There are very few books out there I will buy in hardback. Hardbacks have several severe disadvantages, mainly: They are big, and don’t fit into my handbag. They are heavy, and I don’t like to carry them in my handbag or have my arms tire when I hold them for a longer time. They take…
There is one matter of taste in which I appear to differ from most romance readers: I have a great fondness for blond heroes. Love’em. But I seem to be part of minority, because the majority by far of romance heroes are dark-haired. Not that I mind a yummy black-haired hero … but I sigh…
Recently I came across the Castle books, thrillers ostensibly written by author Richard Castle, who is the hero of TV series Castle but in reality penned by a ghostwriter. I read that several chapters of the first book, Heat Wave, were published on ABC’s website for promotional reasons, until the whole book was released under…
During a visit my twelve-year-old niece paid to my place last weekend, I took her to the guest room, where I keep my children’s and YA literature, and chose some books with her to borrow over the summer holidays. Many of my books there are classics, the majority are books I read when I was…
When I bought my first eBook reader, an Opus, in December, I felt both like a pioneer – eBook readers are not at all common in Germany yet, and I’d only seen one in the flesh before, on a train in England – and, at the same time, like a dinosaur, because already the media…
During my book club’s latest meeting, a friend who’d seen the play version of a novel most of us had read, showed around some leaflets of the production and asked whether the two actors who played the leads were in accordance with how we’d imagined them. This lead to a rather funny moment, because of…
At the moment I’m reading The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, but I stopped, because I was so embarrassed at a main character’s actions. Do you know this phenomenon? You read a novel about a character you generally like and admire, and at some point the character acts in a way that makes you feel…
On the whole, I don’t mind seeing variations of the same old plot in what I read. Well, I do read plenty of genre literature after all! The finesse and/or psychological depth in which a well-known plot is handled can actually enrich my pleasure in reading a great deal. That said, there are a few…
Recently, I reread Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March. It’s a book I’ve read with great pleasure before; this time I was particularly struck by the way the relationship between the poet Catullus and society lady Clodia is portrayed. He loves her with all his heart and writes great poems to her and about her;…
Recently, I sorted some of my bookshelves. Truth to be told, I mostly did it in order to procrastinate doing some other work, but when I had finished, I was really pleased: The books looked so neat, with many from the same publishing house standing next to each other, and next time it won’t take…
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