MissWatson consults the oracles, part one

Hello, I am Birgit and I live on the coast of the Baltic Sea.

2025 is my second year of retirement. I am happy that I now have so much more time for reading, but the basic problem remains: what shall I read next? This year, I have decided on a mix of expert advice and chance to help me make up my mind. The experts are critics, reviewers and compilers of lists, the random element is provided by time and the luck of the draw.

Meet my cheerleading team: dachshund Strolch, Valerius Maximus, Austin Reed, Arzhel, Richard Sean and Corrado.

All images are my own, except for The VIB list.

I am not setting numerical goals for my categories, but I like to keep track of how many pages I read, aiming for 3,500 per month.



January: 4,150 pages
February: 4,286 pages
March: 4,590 pages
April: 3,167 pages

The Big Box



I’m sorting (slowly) through the nooks and crannies of my apartment, and one of the things I ran across was a big shoe box filled with newspaper clippings, all of them reviews for books which I thought interesting. Most are non-fiction books, I think. Once every month I intend to put my hand into this box (with my eyes closed) and either read the book or dismiss the review.

January: Stoner by John Williams. Review "Er war kein Kämpfer, aber ein Sieger", FAZ of 31 October 2013
February: Der Schatz by Eduard Mörike. Review "Unsere Romanhelden – Franz Arbogast", FAZ 11 May 2013
February: Wellen by Eduard von Keyserling. Review "Glanz und Verzweiflung", FAZ 8 November 1988
March: Armut, Reichtum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores by Achim von Arnim. Review "Unsere Romanhelden – Gräfin Dolores", FAZ 15 February 2014
April: Der amerikanische Traum by Ernst Augustin, Review "Hawk Steen", FAZ 4 April 2014

Author of the Day



One of my daily habits is to check the list of authors who were born or died on that day. The plan is to choose a book by one of these authors if they’re on my shelf and I am looking for a new book to start on this day.

Armance by Stendhal, who was born on 23 January 1783
Die Fieberkurve by Friedrich Glauser, born on 4 February 1896
Montezuma’s Revenge by Harry Harrison, born on 12 March 1925
Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser, born on 2 April 1925
Vor dem Spiegel by Wenjamin Kawerin, born on 6 April 1902 (Julian calendar)

The VIB list(s)



Like many other readers, I keep an eye on several “You must have read this!” lists. But when the time comes, the Very Important Book has to make way for something more alluring. The plan is to actually read one book per month from my various lists. At least one.

The list pictured here was compiled by Deutsche Welle for a campaign back in 2018.

January
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1001 BYMRBYD)
Burmese Days by George Orwell (1001 BYMRBYD, Guardian 1000)
Transit by Anna Seghers (1001 BYMRBYD)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré (1001 BYMRBYD, Guardian 1000)

February
Strangers on a train by Patricia Highsmith (Guardian 1000)
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1001 BYMRBYD, Guardian 1000)

March
Ungeduld des Herzens by Stefan Zweig (Deutsche Welle 100)
Smiley’s People by John le Carré (1001 BYMRBYD)
Die Reise nach Petuschki by Wenedikt Jerofejew (1001 BYMRBYD)
Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler (1001 BYMRBYD)

April
What Maisie Knew by Henry James (1001 BYMRBYD)

Siren Song



This is the category for books that beckon from my shelves, on other people’s threads, or in bookshops. In short, everything that detracts me from my own categories.

1. Notre-Dame – Geschichte einer Kathedrale by Thomas W. Gaethgens
2. Gefallen by Thomas Mann (No 1 in a collection of his stories)
3. Der Wille zum Glück by Thomas Mann (No 2)
4. Le Petit Nicolas – La Bande Dessinée Originale by Sempé/Goscinny
5. Der Tod by Thomas Mann (No 3)
6. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
7. Der kleine Herr Friedemann by Thomas Mann (No 4)
8. Schlick by Kester Schlenz and Jan Jepsen
9. Frankie by Jochen Gutsch and Maxim Leo
10. Peony by Pearl S. Buck
11. Enttäuschung and Bajazzo by Thomas Mann (No 5+6)
12. Der Schachautomat by Robert Löhr
13. Tobias Mindernickel by Thomas Mann (No 7)
14. Cinq-Mars by Alfred de Vigny

CATs and KITs



Sir Puss has agreed to preside over the various CATs and KITs. I am just going to keep track of my participation by month. I probably won’t manage to cover them all, but we can have our ambitions. Double-counting is allowed here, but not for my own categories.

January
1. Brunos Weihnachten by Ben Becker ColourCAT: green
2. Der Schattenmann by Kester Schlenz and Jan Jepsen AlphaKIT: S
3. Stoner by John Williams AlphaKIT: S
4. The Quiet American by Graham Greene ColourCAT
5. The Looking Glass War by John Le Carré MysteryKIT
6. Burmese Days by George Orwell ColourCAT, AlphaKIT
7. Der Gin des Lebens by Carsten Sebastian Henn RandomKIT, AlphaKIT
8. Transit by Anna Seghers CultureCAT, AlphaKIT
9. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré MysteryKIT, AlphaKIT
10. Armance by Stendhal AlphaKIT
11. The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré ColourCAT, AlphaKIT

February
1. Mord im Filmstudio by Beate Maly ColourCAT
2. Die Toten vom Lärchensee by Joe Fischler AlphaKIT
3. Die Fieberkurve by Friedrich Glauser AlphaKIT, MysteryKIT
4. Der Wald by Hansjörg Küster CoverCat, NatureKIT
5. The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman AlphaKIT, RandomKIT
6. Le Petit Nicolas – La Bande Dessinée Originale by Sempé/Goscinny AlphaKIT
7. Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur by Maurice Leblanc AlphaKIT, MysteryKIT
8. Die goldene Stadt by Sabrina Janesch ColourCAT, AlphaKIT, Bingo
9. Auf der Suche nach dem Goldenen Mann by Victor Von Hagen ColourCAT, AlphaKIT
10. Schlumpf Erwin Mord by Friedrich Glauser AlphaKIT, MysteryKIT
11. Der wunderbare Massenselbstmord by Aarto Paasilinna CultureCAT, RandomKIT
12. Les confidences d’Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc MysteryKIT, AlphaKIT

March
1. Nordlicht – Die Tote am Strand by Anette Hinrichs AlphaKIT
2. Die Stimme der Violine by Andrea Camilleri AlphaKIT
3. L’homme au ventre de plomb by Jean-François Parot AlphaKIT
4. Montezuma’s Revenge by Harry Harrison MysteryKIT
5. Armut, Reichtum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores by Achim von Arnim AlphaKIT
6. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler ColourCAT, RandomKIT
7. Ungeduld des Herzens by Stefan Zweig ColourCAT, AlphaKIT
8. Smiley’s People by Johne le Carré MysteryKIT
9. The Light of Day by Eric Ambler MysteryKIT, AlphaKIT
10. Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler MysteryKIT, AlphaKIT

April
1. Vor dem Spiegel by Wenjamin Kawerin AlphaKIT
2. Der amerikanische Traum by Ernst Augustin AlphaKIT
3. What Maisie Knew by Henry James AlphaKIT
4. Venedig sehen und stehlen by Krischan Koch AlphaKIT
5. The wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton ColourCAT
6. Der Spurenfinder by Marc-Uwe Kling AlphaKIT
7. The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer AlphaKIT, RandomKIT

BingoDOG



My favourite challenge!
Many thanks to LShelby and Christina for the lovely card.

1: Alle neune by Anni Hof
2: Notre-Dame – Geschichte einer Kathedrale by Thomas W. Gaethgens
3: The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré
5: Le Petit Nicolas – La Bande Dessinée Originale by Sempé/Goscinny
6: Armut, Reichtum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores by Achim von Arnim
7: Der Spurenfinder by Marc-Uwe Kling
8: Die Toten vom Lärchensee by Joe Fischler
9: Cinq-Mars by Alfred de Vigny
10: Brunos Weihnachten by Ben Becker
12: Der wunderbare Massenselbstmord by Aarto Paasilinna
13: Die goldene Stadt by Sabrina Janesch
14: Schlumpf Erwin Mord by Friedrich Glauser
15: Ungeduld des Herzens by Stefan Zweig
17: Mord im Filmstudio by Beate Maly
18: Stoner by John Williams
19: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré
21: Auf der Suche nach dem Goldenen Mann by Victor Von Hagen
23: Frankie by Jochen Gutsch and Maxim Leo

Welcome!

