MissWatson takes astronomical readings

Hi, I'm Birgit and I live in Schleswig-Holstein on the coast of the Baltic Sea. This is my fourth Category Challenge, and I have enjoyed every minute of the journey. Plus, it helps enormously with the TBR.

Some of my best reads last year have been non-fiction books which made me want to explore the subject or some of its aspects in more depth. But having sixteen categories interfered with this kind of follow-up reading. So this year I am concentrating on three very big tomes. I'll join the CATs and the Bingo if I can find the time, and there are also categories for escape reading.

ETA

I'm not setting any fixed goals, but 2017 pages per month is achievable.

January page count: 4628
February page count: 3366
March page count: 3292
April page count: 2125
May page count: 3254
June page count: 3489

Solar systems



I've chosen three big books of global history, which should provide ample inspiration for further reading. These are the suns. Books chosen as follow-up reading are the planets. They can produce additional reading in turn, which will count as moons.

The suns
1. Die Kinder des Prometheus, 848 pages done
2. Die Unterwerfung der Welt, 1648 pages done
3. Die Verwandlung der Welt, 1568 pages

The planets
1.1. Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer
1.2. Rulaman

The moons

Fix stars



This is for the CATs.

1. Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. January RandomCAT
2. Die Judenbuche. January WomanCAT
3. Sanditon, and other stories. January WomanCAT
4. Bellwether. January RandomCAT
5. The hare with amber eyes. January Awards and RandomCAT
6. Blade Runner. January CultureCAT and SFF KIT
7. Ru. February Woman and AwardCAT
8. Cover her face. February RandomCAT and CATWoman
9. The long way to a small, angry planet. February CATWoman and SFF Kit
10. Muerte súbita. February AwardsCAT
11. Das Mädchen von der grünen Insel. March RandomCAT
12. William the Silent. March CATWoman
13. The sparrow. March CATWoman, SFF Kit
14. Castle Rackrent. March RandomCAT
15. The absentee. March Random and CultureCAT
16. The dark frigate. March AwardsCAT
17. Die Muskeltiere und Madame Roquefort. April RandomCAT
18. Habsburgs verkaufte Töchter. April CATWoman
19. Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser. April CATWoman
20. The warlord trilogy. April RandomCAT
21. Mord im 31. Stock. April SFF Kit
22. Dear life. May AwardsCAT
23. Lichter setzen über grellem Grund. May CATWoman
24. Briarpatch. May AwardsCAT
25. Rendezvous with Rama. May SFFKit
26. Ruth. May RandomCAT
27. The heart of what was lost. June SFFKit

Constellations



This is for the BingoDOG



1: Der weise Gründling by Michail Saltykow-Schtschedrin
2: Roxelane by Johannes Tralow
3: Das Mädchen von der grünen Insel by Johannes Tralow
4: Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser by Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt
5: Bellwether by Connie Willis
6: William the Silent by C. V. Wedgwood
7: Lichter setzen über grellem Grund by Renate Feyl
8: Mord im 31. Stock by Per Wahlöö
9: Ein Held unserer Zeit by Michail Lermontow
10: Lotta Schmidt, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
13: Sanditon and other stories by Jane Austen
15: Homeworld by Harry Harrison
17: Dear life by Alice Munro
20: Ru by Kim Thúy
21: The hare with amber eyes by Edmund de Waal
22: Die Nonne von Monza by Alessandro Manzoni
23: Inseln im Winde by Max Geißler
24: Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit by Sten Nadolny
25: Demelza by Winston Graham

Comets



Shiny and new books go here.

1. Robert van Gulik by Janwillem van de Wetering
2. Bellwether by Connie Willis
3. The waking fire by Anthony Ryan
4. Alarm in Sköldgatan by Sjöwall/Wahlöö
5. Grrrimm by Karen Duve
6. The heart of what was lost by Tad Williams

Black holes



This is for the DNFs. Of course I hope there won't be any, but I really need to be more ruthless about not finishing books if I don't like them.

1. Stabat mater by Tiziano Scarpa
2. The warlord trilogy by Bernard Cornwell

Galaxies



Here goes everything else.

1. Maigret et les braves gens by Georges Simenon
2. Why Frau Frohmann raised her prices, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
3. European aristocracies and colonial elites
4. Wheelworld by Harry Harrison
5. Starworld by Harry Harrison
6. Lizzie Leigh; and other tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
7. Dumm gelaufen by Moritz Matthies
8. Jean Sbogar by Charles Nodier
9. Der Mantel by Nikolai Gogol
10. Suite fantastique by Maurice Renard
11. Grießnockerlaffäre by Rita Falk
12. Das ewige Leben by Wolf Haas
13. The way through the woods by Colin Dexter
14. The dragonbone chair by Tad Williams
15. The economy and material culture of Russia by Richard Hellie
16. Le rayon-vert by Jules Verne
17. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
18. Mädchen in Uniform by Christa Winsloe
19. Die Verlobung by Ludwig Tieck

I think I am set and ready to face the new year, new books and whatever else life throws at us. Welcome visitors!

Very creative, Brigit!

Thanks Tess! I was thinking about those follow-up readings as satellites revolving around a celestial object, and somehow it grew from there...

Awesome theme! Looking forward to seeing all the planets and moons you discover!

Oh, I like!

Great to see you all set up and ready for 2017. Looking forward to following along with your reading.

Fantastic theme, very imaginative!

Wonderful categories and graphics! I'll be following along with your reading.

>12 rabbitprincess: >13 majkia: >14 DeltaQueen50: >15 Jackie_K: >16 VivienneR: It's nice to see you all! I'm looking forward to next year with great anticipation!

I love how you put your DNFs in a black hole. Maybe they'll be enjoyed by people in another universe? Your global history books should be a great achievement when you manage to complete them. Best of luck to you!

This such a neat idea. I love how one read so often leads to others. Also love the space pics!

That's a great set-up!

I like your pairings.

>18 mamzel: That would be neat, wouldn't it?

>19 sturlington: Yes, it's like a string of pearls. Hm, maybe that's a challenge theme?

>20 -Eva-: Thanks!

>21 Kristelh: Thanks!

