Story-Scribbling Sunday

It’s been a good week for writing. OK, wordcount-wise, it wasn’t nearly as much as I’d write during NaNo, but I did reach 1000 words on two days, which is a rare thing outside November. So far, I’ve only written about 10 K this month – already a couple hundred words more than I wrote in December, but less than a fifth of what I’ve written in November.

Speaking about wordcounts, when I stopped writing on Tuesday, my total for January was 8,888 words. Which was pretty crazy, because I wasn’t even trying to finish on a nice number. And then I noticed the number of pages: 88! What are the chances for that?!

The plot has moved along, too. I’ve blown up a couple of subway trains, and killed a priest, and let Julius gather some information that he will need later, not that he knows it yet, and let Theresa and Sophie get an apartment together. Now, I just need some transition blah-blah-blah (and maybe I don’t even need it and will just delete it later), and I can move on to the real fun stuff. Concentration camps. And a scandal in Julius’ family. Hm, yes, writers have an odd sense of humour.

Oh, and speaking of, I’ve found a typo again:

Raven were ugly beards

I’m afraid that every time I see a bearded guy now, I’ll have to  imagine him with feathers in his face…

***

It’s getting more and more difficult to stick to “Goblins”, and nothing but “Goblins”. The most recent plotbunny (which I’m calling “Great Minds” for now, because, you know, great minds think alike) it mostly leaving me alone again, but when I cleaned up my computer some time ago, I found one of my old stories, the only longer one that was ever finished. OK, “long” is relative – only about 40 pages, but that’s a lot longer than the one kiddie story and the couple of Kivailo legends I finished. “The Story of Larin and Liria” is a Kivailo legend, too, but one that centred around an actual historical fact (well, in Kivailo-world history, anyway), started when I was about twelve and finished when I was sixteen or so. It’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks now… at first just in that vague way where I’ll walk down a street in disgusting weather and wish I was wearing a long cloak instead of a jacket, and then cloaks make me think of the characters of “Larin and Liria”. But last night I made the mistake of starting to re-read the old story… just a few paragraphs, but it was enough that I lay in bed with my thoughts whirling, full of secret passageways and swords and what I would write differently now… sudden possibilities of unhappy love and betrayal and murder, all because of a single “what if”… and as I read a few more paragraphs today, cringing at the writing style of my sixteen-year-old self, even more new possibilites occurred to me, and the things I’ve learned about the Kivailo culture in the meantime explain some things,  but also demand that others are changed…

But no. Stick to “Goblins”. Finish “Goblins”.

Winter Reading

Fourteen books in a month. That’s a lot better than I’ve done in a while! Seven rereads, seven new – with that, I’ve reached my reading goal for winter (eleven books a season, six of them new) in less than a month. The languages are a little unbalanced this time, eleven German books and only three English ones.

1. Wolf Haas, Silentium (reread, German): One of the few Austrian writers I know/read. Crime fiction with humour and a very distinct tone – I can’t write right after reading one of Wolf Haas’ novels, because I’ll write like Wolf Haas. Crime fiction is usually “read it and forget it” for me, but here I appreciate it, because I can re-read the books every couple of years and not remember the plot.

2. Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz und die dunkle Bibliothek (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians) (new, German): Not a book I’d have bought for myself (it was a Christmas present), because it’s aimed at a younger audience, but a good read all the same. The characters are a little too… absurd for me to get attached to them, but the whole absurdity is what makes the book so funny. Characters with names like Alcatraz, Bastille and Sing Sing, with talents like breaking things, being late and tripping (and yes, they are talents, not flaws. You might even say super powers), librarians as secret evil overlords, magical eyeglasses, and a mission to rescue a bag of sand… crazy stuff piled on crazy stuff until you barely notice smaller absurdities like polite British dinosaurs along the way. And a writer who’s constantly poking fun at his own craft, claiming that authors only write to torture their readers.

3. Khaled Hosseini, Tausend strahlende Sonnen (A Thousand Splendid Suns) (reread, German): This is one of the books that make me feel a little ashamed of what I usually read, making fantasy seem like such cheap escapism, reminding me how much I ignore the terrible things that go on in the real world. It’s a hard book to stomach sometimes, but I have a soft spot for reunion scenes, so… Also (it feels a little disrespectful to say this, but…), as a NaNoer, I can’t help but grin and think of the Travelling Shovel of Death.

