Nathalie (Deern) tries to read less and LT more in 2014 - Thread 2

Spring has arrived in Merano! Time to make that 2014 a really great year. And to finally LT more. :)
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Read, to be reviewed:

August:

Books read and reviewed in this thread

January:
5. Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Jodi - Kindle - EN - 449p - 4 stars

February:
17. Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis - paperpack - EN - 170p - 4.5 stars
18. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner - audio - EN - 384p - 4 stars
19. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing - paperback - EN - 159p - 4.5 stars
20. Italian SH book by Louise L. Hay - audio book+paperback - IT - 4 stars
21. The Power is Within You by Louise L. Hay - audio book - EN - 4.5 stars

March:
22. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac Mc Carthy - Kindle - EN - 302p - 3.5 stars
23. There But For The by Ali Smith - Kindle - EN - 355p - 3.5 stars
24. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming - Kindle - EN - 190p - 2 stars
25. Overcoming Fears by Louise L. Hay - audio book - EN - 4.5 stars
26. Feeling Fine Affirmations by Louise L. Hay - audio book - EN - 4.5 stars
27. Dave Barry is not taking this sitting down by Dave Barry - audio book - EN - 256p - 3.5 stars

April:
28. Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - Kindle - DE - 603p - 3 stars
29. The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001 by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 282p - 3.5 stars
30. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 4 stars
31. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 4 stars
32. Another Mole.. forgot the title - 2 stars
33. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 3 stars
34. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 3.5 stars
35. The Last Days of Humanity by Karl Kraus - Kindle - DE - 800p - 5 stars

May:
36. Das Treibhaus by Wolfgang Köppen - library book - DE - 180p - 4 stars
37. La Morte a Roma by Wolfgang Köppen - Kindle - IT - 172p - 3.5 stars
38. Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf - Kindle - DE - 350p - 3.5 stars
39. Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 3.5 stars
40. Wheat Belly by William Davis - Kindle - EN - 292p - 3.5 stars
41. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Kindle - EN - xxxp - 3.5 stars
42. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty - Kindle - EN - 178p - 3.5 stars
43. Inside Mr Enderby by Anthony Burgess - Kindle - EN - 232p - 4 stars
44. Dog Years by Günter Grass - Paperback - DE - 778p - 4 stars
45. Amatissima by Toni Morrison - Kindle - IT - 384p - 3 stars
46. Enderby Outside by Anthony Burgess - Kindle - EN - 245p - 2 stars

June:
47. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut - Kindle - EN - ?? p
48. The Clockwork Testament by Anthony Burgess - Kindle - EN - 145p
49. Ebdòmero by Giorgio de Chirico - paperback - IT - 119p - 2.5 stars
50. Halbzeit by Martin Walser - hardcover - DE - 778p - 4.5 stars
51. Living Vegetarian for Dummies by Suzanna Havala - Kindle - EN - 358p - 3.5 stars
52. Anständig Essen by Karen Duve - Kindle - IT - 210p - 4 stars
53. La Disubbidienza by Alberto Moravia - free Kindle - IT - 118p - 3.5 stars
54. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope - free Kindle - EN - 136p - 3 stars
55. Peace Food by Rüdiger Dahlke - Hardcover - DE - 330p - 1.5 stars
56. Skinny Bitch by Rory Feldman - Kindle - EN - ??p - 3.5 stars
57. ... then just stay fat by Shannon Sorrels - Kindle - EN - ???p - 3 stars
58. Cecilia by Fanny Burney - free Kindle - EN - many pages - 3.5 stars

July:
59.Khufu's Wisdom by Naguib Mahfouz - Kindle - EN - ??p - 3 stars
60.If I'm So Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight? By Brooke Castillo - Kindle - EN - ??p - 3.25 stars
61.Loving What Is by Byron Katie - Kindle - EN - ??p - 4.25 stars
62.We Are all Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler - Kindle - EN - 321 p - 3.5 stars
63.To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris - Kindle - EN - 337p - 3 stars
64.The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - free Kindle - EN - ???p - 3.5 stars
65. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt - Kindle - EN - 384p - 4.5 stars

August:
66. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanigan - Kindle - EN - 485p - 3 stars
67. History of the Rain ny Niall Williams - Kindle - EN - 355p - 4.5 stars
68. The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth - Kindle - EN - ???p - 4.3 stars
69. The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee - Kindle - EN - 505p - 4.5 stars

Books read and reviewed in older threads:

Books read and reviewed in 2014

Reviewed in thread 1 https://www.librarything.com/topic/163025

January:
1. Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather - Kindle - EN - 298p - 3.5 stars
2. The New Yorker. Lo humour dei libri by J.L. Chiflet - paperback - IT - 187p - 2.5 stars
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway - Kindle - EN - 490p - 4 stars
4. The Professor's House by Willa Cather - American Author Challenge + 1,001 - 4 stars
5.
6. Der kleine Alltags-Buddhist by Maren Schneider - hardback - German - 140p - 4 stars
7. Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan - Kindle - EN - 305p - 3.5 stars
8. La Promesse de l'Aube by Romain Gary - 1,001 book and January TIOLI - 4 stars
9. Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor - Kindle - EN - 202p - 4 stars
10.Needful Things by Stephen King - audible credit - EN - 948p - 3 stars

February:
11.The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall - Kindle - EN - 208p - 3.5 stars
12.Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks - Kindle - EN - 380p - 3 stars
13. Bartleby & Co by Enrique Vila-Matas - paperback - DE - 226p - 4.5stars
14. Der Tod in Venedig by Thomas Mann - paperback - DE - 129p - 4.5 stars
15. Leben in Venedig by Dirk Schlümer - paperback - DE - 239p - 2 stars
16. Conversazione in Sicilia by Elio Vittorini - paperback - IT - 339p - 4 stars

Purchases:

January:
- Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather - Kindle - EN - 304p - read
- Food lovers. Viaggio tra i sapori del mondo - paperback - IT - 303p
- Zio Paperone La disfida dei dollari - hardback - IT - 215p
- The New Yorker. Lo humour dei libri - paperback - IT - 187p - read
- The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien - paperback - EN
- Fumetto! 150 anni di storie italiane - hardback - IT - 505p
- The Professor's House by Willa Cather - Kindle - EN - 129p - read
- Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Jodi - Kindle - EN - 449p - read
- Der kleine Alltags-Buddhist by Maren Schneider - hardback - German - 140p - read
- Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan - Kindle - EN - 305p - read
- Bird Song by Sebastian Faulks - Kindle - EN - 480p (1,001) read
- Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor - Kindle - EN - 205p - read
- Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel - Paperback - EN - 240p

February:
- The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall - Kindle - EN - 202p read
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme - paperback - EN
- Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis (1,001) - paperback - EN - read
- Brésil, terre d'amitié - by Georges Bernanos - paperback - FR - 213p
- Conversazione in Sicilia by Elio Vittorini (1,001) - paperback - IT - read
- Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas (1,001) - paperback - DE - 226p - read
- Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner - audible credit - EN - read
- Leben in Venedig by Dirk Schlümer - paperback - DE read
- The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing - paperback - EN - 159p read
- Il sorriso di Don Giovanni by Ermanno Rea - paperback - IT - 231p
- L'estate senza uomini by Siri Hustvedt - paperback - IT - 231p
- La vita davanti a sé by Romain Gary - paperback - IT - 214p
- I Sommersi e i salvati by Primo Levi - paperback - IT - 188p (1,001)
- The Power is Within You by Louise L. Hay - audible credit - EN read
- Italian self-Help book of which I can't remember the title by Louise L. Hay - IT read

March:
- All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy - Kindle - EN - 302p (1,001) read
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming - Kindle - EN - 190p (1,001) read
- There But For The by Ali Smith - Kindle - EN - 355p (1,001) read
- Bossypants by Tina Fey - audible credit - EN - ???p
- Amatissima by Toni Morrison - Kindle - IT - 456p read
- Feeling Fine Affirmations by Louise L. Hay - audio book - EN read
- Overcoming Fears by Louise L. Hay - audio book - EN read
- Dave Barry is not taking this sitting down by Dave Barry - audio book - EN - 256p read

April:
- The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001 by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 282p read
- The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 272p read
- The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 292p read
- Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 288p read
- True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend - Kindle - EN - 180p read

May:
- Dog Years by Günter Grass - Paperback - DE - 742p (1,001) read
- Wheat Belly by William Davis - Kindle - EN - 292p read
- The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty - Kindle - EN - 178p (1,001) read
- The Complete Enderby by Anthony Burgess - Kindle - EN - 672p (1,001)
- Ebdòmero by Giorgio De Chirico - Paperback - IT - 119p (1,001) read

June:
- Living Vegetarian for Dummies by Suzanne Havala - Kindle - EN - 358p read
- Skinny Bitch read
- If I'm So Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight? by Brooke Castillo read

July:
- Khufu's Wisdom by Naguib Mahfouz read
- Loving What Is by Byron Katie - read
- We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler - Kindle - EN - 321p - read
- The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanigan - Kindle - EN - 488p read
- To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Fowler - Kindle - EN - 337p read
- The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt - Kindle - EN - 384p read
- The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth - Kindle - EN - ???p read
- Orfeo by Richard Powers - Audible credit
- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth - Kindle - EN - 418p

August:
- History of the Rain by Niall Williams - Kindle - EN - 355p read
- The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee - Kindle - EN - 505p read
- "The Dog"by Joseph O'Neill - Kindle - EN - 256p

Currently reading and planned:

Reading:
- Orfeo by Richard Powers - audio book - EN - ?p - chapter 3/20
- The Plot Against America by Philip Roth - Kindle - EN - 418p - 26%



On hold or slow-going:
- Erziehung vor Verdun by Arnold Zweig - 25%
- Staying Alive: real poems for unreal times by Neil Astley - paperback - EN - 464p - 52%
- Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel - paperback - EN - 240p - p16



Planned longer reads:

- "1,001 Nights" Richard Burton edition in 16 volumes - finished 5 volumes so far

2014 American Author Challenge:
Trying to read some 1,001s this way

Willa Cather- January - Death Comes For The Archbishop and The Professor's House - COMPLETED
William Faulkner- February - Absalom, Absalom COMPLETED
Cormac McCarthy- March All The Pretty Horses COMPLETED
Toni Morrison- April - Amatissima COMPLETED
Eudora Welty- May - The Optimist's Daughter COMPLETED
Kurt Vonnegut- June - God Bless You, Mr Rosewater COMPLETED
Mark Twain- July - The Innocents Abroad COMPLETED
Philip Roth- August - Plot against America
James Baldwin- September - Go Tell it on the Mountain
Edith Wharton- October - finally getting to The House of Mirth?
John Updike- November - continue the "Rabbit" series
Larry Watson- December - no idea

Booker 2014 LL Challenge:

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
"J" by Howard Jacobson
==> authors should consider the "touchstone" issue before deciding on a title! :)
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell - NOT YET PUBLISHED
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
"Us" by David Nicholls - NOT YET PUBLISHED
"The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill
Orfeo by Richard Powers
How to be Both by Ali Smith NOT YET PUBLISHED
History of the Rain by Niall Williams

Then I hope it is no problem for me to pop in next and say hi and congratulations on your new thread. xx

Hi Nathalie, I loved hearing about your time in Venice.

Nathalie and happy new thread.

Hi Nathalie, enjoying your lists. Happy New Thread!

*Plomp*

That was the sound of me getting comfortable for thread 2 by the way :)

Happy New Thread, Nathalie! I look forward to your increased presence here.

Happy new thread, Nathalie.

Happy New Thread, Natalie!

Just staking a place in your new thread, Nathalie!

Hm.. I thought I had answered the first couple of posts. This is the 2nd time in a week that LT (or the company server??) swallowed a post.

Paul, Kerry, Barbara, Ilana, Bekka, Peggy, Diana, Amber, Julia: thank you all so much for visiting and booking seats! I wish you all a lovely new week! :-)

Posting some reviews now and then I'll go home and hopehopehope that I get my notebook working with the weak internet connection. The ipad deals better with it, but I hate to type on that touchscreen, can't get used to it.

17. Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kis (1,001 # 323)

A short, but intense book. Intense story, intense writing. In beautiful poetic dreamlike language, Kis tells us the story of a childhood in Eastern Europe during WWII. We see the family in a good situation, almost wealthy, then they are forced to move when the father loses his job. New places get worse and worse, and suddenly the family is on the run. That’s when the reader begins understanding that the father is Jewish and the family is moving eastward to escape from Nazi persecution. It also becomes apparent that the father is a deeply disturbed character, bipolar, alcoholic, unreliable, yet fascinating – clairvoyant, over-intelligent, over-sensitive, over-everything, and that some of those characteristics have been passed on to the son, our narrator.
This is great writing, at some point the book changes its course, the writing becomes cold and factual, only to return to beauty a couple of pages later.

This book has been on the “unread list” in the 1,001 group, i.e. on the list of books so far not read by any group member. Some of those books are not available in English or generally out of print, some are just for whatever reason not popular. This is a book that imo really deserves to be read.

Rating: 4.5 stars

18. Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner (1,001 #324)

Thanks to the American Author Challenge I finally read my first Faulkner. I chose this book because it had been standing on my shelf for a while now, but in the end I had to buy the audio version, because I found I simply couldn’t read it. I got distracted, bored and also annoyed with the endless chapters almost free of paragraphs. As the story is a narration, told by 3 (or 4?) different people to alternating listeners, I thought it might work better on audio, and it did. I still had to listen to everything at least twice, but I got through it within the month, and I really enjoyed it. I got quite used to having this story told to me in the evenings, and when it was finished I missed it.
Still I feel I didn’t really “get” it in the way US readers might get it. But that’s a normal reaction, just like I felt a deeper connection to Anna Segher’s The Seventh Cross or Christa Wolf’s Patterns of Childhood than many other readers because I could directly relate to them.

The main plot is given away on the first pages, and I wondered how Faulkner was going to fill the remaining app. 380 pages/ 12 hours of audio. But the different viewpoints of the narrators, their different knowledge of what really happened, the reactions of the listeners, always opened up new layers and while I felt I was hearing the same thing all over again and again, there was always something fresh added to it.

Still, what I didn’t get was the demonization of the main character Sutpen. When all was finished, I couldn’t help thinking “and now, given that it all happened between 1830 and 1860 (or so), what has been so exceptionally bad about it all? How can it haunt everyone for generations? Is it just that it was the one big thing that ever happened in the lives of those small-town people? ”.
Not yet ready for the next Faulkner, but definitely less scared now.

Rating: 4 stars

19. The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

I bought this “horror book” spontaneously in a Venice book shop. It’s the story of a young couple in the late 1960s who decide against the modern trend to have a big house and a big family. All goes well with some financial help from the parents until Ben, child number 5, is born. Ben is a “monster baby”, already torturing his mother all through pregnancy, full of rage and violence, killing pets, hurting his siblings, destroying the peace and balance of the family.

It’s really short, and a quick, fascinating read. Then at some point I had a look at the reviews and was surprised how many readers took the story at face value and guessed whether the child was autistic and what treatment would be like nowadays. I really don’t think I have an over-interpretative mind; at school I hated the usual “what did the author really want to tell us?”, often thinking “maybe he just wanted to tell us a story and if he’d had an extra message he might have spelled it out so it wouldn’t get lost?”.
In this case however, by the middle of the book when the plot becomes quite absurd and Ben is put into that horrible institution, I thought “this isn’t really about a child, this is about a side in the woman which she can’t let surface ”. A side full of primeval rage and resistance against everyone else’s expectations. Something that can’t be soothed, that’s constantly screaming “I AM HERE!!! SEE ME, DEAL WITH ME!!”.

This was my second Lessing book. I loved it, but her books have an intensity that exhausts me. But I’ll definitely read the sequel where Ben has grown up and has to deal with a world he doesn’t understand.

Rating: 4.5 stars

20. err... something in Italian that came in a box by Louise L. Hay
21. The Power is Within You by Louise L. Hay

Well, yeah… self-help. :)

Didn’t know Louise Hay before grabbing the little box with an Italian affirmation book and a CD from a shelf in a Bolzano bookshop a week ago. I bought the longer audio book 2 days later and listened to it mainly during my walks to and from work. The longer book is a bit outdated, has been surpassed by recent events. I saw it was published in 1991, when after the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the cold war and 10 years before 9/11 future suddenly looked unusually bright.

But while the circumstances have changed, the message stays the same: Your life is your responsibility, stop handing that power over to others. The past formed you, yes, but it’s your decision now if you want to stay in that place or move forward to a better situation and finally become your own friend instead of your most critical enemy.

Sure, doing affirmations and trying to think more optimistically are methods of brainwash, but - as I didn't learn from these audios but from therapy over the last year - the old thinking has been brainwash as well and didn’t lead me to truth and happiness either. So why not chose the option that at least makes me feel better? Whatever helps... :)

Rating: 4.5 stars for both books

22. All The Pretty Horses by Cormac Mc Carthy (American Author Challenge March Read; 1,001 #325)

Phew… I didn’t like this book, but the ending quite reconciled me with it. From the literary side it feels great and important, but like Hemingway’s style it’s a type of sparse male writing I don’t enjoy much. Then there’s so much unnecessary violence. I was grateful for the balancing presence of the horses.

While I am glad I’ve read it, I don’t think I’ll ever read the other 2 books of the Border trilogy. If this is CMC’s most romantic book, I don’t really want to know what the other listed book Blood Meridian is like.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Why do touchstones not work when the brackets are typed into an ipad keyboard?

A book I won't count, but must rate and recommend again:

Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi (German title "Genussvoll Vegetarisch")

Best cook book I ever had. I've been cooking quite exclusively from it for weeks now and so far I only found 2 dishes I didn't absolutely love. Still liked and finished them, but didn't cook them a second/third/xth... time as all the other ones. Every dish has been such a positive surprise.
Tonight I had baked turnips and sweet potatoes with tomatos and a caper vinaigrette. I thought it sounded awful and couldn't imagine it would work, but it's so delicious I ate the whole thing and now there's nothing left for lunch tomorrow. I haven't once missed meat on my plate since starting cooking with this book.

Just looked at the reviews and someone said you must be meticulous with the quantities. I don't think so, probably depends on the ingredient. I generally use half the oil or less, the same goes for onions and I substitute garlic (which brings my low blood pressure completely down and my pulse up so I can't sleep) with asa foetida. Often I don't find all the original ingredients, have to use different mushrooms, beans, cheeses, etc. So far everything worked. Brussel sprouts with spicy tofu were to die for although my tofu marinade consisted of 100% "might be similar" ingredients and I couldn't find Shiitake anywhere here.
5 fat stars!

I must have been blind... there you are. :)

Hi Kathy! :)

I agree with you completely on both The Fifth Child and All the Pretty Horses. Really liked the former, really didn't the latter. Ha!

You became 'unstarred' but I found you again! I wonder how that happens? I love all the new reviews. I gave up on Faulkner last month when I was mostly needing comforting things to read but I do have The Sound and the Fury in both book and audio version and seem to remember a blurb on Audible saying Faulkner is often easier to make out with a good narrator reading it out loud for you. I won't give up on him entirely, but I don't see him becoming my favourite author either.

The Fifth Child definitely sounds intriguing and harrowing! Will have to put Garden, Ashes on the wishlist. The author's name seems familiar, though no idea why. Maybe seen him on the list.

I quite liked All the Pretty Horses when I read it the first time! which I found surprising. Rereading it this month because it's been a very long time and I'm hoping to move on to the next book in the trilogy. Don't know how it'll go next time.

Square brackets working for me fine on the iPad this morning. I keep getting exclamation! marks! all over! the place though when I type on it! not sure why!

Thanks for your thoughts on my thread. You give me more to think about and I appreciate your perspective on the matter.

Eta: added paragraph on AtPH

Nathalie,

I haven't read that Lessing, but it sounds like one I might not be able to pass by! Great review.

Hi Amber, Ilana, Barbara, Lucy, thanks for visiting! :)

I confess that I spend almost no time on LT right now (checking Paul's thread every 2nd day for any insider updates on the missing plane), but I am keeping my resolution in the title, because I DON'T READ AT ALL, so I still LT more! I started Notre Dame de Paris for the 1,001 GR, and although I enjoyed it so far, I haven't read a single word for at least a week now.

Work is very very busy (which is very very good!) and I am doing my best to try a new schedule for my free-time. I really started taking those lunch breaks: I walk to work in the morning, back home for lunch, back to work, back home in the evening. That's 1.5 hrs just walking in the nice mild spring weather. I won't be able to do that during summer (far too hot), so I am enjoying it as long as I can. At home I do my yoga, watch my half hour of "something Italian" on Sky, and then I usually simply fall asleep, as early as 8pm. It happened even earlier some days ago.
During my lunch break I sit on my balcony listening to classical music on my ipod while eating.
The last 2 weekends I have been out either on my own or meeting friends I hadn't seen for a while and didn't read a single line of literature.

2 days ago I spontaneously signed up for a new yoga class: "laughing yoga". It's said to remove all kinds of tension and to increase creativity, so I thought "why not". It starts tonight at 7:30pm which is my only worry: will I fall asleep on my yoga mat or will I make it until 9 and then back home?

Lovely hearing from you Nathalie. I'm glad you're enjoying Spring weather and it sounds like you're doing well. I'm intrigued by that Laughing Yoga class, look forward to seeing your comments about it. Good luck staying awake, but if you're laughing surely you won't fall asleep?

Nathalie, It's great to hear how you manage your lunch time. I love it the way you are doing it, walking at home and have lunch outside.

I wish you a lovely weekend

Hi Nathalie, your daily schedule looks fabulous! It's great that you take your time to walk there and back again. Now, as the sun sets later in the evening I'm planning on getting my bicycle ready to make some rounds after work. How was the laughing yoga class? It sounds interesting but I'm not the yoga type in general. ;)

Have a great start of the week!

Hi Ilana, Barbara and Kathy!
Yes, after the unusually harsh winter this must be the nicest spring I ever had. The weather is incredibly steady - with the usual exception of clouds turning up and temperatures falling during weekends. Everything is blooming, and knowing how hot it will be in summer I try to enjoy every minute of it now.

Another weekend has passed without reading. Can’t believe it… I re-listened to Louise Hay’s 6hr book during my walks, so maybe that counts. And I started Tina Fey’s Bossypants as audiobook which so far I neither love nor hate.

*******
I wrote this during work (yes...) yesterday but then couldn't post it:

I am trying to integrate some laughing yoga exercises into my day. Oh dear… that’s really difficult. Maybe I should first tell you how the class went.

I had expected a yoga lesson with laughing exercises, but it was a full 90 minutes of laughing with just a tiny bit of stretching (while laughing). Laughing exercises are basically wild and fake laughs until you finally break into a real laugh. Plus making funny faces, dancing around, singing “haha hehe hihi hoho huhu”, jumping in a circle like little kids. It was surprisingly (and disappointingly I must add) exhausting. I started yawning punctually at 8pm (my currently favorite sleeping time) and couldn’t stop. Also, I got stomach muscle cramps – laughing training is a great exercise for those muscles, no more sit-ups I guess – and, worse, cramps in my cheeks from all the wild grinning.

Then there was the relaxation phase, which consisted in lying on my back on the mat, laughing. That was interesting because suddenly my eyes teared up, my nose ran, I started coughing and those channels of which I don’t know the name behind my ears started hurting. So the “head fluids” were all quite active. It will be interesting to see how the other 9 classes will work out and if I really feel better after a while.

Well, home exercises… I started doing them while blow drying my hair in the morning, so the neighbors don’t get confused by those early, mad-sounding noises. I did them in the car on Sunday on the way to my hiking start point. I watched an old Disney movie (Merlin and Mim had been the German title, I guess the original is “The Sword in the Stone”?) and did my best to laugh during the funny scenes, and sure they were all aaaawww-cute, but not really LOL scenes for me. And then I thought “why not listen to a real funny audio book” and that’s where the odyssey started. In the end I bought Tina Fey’s Bossypants, but I knew already it wasn’t what I had been looking for. That’s the other thing – self-depracating humor is something else I am trying to reduce, because that’s basically been my main kind of humor since I was about 10 years old. You can hide behind that very well. Not that I see it as a bad thing generally to be able to laugh about oneself, I just had too much of it and need to learn some self-appreciation now for a change. So listening to someone else making fun of herself and others isn’t exactly helpful, but I just didn’t find anything else. I test-listened to countless books, then read the longer Kindle test chapters, and none of them raised a single real laugh out of me, at best a weak smile. The selection of fun books for eye-reading is better, but I’d prefer to listen, it’s a more direct experience and I can do it during my walks.

