Quotes on being Woke

I came across some quotes about being woke lately. And since I am a proud "Wokonian", I just had to put them all together. In most cases, I have no idea who said them first, so if you are or know the originator, please, let me know.

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Originating from African American English, "woke" was first used to mean being aware, informed, and conscious of social injustices and racial inequality.

I found that woke is a professional word for enlightened, multiculturally sensitive. aware, conscious, evolved, inclusive, politically correct. leftist, liberal, progressive. And the opposite would be "slept" or "fell asleep". So, what's wrong with it?

Some people use the word "woke" as if it's supposed to be an insult.
But mostly, they use it because they can't spell "empathetic", "educated", or "enlightened".

Woke = well-informed, up-to-date and alert to injustice in soiciety, especially racism.

Woke = aware, knowledgeable about your community and the world, with the willingness to access and critique systems of oppression.

Proud to be woke - It sure beats being willfully ignorant and racist.

If woke is the opposite of fascist, I am superwoke.

Wokery: a term hi-jacked by the far right to demonise the following values and characteristics, amongst others:

•     Compassion for and empathy with others.
•     Love of truth/facts and hatred of lies/gaslighting and manipulation.
•     Support for social, economic and climate justice.
•     Support for human rights.
•     Anti-corruption/nepotism/cronyism.
•     Respect for and compliance with the rule of law.
•     Upholding democracy and the democratic process.

In other words, people who give a sh*t for more than themselves and who want society to work for the good of all and to leave the world a better place.
(found here on West Country Voices).

10 Symptoms of Woke Mind Virus:
1. You read books, and don't burn them.
2. You embrace science.
3. You are willing to change your mind when new information becomes available.
4. You understand that most issues aren't black and white.
5. You belive in true equality for all people.
6. You like to share.
7. You embrace cooperation.
8. You respect others' rights.
9. You believe culture and arts has value.
10. You care for the planet and all of its life.

If you know more, please, feel free to share. If you disagree, please, think again!

✊☮😴☮✊

Adkins, Roy & Lesley "Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England"

Adkins, Roy & Lesley "Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England: How our ancestors lived two centuries ago" (aka "Jane Austen's England) - 2013

Part of my #Reading Austen project is to read a book by the author in the uneven months and a book about the author and/or her books in the even ones. This is my October read.

And it was a very interesting and detailed book. We get several maps right at the beginning where we cannot just see where Jane Austen lived during her lifetime but also some other contemporary characters with a similar background. Something that always adds to the explanations in any book, fiction or non-fiction.

But it's not only that. They explain how the pounds, shillings and pennies were divided, how the weights and measurements were calculated, all those nitty-gritty bits that are in the books of that time but not explained because the readers would have known what it was. The same as what it meant when someone had £10,000 pounds a year. 

They tell us everything about weddings at the time, about the aristocracy and who was who, education was as much talked about as what was going on in home and kitchen. The fashion of the time (of which we read a lot in Jane's books) is described, the religion, work and hobbies, crimes, illnesses, just everything that was important to the people of the 19th century.

So, if you want to know more about Jane's life, this is the book for you.

From the back cover:

"Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking for love. Yet the comfortable, tranquil country that she brilliantly devised is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. For twenty-nine of Jane Austen's forty-one years, the country was embroiled in war.

Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England of that time. Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray fascinating aspects of the daily lives of ordinary people, from forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this book eavesdrops on the daily chore of fetching water, the horror of ghosts and witches, Saint Monday, bull baiting, sedan chairs, highwaymen, the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets and the horrors of surgery without anaesthetics.

Giving a voice to these forgotten people and revealing how they worked, played and struggled to survive, Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England is an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining."

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Books based on a true story

 

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.

Unfortunately, Meeghan has not posted anything for a while. If anyone knows what has happened to her, please, let me know.

And here is a list of all the topics for the rest of the year.

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This week’s topic is Books based on a true story.

I always try to find some not so well known books and hope I detected some that most of you don't know, yet. And I found three translations. But in any case, they are all worth discovering.

