MissWatson visits 16 small(ish) towns in Germany – the second trip

I'm Birgit and I live in Schleswig-Holstein, at the northern end of Germany. The Federal Republic has sixteen Länder, so the theme is more or less a no-brainer. It is also an incentive to read more from and about my own country. Some of the categories are specific, others deliberately wide to allow for digression and impulse reading. The minimum number of books for each category is 2, again.

I'm also going to track the number of pages I read.



January page count: 3838
February page count: 3838
March page count: 3517
April page count: 2758
May page count: 3913
June page count: 3022
July page count: 3692
August page count: 3635
September page count: 2069
October page count: 2401
November page count: 4793
December page count: 4120

Marbach / Baden-Württemberg
Category: German authors whose papers are held at the German Literature Archive



Marbach is the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, the other giant of German literature. It is also home to the German Literature Archive. Authors can donate their papers before they die, so I may get around to read contemporary authors.

1. Der Zauberring by Friedrich de LaMotte Fouqué
2. Tage des Königs by Bruno Frank
3. Sansibar oder der letzte Grund by Alfred Andersch
4. Tod des Dichters by Ludwig Tieck
5. Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht by Willibald Alexis
6. Das Leben der Hochgräfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns by Bettina and Gisela von Arnim
7. Die Wiedertäufer by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Nürnberg / Bayern
Category: children/YA/Roald Dahl centenary



Nürnberg is famous for many things, among them a spicy sausage, Lebkuchen (gingerbread) and a medieval castle. It also hosts the world's largest toy fair.

1. Noch mal! by Emily Gavett
2. fünfter sein by Ernst Jandl
3. Les récrés du petit Nicolas by René Goscinny
4. Sophiechen und der Riese by Roald Dahl
5. Gritlis Kinder by Johanna Spyri
6. Der gestiefelte Kater by Ferdinand Avenarius
7. How I live now by Meg Rosoff
8. Die Glückspilze by Annegret Rausch-Hüger
9. Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling
10. Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
11. Goth Girl and the ghost of a mouse by Chris Riddell
12. A travers l'Exposition by Elodie Lamarque
13. Das fliegende Klassenzimmer by Erich Kästner

Museumsinsel / Berlin
Category: arts and Graphic novels



My favourite place in Berlin is the Pergamon Museum, and my favourite object is the Ishtar Gate. Such vivid colours after so many centuries!

1. Das Lesen ist schön
2. Von Herkules gekrönt by Agnes Tieze
3. Yukon Ho! by Bill Watterson

Dahlewitz / Brandenburg
Category: Science Fiction and Fantasy



Dahlewitz lies south of Berlin and is tiny indeed. Its only claim to fame is to be the birthplace of Nikolai von Michalewsky who wrote SF under the pseudonym of Mark Brandis, a reference to his native region, the Mark Brandenburg. I think this was my first encounter with SF.

1. Queen of fire by Anthony Ryan
2. Shovel ready by Adam Sternbergh
3. His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
4. Wir by Evgenij Zamjatin
5. Leviathan wakes by James S. A. Corey
6. The healer's war by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
7. L'Alchimiste des ombres by Pierre Pevel
8. Le dragon des Arcanes by Pierre Pevel
9. Black amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett
10. Asche und Blitz by Frédérick Tristan
11. A world is born by Leigh Brackett
12. War with the robots by Harry Harrison
13. Spaceship Medic by Harry Harrison
14. The aeronaut's windlass by Jim Butcher
15. The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison

Bremerhaven / Bremen
Category: books and authors from countries I have not visited myself (yet)



Bremerhaven was founded as a port for Bremen when ships became too big for the Weser river. From here the emigration ships embarked for North America. Reads for the Geo CAT will be recorded and counted here.

1. La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende. January Geo CAT
2. Dshamilja by Tschingis Aitmatov. February Geo CAT
3. Der Verrückte des Zaren by Jaan Kross. March Geo CAT
4. Geschichte des Baltikums by Alexander Schmidt. March Geo CAT
5. Wellen by Eduard von Keyserling. March Geo CAT
6. Wir by Evgenij Zamjatin. March Geo CAT
7. Ali und Nino by Kurban Said. March Geo CAT
8. Grimsey by Ulrich Schacht. April Geo CAT
9. The hills is lonely by Lillian Beckwith. April Geo CAT
10. Forty words for sorrow by Giles Blunt. May Geo CAT
11. The cruellest month by Louise Penny. May Geo CAT
12. The witch-maid and other verses by Dorothea Mackellar. June Geo CAT
13. Buckley's Hope by Craig Robertson. June Geo CAT
13. The little blue devil by Dorothea Mackellar. June Geo CAT
14. El derecho de asilo by Alejo Carpentier. July GeoCAT
15. Concierto barroco by Alejo Carpentier. July GeoCAT
16. A good man in Africa by William Boyd. August GeoCAT
17. The coroner's lunch by Colin Cotterill. October Geo CAT
18. Samarcande by Amin Maalouf. November GeoCAT
19. Euphrat Queen by Ursula Naumann. November GeoCAT
20. Von Trollen und Menschen by Selma Lagerlöf. December GeoCAT
21. Aziyadeh by Pierre Loti. November GeoCAT

Finkenwerder / Hamburg
Category: all things maritime



Finkenwerder is the birthplace of Gorch Fock, whose most famous book is "Seefahrt ist not!". The training ship of the German navy is named after him. Finkenwerder also provides a popular recipe for cooking plaice.

1. Seefahrt ist not! by Gorch Fock
2. Friesenrebellion by Ocke Aukes

Wiesbaden / Hessen
Category: mysteries



Wiesbaden is the capital of the state of Hesse and also the seat of the "German FBI", the Bundeskriminalamt.

1. Sauerkrautkoma by Rita Falk
2. Schweinskopf al dente by Rita Falk
3. Mord nach jeder Fasson by Tom Wolf
4. The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price
5. The Alamut Ambush by Anthony Price
6. Ah, treachery! by Ross Thomas
7. Ausgefressen by Moritz Matthies
8. Voll Speed by Moritz Matthies
9. Dickes Fell by Moritz Matthies
10. Letzte Runde by Moritz Matthies

Stavenhagen / Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Category: regional literature, regional dialects



Stavenhagen is the birthplace of Fritz Reuter who wrote books in his native dialect, the Plattdeutsch of Mecklenburg. There are quite a lot of authors who cherish their local idiosyncracies, so this is the category to go walkabout in Germany.

1. Winterkartoffelknödel by Rita Falk
2. Leberkäs-Junkie by Rita Falk
3. Kieler Schatten by Kay Jacobs
4. Weißwurst-Connection by Rita Falk

Wolfenbüttel / Niedersachsen
Category: science, non-fiction



Two great minds of the German Enlightenment served as librarians at the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It is now a research library for Medieval history, so the occasional history book will also slip in here.

1. Die Prussen by Gisela Graichen and Matthias Gretzschel
2. Vorgeschichte in der Bretagne by Pierre-Roland Giot
3. Kleine Geschichte der Niederlande by Geert Mak
4. Die Kelten by Bernhard Maier
5. Die Sachsen des frühen Mittelalters by Torsten Capelle
6. Die Franken by Bernhard Jussen
7. Die Skythen by Hermann Parzinger
8. Hirten, Bauern, Götter by Werner Tietz
9. Science and Civilisation in China volume 1: Introductory Orientations by Joseph Needham
10. The Gothic: A very short introduction by Nick Groom
11. Abenteuer Archäologie by Hermann Parzinger
12. Science and civilisation in China volume 2: History of scientific thought by Joseph Needham

Solingen / Nordrhein-Westfalen
Category: novelas de capa y de espada / romans de cape et d'épée / Mantel- und Degenromane



Sharpe fans may remember Sharpe's Sword where he covets his opponent's fine blade made in Klingenthal. Klingenthal was founded in 1730 by Louis XV. Until then, the French army bought its swords in Solingen. The name is still a mark of quality for knives.
According to some sources, 2016 is also the bicentenary of Paul Féval who wrote an iconic swordfighting romance: Le bossu.

1. The tavern knight by Rafael Sabatini
2. The suitors of Yvonne by Rafael Sabatini

Trier / Rheinland-Pfalz
Category: ancient history



For nearly a century, Roman Emperors resided in Trier. The city boasts some spectacular remains.

1. Mémoires d'Hadrien by Marguerite Yourcenar
2. Romans, Celts and Germans by Maureen Carroll
3. Die Söhne des Mars by Armin Eich

Mettlach / Saarland
Category: economic history



The small town of Mettlach houses the headquarters of Villeroy & Boch, family-owned since the 18th century. Nearly all my tableware bears their mark.

1. Trade in the Eastern seas by C. Northcote Parkinson
2. Empire of cotton by Sven Beckert (abandoned)
3. The Indian cotton textile industry by M.P. Gandhi
4. The spinning world by Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi
5. Die Portugiesenzeit von Deutsch- und Englisch-Ostafrika by Justus Strandes
6. Before European hegemony by Janet L. Abu-Lughod
7. Der königliche Kaufmann by Stefan Weiß

Leipzig / Sachsen
Category: group reads and CATs



The other book fair! The Leipzig book fair holds many events for readers, so this is the category to record reads for the Dewey and Random CATs, and maybe some group reads. Since the CAT category dwarfed all others in my 2015 challenge, overlap with other categories is allowed here.

