Sakura

I rarely bother rereading something. It's just not a big priority against my growing SUB. But I have to say, I usually have a very bad memory for plots, so sometimes I see a book I know I liked a lot, but can't recall at all. I'd start to reread it, but I'll always end up remembering most of it a few chapters in, so I never see a point in finishing it. If it's not a surprise it's not really worth the read. I also don't like the sense of deja vu I usually get from it.

I love a lot of classics, so it's a tough choice: Faust - Goethe An ideal Husband - Wilde Mansfield Park - Austen

Thanks, I'll try him. I've ordered the Book of Lost Things and The Gates. If anyone else is interested in this genre, I'm currently reading the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. It fits my criteria very well and is funny and well-written, with a big variety of gods and supernatural beings covered.

Hi Angee. I think I'm supposed to hate you. *grrr*. There. But welcome anyway. Don't let the grumpy German in me spoil your fun.

I started on Hexed, second part of the iron druid series. Though, start in this case means I'm nearly half-way through already. Why are all the good books always too thin. And I'm impressed that they manage to use grammatically correct German in that one.

It sounds like a pretty normal problem when you start reading in a new language. I had similar problems when I started reading more complex English stuff. At first you want to look words up, especially if you can't understand the meaning from the context, but after a while your vocabulary should be vast enough to learn most words from context. You'll also develop a more natural reading tempo over time too. It helps to stay within similar genres at first, since vocabulary can differ quite a lot between lets say sci-fi and historical fiction. But really, the only thing that really helps is practice.

I've had Lies of Locke Lamora lying around here for ages, as well as Magic's Pawn. Both came highly recommended, but I can't get into either of them. I have to admit, I can't look at that pink unicorn cover of Magic's Pawn and want to read it. I should, I assume I'd like it, but... *shudder* Lies of Locke Lamora I started, but I don't like the characters much, yet. I hope to retry it at some point. There's also Belgrave Square, which broke my run on the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. I loved the series, and I'm really not sure what turns me off the book so much. I never get farther than 2-3 chapters, and I just can't find the same enthusiasm as for the books before.

I finally finished The Rest falls Away. I'm still not sure what to think about it. It's well written, but also very cliche in a absentminded sort of way. The cliches are usually just used in passing, without much depth to it. As if the author was fulfilling a requirement, without much thought. What vampire books need: A prophecies that only the heroin can defeat the villain *check* Hunt for a McGuffin *check* Two men rivaling for the heroin's heart *check* Gratuitous sex scenes *check* A personal vendetta against the villain *check* But despite that I did not find it whole uninteresting to read. Since it's the authors first book, I'm willing to give the next part in the series a try to see if it gets more coherent and less cliche. Right now I'd classify it as very good fanfiction

I absolutely did not want to read them at first, since I simply hated all the publicity. But at the 4th book I carved, and I'm quite happy that I did. It was really a very good series. Though I have to say, I did not like the end. A bit too deus ex machina for me. I saw the films up to the 4th, but I greatly prefer the books. I can't really get behind the films. Too much is left out or altered. I guess I am too much of a Potter fangirl, cause that really irritates and grates me to no end, whenever I try to watch them.

I'd recommend a look at the Bartimaeus triology or Eragon. Bartimaeus is also about an 11 year old magician's apprentice, but the feel and atmosphere of the book are very different from Harry Potter. Eragon is about a young farm boy who finds a dragon's egg and sets out to become a dragon rider. Much more along the lines of high fantasy, but I found it very engrossing.

I read a lot of Manga, when I was younger and still had the money left over. Later on I purged most of my collection and only kept my favorites: Clover, X, Wish, Saikano, Lady Snowblood and Detectiv Conan.

Whee, made it. But it's really more about reading comprehension under pressure, than grammar.

I did that too, now that I think about it. I read a lot of Shakespeare in 8th grade (his comedies where quite enjoyable, but I wouldn't recommend the German translations to anyone), and I remember trying to get through Heidegger in 10th. As you can imagine, I was not very popular.

