I feel that this was a good year for me and my books. I read several modern goddesses of mine and spiced it up with the new favorite Sookie Stackhouse Novels and Poppy Z. Brite. But the best book of this year award goes to...... House of Spirits of Isabel Allende!!!!

JANUARY

-Lost Souls-Poppy Z. Brite: I finally found a cheap copy in e-bay and bought it, it was very good, but i still liked Drawing Blood better.

FEBRUARY

-Oncesi Ve Sonrasi(Before and After): Actually this is the second book that the wife of my mother wrote. Not bad, but not very good eaither to tell you the thruth, and it is not because I love my mom better:P -

Yesil Elmalar (Green Apples)- Nazım Hikmet: I don't know what to think about this book, Nazım Hikmet usually writes in social realism, but this book was a pulp fiction of American cheesy adventure, diamond mins in Australia, Second World War, Film Noir... It was interesting, that's for sure. -

Esir Şehrin Insanlari-Kemal Tahir: A triology about the Independence War years' Istanbul. Very good story with very powerful authoring, I was really fascinated by these books.

-Esir Şehrin Mahpusu- Kemal Tahir

MARCH

-Yol Ayrimi- Kemal Tahir -

The Spirit of Houses- Isabel Allende: I wanted to read something by Allende for years and this books was on my list, but I could never start with it until now. I now see that this was a big mistake. Someone said on the back of the book that she was almost as good as Marquez, but I personally think that she is far more better. 'A 100 years of solitude' is one of the best books written, but I'm constantly disappointed with other Marquez books (I still didn't read Love at the time of cholera though, maybe it will be as good). Well, back to Allende, the Spirit of Houses' story both embraces Chili's political history, with a powerful, magical spider web structure of storytelling. I'm completely fascinated by Latin America literature.

APRIL

Cronica de una muerta anunciada (I cannot find theEnglish Title)-Gabriel-Garcia Marquez: This Marquez book was better than my melancholic whores in my opinion, but not half as good as A Hundred Years of Solitude

MAY

Persuasion-Jane Austen:Fun to read, but it felt more like a romance if you ask me.

La Vie est Ailleurs (The Life is Somewhere Else)- Milan Kundera: What can I say about Kundera? He is a genious and I particularily appreciate his characters. They are complicated, shallow, living, breathing human beings that fascinate me.

Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf: I wanted to read this book for ages too, but I was obsessed with reading it in English. Every other Woolf book, you can find in english in Istanbul, but Mrs. Dalloway, nooo. I searched all the bookstores that sells english books periodically every 3-4 months, but I finally found it in Budapest. It was poetic really. As always, I didn't bring enough books to a vacation, so I was desperately looking to find an english book. There was only one mall that I knew in Budapest, I went there, there was a big bookstore. And Mrs. Dalloway was just sitting at the top of English books. Isn't it magical?

JUNE

Making Documentary Filmd and Videos

Ariel- Sylvia Plath: I finally ordered a copy in English from Amazon. It was very important for me to get a revised copy where the editor put the poems that exactly Plath puts in the manuscript (that means that not the book that his cheating husband Ted Hudges found the liberty to cancel some poems and change the order after her death). I did better, I found a manuscript facsimile copy, which also have scanned versions of the manuscripts with the notes and editions she hand-made. Wohooo

JULY

Yüksek Topuklar (High Heels)-Murathan Mungan: They make a big fuss about this Turkish  writer that I don't get. This is the second book I read by him, and this wasn't worth the time. I didn't like a single thing about the book.

Dead Until Dark-Charlaine Harris: So what, I want to read some pulp fiction. What better series that originate True Blood:)

Living Dead in Dallas-Charlaine Harris

AUGUST

Club Dead-Charlaine Harris -Dead to the World-Charlaine Harris: So ok, I didn't only want to read one pulp novwl, but four. They are good, so, who cares?

