Yesterday ...

... was the international day of books.

Many bookaholics took part in a book-read-a-thon organized by Lovely Books. A read-a-thon is a day dedicated to reading - most of the time. I did a little blog hopping today and read all about the experiences bloggers had yesterday but I didn't take part in this.

I was away for the day celebrating a good friend's birthday with a barbecue, chatting, sitting in the sun all afternoon and okay, a little bit of reading - probably 5 pages.

But I think it is a nice idea dedicating an entire day to reading and maybe I will be part of the crowd at the next read-a-thon - who knows.

I found this video on a Swiss page dedicated to the international day of books. It is a wonderful video and the text and the end means: "You can also read books"

Easterholidays

After my vacation in London I had to attent my corses at university for just one more week and now because Easter is just around the corner I have two weeks without university.
Sadly this doesn't mean that I don't have to study or write papers but it is much more relaxed and I finally have enough time to meet my friends and enjoy life a little bit more.
Saturday, Sunday and yesterday were my real holidays which means I didn't do a thing - nothing, nada, niente. Really nice.
I started reading Sophie Kinsella's "The Undomestic Godess" yesterday morning and finished it around midnight.

I read over 400 pages in one day and I didn't read the whole day. I had some major pauses for tutoring one of my students, travelling on public transport with a huge shopping bag - so no way to read, eating and sleeping.
So, now I am almost on my way to work and really looking forward to start reading JoAnna Carl's "The Chocolate Mousetrap" on my trip. One of the best American crime series ever.

After tutoring I will start studying for my next exams but tomorrow I will meet with a friend who is in England as German native speaker this year and is right now at home. I am sooooo looking forward to it.

Today I want to share something completely different with you.

I am a follwer of Sonia's blog Runaway Hippie for quite some time now and there I found a wonderful post called 30 Pictures. The idea behind this post is to share 30 different photos with you, telling you a bit more about me and my life.

So, here are my 30 Picture!

01/someone I spend a lot of time with

02/a picture of myself

03/a picture of someone in my family

04/a picture of something that makes me happy

05/an old picture of myself

06/a picture of my sibling

07/a picture I've never posted on my blog before

08/a picture of someone that I miss

09/a picture of a relative of mine

10/a picture of my favorite place

11/a person I can tell everything

12/a picture of my everyday life

13/a picture of a place that I love

14/a picture that reminds me of old times

15/a picture of a friend since my childhood

16/a picture of myself

17/an unsual picture

18/a picture of my spare time

19/a picture I'm satisfied with

20/a picture of one person close to me

21/a person who is always there for me

22/a picture of a time that I miss

23/a picture from last summer

24/a picture that makes me sad

25/a person who always makes me happy

26/someone I'm always having fun with

27/a picture I always laugh about

28/a crazy picture

29/the latest picture of myself

30/someone I will never let go of

Vacation

I know it's been a while but I really really needed a time-out. Well, not particularly a time-out from this blog but a time-out from university life. I was studying and working on papers without a break since September and began feeling frustrated and writing papers got harder and harder due to lack of concentration.

So I took a vacation!

I went to Prague for three days with my mum. I had a great time. We enjoyed the city, the sun and the bookshops. Before going a good friend of mine told me to enjoy the city as well and not only the bookshops – and that was what I did.

After being home one day to sort out my washing and to unpack my bag I packed it again and took off to London for four days with my best friend Angie. It was so wonderful. We had the most beautiful weather. It was sunny and warm and we did a lot of shopping, gossiping and enjoying some alone-time together. Normally we are part of a huge group of people who we love but sometimes it is great to be alone with Angie to be all girly (at least as much girly as we can be). We hit so many stores it was unbelievable!

We also visited “Waterstone’s” my favorite bookstore partly because I begged Angie to do so and partly because she and her husband gave me a £30.- book coupon for my birthday. Yeah!

Angie followed me all the way through “Waterstone’s” always mumbling that I was so crazy for buying all these books. I though that I didn’t buy so many books but she is such a non-reader that I sometimes, okay always, wonder what she does in her spare time. I don’t know!

