Martini

Movie critiques and a father babbling about his teenage son suffering from his first heartache. Boring.

Nuff said.

Since my phone broke down last week, I thought I would give you all a short overview of some of the weirder ways to express this in German, complete with their literal translations. Just for fun, you know, since German is such a fun language. ;)

In German, cell phones/smartphones are called "Handy", so:

Mein Handy ist/hat... - My phone is/has..

• kaputt - yes, that's a German word, so no translation required
• den Geist aufgegeben - given up its spirit
• über den Jordan gegangen - went over the (river) Jordan; also: über die Wupper gegangen, where Wupper is a river in western Germany
• in die ewigen Jagdgründe eingegangen - gone to the happy hunting grounds
• im Eimer - in the bucket
• im Arsch - in the ass

Some of the above can also be used to express that somebody is completely exhausted.

Considering the stress of the last two and a half weeks, the fun of trying to save my data from a phone that continuously switches itself on and off every two minutes, and the fact that I managed to drop a metal bucket on my left foot yesterday and now have two blue and swollen toes, I think it is safe to say that I am completely in the ass.

No sympathy, please. I just needed to vent.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I sleep a bit at night and work all day, and then some.

Extremely busy at the moment, will be back here next week. Hope you are all doing well and will enjoy the earworm! ;-)

Remember when I told you about my last book haul? Yes, the one that made Lina so happy? Now you'll finally get to know the titles. :D

For the convenience of our international community I have chosen the English editions where available (one of the books I have actually bought in English).

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Sorry for having to state the obvious here: This is not a book by Douglas Adams.
The main difference is that Douglas wrote SF with a portion of (wonderful) humor, while Eoin Colfer has written a comedy with SF elements. Still a really entertaining read, and the many references to the other Hitchhiker books made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, so much that the fourth star is for merely sentimental reasons.

The last book in the series will now be "Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion" by Neil Gaiman.

Dear Cologne City Marketing,

(I guess they were referring to the Kölner Dom = Cologne Cathedral and not to the dominant person in a BDSM relationship.)

I expected this to be rather near-future SF about a Himba girl, a girl from the Namib Desert, going to a university in space and all the cultural differences and difficulties she would experience there. Instead, this was far-future SF with a culture clash of a different kind. Also, the Himba have developed into mathematical geniuses and can perform a mathematical meditation called ‘treeing’, through which they are able to steer ‘mathematical currents’ in order to make certain devices work and to analyze the world around them. Fascinating!

And that’s where my scientific interest kicks in: If I get presented with such a unique concept, I want to know more about it. Much more. Unfortunately, as the story develops, we only get a few glimpses at this astonishing ability. It is as if we were peeking through a hole in a fence, allowing us to see a certain section of a beautiful garden. But we want to see more of it, want to know which other flowers and trees are there, where the gravel path leads to, and if there is a pond or a greenhouse or a pavilion.

I really hope that the second part of the series, Binti:Home, will allow us to sneak a peek through further holes in that fence, and thus give us a wider view of the garden. That’s why I will start to read it immediately.

This is definetely one of the most beautiful cookbooks (and more!) that I have ever seen. Highly recommended to everybody who is interested in the traditional English Tea Party, English lifestyle and everything vintage.

Sorry everybody for clogging up your feeds! I'm currently importing some data, and for a reason I don't understand Booklikes is showing all the books as reviews. Will delete them continuously. Terribly sorry!

This is Lina, one of the stray cats from our area. The picture was taken last summer. She has been visiting us for about a year since we moved in last February.

She was very shy in the beginning, always running away when she saw us. We've been putting food out for her every day, because she was so thin and small, and she eventually started to tolerate us around her when she was eating.

After some time we put the food in our garden shed, where she could come and leave as she pleased, and after some hesitation, she accepted the new spot. We bought her a cushion, but she didn't like it and preferred to lie on a cardboard box instead, so we put a towel on it to make it more comfortable for her.

During the last months I've been trying to make her get accustomed to my hand, hoping that one day she would trust me enough to allow us to take her to the vet, to get all the necessary treatments. I started by simply sitting beside her when she was lying on her box. At first she hissed at me and then left. After some weeks, she accepted me sitting there, and that's when I started to slowly make her get used to my hand by simply showing it to her; again she hissed and left. A week later she stopped leaving, but still hissed at me. It took us two months for her to accept my hand close to her, and when she didn't hiss for the first time, it made me so happy. During the next months we made further progress, accompanied by initial hissing and leaving, and finally me being allowed to slightly touch her with one finger on her back.

Today I felt like it was time for the next step, and when I put my finger on her back, I slowly started to move it in small circles through her fur. At first she gave me a wry look, but did not move or protest, which encouraged me to use more than one finger to pet her. And when I was finally stroking her whole back, she turned her head towards my fingers so that I could pet her there, too. And then she started to purr. Silently at first, then louder and louder as I continued.

I petted her for almost an hour, most of the time crying and sobbing for sheer joy, then she left.

Today has become a day of celebration: we have a new family member.

The story alternates between four different times: today, 3 years ago, 21 years ago and 25 years ago; additionally the "today" narration alternates between three different points of view: Jaqueline's, her friend Phin's and the killer's. So all in all we're switching between six different perspectives. Yes, that's right: six. Is this really necessary? I mean, this is a thriller, not one of Tolstoy's epic works.

Gosh, this is grating on my nerves...

This is the last book in the Hitchhiker Trilogy pentalogy, and it was supposed to be a bad book, according to several reviews that I read. It was even described as depressing, not worth the read and that one would be better off by reading So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish as the final installment and then stop, in order to keep the series in good memory.

I shouldn’t have listened to those reviews, because saying that this book was bleak or even sad is utter BS. Granted, the undertone may be a bit less cheerful than in the other books, but nevertheless the story is brimful with the crazy funny stuff I adore Douglas Adams for.

Here are some examples – without spoilers or further explanation – to pique your interest, if you have refrained from reading the last Hitchhiker book until now:

• a Grebulon ship tries to find out why its system does not work properly
• Tricia realizes that there are actually two rules about going back for your bag
• the Hering Sandwich experiments
• the anti-Marvin
• the welcoming planet of NowWhat

All of these examples are only from the first eighty pages; I stopped taking notes afterwards. So stop giving me that “Oh, he had a bad year when he wrote it” stuff. I know, Douglas said so himself, but still!

If you can’t see the loads of humor in this book, then, dear reviewer, you’re a Vogon.

Thanks for bearing with me during this fun little project which I'll probably repeat this year. I wish everybody a happy 2016 with lots of awesome reads; may your TBR always contain one book more than you'll need! :)

I meant to post the last update of the book advent calendar on Christmas Eve, but the holidays were really busy this year, and then life and a reading marathon got in the way, so I'll just post it now.

On the 23rd I got Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, a book that I have wanted to read for quite some time, but it was out of print for some years in Germany. A new edition has been published only recently, and now the pre-loved copies are much more affordable, so I bought one eventually.

On Christmas Eve I got three books:

Louis Sachar's Holes, which is supposed to be quite funny, Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones because everybody I know IRL loved it, and David Gilmour's The Film Club because it sounds interesting and I need to read more non fiction.

You can find my other posts about the Book Advent Calendar here:

• Book Advent Calendar
• Day 1 to 3
• Day 4 to 6
• Day 7 to 9
• Day 10 to 15
• Day 16 to 19
• Day 20 to 22

May your days be filled with happiness and joy. Fröhliche Weihnachten!