Nathalie's (Deern's) Reading in 2018 Part 3

Welcome to my 3rd thread!

Some happy holiday memories:


The view from our hotel room over the mini harbor of Padenghe sul Garda on a particularly nice evening



My mum and dad, tired but happy, on the same evening (their golden wedding anniversary) when we took a short after-dinner walk along the harbor



The only pic with me from that holiday that's not upside down, taken in the tapas restaurant near the hotel.

Books read in 2018:

January:
1. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1001, BAC, ROOTs, TIOLI) - 3 stars
2. My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame - 4 stars
3. Why I'm no longer to white people about race by Reni Eddo-Lodge -5 stars
4. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1001, IAC) - 3.8 stars
5. Darm mit Charme by Giulia Enders - 4.5 stars
6. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 4.5 stars
7. An Italian Education by Tim Parks (ROOTs) - 3.5 stars
8. Untenrum Frei by Margarete Stokowski -4.3 stars
9. The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle - 3 stars
10. La Tregua by Primo Levi (ROOTs) - 5 stars

February:
11. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne by Jean Améry - 4.3 stars
12. Hold your Own by Kate Tempest - 5 stars
13. I sommersi e i salvati by Primo Levi (ROOTs, 1001) - 5 stars
14. Fleischmarkt by Laurie Penny - 4.5 stars
15. Ma le donne NO by Caterina Soffici - 4.8 stars
16. His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle - 4 stars
17. Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (IAC, 1001) - 2.8 stars
18. The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - 4 stars
19. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 2.8 stars
20. Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling - 3.8 stars

Books read in March -July:

March:
21. Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler (BAC, 1,001) - 4 stars
22. La luna e i falo by Cesare Pavese (1,001) - 3.8 starsf
23. Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden (IAC) - 4 stars
24. A Season with Verona by Tim Parks - 3.5 stars
25. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - 4.5 Stars
26. Underworld by Don de Lillo (ROOTs, 1001) - 4 stars
27. Blindness of the Heart by Julia Franck (1001) - 3.5 stars
28. On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder - 5 stars
29. 2001 Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1001) - 3.7 stars
30. Metamorphosen by Ovid (1001) - no rating

April:
31. Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney - 5 stars
32. Even Vegans Die by Carol J. Adams - 4.8 stars
33. Molloy by Samuel Beckett (IAC, 1001) - 4 stars
34. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (IAC, ROOTs) - 4.5 stars
35. Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (1001) - 3.5 stars
36. The Hounds of Spring by Lucy Andrews Cummin - 5 stars
37. The White Book by Han Kang - 4.5 stars
38. In the Woods by Tana French (IAC) - 3.5 stars
39. Judgement Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein - 4.5 stars
40. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli by Carlo Levi (1001) - 4 stars

May:
41. Nicht direkt perfekt by Nicole Jäger - 3.5 stars
42. Die Fettlöserin by Nicole Jäger - 3.5 stars
43. Death Comes To Pemberley by P.D. James - 2 stars
44. Marx for Beginners by Ruis - 3.5 stars
45. Abstinence by O.A. - 3.5 stars
46. Estate senza uomini by Siri Hustvedt - 4.5 stars
47. Drift: The Unmooring of American Miltary Power by Rachel Maddow - 4.5 stars

June/ July
48. The Gathering by Anne Enright - 3.5 stars
49. The Art of not falling apart by Christine Patterson
50. Calypso by David Sedaris
51. The Violent Bear it away by Flannery O'Connor (1001)
52. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
53. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (BAC, 1001)
54. Room to Dream by David Lynch
55. "Recovery" by Russell Brand
56. A Chef's Christmas by Anthony Bourdsin
57. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (Booker 2018 LL) 3.5 stars
58. The Master by Tolm Coibin (IAC, 1001) 4.5 stars
59. Under The Net by Iris Murdoch (1001) 3.5 stars
60. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain 3.5 stars

August:
61. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (BAC, 1001), 3.5 stars
62. In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne (Booker LL 2018) 4 stars
63. Snap by Belina Bauer (Booker LL 2018) 3.5 stars
64. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (Booker LL 2018), 3.8 stars
65. Treasure Hunt by Molly Keane (IAC 2018) - 3.8 stars
66. Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners by Therese Oneill - 3.8 stars
67. From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan (Booker LL 2018) - 3.8 stars
68. Kick ass with Mel Robbins by Mel Robbins -4 stars
69. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers - 3.5 stars
70. Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Stroemquist - 4.5 stars
71. Rites of Passage by William Golding (Booker winner 1980, BAC September, ROOTs, 1001) - 3.8 stars
72. Pietr il lettone by Georges Simenon - 2 stars
73. Il cane giallo by Georges Simenon - 3.5 stars
74. Public library and other stories by Ali Smith - 4 stars
75. Brazen: Rebel ladies who rocked the world by Penelope Bagieu - 5 stars

September:
76. Great Masters: Mahler - His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg -4.5 stars
77. Paddy Clarke by Roddy Doyle (IAC) - 3 stars
78. Ein vernunftbegabtes Tier by Robert Merle
79. How to listen to and understand great music by Robert Greenberg - 5 stars
80. Mini Rabbit Not Lost by John Bond
81. Wild Harbour by Ian McPherson - 1.5 stars
82. Smoke by Ivan Turgenev - 3.5 stars
83. Classics of Russian Literature by Irwin Weil - 4.5 stars

October:
84. Eugen Onegin by Alexander Pushkin - 4 stars
85. and 86. Wind / Pinball: 2 Novels by Haruki Murakami - 3.5 stars each
87. What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami - 3 stars
88. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami - 4.5 stars
89. And then there were none by Agatha Christie - 4.5 stars
90. Urban Monk by Pedram Shohaj - 3.5 stars
91. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami - 4.2 stars
92. Il mestiere dello scrittore by Haruki Murakami - 3.3 stars
93. Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami - 4.2 stars

November:
94. Il Selfie del Mondo by Marco D'Eramo - no rating
95. Great Music of the 20th Century by Robert Greenberg - 5 stars
96. The Overstory by Richard Powers - 5 stars
97. Beethoven His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg - 4.5 stars
98. Shostakovich His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg - 4.5 stars
99. Siddharta by Hermann Hesse - 5 stars
100. The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal - 5 stars
101. Vodka is Vegan by Matt Letten - 3.3 stars
102. The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket - 4.2 stars
103. How to American : by Jimmy O. Yang - nr

December:
104. Warum wir Hunde lieben, Schweine essen und Kühe anziehen by Melanie Joy - 4 stars
105. Don't let my past be your future by Harry Leslie Smith - 4.5 stars
106. Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds - 4 stars
107. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes - 3.5 stars
108. Raven Black by Anne Cleeves - 4.2 stars

CHALLENGES 2018:

IAC:
- The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (January: EOB)
- Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (February: WT)
- Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden (March: DM)
- Molloy by Samuel Beckett (April: SB)
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (April: SB)
- In the Woods by Tana French (May: Crime/Mystery)
- The Gathering by Anne Enright (June: AE)
- The Master by Colm Toibin (July: TC)
- Treasure Hunt by Molly Keane (August: Molly Keane)

BAC:
- Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (January: debuts)
- G. a novel by John Berger (February: the 70s)
- Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler (March: classic thrillers)
- Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney (April: Fables)
- Death Comes To Pemberley by P.D. James (May: Queens of Crime)
- (Travel lit)
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (July: Angry Young Men)
- The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (August: British Sci-fi)
- Rites of Passage by William Golding (September: British historical fiction)

ROOTs:
1. - Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
2. - An Italian Education by Tim Parks
3. - La Tregua by Primo Levi
4. - I Sommersi E I Salvati by Primo Levi
5. - The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. - Underworld by Don DeLillo
7. - Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
8. - Estate senza uomini by Siri Hustvedt
9. - Rites of Passage by William Golding
10.- Pietr il lettone by Georges Simenon
11.- Il cane giallo by Georges Simenon
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.

Bookers:
- The Gathering by Anne Enright (winner 2008)
- Rites of Passage by William Golding (winner 1980)

LL 2018:
- Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
- Snap by Belina Bauer
- In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
- the Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
- From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
- The Overstory by Richard Powers

11 Books to celebrate my 10th Thingaversary
1. The Woman that never evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (BB from Lucy)
2. Se Questo È Un Uomo by Primo Levi (had read it as library book only and wanted it on my Kindle)
3. "L'Italia delle Donne" by Alida Ardemagni (bought at the Merano Museum delle Donne, a book about famous Italian women in RL and mythology)
4. On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
5. No is not enough by Naomi Klein
6. Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Stroemquist
7. Brazen: Rebel ladies who rocked the world by Penelope Bagieu

CURRENTLY READING:
- Storia di Roma antica part 1
- Exploring Metaphysics by David K. Johnson
- Il sistema Periodico by Primo Levi, narrated by Massimo Popolizio
- The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
- Beethoven by Maynard Solomon

On (temporary) hold:
- The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (audio, 30%)
- Never too late to go vegan by Carol J. Adams (10%)
- Gehen Ging Gegangen by Jenny Erpenbeck (ROOTs)
- A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

Happy new thread!

Happy New Thread, Nathalie!

>7 drneutron:, >8 jnwelch: Thank you, Jim and Joe! :D

Happy new thread, Nathalie!

Happy new thread Nathalie!

Nice picture of your mom and dad.

I'm pleased with the ROOTS reading I've managed to do. I have a sense of accomplishment and cleaning house! I'm getting better too at deciding that in a few cases the reason I didn't read something for so long was because I knew I wouldn't enjoy it.

Glad to see the new thread and the new family pictures - all of you are handsome!!!!
I look forward to seeing your posts on this happy new thread.

>10 FAMeulstee:, >11 charl08: Thank you Anita and Charlotte, I sure hope it'll be a happy one for once :)

>12 sibylline: I'm the opposite of pleased with my ROOT reading. I don't pearl-rule, I usually finish my books, but I might put them on very long holds. I still do ROOT, but I put the last 5 or so books "on temporary hold", so my ticker is stuck at 8 where it should approach 16...:/
Just started a new ROOT that's also a 1001 and a Booker winner and a BAC read, so hopefully that one will be finished. In the meantime, new books are building heaps on shelves and Kindle :)

>13 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy :)
I think they both look good for their age, especially my mum who has almost no wrinkles! No, didn't inherit her skin... Of course they both have their general health issues, then one is obese and the other underweight, but what can I do?
Thank you for giving me the idea of making this one a happy thread!

68. Kick Ass with Mel Robbins by Mel Robbins

Sorry for the length, but this is an example of the way books take to us: this audio was pressed on me by audible. I gave in, but wasn't planning to listen to it soon. Then a good friend told me about the 5 Seconds book and said "let's both read it over summer". I didn't really feel like reading another new marketed self-help approach, but noticed that my audio was a kind of sequel. Then I stumbled over Feel the fear and do it anyway in the Guardian comments about a week ago. As I was feeling lousy (stupid summer low as usual) I started both books together, and they work great hand in hand. This one here, as an audio, is hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud several times.
Okay, it's not for the faint-hearted or self-help beginners or anyone expecting all kind understanding. This is ass-kicking for people who tried other things and want to be handled roughly, which doesn't automatically mean everyone should be handled this way.
It's also full of those trigger warnings you have to add to everything nowadays. It's "real" sessions with "real" people (not 100% sure about that). I believe the stupid 5 seconds were mentioned only in one session, otherwise it's more like "what is the real issue?". For example there's a woman who finally wants to lose weight, describes herself as an emotional eater, there was abuse as well, and instead of following up on those standard issues, they work out that she doesn't lose the weight for very different, very egocentric reasons. It IS ass-kicking, in most cases. And there is much strong language. This is very different from the usual soft approaches, and clearly the people (if they are real) are able to take it. There's laughter, jokes and much swearing. Could have been twice as long!
Rating: 4 stars, as it's not really in depth, but really quite fun.

Happy new thread Nathalie! Just checking in post hols.

Love the pics - hope your Mum is still making good progress.

>16 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka! :)
My mum takes little walks now and she's hungry, my dad had to buy her a big ice cream with whipped cream yesterday between meals! I hope it continues that way.

Making my way through what must be a self-help classic by now, Feel the fear and do it anyway. It requires much writing and planning which I like. And it has a chapter on losing loved ones I found very helpful. What I really like is the concept of the "Magic Duo" (stupid name name for a good idea) in everything you do. Immerse yourself 100% (or try to) and act as if your action counts for others. I had to define 9 important areas of my life and how I'd like them to be (realistically) and what action I can take to get there while having the MD in mind. The result is, when you lose out in one area - your job or your partner leaves or someone dies - there will be 8 areas left you're maintaining and a bad event in one area is less likely to leave you totally lost. I tend to concentrate one 2-3 areas of my life completely, usually my work and then a relationship when I have one, family otherwise. There's much inner dependency and when something happens I can't deal with it and go into hiding or have a breakdown. I'll try to get more balance into my life which might also mean overall less reading and less time spent inside. We'll see...

69. Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers

Self-help classic, and a bit of a mixed bag. It's actually great and timeless in the realistic scenarios, for me especially relevant the chapter on loss/ fear of losing a loved one (in whatever way). "Get your life in order for anxious people" would be an alternative title. I'm already applying some of her advice.

When it comes to the spiritual part however, I much prefer Singer (listening again, I always find new levels) and Tolle. They're great and fun, and they don't use that pretentious language with "miracle" and "higher self" etc. all the time which always makes me want to drop the books. It's so cheesy and exaggerated, and you immediately think of pyramids and crystals and rainbows, and "trust in abundance and money will come to you". No it won't, unless you take some steps in the real world. But you'll feel richer - which is good (and more important) but not the same.

As a different example, I'm quite convinced of veganism (not 100% able to be one yet), but whenever I read a book about "glowing from inside out" as long as I just eat enough veggie-protein-packed smoothie bowls, I want to give up. It's the same thing. Limited marketing language that it seems has to be used nowadays to sell self-improvement books. Just stay real, writers. And I know what a "miracle moment" is, I've had many in the last years and they are hard to describe and very addictive. I vividly remember a scene with my mum last year when I held her hand and told her never ever to be afraid for me, that I'd always be safe, no matter what happens to me. It is when seperation between individuals falls away and you feel you're fed from a source that's not your rational mind. It has no name. Okay, many would call it "God" or "Holy Spirit", others "love" or "unified field". I don't think it needs a name. End of rant. :)

Rating: 3.5 stars for the good practical part

>18 Deern: I agree re the pretentious language. A real no-no. I'm also warned off by large claims - I quite like approaches that lean towards understatement.

Glad to read your mum is walking - ice cream sounds perfect.

>19 charl08: Last night she demandes he bring some smoked salmon to the clinic as their menu is boring:)

******
Bad news: office got a new firewall yesterday, LT is no longer accessible, along with the Guardian and others. Typing this on my iphone, which is not an option for normal LTing... Must do sth about those old notebooks at home. Grrrrr....

Belated happy new thread. I like the topper. Beautiful pics.

>20 Deern: Sorry you can't access LT at the office anymore, Nathalie. I hope you get one of the old notebooks working.

>20 Deern: Nooooo! That sucks. Hope you can find an alternative route to us :)

>21 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara :)

>22 FAMeulstee:, >23 BekkaJo: It totally sucks. I'm usually spending the 2 hr lunchbreak in the office, that always was a good time for the internet. I also got 4 online newspaper subscriptions now. They might give me those back, but certainly not a forum where I'm regularly posting things not work-related or upload pics. :(((
Trying to see it positively: must restructure my office hours now, use the lunchbreak differently (maybe also work through and leave early).

Spent yesterday's LB reading Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Stroemquist, Guardian BB I caught 2 days ago. A graphic novel, not great to read on the iphone. I also got Brazen by Penelope Bagieu, another feminist GN, but that one's impossible to read on such a small screen. The guardian is now regularly reviewing GNs and I'm planning to become better acquainted with that genre.

Half through Rites of Passage, which is a great book on many levels, but I just can't enjoy it. Partly skim-reading. I really wanted to like it, but it bores me. If it were just a ROOT and not 3 other. categories as well, I'd put it on the big "on hold" stack.

Typed this on my old ipad mini which has a bigger keyboard but no phone SIM, it only works with a wifi, so no office option.

Yay for graphics, boo for the firewall (although leaving early sounds like a great idea). I ended up using my 'memo' function to type up messages on my phone, which seems to work better copied across to LT than typing straight into a message box. No idea why.

I have two Booker LL books to read from the library and am lacking a sense of oomph, despite the approaching announcement.

>18 Deern: I read that years ago, and remember quite liking it. Even though I generally avoid self help books :) I still use the phrase.

>24 Deern: If it helps I found the second half of Rites of Passage much more attention holding.

>27 BekkaJo: Bekka, you're absolutely right. Read the second half with Colley's text almost in one sitting yesterday. When the narration turned back to Edmund however, the book lost me again. Anyway, it's finished. Great, smart amd sharp book that deserves the prizes, but not really a joy to read.

>26 LovingLit: Oh, it IS good! I just read too many of those using that vocabularly, and find myself returning most often to those that don't. "Magic" was the other expression, I just remembered. The practial advice in those books is often good. I took from her the 9 areas of life and keep journalling. And the (aaargh) "Magical Duo" which is basically a turn on the awareness principle.
Won't last forever, but it was another good push.

>25 charl08: I got so many non-Bookers to read now, and none of the candidates calls me. Those 5 I read didn't chamge my world either.

