Dreams

I like to listen to a lot of world music, and I'm always curious to see if others do too. I like Japanese music too, but it gets tiring talking about it because it's so popular now... so I want to find those music-lovers who've explored other countries/languages. :)

I especially love music from Estonia and Russia... artists like Тату, Юлия Савичева, Оскар, Света, Vanilla Ninja, Cherryland, Niki, Hannaliisa Uusmaa, Släm, etc. They mostly perform dance/pop.

Some of my other favorite groups include Kobojsarna (Sweden), L5 (France), Värttinä (Finland), O-Zone (Romania), Tarkan (Turkey), Milky (Italy), good ol' Blümchen (Germany), Kelly Chen (China), and Deep Forest - a duo who takes many languages (especially tribal ones) and turns them into music.

How about you? Anyone have any to share?

It's technically a kids' series, but it's oh-so-good, and not "kiddish" at all. It takes place in a land called Foo that exists alongside ours, much like Nightopia, where all of mankind's dreams go to. The inhabitants there help manipulate the dreams so we can rest peacefully. But besides the dream world similarity, it's vastly different than NiGHTS. Average people from Earth come to live in Foo if they're in the right place at the right time - they just get sucked into the world. Unfortunately, some of them want to go back, but can't. The series revolves around a war taking place in Foo, where many of the people are trying to open a gateway back to reality... not realizing that by doing so they may destroy Foo and Earth entirely, and mankind may be devoid of hopes and dreams forever.

The books have a great cast of characters, fast-moving storyline, and paint a creative picture of a land of dreams. But what got me the most was the author's writing style... even though the story gets rather serious at some points, Obert Skye has a way of writing such witty things that you'll gigglesnort your way through it.

Highly recommended ~ the first book is here.