#ThrowbackThursday. May 2014

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 May 2014.

Christie, Agatha "Poirot Investigates" (Hercule Poirot #3) - 1924 

Monsieur Poirot is one of my favourite characters in any crime series, past or present. 

Dallaire, Roméo "They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers" - 2010
If you are interested in what is going on (mainly) in Africa and would like to know what can be done for a hopefully peaceful future, read this book. Roméo Dallaire fights a great fight and needs all the support he can get.

Fowles, John "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" - 1969
A lovely story. A love story in the Victorian era between a man and a married woman. Quite a lot to talk about. This is one of the rare occasions where I liked the movie better, maybe because of its great actors.

Lindgren, Astrid "Seacrow Island" (Translation: Vi på Saltkråkan) - 1964 
One of my favourite stories by Astrid Lindgren besides "The Six Bullerby Children". Similar as in that story, there are a couple of families in Sweden with children of the same age.

Lindgren, Astrid "The Six Bullerby Children" (Swedish: Barnen i Bullerbyn) - 1947

Next to "Seacrow Island", my favourite story by Astrid Lindgren. This is a trilogy about six children who live in the little village of Bullerby, Lisa,

Mann, Thomas "Death in Venice" (German: Der Tod in Venedig) - 1912
This book is about a dream and the hope of its fulfillment. It is a story of defeat but also of love. It is as actual as it was a hundred years ago when it was written. Maybe one of the most actual books written on the subject of homosexuality.

Nafisi, Azar "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books" - 2003 

A beautifully written memoir about a dark time. It is not just a book about different books and a class discussing them, it is a precise account of a country turning from modern times into the past, taking away the human rights of half of their population, something that happens all over this world.

Tartt, Donna "The Goldfinch" - 2013

The book is a wonderful account of friendship and endurance. But it isn't a "happy" book, lots of difficulties occur in Theo's life. It is as much a dark book as an uplifting one.

Anonymous Comments

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Colours

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.

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

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This week’s topic is Colours. 

Now, this was an easy one. I could have found a lot more than just five books this week but I kept it with the main colours. And I think I found a large variety of very different books here.

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

Apparently, this novel is "one of the four pinnacles of classical Chinese literature." Also known as "The Story of the Stone", it is said to be the first Chinese novel of this kind and has created an entire field of study "Redology".

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Half of a Yellow Sun" - 2006

I totally can relate to the quote "The world was silent when we died." I don't think many of us knew where Biafra was. Here we can learn about it.

Hajaj, Claire "Ishmael's Oranges" - 2014

A book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like so many other books about the people of Palestine, it can only touch the surface of what is going on. Therefore, we need to read as many books about this as possible and pass them on. 

Montgomery, L. M. "Anne of Green Gables" - 1908
An orphan girl is taken in by a childless couple and she really loves both her new parents as well as the school and the neighbours and everything but still gets into a lot of trouble all the time. The novel is both humorous as well as serious.

Vreeland, Susan "Girl in Hyacinth Blue" - 1999

The main subject of the novel is a fictitious painting by Vermeer. It describes its life, starting with the last owner. A lot of interesting stories, every important timeframe is included and the change of owner is almost every time highly dramatic.

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🌈 Happy Reading! 🌈

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Gappah, Petina "Out of Darkness, Shining Light"

Gappah, Petina "Out of Darkness, Shining Light" - 2019

Of course, we all know about David Livingstone's search for the source of the river Nile. It is also widely known that his heart was buried in Africa and his body in Europe. This is the story, told by two slaves, how the body got from the middle of Africa to the sea so that he could be transferred to Great Britain.

Two different people tell the story, a women who is employed as a cook. Her story is pretty African, she uses far too many words that the average Europen will not understand. Granted, there is a small annex with explanations but you have to use that far too often and it destroys the enjoyment of any story. Then there is a guy who wants to become a priest. He is preaching already. All the time. Almost every second sentence starts or ends with "dear Lord" or something similar. He comes across as a religious fanatic. Reading the Bible is more wordly.

Have you guessed it already? I didn't like the book.

There was only about one sentence that made me smile. When someone told the other slaves about the meeting between Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone, he translated the first sentence (Dr. Livingstone, I presume?) into: "It can only be that you are Bwana Daudi."

We discussed this in our international online book club in July 2025.

