Peter Pan "I hate Wendy so!"

I jumped into Peter Pan's world as a “must” read, since I proclaim myself a sort of female Peter Pan. I'm about to show you a very slanted point of view to be honest, so if you are already so fond of his book, skip this review, or accept my apologies in advance.

Every one of us knows the Disney distilled essence of the story, a boy who didn't want to grow up, and three siblings who came into Neverland with him and had very exciting adventures with the lost boys.

As a girl who just doesn't grow up - not that I don't want to, I just don't. I never could avoid behaving like a child, no matter how much my family hates it, I am what I am, and I'm happy with it -, I say, as a girl who just doesn't grow up I clearly liked the character of Peter Pan, playful and cocky Peter, and also hated it a bit, for being so pretentious and rude with Wendy… because there is the loving and caring character of Wendy too, which girls are supposed to be related to, and obviously I couldn't help to do it. She's the absolutely opposite to me, and nevertheless I was all the time, thinking about what would I do if I were her... (to be fair I'm more Tinkerbell than Wendy)

So, If I were Wendy, the hell with housekeeping and cooking for the gang!!, how come that a girl's in this awesome world of adventures, and while Peter is having all the fun she’s at home cooking!! Seriously, if I were her, I would be competing with that Peter Pan all the time, I would even try to get a Tinker for my own... oh, and a young ladies’ gang of lost girls too, why not??... Cooking for them!! Pffffffff!!! And double Pffffff with extra doses of Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!!!!!!

That's why I hated Wendy so much. She totally spoiled the fun, she made the boys go to bed early, clean themselves, eat the food and in the end, she even made them all return to reality where they grew old, had to go to school, and forgot how to fly!!! That bitch!!

Then, what’s the obvious natural conclusion here? Women have no fun and they are placed in the world just to make men grow up and take responsibilities?? Fuck off!

Look, in general, I did like the book, the pirates, the mermaids, the red-skins, beautiful adventures and beautiful literature, really a pleasure to read. Recommended for every boy and girl of any age, yes... Because if it’s read by a little feminist girl, she will just hate Wendy as much as I do anyway, and she will see all the “don’ts” she will keep in mind for her life and surely she will see why.

As for Peter Pan, he's such spoiled boy, a taker, if I were Wendy, we would probably be declared enemies and also good friends as well. Instead of winning a place in his life as his “house spring cleaner”, I would have his respect or nothing... and maybe I would make him grow a bit, in a different way, after all, being an adult – at least by the looks -, has its benefits...

Finally, my suggested soundtrack here ♫ Reading Peter Pan by Diana María Valencia Duarte http://spoti.fi/1wSiHJP 

SHANTARAM

“There is no heart like the Indian heart”

First thing you feel as latin when you get into the universe of Shantaram is a kind of third-world affinity with the whole typical tourist pack that our lands offer: extreme parties, beautiful people, paradisiac natural marvels and very tasty food among others, plus, sometimes the poverty picture where other elements lay like the very nice fellas, the bliss of those who live day by day, and the funny and unusual situations... so many common stuff that made me think “what new thing can this book bring to me?” Well, aside from being so brilliantly written, I eventually found the big difference between them and us and it captivated me.

Suddenly I came across with lovely sentences like “the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life”, “my culture had taught me all the wrong things well”, “justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them”, or, “If you have to ask the question, you have no right to an answer” (I need to memorize this last one by the way, it certainly can save me many trouble ). So, Mr. Gregory David caught me into this incredible adventure trough Mumbai and Maharashtra in a very personal, joyful and also painful way, he got me totally into his skin (or Linbaba's, I guess it is just the same) hence made me laugh and feel happiness and then threw me into such suffering that I cried and went “Fuck this book! Why did I read this? Why?”

