Statistics 2020

 

My statistics for the last years are here:
Going back to 2009-12, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 

 

And these are the results of my reading lists for 2020:

* Statistics 2020 *
 

I read books that contributed to the following challenges. Some of them count for more than one category:

Challenges (number of books read for the challenges in brackets)
The 100 best Non-fiction Books of All Time as Chosen by The Guardian (0)

100 Books by the BBC (1)
100 Greatest Fiction Books as Chosen by the Guardian (2)
101 Best Selling Books of All Times (1)

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (3)
20 Classic and Important Books (1)
2020 TBR Pile Reading Challenge (26)
7 Books That Will Radically Shift Your Perspectives (0)
Anti-Racism Books (5)

Barack Obama Reading Lists (2)

Best European Literature (4)
Bildungsroman (3)
I'm sure I read more books in that direction but these are typical for this genre.
Book Bingo 2020 (10)
Books That Changed the World (0)
A Century of Books (1)
Children's Books (7)

The Classics Club (13): The Classics Spin (4)
4 for the Classics Spin, 13 in total

Dutch and French Books (7 French)

Esperanto Books (1)
Emma's Book Club - Our shared shelf (0)
An ever growing list of books about and for women, a group started by Emma Watson (better known as Hermione Granger), UN Woman Goodwill Ambassador.

Favourite (German) Independent Books (2)
(Das Lieblingsbuch der Unabhängigen = The Favourite Book of the Independents)
German Books (18)
Le Monde - The 100 Books of the Century (0)

Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century (0)

My Favourite Books Ever (16)
Every year I find some more books I can add to my list of favourite books. 16 this year.

Nobel Peace Prize (0)
Nobel Prize Winners and Their Books (7)
Oprah's Book Club (0)
Oscar Winning Books (2)
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2)
(German: Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels)
Reading Challenge - Chunky Books 2020 (18)
I read 18 chunky books in 2020 of which 7 are considered a chunkster.
Reading the World (1)
Suggestions from Friends (1)
The "Piggybank" Challenge 2020 (78)
The 78 books I read this year resulted in €156 to spend on something nice.
The non-western books that every student should read (0)

Top Ten Tuesday
I took part in 50 of the challenges, this is a great way of reminiscing or planning your reads.
Travel the World Through Books (1)
Twitterature (2)

Some of the challenges are older and I only add to them if I happen to read one of the books.

Book Club 2017 etc. (12)
Esperanto (1)
Here, we read mostly short stories.

Books Read: 78
Pages read: 30.650
393 pages/book, 84 pages/day, 6.5 books/month

The average novel contains between 140 and 320 pages, i.e. 230 = 133 books in 2020 (that's only one fewer than last year, somehow I had the feeling I hadn't read as much)

Books dating from which year:
Pre 1800s: none
1800s: 12
1900-1949: 12
1950-1999: 15
2000s: 45 (3 of which from 2020)

Male Authors: 48
Female Authors: 36
Both: 2

Nobel Prize Winners: 7

Fiction: 58
Non-Fiction: 27

Chunky Books - more than 450 pages: 18, more than 750: 7
Library: none
Re-Read: 1
TBR Pile: 26

Oldest Book: 1807
Staël, Anne-Louise-Germaine de "Corinne ou l'Italie" (Corinne: Or Italy/Corinna oder Italien) - 1807
Newest Book: 2019
Osman, Richard "The Thursday Murder Club" - 2020
Longest book: 1,168 pages
Undset, Sigrid "Kristin Lavransdatter" (Norwegian: Kristin Lavransdatter/Kristin Lavranstochter) - 1920-22
Shortest book: 64 pages
Hubbard, Fra Elbert "A Message to Garcia" (Nachricht an Garcia) - 1899
Longest book title: 41
Stelter, Bernd "Das Leben ist zu kurz, um schlechten Wein zu trinken" [Life is too short to drink bad wine] - 2004
Shortest Book Title: 5
Rutherford, Edward "Sarum: the Novel of England" (Sarum) - 1987

