Book Quotes of the Week

"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere." Jean Rhys

"Good fiction creates its own reality." Nora Roberts

"I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book." J.K. Rowling

"The world was hers for the reading." Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
 
"Every time we read to a child, we're sending a 'pleasure' message to the child's brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure." Jim Trelease

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Scott, Mary "Turkey at Twelve"

Scott, Mary "Turkey at Twelve" - 1968

Another enjoyable reread of Mary Scott's stories about Susan and Larry, the farmer wives from New Zealand. This is book number five from the series of eight.

This time, Susan and Larry have to worry about the same things we still worry about today, all the work a public holiday brings. How many people will feed on a turkey? How much dessert do we need? How many drinks? And where, oh where will the whole family sleep?

Not only that, they also have to listen to an unmarried relative who knows so much better how to lead a household or raise kids than our two friends. How times have not change at all. Will these kind of people ever die out? I doubt it.

Anyway, as always, this story is both funny and nice. A feel good read.

This is the ffith book in the series by Mary Scott And this is the list of all of them:
"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

Unfortunately, they are out of print and only available second hand. I have heard in the meantime, that you can buy some of them as ebooks, i.a. "A Change from Mutton"

From the back cover: "Turkey At Twelve. The back blocks of New Zealand are once again the background for this latest novel by Mary Scott."

Book Quotes of the Week

"Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you." Harold Bloom

"A good book has no ending." R.D. Cumming

"Books make great gifts because they have whole world inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!" Neil Gaiman

"Books are the ultimate dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back." John Green

"Reading can be dangerous." Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

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McCullough, Colleen "The Thorn Birds"

McCullough, Colleen "The Thorn Birds" - 1977

I read this book years ago, shortly after the mini series came out in 1983. However, I am sure that I read it in German at the time because I wasn't able to get English books that easily back then. Or at all.

I wanted to reread the novel for ages and now I finally achieved that.

I think we can easily call this book an epic saga. The story of the Cleary family over two generations coming from New Zealand to Australia in the early Twenties of the last century and also moves to London and Rome. But the main story is told in New Zealand, how a family settles in a strange country and goes through all the hardships you can imagine.

The story touches almost every topic you can imagine, well, there are over 700 pages, so there is space for a lot of drama. It is so well written. The characters come alive in a way that makes you feel you know them personally. You fear with them, you rejoice with them. You feel sorry for them when something bad happens. And there is plenty of bad stuff to happen to a family like that but there are also some quite unexpected parts, roads this story takes that you don't think it would.

I especially loved it because it shows the hardships people went through when settling in a new continent. Even though the Clearys were not the first settlers, there was still a lot to overcome, both in New Zealand as well as in Australia. Some things we should not forget nowadays where all these countries have all the modern facilities imaginable.

Anyway, if you love chunky books and would like to read about Australia, this is a wonderful book, whether you have seen the series or not. Read it. You won't regret it. Maybe it's time to get the DVD out again, as well.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover: 

"Treasured by readers around the world, this is the sweeping saga of three generations of the Cleary family. Stoic matriarch Fee, her devoted husband, Paddy, and their headstrong daughter, Meggie, experience joy, sadness and magnificent triumph in the cruel Australian outback. With life’s unpredictability, it is love that is their unifying thread, but it is a love shadowed by the anguish of forbidden passions. For Meggie loves Father Ralph de Bricassart, a man who wields enormous power within the Catholic church…

As powerful, moving, and unforgettable as when it originally appeared, THE THORN BIRDS remains a novel to be read…and read again."

Book Quotes of the Week

"Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms." Angela Carter

"You will be transformed by what you read." Deepak Chopra

"A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book comples you to reread your own soul." Richard Flanagan in "The Narrow Road to the Deep North"

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time." Carl Sagan

"Books are open doors to other dimensions where everything is possible and nothing is forbidden." Danny Tyran

Find more book quotes here.

Montgomery, L. M. "Anne of Green Gables"

Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) "Anne of Green Gables" - 1908

Can you believe that I have never read Anne of Green Gables? Of course, I have heard of it. But it was not a very well known book in Germany when I was little, at least I don't think so, and later I didn't really come across it, either. But I have a couple of Canadian friends who often asked me whether I have read the book or not. And I always had to say "no". So,I thought it was time to read it.

I don't think I have to tell many people about the book. 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.

A good book for children of all ages but I am sure everyone enjoys rereading it as an adult, as well. I definitely enjoyed reading it as an adult for the first time.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Everyone's favorite redhead, the spunky Anne Shirley, begins her adventures at Green Gables, a farm outside Avonlea, Prince Edward Island. When the freckled girl realizes that the elderly Cuthberts wanted to adopt a boy instead, she begins to try to win them and, consequently, the reader, over."

Gaarder, Jostein "Sophie's World"

Gaarder, Jostein "Sophie's World" (Norwegian: Sofies verden) - 1991

This is not a book you will want to read within a couple of days. There is a lot of information in this book. We could call it a philosophy class. Granted, this book has been written for young people. But there is a lot in it for us older folks, as well.

Sophie is a 14 year old girl who receives mysterious letters from a philosopher unknown to her. He teaches her about one philosopher after the other,  Even if you just look at the book for this, it is a good achievement. We learn a lot about many philosophers and their philosophies, their language and the development how we (Westerners) look at this world today. And Sophie is not called Sophie by chance, philosophy means "love of wisdom".

The story around Sophie itself is just as philosophical. Who are we really? And what happens to the characters in the books we read? Jostein Gaarder might not have created the greatest story ever written but he certainly has given us food for thought.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie’s World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: 'Who are you?' and 'Where does the world come from?' From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning - but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined."