Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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New interesting books

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I recently found the web-site of Bookreporter and am now subscribing to some of their newsletters. In the latest version I found two books that sound especially interesting. There are of course many more, especially a lot of thrillers/mystery books that are interesting, but these two stuck out for me.




CARELESS PEOPLE is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of one of America’s best-loved novels. Acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn in 1922, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.
Penguin Books * 9780143126256


THE CAIRO AFFAIR by Olen Steinhauer (Thriller)

Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated.
Picador * 9781250036155

 Mostly because I have lived in Cairo, and it is alway interesting to read books from places where you have been.


MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH by Rebecca Mead (Memoir)
Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH. After gaining admission to Oxford and moving to the US to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage and family, Mead read and reread MIDDLEMARCH, which offered her something that modern life and literature did not. Here, she leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written.
Broadway Books * 9780307984777

I have always wanted to read Middlemarch and I have it on my TBR shelves. Everybody seem to have only good things to say about it. Maybe this will be the year that I will read it?

 I know, I know... I have to look for my TBR shelves this year, but I can always dream and keep them on my to buy list!

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