May, Karl "Through the Desert"

May, Karl "Through the Desert" (German: Durch die Wüste aka Durch Wüste und Harem) - 1892 

Karl May is a famous German author who wrote books about half the world without ever having travelled there himself. I have seen several of his stories as a play and on televeions but had never read any of his books even though my husband has most of them since his childhood. A couple of friends convinced me that I really should give them a try. And I did.

This is the first of his many books, the Arabian ones. He is also famous for his Native American exploits where we meet the famous Chief of the Mescalero tribe of the Apache, Winnetou.

In the Arab countries, the author calls himself Kara Ben Nemsi (Karl, son of the Germans) in this book. He travels with his friend and assistant Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawuhd al Gossarah through half of Afrika and Arabia and meets several explorers or other adventurers as well as many local tribes and their leaders. It is a typical adventure story but we learn a lot about the people from the time, the Islam religion and the languages used in that part of the world. Contrary to his North American stories, he has visited the Middle East and seems to draw a lot from his experiences there.

A real adventure story, very worth reading.

From the back cover:

"Karl Friedrich May was one of the best selling German writers of all time, noted mainly for books set in the American Old West, (best known for the characters of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand) and similar books set in the Orient and Middle East. In addition, he wrote stories set in his native Germany, in China and in South America. May also wrote poetry and several plays, as well as composing music; he was proficient with several musical instruments. May's musical version of 'Ave Maria' became very well known."

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Goals/Resolutions For 2014

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". 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.

January 7: Top Ten Goals/Resolutions For 2014 (bookish, not bookish or a blend)

I don't really have any real resolutions. My first resolution for the year is to write 2014 instead of 2013, the second one is to read.

However I have signed up for a few challenges. They give me the opportunity to read a lot of different kind of literature so I don't always stick with my favourites.

These are the ones I signed up for so far:

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014 
Postal Challenge 2014  
Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2014  
The Motherhood + Jane Austen Book Club   
What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge  

And I definitely want to read more Nobel Prize winners and further contribute to the blog Read the Nobels. 

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

What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge

What's in a Name 2014 Reading Challenge

I love to think about new books to read and don't normally struggle to find new books. However, I find that if I am given ideas by others, I often find some fantastic new authors and therefore I miss my book club that I had to give up for health reasons.

So, it is great to have the Internet to communicate with other readers. And some of them come up with some great ideas like Emma at Words and Peace.

These are her conditions:

Between January 1 and December 31, 2014, read one book in each of the following categories:

1.    A book with a reference to time in the title (Eleven Minutes, Before Ever After)
2.    A book with a position of royalty in the title (The People’s Queen, The Last Empress, The Curse Of The Pharaoh)
3.    A book with a number written in letters in the title (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, A Tale Of Two Cities)
4.    A book with a forename or names in the title (Rebecca, Eleanor & Park, The Unfinished Work Of Elizabeth D.)
5.    A book with a type or element of weather in the title (Gone With The Wind, Red Earth Pouring Rain)

The book titles are just suggestions, we can read whatever book that fits the category.

And here are my books:

Category 1:
Fo, Dario "My first seven years (plus a few more)" (also under #3)

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Midnight Palace" (El Palacio de la Medianoche)
Scott, Mary "Turkey at Twelve" (also under #3)

Category 2:
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "Der Fürst des Parnass" (El principe de parnaso)

Category 3:
Fo, Dario "My first seven years (plus a few more)" (also under #1)
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" (also under #4)
Scott, Mary "Breakfast at Six"
- "Turkey at Twelve" (also under #1)
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives"

Category 4 
Austen, Jane "Emma"
Berry, Wendell "Hannah Coulter"
Dickens, Charles "The Pickwick Papers"
Döblin, Alfred "Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf" (Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf)
Gaarder, Jostein "Sophie's World"
George, Margaret "Elizabeth I"
Joyce, James "Ulysses"
Mankell, Henning "Daniel"
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" (also under #3)
Montgomery, L.M. "Anne of Green Gables"
Nabokov, Vladimir "Lolita"
Nafisi, Azar "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
NDiaye, Marie "Rosie Carpe"
Nietzsche, Friedrich "Thus spoke Zarathustra"
Roth, Philip "Zuckerman Unbound"
See, Lisa "Peony in Love"

Category 5:
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky" (El mapa del cielo)
Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" 

I read:
three books in category 1: seven years, midnight, twelve (o'clock)
one in category 2: prince,
three in category 3: two, six, seven, (2x) twelve
15 in category 4: Anne, Antje, Berlin, Daniel, Elizabeth, Emma, Faber, Franz, Hannah, Hattie, (2x), Jesus, Lolita, Nero, Peony, Rosie, Sophie, Ulysses, Zarathustra
and two in category 5: snow, sky

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 2014

I have found another interesting challenge for me for the next year. "Around the World in 12 Books", initiated by the blog "Giraffe Days".