Fourteen books. Huh, piled up like this, that looks like quite a lot!

4. Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz und das Pergament des Todes (Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones) (new, German): what I said above for 2.

5. Robin Hobb, Der Weitseher (Assassin’s Apprentice) (reread, German) and
6. Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin (new, English): I think the Farseer trilogy deserves its own post.

7. Jenny-Mai Nuyen, Nocturna (new, German): It’s a little humbling to think that Nuyen is younger than me and has already published half a dozen books. She does some things that would bother me in other books, such as a mish-mash of real and made-up names, and some rather fantastical places even when the book is set in the real world, but she carries it off in such a way that I don’t mind. I just can’t put my finger on exactly why I don’t mind. I can only say, “something about her tone”, which is a very unsatisfactory explanation. In any case, I can’t help but like a main character who can’t tie her shoes, and a story in which there is no clear “good” and “evil”.

8. Walter Moers, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher (The City of Dreaming Books) (reread, German): I liked Moers’ books better a couple of years ago. It’s still a good book, but I find it hard to form a connection with a main character who is a dinosaur. Even if he’s having adventures in a city full of books, books, and yet more books.

9. Walter Moers, Das Labyrinth der Träumenden Bücher (The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books) (new, German): This was the reason why I reread City of Dreaming Books. Might not even have been necessary, as much of the book was a recap of what happened in CoDB, in the form of the main character watching a play based on the book he wrote about his own adventures (confused yet? Moers is pretending he is just the translator of these books, while the actual author is the dinosaur main character). As with CoDB, I couldn’t really care for the characters (a similar problem to the ‘Alcatraz’ books, again it was the absurdity of the characters and world that was the problem, and at the same time it’s also what makes the book work.) But I had a good time with it once I realized that the names of the writers in the books are anagrams of real-life writers, and started trying to puzzle them out. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think of, say Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or William Shakespeare without a grin. What was odd was that I did better at recognizing the names of composers than those of writers, even though I don’t much about music, and most definitely not about classical music. I wish I’d read this book while I was still at school, it would have made German lessons so much more amusing.

Still so much waiting to be read. And there's at least one other book on the way.

10. Andreas Gruschke, Tibetische Mythen und Legenden [Tibetan Myths and Legends) (new, German): I picked this up at a flea market some time last summer – took me a long time to read it! I do like myths and folk tales, but this book was written for people who know more about Tibet than I do, so I often felt a little “lost” in a mythology and way of thinking that were quite foreign to me. There are commentaries to the stories, but they are written in an unnecessarily complicated way – there was at least one time when I actually had to analyse a sentence to figure out what the author was trying to say. I thought I was done with finding subjects, predicates and objects when I left secondary school, or at the very latest with my last Latin exam!

11. T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone (reread, English): I know I must have read this book before, because I got the whole series from the library once, but I have absolutely no memory of it. I didn’t even realize that the movie I watched with my little cousin once was based on this book (in German, the titles are different, so no hint there). It’s sometimes a little weird, but funny.

12. Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Quest (new, English): As I said, going to need a separate post.

13. Don Rosa, Onkel Dagobert – Sein Leben, seine Milliarden (The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck) (reread, German): Yes, it’s a comic book. And yes, I count it as a book. It’s over 400 pages, after all, with several pages of commentaries to each story. I think Don Rosa was the first comic writer/illustrator whose style I recognized as a kid. I still adore his detailed drawings, and the way he mixes actual history and “facts” from Carl Barks’ stories, and I still remember how pleased I was when I finally found this book. I remember we were at the bookshop to buy something for a Harry Potter party, and I was at least as excited about this comic book as I was about the next HP book – I definitely yelped rather loudly, and I might have bounced.

14. Leonie Swann, Glennkill (Three Bags Full): A murder mystery. With sheep. It sounds silly, but it’s not. It’s funny, yes, but not silly. Funny in the way that looking at the world from an unfamiliar angle always is, and definitely well written – definitely a book I can recommend! There’s a second part out now, and I can’t wait!

