Friday 30 January 2015

Book Quotes of the Week

"The whole word opened to me when I learned to read." Mary McLeod Bethune

"I opened a book and in I strode. Now nobody can find me." Julia Donaldson

"As a reader, I don't feel a story has an obligation to make me happy. I want stories to show me a bigger world than the one I know." John Green

"Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, Heart and Soul." Joanne Harris

"We become the books we read." Matthew Kelly

Find more book quotes here.

Thursday 29 January 2015

Dahl, Roald "The Best of Roald Dahl"

Dahl, Roald "The Best of Roald Dahl" - 1978

Before I knew that Roald Dahl was a children's writer, I knew him by his very "dark humour" short stories. They were published in Germany under the title "Kiss Kiss" and they made a few into a television series.

I have never been a huge fan of short stories but I absolutely loved these. My favourites would be "Lamb to the Slaughter" and "Parson's Pleasure". They are both hilarious!

If you are looking for some short stories, some in between reading, something funny that will make you laugh no matter what, this is the book for you.

These are all the titles included in this collection:
1. Madame Rosette
2. Man from the South
3. The Sound Machine
4. Taste
5. Dip in the Pool
6. Skin
7. Edward the Conqueror
8. Lamb to Slauhgter
9. Galloping Foxley
10. The Way Up to Heaven
11. Parson's Pleasure
12. The Landlady
13. William and Mary
14. Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
15. Royal Jelly
16. Georgy Porgy
17. Genesis and Catastrophe
18. Pig
19. The Visitor
20. Claud's Dog
21. The Great Switcheroo
22. The Boy Who Talked with Animals
23. The Hitchhiker
24. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
25. The Bookseller

From the back cover:

"Twenty wickedly anarchic tales from the master of the unpredictable, chosen from his bestsellers Over to You, Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch. Stylish, outrageous and haunting, they explore the sinister side of the human psyche with unexpected outcomes.

There's the wife who serves up a murderous new dish to her husband, the gambler who collects little fingers from losers, the sound machine that can hear the grass scream and the night-time seduction that has macabre consequences, to name a few."

I have also read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by this author which is, of course, a children's book.

Tuesday 27 January 2015

Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2015

Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2015

Two years ago, I participated in an interesting challenge, reading "chunky" books (I love that word). I signed up for the highest of the four levels "Mor-book-ly Obese" which meant eight or more chunksters (books over 450 pages) of which three must be 750 pages or more. I reached that goal at the end of March. By the end of the year I read 37, 15 of which were "chunksters".

Last year, they were not setting goals within the challenge but asked everyone to come up with their own goal, I pledged to read double the amount of the 2013 pledge, i.e. 16 chunkys. I fulfilled that, I read 22 chunky books, 5 of which were "chunksters". They are not setting goals this year, either, and I will see where I will get. I am looking forward to finding a lot of interesting ones.

If you are interested in the challenge, check out this link.
They also give you suggestions by page number, in case you can't find any chunksters yourself. ;-)


Or you can check out my list from last year, maybe you are interested in a couple of them.


I will be posting the books I have read here:

Lamb, Wally "We are water" - 2013 - 592 pages
Virgil "The Aeneid" (Lat: Aeneas) - 29-19 v. Chr./BC - 544 pages

Smiley, Jane "Some Luck" (Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #1) - 2014 - 624 pages
Follett, Ken "Fall of Giants" - 2010 - 985 pages
Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (GE:  Buddenbrooks) - 1901 - 759 pages

Follett, Ken "Winter of the World" - 2012 - 960 pages
Hugo, Victor "Les Misérables" (FR: Les Misérables) - 1862 - 1,480 pages
Setterfield, Diane "The Thirteenth Tale" - 2006 - 499 pages
 
Follett, Ken "Edge of Eternity" - 2014 - 1,098 pages
Yousafzai, Malala; Lamb, Christina "I am Malala" - 2013 - 464 pages
Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (IT: Il nome della rosa) - 1980 - 635 pages