Preparation du Roman (Preparation of a Novel)-Roland Barthes: :This book is Barthes' lectures that he gave in  one university semester. His thoughts are as always really fascinating, but he talks about anything but preparing a novel. He founds the novel the opposite of a haiku (which he calls notes) and he tries to find a way to turn this notes into a novel (he didn't find a way at the end). The problem is that he was trying to wrtie a novel at the moment, but all he could do is to take notes (quiet like me, actually). Fascinating ideas though.

Madame Bovary- Flaubert: I found a french second hand copy of this by chance and eventhough my french is rusty ( I didn't read in french for ages), I wanted to read this in its original language. Work still in progress, I will just say what Barthes said about it :"Words was what Emma lived for and word was why she died". I don't know about her death yet, but I found the idea very accurate so far.


September

Haunted, Tales of the Grotesque- Joyce Carol Oates:  I loved some of her stories a lot, she definitely knows what stresses a woman

Mansfield Park-Jane Austen: I :heart: Austen:) Jacob's Room-Virginia Woolf: I am usually a good Woolf reader, but to tell you the truth, I can't follow this book, what was it about again?

October:

Desert Flower- Waris Dirie: The book was a biography of a top model originally from Somalia and who had to endure the awful crime called female genital mutilation. The style and writing of the book didn't impress me much, but her life sure did. They also did a film about her by the same name, but I didn't see it yet.

Anayurt Oteli- Yusuf Atılgan: This is a great Turkish novel that I meant to read for years, but just could find the occassion. Great as I hoped.

Güle Güle Günsarı (Farewell Gunsary)-Chingiz Aitmatov: Aitmatov is a very important writer in the Soviet area of the 60-70's. He has a very unique style, closely linked to the pastoral literary tradition and although it was at times a little bit hard to read, impressed me a lot.

Aşk Artık Burada Oturmuyor (Love Doesn't Live Here Anymore)- Nazlı Eray: Cute, short novel. But didn't impress me as much as her other books to tell you the thruth.

Kan Konuşmaz (Blood Doesn't Talk)- Nazım Hikmet: Don't let the title frighten you, it is a great book passed in the First World War in Istanbul. It focuses on people and the philosopical and political tendences of the time and Hikmet's style is as good as humorous as always.

NOVEMBER

Bruno's Dream- Iris Murdoch: Iris Murdoch was also a writer that I've been meaning to read for years and I chosed this book to begin because of my fascination with the realm of dreams. It was a very good book, philosophical at times, mysterious and romantic at others.

DECEMBER

Dead as a Doornail -Charlaine Harris: It's time for another Sookie Stackhouse novel. Oh, yeah!

Definetely Dead- Charlaine Harris: The books are great and all, but this thing she does with the titles starts to bore me to hell!

BOOKS READ THIS YEAR: 31

I'm leaving for Ankara tomorrow, not that I want to, in fact that's one of the last things I want to do, since I also have a terrible flu and tons of work to do for the uni. But, hey, at least I will see kill_the_onions . It's been a long while...

My stupid stupid puppy got bitten by a big dog last night:( My father never took the leach when they wander around and he just sit in a cafe drinking tea, while my stupid stupid puppy go around and come back. I always say him not to, but he does it anyway. But last night, apparently he got bitten and the weird thing is he acted so normal that no one noticed it until the morning (I wasn't around, if I was, I would see it in a minute:P). The bites are bad, especially in his neck, but since he has long hair, the scars are not visible. He is all in bandages now, weak with antibiotics and painkillers:(((((

Broadcasting from the workshop in Modra....
Last Sunday I went after a 12 hour flying and transfering and waiting in between (we stopped at prague, which is one of the cities I wanted to see more and I could only see the airport:( ) we arrived to Modra. It is a small empty and boring village near Bratislava (but not very near so you can go to  Bratislava at the evening). The hotel is comme-ci comme-ça. The workshop this time is about marketing and selling films which doesn't interest me much, so it wasn't the best time I had or anything. And I have to also add that I'm not in love with Slovak people.