I'm often finding GNs very uncomfortable, the sparse texts, the connection with the sometimes harsh illustrations. I see it as an exercise, widening my reading and art horizon. Just have to find a way to enjoy them without having to order them in physical form. The smartphone screen is the worst device.

Yay, summer is over! :)

Not really, but the temps fell yesterday to the low 20s Celsius, we had a full day of rain, and like every year when the summer heat is finally broken I feel like my brain is waking up and demands smart food.

Just downloaded a bunch of audio books: on Italian history, on Gustav Mahler and an audio guide for a Frida Kahlo painting, I'm curious how that will work. Then I ordered Paddy Clarke for the Kindle for IAC. Don't feel like reading another Irish family saga, I hope this one will be a bit different.

Yesterday I watched a mini series of 3 episodes on German art history (middle ages to 1980s). Really hope the weather stays cool for a bit.

Planning to drive up to my parents on Thursday and to return Monday morning. My mum keeps making progress and being terribly nice to everyone. Must be the anti-pain pills. :)

Edit: If Charlotte is reading.... my "no more books in August" was out the window minutes after heroically leaving your thread with no books bought. And since posting the above I've filled a 100 Eur basket on amazon it with paper books. Haven't klicked on Send yet, but it's only a question of hours... minutes.

This book splurge is taking on Paul C. dimensions now, I'd better leave the house! And I know when the temps rise again I'll be all back to sleepy brain mode again.

>29 Deern: Yay! The same here, Nathalie!
I hope your mum stays like that for a while :-)

>30 FAMeulstee: It's soooo lovely today that I just took a happy long walk, listening to the first chapters of Mahler and pre-Roman Italien history. No "forcing myself outside" as the last couple of weekends. The light has changed, and there's a strong fresh breeze, a bit like walking near the North Sea coast, without the salt. I was thinking of you and Frank, it all looks very "Heidiland" today. :)

At least those reviews will be getting shorter... or just as long with more typos.

70. Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Stroemquist

This graphic novel BB from the Guardian should please be on the world syllabus for children and adults. It's short and funny enough to be a very quick read (again: unless you read it on the smartphone), and almost everyone will have learned something when finished. It's all about the female sexual organs, how little we know about them even today, how little was known especially in the 1700s and 1800s, a time when many men of modern science claimed knowing everything about it. It has a Swedish focus, which is very okay, I learned some more, like about princess Christina and her "unfemale ways". Nice illustrations, frank language, I loved it! I'd buy it for my mum in German! And for all my friends!
Rating: 4.5 stars

71. Rites of Passage by William Golding (1001 #438 /382, BAC 2018, ROOTs, Booker winner 1980)

If I hadn't wanted desperately to finish a ROOT again and if this one hadn't ticked the other 3 boxes, I might have put it on hold halfway through. The second half went better. Strangely, I was aware all the time to be reading a super-smart, sharp story, I just didn't enjoy it much. As said earlier, it fully deserves its Booker, I feel this was just me.

Oh, I wanted to add that when in Melbourne in 2007 I went to the immigration museum and they had examples of cabins/ sleeping places in the ships, the early ones and those used after WWII. Whoever had the courage to go on such a ship voluntarily in the errr... when's that book set? 1800s? must have had an immense trust in their fate and god's goodwill.
Rating 3.5 stars

I think I half-mastered copy/paste on the touchscreen...

72. Pietr il lettone by Georges Simenon (Maigret #1)(ROOTs 10/24)

I started the Maigret series long ago on audio in Italian, and audible gave me the wrong order. Saw today that this one isn't #3, it's the first. Maybe better I didn't read it first.

I got through the two I read earlier without much enjoyment, but fell asleep over this one so often that I finally deleted it from my phone. Found it again yesterday, searching for Italian audios (a new resolution: improve Italian by listening to audiobooks). Fell promptly asleep again, but forced myself through it today while doing my Saturday housecleaning. If that sounds masochistic, maybe it is. Anyway, it's my least favorite so far. Complicated plot, too much alcohol, and usually I put racism into the context of the time, but this I that stereotype of the hysterical, unreasonable yet seductive Jewish woman was difficult to listen to. Not to mention the brutal Eastern-European men...

Rating: 2 stars

73. Il cane giallo by Georges Simenon (ROOTs 11/24)

So much better than the last one! A psychologically interesting case set in a small town in Bretagne. A likeable Maigret as well. I might continue with the series.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Well, ((((((Nathalie)))))), I hope that your weekend is good for you and your parents. I'm sorry about the firewall and hope you find your way around it (you need a high school student; they broke through the school one for me in about 3 minutes when I needed something about Emily Dickinson. I guess your work one is more serious). I'm always amazed by your self-help reading and response. And I'm happy to see you with Simenon.
Travel safely!

>36 LizzieD: Thank you (((((Peggy))))! :)
Arrived well in Bavaria, wheather is ghastly (rain, fog, cold), but that was only an issue when driving. There were two accidents on the 250kms (nothing serious fortunately, but long queues).

My mum starts being demanding again, orders extra food, then complains, sent us to the shops twice yesterday, so more improvement!:)

I try to do more internet in the evenings now, even re-activated one of those notebooks, I just have to get a new antivirus program before I can safely use it. My lunch breaks this week have been spent with yoga and audiobooks and -lessons. Almost through the Mahler class and I'll get another class next week.

*******
Just finished books 74 Public library and other stories by Ali Smith and 75 (yay!), Brazen: rebel ladies who rocked the world by Penelope Bagieu, a great milestone! And before September, now I'll try to get to 100. Reviews to follow when I got more time for typing, just having tea with my dad who I notice tries to read over my shoulder. :)))

Happy weekend, everyone!

Congratulations on reaching 75, Nathalie!

Congrats!

Congratulations, Nathalie!

Fab choice for book 75 Nathalie - wishing you a lovely weekend.

Thank you Anita, Jim, Darryl and Charlotte! So glad this year's reading funk is over, at least for now. Brazen was a great #75, 5 stars and moved to my "inspiring" collection. This morning I finished my Mahler audio course (4.5 stars only because I want to see if the next one might be even better). Started a new 36hr audio on understanding concert music this morning. And I started my September IAC, Paddy Clarke which I'm already skim-reading as I feared. It's raining non-stop in Bavaria,the internet connection is lame as ever, so I can read and listen most of the day, it's fantastic! :)

Wooo! 75 and out of a reading funk. Very glad for you :)

Congrats on reaching 75 and happy Sunday, Nathalie.
the weather changed here too into autumn. I love this season very much.

Happy Sunday and Happy 75! Autumn hasn't arrived in my neck of the woods. We've got a few 32 c days lined up next week so summer is not quite done with us yet.
Great toppers!

I was tickled by your happiness that your ma is complaining and bossing you and your dad around again! My mother was depressed for awhile (with justification) and we all agreed when she came out of it that she was, in many ways, nicer depressed -- she would even take advice then! (My mother was very nice overall, just very energetic and stubborn as can be.)

Woe about the firewall at work.

Hi all, thank you for visiting, for the congrats and the good wishes for my mum!! :)
I'll respond individually over the weekend and visit threads.

Returned to Italy/ straight to work on Monday morning. Work has been a bit rough this week and I'm still behind on sleep from the night drive, so I'm not reading much and my eyes were too tired for LT in the evenings. My new audio course on classical music is filling my lunch breaks, in the evenings I've been listening to some of the concerts mentioned in the lectures, and I'm doing some other things as well. The days need more hours!

Happy Friday!

Congratulations on 75, (((((Nathalie)))))!
Glad you're home safe and sound and I continue to hope that your workload eases.
Mahler! I listen and would love a course.

>47 Deern: Oh, please tell a bit more about your audio course. It sounds intriguing.

The music course sounds wonderful Nathalie - I have been enjoying the repeats of the Proms concerts - some amazing orchestras. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097/episodes/player

>43 BekkaJo: Thank you Bekka! :)

>44 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara! Here summer has come back with a vengeance, as always in September. The nights are okay, but the days can be very hot (over 30 C). My more nordic brain now wants autumn, cool temps and time for reading.

>45 Carmenere: Thank you Lynda. Yep, hot temps here as well again, and that can go well into late October, with the difference that the sun will be gone around 3:30 pm.

>46 sibylline: Yes, stupid firewall! Typing once again on the ipad, still haven't fixed the antivirus on the notebook.
My mum is going home tomorrow, I so hope her half-good mood will last a bit longer and she won't do any stupid cleaning activities and take a fall or something like that.

>48 LizzieD: Thank you (((((Peggy)))))!:)
The Mahler course was great, but as I never "seriously" listened to classical music I thought a more basic class might be in order now. I'm now learning about baroque cantatas and have listened to some Bach. So much to learn!

>49 Ameise1: I just discovered the "Great courses" on audible.com. They aren't available on audible Italy, don't kniw about Germany/Switzerland. They're in English, cost one credit each (USD prices vary depending on length). There are also science courses, philosophy, etc. I'm considering getting the one on metaphysics as well. The ones I listened/ am listening to are lectures by a composer names Robert Greenberg who I'm sure is famous, but I know nothing about modern concert music. The courses come with extensive pdfs for download. The current one has over 300 pages. The lectures are very entertaining and often have many music examples.

>50 charl08: I listened to the well-tempered clavier book 1 by Bach yesterday on youtube, and it was a recording from the 2017 proms. Thank you for the link!

Edit: unfortunately my old ipad can't load the website, I'll try later from a different device..The phone should do.

Well, obviously I'm in one of my mostly short-lived (except for reading) phases of enthusiastic wanting to learn "everything" which usually coincides with cooler temps and overload of work tasks I find dull. The music course is great, but I'm also learning about Italian history, watching art docus, am (again) considering learning a bit of another language, do drawing exercises, there's that metaphysics course, ... it's way too much obviously. Normal (fiction and challenge) reading falls short, as do yoga and cooking. I should try and get better organized, but maybe I'll just wait until 2-3 of those interests fall off again and concentrate on what stays with me.

Happy Sunday! :)

aaargh... another week has passed. I have been working like crazy, slept badly, not finished any books, but listened to many music lectures, listened to concerts, read about Italian history, did some more drawing exercises... feeling a bit exhausted, actually. I like experimenting with new things/ideas, but "work is in the way", which probably means it isn't the right work in the end.

My parents are fine, my mum had a bit of a crisis when she returned home and wasn't able to start cleaning right away, but it seems she has given in and they're getting their neighbor's cleaning lady next week for the dusting and the windows.

The weather is too hot for september, but it's the same every year and might last until late October.

I'll not try to get to 100 books and instead do more of those Great Courses when I'm done with this one.

Happy Sunday and happy new week!

Happy Sunday, Nathalie. Those music lectures can be so interesting, I listened to a Dutch series about Monteverdi, recently. And Bach, can't go wrong with Bach.

I sometimes start to feel tired with reading, it's like my brain wants a different channel, no more letters, now for some pictures, or some music.

Glad your mother is doing better.

Glad your ma is home and ok and succumbing to good advice about housecleaning! Not something I would have trouble with.

Love all the ways you are expanding your horizons!

>33 Deern: an oldie but a goodie! I cont remember what that one is about, but I definitely read it a few years back now.

Aaaand another week gone, time is running so fast every year when we reach September. It'll be Christmas in a minute!

>55 EllaTim: Same here, it's a different channel for different needs. And those lectures work fantastically via audio and if I want to look sth up, each class has an extensive accompanying pdf for download.

>56 sibylline: My mum keeps improving physically and falling back to old behaviors. Well, that could be expected. Basically, looking at her and at my grandmother who is terrorizing the staff at the old people's home and my dad's siblings (and all of us) gives me another push to learn new things, keep an open mind and not rely on just one side of my life.

>57 LovingLit: Those Maigrets are different from other crime series I started, alltogether "drier". Not bad when you get used to it. I must get the series in order and continue. Just a pity there are no more audios in Italian (they were cheaper than the books).

Okay, I must at least try to get this thread in order and add books I finished in the meantime (3, one a picture book...). My last review was #73, so I'll try to keep this short.

Read in August:

74. Public library and other stories by Ali Smith
This was an audio (must check if it already qualifies for ROOT), and a nice and easy listen. There are longer passages, usually Smith's memories about books, writing, language and shorter anecdotes from other people about what the public libraries mean for their lives. The book is narrated by AS and ends with an interview. Some of the AS chapters sound like exercises for "Autumn" and "Winter" which was very interesting, but overall the memorable bit for me was that public libraries are much more important in the UK than they are (as far as I know) in Germany or Italy. I never thought of using a library until I ran into money troubles here some years ago. I missed a lot, libraries are great and important.
Rating: 4 stars

75. Brazen by Penelope Bagieu
This was much more informative and entertaining than I had expected. I'd tried earlier a similar-themed Italian GN and put it on hold, but this one kept being mentioned and praised, so I finally got it, read it, loved it, am praising it. The selection of women was interesting: no Astrid Lindgren, no Marie Curie, basically names I'd never heard of/read of before.
As usual, reading on the ipad mini was an ordeal, but that isn't the book's problem. Inspiring!
Rating: 5 stars

Read in September so far:

76. Great Masters: Mahler: His Life and Music by Rob Greenberg
I don't know why it took me so long to stumble over the Great Courses at audible? We had a Mahler festival once in Merano, so I started with this one, and I've been attracted by the tragic romanticism connected to him for a long time (that's so German of me!). What can I say? Great course! But I noticed I needed more basic knowledge of classical music, so I got the 36h course next.
Rating: 4.5 stars

77. Paddy Clarke by Roddy Doyle (IAC, 1001, Booker winner)
I had some very strange reactions to this book I was planning to get to in this review, but I better don't. I got what Doyle was doing, mainly in the last third, but I didn't like it. I was mostly reacting negatively to the whole story, even getting angry at some points, feeling half-manipulated to say "the poor child" all the time.
Anyway, I'm adding a star for the strong reaction which taught me something about myself. But seriously (sorry) I've read too many similar books on the IAC this year.
Rating: 3 stars

78. Ein vernunftbegabtes Tier (The Day of the Dolphin) by Robert Merle (1001 #383/439)
The 1001 GR in September. Another book causing strong reactions, this time with everyone on the GR. Very weird writing, sometimes hilarious, sometimes very flat. Imagine a comic book with extreme illustrations of the characters (big breasts, hairy arms, bony legs - different characters of course) and those traits described in minute detail, bordering on the grotesque. I thought it was funny, as men and women were treated the same way, others thought it was misogynistic. After all it was written in the early 70s I think, imo it wasn't too bad, there weren't that many female professors, secret service people, etc. I guess (are there many today?).
It's a cold war espionage thriller with a stupid and boring (imo) plot about dolphins learning the human language and being used as weapons against Russia. But it also has some statements I didn't know were that openly expressed that early on before Bush II and Iraq/Afghanistan. As a time witness it's interesting, as a thriller it's (imo again) quite bad.
Rating: 3 stars

79. How to Listen to and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg
48 chapters, 36.5 hrs, more than 300 pages of pdf and many extra hours of listening to classical music on YT and Amazon's music unlimited. Totally and utterly LOVED it and see myself having to get all the individual courses as well.
Rating: 5 stars

80. Mini Rabbit Not Lost by John Bond
A different kind of BB from Charlotte's thread. A picture book about a cake-fixated little rabbit boy searching berries so his mum can bake him a cake. Totally sweet! :)
No rating

I feel very much reminded of 2007/ 2008 when I was overwhelmed by a project at work and fled into Shakespeare's plays and sonnets and for whatever reason astrophysics. This somehow led me to the 1001 books and also to LT.

I'm now feeling similar about the music courses and the other things I'm doing. After the big 36hr course I'm continuing with the 20th century music (I'm always in for that kind of challenge) and got the Shostakovitch class next up on my wish list. Then I'm listening to a course about Russian literature and started reading Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. I read most of the "big Russians" on the 1001 list, but I might want to reread some with a better background knowledge and I might hopefully finally tackle the Brothers Karamazov and Doctor Zhivago, both on my shelves for many years.

I'm walking to the office again now that it isn't that hot anymore in the evenings, so I get exercise and two classes in easily every day.

I signed up for three "cultural walks" in Merano this autumn, hoping I'll make it onto the lists. One's about Russian heritage, one is a visit to the Jewish cemetary and one is a visit to an old villa that's just been turned into an art museum. I always complain about "lack of cultural things to do" here, so I should at least try what's on offer and not somehow alpine-related.

In order to do all this I'll give up the BAC and IAC this year, but continue the 1001 GRs where possible. Somehow it's more about listening and seeing right now, and when I read, I'd rather read what I feel like. I've also lined up some more Italian books, both audio and paper, there's still so much to discover! Need more time!

Happy Sunday, everyone! :)

Wishing you a relaxing day Nathalie. The cultural walks sound wonderful. I did a writers in Liverpool one a few years ago and found it included places that were completely new to me.

And yes, more time would be helpful!

Congrats on crossing the magic 75, Nathalie.
I love cultural walks. Please share with us what you have learned.
Happy Sunday.

>62 Deern: Funny, Nathalie, I have read the two russians you want to read. And I only started reading 1001 books in 2016. Eugine Onegin is waiting on the shelves, I might join you soon.
Imho Shostakovich is one of the best classical composers ever, so I am happy you are planning to know more about him. You might be able to teach me a bit after finishing that class :-)

We are on vacation, will return home tomorrow. Reading and LT time were limited this week.

Congrats on zipping past the goal!