I'm signing off for the holidays and will be offline until January. Hope to see you all safe and sound then!

Merry Christmas!

You too!

Hi Birgit, love the astronomy theme for your 2017 category reading!

>25 The_Hibernator: Thank you, Rachel! Lovely bird!
>26 lkernagh: Thanks for dropping in, Lori!

Comets

My first book of the year is a biography of Robert van Gulik which I picked up for the princely sum of 10 cents at a bookstore closing down, written by a fellow mystery writer from the Netherlands. Short enough to finish it on the train ride home, after spending the holidays at my sister's without reading a single page. But family takes priority during Christmas.

And now I'm off to catch up on everyone else's threads before it's time to get back to work!

Happy new year. I love the way you've structured your challenge!

>29 tymfos: Thank you!

Love the way you've structured your challenge. And how you're allowing your reading to lead to other books.

I love your challenge!!! Happy New Year!!

Constellations / Fix stars

My first read for the BingoDOG is a leftover from 2016, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, which is a fictional biography of Sir John Franklin and also a reflection on time and observation. The fatal expedition takes up the final chapter, as the author is much more interested in his early years and the development of his character. A very rewarding read.

It also fits the January RandomCAT's theme of search, for the Northwest Passage in Franklin's case.

ETA

>31 markon: >32 VictoriaPL: Thank you! Very happy to see you!

Galaxies

Last Sunday we had a new TV version of Maigret starring Rowan Atkinson. I was a little surprised by the Fifties setting, I always associated Maigret with the Thirties and Forties, so I went to my shelves. And I found Maigret et les braves gens, written in 1961. So that's allright, then. A very quick read, the book is short and typeset in a very large font size, easily finished in a day. The nice thing about these stories is that they are not graphic in their violence, the search for finding out what happened is the most important thing, and the policemen spend nearly all their time questioning people. Oh, and the new TV version is actually quite good.

>35 MissWatson: Oh, I hope we get that series here! I have a weakness for period crime drama. It seems like the fifties are a popular setting at the moment.

>35 MissWatson: Sounds marvelous!

>36 cbl_tn: So far there are two feature-length episodes, but they catch the atmosphere very well and made me nostalgic for the days when the French police still had their distinctive uniforms, when French cars were recognizably French etc etc...

>37 Tess_W: I have only seen a version dubbed into German, so I am not sure how much they mangled the French names, but everything else is just like the books.

ETC

Fix stars

Today is the 220th birthday of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff which is why I re-read her novella Die Judenbuche for the January WomanCAT. I last read this in school, where it was part of the curriculum, and I duly forgot about it. More's the pity. These days I can appreciate the way she left everything in doubt, nothing is resolved, and the description of the harsh life and rough characters in a Westphalian village in the 18th century is vivid. It is also familiar territory, the true case on which it is based took place near Paderborn, and the language reminded me of the dialect spoken by my mother's relatives.

edited for touchstones

>39 MissWatson: Sounds like a great read, but really expensive in translation. I'll watch for a cheap copy!

>40 Tess_W: I am surprised it has been translated at all. In her time she was most famous as a poet, and nowadays she's mostly known for this novella, because nearly everyone is made to read it at school. I picked up a volume of collected works when we visited Lake Constance last year, where she died, and I can't come to grips with her poetry. Her prose is much more modern in phrasing.

>40 Tess_W: If you're interested, there's a volume of German literature in translation on Project Gutenberg which contains the novella and a few of her poems: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12351/pg12351-images.html. At first glance, the translation is quite good. Navigation is rudimentary, though.

fix stars / constellations

I finished Sanditon and other stories which reunites all of Jane Austen's early and unfinished writings in a single volume, and I read it now because I find that a new movie is based on two of these tales (Lady Susan and Love and freindship) and because last year I bought the gorgeous Everyman's Library edition. Wonderful smooth paper and two of my favourite typefaces in a reasonably generous font size. Also, it's Jane Austen! Not as polished as her other novels, but it had me giggling quite often. I was amazed to read the phrase "leader of the Gang" here, it's surprising how old some of these phrases are.
It fits the January WomanCAT and the BingoSquare for the CAT.

>43 MissWatson: I highly recommend the movie "Love and Friendship"! I think it may be available to stream on Amazon Prime...not sure about other streaming services.

>44 christina_reads: It's on my list!

I really liked Love and Friendship (the movie) as well!

galaxies

Why Frau Frohmann raised her prices, and other stories by Anthony Trollope is a collection of five stories, one of them a Christmas story I saw mentioned in the run-up to the holidays, which is how I found this digitised copy. I rather like to read the scanned pages as a PDF, to see the original layout of the pages. This was typeset in a font much used at the time which I like very much, but don't know the name of (it's a little like Modern No 20).
As for the stories themselves, the title story is a bit like a primer in basic economics, here especially monetary theory and inflation. The Christmas story was unusual (to say more would be spoiling), the others are variations on the usual theme of girls waiting for a proposal from a man who seems out of their reach. I think the short form does not really suit Trollope; at least I miss the convoluted plots and larger casts of characters of his novels. Still, entertainingly presented.

There's been a story on the news about a library in Florida where the staff created a fake account to outwit the stock management software: they borrowed books with this account that would have been decommissioned otherwise. As one of the commentators remarked, they must have found this idea in a book, namely Connie Willis' Bellwether. How could I not go and look for that book with such a recommendation?

>48 MissWatson: Bellwether is great fun! Hope you enjoy it!

>48 MissWatson: I haven't seen this news story - love it!

>35 MissWatson: - I did not know that Rowen Atkinson had something new out. Must investigate....

>50 madhatter22: >51 lkernagh: Nice to see you!
>49 christina_reads: I enjoyed it very much!

fix stars / constellations / comets

I found a copy of Bellwether and raced through it. This was my first Connie Willis, so it fits the "shiny and new" category, it involves the eternal intellectual quest for reasons why things are as they are, so it fits the RandomCAT, and it is a one-word title, so I can fill another square on my Bingo card and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.
It is also a wonderful story, this won't definitely be my last Connie Willis. Funny, but also uncomfortably close to real life. At times I wondered if I should use it for the satire on the Bingo card. The only thing missing was the "publish or perish" pressure, otherwise it still accurately describes the madness that is modern science.

