I am almost a little late for this months book reommendations – but here I am! Phew! Did you have a nice christmas? So this is the book I recommend this time:
This is Three bags full by the german writer Leonie Swann.
On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, a flock of sheep gathers around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared devotedly for the flock, even reading them books every night. Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George’s killer.
The A-team of investigators includes Othello, the “bad-boy” black ram; Mopple the Whale, a Merino who eats a lot and remembers everything; and Zora, a pensive black-faced ewe with a weakness for abysses. Joined by other members of the richly talented flock, they engage in nightlong discussions about the crime, wild metaphysical speculations, and embark on reconnaissance missions into the village, where they encounter some likely suspects. Along the way, the sheep confront their own all-too-human struggles with guilt, misdeeds, and unrequited love.
To be honest – I have never given much consideration on sheep. They were just there and I would never loose many thoughts about them. I guess I would never have read this book either if it were not for my sister. She read it and loved it, so I thought I’d give it a go and I am glad I did! It is so much fun to accompany the flock on their journey on finding the murderer of their sheperd. It is fun because you gain a whole different perspective on humans and on human behaviour. I loved it how everyone of the flock played its role, everyone was important to the story and I also loved those references to the Miss Marple mysteries. It’s a great, witty, touching story that you will definetley enjoy! For me, it’s the best sheep detective novel ever written!
I do love to answer questions! I do enjoy my life most of the time, so I am always happy to share! If you decide to take these questions to answer them as well, please leave me a link so I can read them too! ♥
What bill do you hate to pay the most?
I enjoy shopping and ordering useful and sometimes also useless thingies over the internet and I normally am ok to pay those kinda bills (I don’t love it – duh – but it is ok). I guess I don’t hate to pay bills in generally, it’s just something you have to do, but I am not too crazy about all the high bills, like rent, gas, water and insurance, especially since they keep increasing the amount (yeah Mr. Landlord, I am talking to you!)
2. When was the last time you had a romantic dinner?
Hmm.. Yesterday! Me and my boyfriend went to eat ethiopian food! We try to go to different restaurants every once in a while and to discover new types of food. I had never eaten ethiopian food before, but it was delicious! You would share a plate and eat with your hands! It was really fun 😀
3. What do you really want to be doing after answering these questions?
It is already night time, so I will answer these questions and then take a shower. I recently started to reread the Harry Potter Series, so the sixth book is waiting on my nightstand and there is nothing better to snuggle into your warm bed with a good book after you had a shower!
4. How many colleges did you attend?
I am never sure if a college is the same as a university, or if there is a difference! In Germany, we just have universities and I attend one. I am still going to the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, one of the best universities in Europe.
5. Why did you choose the shirt you have on now?
Truth is – I am not waering and shirt atm xD I am wearing a comfy onesie! And I am wearing it because it is so warm and comfortable 😀
6. Thoughts on gas prices right now?
Um… no. I imagine they are too high, my father always complains about them, but I would not know, I never owned a car.
7. First thought when the alarm goes off in the morning?
Usually it is too early to think anything. There is just this instinctive grabbing my phone and turning the alarm off. Sometimes accompanied by some grunting. I am not really a morning person.
8. Last thought you have before you go to bed?
Depends. Normally something that involves the word “tired”.
9. Do you miss being a child?
Sometimes. I miss having no responsibilties. But there is a saying in Germany that says: You are only human if you grow up and remain a child. I guess and hope the child inside me will never disappear.
10. What errand/chore do you despise the most?
Lol I had to look up errand and chore xD Thanks 30 questions for teaching me some more english xD
I don’t like to clean. I am also not good at it. Lucky me my boyfriend is very good at it, so he does it most of the time.
11. Do prefer to wake up early or sleep in?
I think I alredy said so – I am NOT a morning person. I get grumpy in the morning and I insult people who wake me before I have to get up. So that is a definite YES for the sleepin in!
12. Found love yet?
Yes. Happy for 6 years. We are going to get married next year! So hyped!
