So, I’ve been pondering about this for quite a while. For those of you that noticed that little reading list on either the right side or down below (depending on where you read this on) you might have noticed that I skipped some books on there. Well, the reason for this is that I did not really like them… and for a few months I was thinking if I should still dedicate a full entry to them, or not. In the end, I decided against it. Therefore, I present you: The „Meh“s – books that I did not enjoy all that much.

The Water Cure – Sophie Mackintosh

As I said in the intro to this blog, I don’t like first-person narratives and books in present tense. Still, I’ll give it a try if I think a book is really good. I had really high hopes for this one, as it was described as dystopian feminist tale and I like both dystopian books and feminist books. But…. I did not really enjoy it. The chapters are very short and more like descriptions of moments than really a continuing story and I did not manage to feel for any of the characters. As a result, I could not really get into it.

The Plague – Albert Camus

Now, the book sees itself as a chronic of events surrounding the outbreak of the plague. For this reason, as I was told yesterday by my brother who loves the book, you are not supposed to feel with the characters. The thing is though, it’s important for me. If I cannot relate or if the characters don’t get any emotions out of me, then it’s simply not my kind of book. The only character in the book I kind of liked was the aspiring author that wants to write his book but keeps on working on the first sentence, convinced that he cannot move on until it’s perfect. I can relate to that^^“‘ I was also bothered by the fact that all the main characters are male, and the women in the book have like 5 sentences. Did not sit well with me.

Dschamilja – Tschingis Aitmatow

This book was lent to me by a friend who said ‚it’s one of the best love stories I’ve ever read‘, and I sort of already knew that I would probably not really like it, as… well… I do not really like nor read love stories. I like it when they are a part of the plot, but if the whole book is just about love, then normally that’s a bit boring to me. Hey, I’m not a romantic. Therefore, I did not like it. I found them cute and I liked that their love story was from the perspective of a third person observing how the two of them get closer, but again, I did not really care for the characters. And I definitely don’t consider it one of the best love stories ever, but hey, we all have different preferences, right?

Measuring the World – Daniel Kehlmann

I heard so much about this book and couldn’t wait to dive into it. And I liked it, I mean, it has Humboldt, I like Humboldt, but… it didn’t leave a big impression. Writing this, I cannot even clearly remember what it was about. I remember laughing about Gauß‘ grumpy attitude and some of the jokes Kehlmann planted into the book, but other than that…? Still, I want to read Tyll, his latest novel. It has waaaaay more pages, so I hope that I can get closer to the characters this time. We’ll see!

So, this was part I of the books that I did not enjoy all that much. That does not mean, that I hate them or think they suck. They don’t. I would never say something like that. Writing is so much work and the author put its heart into it. I would therefore never say negative things like this. Instead, I say that they were not my taste. That’s natural and happens. The combining element here is that all of them did not bring the characters close enough to me. I need to feel the characters and understand their actions and feelings. So reading the books above helped finding me out about this. I will still try to find a nice home for the books on this list, because I am sure someone else will absolutely love them. I’ll attend my first Berlin Book Swap this week and hope to find a new home for The Water Cure.

On a personal note:

Spring is here and I think I developed a hay fever. Last week I had the feeling that my eyes are sort of shut and my face was itchy. After talking to my friends and brother, I fear that I got myself an allergy. Good thing that I live right next to Berlin’s biggest forest. A forest full of pollen. Hence, an apartment full of pollen. On a positive note, I also got myself a bicycle. My first one in Berlin! I can join all my friends on their bike tours now! And it only took me 9 years!!! Only thing is, I am so afraid to cycle in Berlin. I’m from the country side I’m not used to pedestrians, cars and all that…. I was so stressed when I first rode it. XD

I read this book back in January and somehow forgot to write about it. I got this book for my birthday from my roommate – because she knows how much I love penguins (you can not really not notice it if you look at my room) and I couldn’t wait to read it. The premise of a guy living together with a penguin was so interesting but then… well, unfortunately there are a lot of parts that were really going against my taste.