1. Firmin by Sam Savage. January Dewey CAT
2. Informatik by Friedrich L. Bauer. January Dewey CAT, January Random CAT
3. Sophiechen und der Riese by Roald Dahl. February Random CAT
4. Lilienbanner und Preußenaar by Karl Bartz. February Random CAT
5. De brevitate vitae / Die Kürze des Lebens by Seneca. February Dewey CAT
6. Die preußischen Brüder by Christian von Krockow. February Random CAT
7. Der Vorabend des Weihnachtsfestes by Rosalia Müller. March Random CAT
8. Ali und Nino by Kurban Said. March Dewey CAT
9. The spinning world by Giorgio Riello. April Dewey CAT
10. Manners for women by Mrs Humphry. May Dewey CAT
11. The black robe by Wilkie Collins. May Random CAT
12. Lumpenmüllers Lieschen by Wilhelmine Heimburg. June Random CAT
13. Latein ist tot, es lebe Latein! by Wilfried Stroh. June Dewey CAT
14. Rendezvous mit Venus by Jean-Pierre Luminet. July Dewey CAT
15. Sword at sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff. July Random CAT
16. Before European hegemony by Janet L. Abu-Lughod. July Random CAT
17. The winter king by Bernard Cornwell. July Random CAT
18. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. August Random CAT
19. Hirten, Bauern, Götter by Werner Tietz. August Dewey CAT
20. Asche und Blitz by Frédérick Tristan. September Random CAT
21. The game of kings by Dorothy Dunnett. September group read
22. Von Herkules gekrönt by Agnes Tieze. September Dewey CAT
23. The moviegoer by Walker Percy. October Dewey CAT
24. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. October Random CAT
25. Impératrice by Shan Sa. November Dewey CAT
26. Rose et Blanche, ou la comédienne et la religieuse by J. Sand. November Random CAT
27. Euphrat Queen by Ursula Naumann. November Dewey CAT
28. The Cavalry Maiden by Nadezhda Durova. December Dewy CAT
29. Unsere Hochzeiten by Dorit Rabinyan. December Random CAT

Magdeburg / Sachsen-Anhalt
Category: books about music, musicians or with music in the title



Magdeburg has many famous sons, among them composer Georg Philipp Telemann.

1. Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag by Eduard Mörike
2. Concierto barroco by Alejo Carpentier

Flensburg / Schleswig-Holstein
Category: book bullets and the TBR pile



Flensburg is a sleepy little town on the Baltic and next door to Denmark, but once it was the largest rum importing and blending town in Germany. And what do we associate with rum? Pirates! And with pirates? Treasure-hunting!

1. Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
2. Trenck by Bruno Frank
3. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
4. The last chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
5. La fête à Coqueville by Émile Zola. BB from VivienneR
6. The winter king by Bernard Cornwell. TBR
7. Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell. TBR
8. Hot water by P.G.Wodehouse. TBR

Arnstadt / Thüringen
Category: romances and guilty pleasures



Arnstadt is the birthplace of Eugenie John who wrote romances under the name of Marlitt. Literary critics look down on her books, of course, but what do they know?! Sometimes you just need to curl up on the sofa with a favourite heroine or a swoon-worthy hero.

1. Maman la Soupe et son chat Ratu by Marcel Mültzer
2. Pauline by Alexandre Dumas père
3. The duke's daughter by Mrs. Oliphant
4. The fugitives by Mrs. Oliphant
5. Das Schloß im Gebirge by Moritz Hartmann
6. Bardelys the Magnificent by Rafael Sabatini
7. The Chalet School and Jo by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

This is the place for the BINGO dog.



1: Firmin by Sam Savage
2: Frau Maier hört das Gras wachsen by Jessica Kremser
3: Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
4: The Labyrinth Makers by Anthony Price
5: Schriftsteller! by Jessica Durlacher
6: Key economic areas in Chinese history by Chi Ch'ao-ting
7: The moviegoer by Walker Percy
8: Jugenderinnerungen by Sof'ja Vasil'evna Kovalevskaja
9: The adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
10: Pauline by Alexandre Dumas père
11: Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag by Eduard Mörike
12: Pereat Austria! by Carola von Eynatten
13: Impératrice by Shan Sa
14: Euphrat Queen by Ursula Naumann
15: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
16: Hirten, Bauern, Götter by Werner Tietz
17: Seefahrt ist not by Gorch Fock
18: Death at the opera by Gladys Mitchell
19: How I live now by Meg Rosoff
20: Der Verrückte des Zaren by Jaan Kross
21: Die Gemälde by Ludwig Tieck
22: Gräfin Erikas Lehr- und Wanderjahre by Ossip Schubin
23: Something under the bed is drooling by Bill Watterson
24: Navajo Autumn by R. Allen Chappell
25: A month in the country by J. L. Carr

And here is the BINGO WomanPUP. Because I'm greedy. Overlap between BINGOs and with categories is allowed.



1: a new-to-you author: The duke's daughter by Mrs. Oliphant
2: author over 60 years old: Before European hegemony by Janet L. Abu-Lughod
3: African author: Red Dust by Gillian Slovo
4: male pseudonym: Rose et Blanche, ou la comédienne et la religieuse by J. Sand
5: author from Middle East: Unsere Hochzeiten by Dorit Rabinyan
6: set in Latin America: La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende
7: made into a movie: Das Leben der Hochgräfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns by Bettina and Gisela von Arnim
8: about a female critter: Danke für meine Aufmerksamkeit by Cordula Stratmann
9: published before 2000: The Prospering by Elizabeth G. Speare
10: set in England, Australia or NZ: The little blue devil by Dorothea Mackellar
11: different genre by same author: Career of evil by Robert Galbraith
12: Award winner: How I live now by Meg Rosoff
13: by a woman: Marriage by Susan Ferrier
14: Golden Age Detective Fiction: Death at the opera by Gladys Mitchell
15: poetry: The witch-maid and other verses by Dorothea Mackellar
16: non-traditional role: Roast Beef, Medium by Edna Ferber
17: less than 10 years old: Friesenrebellion by Ocke Aukes
18: TBR: Lumpenmüllers Lieschen by Wilhelmine Heimburg
19: memoir: Jugenderinnerungen by Sof'ja Vasil'evna Kovalevskaja
20: about a spy: At risk by Stella Rimington
21: short story collection: Von Trollen und Menschen by Selma Lagerlöf
22: women in science: Euphrat Queen by Ursula Naumann
23: women in combat: The Cavalry Maiden by Nadezhda Durova
24: female ruler: Impératrice by Shan Sa
25: Afircan-American author: Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E. W. Harper

Welcome to my visitors!

Happy new thread! Loved seeing all the flags again and the references to pirates ;)

Schiller just came up in a Robertson Davies book I'm reading: someone quoted his line "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."
This quote also appeared in a Len Deighton novel. It seems to be a popular quote of his!

Happy new thread! Your categories, however, are giving me flashbacks to my German Culture class.

>22 rabbitprincess: Nice to see you! Schiller (and Goethe) quotes are to German what Shakespeare quotes are to English: ubiquitous.

>24 MissWatson: Hi Kay! Are the results of your test in yet?

The weather has been awful all week, yesterday it still rained buckets, and today, hey presto, we have glorious sunshine! Perfect for the May open air fleamarket where several gardeners offer plants. I brought home two and hope I didn't kill them with re-potting. I am not exactly blessed with a green thumb.
Oh, and I found books, of course. Fifty cents is unmissable for a nice pretty Tauchnitz edition of Fraternity by Galsworthy.

edited for typo

Happy new thread. I have a notorious brown thumb and can't be trusted around plants. I leave most of the gardening to my husband in order to give the plants a chance to survive. :)

>24 MissWatson: It will be at least a few more weeks before the test results are in.

And let's hope that spring is finally here. I would love to be able to walk around and enjoy it, or even sit outside at a cafe.

>27 DeltaQueen50: I noticed that one of last year's flowers is showing buds, so I'm mildly optimistic that it's not dead.

>28 RidgewayGirl: That would be nice for the long weekend coming up.

>30 MissWatson: I'm holding my thumbs!

Happy new thread! It's cool seeing all those proud flags.

Yea! Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread!!

Happy new thread! And, finally, happy spring! :)

>32 mamzel: >33 mstrust: >34 -Eva-: >35 Chrischi_HH: Thanks for dropping in! I hope the weather treats you nicely!

Marbach / German Literature Archive

Tod des Dichters by Ludwig Tieck is a historical novel set in Lisbon and describes the last days of the poet Luís de Camões, which coincide with the last days of Portugal as an independent nation: King Sebastian engaged on a fatal campaign in Africa, got himself killed, and Philip of Spain took over the kingdom.
I am tempted to say that it is typical of what we expect from the Romantics; everything is larger than life, people more beautiful, feelings more intense, faith more fervent, fates more desperate. Death and the futility of life loom large. There's also the parallel between the nation's ingratitude towards its greatest poet and the decline of Portugal as a great colonial empire, and this was an aspect I found hard to swallow. This fervent nationalism, coupled as it is with the firm belief in white peoples' superiority, is very much a product of its time, a fact I was constantly reminded of by the author's quaint, old-fashioned style. It's so odd that I went to look at a digitised copy of an original printing just to reassure myself that he had actually written it like this.
Time to read up on the Romantics.

ETC

Magdeburg / music or musicians // Bingo DOG / title has a musical reference

Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag is a novella and tells how Mozart, on the way to Prague with his wife for the first production of Don Giovanni, stops over in a small town and is invited to the celebration of a betrothal at a castle nearby. There's lots of impromptu music and Constanze shares some tidbits about married life with a genius. Nice and gentle.

Bremerhaven / Geo CAT

Forty words for sorrow is set in Ontario and my first book in this series. Probably not my last, I liked the characters and the setting was new to me.

