Nathalie's (Deern's) Reading in 2013 - Part 1

HAPPY NEW READING YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

It's January 1st, 1:50 am CET and the perfect time to start my 2013 thread.
In 2012 I managed to get through > 150 books for the first time and I'd like to get as close as possible to that number again this year.

Books read, but not yet reviewed:
37. Die Sünde des Abbé Mouret by Émile Zola - free Kindle - DE - 391p - 3 stars
38. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Kindle - EN - 482p - 3.5 stars
39. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel - Kindle - EN - 268p - 3.8 stars
40. Il Piacere by Gabriele D'Annunzio - free Kindle - IT - 466p - 3 stars

Books finished and reviewed here:
January:
1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Das fehlende Glied in der Kette) by Agatha Christie - paperback owned - DE - 192p
2. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell - paperback - EN - 230p - 3.75 stars
3. A Game of Thrones By George R.R. Martin - Kindle - EN - 861p - 4 stars
4. Der Wunschpunsch by Michael Ende - Kindle - DE - 240p - 3.5 stars
5. La Conquete de Plassans by Emile Zola - free Kindle - FR - 451p - 3.75 stars
6. Falling Man by Don de Lillo - Kindle - EN - 274p - 4 stars
7. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion - Kindle - IT - 216p - 3.5 stars
8. Simplicissimus by von Grimmelshausen - free Kindle - DE - 1050p - 4.25 stars
9. trattato di culinaria per donne tristi by Hector Abad Faciolince - paperback - IT - 133p - 4 stars
10. Sudtirolesi by Benedetto Masi - paperback - IT - 230p - 3.25 stars

February:
11.La coscienza di Zeno by Italo Svevo - free Kindle - IT - 598p - 3.5 stars
12.Il gioco delle tre carte by Marco Malvaldi - paperback - IT - 208p - 3.5 stars
13.The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing - Kindle - EN - 688p - 4.5 stars
14.Tacchino farcito by Alda Bruno - paperback - IT - 93p - 1.5 stars
15. Italiani di Domani by Beppe Severgnini - hardcover - IT - 165p - 3.5 stars
16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Kindle - EN - 1488p - 5 stars
17. Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke - free Kindle - DE - 193p - 4 stars
18. A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell- paperback - EN - 274p - 4 stars
19. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks - audible credit - EN - 194p - 3 stars
20. Il ladro di merendine (The Snack Thief) by Andrea Camilleri - Kindle - IT - 247p - 3.5 stars
21. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman - Kindle - EN - 504p - 3.5 stars
22. La grammatica ti salverà la vita by Massimo Birattari - library book - IT - 156p - 3 stars
23. Il Re dei Giochi by Marco Malvaldi - library book - IT - 192p - 3.5 stars
24. The Art of Happiness in a troubled World by Dalai Lama - Kindle - EN - 336 p - 3.5 stars
25. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - audible credit - EN - 405p - 4 stars
26. Beatrice e Virgilio by Yann Martel - library book - IT - 190p - 3.5 stars

March:
27. Krabat by Otfried Preussler - harcover - DE - 256p - 4.5 stars
28. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - paperback - EN - 150p - 3.5 stars
29. Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani - paperback - IT - 214p (1001) - 4 stars
30. Nachsommer (Indian Summer) by Adalbert Stifter - free Kindle - DE - 768p - 4 stars
31. The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell - paperback - EN - 214p - 4 stars
32. In 80 Tellern um die Welt by Peter Menzel - hardcover - DE - 4 stars
33. Il culo di Sacchi by Gene Gnocchi - borrowed book - IT - 98p - 1.5 stars
34. Allegro ma non troppo (The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity) by Carlo Cipolla - borrowed book - IT - 112p - 2 stars
35. Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac - free Kindle - FR/EN/DE - 268p - 3.5 stars
36. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope - free Kindle - EN - 652p - 3.8 stars

BOOK STATS

Currently reading:

Normal books (where there's a chance I might finish them in the next two weeks):
- I mostri nel mio frigorifero by Stefania Cecchetti - paperback - IT - 197p - p116 (this is BORING!!)
- Cecità (Blindness) by José Saramago - paperback - IT - 276p - p102
- Seine Exzellenz Eugène Rougon by Émile Zola - free Kindle - DE - 363p - 42%
- The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch - Kindle - EN - 555p - 34%
- At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell - Paperback - EN - 234p - p52

Very Slow reads:
- Gedichte fürs Gedächtnis by Ulla Hahn - hardcover - DE - 278p - on hold
- Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee - Kindle - EN - 944p - on hold
- Arabian Nights: Tales From The Thousand and One Nights - free Kindle - EN - 32% in/ 559 (of 1001??) nights read - finished volume 5!! (February 25, 2013) (1001) - back on

On temporary hold in 2012:
- La Vie Mode d'Emploi by Georges Perec - owned - FR - page 112 of 579 - finished part I (1001)
- Non mi puoi manipolare (The Gaslight Effect) by Robin Stern - paperback - IT - 303p
- Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times by Neil Astley (500 poems for 500 days!) - 205 read

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Planned books:

Some of the more difficult 1001s I want to get off my tbr:
- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
- Simplicissimus by Hans von Grimmelshausen

Janet memorial reads planned:
- Palace Walk Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz - bought - EN
- Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times by Neil Astley ==> planned one poem per day - bought - EN

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Acquisitions:
January:
- The Song of Ice and Fire (Die Herren von Winterfell) by R.R. Martin - paperback - DE - 545p - read
- Il gioco delle tre carte by Marco Malvaldi - paperback - IT - 208p - read
- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin - Kindle - EN - 861p - read
- Italiani di Domani by Beppe Severgnini - hardcover - IT - 165p - read
- Mai più terroni by Pino Aprile - hardcover - IT - 127p
- I mostri nel mio frigorifero by Stefania Cecchetti - paperback - IT - 197p
- Sudtirolesi by Benedetto Masi - paperback - IT - 230p - read
- Venuto al mondo by Margaret Mazzantini - paperback - IT - 529p
- trattato di culinaria per donne tristi by Hector Abad Faciolince - paperback - IT - 133p - read
- Un filo d'olio by Simonetta Agnello Hornby - paperback - IT - 266p
- Tacchino farcito by Alda Bruno - paperback - IT - 93p - read
- Fisiologia del gusto by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin - paperback - IT - 244p
- Falling Man by Don de Lillo - Kindle - EN - 274p - read
- Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion - Kindle - IT - 216p - read
- Mancarsi By Diego de Silva - paperback - IT - 98p

February
- Invitation to the Dance by Hilary Spurling - Kindle - EN - 354p - this will be my guide to the year-long DttMoT read
- Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - audible credit - EN - 405p - for 1001 GR March (1001) - read
- Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani - paperback - IT - 214p (1001) - read
- Cecità (Blindness) by José Saramago - paperback - IT - 276p
- Il ladro di merendine (The Snack Thief) by Andrea Camilleri - Kindle - IT - 247p - read
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - audio book - EN
- Il Sistema Periodico by Primo Levi - paperback - IT - 251p
- Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola - paperback - IT - 234p (1001)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - paperback - EN - 335p
- The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - paperback - EN - 150p - read
- Krabat by Otfried Preussler - harcover - DE - 256p - read
-In 80 Tellern um die Welt by Peter Menzel - hardcover - DE - read

March:
- The Moviegoer by Walker Percy - Kindle - EN
- Die Abenteuer des starken Wanja by Otfried Preussler - hardcover - DE - 191p
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick - audible credit - EN
- Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood - Kindle - EN - 482p - read
- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel - Kindle - EN - 268p - read
- The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch - Kindle - EN - 555p

TA = Thingaversary book

I wanted to re-organize my stats, but now I'm glad I get them done somehow:

January and February reads:

Books read in January: 10
Pages read: 3877

Fiction: 8
Non-fiction: 2
Plays: 0
Short Story Books: 0
Poetry books: 0

English: 3
German: 3
Italian: 3
French: 1

Audio books: 0 (0 bought)
Kindle books: 6 (3 free, 3 bought)
Real books: 4 (2 owned, 2 bought, 0 library)

Books purchased this month: 15
Of which read in the same month: 9

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Books read in February: 16
Pages read: 5931 (this could be a new record, thanks to Les Mis)

Fiction: 14
Non-fiction: 2
Plays: 0
Short Story Books: 0
Poetry books: 0

English: 7
German: 1
Italian: 8 (first time IT wins!)
French: 0

Audio books: 2 (2 bought)
Kindle books: 7 (3 free, 1 bought, 3 owned)
Real books: 7 (1 owned, 3 bought, 3 library)

Books purchased this month: 12
Of which read in the same month: 2

*******************************

Summary 2013:

Books read 2012: 26
Pages read: 9808

Fiction: 22
Non-fiction: 4
Plays: 0
Poetry books: 0 (but 62 poems)
Comic books: 0
Short Story Books: 0

English: 10
German: 4
Italian: 11
French: 1

Audio books: 2 (2 bought)
Kindle books: 13 (6 free, 4 bought, 3 owned)
Real books: 11 (5 bought, 3 owned,3 library)

Books purchased 2013: 27
Of which read in the same year: 11

Happy 2013, Nathalie! Now don't get lost this year! *smooch*

Happy New Year Nathalie!

Happy New Year Nathalie - wishing you the most wonderful of 2013s.

Found you - Happy New Year. Looking forward to seeing what you read in 2013. Wish I could join you for the Dance marathon but I think I'll bow out on that one - just can't commit to it (having a break post Clarissa!).

Happy New Year, Nathalie!

Hey Nathalie, finally found you! I hope that you arrived sound and safe in the year 2013! I'm really looking forward to your readings this year.

Hi Nathalie, Happy New Year! I'm sorry I fell behind on your threads last year. Will try to keep up a bit better this year. I hope you have a good year of reading ahead.

I've just ordered a copy of the first three Anthony Powell books: I have a volume with nos. 7-9 but not the rest. I hope this arrives in time and then I'll join you in the Dance!

Hallo Nathalie, wollte Dir nochmals ein wunderschönes Neues Jahr wünschen!

I also would like to say that I am very sorry for you and your parents in regards to your aunts.

There are some brilliant reviews on your old thread. I only read three books last month and started many more :( However, I am hopeful that my reading pace will pick up again for this year.

I see that you are reading slowly The dovekeepers how do you feel about the book now, after reading a bit more?
And last - How is your new job going?

Happy new year, Nathalie!

Happy New Year, Nathalie! Wishing you a fantastic 2013!

Here you are! I see that you're already into *Dance* 1, so I'll start it too.

Happy New Year - starred you!

Welcome back!

Found ya!

Leaving a star behind so that I can find my way back to your lovely thread!

Looking forward to keeping up with your reading adventures in 2013!

Putting a big star on your thread, Nathalie and wishing you a Lucky 13 New Year!

Hi Nathalie - always a joy to follow your extensive reading plans. Thought about "very slow reads" - in stead of giving up on difficult classics better read 5 or 10'pages each day and see if you get into it eventually. I'm doing that with Moll Flanders at the moment.

Doctor Zhivago was supposed to be read last year. I hope it will be this year for me too.

And oh yes, happy new year :)

Hi everyone, thanks for checking in and the good wishes for the new year. I'll respond to you individually tomorrow and will go look for the many new threads I missed so far...

I've been ill since Tuesday with some stomach virus that also brought a fever and all the usual flu symptoms. I've been schlepping around the virus since before Christmas and now it finally broke out. I tried to work at least half days, it doesn't look good to stay at home during the probation period. Today I worked a full day again, but am really tired now, so I hope to get some sleep and be back in better shape tomorrow.

Take care, Nathalie - hope you'll feel better soon.

Hi Nathalie, I'm sorry to hear about your illness. But it must be something around, because many people are having stomach flues here, too! Get well soon!

Hallo Nathalie, von mir auch Gute Besserung. You must feel absolutely shattered after going to work, when feeling not well. Yes, and the type of stomach flu you are describing are going round. Have a hot cup of sage tea with honey that usually does ease the problems a bit.
Fingers crossed that you are better in a few days :).

Hoping you feel better soon, Nathalie.

Hope you're feeling better Nathalie. My family has been suffering with flu / stomach problems over the holidays too - there seems to be a huge amount of illness around this year.

Nathalie, at least you waited until after the holidays to get the flu. I hope you mend quickly and can join in the fun around here.

Nathalie - hope you are feeling better soon. x

Get well soon, Nathalie.

Wow, you are all so great!
I feel much better today, only a little weak. Yesterday my eyes still hurt too much to read, but today they are fine again.

I actually managed to read a whole book today, I squeezed it in because all the others are so terribly slow going. It was a reread of The Mysterious Affair of Styles by Agatha Christie, in German.

Hi Nathalie, good to hear that you're feeling better! Take care of you and don't try too much too early. :D

Hallo Nathalie, great to hear that you are feeling better and managed to do some reading!
I have never read anything by Agatha Christie, also I always enjoyed the movies.
Didn't you mention last year that you liked the Buffy series? I actually started to watch them in November and got completely hooked. Currently, I am on Season 6 and after that I will go for Angel and I have been told to try Fire Fly after that.

Have a great remaining Sunday!

#33 Kathy: I'll try to be careful - one of my NY resolutions is not to be too demanding to myself after the last stressful months. Re. reading I am aiming for the 75 this year and not try again to get ot 150.

#34 Bianca: I've got most of the TV Poirots on DVD, I feel it's time for a rewatch. They are somehow quite calming with the setting in 1920s/30s England.
I was Buffy-obsessed for a while many years ago. As I started early, my favorite series were 2 and three, although the special effects budget then clearly was quite small, but the original Scooby gang with Oz, Angel and Giles was still complete. The last episode of series 2 can still bring me to tears. After the split into 2 shows it never was the same for me although there were some outstanding episodes. The German dubbing was quite bad, I was suprised how funny the original dialogues were.
I also tried 'Angel', but only the first 2 series. I preferred the Sunnydale setting.

Nathalie, it's good news that you're feeling better. I'm starting the Anthony Powell book tomorrow, so I'll see you on that thread too.

Sorry you've been so ropey Nathalie - it sucks starting the year feeling rotten. I've been full of a streaming cold and that's bad enough. Stoopid bugs.

Buffy is still wonderful - re-try Angel, go on go on go on. Once you get into it it's excellent.

Anyway, hop eyou feel back to normal soon.

#34 Firefly is also amazing - very different, but get ready to feel utterly traumatised by the early cancellation. Still gutted about that!

#35: That's a wise decision for sure. And I'm sure that you'll read far more over 75 books anyway. :)

I never watched "Buffy" on a regular basis. I've seen only 4 or 5 episodes of a re-broadcasting about two years ago, but that was fun. In general, I was more the "Charmed"-girl. :)

Kathy "Charmed" never, ever seen it. Is it funny? I think, I have to check that out, once I finished all the other seasons of Buffy, Angel and Fire Fly *smile*

Back then... als ich noch jung war ;) ... I liked it very much, because of the three strong female protagonists who don't take themselves too serious. It was funny, but there were also sad moments. I have to admit that I haven't seen much of the last two seasons, because I think I grew out of it and my tastes simply changed. Buuut I was looking for *coughcough* the complete season on DVD just last december. ;)

#36 Susan: Great, looking forward to reading your thoughts. The first 3 vols are rereads for me and I hope no-one will get discouraged by the slow pace.

#37 Bekka: hm... as a then Buffy-Angel shipper I never forgave Angel his various Darla adventures and especially not that Cordelia storyline (although I liked Cordelia as a character). Basically I never forgave the network for splitting the shows. And although I liked chipped Spike, my heart bleeds whenever I see him in full evil season 2 mode with crazy Dru.

Kathy and Bianca: I watched many episodes of "Charmed" as well, but never get hooked. I found the balance of the sisters trio was seriously damaged when Prue 'left', that other sister turned up and when Alyssa Milano's role became too big.

You all see, I am a very conservative watcher once I start liking a show. No changes! :-)
Maybe with the exception of "The Big Bang Theory" where I like the older and newer episodes equally and don't mind all the additional characters.

"The Big Bang Theory" is one of the few newer TV series I actually seriously enjoy, because they are hilarious. Apparently, when I watch it - according to my parents and my son - I turn into a giggling imbecile, who may even drools inbetween.

> 40 Don't worry Kathy *pat shoulder* after starting Buffy, I bought most of the seasons on DVD as well, nothing wrong with that. *grin*

#41: Spoiler alarm! ;) First, I couldn't accept that change neither and didn't want to continue watching it. I just couldn't accept that there suddendly should be another sister, because it was always the power of three! But I gave it a try and I found the new balance of power between the sisters intriguing. But hey, nowadays I would think totally different about the whole series than I did ten years ago. :)

#42: When I watched TBBT for first time I felt like I'm missing something. It was funny, but somehow just not funny enough. But as there are not many alternatives at the moment, I bought the DVDs.:P
Concerning younger series: I really enjoyed the first season of "A Game of Thrones", the first two seasons of "The Walking Dead", or "Mad Men". - And thanks for the shoulderpatting. ;)

Oh wow, it's getting really interesting now. I have got the DVD box of "A Game of Thrones", pre-ordered already the second and I absolutely love "The Walking Dead" that was my first ever time that I liked anything with zombies. And now we have to wait to February for the next episode to come out. Although, I have never heard of "Mad Men".

What about you Nathalie, do you like any of them?

Bianca, "Mad Men" stands out of line in that case, because it's about the advertising industry in the New York of the 1960's.

Nathalie, thanks for letting us board your thread. :)

I quite stopped buying DVDs a while ago. It became a space issue, they fought with the books for shelf space and so I decided in favour of the books. And I don't really follow them on TV anymore.
I was interested when I read about "Downtown Abbey" (?) here, but then the ZDF just broadcast it within a couple of days during Christmas. The same happened on a different channel with "A Game of Thrones". They spend a lot of money for the shows and then try to 'get rid of them' as quickly as possible.

I heard of "Mad Men" (never watched it), but never of "The Walking Dead".
I bought the first book of "A Game of Thrones" today, so I guess I'll soon get interested into the TV series as well.

*****

*grrr* can't sleep... and there's a full work week ahead of me.

Nathalie, I don't watch much TV anymore, because all the advertising gets on my nerves. That and the fact that I can watch it when I want are the main reasons why I buy the DVDs.
I recorded "Downton Abbey", but I haven't finished watching it yet. Honestly, I don't understand the hype, because although it takes place in the 1920's it follows the principles of a soap (love, intrigues, etc.).

I think the logic of broadcasting the series in just a few days is that they keep the spectators interested, to guarantee good TV ratings. I think it was RTL2 who did that with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

I'm already curious what you'll think about A Game of Thrones!

