Spell the Month in Books ~ March

Reviews from the Stacks

I found this on one of the blogs I follow, Books are the New Black who found it at One Book More. It was originally created by Reviews from the Stacks, and the idea is to spell the month using the first letter of book titles.

March: Science Fiction

Science Fiction is not my genre and I was wondering whether I would be able to fill even five letters. But, as you can see, I managed. Some are more dystopian than science which (which I really prefer) but I even managed to find five books that I like that fit the subject.

MARCH

M

Weir, Andy "The Martian" - 2011  

A
Stephenson, Neal "Anathem" - 2008
R
McCarthy, Cormac "The Road" - 2006 
C

Mitchell, David "Cloud Atlas" - 2004

H
Adams, Douglas "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - 1979

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Happy Reading!

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Six Degrees of Separation ~ Prophet Song

Paul Lynch
"Prophet Song" - 2023

#6Degrees of Separation:

from Prophet Song (Goodreads) to The Discovery of Slowness

#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 "Prophet Song" by Paul Lynch, an Irish author who received the Booker Prize for this novel. The last ones I read were not to my taste, so I didn't even try to get it.

But since this book is not written by a British or an American author, I have tried to find some other foreign authors who were awarded prizes either in their country or internationally. I succeeded for all but one.

If you are interested, here is a description of this novel:

"A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internationally award-winning author

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together."

I start with the word Song.

Liao, Yiwu "Testimonials or: For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet's Journey Through a Chinese Prison" (CHN: Zheng-Ci) - 2000

Yiwu Liao received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2012.

García Márquez, Gabriel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (E: Cien años de soledad) - 1967

Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".

Giordano, Paolo "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" (I: La solitudine dei numeri primi) - 2008

Paolo Giordano won the Premio Strega literary award with this, his first novel.

Simmonds, Jeremy "Number One in Heaven – The Heroes Who Died For Rock 'n' Roll" - 2006
A fantastic book about all the rock stars we loved and who left us far too early.

Mulisch, Harry "The Discovery of Heaven" (NL: De ontdekking van de hemel) - 1992
Harry Mulish received several international awards, and the NRC Handelsblad readers voted this novel the greatest Dutch book ever written.

Nadolny, Sten "The Discovery of Slowness" (GE: Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit) - 1983

Sten Nadolny received many German and Italian literature prizes, i.a. the prestigious  Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.

We always try to find a connection between the first and the last degree. I think a prophet could be very helpful in the search for slowness.

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Happy March!

 Happy March to all my Friends and Readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch

"Am Fluss"

"Along the River"

Hanka and Frank say to this picture:

"Für den kommenden Frühling haben wir uns für Hankas Kinder Aquarell entschieden."

"For the coming spring we have chosen Hanka's children's watercolor."

This picture by Hanka remindes me of my childhood. We had a little stream behind our house that would go all the way into the village and we children used to go there and take the way to our favourite places.

Read more on their website here. *

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In the middle of February, I heard someone saying on the radio "When will it finally be spring? And I thought, hey, it's only February. Shortly afterwards, we had two days of snow, the first this winter. And probably the last. I remember winters when we had snow from November until February at the least.

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And there was a less amusing event for all Germans. Elections. After the last coalition collapsed, Chancelor Olaf Scholz (Wikipedia) asked for a vote of confidence which is one of the prerequisites to have new elections.

Of course, the conservative party won and the ultra-right gained 20% of the elections, something most of us feared. Now we hope they won't form a new coalition, that would certainly be a catastrophe. Wish us luck.

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With the book club, we read a German book by Michel Bergmann, "Herr Klee und Herr Feld", unfortunately not translated into English or any other language. Yet, I hope.

My favourite book of the month was "Jane Austen at Home" by Lucy Worsley. As part of the commenmoration of Jane Austen's 250^th birthday, the Classics Club has started a #Reading Austen project. We are reading a book by her every other month and I have decided do read something Austen-related by her every month. This was a fabulous biography.

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And here is a picture from our two days of snow.

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* You can also have a look under my labels Artist: Frank Koebsch and Artist: Hanka Koebsch where you can find all my posts about the two artists. 

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💐 I wish you all a Happy March 💐

Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home"

Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home" - 2017

My favourite book of the month. As part of the commemoration of Jane Austen's 250th birthday, the Classics Club has started a #Reading Austen project. We are reading a book by her every other month, last month it was "Pride & Prejudice", next month will be "Sense & Sensibility". When it fits in with my other reading "duties" (book clubs and challenges), I want to do read something Austen-related by her in between.

This was a fabulous biography. Lucy Worsley really "visited" Jane Austen at home and accompanied her on all her visits to friends and family. It was so nice to read what she and her family, especially her sister Cassandra had been up to. You hear about the relationship between them and also any other person of their lifetime. Also, the way they lived. We all know that they had money problems but it is different today, at least in our countries. Also, the things Jane did for female authors and women in general are not to be underestimated.

After reading this book, I feel I got to know Jane Austen better, almost personally. I would love to have all biographies written like this. I think I love the author even more than I did before.

There are so many quotes I could mention but I leave it at this one  about my favourite novel: "Persuasion was … set precisely in the period of peace between the months June 1814 and February 1815, when Britian's naval officers were on shore leave." It shows how her novels relate to the time she lived in.

