MissWatson takes astronomical readings

Hi, I'm Birgit and I live in Schleswig-Holstein on the coast of the Baltic Sea. This is my fourth Category Challenge, and I have enjoyed every minute of the journey. Plus, it helps enormously with the TBR.

Some of my best reads last year have been non-fiction books which made me want to explore the subject or some of its aspects in more depth. But having sixteen categories interfered with this kind of follow-up reading. So this year I am concentrating on three very big tomes. I'll join the CATs and the Bingo if I can find the time, and there are also categories for escape reading.

I'm not setting any fixed goals, but 2017 pages per month is achievable.

January page count: 4628
February page count: 3366
March page count: 3292
April page count: 2125
May page count: 3254
June page count: 3489
July page count: 3441
August page count: 4705
September page count: 1952
October page count: 2952
November page count: 3476

Solar systems



I've chosen three big books of global history, which should provide ample inspiration for further reading. These are the suns. Books chosen as follow-up reading are the planets. They can produce additional reading in turn, which will count as moons.

The suns
1. Die Kinder des Prometheus, 848 pages done
2. Die Unterwerfung der Welt, 1648 pages done
3. Die Verwandlung der Welt, 1568 pages

The planets
1.1. Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer
1.2. Rulaman
2.1 Die Schimmelmanns im atlantischen Dreieckshandel
2.2. Teori
2.3. Merchants and trade networks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, 1550-1800
2.4. A stakeholder empire: the political economy of Spanish imperial rule in America by Regina Grafe and Alejandra Irigoin, EHR 65 2(2012)
2.5. The globalisation of codfish and wool: Spanish-English-North American triangular trade in the early modern period by Regina Grafe, EHWP, LSE 2003

The moons

Fix stars



This is for the CATs.

1. Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. January RandomCAT
2. Die Judenbuche. January WomanCAT
3. Sanditon, and other stories. January WomanCAT
4. Bellwether. January RandomCAT
5. The hare with amber eyes. January Awards and RandomCAT
6. Blade Runner. January CultureCAT and SFF KIT
7. Ru. February Woman and AwardCAT
8. Cover her face. February RandomCAT and CATWoman
9. The long way to a small, angry planet. February CATWoman and SFF Kit
10. Muerte súbita. February AwardsCAT
11. Das Mädchen von der grünen Insel. March RandomCAT
12. William the Silent. March CATWoman
13. The sparrow. March CATWoman, SFF Kit
14. Castle Rackrent. March RandomCAT
15. The absentee. March Random and CultureCAT
16. The dark frigate. March AwardsCAT
17. Die Muskeltiere und Madame Roquefort. April RandomCAT
18. Habsburgs verkaufte Töchter. April CATWoman
19. Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser. April CATWoman
20. The warlord trilogy. April RandomCAT
21. Mord im 31. Stock. April SFF Kit
22. Dear life. May AwardsCAT
23. Lichter setzen über grellem Grund. May CATWoman
24. Briarpatch. May AwardsCAT
25. Rendezvous with Rama. May SFFKit
26. Ruth. May RandomCAT
27. The heart of what was lost. June SFFKit
28. Nectar in a sieve. July CATWoman
29. The witchwood crown. June SFFKit
30. Nouvelles contemporaines. July RandomCAT
31. The legion of flame. August CultureCAT
32. The three-body problem. July SFFKit
33. Rest in pieces. August RandomCAT
34. Murder at Monticello. August RandomCAT
35. Das Märchen vom herrlichen Falken und andere russische Märchen. August RandomCAT
36. Falcon. August RandomCAT and CATWoman
37. The broken shore. August AwardCAT
38. Den Fluten zum Trotz. August CultureCAT
39. Die "erschreckliche Flut von 1634 und der Untergang von Alt-Nordstrand. August CultureCAT
40. Prager Tagblatt. September CultureCAT, September RandomCAT
41. This monstrous thing. September CATWoman, SFFKit
42. English Passengers. September AwardCAT
43. Der Weg aus dem Dunkel. October RandomCAT
44. Waal – Waal!. October CATWoman
45. Der Teufel am Herd. October AwardsCAT
46. Onnen Visser, der Schmugglersohn von Norderney. October CATWoman, CultureCAT
47. Never let me go. October AwardsCAT, SFFKit
48. Arme Leute. October CultureCAT
49. Taxi. November RandomCAT
50. Vor dem Sturm. November CultureCAT
51. Das Nordseegrab. November AwardCAT
52. Throne of Jade. November RandomCAT and SFFKit
53. Purposes of love. November CATWoman
54. Maria Pavlovna : Die frühen Tagebücher der Erbherzogin von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. November RandomCAT
55. Die zwölf Apostel. December RandomCAT
56. Schulmeisters Marie. December RandomCAT
57. Blaubart. December RandomCAT
58. Russkie narodnye skazki. December RandomCAT
59. Den Stürmen zum Trotz. December RandomCAT
60. Song for a dark queen. Fits all DecemberCATs
61. Tristan and Iseult. December CATWoman, RandomCAT
62. Loco. December CATWoman, RandomCAT
63. Minus Drei wünscht sich ein Haustier. December RandomCAT
64. Feiern die auch mit?. December RandomCAT
65. Five on a hike together. December RandomCAT
66. Kunden aus der Hölle. December RandomCAT

