#ThrowbackThursday. February 2012 Part 2

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the second part of February 2012.

Brooks, Geraldine "March" - 2006
Who hasn't read "Little Women" and wouldn't mind reading more about the March family. Well, here's your chance.

Allende, Isabel "Island Beneath the Sea" (E: La isla bajo el mar) - 2010
A great description of life on a plantation, first in the Caribbean, later in Louisiana, the life of the slaves and the free, lots of history, an incredibly rich account of the lives people had to lead. 

Pausewang, Gudrun "The Last Children" (GE: Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn oder … sieht so unsere Zukunft aus?) - 1983
A youth book from the early eighties. When we were in the middle of the Cold War. When our biggest fear was the nuclear bomb. This book shows the worst case scenario.

Pessl, Marisha "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" - 2006
A modern book about teenagers. Granted, not the usual ones. 

Şafak, Elif "The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi" - 2001
Two books in one: Ella, an American woman receives a script to be edited. It is about Rumi, a Muslim poet who lived in the 13th century. His poems are world famous.

Faber, Michael "The Fire Gospel" - 2008
A scientist visits a museum in Iraq that was looted. He discovers the "fifth gospel" and finds that it is difficult to share with the modern world.

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Alphabet Authors ~ B is for Buck

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc.

I might not do it exactly as he does but I will try to get to all the letters of the alphabet over time.

I was contemplating to take Bill Bryson for this letter but he writes (or rather wrote) non-fiction books, and I decided to stick to non-fiction. But there are letters where you find many more authors and it is always going to be hard to decide for the one you like most.

Pearl S. Buck has always been a special author for me. She was probably one of the first "grown-up" authors, no, the very first "grown-up" author I ever read. And certainly the first Nobel Prize winner, maybe that's why I still like to read them.

Pearl S. Buck wrote a lot of books about China, where she grew up as the daughter of a missionary. She must have written at least a hundred but I only read a handful of them. However, I believe she was a brilliant writer and had a lot of stories to tell,

- "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930
- "The Good Earth" (House of Earth Trilogy #1) - 1931 - ILK
- "The First Wife and Other Stories" - 1933
- "Sons" (House of Earth Trilogy #2) - 1932
- "The Mother"- 1933
- "A House Divided" (House of Earth Trilogy #3) - 1935
- "The Exile" - 1936
- "The Patriot" - 1939
- "Portrait of a Marriage" - 1945
- "Pavilion of Women" - 1946
- "Peony" - 1948
- "Kinfolk" - 1949
- "Love and the Morning Calm" - 1951

She has also written a few non-fiction books:
- "My several worlds: A Personal Exile" - 1954
- "Imperial Woman" - 1956
- "A Bridge for Passing" - 1961
- "The Story Bible" - 1971

Facts about Pearl S. Buck:
Born    26 June 1892 Virginia, USA
Died    6 March 1973 (aged 80) Vermont, USA
Buried in Pennsylvania, USA
A 5¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued by the United States Postal Service
A statue of the author stands in front of the former residence at Nanjing University
She appears on the £10 note of the Bank of England.

Pearl S. Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

* * *

This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

Tartt, Donna "The Secret History"

Tartt, Donna "The Secret History" - 1992

"The Secret History" has been on my wishlist ever since I read "The Goldfinch". And this year, I finally got to it. 

And a very impressive story it is. But it's difficult to get into details without giving out spoilers. Just this much. A group of students doesn something really bad and can only get out of it by doing something even worse. The characters are not really likeable but they get under your skin. You can't follow their actions but somehow you can.

A challenging book that will probably stay with me forever.

Quotes

on migraines:
"Henry, flat on his back in a dark room, ice packs on his head and a handkerchief tied over his eyes.

'I don't get them so often as I once did. When I was thirteen or fourteen I had them all the time. But not it seems that when tey do come - sometimes only once a year - they're much worse. ...'"

on death:
"Is death really so terrible a thing? It seems terrible to you, because you are young, ... It does not do to be frightened of things you know nothing ..."

