Hall of Records

I got received this yesterday and only wanted to read a page or two before going to sleep. I ended up snort-giggling with tears streaming down my face. It was the eyebrow-incident! It reminded me of my own attempts to bring my outgrown fringe back into the fluffy shape that was en vogue back in the late 1980s (I was 12 or 13 at that time). Of course, I lacked the proper equipment my mom’s friend, a professional hairdresser, used to cut it the way I liked so much. Equipped with a pair of mundane household scissors I set to work carefully but enthusiastically. I thought I knew how to do this in theory. It just wouldn’t fluff the right way, though. Obviously, I had to cut off some more. Then it was uneven and still not particularly fluffy. I had to rectify this by trimming some more – until I had it down to only a few centimetres and had to admit defeat. I think my mom almost cried when she saw me that night. I’m not going to repeat what she likened me to here. Suffice it to say that she refused to be seen with me for the next couple of weeks.

When I told my partner this morning he reminded me of his own attempts to cut his hair in an undercut fashion, what we used to call a façon style back then. He decided to use his father’s razor (for wet shaving) and removed a big chunk of hair from the back of his head.

And ah, to be a whiny 14-year old again! Uh, no. I’m glad that I’ve left this period in my life far, FAR behind.

This is exactly what I needed at this juncture. It's been a horrible two weeks - reading-wise. I've finally rediscovered the joy of immersing myself in a book that makes me smile.

I saw this in Karen's review (over at GoodReads - yes, I still lurk there) and giggled so hard. That's why I wanted to share it with you guys!

(source: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/738730536 and http://www.dogshaming.com/)

I had high hopes for entertainment when I got this book, even though the colleague who lent it to me warned me that it might be a bit shallow. I like good-natured fun between European nationalities and there was, at times, just the right amount of facetiousness and snarky remarks to make me giggle, but the passages that had me roll my eyes in annoyance outweighed that by far. Our protagonist, Paul West, is such a bit too much enamoured with himself for my tastes. Yes, he does make fun of himself from time to time, but mostly in relation to his propensity to step into dog excrement, which the streets of Paris are apparently covered in, and his difficulties in ordering beverages like the locals.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

I admit to being weary of books featuring vampires and targeted at a young adult market. Very weary. Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in Coldtown sounded interesting and while I was keeping a watchful eye out for the usual pitfalls that made me cringe with contact-embarrassment and snort with derision in my previous forays in the genre, I thoroughly enjoyed my time reading the book. This was the very first arc I’ve received and I was worried that reading an uncorrected proof might diminish my reading pleasure, since I usually get pretty annoyed by the tiniest copy editing glitches, but I found myself easily ignoring the unfinished layout as I was sucked in by Black’s masterful storytelling.

My lunch break is over but I can't turn away from the site to focus on work. It's just so very pleasant chatting with folks around here. I really need to take care of some "customer" service before heading out for the weekend. I wouldn't want people to draw comparisons between "my" little scientific journal and GoodReads. I'd be mortified if any of the people addressing questions and concerns to me would feel that neglected.

So, see you all again in the weekend, let's see in four hours, give or take.

Love you all so much!

XO, Jana

Sometimes it's nice to scatter blockquotes around your post, just to keep things interesting.... But how? Have no fear, there is a simple solution!

First things first.  When making a post on your Booklikes dashboard you'll maybe have noticed that it doesn't really cope well with coding added to the main body of your text.  Doesn't like it.  But there is a simple work-around, and here's how.

[[*snip* continues after the cut]]

Of all the things that could be considered stressful about joining a new community, I really only find one thing stressy - The following/followers thing.

I'm loving finding new friends and feeds to follow.  I love waking up to a slew of new posts to read, ranging from reviews to new releases to site news and even to the rants.  Really enjoying my time here so far and reading all the posts.

But every time I follow someone or someone follows me, I stress.  I'm not sure of the etiquette.  I'm getting worn out by trying to second guess myself.  

If I follow you it's because I really want to hear what you have to say.  We might share the same likes in books, you might have interesting discussions or I might just want to follow you because you post such great gifs.  My reasons are numerous.  But then I worry that you'll think I'm only following you because I want a follow back....

The flip side of the coin is you might follow me to remind yourself of where you found a tutorial (and that's fantastic and gives me joy!) but we maybe don't actually share book tastes.  I wonder if I'm supposed to follow back anyway...  I'm a worrier. 

Life is too short though so I thought I'd just get this 'out there' so that I can rest easy and we can be on the same page (see what I did thar? :D ) .

Please don't feel like you have to follow me back if you'd rather not.  I understand.  I'd be thrilled if you did, but don't feel obliged to, just because I followed you.

Conversely, if you follow me and I don't follow you back, please don't be offended.  It may just be that I don't share your interests but I appreciate the connection you've made and will try to post regularly for you.

