Nathalie (Deern) reads on in 2016 - Part 1

My dear LT friends, welcome to my 2016 thread! I wish you all the most Happy New Year and many great reads.

I was thinking about a motto for my threads and then I thought that the only safe project for 2016 is to read 75 or more books again.

Apart from that I'm just curious what the year will bring. Tavolatas with friends? Certainly. Travels? Hopefully. New recipes? For sure. And a new home and different work as well. I'd say that's quite a lot already. :)

Looking forward to everything and I'd be glad if you joined me again!

Pictures will follow after New Year's Eve.

Books read and reviewed:

Not yet reviewed:

January:
1. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler - 3.8 stars
2. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill - 2.8 stars
3. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes - 3.8 stars
4. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - 4.2 stars
5. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies - 4 stars
6. Die Kraft liegt in mir by Tamara Dietl - 3 stars
7. Und trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen by Viktor Frankl - 5 stars
8. Stiller by Max Frisch - 5 stars
9. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth - 4.1 stars

February:
10.L'amica geniale By Elenna Ferrante - 4.8 stars
11.Crooked House by Agatha Christie - 3 stars
12.Nate in Venice by Richard Russo - 3.7 stars

Purchases:
January:
- The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke - Kindle - DE
- Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth - Kindle - EN read
- Fifth Business by Robertson Davies - Audio - EN read
- Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes - Audio - EN read
- Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe - Kindle -EN
- Die Kraft liegt in mir by Tamara Dietl - Kindle - DE read
- Und trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen by Viktor Frankl - Kindle - DE read
- The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple - Kindle - EN ==> TA Book 1/9

February:
- Storia del nuovo cognome by Elena Ferrante - Kindle - IT ==> TA book 2/9
- Nate in Venice by Richard Russo - Kindle - EN read

Challenges:

1,001 GRs:
- January: Stiller by Max Frisch COMPLETED
- February: The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf - already read

AAC 2016:
- January: Dinner in the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler - COMPLETED
- February: Nate in Venice by Richard Russo COMPLETED

BAC 2016:
- January: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill COMPLETED, Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth COMPLETED
- February: Crooked House by Agatha Christie COMPLETED, The Age of Kali by Willam Dalrymple

CAC 2016:
- January: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies COMPLETED, Kim Thúy
- February: Helen Humphreys, Stephen Leacock

Booker books:
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (Winner 199?)

Others
Series:
Elena Ferrante Neapolitan series - read 1/4
Knausgaard????
At least 3 more Montalbanos

Best Books in 2015:

In no particular order:

Non-fiction:
The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer - my personal Book ofthe Year
Peace from Broken Pieces by Iyanla Vanzant
Forgiveness: 21 Days by Iyanla Vanzant
What Color is your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles

Fiction:
Et tu n'es pas revenu by Marceline Loridan-Ivens
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Gilead, Home and Lila by Marilynne Robinson as a trilogy
Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg
Slade House by David Mitchell

Planned reads of the month:
January
Stiller by Max Frisch (1,001)
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (AAC)
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (BAC)
L'Amica Geniale by Elena Ferrante
Finish Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (CAC)
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (BAC)

February:
- The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple (BAC)
- Crooked House by Agatha Christie (BAC)
- Nate in Venice by Richard Russo (AAC)
- The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys (CAC)
- Me Before You by JoJo Moyes
- Storia del nuovo cognome by Elena Ferrante

Hi Nathalie, I take a seat at your place. Looking foward to your readings 2016.

Welcome back!

And I'm getting in early and claiming my spot - I refuse to be awol again. well, life pending and all that ;)

Glad to see your BAC and AAC-ing again - me too, though I'm not brave enough to CAC at the same time, due to my dismal attempt at Nov/Dec in 2015!

Wishing you lots of travels (also hoping that I might get some myself too). Happy 2016 and new thread.

May 2016 be the best year ever for you, Nathalie :-)

Lovely to see you back Nathalie. xx

I have you starred Nathalie! Hope you have a great reading year!

Dropping my star, Nathalie!

Star and congratulations on steering your way with growing clarity and compassion through what could have been a devastating year. Happy 2016, dear Nathalie! I look forward to spending some of it with you.

Great to see your thread here, Nathalie!

All the best for the new reading year, Nathalie!

Guten Rutsch, Nathalie!

Hello Barbara, Jim, Bekka, Charlotte, Anita, Paul, Lori, Mamie, Peggy, Lori, Diana, Kathy and Cushla! Thank you for visiting, dropping stars and leaving good wishes!

I just had my super-light NYE dinner of red lentil dhaal and prosecco. I had prepared much more, but tasted so much during cooking that I'm not hungry anymore. Well, maybe after midnight... Almost 3 hours left, I might jump into the readathon - or just keep watching comedy on TV.

I wish you all a "Safe Slide into the New Year" (Guten Rutsch) and All the Best in 2016 for you and your loved ones!!!!

Nathalie, I like the idea of a "safe slide" into 2016. I hope to be sound asleep before midnight. I have a bit over two hours to go and I'm not sleepy yet. I look forward to following your reading once again and to seeing what life has in store for you this year. I wish you all good things! Happy New Year!

>21 Donna828: Thank you very much Donna, the same to you!!
Yes, it's a nice expression which even many with Italian mother language are using - the "auguri" (congrats) are for the next day.

I never slept as early as this year, but woke up 12 mins before midnight when the noise increased. Watched the fireworks, phoned my parents and my grandma in Germany, went back to bed and couldn't even finish my second glass of rosé prosecco of the evening.

Started the morning with a "detox" infusion from my favorite food blog because my stomach feels a bit weird (and I had less than 2 glasses of very good prosecco and not much food), loving it. It's with fresh ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, lemon and a spoonful of apple cider vinegar. Yes - sounds horrible, but tastes lovely.

My red lentil dhaal (red lentils for prosperity) turned out very well, but something went wrong with the tofu quiche this time, it tastes too "tofuey" although I had more veggies in the filling than the last two times. Couldn't eat it for dinner last night and might have to return to the pizza idea for my bday.

As I managed to clean the house yesterday afternoon I hope for much reading time today, hoping to finish my Anne Tyler for the AAC, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, over the next 2 days.

Happy New Year Nathalie!

Looking forward to following your reading again this year, Nathalie!

>22 Deern: Is that detox tonic from Oh She Glows? If it is, that's one of my favourite blogs too! Glad the drink is good; I've been contemplating giving it a try.

Hi Nathalie!! Happy New Year and all the best for a spectacular year! Looka like it's off to a healthy start! I hope to travel more often to your corner of the world this year and follow your reading progress.

Happy New Year, Nathalie!

Hello and HAPPY NEW YEAR, Bekka, Cait, Lynda and Mamie!

>24 Cait86: It is!! Great to find another fan. I've even met one in my yoga group here in Merano, and I think Mamie here knows the blog as well. Angela is totally famous. :)

I made the infusion with fresh ginger but without the cayenne pepper (as fresh ginger is already quite hot and I didn't want to unsettle my stomach even more). I thought it was delicious - who would would have thought that apple cider vinegar in an infusion is a good idea. Will have a second portion tonight.

>25 Carmenere: Healthy ended quickly when I turned to the pandoro for breakfast. I'm totally off the normally sugared stuff like biscuits, chocolate, ice cream (dont even feel like eating a Cristmas cookie), but defenseless against that sweetish brioche Italian Christmas cake. :(
Decided to go off wheat starting on the 7th for 2 weeks. *sigh*

*****

Thanks to no internet = no phone + no cell phone connection for hours (typical holiday issue) I was able to read all afternoon, and finished my first AAC read, Dinner in the Homesick Restaurant. I liked it very much, but thought A Spool of Blue Thread was more complex. Now onto the BAC with Susan Hill's The Woman in Black!

>27 Deern: Yep. I LOVE that blog!

Oh! I have Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant on the slate for January, so happy to hear that you liked it. The only other one by her that I have read is The Accidental Tourist, which I loved.

I know I needn't translate for you Nathalie, but here is it for your visitors:

"I wish you never-ending dreams
and the furious desire to realise some of them."
— Jacques Brel

>28 Crazymamie: I cooked several of her recipes for my yoga friends some weeks ago and they couldn't believe they were eating vegan. I'll order the new cookbook as soon as it's out! :)

>29 Smiler69: Merci beaucoup, ma chère Ilana! {hugs} (whatever these are called in French) :)

I don't think there's a proper synonym for "hugs" in French, strangely enough... but "des calins" is what comes to mind. Et je t'en envoie tout plein moi aussi! xx

>27 Deern: >28 Crazymamie: Angela lives about twenty minutes from me, so I enjoy her local perspective as well as her delicious food. Secretly I hope I'll run into her one day at Whole Foods ;)

Happy New Year!

>22 Deern: - Your detox infusion sounds familiar. The only difference being the one I drink does no have fresh ginger or tumeric... that has been replaced with a pinch of cayenne pepper powder. ;-)

Wishing you a Happy New Year and best wishes for 2016!

Have a wonderful bookfilled 2016, dear Nathalie. xx

Guess what? :D

Ooh, it snowed? I am not jealous, nono.. maybe a little bit. Happy Sunday, Nathalie!

>31 Smiler69: We don't have a direct one in German either, but {hugs} are known and accepted. Love the sound of the word, it sounds comforting as it should. :)

>32 Cait86: Should you run into her, tell her she has fans in Italy! :)
I was considering applying for the recipe tests for the second cookbook, but then remembered that too often I don't find the original ingredients here. I'll do a version of her vegan lasagne with basil "cheeze" for tomorrow night.

>33 sibylline: Happy New Year, Lucy! :)

>34 lkernagh: This is the first homemade infusion I ever had. Maybe I should look up more recipes, they seem easy to make.
Thank you, and the same to you! :)

>35 PaulCranswick: A Very Happy New Year to you, Paul!! :)

*****
Yes, it started snowing last night, very tentatively after months of dryness. Took some pics then because I thought it would all be gone again in the morning, but there it is - winter wonderland! Won't last, of course. But for one day it's nice to look at - and I'm glad I did all my shopping yesterday.

I worked longer than planned yesterday, and in the middle of it I took a break for another drive to the supermarket because I had changed some recipe plans and because another 2 people will come and I thought I didn't have enough prosecco. There were more people than on the 30th! I mean - I had a reason to go, but for everyone else it's a normal weekend. I really didn't get it. Of course many things weren't restocked yet, I had issues finding another 2 bottles of good prosecco.

When I finally returned home from the office in the afternoon I was so beat, I just fell on the couch, feeling ill. Couldn't read, just played a bit on the ipad (finally got Room 3) and watched Master Chef Italy. So bad... We still got Joe Bastianich (who gave up MC US), and he and the other 3 must be the worst-humored jury in the MC universe. I suspect they all hate each other. They are disrespectful towards the candidates and very "macho" in a way that would be impossible in the US/UK/AU.
I like comparing with the other versions Sky shows me, and by now MC IT is about as badly scripted as MC US, and with worse cooking. At least I don't see high heels, miniskirts and those super-female glossy curly long hairdos here. In that respect I like Australia most - they all get those good flat boots in the beginning, wear long pants and mostly have their hair back so it can't fall into the food. What I don't like about MC AU is that too often mediocre candidates win, I guess that's the anti-elitist thinking.
Italy has too many bad candidates and usually at least one of the few good ones wins.

Started my fod preparations, made the "trifle" (it isn't a real trifle) and cooked the beans for the chili. Now off for a walk in the snow, and in the afternoon I'll prepare all the veggies and clean a bit more.

Happy Sunday, everyone! :)

>37 PersephonesLibrary: Hi Kathy, yes - lots of snow and finally rain in the other parts of Italy, so hopefully the smog in Rome and Milano is history no. Aren't you in Austria anymore?

Did you have a big smog problem there?
Yes, I am still in Austria, but snow hasn't decided yet to stay - except for some ski regions in the mountains.

>36 Deern: Oh, you got snow. We had only rain. I hope thete will be more snow up the mountains during zhe next 6 weeks. We're going than to hour two weeks ski holiday in Davos.

Happy Sunday, Nathalie! I had to look up trifle, as I hadn't heard of it before. It looks delicious!

Oh! Your snow is beautiful - thanks for sharing it! We don't get that in Georgia, and I miss watching it fall and seeing the ground covered up and looking like a blank canvas after a big snow. BUT, I don't miss dealing with it, so I will happily admire yours from afar.

Hoping that your Sunday is filled with fabulous, Nathalie!

Starred you Nathalie.

Happy Birthday Nathalie, it's already the 4th here in NZ so I wish you a great day.

>38 Deern: I've also enjoyed MC Aus, though haven't watched it for a few years. The NZ version hasn't made great viewing though it has worked out very well for a couple of the winners.

Hey Nathalie lovely snow! Hope your birthday party went well.

>40 PersephonesLibrary: Not where I live, but the quality of air wasn't as good as usual. And the dryness caused all those discomforts with the eyes and much coughing.. In Rome they restricted car traffic by license plates, it must have been real bad there.

>41 Ameise1: Oh, I'm quite sure snow will come now in the ski regions. I hope those storms won't set in as last year. Isn't Davos very high? So if it snows a couple of times, at least it'll stay and you should be safe. 2 weeks up there - that must be so lovely!

>42 kidzdoc: Happy Sunday, Darryl! My trifle is an alternative one, no custard, instead a mix of yogurt, quark (similar to fromage blanc) and whipped cream, topped with cantuccini crumbs. It's always quite a success, I hope also tomorrow.

>43 Crazymamie: The good thing here is that it usually only stays for a couple of hours and then melts away - as it did today once the sun was out. "Dealing with it" was in Germany and I don't miss that. :)

>44 SandDune: Hi Rhian, welcome to my thread!
Is yours up? I believe I haven't found it yet. I hope I can catch up on the 5th and 6th, as I'll also lose tomorrow. The year is 3 days old, and I've already fallen so behind, argh!

>45 avatiakh: Thank you and Happy Birthday to you, Kerry!!! :) Mine is still 1 hr 27 mins away.
I only get the MCs Sky Italy shows me - NZ sadly isn't among them and neither the UK which I'd both love to see. It's US (running constantly), AU from season 4 on, Spain and Canada.
Saw My Kitchen Rules AU for the first time in 2015, but that's not for me.

>46 charl08: Thank you, that's so cute!!! :))
The party is tomorrow and I'm still in a "not enough food" panic. Have to remember that I also got all that bread, cheese, 3 cakes (maybe 4), salads, dips. Err... now it's changing into "what to do with all the leftovers" panic. :)

Nathalie, it's not far from midnight. Therefore

Happy New Year! We're getting snow here too - and the temps are going to plummet and get seriously wintry tonight. We've had it so easy so far I'm not at all prepared mentally.

Happy New Year, Nathalie!

Happy Birthday, Nathalie!

>48 Ameise1: OMG, it's Italian!! Thank you, Barbara! :)

>49 sibylline: Thank you and Happy New Year to you, Lucy!
I understand that it's a completely different case where you live. Here it's a nice distraction to have one or two snow days a year, especially on a Sunday when you don't have to drive.

>50 The_Hibernator: Happy New Year to you, Rachel! :)

>51 kidzdoc: Thank you Darryl! :)

*******
Got up early and made the vegan cheese cake following the recipe of my beloved vegan restaurant that closed in 2015. It's more like a custard cake. I used vanilla soy milk and lime zest.
Made the chili and two types of veggie lasagne yesterday. My friend will bring curried chickpeas and two zucchini loafs (loaves? looks wrong).

Listened to my BAC, The Woman in Black, during cooking, really felt like listening to a good ghost story with the winter outside. Now in the last chapter. Actually, I'm a bit disappointed. The setting is great, but the "secret" (if it is as I assume) is terribly predictable.

I can't get a CAC Kindle book here in IT, but saw that Robertson Davies' books are available on audible. Considering getting Fifth Business because it is also a 1001. Does anyone know if it's good listening material?

Read the first couple of pages of my 1001 GR Stiller, a German modern classic that has been on my shelf forever, because Max Frisch is such an overused author in highschool reading. It's true - once you've interpreted 1 or 2 of an author's books for months and months, you don't feel like reading anything else by them for decades.

Happy Birthday Nathalie :) Good luck for the party - I'm sure it'll be great.

I finished Woman in Black last night - I really enjoyed it, though I agree there is nothing too big about the secret. I like that though - it very much channels victorian gothic novels in that way.

Happy, happy birthday, Nathalie! Your party plans sound awesome! The snow scene looks awesome too. In fact, Here's to an awesome year! Cheers!

BTW: I enjoyed TWiB a couple of years ago. It is the atmospheric elements which I remember most and not the ending

>53 BekkaJo: Thank you Bekka! :)
I also finished TWiB and am even more disappointed now. But if it channels victorian gothic, then maybe that's not for me. I also didn't enjoy The Turn of the Shrew and wanted to much to like it.

>54 Carmenere: Thank you Lynda! :)
I took some more pics yesterday before it started melting, I'll try to load them up and post them later today.

*********
I just cancelled the planned last dash to the (organic this time) supermarket to buy falafels. I realized I'm clearly out of my mind. Even if there should be 12-14 hungry people, there will be lots of leftovers. And in the worst case I can still cook a pot of pasta or order pizza!

I also decided to take a break now from preparations. Just accidentally threw a plate on the floor (but at least there is a saying "shards bring good luck"), but far worse: I stepped into one of my lasagnes!!

Okay, not with my full weight and it was covered in tin film and cling film and on top was a kitchen towel, so it's less of a mess than could have been, but still... Glad I made so many and in so many different small pans. I had it outside on the terrace because it's cold and the fridge is full. Then I carried the prosecco outside and didn't look. If someone was following me with a camera today, they could make a nice comedy.

This is the menu:

Starters:
Lots and lots of breadsticks and taco chips
Humus, carrot sticks
Salsa
Avocado tomato basil dip
Vegan Nacho "cheeze"
smoked mini provolone cheeses with pesto dip
Warm foccaccia bread
Curried chickpeas

Mains:(after the mishap)
A small (5 portions) vegan lasagna with zucchini, mushrooms, green asparagus, vegan bechamel sauce and basil cheeze sauce (cashew based)
The same thing once more with butternut squash instead of asparagus
A big (8 portions) chili lasagna (veggie chili, mais tortillas, nacho cheeze sauce)
All mains are vegan because 3 guests are lactose-intolerant.

For the one with a nut allergy: the chili from a pot, which is at least another 6-7 portions.

For those who want real cheese on the lasagne: a bowl with feshly grated parmesan cheese and also yogurt for the chili.

A big bowl of salad leaves without dressing (we're in Italy and everyone but me hates dressing, so they can put on oil/vinegar/salt/pepper as they like), pomegranate seeds and walnuts as extra toppings

Dessert:
2 zucchini loafs
a big bowl of pseudo-trifle
vegan cheesecake/custard cake
store-bought cookies and pandoro Christmas cake

Cheese (gorgonzola and a smelly mountain cheese)

Drinks:
7 bottles of prosecco
18 bottles of Corona

I know some guests are bringing wine, I hope they won't bring more food!

I fear I can feed 25...

1. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (AAC 2016)

I liked Anne Tyler's Booker-SLed A Spool of Blue Thread very much and was looking forward to this month's AAC. I ordered a couple of samples but stuck to the first one I tried. It was a smooth and quick read and a not too original, not too painful family story about a woman and her three kids who have to get along after the husband/father walks out on them from one day to the next (given my RL experience that part hurt a bit more than the rest).

The book begins with the mother, very old and blind, on her deathbed, watched by her middle child Ezra. She remembers the hard times, how she struggled to make ends meet and how proud she was that she was able to keep up the secret that her husband had left for good for so long (he was a sales agent and long absences were normal).

The focus changes to the kids whose memories are quite different. We see an aggressive mother, full of rage, unjustly punishing and also beating her children. Three children fully aware that daddy isn't coming back but never speaking about it, the eternal competition for their mother's love between the sons Cody and Ezra, the body and control issues of the daughter Jenny. Many developments are predictable though and as a result I didn't get as much involved emotionally - maybe because there wasn't much development in the characters, they just got older. A very solid read, but I prefer ASoBT.

Rating: 4 stars

2. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (BAC 2016)

I SO wanted to love this one, maybe too much! I didn't know the story, just that it was something with ghosts set in the victorian period and that there was a Westend theater play and a movie, so it must be popular.

I started reading but then decided I wanted to listen to it and got the audio in the audible sale. Listened while cooking yesterday and even before sleeping, but wasn't scared a bit - just annoyed with the slowness of the not very bright narrator Arthur who didn't see the obvious truths.
Today I listened to the last chapters with the explanation and the imo unnecessarily evil ending - but even that didn't come as a surprise because the story is told by the same Arthur many years later and the first thing he tells us is how unhappy he has been for so many years, so you know something very grave must be coming.

I couldn't help feeling that this story checked off all kinds of ghost story boxes, it had all the right ingredients (mysterious lonely mansion by the sea, cut off from the land and accessible only at low tide, sudden mists, chilly air...), even the structure of someone remembering something terrible and writing it down to get if off his chest was a classic. But if that structure had been different, the ending would have been a surprise and for me personally the book would have been a better success.

Rating: 2.8 (sorry!)

Happy birthday Nathalie! Your party sounds fabulous. I wish I could "apparate" a la Harry Potter and enjoy all the marvelous food. Well, except for maybe the stepped-in lasagna. :) I am sure your guests will have a great time. Enjoy!

Dear Nathalie,
I wish you a wonderful Happy Birthday and an even more wonderful 2016.

A very Happy Birthday to you, Nathalie! Your guests are going to be so impressed that you went to so much trouble for them. What a wonderful and delicious feast you are providing them with. Take a deep breath and give yourself a pat on the back for being such a thoughtful host. Hoping that your day is filled with everything fabulous!

Skipped your first review, as I am going to read that one this month - I'll be back to see what you wrote about it after I read it. And I totally get your thoughts on The Woman in Black - I really liked it, but I do remember being disappointed with the ending. I wanted more. Still, the building tension and the atmosphere made it worth it for me. May your next read be a better one for you!

>58 lauralkeet: Thank you - and I wish you could all apparate here! I'd happily put the extra pasta pot on! :)

>59 drachenbraut23: Oh - thank you so much!!! A wonderful and healthy 2016 to you too, Bianca!
Do you have a thread again? Also haven't found Rhian's yet - off to check in a minute.

>60 Crazymamie: Yay, we cross-posted! Thank you, Mamie! The first guests arrive in 2 hrs - I'm sitting down now, drinking some tea and looking forward to it all! :)

Re. TWiB I can imagine that the movie is good - when you really hear all those scary sounds and there's just the mist and nothing you can actually see.

You've just given me a good chuckle - note to self, beware lasagne when carrying prosecco - I think these are words to live by :)

Sounds like you have enough to feed a small army. Relax and enjoy!

Happy New Year, Nathalie! Sorry to hear that you had a 2.8 read. I'm not sure if I would have finished the book! Happy Birthday!

Nathalie, relax and enjoy your party. The stepped-on lasagna should be a fun story to start off the festivities. I hope you have time to take a few pics of the feast you've prepared. Oh, and Happy Birthday to you. Will there be cake?

The happiest of birthdays to you!

Happy Birthday Nathalie!
I wish you the bestest birthday-party ever!

Your menu sounds wonderful, even minus a lasagne. Hope you are able to relax and enjoy it after all the preparation you have put in.

Happy belated birthday wished, Nathalie! Sorry to see that the Hill read was a bit off for you. I have only read one Hill so far, The Mist in the Mirror and while I really liked the Gothic tale for what it is, I am not sure if I am up for reading more Hill.

Your menu sounds divine!

OMG so many visitors :D - thank you all for the birthday and new year wishes and for cheering me on, Bekka, Debbie, Donna, Kathy, Anita, Charlotte, Lori!

>62 BekkaJo: Honestly, I couldn't believe it myself! The first time I brought something outside, I even thought "hey, I managed NOT to step into any food" - and 5 mins later it was "what is so soft under my shoe?". But I do those things. Not often, but they're typical for me. I get distracted. Like putting a cup of tea into my wardrobe and then searching for ages.

>63 vancouverdeb: Happy New Year to you, too, Debbie! :)
Well - it was short and I was mainly listening while doing other things. I also really hoped that the endng would be more gripping.

>64 Donna828: Thank you Donna!
It was a nice story, yes. And people still ate the food without looking at it suspiciously. :)
Yes, there was cake, but I forgot the candles. Cake was my vegan "cheesecake" (more vanilla custard cake), the slightly failed zucchini loafs my friend brought and the trifle was very cake-like and was the dessert winner (decidedly non-vegan and quite rich).

>65 PersephonesLibrary: Thank you Kathy - is that a book cake??? Wow, must get one next time!

>66 FAMeulstee: Thank you Anita, it was a very nice party and maybe my bestest ever! :D

>67 charl08: Again I was surprised with how much delight everything was eaten (devoured) despite being vegan and that no-one added the real cheese. Exception was dessert where the cream/yogurt/quark trifle won hands down, but that recipe has been a mega success for years and can't be veganized easily.

>68 lkernagh: Thank you Lori! :)
I just expected too much of the Hill I guess. Or I should say, what I expect from gothic ghost stories just seems not to be in there, because even The Turn of the Shrew didn't work for me. Or Frankenstein or The Mountains of Madness.
Still considering to read Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing some day, just not this January.

Party started with my friend Chrystle bringing her dog Floh who (Floh, not Chrystle...) first thing jumped on the couch, from there on the couch table and into the 2 plates with pandoro and cookies. More broken plates (=more luck!) and at least it was all the store-bought stuff and not my trifle. :)

Two guests cancelled on short notice, then one guy arrived without the wife who was sick and left again without having eaten anything after a quick toast. We were really drowning in food - but then at about 8pm my friend and maybe future landlady Karin turned up with her husband Giuliano whose bday it was as well - and boy can those two thin people eat! Starters were cleared almost completely and they managed two big plates of mixed lasagna each.

Even more than half of the desserts were gone in the end. I had bought aluminum pans for take-away and easily got rid of all lasagna except for one small pan which I'll have today and tomorrow, and much of the chili and almost all of the trifle and cheesecake. They took some bread home as well.

My landlady Chrystle befriended my upstairs neighbor Ute which I had hoped for. It would be nice if they could do things together in the future. And also the others mixed extremely well and the atmosphere was cheery as it should.

Some went through my recipe book collection and laughed a lot looking at the pics in The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Most of them hadn't been to my place yet (inviting people into your house isn't as normal here as it is in Germany), and they admired all the books. My friend Sarah is half-English and decided she won't have to buy another English book before having worked her way through my shelves.

Food was a real success! Chrystle's humus and curried chickpeas were so delicious and the lasagnas were devoured and no one had an issue with the fake cashew cheeses on top. Then a short break and on to the trifle!

Cleaning up was also a surprisingly quick business - another half hour of work later toda and I should be done.

Will try to get some reading done today, catching up on threads here and maybe go into town in the afternoon. More snow is announced for this week.

Happy birthday, Nathalie! The party sounds great, and I am laughing about you stepping in the lasagne. It sounds like you didn't go hungry even without it!

Sounds like your party was a success, Nathalie! I love that you have a recipe book called The Gallery of Regrettable Food - too funny!

Party sounds wonderful. Wish I was close enough to 'just drop in' and entirely coincidentally sample all the leftovers! At least reading about them online is better for my waistline.

I am happy you had a great birthday party :-)

>71 cushlareads: Thank you Cushla! Yes, that will be a thing to be remembered. :D

>72 Crazymamie: Yes it was a great night, and if I remember well my biggest bday party since my 18th!!
(It has to do with the date - many people are still on holiday on the 4th, the weather is often bad, you are restricted to indoors - I never felt much like celebrating with more than maybe 4 or 6 people.)

TGoRF is one of the funniest books I ever read. Ilana loved it as well. The author Lileks used recipe books of the 1950s to 70s with those horrible pictures and added really hilarious comments. There also is an old website with many more examples, but it doesn't work anymore on my ipad. He also criticized 60s interior design and other things like ads. Nowadays he has a blog and you still find the old links on his website www.lileks.com where I haven't been for a while and which I clearly must rediscover.

Edit: the site still works from my old notebook that hasn't been updated in years. Here's a nice example: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/meat/22.html
But be warned that some pics/descriptions expecially of the meat range are gag-inducing. But that's how roast meat was presented 40-50 years ago, I saw it in my mum's old cookbooks.

>73 charl08: I wish you could all have dropped in! My destroyed waistline got lots of leftovers today, but also the first hour of workout this year from a shiny new yoga and fitness app.

>74 FAMeulstee: Thank you for cheering me on, Anita! All that support did help! :)

I'm so glad to hear that you had a fabulous evening, Nathalie.

Oh phooey! I missed your birthday. BUT the party sounds fabulous, and the food sounds scrumptious, and it's no wonder that you have very little left. Congratulations on your success!
AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY + a day! I hope that 2016 is a truly stellar year for you!

Well done on hosting your great birthday party, Nathalie! Are there pictures of this grand gala?

Oh yes! The Gallery of Regrettable Food... that was a lot of good fun! :-)

Wishing you another Happy Birthday, and I see it was indeed and glad you had a nice party.

I listened to Fifth Business toward the end of the year. It was a reread and I was prepared not to like the narrator for his American accent on what is a very Canadian book, but he did a good job and all was forgiven.

Like you, I really wanted to like The Woman in Black, but it utterly failed to wow me, or even to make much of an impression at all. I'll be reading Hill's I'm the King of the Castle for the BAC this month.

Congrats for a successful birthday party, Nathalie! It sounds wonderful and your guests seemed to be in a party mood. When's the next one?

Glad to see the dinner was a great success... even with the interesting situation with the dog.... I would have panicked at that point!

Glad you had a successful party. The 'stepping in the lasagna' sounds like something that would happen to me. Today I switched the slow cooker off instead of to low, so we are waiting an extra time for dinner to be ready!

>77 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara - and thank you for the mental support! :)

>78 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy - and I think I missed every single bday here in 2015. And in 2014 and way back. They always seem to happen as soon as I'm away. :)

I have some very good cookbooks and I present my friends here food they don't usually eat - neither Italian nor German, mostly from US cookbooks/websites with "strange" stuff like quinoa with avocado, putting butternut squash into lasagne or preparing chili/tortillas/nacho cheese in lasagne form. So I've got the surprise element with me and so far it works. :)

>79 kidzdoc: I so wanted to take pics and then I didn't. I photographed the table and the kitchen before everyone arrived - I'll post these - , then put the mobile phone to the side and didn't even hear it ring for the next couple of hours. On the other hand even with pics I'd be reluctant to post friends' faces because I'd have to ask them first and then they might want the link and honestly I don't know if I'd want them following me. I told Chrystle once before posting hiking pics with her, but she doesn't read anything except the paper. My parents don't really want to be on the internet... but that reminds me there is sth I MUST post. THEY won't see it anyway. :))

>80 Smiler69: Lileks still does all kinds of stuff, but nothing has ever been as funny again as the food, the interior design or the hotel "The Gobbler".

Thank you for the bday wishes! :)

I don't really know how Canadian sounds different from US English so that shouldn't be an issue unless the American is very "broad". I should add that when I watch some US show here on TV in original version, everyone seems to speak what must be "News English" which for my ear is accent-free and doesn't meet any resistance. Movies can be more difficult and for some I needed subtitles.

I'm a bit relieved that I'm not alone with my feelings re. TWiB - although I'm sorry it was an unhappy reading experience for you as well.

>81 Carmenere: Actually I have the next one in my head already - want to do one for my female colleagues before I move out (=as long as I can still seat more than 4). It will be interesting because they are either very Italian or very Tyrolean in their lives and their eating habits.

>82 lkernagh: Oh, it was a short moment of panic indeed. I love Floh, but she has some neurotic ways and gets easily scared by loud noises. The second moment of panic came much later when everyone sang "Happy Birthday" for me and my friend's husband Giuliano and then we were all clapping. Up she was from her chair, running around and yelping.But at least food was out of her reach then. :)

This is the last public holiday before Easter and it ends the festive season. I'm always a bit depressed because with my bday on the 4th it's always that period of 2 weeks filled nice events which then abruptly ends. Here it's extreme because also most hotels and restaurants close, the tourists disappear until Easter and without all the lights the greyness of the weather becomes worse.

Amber-like "plans for the day":
Got a new yoga app and want to start the day with some exercise. Then some more house cleaning and clothes washing and then I'll go into town to say goodbye to the Christmas market. Might meet Sarah in her café and will have a look at the shops because Sales started.

I'll eat the last batch of lasagna (chili is in the freezer) and I'll try to squeeze in some reading. Must go on with GR now that Lucy is ahead of me again! In the evening I'll do my weekly service at the refugees' place.

Glad the next weekend is already visible, but next week without a holiday will feel strange.

>83 avatiakh: Thank you Kerry! I'm more likely to not switch off cooking plates completely, so now I switch off the oven fuse before leaving the house. The fuse is next to the door, so the last thing I see before getting out is the position of the fuse and I don't have to run back to the kitchen to control all the plates. So far nothing bad ever happened except for some melted plastic or burned food, but...
I hope you didn't have to wait too long for dinner though.

I can't believe I'm ahead of you. But I also can't wait to get to the end. I'm not sure how I would have fared reading it in print (certainly couldn't read the copy I have --ancient paperback with tiny print) either, but listening has often been a bit confusing, although I think there are parts of it I appreciated more--some of the interactions.

What I should do right now is go and try to write some kind of summary of the last bit I listened to. It's going to be almost impossible as I listened in such a fragmented way.

Happy belated birthday and kudos to you for your party! Sounds lovely. And delicious.

>87 sibylline: Thank you Lucy! :)
You are ahead - I quite gave up at 76% waiting for your next comments. That's still "28 minutes" (acc. to my Kindle) away from part IV. I was at a point where reading on made no sense because my brain has lost its capacity to process the text - or so it seems. :(
There are characters that might have turned up earlier but I don't remember. I don't even know anymore where we are. *sigh*
Or I'll just give up thinking and "simply" read the remaining 25%.
This is harder than Ulysses where the frame (one day in Dublin, 3 characters) at least gives you a kind of anchor.

Okay - again some pics are upside down - sorry:

First my mum and dad trying to put the additional light chain on the treee after it had been fully decorated. My mum went almost crazy over the two different types of light (warm and cold) which I wouldn't have noticed hadn't she mentioned it. So we bought another chain of "warm lights" to mix it all up. I served tea and watched while the usual drama unfolded. :)))

Here my mum tries to draw the lights to a certain spot while my dad tries to explain that the distance between the lights doesn't allow for it:

Coffee table pre-Floh with cakes and cookies and plates intact:



Very blurry pic of the chili lasagna, the tortillas and the chili pot. I didn't photograph the veggie lasagna because the green basil "cheeze" as good as it tastes looks terribly unappetizing.


And another upside-down shot, but they all come out like this when I upload them to LT. This was the table with starters:

I had exactly the same response, so maybe this is really a sort of slow point/hiatus in the book itself? A bit of too muchness? I only care about Slothrop and a bit about Enzien and Tchitcherine. Don't mind hearing about Pirate and Mexico and maybe Katya, but they mean less to me.

Happy Belated Birthday! I've learned to put them into a photo editor and make sure they are upright before loading to LibraryThing and saving them that way.

>91 sibylline: I just read your comments on your thread and they helped already! I'll finish another book today and then return to GR.

>92 thornton37814: Thank you Lori!
In this case I directly uploaded from my phone, but in other cases I first downloaded to the computer, looked at them in the photo editor (and maybe turned and saved them), then uploaded them to LT and they were still upside down here while perfectly upright on my computer. That only happens with the ones I take with the smartphone and not always. Barbara recommended saving them in my smartphone's cloud first and taking them from there, but somehow I don't want my pics in some cloud - despite the risk of completely losing them when I lose my phone. And there aren't any "can't show" pics anyway, that's just my paranoia. :)

*****

So I was quite good yesterday: did a yoga and a short cardio workout, went into town to have my traditional "Dinnerte" (sourdough "pizza" made in a wood-oven with potatoes and cheese) as my "Goodbye Christmas Market" meal, met Sarah in her Café, didn't do any shopping, went home and listened to Shonda Rimes' Year of Yes which turned out much better than I feared after the first 15 minutes, went to the "casa dei profughi" where there wasn't much to do, had dinner with the guys (spicy rice and pittah bread, spicy beef for the others), and back home listened some more until I fell asleep.

Now back at the office. Going to see my therapist today during lunch break and otherwise trying to keep to some small NY resolutions: trying not to do ANY food shopping for 2 weeks, even if that means I won't get my daily dose of vitamins. I can do with less for two weeks, and there is so much other food in the house now after all the parties, I just have to get a bit creative with it. And there's veggie chili in the freezer, frozen apples and frozen raspberries. This morning I had a smoothie of leftover carrots and oranges which is a great start.

The other one is doing at least one short session of yoga every day, preferably in the morning. The app I got 2 days ago so far is fantastic. It has many sequences, it's my preferred style and it's a good mix of easy and more demanding poses. Did a warrior sequence yesterday that got me into a good sweat and left me with wobbly legs. Started with a 20 minute morning session into this Thursday.

I'd really like to lose some weight early in 2016. Since that first lump in my right breast was found in October 14 I'd been feeding my fear with sugary foods - and when everything looked right again in spring 2015, I was left by "that man" and the way it happened and his denying I had ever existed (3 years turned into nothing!!) very often left me with just a couple of choices on bad days: xanax (which I have for "emergency" but stopped using for ist side-effects), alcohol, jumping off a roof, storming into his pharmacy and screaming abuse at him - or eating something, preferably a ciabatta bread. Though I knew I'd gain weight, eating seemed the least destructive option. And it had the side-effect of making me invisible for other men. I've never been rebound-girl, I'm "suffering for years and years"-girl. Okay - middle-aged woman.
I got rid of the sugary foods in November but still comfort-fed on bread. Now I'm not overweight, but I don't feel well anymore. Nothing really fits, thanks to all the comfort-bread I'm flabby and when I look at pics of summer 2014 I know that's where I want to be again. I was also quite fit then and I did daily yoga! I wore shorts!!

I started wearing nice things and dresses again and looking after my hair and make-up some time in December, so I feel that now I might also be able to throw the weight off and to become visible to the world again.

Edit: as that cold that has been looming for day and days seems to finally have got me, my nose is running and my eyes are red, I might make an exception for apples and citrus fruits. I'll have to buy those around the corner because the way that small supermarket is built I can walk from fruit to check-out without passing the bread section.

3. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Once again I followed an audible recommendation from the self-help shelf and again it was a good decision, although I had a hard time with the introductory part. Shonda Rhimes is the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy”, its spin-off and two more shows.

GA rant to be skipped:
I was never a fan of “Grey’s” although I recently noticed it really is highly addictive when Sky IT showed all of series 9 in one day. I didn’t like it because when I watched some of it back in Germany it concentrated too much on Meredith/Derek which I still believe isn’t a good relationship (like the one of Carrie and Big in SoTC or Ross and Rachel in Friends and don't get me started on Ted and Robin – gaaah!). I didn’t like their relationship because I’m a Meredith and I’d run after a narcissistic a******e like Derek or Big for all my life, waiting till they return from their ex who only has to set foot in town to make “my” man cheat on me and leave me, waiting for them to get divorced from some girl they met somewhere and married after a week while they told me they were not into serious relationships, waiting for them to finally see me and acknowledge that I’m the best thing that ever happened to them. And because Meredith got her Derek (at least for a while) and because Carrie got her Mr. Big and because I know that it’s all a big lie for a Mr. Big would never run to Paris and say “you’re the one” and that those relationships will be as bad as the dating was, I couldn’t watch the shows anymore. The last thing I needed was being told those destructive relationships are "romantic" and to be encouraged to wait some more.

But – I LOVED Christina! What a fabulous character! And this book, in the short bits when it is about GA, is all about Christina and SR’s love for her. The few bookmarks I added were exclusively Christina quotes and I’m now considering really watching that show for the first time, fast-forwarding whenever Meredith stares at Mc. Dreamy.
So – rant over, let me get to the book.

The short introduction (“I’m old and I’m a liar”) is HORRIBLE. So horrible I was wondering how I should get through the book, because I really really wanted to know how Rhimes’ resolution to say “yes” for one whole year to everything that made her feel scared or uncomfortable would turn out. But from the first chapter on, this book worked. Maybe because there are some things we have in common – we are the same age, both capricorns and both strange introverts who their mothers had to force outside to play (and who then hid behind a tree to read a book). The scene where she plays with the cans in the pantry could have been me. I also had stories in my head all the time while people thought I was just sitting around – I just never wrote them down nor was I encouraged to.

Despite being a super-successful writer, being invited to Oprah, being a mum of three kids, Rhimes keeps “hiding in the pantry”, avoiding the public, avoiding committing to anything. It’s during Thanksgiving 2013 that Rhimes oldest sister tells her the 6 magic words “you never say “yes” to anything” and on her next birthday she starts into the project – her “Year of Yes”.

I found many of her experiences really helpful – for example the one that you’re going to lose friends when you change. Happened to me last year and it’s something I’ll have to accept. Or how she overcame stage fright – the scene where she imagines all the things that could happen (falling flat on your face in live TV) was really funny. But she also bends the “yes” a bit, like when she learns “to say yes to a no”. If the “no” is really something that’s her, she learns to own it – like not wanting to get married no matter what other people think or not accepting ideas for her script that she knows are wrong. When it comes to her body she has to accept that she used to say “yes” to her fat body and when she can’t close the seat-belt in the first class anymore realizes she must say “yes” to a body that keeps her alive long enough to see her kids grow up.

Great bits are the important speeches she gave during that year. You hear in her voice that she’s nervous, but you hear her also having fun – and being surprised about it. Of course the writing overall is easy-to-read/listen, with funny bits in every second sentence at least, often self-deprecating. It won’t win a literature price, but it sounds honest and – and this is one of the most important points SR makes in one of her speeches – reading it you won’t feel alone with your issues.

In the end this isn’t a spiritual experience as Singer’s. SR isn’t accepting what’s thrown before her, she isn’t emotionally detaching from events. This is more about growing up and owning your life and loving yourself. Inspiring in a different way and encouraging.

Rating: 4 stars

Thanks for sharing the photos of your parents and your very appealing birthday dinner, Nathalie!

>95 kidzdoc: Well, the pics aren't great, but the food tasted good and looked much better in RL. Now my parents ordered a green lasagna and a raspberry non-trifle for their visit in March. :)

I love the photos you posted, Nathalie. Thanks so much for sharing!

The food looks great on the photos :-)

I hope the cold passes fast, buying some fruits might be wise!

>93 Deern: I just e-mailed them to myself and put them in the photo editor and saved and then uploaded to LT.

Sounds like you have some good small NY resolutions.

Nothing really fits

Been there. It is so frustrating when nothing in your wardrobe fits quite right and yet you haven't gained enough weight to justify getting a new wardrobe. I have learned that my metabolism took a sharp noise dive about 4 years ago - roughly coinciding with my decision to give up caffeine, so I have had an ongoing mini-struggle/not 100% happy with my weight thing. This holiday season I started drinking matcha once a day (I prepare it at home), all because I read an article about matcha being a non-caffeine way to perk yourself up mentally and to help rev up your metabolism. 3 weeks in and I am noticing a difference. Nothing major but still, a difference: I think it has to do with the fact that the matcha also seems to stem my food cravings a bit.... I am not constantly grazing/nibbling throughout the day anymore. I will give it a couple more months and see if it (with my walking) will really help me trim/tone up. ;-)

Smart idea to wear nice things and dresses again as well as the whole hair thing. I am not a big fan of makeup beyond some eyebrow pencil and lipstick but even that can bring a spring to my step.

Good luck!

>97 Crazymamie: Thank you Mamie! :)

>98 FAMeulstee: thank you Anita! The cold still isn't fully out, I wish it would finally erupt that I could be over with it in a week. It's often like this - my body's defences can fight for weeks against a virus and all the time I'll feel half-ill. Stomach bugs are worst. Often I don't get them, but if so there can be up to 10 days between infection and breakout and I will feel more or less sick all that time.

>99 thornton37814: *sigh* Thank you, but I'm clearly too stupid for that. Tried just that - copied the Christmas tree picture from my mobile (perfectly upright) to the computer (perfectly upright). Opened it in the MS photo editor - perfectly upright. Selected it from the picture folder of the computer and loaded it onto LT - it's on the side again. :(

>100 lkernagh: Thank you for sharing your experience. Matcha might be an option. Don't like it, my stomach doesn't like it - but that might be helpful, I won't feel like eating.
I usually have just one cup of coffee per day, sometimes none at all. I'm sure that except for the bread eating my bad sleep might play a role, at least it's something you read all the time. If you don't get enough sleeping hours your body will burn less calories (I would have expected the opposite tbh).