From the back cover:

"Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever."

#ThrowbackThursday. February 2012 Part 1

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the first part of February 2012.

Fforde, Jasper "The Eyre Affair" (Thursday Next 1) - 2001

It is so difficult to put a label on this, it's' a detective story, a thriller, classic reading, alternate history, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, philosophy, religion, a love for word play, weird names, language (he even mentions Esperanto), satire, even a little romance mixed in, you name it, it's in here.

Morgan Dawson, Sarah "A Confederate Girl's Diary" - 1913
If you enjoy stories like "Gone with the Wind", you will love this book. Sarah Morgan Dawson lived from 1842 to 1909. She was born into a well-to-do family who had slaves like any other rich people.

Oates, Joyce Carol "Black Girl/White Girl" - 2006
The daughter of a radical activist lawyer, descending from a family with a large history of civil rights fighters shares her room at college with the "black girl of the story.

Le Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave "The African" (French: L'Africain) - 2004
The French Nobel prize winner wrote this autobiographical essay mainly about his childhood in Africa where he met his father who spent most of his life there. A good description of the African landscape and not only an autobiography about the author but also about his father whom he got to know as a stranger.

Carey, Peter "Oscar and Lucinda" - 1988
Interesting story, set in one of my favourite centuries, the 19th, told in a vivid yet pleasant way, the life of people trying to fit into a life they had no idea about. 

Kemal, Yaşar "The Birds Have Also Gone" (Turkish: Kuşlar da Gitti) - 1978
An interesting story not just about the boys from Istanbul but about the ever changing times, the shattering of dreams, and about the streets of Istanbul

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Alphabet Authors ~ A is for Austen

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc.

I might not do it exactly as he does but I will try to get to all the letters of the alphabet over time.

My first author is probably clear to anyone who knows me even just a little. Of course, I could have picked Isabel Allende (of whom I read 5 books) or Margaret Atwood (4). I do like both of them and I will certainly read more of their books in future but I just have to go with Jane Austen.

Of course, I have read all of their books and own various copies of all of them. So no surprise there. You can see a picture of her covers, this time not in alphabetical but in chronological order. The same with the German editions:

If you are interested in my German reviews: here is a list of all her books that I read with the German titles included:

Austen, Jane (Jane Austen in German)
"Emma" - Emma - 1816 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Mansfield Park" - Mansfield Park - 1814 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Northanger Abbey" - Kloster Northanger - 1818 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 
"Persuasion" - Überredung/Anne Elliot - 1817 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Pride & Prejudice" - Stolz & Vorurteil - 1813 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 
"Sense & Sensibility" - Verstand & Gefühl/Sinn & Sinnlichkeit - 1811 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 

And since 2025 will be the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, the Classics Club has started a #ReadingAusten project here. We start with Sense & Sensibility.

And there are, of course, hundreds of books about Jane Austen, her life, her novels, plus numerous "sequels" to the novels she wrote, written by contemporary authors. I am not a big fan of those kind of stories, so I'm not including any since I haven't read them.

Austen, Jane
"Lady Susan" - Lady Susan - 1795
"The Watsons" - Die Watsons - 1803/05
"Sanditon" - Sanditon - 1817
"Selected Letters. 1796-1817" - 1796-1817

Le Faye, Deirdre "Jane Austen. The World of Her Novels" - Jane Austen und ihre Zeit - 2002

Pool, Daniel "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" - 1993
Rowlatt, Bee & Witwit, May "Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship" - 2010
Shields, Carol "Jane Austen. A Life" - 2001
Tomalin, Claire "Jane Austen - A Life" - 1997

How did I come across this fantastic author? I only started reading her novels when I moved to England in 1994 and began reading books in English. I started with a few easy reads, children's books that I read with my boys and easy reads, quick chick-lit types first but found pretty fast that I preferred the classics, Louisa May Alcott was one of the authors that eased the way from the children's books to adult ones. And if you read one English classic, Jane Austen is not very far.

The saddest part of having Jane Austen as one of your favourite authors is that she didn't live long enough to write more then the six novels she finished (plus a few that she started).

