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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'Connected Reading'





While you are reading books you always find some connections to historical events, books by the same author, other authors, other book titles, a place, a person or whatever gives you a connection to something. It is interesting to continue reading in this direction.

 I will use this new page in an effort to lower the number of books on my TBR shelves, which means I can only choose 'connected' books from there or from the library.

1 The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
- connection: Odessa
Odessa - Genius and Death in a City of Dreams by Charles King
- connection: Crimea
Wild Romance by Chloë Schama
- connection: bigamy
Lady Audrey's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 
- connection: The Pre-Raphaelites
Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle
- connection: Lizzie Siddal
Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley
- connection: Ford Madox Brown
The Good Soldier - A Tale of Passion by Ford Madox Ford
- connection: Ernest Hemingway
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- connection: Paris beginning of 19th century
- Mysteries of Paris, The Quest for Morton Fullerton by Marion Mainwaring
- connection: Edith Wharton
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald - An American Woman's Life by Linda Wagner-Martin
- connection:  F Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- connection: Gatsby and his time
Careless People - Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell 
- connection - Murder
The Hanging by Lotte and Soren Hammer
 - connection - Scandinavian noir, two authors
Solitairen (The Solitaire) by Anna Lihammar and Ted Hesselbom



2 The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
- connection: Jean Rhys
Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
- connection: London
A Circle of Sisters by Judith Flanders
- connection: the pre-Raphaelites
Effie by Suzanne Fagence Cooper
- connection: Victorian women



 3  
A Brief History of the Celts by Peter Berresford Ellis
- connection: Celts; queen Cartimandua
Daughters of Fire by Barbara Erskine
- connection: Celts
The Song of Taliesin - Tales from King Arthur's Bard by John Matthews
- connection: The Grail
Brief History of the Holy Grail - History, Myth, Religion by Giles Morgan
- connection: Mary the Magdalene



Comments

  1. Pam- Travellin' Penguin10 December 2014 at 21:13

    I really enjoy this concept. I was reading a non fiction Amer. Lit book the other day and was thinking that I really should read what was connected out of that book into something else. The idea really appealed to me. Might do some of this in 2015. Glad to know someone else had the same idea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lisbeth 11 December 2014 at 12:33

    I think it gives another dimension to reading, and you feel that you are proceeding in a given direction, whatever it might be. Of course this direction will change with each book. Glad you like it, I will keep my eyes open for your connected reading. All the best for reading in 2015.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sandra5 March 2018 at 11:24

    I've long had a hankering to do something like this. Often I notice tiny connections from one book to another and wonder at the coincidence. Perhaps one day I'll start with a book on Jan 1st and see if I can keep a connection going through the year :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisbeth 13 March 2018 at 11:45

      That sounds great. It is a little bit like the 6 Degrees of Separation meme, where you start with one book and see where your connection leads. Maybe I should rename this page. I did not really know what to call it. Let me know if you start a chain some day. Maybe you will do a challenge out of it?

      Delete

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