Hi Birgit! I'm a little late to the party, but I really love your set-up, especially your solar system category. And I'm happy to see that you enjoyed Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. :)

Hi Chrischi! I'm finding that reading books long after the hype is over makes for very pleasant discoveries.

fix stars / constellations

The hare with amber eyes fills a satisfying number of slots, it fits the RandomCAT, the AwardsCAT and a bingo square, with an animal in the title.
The book itself did not live up to my expectations, mostly because I missed notes and complete information about the many books he mentions. The illustrations were poor, and I recommend keeping your internet connection open, so you can check out all the paintings and other pieces of art he mentions. And I will re-read Du côté de chez Swann with different eyes now.

constellations

I don't think I'll read another book of short stories in the foreseeable time, so I'm counting this for the Bingo square: Lotta Schmidt, and other stories by Trollope, which I downloaded because of a Christmas story it contains: The two generals. Almost all the stories are set abroad, there's usually a romance and surprisingly not all the romances end in marriage. They were also very topical, the two generals are brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of the American Civil War (which had not ended yet at the time of writing) and another is set in Venice during the fights for Italian independence. My own impression is that Trollope was well-travelled and willing to acknowledge that different peoples live differently. The first story is set in Vienna and he is at pains to tell his readers that girls may go out dancing without chaperones, which would be unthinkable in England. It instantly reminded me of snotty Eugenia Wraxton in The Grand Sophy who considers English manners to be superior to everything else under the sun.

fix stars

I finally read Blade Runner, my movie tie-in copy of Philip K. Dick's classic, for the SFF KIT. At a pinch, it fits the CultureCAT since it is also about the ethics of killing man-made machines if these are no longer distinguishable from humans. I confess I am a little disappointed, it didn't live up to its reputation, which may be due to the fact that it is set in 2020, and the discrepancy between where we ware, and where Dick thought we would be, is too large to ignore. It felt dated to me.

>58 MissWatson: Part of me is tempted to read this in 2021 to see what didn't come to pass! ;)

>59 rabbitprincess: It's more of a case what's still around: typewriters, carbon copies, primitive telephones...

There's a sequel movie coming out in October and I am so excited!! I am a huge Blade Runner fan girl. I really enjoyed the sequel books Blade Runner: The Edge of Human, Blade Runner: Replicant Night and Eye and Talon by K.W. Jeter.

>61 VictoriaPL: This sounds intriguing!

>60 MissWatson: Bwaaaahahaha carbon copies! :D

Galaxies

European aristocracies and colonial elites is a collection of papers which look at how aristocrats managed their estates and fostered or hindered development of a modern economy. The quality is very uneven, by far the best was Richard Hellie's about Russia which gave a succinct history of Russian aristocracy since the days of Ivan IV. Once again, the idea of applying modern concepts of economics to historical societies strikes me as ludicrous, but these papers for the most part put the focus on history, so I gleaned quite a lot of useful information on various countries, which should help with understanding 19th century novels. The final summary essay by Patrick Karl O'Brien deftly puts the straightforward chronological narrative of the previous papers into economists' gobbledegook.

Solar system

I have finished my first big book, Die Kinder des Prometheus. The author follows humans across the globe as they turn from hunter-gatherers into farmers. Very interesting, but a little repetitive if read in one go. There's only so many ways you can vary phrases like "they lived on fish, game and nuts". I won't remember all the numerous individual cultures he describes, but the one thing that will stick is that change is normal, and people will always move.

Constellations

A little light relief between chapters from my heavy tome was provided by Homeworld which I have owned for more than five years.

Galaxies

Wheelworld is the next instalment in the trilogy, also conveniently short. It has aged quite well, in my opinion, as it is basically a story of a trek, where a farming community travels from the northern continent to the south as the seasons on the planet change every four years. Full of technical details of the various crises on the way, plus a rebellion of the underlings. There's almost no reference to events in the first book, and now I am quite curious to find out how this ends.

Galaxies

And I finished Starworld with a few minutes to spare before midnight.
This was a disappointing end to the trilogy. It feels rushed as the hero literally runs from one end of the Earth to the other and back, typos and mangled phrases included. A back history of 400 years is infodumped by people who play no further part in the action, yet all the reference to history we get is the usual 20th century stuff, including nationalist clichés. We are treated to a lecture on how to conduct a real space war – the weapons engineer even gets to play an excerpt that reads like Star Wars (Harrison really must have been pissed off with the travesty of space popluarized by movies). Hardest to swallow is the emergence of a James Bond-style, omnipotent, omniscient supervillain. And all this in 200 pages! For once, more would have been better, there is simply not enough time to treat interesting aspects of the story in satisfactory depth.

So...January roundup. I managed to read 15 books, which I find amazing. If I can keep this up, I might eventually make a dent in my TBR! However, the best book of the bunch was a recent acquisition: Bellwether. I can definitely see more Connie Willis in my future. The others were more or less what I expected, and Jane Austen the most agreeable.

On to February with a followup to my first chunkster, Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer.

>69 MissWatson: Fifteen books *is* amazing! Congrats, and I'm so excited that you liked Bellwether!

>70 christina_reads: It's so great to find new authors thanks to fellow LTers!

15 is very respectable indeed - congrats on your progress!

>72 -Eva-: Thanks, Eva! February plans got derailed when I went to pick up a book at the bookstore and saw The waking fire. 600+ pages...

>73 MissWatson:
Haha! Well, I guess it'll all even out in the end. :)

>74 -Eva-: It will all be good in the end, yes.

