Virtual Advent Tour 2013: Christmas Cards

 In the spirit of the season, I am participating in 2013 Virtual Advent Tour, hosted by Kailana from The Written World and Marg from Adventures of an Intrepid Reader. Head over to Advent Blog Tour to see the schedule and visit other participants’ posts.

One of the things I used to always look forward to as a child was getting Christmas Cards. When I was little, my family didn’t have a phone and there was no internet yet, so visiting people in person or writing were the only way of communication, and we only wrote when it was something urgent.

Christmas time was that one time of the year when we heard from distant relatives and friends, a sign that we were all still alive and thinking of each other, even if the distance, work, money issues or illness prevented us from visiting each other.

A week or two before Christmas we would sent out our Christmas cards and at the same time started anticipating the arrival of Christmas cards others had sent to us. It was really exciting, especially for me as a child – it was as much about greetings as about pretty images – and all the way till my late teens. Each card was carefully read and we proudly displayed them all on the cutlery drawer for a few weeks.

Things have changed since then, and staying in touch with people is easy with mobile phones and via the Internet, but sending and receiving Christmas cards remains a tradition close to my heart, even though I have abandoned it for the past few years due to financial problems (postage is more expensive then calling a person or sending an e-card), but I hope to resurrect the tradition some day (that is, if other people don’t abandon it entirely.)

Until then, I will keep up the tradition of sending holiday greetings via other means of communication and from time to time I will perhaps look through the old Christmas cards I have saved, with the picturesque winter- and holiday-themed imagery, much similar to the few examples below.

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What about you? Is sending/getting Christmas cards one of your holiday traditions? Or have you switched to the electronic means of sending out holiday greetings?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

SUMMARY (from Goodreads): 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.

Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.

MY OPINION:

I read The Book Thief soon after when it was first published, but I decided to reread it this year as there is a movie coming out in spring. As all my reading recently, it went slowly, but I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this jewel among WW II stories.

What makes The Book Thief stand out from other books in the genre is its greatest strength – or vice, depends on whom you ask – that is, its narrator and writing style. The Book Thief is narrated by Death, which results in a unique writing style with little lists, narrator’s notes and digressions from the main story. Whereas I can easily understand this can make it hard for some people to get into the story, I loved this style in this particular book.

The language is beautiful, and there are so many truths said about history, life and human race in general, put in such an elaborate manner that it is hard to pick just a few favourite quotes from it.

Zusak captured Death in a way that I believe could fit her perfectly. Yes, I wrote her, because in Slovene tradition Death is a female, an old lady with a scythe, and Death’s personality as depicted in the book fits my preconception of Death as such so well that I subconsciously went along with it, despite being aware of Death being a man in Germanic culture, and I was from time to time surprised by the reminders that Death is actually supposed to be male.

As for the main protagonist, Liesel, her story is full of tragedy, but also hope, happiness, and, of course, mischief. It is a story of growing up in a difficult era, and is as such both beautiful and sad, suspenseful and funny. I could say a lot about how it touched me and which parts I especially enjoyed or found important, but I don’t wont to spoil the book for you, so I won’t.

Other characters are portrayed just as vividly and diversely as Liesel, which adds to the richness of The Book Thief's world. There are numerous characters worthy of mention, from Rudy to various townspeople, though the ones that had the most impact one her life were her foster parents, who, with their opposing personalities, provided Liesel with exactly what she needed and gave her a family. Rosa, with her yelling and raw exterior and a heart of gold inside reminded me very much of my grandmother, which always makes me like a character.

Even though The Book Thief is by some standards a YA book, I would be cautious when categorising it as such due to its themes and the way they are conveyed, for Zusak doesn’t spare the reader with both physical and emotional suffering and the allusions, sometimes quite direct, even graphic, to the atrocities of the era and the mechanics of the war itself.

All in all, however, The Book Thief, is an exceptional novel, which could be enjoyed by people of different ages (perhaps, apart from young teens), depending on the individual, naturally.

RECOMMENDATION: If you like historical fiction, especially WW II novels, and you are open to a somewhat unusual approach, The Book Thief might be a great book for you.

I’ve Joined BookLikes – Announcement & a Short Review

Actually I did that already in August, but I needed some time to make it look presentable.

