It’s Sunday and time for the winner announcement of the Grimm’s Fairy Tale T-shirt, determined with the help of random.org.
The lucky winner is Jonathan (Intermittencies of the Mind).
Congratulations, Jonathan.
Please contact me via beautyisasleepingcat at gmail dot com.
Thanks to Literary Book Gifts for co-sponsoring the T-shirt and for offering a code.
November is here and German Literature Month begins.
Normally I do share my plans with you at this stage, not so this year. I will be focussing on our readalong titles. If I manage something else, wonderful, if not, that’s OK as well.
Just to remind you – here’s our program again:
November 7 – Readalong with Lizzy: The Book Jumper – Mechthild Glaser
Amy Lennox doesn’t know quite what to expect when she and her mother pick up and leave Germany for Scotland, heading to her mother’s childhood home of Lennox House on the island of Stormsay. Amy’s grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House – but not in the usual way. It turns out that Amy is a book jumper, able to leap into a story and interact with the world inside. As exciting as Amy’s new power is, it also brings danger – someone is stealing from the books she visits, and that person may be after her life. Teaming up with fellow book jumper Will, Amy vows to get to the bottom of the thefts – at whatever cost.
November 14 – Readalong with Caroline: Blue Night – Simone Buchholz
The hair stands up on the back of my neck and I get an age-old feeling in my belly. Like there’s a fight ahead. Like something’s really about to go off…
After convicting a superior for corruption and shooting off a gangster’s crown jewels, the career of Hamburg’s most hard-bitten state prosecutor, Chastity Riley, has taken a nose dive: she has been transferred to the tedium of witness protection to prevent her making any more trouble. However, when she is assigned to the case of an anonymous man lying under police guard in hospital – almost every bone in his body broken, a finger cut off, and refusing to speak in anything other than riddles – Chastity’s instinct for the big, exciting case kicks in.
Fresh, fiendishly fast-paced and full of devious twists and all the hard-boiled poetry and acerbic wit of the best noir, Blue Night marks the stunning start of a brilliant new crime series, from one of Germany’s bestselling authors.
November 21 – Readalong with Lizzy: The Emperor’s Tomb – Joseph Roth
The Emperor’s Tomb is a magically evocative, haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the passing of time and the loss of youth and friends. Prophetic and regretful, intuitive and exact, Roth’s acclaimed novel is the tale of one man’s struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities.
November 28 – Readalong with Caroline: A Long Blue Monday – Erhard von Büren
The novel portrays, with dry humour, delicate irony and a touch of nostalgia, the lives and feelings of young people in the late 1950s.
“Erhard von Büren pours out memories of love affairs, of family life, of student experiences or incidents from his readings… His style is spiced with waywardness and wit.” – Award of the Canton Solothurn Prize for Literature.
In A Long Blue Monday, the narrator, who is temporarily away from home working on a book about Sherwood Anderson, remembers his unrequited love affair with Claudia, whom he met at college during rehearsals for a play.
How could he, the village lad, the son of a working-class family, aspire to gain the affection of Claudia, a sophisticated town girl, who lives with her wealthy family in a spacious house by the river? Worlds seem to separate the two. But he is convinced that where there’s a will there’s a way. As a young boy, he had tried, by being a model pupil and a model son, to repair his family’s damaged reputation. But now, in spite of all his attempts, his love remains unreciprocated. Finally he decides to take several weeks off college to write a play – a trilogy, no less – to gain Claudia’s esteem.
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Please do not forget to enter your posts on the German Literature Month site, so everybody knows what’s happening and can visit your blogs.
Happy reading!
A while ago I was contacted by a small company – Literary Book Gifts – that produces gifts for book lovers. I had a look and liked their products so much that I decided to feature them for German Literature Month and offer one of their T-shirts, The Grimm’s Fairy Tale shirt, as a give-away (co-sponsored by Literary Book Gifts).
The company produces T-shirts for women and men and tote bags. All of them with great book-related art work as you can see below where I share some of my favourites. Each T-shirt comes in various sizes and colors.
And some of the tote bags:
GIVEAWAY
The T-shirt I’m giving away is a Grimm’s Fairy Tales T-shirt. This too, is available for men and women and in various colors.
The giveaway is open internationally. The winners will be announced on Sunday November 4 2018, around 18:00 Central European time.
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If you’d like to buy something from Literary Book Gifts, you can use the promo code beautyisasleepingcat20. It will give you a discount of 20%.
Thanks to Literary Book Gifts for co-sponsoring the T-shirt and for offering a code.
I’ve wanted to read Belinda Bauer for ages because I’ve heard so many good things about her books. Even so, I was surprised to see her on the Man Booker longlist. I don’t think many crime novels are included usually. And so, even though Rubbernecker is on my piles, I went and got Snap. I finished it two days ago and am still baffled. Baffled it made the Booker longlist. Not only baffled – sad really – because if the typical Booker longlist reader usually doesn’t read crime and this is his introduction to the genre . . . Not ideal. Baffled also because it’s such a weak book. There’s some nice writing there, good characterisations, but the story is unbelievable, relies heavily on coincidences – one after the other – and the killer’s motive is so far-fetched that it’s painful.
The premise is interesting enough. A pregnant mother leaves her kids in the car to get petrol and never returns. Later, her body is found. She’s been murdered. There are no suspects and soon it’s a cold case. Three years later, the three kids are living on their own in the messiest place one could imagine. What happened? The dad couldn’t cope and left the three children to fend for themselves. The oldest, Jack, provides for them by breaking and entering into houses whose owners are on holidays. Unfortunately, (biggest coincidence) one house isn’t abandoned and inside Jack finds not only a pregnant woman, but an object he believes had something to do with his mother’s death.
