Wordless Wednesday ~ Peace

Alphabet Authors ~ Z is for Zweig

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.

This is the last letter in my alphabet. I had no problem whatsoever to choose the author. Stefanie Zweig is one of my favourite authors ever, she has written so many great novels with quite some different backgrounds, all of them part of her life.

Zweig, Stefanie "The House in Rothschild Lane" (GE: Das Haus in der Rothschildallee) (Familie Sternberg #1) - 2009 
- "The Children in Rothschild Lane" (GE: Die Kinder der Rothschildallee) (Familie Sternberg #2) - 2009
- "Coming Home to Rothschild Lane" (GE: Heimkehr in die Rothschildallee) (Familie Sternberg #3) - 2010
- "A New Start in Rothschild Lane" (GE: Neubeginn in die Rothschildallee) (Familie Sternberg #4) - 2010
- "A Mouthfull of Earth/Soil" (GE: Ein Mundvoll Erde) - 1980
- "Home was Nowhere. My Life on Two Continents" (GE: Nirgendwo war Heimat. Mein Leben auf zwei Kontinenten) - 2012
- "It started back then in Africa" (GE: Es begann damals in Afrika) - 2004
- "Nowhere in Africa" und "Somewhere in Germany" - 1995+1996 * Book Club Questions - Nowhere in Africa - Somewhere in Germany (GE: Nirgendwo in Afrika + Irgendwo in Deutschland) - 1942
- "Owuor's homecoming" (GE: Owuors Heimkehr) - 2003
- "The Dream of Paradise" (GE: Der Traum vom Paradies) - 1999
- "Reunion with Africa" (GE: Wiedersehen mit Afrika) - 2002 

Facts about Stefanie Zweig:

Born    September 19, 1932 in Leobschütz, Upper Silesia
Died    April 25, 2014 in Frankfurt/Main (aged 81)

Her Jewish family fled to Kenya in 1938 when she was five years old. After the war, her father was offered the position of a judge in Frankfurt and they "returned" to Germany. Stefanie Zweig became a journalist and wrote first children's books and later many others. A lot of her works are based on her own life as a Jew both in Africa and in Germany. Her most successful book "Nowhere in Africa" was made into a film and received an Oscar for best foreign language movie.

Find here all my German reviews.

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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.

Osman, Richard "We Solve Murders"

Osman, Richard "We Solve Murders" - 2024

I absolutely loved Richard Osman's first books because I do love him as a person and also got to love him as an author, So, I was quite happy, when my son gave me this for Christmas.

If this was a movie, this would be an action thriller rather than a murder mystery. I love watching murder mysteries (though I don't read them much) but I really don't like action movies. Far too loud for me.

I must say, this was almost the same with this book. I heard people complain about his first books that there were too many characters and that you did confused. Well, if you got confused with the first lot, this one will certainly not do for you. It took me quite a while to even understand who was who and what they were up to. My book has 464 pages and I think I got into the story at around page 200. Far too late and I would have given up if it weren't for the author.

There is some humour in this book but not the humour I am used to from Richard Osman. Such a pity.

From the back cover:

"Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?"

#ThrowbackThursday. October 2013

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 post more than one Throwback every week. These are my reviews from October 2013.

Basti, Abel & van Helsing, Jan "Hitler in Argentina" (GE: Hitler überlebte in Argentinien) - 2011
A great and interesting book, whether you believe the authors or not. According to their research, Hitler survived the end of the far and fled to Argentina.

Bernières, Louis de "Birds Without Wings" - 2004
Greece and Turkey at the beginning of the last century with a lot of information about their history, a great addition to Victoria Hislop's "The Thread" which I read earlier.

Binet, Laurent "HHhH" (F: HHhH) - 2010

German subtitle: "Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich". The translation: "Himmler's Brain is called Heydrich". The story is not about Hitler or Himmler but about Reinhard Heydrich, a high ranking German Nazi officer and Jozef Gabčík, a Slovak soldier, and Jan Kubiš, a Czech solider and their "Operation Anthropoid" whose goal was Heydrich's assassination.

Civardi, Anne; Cartwright, Stephen "Things People Do" - 1986
Little kids just love the illustrations of animals and people in all sorts of jobs and activities. When they get older, they love the humour behind the names. 