Did another 2 sessions of yoga last night (20 and 30 mins) and am still surprised that it's just my level. Many easy poses, but others so demanding that I get into a sweat and my muscles burn. Did a 30 mins shoulder and hip session this morning which (for the early time when I'm still stiff) was almost too much. But after just 3 days my body already feels a bit better. It's always wonderful how three days of exercise can make a change after 4 weeks of neglect.

I quite hate foundation and nail polish, but my face needs a bit of eye make-up. I'm a similar color type as Heidi Klum (just color, not general prettiness or body type of course), without eye shadow and mascara we look pale and ill. It happened to me that people asked me "oh dear what happened to you" when they saw me without mascara the first time.

Enjoy!

>102 DianaNL: OMG how cute! I envy those cats - my weekend begins in 6 hours and I just got a tasklist from my boss that will keep me busy for a year. Which is good! :)
Happy weekend to you, too!

Okay, so my reading status after 1 week of 2016:

Finished 3 books, AAC completed, BAC theoretically completed (planning just 1 book per month), Gravity's Rainbow in progress - only 9% left, should finish this weekend! :)

Planned for next week:
Stiller by Max Frisch for the 1,001 GR and because it has been stitting on my shelf for years
Pick up L'amica Geniale by Elena Ferrante again
Start either a second BAC (Sacred Hunger)or a CAC book (Fifth Business)

Feel very tempted to complete both the BAC and the CAC this month with 2 authors each, but don't want to neglect other projects or generally "overdo" in this first month. In the last two years my reading energy always ran out in March, so I'll try a slower and steadier approach this year.

>101 Deern: I had that happen with one of mine but when I saved it again while it was upright, it worked on the upload.

I loved the party pics you posted, upside down or not. Actually it does me good to give my brain a spatial workout. I love dogs, but don't think I'd take one to someone's party like that. Too bad about the broken dishes and food mess. I hope the dog settled down after that! Your reading is off to a fine start, Nathalie. I hope you can keep it up, but I'll be following along with you even if you don't. Even your reading slumps are interesting. lol.

>104 Deern: Stiller!!!! I hope you'll enjoy it. I like it very much.

>104 Deern: Sounds like you're reading a collection strong on classics. I was quite amused this week to see that two people had ordered Ferrente at the same time (even next to each other on the reservation shelf!): word is spreading!

Good luck with the yoga. I have fallen off the wagon with that, but might try pilates again once the new year rush dies down at the classes.

>101 Deern: - One thing about matcha. Never, ever drink it on an empty stomach. I made that mistake, and my first thought was that it didn't agree with me. Tried it the next day after eating breakfast... no problem. Slipped three days later and had matcha on an empty stomach and felt completely nauseous. Ate a piece of cheese and was feeling better within minutes. Eat something, even if it is just a slice of toast, before drinking matcha.

Good job getting back into yoga!

Sounds like you need the shadow and mascara for the same reason I use eyebrow pencil: My eyebrows look disproportionately pale compared with my eyelashes and hair, or at least I think they do.

>105 thornton37814: I almost don't dare to say it, but I just tried that, and it's still not upright. This really happens only with the pics from that smartphone, never with the ipad or earlier phones. Those pics often weren't upright when I saved them on the computer - I turned them, loaded them to LT and all was fine. These here are automatically turned on the computer but on LT return to their old state. Need to change smartphone, I guess. :)

Ha - but I'll still try the one thing you did: copy from LT onto the computer, hoping it arrives there upside down, then repair and upload again. But can't do that here, must wait till Monday.
Thank you for all the help!! :)

>106 Donna828: Well, I hope my friend doesn't read here. I love that dog - it's cute and likes me (I'm auntie Nathalie), always jumps on my lap to take a nap there. But my friend is alone with her all the time and over the course of 3 years the dog became quite neurotic. Can't be left alone anymore, can't endure any noises, runs away on the slightest occasion. My friend's life has become dominated by rules of where she can go/what she can do with the dog and what not. Going into town during Christmas market? Impossible because of the music. And because of other dogs. In the beginning she did all the socializing things (puppy school), but she gave up on all that and now her life has become really limited. She doesn't see it though, and you can't discuss it with her. It's the fault of other people (musicians for example) when her dog goes crazy.
My mum is the same way with dogs and wisely decided not to have another one.

Haha, thank you for liking my reading slumps. :D

>107 Ameise1: So far I like it and I'm glad that the GR forces me to finally read it. We read other Frischs at school - at a far too young age (11?) Biedermann und die Brandstifter and in Oberstufe we spent months on Homo Faber. And as usual, the books were taken apart to a level that didn't make me want to touch anything by that author "ever again". Why is reading never fun in Deutsch Leistungskurs?
I think the only authors I still liked after their school treatment were Dürrenmatt, Kafka and Thomas Mann, because we just had a glimpse at their works.

>108 charl08: I had heard of her earlier, she was nominated for the Strega Prize more than once. Even looked at the first book of the series but decided from the horrible cover it wasn't for me. And I had read another book (title??) from the 1,001 list which wasn't bad but so weird I didn't feel like reading anything else by her. But now the series has become famous abroad, so I'm curious.

Did yoga classes in Germany, hated them, so did a bit with books and DVDs. Here in Merano for the first two years I did lots of Pilates at the studio, they had the greatest teachers. Then they got a new management and philosophy, the two instructors left and after a while I tried another yoga class at Volkshochschule - and found "my" teacher and style there. It's vinyasa flow yoga, dynamic and focussed on the breath, and the app I found teaches the same style.

>109 lkernagh: You're right, thank you! The same happens to me with simple green tea. On an empty stomach I find it totally nauseating. It's the tannins, I guess?
I'll put matcha on my shopping list for next weekend when I'm allowed to do food shopping again. :)
Need to go to the organic supermarket for it.

I have brown eyes, strong dark eyebrows, pale skin and no visible lashes and was born blonde though it darkened much when I got older (2 of my lucky cousins kept their light blond hair and have dark eyes as well). Hair is now dyed blonde because it's already turned totally grey and with darker color I'd have to redo the roots more often. Strangely, with darker hair I also needed even more make-up, even blusher, so despite dark eyes and brows I seem to be a "blond skin type".

Did a good job with the last party leftovers yesterday: had another orange carrot smoothie for breakfast, yogurt with pomegranate seeds and walnuts for lunch and tortilla wraps with roast vegetables and beans for dinner.

For today I'm planning to make a risotto with a bit of gorgonzola cheese and the last pomegranate seeds. And I'll allow myself to buy apples and oranges to fight the cold.

****
I would like to say that I "finished" GR - but honestly I mostly just moved my eyes over text until the text ended. The last part had some great bits (like the life story of Byron the immortal light bulb) but if you asked me how it ended and what became of the main characters - I got an idea, but I'm not sure. And am also a bit disappointed about Slothrop although I think it makes sense.
This was a much harder read than Ulysses or any othe other "crazy" books like Infinite Jest and without Lucy I wouldn't have made it through it. Have no idea how to review it - will just link to hers when she's done. :)

Now on to Stiller!

>110 Deern: I am sorry to hear things have gone so far with Floh and her owner...

Hey Nathalie, whether your pics are rightside up, upside down or sideways, there all good and it would be funny to watch me turn my head this way and that to view them. Keep the good times coming and the pictures too!

You go girl! Keep up with the yoga. You inspire me to keep at it! I feel a difference in myself when I miss a day of yoga. Kind of sluggish and dull minded. Hope you're having a great weekend!

>110 Deern: To be frank, after the Matura (Abitur) I didn't read any classics for more than four years. But later I enjoyed them very much. Even nowadays, my daughter had/have to read classical books at grammer school. Some of them they like others not. I always loved to read Frisch. I guess because he was living in Zürich and it wasn't only his books and plays but also his architectures made it for me easier to read him.

I wish you a wonderful Sunday, Nathalie.

Quoting myself: "Now on to Stiller!" - Well, that might have happened had I not decided to read the sample of Sacred Hunger first which at once turned into the full book. And it seems to be a long one because while I read and read and read, I'm still only at 30%. But what a pageturner!

Still managed to go and shop my oranges, lemons and apples and washing powder and didn't get any bread. And my friend Karin spontaneously visited me for a cup of the detox infusion I'm now making almost every day. It's already her second visit since the party which is great, because that's what I want - friends calling when they're nearby without arranging weeks in advance. Okay, she's Swiss and always had friends at her own place, so the typical Italian reluctance for house calls doesn't apply to her. But it's a start! :)

Made a risotto without a recipe with what I thought combined well and it was great: instead of wine I added some orange juice additionally to the vegetable broth. Also put in rosemary, pomegranate seeds and a bit of gorgonzola cheese and topped it before eating with some crushed walnuts.

For dinner I had the remaining beans and some salad leaves with the last tortilla wraps. That all sounds very healthy, but there was also still open pandoro which I "had to finish" and an open pack of breadsticks. So not perfect, but getting better. And I did two short yoga sessions and a 16 minute cardio.

Must get up now to drive to Bolzano to the shopping center to see if I find a cheap mini notebook for the handbag. Since tablets became popular they're almost exclusively offering the 2 in 1 things, but I don't like those.

Will read on later and visit threads. Happy Sunday everyone!! :)

>112 FAMeulstee: Yes it's sad, because Floh is such a lovely dog! :(

>113 Carmenere: Thank you Lynda! :)
I want to get there again as well - to that point when a day without yoga feels incomplete. Still quite a way to go, but there's improvement.

>114 Ameise1: Happy Sunday to you Barbara and thank you for the lovely picture! :)
I had a good teacher in Oberstufe, I guess the damage was done early in grades 5-8 when we were constantly reading Brecht, and that first Frisch was far too early as well.
I didn't know there's architecture as well. Must google it later.

Brecht is one of my favourite author. We have his collected works at home.

Your risotto sounds wonderful. I can't imagine reading Brecht at a young age - always seems like such a Serious writer of adult topics. But then again, was forcefed Shakespeare instead.

That risotto does sound good, Nathalie! I hope that you're having an enjoyable and productive Sunday.

Stopping by to say that I made some progress with GR yesterday--Byron the Bulb is hilarious, I'd forgotten. I hope to listen a bit more today and then write something up - probably the penultimate (one of my favorite words) one!

The risotto sounds lovely - first original recipe for your cookbook?

>117 Ameise1: I agree he's fantastic and I'm planning a big fat re-read. :)
I read a so far unknown one 2 years ago and it was a completely different experience. But you know how it is with young students -at an age when they'd preferably read adventure stories, something linear and gripping, you can't present them a Brecht or a Frisch without any further explanation and expect them to like or understand it. We didn't even know what a "Biedermann" stands for or that a Brandstifter might have a different meaning than just someone who lays a real fire. That teacher would have been good for Oberstufe, but not for 10/11 year olds. Btw. that was before there was a syllabus, so basically teachers could chose whatever they liked.

>118 charl08: Hi Charlotte - yes, that was the big problem. For my too young brain his plays just felt very empty and very boring. I'm still grateful that my English teacher disliked Shakespeare, chose different literature and couldn't spoil him for me. I had a great German literature teacher in grades 10 and 11 (at age 15-17) who taught us Schiller really well, also went to the theatre with us. That's how it works. :)

>119 kidzdoc: The risotto was so good I wish I had made two portions. My Sunday is nice, I'm just very tired and might fall asleep any minute. Happy Sunday to you, Darryl! :)

>120 sibylline: I'll check your thread later today, but I'm right now half through a text I'd like to finish first. Something with "Hounds"... :) Love it!!

Oh dear - my cookbook would be like this: "and then you add orange juice - you'll know how much is needed. Then add gorgonzola cheese until the right creaminess is reached... "
I'm like my grandma in this, when I do my own stuff it's cooking by feeling and tasting without measures and I'm mostly lucky. :)

*****
Typing this with some difficulty on my new small and super-light notebook! Difficulty because it's my first Italian keyboard, but I'll get used to it. It's actually a 2 in 1, but it was cheaper, prettier and weighed less than the real notebooks they had - okay, with exception of the Macbook of course, but it will be years until I'll be able to afford one of those again. I hope we're in for a good time together my little White NB and I! :)

Hi Nathalie, I tried to give you an answer on the Brecht question here.

In my travels I am also shamefaced to admit that I missed your birthday too Nathalie. At the dog-end of Sunday though I'll belatedly wish you the best of everything in 2016 and always. xx

>57 Deern: I felt the same way about The Woman in Black. I had high hopes and then was let down because there was nothing special about it. Perhaps it was special at the time, but it is pretty stereotypical now.

>70 Deern: Glad the party was a success!

Hope you had a great weekend!

>122 Ameise1: Hi Barbara, I already saw it last night on your thread, but was half-asleep already and didn't post a reply yet. Thank you so much!!

>123 PaulCranswick: No worries Paul, I must be the greatest bday-misser on LT. And good wishes are welcome any day of the year, aren't they? :)
Have a good week!

>124 The_Hibernator: It's a modern novel in the style of classic gothic novels, so it was stereotypical from the start and probably that's its success. I so wanted to like it and to feel frightened by it, but for me in all the wonderful setting somehow the chilling or surprising element was missing.
Thank you and yes, I had a nice and quite lazy weekend, just what I needed.

******
Didn't read much yesterday, but started another book on my way to the shopping center - an audio of course, the Fifth Business by Robertson Davies for the CAC and it's also a 1,001. Read only about 10% more of Sacred Hunger because I had some phone calls from German friends in the afternoon who didn't get through on Monday and now wanted to chat a bit.

I realized that the move to the new appartment will cost me a lot of money. In the end there's no alternative and I'll start saving from the second month on (in the first I'll have to pay both places), but all the painting and repair works in the old place, the removal itself and then the redecoration I'm planning for the new place will hurt me a lot. I hope to be able to sell most of my furniture for a good price, so I can save removal cost and get some new and more flexible IKEA things. I'm considering having a loft bed built into one of the two rooms. It's an old building with high walls, it should be possible. That would give me the opportunity to place a big table for future dinner parties. and I always wanted a loft bed. I'll still have the guest couch should I get ill or break a leg.

I think I've earlier been complaining about the ugly kitchen in the new place. Now I learned the guy who lives there now bought a nice IKEA kitchen in a perfect color for the tiles and then painted it all over in an ugly blue. :( Well, then at least he can paint it white before leaving, so it's neutral and I can have one pink wall (Ilana's new wall inspired me). :)
And when I have more money again I can replace the fronts with the very nice original ones.

I still expect some tax refunds for my ex-company, now I hope they will pay out before July.

And once again things fell into place perfectly. I wanted to participate in this year's yoga retreat again, this time in Sicily. And then they changed the date to a week when I can't leave work because of all the month-end duties. At first I was sad, then I thought "don't get worked up over it, just wait and see if something else comes up" - and the sth else now seems to be that my friend Karin offered me the appartment and that I need my time and money for that.

Yoga is still going strong, did two longer sessions yesterday, overall about 80 mins, and started with a 30 mins shoulder and twist session into today. Feel good enough that tomorrow's RL class after a 4 week break shouldn't kill me, even if my instructor decides it's time for some "fire" (she likes to work with element mottos). I see a clear improvement in my muscles after a week. If now I can get rid of the ******** bread I should be good. *sigh*

>110 Deern: - Interesting comments regarding colouring types. My 'baby' brother had white-blond hair for the first 10 years of his life. It slowly darkened over time to the medium brown that it is now. My hair has always been dark brown, which goes with my hazel eyes and more olive-tone skin colouring. Like you, darn those grey hairs! I have fun by dying my hair to suit the seasons - I go with blond highlights in the summer and more of a caramel colour highlights in the winter.

Love your risotto "experiment". Sounds delicious! I love making risotto. Mushroom/asparagus and Parmesan cheese is my go to favorite at the moment so new ideas are always welcome.

Looking forward to seeing what you think of your audioread of Fifth Business. I plan to read the trade paperback copy I borrowed from the local library. It will be my first Robertson Davies read (hangs Canadian head down in shame).

Moves always seem to have costs that can creep up. Good thing you are planning ahead for your move.

Good job sticking with the yoga! I walked to the dentist today which was a good 5.5 KM walk so I feel good about that and I am now making some sugar-reduced oatmeal raisin cookies to celebrate, and so that I have a 'treat' I can take into the office for when I want something sweet.

Coming out of lurk to say that I'm glad things seem to be going well with you. Food sounds great!
I'm tickled that you are loving Sacred Hunger so much. It is certainly one I remember passionately.

>126 lkernagh: I always wanted olive skin (part of my family has it), but of course I got easy-burn nordic skin. It gets a tan, but I have to be careful. My hair became more difficult to dye when it greyed and strangely darker colors often turned greenish even when done by a hairdresser - another reason to stay on the blonde side of the color spectrum. :)

Mushroom/asparagus is also a great combination! I love it that risotto can be made in so many ways and I now mostly prefer it to pasta. 80-100g risotta rice are quite filling, after 80-100g pasta with some sugo I'm usually still hungry. I must next try a risotto with beetroot and maybe more gorgonzola after having opened a pack of beetroots yesterday (they always come in packs of 4 here).

I haven't made any progress on TFB since Sunday, but I have some very dull office tasks today that will allow me to listen while working. So far it's nice, not gripping, but an easy and pleasant listen.

Wow - that's quite a walk to the dentist. I gave up on my office walks (3.5 km one way) when it became dark so early. I walked last winter, but it was quite scary, the first half is narrow roads with almost no lights and no houses and the drivers here often are way too fast. Also, on 3 days of the week now I need the car anyway for afterwork activities. But I miss my walks and hope I can take them up again soon at least on Mondays and Fridays. And when I move I can take the bike. The new place is further away from the office, but in the valley, so it's mostly flat and there are good bike paths.

>127 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! :)
I only made it to 57% last night before falling asleep and I'm so curious to see how the story ends. Didn't realize it is such a long book when I started it, it might even be one for the doorstopper challenge.

Hello, Nathalie! Your thread always makes my mouth water - love all the food talk! I just picked up Fifth Business from the library, but I haven't started it yet as I already have several books going. I need to finish something!

Just here to confess I haven't made much more progress with GR . . . I WILL finish it, however, by Tuesday as I have a long drive home from taking my daughter back to college then. And I hope I get to start the next Shardlake too, as my reward!!!

I'm a BIG Robertson Davies fan!

>129 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie, thank you! I made some progress on FB last night and am about half through it. But I also feel like I'm stuck with my reading, because it seems I can't finish anything. Must finish this one and Sacred Hunger by Sunday latest, so I can finally concentrate on Stiller and L'amica geniale. And then I must already organize my February reads. In February I'm determined to go easy on the challenges.

>130 sibylline: Hi Lucy, I finished it a couple of days ago and yesterday read some long and great reviews here on LT. I won't be able to review it, though it was mostly great fun.
I never heard of RD before this month's CAC, but that's normal - I didn't hear of most English speaking authors before catching BBs here on LT. I really like FB and fear I'll have to read the other two as well. It is so well written and also very well narrated, I'm glad I found the audio.

*****
My RL yoga class last night went very well, but the instructor gave us an easy start. Feel quite an improvement already in my thighs and my arms and shoulders. No weight loss yet ("clearing" my freezer of all the bread...), but more muscles. Another 30 mins session this morning with the app. It's a great one, but not at all suited for beginners, so I won't recommend it here. There's no list of poses or "how to", just sequences and they expect you to be able to do even higher-level things like side-crow or one-armed wheel. I leave those out and am happy with the rest.

Inspired by Darryl's Chinese scrambled tofu egg I made a mediterranean version last night with a bell pepper and sun-dried tomatoes. It was very good, tasted like scrambled eggs thanks to the black salt and was much better digestable. I liked eggs, my stomach didn't, so while I still eat cheese and yogurt, I really eliminated the eggs from my diet a while ago and use substitutes like soy yogurt, banana or chia "egg" for baking.

Went to see the appartment a second time yesterday and I made my mind up to rent it. The rooms are bigger than I remembered and especially the kitchen and living room have a nice warm atmosphere. My friend and future landlady is totally happy with my idea of the loft bed in the living room. The second room will be guest room and wardrobe room and maybe also yoga room. The first room will get my big table, one or two comfy chairs, bookshelves and the loft bed. Well, if everything goes as planned that is. :)

>131 Deern: Your plans for the new appartment sound good :-)
Funny how we can see things differently at different times. The first time you saw the appartment you were probably more focussed on the fact it was smaller than your present appartment.

Just reading further above. I too have the colouring that if I go make up free, people would ask - are you ill, are you tired? Now that I am in my mid - fifties I more often go make up free, especially to walk the dog, to the grocery store . I am just quite pale with what used to be dark brown hair. Now my hair is a lighter brown with highlights! :) One of my sisters' accuses me of " going blonde" due to my highlights! She is funny! Moving! Oh that is a lot of work, but if you are happy in the new place, so worth it.

>132 FAMeulstee: Yes, and it's a nice project to keep my head busy. Color schemes and furniture for each future room, so much to think about!
My old appartment is really, really nice - it's the best one I ever had and downgrading is never easy. But the new one is great value for its price. In the old appt, the landlady became my friend and here my friends will be my landlord/landlady. And there's an organic farm with shop just next door. What else can I be looking for? :)

>133 vancouverdeb: Ha! I felt "bad" for going blonde, because dark seemed so much more serious and "deep". When my hair was less grey and I was younger, I dyed it in all forms of dark and used loads of make-up. I think dark hair needs either the olive skin or that northern fairy-like very pale skin and I'm neither, my face just disappeared in that dark frame.
I very reluctantly turned to blonde highlights when I had to do the roots every 3 weeks. Of course at work I was "blondie" for a while. though it came in handy - when I didn't understand sth the first time I just had to point at my hair without saying a thing and people laughed and explained again. There definitely is prejudice, but sometimes it's kind of fun working with it.

