#WeeklyForecast 41/25

I started Remote Sympathy , which is a chunkster and very dark. Afterwards I guess a DCI Matilda Drake thriller will be a welcome palette cleanser.

#WeeklyFavorites

My first favorite of October is the tagged. It made me cry and even though that makes me sad, this is one of the reasons I read.

#FridayHappyReadingHour

White wine, wasabi nuts, sparing water and a Catherine Chidgey… kind of perfect!

I finished #BookChain2025. In the photo are the final books of the chain. Loved that you put it on Storygraph Sarah!

This is a haunting, lyrical story set on the Irish Kerry cliffs. Micheál, a reluctant guardian of a suicide blackspot, inherits his late mother‘s grim duty of watching and intervening when he can.
Torn between family estrangement, personal grief, and the suffocating pull of home, Micheál‘s silence speaks volumes. I‘ll be thinking of this for a while.

Started and finished this graphic novel in about 10 minutes. Just to tick off some prompts in my reading challenges. Let‘s say I won‘t read the second installment 😊

Note to self; stop reading books about teenagers making stupid choices Barbara, you‘re too old, you can‘t relate any longer.

#SeptemberStats

5⭐️

Slanting Towards the Sea

4.5⭐️

Woman on the Verge

4.25⭐️

The Loft

4.0⭐️

A Language of Limbs

On the Calculation of Volume IV

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Cheri

Misinterpretation

Someone To Watch Over You

3.75⭐️

Gallows View

3.25⭐️

When the Museum is Closed

Private Rites

Ripeness

3⭐️

Endling

2.75⭐️

The Feast

2⭐️

I Want To Go Home But I‘m Already There

You Be Mother

#WeeklyForecast

This week I‘ll have little reading time. I hope to finish Though the Bodies Fall and make a start with the tagged book for the #EuropaCollective discussion in October.

My final book at #Gladstones25 was another good one. It felt so personal and relatable. It is about a woman struggling with mothering 2 young kids. She misses working and being a woman. I could very much relate to that (even though I always kept working) but then the story turned to her father dying and I could relate even more. Ugly tears at the airport , waiting for my flight home. This book might not be for everyone but it certainly was for me

This is a very strange Japanese book again. About a shy girl, hired by a museum to talk Latin to an old statue of Venus on days the museum is closed. It‘s a book about art and raincoats, loneliness and living in Japan, and, between the lines, child abuse. It‘s funny and challenging. Thanks for the gift, @TrishB 💕

#Gladstones25 #BlindDateWithABook

#WeeklyFavorites

This week favorite is this month‘s favorite and will probably be one of this year‘s favorites.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Ivona and Vlato meet as students at the turn of the millennium in Zagreb. Everything smells of freedom and possibility. Red Hot Chili Peppers are pumping through the speakers of a bar and cheap beer is overflowing; newly democratic Croatia is alive with hope and promise.”

With a blurb like this, my expectations were high and I am happy to say I loved this book.⬇️

📸 Room with a view at #Gladstones25

An Austrian housewife, estranged from her husband and kids, keeps herself busy by tidying the house. One day, she receives her own diary entries from 20 years earlier, sent anonymously by mail.
These entries transport her back to a time away from her family, and the reader gradually learns more about why. But this is Marlen Haushofer, the author of the enigmatic The Wall—and this book is just as mysterious. Perhaps even more so.

#Gladstones25

Two Australian teenage girls in the 1970s stumble through their first loves, both with other girls. One accepts her sexuality while the other chooses the safe option by marrying a boy. Their stories unfold in a moving and bittersweet way. The writing is gorgeous and poetic, the romance bittersweet.

Thanks for the recommendation @TrishB @Lesliereadsalot @Jas16

📸 Chester, UK

All set! #Gladstones25

The rain. The incessant rain has submerged much of the land and of the way people live. It adds so much to this atmospheric novel about three sisters dealing with this collapsing world, their father‘s death and their complicated relationships. It is a very engaging read even though I didn‘t understand everything that happened. And that ending?!

#WeeklyForecast 39/25

It is #Gladstones25 week. On Thursday I‘ll be leaving for Gladstone‘s Library in Wales to read and chat and walk and eat cake with other Littens!

Right now I think I‘ll take these books but I keep thinking about it so changes and add-ons are very well possible!

The novel takes place in Cornwall in 1947 at a coastal hotel. From the opening, the narrator reveals that the hotel will soon fall of a cliff, killing some of its guests. The suspense lies in learning who survives and who doesn‘t.
An interesting premise and a funny stream of characters but there are so many that I couldn‘t really keep track because I had the audiobook.
Maybe I try again in print one day…

This novel cycle is constructed so ingeniously. Everything makes sense, every detail, while in fact nothing makes sense because the main characters are still trapped in November 18. Things are changing though.

I read somewhere that the author lived in exile for 20 years to write this work. I understand that and I can‘t wait to see how the story continues!

#BookerLonglist #6

A highly original novel about 3 Ukrainian women on a road trip with some men they keep captive while Russia invades their country. Also, they are looking for a special kind of snail. I loved the fist half and the part which is an interlude by the author herself. Then however I lost interest a bit. So many super interesting story lines and yet I felt like nothing much happened. A so-so for me.