Mettlach / economic history

The spinning world is a collection of twenty essays dealing with various aspects of cotton cloth manufacture and trade. There was quite a lot of mutual citation, as is usual among people working in similar fields, but all of the essays are very readable, concise and informative.
Oh, and it also counts for the April Dewey CAT.

ETA

Bremerhaven / Geo CAT

The cruellest month is the third instalment in the Gamache series and my first book by Louise Penny. I liked the setting and the people in Three Pines, but the affair at the Sûreté strikes me as less convincing. And she chose some very untypical names for her Eastern European immigrants.

>41 MissWatson: My favourite book in that series is #6, Bury Your Dead, mainly because it's set in Quebec City. There's a good book set in a Canadian winter :)

>42 rabbitprincess: That sounds promising. I'll keep an eye out for this at my favourite charity bookshop.

Leipzig / CATs

I found something unexpectedly nice on my shelves for the Dewey CAT, about etiquette: Manners for women. It had me giggling several times, other stuff she mentions is still valid today. And I loved Lord Charles Beresford's telegraphic reply to an invitation politely to be declined: "Sorry to be unable to accept. Lie follows by post."

Trier / ancient history

I do not often buy books fresh off the press, but in this case I did, because Die Söhne des Mars promised to do what Harry Sidebottom's Ancient warfare abysmally failed to do. And it did deliver.

The author takes us from the question of how war emerged to the first archaeological remains of weapons and battle sites and on to the Greeks and Romans. He manages to explain different views of these fundamental questions in layman's terms, he does not overburden the reader with too many details, and he has an amazing way of summarising long-term developments in one succinct sentence. He even takes the trouble to translate technical terms (coined from Greek and Latin which is no longer part of the general education) into German. A five star read.

Happy new thread! - well, new for me a I struggle to get caught up with threads. ;-)

>46 lkernagh: Hello Lori! Keeping up with threads can be a full-time job, as I know myself.

Leipzig / CATs

For the May Random CAT I picked The black robe by Wilkie Collins off the shelf, where a Jesuit priest tries to convert an English gentleman to the Roman Catholic faith, and to inveigle him to return his property, which was seized by Henry VIII, to the church. Not as viciously anti-Catholic as some Victorians, but Father Benwell makes for a very hissable bad guy. I sadly missed the plucky woman in a supporting role that Collins normally provides. My edition also lacked a few paragraphs, I had to check a digitised version on Project Guternberg for the full text. And choosing a portrait of the Reformation hero Ulrich Zwingli for the cover was a very bad call.

Stavenhagen / regional literature

I listened to Leberkäs-Junkie while doing some paperwork, and Christian Tramitz does his usual stellar job with the various Bavarian dialects. Fluff, but fun.

edited for touchstone

Dahlewitz / SFF

Leviathan wakes is a nice bit of space opera. I liked how the story is told in alternate sections from the view of the two main characters.

Mettlach / economic history

Die Portugiesenzeit in Deutsch- und Englisch-Ostafrika by Justus Strandes was a follow-up on The spinning world. Machado quoted in his essay an English translation of this book, and I was more than a little surprised to find that he used an 1989 edition of a book first published in German in 1899.
Strandes basically provides a chronological history of Portuguese action in Mombasa and its surroundings with much detail garnered from Portuguese chronicles, which becomes pretty repetitive after a while. The impression is that they never had more than a toehold there and trade was minimal to non-existent. One interesting observation is that the Dutch started their own seafaring to the East around the time that Portugal became part of the Spanish Empire and Philip II suppressed the trade between Holland and Porrtugal, so the Dutch struck out on their own.
The most useful part of the book is the first appendix which gives a thorough look at Portuguese money in the time under discussion.

Dahlewitz / SFF

I picked The healer's war because I thought it would fit the June SFF Kit. The author herself calls it fantasy, but it does not resemble any fantasy that I have read, so far.
It is a first person narrative from a very young army nurse, looking back on her tour in Vietnam, and it is harrowing. There are three parts in the book: the first is a rather straightforward story of things happening at the hospital, off and on duty. Then a new surgeon is appointed who wants all the Vietnamese civilian patients off his ward, and Kitty tries to save at least one of them. This is the second part, where an amulet she received from an old Vietnamese becomes important and introduces the fantasy element. The third part is a brief coda telling of her problems coping with life "back in the world" and finding a new mission at the end.

The amulet provides the only element that could be called fantasy here, and to my mind it is more of a device to enable the author, who was an army nurse herself, to write about her experiences and, possibly, work through them. This part is the most harrowing, the cruelties which people inflict on both their own and the enemy side, are very bad. There is no black and white here, and she is still conflicted about it at the end of the book. The descriptions of the jungle are so vivid you feel the need for water and salt tablets. This will stay with me for quite some time.

ETC

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

Kleine Geschichte der Niederlande is a rather personal history of the Netherlands written not by a professional historian, but by a well-known author of fiction, and as such it is also a reflection on what he knows and feels about his country. It ranges from history as it was taught in his youth to the revisions made by recent archaeology, from the earliest known settlements to the latest political debates. The Golden Age receives the same attention as all other eras, which means everything is told briefly and in a rather impressionistic manner, but enlightening nonetheless. It whets the appetite for reading more and in depth.

And with this I am off to a short holiday and will be offline for a week. See you soon.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Have a great time!

Enjoy your holiday! (I hope you're staying in the sunny part of Germany - or abroad!)

>51 MissWatson:
What a shame - it could have been really interesting, considering the topic.

>54 MissWatson:
Have a great holiday!

>55 DeltaQueen50: >56 mstrust: Thank you, it was wonderful!

>57 Chrischi_HH: Hi Chrischi, I went to Amsterdam with my best friend and loved every minute. Fabulous weather, too. We watched the German news a few times, and every time there was a report about flooding somewhere. It's such a scary summer this year.

>51 MissWatson: I've read worse, it's just that the shipwrecks, sieges and general incompetence of the officers got to be boring.
>54 MissWatson: Thanks, it was very interesting.

I had a very interesting and educational time in Amsterdam (such wonderful museums!) and of course I brought back books. There was an English bookstore selling brandnew paperbacks at 5 Euros each, and the Athenaeum bookstore sold French paperback classics at a discount, so how could I resist?

We also had some fun trying to decipher Dutch menus and ads and so on, which was easier than I thought if you're familiar with German and English. These languages are definitely related. And I just read that Kiel University is giving free public lectures again, during Kiel Week ( a sailing event with lots of entertainment on the side), and on Saturday they're giving a crash course in Dutch. This should be fun.

Welcome back! I loved Amsterdam, it is the only city I have ever been to in the Netherlands, and it was a long time ago (1994) so I am long overdue a return visit. Especially now I know there's an English bookstore :)

>63 Jackie_K: Actually, there are at least two: The American Bookstore, and the other one, whose name I don't remember and which sells discounted books. I had an impression that regular prices are higher than in Germany.

I can heartily recommend the museums, though, they are great on presentation and interactivity. The National Maritime Museum has some sections that seem specifically aimed at school age children, including games and quizzes that adults can enjoy, too.

Glad you enjoyed Amsterdam! It is a lovely city, laid-back, lots of water and interesting architecture. I might have to start making plans for a weekend there... Kieler Woche is starting on Friday, right?

>65 Chrischi_HH: Yes. Usually I miss the first weekend because my mother's birthday is close, but this year it starts earlier than usual, so I'll miss the fireworks on the last day.

Marbach / German Literature Archive

Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht was a real chunkster at 1081 pages. Set in Berlin in 1805-1806, Napoleon threatens war, and a large cast of characters discusses how to face the French.

Nürnberg / children/YA

Back in the eighties I worked my way through Anthony Price's David Audley series, and Kipling's Stalky & Co. was mentioned so often that I picked up a copy. Now that I've finally read it, I need to revisit Audley to see the connection.
On its own, it's an interesting glimpse at school life for a particular segment of British society: nearly all the boys come from families in the Armed services and the Colonial Civil Service and expect to follow the same careers.

ETC

Wiesbaden / mysteries // Bingo / about an airplane flight

Just to check if memory served me well, I read The Labyrinth Makers and The Alamut Ambush again. I had forgotten most of the plots, which is not surprising, as they are uncommonly intricate, and Audley's talent for confounding both friend and foe is great.
The first can also count for the Bingo Dog, as it centers around an RAF plane lost shortly after the end of WWII and suddenly found in a lake, together with a dead pilot and seven boxes full of bricks. Where's the original content, was it some kind of loot and why are the Russians interested? To say more would spoil the suspense, suffice to say that there are plans within plans within plans, and all the knots neatly untied at the end. The same goes for the second book, and I feel a certain regret that I ever parted with them. There's only oldfashioned footwork and file-reading, no fancy gadgets or gimmicks, and it stands the test of time quite well.
Oh, and there's only a brief mention of Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, so that must have become more pronounced in the later books.

I had planned to read Carrion Colony for this month's Geo CAT, but I gave up on it. Weird sentence structures, where you try in vain to guess what he may have wanted to say, made this a chore, not a pleasure. Not to mention the swearwords. I don't object to swearing in dialogue, if it fits the character, but here they invade the narrative, and in numbers I found off-putting.

ETA

Bremerhaven / Geo CAT // Woman Bingo pup / poetry

I finished The witch-maid and other verses by Australian author Dorothea Mackellar, published in 1914 and available as an ebook on OpenLibrary. This was beautiful, just beautiful. I love the way she describes colours, as in my favourite poem "Bathing Rhyme" which has many shades of grey and put me in mind of the North Sea on sunny days...