Good reading in 2025. The cat would be great for royalty books.

>10 mnleona: Yes, and I think he knows it.

I love the Big Box. Hope it gives you tons of joy. Wishing you a happy year with enjoyable reading.

Best wishes for great reading next year and for your second year of retirement! I always enjoy seeing what you have read.

Your pictures are very interesting and I love the Sir Puss especially. Charlie Dickens and Toeney also approve.

It must have been wonderful to come across the big box of newspaper clippings. Have a great year of reading!

I love Sir Puss and your cheering squad.

I like your unrestrictive categories. Happy reading in 2025.

Happy Reding on 2025.

>12 majkia: Thanks. I’ll try to get somewthing from the bottom, I have no idea how old these are.
>13 clue: Thank you, and a good reading year to you!
>14 LadyoftheLodge: Sometimes it’s scary to run into things I had completely forgotten about, but I am hoping they will prove interesting.
>15 VivienneR: One of these days I hope to find a Lady for him. He and the team say Hello!
>16 lowelibrary: Yes, unrestrictive was the main idea, because I never stick with plans made in advance.
>17 pamelad: Happy reading to you, Betty!

Ooooooooo, the box of reviews is very good! Good luck with your 2025 reading!

The box of reviews sounds interesting - I wonder which book is nothing more than a thick letter?!
I love random draws for choosing books, so all your categories look like lots of fun.

>20 Tess_W: Thanks, Tess. I am getting slowly excited about it.
>21 JayneCM: I peeked, because it’s the article on top, and it celebrates the 250th anniversary of German writer Jean Paul. It was his own comment on his work.

I've been working on book choosing for years but my TBR is still far behind my ambitions! I hope you have an enjoyable and successful 2025, Birgit.

Thanks for dropping in, Judy, and all my best wishes for a good reading year to you!

Stopping by to leave a star and wish you good reading in 2025!

Hello there, greetings from another resident near the Baltic Sea! Your challenges sound great and I am very interested in your -List-challenge. I will definitely drop by once in a while!

Like others I love the idea of the review 'dip box' - hope you find some good ones (or find them again?!)

Wishing you a great 2025 as you continue to enjoy your retirement, I'll be following along.

Hello Birgit! I love all your plans, and I'm also intrigued by the box of reviews :-)

I hope you have a great reading year in 2025, and I'm looking forward to following along! Oh, and I love your cheerleading team!

Dropping my star here too - have a wonderful 2025, Birgit!

Happy New Year! Dropping off my star.

Happy New Year and good luck with your reading.

Hope you have a great year of reading!

I am so interested to follow your random selection methods. >3 MissWatson: The box is great as others have said. We live vicariously through your plans.

Find me here this year.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/367017#8712413

Hello Birgit and Happy 2025 to you! Waving across the Atlantic coast (well, 6 hours away) to the Baltic sea and wishing you much success with your reading. I love your idea of reaching into the reviews box to find a book, and also your Siren Song. Mirabilia has such great designs, and she has so much longing in her expression.

>25 christina_reads: Thanks, Christina. I’ll be following your reading closely for the mysteries!
>26 Tallulah_Rose: Hello! I hope that there won’t be too many so-so books on these lists, my taste frequently differs.
>27 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. There will be lots of surprises in that box.
>28 susanj67: Hi Susan, have a lovely reading year!
>29 MissBrangwen: Thanks, Mirjam. They are very understanding of my reading habits.
>30 Jackie_K: Have a great reading year, too, Jackie!
>31 LadyoftheLodge: Thank you, Cheryl!
>32 lowelibrary: And a happy reading year to you, too, April!
>33 thornton37814: Thank you, Lori, and my regards to your boys!
>34 beebeereads: Thanks, Barbara. I’m curious to see how long the plans last. I am not good at keeping resolutions.
>35 threadnsong: I have three of her mermaids hanging on my walls and I hope that I can finish one more before my eyesight gets too bad. I am finding it increasingly difficult, sadly.

Here we are then, it’s 2025. I’ve had a lovely time with my sister and for once the train journey back to Kiel went without glitches. Lucky timing, when I arrived the information board said the line was closed in Hamburg because of the storm. It’s still blowing fiercely, so I am happy to be inside, catching up with the threads.

My holiday reading at my sister’s:
Pi mal Daumen by Alina Bronsky features an unlikely couple of mathematics students teaming up for group work: Oscar is a highly-gifted teenager somewhere on the autism spectrum, Moni Kosinsky is a young grandmother from a socially disadvantaged background. Both turn out to be quite good at their subject, and as the story develops we learn more about Moni’s amazing family. Like all of Bronsky’s novels that I have read so far, this is highly entertaining and sometimes truly funny. A glorious start to my reading year!

Mucks Maus und Missjö Katz by Isabel Abedi is a children’s book with lots of illustrations, about a boy who lives with two fathers and his sister in a former railway station. His best friend is the resident mouse who must not be seen by the others. He gets very jealous when a cat moves in...

Brunos Weihnachten has two stories about the boy with green hair, one for Christmas and one about a visit to his uncle where he saves a deer from being killed. This fills my first Bingo square and gets the "holiday in title" out of the way. Because of Bruno’s green hair, it also serves for the ColourCAT.

Der Schattenmann is a sequel to Der Bojenmann which I read last year. This time the theme is the awful abuse that went on in homes for abandoned children right up to the seventies, a very dark chapter in our recent history.

Ein Inne halten was a newly arrived picture book at my sister’s library, about mindfulness. Well done and lovingly illustrated.

Queen Victoria : Die unbeugsame Königin is a non-fiction biography by Karina Urbach. I quite enjoyed her foray into espionage and her book about her grandmother was riveting. I was less pleased with this, it is a revised and extended version of a previous book, and I really disliked that she doesn’t give proper endnotes for her sources. It’s also rather short, given Victoria’s long reign, and most topics are covered only rudimentarily. The most interesting chapter was the last one where she tells how the queen’s numerous offspring were separated by finding themselves on opposite sides of the Great War.

I have rummaged in my magic box and found a review of Stoner. I think that’s going to take me a while!

>37 MissWatson: Pi mal Daumen sounds interesting. Have to see if I can get it somewhere. My husband is also a mathematician and I enjoy reading booksabout this rare human species ;)

>39 Tallulah_Rose: I should think most municipal libraries have bought it, she’s such a regular on the bestselling lists.

Your box of.clippings is an excellent way to choose a book, after all, you did once think the book interesting enough to save the review. I'm very curious to see how this plays out.

The Big Box / AlphaKIT: S / Bingo: place you’ve never been

I must have had Stoner mixed up with some other book, as it was neither as long or as difficult as I thought. But I did take my time over it to savour the writing. This was a most rewarding read, and the reviewer was right to praise it. I fully agreed with her (Maria Frisé in the FAZ) and I am happy that this was my first draw. The entire life and world of William Stoner takes place in Columbia, Missouri (where I have never been), and the time is way before my own, and yet his thoughts and attitude towards life spoke to me. This one is a keeper.

>41 RidgewayGirl: As you can see, the first one worked very well! Thanks for dropping by, Kay.

ColourCAT: green / VIB lists: 1001 BYMRBYD

The Quiet American by Graham Greene is short and left me pretty cold, I’m afraid. Fowler strikes me as whingy, and his girlfriend is such a blank. That may be intentional, but I still found it unsatisfactory. However, I read Zadie Smith’s introduction after reading the novel, and she does give me something to think about, so I may return to this at some point.

>3 MissWatson: >42 MissWatson: I also find your Big Box intriguing! I'm glad to see that the first read worked out so well. I am working my way through the books in 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die and Stoner is on that list!

>43 MissWatson: The writing was stellar but the racism and sexism in that book was beyond what I can tolerate. There's a line in there that says essentially all a woman really wants is to get raped, and after that point, I could not keep an open mind about the book.

