Readathon Wrap-up

It is the day after the readathon and also my first day back in school after the Christmas break which is a bad combination because the effects of the sleep deprivation are fully kicking in.
But, while I almost fell asleep in Geography today I have not regretted participating for one second: I had an amazing time and made a lot of progress. I want to thank the lovely organizers who sacrificed much of their free time to make this run smoothly and did a wonderful job!

I am very satisfied with the readathon because firstly, it was incredibly fun to keep in touch with all the other bloggers and I added quite a few titles to my TBR list and secondly, despite being away the whole afternoon and evening I managed to devote more than 13 hours exclusively to reading.
On the Classics Club website there is a wrap-up questionnaire which I am answering below.

1. What book(s) did you read during the event?
2. What book(s) did you finish?
3. What did you like about our event?
4. Do you have suggestions for future Readathons through The Classics Club?
5. Would you participate in future Readathons?

1. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Both of them, which is almost unbelievable keeping in mind my reading pace!
3. Everything. The interaction with other bloggers from all over the world, the opportunity to start the year with intense reading and the fact that there were updates and check-ins on the Classics Club site every few hours.
4. Not really, since the only thing which troubled me was the time difference and that is something not even our wonderful organizers can fix.



I may or may not have eaten all other chocolates during the readathon

5. Definitely! The sooner the better! Although it is certainly not beneficial for my nutrition...

The Classics Club Readathon

I couldn't keep myself from taking part, even if I know that cannot read the whole day because unfortunately I have some meetings in the afternoon and evening.

Anyway, I will just read through the night! And, yes, I am mightily excited! Let the classics-reading begin!

On the Classics Club blog there is a starting post with a few questions to kick off the event. I will answer them here and then update this post every few hours with my progress.

1. Snacks and Beverages of Choice?
2. Where are you reading from today?
3. What are your goals for the Readathon?
4. What book(s) are you planning on reading?
5. Are you excited?

1. Any Christmas leftovers I can find. There are still lots of cookies and chocolates left from the holidays and it is high time I eliminated them and started eating healthy again. As for the beverages I will probably be dependent on coffee, but a few cups of tea are always nice.
2. My family's livingroom, in an armchair right next to the Christmas tree. For those who don't visit my blog regularly: this is in Graz, Austria. Thanks to the American time the readathon starts at 2 p.m. for me and I will hopefully read until 2 p.m. on Sunday.
3.  Simply to read as much as possible, visit other blogs and have fun. Oh, and to dutifully finish Faust.
4. The second half of Faust, the beginning of Mrs. Dalloway but mostly J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. I read very slowly, so that's probably more than enough.
5. I think I've already answered this one...

The readathon starts in five minutes, so happy reading everyone! I'm looking forward to updates on your progress.

3.20 p.m.
The first hour is over and I have finished Faust. The end was much better than the beginning, but my pleasure in having read it is mostly the pleasure of conquest.
Now I have to take a break from reading and go to the city for a meeting, but I'll be back in two hours to start The Hobbit.

10.20 p.m.
The break took longer than expected, but I actually managed to squash in an hour of reading between my afternoon meeting and my invitation to dinner. I read the first 50 pages of The Hobbit and got completely sucked in. How could I ever start this book without finishing it? It is so perfect! The light, amusing but still deeply moving writing and on top of that the setting in my beloved Middle-Earth...I can't even describe how utterly right it feels to read it. So the plan for now is pretty much to spend the whole night with Tolkien in front of the Christmas tree. We'll see if I can bear the sleep deprivation.

1.00 a.m.
Sunday has now officially arrived here and keeping my eyes open is getting a little tough. Usually I would just drink more coffee, but my whole family is already fast asleep and the coffee machine is dreadfully loud, so I'll have to do without...
My reading progress is slow but steady, I'm on page 104 of The Hobbit and still enjoying it immensely. Also, I am almost at the end of the part that has been adapted into the recent movie and know virtually nothing about the storyline later, so things are getting exciting. I'd love to read until the morning. There is not anyone reading this who by chance knows a super-effective secret trick for keeping awake without caffeine?

3.20 a.m.
Still awake, which already is an achievement! I am only halway through the Hobbit since I read at a tortoise's pace, but I would love to finish it. I'll probably read for another hour or two and then catch a few hours' sleep before tackling the rest of it in the morning. After all I have time until 2 p.m. before the readathon is over.

