I loved the language and the descriptions of Barcelona just like in Shadow of the wind. It’s a book I can read just because it is beautifully written. The story in itself is not bad either, but for my taste has too many “fantasy”-elements (people being reborn, becoming immortal etc.), which is not my cup of tea.
Done. Haven’t dodged a call in quite some time and trying to keep my phone with me most of the time so not to miss calls. So, nothing else to do with this resolution.
A memoir from CNN News Anchor Anderson Cooper (not being American, I didn’t know him) about his career as a journalist reporting mostly from war and disasters – starting in Bosnia at the beginning of the 90s and ending with Hurrican Katrina in 2005, while also opening his own history. An interesting book….
A nice real story about how a man exchanged things – from a paperclip to a house and the people he met on his way.
A very early book from him and I felt the characters weren’t really developed yet and they changed just a bit too easily.
IIt’s been 3.5 weeks since I broke my humerus head into many pieces. It’s been pretty painful and annoying as hell. The bad thing is that it hasn’t started healing yet. It’s so frustrating to depend on others all the time.
this morning… which means only 2.8kg more to go until I can mark this done. I have already reached a weight I last had at 18.
A German book about love and life in Berlin right after re-unifcation. An interesting angle and an interesting story, but for my taste too many words and not enough story. The author gets lost in those really beautiful sounding sentences, without any content. This can be nice for a while, but not carry a whole book.
A great book set in the early eighties, when the American Phd student Ben comes to Zim to research reconcilliation. His awakening to realities and that nothing is as it seems is described in captivating language and in very nice, personal way that makes it come to life.
(The shocking inside story of how America REALLY took over the world)
I had wanted to read this book for a long time, before I got around to buying and actually reading it. Most general information on what kind of games are played to make money rule the world I had already come across, but it was an interesting perspective and a lot of historic information I wasn’t firm about.
Unfortunarely, I struggled with the tone of the book up until the last few chapters of the book. The constant references that the author was one of the selected few who knew and understood the world and his guilt about being part despite knowong better, put me off. The book also struggles like other non-fictional books written for a commercial market with the balance of being easy to read (it is),
while providing enough information (not always – the different parts are too short and interrupted) and also trying to sensationalze certain aspects. Overall, an interesting read, but not quite as good as it could have been.
One of the very few good things about breaking your shoulder is lot’s of time to read… even if it is 650 of blabla chicklit.
The book was given to me as a get-well-loan so I thought I kinda have to read it. Plus my attention span is currently very short and gets interrupted by frequent naps.
One of the three intertwining stories based on three different characters was actually quite. The other two I couldn’t really get close to, so the story dragged on for quite a few pages.
Really only something for rom-com fans… or if you are lying in bed anyway trying to get the time to pass.
A nice little book about an italian polic detective. A nice plot, likeable and interesting characters and I liked the italian atmosphere of the book.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Emerging from the dissident calibrations of literary voices joined together in the culture of protest against the apartheid regime, the distinctive writing of novelist, critic and academic J M Coetzee has become identified as one of the most finely tuned among contemporary Southern African writers. From the local recognition accorded his earliest novel Dusklands to the international acclaim with which his rewriting of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe story, Foe was received, Coetzee has dedicated himself to transforming South African writing from a blunt weapon of struggle to a delicate and incisive instrument of reflective liberation.
Disgrace takes as its complex central character 52-year-old English professor David Lurie whose preoccupation with Romantic poetry – and romancing his students -threatens to turn him into a “a moral dinosaur”. Called to account by the University for a passionate but brief affair with a student who is ambivalent about his embraces, David refuses to apologise, drawing on poetry before what he regards as political correctness in his claim that his “case rests on the rights of desire.” Seeking refuge with his quietly progressive daughter Lucie on her isolated small holding, David finds that the violent dilemmas of the new South Africa are inescapable when the tentative emotional truce between errant father and daughter is ripped apart by a traumatic event that forces Lucie to an appalling disgrace. Pitching the moral code of political correctness against the values of Romantic poetry in its evocation of personal relationships, this novel is skillful – almost cunning -in its exploration of David’s refusal to be accountable and his daughter’s determination to make her entire life a process of accountability. Their personal dilemmas cast increasingly foreshortened shadows against the rising concerns of the emancipated community, and become a subtle metaphor for the historical unaccountability of one culture to another.
The ecstatic critical reception with which Disgrace has been received has insisted that its excellence lies in its ability to encompass the universality of the human condition. Nothing could be farther from the truth, or do the novel – and its author – a greater disservice. The real brilliance of this stylish book lies in its ability to capture and render accountable – without preaching – the specific universality of the condition of whiteness and white consciousness. Disgrace is foremost a confrontation with history that few writers would have the resources to sustain. Coetzee’s vision is unforgiving – but not bleak. Against the self-piteous complaints of all declining cultures and communities who bemoan the loss of privileges that were never theirs to take, Coetzee’s vision of an unredeemed white consciousness holds out – to those who reach towards an understanding of their position in history by starting again, with nothing – the possibility of “a moderate bliss.”