******
I'm having some very busy days at work, so I'll try and catch up on threads over the weekend.

I'm very saddened by Alan Rickman's death and I hope Sky will send some of his movies (they always do those specials on actors when they win an Oscar or die) and that it won't just be the HP series. Never saw "Truly Madly Deeply", but watched the trailer yesterday which was enough to make me cry, so I'll try to find it. And I'll do my Thomas Hardy BAC earlier and listen to The Return of the Native. Tried last year, but Rickman's voice distracted me from the plot. :)

I finished my 5th book: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies for the CAC and the 1,001 challenge. I really liked it, but at least 0.5 stars of my 4 star rating are the merit of the narrator. The writing is very good and the story isn't boring, but I just feel I would have enjoyed it a bit less if I had eye-read it.

Yup TMD was a weepy. I was in floods and floods of tears (and I wasn't even on am aeroplane, which is normally the only place I get like that with films). Hope your plans for the move go well. I am in awe of the advance planning you're doing.

>135 charl08: For rented appartments you have a period of notice of 6 months in Italy (3 in Germany, I guess even less in the UK and the US), so that gives me enough time for planning. Which doesn't mean that it will work well. I might ask the commune today what documents they need and prepare everything, or the energy provider or Vodafone, and I might still be without electricity, phone/internet or a valid address in July. But at least with the phone I guess it's the same in every country.
Note to self: buy kitchen rolls today for watching TMD. Just thinking of the trailer gives me goosebumps despite AR wearing a moustache.

Hi Nathalie! Your move sounds very exciting!

Doesn't yoga make your muscles feel alive?! You're working out much more seriously than I am as I only do 30 minutes a day using sessions I've posted to Pinterest from a Yogi's YouTube challenges.
Wishing you an outstanding weekend!

>136 Deern: That does explain why friends who have moved to the continent have struggled to get utilities connected when they just turn up in a new city/ country and move in from here!

Americans are quite impatient--generally it is not hard to arrange to have the power switch happen on consecutive days, ditto telephone service. Internet and cable take longer, generally, but matter less nowadays with cell phones and mifi (my phone can connect me-my computer--to the internet as long as I have two bars), Uh oh Tenzing is chewing things which means I have to move on.

Have a lovely weekend!

>137 Carmenere: Hi Lynda!
I'm down to one session a day or two short ones as I'm working normal hours again. I learned that after a long time without yoga, it needs just three days with exercise and I walk more upright and feel overall better. Maybe also because the vinyasa yoga puts such an emphasis on breathing and "heart openings". I never tried youtube classes. I generally missed out on YT as on most social media platforms, also FB and Pinterest and Twitter and all the others, but if you have a link, maybe those sessions are for me as well.

>138 charl08:, >139 sibylline: I believe things go fairly well in Germany with electricity and water. Phone and internet are and have always been a problem. But when I moved here, I tried to organize electricity for my new office in advance. It was ridiculous. Nothing was possible via phone, fax or e-mail, they needed to see me personally at their counter! After long discussions they sent me the contracts by snail post to Germany and I had to send copies of my identity card, the registered rental contract and other things plus of course send the signed contract back. When I finally arrived here, they had implemented electricity in another unused office in the same building and it took me a full week and two visits at their counter to get that corrected.
My landlady came with me when it was about the electricity for the appt, knowing how bad it would be. We had to look at photographies and cataster data to identify the house!
And at the commune (like in Germany you have to register your address in Italy) it wasn't any better.
And nothing works without queuing forever at some counter, often just to be sent home for yet another document. And calling in advance, asking what you should bring doesn't help. They don't give you the full list because thet want to frustrate you by sending you away at least once. You always have to take half a day off because all offices are closed for lunch and on Saturdays. :)
(And this is the very North where they believe they aren't even Italian. I've read much worse accounts, even by Italians, about administration further South)

(My ex-colleagues pressed me to write a book about all those experiences, but enough of those exist already)

>140 DianaNL: Oh, how cute! :)
Thank you and a Happy Weekend to you, Diana!

Nathalie, this are good news about your new appartement. Here we don't have such problems with electricity, water, phone etc. when we move.
I wish you a relaxed weekend.

>142 Ameise1: Haha. that's what I expected from Switzerland! :))
A very happy Sunday to you and thank you for the snow pic! I don't think we'll get any more real snow this year.

>143 Deern: Here, it just started with snow. Last week I went to work by public transports and next week will probably the same. The car stays safely at home.

Stopping by to get caught up and to wish you a lovely week, Nathalie!

Walking when it gets dark early and the way home isn't well lit - or well travelled by others - would be a concern for me as well. During the summer months I walk along the waterfront pathway for my work commute but never during the the winter months.... the path is poorly lit and has a lot of bushes where undesirables can hid from view. From November to March, I follow the main road. There is always traffic on the main road! My big concern now though is that they have torn up the sidewalk as part of a city works project so pedestrians have to walk one block in the shoulder of the road with just emergency cones as protection from the vehicles on the road. It has been like that for 4-weeks now and I am getting a little ticked. They really should have done this work during the summer months when the sun doesn't go down before 8-9 pm. sheesh!

Congrats on deciding on the new apartment!

Glad to see you liked Fifth Business! I still need to crack that one and my Tyler read for the AAC. *Looks at calendar and decides it is too early to start end of month reading panic*

>145 lkernagh: Hi Lori, thanky for visiting!
The dark streets here have no sidewalk either, so the danger of being hit by a car is actually there. I try not to think about undesirables when I walk, but they'd have great hiding places here as well, many bushes and walls. Daylight is clearly preferable for walks!
I also always wonder why street works seem to be done at the worst possible times - here they renew the lines every year exactly the week when all the tourists arrive for Easter. :)

4. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1,001 #405/359)

Okay, can't review. Sorry. If you want to read it, check the long reviews with 4 or 5 stars on the book page - they're great and gave me a rough idea what I had been actually reading.

I took the opportunity when Lucy started this one last year to read along, fearing I'd never get through my first Pynchon on my own. Her wrap-ups helped me a lot and I was often able to appreciate the brillance of this work.

But it also was one of the hardest reads of my life, far more difficult to follow than Ulysses and Infinite Jest, and the 700 pages of my Kindle edition felt much much longer.

I rate with 4 stars because I didn't "get" enough of it for more and because I was often frustrated and close to giving up, especially in part 3.

5. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (1,001 #406/360)

As so often, this is an author I wold have never read had it not been for some challenge, here the CAC. Davies' books aren't available here as Kindle, but I found some audios and got this one as it's also a 1,001. It was a surprisingly pleasant listen for a plot that's basically quite an unexciting life story of a schoolmaster in a small town in Canada. The narrator did a very good job and once I got used to his voice (that always takes me 1-2 chapters) I listened through this in just 3 days.

Despite its excursions into the slightly mysterious, this really is quite a normal story about a man who believes he's been "Fifth Business" for others, i.e. while he himself lead a mostly unremarkable life, his presence triggered events that had consequences for others. The story begins with the protagonist (Dunston?) as a young boy ducking from a snowball thrown by a friend. The snowball hits the pastor's pregnant wife who takes a fall and goes into early labor. Her son Paul survives, but the circumstances of his birth greatly influence his further life and that of his parents. Many decisions the protagonist takes in his later life are influenced by the guilt he feels for that snowball that was meant for him.

Rating: 4 stars

6. Die Kraft liegt in mir by Tamara Dietl

Tamara Dietl is the wife of the late German film director Helmut Dietl who died of lung cancer early in 2015. Just a year earlier, while he was already fighting the disease, TD’s mother died surprisingly and very quickly of cancer as well. TD is a crisis coach and she decided to write a book about her own experiences, how the techniques she knew helped her get through those super-hard times without being destroyed. None of the techniques are really new for me, actually I found them to be typical coach stuff. But seeing them consciously applied over a period of 15 months in a constantly worsening situation was actually helpful.

TA is certified in the tradition of Viktor Frankl – a philosopher of whom I never heard before and whose quotes in this book I all highlighted. Frankl was Jewish and deported to Theresienstadt in 1941 with his family. He survived 4 concentration camps, all his family was killed. Later he wrote books about how he was able to say Ja zum Leben (Man's Search for Meaning) despite everything he went through.

My favorite was something like this: “Don’t search (because searching is looking through old stuff for things you already know). Find instead, because finding is always something unknown, something that brings you forward! “

Now this book here… I feel it is honest. I feel she had to write it, that writing was a new coping technique for her. Some of it might be of help for me. I’d even book her as a coach if I was in Munich and could afford her fees, because I really believe her.
But… the writing is that type I really detest. Women magazine writing. I know, almost all SH books are written like that, but that does not change that I wish they were different.

The next difficult point was that while I didn’t mind (also didn’t love) his films and was never interested in the celebrity personality Helmut Dietl, in the chapter where she describes their big love story I quite hated him, and her just as much. When they got together, when he insisted she’d come first to Munich to see him and then fly to Paris with him, he’d had a life partner for many years and everyone knew it, even I knew it. He was a commitment phobic, so they lived in different apartments in the same house. She had been his muse for many years and acted in some films. And while I’m not among the people who think “the other man/woman” is automatically the homewrecker – after all it’s the partner who decides to walk out for someone else, often not even trying to save the relationship – I hated her gloating about it. He had a woman when you were with him first and you knew it! A proof of his big love for her was that he left his partner as soon as they came back from Paris. Not a line of concern from that crisis coach for the abandoned partner! Instead total happiness because her man at once wanted her to move in, marry her and have a kid, all things he had denied his other partner forever. So much love, happy pink clouds, it was all SO romantic!! So how should I feel for a woman who doesn’t say a single time that she felt sorry for the ex? (I don’t like the ex, a big actress in Germany booked on wannabe tragic roles, but everyone deserves better treatment than that). And yes, of course I - abandoned for another woman - took that personal, how couldn’t I ??

So in the end the book gets a 3 star “I don’t know what else to give” rating from me.

I had a strange weekend, didn't LT, read almost nothing of my planned books and just let myself drift along on emotions and impressions that came to me. It all started pretty normal with a visit at the hairdresser’s. There I read quite a bit of this month’s 1,001 GR Stiller. Well, somewhere between pages 100 and 150 Frisch describes the relationship of the missed artist Stiller and his wife Julika, and except for time, profession and names, you could have put in the names of my ex and me and would have had a pretty good idea of the destructive dynamics. It was really scary and basically I spent most of the weekend thinking about how I might finally really step out of all that bad old stuff that leads me to such men who emotionally abuse me/ determines my own behaviour, not just in relationships, but in all areas of my life. I know I'm doing much and it all looks like progress to the outside world, but I feel like that hurt being inside of me keeps me on a leash and whenever I step too far out it drags me back and scolds me for wanting more than I deserve.

Actually, last week I asked my therapist if we can kill an inner child when it tries to kill us and when all the coddling doesn't help. She'll try a new approach of trauma handling in February. I'm scared, but it can't go on like this.

Later I tried to watch “Truly Madly Deeply” and only got through 4 of the 9 parts on YT. I didn’t cry, but couldn’t watch on. Another woman who wants to feel “looked after” and doesn’t grow up, just like me. A woman with a bunch of good (men) friends who help her out with things she could just as well do alone. And Jamie when he comes back, is he really loving? I thought he was merely terribly commanding and self-centered and I thought he should better disappear again asap. I know how the movie ends, but I don’t feel like watching anymore of it right now.

I got up from my couch and started baking some sugar-free oats-and-raisin cookies. Just when they were ready my friend and future landlady Karin called in for a cup of tea and was overjoyed to get fresh warm cookies as well. We chatted a bit, then I did my yoga and cardio and went to sleep early.

Yesterday I cooked another batch of chili and watched several episodes of Poirot after an extra long session of yoga.
I tried to rearrange my bedroom in a way I might feel like sleeping in it again (it’s almost a year now I have been sleeping on the narrow couch in the living room). But the bedroom that used to be my haven for 5 years has somehow lost all its appeal to me. It’s like it doesn’t belong to me. I decided that that part of my furniture needs to be sold, I'll just keep the mattress.

It was snow weather without snow (which I quite like) and I took a long walk, feeling strangely energized and almost liberated. Couldn’t put words to it, but later I called my friend Sabine for her birthday and she told me about a book that had helped her a lot in dealing with the separation from her partner (it happens everywhere now, she also told me about a colleague who was recently left by her husband after 23 years, and for her best friend). I downloaded it at once and read it, and then I took some resolutions which I might share here later.

Okay, here they are:

1. Do something different every single day and write it down.
Saturday I started with something as simple as eating spaghetti aglio olio peperoncino. I never eat garlic when I can avoid it - but I felt like it and I loved it!
Yesterday I did some changes in my bedroom, not a great success so far.

2. You cannot eat love - love’s in the heart, not in the belly! 
I remembered something from my very early childhood last week - when I was sad and needed comfort I pressed a cushion into my belly until it hurt (in my mother's household you couldn't just walk into the kitchen and eat something). I clearly later used food for the same effect, a full, slightly aching stomach gave me a feeling of comfort nothing else could.

3. Don’t feed that evil little troll (= angry abandoned child) that wants you rather dead than changed and tells you you’re too bad to deserve a happy life, "because see - "everyone" left you"! Avoid any feeding thoughts, you know where they lead, even if they start out harmless.

4. Stop searching (because searching is looking through old stuff for things you already know). Just live and while living, accept what you find on the way!

5. Save money by eating from the pantry*, not buying new clothes, reading library books and off the shelf, walking more often instead of driving.
*for a single household I have a ridiculously well-stocked pantry. If I buy only fresh things and eat my way through all that pasta, rice, pulse, etc. I’ll be well-fed until my move in June.

6. Spend the saved money on travelling. Make a list of places to visit this year and work on checking them off.
I want to find the courage to travel on a small budget, starting with weekend trips.

7. Fill each week one box or bag with things you can get rid of and then do get rid of them instead of storing them in the basement or garage!

8. Get a “DIY for Dummies” or similar book that allows you to do many things on your own – like drill holes in a wall to fix a shelf or paint a chair.
Yes, I know. High time for that. My lame excuse is that no-one in my family knows how to do these things so we always paid others. Maybe I'm not as left-handed as I always believed.

9. Do not hide behind books from RL. This also means do not over-commit for challenges to have an excuse to stay in reading when there are alternatives.
*sigh* this one's going to be hard!

10. Yoga. Every day, and if it is just a sun salutation or a breathing exercise.

Reading status after week 2/2016:

Finished books 3-6/2016: Gravity's Rainbow and Fifth Business, both 1,001 and the latter a CAC.
Read my second self-help book this year and it's just the 18th of Jan! :(

Made progress on Stiller but will have to continue slowly, it's more intense than I had expected.

Started listening to The Return of the Native.... *sigh*

No progress on Ferrante and also haven't read anything of Sacred Hunger in days.

Hope your challenges go well. Will you keep a diary to record how you are doing? The idea of travelling sounds great. Would love to hear more about where you will go.

>153 charl08: Hi Charlotte, thank you! Well, some are your typical ones, but the doing sth different is an important one. I started that a while ago and then neglected it again. I'll write it down here and maybe into my otherwise unused diary.

Today I'm wearing a very fashionable but very ripped new jeans with biker boots in the office. Well, no clients see me anyway.

I won't be able to have a long holiday this year, but I'd love to take some weekend trips, also simply to get out of those mountains from time to time. I'd really like to see Genoa, that's quite on top of the list and I don't even know why. I feel just drawn there since last summer. It's a nightmare to get there by train though. Maybe Venice again. Then Milano with my parents in March (but that won't be budget). And then I should really try and get to Zuerich this year (I could travel with my Swiss friend) and have a mini-meetup with Barbara! :)

>150 Deern: >151 Deern: I've been told the first step to change is recognizing the change needs to happen (as cheesy as that sounds when I say it like that). So it's great that you spent an introspective weekend and are willing to start making some small resolutions for change. Way to go! :) I've been doing a lot of introspective thinking myself lately. It feels like a waste of time sometimes (think of all the reading/studying/blogging) I could have done during that time. But it's worth it when the next day you feel like you've learned something about yourself. Even if it makes you cry a little.

Keep it up!

>155 The_Hibernator: I have been taking little steps for a while now. Maybe my biggest problem is the combination of impatience and lack of courage. Oh, and not knowing what I really want. :)
At least it was a tear-free weekend for once, there haven't been many of those since last April. It was more contemplative, like developping a new idea of myself, without constructing too much. (because constructing is already limiting)

***
The new thing I did yesterday was trying to do a headstand. I know it's super-easy, but it scares me extremely, I always see me fall over and at least break a bone, if not my neck. So after my yoga session I tried one, against a wall. Was still too scared, but managed to get one leg straight up and the other on the edge of a high chair. Will try again tonight.

Hi Nathalie, I wish I'd been more assiduous at catching up with you, but it had been a while and there was so much happening here, and I've been less patient even than usual with the state of my head being what it is, so I hope you'll forgive me for not giving everything proper consideration.

I'm really glad you enjoyed Fifth Business but have to say I don't agree with your review, but then, I'm immensely biased, because I discovered Robertson Davies when I was a very impressionable 17 or 18 and he can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned. I've always found his writing has a sort of magical quality, perhaps in the way he observes things and his subtle (rather Anglo) humour, combined with his vast culture, so that all his stories are imbued with a sense of history and mythology. But as I say, I'm a big fan, so obviously it taints my impressions, so that seeing the word "ordinary" to describe any part of his writing seems a bit odd. That being said, he was a apparently very taken with all the nitty-gritty ordinariness or daily life, and according to at least one reviewer, made that very much part of his writing. I guess it's the way that he blends that sense of normalcy with other more universal aspects that works magic for me. Also, I think I have an advantage as a Canadian, because I can probably pick up subtle nuances which are purely cultural. That's my two cents anyway!

I hope you end up liking/loving Sacred Hunger. I have it in book form, but ended up listening to David Rintoul's excellent narration of the audiobook and was very much taken by it. Another author I'm probably losing a sense of perspective on, because with three of his books under my belt, I've become quite a huge fan. Have you read his Morality Play? I can't recall. It's quite short and rather brilliant.

About yoga: my father was what you might definitely call a yogi for over 25 years, doing yoga some 2 and 3 times daily. He says he damaged some disks in his lower neck because of some postures he was probably doing inaccurately, namely the headstand. I would say you should always follow your instincts and if something doesn't feel right, then best to avoid it. I've always been terrified of headstands, though I've done it successfully, but I've always worried that all that pressure on your head can go wrong if you're not well aligned.

>157 Smiler69: Hi Ilana, I'm happy to see you here, and no worries about thread presence! Just like you I can't follow threads all the time - and even if I manage to do so, I often don't have anything to say and just lurk for a while.

I just reread my FB review. I didn't find the expression "ordinary" (is that a bad word btw?) , but I said "normal", "unexciting" and "unremarkable" when it comes to the protagonist's life - not to Davies' writing!! - and I think that's what it is. One friend gets immensely rich, another friend is a famous magician, and for an outsider it looks like Dunston is stuck in his smalltown world and his teaching, and that reflects in that impersonal standard farewell speech when he goes into retirement. People don't really know him, he just blends in, and his little excursions to collect saints and the books he publishes on them are seen as odd and are better not mentioned.

Now Davies put this into a story I loved listening to and that didn't bore me a minute, and that is great and makes me want to read (listen, because I can't get his books here) more!
Other authors would write about the industrialist or about the magician, but he gives the schoolmaster a life that's quite fascinating. And I noticed and enjoyed the British humor in it.

It is difficult for me to judge writing when I'm listening to a book (that's one of the remaining foreign language issues). I love Virginia Woolf's writing, but am sure I couldn't listen to an audio of her books. I loved the writing in Gravity's Rainbow and was unable to listen to a single chapter. Other books (Babbitt) only come to life for me when I can listen. Here unfortunately I can't compare, but my listening impression was a very good one.

I had a strange experience with Sacred Hunger. I devoured the first 35%, then slow-read another 15 or 20%, then put it aside and it doesn't call me back yet. I'll finish it and I'm sure I'll love it in the end, but while at the beginning I didn't feel like reading typical historical fiction, now I do. And I'm wondering how I would tackle such a task. When an Austen character was involved in the South American trading (i.e. slave trading), no-one thought anything about it until some years ago and now it's being discussed. For me it isn't an issue in her books. It was a horrible thing, but when she wrote the book it was more or less "normal" business and the ethical aspects certainly weren't discussed in a drawing room with the ladies around.
But setting out in the 1990s to write a book on slave trade and dare making the ship owners likeable was quite a risk. So while I like Kemp and want him to succeed financially, I know he has to fail because it's such an abominable business. I even like Kemp Junior (I know I'm not meant to) and want him to get the girl and I'm sure he won't. So by putting the book aside I'm avoiding their downfall for another couple of days, but I admire Unsworth for developing such a risky plot and hope the book won't fall into the "modern historical fiction trap" later on.

Yoga: I always had neck issues that's why I avoided the headstand so far. But some days ago I just felt like giving it a try, with the wall for the alignment and a cushion for the head though and very carefully. I'm trying to listen to my body with all those yoga positions and somehow I'm managing not being over-ambitious there as I was with other sports. I also have a very good teacher here who controls and adjusts our posture all the time in order to avoid injuries.

I had a very unremarkable day yesterday. So unremarkable and filled with standardized Tasks that despite all my searching I didn't find anything important I could do "differently". I walked to the shop during lunch break to buy apples, but that wasn't a first time. Okay, maybe I'll find two things today. :)

Listened to a bit more of The Return of the Native and fear that despite Rickman's voice I won't like it. What's wrong with me? I like Eustacia and find Tamsin (?) boring. So of course Eustacia will lose everything and die and Tamsin will probably marry that guy who found her on the road. I don't know though, there are 12 hrs left. It's not an easy-to-follow book for me. I know that the long descriptive parts about nature are immensely important, but it's hard for me to concentrate and I have to rewind all the time. If it were not for Rickman I'd prefer eye-reading this one.

Made also a little progress on the super-slow Stiller, am on page 252 of 432. Great, great book so far and I'm glad that I finally got to it, or better that I was finally ready for it. Another typical case of books coming to us when we are ready to learn from them.

Following the Dietl book I downloaded Viktor Frankl's Und trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen. That's one reason why I don't want to overplan my months with challenges. A friend recommends a book that leads you to another book. Or you read an article with a link to another article (yesterday: from D.H. Lawrence to James Joyce) and suddenly feel like finally getting that Finnegan's Wake off the shelf. I like being diverted from my plans.