4.40 a.m.
I can't believe I have made it so far! I'm on page 218 of my dear Hobbit, who is a lovely companion for this readathon and about to take a nap before hopefully finishing in the morning. Good luck to everyone still bearing up!

8.30 a.m.
I slept for about 3 hours, which was more refreshing than I thought. Now I'm curled up with The Hobbit again, (although most others seem to have given up?). I hope I can finish before the readathon is over!

1.30 p.m.
The readathon is almost over, which leaves me exhausted but proud and very happy. I have just finished
The Hobbit with perfect timing, if I may say so. It is such a shame that next to The Lord of the Rings this book is so often overlooked! It is heart-warming and told in a light way, but absolutely beautiful and far from childish.
With this I am closing off the readathon and saying thank you to the wonderful organizers for their great work. It was an amazing experience and tomorrow I will write a wrap-up post.

January Plans to keep me focused

While I am still optimistic about the year ahead, my enthusiasm has suffered a severe setback yesterday.
I begun reading the apparently best-known and most influential piece of German literature: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. Not only do I feel that it is a gap in education not to have read the most praised literary work in my native language, I also have to finish it until Monday for my German class.
But this book! In it I seem to have found a new arch-nemesis! Usually I am patient with books, I give them time to fascinate me and hardly ever give up reading them, but I'm only twenty pages into Faust (getting there took me about three hours) and find it unbearable.
Everything is so exaggerated, every line drops with pathos and I have the impression that Goethe only wrote it because he was in love with the way his writing looked on paper.
Yes, I will finish it, but sadly I don't dare to hope that I will enjoy it.

Why are you making my life so hard, Dr. Faust?

Since my first reading project in the new year is such a disappointment I thought I might create some January plans to motivate me a little. 

Firstly, on the Classics Club site I have seen that Bex is hosting a readalong of Mrs. Dalloway beginning on Saturday which I'd love to take part in. Somehow I've never happened to read anything by Virginia Woolf, so I'm excited to do so now.

Apart from that I want to finally read The Hobbit in January. I have started reading it several times but never finished, which is strange because I remember loving the beginning every time. Now with the (wonderful) movie in the theatres it is high time I got around to reading the original!

Additionally I want to read a French novel for my books on France challenge, but I haven't decided which one yet. Perhaps it's time to finish Les Misérables eventually? Like The Hobbit I immensely enjoyed what I've read so far, I just somehow never managed to read it until the end.

Oh, and I desperately want to take part in the huge Classics Club Readathon which sounds incredibly fun, but on Saturday I am invited out both for lunch and dinner. For me the readathon would start at 2 p.m., so I could still read for quite a while, but I'm not sure if that wouldn't feel like cheating. Should I sign up nonetheless and just read through the night and the next morning? 

That's it, I'll have to get back to Faust now... I hope you're all still enjoying 2013 and your first book(s) in it!

The Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan

We are two days into 2013 and so far everything is going splendidly, which of course doesn't mean anything, but I'm taking it as a good omen. This review of Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow is my first post in the new year and at the same time the first proper review I have written since the 6th of July. I was absent from blogging longer than I thought. Anyway, Jude Morgan's novel about the Brontë family was on my wishlist for a long time and when I got Atticus for Christmas and saw that the kindle edition only costs six euro (as opposed to eleven for the paperback) I didn't have to think long about which book should be my first e-book. There is something absolutely fascinating about this family: all children uniquely gifted writers, living secluded in their own little world, but haunted by tragedy. How could they manage to write books that changed the literary landscape forever? Who were the women who came up with Jane Eyre, Cathy and Heathcliff? Why did all of them die so young and how on earth could Charlotte survive the loss of almost her whole family? Perhaps it is exactly the comparative lack of information about their lives that makes their story so intriguing.

Jude Morgan wrote a fictionalized account of the Bröntës' lives, starting with the death of their mother and ending a little after Charlotte's marriage. Although all family members receive sufficient attention the novel's focus is clearly on Charlotte, something which you quickly notice through the style that - sometimes more, sometimes less drastically - seems to imitate Jane Eyre. I don't say that as criticism, in fact it was very appropriate, especially since Charlotte inevitably reminds the reader of her famous heroine. Of course there are differences between them: the "real" Charlotte Brontë is less outspoken and, naturally, less fortunate, but her personality in Morgan's portrayal is very similar to Jane's.
Again, I am not criticising  this, because Jane Eyre obviously is based on her author.

Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with the details of the Bröntës' lives to judge how much of their feelings and thoughts in the novel are adapted from their real sentiments expressed in letters, diaries or stories, but I have to bow to Jude Morgan anyway for creating such believable characters.
Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell are not just dusty entries in literary encyclopedias, but authentic, tangible people. If they did not exactly do or say the things as Morgan writes them, it is at least very easy to imagine that they could have done or said them. Whether it is Branwell's descent into alcoholism because he cannot bear the weight of expectations on him or Emily's inability to feel comfortable around people she cannot remember always loving; this novel draws very realistic pictures of the Brontë siblings' lives and personalities.
The only character I found a little one-dimensional is Anne, who is completely unselfish and only concerned with making the lives of her family members as easy as possible without regard to her own happiness, but then maybe that was Anne's role in her family. I don't know, but I am now eager to read her books.

With 464 pages this book was not too long, in fact it was a quick read, but it is maybe a little stretched in the middle and then too hurried when it comes to the development of the sisters' novels. About Emily's motivation to write Wuthering Heights the reader learns virtuallly nothing, for instance, and Charlotte's inspiration for Jane Eyre is also only outlined roughly. (Looking at her live I have to wonder where Mr. Rochester comes from.) But again, perhaps there simply is no existing information on these topics and Jude Morgan didn't want to invent anything. To be sure, it doesn't impair his novel much: The Taste of Sorrow is a great book for anyone interested in the Brontës and I am looking forward to reading more from Jude Morgan, his novels on Shakespeare and the romantic poets for example.

Changes and Enthusiasm

As all of you currently reading this will probably have noticed, I have finally managed to upload a background image. Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Except that it took me three whole days, various visits on nerdy IT-websites and several nervous breakdowns to make it work. And they say we're the computer generation...

Anyway, I am brimming over with enthusiasm right now, so I'll seize the opportunity to announce a few changes and plans for 2013. After all, it already is almost New Year's Eve.

A little early, but still: Happy new year!

Like probably every other devoted reader during the last few years and especially now that they are becoming so mainstream I have given a little thought to e-readers. The idea of carrying around as many books as you want to and never lack space on your shelves again is an intriguing one, but in the end I am just a little too old-fashioned to decide on giving up all tangible books for a mere gadget. Thankfully this decision was made for me since I received a Kindle for Christmas! I'm still in the testing phase, but so far I'm -unexpectedly- loving Atticus (yes, I've already named him: which name could be more appropriate than that of book-loving wonderful Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird?). 

The first e-book I've downloaded is Jude Morgan's fictionalised biography of the Brontë family, The Taste of Sorrow. It is very interesting, but I'm anxious to finish it before tomorrow night because I don't want to start 2013 with a half-read book. It is silly, but for me it just feels better to start a new year with a new book.
Which brings me to my developing reading plans! I love making plans and participating in reading challenges, and I am especially excited since I had to cancel all my challenges this year because of my abrupt hiatus.

The amazing Narrative Poem Reading Challenge is hosted over at Half-Hilled Attic. I plan on finally reading Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso after loving Inferno so much. Additionally I feel as if it was about time I finally tackled Homer, so I will probably give him a try, as well as Edmund Spenser's The Faery Queene which I'm really curious about. And of course Paradise Lost, which I've wanted to read for years but somehow never did.

Another challenge which comes exactly at the right time is the Books on France Reading Challenge. Usually I am horribly neglecting French literature (and my poor French), but this is the chance to change that. I will probably be aiming for the level "beaucoup", meaning that I will read 6 French books, so one every two months, but it will take me a little longer to decide on the titles.

And my for the moment last challenge will be the Wishlist Challenge from Uniflame Creates. This one is especially fun because you only read books that are already on your wishlist; so you basically get to read those books you've been wanting to lay hands on for ages. During the next few days I'll write a separate announcement post detailing which 12 titles I plan to read for this challenge.

That's it for now! I hope I can carry some of this enthusiasm into 2013. Oh, and before I forget: I'm wishing you all a great last day of 2012 and a good beginning of the next year!

Stuck in the Labyrinth

Perhaps thinking really is the root of all evil, the source of all unhappiness.
Look at me half a year ago: quite obviously there was nothing wrong with my life, nothing, except the nagging  doubt in my mind. There were just so many unanswered questions; questions I tried not to think about because they only made me miserable, but I literally couldn't. One cannot stop thinking simply because  one wishes to. And the more I thought about them; the more I thought in general, the more I felt the sadness creeping in and seeping through my whole being.