>62 Deern: Totally get the read-what-I-feel goal. I overwhelmed myself with RL bookclub commitments and now don't feel like reading any of the books. So now I'm reading what I feel like - which, at the moment, is the Booker shortlist. But who knows how long that will last? Lol

>63 charl08:, >64 Ameise1: Hi Charlotte and Barbara :)
All 3 walks are confirmed, the first one is tomorrow (the other 2 in Oct/Nov), about Russian culture in Merano in the late 1800s/ early 1900s when Merano had become a renowned spa/bath. It's interesting that I moved from a bath region to another bath place 750km away which had the same clientele. Okay, Sissi was everywhere anyway...
Before, I lived near Wiesbaden, was born in Bad Schwalbach, both locations though with different names in Dostoevsky's Der Spieler/ The Gambler. Will be interesting to learn who came to Merano (Kandinsky among others, I think).

>65 FAMeulstee: I thoght of you, Anita! I listened to my first Shostakovich after you had mentioned him on your thread. He's not part of the "20th Century" course because Greenberg had already done a seperate course just about him. Looking at the reviews, I expect to cry a lot.

>66 drneutron: Thank you, Jim! :)

>67 The_Hibernator: Hi Rachel, I was really determined to do both the complete BAC and IAC this year, but now I reached my 75, the pressure is gone. And then, the most interesting challenges (for my tastes) are over. And tbh, the IAC, of course due to my own choice of books, felt a bit monotonous. I still want to read the Booker SL as well, and all of the LL eventually.

******
I just finished my worst read this year, the October GR for the 1001 group: "Wild Harbor" by Ian McPherson. At least it was short and they took it off the list already in the 2008 edition. I'll try to post a review later this week.

LT now officially off the list of "good websites" for our firewall, just by category. Whoever decided I am allowed to look at music sites, but not motorcars, gardening or anything else hobby-related. :/

So if LT off the work website list, does that mean you are offline? Boo hoo!

Happy weekend, Nathalie.

>68 Deern: I think the list of OK sites must have been come up with my someone who doesn't read!

Pasternak is a wonderful writer, you will be engrossed.

I went on a Dostoevsky binge when I was in my early thirties -- eventually it got too depressing -- ran into the same wall with Kafka too!

After I wrote out Dostoevsky I had to go check it was right. Somehow it looked to short. But it is right!

I think my days are going quickly, and then I look at all that you're packing into your time. Wow! (((((Nathalie)))))
I'm thrilled that you're exploring and enjoying music. I think I said on another thread that 'Marche Sarcastique" by Shostakovich was my first adult piano piece. My piano teacher (who was a fine musician) called it "Marshay Sarcastikyoo" and so did I. on the other hand, it's such a fun piece that even a child could catch the mood.
I need to read or reread the Russians too, but they aren't calling me right this minute.
I wish you a great week, and I look forward to hearing about (and maybe seeing a bit of?) those culture walks.

ETA: My typing at 11:18 is always if-y. "A bit" turned into "at bi".........the wandering t. Anyway, I fixed it.

I'm so losing track of time, it is quite crazy! I hadn't been fully aware how much LTing I really was doing from my work desk... Lunch breaks or not, seems I really need a keyboard and a mouse and a much bigger screen. Not knowing what to do with my LBs without the internet I packed them with other stuff, I basically have a whole timetable of "brain activities" now. I'm reading like crazy (many time-consuming or/and long works, so my stats aren't that great), I listen to some difficult 20th century music that needs much repeated listening, I'm still dabbling in a new language on my own which is too pathetic to say more, and erm, for whatever reason I thought learning to juggle would be great for my brain and body. I really have bad coordination with throwing balls, so I spent weeks handling just one ball with enough regularity before finally adding a second one last week. That was surprisingly easy and I'm trying both directions and small plastic bottles and apples and stuff, but I can't get my head and arms around to 3 of anything yet.

I started writing reviews and got nowhere.

Oh, and my cultural walk was great! It ended at the small Russian culture centre and church, and they had provided food and wine. Characteristically, I bought a couple of books and a CD. Uncharacteristically I stayed until the very end, got the tiniest bit drunk and made some new friends. :))
One nice lady gave me an address for interesting-sounding painting classes and we're going to a concert next week. Then to my surprise my ex-fitness coach turned up who I hadn't seen in 5 years. Last time he was a burned-out (he had a breakdown!) young guy in his mid-twenties, now he's passed the 30, has a wife and a baby and turned quite spiritual. He and the tour guide invited me to another guided walk a couple of days later which was all about "walking correctly", just when my daily brisk office walks had caused me some back and knee trouble and even dizzyness. Trying to follow the advice in the last 2 weeks, so far it really helped!

Tomorrow I'm going for a solo-walk up to a castle that has a potato exhibition (I was told it's actually fascinating) and more importantly a chestnut party. Next weekend I'll be in Germany.

My mum is slowly getting better, but now has a light inflammation in the knee and got antibiotics and cortisone. TG the thrombosis is gone!

Work is... I could say worse than ever, but I'm trying to take it as a spiritual challenge. The tasks are interesting, the comunication is a nightmare.

Reading: I started loads, but my main focus is on the Russians (I finished a Turgenev and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Murakami. I'm reading his book on how to become a writer and started buying and reading his books in order and also got the audio on running. I've lost all interest in the Booker and feel liberated! :)
Still planning to read them all....

Glad to hear that you made new friends. Sorry to hear that work is still troublesome.
Happy weekend, Nathalie.

>69 LovingLit: Basically yes...:((( And now my ipad is giving out as well, looks like I should invest in something new soon. *sigh*

>70 Ameise1: Happy (2 weeks later) weekend to you, Barbara! :)

>71 charl08: He doesn't read but likes pop music, so music sites are okay :/

>72 sibylline: I'm really looking forward to it now, the Pasternak chapters in the "Great Course" were wonderful! I also have to get to The Brothers Karamazov soon. I also need breaks (long breaks) between Dostoevskys and Kafkas. About Kafka, I just thought a couple of days ago that Murakami for me isn't "Kafkaesque" at all. Ishiguro has given me a Kafka-like reaction with two of his books (When we were Orphans and The Unconsoled), but Murakami for me happens on a different, less uncomfortable level, much easier to digest .

>73 LizzieD: (((((Peggy)))))) :))
I still haven't started the Shostakovitch course, the 20th century one is so time-consuming. Normally, the music (samples) is added into the classes, with the 20th century they only added YT URLs for copyright reasons. So instead of the samples, I usually listen to the whole pieces, more than once, and that takes time and concentration. At least my ears will be well tuned when I finally get to Shostakovitch!
And now I'll go and listen to that march! :)

>75 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara! :)
I guess I have a talent to get "paired" with really difficult people. Of 20 colleagues there are 2 I have problems with, as has everyone, it's not just me, both have serious anger issues, but I'm the one working closest with them.

>77 Deern: Yikes. Good luck. I am amazed at anyone who works in that kind of environment and keeps going. Kudos.

Your walks sound wonderful. So glad they worked out so well.

Sorry work is still a challenge, Nathalie.
Good you are doing other things beside work. The 20th century course sounds good, wich composers have you heard now?

>78 charl08: Since moving here I always had to deal with such people. Either they're more frequent here (things are a bit old fashioned after all) or it's a "karmic" thing for me I have to learn to deal with. Don't know, but I've seen several companies here and talked to many people and it seems those characters are everywhere, which is basically why I haven't started searching in serious for something else. Here at least, I have a really good standing with everyone else and enjoy some other freedoms.

>79 FAMeulstee: Lots and lots of Schoenberg (his "survivor from Warsaw" made me break into tears during lunch break on Friday), Stravinsky - I saw all the early ballets on YT and a docu on the wonderful "Rites of Spring" and the next lecture will be focussed on his years in the US; Babbitt, Debussy, Elliott Carter and lots of Bartok. Of those I like I get more from amazon, I signed up for music unlimited when I started the courses.
There were many other composers, also extremely experimental ones. Added to the music there was a really great and heartfealt analysis of WWI and the aftermath leading to the uprising of the Nazi party. I've become a total Greenberg fan, and he has a great narration voice. With the other two courses (Russian lit and Metaphysics) it took me a while getting used to the narration and I had to remind myself that those are "normal people" not actors or otherwise trained voices.

For those interested: I just posted 15 new pics with comments in my member gallery, most from today's lovely hike. The weather was perfect, warm but with a breeze, and the light was as it should be in October, soft and yet bringing out the colors perfectly, sometimes dramatically.

The chestnut festa was nice, I had a glass of wine and a slice of chestnut apple cake and later bought a bag of roasted chestnuts. I didn't look too closely at the potato exhibits, there were too many people and the castle is tiny. There also was just one bathroom, so I didn't want to stay too long. :)

>74 Deern: Your walk and all sounds wonderful. Juggling, I admire you for trying it.

>77 Deern: The music course sounds really interesting.

>81 Deern: Hurray for chestnuts!

We changed firewalls!! Okay, we're testing several, so this might not be the last change. I'll still be monitored, but what the heck, I'll paste in those reviews now.

September:
81. Wild Harbor by Ian McPherson
Over in the 1,001 group there are readers who love it, I hated it with all my heart, and it wasn‘t a “good hating” for me as happens when a work is uncomfortable and challenging. It was called “visionary”, but after having learned that basically the whole UK has been preparing for war as soon as Hitler came to power, I can’t say an author writing a novel in 1936 about a war (enemy unnamed) breaking out in … err…. 1944 (? I forgot already) is “visionary”. Nothing else in this book has any WWII relevance, it actually sounds more like a civil war where neighbors turn into enemies is the reason for the main characters to leave their house and go hiding in a cave. There are nice landscape observations, but nothing I haven’t read better elsewhere, and the dialogue was annoying. I also kept thinking that the whole place, also the village, sounds so remote from the start, that I don’t belive an international enemy would bother with it at all. The worst was the cover, it should have warned me.
Rating: outrageously friendly 1,5 stars, by far my worst read this year

82. Smoke by Ivan Turgenev (might be the wrong touchstone)
I’ve already half-forgotten this short novella, recommended to us during the “Russian Culture in Merano” walk, along with Eugen Onegin. It deals with a group of Russians visiting Baden Baden in the 1800s, where our hero (it’s a Russian name, sadly I forget those the instant I read them) has an encounter that shakes him to the core and makes him question all the well-structured plans he’s made for his life. It’s a bit Stefan Zweigish, but (sorry) more boring.
Rating: 3 stars

83. Classics of Russian Literature by Irwin Weill (The Great Courses)
Today I found out those “Great Courses” aren’t an audible thing, that in fact there are websites and apps and many more courses, even with videos. I fear this will be my financial ruin….
This one needed some getting used to, as Irwin Weill has a very “special” mode of expression. He just sounds completely different from everyone I heard on audible before, I actually thought he was of Russian origin, but it is later explained that he’s a several-generations-in US citizen from the Midwest. Maybe he just spent so much time in Russia and speaking Russian that his English started sounding different. I was told recently by a friend from Frankfurt that my German has changed – despite living in a German speaking place. Both use of expressions (of that I’m aware) and “melody” are slightly different, according to her.

Anyway, once I got used to Irwins voice and reminded myself that those are lectures and might therefore be less fluent than reading from a script/ novel, I enjoyed this course very much and immediately started catching up with “the Russians” by reading Eugen Onegin and the above Turgenev. I also have a Solzhenitsyn waiting, and then there are all the remaining Dostoevskys….
One warning though: He really goes into detail, so the course is full of plot spoilers.
Rating: 5 stars

October:
84. Eugen Onegin by Alexandr Pushkin
I always thought this was a long and boring work, instead it was quite fun and easy to get through. I used a free English translation that kept the rhymes and the measure and read much of it aloud to myself. Imo it’s not the greatest story of all time and the duel is among the stupidest things I ever read, but maybe the times were like that. Just thinking of that Wharton book and the sleigh, what was its name again?
Rating: 4 stars

 
85./86. Wind/ Pinball: 2 Novels by Haruki Murakami
I stumbled over Murakami’s Il mestiere dello scrittore in my library, which means it was presented on the table with all the computers. As usual, I thought it was a sign and took it home. After the first 2-3 chapters, a Murakami mania shoved all the Russian classics out of its way and told me “to read them ALL IN ORDER”. So I got these two first novels, available it seems only in a bundle. There isn’t much action, but it’s already typical Murakami, containing also in the plot many of the elements that turn up again in the later works: the slender young women, the low-carb food, the beer, the cigarettes, the jazz and the classic music, sitting around in a meditative state, and of course an unnatural element. These two aren’t “great” yet, but I’m glad I read them. And the main characters are those of his first big success and novel #3, A Wild Sheep Chase.
Rating: 3.5 stars for both

87. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
I LOVED this one. It’s not as mature and complex as later works of course, but it was imo very well balanced and got my mind into the “Murakami state” (which is different from the Kafka/ Virgina Woolf/ Shakespeare/ Bolano and other special states where a different part of my mind is reading). I really liked the ending, it was heartbreaking and beautiful. And yet I would really have liked to see what the world of the sheep would have looked like in the novel.
Rating: 4,5 is overrated, but forgive me it’s Murakami.

88. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Not a favorite. Murakami’s non-fiction hits a different note with me, I remember not at all being blown away by Underground, and the writing book I’m currently slow-reading in Italian isn’t that great either. Much in this book is repeated in the book on writing, it almost seems word for word, so it’s a reheat with some extras on writing and less running.
I’ll rate the writing part in the other book, so I’m focusing here on the running. I’d hoped for some inspiration, but didn’t find any. His is the typical male approach I’ve seen with many friends and relatives when they turn 35 or 40. They start running seriously and religiously and will brag about it endlessly (if I ever tried that with books anywhere but here…), but it’s always about time and distance, with the objective to do some races, possibly a marathon. Some continue after that or turn to ultra or triathlon like Murakami. In the end, I sadly saw most of them giving up when there were no new challenges left, quickly gaining weight and falling into worse health issues than before. As far as I know, Murakami at least never fully gave it up and is still running, despite his irritation with the ageing process. This was an audio, very easy to follow.
Rating: 3 stars

89. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The umpteenth reread, this time in English again, triggered by the BBC mini-series I watched this weekend. On first watch, I thought it was remarkably true to the book, with the exception of the disappointing ending that didn’t explain enough and was unnecessarily over-dramatic. After my reread and a rewatch I noticed many differences, but thought they were less important, as the psychological element, the claustrophobia and the growing desperation were worked out in such a believable way, I didn’t even mind the “mini orgy”. There is strong physical chemistry between Vera and Philip in the book, there is a good amount of swearing for a book published in 1939, and all the drinking in the last night is totally understandable and only shows how much pressure has been building up. Great selection of actors, except (imo) for Hugo – why would a woman like Vera fall for such a boy? So much about the film.

Now the book: for me one of AC’s best, and one that gets better on every read. I read it over 30 years ago in German with the super-racist first title (btw. that rhyme existed in Germany as well, I had the children's book, it just had a happy ending), later in Italian with the second title which the Italians never bothered changing again, and at least twice now this English edition. I remember the shock of my first read, it was so unexpected. Now I can concentrate more on the build-up and the psychology, and I can’t believe she dared bending the genre categories so extremely already in 1938. The other two mysteries “out of the ordinary”, Orient Express and Roger Akroyd (and I might add Crooked House though by the end I was so bored that I didn’t care who the killer was) still are classical “cozy” whodunits. This here is a different category, that bleakness of the setting and the hopelessness and then the impossibility to bond with any of the characters must have been a shock to the early readers.
Rating: 4.5 stars

Done... and off again! :)

>81 Deern: Lovely pictures, Nathalie. Is it the castle we saw when we went up the mountain?

>84 Deern: You make Eugen Onegin sound like I should read it soon. At the moment I am reading (read: struggling with) Paustovski's Story of a life.

Beautiful photos, Nathalie. I love roasted chestnuts (Marroni).

>84 Deern: Impressive reading Nathalie. Hope the firewall folk find something that works for all.

>83 Deern: RE: 82. Smoke by Ivan Turgenev
I just read Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev by Robert Desai, and it was just lovely. I can recommend that if the actual Turgenev didn't suit!

>74 Deern: I see you got those reviews written after all! It's good that you're getting a lot read. I'm doing pretty good for the end of the year. I had to change my goal from 75 to 60 to take off some of the pressure, but part of me is still trying to reach 75!

>82 EllaTim: Haha, yes I'm trying without much success! :)) Yesterday I found out that I had been doing it all wrong so far, so I'm relearning, with one ball again now...

The music course is so great, I'd rate it with 10/5 right now. But it really needs effort and time.

>85 FAMeulstee: Yes, that's the one we saw and which gave the region (also the Austrian Tirol) its name.

I liked Eugen Onegin, but it lacked a bit of drama, it's actually ironic, he makes fun of his hero (and himself). I guess it'll be a quick and easy read for you.

>86 Ameise1: Yes, heisse Maroni, a fun snack since childhood! :)
It's a pity they only sell them here in October, I'm so used from Germany to having them on the Christmas markets.

>87 charl08: Thank you Charlotte! Well, the issue with the firewalls is not just the access, it's also being monitored and protocolled now. Uploading stuff (pictures and posting) is much worse than reading, and my standing with the colleague isn't at its best. He's vindictive when he feels threatened or stressed, so I don't want to play into his hands with any avoidable internet activities.

