library_mistress reading chronicle 2018

1/75: The first book I read this year was The George Bernard Shaw vegetarian cook book in six acts : based on George Bernard Shaw's favorite recipes which I got via SantaThing :-) George Bernard Shaw was a vegetarian from the age of 25, first because vegetarian cuisine was cheaper and he had not much money, but soon because of profound conviction. These are recipes by his housekeeper and cook, Alice Laden.

2/75: The second one was Of books and bagpipes by Paige Shelton. I collect books featuring librarians (many of those are cozy mysteries), and the father of the main character's boyfriend is a librarian ;-)

Started yesterday: Attention All Shipping : A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connelly. The "Shipping Forecast" is a traditional BBC radio broadcast where the nautic weather in the waters round the British isles is forecasted. Wikipedia says about this: "The unique and distinctive sound of these broadcasts has led to their attracting an audience much wider than that directly interested in maritime weather conditions".

Welcome back! I read a mystery last yer, I think, that included the Shipping Forecast - might have been Anne Cleeve's Shetland series. I'll have to see if I can find Attention All Shipping.

Hope you have a great year of reading. How was that Paige Shelton one? I read the first in the series, giving it a 3 star rating, but I never got around to the second one.

@ thornton37814: I just finished the first volume - I had read the second first ;-) I preferred the second one. I found a bit funny that a person moving to a completely foreign country finds friends and a love interest in the first week (what am I saying - in the first DAYS), and I didn't like the crime plot so much. But it was a nice read while commuting and I will acquire other volumes for my collection.

Still reading: Attention All Shipping : A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connelly.

3/75: The cracked spine by Paige Shelton. After having read the second volume of the Scottish Bookshop Mysteries, I wanted to read the first one. I preferred Of books and bagpipes (see more in another posting in this thread), but The cracked spine was a nice read while commuting.

@ drneutron thanks for the info - I work at a meteorological service and so literature featuring a weather forecast are interesting for me.

4/75: Better Late Than Never (Library Lover's Mystery) by Jenn McKinlay. Volume 7 of the Library Lover's Mystery - I read them all. Enjoyed it.

Still reading: Attention All Shipping : A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connelly.

5/75: Kater Friedrich fährt zur Kur. A really charming children's book about a cat named Friedrich who goes on a "Kur" (difficult to translate - it's a several-week-long stay in a specialised institution to restore or maintain one's health, usually paid for by your health insurance). Friedrich has accidentally swallowed something he shouldn't have and needs to recover.

Still reading: Attention All Shipping : A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connelly (I'm on page 204 of 370).

6/75: Attention All Shipping : A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast

7/75: Crime & Poetry (Magical Bookshop Mystery) by Amanda Flower - a bookshop mystery featuring magic and a cat and a librarian.

8/75: Agatha Christie: Lord Edgware dies

9/75: EU-Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (EU-DSGVO). Praxiseinführung in 7 Schritten - a useful book about the GDPR I read for my work as a data protection officer.

10/75: The glass room by Simon Mawer - finished. Enjoyed it.

11/75: Lukas Feiler, Bernhard Horn: Umsetzung der DSGVO in der Praxis - another book about the GDPR

started today: Prose and cons - another magical bookshop mystery by Amanda Flower.

12/75: Prose and cons by Amanda Flower.

13/75: started today: Browsing for Trouble by Amy E. Lilly - volume 4 of the Phee Jefferson Bibliomysteries. Do you see a certain trend in my reading choices? ;-)

13/75: finished Browsing for trouble.

Currently reading 14/75: The road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, his documentary account of mine workers' work and life conditions in Yorkshire and Lancashire of the 1930s and musings about socialism and communism. Very interesting and sometimes surprisingly current.

14/75: finished The road to Wigan Pier

15/75: finished Lewis Carroll: The hunting of the snark - inspired by an episode of "Inspector Lewis" ;-)

16/75: Anekdoten über Adalbert Stifter - a very short collection of anecdotes about the Austrian writer whom I appreciate a lot

17/75: Christian Pfitzer: Abgewrackt - Die Anekdoten eines Arbeitslosen - a critical and also funny account of a 25 year old German having lost his job and avoiding to get another one for a quite long time. Very good descriptions of the bureaucracy at the job centre and of the many ways poor people try to get round the month.

18/75: Jeremy Bessler: Anekdoten aus der Musikwelt - a nice collection of anecdotes about composers, conductors, pianists, singers...

19/75: Harm von Seggern: Sex und Geld - a mystery about an Italian misplaced in a dreary countryside of Northern Germany after having fled the Mafia and the local police officer, also featuring a librarian (this is why I bought the book). The title (sex and money) is quite accurate as the novel contains some lengthy descriptions of the porn films the anti-hero watches ;-) It is actually quite funny but the end is quite abrupt - the story lines (of the mystery as well as of the developing relationships) don't really find an conclusion. Maybe the author plans a second part...

20/75: J. J. Slattery: Perhaps she'll die (2013) - another librarian mystery. I liked the description of "small college politics and scholarly intrigue in the groves of academe" (blurb) among the very good mystery plot. It also has a classics background (Sappho & Co.) which I especially like. I really read a lot of bibliomysteries, and this was special. I would like it to be continued.

21/75: A. J. Jacobs: The know-it-all. I remembered that I have read a book from a man trying to observe ALL rules in the bible. As I searched the book I realised that Jacobs has written a lot of books with self-experiments. So I read The Know-it-all.

22/75: M. Amos Clifford: Your guide to Forest Bathing

23/75: Ephraim Kishon: Alle Satiren (all satires in one volume) - a really pleasant and funny read, but in some of the stories you see their age (I don't speak of technical developments, but of the man/woman relationship).

24/75: Meg Perry: Cloistered to Death - librarian mystery

25/75: Meg Perry: Dirty Laundry. The Jamie Brodie short stories - background stories about the librarian mystery series :-)

26/75: another GDPR book: jusIT Spezial: DS-GVO. ExpertInnenwissen zur Datenschutz-Grundverordnung

I have missed several volumes of the Jamie Brodie Mysteries by Meg Perry, and as I had to procrastinate (I would have had to write an article) I read one of them after the other (I sometimes feel like I cheat when I read the books on the ebook reader, but I read them...):

27/75: Dirty Laundry. The Jamie Brodie short stories
28/75: Encountered to Death
29/75: Talked to Death
30/75: Psyched to Death
31/75: Played to Death
32/75: Filmed to Death
33:75: Avenged to Death

In addition, I discovered the Very English Mystery Series by Elizabeth Edmondson. I have finished
34/75: A man of some repute and
35/75: A question of inheritance
and am currently reading A matter of loyalty

36/75: finished A matter of loyalty by Elizabeth Edmondson and her son Anselm Audley, who is also an author and wrote the novel after drafts and memos by his mother
37/75: finished A youthful indiscretion by Elizabeth Edmondson - it's a pity that there won't be any more volumes of the Very English Mystery Series. I really liked it.

I started Tin Man by Sarah Winman (reading it for the first meeting of the Girly Book Club's new Vienna chapter - does anyone know that club?). On the first pages, I had difficulties to find into the story but I did it. And imagine, I discovered that one of the main characters opens her own bookshop after having worked in a library - so another volume for my collection of fictional librarians :-)

I started Death at the Netherfield Park Ball by Amelia Littlewood on the Kindle.

ohmy, I have counted "Dirty Laundry" twice. So I am at 36/75 now. But I guess I will be finished with Tin Man today.

37/75: finished Tin Man by Sarah Winman

38/75: finished El bosque, a Spanish picture dictionary about the forest

started Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
started The trouble with women by Jacky Fleming

39/75: finished The trouble with women by Jacky Fleming

40/75: finished Raising steam by Terry Pratchett - not my favourite of Pratchetts books but still: funny, a very nice ending and some observations one can apply to our daily lifes. I love Lord Vetinari! :-)

41/75: finished Sing, unburied, sing for September's Girly Book Club in Vienna - it was quite hard to read for me and left me somehow perplexed. I would not have bought it from the blurb, but it's definitely worth reading. It showed me that I am privileged in many aspects.