---

Have a good night (hope that you can fall asleep soon) and a calm work week!

Guten morgen Nathalie :), I don't really watch TV either for the same reasons Kathy does. I even don't watch that many films, but if I do I prefer watching the DVD's.

I am also mighty curious what you will think about A Game of Thrones

I also hope that you eventually managed to get a good night sleep!

I'm a seriously big fan of Mad Men. Fantastic series! Don Draper is the perfect man to get obsessed with (and the perfect man to hate ;-) ).

I do hope that you like Game of Thrones. I read the whole series last summer and was excited and overwhelmed. I couldn't put these really really long books down. I'm already planning a complete re-read toward the end of the year (if the rumors are true that the next book (The Winds of Winter) in the series is published in 2014).

Just stopping by to add big thumbs up for Big Bang Theory and Game of Thrones. Hope you enjoy the books - the first three are great, book 4 is a bit shaky and the second half of book 5 is back to brilliant again (IMO of course). Can't wait for the next series and the next book!

Hope you managed to get some sleep. After a pants night myself I am massively over caffeinated...

> 51 BekkaJo - agree with your opinion. I felt the same way about them. :)

I watch very few tv-series - but more movies which can easily be lend on the apple tv. No dvd's anymore :)

Hope you'll get a good nights sleep soon, Nathalie.

#48+49 Kathy/ Bianca: I am glad I get ORF where I live. They often show the same movies as RTL, VOX, etc. but without the ads. And while I don't follow the latest series, I heard that they are often a day or so in advance of the German channels.

I watched 2 eps of "Downtown Abbey" on Christmas day and that was the maximum I could do. I would have liked to see another episode, but on another day. But I also never went to those 'long movie nights' with the complete HP or complete LotR.

"Game of Thrones": so far very readable, gripping, although it is definitely not my genre. Certainly addictive, but I keep thinking "So glad I don't live in that world". And I fear there are some battles waiting for me. It's very well written without a doubt, but knowing that there are so many more books to come, I feel a little discouraged already. I fear that all the questions that might arise now will only be answered in a couple of years when the last book is published.

#50: Hi Vroni, frohes Neues Jahr wünsche ich Dir noch!
And now I'm interested to watch some episodes to see that Don Draper guy... :-)

#51 Bekka: not much sleep last night and not yet back on the coffee after the flu. Stupid herbal teas...
Okay, then I know I can read on in case I don't like part IV. How many are there? And how many more are planned??

#53 Carsten: apple TV sounds good. My notebooks are both too old to show me movies without having some major crisis, but maybe 2013 will be the year when I finally get one of those touchscreeny things?

Hi Nathalie, I assume you are reading the English edition? Well, the English edition has got so far 5 doorstoppers and apparently there are two more planned with the 6th coming out 2014. Although, I wouldn't necessary rely on that, because it took him ca. 6 years to publish number 5 :(. Very frustrating author, indeed. :)

I hope you can sleep better tonight. :) Did you get my pm?

Nathalie, I hope that you're 100% well and on the go again. If not, I can sing "Soft Kitty" to you.
And I have been a Mad Men addict except for the last season when I just couldn't make myself put aside everything else to watch them. I haven't gotten on the bus to Downton Abbey either - maybe in a year or so when you've all forgotten it.

Ich wünsch Dir auch ein gutes neues Jahr ;-)

When I first started with Game of Thrones I thought that I would be unable to cope with all the different characters, families and "The North", "The South", "the East"... But it didn't take very long to find out who the "better guys" are and who to support. From then on it gets easier. Don't feel discouraged! It's not really my genre either but all those likeable (and not so likable) characters kept me reading and reading.
And now I hope that Mr. Martin holds true to his promise that "Winds of Winter" will be published in 2014. Because "Dance with Dragons" ended with a terrible cliffhanger for me.

Hi Nathalie, things look like they are going very well over here. Let me chime in that I've been watching Mad Men and I'm currently on Season Three. What an amazing show. The casting is perfect and Draper and his wife make a perfect 60's couple. It's amazing how far women have come, in some respects, in the workplace. For example, before this show I had not realized just how patronizing men were to women in the workplace. Good history lessons too.
Hope the new job is going well.

Nathalie! Glad to see you back with us again. Sorry to be so slow checking in on you in the new year.

Hi Nathalie! Another Buffy fan here, and I have to agree with you that the best of Buffy is the earlier stuff. I hated when Angel left the show - it changed the dynamics. I am currently making my way through Game of Thrones and really liking it. I am also liking Anna Karenina so far.

Hoping that your weekend is lovely and full of fabulous!

hi Nathalie

Sorry to read you were ill, happy to read you are feeling better! ;-)

Game of Thrones: I read the first 4 books, bought part 5 but sadly won't be able to read it soon... lended the DVD from the library (only lending CD's and DVD's there these days) and loved how they filmed it. Even Frank got excited.
Reading as slow as I do now, I'll better wait for next sasons on TV or DVD!

Anita

Hallo Nathalie, :) wollte Dir nur ein schönes Wochenende wünschen! e-mail ist abgeschickt :)

Nathalie - glad to see you mostly recovered and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Hi Nathalie! Dropping by to catch up with you. I see I'll have to go back to your last threads of 2012 to see what great reviews I've missed. So sorry you've been sick! Hope you're well on the mend by now.

Game of Thrones is TOTALLY NOT my kind of book, but I got completely hooked when I watched season 1, which is what had me reaching for the books. I've got the 3rd book waiting in the wings for me now. When I'll actually pick it up is another story.

I'm one of those who got completely caught up with Downton Abbey. Even though, yes, for all intents and purposes, it really is a soap opera. But what an amazing production! Reminds me I want to buy the 3rd season from iTunes. That's how I watched the first two, and I love it. Watch when I want to, no fuss about tv schedules. I stopped buying DVDs a long while ago for the same reasons as you, but have gotten lots of stuff via iTunes. Everyone is excited about NetFlix, but here in Canada we don't get nearly as much as what they have available in the states, and every time I've searched for a title they didn't have it, so I dumped them. But maybe (probably) you don't have NetFlix in Europe, in which case you probably aren't interested in that. Hm.

I'll have to borrow Mad Men from the library. I tried to watch it once or twice and was bored to tears. Several people told me you have to watch several episodes from the first season to get into it, so I'll try that. Mind you, I can barely find time to take a shower these days, so don't know where I'll find time to watch a bunch of tv shows! I'll definitely MAKE the time for Game of Thrones when season 3 comes out in March though!

Be well my dear. xx

Hi Nathalie! How you're doing? I hope you've got some more sleep and feel fine again!

#54: I get ORF, too, but recently even the spots between the movies/series have started to annoy me. Maybe that's a general rebellion against the public broadcasting: Why should I pay money for a program I don't like in 90% of the cases? When I've got my DVD I can watch it whenenver, wherever and as I'm buying less than a DVD every five or six months, it doesn't get too expensive.
I'm glad that you're enjoying Game of Thrones so far. And don't be discouraged! You have to think about it more like "Oh, there are only four books left to get through the long years until book 6 will be published". Then you suddendly think that there's just not enough to read. :) I've only read the first two books and until so far there are not too many unanswered questions...

Have a lovely weekend!

Happy Sunday, Nathalie! I hope you are feeling better.

So many visitors! Thank you all for visiting and leaving good wishes!

My week has been work, sleep, work, sleep... After the 2 holiday weeks, work started again with some surprisingly demanding tasks, and as I was (and am) still a bit unfit after the flu, I fell right into bed when I came home in the evenings. Sleep was often interrupted by fits of coughing, that's my weakness: whenever I catch a cold or a virus I get a nasty cough that often stays with me for months, to the annoyance of colleagues and maybe also neighbours.

Next week will be just as busy, so possibly I won't turn up here again before next weekend. I also made plans for some of the evenings. I'd like to go to the local therme/ sauna tomorrow, hoping it helps with the recovery, and if the coughing allows I'd like to go and see a movie in the cultural center on Wednesday (part of my NY resolutions: do more 'cultural things', preferably in Italian).

My reading has suffered terribly, I am so slow, and I can't manage my parallel readings again yet. It's mid-January and so far I only finished 3 books! I'll be lucky to end the month with 6 or 7 books finished. Instead I got a couple of new ones. My library sometimes gives books away for free, usual some completely outdated IT stuff, but this time they cleansed their small foreign langage department to make room for some new books.

I got:
- Strangers on a train by Patricia Highsmith
- The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
- The Marvellous and the Strange - short stories by A.A. Poe and H.G. Wells
- The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
- "Selected Stories" by Bernard Malamud
- Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

But I also bought some new Italian books, I just can't stay out of the bookshops:
- Stare Insieme è un Arte by Lucio Giudiceandrea and Aldo Mazza, a book about the South Tyrol problems
- Italiani di Domani by Beppe Severgnini - how can the Italians best face the future
- Mai più terroni by Pino Aprile - a book claiming that the differences between the Italian North and South are finally disappearing

Excellent haul! Hope you have a better week this week.

#55 Bianca: I bought the German translation, just because it caught my eye in the bookshop and I thought I might get easier into it if I read it in my own language. I spent 16.50 EUR on the paperback and was surprised it had only 500 pages (with everyone here saying the books are so long). And then I realized the German publishing house split each book into 2 volumes! So they expected me to spend another 16.50 on vol 2 - on paperbacks! So instead I spent 6 USD and got the whole thing on Kindle in English. And now I have a part I vol I in German to give away...

# 56 Peggy: Aaaw, that's so sweet! I don't know "Soft Kitty", but it sounds nice!

#57 Vroni: I'll write some more in my review, but although I really enjoyed the book, I can say I am in a big hurry to read part 2 now. My memory for character names is horrible, and I fear I'd have to read all 5 books again in 2014 and then again whenever part 7 is published.

#58 Lynda: another one chiming in for Mad Men... okay, I'll WL it and as soon as my budget allows, I will carefully take a look at season 1.

#59 Stasia: So good to see you here! One of the things I planned for today is searching your new thread and finally checking in with you as well.

#60 Mamie: I loved Anna Karenina! It has some lengths, but somehow I even enjoyed those. Re. Buffy I noticed that the people who started watching early all prefer series 1-3, while the others are clearly pro-later-seasons, usually like Buffy-Spike and don't get the Angel drama. But I think both groups agree on not liking Riley. :-)

Hi Nathalie, I have got the German and English Translation of Game of Thrones. However, I agree with you 32 Euro to have one complete book is just ridicilous.

I also belong to the group who loves AK. And I definately didn't like Riley in the Buffy series. However, I am more fond of Spike then of Angel as I believe that Spike is more honest in his nastiness.

wish you another great remaining Sunday.

As you mentioned your persistent cough over quite a long period of time after you suffered a cold/flu did you ever try salbutamol inhalers? You sound very much like you do have an underlying asthmatic component.

#61 Anita: my bookshop is selling the DVDs of series I of "Game of Thrones", but as usual for a ridiculously high price, so I decided to wait a bit longer with the purchase.

#62 Bianca: Dir einen schönen Rest-Sonntag, und vielen Dank für die E-Mail!! :-)

#63 Paul: thank you, it was indeed relaxing and I finally got a bit of reading done. Have a great week!

#64 Ilana: I liked what I saw of "Downtown Abbey", it's a setting that appeals to me. I just couldn't face to sit through 3 episodes in a row on Christmas day and all of the following days. I thought it was such a waste of a probably great show, and the station has certainly paid a lot of money on the rights and the dubbing.
iTunes will be a possibility once I can finally, finally buy another Mac-whatever (book, pad... anything).

#65 Kathy: you're right, I noticed as well that the ads between shows get longer and longer. I liked to watch the "How I met your mother"/ "Big Bang Theory"/ "2 and a half Men" combo in the evenings, but now I often switch channels during the ads and then forget to return.

#66: Happy Sunday to you too, Stasia! :-)

#68 Bekka: thank you - wish you a great week as well!

#71 Bianca: Spike is the more interesting character, but still I didn't like what they did to him in season 7. In fact, I quite ignore that season. I bought it, but never fully watched it. Bad Spike in season 2 was best, he had such a great humor in all his evilness ("I don't want pieces of librarian in the carpet" when Angel was torturing Giles... *sigh*).
And then... they set up Buffy/Angel as the star-crossed lovers (wasn't Buffy declared to be A's fate in the penultimate ep of season 2?), only to make them have new partners again and again in the later series.
Oh dear, time to rewatch I fear. Which means even less time for reading!

I own an inhalator and am inhaling with 'someting Italian'... I'll check the label for the ingredients. Thank you!

***

I wanted to make the complete rounds tonight, but I was just invited to join some friends for the movies! I haven't been to the movies in more than 3 years(!!!), so I'll promise to visit the remaining threads later this week, pack the anti-cough sweets into my handbag and leave you all to a hopefully relaxing rest-of-Sunday!

Hi Nathalie, I hope your cough is getting better. It must be hard to have to work being not 100% healthy. If you do that in a long turn, it "geht an die Substanz". Just take care of yourself and enjoy the movie night! (What are you going to watch?) Have a nice evening!

Hi Nathalie, How nice to be surprised by friends and get invited to a movie. Which movie did you see? Has the coughing subsided? I hate it when those nagging coughs last for months on end. Sometimes I would cough and wouldn't even realize it, that's how common they could be. Take care and hope you have some relaxing time to yourself.

#74 Kathy: the movie was nice - not super-great, but solid work, and most importantly: people spoke slowly and clearly enough that I could understand all the Italian. The name of the movie was "La migliore offerta" / "The best offer" / "Das höchste Gebot". I don't think it has been released anywhere outside Italy and the UK yet. Some of the scenes have been filmed in Merano and Bolzano last year, but I didn't recognize anything.
I coughed quite a bit during the movie, but I wasn't the only one, so it was okay.

#75 Lynda: I cough most while speaking, so phone calls are really annoying right now - for me, but even more for my clients and I try to do as much as possible via e-mail. You're right, there always comes the point where I'm not sure if the cough is still really there or if I just got so used to it that I do it without need. But that point is still months away...

I went to the sauna on Monday as planned and I think it did me some good. Might go again on Friday. I still fall into bed at impossible times in the evening (7:30 pm!)and sleep almost until the alarm clock goes off in the morning.

I finished books 4 and 5: Der Wunschpunsch by Michael Ende and - yay - after about a year finally a French book again: Emile Zola's La Conquete de Plassans. Now I need to concentrate on Simplicissimus, another hard read.

A doctor told me a phrase for this special type of cough, which is not really a cough anymore, but only a nasty habit (I really can't translate this into English :-)): "sich selbst erhaltender Reizhusten". Nice term, I think.
I hope you get better soon!

Hope that you will get better soon.

Nathalie, I hope that this week got easier for you. I'm also hounded by a cough after any kind of respiratory event. The sauna sounds like a good thing. Anyway, feel better and check in here this weekend!

Nathalie - Will be interested to see what you made of the Zola. It is one of the few Rougon-Macquart series I haven't read yet and have it on order.

ETA Also wishing you a lovely weekend. x

#77 Vroni: that's a nice expression and exactly what it is. :-)

#78 Piyush: thank you - very much better this weekend. And almost cough-free during the nights

#79 Peggy: the sauna did me some good, I used the one that has only 60°C and more humidity. I hope your own cough will get better soon!

#80 Paul: the Zola was interesting - the first half was a bit like reading a Highsmith crime novel. So much potential, but clearly writing a thriller wasn't Zola's intention. Then came a part where things developed too quickly for me to believe them and parallely there were lots of political discussions. And right when I was a bit bored with the story, there came such an over-the-top crazy final phase that I was sorry when the book ended.
Lovely weekend to you, too!

*Drive by waves tinged with sauna jealousy*

This week has been busier than the last one. I also had business visitors and had to dine out with them on two evenings, so there was almost no time for reading and LT. On the remaining days I just fell into bed as soon as I came home. Yesterday that was at 6:30 pm on a Friday night!

It annoys me that I don't make any progress with my books. I try to read during lunch breaks and a bit in the mornings before I go to the office, but I didn't manage more than 10% on La coscienza di Zeno by Italo Svevo (great book!) and Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen. The latter has been originally written in the 1600s, it's terribly long and the language is so old that I almost envy non-German-speaking readers because they can select a modern translation.

Somehow I can't keep away from the bookshops. I noticed that one of them has such a great selection of Italian books, while the German and English sections consist mainly of genres I don't like to read (fantasy, historical novels, and as a result of "50 Shades" a whole shelf of erotica..). So today I returned with another bag of Italian books, just like the week before. I bought:

- Introduzione poco riverente nel mondo dei Sudtirolesi: a nonfiction book that explains the (German) South-Tyroleans tio the Italians
- Venuto al Mondo by Margaret Mazzantini whose Don't Move I loved. This book here has recently been filmed with Penelope Cruz playing one of the main characters
- I mostri nel mio frigorifero (The monsters in your fridge): non-fiction book about the food industry
- a collection of 4(!) books about food and cooking by Abad Faciolince, Agnello Hornby, Bruno and Brillat-Savarin

None of them planned purchases. I need a reading holiday.

I know exactly how you feel - I hate it when I can't make progress with my books and have the same ones in my bookbag for weeks on end. I can have one or two that move slowly, but not all of them.

Nathalie, sorry the cough is still plaguing you. I really enjoyed La conquête de Plassans. That abbot really was something, and the ending was so over the top that I thought it was almost campy!

I've decided this year I'll read whatever amount of books I manage to get to, and really won't pressure myself to fit in as many as possible. I'm a very slow reader, which is something that's not likely to change, and even finishing a 300-page book can take me a couple of weeks, since I only read just before sleep usually, and often get to bed too late to get much time at all for reading. I've got several large volumes to get to this year, and often stay away from those because they slow me down too much and I can't fit in as much, but I've proved to myself I can read quite a lot in one year... and now that I'm trying to fit in more activities into my days, I found that was one compromise I was willing to make. I've also decided I'll only review a limited amount of books this year as opposed to trying to do a writeup about every single one.

#82: Hi Bekka! Sauna is great, I might go again some time this week.

#84 Lucy: I used my non-progress as an excuse to buy two more books today which should both be fast reads: Falling Man by Don DeLillo which is also a 1,001 and my first Zombie book, Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.

#85 Ilana: the ending was something I had not expected at all and it was so "un-Zola". I felt very much entertained by this book.

I've taken the same decision not to care too much about the book count in 2013. I also got some chunksters planned and I want to finish some of the many difficult books I put on hold last year. Getting through 153 books in 2012 was a great success I am not likely to repeat any time soon. And I want to read as much Italian as possible this year which will slow me down even more.