>88 LovingLit: That sounds like a great one, BB duly caught, thank you! :)

>89 The_Hibernator: I also had to remind myself this year once again that challenges can be great and exciting and enrich your life, but in the end I'm not reading for my living. When getting this month's challenge done feels like more stress added to the existing load, something's wrong. Your life is so busy and you're managing so great, squeezing in 60 books is incredible! :)

Hi, Nathalie.

Good to see you read those Murakami books. I'm a fan, and reading his new one, Killing Commendatore, right now. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running didn't do a lot for me either, although there were a few interesting autobiographical nuggets in it. I did like Underground more than you did, sounds like. I enjoyed reading him in reporter mode, and what a creepy story.

And Then There Were None is definitely one of her best, IMO, and it's our Agatha-phile daughter's favorite. She re-reads it regularly, too, and I believe has all the English language filmed versions.

>91 Deern: Oh, you havem them only such a short time? That's awful.

>93 jnwelch: Hi Joe, I had already been a Murakami fan, but so far had only read the big later ones and out of order. Underground was good, but imo a bit too long and strangely factual/detached. I understand though that he didn't want to edit out too. much of what people had told him. The subject of course is horrible and nightmarish. I'm curious about After the Quake where I read he mixed in supernatural and other fictional elements.

>94 Ameise1: They do quite the chestnut overkill here in October with turning them into cakes, strudel, dumplings, pasta... Maybe they get tired of them by November? Roast chestnuts are mainly eaten with Siasser, very young sweet red wine - basically a day old grape juice, a very nice combination.
I hope to get them in December in Bavaria.

Dropping in a wave and a check in. So awol but thinking of you all.

I'd like to make a chestnut cake, not even sure where I would buy the chestnuts. Love the combination with chocolate....

>96 BekkaJo: Hi Bekka, Happy Weekend! :)

>97 charl08: Hi Charlotte, aren't chestnuts popular as turkey/goose stuffing in the UK around Christmas as well? In Germany you can get precooked chestnuts in vacuum around that time, maybe also through the year. In Italy you can find chestnut flour, but the last time I bought some it came "alive" very quickly in the cupboard and I had to throw everything out.

*****
I'm with my parents in Bavaria now. On Thursday I had taken the day off because I had to take my car to a garage in the next village for inspection and revisione (certificate that it's fit for the streets, like the German TÜV). Then I got a surprise call from my aunt Karin and uncle Reinhold who had been passing through on their way back from Sicily and decided to stay a night in a hotel. So we spent all day together, it was lovely. Then I picked my car up from the garage and went to meet my new friend Rosmarie for a concert in the Kurhaus by Herbert Pixner Project. It's a local instrumental group with strong alpine roots, but their music is in parts quite experimental, mixing in blues, jazz, country, world music, using many instruments. There was a lovely alpine harp as well, I had to think of Lucy. The kurhaus was packed, people caming also from Austria and Germany. All in all a very eventful day! Which also means no reading since Wednesday. :)

>98 Deern: Sounds lovely Natalie! Happy weekend.

It sounds like you have a great time. Happy weekend.

>98 Deern: The concert sounds interesting, Nathalie, mixing styles can work out well.
I hope you had a good time with your parents.

Hi Charlotte, Barbara and Anita, happy Thursday! Had a lovely time with my parents, and my uncle and aunt turned up as well on Sunday on their way up North! :)
Did two easy walks with my dad who proudly showed me all the hiking places he'd been to this summer. My mum still talks a lot about moving away again, though...

I somehow ruptured a small vessel in my eye a week ago. Happened before, but this time the whole white part went dark red for three days. Now it's getting better and I don't have to run around with sunglasses all day for people's sake, or comb my hair over one eye, so 80s! It doesn't hurt and I see everything, it just looks incredibly disgusting. Think Terminator I. Should have come a week later for Halloween.

Not much reading that last week, finished one audio only. The music course is very slow going now as those last lectures have over 10 sometimes quite long YT music pieces added. The metaphysics one is in its last third, not all happy with that one. Guess my expectations were wrong. Today I start a new RL yoga class and on Saturday there's another cultural walk.

That sounds horrible! Poor you! Glad it doesn't hurt and is healing up. think my big sis did the same a while back - problem for her was that she couldn't put her contact lenses in which made her exceptionally grumpy!

I'm sorry about your poor eye. I hope that every night's sleep clears it up a bit more.
I wish you a happy weekend with some socializing, some reading, and some doing whatever else you choose!

Wow! Lots and lots of Murakami!

So glad you've had some good times with family.

Hope the eye heals up quickly. A friend here was having the same thing. I didn't see her often enough to note how long it took to get better.

Good morning Bekka, Peggy, Lucy :)
My eye has healed up well with the drops I got from the Bavarian pharmacy, now it just looks like I had a very high cholesterol level, yellowish. Time for sunglasses is over anyway....

We're lucky in Merano as it's such a wide valley, but those rainfalls caused some real damage around, the neighboring village has been without electricity since Monday night, many roads and the main train line and motorway were closed for hours after mud avalanches, and in other parts of Italy it's much worse, some people died. We all needed rain, but not that much.

My second "cultural thing" this fall last Saturday was as good as the first one. It's not easy to describe... Merano is full of old villas built in the late 1800s with big parks around, mostly once owned by rich spa guests who decided to stay. Over the years many were turned into condos, restructured, etc and real estate agencies are greedy to put their hands on those still owned by a family, or in many cases by one old woman, and make money out of it.

This villa was such a case, but the owner's grandfather had also beem a great collector of arts and bits from all over the world. In her last years (she died in 2013) she lived on the first floor of that villa, basically sitting on all that stuff, defending it from the vultures who offered her a nice little modern appartment... She managed to turn everything into a museum foundation before she died and since then a group of volunteers, some architects and historians among them, have been sorting through the mess (I saw pics, it was a mess), cataloguing everything and preparing the museum which will open in April for the public. It will show how rich people lived in Merano during that period, and it will be a "look and feel" museum. There will also be musical events (a Steinway was found and repaired among other things), special events for children as there are so many toys, etc.
This is such a fantastic project, and they're still looking for volunteers, I'm considering signing up. I already offered helping with the masses and masses of books (some from the 1600s!). :)

Ooops, almost forgot: Happy Halloween! :)
Must remember to buy some candy today...

Wow, this sounds like a great initiative, Nathalie. I love to visit these 'look inside' homes.

Quick cut&paste...

90. Urban Monk by Pedram Shohaj
Got this as part of a “two audiobooks for one credit” sale at audible. It didn’t really call to me, but I thought I’d need something easy for my walks for those days when my head is too tired for Great Courses lectures. Actually, it was a very okay spiritual self-help book. I don’t think I learned anything new, but it worked without the “miracle” language and had some very funny bits. It’s two weeks since I finished it and I don’t remember anything in particular, so I might soon re-activate it for easy walks.
Rating: 3.5 stars

91. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Okay, now I get why his writing has been called “Kafkaesque” in the past. This book had some of the surreal and uncomfortable elements that make Kafka special and enjoyable but difficult for me. Usually, reading Murakami is like gliding smoothly and effortlessly along the surface of a beautiful still lake – even when there’s violence and cruelty. But this one was a bumpy ride, and one reason to rate it highly was appreciating its being different. The Hard-Boiled-Wonderland part had its smooth moments after a rough start when I even put it on short hold. It made me nervous whenever it went underground. Somehow the contemplative way of Murakami’s writing doesn’t go so well with action scenes. But at least that part mostly had the usual elements and the usual narrator. The End-of-the-World part was different, I really didn’t want to be there, not for a single moment. Which was interesting, because it really was quite a “perfect” world. I had expected a different ending and felt a bit let down by it. But it’s interesting reading his books in chronological order, especially along with his book on writing – one of those nice reading coincidences. The development is so visible, and after the (imo wonderful) A Wild Sheep Chase which was a careful dip into the fantastic, he took a full plunge here. As he describes it in the writing book, he keeps expanding his scope. The next books turn more inward again, seemingly, but he makes more experiments with the characters. It was interesting to read for example, that until the next book, Norwegian Wood, he felt unable to name his characters. That’s why you have The Professor, The Librarian, the Chubby Girl – and such a small number of characters.
This wasn’t a meditative read for me at all, and I didn’t really ponder the questions of conscience. But I feel it will need a second read eventually.
Rating: 4.2 stars

92. Il Mestiere dello Scrittore by Haruki Murakami (I don't know if this exists in English, didn't find a touchstone)
This book started the new mania when I found it in the library next to the research computer. It’s fascinating that Murakami’s non-fiction is so hard for me. Where the fiction normally reminds me of that gliding on the lake thing or alternatively is absorbed instead of logically processed by my brain, the non-fiction books take forever and I can hardly read one chapter without a break. As I said in my review for the running book, it’s a bit repetitive. He explains that in the afterword that should have been a preface: it’s actually a collection of essays on writing he wrote over decades (and parts of which he already used elsewhere). There were however some new and interesting bits, and they are the newer ones, where he really takes a look back over 35 years as a writer and you see the developments. The chapter on characters is great, where among other things he explains the name issue. The part about writing and publishing abroad was interesting as well. And then the thing about finding his style, his language was especially interesting for me. Whenever I try writing something for myself I get mixed up in the languages. My German sounds either too sloppy or too exerted, so I sometimes write long texts in English which is far from perfect of course. Murakami wasn’t happy with his Japanese, so he started writing in English, then translated it back into Japanese and this way found a special form. He then continued in his new own Japanese. I should try that approach some time.
Overall, it was a good read, though not an easy one
Rating: 3.5 stars

>109 charl08: Yes, it sounds wonderful, I hope it'll be successful!

>107 Deern: That sounds great, Nathalie, both turning the villa into a museum and voluteering to catalogue the books :-)
Maybe a project worth to be a legacy library here on LT?

93. Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Yes, I should have reread Norwegian Wood first if I'm reading in order, but didn't have my old paper copy with me in the office and once started this one, I couldn't put it down. Looking at the reviews, it makes a great difference if read as stand-alone or after its prequels. At least A Wild Sheep Chase imo should be read first or you won't know about the impact and atmosphere of the old Dolphin hotel, about the (then nameless) ex-girldfriend (who gets a name here, Murakami having taken the step to naming his characters a book earlier), the sheepman and the loss the protagonist experienced.
I loved this one and feel kind of sad that the Rat series (also the first two novels Wind and Pinball 73) is concluded now.
I'm quite fascinated by now with the playing of ever repetitive elements and variations. When I start a new book I step into a familiar world which will then be broken apart in ever different ways. Then are strewn in chapters that calm me down again where the characters do things like cleaning the house or go grocery shopping and everything feels normal again for a minute. This gives the impression that the fantastic underworlds are really there, just a step away from our own daily routines.
Maybe the books are resonating so much with me right now because I've been thinking so much about loss and aging recently, and there's so much of it in these stories.
Anyway, another good one. On to Norwegian Wood on this rainy holiday.
Rating: 4.2 stars

>112 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita :)
Actually, I never really looked at those legacy libraries yet, but that might be an idea. I'll look into it, this is a completely new field for me.

Hi, Nathalie. I'm enjoying following your reading-through of the Murakamis. I did the same thing after reading my first one, After the Quake. His books really work well for me.

Norwegian Wood is more traditional in some ways, and reportedly was his first big hit in Japan.

P.S. I really like your comment, Then are strewn in chapters that calm me down again where the characters do things like cleaning the house or go grocery shopping and everything feels normal again for a minute. This gives the impression that the fantastic underworlds are really there, just a step away from our own daily routines. That expresses well an unusual quality his books have.

>115 jnwelch: Hi Joe, thank you! I already read Norwegian Wood many years ago and also all the later famous ones. I remember it as being "quite normal but intense". Started my reread yesterday and noticed "the wells", which I believe turned up the first time in Wild Sheep Chase and are another idea he uses also in later books.
Reading all the early books I was surprised at how far he ventured into the fantastic. Then he turned back to more normal stories, but looked deeper at his characters, and started naming them.
When, like yesterday, I take a walk after reading Murakami, I find myself looking out for reality gaps. :)

Lalala... lunchbreak copy&pasting, no-one sees me.... :)

94. Il selfie del mondo by Marco D'Eramo

In the postface (again! Why not put such relevant stuff into the foreword?!), the author explains to “those who made it all the way to this point” (well…) that we might have noticed the scope of the book gradually changed from a look at modern city tourism and its impact on the inhabitants to a broad look on tourism generally.
Well yes, I noticed. It was impossible not to notice. And at around 60% I wasn’t able to continue reading, I was bored to death, took more and more week long breaks and finally started skimming to see if something interesting (for me) might come up in the last many pages. No, even the long chapter on foreign food was just long. It’s fascinating how often I still had to page when my Kindle told me “time remaining in chapter: 1 min”, and I’d already shrunk the font size.

There was an article in the weekly “Der Spiegel” some months ago about mass tourism, cheap flights, and that modern city tourism that basically turns old town centres to Disneylands for day and weekend visitors and kills all real life. The article contained some quotes from this book, so after reading the great test chapter I bought it.

Now, it isn’t a badbad book, it’s certainly well-researched and really very informative if tourism over centuries and how it can be linked to all the philosophies that ever existed and everything else interests you. It’s full of sources, for a tourism student it might even be a treasure. It just absolutely wasn’t what it set out to be – for most of its length. I remember a great early chapter on the UNESCO world heritage seal, and also a plea for development and modernism that to my surprise really got to me. But right after that chapter, the book lost all its life and turned into a long-winded and very dry history book I hadn’t the nerve to read right now. All in all, the book gets my usual “I don’t know what to do” rating of 3 stars.

95.Great Music of the 20th Century by Robert Greenberg

I don’t know if this was a life-changing course, but it sure often felt like one. My third Greenberg course, and the one that involved much more effort than any of the others if I can believe reviews. The thing with the Great Courses is that they are set to serve you knowledge in easily digestible portions of 30 or 45 minutes, “one lecture a day”. In Greenberg’s other classes, the music itself is included. Not full pieces, but extracts he explains in detail. That’s easy with the classics that are in the public domain. I just started course #4 (the 30 greatest orchestral works) and I try and listen to all of them in full length after the lecture anyway. The bits are nice to open your ear.
Now with this book, they would have had to pay too much copyright, and it’s one of the most expensive courses anyway. So instead you get a list of URLs, mostly YT, in the accompanying extensive pdf.

I admit I wasn’t too happy with that extra work at first as I love listening during walks, and many reviewers weren’t, either. But then – that 20th C music isn’t easy listening anyway, and if that little effort is already too much, maybe it isn’t the right class for us? So I started working with the URLs, and after a couple of lectures I was converted. With few exceptions I listened to every bit in full length at least once, I exchanged amazon’s Kindle Unlimited against Music Unlimited, and listened and re-listened to so much fascinating music over the last weeks… I can hardly put into words what I sometimes felt!

For the first half of the 20th century, Greenberg concentrates on three composers (who haven’t been covered in separate courses like Shostakovich): Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Of course, he throws in some others, but the focus is on those three. What can I say? Worlds opened up to me! I could cry right now just thinking of it! I actually did cry several times.

Then he turns to the US, and the influence of R&B. Can I just say “WOW”? I want an extra course on that! And when I thought it couldn’t get any better, there’s a lecture on Asian and South American composers!

So how did I manage with the URLs? I checked the pdf before starting a lesson, opened all the URLs (so I had x YT windows open) and then started listening to the lecture, usually when I went for a walk, interrupting and switching to YT where needed. That worked fine for about 20 of the 24 lectures. The last lectures, and that’s my one critique, were too compressed. It was just 5 minutes on the life of a 20th/21st century composer, then 5 or more URLs and so on. It lost a bit of its soul, and I had to sit down with two devices - listening to the audio, checking the pdf, opening the URL. I needed several days for each of the last lectures. The 24th lecture is about Greenberg's own music and I admit that’s the one I haven’t yet fully listened to, needing a bit more distance from the course first. Strange, but it feels almost too intimate after all those hours. Yes, I’m scared I won’t like it. :/

Rating? 10 out of 5! “Book” of the year!

New anecdote in the “books calling to me” category: when the new Richard Powers book came out, I read the positive but oh so lifeless Guardian review and thought “It will sure be a Booker candidate and I’ll have to read it. But trees and people being connected to trees, and it’s long as well… Okay, I read two of his book, loved the one about the happy girl and liked the other, might as well give it a try. But boy, it sounds like a real drag…can’t it be shorter? And if I hate it, how can I ever tell Peggy?”. So when it was nominated, I bought the book but didn’t touch it, totally dreading it.

Now yesterday I was wondering whether to listen to another Greenberg lecture or some classical music or get to Norwegian Wood. And then a little voice in my head said “time to read The Overstory”. What can I say? Got through 50% in 24 hours, hate having to put it down for work. And scarily it’s also about voices telling one of the characters what to do. Will I now have to turn into a tree activist?!? :)

Happy (I hope) voting day!

>118 Deern: Great review of the Greenberg music course. I'm glad for you that you loved it so much! So life enriching to find something like that.

>119 Deern: I just finished The Overstory. I found I had to read slowly, it got to me emotionally. And yes, it's a call to action and awareness. Though I don't think I could face chaining myself to a tree!

>118 Deern: Happy to see you loved your Great Music of the 20th Century course, Nathalie!

I’m scared I won’t like it. :/
Don't be scared, you like it or you don't like it. After this course I think there is a good chance you like it :-)

>119 Deern: Lol. I just bought Overstory on audio, so I'll hopefully get to it soon. Though I don't think I'll get half-way through in 24 hours!