42/75: finished Erotic stories for Punjabi widows for October's Girly Book Club in Vienna - this is funny, witty and moving. The story is set in a (too) close-knit Indian community in the London district of Southall. According to Wikipedia, over 55% of Southall's population are Indian/Pakistani, 43% are born outside the UK. The central character is Nikki, who is torn between old tradition and new life. Description: "Nikki impulsively takes a job teaching a 'creative writing' course at the community center in the beating heart of London’s close-knit Punjabi community. Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories. Eager to liberate these modest women, she teaches them how to express their untold stories, unleashing creativity of the most unexpected - and exciting - kind."

started Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett - there is a funny paragraph about meteorology which I especially like because I work at a weather service: "People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complecity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter".

43/75: Früher war ich jünger: 41 Geschichten aus dem Leben eines einfachen Mannes by Herr Kofler - Kofler is an Austrian journalist who writes funny and thoughtful stories about his professional and private life.

44/75: Feet of clay by Terry Pratchett - I loved it. It has a fine sense of humour and a lot to think about.

I wrote an article about the Austrian writer Jeannie Ebner and read some books by/about her again:
45/75: Frau sein & schreiben. Österreichische Schriftstellerinnen definieren sich selbst edited by Hilde Schmölzer
46/75: Jeannie Ebner: Ausgewählte Gedichte (Podium Porträt 21), a collection of poems
47/75: Jeannie Ebner. Eine Einführung, an introduction and bio by Carine Kleiber
48/75: Die neue Penelope, a collection of prosa and poems edited by Gerhard Trenkler

49/75: James Veitch: Dot Con: The Art of Scamming a Scammer - very funny. But his TED talks about answering to scammers are even better :-)

50/75: Terry Pratchett: The fifth elephant - one of the darkest Discworld books I have ever read, with several very sad scenes. Well, it takes place in Uberwald after all...

I started reading Kerri Carpenter: Her super-secret rebound boyfriend (with a librarian as main character)

51/75: Published to death - another Jamie Brodie Mystery by Meg Perry. I think this is one of the most funniest - Kevin and Jon get a new colleague who loves to speak in phrases and clichés - e.g. "Now, boys, keep your pants on. ... See which way the wind is blowing on the streets. Let's make hay while the sun shines, boys" and this in every scene :-)

52/75: finished Kerri Carpenters librarian romance Her super-secret rebound boyfriend. Nice read, a bit abrupt happy ending (as so often in romances like this).

I started Flamme sein! Hans Scholl und die Weiße Rose by Robert M. Zoske about Hans Scholl, who was a core member of the non-violent resistance group "Weiße Rose" (White Rose) in the Third Reich and was sentenced to death and executed in 1943. When I was a young adult, I had a book about the White Rose and it moved me deeply, so when I read a review of this new biography, I ordered it immediately.

I started the librarian cozy mystery The Rhyme's Library by Kristy Tate.

53/75: finished librarian cozy mystery The Rhyme's Library by Kristy Tate.

I discovered a new bookish+cat mystery series: the Black Cat Bookshop Mysteries by Ali Brandon.

54/75: Double Booked for Death
55/75: A Novel Way to Die
56/75: Words With Fiends
57/75: Literally Murder
58/75: Plot Boiler
I already bought the sixth volume Twice told tail.

I started reading Bare Minimum Parenting: The ultimate guide to not quite ruining your child by James Breakwell. I don't have children myself and don't plan to have some in the future, but I follow Breakwell on Twitter (@XplodingUnicorn) and think his tweets about his experiences with his four children are hilarious, so I wanted to read his book, too.

And I started reading Les Combustibles (Human Rites) by Amélie Nothomb as it is also library-themed. I took another book of Nothomb from the Open Bookshelf in my hometown and read a bit about her and discovered this book.

59/75: Bare minimum parenting by James Breakwell
60/75: Becoming by Michelle Obama
61/75: Vom Ende einer Geschichte (The sense of an ending) by Julian Barnes

just started: More than superhuman by A.E. van Vogt

I discovered the regency romance series "The Penningtons" by Bliss Bennet and loved it - strong women with their own head, sex scenes that are not embarrassing, plot twists, interesting characters, british/irish background.

62/75: A rebel without a rogue
63/75: A man without a mistress
64/75: A lady without a lord
started A sinner without a saint

65/75: Twice told tail by Ali Brandon