Collins, Wilkie "Armadale" - 1866
Like in his other books, the author partly lets his characters tell his different characters tell the story, either through their letters or their diaries. It takes us from the deathbed of an old man in Germany to various other places in Europe but is definitely an English novel through and through.

Guterson, David "Ed King" - 2011
This is the story of Ed King as well as his parents and foster parents, a child born out of wedlock at a time where this was definitely not possible to raise a child alone without the support of anybody. You only notice to the very end that you know the story already and I am not going to reveal here what I mean but if you read any other description

Pamuk, Orhan "Silent House" (TR: Sessiz Ev) - 1983
Turkey in the late 20th century. Three siblings, a sister and two brothers, visit their grandmother who lives outside of Istanbul. Everyone seems to have their own problems. 

Alphabet Authors ~ Y is for Yousafzai

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.

Y is not a letter with many authors but I knew immediately which person I wanted on this list, even if she only wrote one book - so far.

Yousafzai, Malala

- "I am Malala. The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban" - 2013 (with Christina Lamb)

Facts about Malala Yousafzai:
Born    July 12, 1997 (age 27), Mingora, Swat, Pakistan 

Married Asser Malik 2021

In 2012, she was shot because she opposed Taliban restrictions on female education in her home country of Pakistan. She has since become an international symbol of the fight for girls' education.

She has received numerous international awards for her work.

Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi  received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." She is the youngest laureate in history

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

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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.

Hornby, Gill "Miss Austen"

Hornby, Gill "Miss Austen" - 2020

As I mentioned before, 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, and I want to do read something Austen-related by her in between.

In April, I read a German book by Catherine Bell, "Jane Austen und die Kunst der Worte" [Jane Austen and the Art of Words].  I was not impressed, I probably read too much about Jane Austen before and this one could have been written by any Jane Austen fan without doing any more research. Such a pity.

Mind you, "Miss Austen" wasn't all that much better, only a little. The Miss Austen mentioned in the title is not Jane but her sister Cassandra. We hear about her last self-given task, the intention to destroy the letters her sister had written that contained something Cassandra didn't want anyone to know, that would look bad on her sister's legacy. But, since those letters were destroyed, we don't know what it contained and the author just invented them.

I don't like people writing a sequel to a book where the original author died. I never did and I doubt I ever will. So, I guess my next book about Jane Austen (in August) will be a non-fiction again.

From the back cover:

"1840 : Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury.

She knows that, in some corner of the vicarage where she is staying, there is a cache of letters written by her sister Jane.

As Cassandra recalls her youth, she pieces together buried truths about Jane's history - and her own ; secrets which should not be revealed.

And she faces a stark choice : should she act to protect Jane's reputation?

Or leave the letters unguarded to shape her legacy..."

The Classics Club: The Classics Spin #41

"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 15^th June 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 24^th August 2025 to read it.

This time, I read only the one book from my old list (Classics Spin #40) ("Madame Bovary"). 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. Aristophanes "Lysistrata and Other Plays" (Lysistrata) - 411BC
2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I" (Faust) - 1772-1808
3. Dickens, Charles "Martin Chuzzlewit. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" (Leben und Abenteuer des Martin Chuszlewit) - 1843-44
4. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias) - 1848
5. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
6. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
7. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
8. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
9. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
10. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929
11. Aristophanes "Lysistrata and Other Plays" (Lysistrata) - 411BC
12. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I" (Faust) - 1772-1808
13. Dickens, Charles "Martin Chuzzlewit. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit" (Leben und Abenteuer des Martin Chuszlewit) - 1843-44
14. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias) - 1848
15. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
16. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
17. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
18. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
19. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
20. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929

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 #11. That means for me:
Aristophanes "Lysistrata and Other Plays" (Lysistrata) - 411BC

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.

Six Degrees of Separation ~ All Fours

Miranda July
"All Fours" - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation: 
from All Fours (Goodreads) to Big Mouth & Ugly Girl 

#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 "All Fours" by Miranda July. I guess it's no news to you that I haven't read this book. That only happens once in a blue moon.

This is the description of this novel:

"An irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious, and surprising novel about a woman upending her life

A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive."