Funniest Books:
Kaminer, Wladimir "Mein deutsches Dschungelbuch" [My German Jungle Book] - 2003
Wodehouse, P.G. "Right Ho, Jeeves" - 1934
Saddest Book:
Thomson, Mike "Syria's Secret Library" - 2018

New author (for me) that I would like to read more from: 12
Cathleen Booth, Erika Fatland, Maxim Gorky (Максима Горького), Evelyne Hespel, Shappi Khorsandi, David Malouf, Benjamin Myers, Richard Osman, Delia Owens, Ayn Rand, Helen Russell, P.G. Wodehouse

Translated Books:
Translated Books: 13 from 6 languages
3 from Norwegian
2 from Polish, Russian, Swedish
1 from Finnish, Italian, Spanish, Turkish
Books read in another language:
18 German, 7 French, 1 Esperanto

Numbers in Book Titles: 343, Ten
Place Names in Book Titles: Denmark, Europe, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kleve, Kyrgyzstan, Monte-Cristo, Oz, Petersburg, Peyton Place, Primeval, Provence, Sanditon, Santiago, Sarum, Scotland, Siberia, Solaris, Syria, Szechwan, Tajikistan, Trulala, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
Names in Book Titles: Adèle, Agnes, Anna, Corinne, Erika, Frankenstein, Garcia, Grimm, Grey, Jeeves, Kristin, Kühn, Lavransdatter, Nickel, Peter, Prince Serebrenni, Saki, Shakespeare, Wooster
Colours in Book Titles: Black, Grey, Red

My Favourite Books: 17

Wodehouse, P. G. "Right Ho, Jeeves" - 1934
Falcones, Ildefonso "Die Erben der Erde" (Los herederos de la tierra/La catedral del mar #2/The heirs of the earth) (La catedral del mar #2) - 2016 (I will review this once it's translated into English.)

Stelter, Bernd "Nie wieder Ferienhaus" [Never again a holiday cottage] - 2004
Taylor, Helen "Why Women Read Fiction. The Stories of Our Lives" - 2019
Rand, Ayn "We the Living" - 1936
Khorsandi, Shappi "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English" - 2009
Russell, Helen "The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country" - 2015
Weir, Alison "Six Tudor Queens. Anna of Kleve. Queen of Secrets" (The Princess in the Portrait, American title) - 2019
Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing" - 2017
Borrmann, Mechtild "Grenzgänger. Die Geschichte einer verlorenen deutschen Kindheit" [Cross-border commuters. The story of a lost German childhood] - 2018
Booth, Cathleen "Mercy & Grace on the Camino de Santiago" - 2020
Hislop, Victoria "Those Who Are Loved" - 2019
Whitehead, Colson "The Nickel Boys" - 2019
Rutherford, Edward "Sarum: the Novel of England" - 1987
Zweig, Stefanie "Nirgendwo war Heimat. Mein Leben auf zwei Kontinenten" [Home was Nowhere. My Life on Two Continents] - 2012
Metalious, Grace "Peyton Place" - 1957
Myers, Benjamin "The Offing" - 2019

 
With my books, I visited places in the following countries:
Africa (6):
Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania, Togo
Asia (21):
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, North Korea, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Yemen
Europe (27):
Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, The UK
North America (7):
Belize, Canada, Caribbean, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, USA
South America (4):
Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru
Australia/Oceania (3):
Australia, New Zealand, Oceania
Extra-terrestrial (2)
Everywhere (5)
Others/Anywhere (2)
Countries "visited" in total: 68

See also "My Year in Books" on Goodreads.

You may find some even greater statistics by better bloggers than me, e.g. at "Stuck in a Book".

 

If you want more information on any of the lists mentioned, please, let me know.

Happy January!

Happy January to all my friends and readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch

"Lenzrosen im Schnee"
"Spring Roses in the Snow"

I wish you all a very happy January and an even happier year 2021. I think we all hope that this year will be better than the last, that the vaccinations can take place soon and that we can go back to a halfway normal life.

* * *

In the last months, I wrote about some German traditions and received many positive comments about that. I will try to keep it up this year and hopefully can bring you some more interesting facts about my home country.