>45 kac522: Here's what I wrote last year when I read The Quiet American:

I wasn't liking The Quiet American much as I was reading. The narrator is obnoxious and he doesn't have a good thing to say about anybody. And his opinion of women is little better than what he feels about a faithful dog. But what really did me in was this sentence a little over half-way into the book, where he & Pyle (the American) are trapped in the marshes:

"I took a breath and went under--so instinctively one avoids the loved thing, coquetting with death, like a woman who demands to be raped by her lover."

After that, every page just got me angrier and angrier. That's his viewpoint--a girl just wants to get raped. Enough. Whether that's the thoughts of the despicable narrator or Greene himself, it doesn't matter. I don't need it.

>44 cbl_tn: It’s fun, so far!

>45 kac522: Yes, I remembered your comments when I started and that was exactly the point I found most vexing. I just had no sympathy or pity for Fowler.

>47 MissWatson: Sorry if my earlier review colored your own reading. Normally, if I really dislike a book that much, I don't finish it (and don't review it), but this was for my book club, so I felt obligated to finish the book. Needless to say, I won't be reading anything else by Greene.

>46 kac522: That's his viewpoint--a girl just wants to get raped. That's not how I took it. It's not a general statement about women, but about a mistress pretending. I do agree that Graham Greene is often miserable and misogynistic. On top of that the spy genre, where I think this book belongs, is often morally murky. The Quiet American is a book with a lot to say, so from my perspective it's worth reading,.

The Phil Noyce film of The Quiet American solves the Fowler problem by having Michael Caine play him. He's still weary and cynical, but Caine is always likeable.

>43 MissWatson: Fowler is so down-at-heel and defeated. A lot of Greene's characters are. I suppose that's how he saw the world, poor sod.

>48 kac522: >49 pamelad: I am still thinking about this book, which says a lot about its impact. I also notice that he finished writing it in 1955, which makes it seventy years old, so a little allowance for changing mores may be made. But he is a miserable little sod, this Fowler.

MysteryKIT: winter crime

And on we go to more miserable little sods in The Looking Glass War. I am slowly working my way through the George Smiley books, and this is one I hadn’t read before. Smiley is a very minor character here, which was a little disappointing at first. But then I realised what Le Carré is doing here, and he is merciless. And cold, oh so cold. Not only literally, as it starts on a snowed-in airfield in Norway, but also figuratively.
This was published sixty years ago in June, and I think I am developing a theme here. I am currently reading Burmese Days, published in 1935, and the next Smiley book, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy appeared in 1975...

>50 MissWatson: You just aged me. I graduated from high school in 1956. I guess I have not thought about years. Time does fly. Hug your loved ones.

>49 pamelad: We'll have to agree to disagree--I don't see anything in that statement about a mistress--to me it's a general attitude about women. But that's OK--I can live my life without any more Graham Greene and get along just fine.

>51 MissWatson: Nice review! I am also making my way through those George Smley books - I am ready for The Honourable Schoolboy.

>52 mnleona: Wow!
>53 kac522: Thanks!

ColourCAT: green / VIB lists / AlphaKIT: O

Burmese Days was a surprise in many ways. My copy was published by Alma Books, which was a completely new publisher to me, and it’s a pleasure: gorgeous cover, almost no typos, endnotes, additional material on the author. I didn’t know that he actually worked in Burma for the Indian Imperial Police, and that it is based on his experiences there. It was also his first foray into fiction, and I really like the writing. I had always associated him with Animal Farm (compulsory reading at school, so of course I hated it) and 1984, so this was a change.

This is on the 1001 BYMRBYD and the Guardian’s 1000 list, and I think it deserves to be there. I learned a lot about a country that hasn’t really been on my radar before.

>56 MissWatson: Your copy sounds lovely. His earlier works are very different from his final two books which always get all the attention. I also really love his essays.

>57 Crazymamie: The one tzhat has always intrigued me is Keep the aspidistra flying. I’m looking forward to that!

RandomKIT: Eat, drink and be merry / AlphaKIT: S

Well, there had to be a dud eventually, and Der Gin des Lebens is it. The title is a wordplay on "Der Sinn des Lebens"=the meaning of life, and tells you from the start that this is intended to be a humorous book. It started out promising enough, with Bene messing up his marriage proposal. On the way home he drives his car into the Rhine and decides to drown his sorrows with a bottle of gin that his father left him. It turns out to be phenomenally good, but there’s only the one bottle – his father died in a car accident before he could make more of it. So he sets out to the Bed and Breakfast in Plymouth where his father stayed every year before his death and because the city houses the oldest still working gin distillery of the world. The B&B is owned by Cathy who is trying to find the recipe for a gin her dead father made, and it tastes exactly like the one Bene has inherited...

There’s also a dead body found in Cathy’s garden, but the police investigation into this is almost non-existent, and as the story progresses it becomes more and more melodramatic until it is ludicrous. The police officer and the main culprits are caricatures, and the ending soppy beyond belief. The author also drops several plotlines midway without picking them up again. The only interesting parts here are about the making of gin, and there are some recipes at the back (including one for making your own). The author is a restaurant critic and studied winemaking, so he knows his culinary stuff. The rest is meh. Ah well, it’s a book that leaves the house.

ETC

Siren Song / Bingo: features fire

Notre-Dame – Geschichte einer Kathedrale starts and ends with the fire that destroyed the roof and spire of Notre-Dame in Paris. It is a short non-fiction book about the cathedral’s history, written immediately after the fire, and offers much information about its building, remodelling and restoration. A very helpful refresher.

Belated good wishes for the new year! I love the Mirabilia mermaid for your "Siren Song" category.

>61 mathgirl40: Thank you! That was a very rewarding project.

CultureCAT: displacement / AlphaKIT: S / Lists: 1001 BYMRBYD

Transit is included on the list, and I probably shouldn’t have read this on one of the dreariest January winter days. It is a depressing read when you look at the world today and see how little has changed.
Our nameless narrator sits in Marseille in the winter of 1940/41 listening to the stories of oh so many people who are hoping to find a ship to take them away from the war. The chasing after the necessary papers seemed kafkaesque at times. The narrator himself wants to stay, but isn’t allowed to, his residence permit depends on finding a ship and the necessary papers. I was glad to see that it ended on a hopeful note for him: he finds a place for himself on a French family’s farm.

VIB lists / AlphaKIT: S / MysteryKIT: winter / Bingo: profession in title

I have finished my re-read of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and was surprised how much of it I remembered after so many decades. This may of course be due to the TV series starring Alec Guinness (which I re-watched immediately after closing the book, this has been a very long night), which is remarkably faithful to the book. It’s also shorter thanh I remembered, but everything as gripping, even if you know the plot.

As for my next book, today is the birthday of Stendhal and I’ve taken Armance from the shelf, his debut novel.

Author of the Day / AlphaKIT: S

Armance is the debut novel of Stendhal, and it turned out to be a slog. Mostly because of the publisher’s decision not to give a separate paragraph to every piece of dialogue between two persons talking. Adding to that the problem of French typing habits (no quote marks), I had a hard time working out who was talking. And then commas in odd places, so I had to read sentences twice to work out what went where.

And on top of it all, I had absolutely no patience with Octave’s ridiculous behaviour. He strikes me as an extremely immature twenty-year old, full of book learning and in the relentless grip of his hormones, seeing the world in black and white, swinging from one extreme to the other. I also kept the German ttranslation of this and consulted it for the notes and afterword, which speaks much about Stendhal’s effort to discuss male impotency in this book. Frankly, a modern reader would never guess this, you need to have the background knowledge of other contemporary novels dabbling in this to see the connection. Apparently, Stendhal’s readers would have known immediately if he had named the novel for his hero, but instead it is titled for his love interest, a penniless relative of Russian extraction.

I stuck with it all because of the very vivid picture it paints of the high aristocracy in a very precise year. We are in the Second Restauration of the Bourbons, and the nobles are about to be indemnified for the confiscation of their fortunes by a law. Octave’s mother stands to get two million francs, and suddenly her son is an eminently marriageable young man. It is a very closed society, and it was surprising to see how many of them returned, and how little they seem to have learned from the recent past. Ah yes, and I couldn’t help thinking that at this time Dantès was still rotting in the Château d’If while his enemies made their fortunes...

ETC

>66 MissWatson: I haven't read Stendhal for a very long time but your words "it turned out to be a slog" described my experience exactly. In fact, this is all I really remember. Good for you to stick with it.