Hallo Nathalie,
trying all day already catching up on my outstanding reviews. Still two more to go. I am so glad I could tempt you to get Warm Bodies it's really funny and just full of puns. Nothing serious, obviously, but a fun read.

Wünsche Dir noch einen schönen Sonntag Abend!

#86 I caved - a friend is going to the spa on Saturday before going for afternoon tea with a lot of our friends (she is heavily pregnant so it seemed a good non-boozy way to go!) and I'm going to join her. I'm skint but I don't care - awful, awful week at work (I so want to hatchetty murder one of our Directors) so a nice steam/sauna/swim sounds like bliss. In particular when followed by cake...

And I applaud the decision to chill about the book count - I got myself in that sort of spin last year, really annoyed that I wasn't going to even hit 75, and then I realised I was being a bit dumb since it was stressing me out about reading. Just relax and enjoy!

I'm not keen on zombies, but I really like the De Lillo that I've read, can't think what at them moment, but I liked it a lot.

#87 Bianca: I enjoy Warm Bodies, but I got a feeling it works not as well in Italian as it does in English. It's still funny, but somehow the translation is so.... not fluent (don't know how to say it), I can't read more than 10% a day although it is short. It is very obvious from the language that the original is not Italian and my brain feels strange during reading.

#88 Bekka: sorry you're having such a bad time at work! The spa will sure be a great place to relax. And post-sauna-cake sounds great! I got my sauna bag in my car today and might go again after work.

Relax and enjoy... well said. I must be completely nuts because I bought (for 3 USD) and started Les Misérables some days ago. This book has 1500 pages! And there's still 20% of the 1000p Grimmelshausen and more than half of "Zeno" and numerous books on hold and it's only the 25th of January today and I just realized I bought 15!!! books, not counting those free or almost free Kindles I downloaded this month. My TA is on Sunday but that allows only for 5+1 books.
Actually I'm trying to eat less and it seems book-buying has become my compensation activity. :-(
Okay, trying not to panic and instead looking forward to the steam sauna tonight. And to the relax zone where I can sit and read...

#89 Lucy: Falling Man was so very well written, it is a great book, although not the least bit enjoyable. Very intense. I'll sure try some of his other books, though not right now.
*gets into a Les Mis panic again*

Hi Nathalie - Have a nice weekend - hope you enjoy the sauna. My mother being from Finland I have a special affection for sauna and steam bath. Had a 15 km walk today, listening to Trollope on audio and when I came to my parents house I went straight to the sauna. Love it :)

Read Delillo's White Noise some years ago. It didn't leave a very great impression but it was ok.

Swooping through on my broomstick to leave a cloud of hugs!

#91 Carsten: in the end I didn't make it to the sauna on Friday, but I'm going this afternoon instead. I love the combination of winter workout and then sauna/ steam.

Went up to the small local ski area yesterday to check the prices for the rental of ski/shoes/helmet and for single lessons. Haven't been skiing for at least 20 years and never tried carving ski. I'm not too keen on the whole downhill racing + partying atmosphere. But I'd like to learn cross-country skiing and for that you also need some downhill capability in this region here where everything is so steep.

Oh dear... I almost forgot I should continue the Trollope soon. After Les Miserables, i.e. March...

#92: Hi Richard, thanks for the visit and the hugs!

****
I finished TWO books yesterday: Warm Bodies which was suddenly much, much better, when the action started in the 2nd half and - yay - Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen! I'm always happy when I get one of those pre-1800 tomes off my 1,001 tbr-list. But this is one of the better ones, really funny at times. I just wish the old-fashioned German had been a bit easier to read.

*****
As I wrote above, I went to the ski area yesterday. But I didn't go alone, I was with my friend/landlady Chrystle. She just got a new mini-puppy 2 days ago and while she went skiing, I was carrying the tiny thing around in a bag. She slept most of the time, while I was sinking knee-deep into snow on my way to the lodge where I was to meet Chrystle for lunch. I'll need to post a picture of her here, yesterday's pics all didn't come out well, it was too sunny for my mobile phone camera. I'm now auntie Nathalie for little Floh.

Hey auntie Nathalie!

It's sounds like you were having a lovely day in the snow with little Floh.

First I was a little bit cautious about Warm Bodies because I was afraid that it would be very "twilighty". But when I saw the movie trailer and read something on LibraryThing about it, I decided to read it. I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

Wow, Les Misérables is a really huge reading project. I bought the novels in French and just managed to finish the first one so far. I still hope that I can read it one day or another. :)

Simplicissimus was never were tempting to me - so congratulations on finshing it!!

Have a nice Sunday!

*giggle* how sweet auntie Nathalie for little Floh :)

Yes please, I would like to see some photos of a cute little puppy.

So, in the end the Italien translation worked well for Warm Bodies, that means we all can go next month and watch the movie. I wonder how that one is going to be, at least the trailer looked quite funny.

Alex is back into a Dr Who repeat, which I have been partially watching with him. He is still not himself, especially as he kind of got re-infected last week :(. However, he's missed already 3 weeks in school and I will send him back to school tomorrow and see how it will go. I only don't let him take part in sports for a couple of weeks.

I have to agree with Kathy Simplicissimus never appealed to myself either, also I know that my brother recommended the book to me several times.

Les Miserables is one of the books I mean to read at least once in my life time. I am very interested in your thoughts on that one.

Wish you a great remaining Sunday!

#94 Kathy: I so completely ignored Twilight that I can't tell you if there are many similarities, except for the basic idea of a romance between an undead and a mortal. Warm Bodies is no great literature, but it was an easy (once I got used to the language) and quite entertaining read, a bit of the brain candy I needed with all the more difficult books I was reading.

I considered reading Les Mis in French, but decided that the 500+ pages of some Zolas I read are the absolute maximum for me in that language. And I had tried reading Notre Dame de Paris in French twice and never even got through the first chapter...
But Les Misérables English so far is an incredible page turner, I just finished the first volume which is already 25% of the book.

#95 Bianca: Auntie Nathalie even bought little Floh a pink coat with a hood... If I could have a dog I'd certainly get a bigger one, but the nice thing about the tiny ones is that you can really dress and spoil them. Floh is so tiny that she really needs coats in winter, on Sunday she was still shivering in her warm bag.
Les Misérables is great storytelling, at least so far. Since The Count of Monte Christo I haven't read such an entertaining classic.

****
It's 5:01 am CET and I am awake since midnight. Half an hour ago I gave up on the idea of sleeping again, got up and made some coffee instead. At least I can use this extra time for LT, and I hope I'll get through the work day somehow.

Reading update:
I finished 2 non-fiction books: trattato di culinaria per donne tristi by Hector Abad Faciolince and Sudtirolesi by Benedetto Masi. The first was a nice little surprise: a book for 'sad women', giving all kinds of advice, mainly recipes. It's not a serious book, more like fiction and the style was very much Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I am still reading my daily 5% of La Coscienza di Zeno and should finish it by Sunday/Monday. I picked up Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook again, but it's so terribly intense that I don't know if I can finish it without another 'on hold' period.
I read another percent or so of Adalbert Stifter's incredibly boring Nachsommer, a book that normally puts me to sleep within 2 pages, but today even that one didn't help.

And I started A Buyer's Market, the 2nd volume of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.

I wouldn't have expected so much "literary value" from Warm Bodies - I mainly bought it for brain candy purposes. :) It's next on my list, because after Anna Karenina and Anatomie einer Nacht I really need something less complex.
I love both stories - The Count of Monte Christo and Les Misérables - and someday I will defeat the latter in French.

Have a nice Friday and a lovely weekend!

Trattato di culinaria per donne tristi sounds like fun, I wish they'd translate it.

Stopping by to wave hello

#97 Kathy: the same to you, thank you!!

#98 Richard: it is a lovely little book, they should translate it. There's an example: if you are sad because people have been talking too much and you can't deal with all the words anymore, make a nice portion of spaghetti aglio olio, get a glass of the best red wine. Place two books of best poetry at the left and right of your plate and with each bite of spaghetti or sip of wine, read a couple of beautiful words and you'll be healed.

#99 Linda: Good to see you and thanks for visiting! I hope that this weekend I'll finally get around to the many threads I haven't visited in busy January.

****
Off to work, I'm glad it's Friday. It hasn't been such a great week yet, and for several reasons I'd wish February was already over. Some 'stupid' things/ events coming up in the next couple of weeks.

The forecast for the next 3 days is not so good, so at least I hope for a nice weekend filled with reading and LT.

Les Miserable is one of my all-time favorite classics. Glad you enjoy it. Remembering being totally captivated by the relationship between Valjean and Javert - the question of forgiveness and punishment/justice that Hugo brings to the front. Good weekend, Nathalie.

#101 Carsten: thank you, I had a wonderful weekend, I hope yours was good as well!
Yes, their relationship is fascinating, and also kind of challenging for my nerves. I'm glad Hugo added all those digressions, they always give me a very welcome break when I think I can't stand the tension any longer.

****

I couldn't do my planned catching up on LT this weekend and now once again am hopelessly behind on all threads. The reason is that very unexpectedly I had the opportunity to spend the whole weekend in Merano's best hotel, including half pension and free spa access and only had to pay for the extras. Friends (in fact LT friends!) had booked the hotel, but had to cancel on Thursday and due to the strict booking conditions the whole amount had to be paid. So they asked me if I could make use of at least parts of the package so the money wouldn't completely go to waste. I talked to the hotel who confirmed me they couldn't do a refund for my friends but I'd be welcome to use whatever I wanted of the package. So, with a bit of a bad conscience, on Friday night I moved in. Had dinner alone, but already on Saturday and then also yesterday I was joined by various friends for spa and the two remaining dinners. I haven't had a real holiday for years, so I enjoyed the stay very much.

The only thing that didn't work well there was the free internet connection that crashed on every second opening of a website. So instead I did a lot of reading, finished La coscienza di Zeno, made some progress with A Buyer's Market and The Golden Notebook and Les Misérables.

And I played tourist in my own town and went clothes shopping which I hadn't done properly for ages. I was planning to get black trousers and a black sweater (I was feeling sad for no explainable reason) and maybe black boots and ended up with 3 new dresses (I don't wear dresses!) with 2 cardigans and 2 pairs of black boots. But everything was half price or less, so the damage wasn't too bad. And I could wear the dresses in the hotel restaurant in the evenings.

I also found a some interesting cultural events I might attend in the next couple of weeks, theatre, a concert, a Fellini movie, so there should be more occasions to wear those dresses.

#102 That sounds so lovely - and no guilt allowed when it would have been a loss otherwise! Glad you had such a nice weekend.

How are you finding The Golden Notebook? I'm still reading a few pages every now and then (am only about 150 in) but I just find it lacks her usual style and passion. At the rate I'm going with it I'll still be picking at it this time next year!

Greetings Nathalie. Your unexpected weekend sounds wonderful, the books will wait patiently for you as flitter and flutter all over Merano.
I think you will find Les Mis to be worth the time it takes to complete it. I've yet to see the movie but it must be outstanding.
Have a great week, Auntie.

What a wonderful weekend you had! I'm amused at buying dresses when you don't wear dresses!

So happy to hear that you had a lovely weekend! And buying something completely different than you had planned on is so fun - good for you!

Hi Nathalie, that sounds like an amazing weekend. And be sure of it that you earned it after the past year. :) You need to spoil yourself from time to time. And I know about the buying-clothes-logic: If I look for something particular, I can be sure that I won't find it. But if I'm just doing some window-shopping without a particular target, I'll find plenty of stuff I don't need. (Ok, in that case there's the question "What do we really need?").

The cultural events sounds great. I hope that you'll be having a great time!

What a marvelous mini-holiday! Just wonderful.

Nathalie, I'm grinning that you had the unexpected, marvelous holiday! If we'd ordered what we thought you needed, we couldn't have done better for you. Bless friends who think of you!
Enjoy the clothes and the upcoming events and the lovely memory!
(Now I have to get back to *Buyer's Market* - I've read almost none of it.)

#103 Bekka: The Golden Notebook... it will be very hard for me to review it, because at times I felt like Doris Lessing was reading my mind, mostly in the 2nd half. But that wasn't a good thing at all and the book threw me into quite a serious nervous crisis last week, I'm still not out of it.
If you don't find access to it, put it aside and be happy and grateful for it. I'm not proud to have found so much of Anna/Ella in me. :-)

#104 Lynda: I'll wait with the movie until I finished the book. It hasn't been released here yet anyway. It will start in Germany on the 21st and although it has been released in Italy already, in this region here they usually wait till it's available in both languages. Complicated, and it doesn't exactly bring the bilinguism forward.
The book is just fantastic. I am already at 70% and will certainly finish it over the next week.

#105 Laura: It's ridiculous about the dresses, I know. But maybe owning 3 of them now (+ the 2 I already had) will finally force me to wear them?

#106 Mamie: Haha - fun it certainly was. And for the salespeople as well. They just loved me, whenever I said "you know... I can't decide. I'll take all 3/2"

#107 Kathy: well, when I told the girl in the shop where I bought the dresses that I had originally been looking for pants + sweater, she said "oh, we have those as well", I literally ran away from her to the cash desk to at least limit the financial damage. :-)

#108 Lucy: yes it was.. and on the Monday I almost missed my hotel life and the 4 course dinners. :-)

#109 Peggy: *sniff* that's so kind of you I could cry. Thank you!!
I am back with A Buyer's Market after a short break. Just loving it. I must try and stretch it through February so I can immediately continue with #3.

I feel bad for having neglected LT once more through the last week. I am almost up-to-date with most threads now (except for the last 2 days) although I wasn't able to contribute anything useful to many of them and therefore mostly only lurked.

I didn't have such a great week. It sounds stupid, but that Doris Lessing book really hit me very, very hard and I found it difficult to function normally during work. I never cried so much over a book. I didn't even go to the theater on Tuesday as planned because I was just too sad to leave the house. I'll write some more in my review should I ever get to that and add some 'don't read if...' warnings.

The good thing is that reading anything that wasn't Lessing helped me out of it again, especially Les Misérables, which provides just the long and gripping story I need now. And I finished my 2nd crime novel by Marco Malvaldi. His stories are maybe a little too simple to become a great international success like the Montalbano series, but the atmosphere is just so realistic and actually very funny.

The story of my ill-fated meet-up with Anita and Frank (FAMeulstee) continues:

They spent last week in the Black Forest region in Germany and so we decided to have a secod try and to meet 'somewhere in the middle' this weekend. We thought Landeck in Austria might be a good idea. So yesterday morning at 9 am I started and although there was some holiday traffic I arrived in Landeck well ahead of our meeting time, just to see all shops closing, also the one little bookshop. The town was very small and very quiet, and there was only one real restaurant in the city center. So when Frank called to tell me they were stuck in traffic we decided I should drive another 100 or so kilometres into their direction. And that's what I got after about 15 km:



That was about 15-20km before the Arlberg tunnel which I then learned was blocked from both sides.

My new car has no navigation system and I didn't bring a map (very intelligent) and all 3 of us had never been in that region before, so we had not realized that all those 'road blocked here/ tunnel closed there' announcements on the radio had referred to just the route that seperated us. And this being an Alpine region there was no way around it. So about an hour after I had started from Landeck we decided to give up and turn around. Even if we had made it to the new meeting place (where it was snowing heavily) we would have had to face the long return trips - still with all the traffic and maybe new road blockings.

Except for the bit you see on the picture, my route was all country road, very bendy and with many tunnels. So when I got home I was so tired I couldn't move anymore. And poor Anita, Frank and their dogs had even a longer drive.
So next time we'll try and meet in Holland, and then we should finally succeed, because, as Anita said on the phone last night "3rd time is the charm". :-)

Finally posting those reviews I wrote weeks ago:



1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

This was some comfort reading for me, must have been at least a re-re-re-re-read. I love Christie’s Poirot series, and while this one is not my favorite, it is already a typical Poirot case with a surprising twist at the ending. I liked that Christie chose the same location for her last Poirot novel many years later. This book is where a great journey starts, and I’d like to find the time to revisit some more of his cases this year.

Rating: 3 stars



2. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

After deleting all the remarks on the audio format I used then, this is what remains of my 2012 review:

Nice in a very good way. It consists of 4 chapters from young Jenkins’ life: some public school episodes, a visit to a friend’s home, a journey to France, the first months at college. In all of these chapters the interactions of the protagonist with other characters and his observations of their behavior form the main plot. We don’t learn anything about Jenkins’ studies, the French landscapes or his language issues there.
It all feels like a set-up to more, and I am sure that at some point in the remaining 11 volumes I will meet all those interesting characters again.

I generally enjoy such ‘typically English’ books about the ‘lower upper class’ (or is it ‘upper middle class’?). I liked Brideshead Revisited a lot, and Vile Bodies and similar books. I am wondering however if life as a young Englishman really was as it is described here. There must be deeper emotions somewhere? It cannot all have been ‘slightly amusing’ or ‘adequate’; something at some point must have been hilarious? Or really really annoying? It must be terribly demanding to keep up those super-cool appearances all the time, especially in your youth.

Now that I read the paper copy and didn't get lost in the long sentences anymore, I enjoyed Powell's writing much more and therefore upgrade my original rating to 4 stars.

Rating: 4 stars



3. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Stupid me spent 16.50 EUR on the German paperback version only to realize it was only half the book. So I invested another 6 USD to load the whole thing in English on my Kindle. As you know I don’t like the fantasy genre very much, but there’s not much not to like in this book. I was wondering what George R.R. Martin did right to make his fantasy books appeal to such a broad readership. I guess it is the J.K. Rowling phenomenon: he selected ingredients everyone has already read somewhere else and mixed them in a way that seems new and unusual.

I haven’t read much fantasy in my life, but even to me it is obvious that this story is full of the usual stereotypes. The good guys are unbearably and stubbornly good and honest (I might be alone here, but Ned really annoyed me), the bad guys are as bad as can be, there are some multi-layered sinister characters who add some spice to the story but who so far don’t play a main role. There are strong female characters, while most of the men seem to have just one characteristic, but that one in the extremes. There are some interesting locations – Martin did a great job with the Wall, although it reminded me extremely of a Dino Buzzati novel I read last year. Maybe he took his idea from that book. I also thought he might have read Simplicissimus. The best thing he did was the constant change of perspective. This is something I usually don’t like too much, but here it brings the story forward and it avoids the lengths that would come up if we were following just one or two characters. The reader is lead from peak to peak in the story and skips all the boring bits like weeks of travelling from Winterfell to the city.
While I found it difficult to put the book down once I had started it, I don’t feel the wish to immediately continue with book 2. Although there are many open story threads when the book ends, this one could well be a stand-alone book for me.