Constellations



This is for the BingoDOG



1: Der weise Gründling by Michail Saltykow-Schtschedrin
2: Roxelane by Johannes Tralow
3: Das Mädchen von der grünen Insel by Johannes Tralow
4: Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser by Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt
5: Bellwether by Connie Willis
6: William the Silent by C. V. Wedgwood
7: Lichter setzen über grellem Grund by Renate Feyl
8: Mord im 31. Stock by Per Wahlöö
9: Ein Held unserer Zeit by Michail Lermontow
10: Lotta Schmidt, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
11: This monstrous thing by Mackenzi Lee
12: Nectar in a sieve by Kamala Karkandaya
13: Sanditon and other stories by Jane Austen
14: Denn am Sabbat sollst du ruhen by Batya Gur
15: Homeworld by Harry Harrison
16: The three-body problem by Cixin Liu
17: Dear life by Alice Munro
18: Bruno Chief of Police by Martin Walker
19: Fürstinnen by Eduard von Keyserling
20: Ru by Kim Thúy
21: The hare with amber eyes by Edmund de Waal
22: Die Nonne von Monza by Alessandro Manzoni
23: Inseln im Winde by Max Geißler
24: Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit by Sten Nadolny
25: Demelza by Winston Graham

Comets



Shiny and new books go here.

1. Robert van Gulik by Janwillem van de Wetering
2. Bellwether by Connie Willis
3. The waking fire by Anthony Ryan
4. Alarm in Sköldgatan by Sjöwall/Wahlöö
5. Grrrimm by Karen Duve
6. The heart of what was lost by Tad Williams
7. The witchwood crown by Tad Williams
8. The legion of flame by Anthony Ryan
9. How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup by J. L. Carr
10. The dark forest by Cixin Liu
11. The gentleman's guide to vice and virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Black holes



This is for the DNFs. Of course I hope there won't be any, but I really need to be more ruthless about not finishing books if I don't like them.

1. Stabat mater by Tiziano Scarpa
2. The warlord trilogy by Bernard Cornwell
3. The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 by K. N. Chaudhuri

Galaxies



Here goes everything else.

1. Maigret et les braves gens by Georges Simenon
2. Why Frau Frohmann raised her prices, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
3. European aristocracies and colonial elites
4. Wheelworld by Harry Harrison
5. Starworld by Harry Harrison
6. Lizzie Leigh; and other tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
7. Dumm gelaufen by Moritz Matthies
8. Jean Sbogar by Charles Nodier
9. Der Mantel by Nikolai Gogol
10. Suite fantastique by Maurice Renard
11. Grießnockerlaffäre by Rita Falk
12. Das ewige Leben by Wolf Haas
13. The way through the woods by Colin Dexter
14. The dragonbone chair by Tad Williams
15. The economy and material culture of Russia by Richard Hellie
16. Le rayon-vert by Jules Verne
17. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
18. Mädchen in Uniform by Christa Winsloe
19. Die Verlobung by Ludwig Tieck
20. Gold by Dmitri Mamin-Sibirjak
21. Beim Lampenlicht by Ottilie Wildermuth
22. Emma by August Lafontaine
23. Storm Front by Jim Butcher
24. Monsieur Pamplemousse aloft by Michael Bond
25. Machonomics by Kristine Marçal
26. Der General des Bey by Udo Weinbörner
27. Auferstehung der Toten by Wolf Haas
28. Am Ende der Welt by Nikolai Leskow
29. Taxi by Karen Duve
30. Die Auswirkungen von Zöllen und anderen Handelshemmnissen auf Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart
31. Der Brand von Moskau by Anka Muhlstein
32. Fletcher's Fortune by J. C. Edwards
33. Kein Tag für Jakobsmuscheln by Catherine Simon
34. Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan by Wilhelm Hauff

Welcome to the second half of my reading year!

Summer is here, and it is raining. This should curtail outdoor activities and provide much time for reading on the sofa. Currently I'm enjoying a Russian novel set in the Ural gold mines in the late 19th century, Gold.

Sheesh, I just noticed that I didn't number the new thread. Ah, well, it will resolve itself soon.

Wishing you an excellent second half to your reading year!

>11 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, Judy! I hope you enjoyed the festivities for Canada's birthday.

Happy new thread, Birgit! :) In Lübeck the rain has finally stopped, I hope it's the same a few kilometers up north.

Congratulations on the new thread. You've had lots of good reading.

>13 Chrischi_HH: Hi Chrischi. It's been raining a lot, but in the afternoon it cleared up. It was the same today, so I didn't spend much time on the balcony.

>14 VivienneR: Thanks! I'll be busy clearing up my apartment this week for an upcoming visit. Squeezing three more people into a single woman's place is going to be tricky, even if it's only for sleeping. There's too much stuff spilling over...

Happy New thread!

>17 VictoriaPL: Thanks and welcome. Nice to see you!