>67 VivienneR: At 192 pages, the pain was limited. But it will be quite some time before I tackle anything else by him.

>63 MissWatson: I saw Christian Petzold's 2018 film of Transit. The film was set in Marseilles, but updated to 2018 so it was a strange mixture of the forties and 2018. The film led me to the book, which made a big impression. It's a piece of history.

>69 pamelad: Thanks for reminding of that film!

ColourCAT: green / AlphaKIT: S / Bingo: travel

Just before the chimes of midnight I finished The Honourable Schoolboy, in which secret agents are flitting all over Eastern Asia. This was a great read, and I really loved how le Carré juxtaposes the calm world of the desk pushers and their careful planning with the real world of the fieldmen where the human factor always puts a spike in their wheels. And the ending left me speechless.

So, this has been a very good start for the year with lots of fabulous books. Let’s see what February brings. My Big Box has yielded a short piece about Armut, Reichtum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores and to my annoyance none of my anthologies of Achim von Arnim’s works contains this. But, help is at hand, my sister owns it. I’ll be visiting her some time this month and borrow it.

>71 MissWatson: The Honourable Scchoolboy sounds interesting. I have net yet read anything by le Carre, maybe I should change that.

>72 Tallulah_Rose: I am slowly making my way through his books and find them very interesting.

ColourCAT: Gold / Bingo: Hollywood!

Mord im Filmstudio is the next instalment in a series of historical mysteries set in Vienna. We’re in 1925, and our heroine Ernestine Kirsch has got the movie bug: she has wangled parts as extras in the production of "Der Rosenkavalier" for herself and her much put-upon friend Anton, and the female star promptly gets killed.
as always, there is much historical detail, such as the filming of Strauss’ opera by Robert Wiene, which really took place. This is not exactly Hollywood, admittedly, but Austria had a very active film industry at the time.

As usual, I fell for the gorgeous cover: a delightful art nouveau-inspired pattern of thistles, with the thistles picked out in gold. As usual, I was annoyed by the author’s primitive writing style; there are times when I wonder if she’s using AI to write the boring bits for her. But so far, her descriptions of historic Vienna make up for the rest.

Siren Song

I have decided to honour the 150th birthday of Thomas Mann later this year by reading his short stories which is less of a time commitment than his huge novels.
The first one in my collection is "Gefallen" where four friends meet for dinner and get to talk about women, and one of them tells about his first sexual affair. Not very memorable, I thought. But I do miss an editorial note, or at least a mention of when this was written, if it really was a first effort at the short form.

AlphaKIT: L / Bingo: totally random

Yesterday was a bright, sunny day, and I took a train to Hamburg to see the small exhibition about Rowohlt publishing house at the university library. The company’s archives (or what was left after a fire) have been split between the German Literature Archive in Marbach, who got all the boring bits of accounts and correspondence, and the university library who got all the books, file copies of each book Rowohlt ever published. This was a real trip down memory lane, there were so many books from my younger days. The most interesting part, though, was about the two previous incarnations of the company, from 1911 to 1945. I had no idea how many of the leading lights of German literature had connections to the company, as authors or editors. And I was also impressed by how many Nobel laureates they had on contract before they got their laurels.
Now I want to read the book about the Rowohlt centenary...

Anyway, I needed a book for reading on the train and took the first on top of the many, unorganised piles, which was Die Toten vom Lärchensee. A nice, undemanding mystery set in Tyrol in Austria, second in a series. I don’t think I’ll remember the plot a week from now, but I definitely will remember that characteristic Austrian sense of humour.

>76 MissWatson: Thank you for the description of the exhibition! It sounds like you had a good visit there.

>77 MissBrangwen: It was a bit hard on the eyes, as the lighting in the exhibition room is not ideal. But the subject matter is fascinating.

I notice that today is Friedrich Glauser’s birthday, and he fits the Golden Age theme of this month’s MysteryKIT. Now where did I put those books?

>79 MissWatson: Glauser's cause of death is intriguing.

Author of the Day / AlphaKIT: G / MysteryKIT: Vintage mysteries

Die Fieberkurve was published in 1937 and is the second novel featuring Wachtmeister Studer, according to the blurb. This is quite a complicated case for him, as he chases the shadows of dead or missing men from Switzerland to France and then to Algeria, a French colony at the time. He draws heavily on his own time with the French Foreign legion here, I think, and his descriptions of the desert are almost lyrical. What fascinates me most is how Studer effortlessly, almost unconsciously, adapts his language to the person he’s talking to: French, German, dialect. And I can’t help wondering how you bring across the three forms of personal address of Swiss German into English? There’s formal "Sie", informal "Ihr" and familiar "Du"...

>81 MissWatson: And I can’t help wondering how you bring across the three forms of personal address of Swiss German into English? There’s formal "Sie", informal "Ihr" and familiar "Du"...

I think you'd have to do it indirectly elsewhere in the dialogue. Throw in some extra "sir"/"ma'am" to indicate formality, the occasional "buddy" or "kiddo" to indicate familiarity. And the general tone of the speaker's language will do some of that work, things like the difference between "are you free for lunch today?" and "you wanna grab a bite later?"

>81 MissWatson: Fever was really confusing because of so many characters having multiple identities and similar names, but that confusion contributes to the nightmarish atmosphere of the Studer books. I didn't notice how the translation treated the three forms of personal address, so it must have been close to seamless.

The only translated Studer book I haven't read is The Spoke, because I can't find a copy to borrow, but in the interests of completeness I plan to bite the bullet and buy a copy.

The touchstones are behaving erratically!

>81 MissWatson: Sounds intriguing. I'll look for a copy!

>82 KeithChaffee: Yes, I think that could work. Books like this fill me with admiration for literary translators.
>83 pamelad: Very confusing, yes. I haven’t got all of them yet...
>84 charl08: Good luck with the hunt!

CoverCAT: a tree / NatureKIT: forests

Der Wald is a short non-fiction book (128 pages) and brimful with information about trees and forests. He goes from the theory (what is a wood?) to biology, their evolution from the beginning of time, their use by humans, and finally, since he is writing for a German audience, their significance in German culture. His focus is on forests in temperate climes, but he does explain how they differ from tropical or boreal woods. I just wish I could remember all of it.

Siren Song

Between household chores, I also squeezed in another of the Thomas Mann stories: Der Wille zum Glück. Very short, and obviously his own family history provided the initial spark. The narrator reminisces about a school fellow whom he met again as an artist in Munich. He has always been suffering from heart disease which is why the parents of his beloved refused to let him marry her; they didn’t want her to become a young widow. When they do relent, that’s exactly what happens.
The beginning reminds me very much of Tonio Kröger, but of course it ends differently.

AlphaKIT: G / RandomKIT: playing with time

I couldn’t make up my mind between two books I laid our for the CATs, because they both appear to be pretty grim in content. So I picked something completely different: The Secret Chapter, a leftover from last year’s challenge. This one has Irene and Kai as team members for an art heist in Vienna on a world that is more or less contemporary with our own, yet different. Quite funny, as usual, but there are dark secrets lurking in the depths...

Siren Song / AlphaKIT: G / Bingo: child main character

I made a surprise discovery at the bookshop today: the origins of Little Nick as a comic strip which ran from 1955 to 1956. They have been published in a slim volume for kids, but I think that adults enjoy his adventures so much more. Two of the strips included were later re-worked into short stories with new illustrations. Nick’s mother has a hairdo reminiscent of Wilma Flintstone in the strips which looks quite funny.
ETA: the book is Le Petit Nicolas – La Bande Dessinée Originale.

>89 MissWatson: I think they called that hairdo a beehive . . .

AlphaKIT: L / MysteryKIT: vintage mysteries

The heist in The Secret Chapter made me think of other classic heist artists, and Arsène Lupin sprang to mind. I started with Arsène Lupin, gentleman cambrioleur where we meet him for the first time, on a Transatlantic liner bound for New York. The book is a collection of loosely linked episodes, the first three are in close sequence where he is arrested, spends a few months in prison and then escapes. In the last episode we come full circle when he meets the young lady again whom he courted on board the ship.

These are very easy to read, there’s lots of dialogue and little time or space wasted on lengthy descriptions. And there’s much variety, we get some stories in first-person narrative, there’s simple theft, espionage, and duel of minds with Herlock Sholmès (I assume he didn’t want copyright arguments with Doyle).

