May 2015 in Books

Traveling to the US requires some space in my suitcase when going home again - limited by what I could carry around in the city in a plastic bag, I "only" bought 5 books - 3 of them was on a wishlist that I had scribbled down. 

Usually traveling also means reading at least 2 books, but during the two flights only a total of 15 pages, and 35 pages the morning just before check-out - so unlike me not to read more, but hey there is a first for everything.

I thought it was less, but this month's book pile amounts to 7 books - yay!

Man kan ikke se det på dem by Annette Brogaard

(Translated Title: You can't tell by looking at them)*

Denmark

The Postman Always Purls Twice y Anne Canadeo

USA

A Finely Knit Murder by Sally Goldenbaum

USA

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommends by Katarina Bivald

(Original title: Läsarna i Broken Wheel rekommenderar)

Sweden.

Library Book

Kvinden de meldte savnet by Sara Blædel

(Translated Title: The Woman They Reported Missing)*

Denmark

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholasby Jemes Patterson

USA

Seriously...I'm Kidding by Ellen Degeneres

USA

*Translated title: the book has not been published in English version, so title is not an official title of the book.

March 2015 in Books

Was offered a chance to stream a free audio-book for a limited time, and it reminded me, that I can "read" a book while making other things with my hands. One of the Danish news networks has online book clubs, where you are able to stream or sometimes also download an audiobook (limited time only) and then get to know authors you might not normally have picked. Books are expensive here so must admit that known/familiar authors are often those I pick when choosing a new book - and the free offer help me expand my world of books.

Jane Austen is not on this reading list albeit I went to two Austen events - I have plans though to make one of the months this year Jane Austen dominated, as I have 6 books waiting to be read - 2 of them brand new translations to Danish and a 3rd is Jane Austen inspired.

A Perfect Match by Katie Fforde

UK

Priority by Iselin C. Hermann

(Original Title: Prioritaire)

Denmark

Audiobook version

A Vintage Wedding by Katie Fforde

UK

The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie

UK
Library book

A Christmas Feast by Katie Fforde

UK
Collection of short stories 

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
UK
Library book

Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
USA

Me Before You

She narrows her eyes. "Dinner. With or without Mr. BlackBerry?"
"What?"
"Mr. BlackBerry makes me feel like Mrs. Gooseberry." The pot again. "I feel like there's always a third person vying for your attention."

Will Traynor, loves extreme sports, traveling, successful business man with the finger on the pulse..... until a motorcycle accident changes everything. Suddenly he is a quadriplegic and has decided that he does not want this life and wishes to end it.

"Well, it comes to something when the best you can all say about my new career is that it's better than hauling chicken carcasses around the inside of an aircraft hangar," I said.

Louisa Clark lives in a world, where everything is the same until she loose her job at The Buttered Bun tea shop. She knows nothing about quadriplegia when she's hired to be a private care assistant (care and companionship) for Will. 

The book may start like any other chick-lit book, but it goes beyond that label as it also makes you think about bigger issues. How would you react if you suddenly ended up in a wheelchair or similar constantly needing help - where your body will no longer cooperate even though your brain works like it always has? If there are no hope for any recovering, should it be your choice if you want out: as in getting help to die?

My own MS diagnosis came rolling back into my mind as I was temporarily (the temporary part was unknown to me at that point) in a wheelchair, when a doctor told me, what is was wrong with my body. I was lucky that I manage to train myself out of the wheelchair, but what if I had not? One day you are fine and the next? No one ever really know what tomorrow brings.

The book makes to think. What if I was in a situation like Will - would I want to end my life? How would I find the slightest hope? What it was somebody close to me, that it happened to? Would it be selfish of me to wand a severely handicapped/sick person to live on despite his/hers wish to peacefully leave this life? I simply do not know what to think, as I see both pros and cons. Hope I never get in neither situation as I am at a loss what to think of this.

I began to compile a new list - things you cannot do with a quadriplegic.

1. Go on a tube train (most underground stations don't have lifts), which pretty much ruled out activities in all of London unless we wanted to pay for taxis.

2.........

Oh wait a minute. There is something the author might not have considered/known - and honestly, I had the same thought as above, when I was diagnosed with MS - two months before a planned trip to London - and still not out of the wheel chair. A English lady who was in the hospital bed next to me told me not to think underground but above ground. Answer: a red bus. Since then I have realized that she is right: a red bus have an automatic ramp that the drive can activate if a person in a wheelchair wants to get on/off the bus. and a lot of the sidewalk curbs at intersections/pedestrian crossings are at even level with the street to be easy accessible for a person in a wheel chair. If I am too tired to walk when in London I have started to get on the red busses instead - as there are more steps at an underground station that you realize, and if the escalators do not work to to have to walk up/down them there are a LOT of steps at the stations in central London.

I was told, that I would cry my heart out when getting close to the book's end - me, I usually never cry when reading a book.... but I did, and several times during the book. Another thing - the issues in this book really put your mind at work so I did not pick up another book for days as mind still trying figure out what to think. My expectations? Exactly what did I expect? Not sure as was curious about the book knowing it has sold a million-plus copies. I like the book, as it surprised me but also challenged me to think about serious issues even though I can not decide what to think.

Katie Fforde Binge Reading

Above is merely my collection of Katie Fforde books - actually all the titles she has published until now. One of my trips to London included a trip to Waterstones so I could buy the 9 titles that were missing on my book shelves - since then I have purchased the books when they were published but fell behind with the reading due to the sail trip last summer. My binge reading was therefore the 3 most recent published books.

 

The Perfect Match

Bella Castle wanted to start her life over hoping to forget Dominic Thane, a man she could not have and therefore broke her heart. She new stays with her godmother, Alice, who is more than happy for the company in her house. She has found work locally as a real estate agent and she is more than patient with indecisive possible buyers and engaged to her boss, Nevil, and everything seems picture perfect. Dominic suddenly turns up and Bella starts wondering if her heart really is with Nevil, or should she run again settling in a new place with yet another new beginning.

New beginnings - well sometimes I wonder about them. But I think those thoughts derives from the fact that I do not know if nor when the MS might put a limit to what I am able to do.

A Christmas Feast

A collection of stories - not all with a Christmassy theme but even though some of them being very short, one could eye the potential of a story.

My favourite was "From Scotland With Love": Daisy Allway wants to get an unfinished task done as her job as a PR girl for Athene Publishing is on the line so she travels from London to the author Rory McAllen's secret place in Scotland. A snowstorm strands her at Rory's house during the Christmas New Years break and with his reputation of being impossible to work with it seems to be a very long stay.

I would have love to have read this as a novel and not just a short story, as would have like to get to now the characters even better than we did

A Vintage Wedding

Rachel, Beth and Lindy are all single women in a Cotswold town, Chippingford, where everybody knows everybody. Beth has promised her sister to organize a cheap weeding, and the 3 ladies team up to arrange what they decide to call vintage wedding rather than a cheap wedding as they each can all contribute with some skills saving a lot of money. All three attracts the attention of men - everything may not be as it seems and others might be in for quite a surprise.

Enjoy the description of a small town having once lived in one myself. Also the possibility of turning a creative ability into something really useful wherein there might be a future way of earning a living.

CPH Reads: Jane Austen

Source

CPH Reads - a literature festival of 10 days filled with book events all-over Copenhagen earlier this month, and this year's theme was: love.

CPH Reads: Jane Austen-salon at Perch's Tearoom

I had invited an old friend to an event at a local tearoom that in co-operation with the bloggers at LoveBooks had arranged a lecture about the classic novel Emma by Jane Austen while drinking lovely tea and eating scones. She is a big Jane Austen fan and happily received the ticket as a pre-birthday present and had not heard of the event until I asked her to reserve some hours.

Lise Lotte Frederiksen shared her passion for Jane Austen in an openhearted and humorous way that made two hours fly away in was seemed merely a few minutes and captured the smiles of the audience, young to elderly. She was laughing a bit, as most think of the Jane Austen time of drinking afternoon tea, but her time was actually before the introduction afternoon tea, as the English were still regarding tea as medicine - but then again, she thought the venue were perfect for a Jane Austen talk.

I learned a lot from her lecture about details, that I would never have given a second thought, but were small "indicators" in Jane Austen's time about people's manners, wealth, education etc. so now on the lookout of an annotated edition of Emma so I can re-read the novel with attention to all the small details throughout the book. Never read Emma in Danish so purchased the newest translation at the event and have a hard time resisting just starting reading - but other books have priority at the moment.

Some photos from the event here: LoveBooks and Windblown Pages

CPH Reads: Embroidery Workshop: embroider your favorite Jane Austen quote

Could not resist that - have not done any embroidering in a couple of years and want to make some to use in connection with some yarn graffiti later this year. I am not fast at embroidery and we only had a couple of hours at the workshop, so did not finish mine at the event but that is OK as I got some great creative inspiration from the other ladies attending.

Maybe you have already noticed, but saw it fitting that the cover of Emma use in top of this post is an embroidered version - think that would make an awesome collector's item for Jane Austen fans if they were published with covers like that.

My chosen Jane Austen quote was:

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid

Knit in Comfort

Is the grass really greener on the other side? How many of us have not have thoughts like that when doubting if one is on the right track? But what exactly is the right track?

Well I am still pondering if I should not switch to a creative profession compared to the one I have now - Would it make me more ME? Will it make me happier? On the other side, I know that my crooked path until now has me me who I am - what has been handed (like the MS) to me may have forced me to make detours - but without these detours, would I ever have seen the Chinese Wall, the Pyramids of Giza, the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, San Francisco's Golden Gate, the Panama Canal?

 

Yes it can be daunting to check out the grass on the other side, but if you do not venture out there once in a while, will you end up regretting later on that you did not try? Other times one's own grass should be carefully maintained. Not all my decisions may have been wise, but at least I tried and some decisions ended giving me much more than I have hoped for.

 

 

 

Knit in Comfort by Isabel Sharpe - more chick-lit than the recent knit-lit I have read, but it deals with some of the things I pondered about in the beginning of this post.

 

Elizabeth Detlaff, the stranger from New York who arrives in the city Comfort, North Carolina because of a dream with her grandmother (babcia) and a radioprogramme mentioning the city's name. She is in need of some me time to figure out where her relation with her boyfriend Dominique is going, so Comfort seems to be the place that can guide her. She gets lodging at Megan Morgan's garage appartment and suddenly getting an unexpected view "behind the scenes" of this little town.

 

Megan, on the other hand, suddenly feels that Elizabeth has invaded her life - though she could use the money she gets from her new tennant - as Elizabeth is suddenly also invited to the Purls Before Wine Knitting Club as well as being eager to learn about knitted lace, a tradition, that Megan has inherited from her Shetland ancestors. But just maybe Elizabeth turns out to be just perfect to rattle Megan's life into a new direction?

 

Reading a book like this made me feel good - that I am not the only one who might be pondering about green grass elsewhere and that life sometimes just throws you curves that you can either pass or grab. Sometimes you just need a reminder about it.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year

How do you tell the world, that you had enough? That you need a break from everything? Have you ever said to yourself: "I wish that I had just stayed in bed today" when having a terrible day?

 

On the Eva's two twins, Brianna and Brian Jr. leaves for university at the age of 17, she decides that she needs to make her personal statement: that she had had enough. Not being on the suicidal edge, she decides that going to bed and staying there, is going to be her way of letting her surroundings know, that she has reached her limits. She wants to sign out from the real world for a while not knowing for how long.

 

Her husband, Brian, is bewildered and her surrounding is wondering if she is mentally sane at all. Her support is her new friend, Alexander, that helps in her keeping her mind busy. The neighbourhood knows about her decision to stay in bed, and from her bedroom she watches life pass by an by pure coincidence she becomes a person, that people confide in to solve personal issues.

 

If it has been a family, where the kids were still living at home and they were dependent of a second income, it would have bigger consequences than those we encounter in this book. But it is a read that makes you wonder - would I be able to sign out temporarily from my life? I have come to the conclusion, that I am at least trying when having my vacation - and yet, do I really sign out?

 

Spend some airtime (on a plane) readin this book from cover to cover - both laughing and sighing in the company of Eva.

 

A French Affair

How would you react, if a family member left you her antique stall?

This is exactly what happens to Gina and Sally Makepiece in Katie Fforde’s latest novel, A French Affair. When their aunt Rainey leaves them her stall at the French House. The owner of French House, Matthew Ballinger, was a friend of Rainey, so one of her wishes is that they work together with him to continue her calling in the antiques world.

Learning how to spot junk from the real thing. How to make a deal with a customer? Can fellow antiques dealers be trusted when offering you help? Can some of the junk be transformed into beautiful pieces sold other places than at an antique market?

Again a good read from Katie Fforde, and just after finishing it, it realised that I was looking at things at a local fleamarket / antiques market, not buying anything but feeling almost as if I was inside the book.
---

Feeling a bit like Rory Gilmore from Gillmore Girls, since I almost never leave my appartment without a book - any waiting or travel time is used reading those pages. Maybe you have seen me in a long waiting line at the immigration in foreign countries' airports? I will be easy to spot, as I most of the time start reading while the queue ahead of me is slowly getting shorter. Amazing how time can fly by when you are in good company of a a book :o)

The Jane Austen Marriage Manual

How do you find your very own Mr. Darcy? Especially when you are getting close to the big 4-0?

Love books inspired by Jane Austen (this year is the 200th aniversary of the publishing of "Pride and Prejudice") and it seems to be a everlasting ressource of inspiration to romantic books, dreams etc. The most eerie thing about this book is, when I stumbled across it on my vacation, I was as close to my 40-mark, as Kate in the book - but did not realise that until I had almost finished reading the book.

"If lives throw you a lemon, make lemonade" (Joan Collins), an that exactly what Kate tries to persue when she gets fired from her journalist job. Despite warnings from her best friends, that reminds her, that she is not Jane Austen, when she tries to follow Jane's advice for company to see if they still work in or time in a freelance assigment. If you know your Jane Austen, you will recignize a lot of updated things, and if you have never been bitten by the Jane Austen bug, then this will still be an entertaining chic-lit.

Well Kim Izzo must be a bit of a Jane Austen addict herself as every chapter starts with a quote from one of Austen's book - and the name of some of the characters on recognizes from the Austen novels: Emma, Brandon, Marianne

Holidays Are Coming......

Received this season's first Christmas card today, so what better than mentioning a nice holiday read.

Pre-ordered this book, so received it in my mailbox on publishing day, and could not wait start reading it. It should come with a bit of a warning though, as you will find scrumptious recipes for Christmas bakery that will fuel cake cravings while reading it.... but help is not far away if you have the ingredients needed, as it is packed with recipes.

 

Austin is going to New York pursuing a good work opportunity leaving Issy in London, where she is considering her future: Should she remain in London with her beloved Cupcake Café that she has worked hard on creating or should she pursue new dreams in New York as surely, they need cupcakes too in the big apple.

 

One ca not help thinking about the phrase: "The grass is greener n the other side" - which you can encounter if you change jobs. You might get that strange feeling and thought "Did I really make the right decisiom?"

 

All this, recipes and then preparing for Christmas you have a story entertaining you for hours :o)

Remember Me?

Read Judy's haiku poem this morning and started thinking about a book I read last weekend. Then I went to the mirror and looked at myself: If I took a ride with a time machine 20 years ago to present day, would I be able to recognize me? Maybe it is a good thing standing at a mirror and ask: Who are you? A lot of dreams did not happen, other things took their place and helped form who I am now.

 

What if you had an accident, woke up at the hospital and find out, that you have "lost" some years of your life? Would you worry that you might be a female version of Jason Bourne - sort of a "Long Kiss Goodnight" woman? Will you know who to trust, familiar and unfamiliar persons, that you are apparently close too? The reflection in the mirror is a new version of you, but are you really that person?

 

When Lexi wakes up, she suffers from memory loss, and does not recognise her own husband. She is approached by helpfull friends etc. but can she really trust them? She finds out, that she is suddenly director... How did she get to that position?

Sophia Kinsella's writing makes you put down the book once in a while, as your mind starts wander around your own life... and then you want to pick it up again, for what happens to Lexi next?

The World of Jane Austen

I see some of Emily Albright in me - booking a vacation where a part of it was a guided tour of Jane Austen's country....  I could also see myself working in a bookshop just like Emily..... And then what is the thing that got my attention the most when reading this book?

Stepping out of a comfort zone and go your own way? Think I am already doing that pursuing new crafty projects, going places that has never been on my must-go-to-someday-list.... But then there is the job thing where I am wondering, if I am where I am supposed to be?

The stories of Jane Austen have been great intertainment for years - have most of her books and have two versions of Pride and Prejudice on DVD - the BBC production with Colin Firth as Mr Knightley and the never movie version with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet - so could easily sign up for a guided tour to the area from where Jane Austen got her inspiration.... Do like going to England so the idea is not too far fetched.

Then there is this atmosphere of Jane Austen's view on relation ships etc. that a lot of people has fallen in love with: The idea of finding a real-life Mr Darcy. "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler touches a bit of that - though indirectly - but there are still references to the books of Jane Austen.

Yes, I will admit. I am a bit like Kathleen Kelly(Meg Ryan) in "You've Got Mail", that re-reads "Pride and Prejudice" and still hoping for Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to fall in love every time I read it. Is there an significant other out there for me? I would like to think there is. A Mr. Darcy: Well have all the Elizabeth Bennet-like heroines ever been actively looking for him? Think I have to qoute Mr Darcy in "Bridget Jones' Diary" here: "I like you, very much. Just as you are." that are the words of a guy, that I want to meet.

So if you like me, love to read a good chick-flic and have a soft spot for Jane Austen novels in general, then you should pick up a copy of Alexandra Potter's book and read it. Happy that a friend gave me an opportunity to read this book :o)

Katie Fforde's Recipe

Have read all Katie Fforde's previous books, so had pre-ordered this as soon as I saw that it was being published. Love those crafty worlds that all the heroines of this books are in trying to find their place of happiness.

Katie Fforde is following the beat: the trend of the vast number of reality shows with cooking and/or baking competitions (MasterChef, The Next Great Baker, CupCake Wars etc): the heroine of this book, Zoe Harper, has won a place in a cooking competition - winning this competition could get her closer to fullfilling her dream of opening a delicatessen.

I was in an almost all girls class for 3 years (24 girls and 4 boys), so I laughed when I read the description of another of the cooking competition participants, Cher. I have met persons like Cher - the persons that really puts your temper to the limit and demands a numerous count-to-tens in the hope not to explode with rage. That made me connect much more with Zoe while reading the book and it felt like sweeping into her world, as Katie Fforde is very good of describing the scenery.

Maybe my fondness of Katie Fforde books reflects my wish to someday do something creative for a living - but currently that is only a distant dream, as I have no clue how to pursue it and make it happen. In the meantime I will "just" continue reading Katie Fforde's books.