I imported my books from Goodreads, but it made a bit of a mess, so I had to edit the shelves and then edit all the reviews manually. And since I’m an idiot, I synchronised it with Goodreads before making the changes, so it messed my Goodreads in turn, but now I have finally tamed everything into some semblance of order.

I am not planning to leave Goodreads (for now), but BookLikes caught my eye with its tumblr-like platform, so I guess it will serve as an alternative/back up.

Just what I needed, you’ll say, another thing to distract me from blogging, but at least it is a book-ish thing and maybe its less formal feel will help me get my blogging & reading mojo back.

Things I like about BookLikes:

• A tumblr-like platform with an integrated blog and various kinds of posts you can make.
• There is a public view – what other people see and a ‘dashboard’ view' – which enables you all the editing etc, and brings the feed from people you follow. And I like that you can customise what is displayed in the public view.
• A lot of options how to shelve your books.
• A great review-writing interface, you can easily add tags, decide if a post is a review or not, hide spoilers, oh and you can connect each post with up to 10 books, which is perfect for all sorts of Top Ten lists.
• Fast implementing of new useful features.

Things I miss in BookLikes:

• The ability to edit a post from the public view.
• The option to switch between book editions like on Goodreads: You can do that when importing, from the imports page, but not from later on from your shelves, so if you want to change edition you have to delete the existing one or else you have duplicates. .
• Duplicates finding tool would have been great as well.
• On the whole, the book base is not as good as on Goodreads, but they are working on it, so it’s getting better, I think.
• Oh, and I’d love if they enabled removing multiple books from the so-called thematic shelves, but not from your library altogether. (For example, I decided to split my borrowed shelf into books borrowed from friends and those I borrowed from the library. It’s easy to select multiple books and add them to a new shelf, but you can’t bulk-remove them from the ‘old’ shelf because that removes them from your library completely, so I had to manually un-tick the borrowed-from-the-library shelf for each of the books I moved to borrowed-from-friends shelf.)
• Maybe more easy-to customise theme options. For now there are only thee themes which you can customise, and I did try something, but I don’t have enough coding etc. knowledge for anything fancy.

I have probably forgotten other things, both those I like and those I miss, but BookLikes is still growing and developing, so I’m sure it can only get better. I guess I’ll see. Also, I’m still getting the hang of it, which is why it may still look a bit dishevelled. Plus I need to really start and explore it and follow people, etc.

Anyway, if you are on BookLikes, give me a shout, so I can follow you and make my experience better.

Feel free to follow my BookLikes profile, if you’d like.
(I also made a nice new social button for it to fit with all the others in the sidebar.)

And if you are on BookLikes, what do you think about it? Do you have any tips for me?

Eighty Days Yellow (Eighty Days #1) by Vina Jackson

NOTE: This is a review of an adult erotica book, neither the review or the book are intended to be read by those under the age of majority.

SUMMARY (from Goodreads):  Caught in a frustrating relationship with a man who can't accept her for who she is, passionate, flame-haired violinist Summer finds release in her music. She spends her afternoons busking on the underground, lost in the works of Vivaldi or Mendelssohn. When her violin is damaged beyond repair, Summer receives a surprising proposition from Dominik, a university professor with powerful desires, who has been captivated by Summer ever since he heard her perform. Dominik will replace her priceless violin, but only if she agrees to play for him in a private concert.

Unable to deny the chemistry between them, Dominik and Summer embark on an intense affair full of daring twists and turns, as unpredictable as it is thrilling. For Summer it is a chance to finally embrace her long-denied dark side, but she'll soon learn that where there's pleasure must come pain. And can a relationship born of such all-consuming passion, ever really survive?

MY OPINION:

This books was actually a  birthday gift from a well-meaning friend, who got persuaded by a salesperson in a book store to pick this book over another one from the same genre.

Now, I do like a good erotica occasionally, as you may have noticed from this blog, but this book was a complete disappointment. I scarcely ever give one-star ratings, but for this one I feel like even one star is one too many.

The beginning is actually intriguing with Summer’s love for music and her total losing herself in music while playing her violin. But that’s about it, from then on, it goes just downwards. We hardly learn anything about Summer, her background, why she feels compelled to explore her sexuality in the ways she does, which are mostly self-destructive.

