The Book Thief

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

Great book. It is fascinating because whenever we hear about World War II, the story would usually revolve around how evil the Germans were (mainly because of Hitler) and how the bad the Jews had it. This book though, was the first book that I read about the life of the Germans during the war, and how, not all of them agreed to the war and that there were those who showed sympathy for the Jews.

The book centers around the life of the book thief - Liesel Meminger, a young German girl, who lived with foster parents the Hubbermans. It tells of her life during the war, and how she made her life wonderful because of her thirst for reading.

I find that the book was quite confusing for me at first, and it started a little slow. However, it eventually picked up along the way and I found myself not wanting to put it down. I didn't shed some tears unlike when I was reading Silver Linings Playbook, but it touched my heart a whole lot, especially with the character of Hans Hubberman. He wasn't the great dashing war hero that one would usually see in movies or other books, but he was simply, a kind man.

I read this book knowing that it will be created as a movie soon, but all the while I thought it would be for next year. But imagine my surprise when after doing a simple google, I found out that it's actually going to be showing this November and has a trailer already!

And what can I say, oh wow. Something definitely to look forward to. I don't think it'll be a commercial success, but I think for those who like the drama, and perhaps for those who loved the book, may just enjoy this touching story showing in the big screen.

Watch the trailer here.

Can't wait!

Yahoo Changes

We all remember back in the days when Yahoo! was the tech giant and most people that I know had yahoo mail. But as Google slowly made it's way to the consumers, and yahoo slowly deteriorated, a lot started moving to Google's services, in particular - gmail. I was one of those. I signed up for a new personal gmail account and although I still have my decades old yahoo mail account, I decided that I will use gmail as my primary account, and ymail as my, secondary email account.

Over the years, while Google, Facebook, Apple thrived, Yahoo declined. According to this source, its share prices went as high as 118.75 back in 2000. And went down to as low as 8.11. Now it's hovering around 30, which is already a big improvement from two years ago before Marissa Mayer stepped in.

I've been fascinated by Yahoo recently because we've been seeing a lot of changes. Just earlier I saw the gui for their ymail changed again! And if you haven't noticed, they did change their logo recently as well. Another recent headliner was when CEO Marissa Mayer banned work from home for its employees! So that got me wondering who is this CEO?

And here I found a wonderful article about: Marissa Mayer

I have to admit, she's now one of my most admired women.