Top Ten Tuesday ~ Authors (or books by authors) Who Live In My State/Country

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

This week's topic is Authors (or books by authors) Who Live In My State/Country 

That should be no problem, and I will probably have different ones from everybody else, unless there are other Germans participating here. I have tried to list some newer authors and didn't come up with popular classic authors like Goethe, Grass, Mann, etc.

Emcke, Carolin "Against Hate" (GE: Gegen den Hass) - 2016

Hansen, Dörte "This House is Mine" (GE: Altes Land) - 2015
Hermann, Judith "The Summer House, Later" (GE: Sommerhaus, später) - 1998
Kehlmann, Daniel "Measuring the World" (GE: Die Vermessung der Welt) - 2005

Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here" (GE: Was man von hier aus sehen kann) - 2017

Orth, Stephan (German reviews) "Couchsurfing in Russia: Friendships and Misadventures Behind Putin’s Curtain" (GE: Couchsurfing in Russland. Wie ich fast zum Putin-Versteher wurde) - 2017
Precht, Richard David (German reviews) "Who Am I and If So, How Many?" (GE: Wer bin ich und wenn ja, wie viele?) - 2007

Sendker, Jan-Philipp (German reviews) "Whispering Shadows" (The Rising Dragon #1) (GE: Das Flüstern der Schatten) - 2007

Tellkamp, Uwe "The Tower" (GE: Der Turm) - 2008
Wells, Benedict "The End of Loneliness" (GE: Vom Ende der Einsamkeit) - 2016

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Heart

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 a Books with a Heart on the Cover. Meeghan says, "Scavenger hunt time!! Find your 5 favourite books with a heart on the cover. Up to you whether it’s an anatomical heart or a symbolic heart."

As everybody knows by now, I am not a reader of romantic novels and those are usually the ones that have a heart on their cover. But, I found some books that have the word heart in the title, so I went for that.

Conrad, Joseph "Heart of Darkness" - 1902 

Dorrestein, Renate "A Heart of Stone" (NL: Een hart van steen) - 1998

Krall, Hanna "Chasing the King of Hearts" (PL: Król kier znów na wylocie) - 2006

Sendker, Jan-Philipp "A Well-Tempered Heart" (Burma Trilogy # 2) (GE: Herzenstimmen) - 2012

Walker, Alice "The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart" - 2000

All of these are great books.

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💖 Happy Reading! 💖

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Sartre, Jean-Paul "Nausea"

Sartre, Jean-Paul "Nausea" (French: La nausée) - 1938

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

An interesting book. Yes, it introduces us to existentialism. I gives us ideas for thoughts about our lives. But it's not really a novel, nothing much happens. At the beginning, I was quite bored. It picks up a little but it doesn't catch you.

I heard Sartre compared to Camus. I absolutely love Camus. Sartre doesn't come over as well, the story is not a real story. You don't know where they are going. There isn't a flow to his writing.

At the beginning, when the protagonist talks about his nausea, it  reminded me of depression, the big black dog, as people also call it. I thought it might go that way. But it didn't.

All in all, not an exciting book. I would have expected more. Maybe I read this too late.

Comments by other members:

"It was described very accurately by a funny Finnish word 'pitkäpiimäinen' = like rubbery sour milk, longwinded, boring.

We thought it was much more like a complete philosophy textbook than a story.

It was a very anxious story about a depressed and lonely person

It reminded us of many similar stories we have read over the years about loneliness and mental illness, for example: Steppenwolf, The Stranger, plus many more all with their own variety on the subject."

From the back cover:

"Jean-Paul Sartre's first published novel, Nausea is both an extended essay on existentialist ideals, and a profound fictional exploration of a man struggling to restore a sense of meaning to his life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated from the French by Robert Baldick with an introduction by James Wood.

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of an introspective historian, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism. The book chronicles his struggle with the realisation that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come from simply trying to live."

Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 "for his work, which rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age". He was awarded the prize even though he refused it.

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

Six Degrees of Separation ~ Rapture

Emily Maguire
"Rapture" - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation: 
from Rapture (Goodreads) to Mercy And Grace 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is "Rapture" by Emily Maguire. As so often, I have not read this book.

This is the description of this novel:

"The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery."

I have some other books about orphans or children that have been given to the church or stories that are mainly about church members.

Rhoides, Emmanuel (Emmanuel Roidis) "The Curious History of Pope Joan" (GR: Πάπισσα Ιωάννα/Papissa Ioanna) - 1866

There might have been a female pope, I can well believe that but the story itself wasn't too exciting. However, there is some information about life in the 9th century.

Woolfolk Cross, Donna "Pope Joan" - 1996
Same subject, a historical romance type of book with an interesting twist, whether you believe if Pope Joan existed or not.

Sobel, Dava "Galileo's Daughter" - 2000
The life Galileo led is portrayed very well. He was a brilliant mind - and so was his daughter. The book describes the time and the difficulties scientists had to deal with as well as the different circumstances in which people lived at the time.

