Tag Archives: reading

Lisa J. Smith: The Struggle

When I read the first book of the Vampire Diaries series, I already decided to continue with the it, simply because I already have the books. Besides that had I chosen it as bonus book (book you haven’t read that was adapted to a movie/TV show) for BiblioSmiles Summer Book Challenge.

What is it about?

The story picks up right where it had left off and Elena, now aware of Stefanos secret, confronts his brother Damon in search for the other. With the help of friends Bonny and Meredith she manages to find him.

With Stefano more or less safely returned to her, they now have to face a different trial: Someone has stolen Elenas diary and the entries seem all but to prove that Stefano is the killer that prowled around their little town.

Will they be able to prove his innocence?

The reading experience

I honestly felt embarrassed while I read and more than once I wondered why I was even reading this book.

The book has somewhat around 200 pages and throughout all of them I was looking for the actual plot. When I was finished I wasn’t even sure what the purpose of the book was. Stuff happened, people talked, but nothing of importance. What you can read above is pretty much the entire story line of the book.

Other than that was it reading wise not much different then the first part.

The characters

I still don’t like Elena and Stefano and so far I doubt this will change much.

Where I found the sinister side of Damon interesting in the first book, was I disappointed that it wasn’t really featured this time. He was still portrayed as the bad guy, but already showed signs (quite large and blinking) of become just another love-struck vampire. Though he is the creepy type that forcefully takes what he wants, which is also why I don’t understand the growing interest Elena has in him….
Interesting contrast to the main characters? Yes. Healthy people skills? Hell no.

Meredith and Bonny get a bit more screen time and they are a nice – read with more common sense – change from Elena, but it is still too little to get an actual feel of them. Though one of them seems quite dumb, but I don’t remember which one…

All in all do the characters feel kind of dull and sketchy and I didn’t really develop any kind of connection to either of them so far.

General Opinion

So far the story is far too cheesy for my taste and the characters aren’t really memorable. The fluent writing makes up a bit for this, but the missing plot is still kind of weird.
I was shortly considering to rate it even lower, but even with all the complaining above it still doesn’t feel like a one star book…

I’ll still continue, even if it is only to see if there will be plot one day. 😀

Stuff I’d like to add

As I said for part one was this books‘ title also changed during the Twilight hype. Originally it was called: Der Kampf (The Fight/Struggle), but was changed to Bei Dämmerung (At Dawn/Twilight – I’m not entirely sure which one they mean, though I suppose the later) in 2008.
This name-change subsequently causes the connection from title to content to be very, very thin and technically not existent.

PoiSonPaiNter

Reading Together #9

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.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Der Weg vom Garten hinter dem Pfarrhaus bis zum Eingang der Kirche Unsere Liebe Frau die Heitere war kurz; er dauerte nich länger als fünf Minuten.

or in English:

The way from the garden behind the manse to the church Our Lady of Serenity was short; it didn’t take longer than five minutes.

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.

Stephen Baxter: Doctor Who – The Wheel of Ice

Part two of this Book-Week is a book that our local library added when I asked them about it, back when I „hid“ my papers for the Back Wolf Day 2013. It’s one of many Doctor Who novels out there and the first I read so far.

What is it about?

3 of 5 stars

The TARDIS catches a signal that is not supposed to come from the rings of Saturn. Stubborn as she is, she leaves The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe no choice but to investigate.
Strange sightings of Blue Dolls and sabotages meanwhile busy the inhabitants of the make-shift houses within the Wheel of Ice.
Unwelcome at first the time travellers have to team up with the locals to end this predicament.

The reading experience

As I said before was reading this book quite uncomfortable.
To quote myself:

What bugs me most about reading this book is, however, its layout. It’s a Hardcover version and therefore quite large as it is. Still, the pages have a lot of space around what is written in a rather large font, thus creating rather short pages.
So you have this giant book, with little content to actually read on one page.
This feels especially weird when you’re sitting in the bus and to everyone else it looks like you’re reading a children’s book…

It also had a quite interesting chapter outline.
Between the main chapters there were Intermezzo that told stories that had only been mentioned in the main story line. I’m not sure if I encountered something like this before, but it was quite interesting.

