MarthaJeanne - Thoughts on books 2022 - second topic

I'll be finishing another book today, I think.

>1 MarthaJeanne: looking forward to your thoughts.

Der Speisen Würze A collection of quotes about food from various times and places that might upset people. Tries to be scandalous; justs succeeds in being boring.

Did not finish A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I just got to the point where I couldn't follow it any more.

The swift and the harrier This was very good.

April Lady was not a good book to read just after The convenient marriage as they are very similar, and The convenient marriage is better.

Another spice book I can't get into: Aroma Kochbuch. She bases the dishes on her aroma mixtures. They seem designed to overwhelm the main ingredients.

The Word for World is Forest I hadn't read this for a long time, and it didn't feel familiar. I grew up rereading Ishi. One thing I do remember from my first reading is that it fit that Le Guin is the daughter of the Kroebers.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book.

A Certain Appeal is a retake on Pride and Prejudice. Well sort of. I don't think it would be recognized as such without the names. So or so, it's a fun story.

It takes place mostly in New York's burlesque scene. It also gets rather steamy at times.

I love the dedication. (yes, I entered it in CK.)

Snowdrift and other stories

Four Lost Cities This is an interesting book if you are interested in cultures, archaeology, etc.

It's my 15th Thingaversery. I've bought lots of books in the past few weeks.

>10 MarthaJeanne: Congratulations!

Der Konsumkompass
This book is really very well done. In general, the author points out why you might want to reconsider doing X, but if you really do want to do it, these are the considerations to bear in mind when deciding how. She tries to help her readers make ecologically sound decisions without giving them guilt complexes.

Her final point is that while the small amount we can each personally do is small, it does make some difference, but the really big steps need to be taken by governments and large companies.

In the end, I feel good about some parts of my life. Like the blouse I have on that I bought 20 years ago and still love. Other parts less so, like the cheese I have no intention of giving up.

Before I saw you This was really good.

Invisible A fairly standard Steel book about how hard life is for the rich.

It started with a secret This was a good book, but there were an awful lot of people and story lines to keep track of. I gave it 3 1/2*

Ich kann, Du kannst, Erkan I really enjoyed this book about teaching German to immigrants in Berlin.

Gave up on Five Tuesdays in Winter. These aren't stories, they are fragments that need the before and after to really make sense.

Frederica Just love her!

>18 MarthaJeanne: I read her in 2013. Must look for a copy again.

>19 2wonderY: Amazon has it in Kindle for $9.99. They also offer lots of used paperbacks.

Patchwork Classixx I'm not convinced by most of the projects, but the methods are interesting.

The last girl This is not pleasant reading, but it is well enough written that I kept feeling drawn to read more. The Yazidis are a minority religion in parts of Iraq, and ISIS has tried to eliminate them. Nadia was trafficked as a sex slave before she managed to escape.

Lazy ways to make a living Has the major problem that the main character is overly obsessed with etymology and chess. The wedding in Las Vegas may be possible, but not reasonable. This is certainly readable, but not satisfying.

I'm rather disappointed in On Tyranny - Graphic Edition. I don't think Nora Krug did nearly as good a job here as in Heimat

Mr Wilder and me is probably better if you watch a lot of films.

The unknown Ajax The Ajax quotes seem to be from Troilus and Cressida, which I don't think I've ever read. We have a complete Shakespeare, but my eyes can't read it anymore. The library has a DVD.

Weave leno It says for all levels, and now and again mentions that it can be done on rigid heddle looms. Yes, I have done it! Yes, it has been done for thousands of years before there were harness looms! But the instructions are only for harness looms.

>28 IsabelDunrossil: Please flag this message and the spammer. Already gone!

Always the last to know Underwhelming.

The art of procrastination This was an enjoyable reread.

One of the disadvantages of our bout of Covid is that I have an overdue book that I cannot return.

I also had a hold on My Beautiful Laundrette which runs out today.