Brooks, Geraldine "Caleb’s Crossing" - 2011

Droste-Hülshoff, Annette von "The Jew's Beech" (GE: Die Judenbuche) - 1842 

Green, Hannah (Joanne Greenberg) "I Never Promised you a Rose Garden" - 1964

Levi, Primo "If Not Now, When?" (I: Se non ora, quando) - 1982

Noa Bercovitch, Pascale "The Dolphin’s Boy: A Story of Courage and Friendship" (F: Oline, le dauphin du miracle) - 2000

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📖 Happy Reading! 📖

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Andrew, Sally "Recipes for Love & Murder"

Andrew, Sally "Recipes for Love & Murder. A Tannie Maria Mystery" - 2015

I don't really read many crime stories but we love watching them. Hubby found this gem on TV, a newspaper columnist in South Africa who loves to cook and shares all her recipes in order to help people. Her recipes sound so great and there is even a cookbook. Unfortunately, it's only availabe in South Africa and they don't ship abroad. If one of my readers lives there or has connections, please, let me know. I'd love that book.

Anyway, Tannie Maria is a very active woman who can stand up for herself. And she has to prove that as her town is chased by an evil killer. Together with her two (female) colleagues, she hunts the hunter.

A lovely gripping murder mystery.

On page 250, there is an important comment for which I am very grateful. "… most doctors … don't even bother to test for lactose allergy. The truth is many people can't digest lactose properly and in some this develops into a severy allergy. It may worsen with age, ..." There is more but I think this is enough to show of the severity of lactose intolerance. I suffer from it heavily and often peole just laugh about it. I always say, if you ever had Gastroenteritis, imagine you get that every time you only have food with a little lactose. You would avoid it like the plague. Unfortunately, many restaurants and especially cafés don't cater for that at all. I am always happy if they at least offer vegan food, that is alright for me.

From the back cover:

"Meet Tannie Maria: A woman who likes to cook a lot and write a little. Tannie Maria writes recipes for a column in her local paper, the Klein Karoo Gazette.

One Sunday morning, as Maria savours the breeze through the kitchen window whilst making apricot jam, she hears the screech and bump that announces the arrival of her good friend and editor Harriet. What Maria doesn't realise is that Harriet is about to deliver the first ingredient in two new recipes (recipes for love and murder) and a whole basketful of challenges.

A delicious blend of intrigue, milk tart and friendship, join Tannie Maria in her first investigation. Consider your appetite whetted for a whole new series of mysteries ..."

Book Quotes

"To hear the classics as a distant echo…" Italo Calvino in "Why Read the Classics?"

That's a good allegory. As if the past resonates within us.

"A book in your hand can be a real lifeline - when the sea of life is too rough, you cling to stories and let them bring you to safety." (Ein Buch in der Hand kann ein echter Rettungsanker sein - wenn die See des Lebens zu rau ist, klammert man sich an Geschichten und lässt sich von ihnen in Sicherheit bringen.) Jasmin Schreiber in "Marianengraben" [Mariana Trench]

This book deals with death and how we deal with it - or not. The quote is one of the best to show us how books can help us get through the difficult parts of life.

"One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by." Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle 

Aren't we lucky to live in an age where we don't have that problem?

Find more book quotes here.

Hemingway, Ernest "In Our Time"

Hemingway, Ernest "In Our Time" - 1925

I chose this book because the year 1925 was given for our Read the Year challenge. A whole century ago. I had read a few books from that year already, so the choice was not exactly limited but there wasn't a single book on my wishlist that would fit the challenge. So, I went for an author that I like and that I wanted to read more from.

Had I chosen it if I'd been aware that this is a collection of short stories? Probably not. Granted, they were linked with each other, somehow. But it still wasn't enough to really grip me.

However, this was his first publication and we can see a lot of topics that will come up in his later work. Having read some of those helped.

So, not my favourite of his books.

Book Description:

"A strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut.

When In Our Time was first published in 1925, it was widely praised for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and earned Hemingway a place among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories 'Indian Camp' and 'The Three Day Blow', and introduces readers to the hallmarks of the Hemingway a lean, tough prose, enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic. His writing suggests, through the simplest of statements, a sense of moral value and a clarity of vision.

Now recognized as one of the most important short story collections of twentieth-century literature, In Our Time provides key insights into Hemingway’s later works."

Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in 'The Old Man and the Sea' and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style".