The characters

With each more adventure I share with this TARDIS trio I like them more.
The Second Doctor is more of a father/mentor figure towards them and the other characters. He leads them to make the discoveries on their own and follows new leads with a childlike enthusiasm, but is still serious if need be.
Zoe’s tendency to arrogance showed quite a bit in this story, but it is the understandable kind, someone of great intelligence has towards people who just don’t get them. It is toned down a bit when she opens herself to care for her friends and the people of the ring.
In contrast to her is Jamie quite, well, dumb. His knowledge and wisdom is nowhere near hers or The Doctors. Yet, he proves time and again that his compassion is the key to getting the people on their side. And even a simple mind can come to the right conclusions. 😉
The other characters were less defined. We barely know anything about the council members and their reasons for participating – other than this-and-this organisation send me. The most we know and learn about are the the Laws with the siblings Phee and Sam being quite essential to the plot.
In a way they are portrayed as normal teenager, yet, different. The reasoning why the children do what they do is still understandable. At some points I thought the language of the children to be too colloquial, then again, I read the German version and the original could have been different.
The main antagonist Florian Hart was something entirely different. I liked the nod they made to the serial The Seeds of Death with claiming that the company that built the T-Mats used, belonged to her father and the Doctors interference resulted in her life choices. On the other hand have I never before encountered a woman named Florian, so this had me highly confused every time I read it. She was all in all not a very likeable character and a bit over the top, but to some extent still believable.
Also interesting was the way Baxter described the semi-sentient/robot-like beings MMAC, Arkive and the Blue Doll First and their thinkings and actions in the Intermezzo.

General Opinion

Like most Doctor Who stories didn’t this get into too much details either and many things about the background’s and going ons are left untold. As someone used to read about the different worlds in Fantasy novels, was this one of the down points. I understand the lack of information in the TV series, but in a book there is a bit more time to spent on background information (Like how they came up with the ranks and so forth).
Still, it was a nice adventure with what might become one of my favourite TARDIS teams.

Stuff I’d like to add

I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get my hands on another Doctor Who novel, but I wouldn’t mind reading another one.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover belongs to its rightful owner

Terry Pratchett: Reaper Man

We meet again for another Book-Week and I have a slight feeling that it won’t be the last this year.
The first book I’ve chosen to review is Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. I have read this book some years ago during my last school years and as I said before:

When Fairy posted her review on Reaper Man for her Alphabet-Challenge I couldn’t help myself but to follow DEATH on his journey to understand mortality again, either.

What is it about?

4 of 5 stars

In the Discworld everyone and everything gets an hourglass that symbolizes their lives‘ time and that tells DEATH when it is time to pick them up. Some sand grains run faster, others slower and some don’t run at all. Until they do. When DEATH is confronted with his own mortality he decides to live the life he now gained by leaving his realm and offering his help on a farm as Bill Door.
With DEATH out of duty the dead people of the Discworld – amongst them former wizard Windle Poons – now have the slight problem of being un-dead or unable to pass on. While every other species creates their own version of DEATH quite fast, humans take longer and the life force that accumulates in the meantime causes quite a lot of trouble for the people of Ankh-Morpork, Windle, his fellow un-dead friends and the other wizards of the Unseen University.

The reading experience

I remember that when I first read it, I was quite captivated by it and didn’t want to stop. When I now read it again it wasn’t like that. I still enjoyed it greatly, but with some knowledge of what was going to happen still in mind and a different look on writing itself, some passages felt different to what I remember. I do believe I also laughed less at some of the jokes, but I’m not entirely sure whom to blame for that.
Pratchett has obviously his own way of writing – especially his Discworld novels – but some sentences bugged me quite a bit, though this might as well have been due to some translation mishaps.
The ideas, however, were quite interesting:

DEATH leaves and everything that is dying leaves behind its life force that creates new things that shouldn’t actually be there.
Unusual un-dead unite to fight for their rights.
Trolleys hatching from Snow Globes gathering to become a Shopping Mall.
Different versions of DEATH around the Discworld.

But so far I haven’t come across a Discworld book that wasn’t interesting to read.

The characters

DEATH is one of my favourite characters, both in the Discworld and across literature. His way of (mis)understanding the human nature and exploring it is just brilliant and at times quite hilarious. Seeing him face the weirdness of a mortal life as Bill Door (or Bill Tür as he is called in German) is also quite interesting, because he sees so many things quite different.
The Wizards are always a source for laughter and rolling of eyes, their just so quirky and weird. Their whole attitude stands quite in contrast to the second protagonist Windle Poons, who is rather reasonable for a(n un-dead) wizard. He brought a nice contrast into the chaos caused by the life force.
Though they get little screen time are all the side characters still interesting in their own way, with their own quirky stories. The shy Bogeyman Schleppel was quite great, just as the opposite werewolves Ludmilla and Lupine and the (fake) vampire couple the Winkings. As were the semi-self-conscious Troleys, who toyed with the wizards.
Pratchett just has a great way of creating rather unique characters that are quite likable soon.