Oh, well.

>31 MarthaJeanne: Are you a vertical or a horizontal organizer?

Horizontal, for sure.

Round the Bend I see I gave this 4 1/2 stars last time. I think I'll up that.

>35 MarthaJeanne: Hmmm. You remind me I should read more of Nevil Shute. I’m going to have to order some books.

The next Shute I plan to reread is In the Wet. Other favourites include Trustee from the Toolroom, The chequer board, Ruined City, An Old Captivity

Intimations This was at least short.

Fisch echt einfach There are lots of good recipes and tips for German/Austrian freshwater fish. If only getting the fish weren't so difficult. Several years ago there was a good fish market at the other end of Vienna, and we drove down once or twice a month, but they went broke.

Flowers for Algernon I saw a stage production of this, must have been in 1967. It is well worth going back to now and again.

>40 MarthaJeanne: a lovely book! Okay, I will revisit it soon.

Card Weaving Now to work the strap for the bag I have planned.

I've tried going back to the books I was reading when Covid hit. Nope. Still need lighter matter.

Memorial ***

A Wedding in the Country I really like Katie Fforde.

Als Oma noch mit Kohlen heizte

What happened to the Corbetts This is an easier one to read I think, and I have always liked it. It's a propaganda novel published before Britain started being bombed in WWII.

Wish you were here Very weird. Not like her other books. I gave it 3 1/2.

I have several of Nigel Slater's books, but have decided not to even finish reading A Cook's Book.

Jeeves and the king of clubs Schott is not anything like Wodehouse. **

Das vergessene Königreich I'm glad to finally be able to finish this. I suspect that I would have gotten more out of it in English, and even more if my reading had not been interrupted by COVID. However, even so, it was very interesting.

The Ultimate Book of Decorative Knots This is probably a good second or third book on knotting. The photography is poor. The best asset of the book is the author's obvious enthusiasm.

Oh, William This is a short book, and I have read 2/3 of it. Which is more than enough to know that I can't bear to read the rest.

One night on the island OK, the title is misleading, and it rapidly falls apart at the end, but otherwise a good read. It helps if you know who Han Solo is.

I've read half of Ein Koch packt aus. Enough. The major difference between Anthony Warner and most of the people he complains about is that Warner has done his research, and most of what he says is scientifically based. This difference is, as I said, major. However he covers it over with layers of the same type of verbiage that the others use, and you sometimes have to read carefully to figure out whether he wants to praise or condemn one of the ideas he describes. I might give him 3 stars, but I don't need to continue to read his polemic.

I watched Jesus Christ Superstar - Live Arena Tour this evening.

Diddly Squat

Gave up on The Last Grand Duchess.

Waiting for Columbus I think there is a good chance that I would have finished this if I hadn't caught COVID. But whereas back then the weirdness was rather intriguing, right now it just feels weird, and I don't feel up to another 200 pages of it.

Zeitreisen I guess I'm boring, unadventurous, and cowardly. In 1840 a British lesbian couple travelled through Russia and down to the Caucasians. A few years ago a German lesbian couple decided to follow as much as possible in their footsteps. Both couples had lots of adventures that are quite interesting to read about, but I haven't the smallest inclination to copy them. Not even if I had the health and wealth to do it. The whole thing sounds awfully uncomfortable to me. Yes, I'm missing the chance to see some impressive landscapes and fascinating churches, but I can eat regular meals, take regular warm showers, don't have to cross rivers on log bridges... don't need armed cossacks as bodyguards either. Makes 'boring, unadventurous, and cowardly' sound really good.

On the other hand, it makes for good reading. But what a weird ending!

Well, I went through Mumbai : 50 Kultrezepte and I had two reactions. First, I am not going to even try to read text in white on a medium-hue patterned background. Second, if you want to read a Bombay cookbook, read Dishoom. It's even been published in German, so no excuses. Recommendation made, but not reciprical.