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

Find all my Read The Year books here.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Labyrinth

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Travel Inspiration

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.

Unfortunately, Meeghan has not posted anything for a while. If anyone knows what has happened to her, please, let me know.

And here is a list of all the topics for the rest of the year.

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This week’s topic is Travel Inspiration.

I have read a lot of travel books since I love travelling. You can find them all here. For this challenge, I have used some unusual ways of travelling to some unusual destinations. I know I will never be able to do a trip like that anymore but I always love reading about them and I hope it gives someone an idea where to go next.

So, with these books, we travel to several parts of South America, to Oceania, Pakistan, Egypt, India, Kenya, Middle East, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Travel, Zimbabwe and India, Italy, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and through various centuries.

Kehlmann, Daniel "Measuring the World" (GE: Die Vermessung der Welt) - 2005 

Milton, Giles "Nathaniel's Nutmeg" - 1999

Mortenson, Greg "Three Cups of Tea" (with David Oliver Relin) - 2006

Newsham, Brad "Take me with you" - 2000

Trojanow, Ilijya "The Collector of Worlds" (GE: Der Weltensammler) - 2006 

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📖 Happy Reading! 📖

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Hammond, Richard "As You Do"

Hammond, Richard "As You Do: Adventures With Evil, Oliver And The Vice President Of Botswana" - 2008

I have always loved Top Gear and espcially Richard Hammond, "The Hamster" (see his book On the Edge). The adventures the guys had in their show, they were always hilarious albeit very scary.

Here, Richard Hammond has written about his race to the North Pole with a dog-driven sled against his friends in a car - with a lot of preparation beforehand (Polar Special, also known as the Polar Challenge). And about his trip through Africa in a car that he bought right there and kept later on because he had named it (Ollie) and you cannot sell a car with a name. LOL.

And there are other stories in the book, how he rescued some friends who were stuck in their house in the flood in Gloucestershire. And how he met Eviel Knievel, a guy I never was interested in and am even less after reading about him, even though he was one of the author's heroes.

In any case, this was a very interesting book with lots of funny scenes, almost like watching Top Gear. And it was an easy yet still worthy book to read.

From the back cover:

"The wry, honest and often hilarious chronicles of a very brave and clever TV presenter, Arctic Explorer and general drawer of the Short Straw. 

As one third of the BBC's Top Gear team, Richard Hammond's year since his near-fatal accident has been full of stunts and drama. From a race to the North Pole (with skis and dog-sled) to a journey through Botswana in a car named Oliver, and a seventeen-mile run through floods to his Gloucestershire home, in order to get to his daughter's birthday party, the year has been eventful, to say the least . . .

With his boundless optimism in the face of certain failure, Richard Hammond has become one of our funniest writers about a life (and a job) which constantly present a challenge."

#ThrowbackThursday. September 2015

I've been doing ThrowbackThursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. So, I listed more than one Throwback book every week. Now, I have reached the ones I posted ten years ago and will probalby just post one every month. These are my reviews from September 2015. 

Hislop, Victoria "The Sunrise" - 2014 

A story about Famagusta, a town in Eastern Cyprus, that goes deep and shows how stupid any war is. People live their ordinary lives. They go to work, they go home. They love their families, they love their lives. Then the invasion. 

Lawson, Mary "Road Ends" - 2013

I like the author for her realistic description of the characters and their actions. 

An interesting story, not just about young Megan who leaves Canada for England but also and especially about the family she leaves behind, her father, brother, but mostly her mother. A story about mental illness in a time where that was such a taboo, people wouldn't acknowledge it anywhere.

Levithan, David "Every Day" - 2012

An interesting book. Not especially my genre. But an interesting concept about a "being" who is somebody different every day. Well written, certainly deserves to be a best-seller, especially for the "young adults" it has been written for because it poses so many questions that every teenager goes through. Who am I?

McCarthy, Pete "The Road to McCarthy: Around the World in Search of Ireland" - 2002

The author of "McCarthy's Bar" gives us another tale of his travels, this time from Ireland to Morocco, New York, the Caribbeans, Tasmania. A hilarious book by a funny writer who left us all too early.

