April - A Summary

I'm not going to start this post again with stating the fact, that April ran by way too fast! Instead I'll instantly start with my summary. Here we go!

LIFE:
We received the first offers for the changes we want to make at our house. The price meet our expectations, so we didn't suffer any negative surprises there. As soon as my husband has a day off, we will visit the construction site. The outside of the house is finished (they just need to finish the facade) and they already started to work on the inside. My husband thinks that we will move this year, I think that we will be able to live in our own house by next spring. Be that as it may - we are more than excited!
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Die ersten Angebote für unsere Änderungswünsche sind so eingetrudelt und sind nicht höher, als von uns geschätzt. Also hier gibts schon mal keine bösen Überraschungen - zum Glück! Sobald der Liebste mal wieder frei hat, werden wir eine Baustellenbesichtigung machen. Der Rohbau steht, der Innenausbau ist bereits in vollem Gange und man kann jede Woche eine Veränderung sehen. Der Mann denkt, dass wir noch heuer umziehen werden - ich rechne eher erst nächsten Frühling damit. So oder so - wir freuen uns!

We visited my sister in law for a short weekend as our oldest nephew turned nine. NINE YEARS! He's so big already and right now in the middle of a defiance phase and a little difficult. But I still enjoyed the two days off and the fact, that we sat together till way after midnight and just talked and laughed and had fun.
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Wir waren wieder zu Besuch bei meiner Schwägerin in Salzburg, weil unser großer Neffe NEUN wurde. Unglaublich, wie groß der schon ist. Und momentan befindet er sich in einer vorpubertären Phase und ist dezent schwierig. Trotzdem war's toll mal alle wiederzusehen und bis weit in die Nacht zu quatschen und zu lachen!

CRAFT:
My crochet mojo is slowly coming back after being absent for quite a while. I finally finished the little lamb that just needed eyes stitched on and two ears. I immediately started a new project and have a million ideas inside my head!
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Meine Häkelmotivation ist wieder da! Endlich. Nach einer gefühlten Ewigkeit hab ich endlich mein Lämmchen fertig gemacht (haben ja nur noch die Augen und Ohren gefehlt) und gleich sofort mit einem neuen Projekt angefangen. Ich arbeite gerade an einem Sommerpulli!

a new Lupo!

SPORT:
It's reaaaally hard for me to motivate me to go for a run, although I'm still making progress. I managed to run for 6.5 kms last week and I never managed to run that far!
I bought new sport shoes this weekend, maybe this will help. I'm still ahead of my running goal for this year, let's see if that motivation's coming back soon. At least I can force myself to go for at least one run a week.
//
Momentan fehlt's mir echt an Motivation und das, obwohl ich mich mit jedem Lauf steigern kann. Letzte Woche hab ich 6.5 Kilometer geschafft, so viel wie noch nie! Ich hab mir letzte Woche neue Sportschuhe zugelegt, vielleicht helfen die ja. Immerhin bin ich meinem Jahreslaufziel immer noch voraus. 

slightly ahead of my running goal!

BOOKS:
I finished Game of Thrones. Finally. Though I love the books and the plot and the characters, the fourth and the fifth volume were a little tiresome to read.
I managed to read 4 books since and I'm currently in the middle of the fifth one.

After not buying any books for a few months now, I got myself this baking book: It's called Sugar Orgasm and it is written by three women, who opened the "Guerilla bakery" in Vienna. They started with "pop up bakeries" - every two month they opened a little bakery for one afternoon in a abandoned building or an empty appartment in Vienna. That concept proved to be so successful that they opened a real bakery a few months ago and published this book. A colleague of mine ordered it and as I flipped through it I knew, that I HAD to have this book. Can't wait to try out my first recipe from it, I'll keep you posted!
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Ich bin endlich mit Game of Thrones fertig. Obwohl ich die Geschichte und Personen liebe haben sich die letzten beiden Bände dann doch seeeeehr gezogen. Seither hab ich gleich vier Bücher gelesen und bin grad mitten im Fünften. 

Nachdem ich seit Mitte Dezember keine neuen Bücher mehr gekauft habe, bin ich jetzt wieder schwach geworden. "Zucker Orgasmus" von der Guerilla Bakery ist's geworden. Drei Schwestern haben in Wien "Pop Up Bakeries" eröffnet, das Konzept kam so gut an, dass sie jetzt eine Bäckerei/Caféhaus eröffnet haben und dazu ein Backbuch veröffentlicht. Eine Kollegin hat sich das Buch bestellt und nach kurzem Durchblättern wusste ich - das muss ich haben! Ich freu mich schon auf's Ausprobieren und werde dann berichten!

sugar orgasm! That's the prettiest cook book I own!

How was your April? Got any exciting news or experiences?
//
Wie war euer April? Gab's gute Nachrichten oder tolle Erfahrungen?

The year in books. September

Another month has passed (how can it be October already???) and as I always I'm a little late with my list of books to link up with Laura. I've gotten through a lot of books again. I'm currently reading the 47th book this year, so I'm definitely going to make my goodreads reading challenge of 50 books in 2015. I'm pretty certain that I will top it and read more than 50 books. I really need more money and more shelf space for my ever growing reading habit, it's getting slightly out of hand.
Anyway: Here are my books.

Dolores Schmidinger - Im Bett mit dem Teufel
An Austrian comedian who wrote her first crime novel. I'm always falling for crime fiction as it's perfect reading material for train journeys to and from work. I was positively surprised. The book has two timelines: one in the 80s and one in the present. It tells the love story of a woman who falls in love with a man who is a member of a catholic cult group and the second timeline tells the story of her daughter who, after 20 years, gets in contact with said man. It was funny and thrilling and although you knew, who the murderer was, right from the beginning, it was interesting to read until the last page.

picture from google

T.C. Boyle - Wassermusik (Water Music)
I bought this book on a flea market when I was still back at university. I totally fell for it (as I fall for all books of T.C. Boyle) and then I forgot it on the train went I went to visit my parents. On the next flea market, I bought it again and this time I finished it. Boyle tells the story of an 18th century explorer who travels to Africa to explore the Niger. He fails on the first exploration but it never lets him go and so he travels again. I love the style of T.C. Boyle. As I read the first half of the book now three times but the end just twice, I forgot some things that happened at the second half of the book so it was still fresh and interesting. If you love looong books and perfectly detailed drawn characters - Boyle is the perfect author for you.

picture from google

Davig Lagercrantz - Verschwörung (The girl in the spiders web)
Did you read the Millenium trilogy from Stieg Larsson? I absolutely adored it. Even my husband, who barely ever reads, didn't stop reading those books until he finished them in absolutely short time. Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson died after the third book and wasn't able to finish the fourth. After a long struggle with Larssons wife and his family, David Lagercrantz published the girl in the spiders web, which is kind of a continuation of the Millenium trilogy. Of course I was very curios and couldn't wait for that book to come out. I made the mistake to read a lot of article and reviews before I read the book myself. Not a good idea, as my mind was heavy with a lot of different opinions which of course, affected my own. Let's just say this: If you loved Stieg Larsson, you will like David Lagercrantz. Just try to ignore the fact that someone else is writing the book and you won't really notice a difference.

T.C. Boyle - San Miguel
I think I made it clear, how much I love T.C. Boyle. I already read San Miguel, but as I forbade myself to buy new books until the Christmas Holidays, I have to read books again. San Miguel tells the life of two different families who try to live on San Miguel Island, a little Island off the West Coast of North America. When the book first came out, critics said, that nothing happened, that the book is boring, that it only tells of the ordinary, everyday life that people lived on the island. Duh. Of course it only tells that. There are four people, living on an island, away from the main land, in the 19th century. What did they think will happen there? But things happen. And as always, Boyle describes the protagonists so well, that you feel, that you really know the people in the books. You know about their past, you get inside their head to know what they think, feel, smell, talk, you know, what they dream of and if they're disappointed or happy or sad. And that's what I love about Boyles books - his characters.

