Category Archives: Reading Together

While my Book-Week is currently in progress I present to you another instalment of Weltenwanderers and Schlunzenbüchers „Gemeinsam Lesen“ (Reading Together).

Each Tuesday one of them asks four questions, with the first three always being the same about the book one is currently reading and the fourth a new one by either of them. All questions below are obviously translated from today’s German post.

1. Which Book are you currently reading and which page are you on?

I’m still reading the book by my favourite author that I haven’t read yet for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge: The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Which is the fifth part of the Dark Tower-saga.
I’m currently on page 384, which is just shortly behind the re-reading part.

3. What do you desperately need to tell about your current book? (Thoughts, Feelings, a Quote, whatever you want!)

As I said above am I just beyond the pages I read before, years ago. Some of it sounded familiar, some of it didn’t even ring a bell, but it is still interesting how many things of the previous books are retold or mentioned throughout the chapters.
By now I also believe that another reason why I didn’t finish this book back then was the way it is written. The sentence structure is sometimes quite complicated (see last weeks quote) and often times induced with side thoughts. Or the thoughts are added in a new sentence. Or they are not even thoughts, but random phrases.
What also is quite bothersome is the language of the Calla people. I don’t know what they are like in English, but some of them are quite annoying after a while in German. Just as annoying are the Anglicisms in the speech patterns like Baby, yeah or what not. I do believe a lot of meaning here is lost in translation – and that with my English knowledge back then I didn’t understand as much as I do today. Take for example the name of the church from the quote. In German it’s called Our Lovely Woman the Jovial how is that any kind of translation for Our Lady of Serenity? Even though Serenity can be translated to Heiterkeit/Jovial, does it seem that the translator did not put that much effort into this, but at least I now understand Rolands remark that it is a well chosen name…
I also just went through the scene that retold the story of Salem’s Lot, it’s interesting how King not just put himself into the New York part of his universe, but also at least one character from one of his other books.

4. How important is the cover for you? Does it influence your buys or is it completely irrelevant? Do you like the cover of your current book? Should it fit to the content?

It depends.
If I look for a certain book then it doesn’t matter.
If I’m just browsing through the book store my attention occasionally gets caught by a cover. If the blurb then fits what I like to read, it is highly likely that I will take the book with me. If not it’s just put back where I found it.
Apart from the fact that the cover of my book is sprinkled with silver dots, thanks to it moving around quite a bit, do I think it’s a good cover. The German title is translated to „Wolfmoon“ and with the moon on the cover it is also quite fitting.
I prefer if the cover works well with the title and/or the story, but I don’t mind if they just portray the characters of the story either (e.g. the Discworld books). Though the general trend to show (sometimes naked) people in all kind of weird positions is beyond me. I do prefer landscapes or symbolisms to actual people (though drawn ones are excluded from this).
When a cover shows something that doesn’t have anything to do with title or content then that leaves me quite confused. It doesn’t mean that they are bad, but it is sometimes quite weird.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.

And here you have the first instalment of Weltenwanderers and Schlunzenbüchers „Gemeinsam Lesen“ (Reading Together) for this year.

Each Tuesday one of them asks four questions, with the first three always being the same about the book one is currently reading and the fourth a new one by either of them. All questions below are obviously translated from today’s German post.

1. Which Book are you currently reading and which page are you on?

I actually started reading two books yesterday, but I will focus on a book by my favourite author that I haven’t read yet for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge: The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Which is the fifth part of the Dark Tower-saga.
I’m currently on page 57, which doesn’t even count as a proper start.

3. What do you desperately need to tell about your current book? (Thoughts, Feelings, a Quote, whatever you want!)

I first started this book back when there were still two zeros in the year I think and I was about half way through, but at some point I just stopped. After taking the book along for many times it now looks battered, even though I barely read anything in it. I tried several times to get back into it and with the challenge I now finally have. But like I said back when I chose it, did I have the same problem I had with Kinder des Judas that I barely remembered a thing that happened.

Having started with the first few pages and the short summary of the previous books it slowly comes back to me. I think I remember that my reason for stopping was that it dragged on a bit too much in the middle part and I never got over it. So I’m trying anew and maybe I’ll feel motivated enough to read the other books as well to finally know what happens at the Dark Tower. Though I am slightly contemplating to re-read the first four books to remember the whole picture and I’m fairly certain that I some point I will, but maybe not this year.

Aside from that is this series interesting in its different aspects of normal life. The variations of the universes and the differences in speech and customs, to what we would consider normal. I have no idea what most of the stuff in this series is called in the original, but I do believe it is at least as creative as the German version.

I’m also slowly remembering more and more about the characters and which I preferred to which. It is also quite helpful that the characters themselves reflect on what has happened. Though I guess this would be annoying if I had (re-)read the other books beforehand.

4. We have now arrived in 2015 and hope you got well into it 🙂 Looking back at 2014 once again, which book or book series was your highlight and why?

I do believe my highlight of 2014 – both as book and series I suppose – was A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It was just incredible and captivating and I’ll get into more details in my upcoming Book-Week.

The second place goes to The Hobbit (by J.R.R. Tolkien obviously) that I spontaneously borrowed from Anice and nearly finished that same weekend. I really enjoyed the writing style and the atmosphere (Here again: next week there will be a review).

An interesting third place is Ray Bradbury’s A Graveyard for Lunactics that I probably wouldn’t have picked up if it weren’t for BiblioSmiles challenge.

Some of the other books I read weren’t really satisfying (The Haunted Glass, Tiger, Tiger), others were better than expected (Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice, Torchwood: Another Life), so all an all an interesting year in reading.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.

This post is a bit later than usual as I just got back from the cinema watching the Paddington Bear movie, that I can highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good laugh. 😀

PoiSonPaiNter

© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.