A Harry Potter Halloween tale

Fans of Harry Potter rejoice! J K Rowling has released a Halloween treat, the story of the very mean Dolores Umbridge. You can read it in pottermore.com (registration is free) or by clicking on this link.

Happy Halloween!

Top 10 vampire books

Nosferatu, 1922

Now that Halloween is coming it's a good time to talk about the most popular monsters in popular culture. How many novels about vampires have you read? What about movies, or even TV series you have seen? Take a look at this top-ten list published in The Guardian: just two of the novels were published in the XXIst century, the rest are venerable XIXth century classics. Don't expect any good-looking teenagers!

Bonus.- Not into vampires? Read this terrifying Twitter tale.

"The Cut" von Fatih Akin

Mardin, 1915: Eines Nachts treibt die türkische Gendarmerie alle armenischen Männer zusammen. Auch der junge Schmied Nazaret Manoogian wird von seiner Familie getrennt. Nachdem es ihm gelingt, den Horror des Völkermordes zu überleben, erreicht ihn Jahre später die Nachricht, dass auch seine Zwillingstöchter am Leben sind. Besessen von dem Gedanken, sie wiederzufinden, folgt er ihren Spuren. Sie führen ihn von den Wüsten Mesopotamiens über Havanna bis in die kargen, einsamen Prärien North Dakotas. Auf seiner Odyssee begegnet er den unterschiedlichsten Menschen: engelsgleichen und gütigen Charakteren, aber auch dem Teufel in Menschengestalt.

Obwohl der Film die Welt vor 100 Jahren beschreibt, ist er brandaktuell, denn er erzählt von Krieg und Vertreibung. Aber auch von der Kraft der Liebe und der Hoffnung, die uns Unvorstellbares leisten lässt.

Kinostart: 16.10.2014 

Gone Girl

Gone Girl, the major Hollywood movie based on Gillian Flynn's 2012 novel, opens in Spain today. The film, directed by David Fincher (Seven, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has received mostly good reviews. The novel, which was #1 of the prestigious New York Times Bestsellers list for 8 weeks, is an excellent piece of entertainment, a real page-turner. Nick and Amy Dunne seem like the perfect couple, but then Amy disappears and there's a lot of incriminating evidence against Nick. Did he kill his wife?

Interestingly, the film release has sparked some controversy on whether Amy is a feminist or the story can provoke a misogynistic reaction. To learn more read this piece in The Guardian (spolier alert: the whole plot is outlined). It has a curious word that you will probably never use, 'mansplain', whose meaning is explained here. There's also a reference to Amy's 'Cool Girl' diatribe, which you can read here.

Gone Girl was in our recommended readings list last year and is available at our library.

Tag der deutschen Einheit

Der Weg zur deutschen Einheit

National Poetry Day

2nd October was National Poetry Day in Britain. The Guardian celebrated by publishing videos of readers reciting poems they know by heart. Follow this link to check them out.