A nine-year-old Oskar Schell steers New York City on a quest to find the secrets of a mysterious key and its connection to his father, who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 09/11. Since his father’s death, Oskar struggles with insomnia, panic attacks, and depression. He often describes the feeling of depression as wearing heavy boots and deals with this by giving himself bruises. Read more
The Christmas of the pandemic year 2020 brought great praise to a common biscuit salami, enhanced with some crispy pistachios and rum, plus dark chocolate, because in the meantime, I learned what is good in life! I repeated the salami operation three times a week. In my childhood, my mother made this easy and delicious dessert in its traditional version with cocoa and milk. Biscuit salami is an Italian dessert, without baking, consisting of cocoa, small biscuit pieces, butter, and sometimes nuts. Read more
This year was one of the years I shall never forget. The coronavirus pandemic shapes our lives day by day into a new reality, everything seems to change, from hygienic strict rules to working from home, or worse, to unemployment. Due to economical reasons, my job became not a necessity any longer. I must admit (still feeling a bit guilty about it), I do enjoy the unexpected free weeks, more time to read, more time to do online courses, more time for my endless ideas. Read more
Whenever you had to travel by airplane, you’ve probably had to wait at the airport. You look at your watch, you check your phone, you look around at the motley world … But what if just by pressing a button you could print a short story, say, one, three or five minutes? Well, someone actually thought of that! A French company, Short Édition, has created such wonderful vending machines, which distribute short stories to commuters, travelers or people waiting – stories that you can read in one, three or five minutes. Read more
In Copenhagen exists a library where you can borrow books … human books. Exactly, people with a story. The Human Library is, in the true sense of the word, the library of people. Readers can borrow human beings serving as open books and have conversations they would not normally have access to. Every human book from the “bookshelf”, represents a group in our society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diagnosis, belief, disability, social status, ethnic origin etc. Read more