#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!

#fridayreads - Every other Friday still counts, right?!

Ooookay,... I'm still reading "The Bees". I really like it, I'm just not reading a lot these days and so it takes forever even to read a short book. But I'm really enjoying it.

I finished listening to "Our Mutual Friend" this week and have not yet really picked another audio book for my car. Partly because I'm trying to listen to some Poe tales on my MP3-Player to keep up to date with my (own) read-along.

But other than that I may be starting "Ready Player One" as my new commute audio book. Then again I'm kind of getting the feeling that "Neuromancer" is a kind of pretext for that one? So I feel like I should be reading that first. It's also on my TBR right in front of me.

I tried to read "We Three O", which has a very interesting premise, but then I really couldn't. The kindle version had too many typos or editing errors to make it easily readable and then the dialogue was really not... good. So I just stopped. Sad, because the story and idea sounded so promising... (a humankind with three sexes instead of two and also something about a disease...)

(... I need to stop with the "..." ... I probably won't, though...)

And on a non-fiction front I'm checking out some (mostly German) books on financial accounting... yep, that's happening. And the weird thing is, that it pleases me. FA gives me joy! (I'm also trying to follow a FA class on Coursera and enjoying that, too!)

In other news: I finally bought three single shelfs and hope to put them up soon so I can finally have some designated shelfs for MBR-books. That will be wonderful because then I don't have to keep them on my coffee table anymore (I need to have them in immediate reach!) and that means my poor books will have less coffee stains! So, yay!

Oh, and if you're reading this, also check out the Poe Read-Along!

Starting now: The Poe Read-Along (Oktober, November, December)

I wanted to announce Poetober, but yeah, okay, that's not what we'll call it.
But I desperately need distraction in October (and November and December) and Edgar Allan Poe will do that.

I've been wanting to re-read Poe's short stories for ages and here's my - and your! - chance to do that.

I'll be reading this collection of Poe's work (this includes poems, too, but I'll just go for the tales for the time being):

Complete Tales and Poems

And as there are 73 stories in the first half of this collection (the second half is the poems), this Read-Along will start on October 6th and last for 73 days (i.e. end on December 17th).

Who's in? Just let me know in the comments or on Twitter (I'm @EdSpook). Everyone is welcome, the more the merrier!
Participation is not a strict thing, btw! If you feel like actually reading along all the stories with me, you're more than welcome! But if you only feel like discussion one or two stories, that's just as fine!
There's gonna be a goodreads group here: Poe Read-Along 2014
And the Twitter hashtag shall be #poeRA

If there are enough interested participants, I think a hangout would be fun, or some other live event. And whatever may come off it.

Happy Poe reading!

#FridayReads - again, otherwise I won't blog...

So, what's up with books here?
I finished "Ancillary Justice" this week. I really liked it and it definitely made me want to anticipate the rest of the trilogy. And it also got me back in the SciFi mood.

I finally found our copy of "The Name of the Rose" (because I knew we had to have one; I do not think that there is a household in Germany that does not have at least one copy of this book...) and started reading it! Yay! I've been wanting to read it ever since Linda Hutcheon kept mentioning it her book I had to study for my exams.
And then I found out that there's a buddy read at the booktube buddy reads group and I'll definitely try and join that. But first I need to make some progress with it.

And I got back into my car audio book, which is a wonderful reading of Dicken's "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11292942-our-mutual-friend" by Mil Nicholson.

So I'll hopefully be spending the weekend reading...

#Friday Reads aka an UPDATE!

Oooo-kay... so I'm back. Back to reading, back to blogging hopefully.


It's still Friday, I'm on vacation, I just (like 10 minutes ago) finished a book, so I thought a #FidayReads was in order.

So what am I reading?

I just finished "Der Gang vor die Hunde" aka "Fabian" or "Going to the Dogs: The Story of a moralist" by Erich Kästner, which is still as brillian as I remembered it and the new edition (the originally intended version) is even better. And I'll write a review about this one.

Two days ago I started "Ancillary Justice" as my designated beach book and that worked out well so far. Im a good hundred pages in and liking it so far. I have a kind of a hard time actually folling the who's who against whom of it, but that might still be coming and it doesn't take away from the reading experience of it.