Titchmarsh, Alan "Trowel and Error" - 2002
The presenter of "Ground Force" and "Gardener's World" writes about his life. He writes the way he talks, he is the same nice guy from next door as he is in his programmes. And listening to his story, you understand why that is the case.

Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890

I think that there is a lot about Oscar Wilde in Dorian Gray. The novel certainly raises many questions and gives everyone a lot to think about. How shallow are we really? How vain? And what would we swap for eternal beauty?

Boyd, William "On the Yankee Station" - 1981

Boyd, William "On the Yankee Station" - 1981

Several people recommended William Boyd to me lately. And I had found one of his books in a used book sale. So, I decided to tackle this.

This is a collection of short stories about teenagers, young people, students, boarding school, murderers, all about people completely dissatisfied with their lives.

Short stories have never been my favourite and this book certainly didn't convice me otherwise. Please, if you have read his short stories and his novels and think the novels are so much better, tell me, otherwise this would be the last I have read of his stories.

From the back cover:

"Adolescent sex in a Scottish boys' public school ... Oddballs on the seedy side of America ... Murder in a quiet Devon cottage ... Comical, ironical or lacerating - wit is the keynote of these stories, which include two early adventures from the career of Morgan Leafy, glorious anti-hero of William Boyd's prize-winning novel 'A Good Man in Africa'.

Wiliam Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives.

From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in 'The Coup'" In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimaets the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction's finest storytellers."

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Translations

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.

Unfortunately, Meeghan has not posted anything for a while. If anyone knows what has happened to her, please, let me know.

And here is a list of all the topics for the rest of the year.

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This week’s topic is Translations.

It's often very tempting to go with the same books and authors that I used before because they are my favourites. However, I have tried this time to only use titles I never mentioned before and have started with the oldest ones I reviewed.

As you can see, I have chosen books translated from Russian, Swedish, German, Turkish and Finnish. I am looking forward to seeing what other readers have chosen.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor "The Adolescent" (RUS: Подросток) - 1875 

Fredriksson, Marianne "Simon and The Oaks" (aka Simon's Family) (S: Simon och ekarna) - 1985 

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

Pamuk, Orhan "A Strangeness in my Mind" (TR: Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık) - 2014

Waltari, Mika "The Secret of the Kingdom" (SF: Valtakunnan salaisuus) - 1959

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📖 Happy Reading! 📖

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The Classics Club: The Classics Spin #42

"Words and Peace" is a blog I've been following for a couple of years and I have always found some interesting new (or old) books there, especially French ones.

On her page, I found the posts by "The Classics Club" asking us to create a post, this time before next Sunday 19^th October 2025, and list our choice of any twenty books that remain "to be read" on our Classics Club list. They'll then post a number from 1 through 20 and we have time until Sunday 21^st December 2025 to read it.

This time, I read two books from my old list (Classics Spin #41) ("Lysistrata"  and "Martin Chuzzlewit"). I do want to concentrate on a couple of books in the near future, so I have listed only ten books and repeated them. The books are all in chronological order.

1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I. Faust II" (Faust) - 1772-1808
2. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias) - 1848
3. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
4. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
5. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
6. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
7. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
8. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929
9. Cela, Camilo José "Der Bienenkorb" (The Hive/La colmina) - 1951
10. Plaidy, Jean "The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katharine Parr" - 1953
11. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I. Faust II" (Faust) - 1772-1808
12. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias) - 1848
13. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
14. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
15. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
16. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
17. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
18. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929
19. Cela, Camilo José "Der Bienenkorb" (The Hive/La colmina) - 1951
20. Plaidy, Jean "The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katharine Parr" - 1953

This is a great idea for all of us who want to read more classics. Go ahead, get your own list. I can't wait to see what I get to read this time.

This time, the number that has been picked is #17. That means for me:
Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.

And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.

Nobel Peace Prize 2025

Image by Florian Pircher from Pixabay

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year "to the person (or group) who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.".

There was a lot of talk and controversies about it this year, especially since one person in particular insisted he deserved it. (I won't mention his name, we all know who he is, anyway.) Thank you, Norway, for not giving in to the threats that were made.

Wikimedia

The Nobel Peace Prize 2025 was awarded to María Corina Machado, member of the Venezuelan National Assembly "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

See also my list of Nobel Peace Prize Winners.