Mak, Geert "In Europe. Travels through the twentieth century" (NL In Europa: Reizen door de twintigste eeuw") - 2004 - 1,351 pages
Regener, Sven "Neue Vahr Süd" (GE) [Neue Vahr South] - 2004 - 631 pages 
Brontë, Charlotte "Villette" - 1853 - 540 pages 
Roth, Charlotte "Als der Himmel uns gehörte" [When Heaven Belonged to Us] - 2015 - 608 pages
Dickens, Charles "Little Dorrit" - 1857 - 1,008 pages
Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See" - 2014 - 544 pages
Ghosh, Amitav "Flood of Fire" (Ibis Trilogy #3) - 2015 - 624 pages  

Hislop, Victoria "The Sunrise" - 2014 - 481 pages 
Talshir, Anat "If I forget Thee" (Hebr: Im Eshkahekh) - 2010 - 526 pages
Gaskell, Elizabeth "North and South" - 1854/55 - 584 pages
Roberts, Gregory David "Shantaram" - 2003 - 936 pages
Funke, Cornelia "Inkheart" (GE: Tintenherz) - 2003 - 576 pages

Fleischhauer, Wolfram "Schule der Lügen" (aka "Die Inderin") (GE) (In a Tender Hold) - 2014 - 528 pages
Mantel, Hilary "Wolf Hall" - 2009 - 688 pages
Bryson, Bill "The Road to Little Dribbling: more Notes from a Small Island" - 2015 - 528 pages


This means I read 26 chunky books in 2015 of which 8 are considered chunksters.


Happy Reading

Monday 26 January 2015

Brizuela, Leopoldo "Lisboa. Un melodrama"


Brizuela, Leopoldo "Nacht über Lissabon" (Portuguese: Lisboa. Un melodrama) - 2010 

I read the German translation, "Nacht über Lissabon". An interesting story about refugees in Lisbon, the last place in Europe from where they hope to be able to escape. The story is as chaotic as those last days were for the people who came from all parts of life, high and low. A "Casablanca" kind of story.

I hope this is going to be translated into more languages soon.

From the back cover:

"Lissabon in einer Novembernacht 1942. Die Stadt ist der letzte Rückzugsort für die Verfolgten des Nazi-Regimes. Hier im Hafen, der Rettung verspricht, liegt die Boa Esperança, das Schiff, das in Richtung Freiheit ablegen wird. Die Stadt gleicht einem Pulverfaß. Es brodelt vor Unruhe und Angst, es wimmelt von Spionen und Diplomaten in geheimer Mission, von verzweifelten Flüchtlingen aus ganz Europa. In dieser angespannten Lage kreuzen sich die Schicksale ganz unterschiedlicher Menschen. Und je tiefer es in die Nacht geht, desto mehr verstricken sie sich in politischen und erotischen Verwicklungen. Als auf der Boa Esperança eine Bombe explodiert, überstürzen sich die Ereignisse … Ein packendes Bild eines dramatischen Augenblicks der Geschichte – begleitet vom Herzschlag des Tangos und des Fados."

Saturday 24 January 2015

Book Quotes of the Week


"If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books." Roald Dahl

"There comes a day when you realize turning the page  is the best feeling  in the world, because you realize there is so  much more to the book than the  page you  were stuck on." Zayn Malik

"Time is a river...and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time and live to bless the ages following." Joseph Fort Newton

"Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming -- in thinking, not writing." Joyce Carol Oates

"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right." Markus Zusak in "The Book Thief"

Find more book quotes here.

Thursday 22 January 2015

Scott, Mary "Shepherd’s Pie"

Scott, Mary "Shepherd’s Pie" - 1972

Susan and Larry are back. Remember the two farmers' wives from New Zealand? Susan's niece Tony is surrounded by young men who like to flirt with her. But is one of her the right one? Susan has her doubts and her own plans.

As all the previous novels from this series, this is a refreshingly funny and nice novel. It does talk about the problems the characters encounter but overall is a feel good read.

If you like the Susan and Larry series, this is a lovely follow-up of their lives and that of their loved ones.

This is the sixth book in the series by Mary Scott. And this is the list of all of them:
"Breakfast at Six" - 1953
"Dinner Doesn’t Matter" - 1957
"Tea and Biscuits" - 1961
"A Change From Mutton" - 1964
"Turkey at Twelve" - 1968
"Shepherd’s Pie" - 1972
"Strangers for Tea" - 1975
"Board, but no Breakfast" - 1978

Unfortunately, they are out of print and only available second hand. I have heard in the meantime, that you can buy some of them as ebooks.