I realised that the key to this book, my friends, and I mean the key for you to consciously decide if you dare to jump into the Shantaram experience or not, is given by one of its characters: Karla, when she asks: “if you could be happy, really happy, for juSt a while, but you knew from the start that it would end in sadness, and bring pain afterwards, would you choose to have that happiness or would you avoid it?”. And I knew it, I knew it since I read this bit, that it was Gregory, my man, giving me a clue about his own piece of work, it was an advice!. But, just the same as Linbaba's, my life had already answered this question for me before; my brain says “No Diana, please don't”, but I end up doing quite the opposite, I embrace danger eagerly even knowing the consequences too well.

Just as Lin, I chose happiness, the happiness to keep on his fantastic story till the last consequences, I kept on doing it even in those moments when it was really hurting my feelings, I went on till the very end.

And the thing is, I will do it again, I mean, to read Shantaram, because, you know what, unlike happiness in reality, the happiness in the fantasy world of a book, can be brought to life again simply by swimming into those pages once more!

I learnt what is the big difference between India third world and us third world: India is all heart and love, people genuinely care for each other, they sing, dance, laugh, live, truthfully and honestly from the bottom of their hearts; in a way, I think that this is nearly too much for us westerns with our individualisms and shallowness, which are some sort of refuge against feelings, because we feel safe preferring head upon heart.

Consequently, I find India irresistibly attractive as well as terrifying. I don't know if I will go there someday, I still don't make up my mind, Shantaram says that you must surrender your self to India, and it is not talking about the Taj Mahal, the Himalayas, all those Palaces and Temples, or the magic culture; it is talking about those adorable friends, their joy, smile and kindness. It showed me that if I go there, if any of you go there, you will surely have the loveliest time of your lives, but when you will have to leave, you will be completely broken-hearted. 

PS: About my soundtrack for this reading I must confess I have no idea of what this music says, but this songs just feel so right: ♫ Reading Shantaram by Diana María Valencia Duarte http://spoti.fi/1tJlinJ 

A DORIAN GRAY FOR US PETER PANs

Dorian Gray is a dream come true for all us Peter Pans, and a very delicious bad influence for us who had the luck of getting to know him since our very early years.

Imagine if you could have a portrait in your attic who ages and takes upon itself all the consequences of your actions instead of you, letting you free to live and love without pain, remorse, scars, wrinkles, grey hair!, whereas, you could look young, beautiful, apparently cute eternally, deranged as you wish, unstoppable as you wish, insane forever!! , but at what price...

Oscar Wilde, to me, is the master of charm in English language, it is impossible not to fall in love with him, with his rhythm and beauty and wit, as Stephen Fry says, he is almost a musician: more than a musician; he shows you, better than any other author, all what can be done with mere words.

Take this one, for instance: "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses"... Oh my God, what a wonderful thought!... so, you see, it is this the way he plays with some risky idea, using his character Lord Henry, that he gets not only to Dorian, but to your very heart and brain, here, your inner you will get this: if a pain is tormenting your soul, well, the remedy is easy, you just have to seek for a pleasure that fill your senses and that will do the trick! Brilliant!!

That is the huge power of the dangerous and stimulating words of Lord Henry.

Check this out: “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself“ delightfully explained, Wilde gives you the perfectly reasonable basis of an endless pleasures and freedom life, inspires you to live without limits, without boundaries, without scruples or remorse, like you could be burning your life in the flames of your desire without consuming yourself, to never refrain, what a remarkable perfect crime this is for Dorian, for all of us who dare to follow Henry's magnificent and terrible influence...

Sadly, there is a grievous “but”, this is not that easy after all... deep inside a wild and spoiled soul will always be fear. Because at the end, every tear, every wound, every damage made, acts like an unpaid debt. You will be always scared to watch in the face all that the pain and destruction you've been capable of, and trust me, it is unbearably paralyzing to realise that one day that big ghost of all your past deeds will turn against you and will drive you mad.

Wilde had his morals, and at the end, by some sort of law of action and reaction, Dorian will have to pay for all the extreme crimes of his life of excesses.... as a matter of fact, we all Henry's disciples will have to pay...