I’m looking for something like Matt Beaumont’s un-pc “e” series, the first Adrian Mole diaries or the absolutely hilarious “Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth” chapter in the otherwise weak The Edge of Reason (“What’s your favorite color?”). Or Tom Sharpe’s exaggerated Wilt stories, but none of his books are available on audible. There are it seems hundreds of “Jeeves” books, and I once tried one, was amused but didn’t laugh.

Hmmm - I've loved Kevin Hearn's Atticus/Iron Druid series - even the non-fantasy amongst us (read Richard) have found them excellent and laugh out loud funny. I love the Adrian Mole stuff too by the way :)

Film wise I keep finding myself crying instead of laughing. But that's mainly because I live on a steady diet of Disney. Tangled makes me cry three times. Every time I watch it. And Up - that is a soul destroyer. Not helpful...funny films... I always go back to my comfortable faves. Like Four Weddings and a funeral - laughter and tears. Or a ridiculous teen flick called Eurotrip I loved in Uni.

I'm rambling again...sorry :)

Funny... it is so difficult to recommend something "funny". But maybe you could try Die Känguru-Offenbarung. It is actually the sequel of Die Känguru-Chroniken in which the narrator gets a new animalistic flatmate, and Das Känguru-Manifest.
But when I think about it... it's sarcastic, so I guess not really the positive attitude you're looking for.

Laugh yoga sounds interesting... not my cup of tea. But I'm really curious if it'll help you.

>32 Deern: Laughing exercises? You should spend a few hours in SWMBOs company and I'm sure you'd have all the exercise you would need! She's a barrel of laughs, I'm just a barrel.

Have a wonderful weekend and I trust that the weather will remain majestically springlike for you.

Hi Nathalie, I love those laughing exercises. That sounds fantastic.

*Happy weekend wave*

I've seen a laughing yoga class in session before... at first I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, until I realized the fake, crazy laughs were necessary to break down the emotional wall that some participants had. In the end, there were genuine smiles on the participants' faces, and I realized, what a beautiful way to force subtle healing in those who are feeling down, or unable to break out of a negative feeling on their own.

Plus, as adults, we often don't take enough time to just be silly. There's something to be said for returning to our childhood selves now and again (or for some of us, far more often than that... heehee).

Here are some recommendations for your laughing exercises:

Dave Barry reading his essays (he writes a humor column that is nationally syndicated). He writes wonderfully and he is VERY VERY FUNNY. Once we were stuck in terrible traffic listening to him an d we were laughing our heads off and falling all over around the car and people around us glared and glared and thought we were quite mad! He has also co-written some detective stories which are supremely silly.

Bill Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods' - as a book or listen.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis - this has to be maybe the funniest novel ever written, I suspect.

There is evidence that smiling releases something or other and improves mood - I expect laughing is a more extreme version of this? Someone told me once, when I was at an irish music session that I didn't look as if I was enjoying myself at all, that I was grimacing, and I realized that I was - that my nervousness about playing had just taken over my whole body. Then I read the thing about smiling. So then, I tried, you know, alone in the car, practicing smiling for whole minutes at a time. If I was Dave Barry I could write an essay about it that would make you howl, but as I am just me, I will say that I found it insanely difficult at first. I literally didn't have the muscles, it felt really awkward to smile for more than just a brief moment. And that really gave me something to think about! So anyhow, when I got better at sustaining a smile I decided to try, at a session to go in smiling and keep smiling, whether I was playing or listening, and well, I have to say, it has made a HUGE difference. I don't necessarily play any better, but I have a LOT more fun and feel better about whatever I do.

And yes, I have noticed that most of the time if I am feeling down and if I go off in private and do the smiling thing for awhile, I notice later that my mood has improved. I just seem to move on from wherever I was stuck. It really astonishes me every time.

So -- maybe the laughing is more intense than you really need, but I would keep on with it - I do think some of us are quicker to respond to these 'therapies' - just as some are more sensitive to medications etc.

I haven't listened to Bill Bryson yet, but taking note of Lucy's advice since I have a couple on the tbl. I could use with some laughing exercises too. And I would strongly recommend you opt for the original BBC recordings if you go for A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They're really really good and very funny, besides which the books were based on that radio series and not the other way 'round.

Hope you're keeping well and enjoying your weekend. xx

There *is* a new Bridget Jones book out... Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy. I'm certainly looking forward to getting round to it, and maybe it will be laugh-out-loud funny, too? The first two were for me.

Nathalie, I know I don't laugh enough in real life but I simply can't see myself doing forced laughter for that long…especially while lying down. Hmmm…maybe I will try to integrate a little fake laughter into my day if it will help my stomach muscles. I could probably handle about five or ten minutes…Tops!

It sounds like you are very busy at work. How nice that you can enjoy the fresh spring air as you walk back and forth. I remember when you posted a picture of your walk to work and it was a lovely area. Maybe you could laugh and walk at the same time? Ha ha!

Wow, so many visitors and such wonderful posts from everyone!
Starting with replies now before giving an update on my laughing yoga.

#33 Bekka: Don't know "Tangled", but quite loved "Up". Yes, there are sure tear-jerkers, but laugh-jerkers? I found that TJs remain TJs over the years while our sense for "funny" keeps changing. How we laughed in the 90s about the Bundy Family (wasn't that called "Married with Children" in the original? German title was completely different), and if I see a re-run now, I quickly get bored. That's why I stopped buying comedy series on DVD.
I listened to the test extract of the first "Iron Druid" book and am considering buying it, although those 4 minutes weren't terribly funny yet. The basic idea is very promising though. Thank you!! :-)

#34 Kathy: I'll check my library for that Känguru series, thanks for the recommendation!

#35 Paul: after watching that Monopoly video I am absolutely convinced you're right! You have such a wonderful family!!
The weather turned all winter on me over the weekend - but it forced me to read (no inet, no satellite TV thanks to the storms), so it wasn't all bad! (you see my new optimism is working already...) :-)

#36 Barbara: and the 2nd class was much better than the first one. A great week to you!

#37Diana: Thanks and "Happy Week" wave back to you!

#38 Faith: you're absolutely right!
And I remembered how often as a child I broke into those "silly laughs without a reason" and that usually the adults said something like "it's enough now" or "you can't just laugh without any motive". So we lose that wonderful ability - and then have to pay classes to get back there.

#39 Lucy: just wow... thank you so much! Dave Barry and Lucky Jim are noted. Of Bill Bryson I think I read all the older books and loved many of them. A Walk in the Woods is indeed great! The "Hitchhiker" series is on my shelf. I only ever read the first book for the 1,001 list, maybe I should give the whole series another try now.

I've started the "grinning exercises" even before booking that yoga class and found it can really improve my mood. I am actually grinning right now while posting this and I often grin while driving or during hikes when no-one can see me. Laughing when alone is much harder though. It works well for a minute or so and then gets too forced, it's much easier in a group.

#40 Ilana: Hm... I've got the books, but maybe I should really try the recordings.
I just remembered that the last book that really made me laugh out loudly was Bitch in a Bonnet, especially the part about Mansfield Park. And now, while replying to your post I remember we once had that exchange about that "terrible food" book. Must look for that one right when I am back home. Those jelly and meat chapters were hilarious!

#41 Amber: I am quite determined not to read the new BJ book, because it starts in a situation which I prefer to simply ignore, so for me the series ends with book 2. But I return to that Colin Firth interview in book 2 every couple of months, it's just so great!

#42 Donna: well, I grin and walk at the same time. And I started greeting everyone I meet with a "Hello" or "Good Morning", smiling, and usually people respond happily. I took some pics last week, but can't post them from the iPad directly, so I'll have to connect it to the notebook at home. Maybe tonight!

******
Reading Update:

I can’t believe it – I actually did some reading yesterday, and I finished a book!! 

The nice weather seems to know when it’s a weekend – it promptly takes a good rest. Yesterday it was terrible – temperatures 20°C lower than during the week, a heavy wind that brought another internet and satellite TV interruption and rain from Saturday afternoon until late last night. Today the sun is back and temperatures are up. Sure – it’s Monday! :-)
Anyway, I had to sort out my documents for the tax declaration, a task I hate as much as anyone else. So after I had cleaned the house, done the washing and ironing, the cooking, the yoga, all that remained for me to delay that task a bit longer was reading. I decided to start the April GR for the 1,001 group There but for the, and although it had 357 pages, I found myself at 50% quickly and finished it early in the afternoon. I can’t say I enjoyed it so much, it was just a quick and easy read. Then I finally forced myself to do that dreaded tax stuff and then I went to bed early, starting on Casino Royale which I had downloaded as an easy 1,001 some days ago. It’s another quick read and I just skipped through the torture scenes while I had breakfast (couldn’t stomach that and didn’t see any sense in reading that part in detail). I guess it will be the first and last Bond book I’ll ever read.

Following Paul’s recommendation I had also started The Prisoner of Zenda last week, but that one hasn’t really gripped me yet. However, I guess the preliminaries are over now and the action should start in the next chapter. And I am still stuck in Notre Dame de Paris, not making any progress although so far I really liked it. I decided to give up on my Proust reread, it’s just not the right time yet. I am absolutely uninterested in the 2nd half of Cecilia and that Arnold Zweig book I’ve been reading since January is so terribly boring I just can’t get on with it now. It’s a WWI book and it has been recommended by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, but it doesn’t speak to me at all, I can’t help it. I also read the Kindle sample of Toni Morrison’s Beloved which is only available for me in Italian (Amatissima) and I bought it this morning for the April read in the AAC, and it’s also a 1,001 book.

Update on Laughing Yoga
Thursday was a difficult day for me and I considered not going to the class in the evening because I absolutely didn't feel like it. Thursday is also the day when I meet my therapist during lunch break, and this week our talk had been quite intense. Work was hard as well, so I was just tired and didn't feel like laughing.

But then I decided I'd go and, as a reward, buy myself an ice cream at the gelateria next to the school before class. So I did that (raspberry) and was in a much better mood when the yoga started.

Interestingly, this time it was much easier getting into the laughing. The exercises were great and there was more actual movement. I think it helped that we started with dancing and then did some voice exercises. Again I thought that 90 minutes are too long, but it went well for more than an hour this time.

The teacher explained again that the objective is to (fake-)laugh for 15-20 minutes daily. The brain can't differentiate well between fake laughs and real laughs, so it will produce all those good messengers anyway which should - on the long run - have a great effect on the body as well as on the mind. And yes, grinning is a good exercise too, she confirmed.

Greetings Nathalie! I'm sooooo jealous! So spring arrived in Merano on February 26! Here I am in Ohio and it's nearly -7C. No flowers, no sun just blahhhhh. Ok, you made it through Faulkner! and although you're in no hurry to read him it looks promising. I feel the same. Too bad you didn't feel better about All the Pretty Horses. Besides this one, I've only read The Road and I'd say his writing style is pretty much the same in both. I did like AtPH though and I think perhaps the romance is more so with the land than the girl, that was probably lust.

The teacher explained again that the objective is to (fake-)laugh for 15-20 minutes daily. The brain can't differentiate well between fake laughs and real laughs, so it will produce all those good messengers anyway which should - on the long run - have a great effect on the body as well as on the mind. And yes, grinning is a good exercise too, she confirmed.

I really like your instructor's thoughts on laughter. Think I'll give it try today!

#47 Lynda: and winter came back on March 22! :)
I was sad about AtPH too. Maybe it was really an overdose of "macho" American writers, after Hemingway and Faulkner. And I think you're right about the romance with the land.

About the laughing: Do give it a try, what harm can it do? :-))
As I said in some earlier post, sure this all feels like brain wash. But after having made the experience that the more negative "realities" I learned often aren't real either, but based on old false fears, I thought I'd give that happier approach a fair try. It isn't easy, but it has already brought me some small but nice results, mainly in my job.

23. There But For The by Ali Smith (1,001 book 2012 edition, so I won’t count it yet)

This is the April GR in the 1,001 group. I am still stuck with the March book, Notre Dame de Paris, so I thought I could give this one a try and start it early. I had read some reviews on amazon that made me expect a slow read, and absolutely surprisingly I raced through it in just half a day – and that after weeks of non-reading. And no, it wasn’t a book I loved, it was just an exceptionally quick and easy read.

It is a strange book. A book that clearly wants to be high literature, and I don’t like it if that becomes too obvious. There’s play with words, no real conclusive story thread, stream of consciousness and certain checklist issues. It manages to include racism, homosexuality, Jewish background and child abuse, but without making any of those themes the book’s focus and I was glad about that. The framing story is that during a dinner party one of the guests gets up from the table and locks himself into the hosts’ spare bedroom, refusing to leave it and also refusing any spoken communication. The book is divided into 4 chapters, named “There”, “But”, “For” and “The”. Each one focuses on a character loosely connected with Miles, the mysterious spare room occupant, and the word forming the chapter’s title plays a certain role in that person’s life. “There” is Anna, now in her 40s, who knew Miles as a teenager, but hasn’t heard from him since. He’s kept her (actual) address in his wallet, so the desperate hosts contact her, hoping she might get him out of their house. “But” is Mark, a homosexual man in his 60s, who’s picked up Miles after a theater play and without knowing him well at all, invited him to the dinner party. Mark hears the voice of his Jewish poet mother in his head, a woman who committed suicide many years ago. “For” is an old lady in her 80s who’s suffered a stroke and currently lives in the geriatric ward of a hospital. Her connection with Miles is hinted at in the Anna part of the book. “The” is 9 year old Brooke, living in the house next to Miles’ hosts, who was present at the dinner party along with her parents. Brooke is black (which is never mentioned, instead it is said that other people are white), over-intelligent and precocious and an outsider at school, mocked for her cleverness. She’s the only one in direct contact with Miles and also with the other characters. But for me, in a sense she was also the weakest character, or maybe I should say she wasn’t a character at all. Anna, Mark and old-lady-whose-name-I-forgot feel real, Brooke doesn’t. She felt like a technical device and she annoyed me.

I’d say the book has many good elements, and there’s something about the writing which I absolutely liked. But it isn’t flawless and I can’t say where the deeper message is, if there is one.

Rating: 3.5 stars

24. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (1,001 # 326)

Phew… Okay, I didn’t expect much from this book and still it disappointed me. I expected a clichéd story, a bit outdated, and I also expected some misogyny. I mean – it’s Bond and it’s the… err… 1950s? Anyway, what I also expected was a gripping story.

I got the clichés, the outdated stuff and more misogyny even I can digest (I always try to look at older books not too critically). But excitement? None at all, and the reason wasn’t that I had seen the Daniel Craig movie. I only remember two scenes from that movie that were both not in the book, so for me this was quite a new story. Okay, it might have been more exciting had I not known that Bond would survive everything anyway. So I was able to coolly read the baccarat scenes and to skip the torture details. I enjoyed the food descriptions and thought that those were carefree times when ice-cold orange juice, three eggs with lots of bacon and several cups of black coffee were regarded as a “good breakfast”; when lots of white toast with butter were seen as desirable dinner starter and not as gluten-and-lactose-plus-saturated-fat-containing killers and when cigarette smoke was inhaled extra-deeply. (I never was a smoker and I am glad the air is cleaner now in many places like restaurants. And yet… “something” in movie culture was lost when cigarettes stopped being cool and when only the bad characters who’d die anyway kept smoking them). Values change so quickly nowadays.

But when it comes to the character of Vesper Lynd, I am really glad times have changed. So she is introduced as an agent. Couldn’t Fleming have given her at least one “agenty scene” then, some job to do to show that Bond is wrong when he says women are just for reproduction and useless at work? Why is she sent to Royale again? To look pretty in a silk dress, to eat caviar and watch Bond playing at baccarat? And to feel unloved and refused when he doesn't flirt sufficiently?

And please, where in this book is Bond once smart? He’s a good gambler, okay, that’s said early on. But he’s blind as a mole (I hope that’s not un-pc?) when it comes to noticing and evaluating the most obvious hints. And he needs to be rescued by others all the time - be it from loss of gambling money or from being killed by Le Chiffre. Okay, so he is inventive when hiding things in his room, one thing at least. Mathis seemed much smarter to me...

The book started out for me with amused 4 stars, got down to 3,5 when Vesper made her entrance, to 3 after her “incident” and dropped to an angry “I-should-better-not-rate-this-at-all” 2 star rating in the last chapter. I hate that book’s Bond. Won’t ever read him again! Minus 10 stars for the book's last line! :(

Rating: 2 stars, but only because I am being nice

>46 Deern: Nathalie, it's fantastic that you took part all the same at your Laughing Yoga class and I'm glad to hear that it was more a success as you would have expected upfront.
I wish you a lovely stress-free week full of little successes.

> 46: Nathalie, somehow I always shudder when I hear people's fake laugh. I'm a bit sceptical about that the body can't differentiate real and fake laugh. But - stopping with the negativity now - I'm glad that you like it and I really hope it helps. Maybe I should give it a try myself? I'm always in for ice cream, though! :D

I loved The Road by McCarthy and I've got All the Pretty Horses at home. I already thought it would be different, I still want to read it.

But when it comes to James Bond... I haven't read it yet. But that it was chose for the list made me wonder if the authors have actually read the books or only watched the movie adaptations.

Have a happy second-half of the week!

#50 LOL! Love that review! I'll admit to being pretty disappointed in it myself, though nowhere nearly as badly as you it seems.

Hope you are well and relaxing into a great weekend.

Nathalie,

I loved your Bond analysis, and taking us along as slowly the stars dropped away..... It is horribly dated isn't it?

I am going to have to try fake laughing in the car. If I did it around Miss Po (or any family members) they would know for sure I've lost it entirely, but I could use something right now. I am quite down. I think it is mainly the terrible weather.

Hi Barbara, Kathy, Bekka and Lucy! Thanks for visiting!!

I think it's okay the Bond is on the 1,001 list - I mean there's Tarzan of the Apes as well which is one of the most ridiculous books I ever read. They may not be great, but they started something, and reading the books lead me to appreciating the movies much more.
What maybe surprised me most about the Bond book was that the character isn't that great as an agent either. He escapes death several times just because he's lucky. And the great gambling... well, he can thank the CIA there.

******
I just read that Sue Townsend has died, and I feel guilty because my first reaction was "Oh dear, no more Adrian Mole for me!". But maybe it's a normal reaction. I mean - I didn't know the person Sue Townsend/ knew nothing about her life, and when artists die, we always lose and mourn their future work. I'll miss her much!

Adrian has accompanied me since my early teens, he is/was about my age, the first 2 diaries were the first books I read in English and I've followed him since. I also read and loved The Queen and I and Queen Camilla. Just about 2 weeks ago I checked amazon if Sue Townsend hadn't recently published something new (when I was looking for fun books). Now I'll start a big reread and then say good-bye to Adrian. And we'll never know about him and Pandora.

Edit: just read the obituary in the Guardian. What an inspiring woman! How she coped with her many health issues, and I had no idea that she had been blind for years and dictated her last novels to her son.

******
Something else: I'll now officially check out of LT until the 2nd week of May.

I am so sorry, I really tried, but this is a strange phase of my life. I haven't read anything for more than a week, just finishing my 1,001 March GR book Notre Dame de Paris took all my effort. I am spending much time and energy on "re-programming myself" - being active, getting a more positive attitude towards my life. Reading has always been the most important activity for my free time, but now it has automatically retreated a bit to make more room for other things. I also spend much less time on the internet, I just read the daily news. I haven't even checked my private e-mail for over a month.

Now some days ago my mother arrived here and she'll stay till May 1st. She's also doing things for herself, she booked lots of treatments: inhalations, physiotherapy, thermal baths. And I have to look after her eating habits, see to it that she eats 3 good meals every day. :)

On the 1st we'll drive back to Germany together and I'll stay a couple of days to celebreate my grandmother's 90th birthday. With my mum here, the last bit of free time has just vanished, but that's okay.

I've been feeling guilty about books and LT for some weeks now and thought it'd be best just to take some time off "officially" and return when there's more time again.
If I feel like it I might check in again earlier, but... I'll see. Maybe I'll at least post those flower pictures from home before spring is over.. :)

So I wish you all in advance a HAPPY EASTER and/or a HAPPY SPRING!

I hope you have a wonderful visit with your mom; we'll be here when you get back! :)

Enjoy your break. It sounds like absolutely the right thing to do!

Always nice to get an update from you Nathalie. I understand your guilty feelings, but at the same time, wish to tell you that you need not pain yourself. Reading, LT... they'll be there when you're ready and have room for them in your life. Of course we'll always be happy to hear from you! Sounds like you're on a very good track, and that's what is most important. I've seen you mention Adrian Mole before, but haven't looked into it. I'll check it out and see if it's something I might enjoy. Sadly, an author's passing is often a reason for those who aren't so familiar with them to take notice of their work. Maybe a silver lining for their eternal souls (if such exists) somehow?

So happy for your that you still have your grandmother around. 90 is definitely a respectable and venerable old age. Hope you have fun with your family reunion and can enjoy it.

A very Happy Easter and Happy Spring to you too Nathalie! xx

>56 Deern: I liked The Tarzan of Apes, found it brilliant in its sheer simplicity! The Bond books (admittedly I have only read Casino Royale) are, well, maybe, could be, appreciated for its entertainment value, when we consider the times in which they were written. Despite the Bond girls, though I have watched quite a few of them, I have never been a fan of the Bond movies.

Nathalie, have a good vacation from LT while you focus on your mother and yourself. I will try to do some fake laughing and think of you each day. ;-)

It is all at our own sweet pace, Nathalie, my dear. I, for one, miss my friends immensely when you are not around for a while but I understand not everyone is as consumed and geeky as I am to spend so much time on the threads.

Have a wonderful and rewarding break. Your friends will miss you but we'll be all the more delighted when you come back to us refreshed and at your ease.

Happy Easter!

Nathalie, I wish you and a wonderful time with your mom.

Happy Easter, Nathalie!

Happy Easter, Nathalie!

Thanks for your review of Casino Royal - Read it last year and I liked it better than you - still - I don't think I will read Bond again. Funny that it started like a 4 and ended up with a 2 - I guess you were being nice there :)

Well as promised we haven't seen much of you Nathalie since the middle of last month. I really hope that you are in a far better place than you were back then and can consider dropping in on us once in a while. I for one miss you around here.

What he said! I hope everything is better/good with you and that you find your way back to us.

Hi there, this is my first visit to the 75group since April 11. Today I fixed my long neglected 1001 thread which I hadn't updated since December and now I at least wanted to say "Hi, I am back"! Well, a bit back for now. I won't be able to catch up fully with most of my starred threads, but I'll do a bit every day.

Thank you all so much for visiting, leaving Easter greetings and good wishes!!

My mother's stay has been quite time-demanding and except for some Adrian Mole rereads I stayed away from the books. Then I was in Germany for a couple of days and then last week a friend from Frankfurt came to visit, so I extended my LT off-time a little longer than planned.

I'll be back with some more updates tomorrow or latest on Thursday when I have a real keyboard again.
For now sending {hugs} and wishing you all a great week!!

Hurrey! Nathalie is back. Nice to see you here again. hugs xx

Hurrrayyyyy! Nathalie is back! You've been missed my dear. xox

oops, just realized I'm writing almost an identical message as Barbara above, but it's from the heart I assure you! :-)

Hi Barbara and Ilana, thanks for visiting and hugging! 
Writing from work now, I love my ipad, but hate the typing on the screen.

Well, it was good having my mother here for such a long time. She had treatments on most days and especially the thermal radon baths made her very tired. She did two types of inhalations on most days against her asthma and also had about three hours of physiotherapy per week.

