Favorite quotes: Only lovers left alive

The Mortal Instruments - Cassandra Clare

I just finished reading the fifth book of 'The Mortal Instruments' and here are a few thoughts about them.

'The Mortal Instruments' is a fantasy book-series set in 'our world', but with a few twists. There are so called 'Shadowhunters', humans who have been infused the blood of an angel. They can boost themselves and their abilities by drawing (to be more accurate: burning) angelic runes on their skin. Their purpose is to protect humanity from demons, interdimensional beings which shove into our dimension to 'harvest' human energy and destroy humanity.

There are also the so called 'downworlders': Werewolves and Vampires (humans infected with a demonic disease), Warlocks (immortal offsprings of demons and humans) and Faeries (which have angelic and demonic blood in them). All of them have to answer to the shadowhunters and to follow rules called 'The Accords', protecting the unknowing humans (called 'mundanes'). The 'Mundanes' don't know anything about this shadowworld, Shadowhunters and downworlders alike use magic called 'glamour' to make themselves invisible or normal looking for mundanes.

The story follows 16 year old Clary Fray, a 'normal' teenager whose live suddenly falls apart when she meets three shadowhunters noone but her can see, in a club. Things escalate quickly, her mother disappeares, demons try to kill her and she has to face the bitter truth that apparently her mother lied to her about almost everything in her life...

I read the five books pretty fast, and i like them pretty much. They are easy to read and the story is interesting enough to read on and on. And interesting enough for me to be a little bit pissed that the 6th is published not until may. I also think about buying the 'prequel' series, set up in the same universe, but in victorian times.

But they are not 'great literature' and I don't think it's anything you HAVE to read. It's definitely a young adult novel, the story circles around typical topics for an young adult novel: Who am I? What defines who I am? Who do I want to be? Does he love me? etc.pp.
That's not really bad, but the book doesn't raise big questions like other young adult novels e.g. 'The Hunger Games' or 'The Maze Runner', so it's a quite nice read, but not much more. If you like young adult novels about growing up, discovering and defining who you are and where you belong, finding and losing
love, this is for you. If you demand more message and deeper story from a story, read 'The Hunger Games' or 'The Maze Runner' ;)

Noteworthy things:

• The fae are pretty cool
• There is a homosexual interracial lovestory between a shadowhunter and a warlock and a number of other homosexual relationships.
• The characters are not overly stereotypical, everyone has a 'twist' in their background.
• There is very little 'black' and 'white' in the storyline, although the discription of the world may lead to think there is. 
• The angelic runes are an interesting idea
• I like the idea of demons being parasites from another dimension 

(Some thoughts about the film: as a book adaption, the film does a very very VERY bad job. The story is completly mutilated, whole parts of the plot are twisted and torn out of context and replaced by parts that don't make sense at all. The casting is not very good (besides Jaces, he looks just like he crawled out of the book) and they changed the end of the book completely! I was flabbergasted after reading the first book, I really don't know how they are thinking to turn this around in the second movie, or whatever they thought by doing something like this. But I'm not sure I want to see the second movie...)

Vlogbrothers - Ranting about Books

So true, all of them!

Rachel Rostad - "Names" (NPS 2013)

One of the most intense spoken word poems I've heard so long...

Today in gifs

SneakCast #15 - Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit

Da ich heute zu faul bin selber etwas zum Sneakfilm zu schreiben, gibts einfach den Sneak Cast von Cle, der fasst meine Meinung zu dem Film gut zusammen (ausser dass ich Keira Knightley irgendwie mit jedem Film weniger und weniger ab kann ;) )

Today in gifs

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Eye Piece

Wow, just wow O.O This is amazing!

New anti-gay proposal in Kansas

They can't be serious about this, can they?! This throws human rights in the US (or at least in Kansas) right back in the 1960 and before.
I'm really speechless, I can't even find words for how much this appalls me...

LetsRead - Valentinsspecial

'Let's Read Valentinstagsspecial - Die Kunst des Krieges' eines Freundes. Interessante Wahl zum Valentinstag, kann man sich aber sehr gut anhören :)

Fav gif of the day

Hi, I'm Olof and I like warm hugs!

The joy of crying over fictional characters...

If people ever look down upon you for crying for fictional characters, you should give them a gentle, pitying look and feel bad for them. If they’ve never cried for a fictional character, then they’ve never loved one (and what a joy that is). If they’ve never cried at a book, a movie, a piece of music, then they’ve missed one of the great pleasures life has to offer. Just because fiction does not contain things that are real doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain truth, and we find it through the alchemy of our tears.

Cassandra Clare

I love this quote, couldn't say it better... I cry a lot over fictional characters, somethimes I think too much. But it's a great feeling to be emotionally involved with something so deeply that it feels so real that you can't just hold onto you. And you're happy when they are happy and sad when they're sad, and you're devasteted when something horrible happens.

This wonderful moments when you can't read on, you have to close the book, close your eyes and just feel the emotions running through you, the joy or the pain or the grief (and sometimes all of it at once)...

Movie I cried the most about: I think it's 'Les Miserable' (2013). I started crying two seconds after the movie started and stopped approximately half an hour after the movie ended.

Book I cried the most about: 'The fault in our stars' by John Green. I don't think there has been or will ever be another book which made me cry so hard, but it's beautiful nontheless. And the upcoming movie has a good chance to become the movie I cried the most about too ;)

Beautiful and terrifying

Sentences which can be the most beautiful or the most terrifying things in the world: 

"I remember you."

Crazy dance!

