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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Statistics for reading year 2017

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Having had no proper internet connection, this will now be my first post of 2018, instead of last for 2017. A new year, new expectations and promises, but more about that later on. Now it is time for a sum up of 2017, where I managed to read 89 books. A little bit less than I hoped for, but I am pleased with the outcome.

I have been reading a variety of books. With my literary course I entered into unknown territory, but it opened up a new world for me. I could not imagine that old writings from the antique could still be so vivid and engaging today. I presume that is why they are called classics and good literature!

Best books of the year

In an earlier post on the best books read for 2017 I mentioned three books that stood out over the others; The Go-Between by J.P Hartley, The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears and The Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. None of them exactly new. However, I did enjoy most of the books I read. There was one book I could not finish though and that was The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure. I don't know whether it was because it was an audio book and I did not like the narrator, or just a lack of excitement in the beginning. Have you read it? What did you think?


Reading statistics 2017

Going through the books I have read, I realise I ended up with almost the the same number of books for fiction vs non fiction in comparison with last year. 75% vs 25% in 2016 and 73% vs 27% in 2017. Here are the stats for 2016. For 2017 it looks like this for number of books.

Fiction - 42
Historical fiction - 11
Mystery - 11
Total: 64

Non fiction 14
Biographies - 11
Total: 25

Sorry, could not manage to transfer a pie of the statistics, although I managed earlier years!

I wish you all a wonderful 2018 with a lot of reading and a good life!


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