[Read] Astrid Lindgren's War Diaries

One to check off the readathon list! :-)

Astrid Lindgren: "Die Menschheit hat den Verstand verloren. Tagebücher 1939-1945" :


I'm not into rating stuff like autobiographies, memoirs, letters or diaries. At least, I'm mostly not comfortable doing it. Because it always feels like rating someone's life...

Anyway. This was a very interesting, but quite short read. I haven't found out so far, how stronly these diaries were edited before publishing. At some points it felt like huge chunks were missing, at others it felt like every single bit was included. But of course that is hard to tell with diaries again.
When I started this, I admit I was expecting much more personal diaries from Lindgren, in the beginning it felt a bit like she was really just re-telling the news of the time. On the other hand that quickly grew interesting, too. And I must say I enjoyed listening to this audio version a lot.
Eva Mattes unsurprisingly is a great narrator and probably perfect to be Lindgren's voice. (She has been Pippi Longstocking's German voice when that was on TV.)

I also had a close look at the hardcover edition of the book and must say that it is really exceptionally well done and beautiful. It contains a lot of facsimiles of pages from her journals as well as facsimiles of the endpapers of her note books to seperate the years in the hardcover edition.

Dewey's Read-A-Thon - TBR

Super late to join in, but I actually did start reading with the start time of the readathon - inadvertently, that is.

Check out: Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon

For the first hour I read "Imzadi". Then took a 2 hour breakfast break. :)

Here's the rest of my TBR:

I want to finish Astrid Lindgren's War Diaries (audio book) as well as "Remarkable Creatures" (audio) by Tracy Chevalier, and I also hope to finish "Imzadi". So I'll be using this readathon to just finish books I'm currently reading.

Other than that I want to read at least two short stories, continue with "City of Illusion" by Ursula K. LeGuin, if not also finish it. And start "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson.

And that feels pretty ambitious for me.

Bout of Books 12 - Wrap Up

Wrapping it up I can say:

- nope, didn't finish one of the books I was hoping to finish
- but made good progress with another one
- read like a crazy person on several occasions here a few pages and there a few pages, was fun, though
- didn't post even one blog post during the whole week - oh wonder!

I read about 350 book pages all in all (more probably, counting all the bits and pieces) and that is more than I would read in an average week, so yay!

And also I really enjoyed following the #boutofbooks tag and seeing what others read.

Bout of Books 12 - Plans

I'm in again!

Bout of Books 12, because of course reading with a hashtag is so much more fun! ;)

The good thing is that I won't be working for three of the Bout of Books days (yay me!) and this will hopefully mean that I will get a lot of reading done, which was what I planned on doing anyway. And on my work days I'll also hopefully spend at least an hour commute reading everyday at least (except for when public transportation once again is unable to cope with winter and then I'll spend +X hours waiting for trains etc), plus whatever I'll be up to after work.

What I want to do during Bout of Books:
- finish two books during this week (considering I'm reading like 10 books at the same time, finishing two would be great), top of the list are Among Others and The Handmaid's Tale
- read a lot of Lion Feuchtwanger's Success, so that I'll be all up to date when visiting the exhibition about the book mid of January
- write reviews of whatever I read
- finally come here again and often, book blog and post some of the nearly finished posts in storage...

So here we go!
Good luck to all participants!

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 5th and runs through Sunday, January 11th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

#readthon wrap up

I tried.

I knew having work wouldn't be a great thing for reading and then a huge headache hit me, so not optimal conditions.
I did read, though. But not as much as I would have hoped.
And mostly I read social media management literature for work. Finished two short ebooks on that topic and started "The New Community Rules". Probably around 200 pages for that.

Other than that I finished one book ("The Bees") and audio-read one Poe story ("The Black Cat") as well as read another one ("The Puloined Letter"). I also read about 50 pages in "Die neuen Frauen" this morning.

So, yay, not bad, considering.
Right now I'm in the mood for another readathon, though. ;)

Should I Dewey's Readathon or not...?

So... should I? Even try? It's not a free weekend for me. I have to work on Saturday, so I'd be missing the first six hours or so...

Then again, I might as well try.

Okay. I'll try.

Here's what I'll be reading:

Poe. Of course. I'm not on track with the daily tales and will try to catch up. There's a few short ones coming up, so I'm aiming for at least three tales on Saturday.

Either I've finished "The Bees" before the readathon starts, or I'll finish it first thing.

Then: I might be starting "The Circle". Just because it's right in front of me and it's such a pretty looking book. I'm really in love with the hardcovers lately. I might read a few pages in my Erika Fuchs book, or even start "The Handmaid's Tale" (well, re-start, I've read like 30 pages or so a week ago). And also: A book about women in Germany from 1890 to 1914, very interesting!

Bout of Books - here I come!

So, I'll totally be doing BoB! And in my timezone it starts about right now (or maybe it already started a few minutes ago).

I'm with everybody who can't make the usual readathons (I totally just typed "readaTHONG"... what?!), I couldn't so far, because, you know, work and school and the rest of life.

I will be including the stuff I read for school, too. Because that week I will hopefully be studying a whole lot (I won't say I will have to study a lot, even though that would be true, but I have not been known for doing what I have have to do most of the time) and reading several books for my exams in June.

So, what are my intentions with this readathon?
Firstly, to read more than I usually would.
Secondly to get to all the study books that I need to read for this week.
Also, to finish at least two of the non-study books.
Then... also to blog regularly about the reading I do get done. And write reviews if it's worth it.
That's about it and it should be enough.

A list of potential books to read for the week:
For Pleasure:
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - which I will continue to listen to as an audio book.
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
I finally want to read some Octavia Butler, either Dawn or Parable of the Sower.
Embassytown by China Mieville
Then maybe Nineteen Eighty-Four.
And I'll be continuing S., too.
ETA: As apparently May is Short Story Month (even though I think that makes about as much sense as Mother's Day... every month should be short story month...) I'll add that I want to read three short stories. And as such: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Ormalas" by Ursula k. Le Guin (because I want to read something by Le Guin again and because I've never read this famous story), one by John Cheever and another one that I don't know yet.
EagainTA: Other possible short stories are naturally by E.A.Poe and I'm also thinking about "The Lottery".

For History:
Catherine the Great by Isabel de Madariaga. (As it's for school I'll be reading the German version.)
A History of Yugoslavia by Marie-Janine Calic, that's a German book.

For Russian Lit:
The Double by Dostoevsky
Also some of Gogol's magical tales and some of Petrushevskayas short stories.
(And maybe I'll start a re-read of "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard" by Chekhov, probably while watching some taped performance of it.)

For Spanish Lit:
Some stories by Borges (have to pinpoint which ones exactly yet)
One or maybe two novels that have not been determined yet (I hope to have that fixed tomorrow.)
(There'll be four novels all together plus two I have to do a re-read of.)

And somewhere between Russian Lit, History and Pleasure I'll be going on reading Natasha's Dance by Orlando Figes.

If I should finish North and South as my audiobook I'll probably try do something of my study books as audiobooks. If that should not work out I'll go on listening to something by Charles Dickens via librivox.org.

Here's the Bout of Books 10 blurb:
The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 12th and runs through Sunday, May 18th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 10 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

And now... I'll be reading a bit!