Galaxies

The first book in July is Gold, a tale of gold mining in the Ural mountains in the late 19th century.
We meet a bunch of former prisoners who were sent there when mining was still done by forced labour, now it's a state company, and there are also free miners who prospect for themselves but have to sell to the state. The foreman at the state mine deplores all the changes and the modern lack of discipline, and I found it hard to believe that he is eighty years old at the end of the book and still working. Lives are hard and crude, women are treated like cattle and there's a lot of misery, in that respect it's typically Russian. But a much easier read than the "great" authors. The focus on the working people means that it was highly praised by Lenin and much read in Soviet times.

Happy new thread Birgit!

>16 MissWatson: It's always fun to have visitors squeezing into a small space - as long as you know each other well! We used to have a small weekend place in the country and we had visitors almost every weekend. The sensible ones brought mattresses to sleep on the floor! Enjoy your visitors!

>21 VivienneR: Thanks, we will have fun!

Fix stars / constellations

I read Nectar in a sieve for the July CATWoman, but as it turns out it also fills a Bingo square I found hard to fill: the title is taken from a poem by Coleridge. It is a short novel and contains a rather sad story about the harsh life of an Indian peasant woman: a child bride at twelve, many pregnancies, the death of children and the husband toward the end, the precarious living of subsistence farming, the loss of their livelihood when the absent landowner sells the land, the changes wrought by modern times. And yet there is also much beauty in it: the relationship is very loving, and the language is wonderful. I found this by sheer accident and I'm glad I picked it for this month's challenge.

Comets / fix stars

I have finished The witchwood crown, a continuation of Tad Williams Osten Ard trilogy. All in all it is very successful.
We meet familiar characters again, new ones are introduced, and the plot promises an intricate conspiracy. This time, much of the action is set among the Norns, and I was surprised by the extremely hierarchical and tyrannical nature of their society. I'm not quite happy with Morgan, Simon's and Miriamele's grandson. The author seems to have a penchant for troubled royal teenagers, and this one is as obnoxious as they come. I couldn't help wondering what went wrong with his upbringing.

Solar systems: planets

It's taken quite a few weeks to finish Die Schimmelmanns im atlantischen Dreieckshandel, a follow-up to Die Unterwerfung der Welt. This is a detailed study of the slave trade and sugar economy as it happened in the Danish colony on the Virgin Islands. He quotes extensively from letters and documents and paints a vivid picture of the times, which range from the 18th century when the first Schimmelmann made his fortunes to the visit the author paid to the islands, looking for the ruins of the plantations. The book is 40 years old now, and some of the terminology is dated, but it is still a worthwhile read, both for the economical aspects as for the intellectual history.

Fix stars

My choice for the July RandomCAT was Nouvelles contemporaines by Alexandre Dumas. This is a slim volume containing the first prose works he ever published, three novellas, Laurette, Blanche de Beaulieu, and Marie, which are all set in the recent past at the time of writing (1825). It also contains six others written later, and two of these are re-writings of Blanche and Marie, which made for an interesting comparison. The introduction by Claude Schopp does a very good job of putting them into the context of Dumas' life and the political situation.

Fix stars / comets

It's taken me a little longer than expected to finish The legion of flame, too many things going on in RL. Things are going really badly for our heroes and heroines, the focus this time is on Lizanne and Clay, plus a new player who is a soldier in the dragons' army. The pick'n'mix approach to worldbuilding, here the 19th century as seen through English eyes, has its drawbacks, you know immediately who the bad guys are. But there's a lot of action and derring-do, plus a full-grown revolution.
I didn't know it when I started it, but the consequences of a natural catastrophe are important here, so I am also counting it for the CultureCAT next month. To say more would be spoiling things.

Galaxies

I found Beim Lampenlicht over at Open Library, where I often go to see if a German ebook found at Project Gutenberg is available as a scanned PDF – OCR rarely works for books printed in Gothic print. This is a collection of stories written by Ottilie Wildermuth who was a very popular writer in her time. It's the kind of tale I count as guilty pleasures, bordering on kitsch, but relieved here because the stories are all set in Swabia, and it is quite nostalgic to read about places I've seen. It's also full of little details about life in those days which are mostly lost today.

Solar systems: planets

Teori is a novel about Georg Forster's voyage with Captain James Cook. He was seventeen at the time and acted as secretary to his father, who was the scientist on board the Resolution. It is very much a coming-of-age novel, about becoming independent of his father, discovering women, finding himself. I would love to know more about his political activities, inspired by the French Revolution.

How can it be August already? July has been taken over with two brand-new books of considerable length, and I loved them both: The witchwood crown and The legion of flame. Everything else fell by the wayside due to extracurricular activities. That's summer.

Fix stars / constellations

I finished The three-body problem a little late for the July SFFKit, and because it is chockfull of details about radio astronomy and planetary systems, I'm also counting it for the science-related square of the Bingo. This was a fascinating read. I freely admit that the science went over my head at times, especially the subatomic things, but I loved the characters and the setting, so foreign for us westerners.

Galaxies

Emma by August Lafontaine. I picked this up because I found him mentioned several times in other books as one of the most popular authors at the end of the 18th century, and he continued to write well into the 19th. This was published in 1811, and to modern eyes it is tediously sentimental. It must have been some sort of escapist literature, for there is absolutely no mention of the wars raging across Europe, and it must be set before the French Revolution, because one of the main characters has an uncle in the Swiss Guards in Paris. I think it needs a little more grounding in the history of German literature to do it full justice.

