In the Library with Rebecca Armstrong — CHANEL Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon

I've always been interested in reading because ever since I was a kid, everywhere I would go, I would always have a book. No matter on the plane, the bus, the car, it would always be reading because I feel like you can learn so much about everything through just books. In school, I would go to the library and that would be somewhat my favorite time of the day. When it's library time, I'd go borrow like seven books and then I would return it and I would get I'm a fast reader. I like to go through many, many, many books. Sometimes I don't grasp all the information because it's fast reading, but if I find a book that I really love, that really just stays in my heart and I like highlight the words I like or like bookmark the page. You know, like when you were kids, you'd have those bookmarks with like you could like color in, make it like personalized. A book that left a big impression on me, The Strength in Our It talks about healing from your past. It happens to everyone. It's the normality of life. Whether the scar is like in your heart, it's mental or physical. You should look at that as like a growing experience and actually you should learn from that and like, I don't want to use the word move on, but move on because life has so much to offer. And there's actually, if I can, a quote I want to like share here. It's you guard yourself from sadness, not realizing that you have closed yourself off to all of the happiness the world is trying to give to you. That is so true though, because when you focus on just being sad all around you, you forget about that. The people who are out there loving you and you don't see that. So I would say heal. Healing is the best thing to do. The courage to be disliked. I think I can speak for everyone and I think everyone will say the same that no one likes to be talked about or disliked. You want to be loved, you want to be liked, but that's not possible. For you to like be your true self, achieve your full freedom, that comes with maybe having people who dislike you. I think that it's actually worth it because that's you enjoying your life. Life is so short, so enjoy it to the fullest. This book was actually given to me by one of my fans. They gave it to me and I just fell in love with this book because I was like, that is so me. I'm actually an introvert myself. Growing up in school, the teacher would always say, speak up more, talk more, you're not engaging to the class. And I think a lot of people would see this as well because not always the loudest person in the room is the smartest person in the room. Because, I mean, okay, extroverts are lovely people as well. I have so much friends who are extroverts. But appreciate being an introvert and don't try to change that as well. This book, it talks about that being a listener is one of the powerful tools in the world. Not everyone can do that where you sit down and have a conversation with someone and you take every single information that they say. That's very powerful, Harry Potter. I think that's everyone's childhood. Maybe not everyone. That's probably speaking too big. But I think most people came across Harry Potter as like a comfort zone as well because the themes that it's in Harry Potter is just like, you know, friendship, bravery, loyalty. And what I love about it is the different houses. Which house am I in? Slytherin. It's like ambitious people. So it's like competitive, ambitious. And I was actually surprised at the start. I thought it would be like a mixture of like, okay, maybe like a bit of Hufflepuff, Gryffindor. But then when I did the quiz and everything was like Slytherin. Does literature help me to play sometimes? It's helpful when you can like annotate your scripts and everything. Finding out what was the character background. What does this word mean? Yeah, it does help actually when you have literature in your heart and you're working as an actress as well. A book that I recently discovered. Do you know The Little Woman? It is also a childhood book. It talks strongly about strong leadership in women as well because the character Jo, she had suffered through many things and like she had to go through a lot. But she was also really, really strong about what she wanted. And especially during that period of time, you know, it was hard to fight for what you wanted, but she always did. She wouldn't do what society normally says. I love the character Jo because she's a fighter. Louisa May Alcott. She kind of wrote Jo through her perspective of growing up. So she was a nurse. She had a lot of things to fight about during the 19th century. It was a tough time for her and she chose to write in order to provide for her family. So yeah, they're all like really, really strong, powerful women. So this book, Girls on Film, it's Malone who says that movies shape how we view life, which is really interesting because, you know, there's happy endings, there's unhappy endings, sometimes movie gets sugar-coated. It's funny things. But what I really liked, what she talked about was female representation back then wasn't strong. The amount of like female screenwriters, female directors, it wasn't much because it was a very male-dominated field. She suggests that you should empower each other, like woman empower woman. So like when you work together, you should like try uplift each other because she talked about it in her time. That's what helped her. And also when you see like a strong woman character on screen, it motivates the younger generation as well to be like, yeah, I can be like that. So I think a really good advice from this book is that if you have a dream, you can do it. Like she inspires like anyone who is like female actress, female directors, go for it. You can do it. And at the Green Gables, I would say like what I like about her is her positive attitude towards life. She didn't start off from like having everything, but she works her way. She has this like high ambition that I'm gonna get what I deserve. And she has this like make mistakes, but whatever. I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Throughout the book, she also matures. So you follow through her journey. So yeah, I think that her character is really one to follow and I think is really loved by readers all around the world. I think it resonates well with me because to get to where you are today, it's like you have to fight and fight. It's never an easy day, but I think that's where the saying comes from like, you're not lucky, but you work hard and like you deserve it. Power of literature. So I think it's about expressing yourself and allowing yourself to feel those words.