>120 EllaTim: Thank you! It's amazing: in the first chapter you are challenged to open 4 URLs and listen to each piece for more than a minute. Each hurt my ears. By the end of the course each had been thoroughly discussed and I had listened to each in full length and in variations several times.

I'll get to The Overstory in my next post. I felt really down and useless for two days, it was the middle part (Trunk). Crown and Seeds brought it all together.

>121 FAMeulstee: You're SO right, (((Anita)))! :)

>122 The_Hibernator: Get to it when you feel like it. I hope it's a great narrator!

96. The Overstory by Richard Powers

Observations
1) I’ve been such a coward all my life. I hope I can change that, at least a bit.
2) How could I ever expect this to be a dry and dragging book?
3) Be open to let life mature you towards a book (or other things) if they don't feel right in this moment. If you let books (and other things?) "call" to you at the right time, you’ll find immense treasures.
4) This book is somehow beyond rating, but if a number is needed: 5 out of 5 (or 10 or 100…)
5) Thank you RP for the experience

>124 Deern: I love your point 3! Yes.

But don't call yourself a coward, aren't we al frightened and vulnerable?

Clearly The Overstory is a must.

What a treat to help with the books at the new museum -- it sounds delightful, intimate and quirky.

In awe of your music program and also that you are doing such an in-depth read of Murakami.

>118 Deern: Love the account of your music course: sounds wonderful. I spent so much time as a kid fighting music classes, it would be nice to go back as an adult with no pressure to perform, Just to learn and appreciate.

Your reading of The Overstory made me laugh because I also also just read it and my reaction was almost entirely opposite. Ah well. It just felt overblown to me.

>126 sibylline: My Murakami read has come to a halt, as I'm now getting to books I already own. Which means paper copies I have to carry around and I need my glasses for. Which shows how much I got used to e-books and audio in just a couple of years...

I was thinking of you and your forest living while reading The Overstory. :)

>127 charl08: I wish I'd had more music classes as a kid. Had a fantastic teacher in high school who sadly died too early. We didn't really learn classical music or much of music history, but he organized a big school choire with concerts twice a year. He was so great and charismatic that we spent our breaks with extra practice (it was the only opportunity to get several grades and classes together). All the arts had no place in my family - some reading, playing the piano a bit, that was okay. But we never went to the theater or concerts or museums. I did some of that later, but still without enthusiasm. Serious reading with joy started about 10 years ago during a work-related crisis (before that I read English chick-lit and mysteries and "fun travel books"). Now it seems music finally made an entry. And it's really no pressure, that's the great thing. :)

>125 EllaTim:, >127 charl08:
It's so strange.... 10 years ago, maybe 5 years ago this book might have been "worst read". So much about "finding the right moment for a book". But since then I've turned into a reluctant spiritual tree hugger. :))
(I hugged a tree only once during my 2015 yoga retreat and there's a picture of that, but I often touch tree trunks when I hike alone. And some years ago there was a fantastic old tree in the park of the villa opposite my old appartment. When I felt bad, I just stared into that tree for a long time and felt "understood", it was a kind of meditation. The villa was then sold to a local politician who immediately had the old trees felled to make room for a parking place. I almost cried my eyes out.).

Seriously - the character who hears voices is totally quite believable for me nowadays. Not that I hear that kind of voices, except for "go read this book NOW", but sometimes my subconscious or whatever gives me interesting advice in dreams and puts me in my insignificant place that makes me feel better. My thoughts have recently been circling much about the main questions in this book. Sometimes I'm very close to despair, sometimes - on good spiritual days - I feel good and peaceful because I remember my insignificance and everyone else's including certain politicians. Then I remember that the world will go on for a long time, no matter what. I find that reassuring, and it's basically the conclusion of the book.

There was a moment I loved very much: twice the PC game developper (names!) thinks of a sci-fi story with aliens who eat humans alive because they have a different understanding of time and a human second feels like years to them (and they think humans are dead things that don't move). And then Ray has that epiphany about tree time and human time, and I really didn't see it until that moment.

>128 Deern: I had music classes as a kid and disliked it. Luckely my last piano teacher had a dog, that I walked after the lessons. Lessons got shorter, dog walks longer, until the piano teached convinced my parents the lessons were no use and I was allowed to quit.

My cultural upbring really started when we moved to The Hague in 1978 and I was the last child living at home. My fathers new job included invitations for concerts, theater and exhibition opening nights. Often my mother did not want to go, so I accompanied my father. A year after I had moved to Rotterdam, I moved in with Frank and we started to visit concerts, theater & art exhibitions together. That all ended when agoraphobia struck in 1995, and only the last years we are getting back into regular visits to concerts and art exhibitions.

Like you I joined LT in 2008, the year reading came back to me after many years without significant reading.

>124 Deern: I had The Overstory in my hands when I was at the library yesterday, but I didn't bring it home. Your rating makes me wish I had! It is getting great reviews throughout the threads.

Congratulations for reading so many books -- and good ones at that, thus far in 2018. I retired a week ago, and I so look forward to reading time, especially during the evening when I wake up and can't get back to sleep. Now, I can read and not have the time limitation hanging over my head regarding having to get up in the morning.

All good wishes!

Ah, (((((Nathalie))))), I'm thrilled that you so loved The Overstory. I bow my head in shame that I haven't read it yet. I will though; I have it safely on my Kindle. Did I mention that I love RP? Even when he doesn't work, I find things to love. You remind me of my favorite religion professor's telling me that a former student had just come to tell her, "Dr. Wright! I just had an I / Thou relationship with that tree!!!"
Go for it!
I'm also thrilled that your music course was so good. Keep listening!

>129 FAMeulstee: Thank you Anita! It's fascinating how arts, incl literature of course, find us in individual ways.

I started late with the piano (14) and stopped 3.5 years later when I needed all my money for my driver's licence and then car - typical life in a remote village in the late 80s with bad public transport, having a car meant freedom. Later in Wiesbaden and then Frankfurt, I had all the opportunities, but saw the whole Kulturbetrieb as something complicated. We sometimes went to the opera or theater in a group from work, sometimes to an art museum, once ot twice a year.
Basically it also was a thing of feeling "not good enough", so better stay away from it. I still "feel stupid" when I meet people with more knowledge, but now I just admit that I don't know much but am interested and most of them are happy to share their knowledge. :)

>130 Whisper1: Linda, I'm so happy to see you here! I'm glad that retirement will give you all the reading time you need.
I hope you'll like The Overstory when you get to it. I was really touched by all the individual stories, I thought that maybe the weakest part was when so many of them converge and there's "action". My favorite character was the dendrologist Patricia, whenever the story lagged a bit in the middle part, her thread brought it all together. I'm quite sure she'll "speak" to you as well!

>131 LizzieD: (((((Peggy)))))! :)
Your name is totally linked with RP in my brain since I reviewed err.... the other one listed for the Booker in 2014. Then you brought the last book about the happy girl to my attention and I loved that one! :)

That tree... It was just "some whatever pine tree", but it was full of birds through the year, and it smelled so good! When it was gone, for days I saw birds coming looking for it, flying away confused, it broke my heart. Next thing he had Merano's oldest mammoth tree felled... how he got the permission? Well, he's a senator in Rome, maybe that helped just a little? Officially the trees were "ill" and the branches a danger to people in the street, of course. I saw the trunks, there was no rot visible.
******

The villa itself had beem left with clear instructions by the deceased owner that no structural changes were to be made. The new owner (gossip says) helped bring an exception on the legal way: if you convert an old house into a clima house, you can override any will. So they got some sun collectors on the roof and redid everything, changing walls for "open space", adding balconies, etc. It was interesting that once it was done, it was pretty but somewhat cold and soulless, and they couldn't find renters for a long time. One couple moved in and was out again quickly while I still lived in that street.

Having witnessed that, I'm extra happy the Villa Freischütz - the future museum - and its beautiful park could be saved from the claws of all the greedy real estate speculators.

>128 Deern: You could say that everyone reads their own book, based on your own experiences. For me the book concerns the destruction of nature and natural environment, something I feel strongly about. The countryside I grew up in was bulldozed out of existence for farming efficiency reasons. I was very angry at the time, and it's that sense of loss I see in The Overstory as well.
I'm not a tree hugger, but I think we should have more of that feeling of connectedness.

I'm glad your Villa is there, and it's park!

>135 EllaTim: That tree-hugging thing was more of a joke, mainly because I was so "don't care much" in my younger years (I was SO anti-green, now I've been voting for them in the last couple of elections) and couldn't believe it when I found myself hugging a tree in 2015 - sth I'd declared an impossibility about 10 years earlier after an encounter with new age people who also did sth strange with the soul of a whale which I don't remember. :)

I was lucky to grow up in a region rich with mixed oak and pine forests and probably never valued it the way I should have as it was so normal for me. I miss these big dark forests now, the alpine fauna is different, the smell is different as well.

******
On that note: on Sunday I went to the Trautmannsdorff Gardens, it was the last day they were open this season and the first time I went in November. It was fascinating! The gardens are divided into 4 parts - "exotic", "mediterranean", "alpine" and "classic park" (with lots of roses). I prefer the exotic part with Asian, American and Australian plants that also has some sequoias and even 3 rice fields, and this part was most beautiful now in the foggy humid weather we had on Sunday. There were hardly any people, so I could touch and smell many plants. :)

******
This is going to be an interesting week. Tonight I'm participating in a "studio of ideas" in Bolzano. Have no idea what that is, but it has something to do with building communities for social projects. I was invited by a woman I met at the Villa Freischütz who is currently doing her master in arts therapy.
Tomorrow is the meeting for the volunteering at the Villa Freischütz. I actually signed up, now I'm curious what will happen next.
For Friday afternoon I booked a guided tour for the Merano cemetary and the Jewish cemetary which is usually locked. I haven't managed yet to get to the Jewish museum. It has been closed lately as they're been mourning the victims of the shooting in the US.
And on Sunday I'll visit an art exhibition with Rosmarie who I met at the Russian walk.

*******
I listened to 2 more Greenberg courses - The Life and Music of Beethoven and The Life and Music of Shostakovich. The "Life and Music" courses are comparatively short (8x45 mins) and more like appetizers for the musical works. Both fantastic, especially the one on Shostakovich which touched me deeply. Yes, tears again...
So now on to their music, and almost no time left for books.

Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone! :)

Sounds like a great weekend of culture you have planned, Nathalie. I have arrived back into properly winter farmland at home (all empty flat fields) and am wondering if I can plan a route to reconnect with the trees (!) despite my lack of ovwrwhelmed-ness for the Powers, the discussion here has reminded me how much I love a quiet wood. I have a strong memory of visiting a public park after the hurricane in the 80s, and the striking changes in the landscape as many of the trees had been hundreds of years old. I think I would need to go to Scotland to find a "proper" wood big enough for a walk (and accessible to the public).

>136 Deern: Sound like a good weekend ahead, Nathalie!
Shostakovich often can move me to tears too, although the latest I attended had some parts from "The Nose" that were very funny.

Enjoy your weekend! Slightly lame comments here, but I always read your entries with great interest.

>136 Deern: I would have thought hugging a tree a bit weird too, but not anymore;-)

In the village where I grew up we didn't have any woods nearby, it was the traditional Dutch landscape of canals, and boats, and agriculture. But now they are building large greenhouses everywhere and it feels like an industrial landscape, and that gets to me.

You're doing lots of interesting things, have a nice time!

>137 charl08: Imagining a quiet winter wood... lovely! :)
Aren't woods generally accessible in the UK? :o
I think I've never seen a public wood "closed for the public"?

>138 FAMeulstee: Started very funny yesterday! Oh yes, and met new people of course.
I think the Nose is meant to be funny if I remember the novella well. Wasn't that early in his career before things went really bad and dangerous?
Somehow despite it not being a piece of classical music, I had to think of the Billy Joel song "Leningrad" I hadn't heard in ages while listening to the audio book. Found it on YT and it has now turned into an earworm. And made me cry of course. Must be the hormones..

>139 sibylline: Happy weekend to you as well! :)

>140 EllaTim: Ewww, greenhouses.... traditional Dutch landscape is so lovely!
Here the landscape is pseudo-picturesque with all the apple orchards. If you look closer of course, they aren't real old trees, it's just lines of highly productive espalier trees. Then in summer they put up black nets against birds and hailstorms and parts of the valley look from the mountains like wrapped in plastic. But still much better than greenhouses and the nets are taken off again in fall.

*******
The "studio of ideas" was quite interesting. There were about 40 people, and 6 of them had brought ideas they didn't know how to proceed with. We formed groups to discuss the individual ideas and switched tables 3 times. I listened to 2 women trying to make art therapy popular, to an architect thinking of a co-housing project and last a guy who wants to grow and sell medical cannabis and other "natural drugs from the forests". The funny thing about him was that he wanted so much "against politicians and big pharma", but openly said he didn't have the energy and motivation to do it himself, and neither had anyone else from his existing club of 300 members.

I met three super-nice men (don't get your hopes up, all married with kids), two of them Italians and one from Ireland, we chatted and stayed until they closed - which seems to become a pattern with me and events lately.. The Irish guy is planning to start a vegan catering company and will present his idea next week, so I might go again. He's working with the chef who 3 years ago had the vegan restaurant in Merano I loved so much.
We even got dinner, a yummy vegan lentil soup, and some red wine (I had to drive, so just water for me).
Generally, there were very interesting people, many having spent several years abroad outside Europe.

Next stop at Villa Freischütz, I'm hoping for book and/or garden duty.

>138 FAMeulstee: Yes, "The Nose" is after the book, so ment to be funny. It is one of his early works, so before the war and life getting dangerous.
I think Billy Joel uses a Russian theme in that song, I vaguely remember I heard it in some a piece of an other Russian componist, can't remember who...

An interesting evening and next week again, sounds good.
Keeping fingers crossed for book duty at Villa Freischütz!

Good Morning, and happy weekend to you.

Hi Nathalie! I've been dropping in but haven't had to time to post. You really got me with The Great Courses so I have on loan from the library, Great Masters -Liszt his life and music. I chose Liszt because he is Hungarian and while in Hungary we saw his original sheet music at a museum we toured while in Budapest. I too want to get my hands on Shostakovitch when I'm done with Liszt. As you said so well, an appetizer to the main catalog.
Your comments on The Overstory has made me determined to read this book as, for some reason, I've not felt the urge to do so.

>124 Deern: Thanks for your comments on Overstory -- I have it on my Nook from the library, and I just have to get to it!

Karen O.

Yay, (((((Nathalie)))))! I'm happy that you've found such interesting places to go and people to talk to.
I confess that I hugged our walnut in front of the men who cut it down.

>142 FAMeulstee: I'm really interested in his operas as well as in the symphonies and string quartets, I hope to find some on YT. What an idea to base an opera on The Nose! :)

>143 Whisper1: A happy weekend to you and Will as well, Linda! :)

>144 Carmenere: Oh dear... now I want to learn about Liszt as well. I must somehow structure all the follow-up music listening or it I'll get lost.
About the Overstory: I didn't feel the slightest urge, until the "little voice" told me that NOW was the time. And really just in time for an occasion to sign up for helping in the Villa Freischütz park. Sometimes life takes interesting ways, also on the small scale...

>145 klobrien2: Hi Karen, thank you! I really hope you'll enjoy it.

>146 LizzieD: It's always fascinating that on the few occasions when I open up to the world (as in 2015 with the yoga) I at once meet so many great people! I wish I could better keep up with them.
I feel with you about the walnut tree. And I just remember I accidentally lied about my one-time tree hugging... I forgot that when my parents moved away, I spent a last late October afternoon in our garden (can't believe it's been a year!), hugging every single tree, wishing them a long and good life and thanking them for the good times. I also "hugged" the house on all sides....

Yesterday's meeting was fun. We were about 20 volunteers, of which 19 female! :)
And except for me and three others, all retired with much time on their hands which is of course great for the project. Many locals, but also some Germans and one lady from Zimbabwe, many well-travelled people who speak several languages.

We had herbal tea and home-made muffins and got some more information on the villa's history before we got to the duties.They're mainly looking for people to cover the daily two shifts once they open - cash desk and "presence" on the 1st floor where it will be an open museum, and future guides for the guided visits on the 2nd floor. I offered weekend service, preferably in the park, but also background work during closing time like now in winter. They still have much stuff to get through, lots of handwritten correspondence in different languages. Then there's the website, event planning, etc. Lots and lots of different things to do.

97. Beethoven His Life and Music and
98. Shostakovich His Life and Music by Robert Greenberg

"Hmm... okay" to Beethoven and "shudder" to Shostakovich were my main reactions. The "Life and Music" series are appetizers for the musical works, biographies with many anecdotes and music samples, maybe with some extra juicyness - Greenberg is such a great narrator after all. Clearly he loves Beethoven's music - there are several seperate works on his symphonies and concerti and they're also in all the "Best ofs" like "The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works" (symphonies 3 and 9 and the piano concert #4). This doesn't keep G. from pointing out the weirdness, like the long and bitter law suit against his sister in law or the period when he still insisted on conducting or playing in his symphonies when he was already completely deaf. Or his kitsch music phase after the victory over Napoleon. This was an entertaining listen.

Shostakovich however is of course totally tragic. Greenberg often adds a rhetoric "who are we to judge". There were some super-narrow escapes where friends were less fortunate. He also clearly says that S. wasn't a "hero" - he was a survivor and behaved accordingly. He loves S's music, every piece of it, and explains it has to be sensed more than logically processed. He recommends many repeated listenings to the works, and I intend to follow his orders.