Bremerhaven / Geo CAT

Buckley's Hope is a fictional account of William Buckley, a convict transported to Australia who escaped and lived in the bush with a band of aborigines for more than thirty years, until white settlers colonised what is now Melbourne.
This is an amazing story and should have been an interesting read, but I found it sadly unengaging. There is of course the problem that Buckley could read, but not write, and therefore left only his memoirs as taken down by someone else when he was old and his memory faulty. Robertson had to rely on other sources, most of which reflect the racist attitudes of the times and vilify Buckley. Still: the prose is simplistic and full of aborigine words as if to reflect their plain and simple lives, yet he lets Buckley reflect on his situation with modern sensibilities. The chapters about the return to white society and the heady development of the settlement feel rushed.
But the most off-putting thing are the typos, if they took the trouble to re-publish the book they should have taken the time to proof-read it. I cannot count how often b and h were transposed, how often I stumbled because wrong words had slipped in or because words or entire lines were missing. Nice try, shame about the execution.

Bingo DOG / you want the protagonist's job

I finished A month in the country which was everything other readers have said. And I would dearly love to be able to restore ancient paintings, as Tom Birkin does.

>72 MissWatson: I think all those editing mistakes would drive me insane. Good for you for toughing it out!

>72 MissWatson: >74 mstrust: Agreed! Poorly edited ebooks drive me nuts.

>74 mstrust: >75 rabbitprincess: Yes, they were annoying. It was first published in 1981, before computers became ubiquitous, so they may have had an amateur typoscript or even a manuscript to work from. Still, they had typesetters who should know better. And nowaday I find it unpardonable if authors or their publishers don't use their spellchecker before starting to print.

Leipzig / CATs // Woman Bingo PUP / from the TBR pile

I finished Lumpenmüllers Lieschen which has been languishing on my shelves for decades. It fits the June Random CAT as it ends with a marriage, as all these treacly 19th century romances do. It was immensely popular in the 1890s and the title was in use as a popular phrase. It is a typical example of the genre that literary scholars call Trivialliteratur. I expected tears, and I got them by the bucketful, everyone weeps freely, except the nasty aristocratic grandmother. Marlitt did this so much better.

Bremerhaven / Geo CAT // Woman Bingo PUP / set in England, Australia or NZ

The little blue devil is a novel Australian author Dorothea Mackellar co-wrote with Ruth Bedford. The small son of an Englishwoman, who eloped with a French scoundrel and was disowned by her family, is abandoned by his father at the tender age of ten and has to fend for himself, which he does pretty much in the manner of Kipling's Kim. Kipling's poem also gives the title to the book, and the hero's journey takes him half around the world, touching most of the places Mackellar also celebrated in her poems. Nice.

Edited for touchstone

Oh my, where did the first six months go?
Time to do a brief roundup of the year so far. Most of my categories are well past the minimum number of books, and now that summer (what summer? It's raining buckets again!) is here, I expect to fill the categories where I am still behind: sea stories and all things maritime, capa y espada, arts and graphic novels, music. I'm taking it slow with the Bingos, something will turn up, and I may even add something to the CATs later this year.
My favourite books so far have been mostly from the TBR file, and there have been some very pleasant surprises. Especially Sansibar oder letzte Grund.

ETA

Leipzig / CATs

I finished Latein ist tot, es lebe Latein! a day late, but it's still counting for the June Dewey CAT about language. This is a history of Latin from its beginning to modern times, well written, fun to read and full of interesting tidbits. As a classical philologist he is a fervent advocate, of course, and he makes a convincing argument.

ETC

>79 MissWatson: Sounds like you've been making good progress. I'm also doing well in most of my categories, but there are a few that I've barely touched. Must get moving on those ....

>81 mathgirl40: Yes, it's funny how the actual reading deviates from the planning.

Leipzig / CATs

For the July Dewey CAT about science I read Rendezvous mit Venus where French astronomer organise an observation of Venus passing the sun across the world in 1761 and 1769, written as a fictionalised memoir of the chief organiser, Jérôme-Joseph Lalande.
I picked this up because the cover looked intriguing, and the price was unbeatable: a pristine hardcover for 1 Euro. And it turned out to be a wonderful book. It's not too technical about the astronomical bits (the author is an astrophysicist in real life), the style is modern, and the rivalries, jealousies and jostling for position among scientists haven't changed at all, it seems. He also gives full credit to the enormous contribution that female mathematicians brought to the project. I'm looking forward to reading more of his books.

Woman Bingo PUP

I have done some travelling by train these last weeks and found the time to finish my ebook: Marriage by Susan Ferrier. It is set in the early 19th century and offers some very sensible ideas about women's education and the choosing of husbands at a time when women didn't really have any other choice. She is remarkably down-to-earth about the realities of life, such as a husband growing old and senile. The part set in Scotland takes getting used to, with all the Scots dialogue, but it is very refreshing.

ETC

Leipzig / CATs

Sword at sunset fits the July Random CAT.

Edited for touchstone

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

Die Kelten gives an overview from ancient times to the present. Would be interesting to compare it to the latest edition, to be published in September, for the findings from ongoing digs. The author repeatedly reminds us how difficult it is to separate the romantic notions of 19th century nationalists from the hard facts.

Wiesbaden / thrillers

Ah, treachery! turned out to be strangely apt for this electioneering year: it is set shortly after the 1992 elections, and although the name Clinton is never mentioned, the Little Rock team hovers in the background of this tale of election slush funds gone AWOL. There's murder and mayhem aplenty, served with Ross Thomas' usual stylish delivery.

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

For the July GeoCAT, I read El derecho de asilo by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, a short novella about a civil servant who saves himself into the embassy of a neighbouring country when the army stages a coup and asks for political asylum. Two years later he has taken his host country's nationality and the ambassador's job, spending all this time in the ambassador's flat and watching the military dictatorship from his host's living room window as it unfolds as all these coups do. The countries are unnamed, it could be any of the Latin American states and statelets.
I didn't agree with all the translations offered by my bilingual edition, but I do love Carpentier's style and have already put in an order for one of his novels. I wish I had read this ages ago.

ETC

Arnstadt / romances

The weather's been unbearably hot, so I've been sitting on the balcony in the dark without lights (insects!) and browsed the stuff on my Kobo. Yay for ereaders that provide their own light!
I found Das Schloß im Gebirge by Moritz Hartmann, downloaded from the German Gutenberg site some time ago without knowing absolutely anything about the author. I was surprised to find it was a story a mere 22 pages long, and tells about poor peasants from the Savoyard mountains emigrating to France in the times of the French revolution, getting rich later and returning to their natal valley. Not bad at all, and I will probably tackle the other book I downloaded some time.

Stay cool! It is hotter here and also so humid, but as every single indoor place is air conditioned it feels cooler than it did in Munich when we left. Here's hoping the heat wave will end soon.

>90 RidgewayGirl: Thanks! Last week we were moaning about the abundance of rain. There's no way of pleasing us :-). It's just that the jump was so high between 15C one day and almost 30C the next.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

Die Sachsen des frühen Mittelalters was rather short at 160 pages, a very condensed history of the few things we know about the Saxons.

Mettlach / economic history // Leipzig / CATs // Woman Bingo PUP

And I have finally finished Before European hegemony, a history of world trade in the 13th century. A seminal text in its time, and still a fascinating read. I did not choose it for the Random CAT, since I started in May (reading during lunch breaks only) but it fits nicely.
Oh, I just realised she was 61 years old when this was published, so it's a square in the Woman Bingo PUP, too!

ETA

Leipzig / CATs // Flensburg / TBR

I finally finished The winter king which fits for the July Random CAT and comes from my Mount TBR. Not quite convincing attempt to set the legend of Arthut in the real world.

ETC

>94 MissWatson: I tried reading that one in university but, as with other Cornwell books, I found it a slog. He has really good ideas for series, though.

>95 rabbitprincess: I really liked his Sharpe series, when it started, as I have always had a soft spot for Wellington and the Peninsular War (I blame Georgette Heyer), but the books he set in India are less gripping. And his Starbuck series was just meh! for me.

ETC

Magdeburg / music // Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

Concierto barroco by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier also fits my music category, where I have now reached the minimum number of books, yay. The book is short, but not an easy read: he's on a par with Thomas Mann when it comes to piling subclause upn subclause. Still, it was worthwhile the effort.
It is the tale of a journey: a rich Mexican travels to Europe, makes a stopover in Havana where he loses his servant and picks up another, and finally arrives in Venice during the carnival, where he suddenly finds himself drinking with three famous composers: Händel, Scarlatti and Vivaldi. The Mexican, whose name we never learn, has chosen Montezuma as his costume and Vivaldi is so fascinated by the story that he decides to write an opera about it. When he attends the dress rehearsal, our Mexican is furious at the liberties taken with history and surprised at himself because he sides with the Aztecs in the opera. He considered himself a descendant of the hidalgos, yet now he finds himself emotionally drawn to the side of the losers, who are his countrymen.
There's a certain fantastical element in the long night of drinking and carousing, they sit next to the grave of Stravinsky (who is credited with the disparaging remark of Vivaldi having written the same concert six hundred times) and watch the coffin of Wagner being loaded into a boat. The language is difficult because it uses musical terminology a lot, and not all the allusions to other works are explained. But the conversation between the Mexican and Vivaldi about the opera was revelatory. Great stuff.

Wolfenbüttel / history

Die Franken was a quick re-read. Cornwell's hero in The winter king spends some time fighting the Franks and some of the things he wrote he irritated me, so I read up on them again.

