Dinara Tengri

When I was a little girl, my favourite singer of all time was Michael Jackson. For my fifth birthday, I requested my aunt who worked at the radio to play one of MJ: s songs for me. That song may or may not have been The Way You Make Me Feel but this is where my memory deceives me.  What I remember vividly is me and my friend going to the kitchen because we were too shy in the company of all the relatives and then dancing our faces off. This is the earliest memory I have of myself dancing. I'm a 90’s kid and Michael Jackson with his dazzling outfits, his electrifying dance moves, and his in-you-face, larger-than-life stage persona became one of the symbols of my own childhood, and my introduction to the Western pop culture. June 25 th , 2009 is a day that has long ago made its way into the history books. The news of the sudden passing of the King of Pop literally broke the Internet, and the media circus that followed, not to mention the legal charges against MJ: s per...

Title: You're never weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir Author: Felicia Day Published in: 2015 Publisher: Touchstone Language: English How I got this book: at the library "... I don't think it's unreasonable to make a stab-in-the-dark assumption: You're either extremely excited to read this book (inner dialogue: OMG, FELICIA DAY WROTE A BOOK!"). Or extremely confused (inner dialogue: Who is this chick again?") " So writes Felicia Day in the introduction to her memoir. Which of the two categories do I fit in? Well, none of the above, actually. I'm somewhere in between, and when I read that Felicia  wrote a book, my inner dialogue went something like this: "Oh, that girl from Supernatural who I also saw on Youtube once wrote a book! I like the title, it's very appealing to a geek like myself. Wonder what this book is really about." Now I've read it. What did I think about it? Let's break it down, shall we...

Title: Cleo - how an uppity cat helped heal a family Author: Helen Brown Year of publishing: 2009 I read: the Swedish edition by Malmö Bokfabriken Helen Brown wasn't a cat person, but her nine-year-old son Sam was. So when Sam heard a woman telling his mum that her cat had just had kittens, Sam pleaded to go and see them. Helen's heart melted as Sam held one of the kittens in his hands with a look of total adoration. In a trice the deal was done - the kitten would be delivered when she was big enough to leave her mother. A week later, Sam was dead. Not long after, a little black kitten was delivered to the grieving family. Totally traumatised by Sam's death, Helen had forgotten all about the new arrival. After all, that was back in another universe when Sam was alive. Helen was ready to send the kitten back, but Sam's younger brother wanted to keep her, identifying with the tiny black kitten who'd also lost her brothers. When Rob stroked her fur, it was the f...

By Margaret Atwood   At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that (...) illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a writer and reviewer.  This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010 (...) In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form.  She elucidates the differences (as she sees them) between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction," as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy...