Top Ten Tuesday!

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme to share your top ten bookish things. It is especially funny for people who like to make lists.

This Tuesday's topic is: Top Ten Books I Just HAD To Buy...But Are Still Sitting On My Bookshelf.

I'm a book gatherer, and sometimes I'm just overwhelmed by the amount of books I meant to read.

1. The Likeness by Tana French - the second of French's novels which I bought together with the first one. In the Woods was amazing and ever since I say to myself I have to read The Likeness soon.

2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - I got it as an unexpected Christmas present because my man read my post about Top Ten Books I want for Christmas. I didn't get to it yet.

3. Room by Emma Donoghou - it's a very recent purchase, still I feel guilty and read older books first, so this book has to be patient.

4. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I have this book for over one year now, but as I wanted to read Oryx and Crake first (review here) this book is still sitting on the shelf. But it's good to know that it is there and I could read it if I wanted.

5. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - I once borroughed it from the library and was not able to read it before I had to return it. Then I bought it and never picked it up again.

6. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunnant - I mooched it from Bookmooch because somebody recommended it, now I wait for the right mood to read it.

7. Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho - I bought it three years ago when I still lived with my parents. It sat on my book shelf there, until recently, I took it home with me meaning to finally read it. I was not a big fan of The Alchimist but I very much liked Coelho's Veronika decides to die.

8. The Help by Katherine Stockett - I bought it and borroughed it to my mother. Hopefully she is done with it soon.

9. The Gathering by Anne Enright - I mooched it a long time ago when I decided to read some booker prize winners. I read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which I got around the same time (review here) but not this poor, neglected book.

10. A short History of Tractors in the Ukrain by Marina Lewycka - I read some great reviews about this book and it seems to be very popular in Germany, I bought it and one other by the same author and put it on my shelf, where it looks nice but is waiting imaptiently to be read. Will this ever be different?

What a fun topic for a Top Ten Tuesday.

It's Monday!

It’s Monday! What are you reading? is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Book Journey to share with others what you've read the past week and planning to read next.

Last week I read two books. I have swallowed Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore which I will review this week. It is Christian Fiction, a genre which I usually don't read. I recognized that this is for a reason. Being an atheist I don't go to church Sunday's and everything that comes with it although I do understand that this builds the fundament of community life in South American small towns like Ringgold, GA. I did get what it means to grow up in a small town like this though, dying to escape this life like heroine Catherine Grace does.
I also read Tell No One by Harlan Coben, which is a thriller, full of suspense and aimiable characters. I did like to spook myself at night a lot. I also learned that the French made it into a movie, which I plan on watching. Maybe I will review both sometime, book and film, this week.

I started to read a book by a Russian author of which I found no translation into English. In German the tilte is: Ergebenst, Euer Shurik. Which is translated something like: Sincerely yours, Schurik. It is about a young Russian who is not able to emancipate from his grandmother and mother, but who is sensitive about the needs of every woman young or old. He aslo does not shy away to satisfy those needs, be they ugly or beautiful.

Next I will read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

Have you read any of these?

Review: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

This was my first book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, I fell in love with her writing in an instant. I took my time with this book to take in everything Atwood has to say about what is going wrong on planet Earth and to what it could possibly lead. This especially means overpoulation, resource constraints, war and terror, all things caused by humans, weakening them. Atwood describes an apocalyptic future where all this has let to the extinction of all humans but Snowman and the children of Oryx and Crake.

Snowman is a solitary human living close to the genetically modified Crakers. He is like a prophet for them, telling them stories about Crake, who made them and Oryx, who teached and loved them. We get to know Snowman's story, his childhood and how he became friends with Crake and how he fell in love with Oryx. He is the only one left who knows what happened. His story is told between descriptions of his present day activities, where he has to get hands on some food or has to hide from genetically mixed animals like pigoons or wolvogs.

I think the genetic engineering going on in the book, which at last becomes a man-playing-god tale, to be upsettingly realistic. Reading multiple reviews, I know this book is not liked by everyone. But if you like a thought-provoking, literary dystopia novel this book is highly recommended. Five stars!

It's Monday!

It’s Monday! What are you reading? is a weekly event hosted by Sheila at Book Journey to share with others what you've read the past week and planning to read next.

Last week I have finished one book: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood which I have reviewed here. I loved spending time with this book. Snowman is a great character with all the flaws of a human, guiding us through his dystopian world.

Lately I feel like I have too many books, it's really become hard to choose what to read next. So this week I let my friend decide. I grabbed three books from the tbr shelf and he picked one at random. I'm going to read Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queenby Susan Gregg Gilmore, which I got from Julie at Book Hooked Blog. As it is a short one I might squeeze in something else before the end of this week. Or I will read the given literature for my diploma thesis, which is all about spectra analysis and H2O and CO2 fluxes.

I got one new book last week. It is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt.

Any thoughts?

Review: Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Fifty-year-old Alice Howland is professor in Harvard, has three grown-up children and a loving, scientist husband. When one day on her usual jogging round she can't remember where she is, Alice recognizes that something has changed. She visits her doctor who soon diagnoses her with the early onset Alzheimer's disease.

Alice now has to face all the horrible things that come with such a diagnose. She has to tell her husband and children and needs to deal with the fact that soon she will not be able to remember faces, places and words; and later how to go or eat. Of course she hopes that some medicine can help her, but as of today there are only meds which can slow the process of the disease but cannot cure it.

I liked that Genova describes a diversity of problems Alzheimer's patient and their relatives have to deal with. For an example that there exist many self help groups for relatives but only very few or no groups for patients.

*spoiler warning*

Genova also did a good job to describe the emotional turmoil a family faces when one amongst them is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I felt really sorry for Alice's husband who always loved the eloquence and smartness of his wife and first struggles to accept the disease and later tries to get out of Alice's way because he cannot stand to watch her decay. Or later when Alice doesn't recognize her youngest daughter anymore but still feels that this person loves her and simply loves her back. It's heartwrenching but somehow beautiful, too.

*end spoiler*

At a certain point I could never put down this book. I read it at late night, with everybody else already asleep. Although I felt like I had not have enough sleep the next morning, I love when this happens with me and a book.