Rating: 4 stars

4. Der Wunschpunsch by Michael Ende

As a kid I loved Michael Ende's Jim Knopf and Momo, later I read The Neverending Story of which I loved the first half to bits but only once made it through the moralistic second part. Ende’s stories usually contain some critical views on the modern world where people have no time anymore for each other, where greed and arrogance rule the world, where our natural environment is endangered by industrial progress. In this book, the criticism was almost too much for me, the usual subtlety was missing. The balance between criticism and fairy-tale like story was better done in Momo. But still, this here is a nice short novel with two very likeable and funny animal characters and I enjoyed it very much.

Rating: 3.5 stars



5. La Conquête de Plassans by Emile Zola

What an interesting first half, what a crazy ending. Between those two parts there are some chapters I found a little boring, mainly because I was too lazy to look up politics of the time when the book was written.

It all starts out very idyllic with the happy life of the family Mouret in their house in Plassans. When the newly arrived abbé Faujas and his mother move into the spare rooms on the second floor it takes a long time until changes become palpable. But once they do, the atmosphere switches from warm and sunny to chilly, and I felt like I was reading some very early Highsmith novel. I wished Zola had kept this track, but clearly that was not what he had been intending to write. Slowly the abbé spreads his influence not only over the Mouret family, but also over all of Plassans and suddenly it seems his power might be without limits.

If this book takes rank 6 in the list of the 6 Zolas I’ve read so far, this is because the other books were still a little greater and also more consistent. But I enjoyed this story very much and happily recommend it to those interested in the Rougon Marquart series.

Rating: 3.5 (3.75) stars

6. Falling Man by Don DeLillo

The book starts with Keith, covered in dust and ash, stumbling through the streets of New York, while behind him the North Tower of the WTC comes down, the place where he used to work and which he has just barely escaped. He is picked up by a kind lorry driver and gives him the address of Lianne, his almost ex-wife.

The next chapters deal with the direct aftermath of 9/11. Keith lives with Lianne again, as his own apartment close to the WTC has become inhabitable. He, Lianne, their son Justin – they are all caught in their own version of this trauma and it is unclear if their different paths will ever join again. There is a lot of talking about the existence of god too, from very different perspectives. People try to understand and at the same time try to forget or not to forget.

The ending gets even more intense. The book is a wholly unenjoyable read, almost unbearable in its intensity, although very well written. It brings it all back and it shows that sometimes time can’t heal our wounds, at least not as quickly as we’d hope.

Rating: 4 stars

7. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

My first Zombie book, and the first half of it showed me I am not made for this kind of stuff. Eeeww… very much so.
R is a ‘young’ Zombie. Young means he was young when he died and was transformed and he’s still quite good-looking, only slightly grey-skinned and with blood-stained yellowish teeth, but not yet smelling too badly of rot and he still got all his skin. And he’s quite a typical undead – when he’s hungry he goes and feeds on humans. Bites the collar, drinks the blood, eats the brains. Not very appetizing.

The story is set in a dystopian surrounding where after years of war and almost total destruction of everything that made civilization enjoyable, the majority of mankind has been killed and zombie-ed. The remaining humans live in the ‘Stadion’ while the local zombies chose an old airport as the place to live. On one of his food excursions R eats a young guy and is hit by the intensity of the memories he experiences while eating the brain. The guy’s name is Perry and R is so impressed by the memories of Perry’s girlfriend Julie that he rescues her from the other zombies and hides her in his house, an empty airplane. And slowly his life starts to change. Is it caused by Julie’s influence, by Perry’s memories, or is it maybe a change that’s originally happening in him?
The 2nd half was less unappetizing and more action-packed, and I had gotten used to the language (present tense, first person, very short sentences ==> that combination does not work at all in Italian!). Now I am almost ready to go and watch the movie.

Rating: 3.5 stars

8. Simplicissimus by Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

It’s a shame, but I would never have read this great German classic, had it not been on the 1,001 list. One of the truly deserved books on the list. It’s more than a tome with its > 1,000 pages, written in what feels like the original German/ Teutsch of the 1600s. At times I wished I could read this book in a translation, also because of its 6 volumes only 5 have been translated into English.

The book is written in a humorous and satirical style, mixing reality with events that are clearly Grimmelshausen’s inventions like the lovely piece about the little men living in the groundless lakes that connect the continents. It is said that this book is partly autobiographical, and it must be assumed that Grimmelshausen witnessed with his own eyes many of the horrible things he describes here. The book is set during the 30 years war, and the violence the country people are forced to suffer is so unbearable that adding humor to the descriptions must have been Grimmelshausen’s only way to deal with it.

I would recommend it, but only if you like to deal with looong books and old language. And with violence and a bit of vulgarity, especially in the first volume. But there’s also a lot of history and philosophy hidden in this book, so it’s not all ‘eww’.

Rating: 4 stars – had the language been a bit more modernized (I really sometimes didn’t understand whole sentences and there were many out-of-use expressions and my edition had no glossary), this could have been 0,5 star more.

I could have needed this book last week, but I lent it to a friend.



9. Trattato di culinaria per donne tristi by Hector Abad Faciolince

What a nice surprise this little book was! In a style that clearly reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and maybe Isabel Allende, the author gives advice to ‘sad women’. And we know we can be sad for all kinds of reasons and even ‘just so’. The advice usually is a recipe, although there are cases where there’s simply no help at all and the best idea would be to drink a glass of water. Most of the recipes are not intended for recreation (steak of mammut!), although some of them are. This is in no way a cookery book, it is more as if a warm and understanding soul were trying to give us our joy back by reminding us of the good things in life. And very often, those good things have to do with food.

Rating: 4 stars



10. Sudtirolesi by Benedetto Masi

I’ve read a couple of books about the political and social situation in this special region where I live, but most of them were written by a German-speaking author. Late last year I started considering the Italian view on it all and read a couple of books to help me understand their side a little better. This is one of them and a very informative one. It is intended for Italians who often don’t understand what all the fuss here in the North is about. Basically it is quite well written and I might have given it 4 stars, had there not been the very bad editing.

Maybe the author/ publishing house didn’t have the necessary financial means, but even I with my mediocre reading capability in Italian found so many errors (not so much spelling, but double words or brackets where not required) that for me it looked like no-one had ever proof-read this book.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Sorry to hear about your ill-fated meetup, what a shame!

#114 Glad you enjoyed GoT - I'm sure you've heard the warnings, but don't get too attached to any characters if you are going to read the other novels, he is brutal! Awesome, but brutal.

#120 Laura: yes, it was really sad. We knew there'd be traffic, but that much and all day? Anita told me from how many countries she had seen cars/ license plates: Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, France, countless Germans/Austrians/Italians, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Poland..... It seems that half Europe was on holiday this last week and all of them came to Austria. We were lucky we could just turn around and return to where we came from, but those poor tourists all had to wait it out.

#121 Bekka: I wonder if there's a single character I feel attached to right now. It's a good thing Martin does this changing of perspective always before a character can really get on my nerves. The one he killed off in this first book was an exception, I found him incredibly annoying with his stubborn honorous ways and was almost relieved I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore in the future.
I fear the next parts will have more battles, while the part I found most fascinating was the introduction with what happened north of the wall. I'd like to see many more wall chapters in the other books.

I'm just popping in to say hi - I have missed my LT friends the last few weeks! Looks like you've been doing some great reading and between you and Heather I am heading for an Agatha Christie soon. But not till I've finished Anna Karenina... 180 pages to go, loving all of it but also feeling like it's been weeks since I read anything else and the book bullets have not stopped arriving!

Really sorry to read about your meetup. Next time hopefully!

Hallo Nathalie, wow soo many good reviews. I can't believe that you enjoyed George Martin that much - that really makes me smile. I do hope that you will appreciate the other installments as much.
Hm, interesting review of Der Wunschpunsch, I do agree with you that he is less subtle in that story. Actually, Momo is my fave and The Neverending Story my least fave.

Wish you a great and relaxing week.

#123: Hello Cushla, I am sorry it has been a while since I posted on your thread. I am still behind everywhere after my bad start into the 2013 LT.
I'll try and squeeze in some more Agatha Christie rereads as well this year. I love those clean and classic 'Herrenhaus' crime cases.

#124: Hallo Bianca! The same to you!
Momo is such a wonderful story... when the adults start selling the time to the Graue Herren, often for good and selfless reasons (believing to provide a better future for their children) and everyone becomes sadder and unhappier by the day. That was quite subtle for a childrens' book. In Der Wunschpunsch it is so bluntly stated that 'this is a bad sorcerer and he poisons rivers'. But the animals (names already gone from my memory) were so likeable and made up for it.
I read the first half of The Neverending Story countless times. Just the idea with the different print colors! And then when Bastian arrives in Phantasien and everyone and everything I loved in the story is suddenly gone and the whole country has to be freshly created (and completely differently) it was always like starting on a second and much weaker book. I read that part once and now I ignore it.

I'm sorry about the meet-up too - at least you'll get another chance! And glad that you're liking GRRM!
You remind me that I haven't read any of Buyer's Market, so I can go ahead and get cracking. If only I could finish my ER ARC!!!

hi Nathalie

We are safe back home. Sorry we did not make it to meet eachother, but I do hope we will find an other opportunity someday...

Glad to read you had a good time at the Therme Hotel, that is much better than leaving that booking all unused ;-)
I will update my thread later with some of our vacation pictures.

Oh and I completely agree with you on The Neverending story!

Anita

Wow! alot of great reviews here, Nathalie. Sad that the meet-up wasn't able to take place but all of you gave it a good try. Hope you're having a good week!

Hi Nathalie,

so many great new reviews. But oh my, you remembered me that I fully ignored the Powell-reading. Somehow I just wasn't in the mood for it in January, but maybe I can catch up in February.

At least you don't regret having read Game of Thrones. I liked it very much, but I can totally understand that it's not everybody's cup of tea. I'm wondering how it was for you to deal with all these different characters. I have seen the TV series first, so I could keep the characters easily separated. But I am sure that it would have been a more difficult read without the series, because the number of characters are quite overwhelming. How's your impression?

La Conquête de Plassans sounds interesting. - Have to keep that in mind. Although Zola intimidates me a little bit.

Oh my, I'm sorry to hear about your failed meet-up with Anita and Frank. I could have told you that the past weekend in particular was one of the worst possible times to meet in that region. (*smart-ass mode: out*) I live only about 40 minutes away from Landeck, so I have made my experiences with holiday endings, traffic jams, snowy streets, etc. ;) I hope that your meeting in Holland will finally work!

Ich wünsch dir morgen noch einen feinen Freitag und ein schönes Wochenende!

I am moved you were so moved by The Golden Notebook and look forward to your review very much.

Glad you like Game of Thrones - I know just what you mean about not rushing to the next one though, they took me awhile to read and I am one or two behind even now.

Just checking in on you, Nathalie. It has been a while ;)

Hi Nathalie, just stopping by to check how your weekend was so far.

Wünsche Dir noch einen schönen Sonntag Abend.

Hi Nathalie - maybe it's time for another DeLillo - remember White Noise not as a perfect read, but strangely intriguing. As usual very varied reading alternating between german, italian and english - old and new - good and bad :) impressive.

Hi everyone - thank you all for stopping by!
I don't know what's the matter with me , but I find it extremely hard this year to follow LT, to keep my thread going, to post reviews in time (although I do write them, there's quite a collection now waiting to be posted)...

Maybe I haven't yet got fully used to being an employee again. For three years I could do whatever I wanted during the day on the internet and now I am restricted to the early morning and to the evenings + maybe 1 or 2 posts during the lunch break, but then I am often too tired to form a single sentence in English. And on the weekends I often feel like my brain blends out.

After having sorted out the most urgent problems last year (finding a new job, cleaning up all that business mess, regain some financial stability) I now have to 'work' on some personal issues which is equally demanding and often scary.

At least the reading still works, I already finished 11 books this month. I picked up some of my 'on hold' books in order to finally get them finished. Back on "Arabian Nights", but that will take many more months, maybe even years. I finished The Dovekeepers and am making good progress on The Art of Happiness in a troubled World.

#126 Peggy: I loved The Byuer's Market on my reread. I missed so much on that stupid audio last yerar...

#127 Anita: Glad to see you made it back home well! I'll send you a PN later today.

#128 Lynda: Thank you - and the same to you! :-)

#129 Kathy: I had even heard the traffic news on the radio, but not owning a map I didn't know it was Anita's and Frank's route they were talking about all the time. As for me - it was no problem at all to get to Landeck. Just from there to the Arlberg... Well, I've learned my lesson. :-)

The characters in TGOT: I already forgot all the names as usual, but as they are introduced in 'batches', I could cope with them quite well. I liked it that the chapters were just short enough that I was a little disappointed when they ended. This way none of the characters could really annoy me (because most of them are flat enough to become an annoyance) and it was like a book full of story peaks.

#130 Lucy: I am a little scared to post the review, because it might tell you all too much of me or give a wrong impression. While I don't live like Anna, I still made similar experiences. What really shocked me was that she even had the same nightmares. I put 2 other Lessing's on my WL, I found her writing very impressive.

#131: Hi Stasia, I must visit your thread soon, too. I saw the pics of the twins - they're so cute!

#132 Bianca: Dir eine schöne Woche!

#133 Carsten: Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have a look at it. "Strangely intriguing" is a good description for DeLillo's writing.

Yeah, you finished The Dovekeepers and I will patiently wait for the verdict. BTW have you already read anything by Jose Saramago? He has won the Nobel prize for literature some years back and I recently discovered some interesting books by him. Some are waiting on my TBR to be read soon.

I can imagine that it is difficult for you to get back into a different work shedule and it probably will take some time to adjust to it. However, the most important thing is that your financial situation is improving.

Are you still seing the councillor you saw last year?

Wish you a great week :)

#136: I really enjoyed the 2nd half and read that in just 3 days - the first half though not so much. The author used the same 'voice' for all 4 characters, and somehow I needed to get to Aziza (my favorite!) to find that voice/ way of expression fitting to the character. I was shocked by the ending, maybe I should have looked up the history first.

Yes, I am still seeing her. I was very close to stopping the sessions because I thought I was wasting her time and taking the place of someone who might need it more. But then I understood that this is just an expression of my problem: that I believe to be not worth my own attention and feel guilty and selfish as soon as I start doing something for myself. So since I got to that point I believe I am really making progress. I call the problems I am facing right now 'Häutungsschmerzen'. as if I were growing and the old 'skin' is getting too tight. :-)

Edit: forgot to answer the Saramago question: No, I haven't read anything by him yet, but just last week I bought Cecità/ Blindness and plan to read it soon. But first comes Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini which I bought on the same day, because it celebrates its 50th birthday these days. And then Krabat to honor Ottfried Preussler. So maybe I'll get to the Saramago in April.

One of my favorite author of childrens books died 2 days ago, aged 89 (it was published today): Ottfried Preussler, whose "Robber Hotzenplotz" was my very first big literature hero when I was in kindergarten. I reread the 3 Hotzenplotz books last year and also The Little Witch. Now I ordered Krabat/ "The Satanic Mill" and am looking forward to finally reading this dark Slavic tale that scared me so much when I was a kid.

Don't worry Nathalie - LT seems to ebb and flow for all of us..... I can see that as you get up to speed at work, LT would not exactly be a high priority too.

#139 Lucy: then I am hoping for a flow tide to return to me soon. :-)

****

So, reviews. Instead of posting all the 10 I assembled at once, I'll now post 5 and then do the others a bit later.



11. La Coscienza di Zeno (Zeno’s Conscience) by Italo Svevo

I had quite liked the writing, though not the story, in Svevo’s Senilità (When a Man grows older) and therefore decided to try his longer and more famous work, La Coscienza di Zeno. I was also encouraged by the theater play announced in Merano for February 5th. I started well ahead of that date, but the read was slow-going from the beginning, although I can’t say that the language was particularly difficult or that the story was boring.

The first part is set in the middle of Zeno’s life and deals with his unsuccessful attempts to give up smoking. Quite funny and also quite modern. But it also gets obvious on those first pages that Zeno is not a very likeable man. He has a certain humor, being able to make fun of himself. But at the same time he is egocentric and weak, easily offended, too pathetic. The book stays amusing even through the death of his father and his not so successful attempts of finding a wife. He ends up proposing to three sisters during one evening until finally one of them accepts him.

But when in the next long chapter Zeno gets a mistress for no apparent reason and writes endlessly about this joyless and useless relationship, I quite lost my willingness to follow his thoughts and above all his excuses. The next very long business chapter didn’t get any better. Zeno is not only a terrible husband and father, but also a very bad and disloyal friend.

The writing was as good as in Senilità. But in the end I disliked Zeno so much that I couldn’t go to the theater, although I had finished the book in time.

Rating: 3.5 stars, mainly for the writing

12. Il gioco delle tre carte by Marco Malvaldi

After the joyless Zeno I needed some fun and so quickly read MM’s second novel about the barrista Massimo and the gang of ‘old boys’ frequenting his bar and adding their wisdom to whatever comes across them. Again the criminal case could be neglected, all the fun was in the interaction between Massimo, his cranky nonno (grandfather) and the other 3 old men. This time the case was IT focused and it was funny watching Massimo explain this modern world to the old men while being forced to avoiding English expressions like ‘computer’, ‘notebook’, ‘wireless’, etc.
I’ll soon read the sequels.

Rating: 3.5 stars

13. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

If you read this book and your reaction is that you get terribly bored, can’t relate at all and find yourself thinking what unrealistic, hopeless, self-centered characters Lessing created with Anna Wolf and the people around her, you can quietly put the book back on the shelf forever and enjoy the thought that at least some things in your life must have gone well. This is no irony. I mean that and I am happy for you! Maybe I even envy you a bit.

Please stay far away from this book if:
• you are feeling only slightly sad/ melancholy/ depressed and not 100% stable
• there has been/ is emotional abuse in your past/ present life and you haven’t yet been able to fully digest it and leave it behind you
• you’re 42 and a single woman steering full-speed towards your midlife-crisis

This book grabbed me by the throat and strangled me, then threw me into a wild stormy ocean and settled on the shore to watch me drown. For days I was always on the brink of tears and absolutely couldn’t help it. When I finally emerged from it I felt raw and over-sensitive and it took me several days to find my composure again. I don’t know if this is what books should do to their readers.

I am not always that strongly affected when I read books dealing with emotional issues, nervous breakdowns, mental diseases, etc. I remember having been extremely underwhelmed and not at all touched by Bell Jar and also reading all those Virginia Woolf books never made me want to drown myself.

