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

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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."

Greetings to my readers

I know I haven't blogged for a while, almost a whole month actually. Thanks for those of you who have enquired after me.

The reason for this is a personal one. My father passed away suddenly last month. He is truly missed by my mother, my three brothers and me and our families. It might take a while for any of us to go back to normal.

I will carry on blogging, I promise, but I am sure you all understand that I was not up to it lately.

Even though the pictures in this post are taken in our garden, any flower will always remind me of him.

RIP

Book Quotes of the Week

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested." Francis Bacon

"Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach."  Roberto Bolaño, 2666

"I became a book lover at a very young age. Books taught me that there are different lives and beautiful things." Rene Denfeld

"Let books be your dining table and you shall be full of delights, let them be your mattress and you shall sleep restful nights." St. Ephraim the Syrian

"Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read." Groucho Marx

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Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky"

Palma, Félix J. "The Map of the Sky" (Spanish: El mapa del cielo) - 2012

Fantasy and/or science fiction is not really my favourite genre, and that is putting it mildly. However, last year I came across "The Map of Time" in the chunky book group and I really liked it. Probably because it was a spin-off of "The Time Machine" which I did like as a movie (the old version, that is, never seen the new one). But maybe also because the author is a good writer. And very creative. Nothing is impossible for him.

As in his first novel, Félix J. Palma makes a spin on an H.G. Wells novel, this time it was "The War of the Worlds". But he also includes other novels like "The Time Machine", "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and we see many famous people, first and foremost, of course, H.G. Wells himself, then Christopher Columbus, Galileo, Karl Gauss, Marco Polo, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, to name just about the most famous ones.

In this novel, we have a lot of adventures to pass. We are stuck on a ship in the frozen North Sea and we have to fight alien machines who want to overtake the whole world. At that point, we arrive in a dystopian environment. There is hardly a genre or a subject not touched in this novel. There is something for everyone. The author even manages to slip in a love story.

Even though this is a brilliant story, I did prefer the first of these two novels but I am still looking forward to the third and last of the books in this Victorian Trilogy which apparently will work around the themes of "The Invisible Man". I think I should start reading H.G. Wells in the meantime.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"A love story serves as backdrop for The Map of the Sky when New York socialite Emma Harlow agrees to marry millionaire Montgomery Gilmore, but only if he accepts her audacious challenge: to reproduce the extraterrestrial invasion featured in Wells's War of the Worlds. What follows are three brilliantly interconnected plots to create a breathtaking tale of time travel and mystery, replete with cameos by a young Edgar Allan Poe, and Captain Shackleton and Charles Winslow from The Map of Time.

Praised for lyrical storytelling and a rich attention to detail, (Library Journal, starred review), Palma again achieves the high standard set by The Map of Time."

Book Quotes of the Week

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."  Franz Kafka

"Books are a completely portable magic" Stephen King

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

"A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to faraway places without ever leaving your chair." Katrina Mayer

"When we open our favourite books, we do so to spend time with our best friends." N.N.

Find more book quotes here.