Still we often managed to meet both for lunch and dinner in town. I started work a bit earlier or worked a bit longer in the evenings; I had talked to my boss beforehand and he was very understanding. She sometimes also had treatments on Saturdays, so our weekend activities were limited as well. We did a nice easy hike to a waterfall on Easter Sunday with my landlady friend and her little dog, had lunch up in a mountain inn with a wonderful view. Usually however the weather was bad during the weekends, also on Easter Monday, so we often had to stay in.

I think my mom managed to relax a bit and thanks to all those restaurant visits even gained a little weight (I gained much more, though eating less and walking a lot). Back home however she immediately started house-cleaning and jumped back into her old routines, so I suppose most of the positive effects of her stay vanished within a week. She didn’t experience any improvement health-wise, but that was to be expected. You have to want to get better to get better, I guess. At least she enjoyed her stay and we had a great time together.

*****

My grandma’s 90th birthday was a nice big affair, not just with her 4 children and their ever-growing families, but also with her numerous nieces and nephews from both her and my grandfather’s side, some of which I had never met before. It's always good to see my aunts/uncles/ cousins and every year there's at least one new baby to admire.

Thanks to the asparagus season in Germany it was easy for me to stay off the meat without anyone noticing. The best part however was the typical German “Kaffeetafel” with lots of home-made cream/fruit/cheese cakes and coffee. During my mother’s visit I had taken a break from my almost gluten-free diet (if you don’t eat meat and gluten, all that remains for you in an Italian restaurant is a sad salad), so I really enjoyed the occasion and the cakes for once.

******

I returned to Merano with a carload of books from the storage room I had given up some weeks ago. There are still loads of books in my parents’ garage and I have no idea where to put them. Most of the books are recipe books, books about wine and more general “food literature”. Then there was my whole Adrian Mole collection (I had bought some for my Kindle in the meantime), all my books about astrophysics with which I had been quite obsessed some years ago… For now I moved the boxes into my small basement room, but I think I need new shelves (where to put them???).

*******

On Thursday one of my friends from Frankfurt arrived for a long weekend and that was great as well. I had to work on Friday so she went hiking alone, but we had a great hike on Sunday on monte Vigilio. On Saturday we went (as we had planned weeks ago) to a high rope garden. For years I had wanted to try that but no-one wanted to join me. It was quite fun once I was through the first parcours and the first panic. We did three of 7 parcourses and then watched all the other people from the safe distance of the adjoining beer garden. I’ll definitely return soon, although my muscles are still aching.

Reading… Well, that hasn’t been great, as expected.
I started my reread of the Adrian Mole series and so far got until the ending of The Cappuccino Years which I had on my Merano shelf. I bought the older ones as Kindles, but then decided I’d better wait for my old book boxes before also re-purchasing The Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now that I am reunited with all my paper copies, I’ll soon start that one.

But “real” literature was a different thing.

I managed to finish The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the March 1001 GR, late in April. Never really got into Beloved (Amatissima) for the April AAC, but I will pick it up again soon.

After the Hugo I really fought my way through a great(!!) book from the 2006 edition of the 1,001 list, Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Humanity in German. It probably has been removed because it’s written in the form of a play, but with about 800 pages it isn’t really a playable one and it deserves to be put back on. One of the hardest-to-read books I remember from the list, one I only selected because it was on the “unread” list in the group and in German and free, so I felt responsible for “getting it checked off”. In the end it was one (if not the) best anti-war book I ever read. I’d happily recommend it, but I don’t know how good and available the English translation is and it also shouldn’t be read without some background on the late Austrian empire. 5 stars for that one!

Back in Merano I decided it was also time to return to my normal reading, but while the ability to process English texts at a good speed seems to return, my Italian still suffers. I have been reading a couple of German books now just to be able to catch up a bit.

May looks far better than April. I was able to finish The Autumn of the Patriarch which I had started a month earlier in honor of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Certainly not the best choice during a reading funk: beautiful language, but all chapters without paragraphs, chapter-long sentences, changing viewpoints plus magical realism at its best. I must reread it someday, ideally on a lonely island where nothing distracts me.

Then I decided to read some short 1,001 books, also because I had signed up for a couple of the “unread” ones. I finished two Wolfgang Koeppen books, one on the Kindle in Italian (Death in Rome/La Morte a Roma), one from the library in German (The Hothouse/ Das Treibhaus). Both were short and quick reads, and I can really recommend The Hothouse.

The 1,001 May GR Gösta Berling was a quick one as well, as I had found a free German translation. Yesterday I noticed that Notes from the Underground is likely to be the June GR, so I started it and surprisingly also finished it because it’s so short.

I started Günter Grass’ Dog Years from the “unreads” but put it on hold for some days because I don’t want a Grass book to become a real milestone on my personal 1,001 list. The Dostoevsky was #332 and I want to remember #333 and 334 fondly. So after a look at the AAC I started The Optimist’s Daughter which is already half-finished and for fun Inside Mr Enderby by Anthony Burgess. Once those are done I’ll pick up some of the many half-read ones I assembled earlier this year and try to get them finished.

Lovely to see you back Nathalie :)

#75: Hi Bekka! :)

Starting to catch up on my reviews... first with an old one from January:

5. Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Jodi
I LOVE BiaB! I already read it frequently when it was available online and now when I noticed that part of the content has been published as book and therefore taken off the website, I bought the cheap Kindle edition (I think just 0.99 for US people, app. 1.50 USD for me). Jodi loves Austen’s books, reads and discusses them chapter for chapter, all in the conviction that JA was in fact a “bitch in a bonnet” and that those so-called romances are in reality biting observations of the life around Austen, well-disguised in stories about love and marriage. I often had similar feelings reading her books, though I accept others might see that differently and therefore probably despise Jodi’s book. It helps that he – like me – loves P&P, Emma and enjoys S&S, while quite openly hating Mansfield Park’s protagonist Fanny. Reading his comments helped me get through that book years ago on my 3rd try.

4 stars

Remaining March books:

March:
25. Overcoming Fears by Louise L. Hay
Well, another helpful LLH book. Not really getting addicted, but I use this audio (the 2nd part with the affirmations) whenever I get overwhelmed by panic which still happens from time to time. Better be calmed down by her than by medicals, I’d say.
Rating: 4.5 stars

26. Feeling Fine Affirmations by Louise L. Hay
The order is wrong here, this was my first affirmation audio book – but as I listen to this one constantly it doesn’t really matter where I put it in my reading list. This is an audio book with 2 series of affirmations of about 23 minutes each which I am doing almost daily. The second part (body affirmations) was a revelation for me – coming from a family where we are all in some way fighting our bodies by mistreating them with stupid diets/ over- or underfeeding them or where people were used to feel loved only when they were ill and therefore cultivated their illnesses over decades (the usual problem in post-war families with too many children I guess). Developing gratefulness for that quite healthy body that has carried me around for 43 years now is a fascinating idea and I really enjoy doing these affirmations every morning. The other half is more general about self-love, the acceptance of success, etc..I’ve been using it as preparation for what felt like critical situations and it always made me feel better.
Rating: 4.5 stars

27. Dave Barry is not taking this sitting down by Dave Barry
I listened to this as a feel-good book. It was an entertaining listen, although I noticed once again that humor is culturally influenced. It was all a bit too “good” for me, too family friendly and clean, avoiding “bad words” (only hinting). And sometimes I just plainly didn’t know what DB was talking about when he referred to something that’s clearly part of US culture, but which I never heard of. I thought it was a new book, but it’s in fact a collection of columns from the 90s – therefore many of the political references were lost on me as well. I enjoyed it though and I will certainly re-listen to some of the pieces when I need something uplifting.
Rating: 3.5 stars

April:
28. Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo (1,001 # 327)
Oh dear, what a struggle! I loved Les Misérables to bits, but never ever got into this one, the 1001 GR of March. This was my 3rd or 4th try with this novel, I was determined to get through it this time and in the end I succeeded, but I’ll certainly never read it again. I think I disliked every single character, didn’t care a straw for any of their fates except for the goat, and if Hugo hadn’t added all those digressions about architecture and the historic view on Paris from the towers of Notre Dame, etc., I would have rated the book even lower, just based on the story.
Rating: 3 stars

29. The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001 by Sue Townsend
3.5 stars
30. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
4 stars
31. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
4 stars
32. True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole by Sue Townsend
2 stars
33. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend
3 stars
34. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend
3.5 stars
All AM reviews to follow when I have finished my big re-read of the series

35. The Last Days of Humanity by Karl Kraus
A completely unexpected 5 star read! For me maybe the greatest anti-war book I’ve read so far and also one of the hardest reads ever! I still can’t believe this book with all its timelessness and foreshadowing has been published shortly after WWI. It’s true, it’s wise, it’s sometimes bitterly funny, the ending is apocalyptic.

Now come the difficult bits:
- it’s written in form of a play
- it’s about 800 pages long
- while written like a play it’s in fact unplayable
- it’s probably untranslatable (with all the Austrian expressions it was often also difficult for me)
- it’s culturally Austrian, not German-Prussian, so the reader should have some background knowledge
- it’s not greatgreat throughout, which means it has its lengths where I was close to giving up

The 5 acts are basically the 5 years of war. It starts with the news that Franz Ferdinand and his wife have been killed in Sarajevo. Everyone is excited because war is in the air and they are all looking forward to a quick battle and more glory for the empire. Things slowly and gradually change and I now realize that a modernist play is the perfect form to demonstrate what war really does to the people – those at the front, but also those at home. You can exaggerate like crazy which is impossible in a novel and still reality will be much worse. There are the constant lies spread by the papers, immediately contradicted by reality. There is the “elite” who are pro-war, but avoid with all means being drafted. There’s the xenophobia, well hidden in the beginning, then openly demonstrated by ganging up against/ beating up/ killing anyone who "looks foreign". There are many discussions between “the optimist” and “the grumbler”, full of foresight, and sadly the pessimistic grumbler so far has been right in everything and keeps being right.

Rating: 5 stars

36. Das Treibhaus (The Hothouse) by Wolfgang Köppen (1,001 # 328)
I feel it’s my „job“ to get the German and Italian authors checked off the list of unread books in the 1,001 group. I had never heard of Köppen before and now that I read this book I can’t believe he isn’t more widely known in Germany. Probably he published too early, in the 1950s, when no-one wanted to read criticism on the political system or wanted to be reminded of the war and Holocaust. But later, in the 80s and 90s his books should have found their way to the shelves and into the classrooms.

This book reminded me a bit of the Bölls I’ve read – open criticism on the cozy post-war Germany of the “Bonn republic” where many ex-Nazis have managed to make a new political career. The protagonist here is a delegate of the social democratic party, so in theory left-wing. He is disgusted by the political realities, always fighting his conscience that wants him to step away from the government-friendly party line, but at the same time inable to act. He imagines heroic scenes where he shows the world his opinions but in the end always gives in to the “Hothouse”, the special atmosphere in Bonn where bad plants find perfect conditions to prosper and bloom.

Rating: 4 stars

37. La Morte a Roma (Death in Rome) by Wolfgang Köppen (1,001 # 329)
This book deals with post-war German conscience as well, using as example a once powerful family who coincidentally all meet in Rome. There’s the Nazi leader Gottlieb “Götz” Judejahn, living under a false name, dreaming of resurrecting the Reich, obsessed with antisemitism; his weak and broken wife who admires him only for his political will; the wife’s brother Pfaffrath, sister-in-law and older nephew are all ex Nazis on a much smaller scale who managed to make a good life in the new republic, not looking back. The younger nephew Siegfried who had suffered from a Nazi elite education, has turned away from the family and is composing sad dodecaphonic symphonies. Last not least the Nazi leader’s son, aptly named Adolf, who has taken refuge in religion, preparing to become a Catholic priest.

This was an interesting and often shocking portrait, especially when Köppen looks deeply into Judejahn’s world of beliefs. It ends not as strong as it begins though and compared to The Hothouse left a slightly weaker impact on me.

The Siegfried chapters go well with Pasolini’s Ragazzi di Vita.

Rating: 3.5 stars


38. Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf (1,001 # 330)
May GR in the 1,001 group. I’va always wanted to read this because I love Nils Holgersson so much. I’d say this one’s weaker, but maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for a classic Swedish take on magic realism. It was a quick and entertaining read though and I might give it a second try one day, maybe in winter – it feels like a winter book.

Rating: 3.5 stars

39. Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1,001 # 331)
On the 1,001 list this was the last remaining GGM for me, so I decided to read it when I heard about his death. Definitely the wrong time in my life for a book with chapter-long sentences, free of paragraphs, with a difficult-to-follow storyline. I was glad I checked out the reviews on LT and found a link to a NYT article that explained the idea behind this book – that it’s the essence of all (Latin) dictators – not just Latin-American because he threw in some Mussolini and Franco as well. I feel this is a great work and I am sure I’ll rate it higher after a re-read.
3.5 stars

Another one dropping by to celebrate the return of a favourite Lter. xx

#80: Hi Paul and thank you! I am planning to start my thread tour tonight. First posting the remaining reviews to get done with all the backlog.

40. Wheat Belly by William Davis
3.5 stars (extremely long review to follow)

41. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1,001 # 332)
3.5 stars for its depth, but no more because I didn’t like it. My 4th Dostoevsky, and while I always feel like I am reading something great, I never feel a real connection to them and am far from looking forward to the next one.
Maybe not enough feelgood storytelling and too much realism, unbeautified. Seems I can’t cope well with that.

3.5 stars

42. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (1,001 # 333)
I am determined not to call myself “stupid me” anymore, but in this case… I saw EW is this month’s author in the AAC and that this book is on the 1,001 list and that it’s short and has a happy-sounding title, so I read it and happy it wasn’t. :(
But a great book it is nevertheless. It has so many layers and I wish EW had explored all her main characters yet a bit more and also given them more interaction. I couldn’t help liking Fay and feeling sorry for her although she already felt sorry enough for herself.

3.5 stars

43. Inside Mr. Enderby by Anthony Burgess (1,001 # 334)
Disgusting bodily functions abound in this book, but strangely that didn’t disturb me as much as expected. Already the idea that the protagonist Enderby, a poet, works from his lavatory seat and then lets his poems rot in the bath tub along with bread and cheese crusts which attract mice, seemed far from inviting but worked out well.
I really liked this book and felt well-entertained, except for the (for me annoying) issue with the Catholic church. Maybe I am too much Continental European and too much free thinker, but the recurring issues around the Catholic faith in the works of Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and now it seems also Burgess go way past me. My mother was Catholic before she left church altogether, but wasn’t brought up any different from my Protestant father. Here in Italy I am an exotic Protestant, but people seem quite relaxed about their faith. I know, there were centuries(?) of religious persecution in England, but can someone really be as traumatized by a Catholic upbringing as Mr Enderby here in this book? Then why spend your…errr.. “holiday” in Rome of all places??
4 stars though and I'll read the other 3 Enderbys as well

>81 Deern: Re Optimist's daughter...Really? I loathed Fay. I honestly wanted to punch her. I suspect you may be a nicer person than me :)

First part of Wheat Belly review:

Okay, I am sorry, but this is going to be a real long one.

I am going to criticize a lot, so I should better start with saying that I am very glad I read this book. It was right for me because I am a wheat bread “addict” and definitely needed an eye-opener, showing me how my continuous over-indulgence in bread might afflict my health. Like Davis’ patients I am a victim of the health claims of the early 90s. I always loved my bread but dutifully tried to eat other things with it, until I read an article about a low-fat diet that said “you can’t gain weight by just eating bread”. That became my credo. And they were quite right. I didn’t gain weight, but I also didn’t lose any, although from then on for a long time I ate breadbreadbread and not much else.

My eating habits have since much improved, but in low times I still have the tendency to go and buy a fresh warm crusty loaf of white bread and just eat it from the bag (yes, salivating right now..). I should add that bread is and was my only “drug food”. I have a nice natural barrier for too strong flavors which include sugar, so while I love a slice of cake or a biscuit or two I could never eat a whole pack. The same goes for spicy crisps, salty pretzels, peanuts and all that other snack stuff. When I bake a cake I usually leave out half of the sugar simply because for me it tastes better that way (and I can eat much more). I never liked breakfast cereals – far too sweet. But bread was my friend… in all its varieties, although my favorite will forever be the white ciabatta type. Or the pizza bread or the pittah or… well – you see my problem. 

I was never overweight, but always struggled with my cholesterol (as all my family does) and my blood sugar has been too high once or twice, but always recovered quickly. I have those constant coughs, my fingers, legs and feet collect water when it’s hot (another “family issue”) and last winter for the first time my joints ached. I knew for years that I eat too much bread but I never connected it with any of my small health issues. Now I do and I am willing to take the test.

So here’s what’s good about the book:

William Davis describes in extreme detail the effects modern wheat has on the human body, and none of them are nice. He puts the emphasis on “modern”, showing in a heroic self-test that old-fashioned wheat (that’s no longer in use) is much better digestible. I believe that. Much of our food has been tempered with in order to increase quantities and turnover for the companies, not necessarily in order to improve our lives. Okay, in Europe we still don’t allow GMO plants for human consumption, but enough other changes have been done. And now that the first chains started selling OGM-fed chicken, no doubt others will follow soon.

What shocked me most was the chapter about the opium-like effect wheat products have on the human brain. I used to joke that I am a bread junkie, now I know that in fact that’s what I am.

So for the science part - although I can’t prove any of it – I’d rate the book with 5 stars.

Now where did it lose 1.5?
1. Bad writing – it’s extremely repetitive and the jokes and wordplay are sometimes terrible.
Here’s an example: “Wheat is therefore the great disrupter. It’s the floozy girlfriend of the midlife crisis male, busting apart the entire happy family” I’d say that while the young floozy wheat might be the temptation, it’s the weak family dad named willpower that can’t resist and lets it disrupt the family-body. That’s just one example of countless equally bad similes.

2. The same old low-carb approach again? I am SO tired of it!
Once the scientific part is done with, Davis gets practical. And that means: we have to cut ALL grains from our diet, and this includes rice, corn, polenta, buckwheat, kamut, etc. We shoud have fruit only in small to minimal doses, instead we can now indulge in meat/eggs/oils/seeds blabla… And he delivers some nice recipes, like spaghetti made from zucchini or pizza crust made from cauliflower mash. Why should I do that to my taste buds?

Okay, if this book addresses people with extreme overweight, a long low-carb phase might be advisable. And I am not writing now about those with allergies or celiac disease. But can’t we all for once simply learn to eat “normally”? Why do we have to substitute the drug wheat with the drug nuts for example? Why am I allowed to “throw in handfuls of nuts”? Why do I have to “throw in” anything, be it in handfuls or not? My body isn’t a garbage can!

A low-carb phase is good to reset our false cravings and re-awaken our taste buds. It’s a great beginning for a new life as food lovers. But then we should “just learn to eat”. Germans, Brits, Americans and many others are people without a grown healthy eating culture, maybe due to the lack of sun and therefore fresh ingredients in many places. We too often eat for emotional reasons and we over-eat.

When I look at the portions of pasta the average Italian eats, then it’s about half of what I have on my plate in an Italian restaurant in Germany. You have an antipasto of grilled veggies with olive oil or parma ham and melon before the pasta or a salad with it. Or you have a small piece of meat with some spinach following the pasta. Crème sauces are exceptions. An Italian might clean up the sauce with a slice of bread – but with one slice, not with a basket of breadsticks. I also believe that fresh herbs play a role when it comes to digestibility and maybe the espresso and the glass of wine and the non-fizzy water. It all goes well together. Pizzas here look big, but they are extremely thin, and unless you order it they have far less cheese on top.

And you don’t need to have wheat pizza/ pasta daily - how about once a week or use a good quality gluten-free substitute? I got cornmeal pasta at home free of additives, with great taste and texture. And why not have gluten-free natural stuff like rice, potatoes, polenta – all in normal (i.e. small) sizes and accompanied by vegetables, eggs and/or meat? Italians usually also aren’t afraid of the sugars in an orange juice. Theirs is most often fresh and consumed in a bar from a small glass, in the mornings with a coffee. Great for the digestion. No-one drinks 0,25l or more of orange juice or drinks it during the day or with a warm meal. No milk in the coffee after 10am. Sure, there are fat Italians, French, Chinese, Indians, etc. as well, but there’s less diabetes and altogether they seem far more relaxed about their food than the majority of my German compatriots.

So for a short while the quick weight loss and the happiness about good blood values might get even me through Davis’ regime, but where’s the fun?

When Davis describes carb addiction as similar to alcohol addiction where a single little slip will invariably set you on the road to perdition (i.e. all the weight will come flying back), for me it shows that his approach can’t be right. Or I should better say “try normal at least once before you become too radical”. The weight will fall slower, but chances are that it will stay off. Unless you’re an egg-and-meat lover you will most probably return to the carbs at some point anyway. (And if you love eggs ad meat you won’t have a wheat issue anyway, have started living low-carb years ago when Atkins returned and don’t need this book).

The problem with all those books is the half-aggressive radicalism. A ridiculously unachievable objective is set and then described as if it were easy to reach. So invariably, every slip will feel like a complete failure and people might just give up healthier eating completely.

Part 3 to follow...

3. One-Sidedness
So after finishing this book we have a good idea of what wheat might do to us. But did Davis take a closer look at the things he recommends? Have nuts changed over the decades? Wasn’t there something about nitrate in the spinach? How about the acids in many greens? Pesticides in Spanish peppers? There might be health limits as well, but are they mentioned? How much olive oil and other fats can a normal human liver digest? Not to forget the situation of the sad lives cows, pigs, chickens, farm fish, etc. lead before we can eat them or their products “in abundance”.
How about chloride in US chickens and antibiotics in the European ones? Even less to speak of the effects the excessive livestock breeding has on nature. No, he mentions that tofu is not 100% safe. And says once or twice in the book that we ideally should chose meat from animals that have been kept well, thank you very much. Maybe in comparison eating at least some grains isn’t the worst for our health?

By the way, artificial sweeteners, contrary to everything I ever read, are fine. But remember, just half a cup of apple..

4. Disregard for possible objections
2 things really angered me. There’s so much detail in the medical part and then the author just goes over some points without really considering them.
1. Vegetarians: after telling us that all kinds of non-vegetable carbs should be avoided and that even legumes or meat substitutes like tofu (well known as good providers of well digestable plant proteins) should be limited, he suddenly remembers vegetarians (or was reminded by the editor?). He then somewhat condescendingly admits that for “strict vegetarians or even vegans” his ideas are more difficult to realize and therefore suggests to make an exception and eat more of the tofu and legumes and fruits which a page earlier were still blood-sugar raising and potentially dangerous. And we should also eat “yet more nuts and oils” (my liver will be happy with my new olive oil drinking habit - will it believe me when I tell it it’s all healthy or will it shudder and shrink or alternatively explode?). The idea behind that is clearly: Vegetarians are strange people and can’t be helped anyway and I don't care about those meat-avoiders but had to mention them at least.
2. Cost: He completely forgets that the wheat belly and the whole overweight issue is also a social one. Cheap food is often bad food, and if people have to struggle already to make ends meet they can’t simply substitute all the cheap wheat products/carbs with “high quality meat cuts”, buy all those “nut flours” you probably only find in health shops, the “good” non-cheddar cheeses, all the cold-pressed oils and also all the fresh vegetables and nut varieties. Compare the cost of an omelet from several free-range eggs with baby spinach and gorgonzola cheese (or parma ham = “good meat”) to that of some slices of Wonderbread with peanut butter and jam.

So what am I going to do now? I’ll cut off the wheat and bread once again for 2 weeks but continue eating all fruit, rice, potatoes, etc. I don’t care about Davis’ tofu and legume limits. I don’t have to lose weight, I just want to feel better. I’ll then have some rye bread again when I feel like it and small portions of pasta (I never needed much of that) and from time to time a small thin veggie pizza, gluten-free where available. I’ll try and stay off the meat for a while longer (4.5 months now, yay!) and generally try and listen to my body because in the end it knows best what it needs.

3.5 stars

Okay, usually I don't read that type of book anymore. I read this one because I do have a wheat issue and as I wrote in part one, I am glad about all the stuff I learned and I even bought it for my parents. That was before I had finished my own copy though and before I realized it was all new Atkins/ low-carb again.