Comets

Like I said, I went to pick up a book, and there, prominently displayed, I saw The waking fire which I hadn't even heard of. But I liked his Raven trilogy very much, so... How dare they lead me into temptation like this? It's a good thing I had a weekend coming up, because once I started I couldn't stop reading.
I found the setting unusual, as we have a world without government, just a number of large corporations running the world for profit, the largest being the Ironship Trading Syndicate (echoes of the East India Company here, except we're in the age of steam paddleships), exploiting the resources of a southern continent. The main product being dragon blood, harvested from different-coloured dragons for different purposes and used by so-called blood-blessed who can drink it and use it without harm. And this is where our story begins, as a team of independent contractors sets out to find a mythical white dragon.
The story is told from the POV of three people, and I'm grateful that Clay grows up quickly enough, at the beginning he was very immature and very annoying. Lizanne is a very strong female character (who reminds me of Modesty Blaise quite often), and I very much liked Hilemore, who comes across as a cross between Sharpe and Richard Delancey. My only quibble is the body count, the enemy empire is mostly faceless, just throwing anonymous savages against the walls and trenches, and this makes the carnage on the battlefields hard to take.

Congrats on 15 books in January! And I'll take a BB for The Waking Fire; sounds like a good one.

>77 LisaMorr: I hope you enjoy it, I found much to like here. Lizanne is a great female character, strong and competent, most of the characters are likeable and interesting, and there's lots to ponder about regarding the dragons, especially towards the end, when the white dragon appears and the refraction of light comes into play. Why red, blue and green for the dragons on the "enemy" side, and the blacks on the "friendly"? Are we in a computer game?

Fix stars / constellations

After the big book, a very short one to play catch up with the CATs: Ru fits both the WomanCAT as a debut novel and the AwardCAT, as it was the Canada Reads winner in 2015. And I also used it for the "debut work" in the Bingo.
This was a lovely read, such simple and yet elegant language. My edition was intended for school use and had vocabulary notes. I didn't really need these but it was interesting to see that quite a lot of words were Canadian French.

edited for touchstone

Fix stars

Cover her face was P.D. James' first book, so it fits for both the Random and the Woman CAT. A decent country house mystery, no more, no less. Read today it is like a piece of social history on English post-war village life. It is also written in wonderful Queen's English, as it was taught in my school days.

ETC

Black holes

I made several starts with Stabat mater and just couldn't make any headway. I couldn't get into the head of Cecilia, an orphan at the Ospedale della Pietà and one of Vivaldi's students who writes this story as a kind of monologue directed at her unknown mother. Depressing.

ETC

Galaxies

My lunchtime reading for the last few weeks has been Lizzie Leigh; and other tales, a collection of stories by Elizabeth Gaskell. Quite a mixed lot, some about supernatural events (maybe), some historical anecdotes, a love story that was used to pad out Cranford when it was filmed for TV and a few that read like Sunday school material, all about little girls learning their duties to be good, patient, obedient wives. These I found very treacly and preachy, but even they show off her great insight into human behaviour. Her characters are so very real and individual, and share a family life that feels genuine.

Solar systems

Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer is a follow-up on my first "sun" and traces the origins and later migrations of the Indoeuropeans, mostly by linguistic developments. He incorporates a lot of recent research, and I gather there's still academic debate about some aspects of it.

It's my Thingaversary today, the fifth (where has time gone??) and in keeping with the tradition I bought some books:

Elizabeth Gaskell by Jenny Uglow
In these times by Jenny Uglow
El lector de cadáveres by Antonio Garrido
Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Roxelane by Johannes Tralow

and one to grow on: Reading like a writer by Francine Prose
Nearly all of these are book bullets from fellow LTers, so thank you all! I'm looking forward to reading them.

The Sparrow is one of my all time favourite books. I was so heartbroken at the end of it I've still not dared read the sequel...

>85 Jackie_K: That is high praise indeed. Up the list it goes! It will fit for the March CATWoman, I think.

>84 MissWatson: Congratulations on your Thingaversary!!

>87 VictoriaPL: Thanks!

>84 MissWatson: Happy Thingaversary! And congrats on your new Fiver badge.

Congratulations on your Thingaversary! Looks like you got a great bunch of books. :)

Hurray, happy Thingaversary!

>89 AHS-Wolfy: >90 DeltaQueen50: >91 rabbitprincess: Thank you all! I've met such wonderful books (and people!) here.

Belated Happy Thingaversary!

>93 Kristelh: Thank you!

Constellations

I have finished Demelza which gives me my first Bingo as a "next book in a series".

Galaxies

I also listened to Dumm gelaufen, an audiobook my sister sent me. It's a new case for Ray the meerkat detective and it's fun to listen to Christoph Maria Herbst do the voices and dialects.

Constellations

Another one for the Bingo, a place name in the title: Die Nonne von Monza. This is an episode from Manzoni's original version of I promessi sposi which he struck out and whose manuscript turned up again after the Second World War. He has an amazing insight into the psychology of his main character. It's hard to like her, but you can understand why she acts as she does.

Galaxies

I came across Jean Sbogar by accident and can't quite believe I actually finished it. It is a tale of a bandit who falls in love with a rich aristocrat. Things end badly of course, this was written in 1818, when romantic robbers and bandits were highly fashionable. The plot is risible, the characters unbelievable and the whole drawn out with overlong descriptions of landscapes. Not to mention the endless discussions about religion. It is set in Istria, a Venetian province until the French marched in, and that's what kept my interest, plus an unhealthy dose of masochism, I suppose.

Fix stars

I finished The long way to a small, angry planet and loved every minute of the voyage. The crew make a wonderful team.

>99 MissWatson:
More endorsements - great to see as I just put a hold on it at my library. :)

Happy belated Thingaversary!

>100 -Eva-: I hope you enjoy it. The female characters are all wonderful.

>101 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori!

I've been skipping for joy all weekend: I've got tickets for a concert in the Elbphilharmonie, yay!!!

For those of you who may not have heard of it: it's the new, futuristic concert hall in Hamburg which was officially opened in January. The whole project has been plagued by controversy, cost overruns and missed deadlines and threatened to make Hamburg the laughing stock of the nation (until Berlin messed up even worse with their new airport). But when it was finally finished and musicians got a chance to play there and test the acoustics, everyone praised it to the skies. Tickets sold out within hours and are traded for horrendous sums by the sharks. We had hoped that our annual music festival in Schleswig-Holstein would get playing time there, and they did. Friends of the festival can book before tickets go on sale to the general public and I am among the lucky ones with tickets for an evening in honour of Philip Glass' 80th birthday. Such wonderful news to brighten up this grey, rainy weekend!