I realize this is erotica, but that to me does not mean it should be entirely empty of any meaning whatsoever in any form of relationships between people, not only lovers, but also between friends or family members. Everything in this book is just bland.

As for the sex and BDSM, it hasn’t done anything for me but left me disgusted. I had read much, much better porn and BDSM in fanfiction.

In addition, Summer as a person is obnoxious and so are her friends and Dominik. Summer, for example, judges people by the food they like or dislike, which is so ridiculously prejudicial that I couldn’t even believe it. When she loses her job, she simply waves it off. Her friends are not really her friends, again, they are just as prejudicial as she is. Instead of being there for her and supporting her as she displays obvious signs of (identity) crisis, they judge and abandon her. And Dominik has absolutely no appeal to me, though I guess a male protagonist in an erotica novel should have at least some.

All in all, the characterization in general is awfully superficial. Again, it is erotica, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have well-written characters, at least the main characters. However, even that little what we learn about Summer is contradictory; for example, in the beginning, Summer’s mother is supposed to be absent - I was under the impression she is dead, whereas later Summer suddenly talks about her parents in plural.

To top it all, Eighty Days Yellow is poorly written with quite a limited vocabulary and confusing narration. The POV alternates from the first person POV for Summer and third person limited POV for Dominik, but then somewhere in the middle of the book we also get third person POV for Summer and it’s all a big mess.

Finally, I have only finished this book because it was a gift and I felt badly about not finishing it, but I’m definitely not reading the rest of the trilogy.

RECOMMENDATION: If you are tempted to read this book, don’t. The summary/blurb is highly misleading and I believe there is plenty of better BDSM erotica to be found. This is, of course, as always only my personal opinion. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.  

LOTR Reread Highlights: The Return of the King

Note: SPOILERS ahead for those who haven't read the book and/or seen the movie.

I finished rereading LOTR quite a while ago, but I’m only getting to post the things which stood out to me on this reread of The Return of the King only now due to having hard time keeping up with blogging.

The Return of the King is perhaps my favourite volume of LOTR, due to its grand scope and diversity, so without further ado, a few things I’d like to highlight.

As much as Tolkien is criticised for the lack of women in his work(s), LOTR presents some of the strongest female characters, though few in number. Of these, Éowyn stands out the most.

I especially like these Éowyn’s words to Aragorn:

“All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”

And, in response to what she fears:

“A cage, […] To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

These two quotes and the rest of Tolkien’s portrayal of Éowyn convey that Tolkien understood the plight of being a woman, condescended by men solely for her gender, and more: that he opposed the misogynist notions of what women could and should do and set a great (female) role models in his female protagonists, especially in the character of Éowyn.

Of course, LOTR is full of examples worth following. Another such instance is Aragorn's conduct after the Battle of Pelennor fields, as he refuses to claim his rightful title of the King of Gondor for the time being, for fear of causing a split among the allies who should not be divided in the time of crisis when they should join all their forces to defeat Sauron.

At the current point in time, I can’t help but think this example would be a great advice to the politicians running my country (or any country, actually) who are struggling for power, for ‘who is right’, instead of pulling their forces together to work for the benefit of the people who elected them and find a way out of recession (at this point we are in a terrible position, and I’ve been unemployed for quite a while and nothing is getting better, so I can’t help myself but draw parallels.)

The world would be a much better place if those in power looked more after the benefit of those who they were entrusted to rule over than after their own interests, like Aragorn. Of course, you would say, that is a terribly idealistic view. Yes, it is. However, I believe that the lack of striving after ideals is what this time and age lack in order to make the world a better place.

The world would also be much kinder if more people lived by the following words, which are also very close to my heart:

“It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing.”

I think the truthfulness of this sentence requires no explanation.

Thus, LOTR always reminds me of the morals I aspire to live by while it overwhelms me with the beauty of its language and the greatness of its tale with the complexity of the world Tolkien built and the mass of compelling characters he brought to life.

At last, I have to mention the Appendices, at least Appendix A, which is almost a novel on its own, recounting the annals of the Middle-Earth and wrapping up the story of what happened to the beloved characters after the end of the War for the Ring.