Rating: 4.5 for both

99. Siddharta by Hermann Hesse

A quick re-read last night. Thank you Lynda!! Much has happened since I read it the first time and I notice that my mind got hooked in different places. I'd underlined the things that spoke to me on my previous read. They still did, but parts I didn't get last time have been experienced in the meantime.

Great work, maybe the best self-help book ever. 5 stars

Tried two new vegan recipes this weekend from the "Oh She Glows" app. Chocolate pumpkin muffins turned out totally yummy, just didn't rise, as usual. I guess it's the eternal baking soda/ baking powder issue, and then I always reduce the sugar. I added some orange peel which worked perfectly. They're just ugly, my colleague refused trying one, so there's one more for me. :)

Then I made a salad of oven-roasted potatoes, broccoli (original recipe: green beans), pumpkin (my addition), and chickpeas, to which were added cooked millet (in place of quinoa, trying to stay regional) and shredded raw kale. How can something taste so disgusting when fresh and so great a day later? The kale on the other warm ingredients had a terrible flavor, and now that the mix spent a night in the fridge, it's really good. Had two servings for lunch.

>149 Deern: Good to see you finished the Shostakovich course. Did you read The noise of time by Julian Barnes? It is a fictional biography of Shostakovich, and give some good insights how his life might have been.

I have read Siddharta for the first time last May, I liked it. Looking at your thoughts, a re-read might work well one day.

>150 Deern: Wow. I think I would have chucked it our after the first tasting failing (although not a kale fan, so that would have been the main barrier!). Muffins sound wonderful.

>151 FAMeulstee: Ah...- right! I'd already forgotten about the Barnes book. Just ordered the sample. Not my genre (historical fiction/ fictional biographies), but I see it has good ratings and might actually be really interesting. Thank you! :)

>152 charl08: I considered it, but was angry about the waste of good other ingredients. I thought I could at least throw spicy sauce on it the next day.

Not a kale fan either, I prefer my smoothies with other greens. Maybe because my blender isn't strong enough and I had to chew the kale smoothie when I tried making one. :(

Waaaaay up there you mentioned that Onegin reminded you of Ethan Frome...I'd never thought of that parallel, but I totally see what you mean.

Sorry I've been so long coming by. It's wonderful to see the cultural side of Merano, and I was particularly moved by the old lady whose home is now a touch-and-feel museum of a dead way of life! Good on her for saying "pfui" to greed.

*smooch*

>141 Deern: Orchards can be lovely. Netting all the trees sounds less than wonderful, but there still are flowers in spring to be enjoyed. But old orchards are the best, a bit neglected, not so much spraying anymore, trees you'd love to hug;-)

>148 Deern: It all sounds really interesting, handwritten correspondence in different languages, website, enough to keep a lot of people happy.

All good!
Thanks to Anita for mentioning the J. Barnes book. I'm on it!

>155 richardderus: Hi Richard, *smooch*

Honestly I had to think a moment now what I meant with it - but yes, it was about fictional characters in classical literature doing absolutely idiotic stuff that make you shake your head in disbelief for the rest of the book.

Yes, Merano had a short period of world-wide fame. Learned last Friday when visiting the cemetaries that within 20 years the population quadrupled in the late 1800s, mostly rich foreigners, much royalty. Big hotels and new villas were built everywhere, the theater and kurhaus, a train station that soon had to be moved, a new cemetary, that soon had to be moved as well... the local population must have been quite overwhelmed. It ended abruptly with WWI, the region becoming Italy afterwards and quickly a thorn in the eye of the fascists.

>156 EllaTim: Yes, they look nice despite not being natural at all. I'm always happy to see some real old apple trees around the farm houses. Not that I hug them all, not even nowadays. :) I might look around and then carefully touch them instead.

>157 LizzieD: All good, ((((Peggy)))))! :)
Just reading the sample, haven't decided yet whether to make it my #100 or to read The Hare with Amber Eyes first which was a recommendation from the Villa tour guide. Much longer, but in German.

Im now officially a slow-coach but I have made it at last to wish you a belatedly good weekend. xx

Oh, (((((Nathalie))))), by all means read *Hare* immediately!!!!! I loved and adored that book although it starts a bit slowly.

>159 PaulCranswick: Happy Monday, Paul! :)
Ew, I'm really dreading mine...

>160 LizzieD: Hi (((((Peggy))))) I decided to concentrate on Hare, it really IS slow (I'm just half through), but it's wonderful! They have several netsuke at the Villa, and when they were showing them to us, the guide told us about the book. I hope I'll have the occasion to take a closer look some day.
And now I want to reread Swann's Way with Charles Ephrussi in my mind as one of the models for Swann.

**********
No real news here. Working a lot, sleeping a lot, not reading much. Got 5 audiobooks (big audible sale) although not having finished the last batch. Very frustrated with my work, hoping for one new project next year that might make it all more interesting.

Christmas markets opened on Thursday. I'm not in the mood at all, but have already been to three. Okay, on Friday I had a workshop in Bolzano and walked over the market on my way to my car. Yesterday I took a walk to Lagundo, had a vegan burger there (home-made with lentils and mushrooms, worth the walk), then walked to the Merano one to get to my 10,000 steps and bought a bread from the German stall. I'm so happy they are back after last year's break. They bake bread (and pizza-like sourdough thingies with potatoes and cheese) in a wood oven, and it's better than most bread in the bakeries here. Peope buy it like crazy. Back home I had some with a bowl of butternut squash chili, a variation of Richard's recipe. I made a huge pot, froze half and filled 3 small containers for the next three days. Very yummy. I wonder if my mum will let me make it for Christmas.

And should I buy an instant pot? The US brand isn't available here, we're VERY slow in some things, but there are different ones with great ratings.

>161 Deern: I suspect this is an Anglo/American translation issue - but what on earth is an instant pot?

Also, Good morning and hope you have a good week :)

Morning Nathalie. I've not made it to a single Xmas market yet but hoping to correct that soon, if only for some hot chocolate! Hope things improve at work: I find this time of year a bit difficult to get into as there is so much Xmas distraction going on (and we close between Xmas and new year so everything stops).

Just found some new to me sci fi, which seems to be hitting the mark: I'll try not to read too much into the current appeal of that.

>162 BekkaJo: it's an electric pressure cooker with timer and programs. For rice and pulses, but also for more complicated stuff, it can also steam. It takes over the US recipe blogs I'm using and also seems to be the main brand name. Seems that brand isn't available here (yet).

Considering that I eat much rice and pulses, especially in winter and always feel bad about the bean cans, this might be a good alternative to soaking chickpeas for 24 hrs and cooking them for 2. I have no experience with a normal pressure cooker, so it'll be all new.

And happy week to you as well! :)

>163 charl08: Hi Charlotte, happy sci-fi reading!
To get to my 10,000 steps, I walked into town to the Xmas market again today during lunch break. And ate warm German rye bread on a stick. :) I'm such a bread addict!

I wish my company would close between Christmas and New Year. Somehow I always end up in jobs where terrible new legal things start on January 1st, I'm really worried this year. From January on, all invoices between companies, but also to private people have to be converted into a special xml format and sent to a server at the ministery for finance. There the data will be checked, archived and forwarded to the receiver, so everyone (at least not private people) have to get sth like a mailbox on that server. All IT systems have to learn to deal with those files. Paper can still be sent, but doesn't count anymore. Of course it's a measure for the government to control money flows and VAT, but everyone knows it'll lead to even more "grey business" than before. And everyone expects that mysterious government server to crash early in January, because that would be typical. :)

********
I bought The Hare with Amber Eyes as audio today although I was already half through the Kindle book. I feel it's a perfect book to listen to, and I can't concentrate on eye-reading now.

Wow, what a reading month! Just added #100, The Hare With Amber Eyes to my list in >4 Deern: and saw that with one exception I only read 4.5 and 5 star books in November! This isn't a review yet, but *Hare* is excellent as an audio. Listening to it in long stretches during walks and house work yesterday and today was so much better than reading the odd half chapter sitting down. Great book! I should have got the Barnes as audio as well.

1) Buy the "Instant Pot" instanter.
2) Yay for The Hare with the Amber Eyes! I loved it, too, when I read it long ago.
3) Hiss boo hiss on electronic "transparency" which always means "massive confusion and data loss."
4) *smooch*

Natalie, volunteering at the Villa Freischütz sounds like a lovely thing to do.
Isn't it great that retirement allows time for such things to join?

>161 Deern: I tried to keep my eyes closed during the Audible sale. I have so many books bought by Audible sale that I have not had time to get to yet - I really need to focus on catching up!

>167 richardderus:
1) it's in the basket - sooo curious and looking forward to quick chickpeas and yummy stews! :))
2) What a lovely, lovely book, despite being so sad! I listened to the second half which I hadn't read yet, but will now listen to the first part as well. And take a very close look at those netsukes in the villa!
3) you're SO right!
4) *smooch*
5) thanks again for the kick this morning (European time)... I just joined a party! Still can't believe it!

>168 Whisper1: I'm SO looking forward to it! I hope they'll call me soon.

>169 The_Hibernator: Same here! Instead I still keep buying. *help*

*******
Yeah well, it has been brewing a while this year, with all the Woke reading. Then all the 3rd Reich literature (which even played into all the music courses), then I finally watched "Shoah" 2 weeks ago over the weekend. And then there's Salvini's terrible Lega becoming part of the South Tyrolean government - the danger IS here and in the present, no longer just in the past. I'm still waiting for the confirmation, but I joined the South Tyrolean Green party this morning. Mainly because it's the only party promoting peace, solidarity and equality between the language groups, where all the other parties concentrate on one group only. Basically they're as conservative as everyone else here and I'm doubting their "greeness" (greenness?) a bit, given all the trees that were felled since we have a green mayor. But there isn't the "perfect" party for me unless I found it, and the Lega needs more counterweight. There's a pro-Europe party I like more, but they're too weak to ever get into any parliament. And maybe I should add that the party landscape in this autonomous region is different from everywhere else. There aren't the classical "conservatives" and "democrates", there's one Südtiroler Volkspartei that until now has usually held the majority and is so concentrated on the region and the relationship with Austria that a foreigner like me can't feel "at home" with them. The other parties are small and can only hope to get over 5% and maybe one day into coalition.

End of politcal discussion, I'll try not to carry it into this thread though I might mention developments in Italy from time to time as I did until now. I'm just feeling so "joyous" (seriously, it's strange) that I wanted to share it.

>170 Deern: Would like to hear your instant pot experiences. I've given up on cooking chickpeas, I can't get them done!

Good for you, your description sounds good, peace, solidarity, equality. Lots of people are disappointed in politics and there is reason to be, but when everybody withdraws, what good will that do?

Chickpeas in the instant pot. Yes please. Unsoaked chickpeas = double cooking time. I find that chickpeas do best, no matter what, when soaked overnight/8 full hours. Setting them to soak as one leaves for work is best.

This chickpea stew recipe is yummy. 1lb dried chickpeas = ~500gr, and since kale is the most miserable of the cruciferous veggies I substitute collard greens (Kohlgrüns) in equal quantity.

I use these diced tomatoes:

because I'm from Texas and if it ain't hot, I ain't interested. :-) It just means skipping the recipe's red pepper flakes.

A delicious post-cooking garnish for this stew is a tablespoon (~15mL) or so of apple cider vinegar.

>171 EllaTim: I hope I'll get it next week and can "cook it in" and maybe take it to my parents over the holidays. My mum hates cooking and a dirty stove, but there isn't much she can do against the instant pot. I could cook in the bathroom or on the balcony after all. :)

I use to soak chickpeas for 24 hrs in the fridge, changing the water once. Then I boil them in fresh water for up to 2 hours or even longer if needed. I won't eat them anymore unless soft. After just 1.5 hours they give me cramps for the rest of the day, that's why I didn't eat them for years until I finally got them here organic in cans.

I'm not happyhappy with the Green party, but where I live they're the only counterweight. I feel I have to do something, and be it just the membership.

>172 richardderus: Wow, thank you! :) I LOVE spicy food!
I'll have to get normal diced tomatoes, or maybe check if I find a ready-mixed arrabiata. Lots of peperoncini at home, that shouldn't be the problem.
Collard is Mangold I guess, with the white stems and a bit like spinach but firmer, very popular here and available in several colors. A great substitute in any case.

Just watching the first two episodes of L'amica geniale/ My brilliant friend on RAI, it's surprisingly well done, though a bit colorless for a story set in Naples. But it's grimey and all in dialect, with Italian subtitles. The beginning, when Rino jr calls Lenu to tell her Lila has disappeared is so strong, I almost forgot about that outer frame. I hope they keep the level, because with this slow pace (by the end of ep 1 they're in front of Don Alfonso's door to get the dolls back), the series will run for 10 years. Great choice of actors, especially great choice of normal looking child actors.

Finished 3 more audios, two of them will lower my average rating this month a bit. I should give up on audio comedy. The third was the 10 minute The lump of coal read by Neil Patrick Harris. I'll have to relisten a couple of times. Realized while listening that I only ever heard him as Barney, and his narration voice is his "I explain a playbook trick to you" voice, so I was always waiting for some weird twist.

Hi Nathalie, congrats on the political sign up. I joined a women's group that lobbies for equality but haven't taken that extra step. At our last election I was wavering, but because if the way our system works you only vote for your local rep in first past the post. There was no way our Labour candidate wasn't going to get in (her majority is huge). I went to a discussion event and the Green candidate was clearly very inexperienced and I got put off. But I should revisit it all again I think. The Fawcett group membership has been brilliant: they mail me about their campaigns and local events, and it just feels like I am doing something, however small, about it all.

Glad to hear the adaptation of the Ferrente was good: so awful when they mess up a loved book!

>175 charl08: It's interesting how political landscapes are so different in democratic countries, and also the processes. I remember that in the UK before elections, wannabe MPs go door to door. I'd hate that, I probably wouldn't open the door. We vote more blindly for parties, often not knowing our candidate except from posters in the streets.

This is an extremely conservative traditional region. The German speaking population still looks at Austria and hopes for a second passport. The big SVP is the modest one, there are two more rightwing who still want to be reunited with Austria. The Italians even in the third generation often have no roots here and therefore tend to vote for Italian and more national parties, they are Lega fodder. The Greens are the only in-between group, with brochures in all languages and more looking to Europe than stopping at their own garden fence. I'm not a political person, I'm hoping to find something like you found in that women's group, because I don't know where else to look without being limited to German or Italian.

*****
Saw the second episode of Ferrante, greatgreatgreat! The kids, the teacher, the angry mother.. perfect casting
Other news: my parents might come to visit the Xmas market and me from Dec 9 to 12. :)
Now off to buy butternut squash for future cooking, then meeting Chrystel and dog Floh for lunch. Tomorrow I’m invited to an afternoon party at my hairdresser’s and will try to get to Lagundo before that to make that guy sell at least one more vegan burger.
Happy Saturday!

I've got some catching up to do -- how wonderful that they are filming the Ferrante!

Happy cooking!

>172 richardderus: That recipe looks really nice! And very simple.

>173 Deern: I think you have to buy the chickpeas really fresh, and I somewhere even read to soak them 48 hours. No, no way eat them when they're not well done!

>178 EllaTim: If you can *find* fresh chickpeas, you can cook them by boiling in salted water on the stovetop in 5 minutes!

>176 Deern: There is a big difference between political systems. In the UK and USA it is winner of a voting district takes all. So the elected politician has a stong bond with the voting district where elected. Hence going door to door.
In most other countries it is the percentage of votes that decides how many seats are gained. This gives less bondig with a place and more party politics, as it is the highest possible place on the party list they aim for.

>177 sibylline: Ha, I actually thought "s**t, they're filming (destroying) the Ferrante, I'm going ro ignore it". :D
Coincidentally I saw a link to an article last Monday (guardian? nyt?), saying it was good and that it was to start in Italy that very night, so I recorded it. The only complaint I have so far is the unnecessary veil of grey/ opaque they're using nowadays for "historical stuff". This is Naples, even in depressed and poor post-war Italy the sun should have been out occasionally.
Started re-listening to book 1 again last night.

I saw a beautiful corgi on the Xmas market yesterday with a beige down coat on. Poor doggy, it wasn't that cold.

>178 EllaTim: 48 hrs should really do the job! I once saw a guy on TV who said he wanted to make hummus and just grinded the raw (dry) chickpeas because he didn't really read the recipe. His girlfriend almost died. :O
Must order that IP today, I love chickpeas.

>179 richardderus: I never thought about it, but fresh big beans are sold here in summer for a short period, there must be fresh chickpeas (lentils too?) somewhere in the world.

>180 FAMeulstee: As a diligent introvert, you wouldn't have a chance to get elected there, I guess. If you'd want to be an MP as a diligent introvert, that is. You must be able to shake off a lot of abuse....

********
Had a lovely day with Chrystle and my beloved Floh who was sitting on the bench next to me, asleep with her head on my leg all the time. Chrystle was all in red like a small Santa and Floh in a green sweater with rhinestones and a red leash, like a tiny xmas tree! :)
I invited C. to lunch, she bought me a new agenda and we declared that was xmas gifts done for us. She'll be leaving for her country house and return in January after our bdays.
We shared beetroot carpaccio with walnuts, rocket salad and feta cheese, then I had seitan curry with rice and veggies and she had some more beetroot in the form of dumplings. All delicious.