And now, enough writing. Back to reading! I’m trying to make my to-be-read pile shrink, but more books just keep getting added to it, sometimes by me, sometimes by other people.

Story-Scribbling Sunday

On and on, slowly, slowly. I kept on writing despite going back to work, but skipped Wednesday, because I felt just dreadful and fell asleep right after dinner (I couldn’t even make myself go to bed. Instead I just curled up on the couch.) Right now it’s hard to resist the temptation of books to read and playing with the new plotbunny, but I’m making myself stick to “Goblins”.

The argument I was looking forwards to writing didn’t turn out as bad as I’d intended – I was just too tired after work to get my characters in a proper temper, and I also have a really hard time writing Theresa when much of her motivation comes from her faith.

It’s funny. I have absolutely no problem with Lionno in “Masks”, even though he is also very religious, and doesn’t quite understand how others can not be. Theresa is quite similar in that, but I can not write her convincingly. The one difference? Theresa is Catholic, while Lionno is Nalanist. I suppose Nalanism, or Daenay, the Kivailo religion, contains much of what I wish I could believe in, so I suppose that’s what helps me write Lionno.

But Catholicism? I was nominally Catholic for most of my life, but haven’t believed any of it since primary school. In fact, when I took a “what should your religion be?” quiz, Roman Catholic came up as the very last of about 27 options. For some reason, I find that extremely amusing.

Anyway. That’s one thing I need to work on, writing religious (and non-Nalanist) characters convincingly. Maybe I’ll do that next week. And maybe I’ll blow up some things. But now, I must cook dinner and stick my nose back into my delicious book.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day – January 2012

I’ve been lazy about taking pictures this month. Reading good books will do that to me, and now that I’ve pulled myself away from my book for a bit, it’s too dark for any good or even decent pictures. But oh well. You know what violas look like. Red and blue at the bedroom and kitchen windows, blue and yellow at the living room window, blooming happily all through this non-winter.

A couple of last flowers on the Albuca spiralis, but no picture of them.

I’ve posted about my amaryllises just two days ago, but I’ll cheat by posting those pictures again.

And I do have a couple of pictures from about a week ago – little has changed at the bedroom window in that time.

Only a single flower on the Clivia – all the other buds were damaged when the plant got too cold or too dry, possibly both. Repeatedly. I’m not always a good plant-mummy. But even that one flower is enough for me to know that, yes, I can make Clivias rebloom, so as ugly as the plant looks right now, it’ll be allowed to stay for another year.

My Schlumbergera x buckleyi is also blooming – this probably shouldn’t make me want to gloat most childishly, but it does. And unlike last year, when I got one measly flower, I had quite a lot of buds this year. OK, so it dropped several, but I still got a couple of flowers. Sadly, none of them has been quite as perfect as the flower I saw when I got my cuttings.

I’m thinking I’ll put in a hook above the bedroom window and put that plant in a hanging basket. I don’t think it likes being squashed in between my other holiday cacti on the windowsill, and I can’t see much of it, either.

As always, don’t forget to check out the flowers other gardeners are sharing over at May Dreams Gardens.

Flower Power

The hippies are back!

That is, the Hippeastrums.

I went down to the cellar for an apple, and came back with this:

I brought up the ‘Bogota’ when I spotted a bud coming up before Christmas, and gave it away as a gift, but now ‘Lima’ – which I’m not going to give away – has a bud too, and many of the others are showing leaf-tips, so it’s time to bring them up into the warmth and the light.

Uh… OK, so the basket is still standing in the windowless hallway, because I don’t yet know where the fluttering flaming to put them. But I will put them in a lighter place, I will! At least ‘Lima’ has already made it onto a windowsill, even if I can hardly see it right now:

… and that is visible only if I stand on tip-toe and stick my head in between the Monstera obliqua  and a Dracaena.

And that basket was not even all of it. I’ve been buying, too.

‘Supreme Garden’ is a whole clump of bulbs, supposedly with small red flowers. It’s been slow (I’ve had it for a month), but I’m seeing several flower buds now, and lots of leaf-tips. (All the glittery stuff fell out of one of the Christmas cards I got – things like that usually end up in a flower pot here in the Nettle Nest.)