Facts about Jane Austen:
Born    16 December 1775 Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England
Died    18 July 1817 (aged 41) Winchester, Hampshire, England
Buried in Winchester Cathedral
She appears on the £10 note of the Bank of England.
They unveiled a statue in Basingstoke, England in 2017 on the occastion of the 200th anniversary of her death.
A Jane Austen festival takes place in Bath every year in September.
You can visit the cottage in Hampshire (Jane Austen's House), where Jane Austen lived most of ther life. It is now a museum.

Most of her novels portray the women of her time, mainly those who depended on a "good marriage" in order not to starve to death. You can tell she knows a thing or two about that situation. She had a great sense of humour and her novels are full of ironic comments.

Her father was a rector and she had seven siblings.

Her books were made into several films and television series, all of them interesting and worth watching. But my favourites are:

1. "Persuasion" w. Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds - 1995
2. "Pride & Prejudice" w. and Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth - 1995
3. "Sense & Sensibility" w. Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman - 1995
4. "Emma" w. Doran Goodwin and John Carson - 1972
5. "Mansfield Park" w. Frances O'Connor and Jonny Lee Miller - 1999
6. Since I'm not a huge fan of "Northanger Abbey", there isn't really a version I like much but if I had to choose, I'd probably take the version from 1987, not because of Katharine Schlesinger or Peter Firth but because of Robert Hardy who was great in any role.

And one last bit of information:
The actress Anna Chancellor is a descendant of Jane's brother Edward Austen. Jane is Anna’s eight-times great aunt. There are similarities in the drawings and pictures and the descriptions, so, if we want to know what Jane looked like, see here and here. Maybe we can imagine Anna Chancellor who also acted in my favourite "Pride & Prejudice", she is Mr. Bingley's sister Caroline.

Also, you can take a quiz and find out which Austen heroine you would be. I am Elinor Dashwood.

* * *

This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

Statistics 2024

    

My statistics for the last years are here:
Going back to 2009-12, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023  

And these are the results of my reading lists for 2024:

* Statistics 2024 *
 

I did 178 posts in 2024 which was about six fewer than last year.

My regular posts are either weekly (Book Quotes, Top Ten Tuesday, ThrowBack Thursday, Wordless Wednesday) or monthly (Happy Month, Six Degrees of Separation, Spell the Month in Books), so I posted more or less the amount of weeks or months in a year. I didn't do them all regularly, though. Especially the Top Ten Tuesday, I've participated so long and have done a lot of the topics already, so I just do them from time to time.

Book Quotes of the Week (4 posts)

Happy Month (12)
Top 5 Tuesday (20)
Top Ten Tuesday (10)

Top 5 Tuesday (20)
ThrowBack Thursday (41)
Wordless Wednesday (2)
Six Degrees of Separation (12)
Spell the Month in Books (12)

I also did a few lists that are more or less statistics about half of the year and a comparison to ten years ago:

Mid Year Freak-Out Tag

I also participated in Non-fiction November.

*****

And then there are, of course, all the challenges I have done over the years.
I read books that contributed to the following challenges. Some of them count for more than one category:

Challenges (number of books read for the challenges in brackets)

The 100 best Non-fiction Books of All Time as Chosen by The Guardian (1)

100 Books by the BBC (1)

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (1)

2024 TBR Pile Reading Challenge (13)

Anti-Racism Books (3)

I read more on this topic but they were not on this list.

Barack Obama Reading Lists (1)

I added all the books he chose this year to my list but haven't been able to read any of them. Yet.

Bildungsroman (4)

Children's Books (2)

The Classics Spin (4)

Emma's Book Club - Our shared shelf (1)

Favourite (German) Independent Books (3)

(Das Lieblingsbuch der Unabhängigen = The Favourite Book of the Independents)

German Books (24)

My Favourite Books Ever  (24)

Every year I find some more books I can add to my list of favourite books. 24 this year. Not too bad, I guess.