>103 MissWatson: Nice. I like Philip Glass. My husband does not, LOL.

>104 VictoriaPL: Thanks. Curiosity has been whetted to such a degree that the programme became a minor matter. But it is nice that there are familiar and well-liked pieces, it helps with appreciating the sound of the new venue.

Hurray for getting tickets! Hope you enjoy the show and the new venue :)

>106 rabbitprincess: Thanks, it's going to be a long wait until July. Or maybe not, time is racing by again. How can it be the end of February today?

Time to look back on February: ten books read and one abandoned, and the most enjoyable were The waking fire and The long way to a small, angry planet, delicious adventures. I had hoped to read Being mortal for the CultureCAT, but somehow the month has been too short. Ah well, maybe next month.

Fix stars

I was a bit late in noticing that I have one of the ToB books on my TBR, and it took me a bit longer than expected to finish it: Muerte súbita. This is one of the oddest books I have ever read, and I'm not sure I really got this.
I knew that it has a tennis match between Caravaggio and Quevedo, so I took the precaution of looking up the technical sports terms in Spanish, but that was small help. If this is typical of Mexican Spanish, I'm not keen. Far too many subclauses where you had to read twice to make sense of them, a surfeit of "que", like "like" in modern American usage, and an amazing number of typos. He gets the names of people wrong repeatedly, and I do not mean on purpose, as he does when he uses all names under which La Malinche was known. And I really did not care for the way he jumps around chronologically during the tennis episodes, the habit of not marking dialogue as such made these nearly inscrutable. Since this episode is clearly fictional I am taking everything else he tells us with more than a pinch of salt.
Interesting, but not in a good way.

Solar systems

Rulaman is a children's classic in Germany, written in the late 19th century. It's a tale of a youngster living in the Stone Age in what is now the Schwäbische Alb, one of the most important sites for pre-historic archaeology in Europe. The author took a keen interest in the discoveries made there in his time, and he was also an eminent biologist, so the book reflects the state of scientific knowledge at that time. Still worth reading.

>103 MissWatson:
Wonderful! Congrats on the tickets!

Constellations

I came across Roxelane by accident when I saw it in a charity bookshop. I had never heard of the author before, but the subject seemed interesting: a novel about Roxelane, favourite wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
And it was, because the author shows things from the Turkish perspective and the view is always from the inside of the serail which the women can leave to go shopping or for visits. But she never accompanies the sultan when he goes to war, so she must rely on letters for months and years. Tralow tells us why this Empire was ruled from the harem and how: all the sultan's brothers are killed when he ascends the throne, so there are no male relatives, whereas the princesses are married to the important dignitaries and from their various posts in the empire they report back to homebase: the sultan's mother and/or wife.
I was also surprised to recognize many of the institutions as Byzantine, the Turks appear to have simply adopted them. The author actually lived in the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century and has seen the places he mentions. He didn't write this book until 1942 and spent the time in-between researching it, and it shows.
There are a few disappointments, though: typos that were annoying, a glossary of all the Turkish titles would have been useful, it ends abruptly without telling us what became of some of the characters, and I couldn't warm to his habit of writing inner monologue or reported speech in the subjunctive. Not even Thomas Mann used it to this extent. Nevertheless, I've got another book in this tetralogy on deck and will certainly track down the others.

I also notice that this is my third book this year with a single word title starting with R... how strange.

Fix stars / constellations

Das Mädchen von der grünen Insel (The girl from the Emerald Isle) is set in Ireland and thus fits for the RandomCAT and fills the Bingo square which calls for a colour in the title.
It's a short novel of historical fiction. George Lennox is sent to Ireland by his aristocratic family to get himself elected to Parliament, meets a fiery young woman fighting for Irish independence as a journalist and learns about the injustices the Irish suffer under English colonial rule. He sets out to help the cause, of course, and meets his end at the hands of a murky secret government agency.
The author comes firmly down on the side of the Irish, who no longer own the land they live in and have been driven in their millions into emigration.

>103 MissWatson: - Congratulations on scoring the tickets!

>112 MissWatson: - I also notice that this is my third book this year with a single word title starting with R... how strange.

Love it when weirdness like that happens. ;-)

>114 lkernagh: Nice to see you, Lori!

Constellations

Work is pretty intense at the moment and I'm not in the mood for tackling a serious 1600+ pages non-fiction book, so I took something short off the shelf which fits for the Bingo: Ein Held unserer Zeit is a Russian classic that has been made into films or TV series several times in Russia. I'm going to see the ballet version of the Bolshoi next month, and I'm curious to find which parts they are using.

The book is very short and falls into three very distinctive parts: one where an anonymous first-person narrator meets a grizzled army captain in the Caucasus and hears from him the story of Pechorin and his lover, a Chechen tribe girl whom he has abducted; the second is an excerpt from Pechorin's diary about an extended stay in a Caucasian spa where he meets a former lover? mistress? and steals another girl from a friend, and finally a very brief episode from his garrison life. The whole reads as if Lermontov never quite finished what he set out to tell, and the main character, Pechorin, is strangely aloof from the people surrounding him. One to re-read at some point in an edition with notes.

Galaxies

I needed something small to fit into my coat pocket, for reading at the bus stop, and decided to re-read Gogol's Der Mantel. Always a pleasure.

Fix stars / constellations

A few weeks ago I watched a TV programme on the small town of Dillenburg in Hesse, whose claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of William the Silent, founder of the Dutch royal dynasty of Orange, and it put me in mind of a biography I have on my shelves: William the Silent by C.V. Wedgwood. I'm counting this for the Bingo (author uses initials) and the March CATWoman (as a non-fiction genre, biography).

It is very well written, dated of course in many of its concepts, and she cannot get rid of her English prejudices (as in slippery frogs), but it paints a full and lively picture of the man and his times. It is a political biography, so the military campaigns are only briefly mentioned. You get a sense of changing times, the nobility and their ideas of loyalty to a royal house are losing ground and religion becomes a defining element, with devastating consequences.