At last on Wednesday, we decided that we got bored enough and escaped to Vienna for a day. As you may know, Bratislava and Vienna is the two closest capitals in the world and it only takes 50 minutes with the train (which is less then what I have to take everyday to go to university.) Hurray!!!!

We just couldn't find any hostel rooms at the last minute so we stayed at a private room. Vienna is a wonderful, breath-taking city. Also the people are usually very very cool -and the guys very very handsome!-. I realized that I missed German and the German culture and the Austrians were even better then Germans. It seemed to be that (weirdly) Austrian culture is somehow in between of Italian and German culture (or blond Italians)- good combination.

So we arrived to Vienna at 8 o'clock and tried for a long time to find the hostel (we didn't have a map you see, and people kept telling us the direction of a wrong hostel). At the end 2 guys (tourists) asked us a place and I asked them where the hostel is. Luckily they were from the hostel, but the problem was that (I didn't realize it but the girls keep giving me signs and all) we were standing in front of a revue place at the whole time and apparently a car stopped when it saw us and there were 4 men in it looking at us:P The tourist guy opening his wallet to show me the map didn't help either:P At last, we found the hostel without any crazy adventure.

After leaving our staff to the hostel we decided to go out to eat and then apparently we decided took  all the way to the end Vienna, we ended up in the river near midnight. We saw a lot of stuff though, and found a cool place in the river with an artifical beach and drank a beer and went back to sleep.
The next day we first saw Belvedere, then almost everything else in the city, except for the castle outside the city. Vienna is a gorgeous city, especially St. Stephen's Cathedral took my breath away (I literally had to sit for a minute when I saw the inside). We ate huge schnitzels. At 5 o'clock my legs were killing me, but I really wanted to buy my brother something Mozart as he is a Mozart freak and really should have born in Vienna instead of Istanbul. The thing I didn't realize at the time was that I needed to walk for 1 hour to find it and then 1 hour back... I was exhausted, but happy to be able to but him a chocolate box set with a coffee mug. I sit at a Starbucks and while drinking my coffee, the mug fell down:(((((( Only the handle was broken, but still I am very sorry about it.

(now broadcasting from Istanbul).

Anyway the real adventure started after returning to Bratislava. It was 9 when we took the bus to Modra, but we three idiot girls missed the stop and it was the last bus. So the bus left us in the text city, in a deserted bus station, literally in the middle of nowhere (oops). We asked a taxi driver how much would it cost us to go to the hotel, and of course, he didn't know any english and my friends said that he asked 300 euros!. Well we said, maybe we can sleep at the bus station, or maybe not, because we would probably found dead in the morning (did you see the film 'Hostel'? It was in Bratislava!). Then we decided to ask a taxidriver for a hotel to stay, he was weirdly friendly and knew german, so I could communicate with him (I thanked God so many times for knowing German in this city!). He said that taxi to Modra would cost 30 euros, not 300! So we went with the taxi.

The taxi ride was also scary, because we were going in the middle of no where and then the taxidriver called someone and spoke in Slovak (of course) very enthusiastically. I remember scenes from Hostel... but anyway, we managed to go back to the hotel alive. But the adventure was not over... My friend took the driver's coat by mistake thinking that it was our other friend's (which was not). When we checked out from the hotel, he still didn't came for his coat, so, mmm... okay....

The return trip was hell too, we went to the airport at 3 am in the morning, went to Prague and waited 6 hours for our flight to Istanbul:( I never imagined myself being able to sleep in an airport, but well, one must do what she must do, right?

To summarize, except from the wonderful Vienna, the trip didn't worth the effort it took.

