Hi Everyone,
And welcome to the Cultural Reads Newsletter with book, music, and movie recommendations from around the world.
After a two-week holiday break to Portugal and a music festival, I’m back in Rotterdam.
In this week’s newsletter: Turkish souvenirs, Bollywood movies, BOOM festival, Guinean music, Portuguese literature.
After sharing my favorite items in Why Your Best Souvenirs Could Be Better, I asked friends from other countries.
What are the items they can’t live without?
And what are great souvenirs from their country?
Today, Ciler Demiralp from Istanbul will share her favorite items.
Check out the best 10 items & Turkey souvenirs.
Have you already discovered India’s huge movie industry?
I remember watching my 1st Bollywood movie, 3 Idiots, during my AIESEC experience in the Philippines.
Our friends took us out for Indian food and organized a movie night.
Ever since I’ve been hooked.
Give it a try and discover fantastic films from these top 10 Bollywood movies!
This summer, I visited BOOM, a Burning-Man-like festival in Portugal.
The festival offers an exciting mix of psychedelic trance music and workshops around yoga, breathwork, and meditation.
What was most memorable was how strongly connected I felt to others. After an intense sound bath experience, I spent 20 minutes hugging and consoling a girl I’d never met before, and it wasn’t awkward or weird at all. It was just lovely to connect without having expectations.
I also loved the world music stage and Apukuna, a DJ with sets for breathwork and meditation.
An exciting musician I recently discovered is Falle Nioke from Guinea.
His unique style blends traditional West African music with electronic and experimental sounds.
Falle Nioke combines captivating vocals with an ability to fuse traditional rhythms with contemporary production techniques.
If you need to get hyped for something, play his song Leywole.
Blindness is a gripping drama based on the novel by José Saramago, a Nobel Prize-winning author.
It explores the harrowing consequences of a city struck by a sudden epidemic of white blindness, plunging its inhabitants into darkness and chaos.
The book has also been made into a movie.
To learn more about Saramago and his fantastic works, check out the highly-rated documentary José and Pilar.