‘Fresh Lemon’ yesterday – the light is a little crazy on this one, but that’s what happens if you take pictures in a ‘jungle’ on a sunny day!

‘Fresh Lemon’ today. The greenish tinge of the flowers seems more noticeable in the pictures than in real life, but maybe that’s just because there is so much green surrounding them that they look very white by contrast. At least they’re smallish flowers – I like those better. Although the big ones aren’t that bad either – I guess I just love amaryllises in general.

I have a new miniature amaryllis, too:

Typical. Once again not the colour it was tagged as – it was supposed to be pink. I was half-hoping that if it was something else, it’d be red-and-white, but no, I get another plain boring red one. Meh. But at least it’s a miniature.

And a couple of pictures from last year that I don’t think I ever got around to posting:

I love buds at least as much as I love flowers – it’s just fascinating to watch them grow and open. I was trying to take a picture every day, but there might be one missing in the middle. (The dates on my pictures are messed up – I don’t always bother to set it right after I’ve put in new batteries, so a lot of pictures are supposedly from January 2006.)

Story-Scribbling Sunday

I lost 13 days to Christmas and New Year. I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t write for a week before Christmas – I can’t have been that busy. OK, maybe because Theresa and Sophie were going to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, and even though this was only going to be a short scene (mostly to introduce Sophie’s brother and his girlfriend), I decided I couldn’t write it unless I watched them again myself, and spent three days  watching and grumbling to myself about all the changes they made to the story. (I haven’t read the books in years, so I don’t remember everything too clearly, but I’m still mad about what they did to Faramir.)

For a couple of days after Christmas, I was too busy devouring my new books, and then we were at the grandparents’ place, and company and stupid talkshows aren’t exactly conductive to writing.

The car rides to and from my aunts’ place, where we went for New Year, were good times to write, but while we were there, I couldn’t write again. Partly I didn’t even want to, because I was having a good time, and partly because I spent New Year’s Day with a killer headache (and I would still like to know why – I don’t even drink! Just because I stayed up until 7 AM my body doesn’t need to act up like that!)

But now I’m back home, I’m getting back into the habit. Plodding along slowly, often just 300 words a day, but progress is progress. I’ve made Theresa shut up for a bit and visited Julius’ and Annabell’s POVs again and arrested an important Kivailo priest/leader. Now I’m back with Theresa again, she is just easiest to write, but she and Sophie will have their first major fight. Muahaha!

A couple of silly conversations, since I have no noteworthy typos:

He fell quiet when Alex and Mona came back into the room. Alex cocked his head as he looked at them. “Have you been talking about us?” he asked into the sudden silence.

Sigrid leaned back to look at him. “No. About elephants.”

Everyone stared at her.

“Well, one elephant anyway. The elephant in the room.”

“Will you two stop whispering over there so we can start the movie?” Alex asked.

“Give me five seconds,” Sophie answered.

“What are you doing?” Theresa asked as Sophie fiddled with her phone

“I want to time how long those two –“ she gestured to her brother and Mona. “- can stay quiet before they have to start complaining.”

(I forgot to time how long it took me to start complaining, but it can’t have been more than five minutes.)

“Did you hear, Anthony?” the cashier asked Grandpa. “The police caught a pretty big fish yesterday.”

(…)

Annabell tugged on his sleeve. “Grandpa? Can I see the fish?”

 

In non-”Goblins”-related news, I woke up with another story idea the other night.

I dreamed that what we think is imagination is actually a telepathic connection to someone else’s mind, so when we thin we have a stroke of inspiration, we’re actually just sensing what somebody else is thinking or feeling.

There are some gaping holes in that theory, of course, because what about fantasy worlds, science fiction, different time periods? But I guess it works if I just limit it to character interactions, personality traits and such that don’t depend on a certain setting. (Hm, maybe this dream was partly caused by some messed-up-family stuff I heard at the New Year’s party, which made me think, “I can’t believe I know people like this. This usually just happens in stories.”) I do sometimes get lines/conversations, scenes or images that just pop into my mind out of nowhere. Sometimes they fit into a story, sometimes they don’t.

In any case, I think I already declared this a story idea while I was still dreaming, and went on to a girl and a boy who figure out they’re sensing an actual person’s thoughts and fall in love without ever having seen each other.