Robert Schneider - Schlafes Bruder (Brother of sleep)
An Austrian classic. Again a book that I've read before, though it's been some years since I first had a go at it. It's about a boy, who grows up in a little village in the Austrian alps. He's a little strange, doesn't look normal and has an enormous musical talent! He falls in love with his neighbour and thinks, that no one can really love, when he's sleeping. True love never sleeps because when you sleep, you don't think about the woman you love, you can't spend time with her, you can't make her happy. Thus, he stops sleeping.
Rather creepy and disturbing story but it left me thinking about it for some days after finishing it and that's what a good book should do to you - stay in your mind, even if it's back on the shelf!

picture from google

Jo Nesbo - Kakerlaken (Cockroaches)
I've written about my love for Jo Nesbo and his Harry Hole series a few times now. Again a gripping thriller, the definition of a pageturner. The Swedish embassador is found dead in a Motel Room in Bangkok and Harry Hole is send to Thailand to investigate in the case. I won't tell more, Nesbos thrillers are awesome and everyone should read them.

picture from google

Now that Autumn has definitely arrived, I tend to read even more as I love to curl up under a warm blanket, with a cup of hot chocolate in one and a good book in the other hand. We'll see what October has to offer, book-wise.

Happy reading, everyone!

The Year in Books: June

FINALLY I find time to contribute my June reading list. Time hasn't been really stressed or hectic in the last few days, but it was HOT and when I came home from work all I did was jump into the shower and go straight to bed. Way too warm for anything else. Austria has survived a heatwave and the next one is about to begin. I don't mint 38 degrees, as long as I'm not supposed to work. Thank got the next hot day is a Saturday. Hello lake.

I did a lot of reading in June (pagewise) as my man was away a lot, spending time to tune his Harley. He dreamed of owning a Harley Davidson ever since he started riding motorcycles and so I can understand, that he wants to make it perfect now. I'm happy for him and to be honest - I enjoyed to have a few evenings for myself! ;)

So here's my list of what I've read these past weeks: (linkin up with Laura from Circle of Pine Trees

Ken Follet - Kinder der Freiheit (Edge of Eternity)

is there anything better than reading in bed?

The third and last book of the Century Trilogy. I wrote about Ken Follet books here. In this book he wrote about the racist problems in 1960's USA and the Berlin Wall. Again you met the families, whose lives you accompanied since the first book. It was great to read, lots of historical facts and lots of learning without noticing it.

Jo Nesbo - Der Fledermausmann (The Bat)
I read the 10th case of Harry Hole first and ever since I wanted to start from the beginning. So I bough the first case of Harry Hole. Like the two Jo Nesbo thrillers that I've read before,it was a very good thriller, the plot interesting, the killings disgusting and shocking and the end surprising. I want to buy them all over the next weeks, months or years.

T.C. Boyle - The Women

my much used and battered Paris second hand book find. You can still see the price tag. Just 4 euros.

I wrote about it here and my opinion about it hasn't changed. I bought it on holiday in Paris, 4 years ago and I've read it at least once a year ever since. Still fascinates me.

Paula Hawkins - Girl on the Train

After seeing and hearing about it everywhere (and getting it recommended) I gave in and bought it myself. I am commuting by train every day to work so I thought it would be interesting, to read a book about a commuting girl. I really liked the beginng. The story was fascinating and I wanted to know what happens next. In the end I just finished it because I wanted to know who the killer was. I had a clue about halfway in and that turned out to be true. Very good beginning - very weak end. I didn't like the ending at all and for me this destroys the whole book. The ending was very flat and predictable and really, really unrealistic. Sad, because it started really good. 