Yesterday I did something I had been procrastinating for weeks for no apparent reason. And the second thing I did differently was an accident - I guess I ate meat sauce at the refugee home. No-one could confirm, so I'm not 100% sure. I help with the dinner giving out tea and sugar and then I eat with the guys. It's actually important for them to see staff and volunteers sharing their food, so they will complain less about it*. Yesterday it was pasta al pomodoro and beans. I was happy that for once it was meat-free and I didn't have to eat bland potatoes or rice, but when I tasted the beans I got the impression that they were served with meat sauce, maybe from some roast. I checked it for meaty bits but didn't find any, so I kept eating. Maybe it was just lots of onions or a soup cube. I didn't want to return the food or throw it away (that encourages them to do the same) and we who help with the dinner always eat last, so I couldn't offer it to anyone. It actually tasted very good, but I must be more careful in the future. At least I'm not a vegetarian who finds meat nauseating, I stopped eating it because I can't stand the situation in the factory farms and the slaughterhouses.

*Mo-Fri they get food from a Merano mensa which in 75% of the cases I'd say is quite disgusting and totally joyless, but it has to be cheap of course. It's usually meat (beef or chicken) with boiled very tasteless potatoes or boiled oily rice or it's overcooked pasta. Their pasta is actually so bad that they can't understand why the Italians love it so much. No salad, almost no vegetables (they get lots of fruit, mainly apples, from other sources). That mensa is closed on weekends and holidays, so on those days they get the food from Bolzano, from a Pakistani caterer. Now that is great food for even a lower price. I was lucky twice and was present on Pakistani evenings and while I could just have rice and once a samosa, it was SO good! They are however forced to use a local mensa when possible.

****
I found that audible.com now has quite a good selection of Italian audios and got Elena Ferrante's L'amica geniale to listen along with my read. I understood the sample very well.
I read half of the Frankl book yesterday and so far it's a 5 star! Sacred Hunger is still on hold.

Looking forward to the weekend and filling my first "get rid off" bag.

Hi Nathalie, forgive my ignorance - what's a 'mensa'? Is it a kind of shop? How sad that the food is poor.

Our news reported that our local provider of housing for refugees had painted their doors red, and so was identifying them for the locals who oppose supporting migrants. They claim it's just an unfortunate coincidence, but it seems such a stupid thing to do (but then, so is settling people in areas with no jobs and high poverty imho).

>161 charl08: It's a cantine/caterer.

Why should he do that? Those who provide housing for refugees (at least here and in Germany) get a lot of money from the government. If you own an old shabby badly booked hotel the best thing you can do is let refugees live there. There have already been numerous scandals with corruption and the mafia being involved. So at least here who lets rooms would do everything to keep the money coming and certainly not try to call attention to the places.

Catching up. I have meant to say, most seriously, that you are the most adventurous of readers - tackling GR was an amazing thing to do.

Likewise the Hardy! You're right about the landscape. Like George Eliot, Hardy was aware that technology was going to change landscapes and erase a whole way of life and change everything and he was trying to capture it - from the ways of the simple village folk, their customs, to men like the "reddleman" in his caravan. He saw too that a woman like Eustacia Vye was pretty much doomed by her own romantic foolery combining with her energy and intelligence in the worst way. Rickman clearly studied those local accents -- his portrayal of the villagers standing around gossiping and kvetching goes so far beyond what readers usually bother to do. Anyway, just enjoy his beautiful voice!

Back to add - I think too, the fact that everyone walks everywhere - captures the isolation and "slowness" of life then.

>163 sibylline: Lucy, thanks for those comments on Return of the Native - I am also listening to it right now, and so your insights are greatly appreciated.

Nathalie, I have caught up with you, and I am glad that Charlotte asked what a mensa was, because I was also wondering. That's sad, really, about the quality of the food.

I think you are doing so well with your daily journey! I need to do what you are doing with the getting rids of things that have accumulated. I did donate about twenty books or so to the local library, so at least that's a start. And I can't stand on my head, either, and I am not even brave enough to try, so more power to you!

>163 sibylline: An article Charlotte posted and some deviations I took from there lead me to the goodread's list of the most difficult books. Of the top 10 I now (after GR) have read 9. The one missing is, of course, Finnegan's Wake. Checked audible yesterday, becaue another article said it should best be listened to, but unfortunately there aren't any complete readings, the longest is just 7 hrs. The sample was wonderful though.

I decided I'll have to read The Return of the Native on my Kindle as well because it has a dictionary. Those long descriptions of nature are full of unknown words and I don't want to skip them. Though even after loking up "reddle" I have no idea what a reddleman does. I felt sorry for Eustacia when Hardy explained her character. There wasn't much to do for ambitious women then, so she concentrated on love. Imagine what she could do nowadays with her head and her energy!

>164 Crazymamie: Sorry - I was confusing the languages. :) A cantina in Italian is a basement.

Last year, in a burst of energy, I collected so many things into bags and boxes. And then I put them all into my basement room and into the garage where they still are! :)

A friend sent me this link today and I'll get one of those headstand chairs after my move (or earlier): http://mailings.yogi-shop.com/c/21301962/1b38d3cc3968c-o19oz1

I'll listen FW with you one of these days, but let's wait a bit? :)

Is this the list you used?

I haven't read more than half of them, if that! HARD BOOKS

Maybe I should try "hard novels?"

Hmmm I found 100 hardest novels and of course had to see how I scored, which was not bad at all! I've read 73 out of 100 of them, which put me in the top 1% which makes me happy. And I've tried to read several others but gave up ( the William Gaddis comes to mind). A few don't seem very hard to me at all, can't think what they are doing on the list, but oh well. Some of it is about how the book is perceived, not about how it actually is.

REALLY HARD NOVELS, TOP 100

Nathalie, that is a wonderful list of resolutions. I especially like the one about trying new things, although I would probably run out of new things to try pretty quickly. Yoga is so relaxing and good for our bodies. I need to get back to doing it daily as I am not nearly as flexible as I used to be.

I am staying away from the lists of Hard Books that you and Lucy are posting. Right now I'm reading Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving. Not difficult but also not as engaging as I hoped it would be. *sigh* I have been lucky with my books so far this year -- they can't all be unputdownable or I would never get anything done around here!

I am like you, Nathalie. I have plans to read for certain challenges, and then one books leads to another, or I find something fantastic in a review somewhere, or at a 2nd hand book store and I'm down a completely different path than I had planned. So I keep my reading " loosey goosey." Bravo to you for helping at a refugee home. In Canada we are getting quite a few refugees from Syria/ Afghanistan - I think the goal is to re-settle 50,000 people, which is fairly ambitious for a country like ours, of 37 million people ( or so). People here seem to be very generous with money and housing and food.

>166 sibylline: I traced my steps back and found the link: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/827.Most_Difficult_Novels
So it's most difficult novels, not books.
On your list of the 10 hardest books there are many I never heard of - and then there's To the Lighthouse which is quite short and which I found maybe not an easy, but certainly not a super-difficult read (I had more issues with Mrs Dalloway, also on reread). I'd love to read the Hegel, but the German is so old and the sentence structure so complicated... I guess Kant and Heidegger will be just as difficult language-wise.

On the other list I at least know many titles, and again am surprised to find books like the Murakami which is long but I remember flying through it in less than a week. And Oliver Twist and The Mill on the Floss?

I found another list this morning with the classic books most British people would like to read, but "don't have time and patience for": http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/21/dont-read-classic-books-b... (it's imbedded into the article). Of those 25 I read 22 and have the other three on my shelf, so that at least makes me a bit proud. :)

>167 Donna828: Thank you Donna!
It's just a couple of days and I realize how difficult it is to find something to consciously do differently. Which shows how monotonous my life is. It's all about watching myself and identifying those moments when something I do might feel better done in another way.

I'm very happy with my yoga results after only 17 days. I have more muscles, my skin fells better, I'm walking more upright and my jeans fit a bit better. :)
I haven't read a John Irving yet, but isn't he in next month's AAC? So I'll not read Avenue of Mysteries I guess.

>168 vancouverdeb: I love "loosey goosey", have to memorize it! :)
Our refugees here (and in Italy generally) are mainly Africans and Pakistani, those from Syria and Afghanistan are more likely to take the shorter sea route from Turkey to Greece and then proceed to Germany. Honestly - while I'm all for accepting refugees, I don't know how they'll manage it in the future, with over a million having arrived in 2015. Without the thousands of volunteers the German government would be completely lost.

The Africans here in Merano can be split in two groups: very young ones from countries with a murderous military service like Eritrea. They get the money from their families and are sent North. They have a good chance to be accepted. They have no work experience though and should best be sent to school for another 1-2 years to be able to then learn a profession from scratch.

And then there are those who are a bit older and worked in countries like Libya because in their home countries there's no economic future for them (the Pakistanis here fall into the same category) . When the regime in Libya fell, the situation slowly worsened for the foreign workers to the point of persecutions. There is much xenophobia and racism in North Africa against foreign and especially against black people, despite them all being muslim. Basically, they were forced on those boats towards Italy and all their money was taken from them. That group unfortunately hasn't much of a chance to be accepted although they have work experience and are ready to do any job, but their home countries (like Senegal, Gambia) are considered safe.

Nathalie, you are so much closer to the refugee crisis, it must be so much more difficult for everyone involved. Here in Canada, a decision was made by our government, supported by the majority of Canadian citizens to take in Syrian refugees . Thus we have the luxury of the UN doing background checks, Canadian immigration people doing further interviews and checks before we airlift refugees into our country. The vast majority of refugees that we are taking are families, single women with children. They are flown by air to Canada, and met at the airport with a place to stay and settle , with people in place to assist with medical issues, resettling, finding jobs , housing etc. And all of that is not to say that there are not concerns from some Canadians. I can understand how challenging it must be European Countries so close to everything to feel more anxious and overwhelmed. I believe many of our refugees come from refugee camps in Jordan as well. I too am amazed at the generosity of the Germans, though I understand that they are feeling overwhelmed. That is very sad about the situation in North Africa.

Good for you and the yoga! I try to get out most days to walk my dog for a couple of miles a day, and I do feel that better for it too.

Sounds like life is challenging for you right now, Nathalie. I think many of us struggle, but are not brave enough to admit it ( count me in that group). Big hugs to you, and be kind and patient with yourself.

>169 Deern: - the link to from the Guardian re the 25 books - I have only read 9 of them . 22 / 25 for you! Feel proud!

>171 vancouverdeb: Thank you for the information! This is a wonderful procedure with people arriving and finding everything in place and waiting for them. Of course it's not applicable to the situation in Europe where borders are more or less open. Identity and background checks can only be done weeks or months(!) after they arrived. There are lots of fake Syrean passports that allow anyone entry without close checks who isn't "too black or too white". It's a total chaos and only half manageable with the help of the volunteers.

I'm learning so much recently, for example how almost impossible it is to send people back when they commit crimes in Germany or are denied asylum. This all came out after the events in Cologne and elsewhere. Not speaking about Syrean people who won't be sent back into a war region in any case, but for example I had no idea there was asylum given to so many people from North African countries like Marocco and that those people can't be sent back unless their government agrees to accept them back - or is paid to do so.

We in Merano are comparatively lucky as are "our" refugees. There are only 70 in the house where I'm working with a maximum of 4 people sharing one room. There's a dining room, a classroom, a music room (with some donated instruments), a sports room (with donated weights and a cross trainer). Furniture is as cheap as can be, but functional. In the beginning there were only 4 staff, so all the washing, cleaning, sweeping, food serving, etc. had to be done by the refugees which gives them an activity and they learn to keep things clean because tomorrow it might be their turn to scrub floors and toilets. I should add that it's all quite young men, so they really had to learn those things just as others do during military service.

In Merano, many teachers are voluntarily giving German and Italian lessons and some of them organized projects with their schools like intercultural breakfasts, sports events or theater plays, so the refugees are in direct contact with young local people. The direct encounter also helps preventing racism at the roots. Then we had several parties already, "open door days", etc.

What worries me now is the future. Some of them won't get a permit to stay and Italy doesn't send them back. They will just be asked to leave the house and then become illegal as thousands and thousands of others who work illegally on farms in the South. Those allowed to stay still have to leave the house after about a year - work or new home found or not. There's need for seasonal workers in the summer months, but there's no industry where I live where they could find long-term jobs. I guess most of them will have to move away, also because living here costs much more than further South.

Thanks for the hugs, they're always welcome! Hugs back to you! :)

Yesterday’s “different thing” (DT) was that I got out of my passivity and confronted a colleague about a deliverable that’s been pending forever. At least now I know why it’s pending though I don’t know why he’s been promising it us for “tomorrow” all the time. Quite complex actually, and once it’s completed it will become my task.

Today? Don’t know yet. I might follow an advice of today’s horoscope if nothing else comes up (no, I won’t say what it is, it’s a bit embarrassing).

Finished book #7, Viktor Frankl’s Und trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen which despite its old-fashioned language was a great read and my first 5 star this year. Finally picked up Sacred Hunger again and I clearly took my break at the right time to give the Kemps a respite because from here it goes all downhill for them.

Will do grocery shopping after work to get all the fresh ingredients for Darryl’s North African Bean Stew which I’m planning to make with chickpeas. I’ll make half a batch first because I don’t like leek much and never had turnips before. If I get sweet potatoes I’ll also make some of the other African sweet potato soup with black-eyed peas (my favorite in 2015). I love coming home on winter evenings knowing there’s some nice hearty vegetable stew ready to heat for dinner. It’s also easier to do my yoga knowing I won’t have to cook anymore.

I found an interesting vegan recipe for a tres leches cake (TLC was discussed on Amber’s thread last week). I’ll make just a mini cake because TLC is all new to me and I’ll use the gluten-free flour that worked so well with the oat and raisin cookies (of which I’m also planning to make another half batch for my breakfasts). The recipe uses coconut milk and vanilla soy milk for the soaking and the coconut cream is whipped and put on top as 3rd milk.

Tres leche alternative sounds good, look forward to hearing how it goes. I have learnt something from you about the comparable situation of refugees in Italy. Thank you for taking the time to explain that.

I am so sad about Eritrea, I read a little about its history and it seemed that they almost had peace after so long fighting for independence only to go back in the other direction. There were such hopes for a restarted university etc etc.

I hope that there is some long term planning going on somewhere in Brussels as well as the panicky statements about 'the end of the EU' that were on the news tonight. Ideally policies that mean people can make a living in their new homes not just avoid conscription and discrimination.

Happy weekend, Nathalie. Stay safe and warm.

Ha! That Guardian list should be a tribute to my high school - I score 23 & 1/2 and I read probably 90% of them by the end of high school, many of them for literature classes, some on my own. Interesting that Henry James does not figure. (Hmmmm - he doesn't show up much on the 100 list for Goodreads either. Surely The Golden Bowl and The Princess Cassamassima ought to be on it? (Neither of which have I considered it necessary to read even though I like James.)

>174 charl08: It went well, but I now know that tres leches isn't really for me. And I was glad I made that vegan recipe with the coconut cream on top because that was the element I really liked. Otherwise the cake was too wet for me although it tasted good. The recipe was for a small pan and I put half of the small cake in the freezer. Then I stabbed little holes in the remaining half and started feeding it with the mix of coconut water and vanilla soy milk and was surprised how much it soaked in.
And it was the first time I made coconut whipped cream - it really worked and I like it better then the real thing that always makes me a bit nauseous.

I also read about Eritrea and it's what happens sp often - a president starts with good intentions and things go well and then they start being afreid they could lose their power and become dictators. It's similar (w/o the military) in Gambia and a German weekly recently had an article about long-time dictator presidents in Africa.

I quite lost trust in the EU. As a West-German I grew up with the idea that nationalism doesn't do us good and like many I had high hopes in a Europe without borders and a shared philpsphy. But what we got was merely a unification for easier trading of which Germany profited extremely. Behind that business veil I feel nationality was lived and felt even stronger in most countries. They also extended too quickly (greedily) towards East which brought new markets but more conservative nationalism and lots of problems like immigration into the very liberal German (and I think Swedish and Danish) social systems from Romania, Bulgaria and others. With the refugees being such a big theme now in elections in most countries I don't see how Brussels could provide a solution. Has any of those EU welcome and registration centres in Greece and Sicily been started yet?

>175 DianaNL: Thank you for the super-cute puppy, Diana. Sending good thoughts your way!

>176 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara! I'd love to be there now with some friends and everything set for a raclette. :)
Happy Sunday to you!

>177 sibylline: You must have been to a great high school - looking at the comments it seems most of the books have not been on any (British?) syllabus which also surprised me. Had there been more Henry James, my result would be worse, I didn't read those two. I still have to read Vanity Fair, Tess (which I had planned for the BAC Hardy month) and The Brothers Karamazov.

******
My different thing yesterday was that I slept in my bed. Kind of because I woke up about 10 times and had to leave the light on. Did more redecoration of my bedroom yesterday and now I at least like its looks again. I always had a white bedroom and now with different pictures, cushions and a different blanket I added some color.

Got up very early yesterday (the full moon maybe), did a long session of yoga and then started all my cooking and baking. I described some of my tres leches cake experience in the last post. What I'd make differently next time: use a different flour (I only later saw it was gluten-free for pizza and breads, not for cake), add a bit of saffron or curcuma for the color and use a sweeter banana or a bit more sugar. Basically adding the banana was a good move as it goes very well with the coconut milk and cream.

The oats&raisin cookies went well again and also Darryl's stew, while needing much cooking time, was a success. Hadn't found turnips or anything similar, so I threw in a yellow bellpepper (the plant iron in the chickpeas needs vitamin C to be fully processed by the body, so I always make sure to add some parsley or bellpepper into my legume dishes). The taste was surprisingly "un rustic", quite delicate and really very good. Unfortunately I got stomach cramps later and realized it was the leeks I usually don't eat.

I finished Stiller - 5 stars. It's a self-help book in disguise of a novel and just another case of books waiting on shelves until you need them. Later I fell asleep over Sacred Hunger. I doubt I'll finish it today.

>169 Deern: I would agree with James Joyce's two epics as the two hardest reads and concur with there being plenty of Faulkner and Pynchon but I always struggle with DeLillo too and he wasn't too well represented. What the heck is tough about Animal Farm for heaven's sake? There also seemed to be some misunderstanding that long books are necessarily difficult which as we know is not always the case.

Trust you have a lovely weekend and I am finding the discussion of the refugee crisis fascinating. The EU has not acted well at all in concert in the face of the human misery washed up upon its shores and it does lead me to question what the point of being together means when the constituent parts are often at such polar extremes. Nationalism is a potentially terrible thing but there is also a real need to find a permanent solution to the troubles that seem to perpetually beset the middle east.

Congrats on finishing Stiller, Nathalie.

>178 Deern: I am afraid the European Union has been always only about trade, greed & power and nothing else :-(
The quick add of East European countries was power-play against Russia and they are trying it now in the former Russian countries like Ukraïne...
Here we have similair problems like Germany, a bit less, because we are a smaller country, but the nationalism (& hatred toward "others" that goes with it) gets stronger every day and it scares me....

>158 Deern: Well, I plan on listening to two audiobooks by Virginia Woolf next month, so hopefully I CAN stand it. :)

>159 Deern: Sorry you're not liking the book. Rickman's voice doesn't make it worth it? ;)

>160 Deern: Do you volunteer or work at a Refugee home? That must be very rewarding work.

>169 Deern: Ok. You're scaring me because those are exactly the two Woolf books I plan on reading next month.

Hope you have a great week ahead of different things. :)

Sorry for my weekend absence!!

>180 PaulCranswick: I only read one DeLillo which I didn't find difficult but I heard some of his books are more complex. And of course I forgot the title of the one I read. A story about 09/11. Falling Man?

Up to a certain point I thought that politicians know what they do. For example that there's a secret number in some drawer that means "when we have more than x refugees they will cost us more than we gain by dealing with arms/ flooding African markets with our overproduction of vegetables and frozen meat and we'll have to change our politics" - but I realize that's not the case. And there once was a vision about a peaceful union and that vision has been lost quickly after the fall of the Soviet Union and by now it's all reacting while trying not to lose votes.

>181 Ameise1: Thank you - I loved it and now don't know how to review it. :)

>182 FAMeulstee: As I said in my comment to Paul - the vision has been lost imo and quite a while ago. It's such a complex theme, people are so scared of losing things they believed to be safe (though they never were) and nationalism and closing all shutters against "the others" is a typical reaction, but an immature one. I'm surprised and saddened that we haven't learned more from those two World Wars and the genocides then and since then.

I really have an issue with my mother. Her past as a refugee and all the difficulties her family encountered were a motivation for me to try here on a very small scale to make things better for today's refugees. She however doesn't see it that way. She says "we at least were German" (and still they were unwelcome) and thinks no-one from Syria should be any better off than she was in the 1940s. She watches the news with a strange satisfaction and waits that the German government get their payback at the next elections. Actually, it shocks me and discussion isn't possible. Her pain, her fears and her envy are on a level where arguments don't help.

>183 The_Hibernator: It's your mother language, so it will automatically be processed better in your brain I guess. I'd say start with Mrs Dalloway - I just imagine it to be easier as everything happens in one day. It also has a bit more action than To The Lighthouse. When I read TTL I felt a bit like in trance, like carried along by the words. It also has that beautiful bit about making a hole in the sand (on the beach) with your shoe and burying the perfection of the moment in there. I read it during a holiday at the North Sea coast and the next day I did just that. :)

Re. The Return of the Native: I like it, but it isn't an easy book for me to follow on audio. I eye-read the first 10% on Kindle last weekend and had to read some passages several times. My English old-times nature vocabulary is too small for that book it seems. Rickman's voice is definitely worth the double effort of listening and reading. :)

I volunteer at a refugee home. The guys are all quite nice and now that they speak a bit Italian they happily talk about their families at home and their experiences. What I don't like is the insecurity - they could receive a permit or a refusal any day now and we don't really know what to do then.

Sth. to celebrate: maybe for the first time in more than 3.5 years (about the time when that **** relationship started in summer 2012) I had a quiet weekend all alone without feeling lonely, sad or desperate to the point of wanting to jump out of the next window! Basically I just felt good and relaxed and didn’t cry once and I didn’t have the slightest wish to surround myself with people, call anyone to get distracted from my loneliness or anything of the sort. Sounds like nothing, but it was just great! :)))

Okay, I still ate too much, but I also moved a lot. Yesterday I did two longer yoga sessions from the app plus some extra training towards some poses I’d like to do one day like side-crow. I also found a great guide for headstand training. I’m not there yet, but give me another 3 weeks of daily exercise and I should be able to do it without overstraining my neck. I also stayed in the wheel pose which I always hated for the first time ever for more than a couple of seconds and it felt good, it didn’t hurt at all. I went for a longer and brisk walk later, I had so much energy although I hadn’t slept well. I cleaned the kitchen, swept all the floors twice (after the first time the sun showed there was much dust left) and continued my redecoration project.

