Here are my finds for this week…
What interesting things have you found on the net?
This week is exciting because I finally got a book that was recommended to me by a fellow blogger whose taste in mysteries is QUITE different from mine. Plus, I am planning to– hoping for – dreaming about getting back into crochet.
Started early, took my dog by Kate Atkinson
Elena will be so pleased (with herself) that I got this. I love the cover and the title, we will see how the rest goes.
Crochet One-Skein Wonders: 101 Projects from Crocheters Around the World by Judith Durant. One skein is do-able, right?
What was in YOUR mailbox recently?
My week 1 of my NEW52 foodie project went well. I made a recipe I found in this cookbook that I got for Christmas last year. It is a German cookbook called “Vegetarian Mediterranean cuisine”, just my kind of thing. Look at the garlic bulb!
The recipe is called “Vegetable gratin with Feta” and it was delicious, just not a big hit with the kids. They only looked at it and then asked for bread instead.
If you click on the card you will see a bigger version.
This post is part of
Weekend cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. For the other weekend cooking posts please go there.
Credits for recipe card: Fonts: Jellyka Wonderland Wine, Typenoksidi. Papers: Jennifer Labre – Everyday Memories. Week stamps: Weeds and Wildflowers.
Once more Judith from Leeswammes’ Blog will be hosting the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop in February. It is already the seventh time she is doing that and I think I participated in each single one (yes, I checked and I did). Needless to say I will participate in this one as well. It is always fun to hop around, pick and choose which books you might want to win and get to know new blogs.
Want to join in on the fun? Hop over to Judith and sign up!
In a nutshell:
Short synopsis:
Short instalments about the life of the inhabitants of a house in Edinburgh and the people they meet.
Language I read the book in: English
Did I like it? Yes, absolutely.
For people who: love a cozy atmosphere, great locations, interesting people, short chapters that leave you wanting more.
My thoughts:
I want to move to Edinburgh. Not because it is a lovely place (it is, but that is not the reason), but because I want to be able to enjoy Alexander McCall Smith’s books set in Edinburgh more than I already do. If you live there I am sure the reading experience will be exceptional. The way he moves his characters around, through streets, around quarters and inside shops is so enjoyable, even if you have no idea about the places; it must be absolute bliss to be able to picture the real locations that you know from experience while reading his stories.
When I started reading I wasn’t aware that this was previously published as a serialised novel in a newspaper, but I was pleasantly surprised. The chapters are very short, but always with an ending that made you want to read on. If I had read that in the paper I would have waited eagerly every morning for the new instalment.
Pat moves into a room in a flat at 44 Scotland Street. From now on we follow her life and that of her flatmate Bruce, an extraordinarily vain surveyor, of their neighbours Domenica (I want her to live next door to me), Irene, an extraordinarily pushy mother, and her son Bertie and of the people they know. As this series has the same setting as the Isabel Dalhousie books I almost expected her or Jamie to come around the corner any minute, but unfortunately this did not happen. I could have imagined Isabel turning up at the lecture at the Portrait Gallery, for example.
The whole book is a delight to read. The little incidents and goings on are sometimes common, sometimes annoying, sometimes completely absurd, sometimes exciting even, but never to the point where your heart rate starts to go up.
One of my many favourite passages:
“Why did you set fire to Daddy’s copy of The Guardian, Bertie? Did you do that because guardian is another word for parent? Was The Guardian your Daddy because Daddy is your guardian?”
Bertie thought for a moment. Dr Fairbairn was clearly mad, but he would have to keep talking to him; otherwise the psychotherapist might suddenly kill both him and his mother.
”No,” he said. “I like Daddy. I don’t want to set fire to Daddy.”
”And do you like The Guardian?” pressed Dr Fairbairn.
”No,” said Bertie. “I don’t like The Guardian."
“Why?” asked Dr Fairbairn.
“Because it’s always telling you what you should think,” said Bertie. “Just like Mummy.”
I am glad I have the next book in the series already sitting on my shelves.
Product info and buy link :
| Title | 44 Scotland Street |
| Author | Alexander McCall Smith |
| Publisher | Random House |
| ISBN | 9781400079445 |
| I got this book from | I bought it |
| Buy link | Buy 44 Scotland Street |
If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.
Only one crafty book today – and it is a kids’ book.
Paper Artist: Creations kids can fold, wear, tear or share by Gail Green
A craft book for children. I love paper and this will be a great idea book for kids’ projects. I love the heart on the cover.
What was in YOUR mailbox recently?
My thoughts:
Meat and crockpot lovers will like this book. Being a vegetarian I didn’t get too much out of it, as all main dishes, except two (Arroz con queso and Minestra di Ceci), are with meat or seafood.