I have no doubt there are lots of people who happily and healthily live that way, but bodies - contrary to what all those authors tell us - are different. I always had problems with a low-carb diet, I tried it more than once. The weight (when I wanted to lose some) stayed on, I was always hungry no matter how much cheese and nuts I ate, my mood was really bad, I had stomach pains and nightmares thanks to meat and or eggs at dinnertime.

I am a bread junkie, so thanks Mr Davis for all the information, but my body reacts completely neutrally when I feed it with more natural carbs like rice or boiled potatoes while it always complained after a 150g portion of meat, no matter if grilled or stewed or anything that's very fatty.

I hate it that those books are always so "absolute" and sell a complete change of diet as something that's oh so easy. People struggling with their weight often don't have a great self-confidence, so imagine what happens when they "fail" yet again?

And I can decide to have a pizza (maybe gluten-free) once in a while and really enjoy it or not have pizza at all anymore. But mashing cauliflower, baking it and topping it with tomato and mozzarella - while it certainly tastes great and I'll try it out! - is no pizza and won't ever be one. If brain and taste buds are absolutely set for a pizza, I am sure they won't settle for cauliflower.

#82 Bekka: sorry, only now saw your comment in the middle of my "Wheat Belly" review rage. :)

"Like" might be the wrong expression, but I didn't loathe her either. Looking at her family you see why she turned out like that but also realize she is quite beyond help. For that I felt sorry. She has no idea what she's missing.

Laurel however is someone who seems to do all the right things. But she didn't exactly use those 1.5 years her beloved father was married to Fay to get any closer to her or at least to understand him. There is some (though understandable - she's been through too much) self-righteousness about her. I really wish EW had given us another 100 pages of story.

Nathalie, even though you haven't been very often on LT, I'm very impressed how many books you have read. Wowowow.

Nathalie, I wish you a lovely weekend.

Nathalie, I have no hope of catching up with you, but I'm glad to see you here and posting.
I read all your Wheat Belly rant (your word, not mine), but you sound completely rational to me. I'm frankly a bit put off by the vast amount of attention currently given to "eating healthy." I'll bet a good 85% of the conversation over a long weekend with my 4 good friends from high school dealt with food and food theory and food prep, and I was eventually (as in 2 hours into it) bored silly. I like to eat and I like to eat good stuff, but please! End of my rant, and forgive me. Your thread was just handy.

Hi Nathalie - I enjoyed reading your Wheat Belly rant as well. I don't follow any particular food trend, have always believed in the 'eating in moderation' idea. I have two sons who adopted parts of the paleo diet, which forced me to look at it too, and so we have cut down on our bread intake quite a lot as a family.
I always found that you eat less when you take your time over a meal, people that eat fast generally eat too much.

And you have been reading so many books.

I LOVED your Wheat Belly analysis. I am so with you on moderation - and also - studying your own digestion, cravings, dislikes - even to writing some things down and taking them seriously.

An example - Occasionally I get a weird craving for tomato soup and the fact is - it doesn't agree with me, makes me feel terrible, but still I crave it. I used to give in, but now I get it - it really is a bad bad bad idea! I should look at what is in a cooked tomato nutritionwise because there may be something my body does need.... just not the rest of it. - Worse yet - sometimes it used to be a craving for pasta with tomato sauce - and that just made me sick but I ate it anyway! I see my daughter doing that now, and keep my mouth shut. She'll figure it out, I hope.

I love bread too - I try to keep it to a minimum - there is a very fine bakery that is fortunately over a half hour away where the baguettes fresh are literally to die for..... and they make croissants as good as any I've had in France. I've confined my bread eating to only the best! And that works pretty well.

Otherwise - you've kept on reading and that's great. I am glad your visit with your mother was so nice, even if she didn't sustain it at home, it was a respite.

Haven't heard of Koppen. Will see if there is any translated.

So glad to have you back around again, missed you! Your thread fell wayyyyyy down there for a bit.

Hi Nathalie, looking forward to getting more news from you again! Hope things are going well for you. xx

Hello Barbara, Peggy, Kerry, Lucy and Ilana.
I don't know why, but the last 2 weeks have been far busier than could be expected, also the weekends. I did some reading, though not much, and am now quite stuck in two books where I seem to make no progress at all. Both are for the "unread books challenge" in the 1,001 group, so there's some pressure to finish them, and soon.

#89 Barbara: with a delay of 2 weeks I wish you a lovely Weekend, too! :-)

#90 Peggy: you're right,I am quite sick of it as well and over the years I learned avoiding those books. I've become quite a relaxed eater in the past 10 years after about 20 years of constant struggle against non-existent overweight, trying low-fat, Atkins (the horror!), low-carb, sport+vitamins, fasting, etc.

Bread remained the only "vice" until recently when Kerry said in my last thread that a gluten-free diet might help against arthritis. I reduced wheat and generally bread but still eat everything else.

Meat is a different matter... never ate much (once a week or so) but really liked it. There my issue is the breeding - which at least can be controlled to a certain point by bying local free-range - and more so the industrialized slaughtering and fishing. Right now I call it "taking a break from meat and fish" and I'll see what happens. I really quite like the taste of tofu now. :-)

#91 Kerry: Same experience: the really good thing about the bread reduction is that I can no longer come home, run to the fridge and hungrily just throw a cheese sandwich together, eating it standing in the kitchen. Now my food needs a little more thought, the meals look much nicer and I enjoy eating them at the table. I've been doing this now for a couple of months, so I hope it has become a good habit.

#92 Lucy: that sounds strange and I really wonder what it might be your body is looking for in something that makes it sick? I know tomato soup/sauce craving, but luckily I can digest them well.
The German wikipedia says that Lycopin is the special stuff in boiled tomatoes and that it can be found in similar doses in watermelons. So next time your body demands a tomato, maybe have some water melon instead and see if the craving stops?

#93 Ilana: Things are quite okay and I hope this weekend will finally be a quiet one that gives me some internet time.

44. Dog Years by Günter Grass (1,001 # 367/ 335)

I dreaded reading this book because – sorry – I don’t like Günter Grass because a certain type of very arrogant wannabe-revolutionary leftwing intellectuals/ teachers in my youth adored him. It has been decades since I read The Tin Drum and I didn’t like it then. Now reading this book I realized that he is indeed a fabulous writer who absolutely deserved that Nobel Prize! And I’ll read more of his books, first of all reread TTD!

Now if an editor had told him to cut this book just a little shorter and to maybe not repeat too obviously some of the stylistic elements like unfinished sentences or long lists of synonyms (and when I notice those things everyone will notice them!) and if he had followed that advice, this book would have been truly truly great and among the best I ever read. So it’s still a very good book, but it celebrates its greatness a bit too much in part 3. It does its best to score with a really furious and crazy ending, but at that point this reader here was already tired. Grass has an enormous gift for language, but had he reduced it all a bit in the last third, the ending with the 32 circles of “hell” would have hit me on the head and knocked me down. But so I was already on the floor, just wanting to sleep it off.

The book is Grass’ usual confrontation with the German past, set mostly in Danzig. There are three voices: Eddy Amsel “the victim”, a half-Jew, talented artist and producer of scarecrows tells the years of his childhood and friendship with Walter Matern, the local miller’s son. His account ends around 1932/1933 when both attend boarding school at Danzig. Part two is written in form of letters from Harry Liebenau “the witness/observer” to his beloved cousin Tulla. Born in 1927, Harry witnessed Eddy’s and Walter’s life in Danzig from a distance, mainly their friendship with the teacher Brunies who adopts the child Jenny. Harry’s part starts half-realistic and becomes more and more dreamy and ends in 1945. It’s followed by the part told by Walter “the culprit”. Walter doesn’t get over his guilt feelings for betraying Eddy’s friendship. He transfers the responsibility to everyone else and starts a long tour of revenge through the country until he can’t escape his own past anymore and is finally confronted with Eddy again.

This main plot is framed by the story of a breed of dogs. The black wolfhound Perkun, belonging to a servant at the Matern mill, fathers the female German shepherd Senta. Senta later has puppies and one of those is taken on by Harry’s father. That exemplary beautiful dog is used for breeding and one of his sons is Prince, given to Hitler by the Danzig people and becoming his favorite dog. Prince runs away from the Berlin bunker on Hitler’s last birthday in April 1945 and later meets Walter on his revenge tour who gives him the name Pluto.

This all doesn’t sound promising, I know. But it’s maybe the most honest and at the same time entertaining book I ever read about that part of German history written by a German. I recently read Karl Kraus’ The Last Days of Humanity and thought that an absurd style helps to transmit the real horrors. Vonnegut also did that in Slaughterhouse Five with the Dresden bombings. This is similar here. The exaggerations in Grass’ writing illustrate the German post-war repression mechanisms better than any factual story could. And sorry - after this book it can’t have been a big surprise for Grass readers that he had joined the SS in his youth. Part 3 could only have been written by someone who himself went through all the phases of guilt. You don’t get there through interviews and second hand stories. There’s much of Günter in Walter, but also in Harry and even in Eddy.

Rating: 4 stars

45. Amatissima by Toni Morrison (1,001 #368/336)

Another book I dreaded reading, because everyone says TM’s books are so sad. I put it on hold after 10% in April when I tried reading it for the AAC and picked it up again late in May. It was quite a captivating read and yet I am sorry – I didn’t really like it. I think the somewhat undecided mix of ghost story and believable slavery experience didn’t work for me. I wasn’t a bit saddened; I felt a huge distance to all the characters. It’s interesting that people seem to absolutely love or hate this book. Both are strong feelings, and I didn’t feel much at all except for some relief for not being sad.

The often mentioned violence was quite graphic, but if you start such a book you know what to expect. Let’s say the violence was integrated “well”, better than in other cases. On contrast I remember three horribly violent scenes from the books Mr Pip, The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Little Bee which came completely out of the blue and shocked me so much (and stay with me to this day) that I don’t remember much else from those books. It’s a challenge to weave such scenes into the story in a way that they don’t sugarcoat anything but are digestible, so the reader can appreciate the work and its message as a whole and doesn’t remember the book for “that one horrid scene”.

I quite disliked the second part with the many first-person voices. And I know what TM tried to do with the voice of “Beloved”, but somehow that part came too late, that virtual voice of “all those on those ships” was put on top of something that already didn’t work too well (for me) before that. It had been difficult to accept Beloved’s role in the first part and now she was meant to be all that as well? The book caught up again in the last part and I quite liked the ending. There are some more Morrisons to read from the 1,001 list and I will soon try another one.

Rating: 3 stars

46. Enderby Outside by Anthony Burgess
Ew… I liked this far less than part one of the Enderby tetralogy, Inside Mr Enderby. Enderby is still dyspeptic and spends too much time in bathrooms and generally concentrating on his body functions.

The story sets in some months after part 1, Enderby now lives under his mother’s maiden name “Hogg” and works as a bartender in a hotel. He unsuccessfully tries to suppress his poetry and feels guilty. There is a very confusing story about an assassination attempt on a famous pop star in the hotel during a show. The culprit hands the weapon to Enderby who stupidly takes it and then runs off when he realizes he might be suspected. He’d also have had a motif: the singer used Enderby’s unpublished verse for his celebrated song lyrics, so he quickly becomes the main suspect.

With just 125 GBP in his purse Enderby goes off to Franco’s Spain and then Marocco with a tourist group touring the Mediterranean. Now that bit could have been real funny, but it absolutely wasn’t. And it didn’t get any better when Enderby left the group in Marocco, sold his passport and started living in very dubious surroundings. This is just so weird. Brighton-flat-based Enderby from part one imo wouldn’t have done all that. He would have got himself arrested and then gone through some absurd court case. At least his poetry is coming back and part 3 started much more promising.

Really, I didn’t mind the whole dyspepsia stuff much in part one, I understand it’s all part of the character. But here it became just too much. And does he ever wash? He must have a really nasty smell. As I said "Ew..."

Rating: 2 stars

That does sound interesting to me, Nathalie. I, of course, was a great fan of *Tin Drum* in the day - even going so far as to reread it 10 years later and still finding it admirable. He's hard though. At any rate, I'll certainly snag a copy of Dog Years when it comes my way (and I notice that books have a habit of coming my way eventually).
Wishing you a lovely/restful/invigorating weekend!

ETA: Hi, Nathalie! We cross-posted, so I didn't get to see your latest reviews until now. As you might predict, I'm a lover of Beloved, but I can easily see why a person wouldn't be. Enderby is new to me, and may stay that way.

I gave up on Beloved after the 10 percent. Boy it was depressing...

Nathalie, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Nathalie, it's good to have you back and posting about the books you've been reading. Still doing your Happy Yoga?

>97 Deern: Nathalie, Burgess wrote too many Enderby books and I agree that they become repetitive and more than a little irking.

Have a lovely weekend nonetheless and steer clear of the next installment until the pong has subsided from the last one.

Hi Carsten, Barbara, Donna and Paul! :-)

I really must find out now how to do those direct replies with link to users. Somehow I missed that new trend during my absence.

#99 Carsten: I already wondered if it was the language (Italian) that created such a distance. I'll try to find a Morrison in English, maybe in my library.

#100 Barbara: Thank you and a wonderful week to you! :-)

#101 Donna: still happily doing yoga almost daily (loving it more and more), but no more laughing yoga. 3 reasons: no yoga (just fake laughing); the class was on Thursdays which is always a busy day so I am never relaxed in the evening, just tired; there was one person in the group who gave me negative feelings. He turned up for the 2nd class and the atmosphere changed completely.

#102 Paul: I already read Enderby #3 (review to be posted soon), but I'll wait a bit with #4 now.
Have a lovely week!

So much about my weekend plans... Instead of staying at home to read and LT I spontaneously spent 2 days at Garda Lake. The weather was so incredibly sunny and I didn't feel like mountain hiking, I just needed to see some water for a change. Monday was another holiday, so on Sunday morning I drove to Riva del Garda, less than 2 hrs from Merano, where I had booked a room with balcony in a lovely hotel with 3 pools, saunas, bar and restaurant, a huge park with lots of trees... It was just wonderful and so relaxing, just what I needed after many busy weeks. I am considering spending another couple of days there in summer.

>103 Deern: Nathalie, it's very easy. First you take this sign > and than the post number you refer to.

Wishing you a lovely day.

>104 Ameise1: Testtesttest :-)
Thank you!!

>105 Deern: :-D

Hi Nathalie! Very nice to see you on LT again! I put myself through Beloved back in 2008 before I joined this group and it fairly traumatized me. I also ended up giving it three stars, because of course Morrison is a great writer. But last summer when I was taking the Fiction of Relationship Coursera online class, while I was happy enough to re-read a couple of books for the class, like Jane Eyre and To the Lighthouse, there was no way I was putting myself through Beloved again, and just reading through the SparkNotes was enough to bring back the unpleasant experience of it vividly to mind again. *Deep Shudder*. I was surprised to find that I actually really loved The Bluest Eye, a few years later, another book which is by no means easy (she doesn't ever write that kind, obviously) and that I'd happily reread that one again. Though of course everyone reacts differently to such disturbing works.

Hi Natalie

>103 Deern: Your description of the restful spot sounds lovely. I could use that today as fiscal year end approaches and work seems overwhelming.

>98 LizzieD: Peggy - I am so sorry for my delayed reply, it was that cross-posting!
I made the mistake to watch the Tin Drum movie before reading the book, so all those eeew-scenes were still vivid in my memory and I couldn't appreciate the writing at all.
I'll check my library to see if I find a Morrison in English. Not many of her books are available on Kindle for me and somwhow she doesn't work for me in Italian.
Have a wonderful week!

>107 Smiler69: Ilana - Thanks for the advice, I might try The Bluest Eye next.

>108 Whisper1: - Linda: lovely to see you here again, I'll try and visit your latest thread this weekend as I have no lake trips planned. I wish you a very relaxing weekend! :)

47. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut (1,001 # 369)
My new favorite Vonnegut! I am not a bit surprised it was taken off the list, I am more surprised someone once had the guts to put it there to get it more widely read. What an absolutely timeless piece about the morals in rough capitalism!

While books like The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair concentrate on the desperate victims who never make ends meet, no matter how much they work, Vonnegut’s not too exaggerated focus is on the super-extra-rich families, the heirs who never have to move a finger and spend their life in palace-like buildings, on yachts, etc. When his idealistic hero Eliot Rosewater, heir of an enormous fortune (made in the time of Civil War through unfair means), decides to give all his income from the trust to the poor out of love and compassion, this is seen as a threat by most of his equals. ER simply MUST be crazy – and that’s where a young and ambitious lawyer sees his chance to make his own way into the high society. A rule in the Rosewater trust states that the fortune will be handed down from father to first son – unless the son is diagnosed a lunatic, then it will all go to the less fortunate branch of the family, the Rhode Island Rosewaters. Hoping for a good share of the money, the lawyer starts his case and Senior Rosewater is determined to get his crazy son back on track.

Since Vonnegut published this book much time has passed and the money divide has constantly grown, as has the greed of those very very few who own the greatest part. Now you might look at the Rosewaters with some nostalgia, thinking that those were the times when things could still have taken a turn for the better. I guess now many of us just hope that today’s veil will never be lifted.

Rating: 4.5 stars

48. The Clockwork Testament or Enderby’s End by Anthony Burgess
I liked this more than part two, which is something! Enderby is not only rehabilitated, he also delivered an idea for a quite successful but very controversial movie and by that gained a guest professorship at Manhattan University. The book (this is no spoiler as the title gives it away) follows Enderby through his last day, a day so chaotic that sometimes I had to skip a page or two because I simply felt so embarrassed. Again he went through a change between books. Not only is he now really enough of an expert on English poetry to teach it, he is also se***lly active (forgive the asterisks, typing on my office computer once again and don’t want to fall into some filter). Enderby of book 1 was such a shy man that I can’t imagine him agreeing to give classes to young people. He never liked young people. Now he’s full of pity, explaining all behavior he can’t understand with the “poor American diet of burgers and sodas”. Like old Enderby he is completely un-pc, using the n-word repeatedly and not even noticing the reactions.

Story spoilers:
During his last day Enderby suffers from 4 heart attacks – of which he logically survives three. His reactions are somewhat unusual – after the second one he eats all his food supplies (which includes melting a pot of chocolate icecream in a pan and topping it with apricot jam), so nothing is wasted in case his death might be close. He has a visit from a student trying to seduce him to get an A in his class. He holds two classes, one of them about a pre-Elizabethan poet he just invented. He participates in a talk show to defend his movie. He gets a late-night visit from a crazy fan girl who wants to kill him because she can’t get his poems out of her brain. All the while he keeps working on a new major poem about Augustine and Pelagius, therefore once again trying to come to terms with his Catholic upbringing. There’s much talk about good and evil, right and wrong, original sin and the freedom of choice.

And now it will be interesting to see how Burgess will bring E back to life for part 4 of the series. That part is, according to Wikipedia, also considered the weakest, so I will lower my expectations already now.

Rating: 3 stars

49. Ebdòmero by Giorgio de Chirico (1,001 #370)
The 2.5 stars are given for the language and the calming effect the book had on me. No more stars because I simply don’t know what I have been reading here. The book was on the 1,001 list in 2006 but was removed from later editions.

I tried to get some information on both book and author on Wikipedia, but there’s something about Giorgio de Chirico that makes me immediately forget what I read – be it wiki or this novel. Sorry! I don’t know how many times I tried to understand the short blurb, but after one sentence I was always, always, always lost again. And in the same mode I got through those 119 pages, reading them extra-slowly, even reading about half of them aloud, but all that stays with me are a couple of blurry images.

Rating: 2.5 stars

50. Halftime by Martin Walser (1,001 # 371/ 337)

I signed up for this unread 1,001 book because someone said it was out of print in English. It was also difficult to find in German, although Walser is a very popular author. It seems his early works before Ein fliehendes Pferd are quite forgotten and I had to order the expensive hardcover edition.

Well, this is a very, very good book and it absolutely doesn’t deserve to fall into oblivion. I read 2 or 3 of the younger Walsers and this one is way better and is a worthy 1,001er.

It went very well with my recently read Koeppens and the Grass. Published in 1960, it looks back into the late 1950s and extremely well describes an average German post-war life. The protagonist Anselm Kristlein is in his late thirties, married with 3 children. Like all his friends he has a war past, and terrible scenes keep popping up from his memory. He has served in the infantry, got caught by the Russians, was almost executed when trying to escape, and was sentenced to forced labor in a stone pit underground. Now he leads a seemingly normal though financially much restricted life as a sales agent. When the book starts, he has just returned from a 13 week stay in hospital after a severe kidney failure and surgery. Within the first pages however he lost all my sympathy. He is the prototype of a narcissist and a misogynist although he’d probably call himself an “admirer of all women” as many misogynists do. On his first day back home he loses his job, goes to an engagement party where he gets drunk with his horrid chauvinistic friends, cheats on his wife with all of his three lovers, falls in lust and starts to work on #4.

There are some great scenes of high society life in this book that show all the fake shine of the German post-war Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). Life is good again and everyone drives a Mercedes in the end, but opinions haven’t really changed, old Nazi “truths” are now whispered only but are still fixed in the heads and behind many a bourgeois mask there’s an unidentified SS war criminal. Walser’s observations are merciless and he perfectly puts them into words. Stylistically it’s a great contrast to the Grass book: this book is all head, sharp and clear, no obscenities.

For me however, reading it was not much fun, because I grew up in identical narcissistic structures, so the book was a very painful confrontation with some issues I’ve been carrying with me for decades. Mostly in the first half when the story concentrates on Anselm’s thoughts on women in general I felt sick and poisoned and often had to put the book down again for a couple of days to "detox". It got easier in the second half with the society scenes.

Born around 1920, Walser’s anti-hero had to have a Nazi and war background. But I can say that doesn’t explain or excuse anything. I know too many people with an absolutely identical behavior (really, it was shocking, even the expressions and the excuses) who were all born post-war, even in the 70s in my generation. For two years now I have been working to get a distance to those old mechanisms and to be able to defend myself against them. Reading this book was like being thrown back right into the center, I felt lost and helpless. My therapist will probably say it’s a progress that I felt disgusted by Anselm's behavior when two years ago I would have said “why - it’s all normal, isn’t it?” Anyway, I need something easy now.

Rating: 4.5 stars

51. Living Vegetarian for Dummies by Suzanne Havala

I started a German book on vegetarianism about 2 weeks ago, and while it’s certainly full of truths, I thought it was too aggressive to invite non-vegetarians to change idea. Too many slaughterhouse details and bad karma stuff. I wanted to read something more encouraging, so I put it on hold and got this one instead.

Well, Suzanna Havala does her best to be encouraging. She is vegan and makes an effort to get people to at least reduce meat. She never says “only veganism counts", but it shines through that this is what her heart tells her. But I still like her for trying and for offering some recipes that contain dairy. I like it that health and environment are her main arguments in this book and that she mostly avoids the farms and slaughterhouses. You can find that everywhere else, but she intelligently tries to get us to reduce dairy and eggs using the cholesterol argument.

What might be discouraging however – but that’s probably a typical component of the Dummy series – are the “becoming a vegetarian project plan” with monthly objectives or the endless lists of kitchen equipment and basic foodstuffs you always should have at home. That last part addresses people who have never cooked before and need to start from scratch. There’s even an explanation how to boil vegetables (pour water into a pot, put it on the stove at high heat, …).

I didn’t read this book from cover to cover as some chapters didn’t affect me (like pregnancy, feeding your kids and your pets, etc.). Then there’s a chapter full of recipes which you don’t read in detail either before you consider cooking the dish. Most dishes sound delicious and the part about the possible substitutes for eggs and dairy was most interesting for me. I must try those fake tofu scrambled eggs soon and also the vegan chocolate tofu cheesecake.

The book is a bit outdated. Vegetarianism has become so normal and accepted, and so many non-vegetarians often eat meat-free, that those concerns about how to behave in a restaurant/ when invited to a party/ on holiday don’t have much weight anymore.

The book is great for basic information for normal vegetarians or people who want to eat less meat. If you’re planning to go full-vegan you won’t however find much information outside the food category and will need additional literature.