For a non-fiction I'm reading "Selbst Denken" (German, obviously), a book about how astonishing it is that people do not like to use their brains and actually draw their own conclusions about stuff, but rather just follow whatever is told by media, social media, politics, what have you. I'm only in the first third of it and it reads very swiftly and I find myself constantly nodding along (bad sign with such a book? ;) ), but nothing really new so far. It feels like I'm not really the actually intended addressee (yes, I checked, there's just so many d's, s's and e's in that word), as I'm not leading a live of pure meaningless and mindless consumersim with three SUVs and a new set of clothes every month.
So I do not agree with all the conclusions and interpretations of facts by the author, but it still does contain interesting facts and food for thought.

Coming up for air...

Okay, so, well. Starting this blog right before my final exams started was not an especially smart move, but that's what I do...

I was planning on updating here much more, but the end of May has been pretty crazy busy (studying and work) and the last weeks were just frenzied studying. Also, although I'm reading a lot (studying for lit exams does that to you), I don't read a lot I want to blog about... and even if I would want to, I certainly don't have the time to think about writing a review or any such thing.
So, what I read and maybe might be worth an extra post at some later time are "The Overcoat" by Gogol, some stories by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and maybe a history book "Catherine the Great" by Madariaga, which I found to be a great (and relaxing, compared to Russian lit) read.

So, yeah, that's it for now. Mid week I'll switch to Spanish lit, we'll see how that goes.

[Bout of Books] Before the Weekend

So, well. I wish I'd had more time to read during the week. But research has kept me busy every day and after spending 8+ hours in the library, looking through library catalogues, databases and other sources to figure out the literature for my exams I was way too tired to read. :(

But, here comes the weekend and I hope I can make up tonight, tomorrow and even on sunday during work (which will hopefully be zero busy and give me plenty of opportunity to hit the books - study books and a bit of pleasure reads as well).

So far basically all I've read this week were some pages from "Cat's Cradle", a good 4 hours of the audio version of "North and South" (which has been such a comfort!) and a super short short story ("The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin).
And a few pages of required reading about Russian History.

Yep, that's it. So sad - and there's so many books at home that I desperately want to read...

But tomorrow! (Also, I'll hopefully be able to go to that booksale my hometown library is holding tomorrow... looking forward to that! More books!)

[Bout of Books] Highly anticipated books

Here are some books that I am really looking forward to reading come summer:

"The World of Yesterday" / "Die Welt von gestern" by Stefan Zweig: Joined a GR groups about Zweig, whom I loved forever, but read by far not enough. So this starts in June and I'll probably only be able to join in July, but I'm so looking forward to.

"Osmi povjerenik" by Renato Baretić: I'll be reading this in Croatian and German parallel in July, to study Croatian and to get a Croatian reading experience.

"Зеленый шатер" / "The Big Green Tent by Lyudmila Ulitskaya: I love Ulitskaya and am looking forward to some pleasure (because not study related) Russian reading.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin: Again, I love Le Guin and want to read more by her. And more!

"The Campus Trilogy" by David Lodge: After graduating I'm thinking I might enjoy some campus lit again. ;-)

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens: Dickens again! There is a wonderfully read librivox recording of this book and I'm very much looking forward to it.

"Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations": This looks so much like a history book that I would love so much. I tried starting it, but with all the school work I really couldn't focus on it.

"Michael Palin: Diaries": These must be amazing and I am so much looking forward to reading these!

"The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery": I read Vol.1 of the Selected Journals and when the Complete Journals came out I knew I must read them. I love everything LMM and these are such a wonderful and interesting and sad read.

"Fabian" by Erich Kästner: Somewhat forgotten and censured German classic, a satire that only this year will be published (or has been published by now) in its original uncut version. seriously looking forward to this one.



So: no new books here, just what has been on my TBR shelf for a while.

Currently Reading: North and South

How have I not mentioned this here? Oh, wait, it was in the MBRoM-post.

I listen to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell as an audio book, read by the formidable Juliet Stevenson, whenever I'm in my car. And I love it! So much.

Aside from the incredibly great narration by Juliet Stevenson, listening to her voice ist just the most soothing thing ever, it is a wonderful book. (I keep sitting in my car in the garage after I've reached home just to listen on.)
I've read or audi-read this book several times and each time it seems to get better. Each time there is something else I find myself focussing on. This time it is definitely the way Elizabeth Gaskell sets the scene for each meeting (or rather clashing) of members of the Hale and Thornton families. She gives just the details of each persons inner life to make you see how they misunderstand or misinterpret each other and how these meetings can only go wrong etc.
It is a very complex book and has such rich characters.