The Year in Books: May

Oh boy, another month has passed? How did that happen? Where did May go? What did I do in the past 30 days? 
I read a lot, that's for sure. Though this time I have "only" three books to show you. "Only" because two of these three books are more about thousand pages thick. Each. So page-wise I read a lot. Book wise...well let's get started:

(As always, linking up with Laure from Circle of Pine Trees and her wonderful idea of The Year in Books)

Ken Follet - Sturz der Titanen (Fall of the Titans)

I read this book once before I went on my big journey around the world. I always had a big interest in history. As some of you might know I studied German literature some years ago. And literature is always deeply connected with history. So whenever I learned about an epoche, a time, a genre, I also learned about the historical circumstances regarding that certain period. 
Ken Follet manages to combine fiction with historical facts. I love that kind of writing! You have these stories about people that are fictional - but you know that stories like these might have happened in the past. And while you read this page turning story about a small number of people, Follet provides you with the historical facts about the first World War. 

If you haven't heard about Ken Follet and his century trilogy here are some words about it:
Fall of the Titans tells the reader about the circumstances and the historical and political events that eventually lead to the outbreak of World War 1. The story is told via several positions: Families and protagonists in England, Germany and Russia have to deal with the oncoming crisis that eventually draaws in the whole world in one cruel and bloody war. The protagnoists always cross each other during the 1000 pages that seem to fly by rather quickly. While the people in the book are fictional, the historical circumstances are real and so you learn about history while reading an interesting novel full of love and hate and life and death.

Vea Kaiser - Makarionissi oder Die Insel der Seligen

Vea Kaiser is an Austrian author. She's my age and she also studied German in Vienna. I don't personally know her but I'm sure that we had to come across each other at the University. Anyway, Makarionissi is Vea's second book. I talked about her first one, Blasmusikpop here. I loved her first novel and so of course I was really curios about her second one!
Makarionissi tells the tale of a Greek family throughout several generations. Kaiser writes beautifully and funny about the mistake a grandmother made and how here grandchildren had to live with the consequences. I won't tell you more about it as it's a complex story which starts in Greece, switches over to Austria only to come back to Greece in the end.
It wasn't quite as good as her first one but then it's said that the second book for an author is the hardest. Blasmusikpop was such a huge success here in Austria, that Makarionissi is a really, really, really good book as it has to live up such high expectations. If I know about translations, I let you know!

Ken Follet - Winter der Welt (Winter of the World)

This is the second book of the Trilogy and it deals now with the Second World War. The main protagonists from the first book now make place for their children. Still, the maintaining connections between the countries remain and so a lot of familiar people appear here.


Now you can guess which book I'm reading right now! ;)

What did you read in the last month? Do you have any good summer book recommendations? I really need a vacation novel! :)

The year in books - April

Long time no blog... hello to all of you. I'm so happy to be back in blogland, it's been some crazy few weeks. First things first - I AM MARRIED! He said yes, I'm so reliefed! ;) More on that topic in another post which I'm already preparing. Don't miss it because I'm not only going to show you my dress (which is what you all want to see - let's be honest!) but also MY FACE! Yes, I will finally reveal myself to all of you. So watch out for the wedding post. It will appear here in the next few days, I promise!

I did a surprisingly high amount of reading in April! So let's start with my list!

Emily Bronte - Stürmische Höhen (Wuthering Heights)

I can't for the life of me remember where on earth I gotten this book from. It's a very nice edition, and if my research is correct it was published sometime in the 1960's. But it's NOT second hand, that book was unread and brand new. I probably bought it in some antique book store but as I said - I don't remember buying this book which is very weird as I usually remember the purchase of EVERY SINGLE BOOK in my collection.
About the book: It was my first time reading Emily Bronte. As usual with older books, it takes some pages to get used to the style and the writing. But I managed that rather quickly and then really enjoyed this classic. The description of various scene was sometimes a liiiiittle too long and elaborate for my taste but that was the writing of that time. It took me rather a while to finish it, but it was worth every minute. A really nice and thrilling story and a fantastic read.

Victor Hugo - Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

A classic. And I have to confess that I've NEVER seen the Disney Movie so I really had no idea, what that book actually was about. I bought it in an antique book store that I stumbled across accidentially in Hamburg. A beautiful edition and in a very good condition as well.
Anyway, even if I had watched the Disney movie before it wouldn't be the same as reading the book. I couldn't believe how cruel and disgusting it was. And thrilling. I couldn't stop reading it although it's a little exhausting to read that old writing. Such a tiny little font...but again an amazing story!

Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

When we travelled around the world 2 years ago we had to live through many many 10+ hour flights. And on one of those flights I watched the movie. To be honest - I never heard about it, I only watched the movie because Emma Watson played a role in it and as I am a huge Harry Potter fan I was curios how it would be to see Emma in another role other than Hermione. I didn't like the movie very much and as it was an overnight flight I feel asleep during the movie and didn't really understand the end because I missed a chunk of the middle. Nevertheless - when I was looking for a new book (and bought three because I couldn't decide which one I should leave behind) I stumbled about this one. I have seen it in some posts around the internet and most of the times it got positive reviews. So I tried and I liked it! It's the story about a teenage boy. He's writing letters to an unknown receiver and tells this "friend" about his live. He's making new friedns who introduce him to other people, to cigarettes, drugs and parties. It's a great coming-of-age story with a very, very unexpected ending and I will definitely read it again in the near future because I'm sure you read the whole thing differently if you have the ending in mind! Though it's a book for teenager and young adults I would recommend it to readers of any age. Great book!

Emma Healy - Elizabeth is Missing

Probably the best book that I've read this year so far. In this book the protagonist, an older lady named Maud is telling the story. Maud has Alzheimer and the reader gets an inside of her head and her thoughts and the difficulties she has to face due to her illness. It's amazing how this story is build. Maud remembers from time to time that it's been a while since she last heard from her friend Elizabeth. And so she tells her daughter, who takes care of her, that Elizabeth is missing. But no matter how often she tells people that her friend hasn't called in a while, nobody seems to care. Meanwhile, there are always snippets in Maud's present life that trigger a memory to an incident, that happened 70 years earlier to Maud's sister.
The author jumps between the past and the present and both times mingle more and more in the head of Maud until she can't differentiate anymore between what's happening now and what happened all that time ago.
I don't want to reveal too much but the book has a very, very good ending and is one of the most interesting and unusual crime stories that I've ever read!

Ransom Riggs - Miss Peregrins Home of Peculiar Children

Good start - dissapointing end. This book is the last of the three books that I bought spontaniously in the book store when I had to wait for my train. It starts really good, with a kind of horror story but very soon it get's tooo fictional and fantasy-like for my taste. Also the end was a little weak. But I really liked the concept of the author who links the story with old photographs, which are real and which he discovered over the years on various flea markets and second hand shops.

John Grisham - The Client

I love John Grisham. Although his books are often alike he always manages to write gripping stories that are real pageturners. A colleague of mine gave me the book once so it's a rather old version in rather bad condition. But like every John Grisham I read through that one pretty fast and couldn't put it down until I finished it.

Stephen King - Mr. Mercedes

I forgot the books that I prepared for our honeymoon in the hotel so I had to buy a new one at the airport. I didn't really know what Mr. MErcedes was about. The only thing I knew about it was that a man drove a Mercedes into a crowd of people, thus killing some of them.
What I found out while reading it was, that "Mr. Mercedes", as the killer was called by the police who investigated the case, contacted the retired Detective who couldn't solve the crime before he retired. The officer started to investigate again and a very thrilling cat and mouse game began. The end is rather open and I thought, that Stephen King might have left the opportunity to write a sequel when I found out, that it's the first part of a trilogy. A very promising start and I will definitely buy the second book as soon as it's published.

Jo Nesbo - The Son

As I finished Mr. Mercedes before we flew back home, I had to buy another book at the airport in Mallorca. I chose The Son because it appeared in the Austrian bestseller lists for a while and because I really liked "The police", another Jo Nesbo thriller that I read as first book in this year.
The Son is about a prisoner, who escapes to revenge his father, who allegedly commited suicide but (as the son finds out before he breaks out of prison) was actually killed. But who was the killer?
600 pages of thrill and suspension. Definitely not my last Jo Nesbo book, I want to read all 10 books that have the police officer Harry Hole as protagonist. Ambitious, isn't it?