ETA

>31 MissWatson: I picked this one up quite recently so it's good to see that you enjoyed it. My last adventure with Chinese literature didn't go so well so it's great to see the positivity for this one.

>33 AHS-Wolfy: I'm sure that the translation by Ken Liu helped a lot.

Galaxies

I was under the impression that Harry Dresden was a fun series, so I picked up Storm Front for the August SFFKit. Turns out it's no such thing. It didn't really work for me, I found Harry's relationship with the police unconvincing, Murphy's personality felt wrong and the bad guy's motivation non-extistent. I won't be in a hurry to continue with this series.

>31 MissWatson: I started reading this one but had a hard time getting into it. It may have been because I was reading an ebook from the library, and the translator's notes were harder to read in the ebook. Need to get a hold of a print copy.

Love your theme - hope you're having a great time reading.

>36 rabbitprincess: Hope you have better luck with a print copy.
>37 ErinPaperbackstash: Thanks!

Fix stars

Another one down: Rest in pieces where a cat and a corgi help to solve a mystery, which means it fits for the August RandomCAT. Second in the Mrs Murphy mysteries, entertaining fluff for a Sunday afternoon. I like the descriptions of Virginia country life, but I'm parting with the books after reading this time.

Fix stars

Murder at Monticello is the next one in the series, written to mark the 250th birthday of Thomas Jefferson, and thus before most historians changed their minds about his paternity of Sally Hemings' children which makes most of the arguments used here seem, well, dated. The mystery is not very convincing either. A less than stellar entry in the series, and I'm taking a break.

Solar systems: planets

Merchants and trade networks in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1550-1800 is a collection of essays of mixed quality. The common thread is the use of social network analysis in economic history. Cachera Vinuesa provides a very lucid and readable introduction to the concept of SNA and lines out the advantages as well as the pitfalls. These pitfalls are then amply illustrated in the next contribution whose author converts perfectly clear commercial activities into gobbledegook by abstracting them into the concepts of a model.
All in all, a mixed bag, some very interesting case studies. I couldn't finish one essay because the author's command of the English language was insufficient for this.

Comets

My sister had the newly re-issued German version of How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup in her bag when she visited and highly recommended it as a book about football that even non-followers of the game would enjoy, so I got my own copy. She's right. It gets off to a slow start, but then it becomes absolutely hilarious.

Fix stars

I've got Helen Macdonald's Falcon on deck, but before I started it, I decided to revisit one of my favourite fairy tales, the one about the bright falcon Finist. Das Märchen vom herrlichen Falken und andere russische Märchen contains the gorgeous illustrations of Ivan Bilibin, but the text is heavily abridged. Seems like a good time to revisit the Afanasyev version...
In any case, this is another one for the August RandomCAT.

>42 MissWatson: I've taken a surprise BB for that!

>44 Jackie_K: The current Penguin edition has an introduction by D. J. Taylor, which gives some idea of his life. Taylor also tries to place Steeple Sinderby on the map, and this made me wonder why he does not recognise that it is set in Trollope country: the bishop of Barchester gets a look in, and Barchester Cathedral is mentioned.

Fix stars

Falcon is a non-fiction book about falcons, which means it fits for the RandomCAT and the CATWoman this month. It tells you much about falcons, but I expected more.

Galaxies

The recent death of Michael Bond brought several mentions of the Plamplemousse mysteries, and I have finally tracked down a few. I read Monsieur Pamplemousse aloft first because it is set in Brittany. Very enjoyable, although I must say that the cover of my copy is very misleading: the humour is by no means so crass or crude as you would expect from this picture. I also experienced an eerie sense of dislocation from the numerous uses of French phrases in a text that is supposedly taking place in France with dialogue that is supposedly conducted in French. Especially when English idioms are translated literally. But it was fun to read.

Galaxies

Machonomics almost ended up as a black hole, because there is only so much polemic I can take, and at some point I grew tired of finding counter arguments to hers. Yes, there's a lot wrong with economics, and yes, women are discriminated against, but the fault does not lie with the principle of homo oeconomicus. Not in my opinion, anyway.

ETC

Solar systems: planets

One of the advantages of working in an academic library is that you have easy access to journals, so I used my lunch breaks to read two articles by Regina Grafe: "A stakeholder empire: the political economy of Spanish imperial rule in America" and "The globalisation of codfish and wool: Spanish-English-North American triangular trade in the early modern period" which resulted in a long list of notes for further reading. If only I didn't have to work for a living.

Fix stars

I finished The broken shore for the August AwardCAT. This was a great read, which needs concentration. The dialogue is sparse so you need to pay attention to get the meaning. The description of the place was atmospheric, especially the slightly caustrophobic feeling you get when a town is so small that everybody knows, and worse: is related to, everybody. The casual everyday racism, though, was shocking. But I wil certainly pick up the follow up to this book.

ETC touchstone

Comets

I have finished The dark forest. This is a wonderful book. I had my doubts for a while, because of Lao Ji's perfect fantasy woman and rather too many males among the Wallfacers, but things took an unexpected turn when we arrived in the future. The big battle is brilliantly resolved. And I sure hope Da Shi will make it to the next story!