13. Favorite meal to eat for lunch?
Curry. I loooooove Curry! Indian curry is best, but I also love thai curry and nepali curry! I can not get enough of this spicy delicacy ♥
14. What do you get every time you go grocery shopping?
A Pretzel. I love pretzels ♥
15. Ocean, river or lake?
All three. But I love the river that goes through our city. Every city should have a river! It is so nice to walk besides it ♥♥
16. Is marriage overrated?
I’d go with no. It is nice to commit to someone that way and I am really looking forward to this step next year!
17. Ever crashed your vehicle?
Luckily not. I am crossing fingers it will stay like this.
18. Somewhere you’ve never been, but want to go?
Tons of places! I want to go to Nazca in Peru, I want to go to Lumbini in Nepal, to India, to Bhutan, tu Thailand, to Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan! The world is big and I am tiny in comparison, but I am on the task!
19. At this point in your life, would you want to start a new career?
I have changed my career a short while ago, because I was really not happy with it. Now I am doing roman languages and I am so much happier with it. It was a great decision.
20. How many days until your next birthday?
49 days! My birthday is januar 15th and I will be turning 26. Wow. Time flies by so quickly!
21. Who is your go-to person when you need to vent?
I am not normally a venting type of person. I would rather just scream at a tree to get rid of my anger, but I guess when I feel like talking to someone I always go to my boyfriend.
22. Are you where you want to be in life?
Yes and no. I am happy with the person I am right now, I am happy with how things are going so far, but there are still so many things I want for me and my life, so many things I want to accomplish and so many places I want to see! So I guess I aspiring for more but still happy with how things are going 😀
23. Growing up, who were your favorite cartoon characters?
Sailor Moon. Loved her. Still love her!
24. What do you think has changed about you, since you were a teenager?
Hmm interesting question. I guess I am more mature now. At least I think I am. I moved out with 19 years and ever since I managed my own household, earning money, paying bills and studying. It was not always easy but I think my mother would say I turned out ok.
25. Looking back at high school were they the best years of your life?
Hell no. I liked going to school, but I love my life now way better.
26. When do you still feel like a kid?
When do I not feel like a kid? I laugh at funny sounding words, I find it amusing when my sister falls on her nose and I enjoy playing with Lego. I am basically a Kid xD
27. What was the make, model and year of the first car you owned?
I never owned a car But I’d like a VW Golf one day 😀
28. Were you the type of kid you’d want your children to hang out with?
I was a nice kid. The wildest thing I did was to start smoking when I was about 15, but other than that – I never was drunk before I was legally allowed to (I guess the first time I was about 17?), I wouldn’t do drugs and I did not ditch school 😀 So yeah – I would my kids allow to hang out with someone like me 😀 I was fun.
29. What radio stations did you listen to when you were a teenager?
I really was never a big listener to radio. I don’t know how radio is like over at your ends of the world, but here the stations always play the same songs over and over again. I rather would listen to my own CDs and later on – playlists.
30. Who was your high school ‘crush’?
His name was Philipp and he was two years older than me. I hardly ever talked more than 3 words with him, but wow I was in love with him ^^
I had been struggeling a bit finding a book I could recommend this month, as I mostly read german books this past month that had not been translated yet (and I started rereading the Harry Potter series, but I guess there is no further recommendation needed for these little marvels). Nonetheless I am lucky that one book I read and that impressed me big deal got lucky and is available in english, so the book I recommend this month is the following:
This book is called Fame: a novel in nine episodes by the german author Daniel Kehlmann
Imagine being famous. Being recognized on the street, adored by people who have never even met you, known the world over. Wouldn’t that be great? But what if, one day, you got stuck in a country where celebrity means nothing, where no one spoke your language and you didn’t speak theirs, where no one knew your face (no book jackets, no TV) and you had no way of calling home? How would your fame help you then? What if someone got hold of your cell phone? What if they spoke to your girlfriends, your agent, your director, and started making decisions for you? And worse, what if no one believed you were you anymore? When you saw a look-alike acting your roles for you, what would you do? And what if one day you realized your magnum opus, like everything else you’d ever written, was a total waste of time, empty nonsense? What would you do next? Would your audience of seven million people keep you going? Or would you lose the capacity to keep on doing it? Fame and facelessness, truth and deception, spin their way through all nine episodes of this captivating, wickedly funny, and perpetually surprising novel as paths cross and plots thicken, as characters become real people and real people morph into characters. The result is a dazzling tour de force by one of Europe’s finest young writers.