My DTY: I had salad for breakfast. I was making orange juice and wondering what to do with all the oranges (the ones I like best are available only in 2kg nets) when I remembered I still had half a bulb of fennel from the stew-making. So I made a fennel orange salad and because it tasted so good I had it for breakfast right away, topped with some walnuts.

In the afternoon I allowed myself to have a (vegan) hot chili chocolate and put the rest of the coconut whipped cream from the tres leches experiment on top. I got both the chocolate and that lovely cup on my birthday:



Coconut whipped cream doesn't behave like normal whipped cream - it immediately sank down although I had the camera ready. But it tasted just heavenly!

As planned I cleared my wardrobe once again. I’m doing that quite regularly now, so the result was just one big bag, but I also went through my bedroom shelves and threw out a bunch of scarves and some old computer games. After my walk I had a look at my basement room and was quite shocked about all the stuff in there. Sorting through all that will be my project for the next weekend.

Here's the proof for my resolution #7:



When I returned from my walk I found a book on my doormat – my landlady friend Chrystle had been there to bring me the first book she ever read and enjoyed in decades and left it there when she saw I was out. It’s some rom-com I normally wouldn’t touch (I went through that phase in my early 30s), and I already forgot name and author, but if you find a book on your doorstep you have to read it, right? But it has to wait till February.

Cooking:
As I said already, Darryl's North African Stew is SOOOOO good - if you don't have issues with leeks or any other ingredients, try it! I took a pic, but as is normal with stew it looked a bit like something "eaten twice", so I'm posting a pic of the baharat spice mix I made. If I remember well it's sweet paprika, cumin, cardamom, coriander seeds, allspice and curcuma:



I never eat leeks because I don't like their taste much in broths or as a vegetable. I rather put another onion into a broth than a piece of leeks. But in this dish they taste really different and I'll make it again, hoping my stomach will get used to it.

Reading:
15% left of Sacred Hunger. I'm sorry to say that this great book lost me at about 40/45% and I can't connect to it anymore the way I did during the first 30%. It's a wonderful book and if it had been on one of the Booker LLs I read completely I might have guessed it as a winner. But I feel like it spat me out at some point and now I'm watching everything from the outside throug hextra-strong bullet-proof glass.

Happy afternoon, Nathalie! How kind of you to help out at the refugee home!

Here is the link I use to get my daily dose of yoga in the comfort of my home.
Ha! I don't foresee any head stands in my future! I like to keep as much of my body on the mat as I'm able.

http://youtu.be/_wJtQjQ4HI8

Hi Natalie

I'm simply stopping by and waving hi. I hope the day is a good one for you!

7. Und trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen… (Man's Search for Meaning) by Victor Frankl

Books find us when we need them, though sometimes they need a bit longer. When about two years ago I started working with affirmations for positive thinking I always stopped at a certain point when this thought came into my head “and what about the Holocaust?”. Not just “how can I live happily now when there has been the Holocaust and there are still genocides and war”, but also “what does all that positive thinking help me if one day for whatever reason it could be my turn to be deported and killed in a concentration camp - wouldn't I think it was all useless”?.
The Holocaust is the ultimate stress test for any life philosophy, it's the wall every theory had to shatter on. I even discussed it with my therapist and she didn't have an answer.

The idea that shocked me most when I was first confronted with the Holocaust as a child was that there was no safety. I might now feel safe in my family, in my life situation. But hadn’t those Jewish children felt safe as well? And then “evil” had started creeping in, slowly at first, almost unnoticeable – and suddenly you have to leave your home, your possessions, your friends, to live in a ghetto and despite your parents reassuring you that it will turn out well, that it won’t get worse, it get so much worse. How would anyone not despair? How would anyone not walk into the next electric fence?

Last year when I discovered Singer, he at least had a short suggestion for me: if you’re sent into solitary confinement and they don’t give you food – what’s the use if you’re unhappy on top? Of course while the thought is correct, that couldn’t help much. And while Singer had lived in the woods and fasted for weeks, it had been his own decision, that’s not what could count as an experience.

And then last Sunday I read a book that lead me to Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and philosopher who survived the Holocaust. Frankl had a visa for the US but didn’t want to leave his family, so he was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, later to Auschwitz and then to Dachau. And yet he was able to keep up quite a positive life-affirming attitude and after the war returned to Vienna and continued his work. Yes, he was lucky, he was very often very lucky when he took the right decision to get on a certain transport or wait for the next one. He was incredibly lucky when the last camp was cleared a day after the Swiss Red Cross had turned up, and he accidentally didn’t get on the truck into freedom (everyone on those trucks was killed). He went through many weak phases, almost died of typhoid fever, but he never gave room to total despair – not even, and that must have been the hardest thing, when he was finally free and had to realize that his parents, his wife and his brother had been killed. His anchor had been “the meaning in life”, whatever it might be. He wanted to publish his book the draft of which was taken from him in the camp and which he rewrote in shorthand during his illness. He wanted to live a meaningful life in the camp as far as any possible and not give in to the temptation of letting himself go and become a victim. Even a death in the camp would have been meaningful for the afterworld, so while of course he wanted to survive, the important point wasn’t a longer life span but the meaningfulness of his remaining days. The book is a self-help book - so I didn't abuse a Holocaust report for my own purposes. Frankl uses his own story to demonstrate that meaning can be found in the worst possible circumstances.

The last 35% of the short book consist of an abstract play, the scene is a barrack in a concentration camp and long-dead philosophers like Kant and Sokrates watch the prisoners and their trials. That was a bit weird at first, but then it worked very well.

Rating: 5 stars

8. Stiller (I’m not Stiller) by Max Frisch (1,001 #407/361) / GR 1,001

This book has been on my shelf for years and I was running out of excuses why I didn’t read it. It’s not that I terribly disliked Frisch in high school, but I found him boring and his heroes self-centered. The latter applies to this book as well, but it unexpectedly brought me some answers.

The plot is simple: An American named White is arrested on a train in Switzerland for travelling with fake papers. He is accused to be Arnold Stiller, an artist from Zuerich who disappeared many years ago from one day to the next, leaving his ill wife in Davos, leaving his artist’s studio, his friends and family. During the pre-trial custody White tries to prove he’s not Stiller. He’s confronted with old acquaintances: Stiller’s wife Julika, his brother, his prosecutor who’s the husband of Stiller’s ex-lover Sibylle, several friends. No-one doubts his identity, but White/Stiller insists to be White, no matter that he has to face a trial and high fines.

During his confrontations with all the visitors he gains insight into their background stories and learns much about Stiller’s personalities, about that man whom everyone claims to know while all the stories are different. The missing Stiller has been a model narcissist, that becomes especially apparent in his story with Julika, and he was aware of it and suffering.
Of course this book hit me hard and it explained me some behavior I had seen from my ex (like his being offended and angry when I was ill). I discussed it with my therapist last week and she agreed on the parallels (she knows the book).

About 95% of the book are White’s notes he took during his confinement. That part ends with the trial. The second part is written by his prosecutor about two years after the trial. There was some discussion in the 1,001 if the book could stand alone without that afterword. I agree it could, but it would be a different book. It is an extremely honest book and without those 5% it would feel less so – I must add for someone familiar with the condition. I see that many would have preferred the book without the second ending.
Can I recommend it? I’m not sure. If it bores you to death I’d say it’s a good sign that you’re mentally and emotionally quite healthy. :)) 

Rating: 5 personal stars

>186 Carmenere: thank you Lynda - I'll have a look at the Videos when I'm home.
I want to learn the headstand "to get a new perspective", though I have no idea if that really works! :)
Happy afternoon to you, too!

>187 Whisper1: Hi Linda, thank you for visiting and leaving this beautiful pic!

>158 Deern: not to Davies' writing!!

I was very relieved to see you say that. Mind you, to each his/her own, so I couldn't have faulted you even if you had found his writing boring.

I was surprised to see you say you were rooting for Kemp. I don't know where you're at with Sacred Hunger now, but I wonder how you'll feel about him by the end? He's quite hateful, I find, but then again Unsworth is a fantastic writer, and isn't content to paint anyone all black or all white, to be sure.

I'm so happy for you that you were able to have a weekend without feeling lonely. May that be a first in a long string of such weekends. I lived alone and single for so many years, and though I've come to really cherish and be jealous of my alone time, it took me a good decade to learn to truly and dearly enjoy my own company. Now it's gone a bit the other way I'm afraid, and I sometimes (usually) find that after a couple of hours of company, ANY company, I'm itching to be by myself again.

I just read a book about WWII which has an incredibly novel approach. Le Grand Cahier by Ágota Kristóf (The Notebook in English). Really superb. Really harsh too, about to twin brothers, boys, who learn to become complete self-sufficient and write of their experiences in this notebook. A punch in the stomach, but briliant. It's the first in a trilogy, and I've reserved the second book from the library. I had a bit of a strange experience with the audiobook, which I'll go describe on my thread now, and hopefully find the inspiration to write an actual review too...

xx

eta: fixed touchstone. NOT "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks!

Great review of Stiller, Nathalie and woohoo for a wonderful Sunday.

Great reviews of Man's Search for Meaning and I'm Not Stiller, Nathalie. I'll add the Frankl to my wish list, as I've read at least one other glowing review of it.

I'm thrilled that you loved the North African Bean Stew! The NYT has had some appealing recipes in its Wednesday edition recently, and that one looked particularly good. Fortunately it tasted even better than it looked.

Stopping by to say hi, Nathalie. Salad for breakfast! Good for you! I'm in an orange crazy lately! :) Your hot chocolate looks delightful and what a lovely tea cup.

I read Man's Search For Meaning some years ago and enjoyed it. Great review of both books!

>186 Carmenere: I haven't yet looked at the videos, but I like the website behind it. Nice colorful and happy.
I understand that to see the videos you have to subscribe to that trial period and then either unsubscribe or start paying? I'm hesitating a bit because I already paid for my app for the year, but that site looks like more fun. Do you have a subscription?

>192 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara! :)

>193 kidzdoc: Thank you Darryl! I should start reading the NYT a bit more, don't they also have a really culture page?
I didn't post a picture because I didn't have yogurt and fresh cilantro - and just the yellow mass didn't look too great. :)
I hope you'll enjoy he Frankl. The language is a bit strange at first as he wrote it in the form of a philosophical observation/report which is totally different from any other Holocaust book I read so far. And later it took me a bit to get into the play (2nd part), but it was worth the effort.

>194 vancouverdeb: Hi Debbie! :)
Yes, the hot chocolate was delicious, it was the first time I used a block of drinking chocolate and not the traditional cocoa powder. I love oranges as well and we got those wonderful "blood oranges" here from Sicily. They cost nothing and their juice is so good!

>191 Smiler69: Not exactly rooting for Kemp, but you know quite early where his way will eventually lead him and I feel sorry for the character. Actually - your post made me realize what it is that made me take a distance from the book. It's a great story already from the outset, but something about the characterizations doesn't feel right for me. And especially in Erasmus Kemp there's a break for me that doesn't make much sense. Like Unsworth quite liked that character and understood him, but then when he needed a total vilain, he just used him and "broke" him. I'm at 87% now and it's Erasmus Kemp's negative character development I don't want to continue reading. Unsworth gave us the dam and the ship as the "root of all evil" as an explanations for ER's hatred for Paris, and he even gives him small doubts. But "somehow" (sorry for being so vague) that's not enough for me.

When I compare this book and the Davies which I started at about the same time: I thought at first Fifth Business would be boring and I'd sail through Sacred Hunger - and then I couldn't stop listening to FB and put SH aside. FB is perfect in what it is and SH "somehow" isn't (for me!).

I always liked (or so I thought) being alone and didn't feel lonely much. I wouldn't have been able to move here and survive emotionally had it been otherwise. In reality I often kept people away from me, it felt safer - and I didn't know how lonely I really was. Only when that relationship started did I notice that there actually was need to be with others and that it suddenly hurt to be "left alone". I didn't want to, but I fell into that bad trap once again where while you want time alone and don't want to cut someone else's freedom, at the same time you're offended and hurt when he doesn't want to spend more time with you. So I slowly became all focussed on him - because of the two of us he was the one with the big family here, with the kids from the marriage and with the great social life, the one who often had no time for me while I always had time for him. And I, consciously but without being able to help it, kept my weekends free in case he'd want to do something. And when it ended, I was just lost in that big empty space, and sometimes I still am. And I understood that I need people in my life, and life was nice enough to bring me people. And now it seems I soaked up so much social life that I can be just with myself again for a whole weekend and be happy without thinking I'm missing out on something. It's important that I learn to get that "social resonance" when I need it from people who aren't my partner, and not to get into a panic when all stays quiet for a bit. So I really see the last weekend as a success.

BB caught for Le Grand Cahier though I'll wait a bit to read another WWII (or WWI) book.

YDT was that I listened to my (tired) body and didn't overstrain it during yoga exercise as I would usually have. I realized I overdid a bit on Sunday - although it felt great then throughout - and as a result yesterday I couldn't do a simple yoga pushup. Such small things can get me into a rage if I allow it. Yesterday I just left two exercises out and then settled on the couch with a cup of tea.

Today I did two things (small tasks) at work immediately which I'd normally delay a day or two (why? No idea). I made the umpteenth Excel task list last Friday and so far I still work with it and nothing is red yet. :)

The book I found on my doorstep is Me Before You by JoJo Moyes. It has a high rating on LT of 4.21 but also an "euthanasia" tag, so I'm a bit scared. I'll read it in February for Rachel's "fall in love with a new genre" challenge.

Challenge plans for February:

1,001 GR: not participating, I already read The Voyage Out.

AAC: Maybe Nate in Venice by Richard Russo

BAC: Crooked House by Agatha Christie which I had on my Kindle for a while and which I never read.
Maybe City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, but I also found a different one with vignettes, one of them about a group of radical Indian vegetarians trying to destroy a new KFC. Forgot the title of course. :)

CAC: Undecided. The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys sounds good, but there's also a super-cheap collection of Stephen Leackock works available on Kindle and the editors say the books were very funny. Maybe I'll need some funny in February.

Might the Dalrymple have been Nine lives: in search of the sacred ?

My trouble with him is that I want to read all of them yesterday. So I have a few on the shelf, all unread. However I am going to start with White Mughals and see how I get on. I saw a documentary based on the book recently and I loved the cross cultural romance and the beautiful overgrown architecture Dalrymple visited.

>198 charl08: No, I read that one some years ago and loved it. Time for a reread. Just checked amazon.it via Kindle, it's the Age of Kali and I think I'll read that one. I thought I should better get to one of the more popular ones first as base, but now I really want to know more about the radical vegetarians. :)

They do sound fun. Look forward to hearing about it.

>195 Deern: >186 Carmenere: Hmmm, no I've never paid anything for the 30-day challenge. I am aware there is a charge for some of their videos but I tend to stay away from those. I do however subscribe to them on YouTube at no charge, just a way to be notified when something new is available. R U on Facebook? Because you can find Do You Yoga there as well.

>201 Carmenere: Ah, okay - when I can at least test them for free, I'll happily do that! :)
I'm on FB, but I'm "dead" there, i.e. totally inactive. Can't bring myself to do anything there except for checking in twice a year to accept accumulated friendship requests. On these visits I might visit some friends' err... pinboards? threads? presences? and thumb something and then disappear again for several months until I can't remember my password. :)

I understand what you mean when you talk of your former relationship. I had several short-lived relationships here and there over the years (a few months, always less than a year), and I felt the loneliest either during those relationships when I couldn't see my partners, or just after we had split up. It's funny that way.

I don't agree with you about Kemp at all actually. I didn't get a sense that Unsworth had any special feelings for him, much less actually liked him, because that young man seemed unpleasant to me from the very start. Perhaps he liked him the way any artist likes his creations, but it seemed to me he painted him rather darkly from when he was introduced to us, with his illogical and quite arbitrary hatred for his cousin. But of course all that is in the eye of the beholder. I felt by the time I got to the end that Kemp had gone through a certain transformation over the course of the story, and especially at the end. But then, I was gripped with this novel from the beggining; Unswroth's writing really speaks to me on many levels, some of which I can't even begin to logically understand, which was the case from the first book I read by him, which was Morality Play, so it isn't surprising we are affected by Sacred Hunger so differently.

Natalie, Thank you for sharing on such a deep, personal level. I admire your spirit!

Wow, Nathalie! You have a LOT going on, and you're managing it all too!
Take care of yourself and enjoy!!!
I read Sacred Hunger sometime in the past 8 years and can't remember anything about it but the basic situation and that I loved it. It's way too early to reread though. On the other hand, I've had a copy of Morality Play forever, and since I need short ones, I may turn to it soon thanks to Ilana.

De-lurking - glad you had a good weekend Nathalie - may it be the first of many positive ones :)

The food looks yummy as always - plus you've reminded me I must pick up Stiller again. I read the first few pages early in the month and was intrigued but then got bogged down in other things. Sort of suffering through my Unsworth BAC - determined to finish but...

>203 Smiler69: Yes, isn't it strange? You're perfectly fine on your own and having a partner should enrich your life, add to it - in the sense that we're still fine without them and happy in a different way when we're with them. And instead the focus changes in a way that we suddenly feel lost and lonely and less valued when they have someting else to do. I hope I'll grow out of that eventually... :)

Kemp... well, I guess I have a weakness for more complex vilains (also in RL I'm afraid) and want them to stay complex and not suddenly turn one-dimensional evil. :/

>204 Whisper1: Thank you Linda - I deeply admire yours!! {{hugs}}

>205 LizzieD: Hi Peggy, yes surprisingly I'm still managing it all - but it's still early in the year! :)
I admire Unsworth's daring in developping such an unusual plot as he did in Sacred Hunger. Right now I'm struggling through the palaver scene and think it's great that he didn't let all the ex-slaves speak the King's (then) English although it means a lot of effort for me to understand them.

>206 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka - I hope so too! :)
I had a hard time with Stiller also because I found you can't just read a couple of pages here and there. It needs being read in long stretches, so it became my Saturday book.

*****
Looking at my calendar on the office wall I see it's the 27th and my 8th TA today - 9 books, yay! :))

But I think this year I won't just count the next 9 books (which would mostly be challenge books) as TA purchases, I want to make an extra list with books I find this way or that and that feel somewhat special. Books I really want to read and not "just" try because they're in a GR or challenge.

The first one might be the Age of Kali by William Dalrymple. Read the sample yesterday and was very touched by it. And as my Christie is already planned and downloaded, I don't need it to check off my BAC for February.

>201 Carmenere: I woke up at 04:30am this morning and because I couldn't sleep anymore I did my yoga already at 5am. Then there was so much time left that I also did the first session of the DoYouYoga 30 days challenge and it was quite fun. Already the first pose was something my hips really needed. The instructor is likeable and the atmosphere in the video was so friendly. I'll try the other ones as well. :)

My RL yoga class last night was very demanding, we did water element exercises that always strain the wrists a lot. Next week will be fire, that means core exercises. My teacher will then be away for 5 weeks and the substitute teachers will do different styles - Yin Yoga and another one of which I forgot the name. That will be quite interesting, I've only done vinyasa the last years.

Happy Thingaversary, Nathalie!

>209 Crazymamie: Thank you Mamie! :)
I'm giving myself a reading night - I'll stay here in the office until Sacred Hunger is finished and then I'll buy the Dalrymple to celebrate!

Fun! I just bought a Dalrymple - City of Djinns.

Hi Nathalie,

so glad to see that you had such a great time at your birthday.
I decided to give it another go with a thread this year again and just see how things will go.
I always lurk anyway, but I definitely will try to be a tad more active again this year. So, I am looking forward to chatting on your thread again.

Happy Thingaversary!

On lonelyness, I can relate, I was getting better at it since Frank started working 2 nights a week in 2007.
I had not much lived on my own in my life and was awfully bad those months I did live on my own :-(

The last years I sometimes even thought I would survive on my own if ever something happened to Frank (I used to have a list of single guys, known as my reserve-husbands list). Frank went even a few times on vacations with a friend, and I did well.

I had a bad set back when I broke my arm in October and became almost completely dependent. Slowly my arm is getting stronger and I'm gaining my independence back. Now I can sleep again when Frank is at work, but it is still a long way to go until Frank can go away for some days....

Ah, it's your Thingaversary! We joined around the same time, just a couple of months apart. This site became from the first such a big part of my daily life...

Regarding Kemp, I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I think it's safe to say that given he reappears in The Quality of Mercy, he's not likely to be one-dimensional, as you might discover if you actually make it to the end of Sacred Hunger; I wish I could make you like that book more, because I'm so enamoured of Barry Unsworth myself! :-)

Yay, visitors! :) Thank you for looking in and leaving posts, Mamie, Bianca, Anita and Ilana. Today and tomorrow I'll be in a different office to learn new things about cost controlling, but I should find time respond to your posts in the evening (or in between).

YTD (Yesterday's Different Thing): I didn't stay in the office during lunch break but took a really long and brisk walk through town. Once again I was surprised how small Merano is - in 45 mins you can easily walk from one end to the other.

Reading: I finished "the Kemp" (Sacred Hunger) and bought and started The Age of Kali. That last one could have waited, but as it was my TA I wanted to celebrate with at least one book.
During my walk I listened to L'amica Geniale by Elena Ferrante which is now my top reading priority for the remaining month.

Had a very stressful day and tomorrow won't be any better. Looking forward to my yoga at home.

Today's DT: I did some small different things like buying my lunch in a different place (Thursday is therapy day, so I'm in town), but I'll count this: I noticed this morning that under my short-sleeved grey dress I wore my long-armed white T-shirt inside-out. It wasn't extremely noticeable and so I decided to leave it that way. Usually I'd have run to the bathroom to change, but it fits in with another idea I recently had, to go out w/o make-up or for once not wash my hair in the morning and see how I get through the day. Actually, Singer suggests that, just as a test how much we depend on our appearance. The sleeve-thing went well.