General Opinion

Even though I roughly remembered what was going to happen, I still enjoyed this re-read.
With DEATH as main character, I cannot not like this story.
Besides that was it just interesting to read how all of them coped with their different situation (being mortal, being un-dead, being surrounded by Snow Globes, being chased by Trolleys,…).
The only down point I could see, is that at some points the story tried too much to be original, like with the crude writing on the Globes.
It also didn’t become entirely clear to me what the endgame of the Mall was and why the life force was turned into it in the first place (I know it had to go somewhere, but still…).
But it was still a fun read and I’ll probably read it again one day. 🙂

Stuff I’d like to add

If I ever get around to actually do it, I’d like to have a look at this book, Supernatural’s Death takes a Holiday and Torchwood: Miracle Day to look at how differently they handle the concept of Death’s absence.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover belongs to its rightful owner

Reading Together #8

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.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Contrary to last weeks sentence is this one far too long (4 1/4 lines)…

Eddies Vorsatz, nicht von den Muffinkugeln zu essen, hielt nicht lange vor; sie rochen einfach zu verdammt gut, als sie in dem Klumpen Hirschfett schmorten, den Roland (diese sparsame, mörderische Seele) in seiner abgewetzten alten Umhängetasche aufbewahrt hatte.

or in English:

Eddies resolution to not eat the muffin-balls, didn’t hold long; they simply smelled too damn good as they fried in the lump of dear fat, that Roland (this canny, sanguinary soul) had kept in his worn shoulder bag.

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

Happy New Year

Here we are again.
A new day and even more so a new year.
So, let me repeat and add to my title:

Happy New Year! May all your plans and wishes come true to your liking!

Now that that’s said:

What has this new year in store?

Many things that I don’t know yet, but a few I can influence.
As I told you before am I planning to do another Book-Week in January, namely in the week from the 12th to the 18th, because on the 17th Unmei and I will be visiting the Harry Potter Exhibition in Cologne.
On the 19th I’ll be at another concert of the Knight Shoe (Sabaton), this time with Anice and Danger from the Black Pack and Babsi and Jenni from the Out&Loud.
I’m looking forward to either of those. 😀
In May I’ll be at a Blind Guardian concert, though I’m not entirely sure, who else will be there…
It is also highly likely that Anice and I will return to the Rockharz in July and won’t travel to Sweden – at least not this year.
But I hope Janzy and I will finally manage to make our trip to London, after she got her Master’s degree. 🙂
The rest is pretty open yet, but there are a few things I want to accomplish writing-wise.
Well, most of all I need to finally catch up with the remaining Festival/Concert reviews, I’m far behind on those ones and I’ll try to get them done before June (and some of those other media reviews I still wanted to write throughout the year).
I also want to finally finish Crossing Over – I managed to post the full amount of two chapters last year. Then there is The Return of Magic that doesn’t have a proper ending yet, but I want to at least get it actually started.
And the one I’m most anxious about is probably the re-write of the Elevator tale. I now have some more ideas to go on and I think I can improve it.
But I’m not planning on only writing Fanfiction, I also want to continue my original work. The tales of the Dwarves demand to be continued and one story only needs to be typed, the other finished and then there are many more notes that could lead to more stories.
Then there is Your Picture – A Story, DarkFairy and mine new project over at DF.PP Entertainment that will see me write new stories for photographs. (Feel free to send us your work, to be included in it. 😉 )
And I’ll try to get the concept and idea for this years Advent Calendar, I’m fairly certain it will be a 24 chapter long story.
With all this writing I still want to continue reading though. In the last hours of 2014 I managed to finish my 20th book that year and I would like to read at least the same amount this year as well. The reading challenges will help me pick the books.
Well, that’s all I can think of right now.
Guess we’ll see what this new year has in store after all. 🙂
PoiSonPaiNter

Bye, bye 2014

It’s already time for this year to end and I decided to take a look back with the help of WordPress.com’s annual report.

The Posts

From what I already saw in May did the Fandom posts indeed became the most read ones.
The one about the Doctor Who 2048 game gained 1839 views in total and the Elevator Meme reached 380. Surprisingly two posts from 2013 made it into the top list as well and seem to still be of interest to some Googlers. 🙂
Does this now mean for me that I should write more Fandom posts to please my readers?
Well, I certainly will continue to write about some of it, but I’ll pick the topics that interest me most.
Other than that did I manage to write an incredible amount of posts in these past twelve months, though that is mostly thanks to the Weekend Guesses and my Advent Calendar with together a total of 69 posts.
I nearly managed to write my 200th post in this year as well, but I’m short 17 posts.