I admit, this is not usually a book I would read, I have to blame a member of my bookclub, as she wanted us to read it, so I did and I got suprised. Daniel Kehlmann is quite hyped in Germany and is often named as one of the best post-war german writers, but the genre realism, or “magical realism” as Kehlmann writes, did never really speak to me.
Anyhow, as I said, I kinda “had” to read the book for my book club and I went on with it without really expecting much of it. And boy I got surprised! Fame is not really a novel, it is a collection of nince interconnected short stories that all go around the topic of fame. All the short stories approach the topic from a different angle, some make you laugh, some make you tear up, some make you shake your head in disbelief.
As I said, the stories are interconnected, meaning that in one story a person might be the protagonist, but in another story he is only a supporting character. That allowes the reader to get to know the characters from different angles, from different point of views and that is so enriching. And though the book does not have many pages you learn more about the characters then in most 1000-pagers.
Now then another thing that amazed me and that tickled my brain is HOW these stories are interconnected. In one story the protagonist interacts with the narrator, meta-fiction if you like (this is always so confusing to me when authors do that) and in the next story the narrator himself is the protagonist of his own story. Fiction in fiction. In the next story you meet a character from another story of said narrator but in the following story that character is getting its own story again and suddenly is in the same story as the narrator and it is all so confusing. You start to wonder what is fiction, what is meat-fiction and it took me some time to figure it all out.
I am really really excited about this recommendation! My boyfriend went away for a month to visit his sister and I fell into a whole of Netflix. I discovered the series Outlander and I fell for it. So I had to get the book and I turned that 1000+ pages in less than two days, because it was so gawwwd.
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord…1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Loved it, loved it, loved it! I don’t usually like historical novels, but this one was just too real. I loved the love story between Jamie and Claire. I got so hooked up by all the historical stuff that was going on I found myself googleing all about the Battle the Scottish fought against the British. It was an enormous pageturner and I am already on the second book.
This month, I’d like to recommend the following book:
This is the novel The mysterious Affair at Styles by the british Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.
Poirot, a Belgian refugee of the Great War, is settling in England near the home of Emily Inglethorp, who helped him to his new life. His friend Hastings arrives as a guest at her home. When the woman is killed, Poirot uses his detective skills to solve the mystery.
Where to start!? I wanted to read this for a long time already since I love the Poirot books by Agatha Christie! I LOOOVE them! Now I just recently joined a bookclub and this is the second book we read there. It’s somehow special, since it is the first ever book by Christie.
The mysterious Affair at Styles has everything a good Mystery Crime Novel needs. Original Characters who all somehow seem suspicious, an intriguing plot and a quirky little belgian detective. I also liked how charming it was. In the end you don’t always need blood shedding, violence and a gutter mouth to create a pageturner. Thank you Christie!
Hui I am almost a little late for this one! But just almost xD The challenge for this months read was to read a book with a beautiful cover and so I did! I hope you’ll enjoy reading my review of:
This is Death comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
The year is 1803, and Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley live nearby and the orderly world of Pemberley seems unassailable. But all this is threatened when, on the eve of the annual autumn ball, the guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland. As it pulls up, Lydia Wickham – Elizabeth Bennet’s younger, unreliable sister – stumbles out screaming that her husband has been murdered.
I bought this book when my linda Fiorella recommended it to me, but shame on me it lasted quite some time untouched on my shelf. I did love the premise, as I am madly in love with Mr. Darcy and everything Austen (who isn’t??) so I was quite excited for this read. As for the cover, This is the hardcover edition and I loved it simplicity and that there is just half a carriage. The little things are what matter, right?