To conclude, I am glad I decided to reread LOTR this generally poor reading year for me. It has, as always inspired me not only to continue reading, no matter how little or how slowly, but also reminded me of some important life lessons.

The Book Thief Read-Along Wrap-Up

Or, better said: failure report.

Well, not a complete failure, but I can’t really call this a wrap-up post. Still, I thought, since the Read-Along is ending today, that I should post some sort of an update.

As mentioned before [link to previous post], this is a reread for me.

So far, I have (re)read 212 pages, so I have still more than a half way to go, but at least I’ve been reading.

Due to my slow reading and computer problems I didn’t join in the discussion post and I only caught a bit of the first twitter chat.

Setting aside my lack of involvement in the Read-Along social activities, I really am enjoying rereading The Book Thief, though. I forgot how good it is, and I love the unusual style.

I am definitely going to finish it, probably in a few weeks, and then post some sort of a review/discussion post (and maybe borrow some of the questions from the Read-Along discussions.

Anyway, even though I’ve read less than half the book so far and have barely participated in other aspects of this Read-Along, I’m grateful to Suey, Kami and Kathy for hosting it, because it prompted me to reread the book, which I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Another One of Those Posts...

... you know, in which I make excuses for disappearing from blogging. Again.

This time it was because my laptop had stopped working properly - it didn't crash, but it became so slow it was basically useless, so I had to had it repaired, which took a while. I had a spare, older, laptop to work on, but that one isn't too resilient to a lot of use, so I only used it for work and "urgent" (read: checking tumblr) things.

I was mad that I missed out on Bloggiesta. I had a list of things I wanted to do and it would be more fun doing them during Bloggiesta. Oh well.

In other news:

I'm still in what's now a semi-permanent reading slump, I guess.

Apparently the best I can do in reading is rereads. Hence, I finished rereading LOTR, and I'll post the last highlights update soon. I really want to go reread Silmarillion now, but I have to refrain from that at least until I finish rereading The Book Thief.

While I'm at that, I'm horribly failing at The Book Thief Read Along. But I will reread it, just not by the end of September. Obviously. But I'm loving the book, I forgot how beautiful and unique it is and I'm enjoying it, just slowly.

And that's about it.

Hopefully, I'll be able to pick up this blogging thing a bit now.

LOTR Reread Highlights: The Two Towers

Note: SPOILERS ahead for those who haven't read the book and/or seen the movie.

Without further ado, what stood out for me on this reread:

• In The Two Towers the members of the fellowship, especially Merry and Pippin first come in close encounter with the Orcs. No matter how ugly, disgusting and horrible the Orcs as depicted by Tolkien are, there is one thing that makes them even more horrendous in the movies: their voices. I couldn't help but remember them as I was reading The Two Towers. If you need a reminder of how they sound, see this post I wrote a while back.
• Théoden's words to Saruman:

"Even if your war on me was just – as it was not, for were you ten times as wise you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit as you desired…"

          It is an important thing to keep in mind, especially nowadays when the survival of the fittest seems once more again the principle that rules the world and the strong and powerful dismiss the poor and the weak. These words are a reminder that as human beings those who are wiser, stronger and richer than others do not have the right to trod upon the less fortunate but should show consideration and solidarity.

• I love Treebeard's idea of names growing over time, being the stories about people's and things' existence.
• And as always, Gollum provided some food for thought. For example, the moment when Gollum watches sleeping Frodo under Cirith Ungol and he looks like "an old weary hobbit […], an old starved pitiable thing" and then Sam catches him at it and accuses him of sneaking, and Gollum, offended, pushes away the last bit of goodness left in him. It makes me wonder about how thin a line between someone staying good or turning evil is and how little is necessary for one to cross it. Setting aside the fact that Gollum actually did plan to betray them and that his betrayal was crucial for the final (good) outcome, it makes me question whether he would have done the same if Sam had not sort of pushed him over that last, however low, limit. More importantly, it makes me think of how much one might contribute with the smallest word or action to someone else's choice between good and evil (or anything, really). We can argue that everyone is ultimately responsible for their own choices and actions, but as we are all responsible for our own doings, we are also responsible for how what we do might influence other people and their deeds.

And with that I should end my philosophising.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of what I've said? Do you have any favourite parts of The Two Towers that you would like to share?