FEAST OR FAMINE

  In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist (2013) is set in the Netherlands capital city, Amsterdam, from 2002-2012.   The 35-year-old author intended to visit Amsterdam for a semester to study urban planning. But he decides to stay longer because he loves it so much – and his wife Amy Joy joins him. To explore the city together, they get on their bikes.   From the 1890s, Amsterdam began its biking tradition. This is a delight to the author, a self-confessed cyclist-watcher. In between sight-seeing and cyclist-seeing, the author provides readers with insights into the rise and rise of cycling in Amsterdam. He also has advice for cycling safely and how to prevent your bike from being stolen, how to prevent it from falling into the canal, and how not to bang into a pole in the middle of the bike path.   There are many comparisons between cycling in America, the author’s home country, and cycling in the Netherlands. And he did his own research on cyclin...

    Paris turned on its festive Christmas lights on Sunday 22 November 2020. But Paris is still in lockdown due to the Coronovis pandemic (Covid-19).    Lockdown is expected to end on 1 December. President Emmanuel Macron will deliver a speech tomorrow, Tuesday 24 November, to announce whether lockdown will or won’t end, and any further restrictions into December and January.   The festive lights adorn more than 400 trees along the Avenue des Champs- Elysées.   Unfortunately, although I am in Paris, I won’t be able to see the lights until lockdown is lifted because residents are only permitted to walk within one kilometre of their residence. People in Paris must also carry a paper (“la attestation”) stating the reason for being outside – medical, grocery shopping, exercise, going to school or work. Looking at Christmas lights is not on the list! And I live outside the one kilometre zone of the  Avenue des Champs- Elysées. Maybe I can see them in Decemb...

    The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (2017) is set in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in the 1940s.   This is the life of two sisters: ambitious and brilliant-minded Euridice Gusmao and the sprightly free-spirited Guida Gusmao. Euridice is married to Antenor Campelo and Guida is married to Marcos Godoy de Moraes.   Her husband laughs when Euridice says she wants to have her recipes published, so she continues to cook for her family - her daughter Cecilia and her son Afonso. But she needs a new project. Maybe dressmaking. Soon she has a dress for every day of the week. She thinks she could make dresses for her friends, but her husband got very angry about that.   Guida is a doctor’s wife living a frugal life near Botafogo far away from her sister. When her husband abandons her, she returns to her family home with her sick son Francisco (Chico), back to the comfort of Euridice. The two rebellious sisters are back together again.   The only one who seems to unde...

MARTINA NICOLLS Website Martinasblogs Publications Facebook Paris Website Animal Website SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES    MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international aid and development consultant, and the  author   of:  The Paris Residences of James Joyce   (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

    Love is a Rebellious Bird (2019) is set in America and spans sixty years. The title comes from Georges Bizet’s  Carmen .   The narrator is Judith Sherman, in her seventies, who ponders why she loves Elliot Pine. She writes her thoughts to him, confronting the good and the bad.    Written in sections, Judith looks at various aspects of loving Elliot: Beauty, Consolation, Magic, Insanity, Renunciation, Deceit, Serendipity, Sensory Fulfillment, Being Seen, Moving, Need, and Beauty Undiminished.   Judith begins her memories with Elliot’s beauty, and her initial attraction to him, sixty years ago, when they were ten-year-olds in the 5 th  grade at school in Chicago. ‘For the rest of our lives, our relationship was a cocktail mix of rivalry and loyalty – shaken with a strong dose of passion and resentment.’   Judith writes about Elliot’s brother Phillip, three years older, and his brother Jeffrey who was six years older – and comparing herself...

  World Television Day is celebrated annually on 21 November. It commemorates the United Nation’s first World Television Forum on this day in 1996. The television was recognized as a symbol of communication, education, and information.   In 1927, Philo Taylor Farnsworth was 21 years old when he invented the world’s first electronic television. His idea was of a system that could capture moving pictures, change them into a code, and them move those images with radio waves to different devices.    Phil Farnsworth (1906-1971) was born in Utah in the United States of America. His greatest moment was in 1969 when he watched the moon landing on his own television in his own home. NASA’s Apollo 11 landed on the moon on 20 July 1969 when Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, and Michael Collins remained in the shuttle. It was televised in real time to millions of viewers all over the world.    In July 2020, IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, ...