From the back cover (translated): "An engagement with small mistakes ...
Susan gets a third child in addition to Christopher, ten years, and his younger sister Patience - Tony, her husband's nineteen year old niece. And Susan's foster daughter, who at first seemed to suffer greatly from the divorce of her parents, blooms in her new home soon enough - she is both beautiful as well as happy.
Of course, Susan's love for Tony increases daily. She is worried because Tony's many admirers. She fears that Tony might select the wrong guy. However, there would be the right one at her fingertips - Peter Anstruther, who runs a small farm, a well balanced and serious man of thirty.
But of course, things go (initially) differently from what Susan thinks ..."

More books by Mary Scott: here.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Bryson, Bill "One Summer"

Bryson, Bill "One Summer: America, 1927" - 2013

What can I say about this book? Bill Bryson belongs to some of my favourite authors. This is certainly not one of my favourite books by him. Not because it's not funny because most of his non-travel books are not necessarily funny. Not because it's about an area I haven't visited because that is the fact with most of the destinations and places in his books, as well.

I think it is mainly because I'm not much interested in sports and there is a lot of it in there, especially of American sports that is even less known to me than what they do over here, just not a fan of group sports, never have been, never will be. But also because I learned a lot of things that really shocked me about people who I hadn't if not admired then at least estimated before. And it's also not that I didn't want to learn that. If someone is not a good person, I'd rather know.

It just seems as if that whole year 1927 was a horrible one and that the picture I get about the United States of America isn't a nice one, either. There is a lot of crime and even more greed in this book. This is probably the first Bill Bryson book I would not want to read again.

It is well written and well researched, as all of his books are. Maybe too well researched. That might be the problem.

It won't keep me from reading any other books of this fabulous author but had it been my first one, I probably wouldn't have tried any more.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2023.

From the back cover:

"Britain's favourite writer of narrative non-fiction Bill Bryson travels back in time to a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and, in five eventful months, changed the world for ever.

In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth. (So famous that Minnesota considered renaming itself after him.)


It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led to the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more.


In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy, with a cast of unforgettable and eccentric characters, with trademark brio, wit and authority.
"

Read more from this author, I have listed all his books in this post:
Bill Bryson – Funniest Author Ever 

Monday 19 January 2015

2014 Reading Challenges - Wrap-Up

I took part in 6 online challenges:

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014
2014 Postal Challenge
Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2014
The Motherhood + Jane Austen Book Club
The "Piggybank" Challenge 2014
What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge

Unfortunately, I did not manage to fulfill all the challenges I had set myself. My migraines were getting worse toward the end of the year and I read less than at the beginning. So, I only read 77 books this year as opposed to 109 last year. Here are the results of the challenges, more details on the respective pages.

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014
1 read 2 books from Africa (Namibia and general),
6 from Asia (China, India 2, Iran, Israel, Myanmar/Burma),
47 from Europe (Finland, France 2, Germany 9, Greece 3, Ireland, Italy 4, The Netherlands 3, Norway, Portugal, Russia 2, Scandinavia, Spain 3, Sweden 2, Switzerland, Turkey 4, United Kingdom 9),
16 from North America (Canada 2, Guadeloupe, USA 13),
1 from Australia  and
1 Extra Terrestrial (Mars).
Somehow I did not read a book from South America this year which is very unusual because I do like the style of their authors. I have read books from 27 countries, though and those were all new books.

2014 Postal Challenge
I don't think I have done very well with this one but there were 21 books that certainly contained letters.

Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2014
I read 22 chunky books this year (more than 450 pages), 5 of which were "chunksters" (more than 750 pages). My goal had been at least 16 chunky books, so I guess I have reached that.

The Motherhood + Jane Austen Book Club
Jane Austen is my favourite author and when Gidgets Go Home started a challenge to read all her books again and then discuss it as to the mothers in the series, I signed up right away. There is a Facebook page where the discussions were held and I enjoyed every single one of them.

This was our schedule and I added the links to the books here:
1. (Feb) Pride & Prejudice
2. (April) Mansfield Park
3. (June) Persuasion
4. (Aug) Emma
5. (Oct) Northanger Abbey 
6. (Dec) Sense & Sensibility

The "Piggybank" Challenge 2014
This challenge goes officially from 1 March 2014 to 1 March 2015 but it's easier to wrap this up now with the rest of the challenges. This year, I did not read as many books as last year, I was just too sick too often. I read 77 this year which resulted in €154 to spend on something nice.

