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Leipzig
December is always a good time to visit Leipzig, because it is this time of the year that Christian von Aster's famous Christmas Reading takes place. This time it was under the Motto "Buchstabensuppenkasperletheater" (loosely translated: Letter Soup Punch & Judy Show") and the decoration was aptly chosen.
Christian von Aster's big entrance
The reading was a blast even though our dear artist was labouring under a severe cold. I of course used this opportunity to complete my collection with books and accessories which were released while I was away. At the end I had my bags were filled to the brim ;).
On Sunday I had the chance to accompany Christian to his reading in Chemnitz and thus I got two events for the price of one! ;)
All pictures from Leipzig can be seen in my webalbum.Labels: Book, Christian von Aster, christmas, city trip, leipzig
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777 books
Since November 15th, 2006 I have cataloged 777 books on Librarything. 288 of which I have read since that day, that's 2.2 books per week. The rest are books that are stored on my bookshelves which I had read previously.
The 777th book cataloged is Fables Vol. 10: The Good Prince by Bill Willingham.
The Good Prince is the tenth installment of Fables, a graphic novel series about characters from various fables which had been exiled from their Homelands by an evil emperor and have found a refuge in modern day New York. Unfortunately, they cannot spend their days in peace as the enemy threatens a total war to annihilate the colony. The stories are full of adventure, humor and strangely believable story lines. In this issue the tale of Prince Ambrose, or as all Fables know him Flycatcher the Janitor, is recounted and how he has to face many perils to finally avenge his family. This book is one of the best so far and an absolute joy to read with an epic story, romance and many surprises. I can highly recommend Fables and The Good Prince to anyone interested in graphic novels and modern fairy tales.Labels: Book
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Last Read Sideboard updated
Librarything published new fancy widgets, one of which found it's way into my blog's sideboard, where you can see the last five books I've read including rating and review (if available). A good reason to sometimes stop by my blog ;)Labels: Book, metablog
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Read: Modern Magic
Living in the US has one big advantage, I can take part in LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program, which gives away advanced readers copies based to interested members. Members can sign up for the program and select books they would be interested in to read. The books are then assigned based on an algorithm which takes the titles in the members library into account and tries to find the closest matches. So far I received four books and all were worth my time.
Here's my review for the latest book I received, Modern Magic by Anne Cordwainer:
"An intriguing story set in modern times with sorcerers living amongst ordinary people and yet dealing with their own sort of problems. The main characters are the siblings John, a highly gifted magician, and Liz, who doesn't have any magical talent at all, and they regularly exchange the role as first person narrator. This gives the reader some interesting insights into the dilemma that can arise when two world views and the truths they take for granted clash. The book is split into different episodes, which are often set months or up to a year apart, which allows us to see how John and Liz react to the changing world around them and how they try to deal with the different crises that always seem to spring up where they are. Interesting till the last page and well worth a read if you want to discover an alternative to Harry Potter's magical world."
Rating: 4.5 out of 5Labels: Book, Literature
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Book Meme
As seen in Rico's Blog:
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
This happens to be The Discworld's Graphic Novels, which I just started today. This puts me in front of a couple of problems:
- The book doesn't have page numbers
- Page 56 (manually counted) only has two sentences
So I'll just take the fifth sentence from the 57th page (I might have miscounted after all):
"Don't Say It!"
Mysterious... next!Labels: Book, Fun, Literature
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21 vs. Bringing Down the House
Bringing Down the House, the true story of six MIT students who won millions of dollars playing Black Jack in Vegas, has been lying around my room for several months. With the upcoming movie release I decided to give it a go. I was positively surprised by the book, especially by its honesty (regarding the motivations and opinions of the main characters) and its suspense.
The movie on the other hand was pretty good but not as dazzling as the book. To be frank the movie wasn't as much based on the book but rather loosely inspired by it. The main topic, students going to Vegas to play Black Jack was of course present, but almost all the surrounding story was changed. What I liked most were Kevin Spacey's performance, he did a very good job portraying a greedy professor, and the scenes in Vegas. On the other hand the whole moralizing throughout the movie and the robot competition were the weakest parts.
If the movie awoke your interest in Black Jack and if you would like to discover more about their strategy and what really happened in Vegas, then you should definitely read the book.Labels: Book, Literature, movie
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Zwerg und Überzwerg by Christian von Aster
Just finished Christian von Aster's Zwerg und Überzwerg and liked it a lot. Since it is only available in German so far I'll also post a German review here.
