The Content Reader

The back cover of this book promised an interesting story. It reads: ”Based on a real murder at the turn of the century, this outstanding debut novel is a powerful and moving coming-of-age book. Mattie is torn between her familial responsibilities, her desire to be a writer, and the excitement of a first romance. Her dilemmas and choices are quietly reflected in the life of a young woman found drowned in a lake, a woman that Mattie only gets to know through reading her letters.” The first chapter starts with the murder, which gets you right into the story. However, then you are taken back to Matties life leading up to her being at the hotel where the murder took place. From there the story goes back and forth, with a chapter here and there on the murder perspective. In the beginning I wanted to know more about the murder, rather than the background of Matties life. It took me more or less 100 pages before I settled into the rytm of the story and realising that the maj...

Summer time, holiday time. I am presently in Austria holidaying. The weather has been fabulous so me and my husband decided to inagurate our new tent, that we bought last year. We found it on the Caravan Fair in Düsseldorf and it was delivered to us in March this year. It is a big tent, so you can easy stand inside. It is really a tent to use with you car, but can also be used independently. We started out at Achensee, a beautiful alpine lake, 9 km long with tropical, green water. It is also icing cold. This year it had a record 19,5 C, due to the goo weather. Huuh! But, when you are warm and sweaty after a walk along the mountain walls of the lake, it is still quite ok. Once your in it is wonderful. It was a great camping facitily, with new sanitary areas, worthy a very good hotel. The village offered enough of restaurants to keep you going for a while.  After a couple of days there we continued to Walchsee, where we got a spot just by the water. Totally beautiful...

Believe it or not, but I managed to finalise this month´s spin. My number 9 was Richard III by William Shakespeare. I am not good at reading Shakespeare, but this seemed easier to approach. The reason being that I have recently read quite a lot about this time, in connection with the finding of his bones in Leicester.  The drama is not a very long, I read it as an e-book and it went rather smoothly. The beginning was a little bit confusing, including a lot a characters I do not remember. Ideally, one should look them up and check up the history.  However, I am travelling and there was no time. ( Many Books Net) Time has shown us a development in the interpretation of historical events, and this is also the case here. Partly, t he drama felt a little bit out of date, but it is a drama after all.  It was written during Tudor times (during the reign of Elizabeth I) and the first Tudor, Henry VII, beat his enemy Richard III at the battle of Bosworth.  But a classic is a...

Looking for summer reads from my TBR shelves, I find two books by one of my favourite authors, Paulo Coelho. It is By The River Pedra I Sat Down And Wept and Adultery. They both cover relationships and their ups and downs. The first one is about a young couple who grew up together and then were separated many years, since they chose different paths in life. The second is about a woman in a happy marriage, with two children and a good economy. By The River Pedra I Sat Down And Wept she is a young woman who has learned to look at life in a rational way, studying for a profession; he is a man who follows his religious calling, travelling around the world. Eleven years after they last met in the village where they grew up, they meet again. This time he is holding a lecture on his calling, on life and how we should approach it. She travelled to Madrid just for the day to hear and meet him. Like all the rest of the audience, she is mesmerised by him and his talk. Instead of going back s...

This week's quotes come from Carlos Ruiz Zafón's book The Angel's Game. He is one of my favourite authors, never disappoints you. Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader "A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood, and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price."  The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice "My meetings with Cristina were always by chance. Sometimes I would bump into her in the Sempere & Sons bookshop, where she often went to collect books for ...

This is one of those popular help yourself books that seems to overflow these days. However, it defies all the good advices we have been given during the last years, that is; stay positive. Manson says: "Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it."  Right! That is life after all. "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." Sigmund Freud  With this quote in mind Manson argues that values such as "pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive", are poor guidelines for a persons life. After all, some of the greatest moments in our lives are " not  pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive". Which leads him to the belief, and I am bound to agree with him, that it is the individual who is responsible for everything in his/her life. We just have to act due to external circumstances. We are not always in control of all aspects of our...

Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best , is hosting this interesting meme. This month we start with Ian MacEwan's  Atonement.   I am probably one of the few who have neither read the book nor watched the movie. It is a chronicle over a crime and its consequences over six decades. That leads me to my first chain which is Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper. As in Atonement  it is about a crime and how it effects the family. It is only fifty years later that everything is revealed. Another family saga and hidden secrets I found in Habitaciones cerradas by Care Santos. Violeta Lax is the grand daughter of the famous, Spanish artist Amadeo Lax. When he died he left his house and art to the Catalonian state. Violeta comes back to have a look at the house a last time before the house will be turned into a museum. Once the renovations starts a hidden room is found. The novel takes place in Barcelona and that takes me to one of my favourite author; Carlos Ruiz Zafon...