So apart from "Miss Peregrines home of Peculiar children" every single one of the books that I read in April was truly amazing, unique and totally interesting. I would recommend you EVERY SINGLE ONE of it! Go and read them and tell me what you think about it. And please read "Elizabeth is Missing" as it is the best of all my April reads. What an amazing book! I lend it to a friend of mine and as soon as I get it back I will probably read it again.

Linking up with Laura at Circle of Pine Trees and her wonderful and fantastic the year in books. I love Love LOVE telling you about my reads every month! It's such a great idea. Thank you Laura for organizing this! :)

the year in books - January

A month is over and it's time for the year in books again. As I explained in this post, I'm doing a slight variation of the year in books. Instead of stating at the beginning of the month, which book I'm going to read, I'm writing a little review about the books that I've read the previous month.
So here we go.

In December I knew that I had a rather long train ride ahead of me but I forgot my book. So I went to the book store at the train station and grabbed the first thing that sounded interesting which was
Jo Nesbo - Police

I never read anything of Jo Nesbo before. Part of my job is it to update the weekly bestseller lists and Jo Nesbo was featured in that list for quite some time now. So I thought I'd give it a try. And it proved to be a very good decision! Police is a quite fascinating thriller, dealing with a murderer, who killed police officers who weren't able to solve previous cases. It was thrilling and gruesome, sometimes rather disgusting and shocking, but it was quite a page turner and on the first days of the new year I finished it. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it was the tenth book that had a certain detective as main character and so I didn't understand some things as they happened in previous books and weren't really explained. But that's my own fault for buying the tenth book of a series instead of the first. I didn't realise this until I read about a hundred pages, though. But I'll probably buy the first one. It's a nice train or beach book, simple yet interesting.

Then I started on reading the Harry Potter book series again. As some of you might know, I've been on holiday in London in October. There I saw a beautiful edition of the Harry Potter books. Now I've read all of them several times, but I always borrowed them from my cousin, and never possesed them. As I am a book collector rather than a person who borrows, I was looking for a nice edition for quite some time now. I don't even remember the book shop, I just know that it was a book store located in the Waterloo train station, which was right next to our hotel.
I was looking for a souvenir to take home with me when my man pointed the books out to me! On the last day of our stay I bought them and I'm so happy that I did!
Instead of telling you something about the books (I assume you are all familiar with the Harry Potter story and if you're not - step away from the computer immediately and start reading those books!!!) I'll show you some picture of the books so you can have a look at how beautiful they are. There are so many details in these books, for example, all of the letters appear to be handwritten and each character is given his own handwriting, which make them even more precious to me!

What have you been reading this month?

my year in books - 2014

Hello to my first end-of-the-year-review which is published at the beginning of the new year because I didn't have time earlier to sit at the computer and write this nice long post. 
The play is over. Today was my first day back at work and oh my, what a change. I'm totally out of my normal rhythm and it will probably take some days to find back into my old schedule. But it was all totally worth it! The play was sooo much fun again this year. I already miss all my wonderful acting peeps. It was a great success, we were sold out most of the shows and people really loved it. They laughed until they cried and we got told repeatedly, how great it was and how much they enjoyed watching us. And after all, that's exactly the reason why we're doing all of the work, isn't it?

Anyhow, I have this blog post in my head for a while now. I joined the year in books in October, so I didn't really have the chance to show you all of the books that I read in this year.

At some point during the year I set myself the goodreads reading challenge goal of finishing 40 books this year. And I'm really proud that I was not only able to achieve this goal but also to read MORE. 47 books in total, to be exact. Of course, the fact that I commute to work by train since August and have therefore a solid 1,5 hours to read everyday really helped.

And because I am a person who just LOVES lists and statistics I'll give you now all the useless and helpful information regarding to my reading! 
Quick add: I won't review books in this post, I'll be doing this in my monthly year in books posts and may write some reviews for all the books that I've read before October. But enough of the talking, here we go, in chronological (the order in which I read them) order, I present to you: 

MY BOOKS OF 2014:

1) T.C. Boyle - San Miguel
2) Daniel Kehlmann - F
3) Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (reread)
4) Jonas Jonasson - Die Analphabetin, die rechnen konnte (The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden)
5) Nick Hornby - A Long Way Down (reread)
6) Haruki Murakami - Naokos Lächeln
7) N.H. Kleinbaum - Der Club der toten Dichter (the dead poets society)
8) John Updike - Terrorist
9) Herman Melville - Moby Dick
10) Stephen King - Christine
11) James Kirkwood - P.S. Your Cat is Dead
12) Nick Flynn - Another Bullshit Night In Suck City (bought just because of the title. I loved it!)
13) Anna Gavalda - Zusammen ist man weniger allein (reread, Hunting and Gathering)
14) Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Of Love and other Demons
15) Stephen King - Four Past Midnight
16) John Grisham - The Firm
17) Verena Roßbacher - Schwätzen und Schlachten
18) E.L. James - 50 Shades of Grey (review here)
19) Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (review here)
20) Cheryl Strayed - Wild (review here)
21) Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's Calling
22) Romain Puertolas - Die unglaubliche Reise des Fakirs, der in einem Ikea-Schrank feststeckte 
23) Daniel Glattauer - Die Wunderübung
24) Marian Keyes - Sushi for Beginners
25) Lawrence Sanders - McNally's Puzzle
26) Sarah Kuttner - Wachtsumsschmerz
27) John Lutz - Single White Female
28) Anna Gavalda - Nur wer fällt lernt fliegen
29) Robert Ludlum - The Scorpion Illusion
30) Robert Galbraith - The Silkworm
31) Stephen King - Die Arena (Under the dome)
32) Heinrich Steinfest - Der Allesforscher
33) Stefan Slupetzky - Polivka hat einen Traum (review here)
34) Wolf Haas - Brennerova (review here)
35) Noah Gordon - The Medicus (review here)
36) Stephen King - Brennen muss Salem (Salem's lot, review here) 
37) Sebastian Fitzek - Der Augensammler (review here)
38) Vea Kaiser - Blasmusikpop, oder wie die Wissenschaft in die Berge kam (reread, review here)
39) Nick Hornby - Funny Girl (review here)
40) Chuck Klosterman - Downtown Owl (reread, review here)
41) Donal Ryan - The Thing About December (review here)
42) J.K. Rowling - The Casual Vacany (reread, review here)
43) Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex (reread, review here)
44) Theodora Bauer - Das Fell der Tante Meri
45) Lauren Graham - Someday, Someday Maybe
46) Boris Hillen - Agfa Leverkusen
47) Thomas Raab - Still, Chronik eines Mörders

I read nearly 19.000 pages in this year. Quite impressive, isn't it?

I really liked putting this list together, going over the books that I read. There are surprisingly many books which I've read for the first time. I thought that I had more "rereads" (I hope you understood, what I meant by that, basically, these are books which I've read at least once previously).

I've already finished my first book in 2015, you will read about it in my next "year in book post" which I'm already looking forward to! And this morning I started to reread the Harry Potter Series, which I bought on my holiday in London. 
January will be a no-spend-month, which means that I won't buy anything except food. I'm trying to do this every other month now, but that's the topic of another post. So I can't buy any new books this month and I therefore switched to my old ones. And believe me, I have enough of those!

My new reading goal for 2015 is at least 50 books. Like I said, I already finished the first one. It's part of my new years resolution, which also will be told in another post.

Anyway, I'm babbling. I just want to add that I love writing my year in book post, although I've done them slightly different. Rather than picking out a book that I WANT to read in that month, I always talked about the books which I've read in the previous months. So I'm actually always a month behind. That's because I'm never able to tell which book I'll read next. And I don't want to decided that in advance. I always surprise myself with my choices.