Rating: 3.5 stars

I must add this: When my mother was here in Merano, we almost daily went to restaurants and usually both had a vegetarian meal (my mother is no great meat eater either). But through those four weeks she kept worrying what I would eat at their home “now that you don’t eat meat anymore”. I told her repeatedly that it’s just 3 days and that she never cooks anyway so I’d just eat bread and cheese and fruit as usual. But when we arrived home, she obviously had instructed my dad “to buy enough vegetarian stuff”.
And what do vegetarians eat? Fruits and vegetables and not much else my dad seemed to think, so I found: 3 huge bell peppers, 2 fresh peeled and sliced pineapples, a kilo of apples, several kiwis, 5 bananas, 1 kilo of strawberries, a huge bunch of grapes and some pears. Remember: we arrived Thursday night, I returned to Merano on Sunday and the Saturday was my grandmother’s birthday, so when did he think I’d eat all that??
I was so moved, because I’d never expected especially my dad to be so supportive. And I travelled back to Merano with bags of fruit. :)

Nathalie, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

>110 Deern: Glad you liked the Vonnegut as much as me :) Sending Happy Weekend wishes to you.

Happy week wishes to Barbara and Bekka! :)

Grrr…. After that beautiful sunny last weekend this one was humid with the occasional thunderstorm. I went to town on Saturday afternoon for the street art festival, but got into the rain and returned early. A perfect stay-in weekend you’d think, just that whenever it’s real stormy I have no internet, no Sky and no satellite TV. At least I could read, and I finished two books. I spent the rest of my time sleeping (I am always incredibly tired in such weather), doing yoga and cooking.

Out of curiosity and encouraged by the Duve book (see below), I tried some meat/milk substitutes and thought they were all quite good as long as you don’t expect them to taste like the original. The tofu-seitan bratwurst (organic, without smoke and fake sausage flavor) was so good that it didn’t need any mustard or ketchup, and I’d say it tasted better than 90% of the real bratwursts I tried in my life. The natural soy yogurt had a nice, nutty taste that went very well with fruit and also as ingredient in a salad sauce. It’s milder than real yogurt and has a beige color.
The soy milk I bought, although called “natural”, was sweetened with 3.5% sugar and therefore not perfect. The almond milk was sweetened as well, I must check the labels better before buying. In coffee, the soy milk was the better alternative. I also tried to bake a vegan almond cake to see what happens without eggs, but that didn’t go well. Although I left out half the sugar, the dough was too tough. The result wasn’t fluffy as in the picture, but broke into crumbly bits when I cut it and is still far too sweet, tasting like ginger bread although I didn’t put in any spices or dried fruits. I put the crumbs in the freezer, maybe I’ll like them better around Christmas.

My big pot of no-recipe ratatouille turned out well as always and is already half eaten. I also tried a new breakfast food: I cooked millet “Sicilian style”(my invention), with some raisins, two dried dates, orange zest and juice and some cinnamon, topping it with walnut and some pomegranate seeds. Excellent, it only takes too long to cook on workdays, so this morning I returned to my usual instant polenta with frozen raspberries. The raspberries just so melt in the hot polenta, and it’s a nice comfort food for a Monday morning in a holiday-free week. Don’t worry, I am just playing around with new foods. I can’t turn vegan anyway, I am working in a dairy! :)And I LOVE cheese!

*******

Isn’t it fascinating that so far none of the world-cup matches ended in a tie? I was so sure Italy-England would end 0:0. They normally both start badly, so I thought there couldn’t be a winner! Well, let’s see how Germany is doing today. They probably deliver the first boring tie or lose against Portugal. I haven’t been really watching so far, just checked the results, but the match today is early enough and sounds interesting. I just hope it will be shown on normal non-satellite Italian TV.

52. Il giorno nel cui decisi di diventare una persona migliore or Anständig Essen by Karen Duve

This is a reread of a book I first read and reviewed shortly after its publication in 2011 in the original German version Anständig Essen. You could say it’s the German take at Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, although Duve’s approach is different, more honest, much more confrontational and free of JSF’s “I do this to make the world a better place for my son” pathos. An animal lover, already quite well-informed about the forms of industrial breeding and slaughtering, inconsequently enough Duve still ate (cheap) meat regularly. Then she took a New Year resolution for 2010: becoming a better person by following this plan (and writing a book about her experiences):

- 2 months eating exclusively organic food, including meat and fish
- 2 months on an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet
- 4 months living as a vegan (first concentrating on the food, and then slowly eliminating all animal products from her daily life)
- 2 months as a fruitarian, surviving on bananas and peas cooked in coconut milk
- during all those phases get as much information as possible, reading, conducting interviews with experts, etc.

On my first read I was annoyed because Duve slips into each of her new roles so radically – for example as a vegan confronting friends and family constantly over meals with truths from animal life. But this time I understood this as part of the game. Although each of her roles was limited to 2-4 months, she wanted to experience them fully and also to see how far she could go. In normal circumstances she surely would have chosen a slower approach and not turned up in an animal rights T-shirt for a family celebration with BBQ.

She didn’t get admittance to abattoirs or farm factories, but confirms with statistics what I learned from another book – that the situation in Germany is not much better than in the US (as described in Foer’s book and in Fast Food Nation) and that the number of animals not sufficiently stunned before being killed and dismembered is unbearably high. She witnessed with her own eyes that the situation of organic laying hens is not better than that of the normal ones, except for better feeding and less medicals. And she honestly writes about the inner struggles she still experiences despite all that knowledge. Having just eaten a vegan burger and a tofu curried sausage, she suddenly develops such a craving for a real steak that she almost gives in. She describes all her difficulties in deciding where to put her personal limit, now that she knows so much (is it still okay to ride my mule or do I have to walk it on a leash like a dog? Do I have to feed my cats vegan food even if they don’t touch it and therefore kill more innocent little mice and birds? Can I still kill mosquitoes or do I have to catch them in a glass and set them free in the forest? How about those beloved old leather boots? What to do with the eggs my hens are laying? How can I make sure that I don’t accidentally use material from fossil fuels as a substitute for animal products? And in the fruitarian phase: “OMG, by eating those pickled cucumbers I killed an onion!!!”).

What still annoyed me this second time were her attempts to connect natural catastrophes to the worldwide consumption of meat. I am convinced there’s much truth in the thesis, but had she written her book in 2009 or 2011 instead of 2010, she wouldn’t have had all those big floods in Germany to write about, that was quite coincidental.

The book ends somewhat undecided. Duve says that she is no longer able to close her eyes and return to the 2.99€ chicken. She sees a vegan life as the ideal, but also as something she herself might never achieve. She decides to reduce meat and fish to almost nothing and to limit her milk and egg intake (she has own hens which in the course of the book she freed from "egg factories") to 10% of what it was before. She will be using wool, but rule out leather and down. She feels weak for not being able to adhering to an even stricter lifestyle, saying that over the past 10 months she has become a better person, but also a sadder person.

Rating: 4 stars

53. La Disubbidienza by Alberto Moravia (1,001 # 372/338)

This is a short book that well describes the growing pains of young Luca. When for the first time he sees his parents in a situation of weakness he feels cheated and loses his will to live. He doubts everything that once was important for him and reacts to the world with a silent form of disobedience, getting rid of all worldly attachments. He gives away his stamp collections, his books and toys, even buries his money. He neglects school, stops studying, and finally reduces his food to let himself slowly starve to death. Until something happens that reawakens his will to live and turns him into a different, more mature person. Well written, but quite predictable.

Rating: 3.5 stars

3:0 before the halftime break??? I'll have to go searching for my German flag, I had only the Italian one prepared for this championship.. :)

Stopping in after a long busy week.

The vegetarians I know have almost no special equipment. They are better than I am at planning ahead, however, things like soaking beans.......

>120 sibylline: You're right, Lucy, just what I thought. At that point the Dummy book was more like "Kitchen Basics for Dummies", saying "you need knifes for cutting and peeling. And cutting boards. Oh. and when you buy pots don't forget the lids, because you might have to let food simmer in a covered pot".

Wow. "We " won. 4:0. against portugal with Ronaldo! I had so not expected that...
Some idi*ts are already honking their horns after the first match. Either tourists or wannabe-German Tyroleans who want to provoke the Italians. :)

>122 Deern: Congrats on this fabulous win.

We have the opposite - Jersey has a large large population of Portuguese. They are going to be grumpy as hell...

In fact the police have stated that they aren't putting on any extra policing etc re the world cup. Unless England play Portugal. Last time there was a riot...

I segued. Congrats Germany :)

54. The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

Paul recommended this book many weeks ago on his thread. Can’t remember the exact words, but he described it as a fun classic adventure novel. I thought it might be just what I needed then, loaded it on my Kindle and started reading. And then sadly it absolutely didn’t work for me. The story of an English traveler in the Eastern European country of Ruritania, who is the doppelgaenger of the future King and takes his place when the real King is kidnapped by his own brother just didn't interest me, and I was sorry for it because I so wanted to enjoy it. So I put it on hold and picked it up again yesterday afternoon. Obviously my mood has changed for the better, because this really is fun and kind of exciting! Not exactly a new favorite, but a (now) very readable classic brain candy that gave me some relief after those heavy post-war-Germany Köppen/Grass/Walsers and from that aggressive pro-veganism book I stupidly bought for over 20 EUR and so now must finish.
Rating: 3 stars
BIG Spoiler: My rating would have been 3.5 stars if Hope had let at least one of the two possible love stories end differently. I mean - I am a woman, I need happy endings for romances!!! :(

>123 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara! :)
I was really surprised. The match was so early that I was preparing my dinner during the first half, just half-listening from the kitchen. When I sat down with my salad, Germany already led 2:0 and Portugal had lost Pepe.

>124 BekkaJo: Bekka - Wow, I thought the Portuguese were peaceful fans... I hope there were no riots this time? They must be annoyed, the team played badly, but they always do against Germany - like our team always loses against Spain and Italy.

I checked the Guardian to see the comments on the red card, knowing how much the English condemn diving/acting. Sure many complained about Mueller, but one commentator wisely and truly said "well, everyone would have done that in his situation - and an Italian would probably still roll on the floor, holding his head". Sadly I had slept through the Italy - England match last Saturday, but in that respect those two teams must be absolute opposites. Maybe the English finally have to learn to dive (and to shoot better penalties....) :)
I always liked the English team and on each world cup or EU cup I hope they'll finally do better again. I even got that "Football's Coming Home/ Three Lions" song on the ipod, wasn't it from 1996? Great video... :)

Reluctantly returned to Cecilia, I don't want to abandon it after having read more than 50%. Not that I dislike it, it's just so... light and fluffy without being captivating at all.

Still fighting with Dahlke's Peace Food. Condescending people shouldn't try to convert others. Recipes aren't too tempting either.

Last night I downloaded 3 free Mark Twains for the July AAC and started reading The Innocents Abroad.

>125 Deern: Hmmm - that does sound fun!

And it is weird isn't it, when you put them down and months later pick up what feels like a different book! I did the same with Love in the time of Cholera. I HATED the first half and loved the second.

No riots so far - it's mainly the English local v. Portuguese local rivalry that kicks off. It's not exactly a happy relationship at the best of times. Witness today's headline in our local paper, 45% of the new intake at Cassie's school have little or no English. Eeep.

I haven't picked a Twain (I've read the obvious 2) - any ideas? It's the one AAC month that doesn't really appeal, strangely enough.

>128 BekkaJo: Very sorry for the performance of the English team. I had hoped to see them in the quarter-finals. But at least this means your place will remain riot-free. Unless the Portuguese win the thing, but so far that's not likely.

I know I could google, but still I'm asking: why are there that many Portuguese? It's a connection I never heard of. I'd have expected some French...

Of Twain I downloaded The Innocents Abroad which starts amusing although with a form of irony which would nowadays be called discrimination. The ship he's travelling with just landed in Madeira and he's not too friendly with the Portuguese, but I guess he won't exclude any people he encounters from his biting observations. My Kindle says it has 350p, but I heard it is much longer.

I also got A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and the short The Diaries of Adam and Eve. I read A Tramp Abroad some years ago and didn't like it much except for the brilliant and famous part about the German language.

After months I finished the 2nd part of Cecilia by Fanny Burney and just hate the idea that there's a third part to read. There's no good reason for my annoyance with the book, there's enough action, a likeable heroine... it just takes its time when in the end its main objective is to get Cecilia to marry Mr Right.

I did come back! Lots of interesting stuff going on here as usual!!!
I'm reminded of a short story that I never wrote (and I can't think that the idea is original) about a man who becomes a vegetarian when he hears the animal noises from the slaughter house. I'm not sure what goes on in the main part - hence, the non-writing of said story - but the climax comes when he pulls up a radish and hears it scream.....
Just thought you'd like to know.

>129 Deern: A lot (a LOT) of madeira Portuguese came over to help with the potato crop, starting about 30 odd years ago. We still have a large number of Madeiran's/Portuguese, a lot of which are third generation etc, and have great language skills. Unfortunately a lot still are arriving who feel no need to learn the language, which I find v strange. I'm all for integration and community spirit, have no probs with the kids learning Portuguese + Polish. I just worry that they will be held back in an English speaking school by kids who have no English.

Oooh I do have Connecticut Yankee and have been meaning to read that for ages. I think that may win the July ballot :)

Cecilia is okay/good - promise! Just relax into it...

Happy Sunday, Nathalie! The German team had to tremble for this one point.

>130 LizzieD: Haha - no pity for the vegetables! :)) (oh dear, now the universe surely will make me hear the screaming of plants as well as a punishment!!)

Well, as can be seen from the books I am listing here (and another 2 of this type are coming later today), I am currently reading a lot about food. It's not the first time, I've had similar phases years ago which for example turned me off fast food and towards organic/ more healthy. As a result of those earlier books like Fast Food Nation and almost everything written by the German Ulrich Grimm I had really reduced my meat intake to almost nothing, and now when my fingers and toes started aching this winter I thought I should try an alternative diet and stay off meat, fish and gluten for a bit.

I don't (yet) think that eating animals is generally bad, but I'd love to have my "good old times" back before industrial farming and killing. Our local butcher bought the cows and pigs from farmers and did the slaughtering himself. The selection of meats and cold cuts in his shop was small, you couldn't get veal for example and chicken (fat ones for soups) only directly from the farmers. You had meat and/or sausage once or twice a week, but some eggs and dairy. Almost everyone there had a vegetable garden and fruit trees. The parents of my best friend had a small farm, and when one of the cows had a calf it was fully normal that it stayed with its mother for quite a long time. I think male calves needed to be weaned before they were bought by a meat farmer.

We learned that the animals were "there to be used/ eaten", cute as they were, but during their lifetime they were treated as well as possible also because this has an influence on the meat/milk/egg quality. Sure, that wasn't paradise either, and no doubt in the towns it was already very much different.

>131 BekkaJo: Thanks for the information, Bekka. I guess there are similar problems in many countries and I think as open as the borders now are, there should be some standards for schools. It should always be ensured that kids can follow the classes in the new language. Sure, they might learn quickly, but there should be a basis so that the local kids are not held back. Better lose some months which should be spent on special language classes, but then at least the kid has a good chance to get through school successfully instead of sitting around, being frustrated and disturbing the others.

>132 Ameise1: Happy Wednesday, Barbara! :-)
I did some trembling, too! But yesterday... what a shame! My Italian flag is back in the wardrobe.

I should finish Cecilia (I am 30% into part 3 now) and read some more Twain, but instead I am still "researching" (sounds better than obsessing about) vegetarianism/ veganism. So here's a book I hated:

55. Peace Food by Rüdiger Dahlke

This was close to becoming another long rant, but then I saw that this work hasn’t been translated anyway, so I can be short. If you are a vegan and are absolutely convinced it is the only acceptable lifestyle, how can you make sure not to convert a single omnivore?
a) By rubbing it into them that what they’re doing now is morally REALLY BAD and should be forbidden by law. Comparing it to the Holocaust brings extra points!
b) By throwing in esoteric ideas about bad karma that causes cancer. You have the right to believe that, but you should be aware that not only meat-eaters will run from you(r book).
c) By claiming that vegetarians are generally more peaceful and tolerant and don’t start wars (err…. Hitler anyone?). They are also prettier, slimmer and the better people in all aspects.
d) By adding obscure ideas about the nourishing qualities of sunlight (not talking just about vitamin D, but about “living on/eating light and nothing else”).
e) If at that point someone is still reading, by praising your miraculous feel-good serotonin-raising raw-vegetable powder and offering it for sale
I stopped reading right after the nice but short recipe part, although there were only about 5 pages left. Those were all extra esoteric, simply unreadable and actually I haven’t been that close to eating meat since January 6th when I said goodbye to it with a “Dinnerte”* at the Merano Christmas market. Just to get a feeling of distance to the author. That can’t have been his intention, or can it?

Rating: 1.5 stars (for the recipes which aren’t Dahlke’s)

*a longish sourdough rye “pizza” with potatoes, crème fraîche and tiny bacon crumbs, there are also meat-free varieties with onions or cheese. Very rustic, very good!

56. Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman

Okay, I bought another book about vegan lifestyle just because it’s so different and just what I needed. It’s actually quite old already and famous as well. I'd seen it before, but just from title and cover always believed it was some SatC style novel.

I didn’t expect any new information and it’s fully measured for the US market with all the brands that are listed. Also, thankfully, while the situations in the slaughterhouses might not be much different, at least labeling of organic products is much more transparent in the EU and our governments at least at times pretend to pursue consumer interests although basically they are as ruled by the industry and farm lobbies as is the case in the US.

After that terrible Dahlke book I needed something that makes me laugh and that also gives me a kick in my a**e regarding my sugar intake. I didn’t mind the strong language at all and really quite enjoyed the book (slaughterhouse details being the exception, of course), but it can just be an addition to a more comprehensive and balanced work. Information: 3 stars, fun: 4 stars 
==> Rating 3.5 stars

>133 Deern: Sorry, Nathalie, that the Italian are on their way back. I keep my fingers crossed that the Swiss guys are doing better tonight.

>136 Ameise1: just read your post, switched on my TV, and there it is already - the first goal for the Swiss! :)

Nathalie, dumbs up, Switzerland is still in.

Nathalie, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Happy week, Barbara, and I hope for a great match today! :)

I am busy at work and busy at home... At least I finally finished Cecilia after months on hold. I don't know why I didn't enjoy it more. It's hilarious! I read through the last 150 or so pages last night after another week-long break and I felt like reading a sit-com script. I don't know what it was that again and again made me put it aside. Maybe that with such a classic you just know that all goes well and therefore don't really suffer along with the characters and so those 800-900 pages just feel LONG?

After finishing the book, at about 9:55 pm, I fell into a sleep coma for 2.5 hrs and woke up to the 2:1 final goal. Great. And then I stayed wide awake for the rest of the night. Great again.

It's time for a holiday I'd say. and that's what has mainly kept me busy in my private life: looking for holiday homes/ hotels/B&Bs in Italy (and reading veggie blogs, I confess, and trying out new recipes..).
Well, it looks like I'll be packing my car and head to Tuscany this very Saturday morning where I rented a big appartment in an agriturismo just for myself for one week. And then I'll drive back north and plan to spend week 2 at Garda Lake, but that part isn't booked yet. The Tuscany place is in Castagneto Carducci, near Livorno, 5 km from the coast and beaches. I've been there many years ago with my parents, but we didn't see anything because our cocker spaniel had a stroke on the first day and we spent all time either at the vet's or in the house in the shade.
I'll have wifi wherever I go because I'll have to work for a bit. I'll also take the notebook (I hope it's still working), so I can type better than on the ipad mini and I hope I'll finally catch up with some more threads here.

I am planning to take The Cairo Trilogy and one Italian novel (haven't decided yet) and my Kindle. Maybe download an audiobook or two. But I haven't made great reading plans yet, I want to sleep as much as I can. :)

Okay, I stopped reading books on vegetarianism now, but I followed some amazon recommendations that lead me from Skinny Bitch to 2 more conventional diet books. I am reading those merely for my dad who is much overweight (a good 30 kilos), has high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and has now stopped all efforts to lose some weight. Both books are recipe-free and more concentrating on the mind. I am trying to read them with my dad's eyes, wondering if they would convince me to change something.

I finished and enjoyed one and am still reading the other, but don't know if I can finish it. The chapter basically saying "let's waste some food" enraged me. Yes, when your fridge is filled with junk foods you don't have to eat it all up before starting a diet, I agree. But maybe you can give at least some of it away to friends and neighbours before throwing it all in the bin. It got worse when she forced a client to freshly buy loads of kettlecorn and to throw parts of it away at once "to feel the relief". That's decadent and disrespectful and something my dad certainly and sensibly wouldn't do!

****
I think I found something for my week 2. It's an agriturismo 1.5 km from Garda Lake near Sirmione. The appartments are all new and spacious and the owners even offer breakfast. And the pool is huge! They make white wine!! :)
I'd put in links to both places, but I am not sure if this is permitted?

57. then just stay fat by Shannon Sorrels

Now that was quite fun! And partly useful as well. The language is nicer than in Skinny Bitch, but just as open and blunt. The main message is: there are no miraculous diet tricks; you just have to eat fewer calories than your body processes. If those calories are composed of junk foods, you’ll lose weight, but probably go hungry and be malnourished. So if you like to eat much and want to feel healthy, you better eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

And Sorrels doesn't allow to you hide behind the usual excuses like "heavy bones" or "the BMI isn't a good indicator". Her main message is "if you don't want to restrict your calorie intake ... then just stay fat".

I especially liked two things:
1. the natural limits to weight gain and calorie intake (there is no real limit) vs. possible calorie consumption by activities (quite limited) and resulting weight loss (limited as well). I don’t know if this is scientifically founded, but for me as a reader it made sense. The result is that exercise supports weight loss to a small degree (and has the great added value that it distracts you, makes you fit and makes your body release serotonin), but you won’t get around eating less if you have more than a couple of pounds to lose.
2. The “fat ears”, i.e. the way a person with weight issues perceives certain messages. I had to laugh about that, I recognized myself here. A person who has lost the feeling for hunger and satiation, when confronted with an information like “you can eat as many greens as you like” will easily eat more than 2,000 calories in salads and wonder why (s)he gains weight instead of losing some. I remembered the early 90s “you can’t gain weight by eating bread” slogans, where well-meaning scientists were probably thinking of 2-3 slices a day, while for me it meant running to the baker at once and buying and eating a whole loaf and waiting for magic weight loss.

What I didn’t like was the approach to let yourself go really hungry before eating. I found that works well for me (because when I don’t eat for several hours, I get hungry but my stomach also seems to shrink and can’t take much). For someone like my dad however this is the worst possible advice. Basically that’s what he has been doing for decades: not eating for half a day and then fill up at high speed without noticing how much he’s eating. And he can’t eat slowly. We tried with him, he can’t. Well, we’re not all the same.

But this is a book I’d give to him if it were available in German, along with some extra-advice about eating more smaller meals.

Rating: 3.5 stars

58. Cecilia by Fanny Burney (1,001 #373 )

This was a drag. An amusing and enjoyable drag, but still… The story is interesting, the characterizations are great, there’s lots of humor and some scenes read like a sit-com script. But it’s also very long and from the moment where young and lovely and smart heiress Cecilia Beverly meets “Mr Right” you know how it’s going to end and those endless obstacles become somewhat annoying. I admit however that I probably wasn’t in the mood for this book now and I generally don’t feel like reading any of those English comfort classics for a while. Maybe in winter.

Now I am looking forward to the Booker longlist announcement in 3 weeks and some great contemporary fiction, although that challenge will cost me a small fortune again.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Hols sound amazing - remember to take some pictures for us jealous types ;)

Nathalie, I wish you fantastic holiday.

Thank you, Bekka and Barbara! :))
Sooo looking forward to it!!

Just testing my old and slow notebook which I haven't used for a year or so. Yay, it still works, at least from home. Now I hope it'll work just as well in Tuscany, for LT, but also because I really will have to work a bit and I can't do that from the ipad. I worked so much over the past couple of days and didn't get much sleep. I'm really ready for that holiday now! :)

Well... all is packed. And "all" is loads of stuff. The first place doesn't provide towels and linen, so that alone will fill half the trunk in my car.