What will become of my life? How shall I ever choose the right path for my future in this labyrinth of possibilities? What do I really want? Will I ever find someone with whom I can be just myself? Why am I so different from everyone I know? Why do I always have to pretend in society; pretend I like people I can't stand, pretend I'm interested in their trivialities, pretend I am just like them? Why can't I keep my mouth shut when I know it's better to be quiet? Why do I quarrel with almost everyone? Why do I feel best when I am hidden away from the world, reading? Why is the world inside my mind so much more beautiful than the one outside? Why is my life so boring? Will it ever be anything else? Am I making myself unhappy because I expect too much? How could I think myself in any way special, expect something special for me? Do I even want this life at all? What would be so bad about throwing it away? Why can't I just give up?  And, the ever classic: Is there a sense in life? What for am I on earth? When I die, will something remain apart from dust and shadows?

You see, five minutes in my mind are probably enough to drive anyone mad. But there is another especially burning question, one which may explain to you why exactly I refused to read anything since August.
Perhaps it is my own fault that I am so unhappy? Perhaps I have made myself sad by reading too much, perhaps the books have simply planted unrealistic ideas in my mind? Perhaps I would not be so unsatisfied with the real world if I had never entered the world between the pages of a book?
I have no answer to this, but I tried to find one by changing my life completely. I tried to be a typical teenager, just like everyone else around me. I tried to stop thinking, stop caring, I went out a lot, drank and smoked. Needless to say, instead of feeling happy I slowly started to hate everyone, and above all myself.

And now? Now I am back. Changed and with a vast collection of new scars, but still back. I realised I missed a part of myself, in fact I missed the very part of me that makes me myself. This part is hard to define, but blogging, reading the classics and all of you definitely belong to it.
I know that I will have to make a lot of changes on this blog (and in my life) and I don't quite know yet which direction things are going to take, but I am back for good. If you still want me, that is.

What a Week!

About a week ago I came back from holidays brimming over with enthusiasm. I wanted to blog all day long, write about books, talk about books and read all the books on my shelves at the same time because each book seemed like a glorious adventure. And now? There's hardly anything left of it and it's my own fault, so this is probably going to be the first completely non-bookish post I've ever written.
This week a lot of crazy stuff has been going on here. How come I'm always busier during summer break than when I have to go to school? This is a serious scientific problem.

I'll start with the sad news: my guinea pig Hermine (named after the German variation of Harry Potter's Hermione) died as an old lady of eight and a half years. I sat by her when it happened and if you have ever watched a little animal die, you'll know that it is heartbreaking. She lay on her side, something which she had never done before and now and then her whole body jerked violently. At the very end her eyes were wet and it looked as if she was crying. I had never seen anyone or anything die before, but when she suddenly lay very still I knew that she was dead. Not the best start into a week...

To "cheer me up" my whole family decided to organise a belated birthday party for me since I actually turned sixteen on the 29th of July, but was in Greece at the time. I suspect that they all just wanted to eat birthday cake, because they know exactly that I hate my birthday. There is something about being the birthday girl, being the supposed centre of attention that I never liked and since my family had a horrible quarrel during my birthday party some years ago I refuse to recognise birthdays as special days in any way. Well, my family celebrated nonetheless, ate their cake and were satisfied. Back to normal life now, please!

Finally something positive to tell! While my mood was definitely below average for a large part of last week, I have some amazing news. I am sure you all know shows like Riverdance or Lord of the Dance. What those incredible dancers do is Irish Dance, a form of traditional Irish stepdance which makes the dancers look as if they were weightless. Last week I listened to some Irish folk songs and suddenly wondered how one could not dance to these rhythms, so I did a lot of research and found several academies for Irish dance in Austria. Unfortunately they are all situated in Vienna which is about three hours' drive away from where I live. But since annoying people has often led me to success I wrote emails to all those schools inquiring after a possibility to learn dancing in Graz. To make a long story short, after several desperate calls to complete strangers I actually found a coach who is starting a beginners' class here in my tiny town in October.

I am so excited! The only problem is that I have no experience in dancing at all and that I am not a very athlectic person. I have started working out in order to be fit enough when dance class starts (and lose a little weight, have you seen those dancers? Tiny elves, all of them!) and that is the reason I am currently reading so little. My muscles are sore, I'm tired and cannot really concentrate.
So, enough whining! I seriously have to get back to writing focused posts without self-pity. Maybe I'll manage that tomorrow...I have lots to say about Persuasion and Jane Austen.
I hope you're all having a nice week!