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

A good man in Africa by William Boyd is set in a fictious country in West Africa which to my mind resembles Nigeria, especially as it is located next door to Dahomey/Benin. The time is late sixties, early seventies and the British have not yet come to realize that they can no longer lord it over their former colonies. The protagonist is thoroughly unlikable, obsessed with sex, a coward and quite unbelievably incompetent. But that goes for the entire English staff of this British Commission in the western province. Written in 1981, it reminded me of "Yes, Minister", except that Sir Humphrey Appleby had political smarts and deviousness in abundance. But it gives an unvarnished look at English attitudes and uncertainties of the time, and of course class prejudice rears its ugly head at every turn.

Marbach / Literature Archive // Woman Bingo PUP / made into a movie

Das Leben der Hochgräfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns is a fairy tale written at age 13 by Gisela von Arnim, with the help of her mother Bettina von Arnim, whose name helped to publish it, I think. The edition digitised by the German Gutenberg Project is based on the 1986 Insel edition and contains illustrations by Gisela von Arnim. Gritta's father is poor, the castle falls down around their ears, so he marries an heiress who wants to escape from her guardians. Gritta is packed off to a nunnery to be educated and meets other girls in the same predicament. They run away and have adventures until they are reunited with their families. The structure is a little uneven, the prose a little too overblown, but Gritta is an amazing character. This was made into a children's movie in 1985 which is how I first became aware of it.

And this gives me my first Bingo on the Woman Bingo PUP.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

I bought Die Skythen because the author has written a very expensive tome about prehistoric peoples and I wanted to know his style before I shelled out that kind of money. I think I'm sold, this was a very concise book about the Scythians and what little we know about them.

I have also spent a wonderful hour at the bookstore, browsing books and telling myself I don't need any more. One of them had the kind of hilarious title that makes you want to buy it: The potential culinary applications of a cannonball, a novel about a female pirate. The original title Cinnamon and gunpowder doesn't really compare to this. I also noticed that Sabatini's Black Swan has been re-published. That's an excellent excuse to read him next.

Solingen / Mantel-und-Degenromane

And here's the first by Rafael Sabatini: The tavern knight. We are in England and its Roundheads versus Cavaliers, but the politics take a backseat to the private vengeance of Sir Crispin Galliard. It is short at 263 pages, but action-packed, as Sabatini doesn't waste pages on such mundane activities as washing, shaving or eating. There's lots of drinking, of course, since Crispin is notorious for his debauchement. We have only a small cast of characters, so the plot is very predictable, but Sabatini's redeeming feature is that he knows his stuff, doesn't use anachronistic language and even has a heroine who does not ride, she needs a groom to control the horse while she rides pillion.

>102 MissWatson: Sounds like it has more than a passing resemblance to one of Sabatini's other books in Scaramouche. I quite enjoyed that one (and love the film) so maybe I should try and find a copy of The Tavern Knight.

>103 AHS-Wolfy: As far as I can find out it's one of his earliest works, written in 1904, and is rather simplistic compared to Scaramouche. Different setting, too, The English Civil War and the French Revolution. A lot of his books are now available from Project Gutenberg. I loved The Sea-Hawk and Captain Blood and I'm loking forward to more.

Finkenwerder / all things maritime // Woman BingoPUP / less than 10 years old

Friesenrebellion was an impulse buy because I liked the cover. It is set on the East Frisian island of Borkum in 1811, occupied by the French whose small garrison is charged with fighting smugglers and blockade runners. The new commander of the garrison has just arrived and a British frigate has sent a landing party to search for deserters.
Plotwise, this landing is a non-event, but it serves to paint a picture of life on the island at the time. The French have confiscated nearly all boats, so fishing and trading is no longer legal or possible, the men have almost all been drafted into the French army and navy, and the few people left are on the verge of starvation. Competently, if inelegantly written.

ETC

Wow, you've been doing lots of reading! And I'm jealous of your time in Amsterdam. I've been there, but never got out of the airport. Glad to hear good things about Alejo Carpentier because I've been meaning to read him.

>106 cammykitty: Hi Katie! Thanks, we're having the sort of weather where you're happy to stay inside with a book. Amsterdam was wonderful, indeed. And I'm looking forward to my next Carpentier, El siglo de las luces. In Concierto barroco he made many literary allusions that were fun to track down.

Leipzig / CATs // Bingo DOG / adventure

I finished The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the first time I read this in English. I owned it in German as a child and I was surprised how well I remembered it. However, this time around I longed to box Tom Sawyer's ears for his unnecessary embellishments of Jim's flight. I also wondered how Tom got hold of all the books he must have read to come up with these ridiculous plans. And when did he find the time for reading?

ETC

LOL on your comments about Tom! Hard to get in as much trouble as he did AND be a book worm.

>109 cammykitty: I wonder if you get a thesis out of this? Popular literature as featured in Tom's reading? I was amazed to see Friedrich von Trenck on the list.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction // Leipzig / Dewey CAT // Bingo DOG / food is important

Hirten, Bauern, Götter is a history of agriculture in ancient Rome and as such fits the August Dewey CAT (630.937), my non-fiction category, and the Bingo Dog square, since the production of sufficient food is the main topic. It is a very interesting book, even if he restricts himself mostly on the surviving books of the most well-known Roman authors. But archaeology has added a lot to our knowledge, and I was surprised to learn how efficient Roman agriculture actually was. It achieved a productivity not seen again in Europe again until 1800. They gave us cherries and peaches, which I knew, but also a lot of vegetables, like beetroot, which I didn't know.

Dahlewitz / SFF

L'alchimiste des ombres is the second book in the Cardinal's Blades trilogy. An entertaining romp with some familiar characters, such as Richelieu, Louis XIII and poor Queen Anne. There's another conspiracy afoot, involving the duchesse de Chevreuse (another real person) and quite a lot of sword-fighting. And we get dragons. I need to read a serious book on this time, just to find out how much of this did really happen...

ETC

>112 MissWatson: I remember reading the first in that series a few years ago. I do have this 2nd book and sounds like if I enjoyed the 1st book (and I did) then I should like this one too. Perhaps I'll need to go back and start the series over though just to get a refresher on the characters. I seem to remember there being a few of them.

>113 AHS-Wolfy: There are quite a few characters, and he doesn't need as much time to introduce them as he did in the first book. He also has a habit of referring to them as the ex-musketeer or the spy, which makes it easier to keep track of them. I do like the way he uses actual events for his plots, and there is even a throwaway mention of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

Nearly every economic history book I've read over the last months quotes extensively from Joseph Needham's monumental books on the history of science in China. On finding that my library has the original edition from 1954, I picked up Science and Civilisation in China volume 1: Introductory Orientations and finished it after four weeks. This is an amazing book. The first thing you notice is how beautiful it is, well-made, a gorgeous cover, flawless typesetting, meticulous note-keeping. It is also well-organised in its conception and the nerd in me welcomes the fact that for all Chinese names the Chinese characters are given in the footnotes, so sinologists can derive the full benefit. Arab names are given in scientific transliteration. Modern scholarship has probably superseded some of his statements, but not to an extent that would make the book obsolete. I enjoyed the observations he made when travelling in China when so many of the things he writes about could still be seen. Wonderful.

ETC

Dahlewitz / SFF

And I finished the final book in my trilogy, Le dragon des Arcanes. Things get really moving and build up to a climactic battle in Notre Dame. Not all of our heroes make it to the finishing line, I would have loved to have news about half-dragon Saint-Lucq who remains a mystery to the end, and there's an incredible variation on the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask. Wow.

Wiesbaden / mysteries

Ausgefressen is a mystery set in Berlin, where a meerkat joins forces with a private eye to solve a murder committed in the zoo where the meerkat lives with his family. My sister loaned me the audiobook and highly recommended it because the narrator, Christoph Maria Herbst, does such a fantastic job on it. It is hilarious, indeed.

>116 MissWatson: Glad to see that you enjoyed finishing the series off so much.

>118 AHS-Wolfy: Things got off to a rather slow start, but towards the end the action really speeded up. And I loved his detailed topography of 17th century Paris.

Dahlewitz / SFF

Now and again I am reminded that Leigh Brackett wrote SFF. I know her mostly as the screenwriter for two of my favourite westerns, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. By accident I found Black Amazon of Mars on Project Gutenberg. A quick read and enjoyable enough to keep an eye out for more.

Edited for touchstone

Dahlewitz / SFF // Leipzig / Random CAT

Asche und Blitz works for both the September unofficial SFF and the September Random CAT. A rather strange book, it tells of the turmoil surrounding the end of the Ming dynasty. The emperor is abandoned by all when barbarian invaders threaten Beijing, only the abbot of a Buddhist monastery and his 128 monks come to his aid and defeat the enemy. Their heroism is badly rewarded, and the abbot spends much time in flight around China, meeting gods and dragons. Taoist gods and Buddha also meddle in the affairs of the Middle Kingdom. I got the impression that the author has studied China extensively, and gives us the flowery language we associate with the imperial court. The translation reads rushed sometimes, as if she didn't have time to check for consistency, and I suspect she didn't realise that Bei jing is Peking.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

I finally made a second attempt with The Gothic: a very short introduction. Last time I was too annoyed with the way he handled Gothic architecture, and I wasn't convinced by his take on the history of the Gothic people either. Once he gets around to literature he is on safer ground, but here the restrictions of the series format tell: it is not detailed enough. In the end this was highly unsatisfactory.

Dahlewitz / SFF

A world is born is the other short story by Leigh Brackett available from Project Gutenberg. Short enough to finish it in a lunch break, and quite entertaining, if predictable.

August roundup: I'm still one book short in my arts/graphic novels category and one book short in the swashbuckling category. Ah well, there are four months left. The Bingoes also need filling up.