I'm off for a seaside holiday and will be offline for two weeks. I hope to get some books off my Kobo in that time. See you all soon. Happy reading!

>52 MissWatson: Woo hoo! Have a great time! Hope you have good seaside weather!

I hope you are having a lovely holiday. :)

A seaside holiday... how lovely!

>53 rabbitprincess: >54 DeltaQueen50: >55 lkernagh: Thank you, ladies! We had a wonderful time and managed to go swimming every day. I even finished a few books! Of course, I brought my Kobo to save weight on my luggage and ended up buying a few novels about local history. The same procedure as every year.

Comets

My sister recommended The gentleman's guide to vice and virtue as an entertaining read, but I strongly suspect that this is a case where the translator actually improved on a book. The English version has a first person narrator who talks like a modern American teenager, it's all about me, me, me. There are also some few very basic mistakes regarding the English aristocracy which do not speak well for the author's credentials as a trained historian.

Fix stars

I found a historical novel about the great flood of 1634, in which half the island of Strand vanished in the North Sea, on the German Gutenberg site: Die "erschreckliche" Flut von 1634 und der Untergang von Alt-Nordstrand. Unfortunately, this was more about one of the fiercely puritan ministers haranguing his flock about their sinful ways than about the flood, and the part of the Deichgraf, the official responsible for maintaining the dykes, was lifted straight from Theodor Storm.

Many of the survivors fled to the neighbouring island of Föhr, where my next book was set: Den Fluten zum Trotz. I bought this in a local bookshop simply because it deals with the aftermath of the flood and the way the island developed away from subsistence agriculture to coastal navigation and whaling. This is a debut novel, and it shows in the wooden prose and the way none of the characters have an individual, recognisable voice. But I learned very much about life on these islands. And it works for the August CultureCAT.

edited for touchstone

Galaxies

Another find in the local bookshop was Der General des Bey, a novel about Hark Olufs, a young seaman from Amrum, whose ship was captured by Barbary pirates. The crew was sold into slavery in Algiers, and he subsequently made an amazing career at the court of the Bey of Constantine. He returned as a rich man to the island. The author spins a wonderful yarn from this, the sights and sounds and smells of the North African deserts, the cruelty of life as a slave, the precariousness of life at court. I went and picked up another book by this author, about the life of Hark's friend, and I hope to get round to it soon.

Fix stars

I picked up Prager Tagblatt because it fits the September CultureCAT (journalism) and the RandomCAT (something I meant to read for a long time).
The Prager Tagblatt was one of the quality papers of Prague, and many of the intellectuals residing in Prague had connections to it. It had its golden age in the years between the two World Wars. I'm sad to report that I found this disappointing. Brod wrote this in 1957, drawing on his own stint as a theatre critic for the paper for his tale of a bereaved artist finding refuge in the august halls of German-speaking journalism in the newly independent Czech republic, already on the brink of being destroyed by Nazi Germany. Most of the pages are taken up by the main character's attempt to come to terms with the loss of his wife and his affair with a night club girl, and frankly, this bored me to tears, especially as it is buried in an endless debate about faith and God with one of his colleagues. Not nearly enough about the newspaper.

Fix stars / constellations

This monstrous thing also ticks several boxes: the September CATWoman and SFFKit, and the Bingo square "books about books". This is a re-working of the Frankenstein tale for YA readers, the book itself makes an appearance in this alternate history of Geneva in 1818. The author plays fast and loose again with historical facts, far too much for my taste, and the prose is a little too modern, but it is not excruciatingly bad.

Interesting choices for books set at our western coast. I like those settings a lot and also find the history very interesting. Did you stay on one of the islands for your holiday?

>62 Chrischi_HH: Hi Chrischi, we spend a fortnight on Föhr in uneven years and have done so for quite a few years now. I usually find a book or two about the local history, but these were exceptionally good on the history bits (Thiessen is not very good on characterisation and style).

>61 MissWatson: I love how you described This Monstrous Thing as "not excruciatingly bad"! Talk about damning with faint praise. :)

>64 christina_reads: I think the intended audience of YA would find much to love, but it didn't really work for me.

Galaxies

Found Auferstehung der Toten in the donations box of my sister's library and read it on the train ride home, only to find I already owned a copy. Ah well. It was a good read.

Fix stars

I finished English Passengers for the AwardCAT, it was on the shortlist for the Booker Prize in 2000. Very well written, occasionally funny, but ultimately a sad story about the colonisation of Tasmania and the disappearance of the native population, killed either by misguided attempts at "civilising" or by deliberate murder. There's not a single likeable Englishman or -woman in this book. Dr Potter's racial theories are particularly off-putting.

September hasn't been a good month for me. My mother died and there's been this strange feeling of the world slowing down. And now autumn is here, the leaves are falling, and it is raining. Should be a good time for thinking of her. And reading...