Hesse, Hermann "Narcissus and Goldmund" (GE: Narziss und Goldmund) - 1930

This is a much acclaimed book and supposedly one of Hesse's best. Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of two diametrically opposite men: one, an ascetic monk firm in his religious commitment, and the other, a romantic youth hungry for worldly experience.

Ilibagiza, Immaculée "Left to Tell" - 2006
An earth-shattering tale as Immaculée Ilibagiza doesn't just tell how she survived (cramped with seven other women into a tiny bathroom for 91 days with hardly any food and having to be absolutely quiet the whole time, how they learned to communicate without speaking), she also tells about losing all her family and friends.

Booth, Cathleen "Mercy & Grace on the Camino de Santiago" - 2020
A great book about eleven people who walked the Camino de Santiago. A brilliant account beginning with the idea until the arrival in Santiago.

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The connection between the first and the last degree is not as obvious this month. But they all have to do with overcoming obstacles through faith.

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Spell the Month in Books ~ May 2025

 
 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: Freebie

May is a month where we may choose our topic. Sometimes, that's good, sometimes you think for ages what books you will choose. I decided to take girls' names this month

MAY

M

Ruiz Zafón, Carlos "Marina" (Spanish: Marina) - 1999

A
Brontë, Anne "Agnes Grey" - 1847
Y

Singer, Isaac Bashevis "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" (Yidd: נטל בחור ישיבה/Yenṭl der Yeshive-boḥer) - 1983

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Happy Reading!

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#ThrowbackThursday. April 2013

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 2013.

Berenstain, Stan and Jan "The Berenstain Bears" - 1962ff.

My kids loved the Berenstain Bears. Not only was it a "normal" family, the characters just happened to be bears, but it was a funny family. They live in a lovely tree house, and there are hundred different books with all kinds of subjects, anything that can happen in a child's life must have their own book.

King-Smith, Dick "The Hodgeheg" and "King Max the Last" - 1995

Another favourite of my boys, the adventures of Max the hedgehog who tries to save his family and wants to find a safe place to cross the road. He gets hit and from now on jumbles all the letters, so he is a hodgeheg instead of a hedgehog.

Kingsolver, Barbara "Flight Behaviour" - 2012
Barbara Kingsolver brings the impact of environmental pollution, of climate change to the most rural area you can imagine, to a part where people think if they don't pay attention to the big bad world, nothing bad is going to happen to them.

Lamb, Christina "The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream" - 1999
This biography is about Sir Stewart Gore-Brown, someone I had never heard about in my life. And still, his life is interesting and the book was captivating. 

Palma, Félix J. "The Map of Time" (E: El mapa del tiempo) - 2008
This novel is based on "The Time Machine. It's the first time I really enjoyed a book about time travel, usually that is not my type of thing. Some reasons might be the time and place this is happening, I absolutely love Victorian and pre-Victorian England, the fact that there is a book background ... or maybe because I had the feeling that the author does not really believe in time travel, either, but had a lot of fun writing this story.

Tremain, Rose "Music & Silence" - 1999 
This can almost be called a saga, so much is in this story of  the Danish court in the 17th century. 

Happy May!

Happy May to all my Friends and Readers

New Calendar picture with this

beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch

"Holländerwindmühle Rövershagen im Raps"

"Dutch Windmill Rövershagen in the rapeseed"

Frank says to this picture:

"Ein ganz besonderes Motiv ist die Mühle in Rövershagen, wenn sie von dem leuchtenden Gelb der Rapsblüte umgeben ist. Die Zeit der Obst- und Rapsblüte an der Ostsee bietet Motive mit wunderbaren Kontrasten. Das Gelb der Rapsfelder, der strahlendblaue Himmel, das erste Grün an der Bäumen und Büschen und das Weiß und Rosa der Ostblüten zaubern ein wunderbares Ensemble in die Landschaften."

"The mill in Rövershagen is a very special motif when surrounded by the bright yellow of the rapeseed blossoms. The fruit and rapeseed blossom season on the Baltic Sea offers motifs with wonderful contrasts. The yellow of the rapeseed fields, the bright blue sky, the first green on the trees and bushes, and the white and pink of the eastern blossoms conjure up a wonderful ensemble in the landscapes."

Windmills are always beautiful. And somehow, they seem to belong to spring with all its tulips and other flowers blooming though their most important time is in the autumn when the wheat is ripe and the grinding of the grain starts.

Read more on their website here. *

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We just happened to go to an open air museum that has three different kinds of windmills, depending on which part of the construction is moving.

The postmill (1st on the left) is the oldest form of windmill. The whole body of the mill is turned to bring the sails into the wind. The further development was the Koker windmill (middle picture). The word comes from the Low German for quiver and the mill itself moved around the main shaft which staid in the lower fixed part. The third type (right) is the smock mill (also called Dutch mill) where only the upper part (the head) moves.

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I had two great books I would like to recommend this month: "Year of Wonders" (Das Pesttuch) from 2001 by Geraldine Brooks. And a great non-fiction by Geert Mak, "The Dream of Europe. Travels in a Troubled Continent" (Grote verwachtingen. In Europa 1999-2019/Große Erwartungen: auf den Spuren des europäischen Traums) - 2019

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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 very Happy May! 🌷