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!

Yay! More books!

More books arrived! I've been longing to read more Vonnegut for a while now... which one should I start with?

April Wrap Up and a kind of a May TBR (we'll call it MBRiM)

Okay, if I'm serious about book blogging then I should probably do an April Wrap Up. Especially because I feel like I finally got back into reading more during this April. I actually finished books (and yep, it's plural!) in April.

Actually when I think about it it may have been Oryx and Crake in March, when I was trying to finish that before going to a reading by Margaret Atwood, what got me back into the bookish spirit. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy (as I really, really liked this one and Atwood in general, who doesn't?!), but I'll wait till I can get this one trilogy edition that I want to have. (I bought Oryx and Crake as an audio book, so I have no book book copy of it.)

Well, but the Wrap Up. As in: books that I actually finished reading in April:

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. I'll post my review on that one tomorrow or so. I'm kind of torn on this one. Great ideas, but horrible reading experience for me...

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. A re-re-re-re-read for me. And brilliant as always. Sticks with me, too.

The Love Artist by Jane Alison. Finally finished this one. I started it for a Coursera class. I loved the beginning, but over all I had some problems with it. I'll also post a review soon.

So, yeah, three books. Not much, but more than usual for me lately, so I'm happy.
Right now I'm reading Fahrenheit 451. And I also hope I'll finally get to watch the movie adaptation. (I started watching it some while back and loved the looks of it, but for some reason I don't have the DVD anymore...)

And now onto what May may bring.
I'm really hesitant to do an actual TBR. And I won't. Just because I know that I do not like to (and do not do) stick to plans where reading is concerned. (Also, for school I have a lot of stuff that certainly HAS to be read [yep, an "HTBR"], where it is not so much up to me to make decisions, so I like to roam freely the rest of the reading world.)So instead I'll make an "MBRiM" which naturally means: "Might be read in May".

I'll definitely be going on reading S., which I got last week and am in awe of. I read this very, very slowly and enjoy it immensely, the whole feeling and experience. So this may go on for months.

Other books that are just lying around here and might be picked up include:

Die neuen Frauen - Revolution im Kaiserreich (1900-1914) - this is a German book about German women who became politically and culturally active in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. It looks seriously interesting, but I don't know if I'll be much inclined to read non-fiction for pleasure with all the school work I have going on.

Aspects of the Novel by E.M.Forster - I love Forster. And this is my excuse to read something by him while at the same time maybe getting into the spirit of lit exams. (So it's semi-pleasure non-fiction, mark that as a new genre!)

I'm expecting some more books to arrive by mail during the coming days and maybe I'll just dive into one of them immediately. As I'm very much in a Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction kind of mood lately among these books are:
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Embassytown by China Mieville
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov (these last two totally due to me watching too much of books and pieces wonderful youtube channel..)

As an audio book I just started North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. And I just love, love, love this book! So much in there. I am so looking forward to this re-read. (Also: This version is read by Juliet Stevenson. I love her, too.)

And about that whole stuff I have to read for university I might make another post... (Russian lit is always worth a blog post, I think...)

And now it's past 3 am and I am not willing to check for typos. Good Noght.

The Love Artist | Review

The Love-Artist by Jane Alison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Love Artist
I really wanted to like this book. The beginning was superb and the obvious immersion on the author's side with the subject (and her subjects) really made me want to like this book. But in the end it had too many things working against it.
Over all, I did like the writing, style and tone of the book a lot. It has been criticized for its lack of plot and dialogue etc (also the ever lamented "misbalance" of tell over show, even though I do not see that here so much, as with a lot of inner monologues and emotions etc ...) and these are things that I won't miss. I don't like dialogue. I can take it, if it's necessary and well done, but in general, the less of it the better imo. And I also never understood this plot obsession. Here's a story being told, not necessarily a plot, though, but the story is what matters to me.
And I also did not find the much criticized "too much" or "trying too hard" in the writing style. The style I liked.
So why the rather low rating... Probably because after the exceptional and great beginning I felt a bit disappointed by the rest of the book.
Many things were left untold, but not in a good way, rather in a way that left the reader feeling a bit stupid. Yes, I could have gone and googled all kinds of historical or poetical (literary, rather) details, but I didn't. In that case ( and if you are writing such a special book, especially if you've done an immense amount of research, that went into it), why not a glossary. Why not use that research and let the reader know about the details outside of the novel itself?
But there were some other things left untold, which left me kind of clueless, too. BIT OF A SPOILER HERE! Like how this sudden and so absolute switch from lovers and artist/muse relationship turned into something else entierly right after they came to Rome. I could make up some explanations, but leaving the reader on his own here also took away a lot from the reading experience of the rest of the story.
Especially towards the end the book also lost too much coherence for me. It became harder and harder to read and I really had to make myself read the last 40 pages or so.
So this is acutally a 2.5 star rating. I wanted to like it, but it was not easy. I'm glad I read it, though.