I don’t really want another story stealing my attention before I finish “Goblins”, but I still started fleshing out these vague dream ideas into actual characters. Right now, we’re having a bit of an argument – They’re screaming, “We need names!” and I tell them, “No, you need to shut up and let me finish ‘Goblins’!”

Well, if characters are actually real people, that would explain why they so often refuse to do as they’re told!

It seems like a fun story to write, and I actually have a few scenes in my mind already, but I will not write it yet. I will finish “Goblins”, I will finish “Goblins”! Besides, I’m not even sure it is a good story for me. I’ve never done plain romance, and I don’t think I want to. I don’t even like to read it, why would I like writing it? But I can’t come up with any other plot, or even a way to add more plot that wouldn’t feel horribly contrived. (Considering this only happened two days ago, I’ve thought about it an awful lot!)

Well. Enough story-chatter now. Off to bed, and back to work tomorrow.

Back to the Books

Spring and summer weren’t good times for reading. But in autumn, I read more books than in the last two seasons put together – 23, and only four of them rereads – even though I hardly read anything at all during November, when I had to concentrate on writing. Then again, all that was mostly about quantity, not quality. I bought a lot of three-Euro books out of bargain bins, but it would have been better to buy one good book instead of three cheap ones.

1. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (reread, English): I don’t need to rave about my Harry Potter obsession again, do I? Although this is one of my least favourite HP books (too much romance, too little adventure, I think), so maybe not so much raving here anyway.

2. Sabine Kuegler, Dschungelkind (Jungle Child) (reread, German): I read this several years ago, I think at the time it was published. I wasn’t quite as fascinated by it this time round, but it’s still a neat book.

3. Alexander McCall Smith, The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (new, English): meh. I seem to remember that it didn’t have much of an overarching plot, felt like a series of random, unconnected incidents.

4. Regine Leisner, Die Rabenfrau [The Raven Woman] (new, German): meh. Bargain bin book. Not as dreadful as Jean M. Auel’s “Earth’s Children” series, which I’m afraid is what I’ll measure stone-age books against for a couple more years, but unmemorable.

5. Liza Marklund, Prime Time (new, German): Bargain bin book (or maybe flea market). I suppose it wasn’t bad, but crime fiction is “read it and forget it” for me. I should probably get them from the library instead of buying them. Or borrow them from my father.

Random bookcase pic: the catch-all bookcase, holding everything from children's books and crime fiction to dictionaries and comics.

6. Isaac Marion, Mein fahler Freund (Warm Bodies) (new, German): Can’t say I care for zombies, but it was a nice enough book.

7. Tanja Kinkel, Die Söhne der Wölfin [The Sons of the She-Wolf] (new, German): meh. Bargain bin book. Unmemorable, but I’d rather buy cheap historical novels, even if they end up being disappointing, than cheap fantasy, which is usually downright horrible.

8. Mirjam Müntefering, Flug ins Apricot [ Flying into the Apricot, and that sounds seriously stupid in English] (new, German): meh. Bargain bin book. I picked it up because I was getting ready to write about a lesbian couple, but I can’t say it helped any (not that Theresa and Sophie needed it, either, they’re of the nice variety of characters that come alive without any help at all).

9. Arnaldur Indridason, Operation Napoleon (new, English): meh. I suppose it was good – it’s crime fiction, and yet I can still remember the plot – but I don’t want to read it again. Didn’t like the ending. I do like Icelandic names, though.

10. E. B. White, Wilbur und Charlotte (Charlotte’s Web) (new, German): bargain bin book, and one of only two that was worth the money. Also the only book I read during November/NaNoWriMo. I do like reading children’s books occasionally, but I don’t think I’d have liked it as a child. It’s a cute book, but a spider as a character would have freaked me out (and I’d still not be able to watch the movie now. Ick.)

11. Martin Corzillius, Der Henker von Aix [The Executioner of Aix] (new, German): meh. Bargain bin book. Historical fiction. I get the feeling I’m repeating myself, so that’s all I’ll say about it.

Random bookcase pic: the Fantasy bookcase

12. Christopher Paolini, Eragon – Das Erbe der Macht (Inheritance) (new, German): I hate leaving a series unfinished, but I didn’t want to spend any money on this, so I read it right there in the bookshop. I could probably find enough to say about it to write a whole post, but it wouldn’t be a nice post, so I won’t.