Maybe I'm the only one who feels like this, I have no clue, I just wanted to get it off my chest so I can get back to enjoying my new home on the interweb and sleep easy :)

They are talking about Marcel Proust on France Culture (http://www.franceculture.fr/) - and they are having a lot of fun, apparently. I only understand every fourth to fifth word, though. frère - marveilleux - Petit Robert - perdu - Michel Schneider... Not sure I get the gist. No wait, I really don't.

I've been vowing to refresh my former knowledge of the language for years - it will never happen, though. :)

Enchanted Glass

When Andrew’s grandfather, the magician Jocelyn, dies he leaves Andrew his house and field-of-care along with his housekeeper Mrs. Stock and his groundskeeper Mr. Stock (not related). Along comes Aidan, a teenager from London on the run from Stalkers after his grandmother’s death, seeking refuge with the wizard his grandmother had been communicating for decades, only to find Andrew in place of the magician he was looking for. Andrew takes Aidan in only to discover that his inheritance entails a lot more than a house and surrounding lands and that he has to rediscover a lot of magical knowledge he has forgotten about since his childhood days at his grandfather’s place. The world is subtly different within the field-of-care, safer and more turbulent as well. There are magical counterparts to the people in his life, some friendly, some out to get Aidan to deliver him to their king. Andrew and Aidan need to find ways to reinforce the magical wards around Andrew’s field-of-care and to make sure that the mysterious, reclusive Mr. Brown will not take over the land in Andrew’s care.

The characters populating this novel are fleshed out lovingly, each with their individual traits and peculiarities. Even though they don’t seem to see eye to eye most of the time, are headstrong, grumpy, and stubbornly pursuing their own ends, they band together whenever there’s danger from outside to defend and protect Aidan and the field-of-care.

The shifting perspectives took some getting used to, but this was an overall heart-warming tale about the combined efforts to save a rather idyllic little place and grow into a family at the same time.

There goes the neighbourhood!

Well, I assume that everone who's added me to their lists has already seen this and feels the same. I like to have this on my blog though, because Petra is so much more coherent than I could ever be. :o)

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A question was asked in the Everything Booklikes group on Goodreads. 

"So Amazon bought Goodreads , site policy changed ? why is this in benefit of authors not readers ? how can this affect my reviews ? as a top Liberian how can this can affect me? "

Red Country

There isn’t really much to say except: if you liked the First Law trilogy, you NEED to read Red Country. I really could stop at saying just this: THE BLOODY NINE!

Just like this. Completely devoid of context. That should be intriguing enough for anyone familiar with the name to pick this up. I guess that everyone has already, though. I was late to pick up Red Country. For reasons. Then again, it wouldn’t be fair to neglect mentioning some of the fantastic stuff Abercrombie has woven into his latest tale.

I was a bit reluctant to read this. Well, not really, because I could not really conceive of Abercrombie failing to entertain. But I wasn’t thrilled at seeing Red Country marketed as a Western. Back when I was a child and watched everything that on on the four channels we received, I loved me some good (translation: awfully cheesy) “cowboys and Indians” stories, always rooting for the oppressed (in my view always the Indians), always close to tears when on of the horses were hurt. Bit those times are long past and I’ve lost my taste for dry, dusty Westerns.

The Naughtiest Girl in School

I bought a couple of Blyton’s books a couple of years ago because I thought that I might have missed out not having had the chance to read them when I was a child. I never got around to reading them until one Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

The books all seem a bit formulaic and I had to constantly remind myself that they were written at a totally different time in a rather different society. Nevertheless I couldn’t shake the conflicting feelings about the book’s premise that girls must behave in an obedient, proper and polite way at all times. My inner feminist was screeching indignantly.

The Collector

The tone of this novel is certainly different: that is, the first person’s narrative deviates from the usual first person female heroine perspective presented in most of the novels targeted at young adult audiences. And as welcome as such a change is in the light of how much so many of these heroines annoy me, I cannot say that I cared much for Dante Walker’s narrative either. He was intended to polarise, for sure, and readers were probably expected to grow to like him more as the story progressed and his character “developed”. I actually didn’t feel the dynamic between Charlie, the “assignment”, and Dante. I liked his interactions with Charlie’s friends, Blue and Annabelle, best. I also understand that Dante had to come to terms with his changing perceptions, convictions, and feelings himself. It left me strangely cold is all. Well, not that strangely, really, because it was all a bit too repetitive for my tastes.

Evernight - Claudia Gray 

Watch out, rambling ahead!

Well, I finally try and get this review over with. This book has been lingering on my mind for a few months now, not because of its engaging plot or lovable characters – I did encounter neither – but because it had severely annoyed me and made me question myself and my right and qualification to judge any book at all. In the beginning I wanted to give it a rating of two stars instead of the miserly one, since I thought that it might be my fault that the book so utterly failed to entertain me. It almost robbed me of any drive to review a book again and it can call itself luckily that nothing particularly bad has happened to me in the last few months because I would surely have found a way to blame it on Evernight if it had.