From what I understood Phyllis Pellman Good collected those recipes from other people and edited them for this book. Every recipe has a name and town at the top, so I assume that is the person who contributed the recipe. A good sign, as those meals tend to be more “real life” as some you can find in the cookbooks from professional cook book authors. All ingredients are common and easy to find, no recipe has an impossible amount of ingredients and all you do is put them in the crockpot and let it do its magic.
Some recipes come with a photo and those also look like real life pictures taken in a real environment – not the kind where the food stylist has created a “dish” that nobody will ever be able to produce.
If I were a meat eater I’d cook several of the recipes. Here are some that would have appealed to me in my previous life.
The veggie factor
| Recipe ratio (non.veg./veg) | 40/60. Almost all main dishes are non veggie, the sides are without meat. |
| Worth it? | No |
Product info and buy link :
| Title | Fix-it and Forget-it Holiday Dishes and Sides |
| Author | Phyllis Pellman Good |
| Publisher | Good Books |
| ISBN | 9781453276969 |
| I got this book from | Netgalley |
| Buy link | Buy Fix-it and Forget-it Holiday Dishes and Sides for Kindle |
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.
This post is part of
Weekend cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. For the other weekend cooking posts please go there.
The reason I watched this movie:
I absolutely ADORE James Purefoy ever since I saw him as Mark Antony in “Rome”. When I saw him again in a small part in “A Knight’s Tale” I checked what other films he had done and came across this one. Knights, dragons, what’s not to like?
The movie:
I loved all the actors in it. I have never been a big fan of Patrick Swayze, but I really liked him here. Normally, in a film with this plot, he would be the super evil fiancé, looking for HIS woman, in the manner of Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride. Here, even though a bit insistent – the kidnapping was not the best idea- , he is a really nice fellow. Just like all the villains; they are sort of mean, but in a way you can’t be too mad at them. Val Kilmer makes a short appearance as one of them, which also made my day.
Piper Perabo of whom I had never heard before is incredibly good looking and a great heroine. Gentle lamb, my butt! She kicks ass like the best of them and stands her ground.
Somehow you get the feeling everybody in the movie has a great time, and so has the audience.
The dragon legend is turned upside down here; if you expect slaughtered dragons and the like, go elsewhere! It is great family entertainment.
Little bonus: During the end credits they show out-takes which are fun to watch as well.
A happy new year to everyone! I want to share two things I found in the last few days.
Have you found anything interesting lately?
In December I
Additionally I
This month I am planning to
As for the challenges I participated in…
Mount TBR Challenge:
I didn’t read all of the ten books that I first planned to read (in fact I read two), but nevertheless I reduced my TBR pile considerably. So I call it a success.
Narnia Reading Project:
FAIL! My own project, too. But, after the first book I gave up. I suppose you have to read Narnia for the first time as a kid and not as an adult.
2012 Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge:
My goal was 56 book minimum and I read 62. Success.
Venice in February Reading Challenge:
Started one book and DNF’ed it. Fail.
Tea & Books Reading Challenge:
Planned to read two books and finished one. Fail.
If you would like to see what challenges I joined for 2013, go here.
My TBR pile and the book buying ban:
When I started the ban in June I had 65 books waiting to be read that I owned already. Today that number is 43. I haven’t read all of those in the meantime, but I purged the pile a bit more and got rid of some books that I know I won’t read. Apart from some gifted books and a few swapped ones I haven’t acquired a single book since June. I am proud of myself.
I additionally created a “read maybe” shelf on Goodreads which is exclusive, where I put books I might read in the future and don’t want to forget about, but I don’t consider seriously just yet. The to-read books include 22 books on my wishlist.
Goodreads status now:
I am pretty happy with this.
How about you? How did your challenges / buying bans go?
I’m getting into movie mode. For the 200 year anniversary of the publication of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales it was only fitting to watch “The Brothers Grimm” with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. The description on the cover sounded very nice so I gave it a go. I shouldn’t have. To me this movie must be the disappointment of the century. What utter crap! Its only saving grace are the pictures that, I have to admit, are rather magnificent.
Other than that the Grimm brothers and the whole topic of German fairytales were slaughtered until you didn’t recognize them anymore. I wasn’t aware that the Grimms (often referred to as the “Grimmy” by a sidekick in the person of an Italian torture master – typical Italian accent included) were con-artists who travelled far and wide to “free” the country from enchantments that they had previously created themselves. Obviously the real Grimm characters were too boring and needed some embellishing. In fact, to me the film was a mixture of “Dirty, rotten scoundrels”, “Ghostbusters” and “Sleepy Hollow” that went awfully wrong.