To summarize the book for you, Michell is working in South America at a University. While traveling in Uruguay, he sees an oil-covered coast and several dead penguins covered in oil. One of them is still alive and he decides to carry him (it’s a male penguin) to his rented apartment and clean him. Originally, he wants to release him back to the ocean once he fully recovered, but then due to several circumstances, he does not and rather brings him to his university with him and lives with him. Needless to say, the penguin is a big hit among the students and soon becomes their unofficial mascot. I will not say how the book ends, in case you want to give it a try.

One thing I disliked about the book is the „conversations“ he has with the penguin. He is imaging what the penguin might have wanted to say based on his behavior (I guess?) and the penguin’s parts are written in italics. Now, in a fantasy setting, I would have loved me a talking penguin. But this is story based on a true story, and penguins cannot talk in our language nor can we understand theirs. So, the whole dialogues, and there are a lot, felt so fake and … to be honest, kitschy. For me, this was totally unnecessary, he could have told the story with just explaining how the penguin reacted.

The second thing is that towards the end, he is leaving the penguin alone to travel. For pages upon pages he is talking about his trips around South America, which is cool, but, it has nothing to do with the penguin and it felt like he wanted to cram it in because he wanted his readers to know that he got to travel around South America. For me, it disturbed the rhythm of the book, it felt disconnected and I skipped most of it.

So, all in all, an interesting read, but not the best book on the planet. Still, there were times when I laughed really hard when I imagined the penguin. I love penguins.

On a personal note:

I am currently watching Our Planet on Netflix and I love it. The camera work is amazing, the soundtrack is fantastic (been listening to it on Spotify the whole morning) and it’s so well done! The main theme is climate change and how we fuck up the planet at the moment and while being so happy to see all the animals at the same time, you can’t help but to feel sad. It makes me wonder, what can I do to save our planet? I mean, I already don’t use the car, eat meat only a few times a month and even less fish, buy second hand clothes, stopped buying bottled water, try to eat regional food (can’t wait for strawberry season to start!) but still I feel so powerless. Really, this documentary has me going from laughing at the mating dances of tropical birds (if there’s one thing that ALWAYS manages to put a smile on my face, it’s penguins and/or bird mating rituals XD) to crying my eyes out over the polar bear that will most likely die soon because of the human race… It’s heartbreaking, but I highly recommend it.

I’m still really behind with this blog, but due to several business trips and general stress, I wasn’t able to read a lot. I hope to get back into the flow in the next weeks, but for the past weeks, I just preferred Podcasts, they are easier to process.

This week’s book is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and it’s the second book I’ve read from her, the first being, of course, The Handmaid’s Tale (which is awesome!). So my expectations were very high for this one and I did not get disappointed.

The structure of this book is really interesting. It’s about Iris and her sister Laura. Iris is telling the story about how they grew up and how Laura died eventually in retrospective as an old woman that is knowing that she will not live a lot longer. Laura got famous after her dead for a book she wrote that was said to be scandalous at that time. The story is set up in a way that you have Iris‘ reflections of their lives, Laura’s book and newspaper articles tying up to Iris‘ story. You also have the descriptions of Iris‘ daily life as an old woman and the story inside Laura’s story. In a sense, you get four stories at once and three different writing styles in one book, which I find fascinating (I love me some story in story). Atwood manages to give every story a very different writing style, the distinction between them is very clear, yet they all make sense together.

Her characters are very round, expect for Richard, Iris‘ husband, but Iris explains this with the fact that she hardly every knew him despite being married to him. As the book is her recalling of events, it makes sense that she can not make him seem ‚rounder‘. Just as I felt with the Handmaid’s Tale, the female characters seem stronger and painted in more detail. Iris‘ is finding her freedom in affair (scandalous at that time) and Laura is always being described as being different and in her own world. I really enjoyed the both sisters and their different personalities and was able to feel with both of them.

The family story that Iris‘ is telling is also very interesting, stretching from before World War I to, in a sense, 1999 where Iris starts telling her story. The story takes place in Canada and I don’t know much about Canada (Sorry!), so it was nice to read something that takes place there. I also love books that are set in World War I, in between, or World War II as I also have a thing for modern history.

All in all, the book was a joy to read despite it’s 691 pages in the German version and I would totally recommend it to anyone who likes strong female characters, stories in stories or books that take place in the not so distant past!

On a personal note:

Spring has sprung in Berlin at last after a Winter that felt very gray and bleak. I was taking a nice two hour walk in the forest today while listening to music and it feels just so nice. I wrote last time, that I’m feeling so tired and unmotivated all the time but I do think that the weather is helping me. I just want to go out when it’s so nice outside. I can’t wait for it to get warm enough to sit outside and read! Apart from that, as I said in the beginning, I haven’t been reading much lately, but hope to get back to it now. I still have so many books piled up here XD

Yet again, I am so far behind. Another book that I read in January, now its March. I have so many books on my read list and am so far behind with this blog… will need to figure something out here.

Today’s book is by Walter Moers, one of my favorite German authors. Every since my friend Sarah gave me her copy of The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear to read, I am pretty much a fan of his work with my favorite book so far being The City of Dreaming Books. Although I must say this weeks book The Alchemaster’s Apprentice was also absolutely great.

The story is about a crat (magical cat) named Echo who lost its owner and is now living in the streets close to starvation makes a deal with the Alchemaster Ghoolion that Ghoolion will take Echo in for a month and feed him as much food as he wants – in return Ghoolion has the permission to kill him and use him for his magic. But while living with the Alchemaster, Echo realizes that he does not want to die and tries to figure a way out to get out of the deal. For this he is getting help from other creatures of this world, e.g. from Theodore T. Theodore, a Tuwituwu (one-eyed owl) with communistic tendencies and an inability to pronounce words correctly. I guess you can imagine why he is my favorite character in the book. I don’t want to give the story away, so I will not write how the story ends, let’s just say that Echo is going through a lot.

What I love so much about Moers is his fantasy and attention to detail. The world he creates is so full of wonder that you have a hard time processing all the information he is giving you. For example, the Alchemaster created candles that are able to feel pain as they burn down. They appear throughout the whole book with their subtle moaning and suffering, you are constantly subtly reminded of their existence. And although it’s a cruel example it shows his love for details. This is further underlined by his lovely illustrations. I can not show them here due to copy right reasons, but you should google them if they are interested. They are so beautiful and the way there are woven into the book is so well done that the whole thing becomes more a work of art than a simple book.

I have another book of Moers on my TBR and can’t wait to get to it, hopefully in a few months, maybe.

Sorry that this entry is so short, there’s only so much I can say here without spoiling.

On a personal note:

Jet lag is a bitch. I just came back from my business trip to Japan that left me with rather mixed feelings and jet lag is hitting me hard. At around 6 in the evening I am so tired that I can hardly keep myself awake, yet I am wide awake at 5 in the morning. I think it’s especially tough on me this time because I had a very busy few months before – business trip to Frankfurt, came back with the flu, had only one week to prepare for trip to Japan, came back have two days of work then I am going to Amsterdam for the next business trip. To be honest… I feel very tired and I have been feeling very tired for quite a while. That’s why I haven’t updated this blog, that’s why I did not really meet any friends. I hope it gets better soon, but I can’t really get myself to do anything at the moment…

Oh well.

Well, anyways, hope to post here more regularly.

Love,

Jimmy.

Oh dear… I planned to write this entry much earlier, but then life happened and now it’s the middle of February and I read this book on January 2nd and I took notes but I can’t really remember what I wanted to say with them. So if you’re confused reading this don’t worry I am equally confused.

The book I am writing about today was recommended and given to me by a friend who loves it very much. It was written by Becky Chambers and is her first novel that she financed using a Kickstarter campaign.

The blurb on the back makes you think that the story is about Rosemary who starts a new job on a space ship called the Wayfarer and that the story will thus be focused on her and her experiences aboard – but actually all crew members consisting of different species with different backstories and character traits get their fair share of time to shine. At the end, just as the title indicates, they arrive at a small angry planet but during the long way there it’s more about the character interaction than about things actually happening, making it a very fun and unusual read. And although not much drama is happening until they reach the angry planet, the novel never feels lengthy or boring – quite the opposite, I could not put it down.

This is also because the book has some nice food for thoughts in it. One of my favorites was the story arch about Ohan who is a Saniant Pair, meaning that when he was a young Saniant he got infected by The Whisperer and now is having a symbiosis with it. Throughout the book Ohan is referred to as ‚They‘ which is confusing at first – for both Rosemary and the reader. He is the navigator of the ship and very unsocial but still a pretty nice character. The downside to being infected by The Whisperer is that it makes Ohan die earlier than necessary and after the crew finds out that there is a way to get rid of The Whisperer that would result in the already weakened and close to dying Ohan live longer, they are torn about the decision whether they should force the antidote on him or not. In the end, Corbin, a clone, forcefully injects Ohan with it – thus saving his life even though Ohan insisted that he did not want to be cured. Unfortunately the book ends without the reader finding out if Ohan lost his navigating abilities without The Whisperer and I would love if Chambers would get back to that questions in some of her other works within the same universe. Just as the crew is unsure about what to do with Ohan, the reader is likewise thinking about the moral consequences of this. Is it okay to safe Ohan from dying if it means getting rid of The Whisperer? Or does one need to respect his wish not to be separated by it even if it means his death? There are other moral puzzles in her work, e.g. about the AI that is controlling the ship, but I don’t want to get into too much detail about all of it here.

But since I already mentioned the AI, let me just say that the love story between Jenks, one of the engineers of the ship, and the AI Lovely is one of the best love stories I read in a long time. Normally, I am not the biggest fan of love stories as I am not a romantic person but this one really got me. Especially in the end, when an impact on the ship leaves the AI broken and in need of a reset, Jenks is torn whether nor not he should do it. Because after a reset, Lovely might lose all her memory files about him – meaning that what they had would be over. Before that, Jenks and her are having a conversation in which it becomes clear that Lovely is broken as she can no longer remember things that have happened. The conversation between the two of them ends the following way (Lovely in italic):

Please don’t go away.

I won’t.

You’re the only thing that makes sense.

I have no clue why, but I lost it at that part and cried like crazy…

I could go on and on about all the things that are great about this book, but I feel like this post is already too long. Therefore, I will continue with my thoughts on Kizzy which for me was a very unlikable character.

All of the other characters have great backstories, Ohan and The Whisperer, Rosemary and her father who is smuggling weapons for war purposes, and so on and so on (Won’t give away everything her in case you want to read the book). Kizzy, on the other hand, stays surprisingly flat. During the book, she is the quirky engineer and… unfortunately she is not much else than that. Sure, in her backstory we find out a bit about her upbringing and after intruders threaten the crew and steal their things we find that she is having a trauma from it and can’t sleep. But somehow, for me at least, these two scenes are not enough to make her a round character. It might have something to do with the fact that I do not like quirky side characters if that is the only trade mark defining them. Harry Potter’s Luna Lovegood was quirky but she was more than that, the quirkiness was a facet of her character not the thing that made her entire being. For Kizzy though, it felt like this and I could not relate to her. It was not enough to make her believable as a character. I also have a problem with the trope of women that are engineers or in science needing to be quirky or nerdy. Something that I felt with Kizzy and seen so often in movies and TV shows. Why? Why can’t women in STEM-fields not be portrayed as „normal“ (for whatever that means…)? I don’t know. It’s a bit upsetting for me. I would have wished to see a different side of Kizzy, to get a different shade of her character, but oh well, the perfect book still needs to be written, I guess. As this is basically the only negative thing I can say about the entire book, I would say that it comes pretty close though.

To sum this rant up, I can highly recommend this book to people who like SciFi or people who like complex characters, moral questions or interactions of characters without much drama to drive the plot forward.

I would definitely read it again and am already looking forward to the other books she’s written.

One of my dear readers (out of the 4 that are actually reading this) liked the personal notes, so I decided to keep them in.

Personal stuff ahoy:

This reader wanted to know why this blog is called Jimmy’s reading room. Jimmy is me (dam dam dadaaaaaaam!!!!!). It was a nickname given to me by a dear friend (one of the dearest I have) when we were both totally hyped about House M.D.. The character James Wilson is played by Robert Sean Leonard, an actor I loved from Dead Poets Society and the totally underrated Swing Kids (seriously, go watch it!), and I also find to be one of the most attractive men there is, and I was stoked to see him there. We would watch House together, for example during our class trip to Cologne where we bought the DVD box of one season (I think it was Season 1?) and watched it in our room instead of doing outdoor stuff. I could her House for a while, but that stopped because I prefer to call her Katze, but somehow the Jimmy stuck. The full name I gave myself (yes, I named myself) is Jimmy Pingu, because Penguins are the most adorable animals on the entire planet and if you hate penguins, please leave my blog…

I hope that explains it all.

On a different note, I just ended a 8 days long business trip to Frankfurt to attend Ambiente (Germany’s biggest trade fair for interior design) and I caught a cold. So if I sound more weird than usual, please blame it on that. Also, damn did I see cool things! If only I had all the money in the world, I could make this room so cool!

I am going back to bed now.

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Jimmy.

First real entry about books, almost one month after I finished reading the book. Also forgot to take notes. This already screams failure…

For those of you who don’t know Lauren Graham, she played Lorelai Gilmore on Girlmore Girls. I am a big fan of the Gilmore Girls and always watched it after classes during middle and high school. I also binged it several times on Netflix since then and guess what, it’s still so awesome! Growing up, I always wanted to be like Rory Gilmore but after my first re-watch as an adult I realized that I have to face the truth: I am a Paris. (for those who do not understand, go watch it!)

Now, the book’s full title is „Talking as fast as I can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (And everything in between)“ and it’s a semi-biography in which Graham talks about how she grew up, what made her want to be an actress, her old gigs, how she got her part in Gilmore Girls and so on. But it also has relationship and writing advice (and pretty good one, might I say).

The way she writes is essentially the way Lorelai Gilmore talks, which is not a big surprise given the fact that Graham once said that Lorelai is the character closest to Lauren Graham. Her sentences are fast-paced, jumping from thought to thought and full of jokes. In short, if you don’t like Gilmore Girls, or have never watched it, you probably will not like this book.

But I loved it, it was real fun to read and also to get insight information about Gilmore Girls, like how sad the cast was to lose Edward Herrmann, who played Richard Gilmore, Lorelai’s father (and always one of my favorite characters).

There’s really no more I can say about this book. Graham mentiones that she also wrote a novel before and I think I want to try this one too. (After I actually got rid of my tbr pile… so maybe in ten years from now?… oh dear.)

Now, finally, I said that I will keep this blog about books, but I figured, I make the rules here and I can break them. Ha!

So here comes some personal stuff that I need to get off my chest. Feel free to close this tab now.

Personal stuff ahoy:

Arashi announced yesterday that they will go on hiatus starting 2021 and the news was a big shock to me. If you don’t know me for at least a few years, you will probably not understand why this is so important to me (or won’t know Arashi at all, which is cool). This band came into my life when I was really not doing great and has given me so much since the time I found them (in 2006, but did not become a real fan since 2007/08-ish). They’ve given me laughter, cries, good memories, not so good memories, friends that I would never have made otherwise, my path in life and so much more that I cannot put into words. They sparked my interest in Japan and Japanese and it’s no exaggeration to say that without them I would not be who and where I am today. That’s why I am so sad about the news. They were something I could always count on. When I was feeling down their music or tv shows did the trick. I was anticipating every new album, every tour, was always looking forward to talk about them wih my friends, or watch tour DVDs together while drinking way too much wine (*raises glass to Maria*). They were not just a band I followed, they were a part of me and my life. And thus, it now feels like a chapter of my life is coming to an end, which is a sad feeling. At the same time, I can totally understand Ohno’s decision to want freedom. Every fan with a bit of common sense has always known what a sweat shop JE is and I always felt a little guilty supporting this agency. I wish for all of them to be happy, I hope that Ohno finds what he is searching for and if Arashi comes back, I will be there. And if not, then I thank you very much for all the memories and people in my life.

I am still sad about it, but it’ll get better in time, or to quote Arashi:

明けない夜はないよ！

Thanks for reading and sorry for the rant at the end.

Love,

Jimmy.

Hello, this is Jimmy speaking. This blog’s purpose is to rant about the books I read – old ones, new ones, nearly every genre. Occasionally even trying to read my personal pet peeves: present tense and books’s written in I-form. English is not my native language, so feel free to point out mistakes.

I also love music and watching series and movies, but I try to keep this blog limited to books.

Thanks for looking around!