Friday night I attended a Céili, that's a traditional Gaelic/Irish social dance in Bern. There were about 150 people present and it was simply brilliant.
Saturday, I first wen to a Conforama to scout for a new couch and wardrobe and I did indeed find both in abundance. About four wardrobes suited my tastes and that after I have only found one in Fly, Ikea and TopTip. I should have gone to Conforama from the start! ;).
Home again I remembered that it was the Long Night of Short Stories. Browsing through the program, I noticed that most events were already over, but then I spotted something that sounded interesting. And so I ended up at the Razzia im Seefeld. This bar and place for culture was originally opened as a cinema in the 1920s with breathtaking wand murals. Over the years these have unfortunately been covered over but now it has been softly restored and some of it's old glory is shown again. But back to topic. Joey Goebel read from his new novel Commonwealth and it was hilarious! After the reading I couldn't stop myself and bought two books to get them signed ;).
Following the reading was a party with tunes selected by Joey, who is a former member of a small punk band, and so I ended up dancing late into the night again. ^^
On Sunday I almost overslept. It being the end of daylight saving time, I dutifully changed the time on my cellphone during the night that it would wake me on time. Unfortunately, the cellphone then changed the time on its own, which meant that it was now running one hour behind! Luckily, I woke up on my own, checked the cellphone and heard the church bells at the same time discovering the discrepancy and getting up in time to travel to Lenzburg.
In Lenzburg on the castle I attended another Medieval Dance course led by Andreas Rutschmann. I've visited his courses before and they were fun and instructive as always, even though I had danced most of the pieces before.
All in all it was a fantastic weekend and I'm looking forward to the next Céili, reading by Joey Goebel and Medieval Dance course. However, I wouldn't be mad if they weren't all on the same weekend! ;)
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 5
The best presents are the one you make to yourself ;). So when I walked into Phantom of the Attics Games, my favorite Game Store in Pittsburgh, I didn't hesitate to buy the long-awaited Munchkin Quest. At the cash register, I then noticed Monthy Python Fluxx, which I bought after studying two of the cards ;).
When I got home there were more surprises, the first package from Amazon.com with Absolute Sandman Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 was waiting for me!
And that's how the table for presents looked like:
Whilst wandering through Carnegie Mellon's main library I stumbled upon a book which caught my eye: Medieval Literature for Children. Here's a short review:
Medieval literature for children offers a fascinating look into the medieval ages. The book contains a collection of essays, each focusing on a different work from medieval times, discussing the origins and authors (if known) of the work, putting it into context as children's literature and finally giving a small excerpt of the work itself. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about life and literature in the Middle Ages.
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.
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.
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 ^^
Today is UNESCO World Book Day and to celebrate this the Bookparade was held in the old city of Zürich. Last year about 200 book aficionados took part in the first Bookparade.
This year the hopes were high to reach up to 500 people, with simultaneous Bookparades held in St. Gallen, Luzern and Biel. Unfortunately, Saint Peter had other plans and so it rained cats and dogs just when the Bookparade was about to start.
But die-hard book lovers cannot be stopped by rain and so around 50 people accompanied this second book parade which was accompanied by recitations from the Poetry Slammers Lara Stoll and Simon Chen.
And so it once again was a unique experience and I'm looking hoping that next time the sun will join our little parade again :)
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.
A very special reading took place yesterday evening in a unique place in Zurich. Franz Hohler was a guest in the Blind Cow, a restaurant where the customers are literally left in the dark. Sitting in complete darkness we were served by waitresses who were either completely or partially blind. Our food was delicious, once we found it on the plate ;). These surroundings added a special touch to Franz Hohler's reading, without any lights he recited stories and poems he knew by heart. These were a mixture of his own work and texts he remembers fondly. Franz Hohler also had his Cello along and played various pieces of music. All in all it was a magical evening, which is hard to grasp in words. Sitting in the complete dark listening to these stories and to the music; it felt like we were on a different world and as if Franz Hohler was only performing for me :). By the way, this was my second time in the Blind Cow (the first time was in April two years ago) and again it was a night to remember. I can highly recommend both the restaurant as well as their cultural events, they are one of a kind!
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.
"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."
Frank Darabont is well known for his excellent Stephen King's adaptions The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption and so the expectations regarding his newest King project were very high.
The movie had the look and feel of a B-Movie from the 80s (except for the cell phones), nevertheless I was very pleased with it. The story is almost identical to the original and focuses on the tensions which erupt in the supermarket between the realists and the a steadily growing group of religious fanatics. The monsters are more often than not vague shadows in the mist, which give them an especially surreal feeling. The biggest change to the original was the ending. At first I thought: "Shoot, not another happy ending", but on closer reflection I realized that this ending was much harder and more brutal than the original.
All in all a very good Stephen King adaption, which works good as a suspenseful horror movie as well as a study of human behavior under stress.
Now is a good time to see what I have done in the last year: - read 102 books - went 32 times to the cinema - went to 26 concerts / events - saw 3 Musicals (in the US) - saw 3 Theatrical Plays - visited 3 countries (Indonesia, Germany, USA) - collected 3 certifications
While I was entering all my books in my librarything catalog, I stumbled upon a cool idea. David Louis Edelman took all his book covers and created a photo-mosaic based on a picture of himself. Sounds good, thought I, and took a picture which related to my librarything nickname (pratchettfan). And this was the result:
Click to see the full-sized image (4.13 MB).
Cool, isn't it? :)
Meta-Info: 490 covers were used to create this 31 Megapixel mosaic.
Anstand, Ordnung, Sauberkeit - a festive buccaneer reading
After whiling away some more time at the Christmas market it was time make my way to the venerable Heinrich Budde Haus, the location of a pre-Christmas Buccaneer reading by Christian von Aster.
The event was accompanied by a fantastic buffet which was only topped by the length of the queue in front of it ;).
The reading itself featured a rough dozen new stories which sometimes had pirate or Christmas themes and so we learned how children grow up as pirates, the truth about Anstand, Ordnung, Sauberkeit, three vessels of a feared pirate, and where Santa Clause goes to perfect his 'HO HO HO'.
We also witnessed two songs from Christian's pirate CD project. However, this was a strange situation, the author sitting in front of us and all listening to a recording. Anyways, it's been an interesting sneak peek and I hope this project will see the light of day soon ^^.
All in all it was a very successful and enjoyable event, which compensated for minor technical glitches at the beginning and an overlong second part (another break in between was planned but then forgotten).
If you happen to be in Leipzig on 5th or 6th December 2008 you shouldn't miss Christian's next pre-Christmas reading!
As part of the Long Night of Short Stories Franz Hohler had a reading in a bookshop in Zürich. Following the theme of this festival he read short stories and poems centered around food. In between Hohler inserted one-minute slots where he read advertisements for food by supermarkets and even those were funny :). After the hilarious reading he offered to sign books, no matter from whom, so I got my copy of A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore signed by Franz Hohler *g*. The inscription he made was: "To sign another authors book is A Dirty Job!".
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.
I've just had the chance to discover the name and form of my daemon. A daemon is a part of one's soul and they are not visible in this world. However in Lyra's world, whose story can soon be seen on the movie screens, daemon's are part of everyday life.
My daemon's name is Aurora and she's a fox. By filling out the questionnaire below you can help to give my daemon it's final form :).
Edit: My Daemon likes changing forms; I've just spotted her in the form of a rabbit :)