The fairytale allusions all started kind of ok and then disappeared into nothing. Hans and Greta (totally rubbed me the wrong way, they are Hänsel and Gretel!) go into the forest and she gets lured away by a piece of cloth. Wow! Where is the witch, where the gingerbread house? And it went on and on like that. What on Earth does a gingerbread man have to do with German fairytales? Why is Hesse called Westphalia and what is the Thuringian queen doing there? And why has she been living in Rapunzel’s tower? The whole story is a very odd hodgepodge of half baked but never finished ideas about which horrific tales might appeal to an audience who has never read a Grimm fairytale before.
There was one sentence that I found quite amusing (and symptomatic for the movie). The Grimm brothers come to Marbaden where they have never been heard of and introduce themselves as the guys who have fought off “the cannibal chef of the Schwarzwald in the gingerbread house of terror”. There you have it. If you like murderous chefs in gingerbread houses and a bit of comic relief then the movie might be for you. If you like fairytales in their original form and a less horror-like approach, then stay away from it.
What to watch instead? My suggestion is “The company of wolves” by Neil Jordan, which I am going to re-watch tonight to get yesterday’s taste out of my mouth.
I haven’t done a weekend cooking post in ages, but I am planning to change that. As a scrapbooker I am always looking out for new projects and for 2013 I am planning a “NEW 52 project”. You can read a bit more about that kind of project at the blog of One Little Bird Designs, but basically it involves doing one thing that is new to you each week.
I decided to limit my new experiences each week to recipes and am planning to try out one new recipe each week and – if it turns out nice – scrapbook a recipe card to create a special little cookbook at the end of the year. That way, I am forced to look through the umpteen cookbooks we have (or peruse all your weekend cooking posts) and finally cook something else than our staple meals, at least once a week.
So prepare for a recipe post every week in the new year!
This post is part of
Weekend cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. For the other weekend cooking posts please go there.
In a nutshell:
Short synopsis:
After killing a book seller a murderer seems to be after Bob and Angelica.
Language I read the book in: English
Did I like it? Yes, but the heroine is annoying, as almost always with cozies.
For people who: like lovely settings, aggravating heroines
My thoughts:
This second book that I read in the Booktown Mystery series is quite a nice cozy mystery again. It is the fourth in the series, my prediction after book one regarding a relationship between Tricia and Russ has come and gone, meanwhile she has had another thing going with a police officer and her love life is non existent once more. On the mystery side it is a run of the mill cozy where the Booktown is yet another token theme that has no bearing on the actual story. Those people could be selling anything from books to jam to second hand clothes and it would be just the same.
What I realize more and more is that I have a real problem with the cozy mystery heroines. Why do they always have to be either idiots, have attitude problems or both? Tricia is no exception. I find her aggravating and insufferable. Sorry!
Tricia meddles in business that is not her own. She is condescending and prejudiced. She does idiotic things even though she knows better (I suppose you have to be grateful for that). The number of times I shook my head and thoroughly disliked her I can’t count. I don’t know what is wrong with cozy writers. Can’t they create women that are sensible, reasonable people who deal with things in a respectful and cautious manner?
Maybe is should stop reading cozies for a while and turn to something else.
Product info and buy link :
| Title | Chapter and Hearse |
| Author | Lorna Barrett |
| Publisher | Penguin |
| ISBN | 9780425236017 |
| I got this book from | Birgit at The Book Garden |
| Buy link | Buy Chapter & Hearse |
If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.
My Christmas Carol movie marathon continues…
You can’t go wrong with this movie adaptation of A Christmas Carol. The BBC did it in 1977 with Michael Hordern as Scrooge and he is fabulous. Mean and morose, he makes Michael Caine as Scrooge look like the benefactor of the year.
The production is rather spooky and bleak, no big special effects, just the bare story as we all know it. No lovely locations; you know, you can even make slums look picturesque if you want to, but here we are talking about black and white line drawings for setting the scene. They certainly haven’t spent a lot of money on location and decor, but instead focused on the cast.
Other than the previous two adaptations I blogged about (Muppets and Blackadder) I wouldn’t watch this one for jolly entertainment and a good time – popcorn and Coke included -, but rather for educational purposes.
This post is part of
Dickens in December is hosted by Beauty is a sleeping cat and Postcards from Asia.
Here are the relevant links to the mentioned posts in case you want to see what you missed:
Don’t you just love infographics? Check out Piktochart to make yours!
I just love watching Christmas Carol re-tellings, especially the ones with a little twist. So what is better than a reverse one? If you know Black Adder (one of my favourite comedy series EVER) you will know already that this short movie – it is only 45 minutes – will be funny and entertaining.