What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge
This challenge had four categories in which we were supposed to read one book in each of the categories:
1.    A book with a reference to time in the title (Eleven Minutes, Before Ever After)
2.    A book with a position of royalty in the title (The People’s Queen, The Last Empress, The Curse Of The Pharaoh)
3.    A book with a number written in letters  in the title (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, A Tale Of Two Cities)
4.    A book with a forename or names in the title (Rebecca, Eleanor & Park, The Unfinished Work Of Elizabeth D.)
5.    A book with a type or element of weather in the title (Gone With The Wind, Red Earth Pouring Rain)

I read:
three books in category 1: seven years, midnight, twelve (o'clock)
one in category 2: prince,
three in category 3: two, six, seven, (2x) twelve
15 in category 4: Anne, Antje, Berlin, Daniel, Elizabeth, Emma, Faber, Franz, Hannah, Hattie, (2x), Jesus, Lolita, Nero, Peony, Rosie, Sophie, Ulysses, Zarathustra
and two in category 5: snow, sky

For more details, please see the appropriate links. You find the links to my posts by clicking on the name of the challenge and the original challenge by clicking on the picture.

Then there are the lists where I add books every year.

A Century of Books
The goal is to read a book from every year of the 20th century.
I only added two new books this year but "every little helps".
Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice" (GE: Der Tod in Venedig) - 1912
Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) "Anne of Green Gables" - 1908

Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century
I added four books this year and have now read 22 of those 100 novels.
#1 Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
#4 Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков] "Lolita" - 1955
#7 Heller, Joseph "Catch-22" - 1961
#65 Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962

Nobel Prize Winners and Their Books
I have always enjoyed reading books by the Nobel Prize winners. These are the books I read this year:
Fo, Dario "My first seven years (plus a few more)" (IT: Il Paese dei Mezaràt: I miei primi sette anni (e qualcuno in più)) - 2004
Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice" (GE: Der Tod in Venedig) - 1912
Pamuk, Orhan "My Father's Suitcase" (TR: Babamın Bavulu) - 2007
Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" (TR: Kar) - 2002
Pamuk, Orhan "The White Castle" (TR: Beyaz Kale) - 1985
Sienkiewicz, Henryk "Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero" (PL: Quo Vadis. Powieść z czasów Nerona) - 1895

I was invited to join this group "Read the Nobels" and have thoroughly enjoyed adding some of my blogs about the books by some Nobel Prize winners. I love reading the Nobel Prize Winners' work and found a lot of interesting reviews on this page.
These were the 5 books I reviewed on this page in 2014
Hesse, Hermann "Siddhartha" (GE: Siddhartha) - 1922
Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (GE: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
Buck, Pearl S. "Pavilion of Women" - 1946
Hemingway, Ernest Miller 1954 "The Old Man and the Sea" - 1952
Pamuk, Orhan "The White Castle" (TR: Beyaz Kale) - 1985

Best European Literature
Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922

Oscar Winning Books
Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962
Fowles, John "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" - 1969
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков] "Lolita" - 1955
Sienkiewicz, Henryk "Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero" (PL: Quo Vadis. Powieść z czasów Nerona) - 1895

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (German: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels)
Frisch, Max "Homo Faber" (GE: Homo Faber) - 1957
Lindgren, Astrid "Seacrow Island" (SW: Vi på Saltkråkan) - 1964
Pamuk, Orhan "My Father's Suitcase" (TR: Babamın Bavulu) - 2007
Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" (TR: Kar) - 2002
Pamuk, Orhan "The White Castle" (TR: Beyaz Kale) - 1985

The Top 10 Most Difficult Books
Still only one book. Maybe I should try Finnnegans Wake next.

Oprah’s Book Club
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" - 2013

100 Books by the BBC

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. I added only four this year and have now finished 64 of them.
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) "Anne of Green Gables" - 1908
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков] "Lolita" - 1955
Thackeray, William Makepeace "Vanity Fair, or, A Novel without a Hero" - 1848


Not really a challenge but a wonderful list of valuable books to read. I am happy to have read six of them and only one did not really receive my approval.
Smiley, Jane "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" - 2005

I read three more of the books in her list.
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich [Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков] "Lolita" - 1955
Thackeray, William Makepeace "Vanity Fair, or, A Novel without a Hero" - 1848

Friday 16 January 2015

Book Quotes of the Week


"That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with delight and profit." Amos Bronson Alcott

"There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." Bertrand Russell

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them." Lemony Snicket

"I am so clever that sometimes I do not understand a single word of what I am saying." Oscar Wilde

"There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times." Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Find more book quotes here.