I am, however, disappointed that my edition didn’t include the collection which follows in publication order: Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès. Instead it has Les confidences d’Arsène Lupin, and there’s no reason given for this, even less understandable because they provide a list of the books in publication order. I think it would make sense to read this chronologically to see how the character changes during his long career which lasted from 1907 to 1941, after all.

>88 MissWatson: I'm a bit behind you on the Invisible Library series, but I'm planning to read The Mortal Word this month. Excited to hear about the upcoming art heist!

>91 MissWatson: I have a German Lupin book on my shelf (I'm not exactly sure which one) and I have read mostly negative reviews of the series, so it is good to read one from you that is a bit more balanced.

>93 MissBrangwen: My copy has a foreword by Michel Bussi who clearly admires him, but he also says that Leblanc wasn’t consistent in his characterisation of Lupin, who goes from lady’s charmer to megalomaniac and back, and I think that may be off-putting. He has also been put on coinema and TV screens innumerable times, and none of them are really similar to the books, so that probably distorts reception. I’m rather curious to find out more, now.

ColourCAT: Gold / AlphaKIT: G / Bingo: read a CAT

Die goldene Stadt is a fat book about an adventurer who has dreamed since childhood about finding the golden city of the Incas. Rudolph August Berns is a real person, and he’s had the kind of life you couldn’t make up if you wanted. From a sleepy town in the Rhinbeland province to Berlin, where his father is successful as a wine merchant, until he dies in an accident and the widow returns to her own family. Her brother runs a metalworking business, and offers apprenticeships to his nephews there. When he turns 21, the Prussian Army comes knocking, and his uncle gives him the money for a passage to the States where he has a brother living. Instead, our hero boards a freighter bound for Peru. There’s no work there, so he enlists with an artillery regiment, just in time to save the life of a future president when the Spaniards try to reconquer Peru. Then he turns surveyor for the Peruvian Railway company, and with this money he finally embarks on a search in the jungles. He and his partner find what they are looking for – a huge abandoned city left by the Inca – but they need money to explore and excavate it. They set up a company that fails, so they go to the States to find investors there. No luck. They must earn money, so they join de Lesseps in his attempt to build a canal through the Panama isthmus. We know how that ended. So Berns goes back to Peru. But he has learned how to hustle, he sets up a stock corporation, and with some moral support from his former comrade-in-arms, now President of Peru, he finds buyers for the shares. And then he vanishes with the loot from the face of the earth...

The book was off to a slow start, as his childhood and early days didn’t quite convince me psychologically. But then it turns into a real page turner. The author was inspired by the work of historian Paolo Greer, who found Berns’ papers in the National Library of Peru, but she did her own digging in German and Peruvian archives to corroborate the facts stated in his CV, and most of it can be corroborated. From the maps among his papers it is pretty clear that he found Machu Picchu before Bingham. Apparently there was some controversy about Berns having plundered the site, but it seems that even Greer now considers this unlikely and that it was empty when he set foot there. The descriptions of their time in the jungle gives you an appreciation for the difficulties facing the men, and the details of the parasites you encounter in such places should not be read when you’re eating.

One thing I found interesting is that we also meet Peruvians who collected artefacts of their ancient cultures, and according to the author sold their collections to a museum in Berlin. Now that’s something I’d like to know more about...

>95 MissWatson: Wow, that's some biography.

Were there any suggestions about where he went when he "disappeared"?

The author found a copy of Hiram Bingham’s diary, where he writes that on 2 August 1911 he met an old man speaking German in the village of Mandor, just below Machu Picchu, who mentioned an important ruin nearby. Bingham gives no name, but it is tempting to think Berns went back to this place.

ColourCAT: gold / AlphaKIT: G / Bingo: oldest book on your TBR

It’s funny how things sometimes come together sometimes. I was zapping through the channel and came across a feature about a luxury train in Peru which runs from Arequipa to Lima, and part of the journey goes along the very track for which Berns did the surveying. And the station from where you can make a visit to Machu Picchu is Aguas Calientes – where he had established his first enterprise. It’s an amazing landscape.

Anyway, reading about Berns’ search for El Dorado prompted me to take down Auf der Suche nach dem Goldenen Mann which I bought when I was at university. The blurb promised a description of the hunt for the man called El Dorado, in his introduction the author says his intention is to describe the fourth great conquest, that of the Chibcha civilisation, and frankly, it’s neither. But it was a fascinating read, nonetheless.

He starts with the Welser Company which lent money to Charles V, and in return they got a contract for a dominion in South America, in what is now Venezuela. They were hoping for mountains of gold, of course, as Cortés had done just a few years before, and from there we follow consecutive expeditions into the hearts of the mountains. We see how the legend of the Golden Man turns into a legend of a Golden City, how news about the conquests in Peru change ambitions and perceptions of this elusive city, and how hundreds of men lose their lives and their sanity in this quest. It ends with Walter Raleigh’s futile attempt.

The great thing here is that the author knows the area very well from his own expeditions, and many of the places mentioned in the old documents still exist, he has been there. He also speaks German and Spanish and can make sense of the garbled names in the documents. My only complaint here is that he gets so lost in the details of the various campaigns that he never gives us a concise picture of what the Chibcha civilisation actually was and why it rates on the same level of importance as the Aztec, Maya, and Inca. I would have liked to know more about the peoples who lived there. I guess I’ll need an academic library for that...

I also have to report my first DNF of the month: In höchsten Tönen. I went to Schleswig on Friday, because there was a huge demonstration to be held on the great square in front of my house, and I wanted to avoid the noise. They’re having an exhibition of works by the Danish artist Jens Ferdinand Willumsen at the Museum Schloss Gottorf, and I wanted to see that. He’s virtually unknown in Germany, so it is something of a premiere. Very fascinating.

I took that mystery to read on the train, and abandoned it on the way back. The author constantly addresses the reader with hints on how to write a mystery, and the novelty quickly turned into a nuisance. Not to mention that the main character got on my nerves. I’m not counting that for any challenge.

What a relief it is to return to Friedrich Glauser now! I found a copy of Stumpf Erwin Mord on my bookswapping site. That’s the original title of Wachtmeister Studer, and it is an edition with lots of additional material, such as the first draft of the first chapter, and other things that were struck out from the manuscript before it went into print. I’m reading both versions side-by-side now, but the main text is identical. It’s the added material that make the editions from Limmat/Unionsverlag publishers the ones to look out for. In the afterword, Glauser is cited as naming Simenon’s Maigret as his inspiration, and the editor especially mentions La tête d’un homme here, because the plots start from a similar premise. Now that is one Maigret which I haven’t read yet...

>99 MissWatson: Did you have a backup book with you, or were you stuck with your unsatisfying novel?

>100 RidgewayGirl: I was stuck with that unsatisfactory novel and wish I had brought my Kobo. Next time! I have found that I really need to prepare better for my trips. The station at Schleswig is a bleak place, no chance to buy a coffee, and waiting for the train in the cold was unpleasant. But at least the pictures were worth it.

AlphaKIT: G /MysteryKIT: vintage mysteries / Bingo: furniture of the cover

I have finished my re-read of Schlumpf Erwin Mord and as it turned out, the changes from the manuscript were tiny. But all the additional stuff was fascinating, and I’ll be on the lookout for the other novels published by Unionsverlag.

>98 MissWatson: Sounds interesting, however that particular author is not translated into English. Interesting enough to search out something else on the same topic, though!

>103 Tess_W: It will be interesting to see what you turn up, because my municipal library has virtually nothing that is recent, and I haven’t had time yet to search academic libraries.

CultureCAT: Finno-Ugric peoples / RandomKIT: playing with time / Bingo: published in a language not your own

The Finns enjoy a reputation for having a peculiar, rather black sense of humour (at least here in Germany), and that is very prominent in Der wunderbare Massenselbstmord. A failed entrepreneur decides to kill himself on Midsummer Day, but when he reaches the barn he finds an army officer just trying to hang himself and prevents him. They talk and decide to find fellow depressives, offering help. The response is huge, and finally a hardcore bunch take a bus together which they intend to drive over a cliff. A road trip across Europe finds them enjoying themselves immensely...
It’s a feel-good book, very funny occasionally. It was written in 1990, and it feels like travelling back in time, as the two men organise the flood of letters coming in: no internet, no easy mass mailings, no phone calls at the swipe of a finger. It’s almost a different age.