>179 richardderus: I don't think I could get them that fresh here, I mean harvested this year, and not the year before:-)

>182 Deern: Yes, they're probably the fresh ceci. There is no advantage to eating them freshly picked, I can detect no difference whatsoever in texture or taste.

>183 EllaTim: I think that's a noble ambition. I don't know how age affects the quality of dried foods from personal experience.

Still haven't ordered, analyzing reviews of my two favorites. Went to two shops today that sell electric/ tronic stuff and was told both times that yes, they knew what it was but they didn't sell them and I should order online.

My remaining issue is mainly the voltage, as here in IT we have such limited household electricity. Most things I bought in Germany like my hairdryer can only run here with no other demanding item switched on. I can never have more than two pots on the stove and only one of them on max. Or one pot plus oven, then beware of light and TV. If you ever wondered why Italians have gas stoves, no driers and no electric kettles -that's why. :/

>183 EllaTim:, >184 richardderus: All the ceci talk made me open my last can and eat some. :)

And I made my favorite Brussels sprouts and very spicy fried tofu dish, adding pomegranate seeds.

Now off to my hairdresser's advent party.

100. The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
One of those books that worked so well because I had a connection with the story. Had I read it when it was out and on the bestselling lists, I might have been bored all through the first half. That first half is very slow (though fascinating), and when I additionally bought the audiobook I found it worked much better for me than the eye-reading.

Well, as I said earlier, when I visited the Villa Freischütz in October, I saw my first netsuke. I’d never heard of them before. The villa had been owned by a rich Prussian collector of arts and bits, the head of a very wealthy international family with roots in Germany, Spain, Peru and France. The guide recommended the book and I got it at once, of course.

This book is a treasure trove on so many levels. Basically, it only gives you many little pushes and you’re encouraged to investigate further. The plot is the story of a large collection of netsuke the author and narrator inherits from his great-uncle Iggy. By following the netsuke, that came into family possession in the late 1800s, he also follows the rise and fall of his own family, the once incredibly rich Jewish Ephrussis from Odessa who started with trading corn, then got into finance and owned palaces in Vienna and Paris. The netsuke first turn up in Paris, where they’re bought by Charles Ephrussi at the height of a hype for Japanese arts. Charles was an arduous art collector, a critic and writer and expert, a friend of many famous artists, visitor of salons, acquaintance of Proust and one of the two RL models for Swann. When fashion changes and Charles’ cousin Victor in Vienna gets married, the netsuke are sent as a wedding gift and stay in Vienna until and through WWII. They miraculously escape the grip of the Nazis while the rest of the collections is lost, and after the war return to Japan with Iggy and finally land in EDW’s hands in London. In the last chapter he returns to the roots, visiting Odessa, and yes, of course I was crying once again. I don’t get it, I don’t get it, I don’t get it, how we could destroy all that. Not the houses, the art, the possessions, but the treasure that was the people. The book shows so well how poor the European world has become, what we all lost. *

The first part of the book will have you look at all the art, (re-) read all the books, especially Proust, you might lose much time looking up names and things on wiki. The second part, of course, is focused more and more on the political situation and the ever-growing terrible anti-Semitism. We see the rope around the family’s neck get tighter and tighter and yet EDW keeps leading us back to the netsuke instead of focusing on personal dramas. That’s another strength of the book. He doesn’t instill any extra drama to a story that’s already extremely dramatic. Not once a character is “in grave doubt” or “desperate” – we know they are, but it isn’t said. I found myself sitting on the edge of my chair at some point – in my head screaming at Victor SPOILER “get out of here, you are still rich after all and got the connections, your kids are abroad and quite safe, pay the passage to the US, id necessary bribe your way out of that hell already!” and later “Czechoslovakia of all places?!?”
A great, incredibly rich book, wonderfully (and smartly) written, free of everything that often makes me dislike historical fiction.

Rating: 5 stars

* I read a couple of “explaining” books, like the well-researched Warum die Deutschen? Warum die Juden? showing all the historic developments. But can I please on an emotional level never ever understand?  

101. Vodka is Vegan by Matt Letten
This one, as well as #103, basically were purchases I shouldn't have made. I felt bad and wanted something funny/ silly that would really made me laugh. This has already lead me to mediocre, not very funny audio books in the past, and it happened again. This one isn’t bad, it just isn’t funny. And no, I wasn’t offended by all the expletives, I don’t mind them and I don’t count them.
I like a relaxed approach to veganism and that’s where the audio was great. I also liked that the brothers came from such different directions – one having started as the severe animal activist who screams “meat is murder” at the dinner table, the other one taking the health approach first after having been extremely obese. There’s a great chapter on family dogs of the past and a new dog, liberated from a puppy farm. There are chapters about partying and alcohol being vegan (okay, it often isn’t, but they’re really relaxed about that). I didn’t learn anything new, but it’s an okay book, just not LOL funny.
Rating: 3.3 stars

102. The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket, read by Neil Patrick Harris
10 cute minutes, especially once I finally got rid of the “Barney reads the playbook” picture in my head.
Rating: 4.2 stars

103. How to American : by Jimmy O. Yang
I don’t know the author as I don’t watch the shows he’s on. Overall, this book was a bit too juvenile for me. Partying in Mexico, being a pot head in San Diego, that was all really quite boring. The rest of the story is a bit “from rags to riches” of a Chinese immigrant boy, trying to fit in. He has a talent for comedy and finds the best way to escape racism on stage is to exaggerate his “foreignness”. I don’t know if it’s okay that someone becomes a success by playing to stereotypes (also always wondering why Raj from TBBT is STILL wearing those sh***y pseudo-"Indian” clothes in season 11 despite being from a wealthy family). I’d probably do the same. Be THE German, exaggerate the accent, play the “ve haff no humor” card. Well… I wasn’t offended, neither by expletives nor anything else, I just didn’t laugh and basically just listened through it to get it checked off. Which maybe shows I really haff no humor, as other listeners “had to pull the car over because they were laughing so hard”.
Jimmy came over as a nice, likeable guy and I’m happy he made it and is now also playing character roles, but it wasn’t what I expected it to be.
Therefore no rating.

>186 Deern: Lovely appreciation of a book I was fond of as well.

>187 Deern: You...you're...one of THEM?! You're a Hun, a Kraut, a...*shudder*...GERMAN?!?

Farewell. I shall never set trotter in this sty ever again.

>187 Deern: guilty, guilty and...yes, guilty. :/
And now we even suck at soccer, our one consolation.

>189 Deern: Not as much as us, so there's always that...

I forgive you. After all, Germany produced Uhtred of Bebbanburh:


And, of course, your dear self. (Y'all keep on suckin' at soccer too, makes the entire country mad and that's funny to watch.)

Being German/ having family in Germany also has its good sides: just found out that the real instant pot is available there and will order it today and have it sent to my parents. Should arrive in time for them to bring it to Merano next week. I want the IP despite the higher cost because there are substitute parts and accessories available, and for the other brands I could buy in Italy there's nothing.

>190 charl08: you guys at least are getting better! :)

>191 richardderus: yes, it was such fun to watch! Even my parents went mad :D
And thanks for decorating my thread, that's a nice advent gift! :)) Especially after having woken up from a terrible nightmare and being up since before 3 am. Needed a double coffee and still don't want to face the day.

>192 Deern: Sorry you had a bad night, Nathalie.
Some (((hugs))) to help you through the day.

Boo hiss bad dreams! I'm glad Dreymon was here to cheer you up this morning.

>191 richardderus: So much better on the left!

Hope you had a better day Nathalie - and have a good night sleep tonight.

Thank you Anita, Richard and Bekka! I slept much better the last two nights, no nightmares, just the usual "finding hidden new rooms in my house" which I think stands for unused opprtunities/ talents in life.

The bad dream was quite a realistic home invasion (why? It's months since I watched "Clockwork Orange"). Not the first time I was (to be) murdered in a dream, but from this one I just didn't wake up forever.

Just reading Don't let my past be your future and am in shock. This cannot be stopped, can it? It's like watching a train run towards a big wall and the people (voters) who should use the emergency brake instead increase the speed.
I finally got an answer yesterday from the party, they have their annual meeting on the 15th, I'm planning to go.

Next book up is the Barnes. On the side listening to another Greenberg about Beethoven's symphonies and to the respective symphonies during my walks.

Thought of you yesterday Nathalie as we had a speaker who is working on the South Tyrol talking about her research. Glad to hear you had a better night.

I saw you had read Autumn of the Patriarch befpre: how did you find it compares to his other writing?

>197 charl08: It was the only GM I read in Italian, when my Italian was far worse than it is now. I had a hard time with it. It wasn't exactly boring, but dry. I should maybe re-read it in English.

What kind of research was the speaker talking about?

********************
This holiday season/ advent time is running past me this year - so sorry I forgot the most imprtant thing, to wish you all a HAPPY NIKOLAUSTAG!. May your shoe/ sock be filled with sweets and fruit and gingerbread!

This used to be the most anxious day in the year when I was a kid, as sometimes a "Nikolaus" knocked on the door in the evening and I had to recite a Christmas poem and my parents had to confirm I'd been a "good child" all year which he checked in his golden book before giving me sweets. Even when I knew it was the neighbor I was scared like crazy. My parents loved it of course. :)

My colleague who usually comes in early in the morning on Dec 6th and puts a little paper plate with cookies, nuts and an orange on everyone's desk isn't here today. We're all missing her. Okay, the cookies...

I bought an Instant Pot last week, Nathalie, along with a copy of Indian Instant Pot Cookbook by Urvashi Pitre. Actually, this will be my Christmas gift from my parents, as my father will reimburse me for its cost, as I bought it from Amazon on Cyber Monday. I bought the 6 Quart Smart WiFi model, but it's still in the original box. I'm debating whether to start using it now, or wait until I return from London after Christmas.

I also purchased a copy of Yotam Ottolenghi's latest cookbook, Ottolenghi Simple, on the recommendation of Paola, a formerly active LTer who remains a close friend on Facebook. That may end up being my all time favorite cookbook; I made sweet potato fries and roasted asparagus for Thanksgiving week, and both recipes were well received, especially the sweet potato fries. I'll look at it tomorrow, and try at least one more recipe during this long four day weekend. It's a beautiful book, which I've already given to four family members and friends, and it may end up being my favorite book of 2018!

I hope that the Instant Pot is an Instant Success all the way around!
I didn't know about Nikolaustag, but I hope that yours was happy even without your colleague's cookies......and you didn't have to recite anything - that's a bonus.
I'm sorry about your nightmare..... I used to dream about sliding into secret rooms in my house but no more. I can, however, still see the passageway vividly.
I haven't read *Autumn ot P*, but I remain a great fan of the South Americans. I am still reading (or reading in it again) The Mad Patagonian, which is a huge and hugely breathtaking masterpiece by Javier Pedro Zabala, the greatest Cuban writer you've never heard of. My thanks to ER, and may I finish it this month so that I don't have my review hanging over me in the new year!
Hope your whole Advent season goes smoothly, (((((Nathalie))))).

>199 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl, I visited your thread some days ago, but I fear I haven't posted yet, there's still so much to read up in detail. Just finally ordered my IP a minute ago after reading your post. So complicated here, it wouldn't have been at my parents' in time, so I'll have it sent here from the UK with amazon Germany which adds about 20 Eur extra if I want it before Christmas. I pray it works fine and I won't have to go through a 3 country international return process.

I just started cooking from my Ottolenghi book again which was my eye-opener 5 years ago when I turned vegetarian. The best recipe book I ever owned. I don't mind the "too many ingredients" many people complain about as I've always loved spices. The Brussels sprouts with fried spicy tofu recipe is the best tofu dish I've ever eaten. I might buy his second vegetarian book, I've looked through it several times in the bookshop.

********
My parents booked their hotel, but it's going to snow on Sunday, I hope they'll have a good and safe trip.

>200 LizzieD: (((((Peggy)))))
Of course never heard of that greatest Cuban writer you've never heard of. :))
The book goes straight to the WL.

About those secret rooms I notice they get bigger, but shabbier, needing much work. Which I guess stands for getting older and being more scared of taking those opportunities. When I wake up after such dreams I usually tell my subconscious: "can't you please spell it out "for dummies" next time? I'm to thick for those subtle hints. If I knew what those opportunities are, I might have a chance of taking them".

Edit: okay, more watchlist than wishlist. Right now it's not available in Europe and sending from the US costs app 35 USD extra. I hope it'll be "internationalized" soon. It's huge - almost 1300 pages?!?

Happy belated Saint Nicholas Day to you too, Nathalie. My mom still gives me a tree ornament every year for my St. Nick's gift and I continue the tradition with my son.
More InstaPot love! I also ordered an InstaPot on Black Friday. It will be my mom's gift to me. I may have to look into the Indian cookbook Darryl purchased.
Love that you are volunteering at the Villa! Whenever I've visited historical homes I've thought how cool it would be to usher visitors through and be a storehouse of knowledge about the home and the lives of people who've lived there.

St. Nicholas Day was always the day we decorated our tree, and new ornaments were passed to the owner to place as she saw fit.

That whole 3-country fandango just to get the appliance you want, well...silly. Just let people have what they want already, governments!

>203 Carmenere: that's a lovely tradition with the tree ornament! If I remember, I'll buy one for my parents this year.

I admit I'm a bit scared of the IP as I've never used a normal pressure cooker, neither has my mum. I'll be very careful, and I hope I won't have to buy more electricity to run it.

I'm not so much an usherer, I'm hoping for quiet jobs in the archiving rooms and the garden. There were however many older ladies who seemed to have no problem commanding groups of tourists around. I'd be totally scared someone would break sth or maybe slip sth into their pocket while I'm on duty.

>204 richardderus: Including Canada from where the UK company imported, it's even 4. Or are they made in the US, then brought to Canada.... aaargh! :))

In good German tradition my parents always decorated the night before the 24th and then locked the living room all day, telling me that the Christ child (little girl with golden locks) and the angels were busy preparing everything. When the poor Christ child and her helpers left after hours and hours, they (my dad) rang a little bell and Christmas started. Which has, errrr....., nothing to do with the birth of Jesus at all. :)

Nowadays we decorate about a week earlier to enjoy the tree longer and my parents fight about the lights every single year. It's fun watching. :)

>201 Deern: Which of Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbooks do you currently own, Nathalie?

>206 kidzdoc: I own "Plenty". I checked both the sequel and yours yesterday and I'll get the latter. The meat and fish part are small enough, and the recipes are really simpler that in the second vegetarian book. It'll be difficult getting the more exotic spice mixtures, but everything sounds super-yummy. It isn't available here yet, so I'll get the UK Kindle version which uses metric measures.

Morning Nathalie. You and Darryl have convinced me re Plenty. Hopefully there will be a Xmas deal!

>208 charl08: Morning Charlotte, "Plenty" is an older vegetarian recipe book I bought in 2014 to help me through the first meat-free months. I cooked many of its recipes and with one exception (sth with a too sweet curried cauliflower) everthing was delicious.

Darryl's (and now also mine) new one is Ottolenghi Simple which has also some meat and fish recipes and a shorter list of ingredients, as many people criticized "you have to buy too much exotic stuff", also a constant lament in the guardian forum when an Ottolenghi recipe is published.
looking through the recipe list, I'd say over 80% are vegetarian in this new book as well.

Happy Sunday, Nathalie. You did some great reqading. Glad to hear you enjoy your freischütz project. it looks like you've lots of fun.

>209 Deern: Thanks Nathalie, I thought I should probably start with an early one. I'll see how I get on.

>210 Ameise1: I’m still waiting for them to call me, but they’re probably taking a very well-deserved seasonal break and won’t start with the preparations before Jan.

>211 charl08: Sounds like a good plan :)

******
Parents arrived yesterday, fortunately there wasn’t much snow in the mountains and none here. They came to my place for tea and this time were nice about it, even called it gemuetlich/ cosy. We went to the Xmas market after they’d checked into the hotel and to a restaurant to eat some hot soup when it got too cold for my mum. I hope she didn’t catch anything. Today they’re going shopping in Merano and tomorrow, when I have the day off, we’re planning to go to Bolzano. They return home on Wednesday, a short visit this time.

My parents are back home. I was in a very low mood yesterday which I guess was also caused by my last very unhappy reads. I need something light next.

104. Warum wir Hunde Lieben, Schweine essen und Kühe anziehen/Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows by Melanie Joy

It’s a good book, but it has the effect of a Pandora’s box that extends by far the subject of meat-eating and animal welfare by looking at the psychological processes behind all kinds of ideology. Of course it has a strong emphasis on animal rights and doesn’t shy away from all the usual slaughterhouse stories, but my mind immediately transferred the theories to politics, arms dealing, etc. If you read this unprepared, just out of curiosity, it might throw you into a whirl of information you can’t process – and the most likely reaction will be a total shut-down, probably early in. Think “The Matrix” and those two pills. This is why I can’t really recommend it. I wanted a nice book on vegetarianism for my parents so they’d stop worrying, and this certainly isn’t the book for them.

Something I personally liked: the book is based on evidence/ studies from the US, but the footnotes show the relevance for Europe/ Germany. I remember when I first read “Fast Food Nation” many years ago and everyone told me “that’s the US, they don’t have animal welfare regulations like us”. That was partly a well-meaning lie, partly the situation here has turned so much worse, and nowadays the differences are very small, if existing.