I usually like going from one word in a title to another book that has that same word in their title and so on. In the past months, I couldn't do that, so I had to go with the subject. I prefer this one because it leads to all sorts of different genres. But they both have its attraction. Let's see what you think.

Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See" - 2014 
Anthony Doerr managed to write a different kind of war story, a story about the little people, on either side of the war, those that had not much to say about what was happening to them and who paid the highest price. He tells the story of a German orphan boy and a blind French girl who both suffer from what happened, who were probably not even in school when the election in Germany decided about their fate and who had to pay the highest price.

Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here" (GE: Was man von hier aus sehen kann) - 2017
This was such a lovely book, a story of a small village where everyone sticks together, no matter how hard it is sometimes, where everyone looks after everybody else, whether they like them or not. A great description of a functioning small community. The novel has been described as "warm". Yes, it is that but it is so much more. It's a love story as well as a philosophical quest, a coming of age story as well one about old age.

Bryson, Bill "Neither Here Nor There. Travels in Europe" - 1991
If you know Europe, it's an interesting tour to take with an outsider, if you don't know Europe, you can discover it with this book.

Tsumura, Kikuko "There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job" (Konoyoni tayasui shigoto wa na/この世にたやすい仕事はない) - 2015

A young woman goes from one job to the next. Jobs that don't seem to require any special experience or talents. Or is that so? The more we get to know the protagonist, we get to recognize that she has a lot of talents and uses them well to go through her various tasks.

Perry, Matthew "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" - 2022
Matthew Perry opens up, he tells us everything about his life. This is a great book for those trying to understand this illness.

Oates, Joyce Carol "Big Mouth & Ugly Girl" - 2003
This is about two young people at a school where someone has to stand up for what's happening. the learn that it's your personality that counts and that you should be true to yourself and to others. The two kids in this book learn this the hard way.

A journey back to our teenage years.

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There is a connection between the first and the last degree, they both talk about a boy and a girl and their problems to get on in life.

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Spell the Month in Books ~ June 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.

June: Summer Reading

Summer Reading Begins; use books you found at the library or see there now.

Well, there is not much to find in our libarary here, so I used books that are nice reads for the summer.

JUNE

J

Worsley, Lucy "Jane Austen at Home" - 2017

Jane Austen is a great read for any time of the year and this cover looks very summery, don't you think?

U

Mayes, Frances "Under the Tuscan Sun" - 1996

Tuscany, that already sounds like summer and is a place that many people like to visit then.

N

Bryson, Bill "Neither Here Nor There. Travels in Europe" - 1991
My favourite travel writer writes about his summer in Europe.

E

Austen, Jane "Emma" - 1816 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)

Emma, a book by Jane Austen. But in an Austen Year, I think we cannot mention her enough. Anyway, there is a great summer outing to Box Hill which is very important for the whole story.

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Happy Reading!

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#ThrowbackThursday. September 2013

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 post more than one Throwback every week. These are my reviews from September 2013.

Aleichem, Scholem "Tevye the Dairyman" (yidd: Tewje, der Milchiger טבֿיה דער מילכיקער, Jidd. und טוביה החולב, Hebr.) - 1894-1916

"Fiddler on the Roof" is one of my favourite movies and this is the original book. This is not just the story of Tevye and his wife Golde but even more that of their daughters Tzeitel, Hodel, Chawa, Shprintze, Teibel and Beijke. Every single one of them has their own story. I love the language in the book.

Awdry, Rev. Wilbert "Thomas the Tank Engine" - 1956-2011

A favourite book series ion our house has always been the story of the little trains in Wales.

"Thomas the Tank Engine" is a little locomotive that lives on the fictional Island of Sodor in Wales. He has a lot of friends who all have a certain character.

Clarke, Susanna "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" - 2004

It is a lot more a Grimm's fairy tale with a little bit of Victoriana mixed in than a JRR Tolkien kind of fantasy novel. It is also more an alternate history book with a lot of links to non-existing literature. It almost feels like a Dickens novel. Quite entertaining, actually.

Jacobsen, Roy "The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles" (NO: Hoggerne) - 2005 
It says in the description: "The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles' is not a novel about war, but about the lives of ordinary people dragged into war." True. I think that's what makes this novel so interesting. 

