Germany & Book Haul!

This title gives the impression that these two things are separate. Really, they are one and the same. I went to Germany to visit a friend, and timed my visit to fall on the first Sunday of the month which is when a used book market is held in a town near her home.

My visit, at four nights in total, felt far too short. Also, it was apparently carnival time in the region. If I had know before hand, I would have definitely bought a fancy dress costume with me. Dressing up and drinking? Count me in!

But, enough of that. Lets talk about books!

My total number of books bought and received on this visit was... well, it was certainly more than I could fit in my ryanair restricted hand luggage! Especially considering I made the mistake of bringing four of my currently reading books with me*.

I managed to bring back seven books, which will be the ones I talk about. The ten or eleven I left behind will have to be the talk of another time.

Having recently lived the surprisingly exciting and empowering experience of reading Pride and Prejudice in Swedish, I bought the German translation, Stolz und Vorurteil. My German is nowhere near as good as my Swedish, but I know the story so well that it's like having a pop-up dictionary in my head. I've decided to make it a tandem read with another friend, and so we'll aim to read two chapters per week. However, she's already on chapter five, so I'll have to catch up with her first.

Next is Frostfeuer (Frost Fire**) by Kai Meyer. This book has been sitting on my 'to read' list for a while now, and as my friend had a copy, she lent it to me. I... am in all honestly, no longer sure what this book is about, which is a little embarrassing, if I'm honest. But, the blurb mentions a magic duel and a snow queen, and the writing generally makes me happy. Also, the cover has a lot of blue on it, which is nice. I probably shouldn't start reading this anytime soon, but that's never stopped me before. After all, I've only got 28 other books to work my way through!

Next on my shelves are the first, third and fourth books from the Pucki series by Magda Trott. These were purchased at the book fair for two euros each. They are in great condition, although they are obviously well aged. They remind me of my childhood favourites: the Little Women series and the What Katy Dids. The series is quite long running, and there were three other books at the market, but I wasn't much interesting in Pucki the happy bride, or Pucki the housewife or even Pucki and her three young boys - although I'm thinking I may regret my decision if that last is anything like Jo's Boys. I intend to make my way through these at some point, but they're quite old so I'm a bit wary of the difficulty.

The sixth and seventh books are also book market purchases. The sixth is a gorgeously bound book of poems. I'll be honest: I bought this books based on the cover, the fact that it is printed in that wonderful old German typeface and the fact that it contains a poem called 'Fieberträume' which, if I'm not mistaken, translates to 'Fever dreams'. For the interested, it is called Dreizenlinden by F. W. Weber. The title seems to mean 'Thirteen Lindens', and I would chance a guess and say that the poems are at least loosely religious. From my flick through, it doesn't seem to be completely opaque, which is always a plus. It was also only four euros. How could I pass it by?

The seventh and final book for this post is Die schönsten Märchen aus aller Welt, a collection of folk tales from all over the world. The majority of the tales are unlabled, and so can be assumed to be European. However, there are also tales from the Americas (one apiece), quite a few from Asia, and some from Africa. There is also one Inuit tale. I'll make my way through this fairly slowly, as I am to be taking part in a challenge to read one short story or tale per week, and I am woefully behind as I decided neither the stories from Sommarboken or The Cyberiad count. This'll do me until I buy Låt den gamla drömmarna dö by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

This has been a rather long post, but before I sign off I'd like to share the fact that while in Germany, I started knitting a sock, which I finished yesterday (Thursday) morning. Go me!

I've never knitted a sock before, or anything in the round, so I'm pretty proud of myself. This was definitely a learning process. Of course, it's only one sock. As soon as my fingers have recovered enough from five days of almost straight knitting on teeny tiny needles, I'll start the second one :D

Happy blogging, all
Little Newman

*For the interested, those four books are: Bone Jack by Sarah Crowe, The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, Die unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende and Tintenherz by Cornelia Funke. Bone Jack is the only one I see myself finishing this month, contrary to previous expectation, which also included The Cyberiad in that projection.

**The return of the extremely liberal translations... consider yourself warned!

January Wrap Up: Reading and Languages

As the title suggest, this January has been a mix of two things, and two things only. I have read much, and I have done a lot of language study... which most of the time has meant reading more and watching a cookery video or a quiz show every now and again. Who says learning languages isn't fun?

The two books that I reviewed are the only two that I finished this month: Sommarboken by Tove Jansson and Mio, min Mio by Astrid Lindgren. They were fantastic books, and I am pretty sure that they are widely translated, so I really recommend them.

Otherwise I have been slowly reading my way through Bone Jack by Sarah Crowe and The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem in English. These are both very great, very different books. Bone Jack feels like it straddles the border of middle grade and young adult fiction, a very dark coming of age story. I've been wanting to read it for a very long time, and it is not disappointing me thus far. The only problem is that I feel as though I have to draw it out. It would be so easy to gobble it up all in one sitting, but then I'd be finished and I don't think I'd be doing the book justice. The Cyberiad is wonderful - very silly, and very entertaining. A goodreads reviewer said that they wished they spoke Polish to enjoy all that word play in the original and I thought: 'Well, Polish has been on my hitlist for a while, now...'   But don't worry. I'm holding myself back.*

My foreign language 'currently reading' includes Pride and Prejudice, which I am racing through in Swedish translation, Tintenherz, which I am reading with the German Bookclub on A Language Learners Forum and Die unendliche Geschichte, which I am supposedly tandem reading with a friend. We are not so good at keeping on schedule. I am also intensively rereading through Kaninhjärta on ReadLang. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to read it on ReadLang before, but it has now, at the very least.

I guess that here is as good a place as any to put reading goals for February, so...

I hope that, by the end of February, I have finished reading both Bone Jack and The Cyberiad. I am still not sure what should be my next book. If I work through my bookshelf, the next thing should be Darkmans, which remains unfinished despite all of my good intentions. Otherwise, there are thousands** of books clamouring for my attention.

For the foreign language reads, I have no particularly ambitious goals, beyond finishing Stolthet och fördom, which will probably happen this week, and catching up with myself in my read-through of Kaninhjärta. I would also like to get back up to speed with Die unendliche Geschichte, and keep up to speed with Tintenherz. As I am going to both Sweden and Germany this month, I would like to buy at least one new book in both languages. But more on that later.

Happy Reading!
Little Newman

*For now.
**Exaggeration.