#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.

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.