was so excited to get a copy of Béa Gonzalez's first novel, The Bitter Taste of Time: I read her second book, The Mapmaker's Opera, a couple months back and it instantly became one of my favourites. She has a way of filling your head with images, painting landscapes of words so finely detailed you can't see the brushstrokes. The Bitter Taste of Time is full of sights and smells and sounds and colour. Gonzalez takes us into the beautiful region of Galicia in northern Spain, writing into life a land of green, rain-soaked hills, populated by strong, sorrow-drenched people. We follow a house of extremely memorable and vivid women through four generations, watching as all around them certain things change with the passage of time and others remain unalterably the same as always.

At the heart this novel is a series of tragedies, but the beauty of the book is in the multiple heroines' multiple reactions to those tragedies. These women are so strong, so fierce, and so unique: Gonzalez's storytelling feels so intensely intimate, by the end of the book you feel like you have been reading the histories of women in your own family tree. You will miss and remember these women! Maria la Reina and the bookish and big-hearted Matilde are the ones who make the book for me, along with Matilde's dear Don Miguel.

In short, read this book! It is absolutely beautiful, both in construction and in content. It's a fairly small book, so you can read it quickly or take the time to read it slowly and savour it. :)

Happy reading! All the best,
Erin

Hellooooooo Everyone!

I Would like to thank Erin for her more than amazing "Welcome" piece. I would like to add a few words myself to make up for the few things she forgot to mention.......

like how awsome of a person she is. She is smart, caring and has a more wicked fashion taste than i do. She is a great listener and is always there for you when you need her..... plus, the fact that she loves Medieval History makes me adore her so much more.

Ok, now that i said my piece about her since she left that out in her post, i would also like to welcome all of you and hope that in time, we will laugh, learn new things and live through new adventures (or just dream about them while we are working in our book room)Thats all for now and stay tuned for more book and fashion posts to come :)

Toodles,

Rasha

Welcome to our corner of the web! We like to think it smells of book dust, chocolate, chai tea and perfume. We hope you leave your visits here with that smell lingering on your clothes, the sound of words and dreams of books to be read in your head!

The purpose of this blog is to answer, as best as we two can, that age-old question: read any good books lately? We certainly have, and we plan to continue doing so long into the future! We would like to share our recommendations with you, and to get your recommendations in return. The book community has always been one of sharing, with good books changing hands, getting worn and torn and loved and discussed. This blog is our way of contributing to the discussion.

Introductions are in order, first. Rasha is the definition of fabulous: she has a wicked sense of style and impeccable taste. She has a quick sense of humour, an infectious laugh and a love of life that lights up a room. She is drawn to mystery, romance, and the great classics, especially Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. She loves Agatha Christie, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, Francine Pascal, Tom Clancy, and a host of others.

I (Erin) love poetry, literature, medieval texts, history, fantasy, and absolutely anything else that strikes my interest. My favourites are Thomas Hardy, Neil Gaiman, John Donne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Pablo Neruda, Béa Gonzalez, Douglas Adams, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, C. S. Lewis, the ever-fantastic Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and so very many more! The list could go on and on (and on), but I'll restrain myself for now. :)

Together Rasha and I cover quite the wide range, so you'll get different recommendations from both of us. Hopefully we can get some discussion going back and forth: we'd love to hear what you love and recommend, and we'd love to hear what you think about the books we're reading!

All the best, and happy reading!

Erin