>57 MarthaJeanne: when people mention camping I tell them that a cabin with beds and a flush toilet is my bare minimum...no more tents!

I slept fine on the ground when I was young, but don't want to try it at 61.

>59 fuzzi: We once went to a camp concert one of my nieces played at. Both we and her parents stayed at a campground nearby. My sister had to peel her way out of their pup tent and sleeping bags when I came by the next morning with fresh muffins from our (rented) RV. I add a workable kitchen to your minimum. We did the RV bit a few times when visiting relatives across New England. It was also very nice the evening traffic slowed to a crawl because of torrential rain. We took the convenient service area exit, and we didn't even have to go to one of the fast food places. We just called Mom: "Won't make it tonight because of the weather." I had enough food for supper and breakfast.

>60 MarthaJeanne: I've thought about either getting a small trailer or renting an RV on our trips.

My dad has lived in an RV (modest) since his retirement due to financial restraints.

The big disadvantage is having to break camp for any small errand. However, when taking a family of 5 on a tour of relatives, it was much better than bedding down on the living room floors.

An Available Man was a good read. I can't help preferring my FIL's solution. He told each girlfriend that if she felt strongly that he should only have one, then he'd take the other one.

That brings me down to two unread library books.

>63 MarthaJeanne: I always check on the books you post. This has me scratching my head. So, the children of his deceased wife have moved on from her death only two years ago enough to insist that this guy begin dating again? They sound like shallow jerks. If it’s the love of your life, two years doesn’t even come close to recovery time. And I could be off the wall, but I’ve got personal experience. It took 5 years and another family emergency to pull me out of the fog I didn’t know I was living in.

>64 2wonderY: two of my childhood friends married but chose to not have children. I have two children and two grandchildren. There is no need or duty for me to tell them what they may have missed, it's none of my business. One of my friends opened up once about how many people are judgmental because she never had children. Too many people have forgotten what MYOB means.

>64 2wonderY: Someone I knew in Geneva lost her husband just as they were about to retire 'home'. She did not move house, and did almost nothing for two years. They had been very active in the church, and after two years she was ready to do more than just sit in a pew on Sunday. It was my privilege to train her to serve at the eucharist, first at small services, then at the main service, and we were all very pleased that she slowly felt able to do this. But she certainly wasn't dating.

That's about what I have seen. It seems to take two years to start to be human again.

The man in the book should, in my opinion, have burnt all the replies to the personal ad without opening them. He also should have said a very firm "No!" and stuck with it when the woman who didn't show up at their wedding tried to come back into his life. Things worked out for him in the end, but that's not his fault.

Revelation for everyone The commentary was much better than the one I read in January https://www.librarything.com/topic/338163#7702304

but since Wright includes a translation, I got lazy and did not read any of the Greek this time. I did enjoy the praise poems in Greek!

Ruined City Another good Shute.

Uncut Cloth was disappointing after seeing Textiles of India.

Not really books, but take a look at this new (and growing) encyclopedia of Indian Art.

https://mapacademy.io/

They have a short course on Indian textiles that I might just have to sign up for.

Well, back on January 1 I said I was going to memorize Psalm 1 in Hebrew. https://www.librarything.com/topic/338163#7702304

Well, maybe not. I have certainly worked at it. Probably listened to it over 100 times. Maybe even twice that. It now feels really familiar - until I try to say it off myself. On the other hand, listening to it over and over has opened up layers in it that I would never have guessed at back then. Some of them were made clear by Alter, Book of Psalms, but others went deeper than his remarks. (This is not to claim that I understand it better than he does, just that I saw some of it for myself once he pointed out the way.)

I do not feel that I have wasted my time. The very sound of it somehow calms me, and even if I cannot recite it, it has somehow become mine.

I'm currently reading Lectio Divina, which of course, is not something that one can really just read about and put aside. My experience with the Psalm shows me that I could probably profit by deeply reading other passages.