This book here just contained too much of me – but don’t worry, only in a very exaggerated form. The life I lead/led is completely different from Anna’s, but some of our experiences and our thought processes are very similar. We even share some of our nightmares, maybe that’s what scared me most.

But not all is bad, in a way this book also helped me. The idea of compartmentalizing one’s life into strictly separated areas and writing about them in different notebooks was interesting and can be applied in many ways to RL problems. I am glad I finally finished this book now after its long ‘on hold’ phase, but I am sure I won’t touch it again anytime soon.

Rating: 4.5 stars

14. Tacchino Farcito by Alda Bruno

Year after year after year an Italian family has a turkey for Christmas dinner. The preparations and stuffings change, family members are born or die, but the turkey is the constant. Doesn’t sound too bad, but no… there was nothing in this book I liked or that made any sense to me. I learned that even after several generations women don’t count as heirs and even formerly disadvantaged daughters will only dote on their sons and not hesitate to betray their own daughters. With only 93pages, the book at least was short. And don’t count on recipes, most of the preparations here were just… ew.

Rating: 1.5 stars



15. Italiani di domani by Beppe Severgnini

I have a weakness for Beppe Servergnini’s writing, because his older books were the first ones I ever read in Italian. He spent many years in the UK and the US and his writing is fresh and almost English. Many of his books originate from newspaper columns, and sometimes this works well (in all his travel books), but sometimes they should better have stayed in that format.

I keep reading him although I wasn’t too happy with his last books. Not that they were bad, but you could feel that a good concept for a weekly or monthly column, when drawn out over 200 or so pages, not automatically becomes a gripping read. I liked this book better than the last two, although again he loses steam (and half a rating star) towards the ending.

This one’s an appeal directed mainly towards the young Italians, but it also makes sense reading it when much older. “How do we have to change our habits in order to be fit for tomorrow?” is the question he asks and he gives many good and true answers, although he over-idealizes the situation in the US a bit too much.

And sure there’s a ‘but’ again: He tries to find 8 required characteristics and to undermine each of those with 8 arguments/examples. I believe the book would have worked at least as good if he hadn’t cared about that magic number at all. Some characteristics could well have done with a longer exploration, in other cases he didn’t have much more to say after 3 or 4 chapters and started repeating himself. I had the same problem with his Berlusconi book 2 years ago. It’s great if a non-fiction book has a clear structure, but the structure should not dominate the content.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Woah, I still have got two Lessing's on my TBR and they are The Golden Notebook which you just finished and Das fünfte Kind by her. Ahem, reading your review I may just leave it on my TBR for a little while longer.

Hi Nathalie, great reviews as always. :) Doris Lessing is a gap I need to fill up some day, but not this year and presumably not the next one. Somehow I've got the impression that you need to be a little bit older and more mature than I am right now to fully "get" her books.
I hope that your personal issues will soon find some solution. Are you still seeing the therapist? How is it going with the consultation?

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

#142 Hmmm... I'm only on 1 + 1/2 of those and so far it's just irritating me. I hope it did ultimately hlep not hinder :/ Please don't let it put you off her other things - I've only read The Grass is Singing and The Diaries of Jane Somers - the first is good but not out of the ordinary. The second is immensely strong and, I think, will stay with me forever - very powerful but perhaps not for anyone in a messy emotional place.

Hope your next read is better than the last two Italian novels and less emotional than the Lessing.

Wow, Nathalie, your review of The Golden Notebook was so full of raw emotion that I am torn about reading the book now. In one way I'm afraid to read it yet in another way I want to read it to test my reaction. I'm glad you found something helpful about it. LT reviews are all over the place on this book. I would have given your heartfelt review two thumbs up if you had posted it!

Hi Nathalie, I am another who found your review of The Golden Notebook amazing. I think it's one I have to add to my list. Btw, I went to thumb-up your review also, but it is not posted.

#144 Bianca: I found the first parts of the book joyless and lengthy though very well written. The second part/ red notebook about the Communist Party was almost boring (the other parts are timeless, that part is really outdated), and then out of the blue came that grabbing-me-by-the-throat moment. The writing was so good though that I'll soon try The Grass is Singing.

#145 Kathy: yes, I am still seeing her. I was considering ending the sessions, but then something 'clicked' and I am actually seeing a little progress. One thing: I started wearing those dresses

#146 Bekka: I'll definitely read more of Lessing's books. The Grass is Singing sounded harmless in comparison on amazon, so I ordered the sample. Another emotionally demanding one - better not now :-)

#147/148 Donna and Nancy: I considered posting it, but it felt too personal and therefore I prefer keeping it here. But thank you for offering thumbs!! :-)

More reviews:



16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Okay, 5 stars. No discussion here. Almost. No – the book is undeniably great, one of the greatest, and sure among the best I ever read. And if there’s a character who is meant to be ‘good’ but whom I despise, it doesn’t make the book, the story any worse, it just adds some more flavor to it and no-one likes all tastes. *sigh*

But let me say: for me, Marius was not so much a romantic hero, he was a mere plot complication from the moment he entered the book in volume 3. I would happily have sacrificed, let’s say, 300-400 pages (or alternatively have read another 300-400 pages on slang, monasteries, the sewers of Paris, etc. because it was not the book’s length that bothered me!) if that would have saved me from Marius and my ever-growing antipathy for him. Yes, even Zola criticizes him toward the ending and that made the last 10% easier to bear for me. But how I wished at times that he had just omitted the pathetic love story and instead given me more of that eternal battle between Jean Valjean and the police spy Javert. When those two have their fights with their inner demons, the book is at its best. Marius’ cowardly little struggles of avoidance are like weak coughs in the wild and desperate roars that are the turmoils of Valjean’s and Javert’s souls.

I never saw the musical or even listened to any of the songs yet, but the whole book was music for me, and I am not a very musical person. The scenes with Valjean and Javert are played by the big string orchestra and against them Marius sounds like a flute in the last row. (No I didn't like him!)

Other characters: grown-up Cosette felt flat in a ‘Dickens writes women’ way, but that was excusable and could be explained with her upbringing. With Anne Hathaway so over-present everywhere now, I had expected to see more of Fantine in the book. My heart broke for Éponine (another point against Marius!). Gavroche was not so much a character than an allegory for Paris. Thenardier was one of those villains who for me add a welcome zest to the story and there was just enough of him. I loved the bishop and I am glad Zola took all the time to introduce him, because he got the whole story rolling. Wonderful characterization of Marius’ grandfather!

I had not planned to read this book anytime soon, its sheer length (app 1,500 pages) always scared me off. But with the GR and the movie I suddenly felt encouraged and I was surprised how quickly those 5 volumes flew by. One of the best page-turners ever. And so gripping that I needed those numerous and lengthy and mostly wonderful digressions to calm down again and get prepared for the next plot attack.

Rating: 5 stars

17.The Notebook of Malte Laurids Briggs by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Notebooks are Rilke’s only work of prosa and therefore were the only possibility to get Rilke on the 1,001 list. The language is beautiful, the story is part fiction (all the ghosts), part autobiographical, often quite disturbing, with the narrator showing clear symptons of mental illness. Rilke explicitly warns people not to seek a solution for their own problems in this book.
The main topic is death and how everyone is carrying his own variety of it from the day of one’s birth. There were parts where I had absolutely no idea what he was writing about and whom he was addressing. Other parts were of striking beauty and I collected many quotes. He quite lost me towards the ending but then caught me again on the very last pages.

Rating: 4 stars - for the writing, not so much for the content.
Probably weaker in translation.

Placeholder for 18. A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell
Rating: 4 stars

19. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

I am glad I read The Crow Road and Stonemouth first, otherwise this book might have put me off Banks forever. Torturing of animals and detailed drawn-out scenes of drunkenness, 3 children being killed and a surprise ending which I saw coming from the very first chapter (it was just surprising to me that it was such a surprise for the protagonist).

The story: 17 year old Frank lives with his father on a small island in Scotland. His older brother Eric who has a history of bad violence against animals (he set dogs and sheep on fire) has broken out of the mental ward and makes his way towards the island, calling Frank from his trip and scaring the hell out of him (and the reader!). Frank is a very disturbed boy as well. He leads an almost completely solitary life because he is officially non-existent, never having been registered by his father. He leaves the island only for the occasional drink in town with his one friend, ‘Jamie the dwarf’. Already in the first chapter he admits to having killed 3 children before having reached the age of 10. Over the chapters we learn how the murders were planned and executed and we are introduced to the wasp factory, an elaborate construction for the torturing and killing of wasps. Apart from wasps he also kills small animals, mainly rabbits.

As in Stonemouth, the narrator again did a great job here. Banks saves the story because he is such a skilled writer especially for the scenes of normal daily life. It’s obvious where he wanted to go with the story and the idea is quite brilliant. But I just didn’t get over all the casual violence here, maybe those parts would have been easier to get through with a paper copy. So while I can see more Banks for me in my reading future, I’ll be very careful which books to select.

Rating: 3 stars

20. Il ladro di merendine (The Snack Thief) by Andrea Camilleri

The third Montalbano, and so far from the criminal aspect my favorite one. I loved how Camilleri drew the storyline from the murder of an old man in the lift of his condominium to something so big it becomes untouchable.

Looking at the character side however, I believe the second book, The Terracotta Dog, must have been Camilleri’s first great success and he saw the need to soften things down a bit. I didn’t like the changes at all. I was never a big fan of the Montalbano character because I detested the disrespect he openly shows towards others, especially women when they are not maternal and offer him food. But that’s just what he was and fine. Now here he gets a background story that ‘explains things’ and I am confronted with just another investigator with a difficult youth. I don’t want to have to analyze the personal issues of the protagonist in a crime series when I have a crime to solve! This is not high literature, I just want to enjoy it – and this means calling him an a***hole when he behaves like one and not having to think ‘poor guy, what has society done to you?’. And what I also want is the funny and very vulgar interaction with his male friends. That part was obviously cut short here. Some ‘cazzo’ and ‘culo’, but that’s about it. Where’s the real dirty un-pc language??

Well, he compensates having lost that outlet by eating more. In the first two books he ate well, but usually very light, some antipasto, some fish. No pasta, no dessert. Sicily is a hot place. Now he eats 3 or 4 courses twice a day. And doesn’t even take Livia to the restaurants, it’s something he does all alone and then lies to her about having had just a sandwich for lunch, so she can cook him a full dinner. And I noticed Camilleri started the popular ‘teach the foreign readers how to eat/drink correctly in Italy’ game. Lesson #1: only cretins put cheese on their seafood pasta!
Marco Malvaldi does the same repeatedly in his ‘Massimo the barrista’ series where he refuses the guests cappuccinos past noon unless they are incorrigible foreigners.

If the character development goes on like that I don’t know how far I’ll get into the series. In this book I also lost all sympathy for Livia. Clearly he doesn’t want to marry her, not even to live with her. So why get all hysterical about that little boy? If you so desperately want a child, dump him, girl, and look for someone better. You don’t want to move to Sicily anyway (yes, I know, they both have relationship issues and he is scared of women in general and I am 100% sure those things will be drawn out in detail and forever in the other books... Where is the old-fashioned quirky detective who has no past and just solves his cases??)

Rating: 3.5 stars

Glad you enjoyed Les Miserables - I have read it years ago and enjoyed it a lot too, and I also love the musical, but somehow I've managed to avoid seeing the film so far. Not sure how that's happened!

#155 Rhian: After having read the book I am no longer so eager to see the movie, because all those digressions I liked won't be part of the movie plot (how could they?). But it seems I missed it anyway, so I'll just wait for the DVD.

****
How can it already be March??!? I have a weekend full of activities ahead, then an extremely busy week and then another weekend away. And my parents will arrive tomorrow and stay for a week in a more snowy region close to Merano, so I'll try to go and see them at least 2-3 times.
I am tired of my own apologies, but so much is going on in my RL that I hardly find time and brain energy for LT. Maybe I'll take some weeks off, except for the GRs I am participating in, and return, hopefully refreshed, around Easter?

With now 2 salaries not so firmly settled on my account I went on a book-buying spree in January and February. 27 books in 2 months! Then I decided not to buy any books in March and today when I was in Bolzano for a meeting and had some time left, I went automatically straight into the Italian bookshop. I remembered my resolution only when there were already 2 books in my basket, so I heroically returned them to their shelves and only bought a birthday card.

And then I went and bought another dress....
I decluttered my wardrobe last weekend and threw out 3 huge bags of old trouser suits from my days of banking. Most of them more than 5 years old. I haven't bought many clothes since moving here and then only casual things, but I brought loads of old stuff from Germany and didn't wear it. Among the old clothes I found a dozen more dresses, nice and timeless ones, which I all kept.

As one of my planned 'steps forward' I signed up for a language tandem last week. I hope they'll soon find an Italian tandem partner for me. This will require another 2-4 hours per week of my free time, but it's important for me to finally master that language. It will bring me so much additional freedom and if things don't work out with the job here I could go anywhere else in Italy.

21. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffmann

I started this book in October, then at around 45% put it on hold until early this week and then finished it in just three days. It tells the story of 4 women, the dovekeepers, in the Jewish stronghold of Masada, in the years 70-73 in Israel. The country is ruled by the Romans and rebels are persecuted. Refugees from everywhere gather and find a new home in Masada, until in 73 finally the Roman troops arrive.

The book is told from the perspective of those 4 women; each of them gets about a quarter of the book. Telling their stories here would spoil too much, I’d just like to say what made the book so problematic for me. The writing is good, but it reminded me a lot of other historical fiction by female authors. I can’t express it very well, but it’s that distant observing writing with short sentences. As if the narrator wasn’t really touched by the events. Somehow this didn’t work for me for the first two characters, but went better with the last two. Maybe because those two hadn’t been through such horrible atrocities yet. For me, their voice was more believable and therefore the reading was so much faster.

Be warned of a shocking ending. Maybe it had been announced somewhere earlier and I missed it, and stupidly I didn't check wikipedia in advace, it sure came as a big surprise.

Rating: 3.5 stars



22. La grammatica ti salverà la vita by Massimo Birattari

An Italian children’s book I found in the library. Integrated into a story about a school trip to a mysterious, solitary castle, the author gives grammar lectures. The kids have to complete certain exercises during their trip, and when they make too many mistakes, all kinds of monsters turn up: werewolves, vampires, zombies, classical ghosts, etc. There’s no internet or mobile phone connection and the only real phone predictably doesn’t work.
This was an interesting concept and I learned some things, although most of the grammar lessons were really high-level (intended for Italians, not foreigners) and went a bit over my head. The story however was really quite lame and I doubt kids will have much fun with it either.

Rating: 3 stars

23. Il Re dei Giochi by Marco Malvaldi

Massimo, my favorite bar(r)ista, has invested into a huge billiard table for his bar, hoping for new customers, but now the gang of ‘vecchietti’ (old ones) leaves the place only for lunch and dinner and blocks the billiard table for the rest of the day. Massimo is annoyed, even more so when after a tragic car accident (a boy is killed and the mother is gravely injured) his grandpa Ampelio and the 3 others decide it must have been a case of murder. Okay, so there have been 2 murders in the 2 last years, and now it seems the vecchietti believe they booked a kind of ‘a crime per year subscription’ and don’t even shy away from reporting their suspicion to the local police. They believe that one of the candidates for the next election is the culprit and when the police agent chases them away, they quickly disperse their idea everywhere in the little town.
When the injured women is really killed in hospital things suddenly look very different.

As always, the crime plays only a minor role in this 3rd novel about Massimo and the vecchietti. Their interaction is getting better and better and therefore I can forgive that Marco Malvaldi took the occasion to put in much of his own life philosophy into this novel, here mainly directed against religion. Very funny, truly Italian.

I hope the vechietti will remain in good health for many more years and novels to come.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Nathalie, enjoy your mini vacation away from LT. I think its healthy not to get overextended and try to keep up with everything... everything, that is, except Book 3 of A Dance to the Music of Time. I have a busy month ahead as well. Dang, I listed my TIOLI Reads on my thread and on the TIOLI thread and I forgot about The Acceptance World. It looks like I'll be reading 11 books in March. I'm glad it's a long month!

#159: Hi Donna, I don't know yet if it will really be a vacation. But I am always promising to 'catch up this week' or 'this weekend' and I found I can't. At least not now. And seeing that the next 10-15 days will be all busy I thought it'd be safer to say 'I'll probably not be here so don't be angry with me if you don't see me on your threads...'.

I don't know why my brain feels so tired in the evenings. Spring-tiredness (1:1 translation of 'Frühjahrsmüdigkeit')?

****

Something else: I just started reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and I noticed that in English/UK books there's the recurring motive of the woman having run away from her family and having left the child(ren) with their father. I don't remember that so extremely from German or American literature. I don't know if it will play any role in the Barnes book, but the mention of Adrian's mother 'having walked out' just brought back all the other books: The Lighthouse by Alison Moore, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce - even in the first Adrian Mole book by Sue Townsend it is the mother who first packs up things and leaves, and they all do it without much looking back. Sure it always comes with bad consequences for the children left behind - the boys turning into men who can't connect with the world outside, the girls having problems with their sexual identity.

I only know one case in RL where someone 'walked out without looking back' and it was a man who did the classical 'I'll just go and buy cigarettes' and called a day later from the US, informing his family that he was going to start a new life there.

But comparing the lives of friends who grew up with only one parent after a normal divorce I don't see a tendency that those living with their dad had a more difficult or problematic life than those who stayed with their mother.

In case of the female authors I wondered if it was something they were exploring: "oh dear, I got enough of all that! Kids, household, work, husband - what would happen if I just left? Okay, I see my kids would turn into monsters/killers/helpless beings, so now I feel guilty so I'd better stay."?

It's a theme here and there in US lit. too - I can think of a couple - (of course, titles are evading me....I just remember the stories.....) I do think it is a case of working out a 'what if' fantasy. Would I be more free? (If the book is from the POV of the woman who leaves) and What would be the consequences? - There's a recent movie on that theme too - the three young men riding the train in India looking for their mother - Owen Wilson is one of them.....

Like yourself, however, I only know of men who have left. I can't think of a single instance where a woman has gone off and disappeared in RL but I know of at least three incidents with men, curiously, one per generation, the grandfather of a friend of mine, a parental unit of a friend of mine, and the husband of someone I know a little bit who is of my generation...... odd that..... oh and also, heavens, how could I forget, my husband's great grandfather ran off in 1896! And committed bigamy! And converted to Islam. Now there's a tale!

#161 Lucy: now that you mentioned it... I saw that movie and liked it a lot. I even bought the DVD and some weeks ago I found it in a box I had recently brought back from Germany. I must rewatch soon! It's called "Darjeeling Limited" or similar. And yes, they are all 3 damaged, in different ways.