And because I obviously need that trunk tomorrow, I finally had to take out those book boxes that have been driving around with me for 2 months now since I came back from Germany. Well, I just didn't know where to put them, so for now they are in the garage. I didn't find the Adrian Mole book I was sure I had taken with me to finally finish the series. But I found my A Walk in the Woods and will take it with me, it's high time for a reread.

Outside it's dark and raining although the forecast had said something about 32 degrees and sun. Now I checked Tuscany and one of the websites promises sun, the other one rain and temperatures around 20 degrees. That would mean I'd have to repack, so I'll trust the other one. But I added a blanket to my linen basket.

Hope to read you again tomorrow or on Sunday, have a great weekend, everyone!

Nathalie, I wish you a safe journey. Where will you stay in Tuscany? I wish you a wonderful holiday full of R & R.

I have SO much enjoyed your reviews about the Vegan and diet books - Why is it so much fun to read reviews about bad books??? But I also enjoyed the 'just stay fat' one. Sounds honest and sensible.

I have one of those 'fitbits' - a pedometer basically that is hooked up to the computer - and it does make it clear that really, spending an extra hour walking or half hour jogging only gets you an extra (not very big) cookie.... and the fact is that to lose weight you have to figure out how much your body really burns - and mine doesn't burn much at my age - even if I walk 10,000-12,000 steps it doesn't use more than around 1800 calories in a day. So, the fact is, I have to be careful all the time. Losing a pound, say, for real, takes about ten days eating around 400 calories less than 1800 a day - providing I'm doing the 10,000 steps. If I don't walk that much, then I burn around 1600..... It certainly isn't magic: once I've not eaten around 3800 to 4000 calories in any given period, a pound goes 'poof!' Slow hard work.... I tend to gain slowly, a couple of pound a year or so, and then every four or five years have to eat less for at least six months to get back to square one. It gets harder and harder too, as i get older.

Don't know what they have in Europe but if your dad likes keeping track of things he might like something like the fitbit. You don't have to use it with the computer if you don't want to.

And enjoy tuscany!! I so love fagioli!

Hey everyone! I arrived safely and now I finally have some net. My ipad can't find any, so I started my notebook and it had no problems at all connecting with the house's wifi.

I started at 5:45 am from Merano and after almost 600 km, arrived here around noon. I went shopping first, because the owner had said I couldn't check in beore 1pm.
There was much traffic after Parma, and the motorway Parma - Livorno is a nightmare - bendy like some alpine road, tigh lanes, a speed limit of 60 or 80 km/h in the extra bendy parts, which means everyone will slow don to 100 to 120. Before Livorno there was the first 5km jam and then there was another long one when the motorway ended at the toll-station.

When I arrived here, the appartment wasn't ready yet, so the owners invited me to have lunch with them. The owner is an Italian woman named Chicca (pronounce the Italian way with a hard 'k'), her partner Arnaud is French. They had friends from France over who spoke French and English and a young couple from NZ as house guests. There's also a great dog, Janice, who immediately brought me an old rotten football to throw, and 2 cats. The food (pasta and salad) was put in big bowls on a long wooden table on the terrace. After the meal I moved into my appt which looks just like on the website. I happily settled in and didn't do anything for the rest of the day except for making dinner, as I was really tired and developed quite a headache after the long drive.
I slept well and now I am having another lazy day, enjoying the sun under an olive tree and right now preparing my lunch.

Lucy: I'll be back with a reponse right after lunch! :)

>147 Ameise1: Barbara, I am near Castagneto Carducci, between Livorno and Grosseto. The region is also called "Etruscan Coast". Oh, and I am just 10 km from Bolgheri which has become so famous for its "Super Tuscans". I admit I am more a fan of the traditional wines, and those STs are also super expensive, so I bought some nice (white) Vermentino yesterday and I'll try the vinery where my landlords get their wine from.

>148 sibylline: the fitbit sounds like something I'd enjoy. Sadly, my dad has absolutely no patience for anything technical. I know, it's certainly super-easy to use, but I know he wouldn't. He is an emotional eater, all my family is. Probably a typical result of those post-war years when treats like chocolate were rare and you got it as reward for some accomplishment, like good school reports. My dad likes walking only if it leads to some good restaurant/ inn. Weekend travels are centered around food. It is still difficult for me to find rewards for myself that don't involve food. For him, it is impossible. He works a lot, so he believes he "at least deserves some nice food". But when the food's there he doesn't even enjoy it slowly, he devours it in a way you'd think he hates it and has to destroy it.
The second book I am reading now, except for that horrid waste chapter, might be more in his line.

What you describe here confirms what the "just stay fat" book says. The author also explains how easy it is to gain some pounds over the years without eating much, if your metabolism is slow. An extra apple or banana (i.e. sth supposedly healthy), that brings you about 100 cal more than your body needs, will turn into 10 pounds of fat every decade. But just as slowly and steadily we'll lose weight if we're ready to reduce our intake just a bit - and are very, very patient. :)

****

Reading: Sure I forgot to pack the Palace Walk trilogy. So today I bought it for the Kindle, just to find out I had bought another trilogy by the same author. And then I remembered that there had been a reason why I had ordered the PWT as hardcover from England - it hasn't been published for Kindle.
Okay, so now I am reading the other one instead.

Nathalie, when I was a child we went for years close to Follonica. It's called Golfo del Sole. I've good memories of those vacations.

I have to go and look hard at a map - we spent a few days in that area years ago and among other things spent a blissful day wandering around beautiful Roman ruins of a town on a hilltop overlooking the sea that no one else cared about. It was really wonderful, so let me try and figure that out.

OK - I'm back. I think we stayed at a hotel in Talamone - a pretty but touristy place. We visited Orbetello (I feel like that town pulled some fabulous trick back in the Guelph-Ghibelline days of negotiating some peace treaty where the men agreed they would not 'walk out of the town' - so the women carried them out.....! But I could be mixing that up with something else.

The ruin was Cosa - it is worth it and take sandwiches and lots of water and spend the day there - I don't know if you have any way of getting around, but if you can, do. In those quiet places somehow you can get a feeling sometimes, and we did.

Ciao! And have a wonderful time!

That is too bad about your Dad. Perhaps a bit compulsive but not the kind that would be useful in this situation. I really think my love of 'keeping track' of little bits of information serves me very well when I do decide it's time to get back to square one.

Nathalie, I wish you a lovely weekend

>151 Ameise1: It's a beautiful region, Barbara. I'll definitely not let another 18 years pass before my next visit

>152 sibylline: Lucy - I didn't make it there, I am so sorry! I looked at the map and it was almost 200kms on a country road, and I didn't feel like doing that on my own. Populonia (30kms) was the most I was able to do in that first week.

******
Phew… that holiday, while it was great and was over too quickly, was quite different from what I had expected. I had seen myself spending much time relaxing, reading, finally LTing again, cooking, doing yoga, etc.

One thing that went against my expectations in a negative way was that I had to work from holiday much more than intended. I had prepared everything quite well, but still a lot went wrong. That was one element that made me quite internet-adverse through those 2 weeks. When I logged on, I opened my mails first and often found something unpleasant. So once the issue was resolved, I usually shut the thing down immediately before more could surface for that day.

The other more surprising thing was that those two weeks on my own confronted me with myself in an unexpected way. On the surface I was passing a great holiday: in the first week I went to the local beaches 3 times although it was as windy and cool as at the German North Sea coast, forced myself to do two sightseeing and shopping trips to nearby towns, walked up to the Tuscan village of Castagneto Carducci twice and had some great meals in restaurants, all alone. In the second week at Garda Lake I rented a bike and (despite the work) managed to visit Sirmione twice and to go to Peschiera and Desenzano, where I left my bike, got on one of the boats and so visited Lazise, Bardolino, Garda, Gardone and Salò. I had some mediocre meals in that region (not surprising, it’s very touristy there, and with the boat trips I was always in the town centers). I spent some time by the lovely pool and got a nice tan (using sunscreen with factor 30). I did yoga, though less than planned, cooked some nice veggie meals and tasted some local wines.

******
But under that relaxing surface, much was going on. I was at times really unhappy and often felt terribly lonely and like a complete failure. I resisted the urge of letting myself fall into that hole and forced myself to get out of the house and do all those activities, while my mind was busy. I guess that’s progress. And I think now that my mind needed this time, away from the usual cover-up (excuse) activities like daily chores, without TV (in week 1), rejecting books and internet.
I want to add that I wasn’t a bit envious of the other people I met, couples and families. On the contrary, I was happy for them and had some nice chats. I just had to ask myself what the **** was wrong with me that I was alone and so clearly not part of the “normal world”.

Quite unexpectedly in week 2, while I was having an aperitivo at Salò, looking at the sailboats in the harbour, my mind came up with some answers, and they were so obvious (and yet so surprising) that I almost started crying right there in that bar.

"Inner stuff" following in the next post, partly in spoilers

Warning: soul-baring stuff following - feel VERY free to skip and continue with #156 :))

We all know we are defined by what our parents taught us and that at some point we should find our own way. I knew that I am still caught up in some old belief systems and thought I had identified most of them during the past 2 years. And I had applied some techniques to let go, worked with daily affirmations and probably had been preparing the ground. Now my mind showed me how deeply I am still buried in that contradictive and extremely manipulative world I grew up in and which I believed to be normal until 2 years ago when I had my personal breakdown and started my (very soft) therapy - which is really just talking and nothing else. No meds, no "games" or role plays, cushion beating or similar things.

What I now realized was that I was imitating both my mother and my father – who as a couple are quite incompatible and probably should have separated many years ago. While my head has learned that none of them is a good advisor for how anyone should live their life, I let them still rule. And both of them simultaneously, which put me into a constant inner war and made me behave inconsistently. Instead of acting for myself I let my mother’s angry and bitter statements (and contradicting actions) and my father’s degrading and self-righteous statements (and contradicting actions) have an endless and fruitless fight in my mind. And nothing I ever did, felt completely right. Why?

I guess, simply because as a child I loved them both, wanted to respect and follow them both and naturally never succeeded. And then I just kept doing that.
I was an ill child and therefore extremely needy and obedient. As far as my memories go (and before and after pictures show), I returned from those 4 hospital weeks at age 3 silent and withdrawn, kind of broken (I can’t remember what exactly happened, but that was a time when doctors believed rough handling of small children was advised because they’d forget anyway and felt less pain… not to forget that parents were not allowed in the rooms, no matter how long the hospital stay!). I guess, simply put, it was that typical small-child reaction of “my parents abandoned me because I did something wrong, the hospital was my punishment and now I must always follow them to be loved and never be abandoned again. And I must watch out for any signs of new abandonment (so I became controlling as well)”. Rebelling against my parents never ever occurred to me, not even during my teens. They both loved me, but never really loved and respected each other and no fight was hidden from me, on the contrary – they sometimes even called me as a witness. And I wanted harmony over everything else. So I let them with all their their eternal fights and the mutual abuse take over my mind at an early age and never asked for it back.

That’s why I always felt “outside of it”. I am outside. And – and this affects LT – reading so much has been a great escape and relief for my mind for so many years.

What amazes me is the sudden range of possibilities. If (almost) none of those contradicting belief systems has been mine own, wow – that means there’s a lot to try out for me! :)
I feel confused, but strangely liberated. And a bit “stupid” (well...), because I suddenly see how I have sabotaged my own education, career, and sadly also my friendships and relationships, that last one as well. I’ll have some apologies to make, should the occasions arise.

Now I wish I had another 2 weeks off, to experience my holiday in a different way. :))

But I am sure I’ll soon be back to reading – simply because I love it, and hey – there’s the Booker LL to be announced on Wednesday, and I really feel like reading some contemporary novel! 

And now I'm starting a round and leaving a "hi" on all my starred threads.
And in most cases, I am sorry, I won't be able to catch up. Everytime I came back this year I tried just that despite announcing the contrary (and once I even got very close to it with only one Paul thread missing), but as much as I'd like to know what happened in everyone's life in the past couple of weeks/months - I just won't be able to read up, and I decided I'd better follow the actual threads from this point on as much as I can than forever trying to read all the old ones first before posting on the fresh ones.
Read you soon!

Wow - so proud of you hun. That might seem an odd thing to write but it's my gut reaction to the above. These things weave their way in to us so tightly that extricating even some of it and facing it is incredibly hard. I hope that you can love yourself as much as we (albeit random internet book people) love you.

Wishing you the harmony, peace and fulfilment that you deserve.

>157 BekkaJo: Aaaaaawwww... now you brought me to tears (really!). Thank you so much!! :)

I, too, feel awe and pride. You have worked hard in every way, emotionally and thoughtfully, for those insights. A writer/psychologist who might greatly interest you now for how to proceed with your parents and keep your new sense of self separate and intact, is Murray Bowen. His theory of differentiation is brilliant and was supremely useful to both my husband and myself when we were working (and, believe me, it was work!) with the goal of creating 'our own' marriage, a safe and rational one (most of the time!) not modeled on anything to do with our parents. - There is quite a good Bowen website.

I wish you weren't so far away, but I am sending you a transatlantic hug all the same.

Back with the link:
https://www.thebowencenter.org/pages/theory.html

>159 sibylline: Wow - I just read the introduction, the "triangle" and the "differentiation of the self". The example of the family is fantastic. Need I mention that I never experienced anything like the DotS situation? This is really helpful, thank you so much!

Private stuff following
I also now remember clearly a situation with ex-guy where he complained that women were always so needy and want their problems to be solved by the man in their life.
I'd had a hard day at work and simply told him about it. I mean - how should he have resolved my work issues for me?
I tried to tell him that I just wanted to share, that I was an independent individual (you see, I had already made some progress with my "self" at that point) and that I could well cope with all my issues, that I just wanted to tell him those things because they were part of my life - well, and a hug would have been nice. :)
He absolutely didn't get it and he got so stressed, because he was so used to women needing "problem-solvers" (he has a very "weak" mother who's now also gravely ill and his ex-wife had given him the responsibility for everything that went wrong, because she'd always left all decisions to him. Or he had taken them without asking- it's always a two-sided process). That situation was repeated numerous times and in the end this issue became one of the breaking points.
End of private stuff

I'll read on after work.
Transatlantic hug back to you, Lucy!

Just loaded my holiday pics from the Blackberry to the office computer (which is mine own so I guess I can do that). Sadly the BB only has the lamer ones. The nice ones are on the ipad (that only connects with the very old Macbook) and some are on my private mobile which is a very old Nokia (why did I take pics with that one when I don't know how to get them to a computer??)

This is the only Tuscany pic on the BB - it's the living room of my appt, with broken TV (at least I could watch the worldcup matches downstairs in the owners' living room) :)


Here's a picture of Salò, one of my favorite Garda Lake towns. It has a beautiful little harbour for small boats.


I took a picture of this because I couldn't believe it: in very touristy Gardone I got an alcohol-free aperitivo (Bitterino Bianco) for the usual 3 EUR, but they brought delicious big olives, crisps and even cheese! Not the usual dubious peanut bowl. This must be due to "la crisi". I must say that the restaurants were shockingly empty during lunchtime, in mid-July. Many nice looking ones in the side streets had zero guests at 1pm and the staff were sitting outside waiting.

I'm so glad Bowen's theories resonate for you! I will be delighted too to reread anything you decide to read. I have a 'stay differentiated' mantra I use in non-family situations because I tend to 'flood' (panic and lose my sense of self) quite easily in certain situations (performing music, at parties and social situations where I don't feel comfortable)..... here at home we call it 'being aware of being aware'.

As the parents of one child we were extra grateful for our Bowen knowledge and aware of the difficulties of triangulation with three. We stopped eating dinner at the table at night after awhile because it felt too formal and intense for our small group and moved to the living room, either with books in hand or to watch a 'family' show... (Well, Star Trek mainly! and later Friends) - making chatting optional and less pressured: we always end up talking but in this collegial way about whatever comes up instead of Mom and Dad looming over the kid and asking "What did you do today?" It is one of the things we feel we have done 'right' and feel proud of as parents. When she has even one friend over we sit at the table and have long discussions about all kinds of things - there's a balance then. An example of how we had to find our own way to be together healthily for us.

My worst sin is complaining to her now that she is 18 about her father's pack rat tendencies..... but she sometimes brings it up too. She is very neat - neater than I am in fact - so he drives her bananas too! But we try to be kind to him, but firm!

Too bad that I don't see a Bowen-affiliated center in Europe anywhere - we have one here in Vermont, right nearby, which doesn't surprise me.

I will send you anything you can't get, goes without saying!

>162 sibylline: That's so impressive! I wish it had been like that at my home. You say "dinner at the table" and I feel anxiety. And then that constant "your father should..." / "your mother never..." which didn't even stop at the most intimate issues(!). And then, from time to time, the unexpected bonding against me. The classic "your mother and I talked and we think you're reading too much" - that was 2 years ago and I was 41! :)

My dad's youngest sister also managed to consciously step out of the "family box", but only after hard struggles and a temporary separation from her husband two years after the first child was born. In the first phase of their marriage they had both replayed their patterns endlessly and ended up at the same point where my parents are - just with reversed roles! After they got back together they managed to raise their two children so differently from the rest of the family that from a young age they both stood out and still do.
My aunt told me it is constant hard work for her and her husband, but they are immensely proud of their kids (now 31 and er... 22?) and feel they enabled them to take their own decisions and live their lives free from those old family burdens.

She now says it was a great "help" for her that my father - her beloved and adored oldest brother - cut her off of the family during her separation phase. He even ordered her mother not to speak to her anymore because a divorce would have been a shame for the family! Naturally, she was heartbroken. But she also realized that she could no longer rely on him (who had taken over the role as "patriarch" after the early death of his father) and had to find a way for herself.
So yes, a crisis can start a healing process, if we let it.

You and your husband can be so proud of yourselves and your daughter!

I might "steal" your mantra, if you don't mind. :)

Yay, the Booker 2014 Longlist has been announced:

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
"J" by Howard Jacobson
==> authors should consider the "touchstone" issue before deciding on a title! :)
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
"Us" by David Nicholls
"The Dog" by Joseph O'Neill
Orfeo by Richard Powers
How to be Both by Ali Smith
History of the Rain by Niall Williams

9 of them are already published for my "region" as amazon calls it. I just bought and started We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves which cost me the unbelievably low price of 3.37 USD. Can't remember ever having paid such a low price for a contemporary fiction Kindle book (those daily deals are never valid for me).

I hope to get through as many as possible before the SL will be out on September 9th.

Please!!! Eckhart Tolle also uses an expression similar to ours. There is an aspect to Bowen's thinking that I find very 'zen' in fact. I guess the striving for a constant self-awareness -- sometimes in the midst of the howling gale!

I'll look forward to your thoughts on the Fowler. I love the title!

*hugs* for ongoing clarity of mind and happier thoughts.

>164 Deern: hmmmm - I'm out of touch. I know nothing about any of these! I might wait and see how everyone finds them before I jump in :)

59. Khufu’s Wisdom by Naguib Mahfouz

I wanted to take the Palace Walk trilogy to Tuscany as holiday read and forgot to pack it. I was willing to re-buy it for the Kindle and when amazon came up with some trilogy by that author I bought it. Yes, I got the test chapter first, but that was all introduction about the author’s life. So only when I had bought the whole thing did I notice that it was a completely different trilogy and then also remembered that the Kindle unavailability of TPWt had been the reason why I had ordered that doorstopper in paper form from the UK 2 years ago.

I started reading this new book instead, but quickly found it wasn’t for me. It’s a collection of the author’s first three novels and while this first one wasn’t terribly bad, it certainly wasn’t mature. It’s a nicely told but completely predictable story set in old Egypt where a vision about the succession of the Pharao’s throne comes true although 1,000 things are done to prevent that. Not exactly boring, but not gripping either.

I didn’t continue with book 2 - the stories are completely independent anyway – and quite stopped reading altogether for that first holiday week.

Rating: 3 stars

60. If I am so Smart Why Can’t I Lose Weight? by Brooke Castillo

Finally finished the second one of the 2 diet books mentioned earlier. This one is basically a nice little self-help book once you’re through the strange diet-only part. I can’t say if it helps with weight-loss, I know for my dad it wouldn’t work. The author suggests identifying 10 levels of being sated and 10 levels of being hungry. You should only eat when you’re hungry on level 2 (minus 2 on the overall scala) and stop when you’re sated on level 2 (+2). This might make sense to a person who’s not overweight and has a good sense of hunger and not-hunger (just cravings, appetite, etc.).

If I can believe my dad, he’s always “hungry”. :-) And then, after he’s eaten a lot, he’s sated. Or still hungry which means he keeps eating. I’d assume he’s not the only one who functions that way. You should also always write down when you’re eating, what was your level of hunger, at what level of satiety you stopped, why you overate, what was your feeling while overeating, etc.

I’ll skip my anger about the terrible “please waste food chapter”, I’ve mentioned that earlier and for now will just ignore it.

When it comes to the main self-help part which applies to everything, not just to weight-loss, the author makes some really good points, but overall there are just too many things you should constantly (I mean constantly!!) analyze, in written form. She provides numerous “forms” and gives examples of how to fill them in, and while I exactly know where she wants to go and that basically it all makes some sense, I absolutely wouldn’t feel encouraged to do all that without a RL coach. For someone who is new to this, this will be completely overwhelming and look like far too much work and no fun at all. And others, like me, prefer to do written analyses only occasionally, but then still not as detailed. Honestly, it looks quite obsessive to trace every negative feeling to its source by filling in a form. So while I enjoyed the second part, I don’t know how practicable her approach is. However, she lead me to another author who I guess is very famous in the US, Byron Katie and her system of “4 questions”. I bought her book after that and I am using it a lot. Review to follow.

Rating for this one: 3.25 stars – absolutely okay, but nothing I’d give to my overweight dad

61. Loving What Is by Byron Katie

I guess she’s about as famous as Louise L. Hay – another super-successful life coach of whom I’d never heard before this year. Well, I guess “they find you when you need them” or so. :-)

I did have a bit of a language problem with this book because the way BK asks her 4 questions, makes it difficult to translate them into my own understanding, at least in the first chapters until I had got used to it.

Okay, let’s be honest: it’s brainwash, and it’s brainwash that’s meant to numb your “feelings” - the negative ones. More directly and efficiently than LLH’s affirmation can do that, you’ll be numbed almost instantly.

But let me ask: why not?
If you feel like you’re suffering constantly – and let’s be frank, we really suffer mostly from the thoughts/fears we ourselves constantly produce about things that were or might be which is negative brainwash – why not change those thoughts and quickly, so suffering ends?

The danger in the more conventional positive thinking books and in all those affirmations is that you might get disillusioned because you expect great things as a “reward” for your new positive, affirming thoughts. That’s a misinterpretation of those books, but I guess it’s an error that’s made often. When you say things like “there’s only good ahead of me” or “I joyfully look forward to the future” this means to accept as good for you whatever will come, but it’s seductive to interpret it as “the universe will fulfill all my wishes as long as I do my affirmations and keep smiling”. And there are also authors in that market who falsely promise exactly that.
Not talking about LLH here whose books helped me a lot this year, but all those simple books about "sending wishes to the universe" (I read some of those many years ago), often written by TV celebrities, imo can be dangerous stuff for over-sensitive people.

BK instead will make you look at that very moment you’re living and accept that very moment. And then the next. And then the next. She won't allow you to stay caught up in things from the past or to keep scaring yourself re. the future. That’s what eastern meditation wants as well and many other concepts, but here it works without years of practice.

I read this book very slowly and highlighted half of it because so many of those examples were directly applicable to my life. If you’re like me a person with an unsteady mind, you’ll know the problem: You hear some news, be it good or bad, and immediately you’re spinning ideas and stories in your head, nice ones, terrifying ones. For me it has so far been impossible to let my mind rest when I’m awake, or only just to concentrate on a single thing. And most of my thoughts are of the scaring and panicky type.

Within just a couple of days, this book has brought me so much calmness, it’s wonderful! I don’t know if it’ll stay like that, but for now I am really glad with the first results and noticed that I am applying the technique during the day, whenever I get nervous about something, which is quite often. It’s not actively repressing negative thoughts (that would lead to more anxiety), it’s looking at them and deciding “that they are thoughts”, not the reality that is now. And that right now I’d feel better without them. And then you ask what is behind that thought, why you are thinking it, by turning it around and you see what it really tells you. And that’s sometimes funny because it shows some really childish/ immature beliefs, and then it’s easy to let go – at least for the moment. Fascinating.