Nobel Peace Prize (1)

Nobel Prize Winners and Their Books (13)

Oprah's Book Club (1)
Oscar Winning Books (1)

Paris in July (4)

Some books taking place in France.

Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1)

(German: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels)

Read the Year Club (2)

We read 1937 and 1970 this year. It's a good idea to add some reads from former years that we might not have touched before.

Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2024 (12)

I read 15 chunky books in 2024 of which 4 are considered a chunkster. Mor-book-ly Obese again.

Suggestions from Friends (lots)

I read suggestions from friends all the time, just haven't kept up with who recommended which book.

Travel the World Through Books (1)
Voracious (1)

Book Clubs:

International Online Book Club 2017 etc. (12)

German Book Club (9)

Some of the challenges are older and I only add to them if I happen to read one of the books. No new books on these lists:
100 Greatest Fiction Books as Chosen by the Guardian 
101 Best Selling Books of All Times 

20 Classic and Important Books 

I already said this last year. Only three more books on my list, maybe I'll get to "Slaughterhouse Five" one day.

7 Books That Will Radically Shift Your Perspectives 

Best European Literature 
I already read most of those that interest me, there are a few more that I could tackle one day.
Books That Changed the World 

A Century of Books 

Dutch and French Books 

Esperanto Books 
Here we mostly read short stories.

Le Monde - The 100 Books of the Century 

Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century 

Reading the World 

The non-western books that every student should read 
The only thing I miss from our old place is the library that would get me any book I wanted. Not so easy here where we only have a small church library and they only get the biggest best-sellers. And all of them in German only, of course.

Travel the World Through Book 

Some of the challenges are older and I only add to them if I happen to read one of the books.

Books Read: 73
Pages read: 25,412 which results in 348 pages/book, 70 pages/day, 6 books/month

Last year (2023), I read 83 books with 26,717 pages which resulted in 321 pages/book, 73 pages/day, 7 books/month. So, while I read fewer books, they were larger.

The average novel contains between 140 and 320 pages, i.e. 230 which would make 110 average books (compared to 16 last year). 

Books dating from which year:

Pre 1800s: 2

1800s: 2

1900-1949: 4

1950-1999: 14

2000s: 51 (2 from 24)

Male Authors: 38

Female Authors: 33

Nobel Prize Winners: 7

Fiction: 50
Non-Fiction: 33

Chunky Books - more than 450 pages: 16, of which more than 750: 4
Library/Borrowed: 11
Re-Read: 2
TBR Pile: 18

Oldest Book: 1838
Dickens, Charles "Nicholas Nickleby. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" - 1838/39 - 1838/39
Newest Book: 2024

Orth, Stephan "Couchsurfing in Ukraine" (GE: Couchsurfing in der Ukraine) - 2024

Steinmeier, Frank-Walter "We" (GE: Wir) - 2024

Longest book: 1,100 pages
Oates, Joyce Carol "Blonde" - 2000
Shortest book: 122 pages
Fosse, Jon "Morning and Evening" (NO: Morgon og kveld) - 2001
Longest book title: 38 letters
Bontscheva, Antonia "The beauty of Balchik is not a serene one" (GE: Die Schönheit von Baltschik ist keine heitere) - 2021

Shortest Book Title: 3 letters

Steinmeier, Frank-Walter "We" (GE: Wir) - 2024

Funniest Book:

Kishon, Ephraim (english) "Next year everything will be different" (GE: Im neuen Jahr wird alles anders) - 1982
- "Kishon for all occasions. 327 useless pieces of wisdom" (GE: Kishon für alle Fälle. 327 unbrauchbare Lebensweisheiten) - 1987

Güngör, Dilek "Pretty German. My Turkish family and I" (GE: Ganz schön deutsch. Meine türkische Familie und ich) - 2007

Saddest Book:

Şafak, Elif "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World" - 2019

Weirdest Book:

Erpenbeck, Jenny "Kairos" (GE: Kairos.) - 2021

Most disappointing:

Sieg, Sören; Krohn, Axel "I didn't understand you visually. Overheard German dialogues" (GE: Ich hab dich rein optisch nicht verstanden. Deutsche Dialoge mitgehört) - 2015

New author (for me) that I would like to read more from: 5

Jon Fosse, Matt Haig, Florian Knöppler, Abraham Verghese, Caroline Wahl 

Translated Books:

14 from 9 languages

1 ea from Catalan, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish

2 ea from Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish

Books read in another language:

Dutch: 0

French: 0

German: 24

Numbers in Book Titles: 22,39
Place Names in Book Titles: Baltschik, Cannery Row, deutsch, Europa, Kronsnest, Moscow, Napoli, Revolutionary Road, Siberia, Teufelsmoor, Ukraine, Wigan

Names in Book Titles: Algernon, Austen, Benson, Copperhead, Demon, Jane, Kairos, Kishon, Nicholas Nickleby, Páramo, Pedro, Rebecca, Sommer, tschick, Winter

Colours in Book Titles: Blue

My Favourite Books: 16

Bythell, Shaun "Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown" - 2022

Calvino, Italo "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" (I: Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) - 1979

Falcones, Ildefonso "The Painter of Souls" (E: El pintor de almas) - Die Tränen der Welt - 2019

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light" (Kingsbridge #4) - 2023

Fosse, Jon "Morning and Evening" (NO: Morgon og kveld) - 2001

Haig, Matt "The Midnight Library" - 2020

Ivey, Eowyn "To The Bright Edge of the World" - 2016

Janesch, Sabrina "Sibiria" (GE: Sibir) - 2023

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022

Knöppler, Florian "Kronsnest [Name of Village]" (GE: Kronsnest) - 2020

Orth, Stephan (German reviews) "Couchsurfing in Ukraine" (GE: Couchsurfing in der Ukraine) - 2024

Şafak, Elif "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World" - 2019

Taschler, Judith W. "David" (GE:  David) - 2017 

Tokarczuk, Olga "Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" (PL: Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych) - 2009

Verghese, Abraham "The Covenant of Water" - 2023

Wahl, Caroline "22 Lanes" (GE: 22 Bahnen) - 2023

 
With my books, I visited places in the following countries:

Africa (4):
Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe

Arctic (1):

Arctic

Asia (5):
India, Indonesia, Israel/Palestina, Japan, Kazakhstan
Australia/Oceania (3):
Australia, Melanesia, Oceania
Europe (38):
Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom
North America (6):
Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Mexico, USA
South America (2):
Brazil, Venezuela:

Countries "visited" in total: 55

Authors come from:

Africa (1):
Zimbabwe
Asia (3):
India, Israel/Palestine, Japan
Australia/Oceania (1):
Australia
Europe (12):
Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom
North America (2):
Mexico, USA
South America (1):

Chile
Author countries in total: 20

See also "My Year in Books" (and here on Goodreads).

You may find some even greater statistics by better bloggers than me, e.g. at "Stuck in a Book".

 

If you want more information on any of the lists mentioned, please, let me know.

Six Degrees of Separation ~ Orbital

Samantha Harvey
Harvey, Samantha "Orbital" - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation:

from Orbital (Goodreads) to A Clockwork Orange 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. As so often, I have not read the book. 

Here is the description:

"A book of wonder, Orbital is nature writing from space and an unexpected and profound love letter to life on Earth

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?"

Sounds interesting but I have been really disappointed by the last Booker Prize winners I read, so it might take a while, if ever, until I pick this up. But I have read other books about space travel and I will start with my favourite one of them and then go back to using words in the titles.

Weir, Andy "The Martian" - 2011

Bradbury, Ray "The Martian Chronicles" - 1950 

Kadaré, Ismail "The Fall of the Stone City" (aka Chronicle in Stone) (AL: Darka e Gabuar) - 1971

Löwenstein, Anna "The Stone City" (Esperanto: La Ŝtona Urbo) - 1999

LeBor, Adam "City of Oranges. An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa" - 2006

Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange" - 1962  

What do the first and the last book have in common? Well, they both are a work of science fiction.

📚📚📚