A bit longish, but a very nice read. I normally don’t like the narrator spective, but this was nicely done.
Synopsis from Amazon
When Emine Aksu, the flamboyant wife of an Istanbul style guru, suddenly goes missing, Inspector Cetin Ikmen’s investigation leads him deep into her strange and colourful past. Emine was a hippie when she was younger, who wholeheartedly enjoyed the liberated lifestyle that swept across the city when the western Europeans flooded into Istanbul in the sixties. According to her husband, Emine never really left behind the free love pleasures she discovered back then and he suspects she was visiting an old friend at the time of her disappearance. Meanwhile, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman is called to a terrifying scene at the art deco Kamondo Stairs in the old banking district of Karakoy. The skeleton of a woman has been discovered in one of the large plant containers. Could these two bizarre incidents be linked?
Overall, I learned a lot about Turkey, which was quite interesting. Some things were repeated just too often – I don’t need to be informed that the main character lights a cigarette three times per page. The more or less hidden criticism about the conditions of the EU for the accession of Turkey were also a bit too much and the references to the champions league final, well.
A lovely book about friendship, love and life. I enjoyed reading it, even though at times I felt like I had read it before as it is similar to some other books.
The book was a nice read, although it couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be – an analysis of apartheid, a love story or something different. Even though they blend together quite nicely, all of them are a bit flat.
From Amazon:
Synopsis
In North Oxford, where South African born Elena has been living for the past seven years, the morning paper brings shocking news about allegations made at the Truth commission in South Africa and a criminal case against Dr Leonard Bresler, the anaesthetist (22 Med Corps) who bought her Debussy painting and made it possible for her to live in England. In addition, the newspaper mentions an ex-prisoner of Robben Island who gave evidence at the TRC. Could that be Vulani? And could the stranger who came to her friends Nina and Jacques in Cape Town to enquire after her, really have been Vulani? Elena relives the time seven years previously, in the turbulent South Africa of 1989, when she found an escaped prisoner on the beach in front of her house in Cape Town during the last months of the apartheid government’s rule in South Africa. They undertook a journey together that would challenge everything that had formed Elena – her understanding of her own identity, her relationship with her father, her work as an artist.
1. Get the basics right
Some improvements here, although they are not sustained. Included some of these things in the March goal though, to make it a bit more specific as well. It’s so broad that I can probably never mark it done.
2. stop procrastinating
Yes, I was doing better, but not yet good enough to mark it done as I had originally planned to. Need to follow up with the time sheets to make it clearer that I am not procrastinating, but actually getting work done.
3. Lose 10 kg
Further progress though I slacked off towards the end, where I actually gained half a kilo. So this needs to go now and another one as well. Goal for March is to end up at less than 61 kg.
4. Complete my secret project
No, no, no, no, no! I want to work half an hour per day in March. I need to get this done!
5. Speak French fluently
I’ve found a new teacher, but didn’t have a lesson that. I’ve been looking at courses in Paris as well, but they are so extremely expensive. Still, I want to follow up and maybe find a way of financing it.
6.Do everything I can to have great skin
Some progress, but not the one I wanted to. I still haven’t called the dermatologist etc.
7. Keep track of expenses
No progress here…hm.
8. Make a difference
Work is going badly and I am thinking of looking for another job to be able to mark this goal done. I will have to look into this further.
9. Beat my inertia
Not that much. February was a strange month and I was quite tired.
10. Stop thinking, decide quickly, start acting
I think I need to come up with some clearer ideas on that one – what exactly I mean and when I would be able to mark it done.
11. Buy a car
No progress again. It is annoying the hell out of me.
12. Become great at what I do
Some progress. I am pretty much up to date with everything, now I have to work on quality and the extras.
13. Find useful things to do in my free time that improve my life or somebody else’s
Like I sad, a tiring month without time for doing anything useful or even thinking about it.
14. Read at least 2 academic articles per week
Nope. Definitely no progress here. Postponed to March I guess…
15. Travel to 100 countries
No travel this month.
16. Free myself of the need for instant gratification
Not so good this month I think.
17. Take responsibility for my life
Again, not yet. So many things still to be done to mark this one done.
18. Keep a journal
A bit, although not much. Tried to capture my dreams as well which is really fun, although even minutes afterwards I have trouble remembering, but it is still much more than what I would have otherwise.
19. Read 50 books in 2010
I had changed to this the original goal of reading everything I own, but I kept on buying new books. Feb has been quite good on this. I am not quite on track yet, but getting there.
20.Sort it out part 2
Nah, this is ugly again… I need to do this.
21. Review Goals Monthly
done!
22.Tie up loose end
No progress this month…
23. Get all the repairs done in the house
Well, we got the pool and the fence repaired, so there has been progress.
24. Do 200 min of cardio
I’ve been to the gym, but didn’t keep track of this goal at all.