What a story about your husband's great grandfather! Sounds like that could be turned into a great movie as well.

24. The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World by Dalai Lama

Seems 2013 will be the year of 3.5 stars…

Here in this book large parts were extremely boring and repetitive, but the good sections were so good (and helpful) that I ended up giving quite a positive rating. Those were original Dalai Lama, the boring ones are provided by the narrator Howard. Maybe I’ve already read too much about Buddhism, I found the Dalai Lama’s ideas easy to understand and well presented. Howard, taking the role of the unconvinced Western listener, kept asking and asking the same things all over again (but if, but if, but if) to which the Dalai Lama always gave the same answers until Howard finally gave in. When he didn’t ask questions he tried to underline the Dalai Lama’s arguments with scientific findings. Some were interesting, most were not, but I am not among the people who need scientific proof when certain ways of thinking make me feel better – the feeling better is the important point.

While it was a long and mostly dull read, the insights of the Dalai Lama did in fact help me with some issues I lately had and I am trying to incorporate them into my thinking patterns, which is very hard work.

Rating: 3.5 stars

25. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – contains some SPOILERS but plot is of minor importance

I didn’t expect at all to like this one – but then I loved it! If I didn’t rate it with 4.5 stars, it is only because I absolutely can’t explain what it was I liked and where the quality of it lies (but I might upgrade!). The book is full of unlikeable characters, vulgarity, and there isn’t even that much of a story.

It is set in the New Orleans of the 60s and while there wasn’t a single scene that was really inviting, within its first chapters the book managed to set N.O. on top of my ‘places to see should I ever travel to the US again’. The main character Ignatius J. Reilly has only once in his life left town for a job interview and has always regretted that scary trip.

Ignatius is in his thirties and is so un-pc I am sure no author nowadays would dare writing him: he’s fat, ugly, scruffy, obnoxious, offending and above all LAZY. He’s never worked a day in his life although he’s obviously very intelligent and expresses himself extremely well. He lives with his mother who suffers from rheumatism and claims ‘to help her out’, but in reality spends his day lying in his filthy bed or in the bath tub, writing on big tablets of paper what would today be a successful blog, an endless succession of complaints and lamentations about the state of the world, while eating huge amounts of mostly sweet foods.

During a trip into town, while his mother is in the cake shop buying fresh supplies (btw. I want one of those wine cakes!!), Ignatius almost gets arrested by an undercover agent. With the help of his mother and some bystanders, he successfully gets off and the agent arrests an old man instead. Mother and son have some drinks in a dubious bar where the mother sells her hat to a homosexual guest while the son is chatting with a barmaid. All those side characters turn up again in the book, along with numerous others, and their stories interrelate again.

Forced by his annoyed mother to finally get a job, Ignatius is first hired by a run-down textile company where he plans a workers revolt and then works as a hot dog vendor, only causing more mischief when he tries to impress his political ideas on the hat-buyer and his friends of the gay community.

All the time Ignatius keeps being worried about his health, especially watching his ‘stomach valve’, the state of which (open or closed) decides his next step of action.

I found this book hilarious. The narration of the audio version was exceptional and I additionally bought the paper copy for a reread.

Rating: 4(.25) stars

Sorry for the extra-length (#25 was already too long), but this book is so difficult to describe and could be interpreted in so many ways:



26. Beatrice e Virgilio by Yann Martel - contains SPOILERS

I can’t make up my mind about Yann Martel. Do I like his books or should I avoid them in the future? Life of Pi was impressive and well-written, but also a book I didn’t enjoy at all and which I’ll probably never touch again. The feeling this book left me with is similar. I feel repelled, but at the same time I couldn’t put it down and can’t help admiring what he tried to do here.

The protagonist Henry is Martel’s alter ego post LiP. He has written a book that’s read and loved everywhere in the world and he can comfortably live on its income. For 5 years he works on its successor, a book about the Holocaust that tries to develop an art form to impress the unspeakable on the reader without using actual memories of eyewitnesses. The book consists of a novel and a non-fiction part, always printed on opposite pages, forcing the reader to flip the book over to be able to read on. When the book (which I’d love to read should it exist) is refused by the publishers, Henry experiences writer’s block. He moves to New York, gets married, buys a cat and a dog, starts a job in a chocolate shop and leads a quiet life. Until he receives a package from a stranger, a presumed fan. The package contains a copy of the novella l’histoire de saint Julien-l’Hospitalier by Gustave Flaubert and a scene from a comedy called ‘Beatrice and Virgil’.

Henry finds the author, an old taxidermist who also lives in New York, also named Henry. This leaves many possibilities for interpretation. Is Henry II YM’s ‘other, darker, mysterious’ side? Is the story about the 2 different Henrys also a kind of flip book (from Henry to Henry)?

Anyway - Henry II has spent his life writing on the comedy about the donkey Beatrice and the ape Vergil and now he requires the help of Henry I.

Very quickly it becomes apparent that Beatrice and Vergil aren’t real animals and that the setting is just the art form for the Holocaust Henry I has been looking for in vain. The animals play the role of two Jewish people, hiding from the Nazis. Despite its abstractedness, the play draws Henry I in and he keeps meeting with Henry II although that guy behaves decidedly strange.

Like Henry I, I couldn’t help feeling drawn into the story, although there were some lengths and some unnecessarily detailed descriptions of what makes a good taxidermist.

But then came the ending, and like with Life of Pi I found it over-the-top, repulsive and too violent, and I had the feeling that on the very last pages Yann Martel had given away the chance to create something that could have been really big and really different.

Or he did create the big thing and the publishers refused it like Henry’s flip-book was refused? Not unlikely…

Or maybe if Henry I and Henry II are both YM, you could also read a totally different meaning into the ending.

*sigh* that's all too much for my tired head!

I think I like this one better than LiP, but I might be quite alone with that opinion.

Rating: 3.75 stars

Edit 15.01.2016: not much stayed with me but the shocking ending. Rating it down to 2.75. No more Mantel for me...

27. Krabat (The Satanic Mill) by Otfried Preussler – small SPOILERS

I finally read it and I loved it! The 4.5 stars is an ‘adult book rating’ (while my 4.5 for Preussler’s “Hotzenplotz” were much influenced by childhood memories).

This is much less of a childrens book than the first HP novels and should better not be read to the very young ones! I remember that as a child of 7 or 8 I couldn’t finish it, I found it much too scary. And even now there were some scenes that were decidedly chilling.

Krabat is an orphan, a homeless beggar boy, when he starts his apprenticeship at the mill in the Koselbruch. The work is hard, but the food is rich, and Krabat learns quickly that his eleven older co-fellows are able to perform magic. Once his trial period being over, Krabat is getting introduced into the dark arts as well and soon becomes one of the master’s best students. Life would be great – if there weren’t those dark new moon nights, when the mill has to grind things much different from the normal corn…

Big spoiler
The oldest fellow, Tonda, becomes Krabat’s best friend and it hits Krabat very hard when on the morning of New Year’s Day Tonda is found dead on the foot of the stairs. He notices that on the meadow where Tonda is buried, there seem to be numerous other grave hills. Who will be next and when?
End of big spoiler

A gripping story about how seductive 'the evil' can be, about comradeship, courage and the strength of love, interspersed with motives from old fairy tales. It's said to have been Preussler’s masterwork and while I haven’t read all of his books, so far I’d agree. In my opinion it is a book that should be included in the adult 1,001 list!

Rating: 4.5 stars

28. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes – contains many SPOILERS

I’d been meaning to read this for a while now, but whenever I held it in my hands, in the library, in a bookshop or as Kindle sample, and read the first paragraph, I decided for ‘later’. ‘Later’ finally came last week, when once again I saw it in a book shop and bought it along with 5 other books. Back home it was also the first of the six that wanted to be read.

The quality of the writing and the brilliancy of the first part made the reading overall an enjoyable experience. But then I was completely disappointed by the second part. I see this book on the BP longlist, but if it was was 2011’s winner, the other candidates must have been quite weak.

In part one, the narrator Tony remembers his youth, especially his friendship with Adrian, an over-intelligent, promising and serious boy who committed suicide at the age of 22. Before his death, Adrian had started a relationship with Veronica, Tony’s first girl-friend, but only long after after she and Tony had split up. Part of Tony’s memories is an awkward weekend spent with Veronica’s family and some unusual remarks her mother had made regarding her daughter’s behavior.

Many quietly and averagely lived years and an amicable divorce later, Tony receives a letter from a solicitor, informing him he has inherited 500 GBP and Adrian’s diary from Veronica’s mother. But the diary is with Veronica who refuses to hand it over. So Tony meets her again, and slowly ‘the big secret’ comes to light.

The big secret totally underwhelmed me, as did most of part 2.

While it was obvious in part one that the narrator Tony was not 100% reliable and was holding back parts of the truth (especially ‘that second letter’ he had sent to Adrian), he sounded like quite a normal person.

In part 2 I once again had to confront the ‘old helpless loser guy’ who reminded me much of the protagonists in Harold Fry and The Lighthouse who are unable to buy a bottle of water on a hiking trip. Clueless, unwilling to communicate, like someone who has completely given up on life years ago and is just waiting for its ending, part-2-Tony annoyed me endlessly.

As did the two main female characters. Was I expected to feel anything positive for young or old Veronica? Pity, sympathy, compassion? I didn’t. Was I supposed to like Tony’s cool ever-present ex-wife Margaret? She came over as one of those ‘sensible’ women who can’t stop giving away subtle bitchy and jealous comments on other women. What gives her the right to call Veronica ‘fruitcake’ or to decide that women should take ‘the cut’ (cut their hair short and stop dying it) at a certain age? Why does Tony feel the need to tell her everything about his life so many years after the divorce?

I read you’re supposed to read the book twice, but after the secret had been revealed I was so fed up with the characters that I didn’t want to know if I’d missed any hints.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Sorry for the long reviews, I tried to keep them shorter but then they felt incomplete to me.
I guess it will be a while before I'll post fresh ones, all 'currently reading' books are very slow going.
(Nachsommer/ Indian Summer - I'm talking of you!!! Please, give me just a little plot and let any of your characters pleaseplease finally experience an emotion!)

I wanted to re-organize my stats, but now I'm glad I get them done somehow at all:

January and February reads:

Books read in January: 10
Pages read: 3877

Fiction: 8
Non-fiction: 2
Plays: 0
Short Story Books: 0
Poetry books: 0

English: 3
German: 3
Italian: 3
French: 1

Audio books: 0 (0 bought)
Kindle books: 6 (3 free, 3 bought)
Real books: 4 (2 owned, 2 bought, 0 library)

*******************************

Books read in February: 16
Pages read: 5931 (this could be a new record, thanks to Les Mis)

Fiction: 14
Non-fiction: 2
Plays: 0
Short Story Books: 0
Poetry books: 0

English: 7
German: 1
Italian: 8 (first time IT wins!)
French: 0

Audio books: 2 (2 bought)
Kindle books: 7 (3 free, 1 bought, 3 owned)
Real books: 7 (1 owned, 3 bought, 3 library)

*******************************

Summary 2013:

Books read 2012: 26
Pages read: 9808

Fiction: 22
Non-fiction: 4
Plays: 0
Poetry books: 0 (but 62 poems)
Comic books: 0
Short Story Books: 0

English: 10
German: 4
Italian: 11
French: 1

Audio books: 2 (2 bought)
Kindle books: 13 (6 free, 4 bought, 3 owned)
Real books: 11 (5 bought, 3 owned,3 library)

As alwasy I am in awe of how many books you get through Nathalie! And definitely moving Confederacy of Dunces up the TBR.

No apologies for long reviews, they were all excellent and informative. I think Confederacy of Dunces is one of those books that you love or hate. I remembering enjoying it quite a bit when it came out. I always think of the protagonist when I am bathing on a hot day, which isn't all that often, but still! Treat yourself to Walker Percy's The Moviegoer - set in New Orleans, your new love.

#170 Bekka: CoD is a book you'll love or hate at once - so best get the test chapter and decide if you want to go on. In my case I couldn't even wait for the March GR after listening to the audio sample in February.

I have to quote this from a review I thumbed, written by BooksforDinner:
When in the first paragraph of Toole's masterpiece I read: "...Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs...", I knew I was in for something special. "Filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs," is my favorite line in any book I've ever read, period.

#171 Lucy: I had a look at the review page today and you're right, many 5 and 1 star reviews, almost none with 3 stars. The Moviegoer sample is ordered - thanks for the recommendation!

I like your long reviews Nathalie. Sounds like you had a similar reaction to me to Sense of an
Ending.

Wow - a lot of good reading, Nathalie - you are right about Les Miserables - it's best when you follow Valjean and Javert and the psychological battle between forgiveness and judgment - the Danish version I read only has 900 pages, so I guess it was an adapted version - and I guess I should be happy (but it always irritates me when they don't inform you that the book is adapted)

About Martel I think I will stay clear of him in the future. Had similar thoughts as you on Life of Pi and I will probably be irritated with him.

That's a lot of good reading, Nathalie. Have a good weekend!

Nathalie, I've been missing you, and now I have too much catching up to do in one visit. I think I'm glad that I had my Lessing indulgence at a much younger age than you. And now I'm too old, so I doubt that I'll ever get back. I do appreciate your passionate reviews.
I haven't read any of Iain Banks's straight fiction, but I am a real fan of Iain M. Banks's science fiction. They are pretty demanding, but he is creative as all get-out, and I'd adore to visit anywhere in the Culture if I could be sure of returning myself to this world at a second's notice.
I wanted to love A Confederacy of Dunces more than I can say, and it just didn't work for me. As usual, the writing itself was the problem. I could see where IJR was supposed to be funny, but most of the time he just wasn't. I'm glad that you loved it though.
On the other hand, I pretty much agree with you about The Life of Pi. I'm glad I read it, and I don't really have to try Martel again.
Hope this is an enjoyable weekend for you and that things get more and more under control both for your own well-being and so that you can get back to LT more often. It's about time for me to start The Acceptance World, and I'm very glad that *Buyer's Market* worked for you from the printed page.

Hallo Nathalie,
danke für die netten Geburtstagswünsche :). I am glad to see that you have been reading a lot and well you still gave The Dovekeepers 3.5 stars. I really want to get to Les Miserables this year, but I still haven't found a suitable audiobook :(. As it is a chunkster I like to do tandem reads.
I am almost 3/4 through Anna Karenina now and found that I still feel for her, even so that she behaved so badly most of the time - well, I found that I still kind of find it quite romantic *smile*. My flatmate and I watched yesterday the movie with Kira Knightley as Anna. Initially I was horrified about the presentation of theatre aspects and mockery, but then I kind of was intrigued by what the director has done. Although, I have to say that I didn't like the actors choosen to be Anna and Vronski.
I was really lucky and got a really good audiobook of The Count of Monte Cristo which I wanted to re-read this year as well.

I hope that you had a great time with your parents and that you enjoyed your time off LT :)

I am curious how your language tandem works, would be very interested to hear about it once you started it.

I agree with Lizzie - missing you Nathalie! Hope all is ok.

>177 drachenbraut23:: I felt the same way about the Anna Karenina film. I like Keira Knightly but didn't think she was particularly good in that role.

Hi all! I had decided not to post on my own thread anymore before having caught up (impossible by now) or at least posted on all of yours again, but I thought it might be time to give at least a life sign. I am having an extremely busy time at work, and back home I barely manage to read a little before falling asleep (often by 8pm!). Maybe my body needs all that sleep because spring won't come? Yesterday it has been snowing all day, there was more snow than I ever saw here. A year ago we were already hitting 30°C and the apple trees were in full bloom.

I'll try to post something more today during work (I should better say during lunch break).

Have a great day, everyone!

Hi Nathalie! Great to see you on here. I've hardly been on LT at all either, and should do the same on my thread. I do miss the snow, but I expect you are a bit over it by now. Enjoy all your sleep and I hope you stay awake enough to read a book soon!

#173 Rhian: thank you! I don't like it when an author gives me the feeling I am too stupid to understand him or wants to trick me into re-reading his book. This was also my one issue with Gillespie and I. Somehow Murakami makes me feel better about his mysterious works.

#174 Carsten: Sounds like your version was abridged. I almost read an abridged German version, but just in time (I was through the sample and ready to order) I checked the amazon reviews. I then read it in English, couldn't find a complete German version for the Kindle.
Yann Martel seems to have a cruel streak. I feel strange when I think of his books and I am not sure I'd like to know him in person.

#175: A very belated "Thank you", Diana! Have a great week now!

#176 Peggy: There was something in that first chapter of Confederacy of Dunces that bought me. That moment when I thought Ignatius was a very realistic character, one of those annoying obnoxious people who always complain and lament. Nowadays he'd probably be a guest on all of those terrible trashy talk shows, giving his opinion on everything. Next to him most of the other characters just faded away. I'm glad I don't know anyone like him in RL...

I admit that I didn't care much about the writing, as I listened to the audiobook. For audio I need a straightforward story, much dialogue and sentences that are short enough that I can follow them. All that screaming and screeching in CoD kept me listening and the narrator gave them all their own voices. Anthony Powell's beautiful language on audio however was wasted on me (I know it's a shame!). At the end of a sentence I'd already forgotten the beginning.

#177 Bianca and 179 Laura: I had the same reaction when I saw the AK movie. I had not planned to watch it, but then some friends went and took me with them. I was unprepared re. all the theater things and it also shocked me in the beginning, but then I quite liked it. I don't really like Keira Knightley in those classical roles (she looks better in modern clothes) and I found Vronski extremely unattractive. Even bald Jude Law/ Karenin looked better. As expected I wished they had given me a bit more of Levin and Kitty, but it was better than nothing.

#178 Bekka: thanks for missing me, I'm touched :-)

#181 Cushla: I shouldn't complain about the snow, we still didn't have that much where I live. But my poor parents had 'the darkest winter in over 60 years' (that's what the newspaper said).

******
My parents have been here and left again. They had a good time and were quite lucky with the weather, it rained only for 2 days. Then I went to Torino for a weekend, I just 'needed a big town', and one where I hadn't been yet and so I picked Torino from the list of cities in reach for a short weekend. Took the train from Verona and arrived in Torino by 11 on the Saturday. Quickly realized I had brought the wrong jacket, it was really cold and soon started raining. The Sunday was much nicer when the fog lifted and I could see the snowy Alps on one side and the hills (leading to the Riviera) on the other side. And some hot chocolate with an espresso and whipped cream (bicerìn, torinese speciality) helped against the cold.