To be honest, I feel kind of sorry for Paolini. He wrote a lot of rubbish in the first book, when he was pretty young, and then he had to keep working with the characters and rules he established. I don’t know about him, of course, but I’d be beating my head against the wall if I had to work with that mess of made-up and real names, the language that sounds like a mish-mash of Tolkien’s Elvish and something Germanic, blue-furred wolf elves, my own sister (that is, Paolini’s sister), werecats, and magic on every other page. Not to mention a sword called “Tinkledeath” and the name “Blödhgarm”. At one point, I was laughing so hard that I was in tears and stuck between the sofa cushions and couldn’t get out, because “blöd”, in German, means “stupid”, and as my best friend pointed out, “Blödhgarm” sounds a lot like “Blödkram” (“stupid stuff”, “stupid rubbish”).

See? I told you I could write an entire, not-nice, post about it. Books like this, where the characters can’t take three steps without doing magic, are why fantasy has a bad reputation (although there are worse books than Inheritance. Far worse. I’m grateful for the lack of mercenary magicians.)

13. Kij Johnson, Das Geheimnis der Fuchsfrau ( The Fox Woman) (new, German): Bargain bin book, and the second one that was worth the money. It didn’t blow me away, actually the characters left me quite cold, but it was still well written. I was already vaguely familiar with the concept of foxes changing into humans into Japanese folk tales, but I liked how it was carried out here – how the human main character thought he was living in a beautiful house with his beautiful wife and her family, eating delicious foods – while at the same time, he was lying in the dirt of the foxes’ den, eating dead mice. The way he actually did the things he thought he was doing, but not seeing things for what they really were – seeing a cup instead of a dry leaf filled with water, a human boy instead of a fox cub…

14. Suzanne Collins, Die Tribute von Panem: Gefährliche Liebe (Catching Fire) and

15. Suzanne Collins, Die Tribute von Panem: Flammender Zorn ( Mockingjay) (both new, German): Like Inheritance, I read these directly in the bookstore, and for the same reason. Well-written, but – sorry – just a stupid world. Also, the person who wrote the blurb for the back cover for one of these needs to learn the difference between “utopia” and “dystopia”.

Random bookcase pic: the bookcase crash of 2006

16. Stefan Jäger, Das Gold des Nordens [The Gold of the North] (new, German): meh. Bargain bin. Historical. Wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known it’s part of a series, but I doubt it’d have been more interesting if I’d known the first part.

17. Bernhard Hennen, Rabengott [Raven God] (new, German): bargain bin book, and so not worth the money. Terrible in a I-have-to-gouge-out-my-eyes-and-scrub-my-brain sort of way. This is what I meant when I said there are worse books than Inheritance. Way, way worse. I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known it was set in a RPG world, but no matter what sort of world you write in, you shouldn’t write such a dreadful book. I kept notes for a while. Within 27 pages, I’d written down the following (notes in square brackets added now as I type it up):

• real and imaginary names [settle for one of the two, damn it! I realized I had to decide between real and made-up names when I was twelve, for heaven’s sake!] And “Moron”? Seriously? [Even if you write in German, either you or your editor should realize that this is a moronic name.]
• beating a club aside with a rapier? Seriously? [I can’t imagine that’ll work very well.]
• Praios-star? Seriously? [Who calls their sun that? Apparently the word “sun” doesn’t even exist. And the author even uses the old-fashioned “Gestirn” instead of “Stern” (star) to make it even more complicated.]
• h, yay, we have healing magic! [Cheap cop-out, if you ask me. It’s fine if it’s a plot point, like in Trudi Canavan’s Kyralia books, but just to keep characters from dying in battle? No.]
• mercenary magicians [Just please no. It brings bad memories of the Chronicles of the Raven, which is every bit as bad as the map of the rectangular continent made me fear.]
• Reptile Lords? Sounds promising. [Sarcasm, of course]
• oh yeah, and Sskhrsechim is a lovely name [someone call an ambulance, I broke my tongue. And several brain cells.]
• yay, badass female mercenary. With magic! [Take that, Chronicles of the Raven – you had mercenary magicians. Raven God has female mercenary magicians. What is it with books with “raven in the name” and mercenary magicians, anyway?]
• o, arrows that go straight through necks [and fall out the other side]

After that, I gave up on the notes, but it went on in the same vein for a couple hundred pages. Skinned murder victims. Gladiator fights.. Possessed natives. Ghosts. Heirlooms from the mysteriously vanished grandfather. Demons. I don’t even remember what else. It was so horrible that I skimmed more than read.