Galaxies

I wasn't really in the mood for my planned reads, so I fished something from the donations box at my sister's library: Am Ende der Welt is a collection of stories by Nikolai Leskow. Very Russian in its themes of drunkenness, ignorance, and overbearing bureaucracy, and yet not nearly as bleak as I first thought. Definitely an author to look out for, and one where the quality of the translation matters. Here we have examples from five translators, and I thought none of them was outstanding. The paper is extremely bad (East German publisher), so not worth keeping after I've had a chance to compare them with other translators.

>68 MissWatson: I'm so sorry to hear about your mom! I hope you and your family are doing OK.

>68 MissWatson: So very sorry to hear about your mother. Yes, autumn is a good time for reflection.

I'm very sorry for your loss. :( I wish you all the strength that you and your family need these days.

Condolences to both you and your family on your loss.

Sad to hear of your loss. My condolences to you and your family.

>70 christina_reads: >71 VivienneR: >72 Chrischi_HH: >73 DeltaQueen50: >74 AHS-Wolfy: Thank you all for your kind words.

Fix stars

I finished Der Weg aus dem Dunkel which translates as "The way out of the darkness" and thus fits for the October RandomCAT. Another selection of stories by Nikolai Leskow, three of which also appeared in the previous selection, but translated by someone else, which made for an interesting comparison. Especially in the tale about the left-handed smith from Tula, where wordplay plays an important part.

ETC

Fix stars

I read Waal – Waal! for the CATWoman. The author, Margarete Boie, spent many years on the North Frisian island of Sylt in the early years of the 20th century and wrote a lot of children's fiction, mostly set in Northern Germany.
This is about Lorens Peters Hahn who was born in 1668 and became rich and famous on Sylt as a commander of whaling ships. Another famous whaling commander from Föhr crops up, too: Lucky Matthew. Well researched and well written, she uses the local vocabulary which must have baffled her readers in Southern Germany quite a bit. This would have been a four star read, if it hadn't been for her bias against the women. She belittles their share in the local economy.

Fix stars

I found Der Teufel am Herd on the German Gutenberg site. Henrik Pontoppidan received the 1917 Nobel prize in literature for this collection of five stories. Four of these analyse the relationship between husband and wife, the disappointments, the mutual misunderstandings, the gradual disillusion, and the resentments that grow from this. I found his characters very convincing in their psychology, and he gives great insight to country life in the Danish province of Jutland, where alle these stories are set. The translation seemed a bit overliteral at times, but pleasant to read. A great discovery.

Fix stars

I picked Onnen Visser, der Schmugglersohn von Norderney off the shelf for the October CATWoman: the author was born and died in Hamburg, and this is a tale set on the East Frisian island of Norderney in the time of French occupation under Napoleon. The hero is pressed into the French army and marches to Moscow, deserts and returns home after many adventures. This was written as an adventure story for boys in 1885, much maligned by pedagogues of course. The style is repetitive and tedious, reflects the prejudices of the time and relies far too much on coincidence. But it presents a very realistic picture of the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars on the population, how entire communities are ruined and condemned to hunger after the French army has looted and killed everything in sight. So I'm also counting it for the poverty theme of this month's CultureCAT.

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Never let me go is easily one of the darkest and scariest books I've read in a long time. Ruth reminded me so much of a girl I used to know, with her vivid imagination and her manipulative ways. I also admire Ishiguro for not going into details about how this whole system works, just letting you see it from the victims' side. Great.

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I squeezed in the 127 pages of Arme Leute for the CultureCAT. Somehow I can't warm to Dostoevskij. Is it the translations, or is it that so many of his characters are such whining wimps, holy fools, downtrodden fools or plain fools? This one, Makar Devuškin, falls into the whining wimp category.

Constellations

Another one for the Bingo is Fürstinnen, published in 1917. Another elegiac tale about Baltic aristocrats, elegantly written. Only two squares left!

Constellations

I picked up Bruno Chief of Police for the Bingo as author abroad.
This mystery was a serious disappointment. Martin Walker was familiar to me from the time when he reported from the Soviet Union for the Guardian (yes, that's a long time ago) and I really liked the fresh way he looked at the country and its people. Here he gives us a paean to the French countryside, spends a lot of time on ranting against strict EU food safety rules (while illustrating the necessity of protecting the consumers with an anecdote about a local woman fraudulently selling supermarket eggs as farm-laid to unsuspecting tourists) and rather little time on the crime-solving. It is written in a strangely clumsy style, especially the romantic scenes.
The crime involves an ugly tale from the time of the Vichy régime, and in keeping with the close-knit, almost incestuous power structure of the town and the political considerations it is left open. That's a realistic scenario, so I had no problems with that. What I find quite unforgivably crass is that Bruno continues to call the EU food regulators "Gestapo". To make such a comparison between torture, repression and state terrorism on one hand and perfectly legal procedures on the other shows a total loss of sense of proportion. It is cheap populism unworthy of a once serious journalist.

ETC

Galaxies / fix stars

Taxi was an audiobook borrowed from my sister. A young woman finishes school and doesn't quite know what to do with herself, so she gets a licence as a taxi driver and recounts her experiences, mostly with her macho colleagues. I suppose it's meant to be feminist, I found it mildly amusing.

ETA: I just realised this works for the November RandomCAT, as she is frequently stuck in traffic jams!