Best read of the month by far was a non-fiction book, again: Joseph Needham's Science and civilisation in China volume 1: Introductory Orientations. I'm looking forward to the next instalment, which starts with Confucianism.

I think all but one of my books of the month this year have been non-fiction! Surprising how that has worked out. Also surprising is that we are 2/3 of the way through the year!

Wiesbaden / mysteries

Voll Speed is the second adventure of Ray the meerkat. He and his clan are having troubles with rats who smuggle drugs into the zoo, with a starring role for a model of USS Intrepid. Hilarious, especially when read by Christoph Maria Herbst.

>117 MissWatson: >126 MissWatson: I'm not a fan of all those "humorous" books out there, there are far too many which aren't funny. But these as audio version actually sound good. Maybe worth a try...

>127 Chrischi_HH: I'm not overly fond of these so-called funny books myself, but my sister recommended them to me, and as audiobooks they actually work. Herbst especially is good at doing different voices and accents.

ETC

Wiesbaden / mysteries

I had to do some tedious paperwork and used the time to listen to another audiobook: Dickes Fell is the fourth adventure of Ray the meerkat, and this time the plot requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. His human partner is in intensive care with a gunshot wound and Ray needs the help of a gorilla to solve his case, which involves leaving the zoo repeatedly. Brain candy, but fun.

ETC

Nürnberg / children's books

Just so stories by Rudyard Kipling. Clever wordplay. Otherwise I'm a little underwhelmed.

Nürnberg / children's books

I saw Goth Girl and the ghost of a mouse in my sister's library and loved the literary allusions, so of course I wanted to read this in the original English. Yesterday, it arrived in the mail and I devoured it instantly. Great fun and wonderful illustrations.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

Abenteuer Archäologie was an impulse buy and gives an overview of how archeology helps us understand ancient history, and is useful even for exploring recent times, where written evidence often gets lost in fires or other catastrophes. Beautifully produced and illustrated, aimed at lay readers, and extremely well written. Can't wait to get my hands on the author's Die Kinder des Prometheus.

I'm off for a short vacation and will be offline for two weeks. Happy reading!

Enjoy your vacation! :)

Happy vacationing!

Solingen / swashbucklers

The only book I finished during my vacation was The suitors of Yvonne, Rafael Sabatini's debut novel which already contains all the elements of his later works: a soldier of fortune finds the love of a good woman and redeems himself with some noble actions. Very enjoyable.

>134 Chrischi_HH: >135 -Eva-: Thanks! The vacation was wonderful, lots of sightseeing around Lake Constance.

Leipzig / group reads

My vacation interrupted the reading, but I finished The game of kings at last. This was really great, Francis Lymond is pretty much everything I want in a fictional hero and I'm looking forward to the next instalment. My only quibble is that again and again I wondered how dear Francis ever found the time to read and memorise all the books he quotes.

Berlin / arts // Leipzig / CATs

I finished Von Herkules gekrönt, a short monograph on a series of paintings of the garden and cascades at Castle Wilhelmsthal.
This was just in time for the September Dewey CAT, and I'm also counting it for my arts category, which means I have reached the minimum number of books in all my categories. Huzzah! Now I can concentrate on the remaining Bingo squares.

Arnstadt / romances

Bardelys the Magnificent is one of Sabatini's early books, set in XVIIth France (this seems to be his favourite period) and we get plunged right into the action: the Marquis de Bardelys accepts a wager to woo a cold demoiselle who refused one of his drinking mates. Of course things turn out quite differently...
I didn't really like the hero who commits a series of amazingly stupid blunders, apart from one duel there's little swordfighting, and the heroine is a little insipid. I was surprised to find that Louis XIII is not a buffoon as so many other historical fiction writers (Dumas, for instance) show him.

Dahlewitz / SFF

War with the robots is a collection of eight stories first published between 1956 and 1961, and they definitely show their age. This is an exclusively male world, where women simply seem not to exist. The terminology has changed a lot since then, what he calls robots would be androids or even AI today, and memory storage is all on tapes. Not a keeper.

Mettlach / economic history

Der königliche Kaufmann looks at King Edward IV and how he put the kingdom's finances in order. At least, that's what the title says, as it turns out there's not enough evidence to analyse how exactly he did it. Instead, we get a look at how households, from the top down, worked in those times and a brief history of Edward's reign with a particular emphasis on his monetary affairs. Well done, but nothing earth-shattering new, and I have a suspicion that he did not spend enough time at the library searching for other sources on long-distance trade in the Middle Ages.

ETC

Dahlewitz / SFF

I finally got around to Spaceship Medic which I must have bought without realising it is for youngsters. A great adventure yarn set on a spaceship going to Mars when it's hit by a meteor, taking out the control room and nearly all the officers on board. The ship's doctor must take over...

Dahlewitz / SFF

The aeronaut's windlass was mentioned favourably by a few fellow LTers, but unfortunately I do not remember on whose threads I saw this. But I thank them for this is a very entertaining tale!
The setting is intriguing, I sense a backstory of environmental disaster in the distant past which has resulted in several nations living in giant, multilevel towers (spires), depending for air transport on some unfamiliar form of energy, and where wood has become rare and precious. I caught a whiff of plucky little England facing off the evil Spaniards here (that Tudor propaganda sure is long-lasting), and coming fresh off The game of kings I wondered if there is a touch of Lymond in Francis Grimm or if it is more Francis Drake and the Merchant Adventurers. In the end, though, Grimm is far too loyal and dutiful, his attitude is almost Victorian. Gwendolyn starts out as some variation of Austen's Emma and frequently reminds me of Gwendolyn Bracknell. The cat is spot-on, reminded me of my sister's.
One thing I wonder about is why these people make their books from wood if it has become so incredibly expensive? Paper made from rags would be much better quality, too...

Bingo DOG / Woman Bingo PUP

Since both Bingos have an "autobiography or memoir" square, this fits both: Jugenderinnerungen by Sof'ja Vasil'evna Kovalevskaja. She was a mathematician and the first female professor of mathematics, but since this small book only covers her childhood, until she was 13, I cannot count it for the women in science square. However, this was a very interesting book telling what life in a Russian aristiocratic house in the country was like in the 1860ies. I wonder if she wrote more?

Woman Bingo PUP / non-traditional role

I just finished Roast Beef, Medium by Edna Ferber, which collects several stories about a divorced woman working as a travelling sales rep which must have been very unusual at the beginning of the last century. Very entertaining.

>143 MissWatson: I too enjoyed The Aeronaut's Windlass. Butcher's first foray into steampunk seems a success, and I'm definitely going to read the next when it comes out. I've heard it may take a while, though, as he is also working on more Dresden Files books. I like your comparison of Gwendolyn to Austen's Emma.

>146 mathgirl40: I'm hoping the wait won't be too long, because towards the end I grew quite fond of Gwen. She may be an interfering busybody, but then she's been brought up to inherit and manage a huge enterprise, so it is understandable that she thinks she knows better. But she's ready to learn from other people, I like that about her.

Leipzig / CATs // Bingo DOG / author born in 1916

The moviegoer fits the October Dewey CAT and the slot for the author born in 1916. This was a strange book. It took me a few days to read it, although it is rather short, and I still don't know what to make of it.

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

I read The coroner's lunch for the GeoCAT. It didn't quite live up to my expectation after being recommended to me by several people. The mystery was wrapped up somewhat hastily and perfuntorily at the end, the magical elements didn't really fit and the English (UK) colloquialisms seemed out of place to me, they made the narrative feel fake, especially some of the pop culture references. On the other hand, it was a stark reminder how distant the Cold War already is, it's almost ancient history.

>143 MissWatson:
It is quite an intriguing world we're introduced to - I can't wait to see where Butcher takes it all. I seem to remember hearing that it's meant to be a total of 9 books(!), but that may have changed. Lots of potential anyway! (Rowl is my favorite character.)

>150 -Eva-: Hi Eva! Yes, Rowl is my favourite, too. Gwendolyn improves, but she's still irritating. Rowl, on the other hand, is a cat. He's perfect as he is.

Leipzig / CATs

I finally tackled Tales of Mystery and Imagination for the October Random CAT. The stories are not exactly scary, truth to tell, but some of them are decidedly weird. I spent quite some time trying to track down his references to obscure ancient Greeks just to make sense of them.

I have that one on my shelf and haven't gotten to it yet. I don't think Poe is too scary now, just because we've gone so far beyond in terms of horror. He'd probably be terrified of us. But his writing is still wonderful and it's interesting to see what was considered horrifying in his time.
And extra points to you for taking the time to look up the references!

>153 mstrust: Well, he likes to describe a scene or a feeling by comparing it to some obscure ancient Greek legend, so I felt a little stumped if I didn't know the story right off. And it's such an interesting mix between the stories where fear is the major element and the mysteries that Dupin solves merely with logical thinking.

Flensburg / TBR

I finished Mrs Bridge from my TBR pile. A normal, quiet, uneventful life, and until the very end I couldn't decide if she was truly content with it.

November already, how did this happen? I really need to find some books for the Woman Bingo, some of the squares are proving difficult to fill from my own shelves...

Woman Bingo PUP

I finished Career of Evil by J.K.Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith and counted it for the "different genre by same author" square. I really like the way she minutely describes the investigation, but the solution came rather out of the blue this time, and I wasn't entirely convinced by the need for Robin's backstory...