Galaxies

Suite fantastique was one of those surprising finds you can make at Project Gutenberg. It is a collection of five stories by Maurice Renard who was a contemporary (and admirer) of H.G. Wells. He is considered a member of the Golden Age of French Science Fiction.
The stories were quite predictable for a modern reader, and some of the science dated, but interesting enough to stick with them. They cover a very wide range of topics: time travel into the Jurassic, sorcery in Renaissance Ferrara, a mysterious opera singer in his own time. He modelled himself on Poe, but I found these stories much more reminiscent of Théophile Gautier. I think I'll try to track down one or two of his novels which are sadly not available at Gutenberg. Must check out Gallica. Sheesh...as if I didn't have enough in the TBR!

Fix stars

Finally finished The sparrow for the CATWoman. Work has been intense these last few days and I didn't have much energy left for reading. But I savoured this, it has cleverly built suspense and is very well written. I must say, though, that towards the end the characters felt more and more like ciphers and the whole like a thought experiment.

Fix stars

At a mere 56 pages, Castle Rackrent is a bit short for a novel, and I sorely missed notes to explain the legal peculiarities, not to mention the strange phrases. A very entertaining read nonetheless, and I'll be looking out for a better edition.

>121 MissWatson: Glad you liked it! I read the Oxford World's Classics edition. It included the author's own glossary - that's weird that yours didn't include that. My edition also included explanatory notes, an introduction, a chronology of Edgeworth's life and an appendix explaining Edgeworth's influence on Ivan Turgenev.

>122 LisaMorr: Good to know, because I just ordered that. Mine is a Wordsworth Classics, and they only provide the main text. I picked it up cheaply, mostly because the name was vaguely familiar. It's been a pleasant surprise. I'm currently reading The Absentee which is also included in my copy, and that is quite fun, too.

Galaxies

My sister sent me the audio version of Grießnockerlaffäre, a Bavarian cosy mystery, and sundays are good days to finish them in one go. Like the others in the series it is entertaining fluff whose main attraction is the narrator doing the accents.

Fix stars

I finished The absentee by Maria Edgeworth, which covers more or less the same ground as Castle Rackrent, but this time fleshed out into a sort of coming-of-age story, quite literally because Lord Colambre will reach his majority soon. When he comes up to London he learns first about the financial problems of his father and the social ambitions of his mother who is not fully accepted by the ton because hers is only an Irish title. He goes to Ireland to see for himself the evils of absentee landlords and rapacious agents, avoids a fortune-hunting mama and sets about putting things to right. I'm counting this for the RandomCAT and also the CultureCAT for the way she contrasts English and Irish society.

The book is written in three very distinct parts, there is first the social life in London, which is described much in terms that Georgette Heyer used. Then there's Colambre's jaunt in incognito around his Irish estates , which closest resembles the Rackrent style, and finally there's a romance involving a girl with a mystery past (cue lost marriage certificates and disinheriting parents) which seems like an unneccessary complication. Maybe tacked on to satisfy the fashion for gothic? Anyway, it was very different from what I expected and she's certainly an author to keep an eye out for.

Fix stars

I didn't think I'd find something for the AwardsCAT this month, but then I saw The dark frigate on Project Gutenberg, which received the Newbery Medal in 1924. A seafaring tale about a boy whose ship is taken over by pirates, he sails with them to the Caribbean, tries to run and is captured by the Navy, along with the other pirates. He goes on trial for piracy, is acquitted, takes up service with a country gentleman and fights in the Civil War. He decides to leave England for good when Oliver Cromwell comes out on top.

The book is strangely uninvolving, the hero just drifts from one episode to the next. There's reams and reams of technical sailing jargon, but you never get a sense of being actually on a ship, going somewhere. There's no sense of place in the Americas, just the trope of being on a tropical island. And the Civil War goes by in a few pages.

Fix stars

And the first book of April was a delightful read for the Random CAT: Die Muskeltiere und Madame Roquefort, lent to me by my own private librarian (my sister). Our valiant gang of mousketeers observes a fire in a pizzeria where they save a lovely mouse lady who is very adept at manipulating the boys into doing almost everything for her. And she's not what she seems to be...Very nice, set in Hamburg, and very well grounded there.

>126 MissWatson: Aw, I was all excited to read this book, based on the description, but I think I'll pass. Hope your next nautical book is more interesting!

>128 rabbitprincess: The title sounded so promising, but it fell very much short of expectations. Not something I can recommend.

Fix stars

Here's another short one for the CATWoman: Habsburgs verkaufte Töchter portrays six Habsburg women who were married off by their fathers or brothers for political reasons, ranging from the 15th to the 19th century, and five of them actually ruled. The two regents of the Netherlands and Anne d'Autriche are comparatively well known, the others less so. Maria Karolina was queen of Naples-Sicily and a fierce opponent of Napoleon, Leopoldine was Empress of Brazil. Kunigunde, who was married to a Duke of Bavaria, remains unknown, there is simply not enough documentary evidence about her. The others have been much maligned by (male) historians, and the author sets out to rectify this. Since she doesn't cite her sources, her book is of limited use in this respect, but it gives a useful overview of who was related to whom and who feuded with whom over which territory, which could be quite useful for my next book.

Fix stars / constellations

Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser looks at the queens and mistresses of the Valois kings who lived in the castles in the Loire Valley, a place I very much want to visit, so it fills a Bingo square. And it fits the April CATWoman theme of biographies, as the title promises to look at the ladies of these castles. As it turns out, much of it is taken up by the doings of the kings, from Charles VII to Henri III, but since her focus is on the Loire, there are annoying gaps whenever the action takes place elsewhere. Thus it is unsatisfactory both as history and as biography. The style is aimed at a popular readership, so cue colloquialisms and way too many exclamation marks
The book provides an instructive counterweight to my previous read: much the same people appear, but seen through the lense of French politics and interests. Jurewitz-Freischmidt uses mostly French sources, Leitner (presumably, she provides no notes) Austrian ones, so the interpretation is radically different at times. And is easy to believe that the goings-on at the Valois courts inspired Game of Thrones. The Habsburgs are positively boring in comparison.