If I didn’t already own Rubbernecker, I’m pretty certain, I would not return to Belinda Bauer. But since I do, I might give her another try. I’m not sure though. I’ve read many great crime novels this year and also a few mediocre ones, but none was as unbelievable as this.
Why did I finish it, you may wonder? For the longest time, I thought it might go into another direction. Sadly it didn’t. And there was zero atmosphere.
German Literature Month is eight years old this year, and part of the literary calendar. Lizzy and I know that because of the chatter that continues throughout the year about books purchased and set aside for the event. And that makes us very happy. We’re even happier when you read them during November.
For those though who are wondering what this is all about, and may wish to join us for the first time, November is the month for reading works originally written in German: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, essays, comics, graphic novels. Anything you fancy really, in any language you fancy, as long as the original language was German. Then tell the world about it: on your blog, facebook, twitter, instagram, goodreads, amazon, wherever. It all adds up to one great banquet of Austrian, German and Swiss literary goodness. This, for example, was last year’s menu. https://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/german-literature-month-vii-author-index/
The last couple of years have been entirely read as you please, but this year Lizzy and I wanted to introduce new themes and add in more social reading opportunities. So we’ve devised the following plan.
November 7 – Readalong with Lizzy: The Book Jumper – Mechthild Glaser
November 14 – Readalong with Caroline: Blue Night – Simone Buchholz
November 21 – Readalong with Lizzy: The Emperor’s Tomb – Joseph Roth
November 28 – Readalong with Caroline: A Long Blue Monday – Erhard von Büren
As always, you may read as you please for the month, or you may choose to join in any (or all) of the specific themes and readalongs. It’s entirely up to you. The main thing is to enjoy yourself! Will you join us?
Like most book lovers, I own far too many books. Unlike most, I haven’t reduced their number in a very long time. In my teens, I went through a radical culling phase and gave away and sold a fair amount. Since then . . . I just kept on adding to the piles.
Some people only keep unread books and favourite books. That’s not a bad option, only I’ve got tons of favourite books and/or books I hope to read again someday in the future. Nonetheless, I’m sure I could find at least 500 I will never ever read again. Not because they were not good, but because life’s just too short and my TBR pile easily surpasses that number, which means I’m more likely to read something I haven’t read before.
Very courageous people cull books they haven’t even read yet. I find the idea of giving away an unread book even more painful than giving away a book I’ve read.
One thing I have been doing for a while, is putting books I really didn’t like in bags. That way, at least, they don’t clog up my shelves.
Given my reluctance to part with books, I thought it would be interesting to hear what others do.
Do you cull? And if so, what books do you give away/sell/chuck/donate . . .?
Dorthe Nors is a Danish writer who has written novels, novellas, and short stories. Her short stories have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Boston Review, and The New Yorker. Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize last year. Several of her books have been translated.
Mirror, Shoulder, Signal tells the story of Sonja, a single woman in her forties, who lives in Copenhagen and wants nothing more than learning to drive. It seems such a modest wish but for Sonja, who suffers from positional vertigo, it’s huge. The doctor actually told her she cannot learn how to drive but here she is anyway, getting driving lessons and failing miserably. Not because of the vertigo but because she just can’t figure out how to change gear. In itself, even though she urgently wants to learn to drive, this wouldn’t be so dramatic but there’s so much more that doesn’t really work in Sonja’s life that the failed driving lessons take on gigantic proportions.
Sonja moved to Copenhagen from rural Jutland. She’s the first of her family to study and after getting her degree in literature she moves to the exciting big city where she works as a translator of Swedish crime writer Gösta Svensson’s bloody serial killer novels. Not exactly the life she’d expected but then again what life did Sonja expect? That’s the question that not only Sonja asks herself during the course of this novel but also the reader. Sonja is the kind of character many readers seem to hate. She’s almost anachronistic in her failure to figure out what she wants and then go and get it. Because she is in many ways weak, people take advantage of her. Strangers and friends alike. Most people see her as someone they can use to talk endlessly about themselves, to show off, to bully, to patronise or, as her newest driving instructor, to have an affair with.
Sonja knows that her life is off its rails and she knows she’s missing direction but she can’t figure out how to get out of this mess other than to daydream or think about the past.
I was so not sure whether I liked this book or not until I read the last pages and everything came together. The ending was so sad, moving, and poignant that I ended up really liking this novel and it’s passive, at times annoying protagonist.
Everybody wants to read about strong, assertive characters and, of course, that’s inspiring but there’s so much truth in Sonja. I’m sure there’s so much hidden human misery in every big city, certainly also in small cities, that I found this story of a woman who had big dreams but ended up lonely and miserable very touching. It takes a special kind of character to survive in big, cold cities, especially when you were born elsewhere. And not everyone is capable of forming meaningful relationships, not everyone has the knack to be socially integrated. I’m very glad that Dorthe Nors chose to write about a quiet character whose struggles go unnoticed by those who surround her. At first even Sonja herself doesn’t notice. Only when she realises all of her struggles are futile does it dawn on her.
This could have been a sad and depressing story but it’s not because there are many funny moments. Sonja may not see herself as clearly as she should at first but she sees others all the more clearly. She has no illusions about those around her and her observations are often funny and laconic. There are the scenes with her massage therapist who also wants her to join her meditation group that are absolutely priceless.
As I said, there were moments when I wasn’t too sure about this book but in the end I liked the book and its old-fashioned heroine very much.
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat 