Book Fair Baby!

Tomorrow the pumpkin and I are off to the London Book Fair to do some browsing, attend some lectures and basically revel in literary loveliness. We'll be in London for a few days so I naturally made a schedule seeing as I can't leave home without one. I'm physically incapable of going with the flow.

Our to-do list looks as followed: Hummingbird Bakery, World Food Café, Canteen, lots and lots of bookshops, Saatchi Gallery, Camden, stroll in the park, maybe catch a show, a couple of markets, drink loads of coffee and shop until the pumpkin can no longer carry the load. Heaven...

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It took me three weeks and many doctor's appointments but I finally finished Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and I absolutely loved it! It's actually the best book I've this year.

Major Pettigrew is a retired widower living in a quiet English village filled with the usual society ladies, gossiping neighbors and trivial scandals. He befriends Mrs. Ali who runs the local grocery store together with her nephew since her husband died. Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali both share a love for Rudiyard Kipling and often get together to discuss his work and slowly but surely the uptight Major falls for this Pakistani beauty but love is never easy, especially when his womanizing son returns together with a contractor who decides to build a mini mall in the village and last but not least there's Mrs. Ali's traditional family, who think England is no place for a widow.

Major Pettigrew's last Stand is British rural life in all its charming and devastatingly delicious loveliness. The characters are wonderful and simply leap from the page as they go about their day to day business. The story is simple, sweet and not as predictable as you may think due to various ingenious little subplots.

American author Helen Simonson was written a terrific debut novel that will convince you of the beauty of all things pure and simple. Witty, engaging and delightful, this novel will definitely put a smile on your face.

Passionate about Penguin

I've been going a little Penguin crazy lately. It all started with wanting to jazz up our study and I decided that some literary decorations were the way to go, starting with a big Penguin collage which I made from the Penguin postcards set (still a work in progress as you can see).

Then I realized that you can also download PDF's on the Penguin website with the covers of their gorgeous Red Editions of which 50% of the profits go directly to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. The Vanity Fair one is my absolute favorite so I had it made into a poster. I was considering getting a few printed and doing a “Red” wall but we just don't have the space seeing as our hallway was recently consumed by New Yorker covers.


All these covers have actually ignited my apparently dormant passion for book design, making Penguin 75 (a beautiful book celebrating 75 years of Penguin cover Design) a must have. I have to admit, there are some really stunning covers in there from the classic orange ones to some by pretty awesome guest designers such as Chris Ware, Ruben Toledo and Charles Burns. My inner girly girl was quivering from aesthetic delight.

To top things off, I also bought a Penguin mug so I can now sip my morning coffee from Jane Austen's masterpiece Pride and Prejudice.


Slowly but surely, Penguin is taking over my life.

April 1st

Yesterday was April Fool's Day, my mom's 51st birthday (I'm so not kidding), the kick off of the Literaire Lente (Literary Spring) in Flemish bookshops and The International Day of the Edible Book, which was celebrated with a tasty piece of chocolate fiction.

Must-see Movies

Today I read that two of my all-time favorite books are being adapted to the big screen. Yay!

David Nicholls' One Day was the best book I read last year, closely followed by Chris Cleave's The Other Hand. This book was an instant hit so it doesn't come as a shock that two years after its release, we are already blessed with the movie, a big budget rom com / drama starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess no less, which was also written by the man himself.

Another must-see movie is Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a book I read in two sittings. It's that good people! It has a star-studded cast lead by Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks and it filming in New York as we speak.

Last but not least, Never Let Me Go which was released in Belgium this week in only 3 theaters (!!!) which just proves that Belgians have no taste whatsoever. I know I already posted the trailer but I couldn't help myself, I just love love love the book. This beautiful and seemingly innocent coming of age story blows all your expectations out of the water with its sinister scientific twists leaving us with an astonishing combo of English elegance and sci-fi surrealism.

The Devilish Diet strikes back

Not all my test results are back yet but the good news is, I won’t be having a stroke any time soon, the bad news is that they detected a slight calcification. I still have to see a few doctors before I get all the details but I will probably have to take meds for the rest of my life which is fine and also follow a diet, not so fine.

I haven’t been on a diet since “the great diet of ‘97” when I lost a massive 60 pounds and vowed never to diet again. OK, I really needed to lose a lot of weight and I succeeded which I’m very proud of but let’s face it, dieting sucks. If it wasn’t for health reasons I would never endure such horror in a million years because I love food, it’s as simple as that.

I am however, planning on remaining a vegetarian but combined with my new and ridiculously healthy low fat diet it won’t be easy seeing as eggs and most cheeses are now forbidden together with three pages of other yummy things. Damn you arteries! I’m still not planning on eating meat but I have to eat fish at least twice a week so there goes my no dead animals policy.

It’s really weird because I finally got used to changing my food habits and now I have to change them again and low fat meat-free is slightly challenging. What I can eat are soy products, lots of them.

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen this morning to conjure up several tasty meat, cheese, and fat free concoctions to lather my sandwiches with that are still high in protein. Challenging you say? I beg to differ. This afternoon I will been enjoying carrot tzatziki, lentil pesto and Indian bean mush. Sounds lovely doesn’t it?

This afternoon I’ll also have a cup of tea with some freshly baked low fat banana bread courtesy of Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights. I had my reservations at first about this book (model turned cook?) but the more I use it, the more I love it. Half of her recipes are vegetarian and the other half are fish and chicken so it’s low on meat but high in flavor.

She divided her book according to the seasons and for every season she includes breakfast, lunch and dinner options which I like in theory but seeing as I only use the dinner recipes, there’s a lot of them that are wasted on me. There are however, several gorgeous breakfast dishes but for some reason I’m too lazy to cook breakfast. I’m a cereal girl, always have been, always will be.

Another minor flaw in my opinion, is that she writes a 20 page introduction for every new chapter filled with feelings and memories. Why? Get to the point woman! That’s just a little too girly for me, just like her TV show. But in the end I have to say that everything I’ve made so far, turned out beautiful and that's what matters most. Highly recommended, just avoid the sentimental bits!

Thursday night, oh what a night!

Thursday evening to me, is also known as quality TV time. The pumpkin’s out for his weekly jammin’ session, leaving me on my own to snuggle up with Molly on the couch and watch our favorite shows. Include some tea and chocolate and you’ve got, in my humble opinion, a slice of heaven. Sadly, all my shows are dwindling down. Boardwalk Empire ended, as well as Mad Men and The Tudors (period pieces how I love thee) but luckily, season six of House MD is waiting for me.

Plan B, if I ever run out of shows on a Thursday night (God forbid) is watch corny movies that I know will make the pumpkin’s stomach churn such as last weeks’ Brideshead Revisited and An Education.

Brideshead Revisited is based on Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel about captain Charles Ryder who during the Second World War is confronted with his past as a young man at Brideshead, a stately manor where the lifestyle was decadent and the people ruthless. It’s the roaring Twenties in all its glory. Brideshead Revisited is an elegant and passionate movie filled with forbidden desire, guilt and gorgeous costumes. And as usual I am now dying to read the book. A book club suggestion, maybe?

An Education (based on Lynn Barber’s memoires) actually catapulted itself into my all time favorite movies list after one viewing, it’s that good! The story is pretty basic, it’s the 1960ies and an innocent schoolgirl falls for an older swanky guy who teaches her that you can’t learn everything in school. I know it’s cliché but trust me, cliché in a good way. The screenplay was written by Nick Hornby so the dialogue is great, the atmosphere is luscious and the acting phenomenal. It basically made my inner schoolgirl giddy with decadent delights.