Congratulations!

The 1925 Club

This book challenge takes place twice a year and concentrates on one year and one year only. I call it "Read the Year Club". This time, 1925 was picked. For more information, see Simon @ Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy @ Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings (here is Karen's invite and here is Simon's). If you are looking for inspiration, there are a few books from that year that I read already:

de Man, Herman "The Growing Water" (NL: Het wassende water) - 1925

Feuchtwanger, Lion "Jew Suss" (GE: Jud Süß) - 1925
Fitzgerald, F. Scott "The Great Gatsby" - 1925

Ford, Ford Madox "Parade's End" (Tetraology: Some Do Not - 1924, No More Parades, 1925, A Man Could Stand Up 1926, Last Post 1928) - 1924-28
H., A. "My Struggle" (Notes by some megalomanic who thought he could rule the world, GE: M. K.) - 1925/26

Mandelstam, Ossip "The Din of Time" (RUS: Шум времени/Shum vremeni) - 1925

Wodehouse, P.G. "Carry On, Jeeves" - 1925

Woolf, Virginia "Mrs. Dalloway" - 1925

I also found some other ideas, if you are looking for more:
Christie, Agatha "The Secret of Chimneys"

Dos Passos, John "Manhattan Transfer"

Dreiser, Theodore "An American Tragedy"
Gorky, Maxim" The Artamonov Business" (RUS: Дело Артамоновых/Delo Artamonovykh)

Kafka, Franz "The Trial" (GE: Der Prozess)

Lewis, Sinclair "Arrowsmith"
Maugham, W. Somerset "The Painted Veil"
Stein, Gertrude "The Making of Americans"
Undset, Sigrid "The Master of Hestviken, vol. 1: The Axe" (NO: Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken)
Wells, H.G. "Christina Alberta's Father"

This challenge takes place from 20 to 26 October 2025.

I have picked a story by a fascinating author of whom I always wanted to read more:
Hemingway, Ernest "In Our Time" - 1925

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Book Series

"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 Book Series

I have read a lot of series, tetralogies, trilogies (see links), or at least the first one(s) of them. So, it wasn't all that easy to find only ten but I managed in the end. I liked all these book series and have read most of them completely. I have always put the picture of the first one of the series here but listed all the books I read in that series.

Ackroyd, Peter "The History of England, Vol. 1 Foundation" - 2011
- "The History of England, Vol. 2 Tudors" - 2012 
- "The History of England, Vol. 3 Civil War" - 2014
- "The History of England, Vol. 4 Revolution" - 2016

- "The History of England, Vol. 5 Dominion" - 2018

- "The History of England, Vol. 6 Innovation" - 2021

Drinkwater, Carol "The Olive Farm" and further Olive Farm Books - 2001-2010
- "The Olive Harvest" - 2006

Follett, Ken "The Evening and the Morning" (Kingsbridge #0.5) - 2020

- "The Pillars of the Earth" (Kingsbridge #1) - 1989
- "World Without End" (Kingsbridge #2) - 2007

- "A Column of Fire" (Kingsbridge #3) - 2017

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

Ingalls Wilder, Laura "Little House Books" - 1932-71

Little House in the Big Woods (1932)

Farmer Boy (1933)

Little House on the Prairie (1935)

On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)

By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939)

The Long Winter (1940)

Little Town on the Prairie (1941)

These Happy Golden Years (1943)

On the Way Home (1962)

The First Four Years (1971)

McCall Smith, Alexander "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" Series 1-9 *
- "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (1) - 1999
- "Tears of the Giraffe" (2) - 2000
- "Morality for Beautiful Girls" (3) - 2001
- "The Kalahari Typing School for Men" (4) - 2002
- "The Full Cupboard of Life" (5) - 2004
- "In the Company of Cheerful Ladies" (6) - 2004
- "Blue Shoes and Happiness" (7) - 2006
- "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive" (8) - 2007
- "The Miracle at Speedy Motors" (9) - 2008
- "Tea Time for the Traditionally Built" (10) - 2009
- "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" Series #11-17 - Mma Ramotswe Serie
- "The Double Comfort Safari Club" (11) - 2010
- "The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party" (12) - 2011
- "The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection" (13) - 2012
- "The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon" (14) - 2013
- "The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café" (15) - 2014
- "The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine" (16) - 2015
- "Precious and Grace" (17) - 2016

