Conny's comments (member since Jun 16, 2008)

Conny's comments from the Books on the Nightstand group.

I have been reading away in the fall as much as I could, but I am teaching an overload this semester and there is basically no time left for reading. At the moment, I am reading by Nicola Keegan. I am not sure, but I think Anne might have talked about it, and I really like it so far. I also put back on my nightstand. It's interesting and an easy read.

There are no Indie bookstores where I live either. The next one, I know of is in Austin which is more than an hour away. However, my in-laws live not far from Denver, so I will get to go to the Tattered Cover again. What a wonderful store. The last time I went, I spent several hours in there and had a wonderful time.

Congratulations

Shona wrote: "I have to say that all summer long I have had wonderful luck with the books that I've read..there have even been some of my favorite of all time...In the last couple of months I've had the privileg..."

I read Mudbound a few months back, and absolutely loved it. It is probably one of my favorites this year. I hope that you will enjoy it.

I started readingLittle Girls in Pretty Boxes The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters, and find it very well written and interesting. It is not for the first time that I read about the breaking of gymnasts and figure skaters, but it is more terrifying if you can put faces to the stories you have heard about. It makes me doubt professional sports in general, and I feel sad for the girls who work out on beams, uneven bars, etc and whose success seems to depend on the fact that they do not grow up to become women, but keep their childlike figures and weight.

Vanessa wrote: "Tanya wrote: " I finished THE ENGLISH PATIENT (by Michael Ondaatje) last night "

You must have liked it then if you are now reading the prequel and more by Ondaatje is on your to do list. Did yo..."

Vanessa, I also read THE CLIMB by Boukreev. It is very good as well and gives you a different perspective on the events at Mt. Everest in 1996. I can only recommend it.

Tanya wrote: "I just brought home three books from the library: THE HUNGER GAMES (by Suzanne Collins), THE HUNTER (by Richard STark) and, VAMPIRE$(by JOhn Steakley). But of course, the book that called out to me..."

I read the Hunger Games last year and now I am waiting for the sequel to come out in early September. I liked the book a lot, and I hope that you will enjoy it too.

I finished
My Forbidden Face Growing Up Under Thetaliban yesterday. It was a fast, but depressing read about life under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This morning I began reading Lene Gammelgaard's Climbing High A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy. She was in one of the expeditions to climb the Mount Everest in1996, when so many climbers died on their way up or down from the peak. Jon Krakauer and Beck Weathers wrote about the disaster as well. It is interesting so far.
In addition, I listen to a German audiobook that has been sitting on my shelf for months, and I really enjoy it.

Suzanne wrote: "I just finished The Girl Who Played with Fire as well. AWESOME. Do we have to wait until next year for the third book here in the US, or will I have to learn Swedish to get my hands on it sooner ..."

You could also learn German. The third part is already out in paperback in Germany and was displayed in every German bookstore window this year ;o))

Tanya wrote: "Books That Get You Out of a Reading Slump

It happens every once in a while, maybe even chronically... There are times when nothing appeals to you or you start a succession of books and nothing tak..."

Oh, I like that idea. I did not really get a lot of reading in this summer, and with college starting in about two weeks, and me teaching an overload in the fall, I will have even less time to read. I guess there were too many books on my tbr list and I was unable to make good choices. I started several and got stuck on all of them. So, help is greatly appreciated, and Tanya thanks for bringing up the wonderful idea.

I am still puzzled by it because it just is not the same story any longer, and I find that disturbing. Sorry that I babble on about this, but it just does not make sense. Why base a movie on a novel, if you want to tell a different story to begin with?!

I consider this category as the miscellaneous one where we put stuff that does not really fit anywhere else.
I went to see "My Sister's Keeper" at the movies this afternoon, and I was so disappointed. It has been a while since I read the book, but I had the feeling that too many things had either been sweitched around or added that were not in the book. Oh yes, and the end of the novel was completely changed in the movie. Can they really do it? Whad do you think, if a movie is based on a novel, should the end of the movie then be totally different from the end of the novel?