As for my read, as I already said – I wanted this book to by my next favourite book. I wanted to love it! And what can I say? It was an ok read. Nothing for an Austen purists though, there were lots of little things that annoyed my a little. It seemed like if the author tried to imitate Austens writing style, but after a few chapters it fades. Also although six years already passed since the happenings of Pride and Prejudice and the characters still keep referring to them as if all happened just yesterday. There was very little interaction between Jane and Mr. Darcy, pages and pages of monologues instead. Also, surprisingly, noone seemed to care for solving that murder for most of the book! Lucky for them it got cleared up anyway in the end xD
Summa Summarum, it’s an easy read, enjoyable, but no huge world literature. It was nice, perfect for a summer night with some wine at the side 🙂
Yay, it’s time for book recomendations! Are you as excited as I am? 😀
This month I want to recommend the following book:
This is the novel The house of the spirits by the chilenean writer Isabel Allende
Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.
The House of the Spirits was the first novel I read in spanish and therefore will always have a special place in my bookshelf. I was 17 I think when I first read it and I still reread it from time to time. You might already know this one, as it is one of the best known latinamerican novels in modern times.
Now, why do I love that book? There is so much happening! You follow the members of this family through decades. You suffer with them, you are happy with them, you cry, you laugh… It just gets to you. You learn a lot about Latin America as well and what it means to live in unsteady times. I don’t usually read or even enjoy epic familiar dramas, but I do love this one. I love Allende and I love her way of telling a story.
There were several things that made me extra happy this month!
First of all – I love musicals and I go to the theatre as often as possible! It helps that one of my closest friends works at the german theatre here in Munich and hooks me up with free tickets all the time. I love her ♥
So this month I went to see two musicals:
This was Evita. A gorgeous Andrew-Lloyd-Webber Musical about the first Lady of Argentina. It was a great musical and the songs won all those Tonys for a reason! If you are not familiar with this musical – you should look it up! I linked the best known song “Don’t cry for me Argentina” for you to get an impression 😀
The other musical I saw quite recently was Westend Story. Another classic that stopped in Munich on their tour around the world. I have never seen that musical on stage, so it was kind of a big deal for me ♥
It was really gorgeous and I very much enjoyed it! I am a very avid user of instagram and I posted this very picture after the show and I got pretty surprised as some of the actors commented on it! I was in musical nerd heaven!
As you might know April 23th was World Book Day and I went to a party! Amazon Germany is settled in Munich and as they started off with books they celebrated a party and invited everyone to come. They had free cake, coffee, hotdogs, readings, and, most important – free books! They installed an open bookshelf and you could bring a book and take books. There were used ones and new ones! I brought one and in the end I walked off with 8. It was awesome ♥
It was time for another reading challenge and I was so looking forward to this challenge as it was to listen to an audiobook.
I have to say before I start with my challenge – I love audiobooks! I love them, I love them, I love them soo much! I also love radio dramas – Seriously, my mp3 datas on my computer are about 80% spoken content and only about 20% music. I rather walk down the street, go shopping, or whatever, with someone reading a book into my ears than listening to music (although I also love to listen to music!).
For that challenge though, as I wanted to be a challenge I listened to an audiobook in english, which I never did before. Exciting!
I decided to listen to Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone by JK Rowling, read by Stephen Fry.
Harry Potter’s life is miserable. His parents are dead and he’s stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he’s a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry. Though Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it’s his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.
So far so good. Of course I am well aware of the fact that this book might be a book everyone has already read in his or her life. I sure have many countless times. And although these challenges encourage you to read (in this case listen to) something new I felt like it was ok to listen to this one as I listened to it in english which I never did before. Also, I think my english is ok in a written form, but it was a whole new thing for me to concentrate on a foreign language and on the plot.
I wont loose many words on how I loved the story, I guess Harry Potter is this one series we can all agree on. I have never met a single person who did not love it and of course I am one of these people as well. I adore Potter.
Another reason I picked this book was because Stephen Fry reads it. I have to say – I always had a little crush on Stephen Fry, ever since I first saw Bits of Fry and Laurie. He is one of the brightest, most intelligent and most hilarious people I know. I adore him and I adore the way he reads Harry Potter. He does the most wonderful voices and it was easy to follow, to understand and he always caught my attention. I find it easier to follow the british accent and Stephen Fry’s voice is so rich, vibrant, full of energy… He does an amazing job on all the different accents, he brings Harry Potter to live! I am not sure I ever will be able to listen to the german audiobooks again and I am currently listening to the chamber of secrets ♥
But I’d like a VW Golf one day 😀
schnitzelmitkaese 