Skip to main content

Weekly Monday Round-up (October 24, 2016)


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at the Book Date and is "a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week."

Visit the Book Date to see what various other book bloggers have been up to in the past week.





Books I  finished reading last week:

  • Berlitz Travel Guide: Rhine Valley from Cologne to Mainz, 1988/1989 edition. I love reading old travel guides, and this was no exception. It's one of those condensed mini-guides with information of the kind designed to whet one's appetite, which suits me just fine. It also proves what I have said about old travel guides: you can still use them for certain things even if they are decades out of date. This particular one was a trip back in time, as it was published while Germany was still divided and Bonn was the capital of the western part. However, the cities described in it still stand, and so do the old buildings described in it, and the nature and landscapes still continue to attract, so that part is still valid, and I will of course follow it up with more in-depth reading and more recent information.
  • Dragonology by Dugald A. Steer and a team of illustrators and designers. This is the kind of book I would have loved as a child. Still do, as a matter of fact. It's not as detailed in the recounting of dragon lore and dragon natural history as The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, another piece of draconology/cryptozoology which I read and reviewed in January, but it is just as rich in illustrations, possibly richer, if anything, and of course it was written for children. It is a sumptuous book, beautifully illustrated and worth owning, and designed to arouse further interest in the subject.
  • The Odd Job by Charlotte MacLeod. Cozy murder mystery. Also a funny one. It has been years since I read one of the Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn mysteries, but it was just as much fun as I remembered them being. The mystery was mysterious up to a point, but it's really the characters that  shine in MacLeod's books.

Books I acquired last week:
I didn't buy any books, but rescued three from the freebies bin at a charity shop:
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut,
a Latin primer (in Danish) and
a companion volume containing a glossary and etc. for the Latin primer.

Other bookish activities:
I created two book jars.

One is themed, using categories from past What's in a Name reading challenges along with some additions of my own and is meant to be used for a challenge I thought up.

The other contains no less than the titles of all of my TBR books as of Friday a fortnight ago and is meant to be dipped into when I really just want to read and don't care what. Both jars have had the wonderful effect that I have so far had no problem at all of deciding what to read. I have already read a handful of books that are included in the jar and can therefore be safely discarded should I happen to pull them out of it the next time I fall into a reading slump. It also looks quite nice sitting beside all my TBR books.

Other stuff:
 I have been struggling with episodes of dizziness, pressure headaches and occasional stabbing pains in my ears for the last couple of weeks. I finally decided to see a doctor, and guess what? My GP is unavailable this week. I am therefore going to an open clinic after work today. I hope it's just otitis, because the other possibility, Ménière's Disease, is not something I like to think about. My mother has that, and it's apparently hereditary. 

Comments

Beth F said…
Love the idea of book jar! And so happy to see new life breathed in the old What's in a Name challenges. It was fun to host it all those years.
Bibliophile said…
Beth, it's a great challenge, and deserves to be remembered. I am, however, thinking about contacting the current host with suggestions for retiring certain categories.
Kathryn T said…
The two jars are intriguing! The What's in a Name are interesting categories - I just clicked over to have a look. Have fun with both.
I like the books jars! I hope you have a great reading week :-)
Unknown said…
The challenge looks like fun. Hope you are feeling better soon! Here is my It's Monday! What are you reading?: http://shoshireads.weebly.com/home/its-monday-what-are-you-reading7952845
Greg said…
I was told I had Meniere's after I had numerous bouts of vertigo over several years. The vertigo was quite intense, to the point where I couldn't really do anything when it hit. Pretty awful. I haven't had one in a long time (knock on wood) but it still lingers in the back of my mind.

I love the book jar- what a great idea! And Dragonology and the older travel guide both sound nice. I think older guides would be a lot of fun to look through.
Bibliophile said…
Greg, sorry to hear you have Meniere's. It's a horrible condition, but it sounds like you are through the worst part of it. My mother has not had a really bad attack of vertigo in a number of years but does still have occasional dizzy spells and her sense of balance is slightly off.

My symptoms are quite similar to what mom had in the weeks before the first really bad vertigo attack hit, but the doctor says my symptoms are due to really bad myalgia, so I'm off to see a physiotherapist.

Popular posts from this blog

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...