Arnstadt / guilty pleasures

The Chalet School and Jo is part of a series well-known in English-speaking countries (or just England?) It's one of those English boarding school books so popular with little girls. The series wasn't translated into German, so I didn't read this in my impressionable youth, which is probably a good thing. I think it hasn't dated very well. Some of the language is unacceptable today (golliwog), it is class-ridden to an amazing degree, and the stereotyping of what today we call nationalities (and race back in the twenties and thirties) leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

Dahlewitz / SFF

The Technicolor Time Machine shows off Harrison's strength: a rather irreverent look at time travel. It's from 1967 and set in Hollywood, so very sexist, but it was inspired by recent (at the time) discoveries of Viking settlements in North America, and although some clichés are obviously ineradicable, he makes a nice effort to include dialogue in Norse. Very entertaining.

Wolfenbüttel / non-fiction

It's taken me nearly three months to finish Science and civilisation in China volume 2: History of scientific thought, as the subject matter is extremely dense. I freely admit that some of this went over my head, the study of ancient Greek philosophy was no longer part of the curriculum when I went to school. But it was very stimulating and I come away with some very interesting nuggets of knowledge (such as that Leibniz took inspiration from the hexagrams of the I Ching for his binary mathematics) and a much better appreciation of the way the Chinese see the world. It also provides a highly appreciated warning to approach Western translations of Chinese classics with more than a pinch of salt, because they often impose their own world view on the ancient texts.

This is my 125th book in this challenge, which means I have surpassed last year's number. Yay!

ETA

Stavenhagen / regional literature

It doesn't get more than regional than Kieler Schatten which is a mystery set in my hometown in the year 1909. The author has clearly done his research and he also has a website where he posted photographs and a city map of the town at the time which I found helpful for imagining the place.
The mystery itself is a murder investigation with bits of naval intelligence thrown in, the English had a spy in town trying to gather information on German torpedo technology, and their German counterparts interfered. These lines are kept separate until the end, so the case ends inconclusively, which is unusual.
This is a first novel, and it shows. He weighs down his story with far too much background information. The auctorial voice is decidedly 21st century and frequently clashes with the characters' timeframe. There are a few grammatical slip-ups and towards the end typos increase. But I think I'll pick up the second instalment if I come across it second-hand, just for curiosity's sake.

Bingo DOG / features a theatre // Woman Bingo PUP / Golden Age Detective ficition

Death at the opera is set in an English public school, very modern and co-educational, where a teacher is killed during a performance of "The Mikado". Strictly speaking, it's not a professional thatre, only amateur dramatics, but it fills a square on both cards and gives me a Bingo on both! This is very motivating!
The book was also a good read, Mrs Bradley is a very unusual detective and the case is left more or less unresolved, which I found even more unusual. She writes a letter to the person she thinks committed the murder, but we hear nothing about consequences, such as a trial or police investigations. I had never heard of Gladys Mitchell before, but I will certainly pick up more books if I come across them.

ETC

Leipzig / Dewey CAT // Bingo DOG / read a CAT // Woman Bingo PUP / female ruler

Impératrice is a fictional autobiography of the Empress Wu Zhou from the Tang Dynasty, told from her birth and beyond her death, as she somehow manages to add what had happened after her death. Fascinating glimpse into the imperial court of the late 7th century and especially the secluded women's world.

Nürnberg / children's fiction

One of the recent publications at Project Gutenberg is a French book about the World Fair 1889 in Paris: A travers l'Exposition (no touchstone). It has some lovely illustrations, and when I peeked at the first chapter I had a sense of déjà vu: Claude Izner's Mystère rue des Saints-Pères also starts with a boy and girl exploring the Fair.
The rest of the books describes the various exhibitions and shows in a very didactic manner: Madeleine et Jacques are supposed to learn something from their visits. Very much a product of its time: optimistic for the future (looking forward to houses lighted with electricity! Each family will have a telephone!), teaching the superiority of Western civilization and the rightfulness of colonialism and eager to implant nationalistic fervour. The attitude towards Africans and Asians is mostly arrogant and condescending – exception is made for the Japanese.

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

Habent sua fata libelli...
Samarcande is the story of a fictional book, a manuscript of the Rubaiyat written by Omar Khayyam himself, told by a young American who actually found it centuries after having been thought lost in the pillage of Samarkand, only to lose it again when the Titanic hits an iceberg. If you summarise the plot like this, it sounds preposterous, but it is so convincing because it could have happened like this.
This is a wonderful book. The first part describes the life of Omar Khayyam from his arrival in Samarkand to his death, the second part is the tale of Benjamin Omar Lesage, actually named after the poet, who goes looking for the manuscript and witnesses the painful and abortive attempts of Persia to join the modern world and build a democracy – abortive because they were thwarted at every point by the Russian and British empires playing their Great Game. In many respects, we reap today what their arrogance sowed back then.

ETA

Leipzig / RandomCAT // Bingo WomanPUP / male pseudonym

Rose et Blanche, ou la comédienne et la religieuse is the first work George Sand ever published, as far as I have been able to ascertain. She co-wrote it with Jules Sandeau, under the pseudonym of J. Sand, whose last part she then chose for herself. It is a tale of two young women who cannot find happiness where they are looking for it and ends on a sad note after much emotional upheaval.
It was first published in 1831 in five volumes which run to an amzaing 1214 pages, no doubt because of those long sentences, breathlessly piling up simile after simile, until they fill two pages. It is also very contemporaneous, starting in 1825 and ending shortly after the July revolution, there's much reference to current events.
Another Bingo on my card!

ETA

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT // Leipzig / Dewey CAT // BingoDOG / a body of water in the title // Woman BingoPUP / women in science

Euphrat Queen fills a satisfying number of slots and also proved to be a great read. It tells the story of an expedition with two steamboats on the Euphrates in 1836-1837 and proves again that real life writes the most amazing stories. You couldn't make this up.

The East India Company is looking for ways to shorten the lines of comunication with India (the Suez Canal hasn't been built yet), and Thomas Love Peacock (yes, him of Nightmare Abbey) comes up with the idea of taking two of these new-fangled steamships, disassemble them, ship them to the coast of Syria, transport them across the desert to the Euphrates, reassemble them, travel down the river and from there through the Red Sea to India. An excitable Irishman, Francis Rawdon Chesney, is named to command the expedition, and a young German couple, natural scientists, also travel along. Nothing goes according to plan, of course.

The autor draws extensively on the diaries and memoirs of the the expedition members, and especially on the travelogue Pauline Helfer wrote on behalf of her husband. She was the only woman on board and spent part of the time in men's clothes, since the fanatical Muslims of the area would have stoned her otherwise. This gives a rather impressionistic view of the whole expedition, just the highlights, so to speak. The most interesting bits come when she shows the same event from different perspectives.

However, the best part, in my mind, comes at the end when she relates what became of the various survivors: James Fitzjames ended up as captain of HMS Erebus and perished with the Franklin expedition. James Estcot took part in the charge of the Light Brigade. Lt. Lynch married a daughter of the English resident and became eventually the grandfather of Harry Kessler. Pauline returned to Germany a widow and met her hero, Alexander von Humboldt, before she married into one of the most important families in Prague. Six degrees of separation, indeed. One of the most intriguing and romantic figures in this ensemble must have been Lynch's father-in-law, Robert Taylor, who actually eloped with and married a Persian princess. I've noted down at least six books that I want to read now.

BingoDOG / about the environment

At first sight, Key economic areas in Chinese history doesn't seem to fit. But the title is misleading, since it is basically a chronology of important public works of water-control for irrigation and transport from 255 BC to 1842 AD, and economic activity in the various areas is barely analysed. What does come across in the short book is the importance of agriculture for the stability of the regime, in particular the grain tribute needed to feed the army. For the production of grain, lakes and rivers were drained and put to the plough, often with disastrous consequences for flood control, and the canals needed for transport always took priority over irrigation or flood control.
No doubt the author put an enormous amount of work into searching all the provincial gazettes for his compilation of the various projects, but since he does not include any tables it is hard to tell. I doubt this would qualify as a master's thesis nowadays, let alone a PhD.

You are so close on the Bingo! Good luck :)

>169 nittnut: Thanks, I'm trying...

BingoDOG / a comic, manga, BD

I was feeling lazy and picked up Something under the bed is drooling for a re-read after a twenty-year hiatus. Hilarious and delightful, just as I remembered it.

Another Bingo! I'm getting really close...

>167 MissWatson: Wow, that's really interesting that one of the captains on the Franklin expedition also sailed in a steamboat on the Euphrates! And it is such a great feeling when a book sends you off on other reading tangents :)

>172 rabbitprincess: Yes, it is!

Marbach / German authors

I finished Die Wiedertäufer by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, who is Swiss, strictly speaking, but they hold a lot of his papers at the Archive and he's a perennial in textbooks for German class in schools. I find that I am still not fond of reading plays.

Sooo....looking back on November I find that I have been very busy trying to finish my Bingos. Not sure if I can manage that. But I read two fantastic books for them: Samarcande and Euphrat Queen have been lucky finds. Now back to reading.

Nürnberg / children's books

I was feeling a little nostalgic with Christmas coming up and re-read Das fliegende Klassenzimmer.

edited for touchstone

Wiesbaden / mysteries

Letzte Runde is the latest case of Ray the meerkat detective. My sister sent me the audiobook and it was a nice accompaniment for some otherwise dreary filing.

>174 MissWatson: Plays are a bit of hard work, aren't they? I remember liking Hamlet a lot, but I do better listening to a play on audio than reading it myself.

>178 nittnut: Yes, they are, especially if there are a lot of characters and you have to flip back to the list to see who is who. It's much easier to watch. I guess audiobooks would be a good alternative, but I haven't really got in to the habit of listening to books, yet.