Mr. Ebenezer Blackadder is a good person, charitable and giving, but after the visit of the Ghost of Christmas (delightful Robbie Coltrane alone is worth watching the film just because of his little ballerina entering dance) he decides to change his ways.
The whole Black Adder cast is present, Baldrick is the ubiquitous servant as always, and the usual suspects make an appearance, Hugh Laurie as the dozy Prince George, Stephen Fry as Lord Melchett, Miranda Richardson, Miriam Margolyes, Nursie, everybody you know and love is there.
Traditional Christmas Carol fans might be a wee bit disappointed in this rendition but for Black Adder fans this is a must see.
This post is part of
Dickens in December is hosted by Beauty is a sleeping cat and Postcards from Asia.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
Only one non-fiction book this week that I discovered in the Netgalley Christmas newsletter. As I am always on the lookout for new crockpot dishes I had to get this one. It is not exclusively vegetarian, but I am sure I can adapt some recipes. I just saw on Goodreads that the author has written tons of other crockpot cookbooks, one of them a veggie one. Maybe something to think about.
What was in YOUR mailbox recently?
In a nutshell:
Short synopsis:
Minty Auchterlonie asks Isabel to help her in a private affair. Isabel should know better, but does she?
Language I read the book in: English
Did I like it? Yes.
For people who: like Edinburgh, Isabel Dalhousie, meddlesome people, slow and comfy plots.
My thoughts:
By now the way Isabel Dalhousie books develop is well known to me. The plot is always interesting, intriguing, but never overly exciting or thrilling. This book was no exception and it was a nice and lovely read.
Brother Fox made a prolonged appearance in this one and Jamie, Charlie and Grace are fixtures again. Isabel’s niece has yet another, unsuitable guy at her side and once more it leads, well, not to disaster, but to another breakup.
And again there were some points that just made me ponder the nice and comfortable life of Isabel Dalhousie. Her son Charlie is 18 months and already she thinks of him as a man of 21, “coming to the end of his university days”. Talk about plans for your children. I just hope than Charlie does not turn out to be a person who does not want or is not able to pursue an academic career. Isabel – as open minded and philosophical she might seem – is a terrible snob. She walks through Edinburgh thinking to herself how she is fond of both the “romantic tourist posters and this unadorned, workaday Scotland”, and about ten lines later she does not “like this street and wished it was not there”, because it was full of cheap Italian restaurants and low-life bars with bouncers. Then she constantly thinks about being a good person, but her thoughts about colleagues are less than charitable. Actually, she is a hypocrite in every way.
On the other hand she can be rather certain that her son will not disappoint her in later life, seeing that he is such an angel at this point already. An angel! He never cries, he goes to sleep and never wakes up, he eats without spilling anything, he has a gourmet taste in food and is just PERFECT in every way. At one point someone says to Isabel “You’ve got a journal to run, as well as a child and a fiancé. You’ve got more than enough in your life.” Oh, has she? All I can see is someone who has not to work for a living, who can go out at any time and leave her son in the hands of her trusted housekeeper, who has all the time in the world to meddle in other people’s business and who has enough money to buy expensive art for pleasure. Oh yes, Isabel has enough on her plate to deal with. I don’t mind her situation at all, but at least she should be honest about it, for God’s sake and not pretend otherwise!
Product info and buy link :
| Title | The lost art of gratitude |
| Author | Alexander McCall Smith |
| Publisher | Anchor Books |
| ISBN | 9780307741974 |
| I got this book from | I bought it |
| Buy link | Buy The lost art of gratitude |
If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.
The holiday card from the Book Bloggers Holiday Cards Exchange arrived today. My swap partner was Jeanie from Sam still reading and she lives on the other side of the globe in Australia. How exciting!
I got a very cute Santa card and a handmade bookmark with an origami woman on it. I love handmade gifts, and a bookmark always comes in handy. Yes, I have seen the error of my ways and started to use bookmarks again, 
. Thank you, Jeanie for a lovely gift and a great card!
Not very much to report this week. My ban is still working, I haven’t bought a book in ages. This one I only got because someone on my swap site offered one of his in return for one of mine. So I chose this one.
I have a couple of books by Jojo Moyes on my TBR list, but so far don’t own any. This one I had never heard of before, but it sounds good. My edition is German (The German title is “Das Haus ohne Wiederkehr” – “The house of no return”) but I decided to post this cover because it is so beautiful.
What was in YOUR mailbox recently?
In a nutshell:
Short synopsis:
Woman is engaged to boring, but reliable guy and looks for a one night stand to “be young” for once. Doesn’t work out the way she had planned.