>105 MissWatson: That sounds very similar to Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, which I really enjoyed! In that book, four people all decide to jump off the same tall building on New Year's Eve, but when they catch each other in the act, they decide to postpone their plans. The Hornby wasn't published till 2005, though!

>106 christina_reads: I’ve never tried Hornby, but that sounds like I would enjoy it.

How can it be 20 February already? It’s high time I looked at my own challenges and started Strangers on a train for the VIB lists. And I had to postpone my visit to my sister, so won’t get to read my draw from the Big Box this month. The next reviews I pulled out were all for books I have already read, and then I drew Wellen which has gone AWOL in the stacks. Sigh.

VIB lists

Strangers on a train is not exactly a classical whodunit. We see the deeds committed, and towards the end we learn that the police have been investigating, but there’s little about how they do that. In between we spend lots of time inside the heads of the perpetrators, and I have to admit that I was bored most of the time. I’ve rarely come across such unsympathetic characters.

I have also read the next short story in my Thomas Mann collection, "Der Tod", and very short it is at 6 pages. Just a series of diary entries of a man who expects to die at 40 on a certain day...

My catalogue tells me that Wellen is an ebook that I read in 2016. Since I remember almost nothing, I’ll do a re-read. But first my pick for the Author of the Month challenge: Deacon King Kong.

Siren Song

I hadn’t heard of James McBride before, and Deacon King Kong caught me totally unprepared. How glad I am to have found this author! It’s a wonderful book from an exceptionally gifted storyteller. As the story progresses you realise just how carefully planned and crafted the book is, how all the many people and lives are related. I didn’t like all the characters, but they are all so vivid and fully alive, and I really wanted to know what happened to them. I came to care about them, which doesn’t happen often to me. And I wonder why McBride doesn’t feature on any of those VIB lists.

Saturday’s FAZ tells me that Colette’s works are now in the public domain in Germany, seventy years after her death. New translations are promptly thrown onto the market. I think my youngest sister owns some of her books...

Siren Song

The next Thomas Mann story in my collection is Der kleine Herr Friedemann, which I enjoyed mostly for its atmospheric description of old Lübeck. There must be books of photographs of that around...

The Big Box

This category is proving an awkward customer. I started Wellen on my Kobo. The plot slowly came back to me, but I can’t help thinking that the text must be badly mutilated, there are so many sentences where the relation between clauses or words is wrong. Didn’t that bother me the first time around? I can’t find my notes. Anyway, this time I’ll be looking for a printed copy and compare texts.

Until then, I pulled another review from the box, and luckily it is for a short novella: Der Schatz by Eduard Mörike. This is almost a fairy tale, about a goldsmith journeyman sent to Frankfurt to buy gems for his master, and is robbed of his money. Strange adventures in a dilapidated castle ensue, but all comes to a good end because he was born on a Easter Sunday. Again, the writing is difficult to make sense of because it is very old-fashioned, and he has a very odd way with the genitive...

AlphaKIT: L / MysteryKIT: vintage mysteries

I have also finished Les confidences d’Arsène Lupin, the second collection of short stories in my paper copy. The narrator mentions early on that they take place before the big events in the novels, so they are more or less in chronological order. In publication order, too, I think, as there are references to upcoming stories. They are quite varied, and Lupin truly is a flamboyant and ambivalent character. They are fun to read.

The Big Box

I found a paper copy of Wellen and was very much surprised how it changed the reading experience. Mostly an effect of proper punctuation, but it may also be that reading on a screen makes a difference. It’s easier to see and analyse the structure of a complicated sentence, at least for me.
As I read, the story slowly came back to me. Not much happens, but lovely description of the Baltic Sea.

The VIB lists

I wanted something short, and The War of the Worlds caught my eye. Very atmospheric, and very much of its time, and quite an exciting story.

And that’s my last book for February. Tomorrow I’m off to visit my sister for a few days and will be offline. See you next week!

It has been a lovely time, I stayed a little longer than planned, but the weather was so nice and my sister had a few days off, so quality time. And I bought some books, because on our shopping trip we ran into a special offer from Thalia, books for 2.50 €, how could we not buy?
And I even finished some, see below.

Siren Song

My sister had Schlick waiting for me, the latest instalment in a mystery series set in Hamburg. This time it’s about the port of Hamburg and its fight for staying in business by deepening the Elbe river which doesn’t work as they hoped, because every tide brings back the sediments and clogs up the contributary rivers etc. There’s too much info dump here, and because everyone, including the police officers, sympathises with the motives of the perpetrators in this one, the case falls a bit flat.

AlphaKIT: A

We also listened to an audiobook: Nordlicht – Die Tote am Strand by Anette Hinrichs. It is set in Flensburg and involves a cross-border murder investigation with a mixed team of Danish and German police offers. The local Danish flavour was interesting, but the story was weighed down too much by the private traumas of the two leading detectives. It’s the first in a series, but not good enough to go chasing for the next books.

AlphaKIT: A

The German-Italian Friendship Society is planning a series of reading events to mark the centenary of Andrea Camilleri, and the kick-off was in Bielefeld last week. We didn’t go, it was too short notice, but at least I packed a Montalbano novel for the train ride, and I finished it on the return journey: Die Stimme der Violine. A plain police procedural where the detectives do a lot of asking around, and there’s lots of local colour. But I think most female readers have little sympathy for or patience with Livia...

AlphaKIT: A

And I have finally finished my re-read of L’homme au ventre de plomb. It was easier than the first time around, I always need to look up some of the ancient words that pop up in this Louis XV period. The ending is a bit abrupt, maybe I missed a few subtle hints.

>118 MissWatson: That sounds like a great stay with your sister. The weather has been wonderful, hasn't it? It makes all the difference to me.

>121 MissWatson: How lovely that they're celebrating Camilleri. Will you get to any of the other events?

Hope you're feeling relaxed after the great time away.

>123 MissBrangwen: Yes, the weather has been gorgeous and it really brightens life. A less pleasant side effect is that I found the first mosquito of the year in my living room yesterday.

>124 charl08: Unfortunately, all the other events are scheduled far away. But it is a great idea, I think. And thank you, staying with my sister is always relaxing, so I return in a blissful frame of mind.

Siren Song / Bingo: recommended by a friend

My sister mentioned Frankie as an enjoyable read, so I snapped it up when I saw it at the bookstore. And I read it in one go! It’s a delightful story about a stray tomcat who looks into a window of an abandoned house and sees a man hanging from a thread. The man sees him and gets down, and so the two spend some time together. The story is told from the cat’s – Frankie, named for Sinatra – viewpoint, and that works suprisingly well. His observations of humans and the world around him are often hilarious, sometimes serious, and he has a distinctive voice which reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, in the translated version I read as a kid. The man is depressed after his wife died in a car crash, and the ending is left open, but for all that it is a real feel-good book.

The daily calendar tells me that Harry Harrison was born one hundred years ago today, so I’ll slip in another short one before I return to my monumental novel...

>126 MissWatson: Taking a BB for this cat story.

>127 lowelibrary: It is written in German, and while the National Library shows quite a few translations into other European languages, there’s apparently none in English, sadly.

Author of the Day / MysteryKIT: spies

Harry Harrison has always been a SF author to me, but Montezuma’s Revenge turned out to be something completely different. Our reluctant hero is an art historian working in the National Gallery gift shop when he is compelled to work for the FBI who are on the tracks of a da Vinci painting, supposedly destroyed during WW2, but now up for sale. He is sent to Mexico, illegally of course, but who cares about that when you want to put one over on the CIA? Unfortunately, there are a few other secret services involved, and our hapless hero spends most of the time running away from danger.
Harrison’s typical humour is much in evidence here, and the plot reminded me of the spy spoofs of the late sixties which rely heavily on national clichés and stereotyping. That aspect did not age well. Everything else is fun.

>128 MissWatson: Amazon UK has a release date of October 2025 for the English edition. I just need to order a copy to ship to the US once it is available.