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Shadow of the Wind" (E: La sombra del viento - El cementerio de los libros olvidados #1) - 2001
- "The Angel's Game" (E: El juego del ángel - El cementerio de los libros olvidados #2) - 2008
- "The Prisoner of Heaven" (E: El prisionero del cielo - El cementerio de los libros olvidados #3) - 2011
- "The Labyrinth of the Spirits" (E: El laberinto de los espíritus - El cementerio de los libros olvidados #4) - 2016

- "The City of Mist" (E: La Ciudad de Vapor - El cementerio de los libros olvidados #5) - 2020

Scott, Mary "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 

Stroyar, J.N. "The Children's War" - 2001
- "A Change of Regime" (The Children's War #2) - 2004
- "Becoming Them" (The Children's War #3) - 2017

Trollope, Anthony "Barchester Chronicles": The Warden - 1855; Barchester Towers - 1857, Doctor Thorne - 1858, Framley Parsonage - 1861; The Small House at Allington - 1864; The Last Chronicle of Barset - 1867

Weir, Alison "Six Tudor Queens. Katherine of Aragon. The True Queen" - 2015
- "Six Tudor Queens. Anne Boleyn. A King's Obsession" - 2017
- "Six Tudor Queens. Jane Seymour. The Haunted Queen" - 2018

- "Six Tudor Queens. Anna of Kleve. Queen of Secrets" (US Title: The Princess in the Portrait) - 2018
- "Six Tudor Queens. Katheryn Howard. The Tainted Queen" (US Title: The Scandalous Queen) - 2020 
- "Six Tudor Queens. Katharine Parr. The Sixth Wife" - 2021
- "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" - 1991

📚 Happy Reading 📚

Vreeland, Susan "The Passion of Artemisia"

Vreeland, Susan "The Passion of Artemisia" - 2002

I read "Girl in Hyacinth Blue" by this author a couple of years ago and really loved it. I always wanted to read something else by her. Now, I came across this book and it's about a female paper from the Baroque period. I had never heard of Artemisia Gentileschi even though I love art. Typical, women are never acknowledged much.

To start, I really like the note by the author. She mentioned that any work of fiction about history or a historical character ist still a work of imagination, not of reality. Based on known evidence, she spins her story. She used actual works of the artist and actual occurrences. I loved that.

Her style or writing is very vivid. Her descriptions are very detailed. We could see how people at the time lived, what were their hopes and fears. How did the church impact their lives?

Through this novel, I got to know a wonderful woman, a keen and gifted painter who struggled with the constrictions of the time but who nonetheless created some beautiful art.

I will look for more books by Susan Vreeland. Let me know if you've read one.

From the back cover:

"From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition, life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she wanted, and paid a high price."

Six Degrees of Separation ~ I Want Everything

Dominic Amerena

"I Want Everything" - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation:
from I Want Everything (Goodreads) to Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? 

#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 "I Want Everything" by Dominic Amerena. As usual, I haven't read the starter book. This is the description of the novel:

"You all know this, of course, but years and years ago, acclaimed Australian novelist Brenda Shales went missing. After two explosive, controversial books that would shape the literary canon of the country for decades to come — and that terrible legal scandal about plagiarism, of course — she was simply gone. 

That was, right up until a frustrated young writer sees an elderly woman swimming at his local pool in Melbourne. She looks familiar…very familiar in fact. No. It couldn’t be. Stunned, he returns home to confirm the impossible truth; it’s Brenda Shales, now in her old age and stranded in a retirement home. He’s determined to pursue her, to discover what happened to her all those years ago, and to possibly fulfil his dreams of literary stardom through a tell-all biography. But when he finds her, a case of mistaken identity and Brenda’s own terrible secrets begin to derail his ambitions, and ultimately, his entire life.

From brilliant debut novelist Dominic Amerena, I Want Everything is a wickedly sharp story of desire and deception, authorship and authenticity, and the devastating costs of creative ambition."