I’m definitely not going to buy anything else by this author.

Random bookcase pic: the repaired bookcase, in 2008. This was the first one my father ever built for me, about 15 years ago. It's also the biggest, and the only one that can't be taken apart, but it's still with me despite moving three times. Now, it's part of the catch-all bookcase.

18. Daniel Glattauer, Gut gegen Nordwind [Good Against North Wind] (new, German) A much-talked about book, and while I realize that it takes some skill and hard work to tell a story entirely in e-mails (or letters, for that matter), it didn’t exactly blow me away. (Huh. Accidental pun.)

19. Astrid Lindgren, Ronja Räubertochter (Ronia the Robber’s Daughter) (reread, German): I love Ronia.

20. Peter David, Wählt König Arthur (Knight Life) (new, German): Bargain bin. Fantasy. Sometimes a little funny, but mostly meh.

21. Noah Gordon, Der Katalane (The Bodega) (new, German): Bargain bin. Historical. I guess I have a soft spot for Gordon because his books were some of the first “grown-up” books I read as a kid, and I liked this one better than the rest of the bargain bin historicals. But even though the main character was neither a doctor nor Jewish this time, his books still feel a little repetitive.

22. Iny Lorentz, Dezembersturm [December Storm] (new, German): Bargain bin. Historical. Meh.

Random bookcase pic: My first Fantasy bookcase, in 2008. The second one my father built for me, and the only one left behind in a move (it now belongs to my mother).

23. Wolfgang Bühne, Zum Dasein verflucht [Cursed to Exist] (reread, German): I hesitate to even call this a book. I only read it again to know what horribleness I was throwing away. I threw away a book. I can’t remember ever doing that. But like I said, this barely deserves to be called a book. It’s a collection of stories of born-again Christians – ex-drug users, thieves, cult members and a couple other “horrible things”. It irritated me for so many reasons. I’m quite happy to be agnostic, thank you very much. I can’t stand that sanctimonious, self-righteous tone. And it was just plain badly written. Glad to be rid of it.

The only reason it even was in my library, and allowed to stay there for several years (apart from the fact that I just don’t throw away books), was that it was a gift from a friend. I lost touch with her several years ago, and feel a little bitter towards her, and yet not quite willing to get rid of a reminder of the good times we had.

There are several reasons why I finally got rid of it. Seeing it one time too many as I cleaned my bookcases. Generally feeling irritated by the amount of books I’m never going to read again, taking up the space that would better be used for books I want to read. But what pushed me over the edge was walking past a church while I did my Christmas shopping, and the people standing in front of it, handing out free books. That was when it hit me – that was where my friend had gotten my Christmas present from. She hadn’t spent a cent on it, or a minute thinking about what to get me (although she was Christian, so I suppose it was well-meant). And she had absolutely no idea what books mean to a reader. For some reason, that hurt me more than knowing she had spent neither money nor time on me. It’s like hearing I’m a houseplant lover and giving me another goddamned boring Kalanchoe. Or deciding to give someone a bottle of wine as a present, and buying the cheapest bottle you can possibly find. Or the cheapest discount store bread instead of a fresh loaf from the bakery. Tasteless supermarket tomatoes instead of sun-warmed homegrown ones. One of those dreadful free tabloids when I ask for a newspaper. That feeling of “it doesn’t matter what, as long as it has letters in it”, that’s what separates the non-reader from the reader.

That’s why I tossed it, and that’s why I’ve been paying more attention to quality since the winter solstice. I’ve read eight books so far, and every one of them was good, I’m reading another good one, and have ordered another four that I’m sure will also be good. Almost exclusively fantasy so far, but that’s what I enjoy, so why bother spending my money on anything else? (Not that I’m spending actual money. I got gift cards for Christmas. € 150 to spend on books, and nothing but books. I get a seriously insane grin every time I think about it.)

