Spell the Month in Books ~ May

          
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.

May: Nature

I'm not the biggest nature lover but I absolutely love trees. So, I tried to find some that have the word tree in the title. Unfortunately, I haven't read a book called "Yew Tree", so I had to use a cover that shows trees on it.

MAY

M
Montefiore, Santa "Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree" - 2002
The descriptions about life in South America, Argentina, in this case, are not bad but the whole story is mainly a cheesy love story.


A
Grjasnowa, Olga "All Russians Love Birch Trees" (GE: Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt) - 2012
The protagonist is a young Jewish woman who grew up in Azerbaijan and speaks several languages. She goes from Germany to Israel where she tries to settle. Her home could be everywhere, yet, she finds it is nowhere.

Y
Scott, Mary "Yes, Darling" - 1967
Mary Scott was one of my favourite authors in my teenage years. The stories were written in the fifties/sixties and times have changed, hopefully. Margaret, the heroine of our story, lets herself being bullied all her life. First by her father, then her husband and in the end by her husband's daughter and nieces. I think this might actually be a good book to discuss feminism and how it shouldn't be.

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I definitely recommend the Birch Tree book.

Happy Reading!

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#ThrowbackThursday. Fateless

 

Kertész, Imre "Fateless or "Fatelessness" (Hungarian: Sorstalanság) - 1975

The author is a Holocaust survivor, in fact he was in two of the major concentration camps and as such has a lot to tell about his history. He tells the life of a fifteen year old boy who grows up in Hungary during World War II. We see the Nazi regime and the concentration camps through the eyes of a child who doesn't know anything else. This is his life.

Read my original review here.

Happy May!

  Happy May to all my friends and readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch

"Frühling an der Steilküste von Klein Zicker"
"Spring on the Cliffs in Klein Zicker"

Frank says to this picture:
"It's always exciting to paint landscapes on the Baltic Sea in plein air, to feel the wind and the sun on your skin and to experience how the Baltic Sea waves crash onto the beach."
"Es ist immer wieder spannend Landschaften an der Ostsee plein air zu malen, den Wind und die Sonne auf der Haut zu spüren und zu erleben, wie die Ostseewellen an den Strand laufen."

Read more on their website here. *

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There is a German folk song called "Der Mai ist gekommen". (May has arrived/come.) It tells us more or less to not stay at home with worries because the treses are budding and the world is wonderful.

If you are interested, here is the song on Wikipedia.

 

And most Germans take that song to heart and go on a "Maitour", a walk or a bike tour on the first of May which also happens to be a bank holiday. Tag der Arbeit = Labour Day.

 
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We had an early excursion, we went to Bremerhaven with my brothers and their wives. We try to do a siblings outing once a year and have seen many interesting places so far. Here is a picture:

Bremerhaven is not too far from us. It is located at the Weser estuary and belongs to the city-state of Bremen. With 115,000 inhabitants it is only #69 of the largest cities in Germany but it is one of the busiest ports in the country.

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The old German word for May is Winnemond. "Winne" was the name given to driving the cattle out to pasture.

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

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🌳🌳 I wish you all a Happy May!🌳🌳

Read the Year 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, 1937 was picked. For more information, see Simon @ Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy @ Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings.

