[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.

[Friday Reads] Sick at Home - 2nd Edition: Reading is exhausting!

Yep, sick at home - again... might be because I didn't quite get over the flu the last time? Or: wtf is the problem with my immune system? Or: Why hasn't it been spring sooner?!

What I didn't read first: This Easter I didn't pick up "Krabat" by Otfried Preußler, a German
children's classic, which I usually like to read around Easter (because Easter features an important time in the book). I don't do this every single year, but probably every other year. At first I felt like doing it, then I kind of forgot and then I didn't feel like it anymore. Now I'm a bit sad, that I didn't get to read it this year, because it's just such an awesome book. Naturally, as there is no law that it has to be read only at Easter, I could just pick it up and read it, but that wouldn't feel right. So now I'll be preserving the book and hopefully enjoy it next year.

What I'm currently reading (or not really reading, because reading is really exhausting when you're sick, all the tiny letters, holding those heavy books, thinking all the thoughts...):

1984 as an audio book.

This is a re-read. I've read the German translation of it years ago. But I can hardly remember anything. So it's really interesting to finally actually read one of the most quoted and referenced books ever - again. I'm not too keen on the writing style. It's getting better now (about half way through), or maybe I'm just getting used to it. But it did feel rather clumsy in the beginning and also really dry. I'm also only getting used to the narrator of the audio version I'm listening to. He's not bad, but I'm am really annoyed by him not being able to breath as a narrator or actor should be able to. He draws a really sharp breath at the beginning of every other sentence and that is just wrong.

Getting Things Done: well, persuaded by the hype I started this one. Not very far into it yet, so I can't really say anything about it. It might also not quite be the right moment, me being sick and all...








Dvori od oraha by Miljenko Jergović

I stumbled upon this one totally by chance (the pleasures of working in a bookshop!), I had never heard about it before, which is weird, because I did have a look into Croatian and Yugoslavian lit last year. Maybe it just didn't stand out. And that is a shame, because it's a seriously good book! Took me about one page to be totally immersed in it. And that despite the the way it's told. I won't actually mention this, it's not a spoiler, but in retrospect I think it was great that I didn't know this before I started reading it (it might have even turned me off). But I'm gonna say it's style is beautiful and every now and then I stumble over things that I'm, well, not liking as much, it's all part of the narrative and has to be there. I love it and am so glad this customer ordered it - and then didn't want it! ;) Good for me. His loss. I'd say: Go read it, everybody! But I'm afraid there's only been German and French translations from the original Bosnian.



PS: Turns out you need to hit "publish" for your posts to go live... who would've thought? Anyway, this is why this is going up on a Sunday.

[Friday Reads] - sick at home (early bird) editon (it's technically still Thursday here)

So, yeah, the flu got me. And it's really the flu, even though I don't feel as bad as I thought the flu would.
Anyway, as I'm home sick, but not too sick to read (well, most of the time... I do get tired quickly...) I thought I might as well try with the blogging again. And maybe catch up on some reviews.

What I'm reading these days:

Ur-Pippi by Astrid Lindgren, with a commentary by Ulla Lundquist

I've been meaning to read this for years. Ever since it came out, actually. But I somehow never got around to even buying the book. At least that I managed in February and now I even started the book (well, considering it's only 170 pages including the commentary I'm actually half way through). And I really enjoy reading it! I don't think I ever read the Pippi Longstocking books as a child, even though I did read many, many of Lindgren's other books. I only always watched the tv adaptation of Pippi. And so it is very interesting to finally read it and also to read the kind of unpolished and uncensored version of it. I'm comparing it a bit with the official published version, but I'm very interested to get to the commentary about the changes and the whole background to it.
This Pippi girl really is a kind of a brutish character and I love reading about her, she's not very nice or likeable, though. I see how this version of the famous redhead is more appropriate to a personal story telling or in a rather grown up context. I don't think that children would not have understood this version of Pippi or would have gotten all sorts of "bad" ideas from her. I just don't think that she would have gained as much sympathies and such a dear place in the hearts of many children as the "cleaned-up" version has.


Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. Le Guin

Reading Le Guin is always such a pleasure! In this book the first three, rather short, novels of the Hainish cycle (which of course is not a "cycle" at all) are compiled. I already read "The Dipossesed" and "The Word for World is Forest" (about which I have review half written...) of this series. And before I read "The Lef tHand of Darkness", which I've had on my shelf for quite a while, I decided to read the books in order, as far as that's a thing with these not really connected novels. Still, I like reading things in order.
So in this compilation I just finished the first book "Rocannon's World", which felt much more like Fantasy than SF, but that was okay. So far it was the one Le Guin book I enjoyed less of all I read, but it was still a great read! I love her prose and she makes world building and characters so easy to just get. It is kind of noticable that it was a really early work and her later stuff I read read even easier, more polished and perfect. I was kind of dissappointed that the really, really uncanny and scary part about these insect-like beings in their weird sleek and unhuman city was so short. That would have made for great SF moments!
But I did enjoy reading it and am now moving on to the second book "Planet of Exile". (The title's btw - great!)


Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

As there is a group read over on goodreads, and some of my favorite booktubers have been mentioning reading the book and also been showing off the pretty, pretty cover - I spontanously decided to get this one as an audio book. I thought I needed a new audio book for my car commute time (not knowing about staying home due to sickness back then) and it just sounded and looked so good. I already had another Nnedi Okorafor book on my shelf, so she's an author I definitely wanted to check out anyway.
I'm only 5 chapters in so far (because I really mainly read audio books in my car... it is very strange for me to listen to audio books at home, but I manged to listen to some chapters) but I'm loving it! The narrators are great, too.
Still I ordered a print copy as well today. The languages, naturally with Pidgin and slang, feels so rich and special that I feel the need to also see the written words to get a full impression of the book. Also another opportunity to see the cover more often! I might be tempted to touch it a lot...


Erfolg (also "Success" in its English translation) by Lion Feuchtwanger

This is - still! - my work/commute book. And since I a) stopped using public transport during the last weeks (first out of necessity and oportunity and then because it turns out driving just makes me so much happier) and am now b) sick at home... well I didn't make much progress on this one. The few pages I read during last week I still enjoyed a lot and it's so easy to feel right in the book even if only reading a couple of pages. On the other hand I've been carrying this one around for quite a while now and I would like to finish it at some point. So maybe I'll pick it up on the weekend and just sit down and finish it. Not a must, though. We'll see how my weekend goes and also how much like big reading sessions I'll be feeling with this kind of a cold in my head.



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Okay, so, have a great weekend everyone! If you're sick like me (like everybody around here seems to be) - get better soon! If you have to work/study/whatevs today - still have a great time!

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