For hundreds of years the dwarves have led more or less peaceful lives and focused on prospecting and drinking beer. If only the women hadn't all vanished during the last Great War they could even look optimistically into the future. But then dark portents appear: the black sliver spider, the dwarf who doesn't drink any beer and a dwarf with gold teeth. All Omens of a dark prophecy which predicts the end of all dwarves. Has the end really arrived or is it just part of a dark conspiracy?
The book is a pleasure to read. The humorous anecdotes about dwarf history and the enthralling story which progresses at a high pace make this novel a real page turner. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy with a humorous touch.
GERMAN:
Die Zwerge führten während hunderten von Jahren ein mehr oder weniger friedliches Leben und beschäftigten sich mit Ihren Lieblingbeschäftigungen: Rauchen, Trinken und Gold zählen. Und wenn im letzten grossen Krieg nicht alle Frauen verschwunden wären, hätten sie sogar optimistisch in die Zukunft blicken können. Doch plötzlich tauchen dunkle Omen auf die als Vorboten der Prophezeiung des Untergangs von Zwerg und Zwergeszwerg gelten: Der Zwerg der nicht trinkt, der Zwerg mit dem goldenen Gebiss und die schwarze Splitterspinne. Ist dies tatsächlich der Anfang des Endes aller Zwerge oder ist dies das Werk einer verschwörerischen Gruppierung die einen Machtwechsel anstrebt?
Christian von Aster schafft es einmal mehr eine fantastische Geschichte abzuliefern die sowohl sehr unterhaltsam als auch spannend bis zur letzten Seite ist. Humorvolle Anekdoten über die Geschichte der Zwerge und eine mitreissende Handlung gehen Hand in Hand und sorgen für ein sehr kurzweiliges Lesevergnügen. Ein absoluter Pflichtkauf für alle Freunde humorvoller Fantasy.Labels: Book, Christian von Aster, Literature
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LibraryThing's Top 106 Unread Books
As you may have noticed I'm a small bibliophile and thus I was intrigued by the idea of checking how many of the Top 106 Unread Books on Librarything I have already read or plan to read in the near future. "Unread" in Librarything means that these books are on the shelves of members but haven't been read yet.
The way it works: Bold books you've read, italicize books started but unfinished and strikethrough books you've hated. An asterix is for books read multiple times, while underline is for books that are on your "to read" list.
And here's my take on the current list (Numbers in parentheses are the number of users who have tagged this book unread):
- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236)
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211)
- One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183)
- Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176)
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (162)
- Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller (158)
- The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155)
- Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152)
- The Odyssey by Homer (136)
- The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (136)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (135)
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (132)
- War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (132)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (124)
- A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (124)
- The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (120)
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville (119)
- The Iliad by Homer (117)
- Emma by Jane Austen (117)
- Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115)
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (114)
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (110)
- The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (108)
- Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen (108)
- The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (108)
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (106)
- The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (106)
- The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger (105)
- Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (105)
- Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (104)
- Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (102)
- Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco (101)
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (100)
- The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99)
- A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (97)
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (97)
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (97)
- Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (96)
- Middlemarch by George Eliot (96)
- Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen (96)
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (95)
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (94)
- The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (94)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (93)
- Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson (92)
- American gods : a novel by Neil Gaiman (92)
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (91)
- The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (91)
- Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West… by Gregory Maguire (90)
- A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce (89)
- The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (89)
- Dune by Frank Herbert (89)
- The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (88)
- Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift (88)
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (88)
- The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (87)
- The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (84)
- The inferno by Dante Alighieri (84)
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (83)
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (83)
- To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (83)
- A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess (83)
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (83)
- The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon (83)
- Persuasion by Jane Austen (82)
- One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (82)
- The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (82)
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (82)
- Anansi boys : a novel by Neil Gaiman (81)
- The once and future king by T. H. White (81)
- Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (80)
- The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (80)
- A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (79)
- Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood (78)
- Dubliners by James Joyce (78)
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (78)
- Angela's ashes : a memoir by Frank McCourt (77)
- Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (77)
- Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (76)
- The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (75)
- In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its… by Truman Capote (75)
- Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence (73)
- A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole (73)
- Les misérables by Victor Hugo (73) *
- Watership Down by Richard Adams (72)
- The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (72)
- The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (72)
- Beowulf : a new verse translation by Anonymous (72)
- A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (71)
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into… by Robert M. Pirsig (71)
- The Aeneid by Virgil (71)
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (69)
- Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (69)
- The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (69)
- The road by Cormac McCarthy (67)
- Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt (67)
- The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding (67)
- The book thief by Markus Zusak (67)
- Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (66)
- The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (66)
- Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (66)
- Candide, or, Optimism by Voltaire (65)
- Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro (65)
- The plague by Albert Camus (65)
- Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (65)
- Cold mountain by Charles Frazier (64)
*) I've only read an extremely abridged version in school, thus I cannot count it as read ^^Labels: Book, Literature
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
After seeing the Final Cut of Blade Runner I decided the time has come to read the original novel. Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'. However, the term loosely based would be more appropriate.