BingoDOG / focus on art

Die Gemälde is a novella by Ludwig Tieck. Young Eduard has wasted his father's fortunes and tries to raise some money by selling a fake to his father's old friend who is a collector and has a lovely daughter. Eduard decides to mend his ways, but until then there's lots of discussion of paintings and artists.
I found this as an ebook in the Corvey Digital Collection, which scanned the entire contents of the Princely Library of Corvey, scanned from the first edition printed in 1823. The collection is a real treasure trove for classics and forgotten authors.

ETC

>176 MissWatson: I found that one on my parent's attic a few weeks ago and brought it home with me. I don't think I'll get to it this year, though. Sometimes those nostalgic classics are just the best. :)

>181 Chrischi_HH: Most of our children's books were lost when my parents moved to a smaller apartment, although my sister saved some of her favourites. I didn't really miss them at first, but there are a few I want back. Kästner is top of the list.

Leipzig / Dewey CAT // Woman BingoPUP / women in combat

The Cavalry Maiden is taken from the journals of Nadezhda Durova who disguised as a man and joined the Russian cavalry in 1806. Rumours about her reached tsar Alexander I and she continued her career with this protection. She took part in the entire campaign against Napoleon and finally quitted the service to return to her family.
This was an odd read, her adoration for the tsar and her enjoyment of the free life she led in male disguise are described in gushing, almost fervent prose. But she also comes across as a high-handed aristocrat in her treatment of civilians, and her attitude towards the many different peoples in the Russian empire that she meets is often contradictory. She tells little about training and actual service in the cavalry, and one gets the impression that there wasn't much of it. She appears to have had quite a lot of free time to read and explore the countryside wherever she was posted. Her sojourn in Holstein comes in for particular praise, maybe she was prepared to find everything wonderful because the Imperial family had its roots there.
The edition is very satisfactory, Zirin provides translations for Durova's many expressions in other languages, she adds biographical information for many of the officers mentioned in the text and she provides historical context whenever Durova's account disagrees with the official chronology and her service record.

Flensburg / TBR

Hot water is not a Jeeves story, but it is Wodehouse, so very, very funny. I'm glad I finally got around to it, my best friend has been singing its praises forever.

BingoDOG / title uses wordplay

I was drawn to Pereat Austria! by the title which plays on a popular toast from 19th century student halls: Vivat, crescat, floreat! And it started with an interesting premise: written in 1909 and set in the near future, the Magyars want to secede from the dual monarchy but still want to keep Franz Josef as their king. Other nationalities take this as permission to separate themselves, too, the Balkan erupts, and things quickly descend into war, rebellion and massacre.

This is where the book turns from dubious to downright nasty, and its chauvinistic and racist Germanism comes to the fore. It is the scariest book I have read in a long time, partly because it gives an insight into the mindset of the ruling Austrian classes shortly before the war broke out, but mostly because we seem to drift back to this kind of speaking and thinking about people who are different from us. The spookiest moments are the passages set in Bosnia, the names of the cities are familiar from the 1990ies. People turn into mobs, parliamentary debates into brawls, and the author describes it with clarity and an amazingly precise knowledge of political decision-making and military campaigning. She wrote mostly children's books, and I wonder how much of her slavophobe attitudes went into those.

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT // Woman BingoPUP / short story collection

Von Trollen und Menschen by Selma Lagerlöf contains seven stories about rural life in Värmland, Sweden. Poor farmers, poor preachers and lots of superstition. This gives me another Bingo, and I need four more squares to fill my card. Now let's see...

edited for touchstone

Flensburg / TBR // BingoDOG / by an indigenous person

Love Medicine has sat on my shelves for decades, bought because of stellar reviews, and then I never got around to it. I found the construction interesting, all these first-person narratives from the various members of the family, it reminds me of a kaleidoscope, where the picture changes with every turn. But in the end I was a little disappointed, I just couldn't relate to these people.

So, only one square left to fill, and I'm currently reading a book to do so.

BingoDOG / a coming-of-age story

Gräfin Erikas Lehr- und Wanderjahre was another find on the German Gutenberg site. I originally pencilled it in for the male pseudonym for the Women Bingo, but things turned out otherwise. The author's real name is Lola Kirschner and she was born in what is now the Czech Republic, but in her time was still the Austro-Hungarian empire.
It is the tale of a young girl who grows up on her stepfather's impoverished estate and is called to Berlin by her grandmother when her uncle dies without heirs and she is the next in line. She is a great success in Berlin society and yet cannot make up her mind to marry – her mother's hard life has left a deep impression. Of course, after many complications she ends with the man her grandmother favoured. In between, it is a fascinating portrait of a society which no longer exists. There are some rather biting comments on the Wagner festivities at Bayreuth, which put me in mind of boy group fans, swooning over pop heroes is no recent phenomenon. It will be interesting to read some of her Austrian tales, the Berlin setting appears to be rather unusual for her.

This also means I have finished my BingoDOG! I don't know yet if I can fill the remaining squares on the BingoPUP, I'm battling a cold and am not really in a state to be reading. And it's time I set up my 2017 thread. Maybe this weekend.

Overall, it has been a very successful reading year.

ETA

I hope you feel better soon!

>189 Chrischi_HH: Thanks!

Woman BingoPUP / a female spy

I finished At risk by Stella Rimington and I am very much impressed. This is the kind of spy thriller I like: solid groundwork, proper tradecraft, no fancy gimmicks and a very real person as the heroine. There's also that ineradicable inter-service rivalry with MI6 and some sly pokes at the old boys networks.

edited for touchstone

Bremerhaven / GeoCAT

Sooo, it's not the proper month for Turkey, but since I did not finish Aziyadeh, I don't really care. I just couldn't make sense of this book: it purports to be drawn from the diary of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy who enlists with the Turks and dies, but Loti uses his own name all the time and lived to write this weird book, so what do I make of that? And I didn't like all that salivating over beautiful harem girls and the careless philandering. This goes to a new home.

>192 MissWatson: Making room on the shelf for something better.

>193 mstrust: Oh yes!

Berlin / Graphic novels

Well strictly speaking, it's not a novel, merely a daily strip, but so fresh and delightful on re-reading: Yukon Ho! was perfect for a quiet Saturday nursing a stubborn cold.

Leipzig / Random CAT // Woman BingoPUP / author from Middle East

Unsere Hochzeiten is the kind of book I rarely pick up, it was a lucky find in a charity bookshop for filling a Bingo square. Therefore I cannot really judge how this compares to other works in the genre. It tells of a family in Tel Aviv whose members immigrated from Persia. The mother never learnt proper Hebrew, but she manages to bring up four girls and a boy in a three-room apartment with her fisherman husband, and the whole family history unfolds on the day of her youngest daughter's eleventh birthday. Lots of melodrama, and a strange preponderance of the sense of smell, all things and people are described in terms of how they smell.
I found it interesting, but not truly engaging, women obsessing about getting married is not a subject that attracts me. I noticed that it has an unusual narrative structure, large sections are written in the first person plural, as if all the children wrote this together. Others are strictly from the auctorial view, and it's hard to tell why the perspective changes and when. But it reminded me again how I grateful I am to my parents for putting education and the ability to fend for oneself above all other things.

>195 MissWatson: Yes! Calvin and Hobbes cures all ills. Hope you're feeling better soon!

I too hope you're feeling better. Keep warm.

Taking the afternoon playing catch-up on all the threads in the group and have enjoyed getting caught up with all of your reading. Sorry to learn you have come down with a stubborn cold. Here is hoping you are able to chase it away!

>197 rabbitprincess: >198 mstrust: >199 lkernagh: Thanks for all the get well messages, they seem to have worked! And sleeping in helped a lot, of course.

Only two more books to fill in the Women BingoPUP!

Woman BingoPUP / African author

Red Dust by Gillian Slovo. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission comes to a small town on the veld and lawyer Sarah returns home to assist her former mentor with a case. Many, many shades of grey here.

Woman BingoPUP / African-American author

And with one final mad dash I have completed my Bingo card. Yippee!
The book, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted, is difficult to judge fairly from a modern viewpoint. Today we see cardboard characters spouting antiquated platitudes. But that does not detract from the fact that here a woman stands up for her and her people's right to be free, educated and treated as equals.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

>203 mstrust: >204 DeltaQueen50: Thank you! It was a little hectic towards the end, but fun.

Stavenhagen / regional literature

Last night I finished the latest installment of Rita Falk's Bavarian mystery series on audio Weißwurst-Connection. As ususal, it's less about the crime and more about the characters in this provincial mystery, and half the fun is in the narrator doing the various accents. A few weeks from now I won't remember who did it, but still chuckle over granny's curmurdgeonly comments.

It is also the 150th book I've read for this challenge, and this seems a good moment to say it's done. Any books I read from now on will count towards the 2017 Challenge. I just read a review for the TV series of Quarry, based on Max Alan Collins' books, for which I took a BB two years ago. I think I'll go quarrying my TBR mountain...

So, looking back on my challenge I can say that some of the categories just reached the minimum number. It's strange how actual reading deviates from the original plan. But that is something I notice every year. I'm very happy that I have read so much more than I anticipated, and most of it has been entertaining. A few brilliant discoveries, and almost no duds. As always, the company has been great!

Tomorrow I'm leaving to spend the holidays at my sister's and will be offline until the New Year. I'll be back in January and you are welcome to join me on my new thread over in the 2017 Challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/243629

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my fellow challengers!

Merry Christmas! Have a great time at your sister's, and see you in the new year!

"actual reading deviates from the original plan"
That's me every year as well!
Have a great holiday!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Holidays! I don't comment much, but your thread is always a joy to read :)