The Readers

Most interesting for me in this statistic was the fact that I had readers from 82 countries all across the world.
That is quite impressive to me and to think they all read what I’ve written here is also a tad scary.
Though regardless of this I still only got a few comments, most of them from DarkFairy and fruehstuecksflocke and mostly for the Guesses.
Interestingly I showed up amongst the top commenters on two other Blogs, namewise Pop goes the Culture and Weltenschmiede, where I had some quite interesting conversations.
I’m grateful for all the comments I got, but I wouldn’t mind getting more, so feel free to leave me your thoughts in 2015. 😉

The Report

Now enough is said about it, just have a look at what the WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared as a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Year in general

2014 was a quite interesting year.
I finally got my Bachelor’s degree.
I attended several pretty great festivals (Out&Loud, Rockharz, Metalfest) and concerts (Schandmaul, Van Canto, Bela B., Eluveitie/Arkona).
I also travelled again and this time not just throughout Germany, but also to Ireland.
And I discovered some interesting new Blogs and started a new regular post and also successfully given you my Advent Calendar.
I caught up with a bunch of series (e.g. Merlin, Supernatural, Being Human, … ) and been in the cinema for a few times (like for X-Men) or watched movies on DVD. With a renewed enthusiasm I started to properly read again, resulting in a Book-Week in the week leading up to a visit to a Book Hotel and two reading challenges I participate in.
And if I manage to get some quiet time today, I’ll even manage to finish my twentieth book this year (only 50 pages left).
And probably many more things I can’t think of right now.
So you see, a lot has happened this year.
What will 2015 bring?
We’ll see about that tomorrow. 😉
That said I’d like to repeat my words from Sunday:

I wish you all a save journey into the new year or in short Guten Rutsch!

PoiSonPaiNter

Reading Together #7

Only after I published last weeks instalment did I notice that there would be another one, so this time the actual last 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’m still reading my childhood favourite for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by Joanne K. Rowling.
I’m currently on page 212, which is only about a hundred pages away from the end.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Weihnachten stand vor der Tür.

or in English:

Christmas was just around the corner.

Interestingly Christmas has just passed and New Years Eve is around the corner. 😀

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

I am soo bad with predictions…
Yes, it’s a short read, but you have to actually read to be able to finish it in a short amount of time…
And I didn’t expect to get distracted by different Fairytales, Being Human (US) and The Fall along the way…
Though this doesn’t mean the book isn’t captivating any more. It is, I’m just too tired to continue reading, when I finally pick up the book in the evening.
I still remember what is happening in which chapter, but I don’t remember the exact words used, so I can still look forward to experiencing the different things again. 🙂
I also think that „I thought you should know“ as addition to the line „Troll – in the dungeon“ is quite weird and unnecessary, though I can’t remember if it always bugged me, but it feels like it did.

4. The turn of the year is approaching: Did you set any reading-wise goals for yourself for 2015? Which and why?

As I mentioned last time, do I still have the two challenges I want to finish (BiblioSmiles and DarkFairy’s Alphabet Reading Challenge) and after cleaning out most of the books I had for Fairy’s challenge there are quite some books left…
But as I didn’t manage to get the 20 books this year, I think I’ll try to get them next year and with those two challenges I think I would have the needed motivation for it.
As to the why, I guess I could only say: Just because I want to read more regularly.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.
As WordPress made a nice statistic for this year, you can expect to read about it tomorrow. 🙂
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.

Reading Together #6

I’m on vacation and I give you the last 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?

As I finished „A Game of Thrones“ by George R.R. Martin yesterday and didn’t want to continue with The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula Le Guin, that I wrote about last Tuesday, I thought I might as well start with my childhood favourite for BiblioSmiles’s Summer Book Challenge, which is none other than Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by Joanne K. Rowling.
I’m currently on page 5, which technically is page one as I still haven’t started reading.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

Mr. und Mrs. Dursley im Lingusterweg Nummer 4 waren stolz darauf, ganz und gar normal zu sein, sehr stolz sogar.

or in English:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley in the Privet Drive number four were proud of being well and truly normal, very proud indeed.

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

I’m quite excited to re-read this book again after nearly 15 years (if I remember correctly). In contrast to Game of Thrones 800+ pages it will be a short read with about 300 and I remember that I once managed to read through it in about a days‘ – or night’s – time.
I really hope I will still like the characters like I did when I grew up.