So, tell me, do you have any reading goals for this new year? Did you read some of the books in my list? If so - how did you like them? I'm really curious!

Happy Reading! :)

P.S.: If anybody knows if it's possible to add a goodreads-button (and Instagram for that matter) to my blog I would really appreciate your help. I'm somehow not able to get these to things in my sidebar! :(

a year in books: November

I really got a lot of reading done in October, despite the fact, that we spent a week away from home where I almost didn't read at all, except for a few pages on the 1,5 hour flight from Salzburg to London.

These are the books that I finished in October: 

Noah Gordon - The Medicus

picture from here

Now I don't really know what to think about this book. When I wrote here that I'm reading it right now I got a lot of comments from people who've read it already and who really liked it. I just found it really...long! Sometimes really tedious to read. Don't get me wrong, I really love big books, books with thousand and more pages. But I don't really like it when I have the feeling that I read and read and read and I'm still stuck somewhere in the middle of the book. And that is the feeling that I got with this one. But I understand how it became a worldwide bestseller. I really liked the story. I really want to see the movie now!

Stephen King: Salems Lot

picture from here

Well, what can I say. I like Stephen King. I think. He really knows how to keep a reader interested, to build up tension and to scare and frighten his readers. But with this book you get to see, that it is one of his earlier works. First, it's really thing, for a Stephen King book. And until half of the book he wrote really detailed and displayed his characters really well. And then I got the feeling that he wanted to bring the story to an end and everything else happened very quickly. Ir was a good read nonetheless, perfect for my daily train rides. 

Sebastian Fitzek: Der Augensammler

picture from here

This was my first ever Fitzek. I have absolutely no idea if he got translated in other languages, but he is a very wide received Thriller writer here. 

"Der Augensammler" or "eye-collector" as it would translate (badly) in English, is a book about a very gruesom murderer who kills mother, kidnaps their children and then gives the father a 40-hour ultimatum before he drowns the child and removes them an eye. 

Sounds like an interesting and horrifying thriller story. My cousin loves to read Fitzek and so I was very curious. It started great, as far as killing children can be described as great. But you know what I mean. I lost interest in the story though as Fitzek introduced a blind girl, who catches glimpes of the past and helped a journalist to catch the killer. I never like it when writers use people wirh supernatural abilities to solve their cases. I always think its just an easy way out, using a person who just KNOWS that this and that has happened and who just FEEL who committed the crimes. So this book was rather a disappointment for me. 

Vea Kaiser: Blasmusikpop

picture from here

I've bought this book on a holiday in 2012 and read it immediately. I re-read it when I was travelling around the world and spend three wonderful weeks at the most wonderful beach in the Philippines. And I re-re-read it last week. 

Vea Kaiser is an Austrian writer who IS MY AGE! I always feel jealous when people who are as old as I am manage to write a book. I wanted to write a book when I was a child but I didn't have a concept for my story. So I just wrote and wrotw without having a clue what I actually wanted to happen in my book and of course it was horrible and I threw everyhing away in the end. 

ANYWAY, Blasmusikpop is Kaisers first book and was a huge success here in Austria. The story is about a little village, high up in the Alps. The people in St.Peter, which is the name of the village, like their undisturbed live away from the big cities and civilization. They love their traditions and rituals, they grow up, learn the trade of their parents and grandparents, get married, build a house, have children and just do all those things "because that's just how they have always been done". One day, one of them decides to leave the village to become a doctor and therefore break the hundreds years old structures and from this point on the story unravels. 

It is one of the funniest books I know. Maybe that's because I grew up in a very small Austrian village myself. I didn't live in the mountains, but a lot of traditions and characters are so familiar to me, that reading about them was even more fun! 

I just found out, that the book will be translated into English too! I will keep you updated if and when that happens. You have to buy that book yourself. It's hilarious, I promise! 

As always, I have no idea which books I will read next! Whatever comes to my mind. So my "the year in books" posts are rather a reflection and a listing of my previous reads. I hope you enjoy them anyway!

Keep on reading! :-)