I did all the touristy things (sightseeing bus, some museums), had some nice food and walked under the famous arcades. Torino is also Italy's greenest town with huge parks. I must return in summer! It seems a nice city to live in, and that was the main reason why I had chosen to go there. To get a new perspective, to see I mustn't necessarily return to Germany should my business here in Merano ultimately fail. Sure Torino also has a high rate of unemployment, but it's still quite wealthy place.
One of my next destinations (but fo mere tourist reasons) might be Ferrara.

Must post this review now because it is so long and all the following ones are waiting already. I used titles for the paragraphs, so you can decide what to read of it.



29. Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) by Giorgio Bassani

Introduction:
What I love about the 1,001 list is that sometimes it leads me to those unexpected little gems of books I’d otherwise never have read. This is one of them: it’s short, has an inconspicuous title and even the plot is quite action-free, yet there’s something in it that shimmers brightly, although the story is quite sad.

Story (small spoilers here):
The narrator gives all away on the first page, so this is not a great spoiler: looking at the family grave of the Finzi-Continis in Ferrara he tells the reader that of the family members he knew in his youth only one has been buried here: young Alberto, who died of cancer in 1942. All the others, the professor and his wife, the grandmother and all remaining children died in some concentration camp in Germany and no-one knows where and if they have been buried.

The knowledge of the family’s fate adds a melancholy to the book, although what will happen eventually is mentioned only very rarely. The story starts in the late 1920s when the nameless narrator first meets the children Alberto and Micòl (girl’s name) Finzi-Contini and feels a strange attraction towards Micòl. The Finzi-Continis, being very rich and owning a kind of palace surrounded by an enormous garden, live a very strict and secluded life and avoid the rest of the Jewish community (to which the narrator belongs), even buying their own synagogue at some point.

In 1938 suddenly everything changes. Jews are now also in Italy excluded from many areas of public life, and when they are all expelled from the local tennis clubs, the two young Finzi-Continis decide to open their garden and their tennis court for the other Jewish youths. What follows is an enchanted summer for the narrator who builds a strong platonic attachment to Micòl and spends most of his time with her, strolling through the vast garden, sitting under the huge old trees – which, as we learn in the introduction, will all be chopped down to serve as firewood in the last war years. Everything we see in this story, everything that touches our hearts is doomed, but the sweetness and innocence of the narrator’s memories remain untainted.

Bigger spoilers:
Just when things between the two get closer, Micòl unexpectedly escapes to her relatives in Venice. While she is away, the narrator becomes friends with Alberto, and the professor Finzi-Contini opens his vast (20.000 books!) library for him, thus enabling him to write his thesis to finish university. When Pessach comes, Micòl returns – and from there things turn worse. The story ends in 1939, so while the racial laws play a big role in the story, Bassani doesn’t make this an explicit Holocaust book. It’s a book about first love and first big delusions, and about how a summer can change your life and will stay with you forever.
end of bigger spoilers

Language:
The language (in the Italian version) is very demanding, but so beautiful! It reminded me of the old trees in the park, long sentences with numerous small branches of sub-sentences, a little flower here and there… I read this book very slowly; it was such an enjoyment to follow Bassani’s writing. I hope the English version is as good!

Rating:
As you see I am really enchanted by this book and I may upgrade my rating later. I rated with 4 stars for now because somehow the love story failed to really touch me; I found I cared more about the garden than about Micòl whose behavior was contradictory and manipulative. But the book is called “The garden of” and not “The Finzi-Continis”, so I guess it was intended that it should be the protagonist with all the human characters only serving to add some background to its lost beauty.

Oscar winning movie:
Should you have seen the movie (it won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1971 or 1972): it captures the book’s overall atmosphere perfectly, while it makes many changes to the story. It unnecessarily spells out things that in the book were mere suspicions/ ideas and also invents an almost incestuous relationship between Alberto and Micòl. The whole part where the Ferrara Jews are arrested and assembled in the local school, waiting for deportation, is an important element of the film but not part of the book. Giorgio Bassani had his name removed from the credits as a result of those changes. Yet it is a great film and I’d recommend you to watch it should you come across it.

Rating: 4 stars

It was an incredible movie - interesting that the book was less 'dramatic' but not surprising.....

I agree with you completely about the 1001 Books list -- It's a real guide to those great novels that are not so well-known, maybe, at least not to me.

I read an English translation of The Garden in 2011 (wow, it doesn't seem that long ago). I found it very moving, and remarked that its import kind of snuck up on me. It's great that you read it in the original language.

I haven't seen the film yet--I must locate a copy (with two strong recommendations (you and sibyx).

Good reading to you, and good luck with the 1001 Books!

Karen O.

Hi Natalie

such great books and such wonderful reviews!

I'm sorry your meet up with Anita didn't work.

Rainy rainy Sunday, and I have no plans, except for ironing all those clothes that have assembled over the last 3 weeks. So finally I have some time for LT, can post all those reviews and then make the rounds. I won't try to catch up today on the very busy threads, but I'll visit as many as possible.

#185 Lucy: it's one of those cases where book and movie differ clearly, but are both great and somehow transmit the same atmosphere. Another example would be Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and the Visconti movie. Far from a 1:1 adaptation, but the changes helped to capture the morbid atmosphere.

#186 Karen: I hope you'll enjoy the movie when you get to it! I'll try and concentrate a little more on the less well-known 1,001 books in the next couple of months. I am sure there are many sure great surprises waiting for me

#187 Linda: thank you! And I am sure, I'll get another occasion to meet Anita. One day I'd like to join one of those great US meetups.

30. Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer) by Adalbert Stifter

Honestly, I don’t know if I can recommend this book. In the end, once I had decided to stop looking at it with a bad and bitter attitude, I was able to enjoy it a lot, almost to love it. But it needed something close to auto-brainwash, an awful lot of patience and willingness to like it to get there.

The strongest point of this book is the language. It is old-fashioned and made me realize just how poor our everyday-language has become. So many wonderful expressions are unused nowadays and probably need to be explained to the younger generations. It is a very factual language, but Stifter uses it to describe exclusively beautiful things, and that gives a strange contrast. Where a Goethe would have chosen the most flowery of words to write about the rose garden and would make you suffocate in all the colors and perfumes, Stifter manages to express the absolute beauty in such a factual way that it really comes to life and you don’t feel nauseated by an overdose of sweetness.

Then you have to accept that the book describes an idealized way of life as Stifter imagines it. The characters in the story couldn’t exist in the real world. No-one can be as good, as patient, as well-balanced as those people. There is never anything close to desperate sadness or to wild joy. Everything is ‘mild’ and therefore ‘healthy’ for both body and mind. No-one works hard, everyone has all the time of the world to follow their individual studies. Even the ‘workers’ do their job out of vocation. Food is simple, but of best quality. It is completely unrealistic, and once I accepted that, the urge to scream at those people to ‘finally behave normally’ suddenly disappeared and I could tolerate and even like them.

This is a book that grows on you, but only if you are willing to let it do so. In the beginning I was so annoyed with it that I checked reviews on LT and amazon and couldn’t believe they were overall so positive. Now that I finished it I am almost ready to add another glowing review to the (admittedly small) list.

The one point however where it really became ridiculous: the young protagonist travels in the mountains and makes the acquaintance of a wealthy old man who seems to lead a perfect life in a perfect place. He spends a couple of days there and out of embarrassment doesn’t ask his host’s name. Okay. But then he returns next year and the year after and every year and spends there most of his time. And only in one of the last chapters they talk names. Our hero gets engaged and until shortly before the marriage has no idea what the last name of his bride is. If that name issue had been resolved a little earlier, I know it would have been much easier for me to get through the rest. Maybe there is some hidden sense in it – goodness is not connected with names and ancestry, blabla, but I just wanted to shake those people. You can’t say ‘you’ or ‘he’ for a full decade, can you??

Rating: 4 stars (and for half of the book I thought it would end up with 1-2)

31. The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell

How I enjoyed this 3rd volume in paper after I had been so bored throughout the audio a year ago!! I love how Powell interweaves everyone’s fates, makes people meet/ get together and separate again. It is in fact a dance, that life he describes. In this book, Nick becomes a more active element of the dance – “dancing” a little himself with a woman we’ve already met before, but also unintentionally jumbling up other people by bringing new (disturbing) elements into their society.

The last chapter was hilarious, almost like slapstick. Some people may call it cheap fun, but I really enjoyed the scene with Stringham and Widmerpool, it made me laugh out loud.

I am now so looking forward to part 4 which will be all new to me.

Rating: 4 stars



32. In 80 Tellern um die Welt by Peter Menzel

I didn’t read this book from cover to cover, as it is more like a coffee table book, with great photographs and short texts that often don’t add much information to the expressive pictures.

The book simply gives 80 examples of how and what people eat, starting with an American on a diet, preparing for a stomach reduction (1,600 kcal a day) getting to a chocolate-addicted woman from the UK with the incredible and shocking daily intake of 12,300!!! kcal (that was when the book was published and lasted only a very short while, she now seems to be on a much healthier way). There is the Chinese acrobat, the Spanish shepherd, the German baker, the African refugee, the farmer in the Brazilian rainforest, the Italian priest – people from everywhere with a good share of US citizens thrown in for a better comparison (the health-obsessed vegetarian teenager, the truck driver eating cold spaghetti from cans, the Midwestern farmer who makes his own bread, etc.). They all had their pictures taken with an example of their daily food - all of it, from breakfast to late-night snack, including all drinks, nicely presented for the reader.

It comes hardly as a surprise: the more unprocessed food we eat and the more physical work we do, the more calories we can take in without damage. I still was a bit astonished about the high-caloric diet of many of the South American, African and Asian people, and wondered how the thin Catholic monk in Rome could get away with 4,000 kcal a day. But when much of it is fruit and vegetables, with only a little (very fatty – those calories must come from somewhere) meat and dairy, and when it is all consumed in form of 2-3 orderly meals and not as a succession of snacks, it seems to make all the difference. That monk however did have his white bread and his pasta and his Italian sausages and cheeses and sugary cakes and red wine… it all looked delicious and having all that in just one day I’d immediately gain 2 pounds. But a monk wouldn’t lie, would he? Maybe he’s fasting every second day and just didn’t tell?

This is not a low-priced book, so if you’re interested to read it you should best check the libraries. As an ebook it would lose much of its appeal, you have to see those pictures in full size and color. It is an US book and the link should lead you to its original English title.

Rating: 4 stars

33. Il culo di Sacchi by Gene Gnocchi

Now… a friend of mine who also reads a lot brought me a collection of her books the other week which she and her husband thought might help me in learning Italian. He had smuggled this one into the bag and she strongly discouraged me from reading it. So, logically, I read it first, also because soccer/football (calcio) is a great part of Italian culture and I am always ready to learn a couple of nice slang expressions. The author, Gene Gnocchi, had commented on the 1994 World Cup (the one in the US) for the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”. This is a collection of his daily columns.

It is normal that the humor is a bit outdated after 19 years, but I can’t get over the ‘fun approach’ to teams from Asia and Africa. I know it’s not long ago that people in the stadiums threw bananas at young Italian striker Balotelli (of African origin, grown up in Italy) and it’s an overdue step forward that players of a different skin color are now finally, finally fully accepted in the Italian teams. But also in 1994 I would have expected better from a published writer than from some ignorant football fan. Concentrating on the funny names in the South Korean team, mentioning again and again that they all look identical (and therefore only need one passport for the whole team, haha!) or to explain that the announced players’ strike of the Cameroun team came up because ‘the players were angry when they didn’t get their full bonus payment of X camels and Y rhinoceros’ was as impossible in 1994 as it is now. This should never have been published in a newspaper and certainly not have found its way into a book!

What I liked however: for many years the fans complained about the Italian system of Catenaccio – that destructive system of defense that made each of their games endlessly boring. The main idea of this book is that the trainer Sacchi was injected a hormone that made his behind (culo) grow to an enormous size which eventually brought the Italian team with their horrible play into the finals. That’s some self-criticism and brought the book its

Rating of 1,5 stars.



34. Allegro ma non troppo by Carlo M. Cipolla

This book really annoyed me, because I had expected much from it. It was part of the collection I got from my friend last week, and it looked so inviting: a nice thin hardback with good paper quality, clear print and many colored illustrations. In the end the illustrations had nothing to do with the texts and were not that nice to look at. The book consists of three parts, an introduction and two essays. In the introduction the author prepares the reader for the tasteful humor that will follow in the essays, claiming that ‘humor doesn’t hurt and is therefore preferable to irony’. Give me some irony anytime over the non-hurting humor I had to suffer for the next 100 pages (of which fortunately about 25 were covered with illustrations). The first essay humorously tells the story of how pepper had such an absolute importance in the Middle Ages and basically transported us into modern times. Humor = “and then all the men went on a crusade to get the power over the pepper trade back and put their wives into chastity belts, but then they didn’t come back because life in the South was so much better and the women were so much prettier, so the wives back home married locksmiths who managed to open the belts again and that’s why so many people are called ‘Smith’.” And that was one of the funnier bits.

Essay 2 was more promising, giving the “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity”. Not a bad idea, and if restricted to 10 pages this could have been amusing. Over 50 pages it was just a drag. And if my reaction proves that I am stupid, then I don’t care.

I rate this book with 2 stars because it wasn’t ‘bad-bad’ and maybe English humor just doesn’t translate well into Italian language. I can imagine the original text lost much of its sharpness on the way.

Rating: 2 stars

35. Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac

I couldn’t decide if I was expected to be amused or saddened by this story. Eugénie is the only daughter of one of the world’s greatest misers, old père Grandet in Saumur. He’s made millions over the years but leads a very poor life, having only bread and 2 little lumps of sugar with the breakfast coffee (cutting sugar lumps to a smaller size is one of his hobbies), not even sitting down for lunch, allowing only one candle for the family in the evening. His wife and daughter know nothing of his fortune, only his lawyer and his banker are informed, and both try to get Grandet to marry Eugenie into their families. One evening Eugénie’s sad little life is shaken up when her cousin Charles from Paris arrives unannounced, having been sent by his father without apparent reason. Charles is a rich and spoiled boy, very handsome, wearing the finest clothes; for Eugénie he is like an exotic animal, and predictably she falls head over heels in love with him. It quickly shows that Charles’ father has sent him to his relatives only so that he could commit suicide in the meantime. He is bankrupt and won’t live with the shame of his financial ruin. Charles’ honest mourning makes Eugénie adore him even more and she comes to a decision.

I liked the writing, the open irony Balzac is using. What could be told like a great tragedy is almost turned into a comedy, and the book was in fact later added to his ‘Human Comedy’ series, although it had been written earlier. Everyone gets what they deserve, and when the book was finished I felt good, but in no way overwhelmed or tempted to read the series. A solid French classic, and quite short.

It was my first Balzac, I read the first third in French but then decided that I lost too much of Grandet’s cunning financial transactions and switched first to English, then finished it in German.

Rating: 3.5 stars



36. Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

Those Barsetshire Chronicles get better and better! After a long break I picked up this 4th volume because I felt in need of some solid feel-good English classic. Trollope, like Austen, seems to be a guarantee for that. Whatever happens to his characters, we can safely expect a happy ending. And this time Trollope didn’t spoil the whole story on the first pages as he had done in the other books!

There’s a main love story, as always (+ something more and that made me quite happy). That storyline is really predictable and didn’t make me worry for a minute, although there were all the usual twists and turns. A bit like Trollope’s take on Pride and Prejudice I’d say. But more important were the other stories, this time with the focus on the risky financial transactions some of those wealthy people are undertaking, thus endangering their fortune and taking advantage of others where possible. Mark Robarts, the young parson of Framley, trying to be accepted by the rich and the great, bites off much more than he can chew by signing a bill for a ‘friend’, and from there getting into deeper and deeper trouble. There’s also lots of worldly politics again in this part which I enjoyed.

The best thing however is that this book unites almost all of the characters we met in the first 3 books. Even the ex-warden of book 1 makes an appearance again. The book delivered just what I needed, it made me feel good. I am however dreading the next ones: they are much longer, and I am not yet sure if the Trollope style can entertain me for 1,000 pages.

Rating: 4 stars

Oh the Trollope sounds wonderful. I'm close to finishing the third one. I agree they are feel-good books but like you I am wary of those longer ones!!

I am another who would love to be in on one of the bigger US meet-ups, I am in UK next week and SWMBO has mooted a few days in Italy as well. Really enjoyed your reviews as always.

Have a lovely Sunday.

Hi Nathalie!

So. Many. Great. Books. - I don't even know where to start, so in brief:

> Les Miserables is one of my favourite narratives ever (and I fully agree with you when it comes to Marius - never liked him, never will).
> I'm going to read The Wasp Factory this year as well! The opera version will be performed at the Bregenzer Festspiele this summer.
> I'm thinking about doing a Otfried- (Preußler)-Octobre where I'll (re)read his books.
> I read The Sense of an Ending - and I'll need to read it again. I somehow knew that it's a great piece of literature, but I couldn't fully "get" it.

It's good to hear that the sessions help you (hey, congrats on wearing that dress. I convinced myself to a skirt this week. The first for a very, very long time.)

Have a great week!

Great review of Eugenie - one of the few Balzacs I've read, and liked very much!

Hello Nathalie,
just stopping by to wish you a great reading week :) Nothing much to contribute to your books. Well, I was very lucky on Saturday I inherited from my sister a 1930's edition from Herman Hesse in Frakturschrift and also the two book edition from ?1920 of Les Miserable (Die Elenden) also in Frakturschrift. Well, as you can imagine I just couldn't believe my luck in receiving such wonderful books for my collection.
Especially as I wanted to read Les Miserable this year anyway :)

Something happened to my browser here. It started auto-correcting English words it believes are German, I just saw that what I have written is suddenly full of Errors (here - it just turned 'errors' into 'Errors' by itself!). I corrected some now, but don't know if I found all...

#193 Laura: I think for the last one I'll need the GR. He always runs a bit out of steam after about 500 pages, and I hope with the last book this won't happen before at least page 850!

#194 Paul: I guess SWMBO will find many nice new handbags here in Italy. I hope you'll enjoy the stay!

#195 Kathy: are you serious, there's an opera version of the Wasp Factory?? What a crazy idea!
I bought the 3 Hotzenplotzes for my dad's birthday, the new version with the original colored illustrations. He seemed quite happy with them. I can't get my hands on Der kleine Wassermann, it's always checked out from the library.
Marius... *shudder*
Btw. wearing a dress again today. It's actually a Jil Sander I got many years ago for a great price in an outlet store. Absolutely timeless (grey, what else), and so far worn exactly once! After reviewing my wardrobe a couple of weeks ago I decided I don't need to buy anything new this sommer as long as I finally start wearing all those dresses.