I also find it often hard to pin-point. It's certainly not the plot, even books with a very cliché plot and storytelling can be written very excitingly. I think it's about how well the language flows and how believable the author makes it for me. If the writing is engaging and imaginative, if the dialog and characters are realistic and believable, that can make up a lot of failures in other levels of the book.

I've only read one of Rankin's books that I liked, but I can't quite remember the title. It was a German translation too. I keep thinking it's something with bunnies, but it's not Hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse. The rest is just way too absurd for me. Usually I like funny and crazy books, but I guess it must be something about his style that I just don't get. My boyfriend loves them though, which is why we have about all of the discontinued German translations lying around.

They all look adorable. Thank you so much. My boyfriend will love the Tiger who came to tea. Tiger is his nickname, so we are calling the little one cub right now.

Perhaps you guys can give me some pointers. I'm gonna have my first little one in a few month, and I want to start early with a little library. Can't get them hooked too early. Since the little one is supposed to be brought up bilingual, I want to include some English picture book classics too. But I can barely think of any. Dr. Seuss obviously, and the very hungry caterpillar, but that's about all I know. So what would you consider must-haves? Which do you remember fondly from your childhood?

I've just started The Rest Falls Away. Right now it seems like the mixture of historical romance with vampire hunting doesn't yet blend itself as well as I hoped. But I like the idea of a tough vampire hunting badass instead of the typical Mary-sue like clever, attractive yet independent girl, though I guess I could live without the whole romance part.

A book about slaughtering unicorns for young readers? Doesn't sound like such a good idea to me. I don't think I'd be interested in that book. I always found unicorns very much high fantasy cliché, even if it's about hunting them, and since the rest of the text is pretty much non-descriptive that's a clean miss for me.

My boyfriend introduced me to Pratchett with Interesting Times and we got together with a copy of Moving Pictures, so the series always had a special place in my heart. I've actually read the Rincewind series (Color of Magic, Light Fantastic, Sourcery) early on and liked it well enough, though in retrospective I have to admit the other book are a lot better. I've never read the Diskworld in any kind of order. I think the best way is to just take the book you think sounds the most interesting to you and go from there. Since they can be pretty much read in any kind of order, without loosing much, if any, connection, I preferred that way. Though I'd keep the Tiffany Arching arch together. Those where to me more closely connected then all of the others.

I've watched Pacific Rim a few days ago. Even for a film about giant mechs fighting giant monsters it's not very good. The 3D effects where very blurry, the fighting unimaginative, and the plot had more holes then a sieve. I wouldn't recommend it.

I've lost about 35 kg in the last 2 years. I've been going to the gym 3 days a week to do weight lifting and changed my diet to 80% with some low-carb thrown in. I can't wait till I've got my body fat down to 20% (currently 26%), then I can start to acctually build muscles, instead of just maintaining what's there. But I fear the pregnancy will rather throw on quite a few percent points for me. It sucks to be unable to train.

Does anyone know Royce Buckingham? He wrote the Demonkeeper series, a series about a young boy who has to babysit a house full of rambunctious and annoying demons. I read the first book and it was not bad, but really rather written for kids, not too much adult appeal. He's quite popular in Germany, but doesn't seem to have found much interest in then english speaking countries. Now it seems he moved on to more adult oriented fantasy. He's got a book out in german called Karte der Welt (Map of the world), which hasn't even been published in it's original language yet (sadly, since I don't like to read anything translated if I can in any way help it.). The book sounds very interesing to me. It's about a fantasy kingdom that is bordered on one side by a kind of "fog of war". A boy with drawing talent goes out with a group of adventures to messure and draw a map of the borderlands, and notices that he can pull back the fog with his mapping. Kinda old-school fantasy fare, by the sound of it, but I liked Buckinghams style and would like to see what he can do with it when he writes for an adult audience. I hope he'll get this book published in English soon.

I can't do sports for a few month but before I was doing weight lifting and a bit of Krav Maga.

I also just read one book at a time. But I'm very strict when I don't like a book and will sometimes abandon books after a few chapters, when I can't get into it, to read something else first. Often, I'll re-try them at some point. But seriously reading several at the same time never crossed my mind. I have a hard enough time to keep all the character names straight in one book, several would be just too much.