Recitatif By the time this was written I was living in Europe. I think you probably have to be immersed in America's racial history to appreciate this. BTW I did not feel obligated to read the introduction which is longer than the story itself.

The Vortex (Carney) is a very well written book that brings together climate issues, war crime issues, and ping pong diplomacy, around the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

A Soldier's Return Fairly standard chicklit with doctors and dogs.

I'm working through Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod.This is the second Omnibus, and I have finished volume 4. These are collected newspaper columns on German grammar and other language problems. That is enough for now. It gets to be too much after a while, plus I have picked up a couple of German nonfiction books I'm excited about.

One thing - for someone who is so picky about getting German right, he doesn't do well when he refers to English. For example, he says Halloween is a short form of "All Hallow Evening". All Hallow Evening, of course, is on November 1. October 31 is All Hallow Eve.

I'm going to leave Herr Sick for a while, and work on Wie schlimm sind Bananen as that needs to go back to the library quickly.

The Second Child This was interesting. What if, after 15 years of caring for a very disabled child, you discover that she wasn't really yours?

>71 MarthaJeanne: I have finished the Lectio Divina book. I'm not sure where I'm going with this.

I might try to do a deep reading of John. I find that I have several commentaries including NT Wright and Raymond Edward Brown so I can alternate academic bible study with personal prayer.

>77 MarthaJeanne: I should do something similar; but I’m so undisciplined.

My idea is to do it very slowly. I'll start with a chapter a week, and see if that works.

Redemption Bay More Chicklit.

Blackwork (Lucano) This is a real treasure. Lots of great patterns including many crosses.

Wie schlimm sind Bananen It's interesting to read through this stuff, but how useful the numbers are is another matter. He is also not very consistent.

My doubts about this were confirmed when I got to the section on a pair of jeans. His guess that a pair of cotton jeans would fall apart and be useless after being worn for 200 days is ridiculous. That he thinks acrylic and polyester trousers would last much longer is even more so. His case that the synthetics are 'better' also neglects to include the microplastics that enter the water after every wash - OK, his thing is CO2. I know that, but there is more to sustainability than that.

In one place he lists the CO2 values for bicycle riding based on 'fuel'. in another he lists playing football in the backyard as not causing any CO2, apparently even if you fuelled it with a cheeseburger.

I read the German translation. In a few places the translator has added information for German-speaking readers. It would have been even more useful if charts about different countries had included information about Austria and Switzerland as well as Germany.

Hmmm. I seem to have several flagged reviews.

Beyond the Black Stump Another exceptional Nevil Shute.

The Fell is a book about the pandemic. I thought it was very well done. 4 1/2*

I wonder how many of those who thought it was heavy handed have actually lived through quarantine. Kate's reaction to that felt very realistic to me.

The Mistress is not one of Danielle Steel's better books. At present it is most notable for depicting life on one of those Russian megayachts.

L'Chaim! : mit Danielle Spera durch das jüdische Jahr

This is not very detailed. Most interesting for her personal statements of what her faith means to her. Spera is in the process of handing the Jewish Museum Vienna over to a new director. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here.

So Disdained Very early Shute. Good writing, but the plot isn't so great.

111 Ideen für einen besonderen Garten I mentioned this before at https://www.librarything.com/topic/338593#7825148. I actually worked my way through the whole book, and gave it 1/2*. Believe me, you do not need this book. The book is in German, but my review is in English.

I started reading My Body. I guess this might be interesting if you knew something about Emily Ratajkowski but so far all I see is that she is convinced that she is very beautiful, and that that is the most important thing about her. BORING! Not going to read any more.

Fortune's daughter 3 1/2

I got about 2/3 of the way through The Great Passion, but it keeps getting more and more boring.

Winter wedding Follow on >90 MarthaJeanne:. This series is just a bit too much all around.