Comments from the members:

• The start of the book felt slow, and didn't feel pulled into it for the story so much until the murder plot unwound. It was a really nice read though in terms or history and culture. The discussion we had resulted into talking and thinking about African history, slavery, imperialist influences, death rites... The characters in the story were also really distinct. I feel a bit smarter about African history for having read it.

• Many in the book club agreed that the language, particularly the religious tone and African dialects, made the beginning difficult to follow. However, as the story progresses, the plot becomes more engaging, especially with the focus on the African slaves who carried Livingstone’s body. Their journey is central to the book, and the contrast between their lives and Livingstone’s European legacy opens up important discussions about colonialism and the erasure of African voices in history. Some felt the religious elements were repetitive, but they were seen as integral to understanding the mindset of the time. Despite the slow start and challenging style, many found the novel’s exploration of historical and cultural themes thought-provoking.

• Overall it was a really good discussion book, because we have read some books about African history and by African authors before, it always becomes an interesting part, looking at the books we have read, and how the new books align in with those. In that sense this felt like quite a good book to add to the list.

From the back cover:

"This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone - and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country.

This is the story of those in the shadows of history: the  dark companions who saved a white man's bones on an epic funeral march - little knowing his corps carried the maps that sowed the seeds of their continent's colonisation and enslavement.

This is the story of how human bravery, loyalty and love can triumph over darkness - and the result is Petina Gappah's radical masterpiece."

Book Quotes

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones." Umberto Eco 

The man is so right.

"Books have a sense of honor. Once you've lent them, they never come back." Theodor Fontane 

Does that mean we shouldn't lend books? I love discussing books with others and often, the only way to do this is to lend them mine.

"I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil." Voltaire 

Some people should be made aware of that. But those are usually the ones who don't read in the first place and don't want to get people to get ideas or be smart. (And yes, I'm referring to a certain president who is proud to be dumb.)

Find more book quotes here.

#ThrowbackThursday. April 2014

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 April 2014.

Busch, Wilhelm "Max and Moritz" (German: Max und Moritz) - 1865

A german classical children's book. The two boys are very mischievous, anything young boys would like to do they do. But in the end they get punished hardly. 

Calvino, Italo "Why Read the Classics?" (Italian: Perché leggere i classici?) 1991

If you enjoy reading classic literature, this is a great way of getting a list of worthwhile books to read and maybe getting a glimpse of what it might be.

Pamuk, Orhan "Snow" (Turkish: Kar) - 2002

Ka is a Turkish poet who lives in Germany but visits a town in Turkey called Kars. While he is there, they have a heavy snowfall and nobody can leave or enter the town. The Turkish name for snow is "kar". What a coincidence!

Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" - 2005

The author describes not just the life of his great-uncle and his Jewish wife, he describes his own life, he describes the life and death of ordinary people during the holocaust as well as the terrible fate of the Jews. But he also describes life in India pre- and post independence. Quite an undertaking.

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Directions

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 Books with Directions in the Title. 

Directions. I had to think about the compass rose and the cardinal directions immediately. So, North, South, East, West it is.

Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930
This is history, life in Asia seen through the eyes of an American. The title already tells us about the divide between the East and the West, how people believe that they cannot be mixed. 

Gaskell, Elizabeth "North and South" - 1854/55
This novel tells the story of Margaret Hale whose father leaves the ministry because he has doubts about his belief. They move from the South of England to a place in the North, from a village to a town, a lot of things change for the protagonist.

Guterson, David "East of the Mountains" - 1999
What does a surgeon do who suffers from terminal illness and knows what is about to happen to him?

Remarque, Erich Maria "All Quiet on the Western Front" (GE: Im Westen nichts Neues) - 1928
One part of this book tells us about the war, the trenches, the fights, the cold, the dampness, the rats, the bad food, seeing the friends fall one after the other, worrying you might be next ... The protagonist has a home leave in between and his rendition of the visit with his family and him being in turmoil because it is a different life and he is a different person, it tells us a lot about what those soldiers went through when they survived, what soldiers still go through today. They are never the same again.
This contributed to me becoming a life-long pacifist.

Steinbeck, John "East of Eden" - 1952

The author talks about problems as old as mankind, he retells the story of Cain and Abel. An excellent report about growing up, growing in different directions, about good and evil, young and old, a very moving story.

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⬅⬇⬆➡ Happy Reading! ⬅⬇⬆➡

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