SaraPepparkaka

Well, I DID read something over Christmas, even if I wasn't online to tell you about it. "The marriage bureau for rich people" by Farhad Zama, a book in the same feelgood-genre as Botswana's no 1 lady detective, but not as good. "Murder on the Leviathan" by Boris Akunin, Erast Fandorin on a ship with a murderer. "Jemima J" by Jane Green. I didn't need this book to tell me I'd be happier if I lost some weight, I know that I should already. "Ready for love" by Debbie Macomber, two quite enjoyable romance stories (only everything just works out so nicely I don't really believe it..)

Sounds to me you know Swedish already!

Chrissy.. Oh dear. Now I'll feel responsible if you people don't like it!

Book before game, according to the blurb on the back of the book I had. I have seen reviews of this book that weren't too enthusiastic about the book but very enthusiastic about the game. I wouldn't know, I've never played it. I have also read a few reviews saying that the translation to English isn't the best in the world. All I can say is that it was an excellent translation to Swedish..

One read for my UN challenge, "Buying a fishing rod for my grandfather" by Gao Xingjian, a collection of short stories.

Another book read that can be added to this challenge. "Buying a fishing rod for my grandfather" by Gao Xingjian. This is a collection of short stories, some enjoyable and others not so much. They appear to be written in the beginning and middle of the 1980's. I liked the one written about a civil servant who gets lost on a lonely mountain road in Tibet, and also one where a man writes a letter in his head to a girl he knew in his youth.

Description, courtesy to Amazon: The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct. The half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind. But the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory, the stuff of myth and legend. More than 20 years have passed since the last plane took off from the earth. Rusted railways lead into emptiness. The ether is void and the airwaves echo to a soulless howling where previously the frequencies were full of news from Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. Man's time is over. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on earth. They live in the Moscow Metro - the biggest air-raid shelter ever built. It is humanity's last refuge. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters - or the simple need to repulse an enemy incursion. It is a world without a tomorrow, with no room for dreams, plans, hopes. Feelings have given way to instinct - the most important of which is survival. Survival at any price. VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line. It was one of the Metro's best stations and still remains secure. But now a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro, to the legendary Polis, to alert everyone to the awful danger and to get help. He holds the future of his native station in his hands, the whole Metro - and maybe the whole of humanity. My thoughts: A brilliant idea for a book- everything that's left of the world is now in the metro. I really felt that I was IN the Moscow Metro. I could see and feel the stations, and the tunnels between them. Vivid descriptions with just enough detail to fuel the imagination but not too much. No difference that the metro is much smaller than the world used to be, it's just as complex and has all the things in it that the world used to, and it's just as hard as it ever was to find out what really is the truth and what's just stories and legends. And if we believe in the stories, do we make them come true? Artyom has a lot to discover on his journey to the center of the metro. As an avid reader I liked the descriptions of raids to the surface of the earth to obtain more books. However, I may never feel the same about librarians. And the ending is superb, I think I can reveal as much as that it's not a happy one. But then, it takes a good Russian writer to pull off an ending like that and not leave me ( a decided fan of happily-ever-after) feel disappointed. And another thing: not a hint of romance, and I still feel like this is one of the best books I've read this year!

I have been reading some more. "Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater. I didn't fall totally in love with this book, but it was a good read. I really can't see how the sequel would work out, I thought it had a pretty good ending. And then "Metro 2033" by Dmitry Glukhovsky. You should read this one. Yes, I mean you. Excellent book!

I think you are onto something there with the tongue in cheekness, Pickle. And I can forgive characters for a lot of things, but in this case when I have seen nothing good about him and I'm on page 415 of 421, I do have a hard time believing that he does turn out to be a lovely husband (after his first wife conveniently hangs herself in the convent she was shipped off to. That must have been because she missed him so much, I'm sure. ).

I don't think I did say very much about "After Dark". It was an OK book, I do enjoy Murakami.