>211 Crazymamie: I considered reading that one as he's more famous for it, but then the description of the other one caught my eye. I'll be interested to see your review.

>212 drachenbraut23: Very happy to see you here again, Bianca. Found and starred your thread. :)

>213 FAMeulstee: thank you Anita! :)
If I lived close you could always call me round when you feel alone during Frank's shifts. I really understand the feeling of loss and the fears that the other one might not come back.

However I actually managed quite well in my relationships with the occasional alone-holidays. I'm aware that one reason why I chose those man is my own commitment-phobia. I had long-term relationships (12 years, 5 years, 3 years) and never lived with my men, that says a lot. And still - when the last guy cancelled a night out for the perfectly good reason that his son had made a surprise visit I fell into total desperation and cried for hours (really! but that was early when I still was in full panic mode).
It's being denied something you have been looking forward to, the bad surprise thing I can't deal with, so a nightshift or a long-planned holiday were okay. I know I always felt punished when my parents left me alone, be it in hospital (I didn't "function", so it was "my fault") or when they went out to dinner and I woke up in the middle of the night and was alone in the appt (at age 4... quite normal then). So short term cancellations or changes of plans can hurt me a lot, especially when they come from someone where I can interpret it as lack of affection. That's alone-time I can't enjoy at all. I'm tense and scared and unhappy, and even meeting friends doesn't help much.

>214 Smiler69: I liked the book a lot, I'm just the most terrible reader of historical fiction. And I can't help it! Kemp was the only flaw for me (okay, maybe the very ending as well) and I understand that his development was necessary for the plot. But if at least in the very beginning he would have been jealous of the attention his father gave to the ship instead of distracted, dreamy and in love. I really liked first chapter Kemp. I'll list all the super-good elements in my review, but they might not be the elements most of the other readers liked. :)

>216 Deern: At least your guy had a better reason for cancelling than many guys do. I do, however, relate to the hurt that changed plans can bring. I think there's always a little uncertainty about how much the guy loves you because his love language is different than yours. I know that quality time and touch are my #1 and #2 love languages (separated by only one point), but my boyfriend does not understand how important in person time is to me, even though we are separated by distance. He thinks spending time on Skype or in messenger is good enough. Of course, his love language is "gifts of service" which isn't mine. I try to do what I can, but again, it's a learning process. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all have our flaws in communicating with the opposite sex, but hopefully we improve over time.

Have a wonderful weekend!

9. Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth - FULL OF BIG SPOILERS!!

Yay, liked a historical fiction book! And I’m sure that BU absolutely deserved his Booker Prize for it though I haven’t read any of his competitors. Unsworth found a fascinating plot, he dared breaking some of those unwritten historical fiction rules that make this genre so successful (and make me dislike it so much), and he constructed his work very intelligently, thus avoiding a couple of traps in a way it was hardly noticeable.

I admire him for:
- writing a likeable owner of a slaveship
- writing a believable captain of a slaveship
- avoiding a romantic love story at least 95% of HF writers would have added
- writing a believable colony that’s not at all paradise but clearly doomed anyway. The only way to deal with the situation, but nonetheless nothing that would have worked much longer than those twelve years.
- forcing the reader through some (for me!) hardly understandable pidgin English instead of letting the Africans speak the King’s English perfectly after those 12 years (thinking of Little Bee here where the narrating Nigerian teenager had conveniently learned the Queen’s English to absolute perfection from the radio or newspaper before writing down her story).
- inserting a break at the most crucial moment and continue the book 12 years later. This way he avoids an action scene full of dramatic traps and the reader will follow the second part eagerly to find out what really happened.
- creating a complex character with Erasmus Kemp who was much more interesting than his cousin Matthew Paris.

And that’s where I saw some (very small) weakness: Matthew's ethical concern and his passivity fit in well together - he didn't become a hero as I feared. He was accepted in the colony but not loved. Erasmus Kemp however had to become a hatred-driven villain at some point to make the story work. I wish there had been a slightly different motivation. For example I would have fully believed him to make this trip to retrieve as much as possible of the ship and to reclaim the slaves - for the honor of his family! Because he sees the ship as the reason for his father’s downfall (although such a cool business head should have noticed during those 12 years that his father’s business was long past saving when the ship was lost).
But making the hatred for his cousin and the wish to see him hanged his sole motivatior wasn’t believable for me. That strenuous journey and all the effort to see someone hanged who might well be dead? Why not in the same way suspect the crew, even the captain or the mate? That one letter they received spoke of illness and problems, it wasn't totally unlikely that landing in Florida was the only way to survive. That extreme hatred is exactly the drama level of HF where some other author would have Paris and the slave woman (names..) fall madly in love with each other.
I liked Erasmus evil, but not in such a personal way. He’s someone who cried his eyes out for his lost love for days, but then was coolly able to tell her goodbye.

And the second weakness was the ending. Given EK’s quest for revenge, I could have well lived with Paris unfairly being hanged. That was a solution a bit too clean and easy for me. I wasn't sad that I didn't have to read a trial though and some heartbreaking last look on his family.

I absolutely loved the first third of the book. So much that I sometimes lifted my head from the book thinking “It’s HF and I’m loving it!!!”. The middle part felt a bit bumpy for me for me.
Of course from the moment on when the slave trading begins, BU couldn’t avoid the confrontation of his characters with ethical questions. He did that very well imo, not at all exaggerating into a too modern way and treating the captain with his view on the “living merchandise” honestly. He also avoided going too far into the human misery. He didn't emotionalize too much, something Hilary Mantel imo has perfected in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I think both don't have future movies ot TV shows in their heads while writing their novels.

During this 2nd part my reading slowed down and I even took a longer break. I guess I was scared of what I saw as the unavoidable drama approaching – and when I continued reading I was positively surprised that it was mostly avoided. So yes, it was a great read! But I'm unsure whether to get the sequel.

Rating: 4.1 stars

>217 thornton37814: Well, that was an early example where cancelling was justified. Early in the relationship he made quite an effort and became manipulating and controlling the moment he started feeling close to me, about 6 months in. I on the other hand was in a total panic mode in the first months and got more relaxed as soon as he started behaving as I had feared. This is all very complex and I'm in therapy to get my own issues resolved.

I like your explanation with the different love languages very much and I'll keep it in my mind - thank you!!
It needs a partner who totally respects you and vice versa, and then you can work on the decoding and finding a solution for both. I wish you all the best for it, it sounds very mature and loving! :)

If however a partner knows you need quality time and touch and willingly (only to feel stronger and in control, not because he can't understand it) denies it I think it's impossible to change his ways. He doesn't respect you and usually doesn't even respect himself.

>218 DianaNL: That will be my look in about 4.5 hrs - thank you Diana, a very happy weekend to you!

Great review of Sacred Hunger, Nathalie!

I don't know how I got so far behind! Embarrassed to admit I've read I'm not Stiller eons ago and couldn't remember a single thing about it even reading your review very slowly . . . usually some inkling of the book comes back! Weirdly, however, I remember the cover vividly! I read quite a bit of Frisch at one time, who knows why!? In my late twenties. Must have had a reason?

I have yet to read Unsworth -- but I have two on the tbr. Uh oh!

Back to add that I concur with Paul that some books are on that list just because they are l-o-n-g. The problem with the lists is that there really are a lot of a) hard or b) excellent books out there.

Hi Nathalie. Stopping by to try and get caught up with things over here. Great comments regarding Fifth Business. Like you, I have pretty much plowed through it in three evenings of reading - I just have 34 pages to go. I am also completely new to Robertson Davies novels. Shame on me, being Canadian and all, you think I would have read all the illustrious authors that are taunted as 'must reads', but no. Looks like I have some great reading in store if Fifth Business is a prime example of Davies writing abilities.

>150 Deern: - Sounds like it was quite the restless weekend for you. I find introspection very difficult... I don't want to look deep inside me. I know I am not going to be really happy with everything I would discover. Good for you for tackling this - especially that inner child/troll that is giving you such grief - even if it is really scary at times to do so.

Today I'm wearing a very fashionable but very ripped new jeans with biker boots in the office. Sounds like my kind of 'look'.

Glad to see you have visible results after just 17 days of yoga! I am still working on the muscle tone aspect of my trimming/slimming but a darn head cold this past week has put all exercise on hold until I am back feeling 100%.

>185 Deern: - Nice to read this was a better weekend for you!

>221 kidzdoc: Thank you Darryl! :)

>222 sibylline: Hi Lucy! I don't remember much about the Frischs I read many years ago either. And this one is a book that (I think) leaves a deep impression only if you can relate to the protagonist's problems. It isn't an otherwise entertaining book at all.

Yes, too many people see long books as automatically difficult. I've struggled terribly with some 100 pagers and flew through some of those on that list.

>223 lkernagh: Hi Lori! I understand about not having read the "big" national authors. I've avoided the German ones for decades after high school and got into better reading with British and American literature.

Introspection... I reached a point where I was so unhappy without clear reasons that I really didn't know anymore what to do and that was the point when I was looking for help, because the alternative wasn't really one. Since then I learned that there are good reasons although it took me over a year to stop feeling guilty for doing all the analyzing. I'm still avoiding some issues, and I feel I have to confront them now or that "troll" will never leave me in peace and always jump at me and grab my neck as soon as I feel a bit better. We'll try something new in February and I'm quite scared, but I'll get through it.

I've been doing yoga every day now since Jan 5, but this week it felt like my body didn't make any progress, on the contrary. I had much stress at work and slept badly, so I guess that explains it. Today I woke up at 2am and couldn't sleep anymore. So I did yoga at 5am and of course that's not a good time for wheels or crows. :)

YDT: I had a terrible craving for a certain type of saitan burger yesterday, but convinced myself to drive home directly without supermarket stop and to have my vegetable stew instead. I've become very "instant gratification" about food lately, and yesterday I had only brought an orange fennel salad for lunch and was terribly hungry, so it really was an effort

So as I said above, this day has already been quite a long one. I had expected to sleep long after a stressful week at work, but on the contrary - I was awake by 2am, watched TV (Poirot), did an hour of yoga at 5. I went grocery shopping as soon as the supermarket opened and back home started cooking for the weekend and next week. I had planned to make spaghetti puttanesca for lunch, to cook a vegetable broth from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty for future risotti, to prepare a batch of tofu burgers from a Deepak Chopra book I've just started reading and I wanted to make another batch of breakfast oat&raisin cookies. Didn't get any organic bananas though, so I took some cooked apples from the freezer and made apple oatmeal mini muffins with cinnamon and walnuts. They turned out delicious and I have to hold myself back not to eat them all today!

The broth went well, too, but I'm glad I decided not to use all 8 dried plums as in the recipe. I put in 5 and I agree they add a very good taste and color, but already now it's quite sweetish and I put in a bit of fresh ginger and extra pepper to balance it out.

The spaghetti sauce was good, but the tofu burgers are, I'm sorry to say, absolutely disgusting. The dough/mass before frying in the pan and then baking in the oven was okay, a bit bland maybe. It didn't fry well, it stuck to the pan and fell apart when I tried to turn the burgers. I formed them again, added some more bread and put them in the oven, "until dry" as the recipe said. I took them out after almost two hours because they started getting black, but they were still wet inside. I tried a bit and spat it out. And it wasn't burn taste. I have no idea which element (tofu, nuts, zucchini, carrots, leeks, herbs) turned that bad in the oven. I hate throwing food away, but I can't eat them.

So today's DT will be: I'll not force those burgers into me, hidden in soups, salads and sauce or park them in the freezer for weeks before throwing them out. I'm sorryfor wasting food, but my body isn't a garbage bin.

I'd found fresh big artichokes in the supermarkets in bundles of 3, so I cooked those as well and had one for lunch as a starter.

If Lynda is reading here: I now did 4 sessions of the doyouyoga 30 days challenge additionally to my other program and I like it more and more. It's easier than my app, but I'm getting annoyed with that as it loads forever and the level goes up and up without explanation of complicated poses or offering alternatives.

The DYY units are a bit short, but great as addition. The instructer is super-sweet and so encouraging. The app by now makes me feel like a loser, but on DYY I just have to look at the comments to feel better. :)

I say throw them out now and be done with them, Nathalie. Think of it as clearing up space and time - if you freeze them, then not only will they take up freezer space, but they will also require you to eventually deal with them again. You don't need that.

Tofu scares me, but my SIL loves the stuff.

>226 Deern: Lol, Lynda is reading here! I'm overjoyed that you're adding DYY to your routine! Yeah, Erin is a sweetie and always happy and positive. She motivates me. Yes, the units are short and I usually do two units at a time or mix in a couple of sun salutation. Good point regarding the comments. They make me feel one with the world, we're all working toward something good.

>225 Deern: I'm sorry for wasting food, but my body isn't a garbage bin. I totally agree! and it took me awhile to learn that. Is there a compost pile in the neighborhood?

Sorry your meal didn't work this time. I've had a couple of disasters like that, possibly the worst one when I put too much chilli into a vegetarian soup recipe. It was still in the freezer when I had to move out, months and months later. Just couldn't face it.

>227 Crazymamie: Done already! :)
Usually I park things I don't like in the freezer, and hope for a later inspiration, but this was too bad.

I found one brand of tofu I really like, it has a slightly nutty taste and I use it as a substitute for mozzarella or (rarely) fry it for Asian recipes. Not a great mozzarella fan, so I actually prefer the tofu version. Oh - and then there's Darryl's scrambled tofu egg recipe I've been making a couple of times!

But that's about it. Tried other brands and hated them, tried silken tofu for desserts and it felt wrong. I like unsweetened soy milk and yogurt though and use those for recipes a lot. Just difficult to find the unsweetened brands.

>228 Carmenere: Yes, Erin - I had already forgotten her name again. She's amazing!!!
This morning the app was extremely frustrating with side crow and two different types of "put leg over shoulder" and one-legged bridge, and I felt too stupid for yoga. When I looked at the DYY comments of people complaining about downdog I saw that I made at least a little progress in those years. :)

No compost pile unfortunately. The burgers are binned.

>229 charl08: That recipe claimed to be for "the world's best tofu burgers". I later realized that all vegan burgers I tried and liked so far had been tofu-free. Chickpeas, beans, seitan, soy, veggies and cereals, but never a trace of tofu. Tofu's just tofu, not a good meat substitute texture-wise.

Ha - I wonder what I'll find in my freezer in June when I move out! :))
Seasoning vegetarian dishes can be challenging - they often have an ingredient (like beans) that swallow spices and then some hours later they're suddenly too salty or too hot.

Wishing you a wonderful Sunday, Nathalie. I'm too busy to make my weekend greeting tour. On the 13th of February we are heading to Davos and I'll have more time to be in the LT land.

Good move to ditch the vile tofu burgers, Nathalie. There is no point in eating something that you dread, or letting it take up space at the back of the freezer, knowing that you'll probably only eat them if you are snowbound and completely out of food. I tossed a pot of parsnip soup last year after I spilled half of a container of black pepper into it (I love spicy food, but that batch was completely off the scale, even after I removed as much pepper as I could), and threw out a batch of Irish lamb stew that I made for my parents two years ago, as the lamb was rancid and completely inedible.

What is the brand of tofu you mentioned in >230 Deern: that you're particularly fond of? I realize the chance of me finding it in the US isn't good, but you never know unless you ask.

Yes, just throw the tofu burger away.! Cooking is an 'art' and you have to allow for experimenting. You're not wasting, you're learning.

>231 Ameise1: Hi and thank you Barbara! You'rre going to have loads of snow in Davos if the forecast for the next 10 days is right. We might even get snow down here! (and of course I'll complain then.. :)) )

>232 kidzdoc: Ew, rancid lamb? I don't even want to imagine what that was like. :(
It's very unlikely I'll ever be snowbound here and if so, there would be pounds of oats and pasta I could eat before getting to those burgers.

I took a picture of the carton, but don't know if I'm allowed to post it here. The brand is SoiAmica and the producer is natura-nuova, there's a website: www.natura-nuova.com, but it's Italian only.
I tried their other products and only liked the natural (firm) tofu and the soy burgers (bistecche di soia), their seitan products have a weird perfumy taste. Their products are organic, therefore OGM-free and the soy is grown in Italy. It's the only natural tofu I could ever eat straight from the pack without seasoning.

There's a German brand available here (www.taifun-tofu.de) who offer a really good organic smoked tofu, but I don't like their natural tofu at all. Tried their tofu sausages once and couldn't eat them (they took the freezer detour though before I binned them). They export a lot and their website has an English flag as well.

Btw. I cooked my second batch of the NA stew today, as I had most of the ingrdients at home and don't want the spice mix to go stale.

>233 sibylline: :)) "Cooking is an art" - only read it now, but had to smile because after having read more Choprah and his theory of putting as much color on our plates as possible, I had a salad for lunch with greens, radicchio (violet), pomegranate seeds, oranges and walnuts.

I was lazy today and quite happy that for once the weather is bad and I can stay in without feeling guilty about it. Did lots of yoga, unfortunately no progress with the headstand. One leg goes up, the other has to rest on a chair. Strained my wrist a bit trying side crow again, but successfully did crow for the first time in ages for quite a long time! :)

As the burgers I had planned for the week were in the bin I had to look for alternatives and found I had most of the ingredients for another batch of Darryl's North African stew, so I made that. If I feel like it I'll have ayurvedic zucchini fritters tonight.

Despite being lazy I managed to fill my second throw-out bag, this time it's books:



I'll take them to the library next time I'm in town. There are several boxes with library books in the basement, but as they don't have a parking space there, I'll have to get rid of them bag by bag.

Going through my shelves I found so many interesting books I had completely forgotten about. I even found a giveaway library copy of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers! I had bought the Kindle edition last year for the AAC, not knowing I had the book on my shelves. I also founbd Alberta and Jacob, a 1001 I had started and then "lost" about 15 months ago. It was wrapped into another book! :)

>234 Deern: Fortunately none of us tasted the rancid lamb, which I made in their slow cooker. It looked and smelled so bad that no one dared to try it. I only bought it because the local supermarkets where my parents live in suburban Philadelphia don't routinely stock lamb, as the supermarkets in Midtown Atlanta do.

Thanks for the information about the tofu. As you said, neither brand seems to be available in the US, but I'll look for them anyway when I go to Whole Foods Market tomorrow or Tuesday.

Speaking of "color on our plates", do you own a copy of Ottolenghi: The Cookbook? It's a beautifully constructed book, with over hundred colorful photos and enticing recipes.

I should make another batch of North African bean stew next weekend, as I also have a container of baharat in one of my kitchen cabinets. I'll make a healthier version of harira, the Moroccan lamb, chickpea and spinach soup, shortly.

>188 Deern: I loved that book. And your review was very moving.

>185 Deern: I'm so glad you had a day alone where you didn't feel lonely. That is a fantastic feeling, isn't it?

Glad you had a good weekend. I wish you a good week ahead!

>236 kidzdoc: Once again "ew". Good that no-one tasted even a bite!

I don't own that cookbook, I just got Plenty and used it a lot during my first months as a vegetarian. He just uses so many ingredients that are difficult to find here. I could never do any real planning, had to look up 1-2 alternative dishes already when writing my shopping list, then at the supermarket had to check first for which dish I'd find most of the ingredients before grabbing and weighing fruit and veg (which here usually isn't prepacked). Sweet potatoes, parsnips, even Brussel sprouts are hard to find, not to speak of exotic stuff like edamame.

But I looked through it some days ago and there are some things I'd like to make again or try. This weekend I made the vegetable broth, but without the dumplings (no parsnips available..).

>237 The_Hibernator: Yes, it's a very special book! Not at all what I expected. The message is the same I found in last year's Booker candidate Did you ever have a Family?. There is no meaninglessness, not even in the worst events, unless you decide to see it that way.

I had another good weekend, but I feel strange today, something isn't right. Over-tired in the head and at the same time over-energized in the body. I hope I'll get through the day without an injury! :)

Hm.. I really don't know if there was a YDT except for using dry chickpeas instead of canned for the first time. My landlady Chrystle came to see me with her dog Floh and we chatted a bit. When she left it was too late for zucchini fritters, so I just reheated some of the stew.

I slept well (and in my bed, yay!), but only until 01:45. I tried to sleep again, but then some alarm went off (happens a lot when it's windy) and that was it. I read more of the Ferrante book, then got up at 4 and did some easy yoga until 5. Got coffee and two of my mini apple muffins and watched TV until it was time to get up. Despite being tired my body feels all energized. Like I could go for a really long walk in the rain now, just if possible with my eyes closed. :)
I also feel impatient today, like I'd jump out of my skin if I could.

First thing this morning I had to sort lots of documents by number (don't ask). I did that on the floor, it was just so much more comfortable. So I guess that will be TDT: did part of my work sitting on the floor, not caring that colleagues saw me.

Reading:
I'm somewhat disappointed with my January reading results. It felt like I was reading all the time and still I didn't finish more than 9 books. I like starting into a new month with a couple of challenge books already half done, but this time there's just the Dalrymple with 7%. I completed the AAC and the BAC, only half the CAC and joined the 1,001 GR.

I should easily finish the first Elena Ferrante this week and I'm loving it! It's surprisingly easy Italian and I enjoy the story very much.

I should also finish Deepak Chopra's Wonach wir wirklich hungern, a book I bought about a year ago and which I found when I moved back into my bedroom last week. I guess it's some condensed version of his food books, adapted to German readers. Not yet sure what to think. So far it has no new ideas for me although I enjoyed the part about the 6 ayurvedic tastes. But it's also the source for the unedible burgers...

Planning to start my Christie this week, hoping for an easy and pleasant read.

My parents just called and said they're considering moving to Merano. Not that surprising, as I'm their only child and Merano has much to offer for pensioners - beautiful surroundings, nice houses, shops, a theater, good doctors and a hospital with a good reputation, a very low crime rate, etc. It's just that I don't see myself there forever, a part of me is always considering moving further South. But then we'd be on the same side of the Alps at least and the climate would be good for both of them and I'd know they're in a good and "safe" place.
They're coming to visit me in 4 weeks and will stay about 10 days. We'll make more plans then.

Sweet potatoes, parsnips, even Brussel sprouts are hard to find, not to speak of exotic stuff like edamame.

Wow. I'm quite surprised to read that. I would expect that any decent sized supermarket in the US would have all of those vegetables at any time (although the edamame would typically be found in the frozen food section).

