Busy Life, Plans and Meeting Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I've been wanting to write this blog post for more than a week now. To sum everything up: I've been busy as hell.

As undoubtedly all of you know, school has started again and for me this means starting my second year of university. There is a lot of things about uni that I love: the people, the location (heart of Amsterdam), the discussions, the freedom (although less than I had expected) and knowing you have truly learned something at the end of each day.

And then of course there's the hard work, the inevitable boring class, speeches, presentations, essays, essays, essays, midterms, more essays, Shakespeare reading lists that you get two days before the semester starts and the three hours of travelling it takes me every day. 

There's a lot of other things going on as well which I'm going to blog about later. I've also had this idea literally five minutes ago, that I'm going to write a post every day, until the end of the year. It's going to be crazy and I might get a lot of one sentence blog posts but I feel like I need this structure, writing wise. And I hope that writing one small post a day will also help me keep up with my actual homework next to the busy schedule that is my life right now. (The only exceptions for this one post a day, is either a power shortage or when I have absolutely no access to the internet because I'm in the rainforest or something like that). 

Moving on, here is what I've been meaning to write about: 

On Saturday, September 1st Carlos Ruiz Zafón came to our bookstore for a signing. 

You don't get how amazing and strange this is. My home town only has two bookstores and one of them only has three bookcases (mostly magazines etc.). My hometown is an hour away by train and pretty small. And of all the places he could have gone (besides Amsterdam) he chose this place.

I have to be honest. I wasn't a big time fan. I hadn't read all his books (still haven't)  in fact I've had Shadow of The Wind lying on my bookcase, collecting dust for several years. I bought it (and later the sequel) because they were just begging me to be bought. I can't really explain it nor can I fathom why, then, I never read them.

Well sufficient to say I read both of them the week before Mr. Zafón  showed up at our bookstore, and I loved them! I loved the mystery, the supernatural, the incredible humour and the language but most of all the way he talks about book and writing. I mean come on--a cemetery of forgotten books! That's the whole reason I bought the book in the first place.

I am proud to say that I even managed to say something, managed to choke out that I loved his books, that it was nice meeting him besides the usual "hello" and "thank you". I always get nervous around authors the second it's my turn. I mean sweating, squeaky voice, shaking knees, trembling arms, exhilarated heart rate, the works. I didn't even feel that way when I met the lead singer of a band I really like (Destine—I even took a picture with him in which he looks really, really, REALLy creepy). But there you have it... anybody else ever feel this way? 

 

In the end I just love meeting authors, seeing what they look like and hearing them pronounce my name (they always ask how to pronounce "Noortje" when I have to write it down, or try to repeat it when I say it. Which is awesome--hearing favourite authors say your name!) and having them sign my books. 

This is all for today! I will try and have a good start with my posting-plan tomorrow! Now it's time for some more editing!

Keep Writing!

xx Noortje