>92 MarthaJeanne: Runaway widow This series just gets wilder and wilder. I'm moving down to 3*

Finished Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod folge 5. Time to take another break from German grammar. (See >75 MarthaJeanne:)

In love : a memoir of love and loss

4 1/2 *

Tell me Everything could not hold my attention.

Blood & roses will be one of my next books, so I was interested to see this https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-44495902. The article is from 2018.

Lonely Road Shute's plots got better in his later books, but even in his early books he could really write well.

Seeking fortune elsewhere Stories about Indians, mostly in the USA. It's hard to say why I only gave this 3 1/2*. The stories are well-written, the characters real and likeable, the details clear. The stories even have endings. But somehow they don't seem to go anywhere. The one exception is 'No. 16 Model House Road' that has a feminist edge. If you decide to read the book, but then are tempted to give up on it, skip forward to this story.

Four books managed to find their way into my bag while I was downtown today. How did that happen?

>100 MarthaJeanne: 😲

And one of them is a new cookbook by someone who died in 2016.

BTW, they are all nonfiction in German, not available in English.

I'm currently reading Mothers, Fathers and Others The chapter 'Translation Stories' is an exceptional essay on translation.

>102 MarthaJeanne: I'm very happy that Strudelei landed in my bag yesterday. Wir having Blunzenstrudel tonight, because there is one of these Austrian blood sausages in the refrigerator. For my next turn cooking it might be ham and cheese with vegetables, or maybe fish and spinach. Obviously, there are also recipes for sweet strudels. The final chapters are for the many possible kinds of dough you can use and for the various sauces that are traditional with different strudels.

I'm counting The Ultimate Granny Square sourcebook as finished today. Actually, I borrowed the German edition from the library, and went through it deciding to get a copy of my own. This is a great collection of squares, everything from simple to elaborate, lacey or solid. There are a few with cute animal heads that I just love. Lots of flowers.

My copy arrived today, and I looked through the bits before the actual patterns. The directions use US terms, but all designs also include diagrams, although they aren't the clearest I've seen. There are good suggestions for combining different squares, and for finishing. If you crochet, you probably want this book.

>104 MarthaJeanne: The strudel was good - would have been better if the sausage hadn't been so bland. Luckily, I had a much smaller piece than the recipe called for, so I cut up some chorizo into it. The strudel was still blander than we would have liked, but it certainly helped.

>73 MarthaJeanne: My mother just called to thank me for recommending the book. She also said that there is a list of other people from her senior citizen residence waiting for it when she is done. I guess I started something. My family lived in India for 4 years during the 1960s, so we knew some of the issues, but fitting it together with wider concerns was very interesting.

Joan is okay The book is okay, but not better than that. It includes the beginning of the pandemic, but doesn't give any insight into it.

My copy doesn't seem to be properly combined - stuck half way.

Heidelbeere only 3 1/2 stars, but I might buy it anyway.

Geschichte einer Liebe

It took me a long time to get through this, but it is an interesting story of the problems of women (upper class) in 19th century Europe. Especially if they happened to prefer other women.

In the margins : on the pleasures of reading and writing **

Jane's patisserie Jane is very British, and very young. I only gave the cookbook 3 stars, because it really is not suited to me. But she is very encouraging to new bakers, so I'm not surprised that her blog is very popular. I read this from OverDrive, and have no need to own it.

The Hideaway This was a good read.

The chequer board Another Shute classic.

Small Pleasures This was no more than OK.

Finding Ashley Fairly typical Steel. I thought I knew what Hattie would go on to do, but I got it wrong.

>116 MarthaJeanne: BTW, This was one of several books lately in which the man makes the ultimate romantic gesture of picking the woman up and carrying her upstairs to the bedroom. I asked my husband why I had never experienced this, and he said because he would have fallen and dropped me two or three steps up, and we would have both hurt.

Funny thing is, that's more or less what I thought each time I read about it. It knocks me out of the suspended disbelief every time.