>130 lowelibrary: That’s nice to hear! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Big Box / AlphaKIT: A / Bingo: title has 5+ words

When I pulled the review for Armut, Reichtum, Schuld und Buße der Gräfin Dolores from the box I had no idea this was a 500 pages doorstopper. But I have finally done it. It’s a strange story to modern readers, about two sisters, countesses, whose father ran up huge debts and then scampered. So marriage is the only possible option for the impoverished girls, and Dolores takes her chance when a young count comes along and instantly falls for them. They seem badly matched at first, and Dolores has an affair, is forgiven and does penitence by becoming a devoted mother.
It is written in a meandering style, with many digressions along the road, and the author recycles quite a few of his other writings. I skimmed the poems, to be honest, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Dolores, her husband is such a paragon that she must have screamed with frustration in the silent watches of the night (of which our male author has no idea, of course).
Not exactly a book to rave over, and hard work to read because of the ancient German, but interesting nonetheless for the picture it paints of the turbulent times.

Siren Song

And then I turned to something completely different: Peony by Pearl S. Buck. This was a quick read and unusual story, about a Jewish family in China. They have been settled there for generations and have been dwindling in numbers for quite some time now. Most of the story is told from the viewpoint of the Chinese slave girl bought as a playmate for the only son, who grows into the real mistress of the house.

I found this to be frustratingly vague as to time and setting. I guess someone who is more familiar with Chinese history can identify the time (second half of the 19th century?), but that was less frustrating than the lack of secondary characters. The family consists of mother, father and the precious only son, and there is hardly any communication with other Jewish families. The mother wants her son to marry the rabbi’s daughter, become rabbi himself, and lead a renewal of the community, but how can this be realistic if there are no other families to maintain a living community?

ColourCAT: Pink / RandomKIT: Wishes

I bought The Mountain in the Sea because the bright magenta cover hit me in the eye, perfect for the ColourCAT, and it was sold at reduced price. Ah yes, and the blurb promised an interesting story.

The book turned out much better than I expected, exciting and intellectually stimulating. It makes you think about so many things: intelligence, language, communication, emotion. It is set in a very near future, and yet all the time I was reading I wished that it will not turn out like this. But I am afraid that the technology used here is already in development.

Siren Song

Two more short stories from my Thomas Mann collection: Enttäuschung and Bajazzo. The first is a mere seven pages long and feels like an exercise, jotted down from a stray idea. A man tells his life to an ambulant stranger, or more precisely how life never lived up to the expectations he had of it.
In Bajazzo, we meet again one of the descendants of the great, decaying Hanseatic trading houses, who live off the money their ancestors made. I have to say that I enjoy a similar lifestyle now that I am retired: I get up late, lead a frugal life so I can buy books and attend concerts and museums, and pretty much spend my time on my own as I want to. But at twenty-five?

VIB lists / ColourCAT: Pink / AlphaKIT: U / Bingo: medical topic

My copy of Ungeduld des Herzens shows the title printed in pink. It’s the only novel Stefan Zweig wrote, told in a first-person narrative on the eve of the Second World War. A man looks back on his days as a young cavalry officer in the Habsburg monarchy, posted to some god-forsaken village on the Hungarian border, and tells how he ruined the life of a girl, just because he could summon only the wrong kind of pity. It’s an amazing psychological study of two young people, and I liked this very much.

>136 MissWatson: I was impressed by Beware of Pity years ago and bought The Post Office Girl, but made the mistake of reading an article (in the New Yorker, I think) about Zwieg's life and death, so The Post Office Girl still sits on the shelf unread. I should have read the book before the article.

What fascinating journeys you have been thru, from Peru to the modern era, and into inner musings. Your Siren Song and Big Box topics are very interesting and I'm enjoying the stories you include with your reviews.

I read Stendahl as part of my 19th Century French Literature class in college, and Le Rouge et le Noir just seemed to go on forever. "Long slog" is about right.

And for your observation about the formal/informal forms of address in , yes, one would use the dialogue to explain in English the different levels contained in the simple "You." Using "sir/ma'am," perhaps "y'all" if one were in the South, and adding a bit of slang or more politeness within the dialogue would indicate formality or familiarity.

>137 pamelad: I have known him mostly as a writer of novellas and fictionalised biographies, so this came as a surprise. What struck me most is Toni Hofmiller’s voice, it is so very "k-k" Austrian.
I haven’t heard of that other book, I must have missed when they started publishing from his legacy papers. Off to find it.

>138 threadnsong: That’s what I like about the various categories and challenges, they take you to so many different places and times. The same for the reviews I find in that box (or in the books themselves), they often remind me how much time has passed since I saved it and wonder if the book will still appeal. And I am always grateful if the reviewer pays attention to a translation. It can make or break a book, and I am so happy there are people who do this well.

As it happens, my newspaper had a fat special issue for the Leipzig Book Fair, full of reviews, but thankfully none cry "buy me immediately!". However, a few days ago there was a notice that De Vriendt kehrt heim has been re-published and that one is already on the shelf.

In other news, I’m taking my laptop to the shop today to have it upgraded to Windows 11. I hope there will be no glitches...

VIB lists / MysteryKIT: lies, spies and ciphers

Smiley’s People is on the 1001 BYMRBYD list, and deservedly so in my opinion. I loved the slow, painstaking way in which Smiley unravels the intricate web Karla has woven. And I loved the brief episode he spends in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
The story takes place in 1979, the Circus is still a shadow of its former self, and the new paymasters insists on cutting loose the Eastern emigré groups still funded by them. Just then one of them, an ex-Soviet military officer, is found murdered and Smiley is roped in to clean up without making waves. But he can’t help wondering what has made the old man worth killing...
The groups in questions are from the Baltics, and I couldn’t help thinking if anyone at the time of writing could have imagined that fifteen years later there would be an independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania again.

VIB lists

Another one on the 1001 BYMRBYD is Die Reise nach Petuschki which I found decidedly weird. The narrator tells of a train journey he takes on Fridays to see his son and meet a girlfriend (not the child’s mother), and most of the narrative is about his drinking. Everyone else in the compartment is drinking, too, and the conversation becomes increasingly surreal, and finally he finds himself back in Moscow without knowing how he got there.
He talks a lot to himself in his head and addresses himself as Wenja (Venya), so I assume it is to a large degree autobiographical (the author even worked in the same job as his protagonist at the time of writing). But I am not entirely sure what the point of it all is, unless to say that there is no point to life? Strange. Very strange.

From the fact that I am back here on LT you can see that the changeover of the operating system went well. I am so glad about that. All this technology is intimidating.

AlphaKIT: A / MysteryKIT: Lies, spies and ciphers

Eric Ambler is known for his dark and gritty espionage thrillers written in the 1930s. The Light of Day is very different, but I was surprised to find it much more serious in subject matter than the movie that is based on it (Topkapi). The story is told by Arthur Abdel Simpson, a small-time hustler who has picked the wrong tourist at Athens airport to con, and soon finds himself blackmailed into driving a car from Athens to Istanbul. At the border he falls into the claws of the Turkish counter-espionage service who suspect a terrorist plot when they find arms concealed in the car...
Arthur is not a sympathetic character who carries an enormous chip on his shoulder and can be quite vindictive, but everyone else is even harder to like.

So, we’re back on summertime which made me get up late today. And March is almost over, how did this happen? I didn’t get to read a book for all the CATs and KITs, as usual, but that doesn’t bother me. I hope to finish another Eric Ambler today, and then I’ll go and put my hand into the Big Box for my April read...

VIB lists / AlphaKIT: A / MysteryKIT: Spies, lies and ciphers

Cause for Alarm was recently suggested in my newspaper as recommended reading in these troubled times. Our hero isan English engineer sent to Fascist Italy selling machinte tools to the arms industry and gets soon embroiled in espionage, wilfully and obstinately telling himself it’s got nothing to do with him. Until the Secret Police try to arrest him and he barely escapes with his life, thanks to the help of a man who may be a Soviet agent.
Very dark, very atmospheric.

The draw from the Big Box is Der amerikanische Traum, but I think I need something fun and undemanding first.

You have had a lot of good reading. Glad you got your operating system changed successfully. I agree, technology can be daunting.

>148 VivienneR: What I hate most about it is that it is so compulsory – everyone expects you to have and use the latest gadget. They eat up so much time I’d rather spend otherwise.