4. The end of the year is drawing near. Did you have any goals for reading this year? If so, which were they and did you manage to reach them yet or are you going to within the last few days of this year?

I put two challenges upon myself. On the one hand the Summer Book Challenge of BiblioSmiles (see link above) and on the other hand DarkFairy’s Alphabet Reading Challenge. Lo and behold, I managed to finish neither. 😀
While I’m slowly closing in on the eleven books from the Summer Challenge, I am currently thinking of replacing the majority of the books I had counted in Fairy’s challenge and therefore would have quite a bunch of letters left to choose books for.
Still, both challenges give me motivation to strive for actually reading the books I’ve chosen, even if I don’t manage them in the time frame they were set in.
As for my own goals: I didn’t really have any, I just wanted to read more and I’ve managed to do that. Though when I saw my statistic from Goodreads about how many books I’ve read this year, I do have the urge to complete the twenty now…
Maybe I’ll manage it. The Philosophers stone wont be a long read and there weren’t that many pages left in the Earthsea book either, so it might work…

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.
This isn’t really book related, but as Unmei and I will be visiting the Harry Potter Exhibition in Cologne in January I thought it best to re-read it beforehand. 🙂
Leading up to our trip I will also host another Book-Week with reviews for the books I’ve read recently.
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.

Reading Together #5

This week you get 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 „A Game of Thrones“ by George R.R. Martin, but for today I decided to talk about a different book that I had started back in July on our trip to the Book Hotel: Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea-saga.
Last week I struggled a bit to continue reading the other book for several reasons, so on the weekend I picked up this trilogy again.
I’m currently on page 350, which means I’m actually in the book The Tombs of Atuan.

2. What is the first sentence on your current page?

As I like to stop at chapter endings I will give you the first sentence of the new chapter, even though it’s in the middle of the page.

In der großen Schatzkammer der Gräber von Atuan stand die Zeit still.

or in English:

The time stood still in the large treasury of the Tombs of Atuan.

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

When I started reading at the Book Hotel I was soon captivated by Ged’s story in A Wizard of Earthsea and finished it, before we took off again, but when I started reading Tenar’s story afterwards, I soon got bored of her attitude.
Tenar or Ahar is quite annoying in my opinion. Bratty, selfish, arrogant and many more things I can’t quite name.
But not just that keeps me from reading on. The book has quite long chapters with rarely any breaks, where you could properly stop and you sometimes need to read up to 20 pages before a new chapter starts. And if you’re reading about a character you don’t really like those can be quite tedious 20 pages.
Still, with the faint memory of the movies in mind I still am curious how this part, which also seems to be the shortest of the three books, will continue.
It’s by the way quite interesting that the three books of this Earthsea-collection has fewer pages than A Game of Thrones, but is still a bit larger, due to larger print and occasional drawings.
And of course the fact that roughly 600 pages make up three books, while the other counts 800 for only one. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the German publishers had decided to release two translated volumes for each English book from A Song of Ice and Fire.

4. How bad are Spoilers for you? Are you annoyed, when you learn something somewhere – be it from the blurb or a review – or do you not care?

It depends.
Sometimes I read up on what is going to happen out of curiosity, sometimes I stumble across stuff through Tumblr or Facebook and then there are the times when I try to stay as far away from any information as possible.
When I am confronted with Spoilers when I don’t want to hear any than I can be quite annoyed by it, but the other times I either simply ignore it or don’t mind/accept that I now know more than I intended to.
With a series like Game of Thrones that is nearly as old as myself and has a huge Fandom, I came across several Spoilers way before I started reading and thanks to myself asking questions, I recently also learned things I’m not sure I wanted to learn in retrospect…
As reviews tend to give away quite a bit I don’t read them before I’ve seen/read it myself. I also try to write Spoiler-free Reviews here, but sometimes you can’t celebrate an awesome scene by not or only roughly talking about it…
In short: I don’t really like Spoilers – especially the big ones, but I occasionally look for them myself and am not mad if I come across them.

Additional thoughts

You can obviously participate in these questions by either using my translated or the original German version.
Besides differing intentions to continuing with the other book, my motivation to finish the final pieces of my Advent Calendar is slowly dwindling away…
There are only four stories left I need to type and translate (one of them needs to be written first), but I guess I have nearly reached my output limit…
Still, I’ll pull myself together and finish this project.
I wont give up this close to the end…
PoiSonPaiNter
© For the cover, the quote and the banner belong to their rightful owners.