Special Days

Here's a bit of loveliness to brighten up your Thursday morning - take a look at the gorgeous pictures on the Shoot Lifestyle Photography blog.

The Great Gatsby

I've long been a fan of Baz Luhrmann's work and after repeated watchings of the trailers for his adaptation of classic American novel The Great Gatsby, I was expecting a film with the director's trademark visual flamboyance. Suffice to say, I was far from disappointed on this front. Gatsby is, in a word, gorgeous.

Eleanor & Park

The Optimist doesn't do reviews - only recommendations. You won't find anything on this blog that hasn't been pre-loved by me, so here's my first 'must-read': Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.

Optimism

I didn't even have to Google that.

It's one of a few quotes that I know off-by-heart. I told my friend mid-English lesson as we studied Romeo and Juliet for our GCSEs that I would remember it forever. I'm not sure what it was about that passage that appealed so much to my fifteen-year-old self - clearly Romeo had been a lot less spotty than the lads I went to school with.