New postcards at my postcard blog: zeynepsmailbox.blogspot.com

and

New photos at: seraphina5042.deviantart.com

or

in my blog: zsehiralti.blogspot.com

just a quick note to say that, after 2 weeks of hell and frustration at the uni., I'm off to Bratislava for the final workshops!

an old meme stolen from annabattista , it turned out pretty good!

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST/ BAND, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "My Life According to (ARTIST/BAND NAME)"


Pick Your Artist: Placebo

1. Are you a male or female? Lady of the Flowers

2. Describe yourself: Evil Dildo

3. How do you feel: Passive Agressive

4. Describe where you currently live: Running up that Hill

5. If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Dream City Film Club

6. Your favorite form of transportation: Meds

7. Your best friend is: Burger Queen

8. Your favorite color is: Post Blue

9. What's the weather like:Summer's Gone

10. Favorite time of day: In the Cold light of Morning

11. If your life was a tv show, what would it be called: Where is my Mind

12. What is life to you: One of a Kind

13. Your relationships
Last: 20 years
Looking for: Waiting for the Son of Man
Have: Spite&Malice
Wouldn’t mind: Sleeping with Ghosts

14. Your fear: Scared of Girls

15.What's the best advice you have to give? Follow the Cops back Home

16.If you could change your name, you would change it to: Slackerbitch or Miss moneypenny

17.Thought for the day: I know

18: How would I like to die?Narcoleptic

19: My soul's present condition: Drowning by numbers
20: My motto: Mets ton doigt dans mon cul (hehehehehehheheheheeeeeee)

I'm updating the list. The first list was made in May. 6th, 2008 at 11:53 PM


Stolen from the meme-master, Sameen.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you read for school, underline the ones you started but didn't finish (or are on the shelf waiting for a free week).

-red-ones are the books I read since May 6th, 2008

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables *heart*
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Total read books:30
Books read for school:4
Books left unfinished: 5

Poll #1459345 Favorite European City
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

What is your favorite European City? Please comment the reason.

edit:I saw that I forgot to add Paris. Feel free to vote to Paris in your comments too!

I feel that this was a good year for me and my books. I read several modern goddesses of mine and spiced it up with the new favorite Sookie Stackhouse Novels and Poppy Z. Brite. But the best book of this year award goes to...... House of Spirits of Isabel Allende!!!!

JANUARY

-Lost Souls-Poppy Z. Brite: I finally found a cheap copy in e-bay and bought it, it was very good, but i still liked Drawing Blood better.

FEBRUARY

-Oncesi Ve Sonrasi(Before and After): Actually this is the second book that the wife of my mother wrote. Not bad, but not very good eaither to tell you the thruth, and it is not because I love my mom better:P

-Yesil Elmalar (Green Apples)- Nazım Hikmet: I don't know what to think about this book, Nazım Hikmet usually writes in social realism, but this book was a pulp fiction of American cheesy adventure, diamond mins in Australia, Second World War, Film Noir... It was interesting, that's for sure.

-Esir Şehrin Insanlari-Kemal Tahir: A triology about the Independence War years' Istanbul. Very good story with very powerful authoring, I was really fascinated by these books.

-Esir Şehrin Mahpusu- Kemal Tahir

MARCH

-Yol Ayrimi- Kemal Tahir

-The Spirit of Houses- Isabel Allende: I wanted to read something by Allende for years and this books was on my list, but I could never start with it until now. I now see that this was a big mistake. Someone said on the back of the book that she was almost as good as Marquez, but I personally think that she is far more better. 'A 100 years of solitude' is one of the best books written, but I'm constantly disappointed with other Marquez books (I still didn't read Love at the time of cholera though, maybe it will be as good). Well, back to Allende, the Spirit of Houses' story both embraces Chili's political history, with a powerful, magical spider web structure of storytelling. I'm completely fascinated by Latin America literature.

APRIL

-Cronica de una muerta anunciada (I cannot find theEnglish Title)-Gabriel-Garcia Marquez: This Marquez book was better than my melancholic whores in my opinion, but not half as good as A Hundred Years of Solitude.