Rating: 4.2

105. Don’t let my past be your future by Harry Leslie Smith

This one gets a high political rating from me, although it is written with miles of pathos on top. Actually, my reaction to it was interesting. We’re used to politicians using loads of pathos, but it’s usually the conservatives. The more extreme they turn, the thicker the pathos gets. It's new for me to hear it similarly used from the other side.
Don't get me wrong: I don’t doubt HLS’s history of extreme poverty in the time of the Great Depression and into WWII at all. I might have doubts that it really can be compared to today’s poverty (yet), but we’re well on the way. Later in the book he admits that the paradisiacal post-war welfare state he’s mentioning again and again wasn't even close to where it should have gone.

But whatever I might have to criticize formally: we need politicians who get people to return to solidarity with each other. I haven't heard of HLS before, I got the BB from Richard's thread and actually it was the last push I needed to join a party. This is a heartfelt, heartbreaking account of someone who has seen the worst and really doesn't want it to happen again, someone who is stunned and bewildered by what is happening now everywhere, because it seemed vanquished just a couple of years ago. He's using strong colors and repetitions to bring it home, but maybe that's what is needed nowadays to show people that the "days of glory" the extreme right wants us to return to were always only glorious for the upper class, never for the ordinary people.

Rating: 4.5 stars

>213 Deern: #105 Happy I was of service to you, dear lady.

More moody literature:

106. Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds
This was a BB from the Guardian, and I wanted to read some more graphic novels this year. Well, I keep finding them hard to process. Somehow the mix of sparse language and strong illustrations, usually together with unhappy stories, really depresses me. This was described as a very free and dark take on the Christmas Carol. Well, it’s set around Christmas and Cassandra certainly behaves a bit like Scrooge. And the story around her niece Nicky who lives in her downstairs apartment and gets involved with a good-looking guy with very dangerous connections is quite dark, especially the beginning. The illustrations are great, so close to life that I often didn't want to see what happens next. Had this been a TV show, I'd have switched channel until the bad bits are over. The ending felt a bit forced, I didn’t get Cassandra’s motivation for doing what she did.

I shouldn’t read GNs, maybe they aren’t my medium if they always throw me into a despondent mood. They feel way too personal.

Rating: 4 stars because I quite liked it, it just made me sad.


107. The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
This was my second JB after The Sense of an Ending and the second one where I didn’t enjoy the writing. I guess he just isn’t my author. This is also the second book that leads you back to the beginning, like it wants you to read the first chapter again. I didn’t do it last time and I’m not doing it now.

When I compare this Shostakovich account and Greenberg’s, I prefer the latter. Maybe this one is biographically better researched, but it concentrates on certain periods in S’s life when he was under extreme threat from the Soviet leaders, and we don’t see much else. It is all quite painful and full of self-contempt. Basically, it’s all there is. But there are friends, neighbors, family, so from time to time there must have been a different Shostakovich, there must have been the odd moment when he was happy. I don’t know how to express it, but Greenberg’s lectures felt like a musical biography, this felt like Julian Barnes. I learned some interesting facts from this book, but all the inner musings… maybe they’re authentic, after all there were diaries turned into books which Barnes used. But it feels more like fiction than I expected, in a voice/ style I didn’t terribly enjoy. I also hadn’t expected he’d leave out the time in Leningrad during the war, but he wanted to use that little trick with the 12year distances and the leap year, so it’s 1936, 1948 and 1960 we mainly look at.

In the end, Greenberg’s lectures made me want to listen to Shostakovich’s music. Barnes’ book wants me to close the lid on it. Which I won’t do, on the contrary, I’m currently watching “The Nose” on YT and listening to symphonies 1-3 (always in bits to get used to them). I’m glad I had those lectures before the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

>215 Deern: Thank you again :) *smooch*

My Instant Pot arrived yesterday, spent a night at the office and moved in with me today. I‘ll test it with some brown rice and chickpeas over the weekend.

>216 Deern: Oh dear...brown rice...have you been especially terrible this year, that you're trying to atone for your sins before Santa strikes you off the Good Troupers List forever? I haven't heard of any genocidal attacks on people there in the Italian Tyrol...no mass poisonings or releases of nuclear waste into the water supply...whatever horror you committed surely can't be so awful as to require that you consume *shudder* brown rice as a self-punishment! Have a delicious curried risotto with ceci!

>215 Deern: Sorry you didn't like The noise of time better, Nathalie.
The book is probably more Barnes than Shostakovich. I liked they way he made me feel the terror of the Stalin era.

Glad it didn't stop you from listening to Shostakovich :-)

(BTW your link goes to an other book).

IP testrun with 750 ml water was... Well, I think it worked. Not sure if the valve behaved as it was meant to. I have zero experience with pressure cookers and I‘m wondering if preheating takes so long and de-steaming as well, is the advantage all in the vitamins? Now the soaked chickpeas are in.

>217 richardderus: Richard, this is really embarrassing, but I have a confession to make (and so shortly after the „being a hun“ thing): I love brown rice. With nothing on it, just from the pot. I even asked my mum to make it when I was a kid. And to use whole meal in pancakes and fill them with Brussel sprouts. I also loved spinach and disliked meat. I‘m weird. :(

And if anyone ever wondered if that whole grain stuff makes you thin: no, it doesn‘t. I overeat on it all the time. But there‘s one wholemeal thing I hate and that‘s pasta. It always gets soggy and sticky and tastes like cardboard. And I‘d never make a risotto with brown rice, I like it just plain.

>218 FAMeulstee: Thank you, I corrected the link.
I‘m glad I read the book, but it manifested as „what Barnes thought S. must have been thinking“.
It got me to search for „The Nose“, and I found that English performance in the Sydney Opera House, wonderful!

IP is hissing. Is it meant to hiss? :/
I don‘t want to send it back to the UK!

If you notice more typos in the last days, I finally substituted my old broken ipad mini with a new, bigger one (the cheapest version, and it was on offer), and the keyboard is a bit different, haven‘t got used to it yet.
Otherwise I‘m happy with the bigger screen and waste my free time playing stupid search games and picross.
Oh, it‘s way better with graphic novels!

The week was crazy workwise, no lunch break walks because no lunch breaks, and I‘ll go to the office for a couple of hours tomorrow as well to make sure I get everything done next week and can leave on Saturday. Tonight‘s the big Xmas party, but I cancelled. Don‘t feel like celebrating my work this year, and I‘d have to drive anyway.
So I‘ll be by myself tonight with mushy chickpeas, brown rice and some champagne. :)

Oh, I already got all 3 pears from the scavenger hunt and found today‘s all on my own! I‘m terrible with those things (I think it‘s a language issue, can‘t do crossword puzzles in English or Italian either) :)

Congrats on surpassing 100 books!

>219 Deern: ...my dear, my dear...I am saddened to learn of this odd deformity in your sensory systems. Brown rice is simply unacceptable as human food, as is maize, quinoa, as are *shudder* yams and açaí berries...really very few things when one thinks about it. I hadn't thought of that sprouts presentation! Sounds very tasty to me. I like sprouts in a chicken stock/dill/sour cream sauce and your Hunnish way of eating them makes that sound extra good!

I haven't found a leafy green I don't like. The one I like that confuses most people is dandelion greens. "Löwenzahn" in German? Anyway, these:

Raw, sautéed, made into soup...don't care, love 'em. And meat, well, meat of some sorts isn't very nice at all, so hey! On balance, we're in agreement.

oh, and a hearty "hear, hear" to your tablet! Best way to view any graphic storytelling medium hands down. Sending hugs!

Update: that was WAY easier and quicker than test-steaming water. 20 mins „normal pressure“ in the bean program and they‘re almost too well done. Venting was much easier this time as well! So yes, I‘m quite happy right now with my IP! :D

>222 figsfromthistle: Thank you! So happy I got there again! :)

>223 richardderus: Erm yes, I also like quinoa and millet (as breakfast with raisins, almonds, walnuts, spices and pomegranate seeds on top); amaranth less so, never tried acai and yams. Is maize polenta? They have it here with cheese and porcini, if possible cooked over fire in an iron pot. Very tasty, but the portion sizes are crazy.
Ha, I forgot to buy brown rice! Now it‘s curried basmati from the traditional pot, and of course I let it boil over...

Dandelion! :D I had to learn to like most greens, but now it‘s the bitterer the better!

*****
Those chickpeas not from a can do taste like chicken, interesting! :o

Maize (urp):


Amaranth, millet, all them ancient grains can just stay dead'n'buried for all of me. The exception is that I prefer einkorn to modern wheat with its overabundance of gluten. Einkorn flour, made by Italy's finest Jovial Foods, is something I get via internet order since my local store won't carry it. It is quite a bit more expensive than ordinary wheat flour, but I don't get upset stomachs from einkorn bread. My bread machine died a while ago but I'm learning to use the crockpot for baking. So far it's worked fine. I'm building up to making a loaf of bread in it.

Ceci can be so different when one starts with dried, or fresh, instead of canned. I do use the canned ones to roast for snacks.

>227 richardderus: I‘m a bread junkie, and einkorn (or other older grains with less gluten) are surprisingly hard to find here.
I had dark brown einkorn whole meal pasta once (from Austria I think) which had the same issue as all whole meal pasta. Cooking time was 4 minutes and it was cardboard texture. The high protein content of modern wheat gives me problems too. I‘ve tried umpteen times to reduce my bread intake, but it‘s way harder than watching meat, dairy, cheese.

That website is fantastic! And the villa!! And they do cooking classes!!! I must save and book! Their store finder is a bit bumpy though, maybe they‘re specialized on export. I submitted a request.

Sprouts in a pancake? Oh no. I can only eat them fried with bacon (and tbh, would be happier with just the bacon).

Congrats on the new tech, hope it makes posting easier now the digital gates have come down in the office.

>229 charl08: German type pancake, not sweet, pan-size and a bit thicker than a crepe. They can be filled with whatever (jam/nutella for dessert, cheese/veggies, etc for lunch) and rolled up. I loved them with whole meal flour, filled with sprouts or broccoli and just a bit of cheese. Given that my mum worked in a school snack bar and would happily have fed me hot dogs or cheese sandwiches for lunch every day, I was a weird child demanding my veggies instead.

My grandma used to make the sprouts with bacon as well, and lots of stiff white sauce and nutmeg. Totally unhealthy because boiled to death, but Christmassy-yummy.

Booked my train tickets for the holidays. Yes, going to travel environment-friendly this time though that isn't the main reason. I'd wish for a quite trip with much reading time, but given the dates and that it was impossible to get an aisle seat for the return, I'm most probably in for a packed train where I won't know where to put my luggage. Driving up in the car would be nicer, but driving back on the 30th with everyone else going skiing over New Year's Eve would be a nightmare, I'd lose a full day on those 300kms. And travelling 1st class will still cost me less than the gas and multiple road tolls.

Went to work yesterday for a couple of hours, returned via the Xmas market, then settled on the comfy chair with first coffe, then chai tea, then a small glass of whisky which went well with my book,

108. Raven Black by Anne Cleeves
I normally avoid mystery series, or better try not to get soaked into their world and become hooked, but here I'll dive right into the next one. The setting in the Shetlands is lovely and perfect for a winter read (it's also set in winter). I didn't guess the killer for a second the latest killer I mean, the one for the older case was quite obvious which was a great plus. And I got interested in the private lives of the surrounding characters, which almost never happens. The detective has some minor, totally average life issues, isn't addicted to drugs or alcohol or otherwise challenged, nor is he some kind of misunderstood genius. This is such a relief nowadays. There's a possible future love interest, but no star-crossed-lovers drama, it's all very down to earth. I want to see how everyone's lives go on, so I'll continue.

Rating: 4.2 stars which in my world is a very high mystery rating

>231 Deern: I'm so glad you loved Jimmy Perez. It's one of my favorite series!

>231 Deern: Oh my, yes, the sounds a happy reader makes are wonderfully sweet to the inward-facing ear. *smooch*

>181 Deern: -- corgis don't need coats ever! They have thick wolfy double coats! People are so silly!

So glad you loved The Hare with the Amber Eyes. Me too!

I also can't "get into" Julian Barnes

I like the Anne Cleeves books but I got fed up at some point when someone died, mercifully forgotten now, and I though it was just a bit too much.

>232 thornton37814: :))
I wasn't even aware of the series until I looked into reviews today. Must check if we have it in Italy, most probably with some silly title.

>233 richardderus: *return smooch* already half into #2

>234 sibylline: It's never really that cold in Merano, but Italian tourists come to the Christmas markets with their dogs (bad enough given the crowds) and dress them either elegantly or "originally", which is usually army clothes for mini dogs or Santa-like coats for big dogs. Poor things.

"Hare" was one of this year's big winners! :D

Crazy work week, my LT time is quite restricted to clicking the scavenger hunt at 6am to give myself a bit of a success experience early in the morning by finding the new pear quickly. Makes work a bit less frustrating. Counting the hours to 6pm tomorrow when I‘ll hopefully be off for the holidays.

>230 Deern: We used to do savoury pancakes at home as a kid but they were never particularly successful - everyone just wanted to get to the lemon and sugar ones. Your sprout sauce almost sounds tempting...

>236 Deern: Fingers crossed Nathalie!

Pear #9 was hard to find, but fun!

>237 charl08: My mum filled the sweet ones often with a mix of quark and jam to add some freshness. Nerer tried them with lemon. Now I want pancakes! Well, orange fennel salad will have to do for lunch.
Those sprouts were SO good, but I'd never cook them that way. It's all in the memories. :)

4.5 hours....

******
Everyone here in the office had the first bout of "the cold" (it's URI if I remember well?) but me, and last night my throat started scratching, just in time for the holidays. Well, can't be changed. If it comes, I just hope I won't give my mum bronchitis for Christmas.

No other news, no reading at all. Hoping for a nice spacious and quiet compartment tomorrow, at least on the way out.

Find the Light—Reflect the Light—Be the Light

Happy Yule 2018!

>238 Deern: 1.5 hours to go now, I think ;-)
I hope you don't catch the cold, Nathalie, or that your time off comes just in time to prevent real illness.

Finish in style and have a glorious holiday, (((((Nathalie)))))! Stay healthy so that you can enjoy your well-deserved time off. Meanwhile, you're really making me want A. Cleeves, and I have#1.

Hoping your holidays are filled with good friends and good books

Hope you have a great time with the family - have a wonderful and peace filled Christmas break. X

Happy Holidays Nathalie!

(Or in other words, Happy Christmas, to you and yours!)

Thank you Richard, Peggy, Lynda, Bekka, Rachel and Rhian. :)

Very slowly starting making the rounds today. Can‘t believe it‘s that time again and the new year thread frenzy is just waiting around the corner.

My train ride was very unquiet yesterday, didn‘t read a line. Had a very nice and chatty women with little daughter in my compartment, and in 3 hours, we exchanged life stories, phone numbers and even little gifts (she got my mini anti-stress ball from my advents calendar which she needed more than I did).

Parents picked me up in Kufstein/ Austria, we went grocery shopping, then spent much time in the parking garage because my dad had accidentally bumped into a parked car and we had to call the police as the owner didn‘t turn up. My parents were much stressed out after that, but after a cup of tea we decorated the Christmas tree, had a pizza and went downstairs to their neighbors‘ pre Xmas party where I met some other neighbors. All such nice people, it was lovely!

>240 FAMeulstee: I hope so too, Anita. Have a bit of a headache this morning, but that might be the weather. It’s warm and raining, so the typical Christmas weather for Germany.
Well, at least I made it through that last working day.

Happy holidays, Nathalie. xxx

Merry Christmas from Philadelphia, Nathalie!

How nice that you made a new friend on the train, Nathalie. I sure wish we could be friends in person but I do treasure our LT friendship. Enjoy the holidays with your parents!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays, Nathalie. I liked your story of meeting a stranger on the train:-)

Hi everyone, I‘m back in Merano and back at work.
Thank you for leaving Christmas wishes, Barbara, Paul, Darryl, Donna, Lucy, Ella! :))

Quite uneventful train ride yesterday, they just had to change the locomotive in Innsbruck as it was snowing so hard. Not a single snowflake here, it has been sunny and dry for weeks and will stay that way for a while longer.

Had a good time with my parents, although my mum had the usual problems. I was sad to leave, but after a week it always becomes a balance act with my mum‘s moods and her attacks. She can‘t (won‘t) help it, but it gets increasingly difficult for the people around her. Saturday with my cousin and his wife and kids was lovely, we shared so many memories of his late parents and our grandparents.

I stepped on my reading glasses the second day and broke them. They were on the bathroom floor because I was planning to read while drying my hair (long hair, so with the head down and a book on the floor...). As a result, I just read a couple of stories with my dad‘s too strong glasses and instead spent hours with my new ipad doing stupid puzzles.

No plans at all for tonight, I love my quiet NYEs. I‘ll cook a carrot soup and drink some champagne, and for tomorrow I‘m planning the usual early walk.

Last year I ignored the new group until Jan 1st and will do the same this year. The frenzy is great, but I can‘t manage it after the quiet holidays. I might even start my thread with a couple of days delay and might not manage to star and visit everyone before the weekend. Have to see how work goes with the new invoicing regulations in place.

Wishing ((((((((((you all)))))))))) from here

Einen Guten Rutsch (a happy slide) into 2019, have a great start into the new year, and always Happy Reading!!!

Glad your Christmas went (mostly) well, Nathalie and I'm looking forward to starring your 2019 thread when you make it!

Happy new year, Nathalie!

See you in the 2019 group :-)