My parents just called and said they're considering moving to Merano

When I first read that I thought you said that your parents might move to Mexico, not Merano. That's what I get for reading posts too quickly.

>241 kidzdoc: Haha, Mexico - now THAT would be adventurous! :D
I don't remember if I mentioned it here, they have been planning to sell their house for a while, it's becoming too much effort to maintain it, and then there are no shops and doctors left in their village. My mum tested the North Sea coast for a couple of weeks in autumn to see if that region would help her asthma, but she hated it and her arthritis got worse. Merano would be a good choice, we even have a therme with inhalations and special medical baths.

>242 Deern: I blinked a time or two when my brain read "Mexico"; I thought for a second, "Really?"

The photos and descriptions and the photos I've seen elsewhere of Merano are very enticing.

I'm sorry for the extreme length, but wow - what a book! The review is full of really big spoilers and if you haven't read the book yet but are planning to, please skip it entirely or latest after the fourth Paragraph and "beauty".

10. L'amica Geniale (My Brilliant Friend) by Elena Ferrante (Ferrante Napolitan series 1/4)

There are at least two ways to read this book. You might see it as the story of a friendship between two young girls, growing up in one of the poor quarters in post-war Naples. Interesting, but also simple. Easy language, a quick read. Rating somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. This isn’t the wrong way. You might relate more deeply to other stories, but this one has no hook for you that catches you and draws you in.

I once again took that story very personally and for me it has been the book I’d love to have written if I could write. I can’t wait to read the sequel and at the same time I’m scared to read the sequel.

The book begins with a phone call in the now. Our narrator, Elena (Lenù in Napolitano) who lives in Torino, is informed by her best friend Lila’s son Rino that said Lila has gone missing. He asks if she’s with Lenù, but Lila has never in her life left Naples. During their exchange I got a strange feeling that Lenù and Lila might be one and the same person, or better two personalities, sharing the same body. I wondered if Lila existed at all, if she and Lenù had ever been seen in the same place.

In the next chapter however, I quickly learned that Lila is a separate person, very separate at first. She and Lenù grow up in the same bad neighborhood in Naples that just some years after the end of WWII is still ruled by violence and total desolation. The descriptions of that neighborhood, the people, the stories, are SO good!
They become friends at school when to the total surprise of everyone it shows that the “evil and dumb” child Lila with a streak for violence is first in class. She taught herself reading and some writing, and Lenù, despite her best efforts to be top in class, can never overtake her. They form a strong friendship, almost a symbiosis, where one challenges the other, where their minds quickly grow to heights unreachable for their classmates. After primary school Lenù is sent to intermediary school – the first one in her family. Lila however is held back by her family and has to start working. Her ambition and jealousy of Lenù drive her to keep learning in secret. She learns Latin (later even Greek) and even drags Lenù through her first exams. Everything that comes to Lenù with an effort seems to fly towards Lila – but Lila is not allowed to live it. Lila becomes part of Lenù’s brain while Lenù becomes Lila’s body at school, they’re each others’ “brilliant friend”. This works for a while until adolescence hits and many more problems turn up like the re-awakening of the local mafia (camorra), the ever-present corruption, the striving for visible wealth (the first cars, the first TV sets). Add to that the body issues: Cute blonde Lenù develops early and suffers a lot. She puts on much weight, gets acne, needs glasses, while ugly, dark and thin Lila (long after her) simply grows into an incredible beauty.

I felt very much related to the narrator while others here said that we don’t see enough of the “far more interesting” Lila. Lenù’s feelings reminded me very much of what I went through during my own adolescence, especially the body issues. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t nice at all.

And I thought that there are basically 3 types of people: the ones that are content with what they have. They just usually follow the ways of the generation before them, mainly trying to get a bit more money, a nicer house and car, a bit more financial safety. In this books it's the people in that neighborhood, in my own life most of the kids I went to school with.

Then there are the ambitious ones. No matter in which “class” they’re born, they know what they want often from an early age and they follow that desire with all their energy.
And then there are the Lenùs and the Lilas. Those with a good head, with desires and ambitions, but without a clear idea and without the long breath to get anywhere on their own. They might be held back by family or conventions if they’re the obedient type. But there’s also something incomplete in them, they lack the clear idea and will the second type has. That makes them susceptible and they might – like me – spend all their life trying to satisfy others while desperately searching for something they don’t know what. Lenù is sent to the good schools but always feels the danger of being drawn back into the lives of her parents. At the same time she knows she’s not as brilliant as Lila and lets that fact become an obstacle. Basically it’s an excuse. If I can’t be best, shouldn't I better give up at once?

Lila is denied the education and looks for all kinds of outlets. She learns languages she’ll never need or be examined in, she writes stories and paints shoe designs. But her erratic impulses draw her here and there and after a while she loses the energy to continue. Partly because she finds no support in grown-ups like the teacher that gave up on her, but also because it has been driven into her that she’s nothing and shouldn’t try to feel superior to anyone else.

Both girls feel complete only when they’re together, they can only grow together – up to the point where it seems (at least in this 1st book) that Lila takes an easy exit. I think that – leaving aside the pressing outer circumstances – Lila simply anticipates the future loss of her friend who unlike her will at some point escape from Naples and go into the world. So she takes the best possible of her own very limited options to survive.

And Lenù is lost, like an orphan alone in the world. She needs and desperately searches a new object she can attach to, that will make her grow.
I can totally relate to that. It’s a couple of weeks ago that I described that feeling to my therapist, saying I was like a bit of ivy that needs someone/ something it can grow on. It’s something type 1 doesn’t need at all and something for which type 2 has an own inner source. I found it in friends and two of my partners – sadly also in the last one. It’s like you’re each holding a light that shines on a piece of the path the other has to take. Sometimes it ends well – people develop into different directions and there’s a friendly goodbye. But if the connection is cut from one side, there’s such a feeling of being lost and helpless and worthless that often it can be overcome only by finding a new object, and be it just for a short while.
The book’s ending is very strong and I’ll start into #2 today.

Rating: 4.8 (5) stars

>244 Deern: I read My Brilliant Friend in October and then spent some Christmas gift money on the remaining books. I just started The Story of a New Name last night. It picks up right where the first one left off, and threw an unexpected twist at me right away. I'm hooked!!

Wow. Powerful review of My Brilliant Friend, Nathalie. I see that I'm going to have to read Ferrante in the near future.

Hope you enjoy number two as much as you did the first one. I read her novel about a woman after a divorce and just found it relentlessly depressing, but all the enthusiasm around the threads (especially for this book) makes me think that I should give her another go.

Hope your new way of doing things went well today.

>240 Deern: And how do YOU feel about your parents moving to Merano?
There are advantages for them, but you moved away for a reason, are you ready now to have them near again?

>245 lauralkeet: Started it as well and the tone is a bit different. I felt like being in the mind of Lenù the teenager in the 1950s and suddenly it all sounds like the older Lenù remembering - there's more distance to the character (not writing about the introduction where she is older). Anyway, I can't wait to read on, but I fear I'll have no more time today. :(

>246 kidzdoc: Well, try it, Darryl. I'm sure you'll enjoy the setting very much although Italy isn't your dream country.
I'll tell my parents about Mexico. :D

>247 charl08: I think I read the same one L'amore molesto/Troubling Love, didn't like it much and therefore was very reluctant to start this series, despite its success in Italy. I don't know yet about the later books, but this first one is really different. It helps that the characters are likeable and that they're built up from earliest childhood, so strange actions become more understandable.

>248 FAMeulstee: Ha! :) You know Anita - THAT is the big question. Honestly I don't know. On the one hand I want to be away and am annyoed because they call me every second day and want to chat forever and are offended if I don't call. When I lived in Frankfurt we didn't see each other more often and talked less. On the other hand I fear I can't run away from the responsibility - and then I'd prefer having them here near me over having to move back North one day to look after them. That is my big fear, that something will happen that forces me back and takes away the little bit of freedom I found here.

We discussed that option earlier, but my mother was always totally averse. I think the North Sea stay took her illusions that she'd happily live there. She was incredibly frustrated when she returned.

To be honest, I fear my parents won't be "happy" anywhere, because they never were happy people. But the idea that they move to a totally new place and are then on their own without friends and family really scares me. My mum isn't social at all and my dad wouldn't want to leave her alone and they'd get even more focussed on each other in a bad way.

So Merano has some advantages - they've been here often enough, they know some people, my mum knows the town and the therme and could do some things on her own. And they'd find that (fake) idyllic world they believe is lost in Germany. In South Tyrol, if you don't want to look behind the scenes, you don't have to. You just have to keep the tourist glasses on.

But when my dad called me and told me about the new development (my mum being willing to give in), I said that it would be nice to have them closer and that Merano is certainly a good place for them (as for pensioners generally), but that I wouldn't make future decisions dependent on their being in Merano. I want to stay in Italy, but if let's say I'd find a job in Padova or Milano I'd want to be able to move there.

but that I wouldn't make future decisions dependent on their being in Merano. I want to stay in Italy, but if let's say I'd find a job in Padova or Milano I'd want to be able to move there.
Exactly! And let them know that from the start. In today's world, people tend not to stay in the same job till retirement. They change often and move to where the jobs are offered.
Lol, My husband and I may be Tagalong parents some day but still live independently from our only child.

>250 Carmenere: Yes - I don't want to get into the "but we moved to you, now you have to XYZ.." situation.
They quite like the town, the health system is good, resident pensioners can use the very good public transport system for free - enough reasons to move here, and that's exactly why the town is full with German and Italian pensioners. :)
House prices are exploding because so many people buy second homes for old age.
Most of my parents' friends travel here regularly, so they'd still be able to see them. Lots of good arguments, as long as they let me live my life.

>251 Deern: sounds ideal!

I expect having your parents closer will be better, in both the short and long run. Even if you did move a few hours away, it would "feel" closer without the Alps in the middle! And the warmth and the therme, for your mother! As our mothers began to fail my husband and I made the choice to stay near them in Philadelphia even when we wanted to move back to Vermont full-time. I'm glad we did it. I found it much easier to have little interactions, not to have to go for long visits. And when they needed more intense care, that was easy to stay on top of in a way that it wouldn't have from far away.

>253 sibylline: Lucy makes a very good point about being geographically close to parents as they age and require more care. I'm dealing with this long-distance and it only works because we have a paid "care manager" working on our behalf.

I'm glad that Anita asked how you felt about it because I was thinking the same thing. "I fear my parents won't be "happy" anywhere, because they never were happy people." Bingo! And here's the thing, Nathalie - you don't OWE them anything. My sister gave me very good advice once, when I first got married, she said, "Begin as you mean to finish." And that sounds so simple, but really, it's very important. So Lynda is so right when she says to be very upfront with your parents about how things will be if they do move. And I think that what Lucy says is also true - having them closer might be better in the long run because you can see less of them more. Shorter visits could be much less draining, and perhaps it would cut down on the phone calls or at least the length of them.

>7 drneutron: I very much like your comment that books find us when we need them!

>251 Deern:: Lots of good arguments, as long as they let me live my life.
I hope they are able to do so, as the many calls sound to me as "claiming you" and I am not sure if that would become less if they lived closer.

So I echo Lynda and Mamie that you should be clear to them from the start.

>240 Deern: What fabulous news, Nathalie. Sorry, that I was so absent on your thread. I try to catch up and hope doing better now. Wishing you a lovely evening.

Hi all, just a quick note now, which I’ve written in word and am copy/pasting into LT to make my stay here today from this computer as short as possible. So I haven’t read any of your posts yet – will do that tonight from home. I’ll catch up over the weekend and start a new thread as well.

Work is once again being very “critical”, there was another massive escalation yesterday and while I’m not the one in the center of it, it put much extra pressure on. Right now just hoping to get through this day as calmly as possible.

Didn’t find any DTs on Tuesday and Wednesday despite all my best efforts which shows my work days are too uniform. Did something different yesterday though which was answering back to someone who I believe behaved unjustly. Not that it helped any, but at least I feel like I kept my integrity.

I still haven’t finished Crooked House, but am convinced my murder theory is the right one. Would be very disappointed otherwise. :)

Happy Friday!! 

Nathalie, work sounds very stressful. I hope this day will pass too.

11. Crooked House by Agatha Christie (BAC 2016)

This was an easy and quick read, but it’s not among my favorite ACs and I see why it isn’t more famous despite its totally unusual solution. The problem for me was not so much the identity of the killer or the motive, it was that for more than half of the book I felt like watching cardboard figures, not characters, and that was quite boring.

The story is told by Charles, son of a high Scotland Yard inspector and unofficial fiancé of Sophia Leonides. He and Sophia meet and fall in love in Cairo during WWII. He asks if he can come to visit and propose to her after the war and she agrees. She mentions that everyone still alive in her once huge family live together in a big but “crooked” house near London and that she’s very devoted to her rich Greek grandfather, the family patriarch, who made his wealth with unmentioned business activities that are legal, but “just so”.
When Charles returns to London and arranges a meeting with Sophia he sees in an evening newspaper that the grandfather has died that very day. Sophia tells him he has in fact been killed – poisoned with eye drops that were put into his insulin bottle. Charles’ father gives him more background on the case and he starts acting as an intermediary between family and police, doing his own investigations and letting people talk. It gets clear soon that everyone in the family hopes the killer to be the victim’s young wife Brenda who’s supposedly in love with the children’s tutor. But is the solution really that easy or can the killer be found inside the family? And where’s the will?

I was on the wrong track and I guess most readers would be. Yet I was disappointed with the ending, not because my theory was wrong, but because I had hoped that there’d be more credible persons behind the cardboard figures that are introduced to us when Charles first visits “crooked house” and that wasn’t the case. Charles himself, Sophia, his father and the second police inspector weren’t any better. I was also sure of a certain twist which would have given depth to a ridiculously shallow character – but there was none.

A solid murder mystery, but I prefer the Poirots and even all the Miss Marples. Tommy and Tuppence we can discuss.

Rating: 3 stars

12. Nate in Venice by Richard Russo (AAC 2016)

It feels a bit like cheating, counting this very short novella as my AAC for February. But this is a month for short and easy books, as my concentration is not at its best. And then when I took a look at Russo’s more famous works none of them really called to me. I read this one during lunch break and would have liked it to be a bit longer. The protagonist is Nate, a retired college professor from Massachusetts, who’s booked a one-week culture trip to Italy with his older brother Julian. Tensions between them arise already when they meet at the Venice airport, and Julian immediately starts going separate ways, flirting with a female tourist and not sitting with Nate for the first dinner. Nate is lost in thoughts most of the time, not having gotten over “the incident with the Mauntz girl” that happened almost a year ago during his last year in college. The story is brought back in flashbacks and it’s not what you’re thinking now. Already on the second day, Nate manages to get lost in the streets of Venice and is unable to communicate with his brother even by cellphone which is an allusion to his broken-down connection with hos brother and his past in general.

I enjoyed this short book more than I expected and when it ended I would happily have followed Nate to Rome as well. But for such a short book, it was interrupted too often with flashbacks, and those memories weren’t even completed. SPOILER coming: we never know what exactly happened and why no-one ever thought it necessary to give a professor more information about that student’s condition. .

I liked the mentions of Death in Venice. I felt reminded of it a bit, and of my own weekend there 2 years ago. Wandering those lonely little side streets your mind will start wandering too and you might start looking at your life in a different way. The book has definitely re-awakened my desire for that city and I hope to be able to squeeze in another weekend there in spring or autumn.

Rating: 3.7 stars

Mixing it up with a short book or two sounds like a good idea. I am giving myself permission to abandon books too.

The idea of going to Venice for a weekend and just walking (boating? )around sounds wonderful.

Hope that the rest of your Friday is not as stressful and that the weekend is good too. Having spent the last week reading about walking I am hoping to get out and actually do some of my own (ideally without coming home a drowned rat).

Happy weekend, Nathalie. Great reviews, you're flying up with your reading.

#262 What's just terrified me is you saying that your weekend in Venice was 2 years ago.... wow that's two damn quick years!

Hope the parental situation sorts itself in the right way - I think you are very right to be clear with them about your position. It's not fair you - or I guess, them, if they go into it with the wrong ideas. Hope your weekend is relaxing :)

Brilliant review of My Brilliant Friend and the others too. You should post them to the main page so I could thumb them. Great going. Sorry about the quandry of your parents. I am blessed to have 4 siblings . My dad passed of cancer 8 years ago, at the relatively young age of 65. That was challenging enough, in the sense that my mom does not drive and my dad wanted to pass away at home, so it took a lot of energy and time over two years with my dad battling cancer. My mom had a lot of trouble acknowledging that my dad was going to die, - so did I , but it was very difficult for my my mom. It became so tense I sought counseling for a while - as much as I love my parents, they were very demanding. Best wishes with it all.

Catching up and having nothing to add, I'll simply say that I hope your weekend is at least pleasant, Nathalie!

So... I am now half back on track with most threads that I haven't visited in a while.
LT is very, very fast this year although the New Year frenzy has been over for a while. It's great when you have time to follow, but as I really love to read and not just skim threads I feel guilty for falling behind yet again and so early.

I had been planning LT time for Friday night or yesterday, but was just unable to read or comunicate at all. So I did a "detox day" instead, following an advice in the Chopra book I'm just reading. That was my yesterday's DT.

Did much yoga and even some meditation, ate only fruit and salad and later watched 3 movies, "The Two Faces of January" (great costumes, but mediocre plot despite Viggo), a long George Harrison docu and - and that was a great idea - "Darjeeling Limited". I had seen that last movie many years ago in a small English theater on my bday, back in Frankfurt. I remember i liked it but didn't get it, so I bought the DVD. Now I finally rewatched it - and voila: life brought me to the point where I got it and totally, totally loved it. Might rewatch once more tonight.

This morning I woke up at 4am (yes, once again), did my yoga at 5:30 and went out at 8:30 for some work at the refugee centre. Today I wrote the first CV for a refugee, in Italian (so it must be proof-read by one of the workers). I loved having the interview with that man from Gambia and then rewriting his story and experiences in a way that a future employer might be interested. It made more sense than most other things I did last week. Later I had tea with my friend and future landlady Karin who lives 2 minutes from the centre and then walked back home in the rain. Doing that long walk despite the rain and cold was today's DT.

Packed three bags of garbage yesterday by going through the pantry and an old wardrobe in the guest room. It feels SO good getting rid of things!! :)

Another reason for detox day and meditation was that twice last week during work I had something that was either a light panic attack or another negative stress reaction - maybe high blood pressure for the first time in my life?

As I said earlier, it is very stressful right now and there are several reasons, one being the personality of my manager. I've seen some reactions from him lately (towards others) that scare me and I'll have to find a way to distance myself from those very personal outbreaks to be able to do my work well without totally overstraining myself. I've been thinking much and I made a list of requirements yesterday which I'm planning to discuss with him next week. We both want quality, so we'll have to determine how best to co-ordinate requests to ensure this quality.

********

>252 Carmenere: Yes, it is quite ideal. We just talked again today. I want them to get a clear picture of advantages and disadvantages and then will try not to influence their decision too much.

>253 sibylline: Absolutely perfectly said, Lucy!

>254 lauralkeet: It's a difficult issue and at some point it becomes unavoidable. I really hope my parents will sell their house and soon, no matter where they decide to move, because then at least they'd be financially stabile for a long time.

>256 Whisper1: Hi Linda, I made that experience so often. I buy a book, but don't feel like reading it - and then it calls out to me one day from the shelf. Or it is mentioned/ referenced somewhere just when I need it. We can find answers everywhere when we're open to it and in my case (and for all of us) books are the perfect means.

>257 FAMeulstee: We talked about that today and we'll do so in depth when they're here in 3 weeks. It is so crucial that they come here for themselves, not only to be closer to me. I feel that too often they don't know what to do with themselves anymore, and then they call. They're very lonely, and there are other lonely people here of a similar age, many of them. This might be a chance.

>258 Ameise1: No need to apologize Barbara! I haven't been here much myself, and LT is really so busy this year.

>260 DianaNL: Can please both the cat and the snow come my way, too? Thank you, Diana!! :)

>263 charl08: Venice is SO beautiful! I've been there 3 times (only once alone) and every time I look at the canals and the palazzi and can't believe its heartbreaking and morbid beauty. It's a feast for the eyes, not so much for my head though. I'm always dizzy there from the boating and the light swaying you can feel in some places. BBtw. I had that issue in NY when I was there once - up in the skyscrapers I felt that slight rocking motion all day. :)

>264 Ameise1: What a beautiful calming picture, thank you, Barbara! :)

>265 BekkaJo: Yes, it was the Valentine's Day weekend 2014 - which I only realized when I had to wait forever for another single woman to turn up for my booked gondola tour! :)
And I was a fresh vegetarian and then almost vegan and didn't find much to eat besides spaghetti al pomodoro. Oh, and there was acqua alta/ high water and I couldn't walk everywhere. Next time I must take my wellingtons!

>266 vancouverdeb: Thank you so much for sharing your story here!!
You know - apart from feeling responsible, I am sure that in case of a crisis my parents would want me to be there. They might not say so, but in the end it would be hell for everyone, being 760 kms apart. My mum also doesn't drive and is generally totally dependent on my dad.

I don't want them here eating up all my energies instead of enjoying their lives as long as they can. But I'd want them here in case something happens, to be closer to them to provide support.

>267 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy - I hope you had a nice weekend as well! We should share a read again soon!

Hi Nathalie, just catching up here before I pack up and leave Kansas City after being away from home for eight days. I'll miss my grandkids but it's time to return to my other life including my husband and dog.

>216 Deern: I have followed your conversation with Ilana about Sacred Hunger with interest. I'm sorry the book "spat you out" (i love that description btw) midway through. I disliked Kemp from the beginning, and it is only in the sequel A Quality of Mercy that he redeems himself (to a certain extent) in my eyes. At least he shows a potential to act like a decent human being! I really liked both of these books very much but I am a big fan of good historical fiction. >219 Deern: I didn't like the sequel as much as SH but I do hope you read it.

>235 Deern: Oh no, not throwaway books. Whew! They are going to the library. I like to think of the 35 books that I recently culled as going to new homes. It is a great feeling to release them that way.

>244 Deern: Brilliant thoughts on My Brilliant Friend, Nathalie. I love how you analyze the books you read. I tend to be pretty general in my comments online but I do think deeply about them. Reading your comments took me right back to the beginning of the series. I am listening to the fourth one now, and it will keep me company on my 3-hour drive home later today.