Both the movie and the novel have the same starting situation and roughly the same plot. Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter is called in to track down a couple of androids who illegally landed on earth. His research takes him to a multinational company who manufactured these androids, where he hopes to prove the effectivity of the test used to detect these androids.
An analysis of the differences could fill a book all by itself, but I’ll try to cover some of the important ones.
Most importantly the world that the story is set in: Whereas Blade Runner shows us a future where overpopulation is still a problem and even though people might not be happy it is still possible to live on earth. In the novel earth is a wasteland, which is covered by a radioactive cloud caused by a devastating World War and thus most people have fled to colonies on Mars and other planets. To make life more bearable on earth the people have turned to Mercerism and empathy boxes, which simulate feelings.
The character of Rick Deckard also shows significant differences. Whereas in the movie he is a loner, a retired and respected bounty hunter who is called in because of the severity of the situation, he is married in the novel and more importantly always standing in the shadow of Dave Holden, the best bounty hunter in the city, he is only charged with this case because Holden was almost killed by one of the androids.
With all these differences it is surprising to find sequences in the book that have found their way into the movie almost unchanged, and even more surprising, when the consequences of these scenes stand in complete contrast.
What I’m trying to say with this is that I loved the book and that it is a worthy read even if you have seen the movie. You might even enjoy the story more knowing what happened in the movie.Labels: Book, Literature, movie
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House Infernal by Edward Lee
My Christmas present slowly starts to pay dividends ;). Late last year I signed up to the Cemetary Dance Book Club, one book a month from Cemetary Dance Publications. Recently, I just finished the first two books, and they're both brilliant.
First was The Folks 2 by Ray Garton, a thrilling novella about an incestuous family.
Next was House Infernal by Edward Lee, for which I want to post a short review here:
"All Venetia Barlow wanted to do in her summer break was to earn a couple of extra credits by helping to restore St. John's Prior House. But then she starts hearing voices... from Hell, and slowly she discovers the many secrets the Prior House has hidden so well over the years.
A terrific novel which combines a lot of with well-thought-out descriptions (Mephistopolis, the city in Hell with it's different districts is a very fine example) and a suspenseful storyline with steadily mounting tension until the story concludes in a brilliant finale, but be warned, on the way you'll encounter a couple of unexpected developments.
I finished the second half of the book in one sitting, it was way too gripping to put down."Labels: Book, Literature
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Book Tip: JPod by Douglas Coupland
Funny, absurd and unconventional are words that describe JPod very well. The story focuses on Ethan and his co-workers situated in a dead-end part of a software company, the last person to leave this particular cubicle group died... A main part of the story are the strange things these guys come up with to find some distraction from work such as writing a love letter to Ronald McDonald or finding a wrong number in the first 100'000 digits of Pi. Those 100'000 digits are even printed, so the reader can search as well. Another unique thing about the book is it's design there are pages where the writing is minuscule others where a couple of catch phrases are supersized and take up almost all the page.
All in all it's been a very entertaining read and I'm definitely going to check out more of Coupland's work.
Rating: 4.5/5Labels: Book
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Book tip: Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Stardust tells the story of Tristran, who goes out into Faerie lands to search a fallen star. On the way he encounters witches, Unicorns, flying boats and many more strange creatures.
Neil Gaiman manages to present a dazzling fairy tale for adults, capturing the weirdness of Faerie as if he had been living there himself. Besides enjoying the terrific story there's another good reason to read the book now: The story was made into a movie and will be on the big screen in the second half of this year. Thus this is the perfect opportunity to let your imagination roam unbiased through Faerie.
Rating: 5/5
PS: I can't wait for the movie adaption :)Labels: Book
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
My timing was perfect, last Friday night on my way to the bookstore I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, thus ending my Big Reread in time for the latest Harry Potter volume. The "midnight" sale was scheduled for 1am (midnight UK-time), when I arrived at 12.20 there were already a lot of people waiting. Fortunately I had my voucher ready so I could stand in the faster queue. At 1am the doors of the Orell Füssli English Bookshop opened and the first fans could get their books. I had to wait till 1.20am till I finally got hold of my copy. Following an interview with TeleZüri I (you can spot me in the second news item [in Swiss German]) left for home. On my way I spotted people reading Harry Potter on every street corner.
Wanting to enjoy the book as much as possible I left myself enough time to read and did not try to read it in one go, as I had done when HP 6 first appeared; I hadn't managed it back then, falling asleep 50 pages from the end...
This latest volume is definitely the most action-packed of them all, from the first page there's always something going on; reading felt like riding a roller coaster. Nevertheless J.K Rowling manages to regularly interject valuable background information which moves the story along. As usual there are many surprises, red herrings and unexpected twists casting doubt on characters we come to have trusted over the last couple of books. In the end it feels like Harry's story came to a worthy close with most, if not all, open issues addressed and resolved. And even if there were some minor inconsistencies this is definitely my favorite Harry Potter book so far.Labels: Book, Literature
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The Big Re-Read
Summers coming closer and with it two highly anticipated book-releases. First, on July 5th "First Among Sequels" by Jasper Fforde, the fifth book in the Thursday Next series. And then on July 27th "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" the seventh and last Harry Potter book.
To get into the right mood I started rereading all books in those series before starting the newest one. So I now have close to two months time to read 4 Thursday Next and 6 Harry Potter books.
So far I'm on track, I've already finished "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and am one third through "The Eyre Affair".
You can keep an eye on my librarything sidebar to see how fast I progress ;)Labels: Book
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Bookparade
Last Monday, on the occasion of the UNESCO World Book Day, the Verein Leseförderung Schweiz 4xL and the School applied Linguistics organised the first Bookparade in Zürich.
I only learnt of this event 1 hour before from the free newspaper heute. For me as a bookworm it was clear that I had to participate :). The idea of the Bookparade was that every participant would bring his/her favourite book and walk reciting loudly from the main station to the Theater am Neumarkt. Being surprised by the event I didn't have a book at hand, but a short detour to Orell Füssli's English Bookshop solved that problem. My choice was Jasper Fforde's 'Something Rotten' the fourth adventure of Thursday Next and one I didn't yet have as a paperback.
About 200 people participated in the demonstration to promote reading. The procession was shortly halted at the Hirschenplatz where a poetry slammer recited an entertaining story about books. After the parade there was a festival at the Theater am Neumarkt where several authors read excerpts from their works. Unfortunately I had some things to finish at home and so I missed that part.
However, I'll be going back next year :)
Two videos have found their way into the net (here and here) maybe you can spot me there (I didn't have time yet to watch them myself).Labels: Book, Event
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More early works of Terry Pratchett
Just finished two more of Terry Pratchett's early works:
- Carpet People was originally published when Terry was innocent 17 years old. After his huge success with the Discworld novels he was asked to republish this story as well. He conceded, but only after rewriting it. So it's only in parts still his earliest work. But to the story. Did you ever think a carpet was a boring place? Think again, then it is home to Munrungs, Wights, Deftmenes, Pones and other wondrous people all worth paying attention to. The focus of the story are two brothers who, with their village in tow, travel to the capital to discover why no one arrived for the latest counting...
It's an appealing story about how to overcome differences in the face of a shared enemy and how even a single person can have an impact.
Compared to Terry's later works it is but a short story and therefore all the more worth reading.
- The Colour of Magic is the first book in his well known Discworld series and it introduces the concept of a flat world traveling through space on the back of four elephants which in turn stand on a giant turtle. The "heroes" of this story are the luckless wizard Rincewind who finds himself trying to protect Twoflower the Discs first ever tourist.
It's the first book in the series and that is apparent in some places, for example the characters of Death and the Patrician undergo quite a change in the later books. Nevertheless it is full of jokes and puns and as with every one of Terry's books I've read so far I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
Labels: Book, Terry Pratchett
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Read: The Deep. Life in the Abyss
Normally I don't post about books I read, because you can keep track of them through librarything ;). However, this book deserves a special mention.
The Deep. Life in the Abyss is an over sized illustrated book discussing marine life in the worlds oceans. The extremely informative articles are supported by absolutely stunning pictures. Just the pictures alone made the purchase worthwhile. After reading this tome one just wants to get into a submarine and go exploring :).Labels: Book
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