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And I have finished Vor dem Sturm, all 924 pages of it. This was a re-read of Fontane's first novel, last opened in 1988, and now that I am older I appreciate his leisurely pace much more.
It is the winter of 1812, Napoleon is back in Paris, but the remnants of his army trudge across Prussia, and everywhere people are eager for the king to break the imposed alliance and to allow them to chase the invaders out, who include quite a few Germans impressed into the French army. The tone and the style are very much like those of his travel books, full of anecdotes and conversation.

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Das Nordseegrab is a historical mystery set in Husum, the birthplace of Theodor Storm. He was a lawyer in real life, and the author uses some of the real cases happening in the town in 1843 to spin his yarn, told by the newly-hired scribe Peter Söt who has a very mysterious past which was revealed as a hurried afterthought on the last pages, so I nearly missed it. Adequately told, and considered worthy to receive the Theodor Storm Award.

ETC

I am now all caught up. My library got >57 MissWatson: TGGtVaV. At first it looked intriguing but it wasn't enough to hook me. I don't know if any of my students will ever pick it up. Alas!

>87 mamzel: Nice to see you! I think I was a bit harsh on it immediately after finishing it, having little patience for spoiled rich little brats. But it gets the teenage mindset very well.

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Throne of Jade fits for the RandomCAT and the SFFKit. Laurence and Temeraire take an epic journey by sea to China, and the descriptions of the voyage, and the sea, are wonderful.

Constellations

I have finally filled the last square on my Bingo card with Denn am Sabbat sollst du ruhen, a mystery set in Jerusalem. It wasn't bad, but the psychoanalysis isn't really my thing.

Congratulations on completing the Bingo Card!

>91 DeltaQueen50: Thank you! Now I can get serious about setting up my 2018 thread.

Galaxies

I picked up Die Auswirkungen von Zöllen und anderen Handelshemmnissen auf Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart because it contains an article about Napoleon's economic blockade, as a follow-up to Fontane's Vor dem Sturm. Not very enlightening, and the quality of the other conference papers is middling, too.

I'm still not in the right frame of mind for Die Unterwerfung der Welt, so I'll save it for next year and just read a few lighter books for the December CATs now.

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I picked up Purposes of love for the CATWoman. This is her debut novel, and much of it derived from her real life profession as a nurse, no doubt. The almost military rigidness of the training and work was amazing. I also cannot remember when I last had to consult a dictionary while reading a book in English, her vocabulary is amazing.
The characters are constantly self-reflecting and analysing each other and their emotions, it made me wonder when this started. In that respect they are like teenagers in modern YA books, always concerned with themselves. But these are people in their middle and late twenties who are still not fully trained or only on the brink of a career which I found surprising.

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I'm counting Maria Pavlovna : Die frühen Tagebücher der Erbherzogin von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach for the November RandomCAT, since I finished it before midnight and she spends most of the time covered in these diaries on the road, fleeing Weimar for safety from Napoleon.

This was a fascinating read. It partly answers my question above regarding the origins of introspection: the editors of these diaries trace it to the fashion for epistolary novels in the 18th century. They are written entirely in French, a habit left over from her schooldays, when diaries were a means of practising language skills (those were the times when parents and teachers still read and corrected their children's diaries). They are mostly an aide-mémoire for herself, noting people and places she met during these travels and at the various courts. The war itself is mostly mentioned in passing, but the editors have often filled in the gaps with excerpts from her vast correspondence which she kept up with her family in Russia. The editors have tried to identify each person, building or painting mentioned and are mostly successful, so the notes are three times as voluminous as the diaries themselves. There are many familiar names turning up again and again, and it is useful to keep a few genealogies at hand, who is related to whom is sometimes important. The most surprising thing for me was that Maria still deferred to decisions and orders from her brother, Tsar Alexander. I would have thought that the interests of her husband's family should have been her first priority. This shed a new light on the purposes of dynastic European marriages for me...

ETC

Looking back on my reading year, I can say that it has been successful. I finished the Bingo and didn't have too many duds.
I didn't meet my goal of pages read in September, but that was the month my mother died and there were too many other things going on.
That's also the reason why I won't finish my Solar Systems category, I'm still not feeling up to tackling a serious non-fiction book running to more than 1,500 pages.

So I'm taking things easy in December. The December RandomCAT (books that can be read in one day) is a good opportunity to read a few novellas. I always find it difficult to tell the difference between a short story and a novella, and I hope that reading a bunch of them from the German classics canon will enlighten me in this respect.

Congratulations and here is to taking things easy in December!

Thank you, Lori!

Galaxies

And I have finished Der Brand von Moskau, an account of Napoleon's campaign in Russia.
The author is a French historian, so her sources are overwhelmingly from the French side of the campaign, but since her main question is to find an explanation for Napoleon's rationale for marching to Moscow and then turning back, that's legitimate. She uses a few carefully selected memoirs from which she quotes extensively, mostly people close to Napoleon during the campaign, some from fighting units, from doctors, and a handful from the Russian side, which included, to my surprise, Clausewitz. I had no idea he served with the Russian army. Quite a few familiar names pop up, and others surfaced unexpectedly, such as John Quincy Adams as the American envoy in St. Petersburg. Or the daughter of the governor of Moscow at the time who married into the French aristocracy and wrote those moralising children's books, Comtesse de Ségur.

