Here are my #ThrowbackThursday reviews from May 2016.
Aboulela, Leila "The Kindness of Enemies" - 2015 Such an interesting book. A lot about history and also a lot about current politics. A woman with a Russian mother and Sudanese father who lives in Scotland and researches the life of a 19th century Muslim leader. What's not to like?
The author has a special way of telling a story, a quiet, almost dreamy way. I think the author is one of the best ones German language writers at the moment.
After having lost his wife, Philipp Perlman hosts a linguistics conference in Italy. While there, he reflects on his life and notices that he has lost all his willpower to go on. We follow him in his endeavour to find a reason for getting out of his predicament.
Mitchell, David "Cloud Atlas" - 2004 An interesting book. Quite different from anything I've read before. It's almost like several short stories in one book, only they do belong to each other.
Oates, Joyce Carol"The Man Without a Shadow" - 2016 This story captivates you from the first page and doesn't release you until the last page has been turned. We get to learn the characters all so well, their thoughts, their hopes, their ambitions, their wishes for the future. Only, that for one of them in this novel there is no real future, it always ends after seven minutes. One of the two main characters suffers from amnesia, the other one is a scientist who studies his brain in particular and thereby hopes to find more insight into the human brain in general.
A heartfelt memoir by a woman who was a good and kind person, who wanted the best for everybody. After her father died, she struggled to keep up his apple farm, more or less on her own. What a tough life, quite hard work, even for a man it would have been hard.
Honeyman, Gail "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" - 2017
Eleanor Oliphant is definitely not fine. Saying that she struggles with social skills as they do in the description is quite an understatement. I am sure she has some sort of mental illness or suffers from an event that happened earlier in her life.
I had some trouble getting into the story or into Eleanor. I am very sociable, I always like to have lots of people around me and can talk to anyone who is only lightly inclined to respond. I am sure Eleanor would not appreciate me. And I don't want to intrude, so I guess I would speak a sentence with her and that would be it. I am sorry about that but that's just it. She doesn't really want to talk to anyone, right?
The story itself was quite interesting, though, how she meets this colleague who helps her getting acquainted with this world, the writing wasn't bad, either. But I couldn't warm to this story.
Two quotes that I completely agree with:
"... the front door of the hospital ... a woman in a wheelchair – she’d brought her drip out with her, on wheels, so that she could destroy her health at the same time as taxpayers’ money was being used to try and restore it."
I always get mad when I see people smoking in front of a hospital, especially just right outside a hospital where everyone has to pass, sick people, visitors ... Hospitals and its surroundings should be a smoke-free zone.
and
"Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe."
... or get your times-tables right or do anything that will get you somewhere in this life!
"Our book club had a very positive discussion about the book. Most members rated it highly, and one of the strongest shared reactions was how much our view of Eleanor changed as the novel progressed. She may initially seem rigid, socially awkward, overly formal, or emotionally distant, but by the end we felt genuine warmth toward her, were invested in her future, and sincerely wished her well.
A major part of the conversation focused on Eleanor’s neurodivergent traits and how they were portrayed. Given the nature of our group, this aspect of her character was immediately recognizable rather than speculative. Her literal thinking, reliance on routine, difficulty reading unspoken social norms, and unusual communication style all felt authentic to many readers. What interested us more was how these traits intersected with trauma, loneliness, and years of isolation. The novel was praised for allowing that complexity without reducing her to any single label.
Loneliness was another central theme in the discussion. Many readers felt the book captured a particularly modern kind of isolation: someone who is intelligent, employed, capable, and outwardly functioning, yet profoundly disconnected from other people. Eleanor is not excluded from society in any obvious sense, but instead seems to exist beside it, unable to fully participate. This subtle portrayal of loneliness resonated strongly with the group.
We also talked extensively about trauma, addiction, and coping mechanisms. Eleanor’s drinking was generally seen not as recklessness, but as a form of self-medication and emotional numbing. Her routines, detachment, and narrow life structure felt less like random dysfunction and more like survival strategies that had become fixed over time. Several members noted how realistically the novel shows pain becoming embedded in everyday habits.