I'm spending the Easter holidays at my sister's and will be offline for a few days. Happy holidays to you all!

Happy Easter!

Have a great Easter. :)

>133 rabbitprincess: >134 DeltaQueen50: Thank you. It could have been a little warmer!

Constellations

On the train ride to my sister's and back I finished a short ebook, downloaded from the German Gutenberg site, Inseln im Winde, which describes life on a North Frisian Hallig (a small island submerged by the tides in winter) in the late 19th century. The economics of island life are changing, and some of the men want to build dykes to gain new land. It's possibly based on real events, but I haven't been able to check that yet.
I'm using it for the beach community square, which gives me my second Bingo.

ETA

Fix stars / black holes

I borrowed The warlord trilogy from my sister's library as an experiment with audiobooks in English, but unfortunately I didn't like the book(s). I had read the first and wasn't overwhelmed, in the second both Arthur and Derfel act like idiots and I decided to quit.

>120 MissWatson: I too loved The Sparrow. I really enjoyed the sequel, Children of God, as well.

>138 mathgirl40: The sequel is on my list of books to pick up when the chance offers.

Galaxies

I brought home a truly epic cold from my train trip and haven't been in a condition to read serious stuff. But I managed a mystery, Das ewige Leben by Wolf Haas, the first in his Simon Brenner series. Brenner returns to his hometown Graz and wakes up from a coma induced by a gunshot wound. The doctors say it was a suicide attempt, he insists the chief of police was trying to kill him, so as soon as he can crawl he sets out to investigate.
Haas writes in a very idiosyncratic style, the story is told by a first person narrator whose name we never learn and who is revealed only on the last pages. Yet he knows Brenner and the working of his mind so well that I was tempted to see it as the voice of Brenner himself, as if he were talking to himself while at the same time looking at himself. And it is a very strange voice, his sentences quite often have no verbs, and the word order is jumbled. There are quite a few swipes at modern fashion fads, too, and there's an undercurrent of black Austrian humour. A very unusual kind of mystery.

So many books and two Bingos already, I'm impressed! And I hope you feel better soon (fingers crossed we'll soon have better weather to stay healthy and enjoy spring).

Thanks Chrischi, I'm slowly crawling out of the pit. After three days without proper sleep my left eye was such an unhealthy red that I saw the doctor. Conjunctivitis, as it turns out, and I wasn't the only one that day. It must be this very cold spell. But I'm well enough to cook chicken soup today, which always helps.

Fix stars / constellations

Getting slowly back into the reading habit with a short book by Per Wahlöö, Mord im 31. Stock. He's known mostly for the Beck series he co-wrote with Maj Sjöwall, but this was something different altogether. It starts off as a routine police investigation with a bomb threat at a major newspaper publisher, but as Kommissar Jensen goes about his inquiries you realise that this is not a real country. It looks like Sweden, but neither the country nor the city are named, and the more you learn about the place, the more Orwellian it feels. This is a welfare state turned tyranny, with alcoholism as the major enemy. Drinking at home is forbidden, the stuff is taxed to the heavens, and yet every night the police stations pick up three thousand legless drunks. Get picked up drunk three times and you're sent to an institution. The state is extremely creative with its statistics, too. And the publishing house is a monopolist owning and controlling the press and public opinion (with the government's connivance) serving up mindless, uncritical, uncontroversial pap, a bit like the homogenised pap served in the centrally run restaurants. (This reminded me very much of Soviet canteens).
Even more interesting is the fact that this was not translated directly from Swedish, like his other books, but from an English version, with more than ten years' delay. I'm counting it for the BINGO, published in the 1940's to 1960's (it was first published in 1964), and for the SFF Kit, where dystopia is the monthly theme.

Galaxies

I picked another short one from the shelf: The way through the woods by Colin Dexter. This was rather disappointing with its over-elaborate plot and Morse's self-indulgent riddle poem. I prefer the TV version.

Comets

On Saturday I ventured into town for some shopping and ran afoul of the remainders bins at the bookstore, once again. But it so happened that it contained a Martin Beck mystery, Alarm in Sköldgatan, a recently published, new translation, so how could I pass that up? It also came highly recommended by the author of the foreword, whose point it proved nicely. Compared to this terse, no-nonsense police procedural, the Dexter seemed even worse than it probably is.

>144 MissWatson: Glad that The Way Through the Woods is not in the Morse omnibus I borrowed from my grandma. It doesn't sound like the best Morse to start with!

>146 rabbitprincess: No, definitely not his best. The practically re-wrote it for the TV version.

April has not been a good month for reading, with the Easter holidays and then that nasty cold. The best of the month has been the re-discovery of Per Wahlöö and the Martin Beck series.

Galaxies

May is shaping up to be another slow month, reading-wise. But at least I finally finished a re-read of The dragonbone chair in preparation for the new books coming out next month. I was pleased to find that I remembered most of it.

Fix stars / constellations

I finished Dear life by Alice Munro, which fits for the May AwardsCAT and fills another Bingo square: she was born in 1931. Very elegant prose, and some very interesting characters, but I'm still not fond of short stories.

Fix stars / constellations

Lichter setzen über grellem Grund is a novel about the painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, so it fits for the May CATWoman and the Bingo square "appeals to the senses", as it is mostly about Vigée and her preoccupation with colour. The author also vividly evokes the stench of 18th century Paris.
This was an interesting book to read, written entirely from Vigée's perspective, as she moves through Paris society and portraits its high society, including Queen Marie Antoinette, and then has to flee for safety when the revolution turns into a terror regime. She has to remain in exile for a long time before she can return to Paris. However, I found the style too modern for the time. Not a keeper.

Our local art gallery had an exhibit of Vigée-Lebrun a couple of years ago that my friend really liked. Interesting to see her name come up again :)

Fix stars

I finished Briarpatch for the AwardsCAT, it won the Edgar as best novel in 1985. It's been on my shelves for quite some time, because I really like Ross Thomas' series about Padilla/McCorkle and Wu/Durant, but the standalones are often a bit dry with their emphasis on political backroom dealings. This is one of his last novels, and I think it shows. I couldn't really care about the main character.