>96 MissWatson: Congratulations, you did really well this year! It's a good idea to take it easy for a month.

>100 VivienneR: Thank you!

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Today is the birthday of Eugenie Marlitt, so I picked her novella Die zwölf Apostel as my first one-day read for the December RandomCAT. Typical of her romances, but it doesn't work as well in this condensed form.

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I also finished two other short romances by Marlitt, Blaubart (no touchstone) and Schulmeisters Marie. This was her first attempt at writing, unpublished during her lifetime, and she knew why. The short form doesn't really suit her.
The other one-day read was Russkie narodnye skazki, a selection of Russian fairy tales which I bought for the gorgeous illustrations by Bilibin. Unfortunately there's no information from which edition these pages were taken, the text differs somewhat from the versions in my German translation. I was also dismayed by my rusty Russian, if I hadn't known these tales so well I would have struggled.

Galaxies

Another digression was Fletcher's Fortune. I saw the title out of the corner of my eye on LT somewhere and thought: I know the title, but the author's name was different – how's that? So I literally dug out the book and it is indeed the same book as the one by John Drake, recently republished under the new name. There's no explanation anywhere, so I still don't know the reason why.
However, the book is less than stellar, so it won't give me sleepless nights not to know. The bits at sea were pretty much the same as told by any author writing about the Royal Navy, and I had a hard time believing Fletcher could go from lubberly landsman to bosun's mate within a few months. The other plotline about his nefarious stepmother and stepbrothers is very much over the top, too. I probably bought this because someone compared it to Flashman. The pretense is the same: a manuscript autobiography found in an attic. There the similarity ends, Flashman is way better and much more fun.

ETC

>104 MissWatson: Well, on the plus side, your review has reminded me that I want to check out the Flashman books!

>105 christina_reads: He is utterly amoral, but good company. I hope you enjoy his adventures.

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Den Stürmen zum Trotz unexpectedly turned into another one day book for the RandomCAT, it is printed so large that the 304 pages felt like 100. It continues the history of Föhr as seen through the eyes of one family, and historical interest is the only thing in its favour. Rather badly written.

I'm re-reading Smiley's People, and the book mentions Schleswig-Holstein at one point, so naturally I thought of you :)

>108 rabbitprincess: I don't remember that! Time for a re-read!

>106 MissWatson: Love that description!

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Yesterday was Rosemary Sutcliff's birthday and I read Song for a dark queen to honour it. Turns out that this little book fits all CATs for this month: it can be read in day (RandomCAT), was published in the seventies (CATWoman), has received a British award (AwardCAT) and tells a tale about the brutal crushing of a Celtic tribe by the conquering Romans, destroying their society, which is a rather extreme form of culture flow (CultureCAT).
It is also wonderfully written, she has an uncanny knack of transporting you to the past with a few sentences, in this case the opening sentence: I am Cadwan of the Harp. Instantly you know that this is a time and place where people do not have surnames and define themselves and their place in life very differently from us. It is a book for young adults, but she does not prettify things: both sides are violent societies. And her vision of Boudicca is very believable as a strong-willed, passionate woman.

Woo hoo, a CAT trick!!!

>112 rabbitprincess: Yes, I'm feeling rather pleased about it.

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And another one for the RandomCAT and the CATWoman: Tristan and Iseult. Rosemary Sutcliff's retelling of the famous romance hasn't quite the same magic as some of her other books, but this may be because I don't really like either Tristan or Iseult. It always amazes me that the best friend, here Gorvenal, sticks with him through every folly. The hero's best friend certainly would deserve some time in the limelight. And Iseult's companion Brangian is a complete black hole here, she is always there, but doesn't speak once (or so it feels).

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One more for the RandomCAT and CATWoman: Loco, a western by Lee Hoffman. Unusual characters, very clichéd writing, alas.
I had thought about reading a few novellas for the RandomCAT, but couldn't really concentrate on the tortured prose of Heinrich von Kleist. Some other time.

Black holes

I have abandoned The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 after getting nowhere with it in the last week. It promised to be an interesting history of the East India Company, but the theoretical scaffold on which he hangs his history is system analysis, and it's boring.

Only four days left till the Christmas holidays. The ticket is bought, the presents are wrapped, I even made a batch of cookies. I don't think I'll read much over the holidays, but we'll see.

>117 MissWatson: Woo hoo! Enjoy your holidays when they come. I'm off all next week, so the next few days will feel very long.

>118 rabbitprincess: Yes, I'm getting a little impatient for the last days at work to pass. I'm leaving on Saturday and looking so much forward to a week of laziness!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope you all have shiny, lovely books under your tree and spend some time with your loved ones. See you all next year.

Hi Birgit, stopping by to wish you and your loved ones peace, joy and happiness this holiday season and for 2018!

>121 lkernagh:, >122 VivienneR: Many thanks!

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I spent the last few days of the year with a few children's books, all of which could be read in a day, and one cozy mystery, so the final tally for 2017 is 126 books. Not bad at all.

ETA: I forgot the last one before the holidays: Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan. Some very satiric remarks about the literary scene of the early 19th century.