* * *

I was born and grew up in Northern Germany, the state of Lower Saxony. In many parts of the North, people still speak Low German (or Low Saxon) which is considered a separate language from the High German and is closely related to Frisian, Dutch and English. But don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with linguistics, I just tell you the name of the month of January in Low German, it's "Schneimaond" (snow month). Not that many of us, especially in the North, see much of that anymore. Thanks, climate change!

The area I live in is very rural and people still would recite weather lores (we call them farmers' rules) when I was little. One that goes for January is:
If there was no real winter until Epiphany, there won't be any afterwards. (War bis zu Dreikönig kein rechter Winter, dann kommt auch keiner mehr dahinter. They often rhyme.) We'll see about that.

* * *

There are two traditions in our area in January that the children partake in. The first one happens on the 1st of January, in the early morning. Kids go from house to house in the neighbourhood to wish everyone a happy new year. In my childhood, we would mostly get an orange for that, nowadays it's sweets (almost like Americans do at Halloween).

The second tradition happens all over Germany, especially in the Catholic areas. On Epiphany (6^th of January), kids dress up as the three wise men and go from house to house to collect donations for a good cause (usually with an adult accompanying them). They then write a sign on all the houses that participated (this year it's 20+C+M+B+21, the CMB standing for "Christus mansionem benedica" which means "Christ bless this house"). We call them star singers (Sternsinger). The activity is organized by the church, often with a communal mass afterwards. 

One more thing, while the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is completely unknown in Germany, we leave our Christmas tree up until at least the twelfth day which is Epiphany. We used to leave it up until the 2^nd of February (Candlemas).

* * *

Have a happy January with this beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch. The lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis) is also called Spring Christmas rose.

You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.

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

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my friends and readers
 

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch

"Falter im Spätsommer"
"Butterfly in Late Summer"

Let's hope that 2021 will bring us more joy than its predecessor. Best wishes!

I know I'm a tad early for some but our friends in New Zealand and Australia are there already. 

 

You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.

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

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Favourite Books of 2020

"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".

It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

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.

 

Since we are approaching the end of the year rapidly, this week's topic is
Favourite Books of 2020

 

It's always tough to decide which ones were the best book of the year, even if you have a list that you carry on during the years (see here).

I had to eliminate a few from my long list but I came up with ten in the end. I put them in alphabetical order so I wouldn't have to decide which one comes first, second, etc. But I think my overall favourite is "The Offing".

Falcones, Ildefonso "Die Erben der Erde" (Los herederos de la tierra/La catedral del mar #2/The heirs of the earth) (La catedral del mar #2) - 2016 (I will review this once it's translated into English.)
Hislop, Victoria "Those Who Are Loved" - 2019
Khorsandi, Shappi "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English" - 2009
Myers, Benjamin "The Offing" - 2019
Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing" - 2017
Rand, Ayn "We the Living" - 1936
Rutherford, Edward "Sarum: the Novel of England" - 1987
Taylor, Helen "Why Women Read Fiction. The Stories of Our Lives" - 2019
Whitehead, Colson "The Nickel Boys" - 2019
Wodehouse, P. G. "Right Ho, Jeeves" - 1934

Camus, Albert "The Just Assassins"

Camus, Albert "The Just Assassins" (aka The Just) (French: Les Justes) - 1949

I'm not the biggest fan of reading plays but I love Albert Camus. And what should I say, this almost read like a novel. It probably helped that it was about a subject I am very interested in. Apparently, this is based on real social revolutionaries.

The big philosophical question of the play is: Can you kill for the sake of revolution? Is it just or is it still murder? Do you kill a few in order to save thousands or even more? It's for you to decide.

Not just with the location, also with the subject and the way he asks the questions, does he remind me of my favourite Russian authors, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

In any case, this book leaves us with a lot to ponder about. Perfect.

From the back cover:

"Camus’s The Just (Les Justes) is a five-act play based on the true story of a group of Russian revolutionaries who assassinated Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in 1905. First produced in 1949, The Just is a significant, eerily resonant, moving, and highly theatrical work. With a humanist perspective, Camus delves into the hearts and minds of five idealists who each grapple with a heinous choice and ultimately commit murder, in the name of justice. Now, more than ever, the play provokes and reverberates with a troubling yet necessary line of inquiry. Do the ends justify the means? Is terrorism ever a viable choice? What is the true cost of resistance? What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a murderer?