I didn’t like the writing, but there seems to exist a special form of English for (mainly?) US self-help books, with an own (life-affirming) vocabulary and strangely short sentences with a simple structure. Makes sense – this stuff should be soaked up by your brain easily, but reading those books always feels a bit weird.

Rating: 4.25 stars

On the day of the announcement of the longlist, I finished the first book, yay! Okay, it took me until 11:45 pm, but I made it.

62. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (Booker 2014 LL 1/13)

KJF is the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, one of the very few books I ever abandoned, and that was during a romance novel phase. God, I hated that book!
Many people expressed surprise that this book here was selected, but comparing it to last year’s list and not yet knowing any of the competitors, I see it as a possible SL candidate, a bit like 2013’s Ruth Ozeki book A Tale For The Time Being. Definitely not a winner though.

If you want to read this book, here’s a warning: Don’t read detailed reviews, don’t read spoilers and I heard you should better also not read the back of the paper copy. There is a big twist which is unveiled about 30% in, and if I had known earlier what it is about, the book wouldn’t have worked well, I would have been biased from the start. You can read on here, because I am not going to tell the big secret.

The book begins like your usual coming of age story. It starts in 2012 when Rosemary Cooke, aged 40, prepares the reader for her story by saying she will start in the middle. The middle is 1996, when young Rosemary is a somewhat aimless university student with “behavior issues”. She is quiet, has no friends, something is weighing her down. On the first pages the reader learns that her brother Lowell disappeared 10 years ago and is wanted by the FBI, and her sister Fern 17 years ago, both never to be seen again, and you can only wonder in what kind of family Rosemary grew up. What comes next still sounds like your typical YA story. Rosemary meets Harlow, a fellow student who shows some extreme behavior by making a scene in the cafeteria and thrashing furniture. Accidentally both girls get arrested by the campus police, and Rosemary starts befriending Harlow. Later in the book the reader will easily understand the attraction.

small spoilers
Then there’s a time jump to 1979. Five year old Rosemary is sent to her grandparents during summer for no apparent reason. When she returns, the family has moved into another house. And one member is missing, her sister Fern. In the next chapters the close relationship of the sisters is explained by the retelling of memories, but it also slowly becomes apparent that there’s something strange about Fern. I had a very clear idea at that point and that idea was completely wrong. And this is where I’ll stop with the plot.
End of small spoilers

I enjoyed the writing. It seems simple, and the book really is a quick read. But it’s insightful, well-structured (in my unprofessional opinion) and Rosemary’s voice is overall believable.

The last part for me had some flaws and unnecessarily dramatic developments for some side characters. Some readers might complain about the peaceful ending that’s probably less realistic than the rest of the book, but this is a book I didn’t want to be completely saddened by, so for me it was okay. It isn’t a book that makes you work hard as last year’s Harvest or 2012’s Umbrella, but it’s not the flat feel good novel either which you might expect from this author. I really enjoyed it and it was a good start.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Next up might be the Australian candidate, the Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan.

>165 sibylline:/>166 sibylline: I got to the multi-generation part yesterday, I am still at the situations, not yet at the solutions. But concentrating on the moment is always a good advice... see #170. :)
The Fowler is already done. Interestingly it also works much with family structures, how we deal with experiences and form memories from them (especially during childhood) and how those things can influence our life.

>167 BekkaJo: like last year I'll try and read as many as possible before any great hypes set in, and like last year I'll end up craving some good clean classic quite soon.

I haven't heard of any of those book before. Some people are disappointed that Tartt, Amis and McEwan are missing. I didn't feel like reading The Goldfinch, so I'm quite relieved and I am also absolutely not in McEwan mood now. Amis could have been interesting though. I am a bit scared of the Mitchell. Cloud Atlas was great but demanding (for me at least), and after reading test chapters I never wanted to read any of his other books.
***
Not very happy with the beginning of TNRTTDN... too many time jumps already in the Kindle extract which is usually the first 6% of the book. Bought it anyway...
Last night I also tried the test chapter of To Rise Again At A Decent Hour, the Dentist novel, but there were too many details about the results of non-flossing and I was grossed out. :(
***
Edit:
WHY does every modern author believe that a stupid overblown "magnetic" love story is a good addition to something that has already enough drama - like experiences from a POW camp in Burma?? I want to read about exactly that and not have to go through a pseudo Hollywood romance part every couple of chapters. Talking about the Flanagan book here. I was really getting into it and now at 25% I am so annoyed with that unnecessary love triangle that I'd put it on hold if it hadn't cost me 17 USD.

It was the same with Birdsong this year. It could have been a great book without the love story. And without the granddaughter part. You don't have to mix that up to reach your female readership! We (okay - I) don'twant that, it feels false! And if a story is good you don't need those constant time jumps either. This is like reading a movie script where the director assumes that viewers have a short attention span and therefore won't follow long scenes. Or when the story is weak and the cuts/ timejumps push some fake action into it.

Bought the dentist novel now for distraction. Read a review that compared it to Mr. Penumbra. Oh dear, I hope not... I obviously have a weakness for self-help books right now, but I have an aversion against a certain type of feel good "happy" novels.

I had 6 audible credits to spend, so I also got Orfeo last night. The Blazing World was available as well, but I disliked the narrator's voice, and worse, I didn't understand her. Read 2-3 reviews for each book which were intriguing, I am very much looking forward to reading/ listening to those 2.

That dentist novel so far is nicely written fluff. I can do with some, but so far no SL candidate for me, not even one for the LL. I hope it doesn't turn out to become a second Harold Fry (hated it)/ Penumbra (distrusted it) or This Book Will Save Your Life (disliked it so much that I left it in a rainforest lodge in Queensland Australia to make space in my rucksack for sth better). So far I fear it either wants to convert me to Catholicism or to Facebook, but the reviews also promise a Finkler-like trip into Jewish faith and community.

I will continue my rounds later today, now getting to those active threads with 150 or more unread posts.

>172 Deern: Agreed - Hollywood romance has a lot to answer for!

>173 Deern: I hate to use it but... LOL for your middle paragraph :)

Taken me quite some time to catch up properly Nathalie.

I guess it was a bittersweet holiday that you had to put up with a fair amount of anguish in order to provide yourself with insights useful to you.

>157 BekkaJo: As a random internet person, I will gladly second Bekka's sweet comments.

>160 Deern: I won't be critical of someone I don't know but it is extremely important in a relationship to listen and share with your partner. Some chaps are not good at doing this but a few of us recognise its importance. Being naturally a nosy Parker helps me communicate with my lady friends, I guess.

Also pleased that my Prisoner of Zenda recce didn't fall entirely flat in the end.

Have a lovely weekend, dear lady. xx

>174 BekkaJo: Well, that dentist novel turned out differently. Now I am wondering why it has been written at all. But better than any of those sugary "start spreading the love" books.... eeew. It seems to be difficult to come up with 13 books for the LL.

>175 PaulCranswick: Sorry Paul - I didn't want to make people criticize someone they don't know, absolutely not. I just wanted to show how sometimes communication becomes impossible because we learned a code that allows just for one interpretation which is then our "truth" - but probably not the truth of the other person. Un-fixing that code again and just opening up for different interpretations is really difficult.
It was very sad for me to see that while we exchanged words in the same language, we communicated on completely different levels and although at some point I understood his "truth", I was unable to learn his code and communicate with him.
Have a great week!

***** Booker Update:

I finished the second LL book, To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris. Imo that's one of the books you're wondering how they got onto the list. I understand that in earlier years it might have been difficult to come up with 13 good candidates every year, but now with the new rules in place it must have been easier. Not that it's terribly bad, it's just kind of pointless. And seeing that except for the Flanigan there are no Commonwealth candidates this year, I am wondering if the judges thought they must have at least 4 US books on the LL? But even then...

The Flanigan is still on hold until I feel able to read another couple of "doomed tragic love" chapters, but I started Siri Hustvedt's The Blazing World and so far am absolutely delighted! It's my first Hustvedt - I got Summer Without Men on my shelf, but in Italian and the tiniest font size, no idea why I bought that edition.

With the exception of the Flanigan book, the 3 candidates I read/am reading all deal with personality issues which is quite interesting and once again supports my theory that books find us when we need them.

The Fowler follows the questions of how we build our own memory world from events that took place in early childhood.
Ferris' book deals with the need to belong to a community, to feel part of "something", and the Hustvedt promises to be all about "what can I be if I open up for the possibilities my life offers - and how will I be perceived then" (not necessarily well as the first chapter shows).

I spent an audible credit on Orfeo and also bought The Wake which was on special offer on amazon.com yesterday. So I am well-set with Booker candidates for now.

****

I finished my July AAC read, Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, which in the end I quite liked. I had put it on hold twice, but those last 15% were quite enjoyable again, once the travellers finally arrived in Jerusalem.

For the August challenge I haven't decided yet whether to read American Pastoral or The Plot Against America. None of them really interests me right now, I might take a break from the challenge this month. On the other hand, I haven't finished a single 1,001 book since June, so I might read one of them for that purpose.

Longer than the review on my Booker thread because I added the "personal" paragraph which explains why I could identify with a character who's widely described as unlikeable. Feel free to skip, as always. :)

63. To Rise Again At A Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris (Booker 2014 LL 2/13)

I read a couple of reviews after starting this book. The first Kindle test chapter was full with dentist details, mainly about the importance of flossing, and I wanted to make sure not all the book would be equally repulsive. Some comments compared the story to Mr Penumbra, others recalled The Finkler Question. The one I disliked, the other one I quite enjoyed, so I gave this book a go. Well, it has certain similarities with TFQ and appealed to me in the same way for a short while. Thankfully, this is no Penumbra/ Harold Fry/etc. “how becoming a better person/ trusting the nice people at Google changed this solitary man’s life for the better” stuff.

The protagonist Paul is a successful dentist in Brooklyn. He is single, having separated from his co-worker/secretary Connie just a couple of months ago. His dental hygienist Mrs I-forgot-her-name- already is a devout Catholic and from time to time tries to lead him onto the “right path”. While his professional life is quite a success, Paul’s private life is a different story. His father, a devout fan of the Red Sox, committed suicide when Paul was nine years old, and he never processed that experience. He clings to his own fanship of the Red Sox in an unhealthy way, rewatching old games every night while having take-out, because he tells himself: “games night is an excuse to be solitary and if every night is games night, life can’t be too bad”. Since early childhood (since his father’s death) he tries to find a sense and real companionship by intruding into religious (warm, family-like) communities by falling in love with women belonging to it. He loses himself in those relationships and his attempt to become part of “something” he can’t grasp. Connie has been his Jewish “experiment”, and like the Catholic one before, it went wrong because Paul has no basic belief. He wants to be part of the group, learn the history, participate in the rituals, but he can’t share the faith in the respective form of god and his words.

Personal religious experiences
I could identify partly during this introductory part. I remember my first real confrontation with Catholicism aged 12 on a class trip to Bamberg in Bavaria where we visited numerous churches. I fell in love with the rituals, the candles, the crossing, the holy water. German Protestantism doesn’t exactly hug you, far from it. I experienced it as virtually “nothing” – some behavior rules, a most boring mass on Sundays no-one I knew regularly and voluntarily attended, altogether a dreary system. I seriously considered converting to Catholicism then and the warmth and open arms it promised. But then I (again aged 12!) realized that I couldn’t believe in the Saintness of Mary and all the other saints, in the role of the pope and that I disagreed with some of the most basic statements, i.e. re divorce or the marriage for priests. So I knew it could never be for me. My mother (an ex-Catholic) was quite relieved. And while I had similar weaker phases later in my life (Catholicism numerous times, also when I moved here where crosses are present in every small shop, Judaism, even Buddhism) I always knew I couldn’t enter into something I wasn’t born into unless I really really believed in it and was willing to keep that belief up. It’s difficult enough to be dishonest about job qualifications, but being dishonest about faith will tear you apart at some point.
I now accept that I am a free thinker, though not necessarily an atheist, and I am happier with that than I could be with any adopted religion that just isn’t mine.
end of personal religious experiences

Therefore I became annoyed with this middle-aged dentist who clearly couldn’t arrive at that conclusion, felt like a victim instead and who was at no point ready to confront his real issues. I would have liked to read how he himself finds a sugar-free realistic way out of his misery. Instead, early in the book Paul notices that “someone” has hijacked his online life. Someone started a website for the dental practice, someone is leading discussions in his RL name in the Red Sox forum, and that someone uses him to spread information about an obscure stone-old Palestinian cult, the “Ulms”. The identity hijacking and manipulation of someone’s personality via internet could also have been an interesting story (especially given recent events), but no – Paul quickly gets involved into the idea of the Ulms, a religion believing in god, but at the same time doubting his existence.

I disliked everything about the cult, I disliked the way Paul and other (non-)believers handled it, I disliked the ending. I really got his need to belong and all his mechanisms repressing his feeling of solitude. But what do I learn from this book?
The book gets 3 stars because I could relate to Paul and because it wasn’t sugary and because it made me think about my own religious experiences. But a Booker candidate?

Edit:
P.S.: I fully forgot to mention that the book has some quite funny bits and even made me lough a couple of times. I just wish it would then not have turned to the Ulms again. Imo Ferris' strength is writing about normal stuff in an original way, not so much inventing something (like the Ulms background) from scratch. I could have followed Paul's normal daily routines and especially his bickerings with the hygienist quite a bit longer.

64. The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain (AAC July read)

This is a travelogue written by the young Mark Twain who participated in a pilgrim’s trip to Europe and Palestine. I’d read A Tramp Abroad some years ago and basically knew what I was in for: great observations, sharp wit, probably condescending remarks about the natives, and also some lengths. That’s also exactly what I got. The lengths caused some interruptions, but the concept of the travelogue also made it easy to get back into the book because I couldn’t lose any story.

The group visits Madeira, Spain, Morocco, France, many places in Italy, Greece (MT took some risk to get to the Acropolis!) and finally arrives in Palestine where a long exhausting trek starts towards Jerusalem. There were clearly different options to get there, like in a modern package tour, but throughout the trip MT chooses the most adventurous one. On the way back they stop in Egypt and on the Bermudas, but are denied access to all other countries for quarantine reasons after having been to Palestine.

Well, I wouldn’t have made that trip, at least not that later part, and I can well understand that MT soon became kind of travel-weary (which he openly admits). I can also understand most of his negative remarks which are less racist, just annoyed with all the misery he encountered and which he sometimes misinterprets as passivity. There’s much of “we Americans are better/ America is better”, and maybe he should have added somewhere (and maybe he did and I missed it) that America was better because its people had fled from the circumstances in their old countries and were willing to create something new.
But I don’t know what I’d say after weeks on horse-/mule-/camelback in the desert. I'd probably be far less friendly and understanding than MT in his worst moments.

Rating: 3.5 stars

WOW! I had completely lost you, so I am only now reading the whole thread. You have worked your way through some serious stuff, dear Nathalie, and you may add me to the list of supporters who can only look at you in awe. I will be excited to see where your sensitivity and zest for life lead you next!
I am also thrilled with your holiday pictures and will keep checking back for the rest.
And I'm eager to see what you think of Orfeo. Richard Powers has long been one of my favorite contemporary authors. When I have my own decks a little clearer, I'll invest in this one.
(I think your man-friend's reaction to your wanting to "share" is typical. Men, including my DH, are in some kind of practical mode. They don't get the value of simply talking without necessarily coming to a resolution. I have come to depend on women friends for that. Sad, but less frustrating all around.)

Hi Nathalie! It's been so long since I visited your thread that it opened with Easter goodies! So glad to see you're exploring consciousness. I'm on a similar path with a book group reading The Untethered Soul and that has led to discussions on so many enlightening topics. We, humans, are amazing creatures and have so much power within us.

Your holiday pics are few but say so much!

Good luck with the Booker LL. Will you make your own SL before the official one comes out? I plan on reading some of those but to loaded down to read the LLers.

>179 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy!! :)
I have some very nice holiday pics on my ipad, but at home I am still too lazy to start that old Macbook which is the only device I can connect it with. I must buy a mouse for the ipad, I am unable to get those pics posted directly from it, my fingers just can't mark and move stuff. I will forever be generation mouse, never generation touchscreen... :)
There is also some weird movement I have to do with 3 fingers to get a book deleted from the Kindle ipad app and I just can't do it!

I am looking forward to the Powers book. I hope for better weather so I can walk to the office again and listen to the AB on the way. Since I came back, it has been raining daily, sometimes all day. Strange summer here...

And you're probably right with the "typical male" reaction. Maybe it's different with the younger generation who had more independent mothers to watch. My mother can't even buy a small bedside lamp without "having to ask her husband first" (as if he'd notice there is a new lamp at all as long as it works).

>180 Carmenere: Hi Lynda!
I'll take a look at that book, once I am through with those Bookers... or maybe even earlier. I just ordered the test chapter.

Yes, I am planning to have my own SL ranking done as far as possible before the official announcement. I am trying to read them all (well, the published ones). I was also quite hungry for some contemporary novels, but I guess like last year I'll run out of steam halfway through and start craving some nice solid Dickens.

Great review of the dentist book - ugh - I am so glad I don't have to read it!!!!!!!

>183 sibylline: I just added an edit to my review. The book was actually quite funny (though still pointless) as long as it didn't deal with those Ulms.

>110 Deern: Natalie, my partner Will (who, by the way previously lived in Germany), extols Ann Rynd. I think he would very much like to read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut .

And, I ditto what Peggy said in message 179! "WOW! I had completely lost you, so I am only now reading the whole thread. You have worked your way through some serious stuff, dear Nathalie, and you may add me to the list of supporters who can only look at you in awe. I will be excited to see where your sensitivity and zest for life lead you next!"

Nathalie, thanks for sharing. I read with great interest. I'm impressed with the way you're had these revelations and have made all this progress so quickly over the last couple of years. That's really amazing.

As for the Longlist, I've reserved a few from the library, but honestly, I have so many Booker books from previous years still unread, and then the fact that I really promised myself this year that I'd reduce the tbr, that I don't know how much time I'll make for them. So it's always nice to see there are people like you who are making them a priority.

>185 Whisper1: Linda: I always felt intimidated by AR, but I will get there eventually. A recommendation from Will certainly helps. :)
And thank you so much!!

>186 Smiler69: Hi Ilana - thank you! And it's incredible how quickly I was able to apply those revelations to the books I am reading, especially the Hustvedt I finished late last night. I am wondering if I identify too much with characters or if books come flying to me when they fit my life situation?
Reading the LL is the only literary prize challenge I indulge in. It's fun, although it costs me a small fortune every time. Trying to get them all read, hoping they will all be published in time... and then with all their experimental styles and often problem-laden stories they usually set me up for some nice (and free) classics again. Last year, after finishing the LL, I jumped right into the pre-1800s of the 1,001 list and made some good progress there. :)
I also still have to read many of the old winners.

>183 sibylline: Reading the Hustvedt book along with the Bowen reports was incredible! I was always miles ahead of the main character with my analysis of her issues. :))

******
Reading:
I finished and loved the Hustvedt. Loved it a bit too much probably, my review is 2 word pages long and must be shortened! :)
Started the Kingsnorth next, and after getting really angry about not understading a single word, I tried to read a passage aloud and it worked quite well. But this will be a slow read and the plot better be good, with all that work it requires!

65. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt (Booker 2014 LL 3/13)

What a book! I must warn you that I might have taken this story far too personal and that this surely has influenced my rating and my interpretation.

The book pretends to be the authentic story of the deceased artist Harriet “Harry” Burden, but it’s fictional. The introduction is already part of the story and should be read (I usually skip introductions which are often full of spoilers). Harriet, it should be mentioned, was never a conventional beauty. A big women over 6 ft tall, voluptuous, with “crazy hair” and a loud voice, with a fondness for hats and colorful clothes, she never really fit into the artists’ world, at least that’s what she’s been feeling all her life. She has been married to super-successful art dealer Felix Lord and during her marriage completely neglected her own work. After his death she re-emerged, but decided to present her art not under her own name but to use instead 3 different men as “masks”. All three shows were successful, but when she tried to go public with the truth, no-one believed her, and one of her masks, extremely handsome Rune, turned against her. This is what the reader learns already in the introduction. The book then follows Harriet’s life, using extracts of her various notebooks, interviews with partner and children, friends and enemies, newspaper clips, etc.. What emerges slowly is not a simple black and white story about “that poor woman as a victim of the male art world”. There are many layers to Harriet and to her fears and I am sure there are many ways to read and understand this book.

I read the few comments available on LT. One reader got really worked up, saying that Hustvedt did bad research because modern art has in fact been dominated by women since the 1990s. For me, the art absolutely wasn’t the point, Harriet might as well have written poetry or theater plays.

I understand this as the story of a woman who tries to find her voice in a world that she is convinced (and that is the point imo) doesn’t want to listen to her.

In my personal stuff posts on this thread I wrote about self-sabotage. I believe that this is exactly what Harriet is unconsciously doing. Her parents gave her the feeling of being “wrong” in some way. She grew up and took the first hesitant steps into the world she has in fact been made for, because she did have an incredible talent, a “huge voice”. And then she fell in love with a much older man who was like her father and who had a profession that would automatically be an obstacle for her development as an artist. And the first thing he demanded was that she cuts off her wild hair! How symbolic is that?? And when she finally discovered her freedom after his death, she still didn’t dare stepping out, because for 60 or so years she had internalized that no-one wanted to see or hear her, and so she used those masks, unable to face another rejection.

Some spoilers following which were merely my interpretation – I wrote this before finishing the book and in the last 10% Harry herself gets there – so I was right, and better skip if you are planning to read the book!
Rune clearly was a mirror-man. With him she created her best art, based on her deepest fears, but from the start it was clear he’d betray her and turn her into exactly the ridiculous person in the eyes of the world that she still believed to be. Because that’s what she instinctively chose him for. I was really wondering why her childhood-friend-turned-therapist Rachel or her regular therapist she has been seeing for years were not able to make her notice that. There was all that helpless rage in Harry against all those people/men who reduced her, but in the end it was rage against her father and against herself, because once her childhood was over she always took care not to speak out/ to have someone around who cut her off. Then, oh so symbolically, when she was at her worst ever and bursting with rage after the Rune letdown, the cancer diagnosis arrived (there is that esoteric theory that resentment can be an element in the development of tumors, Harry even addresses that as “bad irony”).

Self-sabotage aside - is this book feminist, just looking at the plain story? Yes, but Hustvedt’s misogynists are not so much in the public, they are in the families. It all comes back to Harry's lack of self-esteem and poise. If you have lots of it, you can sell trash. If you have none, the most brilliant work will be rejected. She was also convinced to be ugly (while some male voices in the book call her pretty) and the 3 young men she selected as masks were all very handsome in different ways. If she just wanted to prove the gender problem, why didn’t she select a 60 year old man in bright dungarees as mask at least for one of her shows?

Smaller Spoilers: So what if a self-confident Harriet had stepped out of her box? She might have been rejected, yes. At first. But a liberated Harriet, with her financial background, most probably wouldn’t have cared. She would have trusted her art and her voice and persevered. She would have been able to create without using a man as a tool (not to be confused with a muse!) to unleash her art. And the world would have embraced her eventually – because her art isbrilliant - if she had made herself a constant presence, if she had claimed and taken the place she deserved. After her husband’s death she had all the money and all the freedom and was ultimately unable to escape her own boundaries. There’s an interesting counterexample in the book in the character of that esoteric aura-seeing Pinky girl. With a much worse upbringing she managed to follow her path and while she meets with open rejection all the time, she shrugs it off and just walks on. I loved it that she and Harry meet again in the end, and those scenes around Harry’s slow and painful death from cancer are heartbreaking.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Started The Plot Against America for the AAC and returned to The Narrow Road To The Deep North.