MAY

-Persuasion-Jane Austen:Fun to read, but it felt more like a romance if you ask me.

-La Vie est Ailleurs (The Life is Somewhere Else)- Milan Kundera: What can I say about Kundera? He is a genious and I particularily appreciate his characters. They are complicated, shallow, living, breathing human beings that fascinate me.

-Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf: I wanted to read this book for ages too, but I was obsessed with reading it in English. Every other Woolf book, you can find in english in Istanbul, but Mrs. Dalloway, nooo. I searched all the bookstores that sells english books periodically every 3-4 months, but I finally found it in Budapest. It was poetic really. As always, I didn't bring enough books to a vacation, so I was desperately looking to find an english book. There was only one mall that I knew in Budapest, I went there, there was a big bookstore. And Mrs. Dalloway was just sitting at the top of English books. Isn't it magical?

JUNE

-Making Documentary Filmd and Videos

-Ariel- Sylvia Plath: I finally ordered a copy in English from Amazon. It was very important for me to get a revised copy where the editor put the poems that exactly Plath puts in the manuscript (that means that not the book that his cheating husband Ted Hudges found the liberty to cancel some poems and change the order after her death). I did better, I found a manuscript facsimile copy, which also have scanned versions of the manuscripts with the notes and editions she hand-made. Wohooo

JULY

-Yüksek Topuklar (High Heels)-Murathan Mungan: They make a big fuss about this Turkish  writer that I don't get. This is the second book I read by him, and this wasn't worth the time. I didn't like a single thing about the book.

-Dead Until Dark-Charlaine Harris: So what, I want to read some pulp fiction. What better series that originate True Blood:)

-Living Dead in Dallas-Charlaine Harris

AUGUST


-Club Dead-Charlaine Harris

-Dead to the World-Charlaine Harris: So ok, I didn't only want to read one pulp novwl, but four. They are good, so, who cares?

-Preparation du Roman (Preparation of a Novel)-Roland Barthes: :This book is Barthes' lectures that he gave in  one university semester. His thoughts are as always really fascinating, but he talks about anything but preparing a novel. He founds the novel the opposite of a haiku (which he calls notes) and he tries to find a way to turn this notes into a novel (he didn't find a way at the end). The problem is that he was trying to wrtie a novel at the moment, but all he could do is to take notes (quiet like me, actually). Fascinating ideas though.

-Madame Bovary- Flaubert: I found a french second hand copy of this by chance and eventhough my french is rusty ( I didn't read in french for ages), I wanted to read this in its original language. Work still in progress, I will just say what Barthes said about it :"Words was what Emma lived for and word was why she died". I don't know about her death yet, but I found the idea very accurate so far.

September

Haunted, Tales of the Grotesque- Joyce Carol Oates:  I loved some of her stories a lot, she definitely knows what stresses a woman

Mansfield Park-Jane Austen: I :heart: Austen:)

Jacob's Room-Virginia Woolf: I am usually a good Woolf reader, but to tell you the truth, I can't follow this book, what was it about again?

October:

Desert Flower- Waris Dirie: The book was a biography of a top model originally from Somalia and who had to endure the awful crime called female genital mutilation. The style and writing of the book didn't impress me much, but her life sure did. They also did a film about her by the same name, but I didn't see it yet.

Anayurt Oteli- Yusuf Atılgan: This is a great Turkish novel that I meant to read for years, but just could find the occassion. Great as I hoped.

Güle Güle Günsarı (Farewell Gunsary)-Chingiz Aitmatov: Aitmatov is a very important writer in the Soviet area of the 60-70's. He has a very unique style, closely linked to the pastoral literary tradition and although it was at times a little bit hard to read, impressed me a lot.

Aşk Artık Burada Oturmuyor (Love Doesn't Live Here Anymore)- Nazlı Eray: Cute, short novel. But didn't impress me as much as her other books to tell you the thruth.