Spoiler:
The revelation of the dead mother led to one of the most engaged parts of the conversation. Readers saw this as a powerful representation of how abuse can continue internally long after the abuser is gone. The mother’s voice remains active through criticism, shame, and control, shaping Eleanor’s life even in death. Many felt this was one of the novel’s strongest psychological insights.
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Relationships were another important topic. We appreciated that the story avoids a simplistic romantic rescue arc. Raymond was especially valued because his everyday kindness, patience, and consistency give Eleanor a model of safe human connection. Rather than dramatically 'saving' her, he helps create the conditions in which she can slowly begin to emerge from isolation and reconnect with life. Many readers felt this understated portrayal of friendship was one of the book’s greatest strengths. (I do agree there.)
Language and translation also became a particularly interesting part of the discussion. Some members read the novel in English, some in Finnish, and one in Russian, which allowed for direct comparison. Eleanor’s character is strongly shaped through voice: her formal diction, blunt literalism, unusual phrasing, and emotional reserve. We discussed how each translation inevitably influences how readers perceive her. The portrayal of the mother was especially interesting here, since tone, cruelty, manipulation, and emotional pressure can shift subtly depending on language.
We also discussed the novel’s balance of humour and pain. Eleanor’s voice often creates comedy through precision, bluntness, and social mismatch, yet beneath that humour lies real emotional suffering. Many readers felt the book handled this contrast skilfully, allowing warmth and sadness to coexist without either feeling forced.
Overall, the group agreed that Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is an intelligent, humane, and emotionally perceptive novel. It succeeds not only as a story of trauma and recovery, but as a reminder that people who seem merely difficult, odd, or distant are often carrying far more complexity than others realise. The fact that Eleanor ended as someone we genuinely cared about was, for many of us, the clearest sign of the book’s success."
Book Description:
"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . ."
Top Five Tuesday was originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, but is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. To participate, link your post back to Meeghan’s blog or leave a comment on her weekly post. I found this on Davida's Page @ The Chocolate Lady.
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 Authors. A while ago, I made a list of many of my favourite authors (see here) and could easily choose ten of them. But I thought it would be more fun to present some German authors. I think everyone knows that I love authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Günter Grass, Thomas Mann, but I thought I'd introduce you to some contemporary German authors that are all worth reading. Not all of their books have been translated but there is at least one from all of them.
Unfortunately, Jana seems to have disappeared and has not given us any new subjects. So, I've decided to come up with the last books I read that started with the letters I need.
#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.
I have never heard of this book, or even this author. So, no surprise that I haven't read the starter book. But, here is the description:
"A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.
Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together."
Since today we have a word that leads me to another book, I shall go back to the good old system of using words (which I haven't been able to do since November 2025). I like it because I can come up with lots of different topics.
"The Cliff on the South Beach of Sellin in Spring"
Frank says to this picture:
"Es macht immer wieder Spaß, an der Ostsee direkt am Strand zu malen. Einfach mit den Füßen im Stand zu stehen, dem Rauschen der Wellen und den Möwen zuzuhören, die Sonne und den Wind auf der Haut zu spüren."
"It's always a pleasure to paint right on the beach at the Baltic Sea. Simply standing with my feet planted on the sand, listening to the sound of the waves and the seagulls, feeling the sun and the wind on my skin."
I can imagine how beautiful it must be to spend a day on the beach painting - if the weather plays along. I love being at the beach, the air is just wonderful.
We just happened to go to an open air museum that has three different kinds of windmills, depending on which part of the construction is moving.
We haven't been to the beach last month, but we were able to see a beautiful windmill in a small open air museum in Bad Zwischenahn.
If you haven't seen enough windmills for today, I did a collage of some last year in May (see here). Seems like this is the month for windmills.
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Since we find more and more people like that nowadays, I will choose this German word of the month:
Schubladendenken
I checked whether there is an English translation for that and found pigeonholing and stereotyping. I think I prefer the latter. We are talking about narrow-mindedness, bigotedness, blindness, ignorance, obstinacy. Haven't we all lost friends we thought were nice people until they let out their political thinking?
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This month was the first time in years that I didn't finish a book. A friend had lent it to me and I told her I didn't like another one I had read by that author but I would try this. It was even worse. No more books by Ian McEwan.