I'll continue posting from home. This auto-correct Feature(!) annoys me.

Hi Nathalie!

Isn't it possible to change the language settings? Otherwise that is really annoying.

I checked again and the musical version of The Wasp Factory isn't exactly an opera, but a "Musiktheater" (musical theatre). But still...

I'm thinking about getting the audiobook versions of Der Räuber Hotzenplotz read by Armin Rhode. And somewhere I've still got my old tapes of Die kleine Hexe. Der kleine Wassermann is the only book I haven't yet read - or at least I can't remember.

I know what you mean: Before moving my stuff into my new apartment, I'm browsing through all my clothes. And there's enough for a whole summer. I just need to decide to wear it. :)

Have a calm Monday evening!

Nathalie, you are doing lots of good reading and reviewing. I was especially interested in the Powell and Trollope books because those are the authors I'm concentrating on this year. I am thrilled to make these two discoveries through LT.

#196: thank you, Lucy! I liked the humor, but I felt immediately discouraged when I saw how many books form la Comédie Humaine, although I'll certainly soon read his Père Goriot.

#197 Bianca: what a great present! Those old books are wonderful, sure the reading in Fraktur takes a bit longer, but it looks so good!

#200 Kathy: I just checked the website of the Bregenzer Festspiele. Now this really sounds experimental! It's one of the last books I'd ever consider for a music version. On the other hand it could be really interesting, with many 'schräge Töne'. Bregenz is only 243km away from Merano says the internet, but it's such a long (slow) drive. Hm...

#201 Donna: yes, what would our reading lives be without LT... :-)
I know mine would be much poorer. Definitely no Powell, no Trollope, no Zola...

***

The language setting was okay, and the browser/ program whatever accepted the English spelling. It just seemed to identify the nouns and capitalized them, like in German. I installed Java today on the office computer to be able to do my quarterly VAT reporting online, maybe that caused it?

#192: Nathalie, I didn't remember The Small House at Allington as being too long, but I see from Amazon that it is 752 pages! You might want a bit of a gap after Framley Parsonage, if only because The Last Chronicle of Barset has many of the same characters as The Small House at Allington and I think they would be best read quite close together. I just read The Last Chronicle of Barset after quite a gap and struggled to remember who all the people were and which ones hated Mrs Proudie :-)

Nope, Fraktur doesn't take that much longer as I was taught to read it by two sets of grandparents who still owned tons of books in Fraktur. My sister and I were also lucky that we still did learn to read and write Sütterlin. Well, as I haven't used it Sütterlin in decades I forgot a bit, but I am sure it would come back to me quite easily.

However, I told Kathy already that I would be very much interested in a GR for Blindness by Jose Saramago, but I would like to finish my GR next week on The Great Gatsby first, if that is okay with you?

Hi Nathalie, Finally, a long overdue visit. I think occasionally wearing dresses is a nice change from what everyone else is wearing. I think and hope that people find them to be a pleasant surprise.

I hope your new job is working out well, but I've got to say, I miss the view from your old office window.

Wishing you a happy Tuesday :0)

I've caught up with you again, Nathalie, and I'm impressed as usual with your multi-tongued reading and reviewing. I'm enjoying Powell and looking forward to Trollope 4. It's been quite a long time since I read Balzac, and Eugenie Grandet is not among those I've read. So many books, etc., etc.
I hope that at least your weekends are making up for your exhausting weeks. Take care!

#203 Susan: that's a good advice, thank you! I am reading from a 'Complete Chronicles' edition, and while it feels good to have read 4 out of 6, the overall percentage now is only 53%, so the last 2 must be quite long.
Yes, Mrs Proudie is always the great 'dividing' character in the books. I haven't yet made my mind up about her, either.

#204 Bianca: How great that you kept up reading Fraktur! I wasn't taught it, but somehow learned it, probably also from grandparents' books. But it's over 20 years since I read a whole Fraktur book, only short texts now and then.
And I also learned Sütterlin from my grandmother to be able to read her old handwritten recipes. I even bought a book about it some years ago to refresh my memory. I can't really read it fluently, but I've used it during boring meetings to write comments on my notepad my colleagues were not supposed to read. There are always some letters I forget when I haven't used it for a while, but I just love it. It automatically looks elegant!

I put my Blindness read on hold for a bit to wait for you and Kathy, but I'll need a bit more time with the Italian version anyway. Just tell me when you're ready to go. I'm a bit scared of that book, I fear it could be very depressing, and I am looking forward to read and discuss it in a group.

#205 Lynda: After having been a jeans and sneakers girl (okay, woman) for over 40 years, wearing dresses is a big change. But if I bought them all, there must have been a secret wish to dress up once in a while. Now, at 42 years, I can also finally accept that I don't look like a model and don't care as much anymore what people might think about my not so elegant 'country legs'. :-)

I have a beautiful view out of the new window, I am just waiting for the apple blossoms to appear and then I'll post a picture. I'm sure you'll like it!

#206 Peggy: I am so looking forward to some quiet weekends now. I decided against going to Germany over Easter (all that traffic, and the weather...), and the forecast promises rain once again, so I'll just sleep long, cook some nice Easter lunch and then readreadread! :-)

Reading update: I started Alias Grace yesterday, my first Atwood, a bit ahead of the April GR. So far I am not really happy with it, although it's an interesting idea using this RL event and spinning a story around it. We'll see..

Then I am reading Il Piacere by Gabriele D'Annunzio, an Italian classic from the 1,001 list. I fear it's going to be another one of those long-winded books where nothing happens and the male narrator feels sorry for himself for 500 pages. A bit like Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience and Senilità.

Both books are 1,001s, and I also loaded Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep on my ipod. Those 3 books would get me to #249, and I am considering making The Sea, the Sea my 250th 1,001 book, to be read in April if possible.

#209 I fear it's going to be another one of those long-winded books where nothing happens and the male narrator feels sorry for himself for 500 pages - Oh I hate those!

Hi Nathalie, Glad to hear that Powell is continuing to be a good read for you. I keep putting it off for shorter reads, so I really must get back at it as I am now nearly 3 books behind!

As for Blindness, there are some very tragic and depressing scenes, but stay focused on the positive aspects of community and humanity that are brought to life despite the situations...and maybe have some fluff reading handy too.

I'll be curious to hear how Alias Grace turns out. Atwood has been a favorite of mine, but I recently read The Robber Bride and it didn't live up to my standards for her. Hopefully Alias Grace turns around for you.

Nathalie, I've been meaning to ask you if you've ever read any books by an Italian author named Carlo Lucarelli? A friend gave me a set of three mysteries by him: Carte Blanche, The Damned Season, and Via delle Oche. They look good but I've not cracked them open yet.

Keep me posted if a GR does happen around the Saramago - I have it here and keep NOT reading it.....

I hope that Alias Grace turns around for you too. I loved it. The only Saramago I've read was Baltasar and Blimunda, which I enjoyed but maybe not enough to try him again any time soon.

You seem to be in a hurry to knock those 1001 Books! Are you also following all the books from all those versions, which brings the total to 1305 books or so?

Nathalie, it appears there are actually quite a few people interested (aside from us "three") in reading Saramago. Shall I set up a GR thread for him for April?

Hi Nathalie, the Bregenzer Festspiele are for sure worth a visit. I plan to watch "Die Zauberflöte" (The Magic Flute on the Seebühne/sea stage. The production will be a very playful and imaginative one.

Thanks Bianca for setting up the thread for Blindness! :) And it's not so strict about the time management. If you're reading it earlier or later - the main thing is that we're finally reading it. :)

So you're particiapting in the Atwood April? I would like to read A Handmaid's Tale in April.

Have a nice evening!

#210 Rhian: I am now about 25% in, and I fear I was right... most of the Italian classics on the 1,001 list seem to be about some guy who fears his misstress is cheating on him.

#211: Hi Alicia, thanks for the fluff-reading advice, I'll make sure to have something easy and funny ready to go with Blindness.
I finished Alias Grace today and liked it better in the end, although I wouldn't call it a favorite yet. There are 2 more to read from the 1,001 list and everyone recommends A Handmaid's Tale, so I'll see...

#212 Rosalita: I never heard of him (which doesn't mean anything!), but I checked wiki last night and he sounds promising. I'll see if I find some of his funnier books in my library. Wiki says he developed 3 detectiv series - a very serious one situated during WWII and Italian fascism (this one might be a bit too dark for me now), and two humorous ones. Thanks for mentioning him here! I am always looking for interesting contemporary Italian authors, but as I haven't met many Italian readers yet, I only rarely get recommendations.

#213 Lucy: I have it here and keep NOT reading it
That has so far been my feeling about the book as well, the cover alone scares me. I am looking forward to the GR.

#214 Peggy: Alias Grace turned around for me, though not completely. I was really gripped by the Grace storyline in the end, but couldn't have cared less for that fictional doctor and his women troubles. I was a bit scared of trying Atwood, she is so popular here, and I don't like most historical fiction or SF. So let's say in the end it was quite a pleasant surprise.

#215 Piyush: you are so right, I AM in a hurry!
I made a new list of books read with reading dates and realized I read full 60 in 2010, 44 in 2011 and only 22 or so in 2012. And the Excel tells me I must read 26 a year to make it to 1,001 during my lifetime, so I am falling behind. Okay, there's only one person in that group who might really ever get there, but reaching 500 one day would be nice. There are a couple of books on the list that are very difficult to get, and some others I wouldn't read if paid for it.

I count books read from the 2008 list only, but also look at the other editions for recommendations.

#216 Bianca: thank you, that would be great!

#217 Kathy: I didn't even realize there was an 'Atwood April'. I am so 'under-informed' lately... I have that group read thread starred, so I found the Alias Grace thread, but I don't know if I'll be ready for another Atwood so soon. Maybe...
Dir auch einen schönen Abend!!

****

I had another almost sleepless night, so I finished Alias Grace, which should have been an April GR book.

And I made a little progress on another 1,001 I decided to squeeze in, Like Water for Chocolate. I reached 25% of Il Piacere as well, so tonight I took The Sea, the Sea, my planned #250, off the shelf and read the introduction. It sounds very promising, but I had stupidly bought a cheap edition, with thin grey recycling paper pages, bad small print and one of those bindings where you have to break the book's spine, because otherwise it won't ever stay open.
The Kindle is cheap, so I might switch at some point.

Edit: after another 5 pages I decided #250 should be a wholly enjoyable read and bought the cheap Kindle version now. The paperback is back on the shelf.

#218 by @Deern> Apparently the series that I have is the WWII/fascism one, so that will be interesting. But if the funny ones are good let me know, and I will look for them.

Hello Nathalie, managed to set up the GR thread for Blindness which you will find here I wrote a little bit about him, but if you know anything more which is interesting you may want to add it.

My mum recommended Alias Grace warmly. But now I'm a bit wary.... Well, I'll read another book anyway. - And I usually learn from the group reads when they're half over. Only right now I have quite a good timing... :)

How's Like Water for Chocolate? I heard about it during my studies, but never stumbled over it later...

Oh, you are reading Like Water for Chocolate I read that many, many years ago and absolutely loved the book and hated the movie. I have also read Das Gesetz der Liebe by her, which I also loved.

Kathy, ok it's donkey years ago that I read both books but I still remember them as being excellent.

However, wollte Dir eigentlich nur Frohe Ostern wünschen, Nathalie!

#221 Rosalita: I found some of his books in the library and I checked out one with short stories. I might read it over the weekend.

#222 and 224 Bianca: Thank you for setting up the GR thread, it's already starred. I have nothing to add though - I only know that he won the nobel prize. Your intro post looks great!

Reading Like Water for Chocolate I realized I knew the movie, but can't remember it well. I believe I switched channels when all the wedding guests got sick and didn't return to the film later. I liked the book a lot, although I wouldn't call it a must-read. I liked John better than Pedro, but what can you do when love speaks? I had some tears in my eyes during the last pages.

Ich wünsche Dir auch Frohe Ostern!

#223 Kathy: Alias Grace is 'gripping with lengths' I'd say. There were elements I didn't like, but once I got into the story I also couldn't put it down. I am considering reading The Handmaid's Tale in April, but I also signed up for a GR of 1Q84 in the 1001 group. Didn't want to participate because it's not on the 2008 list, so I wasn't in a hurry to get to it. But now I entered it to the TIOLI challenge #1 to keep the list going and feel obliged to read it..
Like Water for Chocolate is a short and easy read, a bit of that typical Latin American magical realism (Allende, Marquez), with lots of food added to the mix.

I just picked Alias Grace for Atwood April - I've loved some of her other stuff so I'm really looking forward to it. Might also have to pick up Like water for Chocolate - sounds the sort of thing I'm after at the moment (low on trauma!).

Hope all is going well for you.

#225: I've only read Naokos Lächeln and a collection of short stories by Murakami so far. I own Afterdark - maybe I should push that up on my reading list. Like Water for chocalate sounds nice. I'll read that for sure... some time in the future.
As my readings will come up short during the next weeks, I will start with Blindness today to get a small lead. :)

Of course, I'm also here to wish you a happy Easter weekend!

March Stats:

Books read in March: 14
Pages read: 4459

Fiction: 12
Non-fiction: 2
Plays: 0
Short Story Books: 0
Poetry books: 0

English: 5
German: 5
Italian: 4
French: 0

Audio books: 0 (0 bought)
Kindle books: 7 (5 free, 2 bought, 0 owned)
Real books: 7 (1 owned, 4 bought, 0 library, 2 borrowed)

Books purchased this month: 6
Of which read in the same month: 2

*******************************

Summary 2013:

Books read 2013: 40
Pages read: 14,267

Fiction: 34
Non-fiction: 6
Plays: 0
Poetry books: 0 (but 62 poems)
Comic books: 0
Short Story Books: 0

English: 15
German: 9
Italian: 15
French: 1

Audio books: 2 (2 bought)
Kindle books: 20 (11 free, 6 bought, 3 owned)
Real books: 18 (9 bought, 4 owned,3 library, 2 borrowed)

Books purchased 2013: 33
- of which read in the same month: 13
- of which read in the same year: 17

#219 I checked how many have I read from the 2008 edition, turns out, only 102 - long way to go for me, if I want to read half the list. Like you, I have also found a few books, someone will have to pay a fortune to make me read them.

Re. message #195, I join you in your dislike of the character Marius. I haven't read the book, but saw the movie twice.

Am I correct that he returned to the life of wealth after his friends were slatered in their fight for the poor?

#230: Linda, you're correct. But when I remember the story right, Marius never fought for the poor because he believed in it, because he wanted to change something. It was just a form of suicide, because he thought Cosette lost.
And when I think about it, he was just a student... So, was he wealthy in the first place? Nathalie, maybe you can help us out here. It's been a while since I dealt with the story.

Big Les Mis spoilers ahead for Linda and Kathy:
Err.. yes, he was wealthy in theory, being the heir of his grandfather's fortune (a small fortune compared to Valjean's). But then he started sympathizing with the ideas of his father whom his grandfather had hated for his political views (the father was the guy accidentally rescued in Waterloo by Thenardier). So the grandfather threw him out and threatened to disinherit him, although he still loved him and hoped he'd come back. He tried to send him money, but Marius refused it.
Re. politics: I think he did believe in the 'good cause', that's how he got involved with all those guys. But then he got distracted by Cosette and forgot all about politics. When he turned to the barricades, he was ready to 'die for love' and not for the republic.
Yes, I was so moved as well when all the others died... And how heroically they died!!
spoiler end

#229 Piyush: So are you following the original list?
When I started in 2009/2010, only the 2008 edition was available where I then lived, and it also made more sense for me as I had read a couple of the non-UK/-US books.

#226 Bekka: Yes, Like Water for Chocolate is very low on trauma, although I needed some nerves for Mama Elena. It's an easy one off the list.

#227 Kathy: It's been a while since I read Naokos Lächeln/ Norwegian Wood, but I liked it a lot. As expected Blindness/Cecità will take a bit longer for me, but I made some progress today, reading more than 50 pages. Some people complained in their reviews about the difficult style. While the paragraphs are long and therefore the pages look a bit intimidating, I find the writing so far easy to follow, even in Italian.

*****

Gorgeous day today! Who would have thought spring would ever make it this year?
I guess the weather didn't know today was a holiday, otherwise it would have continued with the Saturday and Sunday rains a little longer and would, as usual, have brought the sun out on the first workday of the week.

I took a long walk in town today along the promenades. Hiking is not yet possible due to all the rain and snowfalls. But finally all the plants are coming out, the grass is much greener than 2 days ago, some trees started to bloom and happy tourists were taking pictures of all the unexpected colors around them. I had my first ice cream of the year, very late I know, but so far it has just been too cold.

After lunch I sat on my balcony in short sleeves for the first time this year, read a bit while having a glass of wine.

******

Reading: I started vol IV of "Dance to the Music of Time", At Lady Molly's and finished the first of 5 chapters. As mentioned above I made some progress on Blindness and I am about 25% into The Sea, The Sea. The latter so far is a wonderful book, it has just the little issue that it is a very slow and intense read. As I planned it as #250, I must be careful not to read and finish another book from the list first, so I don't know yet if I'll get to The Handmaid's Tale in April. And I must also wait with Zola's L'Assomoir of which I read 12% yesterday.

And then there's a whole stack of Italian books from the library waiting which my language tandem partner selected for me. I haven't even started one of those yet and feel bad for it.
So, definitely overbooked for April. :-)

HI Nathalie, glad to hear that you enjoyed Like Water for Chocolate, but I do agree with you that it is not a must read. However, you definitely didn't miss anything with the film. I still remember very vividly that I suggested the movie to some friends for our weekend home cinema (because I enjoyed the book) and ended up being completely embarassed, because the movie was so bad.

In regards to the Atwood April. I am planning to read The Handmaid's Tale and re-read The Blind Assassin.

Did they put 1Q84 on the new 1001 list? I am still using the 2008 edition. However, I also found books in there which I wouldn't read for all the love in the world. Books are meant to entertain, educate, stimulate..................and not meant to be torture *smile*.

Hi Bianca, yes - 1Q84 is on the new 2012 list and therefore I was not in a hurry to read it. Now it is also a shared read on the TIOLI - some extra pressure for me. :-)
But still of alle the GRs I signed up for it is the one with the lowest priority. Reading should be fun, not stress.

***
Okay, time for a new spring-thread!

#232 I started tracking the 2008 list when it came out. After that I tried following the next version too, didn't work out too well. Now, I have an original 2008 list which I have been updating since then and a full list of 1305 books consisting of books from all the versions.