I like it to start books without knowing anything about the plot. So on the first pages of TPAA I was really wondering for a moment if there had in fact been a president Lindbergh, maybe just for a short time, in 1940. The idea behind this book is fascinating, the reading however becomes more and more painful. On the one hand because I see things unfolding I wish I could stop - and I even catch myself thinking "at least it's only 3 more years and a bit" when I saw we had entered 1941. But when will war end in this alternate reality? So this is "good" pain.
On the other hand there is "bad" pain around some drama I don't like at all. It feels Stephen Kingish in its predictability. I like Stephen King, but sometimes I get annoyed with his stereotypes. So the drama around Sandy that is beginning now just makes me want to put the book down. It feels so unnecessary. Maybe it will lead somewhere, but right now I find it hard to read on.

Unnecessary drama seems to make up 80% of the Kingsnorth book and I still have no idea why the Burma railway story wasn't enough. I read another 5% and decided to skip the love story. I hope I'll get through the Burma part. I don't want to over-criticize a writing style which many people obviously adore, looking at the reviews. For my personal taste however this is completely overblown.

Good news however about The Wake: really starting to enjoy this. Reading this aloud is fun and I understand most of the words.

That's what I love the Booker for: 2 okay to mediocre books first, then one I didn't enjoy much, and then two absolute gems, first the Hustvedt and now History of the Rain by Niall Williams.
I haven't decided yet which one is my favorite, they are so different. The Hustvedt book is sharp, smart, it made my brain work. The Williams book is wonderfully poetic, not less intelligent, but appeals to a different part of the brain, where you just want to let yourself float on the stream of the words.
Peggy might love it, it is full of Dickens references.

The Wake is work where I am not yet sure if it's going to pay out in the end. At about 25% now, the originality of the language starts wearing out, and while in the background much has happened, it has all been hear-say. But I guess Kingsnorth wanted to take a slow approach to let the readers settle in the language. Hoping for some more direct action now and less of the element I don't like in historical fiction: that typical narrator's voice that detached and without emotions tells the most horrible things "many years later". At least it's a man's voice for a change.

You got me in a word, Nathalie. History of the Rain is on the wish list! I'll have to think a little more about the Hustvedt.

66. The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanigan (Booker 2014 LL 4/13)

This was a hard fight because this book belongs to a genre I normally avoid: contemporary fiction looking back on some terrible real events and mixing in romance to add drama or to attract more readers. In the movies it’s Titanic (only seen on TV and never completely) or Pearl Harbour. I simply don’t get it: you have all the drama in the historic event. Everything that’s added will be too much. For me, at least. Because I found that 2star comment on amazon, saying something like “didn’t interest me, at least there was the romance”. So there are readers attracted by that, just not me.

Plot: many Australian POWs of the Japanese in WWII were sent to build the Burma railway in the middle of the jungle. The pace was murderous, add the climatic circumstances, severe hunger, monsoon, no showers – the men were dying like flies of ulcers and other injuries, cholera, malaria, they were just wasting away. Dorrigo Evans is one of the POWs, he’s the camp doctor and does his possible to save at least some of them. I guess the descriptions of life in that camp couldn’t be more graphic and it has certainly still been much worse. But the camp scenes make just about 25% of the book. There’s also old Dr Evans, confronted with his memories again when he has to write the foreword to a book about the railway camps. Over the years he has become an icon of humanity in the worst circumstances and yes, in Flanigan’s camp narrative he often enough behaves like a saint among many weaker humans. Then there’s the Japanese, and I liked it that Flanigan gave their thoughts and post-war lives some room. We also see that it’s not the officers in the camps who later get punished for their cruelties, it’s mainly the low-ranks, often not of Japanese origin. And then there are the chapters about the ex-prisoners returning to normal life and their various experiences.
I thought those parts were well written and gripping and I would have rated this with 4 stars.

But then there was the love drama. I mean – it’s okay, that Evans doesn’t really love his fiancée Ella. It’s okay for the story that their marriage isn’t that great and his constant cheating is something that doesn’t touch me. But Amy seemed like someone from another world. And the more I read, the more she became an add-on. If you read the almost Amy-free parts and then part 2 which is all Amy, it feels like you’re reading two different books. Everything in that part screams “worst of Hollywood”. There is that indescribable “magnetism” between them, and oh my – how long do they resist the temptation! And then she’s his “uncle’s” wife. And then she stumbles over some wire and has a scratch ON HER THIGH and he SUCKS OFF THE BLOOD (this became sexy with the Twilight books I guess, but in the 1940s wasn't it just "eeeew"?), and oh god, it’s magic and still they resist and don’t do it, that happens just an hour or so later, but then it’s WORLD-CHANGING!!. Well, after reading the first 3 chapters with the time jumps, you just know that Amy is “cannon fodder”. She has to die on the way, because otherwise, why wouldn’t they be together in old age? Well, the truth is much simpler and not dramatic at all and makes Amy even more seem like a late add-on following publisher directions.
FAT SPOILER So you have both been told that the other one is dead. Although there was never any proof. So despite this being a world-changing LOVE you both decided never to investigate. Okay. But then you run into each other decades later and can't even say "Oh my - I thought you were dead???" But still be sad and full of longing?? No, Amy must have been an add-on.
And I also wonder if THE REVELATION (which has nothing to do with Amy) Evans’ brother makes on his death bed was added and why, because it leads nowhere at all.
Zero stars for the extra drama.

I really don’t know what to do about the rating now. I could rate with three, but at times I was so angry with this book and really close to abandoning it that I am inclined to go below the three.

For now: 2.5 stars

67. History of the Rain by Niall Williams (Booker 2014 LL 5/13)

Ruth Swain is young, under 20, and she is very ill. We don’t know exactly what it is, but it sounds like some type of leukemia to me. She has to stay in bed, in the small attic room of the family home, where she’s watching the never-ending rain falling on the roof light.

Her Nan is over 90 and can't come upstairs any more, so they have to communicate by screaming through the house. Then there’s Mam, and slowly we learn that there has been a Dad as well for a long time. And there has been Aeney, Ruth’s twin brother, her golden second half. Ruth is an extreme reader and from her Dad she inherited all his books, over 3,000, which she is determined to read during her lifetime and in which she hopes to find the father she has lost long ago, while he still was physically there. Ruth’s narrative is filled with book references and she has a perfect memory of characters and events. She writes down her family’s story and gives it to her critical ex-teacher Mrs Quinty to read. As Ruth didn’t really know her father’s part of the family, the Swains from England, she uses the classic novels she has been reading and some Irish mythology to spin her own version of the events – the way her father did by using motives of Moby Dick when he told her and Aeney about his life before he came to this remote Irish village by the Shannon river.

This is meant to be writing by someone who doesn’t get out, who lives in an inside world of thoughts and stories, and imo Niall Williams has done this perfectly. I especially loved the way how Ruth weaves recent real events like the financial and building crisis into the story, with half-sentences and side remarks, but when the book is finished you have a good idea of how strong the community has been affected. To stay with the metaphor, if Ruth’s story is a fabric, the thread that holds it all together is love. Real warm affectionate love for friends and family, and that’s why Ruth and her Mam and her Nan, despite everything that happens to them, remain positive and accepting. Over the book Ruth’s health situation deteriorates, but the book ends differently from what I had feared. That last part, last sentence moved me so much that I really started crying over the book, but it was some sort of happy crying, like my heart needed more room and I couldn’t breathe.

The “worst” thing about the book is that you’ll drop whatever other modern book you’re reading, just to turn to Dickens, Stevenson, Austen, Hardy, Melville and all the other great classics.

For me, this is a serious candidate for the prize. And therefore I fear it won’t even get shortlisted, like last year’s Transatlantic which still remains my favorite of the 2013 LL.

Rating: 4.5 for now

The Wake: if that fugol is mentioned one more time I'll... That's the good thing about books, you can throw them against a wall. Better don't do that with the Kindle.
No, I really enjoy it I just wish I could read it quicker (which is impossible thanks to that fake old-anglo-saxon language) and could finally get to the action I hope is hidden somewhere behind all the fugol sighting memories and the being ceosan by that smith whos sweaord is nefer swung.
What is a buccmaster?
Orfeo: Yay, the first time I can listen to an English AB on double speed, so this should just take 7 hours instead of 14! Didn't like the beginning, but audio chapter 2 was quite good.
The Plot Against America: On hold since Sandy's "It's all dad's fault!" outbreak. Must skip fake teenage drama and concentrate on alternative reality.

>191 LizzieD: Peggy, I hope you'll like it. It's certainly a book for the lovers of the classics. And for those who love salmon.

Hi Natalie

I'm simply stopping by and waving hi.

Amazing review of the Hustvedt - sounds like a 'must read'. I do admire that you read the whole of the LL each year.

Laughing reading about The Wake! Here's a snippet about Buccmaster I found on a blog:
"All this brings me to Paul Kingsnorth’s debut novel, The Wake. It’s the story of Buccmaster of Holland, an Anglo-Saxon ‘socman’ (someone relatively high up the social scale), living through the Norman invasion, bearing witness to the destruction of his home and family and becoming one of the ‘grene men’ i.e. the guerrilla fighters who battled the invaders for a good decade after 1066."

>195 Whisper1: Hi Linda, thanks for visiting! :)

>196 sibylline: So Buccmaster is his name? I thought it was a title and meant that he was able to read and write.. I am now at 40% and while there has been a little more action, the sword still has not been swung and the future guerilla fighter has caused more ill than good to his fellow anglo-saxons (that's my interpretation of the events).

The Hustvedt is still clinging to a part of my brain days after finishing. History of the Rain is clinging to a different part, but not less firmly.

This is only the second year I am trying to read the LL after 2013. I got infected by the Booker virus in 2012, but quite late then, and only just made it through the short list that year. Though I still think Umbrella counted for 4 books at least. "Us" is announced to be published after the prize date, so there's a good chance I won't read that one at all.

Natalie, Congratulations on reading so many wonderful books. Your reviews are wonderful. And, if English is not your primary language, that I would only hope that the students I supervise could come anywhere near your writing style.

>198 Whisper1: Thank you Linda, this is so kind! :))

******
Just want to say that I might be off for a couple of days. I am quite busy at work, my parents are here, we'll drive back to Germany together on Sunday and then on Monday and Tuesday I'll be in Belgium for business and on Wednesday all day on the train back to Merano. That means probably no internet time between tomorrow business hours and next Thursday.

Safe journey, Nathalie.

Wow! Do be safe!
I hope you at least enjoy your parents and get to see some wonderful countryside as you go.

Safe travels!

Last day in the office and this morning I unexpectedly finished The Wake - it ends at only 80% (Kindle) and then come notes, glossary, etc. So I sacrificed my lunch break to write this review because I know next week I won't remember a single character name anymore.
Sorry - it's extra long again, but it was such a great book!!!

68. The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (Booker 2014 LL 6/13) - contains only small spoilers

I had some problems with the pseudo old anglo-saxon Latinism-free English Paul Kingsnorth has invented for his novel, but I quickly got used to it. I checked the glossary twice and in both cases I didn’t find the words I was looking for – probably because they were close to some modern English expression I don’t know. Instead I found easy-for-me words like “fugol” (bird, Vogel in German) or petersilie (parsley, Petersilie in German until today). I read many passages aloud, most probably mispronounced most words, but enjoyed this half-poetic language enormously. Paul Kingsnorth writes in his notes that he used it because for him modern language in historical fiction feels fake. Yes, it gave a new authentic feeling to the book although it also simplified the protagonists thoughts and the characters’ dialogues in a way that I was wondering if those people might have been that “simple-minded”. Let’s see…

The protagonist is Buccmaster of Holland. That’s a name, not a title. He is the richest landowner in his ham/village and while he has no official functions like the thengn, he is used to be consulted in all questions. He lives with his wife Odelyn whom he beats when “necessary”, i.e. when she gan agan him (= doubts his decisions) as sadly was the custom then. There are also two teenage sons plus two male and one female geburs (servants). One day he sees a strange fugol/ bird, and from then on things are starting to change. King Harald calls an army against a supposed attack from the Normans and Buccmaster’s sons both join the party against his will. They return after 6 weeks without action, but after a couple of days are called again, this time against the Danes in the North. While the army is up North, Normandy attacks from the South and the battle of Hastings is fought and won by the French, Guillaume becomes king. Buccmaster’s sons don’t return from the battles and he then loses everything when he and others from his ham refuse to pay the new taxes (geld). He goes into hiding in the woods, is joined by two other men and they begin planning an uprise against “the frenc”.

This sounds like a lot of action, but in reality nothing much happens. The whole big battle happens far away and is later retold. For Buccmaster this isn’t just a war between anglisc and frenc, it is also a war between gods. Like his grandfather he is a pagan with a spiritual connection to nature, always seeing signs and hearing voices speaking to him. The sword his grandfather gave him is said to have been made by Welend the Smith, a mystical character who often whispers orders into Buccmaster’s ears. He starts to believe he’s the ceosan one, the one who’ll lead England back to old Anglo-Saxon glory and back to the old faith. At the same time he is strangely hesitant when it comes to fighting the frenc or joining other usurpers. Towards the middle of the book the reader begins doubting Buccmaster’s reliability, and for a while I felt stupid and thought I just wasn’t getting it. But those doubts are intended and reflected in the feelings of his followers. Sometimes I had to laugh about a certain “clumsiness” the ceosen one demonstrates, for example when he tries to kill a pig – something he should be used to do as a landowner, but clearly isn’t. No, he isn’t the brightest one, but he is filled with an indestructible arrogance against all those anglisc people he believes to be in a lower class. Two years after losing his house and land he still calls himself a great landowner and refuses to listen to an ex-gebur. I liked him less and less, and for a while believed that I was supposed to root for him as the story’s hero.

That’s a great trick Paul Kingsnorth plays on the reader: the language is simple, the narrator's thoughts are simple, so the reader supposes the story must be simple as well. It isn’t, and discovering this made me finally love this book which is now among my top 3 on the LL. I’ve now finished just 6 of 13 and already rated 3 with more than 4 stars. On last year’s LL I had just one 4.5 star book, Transatlantic, which didn’t even make it onto the SL and then The Luminaries with 4.25.

If you want to give it a try, I suggest you read a couple of pages in the library/book shop/ ebook test chapters and see how you cope with the language. Take your time, this isn’t meant to be a quick read. In my opinion it’s absolutely worth the effort - and I have been doubting this for a while, thinking it was just another mediocre historical novel with a language gimmick. This is a great composition and (what happens rarely) I’d like to reread it soon.

Rating: 4.3 stars (==> 4.5)

>200 Ameise1:, >201 LizzieD:, >202 Whisper1:: Thank you all! I hope to finish my audio book and maybe this month's ACC book on the train.

Next Friday is a holiday here, so there's just one day of office work next week and lots of traveling. I am looking forward to it.

HAPPY WEEKEND EVERYONE!!

Some great reading Natalie. I've resisted History of the Rain so far (with difficulty) but I think I will succumb to The Wake as the kindle edition is pretty cheap. I've read some of the language and it didn't seem that difficult.

Truly a superb review of The Wake which I am going to have to wishlist now, no thanks to you!!!!!!! (:))

Ah, Nathalie, I'm torn. Your review of The Wake is seductive, but I've read a bit and can't see myself putting forth the effort to continue. Maybe the lower Kindle price will stay put, and I'll be braver by and by! (I should also note that I'm one who waddled through The Luminaries; I never thought it was worth the time. Oh well.)

Hi Nathalie, I wish you a fabulous sunday.

Nathalie, you are doing an amazing job of going through the Booker Prize longlist! I'm only 25 pages into my first book, so I'm barely out of the starting blocks. I haven't been reading your reviews in detail, but I am paying attention to your comments about the books, so I'll read History of the Rain, The Blazing World and The Wake ahead of To Rise at a Decent Hour and The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

>203 Deern: Well that's a maybe... sounds like he's gone to a lot of effort that I just can't imagine being that rewarded. Hmmm - will take your advice and tester chapter it I think!

hi all, posting from my ipad typing with one finger and i don't have much time, so i apologize for typos and non-existent capital letters...

now in germany at my parents' place, weather is horrible: cold, rain and thunderstorms (yes, that should be a contradiction, but it seems you can have those also when it's cold). i spent most of the sunday in bed because the heating only works from september through winter and stupid me didn't bring a single sweater :)

re the wake: i don't know if i can recommend it the way i did for the hustvedt or the williams. for me it is no question that i am going to read all candidates. so i just had to decide whether to read this book now or in september, and because i love challenges, i jumped right into it. and i didn't have an easy time with it. i am happy that i loved it in the end, but i admit i also wanted it to be worth the effort. if i had "just read it" i might have lost my patience with it by halftime, because it really takes a while until sth happens. so if you have doubts and aren't convinced after the test chapter, better leave it, at least for now. i don't want to talk you into sth you might hate...

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at halfpoint now with orfeo, and i started the lives of others which seems to be terribly long. amazon says 500+ pp, but the test chapter took forever. so far it's another promising one. at first it seemed a bit over-written, but now i start feeling at home in the language.

orfeo started really good, but now becomes a bit soso...

Well I have just booked tickets to a talk by Paul Kingsnorth on Friday. Hopefully it will be in normal English.

>212 SandDune: wow, this is going to be real interesting! :))

5 mins of free wlan at frankfurt main station before getting on the train to munich. can't believe how this has changed since my last train ride about 3 years ago... and i notice i miss coffee shops and all those international eateries... you can get a vanilla soy latte everywhere here, but nowhere in merano. and the juice bars and the french patisserie... i'm in food heaven!!!!
and don't even gt me started on the option of buying english newspapers. i've become a hilly-billy (hope that's not an offensive expression)

I love hilly-billy! (but it is really hill-billy). Not offensive in this context or most others as it has become quite archaic! Or, at the very least, quaint.

Glad you are enjoying the food - I'm off to France (aka land of no wifi) on Friday morning so will be awol for 2 weeks. But there are pastries. And Pommeau (apple liquor). And crepes. And langoustines. And beautiful beaches. And, most importantly no work.

Huzzah for holidays!

Thanks to all for sharing your travel experiences. My partner Will lived in Germany for a number of years. Often, when he reminisces he wishes he would have stayed there.

>214 sibylline:: thank you, Lucy! "hilly-billy" (with the two y) seems to be a Germanized form then, it's actually in use here and not offensive, but you never know how it was meant in the original language, so I thought I'd better be careful. :)

>215 BekkaJo: wow, France! What can I say except for ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY! which you'll do anyway :)

>216 Whisper1: hi Linda, I belive you once told me where he lived back then, but I am sorry I can't remember it... I am sure he'd love it even more now, it has become so modern and international in the towns, also when it comes to food. Just this weekend my parents and I discussed how we used to go to the (terrible) restaurants of the shopping centers in Wiesbaden when I was a kid. I asked them why we never went elsewhere and they said "there was no elsewhere". Just one Italian pizzeria in the town center, the first hamburger restaurant opened in 1979, and the street where now we often go to have a pizza in one of the numerous Italian restaurants was still a bad red-light district. I think the first salad bar opened in the early 80s. And now you walk into Frankfurt station at 9am and already get vegan curry and other stuff that will take decades or forever to arrive here in the Alps...
But hey, here I have the mountains instead! :))

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Back home after my long train ride. It looks like it has been raining here as much as in Germany, all rivers are muddy, wild and very high. The washing I put on my balcony on Saturday is completely wet, of course.
I finished another Booker book, The Lives of Others, a great, but very hard read. Another one which I'll rate with 4 stars or higher, and imo another serious candidate for the prize. I started candidate 8, "The Dog", which is ok written, but so far at 25% completely pointless and plotless.
Done with reading for today, now I want to eat that tarte au citron I bought at the French patisserie this morning (no need to worry, it survived the journey, I had a cooling bag with me).

Welcome home! Ah, soggy laundry. Dripping into the bath now, I expect! We're having rain too.

>218 sibylline: Thanks and yes, part of it. The rest must be rewashed. :)

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"The Dog" is at 38% still plotless and feels like reading some extra-long lifestyle magazine article. Not that I dislike it, I quite enjoy it, but it's just... empty. Well-written brain candy, very welcome after the extra-hard The Lives of Others. Maybe the writing qualifies it for the list.

I just saw the longlist for the Deutscher Buchpreis 2014. 20 books! How can they come up with 20 German books when the Booker People are able to limit themselves to 13 from a far, far greater selection? I looked at some of them and they are really long, 500pp+. And the ones that have been published cost a fortune. I once considered going through that LL as well( without time restriction of course), but just looking at the list I feel discouraged every year. I put 3 on my WL, we'll see...

69. The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (Booker 2014 LL 7/13)

Two quotes first:
“Poetry, I bid you goodbye today.
The world is prosey with hunger
The full moon is like a piece of singed bread.”

“… that all this talk about ‘the outside world’ turned round to one thing only: what the outside world made of your own life. You were forever at the center of things, the subject of the sentence; it was not the outside world you were thinking of, but where you stood in the regard of that world. He wanted to say to his father that others thought about their own lives too, perhaps more often, more deeply, than they did of his fathers’s”

“He” is Supratik, the book’s protagonist, the oldest grandchild in the house of the Goshes in Kalkutta. The book is set in the late 1960s until 1970, with numerous jumps far back to the youth of Supratik’s grandparents and the following generation.

On retrospect, this might become the greatest book for me on this year’s Booker LL. Certainly not the nicest one and by far (so far) the most uncomfortable one. It hits you on the head, over and over again, and just when you think you can lean back comfortably, thinking “well, those were the bad times, but now everything has changed”, the book makes a last jump into 2012 and you’ll lose that illusion as well. I love this book, but should you set out to read it, be prepared for lots of desperation, some graphic violence especially towards the ending and then something really disgusting I don’t think was necessary for the plot. This isn’t an important spoiler, so I’ll warn you: When Priyo sets out to a brothel, or when he opens the bathroom door to find his sister inside… don’t eat, put all food aside. Or maybe skip altogether the next couple of paragraphs. That’s a sexual practice I’ve heard of, but wasn’t planning to read about. Be also prepared not to especially like anyone, although Mukherjee will make you feel at least some pity or sympathy for most characters.

The book begins with an intro that for a long time seems unconnected to the rest of the story and sets the tone for some harsh scenes the reader has to expect in this book. A poor farmer, after 3 years of drought and days and days without any food, in an act of desperation kills his wife, his three little children and commits suicide.
Then, with chapter 1, the book turns into a classic family saga, rich in words and with a vast list of characters. The Goshes have made a nice fortune with paper mills and are among the best-respected families in their part of the town. From the first chapters on however, Mukherjee makes it obvious that the opinion of the ‘outside world’ is what counts most. In the first couple of chapters the family members are introduced by showing them doing some typical tasks on a certain day at the same time while one of the daughters-in-law calls her teenage daughter Buli back from the terrace “because what should the neighbors think”. That call is the connecting element in those scenes, and I liked the idea.

The family story is then regularly interrupted by diary entries in a different print. Those are linear while the family story jumps back and forward in time. At first the reader doesn’t know who is the writer of the diary and only much later he learns for whom this diary is written and why. I won’t give away much when I say it’s written by Supratik who sets out with two friends to a remote village to spread communist messages and to lead the rice farmers against the oppressive land owners and the corrupted police. He experiences almost two years of extreme physical hardship, living with the farmers, learning their work and starving with them, before planning the first attack.

I was annoyed at each interruption of the saga with diary entries and then again when the diary was interrupted with more saga. Both parts are equally captivating in different ways. Reading the diary, I grew more and more desperate with the hopelessness of the farmers’ situation. Reading the saga, I felt more and more oppressed by the traditional family structures and the impossibility to escape, like being in a box with the walls coming closer. The structure can be confusing in the beginning, but it makes sense and it works. In the family part I felt sometimes reminded of One hundred years of solitude, I can’t say why, maybe it was that growing feeling of doom.

The list has been accused of not being international enough and I can say that so far “navel-gazing” (as Darryl calls it) novels, set in some comfy Western world environment, dominate. Fortunately for me, I liked most of them. This book falls out of that category. It's 100% India, and comfy it might look only in the first chapters. Supratik tries to make “the (improvement of the) lives of others” his main concern, but at some point has to question his own motives and his priorities.

I have no doubts it’ll make it onto the shortlist, if not win the prize. Great and intelligent storytelling and important as well. Maybe my new favorite.

Rating: 4.5 stars