Kan Konuşmaz (Blood Doesn't Talk)- Nazım Hikmet: Don't let the title frighten you, it is a great book passed in the First World War in Istanbul. It focuses on people and the philosopical and political tendences of the time and Hikmet's style is as good as humorous as always.

NOVEMBER

Bruno's Dream- Iris Murdoch: Iris Murdoch was also a writer that I've been meaning to read for years and I chosed this book to begin because of my fascination with the realm of dreams. It was a very good book, philosophical at times, mysterious and romantic at others.

DECEMBER

Dead as a Doornail -Charlaine Harris: It's time for another Sookie Stackhouse novel. Oh, yeah!

Definetely Dead- Charlaine Harris: The books are great and all, but this thing she does with the titles starts to bore me to hell!



BOOKS READ THIS YEAR: 31

Next stop on how EU loves me, Budapest! We went again for a week-long workshop to Budapest in May. The university was exhausting at the time, so I enjoy some free time a lot. The workshops were more advanced this time and the wheather was beautiful (the city too). Plus, we stayed at the center of the city, so we wander a lot. I didn't get as much good shots as in Fara Sabina, but here are the good-ones:

We could only see Rome on one afternoon, and it wasn't enough of course, but here are what I can get out of it.

European Union really loves me! So it said, "hey you look depressed, wanna travel a little bit? Of course, I'm paying". So an Italian documentary director decided to form a project with my university and we'll participate in three workshops in Europe.

And the first-one was on Italy. They made all the arrangements and sent us the address where we would stay. It is a little town outside of Rome, a very historical-one. So we said, "cool". But the address they gave was of an old monastery, so we though "Ok, so there are a lot of B&B's in the area, we'll be staying in one near the monastery". Well, guess again, we stayed in the monastery!!!! (Did I mention that EU really really loves me?)

The town's name is Fara Sabina (or Fara in Sabina), it is small, very well protected, has a lot of history and has absolutely nothing in it, except for the monastery and an experimental theater. (It only had one grocery store and it was closed for 3 days, so all the participants ran out of cigarettes, awful!)

The monastery is Franciscan monastery and as the tradition goes, the nuns don't speak, don't eat any luxury food, don't use the heating system! They are still nuns living in the monastery, and their story is quiet interesting actually. When Italy adopted secularism, they closed all the monasteries. But the nuns of Fara Sabina being rich aristocrats' daugthers, they made a deal with the government, bought the monastery. The rule goes that they can only be less than 10 nuns in the monastery or they will count as a cult and be closed.

( More photos... )</div>

Hello all,
Don't worry I'm alive. Not in the greatest of moods (which seems my overall mood since I returned from Berlin), but alive. My last year was really the worst of all, but I think I'm ready to return to my livejournaling and penpalling from now on. I even opened to myself two blogger accounts, zsehiralti.blogspot.com for short films, my writings and photos, and zeynepsmailbox.blogspot.com for my postcard collection that I finally scanned.

What happened to me this year. Let's begin with the bad news. In September, we found out that my father had lung cancer. It was looking very bad at the time (the doctors though he had only 3-4 months left), but he is miraculously cured now. The worst thing was of loosing my granny. I'm still very upset about this, it took me months to figure out what really dead meant, it was just a concept for me before that and I really had a hard time coping with that. I'm sorry to say that my friends didn't help me with this stage either, maybe it was just my mood that let me think that, but I felt completely deserted. Well I don't want to talk so much about it.
Now good news. I went to Italy and to Budapest, I'll post seperate posts to talk about them (well ok, I'll copy-paste them from the blog). These were maybe one of the few good things that happen to me this year.