January Calendar Picture

Happy new year, everyone!

One of my favourite amaryllis pictures – I like the warm colours. I took it soon after I moved to the Nettle Nest, in my freshly painted bedroom (as you can see, I don’t like white walls). The plant was rescued from the Teeny Tiny Village Nursery, where would have been thrown out when it was done blooming.

 

Like last year, I made calendars for myself and my family, but this year, it was a little more chaotic and rushed – getting pictures printed just before the shops closed for the holidays, and printing the calendar pages and putting everything together the last night before we went to visit relatives. That also involved a long, boring battle with my printer, and basically printing every page twice before I got it looking right… and I never feel comfortable using it for too long at a time. I dropped a chocolate egg into it earlier this year, and never got it out, and I always worry that it’ll melt if I print too much and the printer gets hot.

But it went all right in the end, and everyone was happy to get a new calendar, and I like the challenge of finding twelve picture of houseplant flowers.

Harvest Monday – December 27, 2011

It’s been a while since I participated in Harvest Monday – not so much because I didn’t have anything to harvest, more because I was too lazy. I’m hibernating, after all – I do really sleep a lot, and consequently don’t feel very hungry. But last week, my best friend and I finally cut the rest of the Swiss chard – 300 g.

They made a big batch of pancakes filled with chard and feta – an easy, quick and tasty dinner, just what we needed after walking for a couple of hours.

And I Call Myself a Reader?

I’m not happy with how much I’ve read this year. I’ve kept track of what I’ve read for three years now, and the numbers have gotten lower each year. (My lists actually go from winter solstice to winter solstice, so they don’t exactly match up with the calendar years, but it’s just easier to say/write “in 2011″ than “between Dec. 21st, 2010, and Dec. 21st, 2011″.)

In 2009, I read a total of 89 books, 58 in German, and 31 in English. Only 18 of them were rereads (and most of those only because I was getting ready to read the next part in the series) leaving 71 new books.

In 2010, 71 books in total, 37 in German and 34 in English. 26 rereads, partially the series thing again (I like to have everything fresh in my mind), and partially because I was trying to decide whether I wanted to keep them or give them away, so only 45 new books. Language-wise, it’s a rather even split, and spring 2010 marks the time when I started to read more English books than German ones.

And in 2011, only 63 books, 35 in German and 28 in English. 23 of them rereads, so only 40 new books. Twice I just barely made my minimum goal of 11 books a season. I posted about spring here, but summer was no better.

1. Melanie Rawn, Sonnenläufer  (Dragon Prince) (new, German): Meh. I couldn’t help feeling indifferent about the characters… not sure if its worth finishing the series.

2. Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Acorna’s People (reread, English): I was wrong in the post about spring  – this was the book my best friend had. I stand by what I said: totally ridiculous – but so ridiculous it’s good again. 

3. Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Acorna’s World (new, English): Unicorns. In space.

4. Arne Dahl, Totenmesse [Requiem Mass] (new, German): I don’t remember where I picked this up (the flea market? Borrowed?), or what it was about. Detective novels don’t tend to stick in my brain.

5. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (reread, English): Do I have to say more about it?

6. Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass (new, English): A rare bit of non-fiction – it’s about how the language we speak influences the way we see the world – a topic that interests me, because I know I think different things in different languages (mostly because different languages make different puns possible, though), and because I like learning languages and making up languages. I liked his writing style, too – I like writers who make me laugh.

7. – 11. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (rereads, English): my best friend and me were having a “Harry Potter movie nag-a-thon” in preparation for the second part of Deathly Hallows – I reread the books and then we watched the films together and I kept up a constant stream of grumpy comments. We  ran out of time and I needed to read DH again while the film was still in the cinemas (we went on the very last weekend they showed it), so I read a little out of order. And I think we all know I love Harry Potter.

I think part of the blame for this low book-count can go to the Italy trip (I’ll finish that story one day…), when I of course couldn’t bring any books… but only a small part. Much more must be blamed on plain laziness and too much internet.

Autumn was better. But I think I’ll do a separate post for that – this is getting kind of long. And I have books waiting for me!