Thursday 15 January 2015

Byatt, A.S. "Ragnarok. The End of the Gods"

Byatt, A.S. "Ragnarok. The End of the Gods" - 2011

A retelling of the Norse mythology. I'm not really into fantasy but was interested in this book for two reasons, I thought Norse myths might be interesting and I like A.S. Byatt.

Was it a good enough reason to pick up the book? Not really, the stories were not interesting enough for me to really get engaged.

The best part of the book were the author's "Thoughts on Myth" at the end of the stories where she explains where certain words come from and why she was re-writing something that has been written already a hundred times before.

Still, the author has a great way of telling any story, I guess. That's why I still enjoyed reading the book.

From the back cover:

"The gods have abandoned the earth. A great battle is afoot that could destroy everything. The time of Ragnarok has begun...

Into her account of the end of the gods, the Booker Prize-winning author A. S. Byatt weaves the story of a young girl evacuated to the British countryside during the Second World War. Struggling to make sense of her life, she is given a book of Norse myth, and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.
"

I have also read "Possession" by A.S. Byatt. It is one of my favourite books. 

Wednesday 14 January 2015

My favourite books 2014


My Favourite Books 2014:

Bradbury, Ray "The Martian Chronicles" - 1950
Harris, Joanne "Blackberry Wine" - 2000
Karystiani, Ionna (Ιωάννα Καρυστιάνη) "The Jasmine Isle" (Μικρά Αγγλία/Mikra Anglia) - 1997
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" - 2013
Nafisi, Azar "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" - 2003
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky" (El mapa del cielo) - 2012
Pamuk, Orhan "The White Castle" (Beyaz Kale) - 1985
Roth, Charlotte "Als wir unsterblich waren" [When We Were Immortal] - 2014
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Midnight Palace" (El Palacio de la Medianoche) - 1994
See, Lisa "Peony in Love" - 2007
Sendker, Jan-Philipp "Das Herzenhören" (The Art of Hearing Heartbeats) - 2002
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" - 2005
Shields, Carol "The Stone Diaries" - 1993
Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute" (Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü) - 1961
Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" - 2013

I have already published my list in my statistics here but I like to have a link that I can refer to.

Tuesday 13 January 2015

Statistics 2014

Last year, I saw someone publishing statistics about the kind of books they read.
I followed that idea and made my own list which you can see here (going back to 2009) and here (2013).

And these are the results of my reading lists for 2014:

* Statistics 2014 *

Challenges
I took part in six online challenges,
Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014  
I read books from 27 different countries this year.
2014 Postal Challenge  
I read 21 books containing letters.
Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2014  
My result were 22 chunky books (more than 450 pages) including 5 super chunky ones (more than 750 pages).
The Motherhood + Jane Austen Book Club  
I read all six Jane Austen novels with this book club.
The "Piggybank" Challenge 2014     
I read 77 books last year, not as many as I would have liked to but certainly more than average.
What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge  
I read three books in category 1, one in category 2, three in category 3, 15 in category 4 and two in category 5.

Books Read: 77
Pages read: 28,879

Books dating from which year:
Pre 1800s: 00
1800s: 9
1900-1949: 6
1950-1999: 26
2000s: 36 (1 of which from 2014)

Male Authors: 43
Female Authors: 33

Nobel Prize Winners: 6

Fiction: 68
Non-Fiction: 10

Chunky Books - more than 450 pages: 22, more than 750: 5
Oldest Book:
Austen, Jane "Sense & Sensibility" - 1811
Newest Book:
Roth, Charlotte "Als wir unsterblich waren" - 2014
Longest book: 1,296
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922 - 1,296 pages
Shortest book: 85
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "Der Fürst des Parnass" (El principe de parnaso) - 2012
Longest book title:
Dallaire, Roméo "They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children"
Shortest Book Title:
Austen, Jane "Emma"
Funniest Book:
Dahl, Roald "The Best of Roald Dahl"
Saddest Book:
Dallaire, Roméo "They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children"
Weirdest Book:
NDiaye, Marie "Rosie Carpe" - 2001
New author (for me) that I would like to read more from: Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi

Translated Books: 17
4 from Spanish and Turkish2 from Italian and Swedish
1 from Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish

Books read in another language:
12 German, 2 French, 1 Dutch

Numbers in Book Titles: two, six, seven twelve, twelve, 22, 1927
Place Names in Book Titles: Alexanderplatz, America, Andros, Berlin, Greece, Green Gables, Lisbon, Mansfield, Martian, Northanger, Parnass, Saltkråkan, Soho, Tehran, Venice
Names in Book Titles: Anne, Antje, Daniel, Emma, Faber, Franz, Hannah Coulter, Hattie, Franz Biberkopf, Herr Mustermann, Jesus, Lolita, Nero, Peony, Pickwick, Podmanitzki, Poirot, Rosie, Shakespeare, Sophie, Stone, Ulysses, Zarathustra, Zuckerman
Colours in Book Titles: Red, White

My Favourite Books:
Bradbury, Ray "The Martian Chronicles" - 1950
Harris, Joanne "Blackberry Wine" - 2000
Karystiani, Ionna (Ιωάννα Καρυστιάνη) "The Jasmine Isle" (Μικρά Αγγλία/Mikra Anglia) - 1997
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" - 2013
Nafisi, Azar "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" - 2003
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky" (El mapa del cielo) - 2012
Pamuk, Orhan "The White Castle" (Beyaz Kale) - 1985
Roth, Charlotte "Als wir unsterblich waren" [When We Were Immortal] - 2014
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Midnight Palace" (El Palacio de la Medianoche) - 1994
See, Lisa "Peony in Love" - 2007
Sendker, Jan-Philipp "Das Herzenhören" (The Art of Hearing Heartbeats) - 2002
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" - 2005
Shields, Carol "The Stone Diaries" - 1993
Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute" (Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü) - 1961
Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" - 2013

With my books, I visited places in the following countries:
Africa (2): Namibia and several different countries
Asia (6): China, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Myanmar/Burma
Europe (16): Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom
North: America (3): Canada, Guadeloupe, USA
Australia/Oceania (2): Australia, New Zealand
South America (0):
Extra-terrestrial (1):
Countries "visited" in total: 30

You may find some even greater statistics by better bloggers than me at "Stuck in a Book" and "Ready When You are, C.B."

Friday 9 January 2015

Reading Challenge 2015


I usually try to join a couple of reading challenges every year. This year, I found one that combines several ones here. I will give this a try but might only fulfill it partly this year. I might do some that fit in two or more categories but you never know. Looks interesting in any case.

1.    A book with more than 500 pages
2.    A classic romance
3.    A book that became a movie
4.    A book published this year
5.    A book with a number in the title
6.    A book written by someone under 30
7.    A book with nonhuman characters
8.    A funny book
9.    A book by a female author
10.    A mystery or thriller
11.    A book with a one-word title
12.    A book of short stories
13.    A book set in a different country
14.    A nonfiction book
15.    A popular author's first book
16.    A book from an author you love that you haven't read yet
17.    A book a friend recommended
18.    A Pulitzer Prize-winning book
19.    A book based on a true story
20.    A book at the bottom of your to-read list
21.    A book your mom loves
22.    A book that scares you
23.    A book more than 100 years old
24.    A book based entirely on its cover
25.    A book you were supposed to read in school but didn't
26.    A memoir
27.    A book you can finish in a day
28.    A book with antonyms in the title
29.    A book set somewhere you've always wanted to visit
30.    A book that came out the year you were born
31.    A book with bad reviews
32.    A trilogy
33.    A book from your childhood
34.    A book with a love triangle
35.    A book set in the future
36.    A book set in high school
37.    A book with a colour in the title
38.    A book that made you cry
39.    A book with magic
40.    A graphic novel
41.    A book by an author you've never read before
42.    A book you own but have never read
43.    A book that takes place in your hometown
44.    A book that was originally written in a different language
45.    A book set during Christmas
46.    A book written by an author with your same initials
47.    A play
48.    A banned book
49.    A book based on or turned into a TV show
50.    A book you started but never finished

Find my results here.