Scarry, Richard "What Do People Do All Day" - 1968 et al.

Richard Scarry is the author of many wonderful stories about the activities of people in Busytown. Busy little animals portray the busy little people in Busytown.

Alphabet Authors ~ W is for Walker

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 several authors I like who begin with the letter W (Mika Waltari, Jan Weiler, Colson Whitehead, P.G. Wodehouse) but I absolutely love Alice Walker and believe she deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature. Therefore, she is my author for the letter W.

Walker, Alice 

- "The Color Purple" - 1982
- "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" - 1983
- "Now is the Time to Open your Heart" - 2004
- "The Temple of My Familiar" - 1989
- "The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart" - 2000

Facts about Alice Walker:
Born    February 9, 1944 (age 81), Eatonton, Georgia, USA as Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker 

Married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal in 1967, they have one daughter (Rebecca who is also a writer) and divorced in 1976.

She received some honorary degrees and fellowships plus a lot of literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Color Purple". 

Besides being a brilliant author, she is also a social activist, i.e. for the Civil Rights Movement, animal activism and pacifism.

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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 5 Tuesday ~ Standalone books I wished were series

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.

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This week’s topic is a Standalone books I wished were series. Meeghan says, "his is the week for everyone who ever wished their standalone book had more books. Maybe even a long epilogue or novella after it. You know, a Mysteries or Thorn Manor style book. Or, even a Song of Fire and Ice style never-ending series?!"

I don't know any of the books Meeghan mentioned but I think we all have those stories that we would like to carry on ... There are a lot of them where I would love a second or more books but some of them have an end that doesn't allow for any continuation. But I found a few where that could be possible and I hope the authors will think about it at some point. 

Kingsolver, Barbara "Flight Behaviour" - 2012
A great book that reminds us of our duty to look after the environment. Would be a great series if we learned more about this subject.

Lawson, Mary "Crow Lake" - 2002
This reminded me so much about my childhood, there could be plenty more stories to be told.

Schami, Rafik "A Hand Full of Stars" (GE: Eine Hand voller Sterne) - 1987 
A wonderful story about growing up as well as about the situation in Syria. 

Seth, Vikram "A Suitable Boy" - 1993
It was announced in 2009 that there would be a sequel to this book "A Suitable Girl" but it still hasn't been published.

Stockett, Kathryn "The Help" - 2009
I absolutely loved the book when it first came out. Then it became a bestseller. And a film. I am sure there are more stories in there about all the maids and all their employers.

So yes, there are plenty of books that could do with a follow-up. I'd read them.

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📗📘📙 Happy Reading! 📙📘📗

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Happy June!

 Happy June to all my Friends and Readers

New Calendar picture with this

beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch

"Kleiner Traumfänger"

"Little Dream Catcher"

Hanka and Frank say to this picture:

"Passend für den internationalen Kindertag und die ersten Sommertage haben wir Hankas Kinder Aquarell gewählt."

"To mark International Children’s Day and the first days of summer, we chose Hanka’s children’s watercolor."

This is an absolutely beautiful painting. We can all dream with the little girl and her bubbles.

Read more on their website here. *

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May had some weird weather. We didn't have any rain until the very end, everything was getting too dry and the farmers started to lament. We felt like it was summer already and had some lovely days outside, walking, putting on the barbecue, and an outing with my brothers and their wives. We visited the sensory gardens of a spice producing and importing company. They have 500 different types of plants in gardens from around the world. Lovely place.

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And I was really happy to meet a blog friend, Eva, who happened to pass through the area on her visit to her family in Germany. It was so lovely to get to know her and find out that she was just as nice as on her blog. We both said we were exactly as whe had imagined each other.

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This month, I want to introduce you to a German saying:

"Die Kirche im Dorf lassen"

This means literally "to keep the church in the village".

Processions from the Catholic churches used to marched through the village. But if the village was too small, they marched "with the church around the village." So, leaving the church in the village meant not being so pompous and exaggerated.

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As it is Jane Austen year, I am re-reading a book by her every other month. This month, it was "Mansfield Park" - 1814 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen). It is not her most popular one and hardly anyone mentions it as their favourite by Jane Austen. But it is definitely a great book.

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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 very Happy June! 🐞