From the back cover:

"Historian Lucy Worsley visits Jane Austen at home, exploring the author's life through the places which meant the most to her.

On the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, historian Lucy Worsley leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world.

This new telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the places and spaces that mattered to her. It wasn't all country houses and ballrooms, but a life that was often a painful struggle. Jane famously lived a 'life without incident', but with new research and insights Lucy Worsley reveals a passionate woman who fought for her freedom. A woman who far from being a lonely spinster in fact had at least five marriage prospects, but who in the end refused to settle for anything less than Mr Darcy."

The book also contains some interesting pictures that relate to Jane Austen's life.

#Throwback Thursday ~ July 2012

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 July 2012.

Bristow, Gwen "Plantation Trilogy" (Deep Summer, The Handsome Road, This Side of Glory) - 1937-40
One of my favourite stories about the Deep South ever. If you work your way through this trilogy, you go form the first settlers in the 1700s until the early year of the last century. 

Haruf, Kent "Plainsong" - 1999
The story of a father raising his teenager sons alone in a small town. And other settlers.

Kemal, Yaşar "The Drumming-Out" (TK: Teneke) - 1987
A young administrator in a town in the Anatolian province tries to fight a big landlord who floods large portions of land to grow rice but doesn't care about the effects on the population.

Noa Bercovitch, Pascale "The Dolphin’s Boy: A Story of Courage and Friendship" (F: Oline, le dauphin du miracle) - 2000
The author was an athlete who had a terrible accident on a train and subsequently had to have her legs amputated. In her partly autobiographical book, she tells us about the Bedouin boy Abdullah who fell out of a tree at the age of five and was deaf ever since.

Pasternak, Boris "Doctor Zhivago" (RUS: Доктор Живаго) - 1957
Boris Pasternak has a great way of telling a "very simple story", as he put it himself. Not really that simple, lots of complications in the life of our hero, Jura Zhivago, a doctor and a poet. 

Shields, Carol "Jane Austen. A Life" - 2001
Carol Shields managed to write a good account of a life at a time where there were no journalists or paparazzi around to reveal every single step a famous person made. 

Westerman, Frank "The Republic of Grain" (NL: De graanrepubliek) - 1999

This book describes life in a Dutch region, in the North of the Netherlands during a tough time. The rise and fall of an area due to nature, politics, decisions made.

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

Alphabet Authors ~ H is for Hislop

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.

 

There are a few great authors with the initial H: Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, or Khaled Hosseini, for example.

But one of my absolute favourite authors is Victoria Hislop, so I definitely had to choose her for this letter.

Most of this British author's books are about Greece and she seems to have depicted that country so well that they granted her honorary Greek citizenship. If that isn't a praise, I don't know what is.

Her very first book, which was also the very first book I read by her, is "The Island". She later wrote a sequel "One August Night" and a children's book about the story, "Maria's Island". But any of her other books are also great.

- "Cartes Postales from Greece" - 2016
- "The Island" - 2005
- "Maria's Island" - 2021
- "The Last Dance and Other Stories" - 2015 
- "One August Night" - 2020
- "The Return" - 2008
- "The Sunrise" - 2014 
- "Those Who Are Loved" - 2019
- "The Thread" - 2011

She has also written some non-fiction books with Duncan Goodhew, a former competitve swimmer:
"Sink or Swim: The Self-help Book for Men Who Never Read Them" - 2002 (Goodreads)
"Fix Your Life – Now!: The Six Step Plan to Help You Fix Your Life" - 2012 (Goodreads)

Facts about Victoria Hislop:
Born    1959 Bromley, Kent
As she is still alive, I hope she will write more books

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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.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Another time

      

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". It was created because they are particularly fond of lists. It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week's topic is Books Set in Another Time (These can be historical, futuristic, alternate universes, or even in a world where you’re not sure when it takes place you just know it’s not right now.)

This is a tough one. I love historical fiction but I have also read quite a few dystopian books that take place in another world. I don't want to repeat the same titles over and over, therefore I have chosen the last ten historical fiction novels I read. I have added the approximate times of the stories.

Alvarez, Julia "In the Time of the Butterflies" - 1994
1924-1960

Barbal i Farré, Maria "Stone in a Landslide" (Catalan: Pedra de tartera) - 1985
Beginning of the 20th century

Brooks, Geraldine "Caleb's Crossing" - 2011
1660s

Chevalier, Tracy "The Last Runaway" - 2013
Middle of the 19^th century

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light" - 2023
997 until the 16^th century

Ibrahimi, Anilda "Red Like a Bride" (Italian: Rosso come una sposa) - 2008
Beginning of the 20^th century

Mahfouz, Naguib "Midaq Alley" (Arabic: زقاق المدق/Zuqaq El Midaq) - 1947
1940s

Mann, Heinrich "Man of Straw", or "The Patrioteer", or The Loyal Subject (German: Der Untertan) - 1914
Beginning of the 20^th century

Şafak, Elif "The Island of Missing Trees" - 2021
1970s

Vargas Llosa, Mario "The Feast of the Goat" (Spanish: La fiesta del chivo) - 2000
1960s