From October to January, I did an intership as international news editor in  a tv newschannel, it was very good, everybody was very sympathetic and humble. I really did write news, I didn't bring coffee or made photocopies, so it was a good experience for me.
I'm almost finishing my university, I just have to shoot my thesis project, which is another problem. I did find my concept, did my research (yeah I'm shooting a documentary again), agreed with the person I'll (hopefully) shoot the documentary about, but there is a little problem... The guy (an armenian dancer) is missing. I cannot reach him by phone or e-mail and the university will open soon, so I'll need to figure out something very soon. I don't want to give up on this guy because he is fantastic (other than being missing), and weirdly I still trust in him for some very silly reason I cannot figure out. But soon, it will be late to switch to another person... Hmmmm....

The last piece of news, I already wrote here about the project that I and the Italian director will do. After meeting with us and getting our suggestions, he decided that we sould do our own feature film (him as the producer), instead of doing his project. Which is great. The onyl problem now is funding, a turkish tv channel is very interesting with the project and he'll also try to have some funds from Eurimages and Media, we'll see what will happen out of it. I'm interesting about this, because I found a great character for him. He wanted us  to find a muslim activist or artist women (which I though was impossible by that time) and the person I found is exceptionnairy. She is a young journalist, and she (with two other women) went to 13 Islamic countries to shoot a documentary series about Muslim women. Just imagine three women wearing head-scarfs going to Islamic countries where women suppose to stay at home, and shooting documentaries. Impressive don't you think?

A last note, I know I didn't write to you for over a year, but if you're still interested in penpalling, send me a message and I'll send a letter to your way, asap.

Also visit my blogs for new writings/my short films and tons of photographs.

Cheers

Finally I have some wonderful news!!! Apparently there is a collaboration in my uni with an Italian documentary director and I will be in his team with my 2 other best friends and in addition to shoot the part of his feature documentary in Istanbul, we will be joining workshops in Europe! I will go to Italy to a little town just outside of Rome in the 22th this month (just 15 days away!). The second-one is in Budapest and the third-one will be in Bratislava. All workshops will be for 5 days and all of our expenses are paid by the production company he works with:D
This means that I will both have a great professional experience and a great time abroad, but it will also means that I will be extra busy this semester.
I just can't wait to be in Roma, drinking wine and checking out what the fuss is about this italian boys, hahaha.

I'm really hoping to read more this year, I think I got a good start, let's hope that I can keep this up.

September

-Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Women-Janet Staiger: A great book on the perversity of women's use in cinema

-The Representations of Women in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema-Deniz Derman: It's actually a thesis from Turkey, some parts of it was really really good. No wonder that they published it:P

October

-Animal Farm-George Orwell: A great book that I wanted to read for years. Thanx a bunch again amanda:)

-Smilla's Sense of Snow: Interesting pshcological/philosophical thriller (!), but it was a little bit hard to read.

November

-Tek Yol-The Only Road- Aziz Nesin: A great Turkish novel, hilarious, smart and leftist!

December

-The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera: I don't know why I waited to read this for so long. ABsolutely one of my favorites.


Total in 2008: only 17:(


THIS YEAR

January

-Lost Souls-Poppy Z. Brite: I finally found a cheap copy in e-bay and bought it, it was very good, but i still liked Drawing Blood better.

February

-Oncesi Ve Sonrasi(Before and After): Actually this is the second book that the wife of my mother wrote. Not bad, but not very good eaither to tell you the thruth, and it is not because I love my mom better:P

Books I read so far: 2

I've been once again very silent for some time, both in lj and with my mails. A lot has happened and nothing changed at the same time, if that makes sense somehow. I have been surrounded by the ugly angel of death and sickness and it seems now that my journey in Berlin was like a sweet preparation to what I have to face really soon.
My granny was sick as you may remember.  Here is what happened after I returned to Turkey.

I returned to Istanbul very sick after my trip to Auschwitz and I went to the seaside before I could get well. The holiday went good and just when I returned, I went to a small island with a couple of friends. Still, everything is good....

Then bam! when I returned to Istanbul, we found out that my father had cancer too... And my happy, lovely days are over.