Basically, if you are a Peter Pan, you like beauty and magnificence, you enjoy feed your soul as your senses as well, and you want to know what happened with the magic portrait in Dorian’s Gray life, while you lose yourself a bit for Lord Henry’s words, this is your book.

This is a suggested soundtrack for your reading: ♫ Reading DorianGray Diana María Valencia Duarte http://spoti.fi/1uwdSDk 

The Game of Thrones

Couple of months ago, I was sitting on a council deciding what to do with the seven broken kingdoms budget. Could you believe that the king wanted to play party guy with his subjects, and everybody there voted that through? I was the only one against it. It was the same with the dragon child killing; I will definitely take no part of that!  But still, I am the hand of the king, and “the king eats, the hand shits”, or so they say.  I am so sick to be the hand of the king, and now I know where does it lead, and just hope to get through this to the end, keeping myself faithful to my beliefs.  The queen is right, if you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. How could I win, when I totally hate this fucking game?

Also I was suddenly in the middle of this Khalasar, I am their queen, more than that, I am their Khaleesi, my brother says that they are savages, yet they are my people now.  I am the dragon, I am the woman who mounts their Khal like Silver, like she will mount the whole world! My lord husband, my moon and stars, the most powerful man in the free cities, he has deeply surrendered to me, to the bliss of my lust; he has the power, the will and the armies to conquer the iron throne, and I will make sure he will, for me and his unborn son, together we will burn the usurper and his unfaithful race down!

Haven’t you ever had someone in your mind that would not supposed to be there, but you cannot help it? I have one, we were born together, we belong together, we are so alike, both special and so different from all the people around us.  He is magnificent, gorgeous, and brave, he does anything, and I mean literally anything for me.  While the king distracts himself with whores and drinks, I have someone whom I love and that loves me more than anything in the seven kingdoms, and I do not regret a thing about us… what’s so heinous about being brother and sister? The Targaryens did it for years to keep the purity of the race; and we, he and I, could perfectly be the superior race now.

That was a bit of my personal experience playing the Game of Thrones. This could be altogether a Book of quotes: “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword”, ”my brother has a sword, King Robert has a warhammer, and I have my mind... and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge”. Moreover, it is like a theatre play where you act various characters’ parts, to the point of feeling, understanding and living their lives so vividly that is utterly scary.  I do know that some of you have seen the series, and you believe that you have figured it out why the winter is coming, well, you do not, the series are the Lilliput of the Song of Ice and Fire compared with the giant world that George R.R. Martin has created; so do not fool yourselves: until you play the majesty whale of the game, you’ll be like Jon Snow, you know nothing! Until you put yourselves in the protagonists' shoes, and be the dwarf and suffer the ordeal of his nature, at the end of the world where the white walkers menace to destroy the kingdoms of men; or be the dragon kid exiled in the barbaric world of the dothrakis; or be my Lady Sansa naively falling for her filthy prince, or be in the middle of a battle where various armies come from each side, wondering which is lord Twyin’s strategy to beat down the starks men between the mountains and the river; only then, only until you play the game of thrones, then  yeah, you will painfully lose your head as I did, but you will also taste the most brilliant Jacobean banquet of a lively fantasy story of our time.

PS: My soundtrack for this reading here: ♫ Reading Game Of Thrones http://spoti.fi/1pL7kMB

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Last week I was scolded by a five years old girl, I earned it since I made a stupid question... We were flying kites with a friend of mine, and I lend her my kite for a while, she was so happy, the kite was very high up in the sky, and suddenly she said: “I'd want to be there”, “There?”, I said, “like up in the kite, flying?”, “Yeah, do you know what I'd do if I were there?” she said “I'd take down all of the clouds”, and there it came, my idiotic question: “what would do that for?”; then she glanced at me like it was so obvious “to play with them!”... Of course to play with them! Silly me! It was like I couldn't see the elephant inside the boa constrictor anymore!...