Granted, they have set various different levels - Level 1: "The Happy Camper" requires only two books, Level 2: "The Wayfarer" two more, so four, Level 3: "The Casual Tourist" wants six books - but the one I will be going for is Level 4: The Seasoned Traveller. The requirements for this level are as follows:

"The Seasoned Traveller doesn’t do anything by half-measures: they go the whole hog and the more obscure the better!
•    Read 12 books over the course of the year, each set in a DIFFERENT country
•    Books selected should include ones set in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia+New Zealand, North America and South America. The Middle East is a bonus.
•    You do not need to plan ahead but it might help you keep on track.
•    No re-reads
•    Any genre is okay (including non-fiction) BUT books MUST be set in a specific country or region with a noticeable attention to the location or environment; some genre books won’t be much use for this challenge."

This sounds very much like my cup of tea.

I will record the list of the books that fall under this category on this post as I read them. I look forward to finding some new ones from the various continents, hopefully also from countries I didn't read anything from before.

Africa
Namibia

Mankell, Henning "Daniel" (also Sweden)

Asia
China
See, Lisa "Peony in Love"  
India
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "The Midnight Palace"  
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" (also Germany and UK)
Iran
Nafisi, Azar "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books"
Israel
Wolff, Uwe "Wo war Jesus zwischen Karfreitag und Ostersonntag? Das Leben Jesu für unsere Zeit erzählt" [Where was Jesus between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? The Life of Jesus told for our time]
Myanmar/Burma
Sendker, Jan-Philipp "The Art of Hearing Heartbeats" (Das Herzenhören)

Europe
Finland
Lander, Leena "The Order" (Käsky) - Die Unbeugsame 
France
Harris, Joanne "Blackberry Wine"  
Ionesco, Eugène "Rhinocéros" (Rhinoceros)  
Germany
Borrmann, Mechtild "Der Geiger" [The Violinist]
Döblin, Alfred "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (Berlin Alexanderplatz)
Korschunow, Irina "Von Juni zu Juni" [From June to June]
Münk, Katharina "Die Eisläuferin" [The Ice Skater]
Nietzsche, Friedrich "Also sprach Zarathustra. Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen" (Thus spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None) 
Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" (also Turkey)
Roth, Charlotte "Als wir unsterblich waren" [When We Were Immortal]
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" (also India and UK)  
Stratmann, Cordula "Sie da oben, er da unten" [She up there, he down there]
Vermes, Timur "Er ist wieder da" (Look who's back) 
Greece
Hislop, Victoria "The Last Dance and Other Stories" 
Karystiani, Ionna "The Jasmine Isle" 
Woodhouse, C.M. "Modern Greece"
Ireland
Joyce, James "Ulysses""
Italy
Fo, Dario "My first seven years (plus a few more)"
Heller, Joseph "Catch-22"
Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice" (Der Tod in Venedig)
Sienkiewicz, Henryk "Quo Vadis"  
The Netherlands
Green, John "The Fault in Our Stars" (also US)
Linthout, Dik "Onbekende buren" [Unknown Neighbours]
Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" (also US)
Norway
Gaarder, Jostein "Sophie's World" (Sofies verden)
Portugal
Brizuela, Leopoldo "Lisboa. Un melodrama" [Night over Lisbon]
Russia
Borrmann, Mechtild "Der Geiger" [The Violinist] 
Münk, Katharina "Die Eisläuferin" [The Ice Skater] 
Scandinavia 
Byatt, A.S. "Ragnarok. The End of the Gods" 
Spain
Montagu, Ewen "The Man Who Never Was"
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "El principe de parnaso" [The Prince of Parnass]
Sweden  
Lindgren, Astrid "Seacrow Island"   
Mankell, Henning "Daniel" (also Namibia)
Switzerland:
Frisch, Max "Homo Faber" (Homo Faber)
Turkey
Pamuk, Orhan "My Father's Suitcase"
- "Snow" (also Germany)
- "The White Castle"
Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute"
United Kingdom
Aaronovitch, Ben "Moon over Soho"
Bryson, Bill "Shakespeare: The World as a Stage"
Christie, Agatha "Poirot Investigates"
Dickens, Charles "The Pickwick Papers""
George, Margaret "Elizabeth I"
Harris, Joanne  "Blackberry Wine" (also France)
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky"
Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" (also Germany and India)
Thackeray, William Makepeace "Vanity Fair, or, A Novel without a Hero"

Australia+New Zealand
Australia
Herbert, Xavier "Capricornia"
McCulloch, Colleen "The Thorn Birds"

North America
Canada
Montgomery, L.M. "Anne of Green Gables"
Shields, Carol "The Stone Diaries"  
Guadeloupe
NDiaye, Marie "Rosie Carpe" 
USA
Baxter, Charles "The Soul Thief"
Berry, Wendell "Hannah Coulter"
Bryson, Bill  "One Summer: America, 1927"
Burgess, Anthony "A Clockwork Orange"
Collins, Suzanne "The Hunger Games"
Eggers, Dave "The Circle"
Faulkner, William "Light in August"
Green, John "The Fault in Our Stars" (also The Netherlands)
Hunter, Stephen "Night of Thunder" 
Mathis, Ayana "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie"
Nabokov, Vladimir "Lolita"  
Roth, Philip "Zuckerman Unbound"
Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" (also The Netherlands)

South America

The Middle East

Extra-Terrestrial
Bradbury, Ray "The Martian Chronicles"

You can find more of the challenges I participate(d) in here.