Well these are some pictures of my treasures. I strongly believe that they are all really really really good books but I will tell you after I read them, which might take a while due to a really huge pile of unread books. 

Books bought in Prague

Lucy Dillon - lost dogs and lonely hearts and Trisha Ashley - Chocolate wishes

Mordecai Richler - Barney's version and Greogory Maguire - Wicked

Sara Gruen - Water for elephants and Scarlett Thomas - The end of Mr. Y

 Books bought in London

Hummingbird bakery cookbook

Sarah Rayner - One Moment One Morning and Sebastian Faulks - A week in December

Madeleine Wickham - Sleeping Arrangements and Jojo Moyes - The last letter from your lover

Katharine Birbalsingh - To Miss with love and Gervase Phinn - Road to the Dales

Dr. Benjamin Daniels - Confessions of a GP and Mike Pannett - Now then Lad

Helen Hanff - 84 Charing Cross Road and Robert Winder - The final act of Mr. Shakespeare

Michelle Moran - Madame Tussaud

Harriet Evans - Love Always

Day 15

Day 15 - Your "comfort" book

To answer this question I would have to tell you that I don’t have one comfort book. It is more like a series. Yes, I have a comfort series.

My comfort books are the books from Gervase Phinn describing his life as a school inspector in the Yorkshire Dales. I love this series. Gervase Phinn has a wonderful way to describe so that the reader can imagine everything quite easily. When reading it I can see the Yorkshire Dales before me even if I've never been there in my life. 

His series starts when he gets the job as school inspector for English and Drama in North Yorkshire. Gervase gets to know his colleges who are hilarious people and are extremely funny, the secretary Julie who is fighting with Mrs. Savage the personal assistant of Dr. Gore, his chef and he also starts getting an impression about his work life.

Till now the series contain five books.

• The Other Side of the Dales
• Over Hill and Dale
• Head Over Heels in the Dales
• Up and Down in the Dales
• The Heart of the Dales

I can highly recommend this series to everybody. It is wonderfully written and quite an easy read but sometimes it is harder to figure out what the clever little kids mean when talking in Yorkshire dialect.

Day 13

Day 13 - Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)

I wrote a lot about childhood books on this blog already so I will tell you what my favorite young adult book is.

This book is really my favorite YA book because it tells the story of Meggie, a young girl and her father. Both are so huge book freaks and every chapter starts with a short citation of a book. That’s so cool.

The book I am talking about is Cornelia Funke’s book “Inkheart”. It is a wonderful, fantastic book about Meggie and her father Mo. Mo has a special gift; he can read things out of books. But for everything he reads out of a book one thing from the real world gets into it. That is how he read out Capricorn, an evil man from Inkheart and in exchange his wife and Meggie’s mum Resa went into the book.

All his life Moe wanted to find a copy of Inkheart and try to read Resa out of it again but he never had any luck.

One day Mo gets warned that Capricorn is looking for him and his ability to read things out of books and Mo and Meggie flee to Elinor, Resa’s aunt. She is an old single woman who only has her book as company and doesn’t like kids which Meggie experiences firsthand. But Meggie kind of wins her heart because of her resemblance with Resa and her enthusiasm for books.

In the end, as it must be, Capricorn’s men find Mo and take him to Capricorn and the whole story gets really thrilling and fascinating.

“Inkheart” is the first book of a trilogy which also contains the books “Inkspell” and “Inkdeath” which are highly recommendable as well.

There is also a film with Brendan Fraser as Mo, Eliza Bennett as Meggie and Helen Mirren as aunt Elinor, which sticks rather closely to the original book and is worth watching.

Day 12

Day 12 - A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times

At first I thought this would be easy to answer but when considering that I already chose three of my all time favorite books which I read more than five times it seemed harder to answer.

After some minutes in front of my bookshelf I came up with another book I read more than five times. It is a wonderful children’s book – “Pippi Longstocking” by Astrid Lindgren. When I was a child I wasn’t that fond of it but as a teenager I learned to love this little, ultra-strong girl who lives all by herself in a large house with a monkey and a horse as company.

I think that everyone should read “Pippi Longstocking” at least once in his or her life – I can really recommend it.