Siren Song

Der Schachautomat was my choice for the April RTT challenge, about famous hoaxes in history. This book tells the fascinating story of the first Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton built by one of Maria Theresia’s court officials. Most of the characters are real people, but since is little known about Van Kempelen’s first presentation of his machine, the author could let his imagination run free. Some of it is a little over the top, and I could have done with fewer sex scenes, but on the whole it is bvery entertaining and also informative. Apparently, the computer museum in Paderborn has a copy of this Turk, so I’ll make time to see it next time I’m there.

The calendar tells me that today is the 100th birthday of George MacDonald Fraser. I think I’ll make time for him...

Author of the Day

I still have a few unread Flashman novels on my shelf, and for his 100th birthday I picked up Flashman and the Dragon, where our unsavoury hero gets mixed up in the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War, i.e. the burning of the Summer Palace which is also the scene of his highly irregular liaison with the future Empress Cixi.

I’ve read about that campaign elsewhere before, so there was nothing much that was new in here. The fun of the books is Flashman’s rather jaundiced view of events and their actors. His attitude towards women is deplorable, and this reader’s patience wore a little thin. So it comes as a pleasant surprise that one of the women gets one over on him and has him shanghaied at the end...to where, is left open.

It turns out that today is the birthday of Wenjamin Kawerin, so I’ll be procrastinating with that before tackliong my read from the Big Box.

Author of the Day / AlphaKIT: K

I found Vor dem Spiegel in a charity bookshop and had little idea about it or the author, it just looked interesting. And it was. It is a love story in letters, written from 1910 til 1932, between two youngsters in Russia who met at a school dance. Most of the letters are from the woman and we watch her grow up, from a girl who wants to study mathematics at university and then finds her true vocation is art. She talks about her classes, her struggles to find her way, other painters and their work, the books she reads. The political currents of the time take her to Turkey as a refugee, then to Paris, and her letters about this time make you realise what a chaotic, unpredictable life she and the others had. This is a long-distance relationship, even in the early years they seldom meet, and yet it is a deep and lasting relationship.

Kawerin wrote this late in life, and he states at the end that these are letters from a real person, which he selected and then filled out the story from his imagination. Which would explain why there are hardly any letters from the man, they got lost in when Lisa died in 1932. It’s an amazing story from trubulent times.

I wish the publisher had put a little more effort into this. There are too many typos, and notes or biographical info would have been welcome.

The Big Box / AlphaKIT: E

Okay, the review told me this would be a little weird, but I didn’t expect this weird. It’s the summer of 1944, somewhere in the countryside near Schwerin, and the crew of an American fighter plane is cruising low, shooting at everything that moves. A little boy is riding home on his bike with a load of wood, imagining himself as one of his adventure book heroes when he gets hit – fatally. And then the hero of the book he was in cuts in as narrator and says, no, wait, this can’t happen...and goes on, living the adventurous life the boy never had a chance to live.

I am not entirely sure that I’ve got this right or what to make of it. At the beginning, the style is very much like the dime novels (i.e. their German equivalent) the boy loves reading, but as the story progresses it becomes more modern and events become more and more surreal. Like I said, weird, but in a good way.

>133 MissWatson: Birgit, I really liked Peony, probably more than you. I've read many of her seventy books and this one ranks just about in the middle (maybe a tad higher) for me. You are correct, the story takes place no earlier than the 1850's. I think I gathered from the book (it's been several years) that the Jews were being assimilated into Chinese society and it was the mother's wish that her son make them a distinct community and stop the falling away. I think Buck probably did not make that clear, maybe did not even allude to it? Again, I'm "assuming."

>154 Tess_W: Hi Tess! Yes, you remember correctly, that was the mother’s wish. I found the vagueness about the timeframe a bit frustrating, but after reading that Flashman book set in China I am pretty sure that the destruction of the Summer Palace is alluded to, so it’s definitely after 1850.
I read a lot of her books in German translation as a teenager, and the one I remember and liked best was Pavilion of women.

Siren Song

And another very short story by Thomas Mann, Tobias Mindernickel, where a man acquires a dog and doesn’t really know how to treat him.

VIB lists / AlphaKIT: K

It’s been a long time since I read Henry James’s Portrait of a lady but I do not remember it as a difficult or boring read. What Maisie Knew was both, a real slog. Glad to put this behind me.

In other news, my best friend is arriving tonight and spending some days before we drive south to spend the Easter holiday at my sister’s. I guess there’ll not be much reading or time here on LT. We have quite a bit of catching up to do!

Friend and sister--it doesn't get any better. Enjoy!

>159 Tess_W: And we have been promised lovely weather! Doesn’t get better than that.

AlphaKIT: K

I’ve been sitting in the sun on my balcony, waiting and finishing a mystery about an art theft in Venice: Venedig sehen und stehlen. Quite entertaining, actually.

Enjoy the visit with your friend and sister.

Glad you are spending time with your best friend and your sister this next week! Your dark espionage-y thrillers sound, well, dark and full of espionage and back-stabbing, and I am glad you have loved ones in your life to counterbalance that darkness.

>162 VivienneR: Thanks, we had a lovely time!
>163 threadnsong: Thanks! Friends and family brighten the darkest books.

I came back a day later than planned, and Deutsche Bahn was kind enough to provide another railway travel adventure. Replacement service because of works on the tracks, and then in Hanover we had to leave our train because they couldn't decouple the two train sections...it’s amazing how quickly they have turned a functioning system into a national laughing stock.
But we had fun days, and I even managed to read a few books!

ColourCAT

I read The wisdom of Father Brown as an ebook, and I was surprised how many of these short stories are set abroad. And the Father Brown of Chesterton bears little resemblance to the many film and TV versions I have known.

Bingo: features winged creatures

"Alle neune" is a children’s books from my sister’s stacks, published in 1949, and a nice story of a little boy who was sent to a home in the country for health reasons. He is homesick and longs for his parents, and a kitten offers help, but can’t give it. So they ask other animals, and in the end five birds, the kitten, a dog and a horse accompany him on his way home.

(touchstone will follow)

AlphaKIT: K / Bingo: non-traditional family

New books arrived for my sister’s library on Tuesday, and I picked Der Spurenfinder for a quick read. The author is best known for his political satire, but he also writes popular children’s books, and this one is a fantasy which he co-wrote with his daughters. It features a kind of detective and his adopted children, a boy and a girl, who are twins. I prefer his grown-up books, but this was actually quite entertaining. I will probably read the next one, too.

AlphaKIT: E / RandomKIT: prime

I couldn’t sleep and picked something undemanding from the shelf: The School at the Chalet which is the first in a still popular series of books about an English boarding school for girls set in the Austrian Tyrol. Nice fluff, but the edition has many irritating typos and some of the German words must have come from an outdated dictionary.

Siren Song / Bingo: author has a relative’s first or last name

I was looking for something set in the 17th century for the Reading Through Time Challenge, and my eyes alighted on Cinq-Mars. It’s counted as the first example of French historical fiction, written and published in 1826, and deals with one of the many conspiracies against Cardinal Richelieu. My edition had a preface, notes and documents by Vigny himself, and copious endnotes which pointed out the many chronological discrepancies and mistakes. Such as having Richelieu’s confessor Père Joseph still creeping around and offering deliverance to Cinq-Mars in prison when he had been dead for four years.
Vigny was trying to make a point which he explained in his preface, but I am afraid he didn’t make it very clear and therefore I am not sure he achieved it. And I just didn’t buy his portrait of Cinq-Mars, his motivations and actions. Still, an interesting read.

Ah yes, where does the relative’s name come in? We attended a birthday party immediately after the Easter holidays, the husband of my mother’s cousin turned 90. They have an amazing number of grandchildren (12) and great-grandchildren (17 on the day of the party, more on the way), and most of them came to attend the party. The second-youngest is named Alfred, born on 1 January this year. That’s my birthday, too, so how I could resist honouring him with a Bingo square?

April roundup

I spent a lot of time away from home and didn’t reach my goal of 3,500 pages this month. I had a lot more lined up for the various CATs and KITs, but didn’t get around to those. Well, that’s life, and I’m not really worried by this. None of the books read could be called outstanding, but they weren’t complete duds either.

And now it’s time for a new thread. Come see me at https://www.librarything.com/topic/370520!