"Samarkand" by Amin Maalouf. The story about Omar Khayyams verses until they end up locked in a safe on the Titanic. Potentially interesting, right? Well, not for me as it turns out. But it gets an entry in my UN challenge list for Lebanon. "With this ring" by Amanda Quick. Now, I would probably have enjoyed the above mentioned story if Amanda Quick had written it. (Or, Jayne Anne Krentz, but I believe she uses Amanda Quick for her historicals). Lots of stereotypes in this book. The hero is tall dark and lonely, the heroine is all kinds of nice and just never gives up (loves stray dogs and orphans, you know her, you've met her before), in this case where both have been married before, it turns out their marriages were unhappy so this is the first time they REALLY fall in love, the mystery is more or less obvious.. And STILL I enjoy reading it. Now, it could be that I love all romance books, of course. But it's not that simple. I also just read "The conqueror" by Brenda Joyce, and this book is certainly classified as romance. And I didn't like a single thing about it. The male leading character very nearly rapes the female lead on the first page, then continues to treat her like garbage throughout the book, she gets away from him, and THEN on page 415 of 421 he finds her and tells her he wants her back- and the daft woman goes with him. No, I certainly do not love all romance books. Some I throw as far away as possible and hope they won't find their way back.

I read a book that qualifies as an entry for Lebanon. "Samarkand" by Amin Maalouf. Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy the book, the historic facts were vaguely interesting, but other than that - not for me. I thought it would be fun, the adventures of Omar Khayyams verses up until the day they were put in a safe on the Titanic.

Describe yourself: I shall wear midnight (Terry Pratchett) How do you feel: Wicked lovely (Melissa Marr) Describe where you currently live: The house at Riverton (Kate Morton) If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Ralph's party (Lisa Jewell) Your favorite form of transportation: The lollipop shoes (Joanne Harris) Your best friend is: Betty Blue (Philippe Djian) You and your friends are: Simply unforgettable (Mary Balogh) What's the weather like: Winter in Madrid (CJ Sansom) You fear: Fire (Kristin Cashore) What is the best advice you have to give: Dating without novocaine (Lisa Cach) Thought for the day: Never let me go (Kazuo Ishiguro) How I would like to die: Appointment with death (Agatha Christie) My soul's present condition: Forever Odd (Dean Koontz) No, I really do not think you should use novocaine when dating!

Hello! Welcome!

Hello and welcome! Best way to learn about the site might be just to look around!

Hello! Welcome!

Hello! Welcome!

A visit to the Trusted Local Library resulted in some great books, the above mentioned "Face to face", but since then I've read Muriel Barbery "The elegance of the hedgehog" and "Bara vanligt vatten" by Kajsa Ingemarsson, too, both of which I found on that same visit to the library. "The elegance of the hedgehog" is a piece of genious, but I seem to remember someone here saiyng that they saw the ending coming a mile away. I didn't, I was really surprised. Kajsa Ingemarsson is a Swedish writer who does NOT write murder mysteries. At least not in this book, and this was the first I've read by her. This book is instead a book about a writer who writes murder mysteries and has a complicated - to say the least- life. Chick lit in the style of Marian Keynes in the way that it also deals with serious issues. I checked Kajsa's homepage and it appears no one of her books are translated to English, but quite a few to German, and some to Dutch, and most of them to Finnish and Norwegian.

Hello!

Hello! to the board!

Hello!

One for my UN challenge: "Face to face" by Chyngyz Aitmatov, for Kyrgyzstan.

Nothing much has happened with this challenge in a while.. but now we have an entry for Kyrgyzstan. Granted the author was born in the Soviet Union, but in the area that later became Kyrgyzstan. "Face to face" by Chyngyz Aitmatov. This story was a little rewritten after the fall of the Soviet union, and it's that version of it I've read. Not bad at all, a short novel about the wife of a man who deserted from the army in the second world war.

We don't have a land line. My parents don't have a land line. My sister has only a cell. My brother has only a cell. We did have a land line some years ago but nobody ever called that number, and we certainly didn't use it..