This was a nice title to find connections through words. I like that because it usually gives us a lot of different topics rather than all the same books. And I often get books I don't use so often otherwise. So we start with: I Want Everything

Bryson, Bill "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - 2003
The title is so true. There is so much information in this book, I wish my science teachers would have been half as informative and concise as he is, I learned more from this book than I did in years of trying to learn just a little about this subject.

Tartt, Donna "The Secret History" - 1992

A very impressive story hat will probably stay with me forever. A group of students does 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.

Grenville, Kate "The Secret River" - 2005
The story of William Thornhill, whose main crime was to be born into absolute poverty in a time where there was no way out of it, where people were forced to become criminals in order to feed their families and, when caught, sent to a foreign country, a country so remote that the voyage there was one of no return. 

Tademy, Lalita "Red River" - 2007
The author tells the story of her father's ancestors that came all the way from Egypt as free men only to be turned into slaves in the States. The story begins after the Civil War when the slaves have officially been freed but white supremacists don't want to accept that, so there is still a long struggle ahead of them.

Xueqin, Cao (Cáo Xuěqín) "Dream of the Red Chamber/The Story of the Stone" (CHN: 红楼梦/Hung lou meng) - 1717-63

This novel has semi-autobiographical sides, it is said that it shows not just the rise and fall of the author's family but also that of the Qing Dynasty. It teaches us a lot not just about everyday Chinese life in the 18th century, but also their culture, religion, science, art and literature. Really captivating. Certainly one of the most informative books I have read about Ancient China, and I have read quite a few.

Dick, Philip K. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - 1968

I always wondered about this weird title. The story is primarily about a bounty hunter in a dystopian world. After a nuclear global war damaged the earth tremendously, there are hardly any animals left. Or humans. So, the survivors have to create a new world.
The film "Blade Runner" is based on this novel.

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Is there a connection between the starter book and the last one? Maybe this: The Androids dream of everything, they want everything. That's about the closest I can get.

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Spell the Month in Books ~ October 2025

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.

October: Trick or Treat – Books that you feel strongly about, whether positively or negatively

Even if I don't like a book, I prefer to list books that I liked. There are always people who loved a book I loathed. So, have you read any of these and did you like them as much as I did?

OCTOBER

O

Obama, Barack "Of Thee I Sing" - 2010

This is one of the cutest picture books I have seen. Every page adds a new example of a person who is an ideal for as all. There is Martin Luther King jr., Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, but also Helen Keller, Billie Holiday and many, many fabulous people who do their bit in order to make this world a better one.

Barack Obama wrote this for his daughters when they were little. It shows how much he loves not just his own children but people in general.

C

Frazier, Charles "Cold Mountain" - 1997

I have read this book several times. This is all about the American Civil War, about love, struggles in bad times, companionship. But it doesn't just show the life of people during the Civil War, it seems to be a never ending description of life. I think it is a great novel that will live on and be read for generations.

T

Rowlatt, Bee & Witwit, May "Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship" - 2010

Two very different women form a friendship via e-mail, a young British journalist, mother of three little girls and a middle-aged Iraqi woman who is desperately trying to leave her country during the war. 

O

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (RUS: Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича/Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha) - 1962/63

We always hear about the Gulag, the prisoners who sent to Siberia and have to work there etc. But we never really know what is going on there, what the work is like, how the prisoners are kept.

Unless we read about the one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, starting the instant he opens his eyes in the morning until he closes them again in the evening.

And once we read it, we understand why this writer was awared the Nobel Prize for Literature.

B

Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (GE: Buddenbrooks) - 1901

This is definitely one of my most favourite books of all times.

The novel, an epic story, dates from 1901 and describes the life in a wealthy merchant family over several decades from the 1800s until the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is based on the author's own family who lived in Lübeck.

E

Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930

I love the way Pearl S. Buck can explain the life in China, life in China during her lifetime, of course, I am well aware that it has changed a lot again. She has a wonderful way of explaining the Chinese way, almost in parables.

R

Bryson, Bill "The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island" - 2015

My favourite book by my favourite travel writer so far was "Notes from a Small Island", a book about the country we both love so much: Great Britain.

Then he did it again, he travelled around the island and wrote about the different kind of landscapes, people, funny encounters.

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Happy Reading!

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