Beyond the Books #11

Hi guys! As you can see, it’s the end of another which means it’s time for my monthly feature Beyond the Books where I talk about all the random things I’ve been watching or loving during that month. In May I didn’t do a lot. It was a long month but as always I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff and I also procrastinated a lot. I still watched a few things that I ended up loving (and not loving) during the month so I’ll have a few things to talk about. Let’s see what I’ve been watching and listening to.

Girlboss

I actually didn’t watch that many TV shows this month. I watched a lot of TV (and a lot of Ink Master) but the only show I actually watched was Girlboss. I already started this in April and as I told you last month I read the book before. I liked the show a lot even if I still don’t like Sophia at all. However, I really hope it gets a second season because there are some people in there I love (can Annie get a spin-off please?).

Dirty Dancing

Just like with TV, in May I didn’t watch that many movies and the ones I watched were… quite similar. In the beginning of the month my mom called me while I was going to a dinner with some co-workers and told me Dirty Dancing was on. Here’s the thing, I love Dirty Dancing and it has been one of my favorite movies for a long time. Obviously I couldn’t watch it since I was out but I ended up watching a couple of days later when the channel was airing the rerun. I loved it as much as the first time I ever watched that movie. I just love everything about it, especially the soundtrack. Also, Patrick Swayze, you were the best Johnny Castle that could ever exist (him and every character in that movie because…)

Dirty Dancing (2017)

I also ended up watching the Dirty Dancing remake that was released last week. Look, I had really low expectations for this one. Everything they had release up to the airing date looked terrible. I was extremely disappointed when I listen to the soundtrack (I still can’t understand how Callum Scott, who is great, was able to ruin She’s Like the Wind and I’m still sad about that) but nothing can compare to the movie itself because it was so bad. First of all, who the hell thought Abigail Breslin was a good Baby?? It wasn’t a good idea. She looked awkward and made everything else awkward. I’m also not very keen of ne Johnny but I’m trying to do what Kat told me to and try to forget about Patrick Swayze for a bit. The movie was so weird and cringeworthy. Seeing Baby and Johnny rehearsing was one of the worst things ever… I cringed a lot. Want to know what was worse than all of that?? THAT STUPID DAMN ENDING!!! I’m not happy about that at all. But now that I talked about how someone thought it was a good idea to ruin one of my favorite movies I’ll just try to erase all of that from my head (but first, kudos to Nicole Scherzinger, Sarah Hyland and J. Quinton Johnson because I absolutely adored Penny, Lisa and Marco).

Music was a big part of my life in the month of May. First of all, The Lumineers released The Ballad of Cleopatra in the end of April which means I’ve been obsessed with it for over a month which is not a surprise because The Lumineers are amazing and The Ballad of Cleopatra is a masterpiece. Basically The Ballad of Cleopatra is a short-film that shows the life of Cleopatra with The Lumineers songs in the background. I just love how they have been putting this together for so long since this consist on their music videos for a few of their songs from the Cleopatra album (which btw, also a masterpiece).

Another great thing that happened in May is that Imagine Dragons kept releasing new songs from their new album, Evolve. I’m a HUGE Imagine Dragons fan and I’m obsessed with their new songs… especially Whatever It Takes. I’ve been listening to it nonstop since it was released in the beginning of May. Can I get Evolve now please.

May also means it was time for the Eurovision Song Contest. I’ll talk more about it later on but Eurovision always makes me happy and I always get new favorite that I end up listening for a long time… I’m not joking… Måns Zelmerlöw won in 2015 and I’m still obsessed with him two years later. You can ask anyone who knows me, they know how much I love him.

As you can see, it was a great month in terms of music for me. I also listened to a lot of Coldplay for some reason and to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack (for obvious reason) But anyway, here’s a playlist with everything I’ve been listening to during the month of May.

Eurovision Song Contest

As I said before, May was the month of the Eurovision Song Contest. If you’re european you know very well what I’m talking about. If you’re not, well you most likely saw it around in social media but basically it’s just like the Olympics but with music and, most of the times, crazy people. I’m not joking… Eurovision had a singing turkey one year. Anyway, Eurovisionis a big thing for me. I’ve watched it since I was a little girl and it kind of became a tradition at my house. We always watch Eurovision no matter what (at least the final). Being from Portugal we never have faith we can win. We’ve been participating for 53 years. Our best position until now was 6th place. In the past 10 years we either stayed in the semi-final or didn’t participate. So here’s my surprised when I found out the portuguese entry was one of the favorites this year especially because I didn’t like it at first. I think this is one of those songs that have to grow on you but it also didn’t help that I didn’t like Salvador when he was a contestant in the portuguese Pop Idol 8 years ago. But anyway, the song grew on me and I got even more excited about Eurovision. However, being a pessimist as I sometimes can be I never believed we could win but we did… WE WON THE 2017 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST and it was beautiful. Our performance was beautiful, we were one of the few countries who actually sang in their native language and WE WON which means next year the contest will be held in Portugal (and it means that if it’s held in Lisbon I’ll try to be there).

Can we also talk how adorable the winning performance Salvador did with his sister, Luísa (who composed the song), was?? This should have been the official entry.

However, winning was not the only reason why I loved the contest so much this year. I have to tell you that there were some great songs out there (Moldova, your song is still my jam). The only thing that could have been better was if Måns and Petra were able to host the contest again. That would have been awesome and maybe we ould had something like this:

---

Here’s what I’ve been doing Beyond the Books during the month of MAy. I’ll be back next month to see with I ended up doing in June. If you like any of the things that I’ve talked about don’t forget to comment too so we can fangirl about it :D. And if you have any recommendation don’t forget to tell me in the comments.