1920
Undset, Sigrid "Kristin Lavransdatter" (NO: Kristin Lavransdatter) - 1920-22
1924
Mann, Thomas "The Magic Mountain" (GE: Der Zauberberg) - 1924
1925
Hemingway, Ernest "In Our Time" - 1925
1929
Kästner, Erich "Emil and the Detectives" (German: Emil und die Detektive) - 1929
1930
Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930
1936
Mitchell, Margaret "Gone With the Wind" - 1936
1937
Orwell, George "The Road to Wigan Pier" - 1937
1938
Herbert, Xavier "Capricornia" - 1938 
1940
Stein, Gertrude "Paris France" - 1940
1944
Brecht, Bertolt "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" (GE: Der kaukasisiche Kreidekreis) - 1944-45
1947
Camus, Albert "The Plague" (F: La Peste) - 1947
1951
Greene, Graham "The End of the Affair" - 1951
1952
Christie, Agatha "The Mousetrap" - 1952
1954
Thomas, Dylan "Under Milk Wood" - 1954
1956
Mahfouz, Naguib "Palace Walk" (arab: بين القصرين/Bayn al-qasrayn) (Cairo Trilogy #1) - 1956
1961 
Rawls, Wilson "Where the Red Fern Grows" - 1961
1962
L'Engle, Madeleine "A Wrinkle in Time" - 1962
1965
Scott, Mary "Freddie" - 1965
1968
Dick, Philip K. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - 1968
1970
Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye" - 1970
1976
Ditfurth, Hoimar von "Der Geist fiel nicht vom Himmel: Die Evolution unseres Bewußtseins" [The mind did not fall from the sky: the evolution of our consciousness] - 1976
1977
Vargas Llosa, Mario "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (E: La tía Julia y el escribidor) - 1977

I also have a list of "A Century of Books" where I list a book of every year of the century, if I read one.

I have only participated in the years where I included a link under the year. However, I have read books from most of those years and have added at least one for those who are interested in reading a book from that specific year.

You can find all the challenges so far on Simon's page Stuck in a Book under 'Read the year' Clubs.

#ThrowbackThursday. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" (Italian: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore) - 1979

One of the most weird - but also most interesting - books I ever read, a reader is trying to read a book called "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller". The book is partly about the reader's life and partly about the books he is trying to read.

One of my favourite books ever.

Read my original review here.

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Cheese

    

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 Cheese. Apparently, "somewhere in the world it is National Grilled Cheese month… I know, right?! So, you can take this any way you want. Either shout about some books with great jokes (cheesy or otherwise), or go straight down that literally path of cheesy goodness."

I am lactose intolerant. If you've been sick from anything containing lactose, you don't really like neither the smell nor the tast of it, so I have never liked cheese. And I don't like cheesy stories, either. However, I came up with a few books that fit the description.

Clarke, Stephen "Merde actually" (aka In the Merde for Love) - 2006
Well, the French are known for their cheese, right?

Drinkwater, Carol "The Olive Farm" - 2001
A farm in the South of France? Again, they eat a lot of cheese here.

Johnson, Dr. Spencer "Who Moved My Cheese?" - 1998
The name is in the title.

Prelutsky, Jack "A Pizza the size of the Sun - Poems for Children" - 1990-2000
Most people believe there has to be cheese on a pizza. However, the original one just had leftovers on it, could be cheese, could be something else.

Spyri, Johanna "Heidi" (GE: Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre + Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat) - 1880/81
They definitely talk about making cheese here, Heide moves in with her grandfather in a hut in the mountains and they have a lot of goats.

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🧀Happy Reading!🧀

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Hyde, Catherine Ryan "When I found you"

 

Hyde, Catherine Ryan "When I found you" - 2009

A member of my book club mentioned she really liked the books by Catherine Ryan Hyde. I had never heard of her before, so she lent me one of her titles.

It looks like Mrs. Hyde is a very diligent writer because she has published 24 books sind 1997, this being her eleventh.

A lot of topics are touched in this book. Not that it makes it superficial or anything, the whole story is very touching and the different topics float into each other perfectly. Abandonment, foster care, professional sports, early love, late love, poverty. You would think with all those subjects, it is more a chick lit type of book but it was not. I quite liked it.

From the back cover:

"When Nathan McCann discovers a newborn baby boy half buried in the woods, he assumes he's found a tiny dead body. But then the baby moves and in one remarkable moment, Nathan's life is changed forever.

The baby is sent to grow up with his grandmother, but Nathan can't forget him and is compelled to pay her a visit. He asks for one simple promise - that one day she will introduce the boy to Nathan and tell him, 'This is the man who found you in the woods.'

Years pass and Nathan assumes that the old lady has not kept her promise, until one day an angry, troubled boy arrives on his doorstep with a suitcase . . ."