What The Just makes so compelling and haunting is the way Camus uses clearly drawn characters to tell such an intimate yet horrific story. He completely understands and sympathizes with his characters but never apologizes for their actions. And although it was written more than fifty years ago and set in another era, The Just feels entirely contemporary and vital. In this play, Camus attempts to understand what it would require to take violent action and assassinate someone in power yet somehow maintain a sense of justice and morality. Is this even possible?"

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

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

🌟 🌟 🌟 Merry Christmas! 🌟 🌟 🌟

🎄 Christmas Eve. We call it Holy Evening in German. Traditionally, everyone gets their presents on this day. If you have children, you go to church in the afternoon where they have a special mass with a nativity play and Christmas carols. After that, the "Christ Child" has been visiting the house and the children start opening their Christmas presents. This is also the day when the Christmas tree and all the decorations are put up. Things have changed since my childhood, but we still don't put up our tree much earlier than the 4th advent, it just feels wrong to have it up during the advent time.

🌟 Nowadays, many companies close on the day but when I was little, everyone worked until lunchtime on Christmas Eve.

🎄 Since there is not a lot of time neither for the preparation nor for the eating of a big dinner before the children need to go to bed, most families have potato salad and frankfurters or meatballs on Christmas Eve. The big dinner or lunch, often with a roasted goose or a carp, follows on Christmas Day when families gather at the house of the grandparents.

🌟 Families without children or where the kids are older, people go to midnight mass. For many, this is the only time of the year when they visit a service. Those people are commonly called "U-Boot Christians" since they only "turn up" at Christmas.

🌟 🌟 🌟 Peace on Earth! 🌟 🌟 🌟 

Hubbard, Fra Elbert "A Message to Garcia"

Hubbard, Fra Elbert "A Message to Garcia" - 1899

Another book that has been on my TBR list for ages and came out of hiding due to the Classics Spin.

When I started reading this, I knew why I hadn't been too keen on it. It's one of those "self-help", "holier than though", "if only everyone would read this, it would solve all the problems in the world" books.

I do understand the message. We all should do what our tasks are without having to be guided for every little thing. And I agree. But this kind of book doesn't help anyone. In a nutshell, a man called Rowan was supposed to be the true hero of the Spanish-American war in Cuba, because he accepted with no questions the order to carry an important message to Garcia. He didn't know how to reach General Calixto García, but he brought him the message nevertheless.

This may all be good in the military, to follow a task without questioning but in any job I had, my employers expected me to think and also tell them if their order was wrong.

Anyway, I'm glad this was such a short book, I doubt I would have finished it. It read more like political propaganda than the trial to help. I think this is terribly outdated and should definitely not be reprinted.

Quote: "The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

And then I found this on Wikipedia:
"The phrase "The graveyards are full of indispensable men" may have originated with Hubbard
He and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915."

From the back cover:

"A Message to Garcia has carried its simple message of hard work, integrity, and dependability to readers around the world for over 100 years. As one of the keystones of American self-improvement literature, this short celebration of the diligence and loyalty shown by one man is truly a life-changing classic that demands to be read again and again.

A Message to Garcia is an inspirational essay written by Elbert Hubbard. It was originally published as a filler without a title in the March, 1899 issue of the Philistine magazine which he edited, but was quickly reprinted as a pamphlet and a book. It was wildly popular, selling over 40 million copies, and being translated into 37 languages. It also became a well-known allusion in American popular and business culture.

The essay celebrates the initiative of a soldier who is assigned and accomplishes a daunting mission. He asks no questions, makes no objections, requests no help, but accomplishes the mission. The essay exhorts the reader to apply this attitude to his own life as an avenue to success. Its wide popularity reflected the general appeal of self-reliance and energetic problem solving in American culture. Its 'don't ask questions, get the job done' message was often used by business leaders as a motivational message to their employees."