Just finished listening to Dakotaby Martha Grimes and Anthem by Ayn Rand. Dakota was okay, and the descriptions of industrialized agriculture in the form of thousands of pigs or cows or sheep herded together under horrible circumstances were interesting and should make any reader think. However, I did not like the main character Andi Oliver too much. She was depicted as someone who everybody falls in love with right away, and therefore everything she does seems to end successfully. I found that rather unrealistic. I have to meet a person yet who is all good, and never makes mistakes.
Anthem, on the other hand, will be one of my top reads for 2009, although this book was published a long time ago.
Whoever wants to learn something about the functioning of dictatorships needs to read this. And I truly hope that no government, regardless of the place, will ever be able to erase individualism to the extent Rand describes in this novel. Should there be a society where the word "I" has gotten lost, then that society is in serious trouble.

If I cannot get into a book, having it read to me sometimes makes it easier.

I started reading Outlander about three weeks ago. I am sure I will come back to it, but it did not hold my attention enough for me to just keep going. It seemed to be a little slow, but maybe my perspective will change somewhat when I will get back to the book.

I finished World Without End by Ken Follett and Beck Weather's Left For Dead. Both of them were good books. I started to listen to the first Harry Potter yesterday, and as an audiobook I find it a lot more bearable than as written text. I guess, I have never been interested enough in magic to thoroughly enjoy the book. But that's just me.
I also began reading Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas which is hilarious and very entertaining. As non-fiction I read a book about the events that led to the fall of the Berlin wall. It is my personal contribution to the twentieth anniversary of this event and part of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). Now, there is a nice German compound noun for you, as Mrs. Bennett would say :o))

My husband pointed out that I might not have worked in the free-market economy long enough, but the little glimpse I got at it as part-timer was good enough, not to want to read about it in a novel.

Peze,
Last summer I attempted to read "Then we came to the End" by Joshua Ferris. Everybody talked about it as a must-read. I did not like anything about the book. My husband offered to read it to me, but whenever we tried I fell asleep before he had finished the first paragraph.

I just finished Mudbound. What an excellent book! This is definitely on my favorite list for this year. It was so well written, I had a hard time putting it down. The descriptions of the various forms of racism and violence were rather disturbing and made me shake my head repeatedly, but this will be one of the books I will give friends and acquaintances to read.

I just finished Edith Hahn Beer's The Nazi Officer's Wife How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust. It is probably one of the best books by a Holocaust survivor I have ever read. She survived as a "U-Boat", i.e. under somebody else's name and by being married to a German officer. It is very interesting how she describes her life, but it is also fascinating to read her observations about the Germans in those days in general. Edith Hahn Beer herself is not German, but Austrian. Two of her sisters managed to escape to Israel before the World War II began, but she did not leave because her boyfriend wanted to stay. She lived with her mother, until the Nazis forced her into forced labor. She was put on a train and sent to a very small town to work on an asparagus plantation, and from then on her life becomes an odyssey.
It seems a miracle to me that she did not have a nervous breakdown after she became, what survivors call an U-boat. Imagine to live the life of someone else, behaving totally differently from who you are - not just for a day, but over years...

And the asparagus plantation where the Nazis sent her, is in the same little town where I went to senior highschool. Of course, there was never any reason to believe that this little town would have been a haven of resistance against the brown plague, but it is somewhat strange and shocking to read about it on the other side of the world seventy years after it happened. Neither my father's nor my mother's families lived in the area at the time, but it would be interesting if the farmer's family is still living there.

I bought a Kindle because it is practical for my yearly visits to Germany. I was hoping that there would be Kindle books available in Germany soon, but I do not think so. The laws for booksellers in Germany are such that a book, for example "The Brothers Karamazov" has the same price, not matter if you buy it from an indie bookstore or from a big chain. For that reason, e-books cannot be offered for a cheaper price...
However, what I was going to say was that you can actually download the Kindlebooks to your computer, and that way save them. I have done that myself. I do not see why then someone else with a Kindle should not be able to connect to your hard drive and upload a certain book to their Kindle. But I do not know if and how that would work.
And yes, I like indipendent bookstores and I will keep buying from them, but a Kindle was bought for practical reasons, as Dottie pointed out. When I go to bed Istill read books the old-fashioned way.

I am finishing up "The Wednesday Letters". I did not like the book so much, too sugary and predictable. After the easy reading, I will be back to mor serious stuff: "The Nazi Officer's Wife. How one Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust" by Edith Hahn Beer. I remember that this book was very hyped when it first came out in Germany, and therefore never touched it at the time. However, that was years ago, so it is time to read it it now.