Whoops - 2012 Book Quest

I went to the second-hand bookstore. I love that place. It is just up the street from where I live and it is a mess of  books. Books stacked on the floor, on tables and on top of any free surface.
There is no alphabetical order, the only order is an unbreakable code of "This is the German author section, but with some Austrian and Belgian in the mix. Over here is the Spanish, Italian French, oh and on the bottom shelf is Eastern European. But if it is a detective novel it might be over there."

Needless to say, it is an amazing place!

I did manage to find some books while I was fighting my way through the Jungle of Used Books. So now I have read 2 and bought 9. I should feel bad, but I don't. I love books and most of the ones I bought are pretty short. I am confident I can make it up.

The books I bought were:

1. George Eliot: Middlemarch
2. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
3. Agatha Christie: Appointment with Death
4. Agatha Christie: Three Act Tragedy
5. Agatha Christie: Peril at the End House

Yes I have a love for Agatha Christie, it might not be big literature, but it is nice. I am currently reading a lot of books "you are supposed to have read", so Christie is like putting on a comfy blanket after all that scary, important, culture-describing, political literature.

Don't get me wrong, I like Charles Dickens, but give me a good murder mystery any day.

Anyway, my already cluttered "to-read" shelf is now even worse. I would lie if I said I did not like it.

The new books are the ones with arrows pointing at them. Obviously...

Violence - The 2012 Book Quest

I finished Dracula last night. The last 50 pages or so were a bit of a chore to get through, but as always when I finish a book, I felt a little bit high. And even if it has been a tough one to finish, I immediately start looking for the next one. For exactly that purpose I have a "to-read" shelf in one of my bookcases. Yesterday it looked like this:

The book I chose is obviously the one with the arrow next to it. (I hope you can see the arrow). It is Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin, a book i bought about 4 years ago because I saw it on a list called "The top 10 most disturbing novels".
The list featured American Psycho, which I had not, at that time, read yet. I had only read a chapter of it in high school English and liked it. I later discovered that the chapter we had read was the most violent and graphic in the book, that disappointed me quite a lot.

I enjoy violent novels, there is something un-apologetic about them.
If an author can write a scene like in American Psycho, where the main character is in his bedroom contemplating what suit to wear and where he should have dinner tonight, only to walk into the kitchen to calmly remark that the severed head of a hooker is looking at him from the kitchen table, then I'm sold.

So I am really looking forward to We Need to Talk About Kevin. The first 50 pages promise an interesting narrative, and I am hoping that, when I finally get to meet this Kevin, he will be every part as coldblooded as I expect him to be.

Sunday Sensations.

I think Sundays are amazing. Even if I do not have anything to do the entire week, I am still much more relaxed on Sunday. It might be because it is the legitimate day to not do anything, so it does not feel like I'm cheating by not working.

Sunday is also the day I look back at my week, I have done that for many years. I quietly reflect on what has happened in the past week and prepare myself for what is coming next. I do not have a check list for what was good and bad, I generally try not to keep score because I do not believe it will make me happier.

Mostly Sundays are quiet days, and I like the quiet. It is the day where even a little bit of work goes a long way.
It is also a day for reading, which means this day is the closest I come to having a holy day. I can just put on some headphones, listen to Jethro Tull and read my book nice and slow, no rush.

So happy Sunday everyone, spend it doing the things you love the most.

Thus far - Book Quest 2012

My quest for 2012 is to read as many books as I buy. I have a tendency to go in to a bookstore and find a bunch of books I want, and then have to put some back because I am not made of money.
It seems silly that I often buy books that stand around unread for years just because I felt like buying them, but not reading them. So to save myself some money and space I will try to limit myself, but just you wait for 2013, I'm going to buy ALL the books!

This quest also serves a great purpose, I get to rant about the books I buy. Anyone who has ever met me right after I've bought a handful of books knows that I could stare at them, talk about them, cuddle them for hours on end.

So far I have bought four books:

1. Charles Dickens: David Copperfield
2. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
3. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
4. Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence

And I have read Jane Austen's Emma. I am taking my sweet time reading the books, simply because I can. I'm enjoying actually having the time instead of having to rush through one book and on to the next.

Currently I am reading Bram Stoker's Dracula and I had the immense pleasure of, while on the train back from my parents house, correcting some young girl who was sighing about how amazingly hot and cool Edward Cullen is by firmly smacking her hand with my book. I would have gone for the head, but she was all the way across from me, and Twilight is not worth the effort of leaning forward.