I'm sure most of you have already read The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, this guy who painted boas constrictor eating an elephant when he was wee, while the adults kept saying “why are you painting hats?” becomes an adult and has a crash in the Sahara Desert, there he comes, the little blond kid who never lets go an answer, scolding him like my little kite girl: “No! I don't want an elephant inside a boa!,... what I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep!”...

If you are an adult, like I am, apparently; and you know the story, what we should do is read it again, before we lost those children we were forever. If you have no idea what am I talking about, what the f*ck are you waiting for? Reading The little Prince is a must! Find out where this little prince came from, what many adventures he lived in his journey to the earth, and if he finally was able to come back to the rose he left behind... 

My Little Prince Soundtrack: Reading the Little Prince by Diana María Valencia Duarte

About Diana

That's me with my Treasure

Who am I? Toughest question ever... I am a sort of a female Peter Pan (even I have eventual lost children around, and some pirates as well), a frustrated astronaut, a frustrated painter, and a frustrated writer. The only great success I got on my living years, took me so far, so high, and so low, and it was the only marriage I was capable of. Yeah, I was married once, I married my ambition, but it seemed to be a very destructive relationship that ended naturally in a dramatic and costly divorce (and I hate real-life dramas). The two things that have always given shiny sanity to this big joke that is the life of mine, are music and books: my dad’s best heritage, I reckon. Music and books, the both accompanied him to his very grave, if there is any god above, I imagine that heaven is for him like a big library with classical operatic music or some Colombian folk romantic songs. Well, if there is an actual god above, and she likes me at least a bit, I hope that she will adjust that heaven footage for me, turning the opera stuff into rock bands, and letting be pretty boys around (I would not mind about the wings but no harps please). That, in the remote best scenario where lonely PeterPan-like bookworm witches go to some kind of heaven…

You can always get in touch if you want me to review a book before you choose to read it.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I must say that I haven't read a book that thrills me and scares me so much since 1984... no, not the year, I mean the book 1984 by George Orwell. The kind of story that scares you because it reminds you so dangerously to reality, the reality as cruel, sad and ridiculous as it is, that feels and hits you like that video First World Problems Anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxyhfiCO_XQ. 

We don't know how real hunger, poverty or violent intimidation are, most of us are citizens of the capitol, with our dyed hair, make up, and funny heels, panicking when our mobile has been forgotten at home. That girl who doesn't want to talk, or make her hair, or wax her legs, would be so strange for us like a teenager freak. This unputdownable book succeeds in dealing credibly with trascendental topics as death, hunger, misery, and indiference... Boys and girls fighting to death into an artifitial arena.. Did someone say implausible? It has already happened in history, you know!, human race is cruel by nature, Panem reminds us of that, by the mere name “Panem et circenses” a society of shallow manipulated citizens that are kept narrow focused by the media and propaganda, sounds familiar? Forget about the movie, you can't imagine the horror that remains outside the film, the suffering that didn't make it to the scripts... and the shame, fears, sense of owing of the main character. 

This is the sundtrack I picked to read it “When I grow up” by Fever Ray <OL: http://spoti.fi/139QjUf>, and full list here <OL: Reading The Hunger Games by Diana María Valencia Duarte http://spoti.fi/1oificq> 

...I'll leave you here a bit of what you can find there, as well... Just one more thing, before getting there, please for god sake don't compare it with twillight!!

“it crossed my mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher’s or rotted vegetables at the grocer’s, something no one but my family was desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the bins had just been emptied. ... I lifted the lid to the baker’s trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare. Suddenly a voice was screaming at me and I looked up to see the baker’s wife, telling me to move on and did I want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash.”

You can buy this book online @ http://www.flipkart.com/the-hunger-games/p/itmdxd5vzhu5ghm5?pid=9788184771695&otracker=from-search&srno=t_2&query=hunger+games&ref=b4775152-0f48-476b-b0f1-0be35370fae3