Language I read the book in: English
Did I like it? Not so much
For people who: liked Fifty Shades of Grey without the kink but with a rival for Grey.
My thoughts:
“Just one night: The Stranger” is the first part of a trilogy and it is very short. At about 130 pages it keeps the plot to a minimum and jumps right into the sex. I am sorry to say that, even with erotica, sex without context doesn’t do it for me, so I found the erotic scenes not so much erotic but rather boring and uninspiring.
Kasie goes to Vegas because her best friend tells her she has to sleep with a stranger before she marries her reliable, secure, but rather boring boyfriend. She does it and, needless to say, the stranger, CEO of his own company, turns up again as a client. She is a business consultant, and at this point -in spite of my complaint that the plot was scarce- I cursed that there was plot at all. The business babble between the consultants or between them and the client was so vague, tedious and empty that it made you wonder why anyone would pay for their advice.
Anyway, the whole client-consultant relationship was just there in order to drive on the sex development which it did splendidly. Kasie and Robert have sex and then some more. In between she beats herself up over it and thinks of herself as a sinner. In order to justify her betrayal of her boyfriend/fiancé she comes up with all sorts of ideas. For example she asks her boyfriend whether he is ever tempted by beautiful female colleagues and when he says that he isn’t she conveniently interprets this answer as a lie (it came too fast to be true) and thus regards her own behaviour as excused.
She is constantly torn between her desire for Robert – which is huge, she dreams about him 24/7 and practically drools just from the thought of him – and her wish to be respectable. How dreadfully boring! One day she tells Robert they can’t meet again, the next day she seduces him, one day later she tells him to stop…after a while she so got on my nerves, I just skipped whole paragraphs. What bothered me most was the fact that she loves the idea that Robert knows the woman who lies underneath her business like exterior instinctively (and he does seem to know her very well), on the other hand she is so clueless about him that probably his bin men know him better than she does. It’s a tragedy.
The end is just another cock teasing episode with a twist when her boyfriend changes the course of events.
At the end of book one there is a short teaser for book two, called "Exposed". At the end of “The stranger” Kasie has to literally leave Robert and go back to her fiancé without another word to Robert. You would imagine that this calls for something other than sex at the beginning of the sequel, but no! It starts with a scene where she has just been violated by her fiancé and now has fantasies about Robert again. Bloody Hell! She has just been threatened by her fiancé, possibly raped, had to leave her lover for good and all she does is come?! I find this hard to believe.
Read this if you must. I will stay away from the sequels.
Product info and buy link :
| Title | Just one night: The stranger |
| Author | Kyra Davis |
| Publisher | Pocket Star |
| ISBN | 9781476711102 |
| I got this book from | Netgalley |
| Buy link | Buy Just one night: The stranger (release date: 22 January 2013) |
If you click on the buy link above you will be taken to The Book Depository.co.uk. If you buy the book through this link I will earn a small commission. You can find my general affiliate links to The Book Depository, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com here.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? I would love to hear other opinions.
When it comes to Dickens in December for me The Muppet Christmas Carol is a must see. This is even more surprising when you know that I am not a big fan of the Muppets –actually I dislike everything animated, puppet-ish, cartoon-ish, you get the idea. Even worse, I don’t particularly like musicals either, and there is a LOT of singing in this Muppets movie.
Scrooge is played by Michael Caine and that is a definite plus. He is the perfect Scrooge and Kermit as his employee Cratchit is just as great. Gonzo, of all people, plays Charles Dickens as storyteller.
The music is pretty awesome, Waldorf and Statler as Marley and Marley do a great performance with the song “Marley and Marley”, which is one of my favourites in the movie.
The movie is fun to watch and enjoyable for adults and children alike. The only thing I don’t like are the characters of the three ghosts of Christmas, somehow they didn’t fit into the rest of the cast. But this is just a small complaint.
All in all this is a great and fun Christmas movie for the whole family.
This post is part of
Dickens in December is hosted by Beauty is a sleeping cat and Postcards from Asia.
I was looking around for strategies to survive the advent and all its busy side effects. And found Martha Stewart’s Helpful Hints: Seasonal Strategies
Some other things:
What interesting things have you found on the web recently?
I got a nice bookish gift in my mailbox this week. Believe it or not, our family joined the group of Kindle users. A friend of mine gave us her spare (first) Kindle as a gift as she received another, more recent, one for Christmas. You might know that I am no Kindle friend, but have to admit that it looks quite good and it has some features that my other reader hasn’t got. Still, I will stick with my trusted old Sony and will only use the Kindle if I have no choice.
As far as books go…
What was in YOUR mailbox recently?