7 Books That Taught Me So Much

Any topic that comes to your mind, believe me, there might be a book just about that! Growing up I was all about teenage novels. My dad didn't like giving me money all the time to read about "silly romance" and stuff that girls like to read at the age. He wante dme to read History and all that boring stuff that we didn't like at the time. But he wouldn't complain much, if I was reading something, I guess deep inside, he was happy. 

The truth is that books weren't just fun stories that I got to read and imagine. Books were real. There were characters that I related to, characters that seemed to be an exact copy of me, of my personality. They knew me so well. I'm sure a lot of girls can relate to a few book characters in some level. I was Mia, I was Blair, I was Carrie....You name it! 

Since they were such a huge part of my life I thought I would put together a list of things I learned from some of my favorite books and that inspired me to keep moving forward and follow my dreams.

Meg Cabot, J. K Rowling, Lauren Weisberger, Cecily Von Ziegesar, Shophie Kinsella.... Thank you! For writing books that are fun to read and help empower girls like me :)

The Princess Diairies series

People expect you to change in order to be what they expect you to be. You don't have to change who you are to be successful at something that you are not fmailiar with. Just do the best you can, ad your own twist and have fun with it!

The Devil Wears Prada

Life is though. But it can get worse. Sometimes even when you have a goal in mind and you work for it and you give it all,  life surprises you...what we thought was the only  option for us, ends up not being the only one :)

The Gossip Girl Series

The world can be tough, it doesn't matter how bad you fall, you have to rise back up gracefully. Even if it hurts. Fake it until you make it. 

Queen of Babble
Be open to new things. You never know where life is gonna take you, so live with your arms and eyes opened so you can welcome the amazing opportunities that you had no idea existed before!

Shopaholic:
You can turn a negative thing into a positive thing. Get creative, be creative and work hard. Find your true passion and don't take everything too serious.
The books also taught me how to survive humiliation with grace and have the last laugh. When you think things are bad, they can get worse. But try to find the positive in it and rise above all the negativity. 

Sex And The City

Life is short! The time to live is now. Make mistakes, It's okay. You need to make tonz of mistakes in order to grow up and gain experience! Have fun and value good friendships. 

Harry Potter
You have a choice, you can go  right or you can left. You can go wrong or you can go right. All you have to do is surround yourself with good people and listen to your heart. 

When it all began!

I remember when I was a little girl and stead of going out to buy toys, my mom used to invite a book seller to come over so she could check and select all the new books she wanted for us. Some were a little boring, including encyclopedias and poetry books -with no pictures in them ( those were a deal breaker for me, I was too young!) and some were so cool that I would flip through every single day, would read and make copies of the fun and colorful images they had. I had toys, but I'd rather read than play! Without a doubt, one of the perks of growing up for me was that I got to choose the books I wanted and I truly became a shopaholic (for books) for someone my age.  I had a great childhood with my Disney and princesses tales! I lived in a perfect world with my books :)

But things started to change when I entered middle school. Books were mandatory for our Portuguese class and they had more words and less pictures, I guess that's when you realized I was growing up...besides that, the stories didn't appeal to me at all. I hated the ones assigned to us and reading became a boring part of my day and no longer a hobby. I completely lost interest in books. They used to be my friends and now I was kind of alone.

I wasn't the girl who fitted well in in school, always felt like I was one generation behind everyone else and was always comparing myself to the other girls, I wanted to talk to them but felt like I had nothing to talk about. And that did made me feel lonely but at the same time I was cool with that and I grew up to be a very independent person. But then one day I saw THE book.

At age 13 I got my first book from the "Princess Diaries" series. All the girls in school had it and were always talking about it.  The passion for the books was the one thing that we all seemed to have in common... the books somehow brought us together. For them it was more about the romance (because that's what teenage girls do) and the idea of having access to a teenage diary filled with love and secrets... To me, 13 years later, what I remember of the story was the same thing that first caught my attention when I read it back then: the city. More specially  New York City. The city that I had seen in movies and seemed so distant for me to go was the city where the story of Mia and her friends took place. I just enjoyed reading them. New York felt like a place I would love to live and write my own story. A place where music, TV and everything I liked was within reach. Where any girl could experience her own version of a fairy tale.

Apart from relating my own story to the main character's story, I remember I would read the books and picture myself living here, having my own version of Lilly and her awesome brother (and Mia's love interest) as friends, hanging out on Park Avenue and hitting the most exclusive balls and events, because that's what teenage princesses do in the New York, right? Oh boy, those books were like my bible for years! I read them countless times and had in mind that one day, no matter how, I would experience that. Not the princess part (although I guess I wouldn't opose to it!), but the life in New York and being able to relate myself to Mia, an girl far from perfect who was somehow comfortable in her own skin, fighting for what she believed...and living in NY!Those books motivated me for years. 

Life has a funny way of doing things. Somehow my oh-so-perfect life in Brazil turned upside down and with determination and a goal in mind I made it to NY! 

I blame movies and the books for making me fall in love with this place and every now and then I go to the bookstore (here in New York) to find a new novel  to read that takes place exactly here. They just inspire me so much! I confess that I remember wishing that  I would live here and who knows would find myself a real Michael... and he would be as awesome as the one in the books.  I'm still looking for him but somehow my life already feels like an awesome fairy tale. Awesome and in New York City. With real pictures that I get to take myself!

The next chapter I will discuss more how I ended up in NY and what other books were my inspiration to get here and pursue my career in...?