In November, I started working at a newschannel as an intern, writing international news. Which is maybe the only thing that wasn't depressing in my life nowadays, eventhough it is very tiring. It will finish in a week too....

the real deal happened in 13 December, when instead of preparing for the holidays, we prepared my grannie's funeral. she died just when she started to gıo better and they started a new, experimental treatment. She died in an hour, without any indication before and we couldn't even reach the hospital before to see her for the last time.

Because the hospital was in another city ( the hospital of the university that my mom works) and  since it was midnight and we didn't have a car, we needed to spend a nightmarish night, waiting for the sun to rise so we can have a way to get back to Istanbul. Imagine being struck in the hospital that your granma just died, because you do not have a car!

I feel ever since strangely very lonely and I am, I guess a little bit distanced to my friends or I feel like they didn't care enough or support me enoughi which is an awful feeling and probably a very unfair-one.

So here are the reasons why I am depressed and why I didn't write anything to anyone. I will try to write the letters I own you as soon as possible.

XOXO

Dead Head by ~seraphina5042 on deviantART

In the last month I went for four short days to Poland; Krakow, Auschwitz and Warsaw. My journey started with a hot and long train ride from Berlin's biggest train station.
I got off the train in Krakow. Krakow had been founded in the 7th century and was the capital of Poland from 1038 to 1596. The city has many historical buildings of the middle ages, including a gigantic castle, various churches and basilicas of different catholic covens and Jewish buildings in the Kazimiers (the old Jewish quarter). The city still has its medieval presence and the buildings with strong characteristic traits still stand enjoying their royal magnificence.
( Read more... )

Well you may wonder what happened to me in this past month. No, I'm not eaten by some German or lost my mind partying. I just did a lot of work for the university, spent some time at the goodbye parties (which involved partying), discovered that I will miss people from Berlin, and most importantly I went to Poland! In 4 days, I visited Krakow, Auschwitz and Warsaw, turned back to Berlin and the next day flied back to my home. I was very sick because of the heavy rain in Auschwitz and before I could recover from the illness, I went to Bodrum (the most beautiful vacation place in Turkey) with my mom for a week. Now I'm back in Istanbul, but I will go this week-end to a beautiful island with my best friend and his boy friend. Yes I travel a lot this summer!
The only bad news is that although my granma's illness is now completely cured, she now has a very strong infection and stays with us, and we needed to go 2 times to emergency room.

I didn't also post the books I read, so here they are:

MAY (CON'D)
- The Innocent: Awful spy book that I needed to read for one of my classes. Even though the story is the real story of a tunnel that the Americans formed to steal info from the Russians, it was a painful experience to read it.

JUNE

-Der Kleine Vampir und die Klassenfahrt: Yes, I read it in german, and I hate german but the little vampire is still one of my favorites:P

JULY
-Vanity Fair- William Makepeace Thackeray: The film was so much better than the book, I have no idea why.

AUGUST
- Ra Material- Don Etkins: It's a book about.... well about the aliens who communicates with us to guide us to the order of one, which is the religion of love and light. And guess what, it's not fiction!!!
-Sense and Sensibility/ Jane Austen: What can I say. It's Jane Austen!!! Brilliant as always.

BOOKS READ: 11

Here it goes:

January:
-Les Misérables Volume Two-  (Finally I could finish it:)
February
-Love in Vein /Vampire Erotica Edited by Poppy Z. Brite- My birthday present. It was great after les misérables-hehe)
March:
-Emma-Jane Austen (She is really genious, so much better then the film.)
-Great Expectations- Charles Dickens (Not as great as I hoped.)

April:
-Orlando-Virginia Woolf (What can I say, extreme case of equality between women and men!)

May:
-Goodbye to Berlin-Christopher Isherwood (It's the book of the musical "Cabaret". I'm currently reading it for a class)


Books I read so far: 6