Der Herrgott hat gelacht Just imagine a Franciscan priest from India, living in Vienna, wearing a baseball cap and singing hip hop and rap on U tube. Seems unlikely, but he exists, and this is his new autobiography. Fun. and spiritual.

>118 MarthaJeanne: That sounds like lots of fun!

Antony and Cleopatra was very well written. 4*. I might have given it 4 1/2 if I had read it without brain fog. It says a lot that I got through all the Roman politics and battles anyway.

Tomate not so much. But it's very hard to write a tomato cookbook in this small format.

I cried to dream again Also very well written. Sexually abused from before she was a teenager, trafficked, and used to rob and kill her trafficker by her 'boyfriend' at 17, the author spent many years in prison before being paroled. She now works to help others caught in these crimes.

Someone else's love story 3 1/2* The end just didn't do it for me.

By reading multiple books, sometimes they intersect in surprising ways. Die Geburt der Mode (Dressing Up : Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe) and The Lies that Bind : rethinking identity are doing that for me right now. They are both very interesting. The first is long, which for me is made more acceptable because it is textile oriented. It is historical, mostly based on the German renaissance. The second is short. It is about today, and the history it considers is mostly 19th-20th century. But note that word 'identity' in both subtitles. How we define our own identity and how we communicate that identity to others is at the heart of both books, even though they are very different.

Quite honestly, unless either textiles or renaissance history really interest you, you can probably give 'Dressing Up' a miss. If you define yourself even partly by any of Appiah's categories (Creed, Country, Color, Class, Culture. He leaves out Gender.) you would probably find his book thought provoking.

Trustee from the Toolroom One of Shute's best.

Beautiful, Steel It would be refreshing if for once Steel's main character didn't have 'a modest trust fund', or a few million Euros in investments.

I just watched the DVD of a performance of Der Tag, an dem der Papst gekidnappt wurde. (The Day They Kidnapped the Pope) I had seen a different production several decades ago with Paul Hörbiger. That must have been in the 1970s. This one was with Fritz Muliar, another very popular Austrian actor. Both did good jobs of playing the pope. The play was written by João Bethencourt I can only recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

The pope is on a visit to New York, sneaks out of his hotel all alone by a side door and takes a taxi. The (Jewish) driver recognizes his chance and takes the pope home, sending the message that he will only set the pope free if the people in the whole world stop killing each other for a day.

>123 MarthaJeanne: I finished The lies that bind and remain very impressed. 4 1/2*.

Back in the days when I belonged to Toastmasters I gave a talk about myself. I started with an outline of myself, traced around on a long piece of paper. And as I talked about different labels used to describe myself, I stuck those labels onto the picture, until 'I' was totally covered up. This reminded me of what I was trying to express back then.

I have a copy of The Jacobite Trilogy. I have now read a little over half of the first book.

I have to admit that I can't really see any reason to read any further. A large proportion of it is groups of men knocking themselves out for the purpose of knocking other groups of men out. Neither of the two main characters is very interesting, nor am I swooning over Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The reviewers seem to have enjoyed these books, but I don't.

Devotion I kept on with this one until the narrator dies and starts wandering around as a ghost. No! Just No!

I finally got around to reading Intercession : a theological and practical guide. I am relieved to note that I bought it well after the times when I was often leading intercessions at church. I probably bought it as a response to hearing that Ormonde had died. It's one weakness for me is that it is based on the US and Canadian books, and not the Church of England liturgies, but that probably doesn't make a lot of difference. 4 1/2*

>123 MarthaJeanne: I have now finished Die Geburt der Mode and remain very impressed. You do need to be interested in the history of fashion/textiles. At the end the author points out how other historians got it wrong and why she thinks fashion is an important part of history. 4 1/2*

We're going to a talk on sea eagles this evening which includes a presentation of Wild flowers of the Lobau. Ours is still the only copy on LT. We are quite pleased to have this reference, except we didn't know where it was. Now found and in my bag to be signed.

I'm trying to be very quiet today so I'm still up for an evening engagment.