New fav song of the week: Imagine Dragons - Demons

I have a new fav song which is running on repeat for about an hour now ;)

It's 'Demons' from 'Imagine Dragons', an US-Indie-Rockband. I have heard their name before but haven't heard anything of their music. I love it! And although the lyrics of this song are pretty sad, somehow listening to this song makes me happy and let's me dance like a crazy person in my room and the whole flat.

It's where my demons hide! *crazy dance*

Sneakpreview: "Saving Mr. Banks"

Sneakfilm der Woche: "Saving Mr. Banks" Ich liebe Disneyfilme. Ich liebe Mary Poppins. Und ich liebe Entstehungsgeschichten, Hintergründe zu kennen, diesen wundervollen 'oh das kenn ich doch, daher kommt das also!'-Effekt. Da konnte bei "Saving Mr. Banks", ein Film über die Hintergründe und die Entstehungsgeschichte des Filmes 'Mary Poppins' nach einer wahren Geschichte, nicht wirklich viel schiefgehen.

Die weibliche Hauptrolle ist herzerfrischend in Ihrer forschen und überehrlichen und rationalen Art, die Hintergrundgeschichte ist herzzerreissend und rührt zu Tränen, man kann viel lachen und viel weinen, ein rundum schöner Film.

Von mir gibt es diesmal 8/10 Birnen (ich denke OV wird eine 9/10 daraus werden, ich freue mich schon, Ihre vielen vielen spitzen Kommentare in bestem britisch englisch zu hören <3 )

Morgen wird auf jeden Fall 'Mary Poppins' angeschaut! <3

(Bechdeltest: 3/3, wobei ich mir beim letzten Punkt nicht so ganz sicher bin bzw. es Auslegungssache ist ob diese kurzen Gespräche zählen.)

Und hier noch der Videopodcast eines Freundes zum Film:



Sneakpreview: "Saving Mr. Banks". I love Disneymovies. I love Mary Poppins. And I love love love origin stories, this wonderfull moment when you recognize something and realize 'oh that's where that comes from, how this was created'. So "Saving Mr. Banks", a beautiful heartwarming and heartbreaking movie about the origins of the movie 'Mary Poppins' couldn't do anything wrong for me.
I laughed a lot, I cried a lot... the female lead character is so awesome in her ironic, overly logic and unemotional ways, it's just lovely.
The movie get's 8/10 pears for the german translated version. (I think the OV will get 9/10 pears, I can't wait to watch it again in OV)

And tomorrow I will watch 'Mary Poppins', that's for sure :)

I'm trying to make this my new slogan ;)

I can't sleep... Got a bad migraine this evening and felt very sick. Woke up at 02:30 am and couldn't get to sleep anymore.
Now I'm lying here in bed, still feeling pretty sick, and watching poetry slam on youtube.

Here a short list of the slams, I can recommend them all:

Phil Kaye - Begining, Middle & End

Lauren Zuniga - Personhood

Gayle Danley - Superheroes

Sulaiman Masomi - Auf der anderen Seite

Patrick Salmen - Euphorie, Euphorie

Adam Falkner - The whitest thing

Brendan Constantine - The last thing I want to do is hurt you

I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did. Sleep well, I'm trying too now.

Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham - HD (+Playlist)

Bill Nye (The Science Guy) debates Ken Ham (CEO of Answers in Genesis) about the question: 'Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era? '

It's very long, but it's really worth it.

Ken Ham starts sounding relatively reasonable, but around 50 Minutes in he starts quoting the bible as 'proof'...

I won't say much more, I think Bill Nye says it all.

Intro to Psychology - Crash Course Psychology #1

Finally! The new Crash Course Psychology started!

Come on, learn something new today!

Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter ...

This thursday I went to my first live poetry slam ever. Until this day I knew poetry slam just from lots and lots of youtube videos I watched, most of them from american poetry slams. So it was quiet interesting to see german poetry slam live.

The 'Wuppertaler Wortpiraten' do a monthly poetry slam with changing guests, there even is a livestream of all the shows online. I liked it very much but I still noticed a few differences to the american poetry slam. Maybe I'm wrong, I haven't seen this much from the german side, and my view about the american poetry slam may be biased because of my interests. Just my thoughts during the show.

Most of the german poetry slam I know is really funny. Don't get my wrong, I like funny stuff and I like a good laugh, but sometimes I don't really get the difference to comedy. When I mention this, some people look really offended, but they can't really tell me the difference, except in poetry slam it's okay to read your texts, in comedy it isn't.
The american slams I watch are often highly emotional, often also political, they are about love and hate, racism and feminism, about things that are wrong in our world but we are so used to that often we don't even realize them until someone says it out loud and there's a lot of poetry in them.
In germany such slams often are called pretentious and are not received so well.

Don't get me wrong, I like both ways and I know that it's normal that different countries develop different styles of things. I don't even say that one style is better than the other.

But the differences are so big that they just leapt out at me and I had to write my 2 cents about it.

The video above is from Sarah Kay, I love her spoken word poetry and her style, I hope you enjoyed it as much as  I did :)

New year, new blog... okay, I'm one month late, but let's not talk about it ;)

This is a new try for a blog to share my random thoughts with all the people that might be interested in them. All two of you. *waves at Anke*
Maybe my facebook friends will be lucky if I don't terrorize them with all my random stuff constantly, who knows. But don't be afraid, I will post enough shit there although.

My mothertongue isn't english, it's german. But I read and watch a lot of english stuff and sometimes it's hard for me to talk about english stuff in german and vice versa. Due to this some of my posts will be in english and some in german, deal with it. If there's someone reading here who doesn't speak german, just let me know and I can translate the german posts too.

So yeah, have fun reading and watching my random stuff.