Book Quotes of the Week

"Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself." Maxim Gorky

"Books may be the only true magic." Alice Hoffman

"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else." Nick Hornby

"Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light." Vera Nazarian

"The books that help you most are those which make you think the most." Pablo Neruda

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul." Joyce Carol Oates 

"Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens." Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations." Henry David Thoreau

Find more book quotes here.

Statistics 2013

Last year, I saw someone publishing statistics about the kind of books they read
I followed that idea and made my own list which you can see here.

And these are the results of my reading lists for 2013:

* Statistics 2013 *

Challenges
I took part in three online challenges,
Chunky: My final result is now 36 chunky books, 13 of them super chunky. I think I can easily say I have reached my "goal" of 8 and 3. ;-)
Piggybank:
I read 109 books which resulted in €218 for spend for something nice.
European:
21 books from the UK (of which 19 from England, 1 from Northern Ireland, 1 from Wales)
17 from Germany
6 from France and Spain/Catalonia
4 from Turkey
3 from Italy and Russia
2 from the Netherlands and Ukraine
1 each from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland

Books Read: 109
Pages read: 41,556 pages = 1134 pages/day

Books dating from which year:
Pre 1800s: 10
1800s: 5
1900-1949: 5
1950-1999: 31
2000s: 59 (5 of which from 2013)

Male Authors: 68
Female Authors: 399

Nobel Prize Winners: 8

Fiction: 85
Non-Fiction: 22

Chunky Books - more than 450 pages: 28, more than 750: 13
Oldest Book:
Homer "Odyssey" (Greek: Ομήρου Οδύσσεια, Odýsseia) - 800-600 BC
Newest Book:
Hosseini, Khaled "And the Mountains Echoed" - 2013
Longest Book:
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (Spanish: El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha/Don Quijote von der Mancha) - 1605/1615 - 1488 pages
Shortest Book:
Neville, Henry "The Isle of Pines" - 1668 - 26 pages
Funniest Book:
Rosendorfer, Herbert "Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit" (Letters Back to Ancient China) - 1983
Saddest Book:
Shriver, Lionel "We need to talk about Kevin" - 2003
Weirdest Book:
Kerouac, Jack "On the Road" - 1951
New author (for me) that I would like to read more from: Maria Barbal i Farré

Translated Books: 21
5 from Spanish
2 each from Catalan, Latin, Russian, and Turkish
1 each from Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
Books read in another language:
22 German, 5 French, 2 Dutch
Goal for next year: Just enjoy my books.
Numbers in Book Titles: 1, 451

Place Names in Book Titles:
America, Argentina (Argentinien), Atlantis, Bloomsbury Street, Charing Cross Road, Chinese, England, Germany (Deutschland), London, Paris, Rothschildallee, Russia, Shanghai, Utopia
Names in Book titles:
Cain, Cal, Charles Dickens, Don Quixote, Ed King, Egil, Elizabeth, Fahrenheit, Gebelawi, Heydrich, Himmler, Hitler, Jane Austen, Jesus, Jonathan Strange, Kevin, Lehmann, Marina, Maya, Miss Marple, Mr. Norrell, Ngono Mefane, Quixote, Rembrandt, Robinson Crusoe, Schindler, Tevje, Tristram Shandy, Zuckerman

My Favourite Books:
Allende, Isabel "Maya's Notebook" (El Cuaderno de Maya)
Bernières, Louis de "Birds without Wings"
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Преступление и наказание)
Ghosh, Amitav "River of Smoke" (Ibis Trilogy #2)
- "Sea of Poppies" (Ibis Trilogy #1)
Hanff, Helene "84 Charing Cross Road"
Hislop, Victoria "The Return"
- "The Thread"
Mann, Thomas "Der Zauberberg" (The Magic Mountain)
Palacio, R.J. "Wonder"
Palma, Félix J. "The Map of Time" (El mapa del tiempo)
Pamuk, Orhan "The Museum of Innocence" (Masumiyet Müzesi)
Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "Marina" (Marina)
- "The Prisoner of Heaven" (El Prisionero del Cielo)
Rutherfurd, Edward "Paris"

With my books, I visited places in the following countries:
Africa (5): Algeria, Cameroun, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia,
Asia (15): Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Israel, Laos, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria
Europe (23): Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom
North America (7): Canada, Carribean, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, USA
Australia/Oceania (1): Australia
South America (3): Argentina, Chile, Paraguay
Countries "visited" in total: 54

You may find some even greater statistics by better bloggers than me, for example at "Stuck in a Book" and "Ready When You are, C.B.".

Happy New Year

Wishing all my friends and readers

A Happy New Year

May you all find many good books to read and the time to get through them.

Best wishes
* Marianne *