It's the wrong time of year for Sleigh bells ring, but a good story.

>133 MarthaJeanne: The book presentation was very good. I was very glad when the sea eagle talk was also over, and we could go.

>135 MarthaJeanne: I’ll bet you wanted to go dancing or some such frippery.

Trailed This is about murders of women in the US National Parks and some of the reasons why the murderers aren't found. Well written and spooky.

The secrets between us This isn't a bad book, but very complex, and I had trouble keeping track of all the various characters. 3 1/2*

The last days of the dinosaurs

I wrote a rather nasty review. On the other hand, the constant lectures on evolution really got on my nerves. One or two, fine, but again and again, they were too much. 3* because it had the potential to become a good book.

The Last Suspicious Holdout
This is one of those books you feel you ought to finish. Problem is, I just couldn't connect with the stories. I'm really glad for people who need books like this that they can connect with. I read five of the stories without understanding what was going on. Enough.

Der Wurm drin: Ein ehrliches Buch übers Gärtnern "The worm inside : an honest book about gardening." In other words, some of the stories don't have happy ends. They don't magically get the slugs to disappear. The hortensias take several years to turn blue and some of them don't. On the other hand, they both get a lot of pleasure out of it. 4*

>140 MarthaJeanne: Now that sounds like a lovely book.

>141 2wonderY: Yes, it is - if you read German.

No Highway A lot of technical stuff about airplanes mixed with lots of human interest. Shute often writes about airplanes, and it's good knowing that he really knows about them.

BTW, Feminists should probably give this one a miss. In 1948 it seemed to make sense that a brilliant scientist needed a woman to keep his house clean and bring up his daughter properly.

Finally finished the third part of Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod 4-6.

Life without children Some of these stories are very confusing. The others don't do it for me. Giving up.

Ein offenes Buch A young German comedian talks about being a woman. Sex, periods, body parts, bras, shaving ... She keeps it light, but she obviously takes most of this fairly seriously. I enjoyed it. This isn't ha ha humour. 4*

Translating myself and others I have listed this as if I really finished it, but I barely skimmed large bits. When you know neither the language that is being talked about nor the books involved, any theoretical points are rather buried under the mass of things you can't follow.

The soulmate equation 'scientific' chicklit. I don't think it's worth more than 3 1/2*.

I also had to deal with CK problems on the author. I'm not sure it will last as it had had n/a before, but someone had changed it to female.

The last gift 4 1/2* Somehow I found this very beautiful. I think maybe the people seemed very real to me.

Die Medizin und ihre Feinde Somehow I do not find it comforting that the antivax people are using some of the same arguments today as they did in the 18th century. 4 1/2*

The Boardwalk Bookshop 4* A bit heavier than most chicklit.

The Old Testament in the New : an introduction This was interesting, but not as interesting as I had hoped.

Mothercoin is a good book, but doesn't really speak to me.

>147 MarthaJeanne: As I thought. Fixed again.

>133 MarthaJeanne: I'm happy to report that Margaret's book is doing its job. Someone on Facebook wanted to know what sort of flower the bee was on in a picture. Jerry came down and studied the book for a while and came up with the name in German, English and Latin.

Small things like these Sorry, this one didn't do anything for me. 3*

The year I met you I can't finish this.

God and the Pandemic I must admit that was a bit sceptical in the beginning about reading a book on the pandemic that had been published in 2020. I should have had faith in NT Wright, and in 2wonderY who pointed this book out to me.

Spooky is the line on the next to last page, "If that fails there is always Mars, the god of war. May the Lord save us from his clutches."

5*

Tag und Woche, Monat und Jahr : eine Kulturgeschichte des Kalenders would not have been a very good book in 1993. As a reprint now it is ridiculous.

Pin loom weaving : 40 projects for tiny hand looms Four stars is probably generous, but it is good to see ideas for using the squares, even though I have no intention of getting other sizes.