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Isabel Allende


muggle not

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Have any of you read Isabel Allende's books. I enjoyed House Of Spirits, Daughter Of Fortune, and Portrait In Sepia. All good books which you can get a good feel for on Amazon.

 

I was fortunate enough to attend "An Evening With Isabel Allende" in 2002 at the University Of Virginia. Wow, what an interesting person and the stories she told were great. She discussed many of her books and some of her life which is a story in itself.

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SOunds like she's a very intersting person. I might have to pick up House of Spirits - I think that's the one I've heard of most often.

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  • 2 months later...

My sister gave me Daughter of Fortune for my birthday last year...I haven't gotten around to reading it yet b/c I want to be able to appreciate it. It's much heavier than most of what I read....yeah, I read fluff! LOL!! With my work, I need "brain candy" whenever I can get it. :)

 

But it sounds like a really good book, so maybe it will be my book to curl up with on a cold winter weekend.

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I was fortunate enough to attend "An Evening With Isabel Allende" in 2002 at the University Of Virginia. Wow, what an interesting person and the stories she told were great. She discussed many of her books and some of her life which is a story in itself.

 

One of Isabel's quotes from her discussion:

 

Allende: People. I want people to love each other, to like each other, to know each other, to look at each other in the face and see the humanity in each other. That is why I write about different races, about people from different backgrounds, about immigrants, and people who are confronted with pain and loss. And then, in that moment of great loss, these people all of the sudden see the face of the enemy--and there is no enemy, it is just another person who is in pain as well. I find that fascinating because that has been my life experience. I write about strong women because I don

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I have two of her books. Zorro and Daughters of Fortune, and stalled on both. I bought DoF first, and read maybe a quarter of it before giving up. I thought Zorro would be more to my taste, haveing grown up on the old TV series and the movies, but no dice.

It is possible that it was my mood at the time or whatever, barometric pressure might have been off....but I will try again.

But not right this minute. :)

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I've only read a couple of her books. I picked up ... The Pygmy Forest? Something like that. It's supposed to be YA, but I haven't read it yet. I have really enjoyed what I've read by her, though. Eva Luna, House of Spirits, Daughter of Fortune. And I'd love to read Zorro, too.

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  • 9 months later...

Zorro was pretty awesome.

 

I was amazed to find that the author was commissioned to write this book - is this a common thing?

 

The book is a good read, sort of a "how Zorro became Zorro" with plenty of history and political and world description of the time. The cover for my book was beautiful and was one of the reasons I bought it. I see other titles listed in this thread, perhaps I'll have to go a-hunting.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 11 months later...

I love Isabel Allende..she is one of my favourite authors.

 

I've read quite a few of her books including (if I can remember!)

 

House of Spirits

Of Love and Shadows

Eva Luna

Protrait in Sepia

Daughter of Fortune

City of Beasts

Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Forest of the Pygmies

And I started reading Ines of my Soul (Iwas really excited to pick up a hardback copy of this in Waterstones with

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  • 1 year later...

Zorro was pretty great but I have to say the translation was really poor (simple typos and writing a sentence twice in a row etc and all the small things you can imagine) and I got really frustrated with it.

 

I've bought House of Spirits, I once started watching the movie and it was really engrossing. I'm thinking this book will be a really epic story.

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I read Eva Luna about ten years ago for school and though I'm vague on the details, I remember being utterly enchanted by Allende's writing, so she's definitely an author I'm planning to get to know better. I'd really like to see what she did with Zorro, seeing as I grew up with the classic television series.

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I didn't grow up with Zorro, I don't know if he interests me, but I'll try Eva Luna (isn't it the name of Within Temptation's singer's daughter?) maybe in Spanish, if I find it. Otherwise, in French. (Finding a Spanish book in English? I try to make my practise of English perfect but this would be strange :D).

 

According to the interview, she has fallen in love with Zorro's epoch, so yes, it seems to be a good book if she knows everything about where he lived!

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  • 1 month later...
I had an extract of an interview of her about Zorro in Spanish (I got a 18/20, so proud :D). How is this book? Now I want to read it!

 

And, of course, if it's not her best... which is?

Zorro was not her best book but it was a very good book and I enjoyed it tremendously. I would recommend it without reservation.

 

I just finished Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel and, once again, it was an enjoyable read. It is amazing the knowledge of history that she has and her description of the events, truly very good reading.

 

I have recently started "Paula" but am not far enough into the book to make any recommendations.

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I've read Paula, which I found was a very touching tale of a mother's love and letting go, and also House of Spirits, which was an interesting read. I find that her style of describing historical events is very "man in the street"

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I though the following was interesting, it is from her book "Paula" (btw, all of Isabel's books have been started on a date of January 8). :

 

 

Today is January 8, 1992. On a day like today, eleven years ago in Caracas, I began a letter to my grandfather, who was dying, leaving a hard-fought century behind him. His strong body had nor failed, but long ago he made his preparations to follow Meme, who was beckoning to him from the other side.

 

I could not return to Chile, and he so detested the telephone that it didn't seem right to call, but I wanted to tell him not to worry, that nothing would be lost of the treasury of anecodotes he had told me through the years of our comradeship, I had forgotten nothing.

 

Soon he died, but the story I had begun to tell had emeshed me, and I couldn't stop. Other voices were speaking through me, I was writing in a trance, with the sensation of unwinding a ball of yarn, driven by the same urgency I feel as I write now.

 

At the end of a year the pages had grown to five hundred, filling a canvas bag, and I realized that this was no longer a letter. Timidly, I announced to my family that I had written a book..............

 

Thus was born and baptized my first novel, The House of Spirits, and I was initiated into the eradicable vice of telling stories.

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