2012 recap

So now that the year is ending, I figured it might be interesting for those of you who follow this blog to have a small recap of what has happened on the blog during the past year.

First of all, I only wrote 13 reviews of fashion books this year, which is not very impressive, but I do think I have actually read more fashion books during the year than that. I guess I just didn't think they were all interesting enough to blog about?
Also, I must say my interest in books has shifted more into business books and history books lately, so while I do still read fashion books, I do think I read less of them generally.

I also recall some technical issues with the blog during the year, so that could be partly to blame too.

The 5 most popular reviews of the year were:
Trinny and Susannah's Who do you want to be today?
Amy de la Haye's A to Z of Style
Carrie McCarthy's and Danielle La Porte's Style Statement
Kira Jolliffe's and Bay Garnett's Cheap Date Guide to Style
and
Natalie P McNeal's Frugalista Files.

And the main keyword that brought people to this blog was "fashion book blog", which makes a lot of sense, I guess.

Happy New Year to all my readers, looking forward to 2013 and many new and amazing books (and hopefully more blog updates than 13!) already!

(pic from The Cube)

Review: Sleeping with the Enemy - Coco Chanel's Secret War by Hal Vaughan

I must admit I haven't read many Coco Chanel biographies, which is kind of weird, I guess, but I think it's because I've read her life story in so many magazines and also seen at least 2 movies about her life, so I never really thought a book about the same subject would interest me a lot. But Hal Vaughan's Sleeping with the Enemy - Coco Chanel's Secret War tells a different story than the one we are used to hearing about Chanel, namely that she was in fact a Nazi spy and had a very long and passionate affair with another Nazi spy, living in France for parts of the Second World War. So this sounded like something a bit different, and I decided to read Vaughan's book for that reason.

I must say the book changed the way I think of Chanel. I never thought her to be a saint, I did know she grew up in an orphanage and stuff, after all, and things like that are bound to affect you in one way or another, I think, but if even half of the stories in the book are true, she was a much, much worse person than I ever could have imagined!

This being the first Chanel biography I've ever read, I am not sure if this part of her life is covered in other similar books as well, but Vaughan does dig quite into the subject of Chanel's war time activities. He does write about other aspects of her life too, so the book is not all about the war by any means.

So I can definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good Chanel biography! I must warn hardcore Chanel fans that the book paints quite a negative picture of Chanel, though, so if those are things you'd prefer not to hear, this book might not be to your liking (especially if you've spent tons of money on Chanel items in the past, I was actually really happy that I haven't after I read this!).