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Brave New World | Review

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As with the other 4 or 5 times I read this: I like it. It's such an easy to get into world, this time for the first time I payed attention to the Shakespeare quotes and motifs and enjoyed it even more (and want to go read Shakespeare now,but I know I must watch Shakespeare, not read him...), so yeah, great book. And naturally: as red-hot as ever. Just ordered "Island", b/c I finally must read something else by Huxley


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I realize how this is not much of a review... I don't have more right now.

Currently Reading: Brave New World

So I was in the mood for more SF and dystopian stuff and finally picked up "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley again. This is probably the fourth time I'm reading this. And I forgot how great it reads. The whole book reads as elegantly as the title sounds. I love it. Also: I have this pretty Vintage Classics edition now:

Getting Started

Alright then.
I can't make up my mind to actually join the booktube, as a booktuber, so here goes a blog (first, for now, mabye...?).
I might as well just start with posting a few reviews of books I read lately.

The Quantum Thief | Review

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


So... well, I have a really hard time with rating this book (it would come in as 2.5 stars, rather). I also didn't have an easy time reading it.

On one hand the sci-fi ideas and concepts are really, really great and also: way cool. "Passing a comemory" is something I've wanted to do at least a million times... The whole world the book takes place in with its mixture of the tangible with the abstract is really amazing and opens a million possibilities which would be so fun (and frightening...) to explore. So world that is built is great, amazing, really, really intriguing. It's the way of world-building I have a problem with, because...

On the other hand I really, really disliked the writing style of the book. It may be one of the principles of hard SF to write a lot of combat and fight scenes into the novel (which is in any case something that I could do without), but I thought the writing as a whole was really ... ugly. I can't really pinpoint it to specific things that I disliked. But the writing style really did make me not want to read the book, and it - of course - became especially clear during those fight scenes, when I was really questioning why I read it in the first place. (And yes, I have read good written - imo - scenes of that kind, too.
My dislike may be due to my general dislike of show-over-tell. I just think it's a stupid concept. For me to like a book it always needs a clear predomination of descriptive parts, I simply don't like reading the show parts. (And again, yes, sometimes some parts where the show outweighs the tell can be good and necessary to a book, and I've read good examples of that, too.)
What I also disliked was the main character. This might also be related to the decision to make his parts a first person narrator. I get that he's supposed to be this bragging kind of master thief, but his first person voice does not seem consistent nor personal in any way. The characters could have been a super interesting part of this book and kind of story (and they probably should have been, as with a classic heist plot you'd need something to set you apart from a million similar stories), but they weren't. There were moments when you got a glimpse of an idea of who these characters are, but those were fleeting and didn't add up. (And again, I love the mysterious, I love hints and I love an author who leaves space for a reader's imagination, this was not what it was like here, though.)
I realize this is the first part of a trilogy and maybe the weaker points of this book will be worked on/filled in in the next parts of the series, but honestly at this point I'm so disinterested that I just don't care.

I also might have a problem with the sheer abundance of ideas being packed into a relatively short novel (yes, I probably would not have even finished it, when it had more pages, as it is) combined with a confusing heist plot. With this huge newly created world it would have made for a huge book, a real tombstone, as well. (Think "Game of Thrones", "Harry Potter" or anything Ken Follet, what have you...)
Also, maybe, if the world building takes up so much of the reader's attention, it is not the best move to complicate things even further by mixing many different plot and time lines within a chapter all the time.

So, to sum up: SF concepts parts: wonderfully done. Writing style: Couldn't be worse for the kind of reader I am. I'll just be hoping that they will one day make some wonderful movies out of this book and the trilogy and I'll go watch these.

PS: Yes, many of my points of displeasure may be due to the genre, maybe I just don't like what is called "hard SF". But in that case I can only say that it is such a pity that this book belongs to the genre and it would have such amazing potential in a different genre. ;)



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