Fix stars

I finished Rendezvous with Rama for the SFF Kit. Solid, but dated. Still, if the sequel falls into my hands I'll be more than happy to learn who exactly the Ramans are.

edited for touchstone

Work has been busier than usual, but tomorrow is a public holiday in Germany (Ascension Day) and I'm spending the long weekend with my sister. Which means a few hours train ride and reading, yay. Ah yes, and no LT til Monday.

Have a great weekend!

>156 VivienneR: Thanks, we had a lovely time at a gardening exhibition admiring the roses!

Fix stars

For the May RandomCAT I picked Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of a young girl who has an illegitimate child. The heroine weeps buckets of tears, which a modern reader may find excessive, but otherwise the subject is treated in a manner I did not expect in a Victorian novel.

Galaxies
It took me four months to finish The economy and material culture of Russia. This is serious economic history and represents an awesome amount of work put into collating, coding and analysing the prices of everything that a Russian in the 17th century could have bought or acquired. Not a book you can actually read continuously, but full of useful facts if you should ever want to write historical fiction set in Russia during this time. So why did I read it? It seemed like a good idea at the time...

May was another slow month, with all those long weekends. And the best book of the month was a re-read, The dragonbone chair.

Comets

Villette is a bit of a slog, so I put it aside for something lighter. In Grrrimm, Karen Duve retells five of the Grimm Brothers' most popular fairy tales in a modern setting. Some of them fun, her version of Little Red Riding Hood set in Romania (Transylvania? I didn't check the names of the villages) was far too gory for my taste. Off to a new home.

Galaxies

Le rayon-vert is not one of Verne's typical adventure stories, although it involves a lot of travel. At times it read like a travel guide for the Hebrides with precise information about which boat or train to catch to get to your destination. It is set in a precise time, August and September 1881, and he must have had all kinds of maps and time-tables at hand. The plot is extremely thin: Miss Campbell wishes to observe a particular optical phenomen which occurs only at sunset, and her indulging uncles take her to various isles, until the journey culminates in a spectacular storm in Fingal's Cave.
I've never quite understood why Verne is marketed as an author for youngsters. Even in his day the romance and the constant citation of Ossian and Walter Scott must have been boring. Ah well, I learned a lot of nautical terms in French.

>161 MissWatson: I would like to read about the Hebrides and Ossian, but possibly not this book (although I do like Verne's choice of subject matter!).

Galaxies

Villette was one of the first books I downloaded from Project Gutenberg, but reading it as an ebook turned out to be rather taxing. Punctuation seemed weird, and I really missed explanatory notes for all the literary and Biblical allusions. So I caved in and got an annotated copy from Penguin, and finally finished it.
Lucy Snow is a very strange character. But I suppose as a modern reader one cannot really understand what it means to be thrown back so completely on oneself, to be so totally isolated and alone as she is, going from one strange household to another, until she finally has one of her own. That part of her mind is hard to get into.
What I missed from the notes and the introduction, was an explanation of why Brussels in the first place? Why go to another country when you know nothing about it, do not even speak the language?
Interesting read, but not really emotionally involving.

Solar systems

It is done, I have finished my second chunkster, Die Unterwerfung der Welt. It's a history of European expansion from the first discoveries to the continuing influence in the present. Much of the history of events I knew, it's mostly the analysis and interpretation of causes and effects that have changed. This is a lot of ground to cover, and the book is necessarily very dense, it helps to be familiar with things and people. When we came to the 19th century and the scramble for Africa I was on less familiar ground, and there I wished for much more detail. I'm also not very happy with the complete lack of footnotes. There are enormous bibliographies for each chapter, but since he does not indicate in the text where a statement or a fact originates, they are more like suggestions for further reading. Frequently a source named in the text can not be found in the corresponding bibliography, which is why the book only receives 3.5 stars.

ETC

Galaxies

Mädchen in Uniform was a mercifully short book after my recent chunkster. It's also one where the title is extremely familiar from the film(s) of the same name, but I had no clear idea what it's about. It turned out to be the life story of a young girl in Prussia, an army brat, whose cavalry father is posted to various places, and whose mother dies when she is very young. Things go downhill when the females in the family decide she needs proper supervision and put her into a boarding school with brutal quasi-military drill. Things end tragically.
I was amazed to find how much room is given to Manuela's childhood, which must have been paradise for her, if not her mother who has to scrimp and save. It offers views of a life long gone, the upper class society in small German statelets who still cling to their ways even though they are now united under a Prussian emperor. Life at the boarding school is a shock to Manuela, but most of the others act like the girls in Enid Blyton's books about Malory Towers etc.

Comets / fix stars

I picked up The heart of what was lost as soon as it became available at a reasonable price and read it immediately. A wonderful return to the world of Osten Ard! It was interesting to see more of the Norns, and I was surprised how hierarchical and rigid their society is. I did not read the teaser chapters for the next book, yet, but I'm not sure my willpower will hold until I have the entire book in my hands. Oh, and it also fits for the SFFKit.

Galaxies

Another short one is Die Verlobung, a novella by Ludwig Tieck. There's a lot crammed into 124 pages. A young man goes to visit a family renowned in the town for their piety, finds the eldest daughter at odds with her family's sentiments and their plan to marry off to an old nobleman who is creditor to their mother and also the spiritus rector of their circle, and meets a man recently returned from the Americas who finds the intellectual climate much changed since his younger days, when Enlightenment was the watchword.
I guess I need to read up on Tieck. The style is very old-fashioned, and the ideas on education dated, but the basic argument is still relevant.

Constellations

I veered off-track (again) with Der weise Gründling because last Saturday the FAZ had an article on Michail Saltykow-Schtschedrin that made me want to read something by him, and as luck would have it, I had a copy of his satirical fairy tales on the shelf. This was a wonderful read, even if his theme is bleak. These are little stories about the deplorable state of Russia, disguised as fairy tales, most of them written after the censors removed him from the editorship of a journal. I hadn't realised before that he was a contemporary of Dostojewskij, for some reason I always associated him with the 18th century.
This fills the "satire" slot on the Bingo card for me and gives me another Bingo.

And it's time to go to a new thread.

ETA