Moving on from the Twilight massacre of 2012 I have discovered an interesting fact. In Dracula, the Count is not killed by sunlight, he just cannot change appearances from what he was when the sun rose. I wonder where the "no sunlight" idea came from.

Someone asked me the other day what was going to be my quest in 2013 and I was all "Whoa, it's January, let's not get ahead of ourselves". Which was mostly a cover up, because I have actually thought about it and honestly; I have NO idea. Suggestions anyone?

Old blog: Bye - New blog: Why

As I try to start a new blog I find it necessary to explain a little about the old one, and especially why it died.

I was overly ambitious, I wanted to read 52 books in a year, a quest I started in March, and I also wanted to write a review of each book. Part one of my plan was doable, but the second part I found to be a challenge. It was a lot more work than I had imagined, and I simply got sick of it. It seemed pointless to me and became a chore.

Now you know you have a problem when a hobby becomes a chore, I figured I would either drop the entire project or stop writing about it. I think I made the right choice.

Now on to this blog; Why did I start anew when it didn't work last time?
Well I want to improve my writing skills, and someone wise and probably famous once said, that if you work really hard at something you get better at it.
Someone also said "Write what you know", well I know reading (and basic math, but I doubt you want to read about me adding columns of small numbers) so I write about reading.
If I should happen to experience something exiting when I am not in my reading chair, I will most likely share that too. Consider yourselves warned!

The books of 2011.

So I thought I was in a hurry to get out the door, only to realize I had misread the clock and I was an hour early. So to spend some of the gained time I here present to the peoples of the internet the 52 novels i read in 2011.

1. Lewis Wallace: Ben Hur
2. Agatha Christie: Murder on the Nile
3. Dan Brown: The Lost Symbol
4. Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book
5. Jostein Gaarder: Sofie's World
6. Howard Pyle: Robin Hood
7. Jan Guillou: The Evil
8. Chris Cleave: The Other Hand
9. Flemming Jarlskov: How to Start a War
10. Fynn: Mister God, this is Anna
11. Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomasson: The Rule of Four
12. Lars Henrik Olsen: The Dwarf from Normandy
13. Shauna Cross: Derby Girl
14. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
15. Johannes V. Jensen: Fall of the King
16. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
17. Brett Easton Ellis: American Psycho
18. Thit Jensen: Stygge Krumpen vol. 1
19. James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff: Mutiny on the Bounty
20. Jan Guillou: The Road to Jerusalem
21. Jan Guillou: The Knight Templar
22. Jan Guillou: The Kingdom at the End of the Road
23. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone
24. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
25. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
26. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
27. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
28. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
29. J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
30. J. K. Rowling: The Tales of Beedle the Bard
31. Lewis Carol: Alice in Wonderland
32. Thit Jensen: Stygge Krumpen vol. 2
33. Robert Rankin: Retromancer
34. Kenneth Graeme: The Wind in the Willows
35. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: The Leopard
36. Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers
37. Robert Rankin: Brightonomicon
38. Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
39. Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
40. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
41. Dan Brown: Digital Fortress
42. Edward Rutherfurd: New York
43. Robert Rankin: The Antipope
44. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five
45. Knud Sønderby: Midt i en Jazztid
46. William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
47. Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak
48. Rita MAe Brown: Rubyfruit Jungle
49. Agatha Christie: At Bertrams Hotel
50. Agatha Christie: The Moving Finger
51. Robert Rankin: The Brentford Triangle
52. John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men

That's all. Doesn't seem like that much looking at it. 

Starting over.

This is a re-birth of a blog that died.
Well, I killed it, on purpose.

So to new beginnings, cheers.

The dead blog was mostly about books, as will this one. It was also about my 2011 book quest. A quest to read 52 novels in 2011. The blog did not die because I failed, I just found out I had made a wrong decision in how to write about the books I read, so I stopped writing.
I did however finish the quest, with a couple of weeks to spare even. It felt pretty good, so I decided I would make a 2012 quest as well.
It would not be to read a specific amount of books, instead the quest for 2012 is to read the same amount of books as i purchase. The point of this quest, I believe, is obvious; to restrain myself from buying just any book I see just because "It looked so lonely, there in the store, I'm sure it was crying too!"  
I am already doing terribly so that's a good sign.
I've been a good girl and have only bought four books so far, but I have also only read one. Oh well 2012 is a long year, I'm sure I will catch up.

That's about it,
TubA