#ReadTheWorld2025 #28 #Albania

@Chelsea.Poole was right. We all should read this. It‘s horrific and it makes me so sad and scared and I really wonder if we will ever be able to return (?) to a place of respect and peace and trying to understand one another. But maybe that‘s me, speaking from out of my bubble. Do read it.

📸 Amersfoort, Netherlands

The #ToB crew is hosting a horror pop-up in which 16 classic horror novels will be set up against one another in the usual way.

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/welcome-to-the-horror-popup

I don‘t think I‘ll participate (too many books too little time) but I do love that tob is alive and kicking and can‘t wait for them to follow up with the #ToB26 longlist!

This was a slow burn for me and I never really got into it, even though I loved the woman Edith has become and admire the girl she was when supporting her sister when she gave birth to a baby. Such an interesting plot and I loved the Irish setting. It‘s really a good book. And yet. It‘s me. A light pick.

📸: Ryan Gander exposition, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands

#FictionalTraveler #EnglishSpeaking

#WeeklyForecast 38/25

I still haven‘t finished the Sarah Moss but I picked it up again and think I am on the point where I want to finish it! In the mean time I started the El Akkad which is super confrontational and a must read for all of us. Next will be my final Booker for the announcement of the shortlist, which is the tagged one. And I have the fourth On the Calculation of Volume waiting for me!

A very short and very sad book about a woman dying from cancer who seeks assisted suicide. Apparently euthanasia isn‘t legal in the US although it‘s almost the same as the kind of help this woman gets, but she can‘t be with her loved ones when the moment is there and that broke my heart (no spoiler). What a horrible disease, what a fight.

📸 Antibes, France

#NotBookRelated I am in a taxi in France where someone left a New York Times on the backseat. I enjoy the article about Trump as a bystander while thinking he rules the world but it‘s in fact so sad. European leaders being so weak, Putin doing whatever he likes and Trump, well …

Thanks to @kspenmoll I started this series and I did enjoy it. This first installment was written in the 1980s and it‘s rather misogynistic but I didn‘t really mind. I liked the characters and the setting and am curious about the second book.

📸 Cannes, France

Don‘t judge a book by its cover. I learned it the hard way. I loved this cover. And the title.

But… the book is about two very boring people living together in a flat that she thinks is haunted. She‘s there all day (doing nothing), he‘s at work and doesn‘t notice how she suffers.
Totally unbelievable that two people who are supposed to be deeply in love never talk to one another.
Okay. On to the next.

📸 Nice, France

#WeeklyForecast 37/25

I am reading both I Want to go Home and Ripeness. The former I bought on a whim because of its title and cover but I‘m unimpressed so far. Ripeness I just started and is very promising.
I‘ll be traveling for work later this week and the tagged book seems a good companion. Cheri is a short one I‘ve meant to read for some time now.

#BookerLonglist #5

Very elegantly written, I became engaged in the book immediately I enjoyed following the narrator‘s struggle to live in NYC while she‘s still strongly rooted in the Albania she left behind. Het empathy for other refugees jeopardizes her mental wellbeing as well as her closest relationships. She moves between this empathy and self-preservation and there seems no closure. An impressive read.

#ReadTheWorld2025 #27 #Albania

Adding some new countries to #ReadTheWorld2025 in July and August: #NewZealand, #Finland, #Peru, #Pakistan, #SriLanka, #Hungary and #Sweden.

I now have covered 26 countries!

A wonderfully strange story about two lonely people seeking eachother‘s company while the coronavirus spreads across Japan. However, they don‘t become friends, they just live their lonely life in the same house. I can‘t say more, it is so weird. But I loved it.

📸 Amsterdam Castle

I enjoyed ‘Sorrow and Bliss‘ but this book by Meg Mason was disappointing. Such one demensional characters. A despairing young mother, a piece of shit father, a nasty MiL and a coward of a FiL. All so predictable.
Neighbour Phil, a just widowed woman, makes up for this but her character didn‘t really make sense either.

And yet I wanted to know the ending. It had some good points but was overall too predictable as well.

#AugustStats

4.25⭐️
King of ashes
Under the storm

4⭐️
Seascraper

3.75⭐️
The tenderness of wolves

3.5⭐️
The return of Faraz Ali
Silent parade
Thursday night widows

3.25⭐️
I see you‘ve called in dead

3⭐️
Crying in H Mart
Deal breaker
One boat

2.75⭐️
Flesh
The Plot

2⭐️
Nightwatching

#WeeklyForecast 36/25

I am reading a short Japanese novel (Someone to Watch Over You) ad then am ready for another #Bookerlonglist book, the tagged. I also want to read the new Sarah Moss, that I bought because of @TrishB ‘s review.

Wow, this is a what you call #NordicNoir! A fire and a murder in a small Swedish village continue to have effect on the village for years to come. A former police officer can‘t let go and neither does the nephew of the man convicted for the crimes.

In the mean time the book sketches a pretty good picture of the political and social circumstances of the country during the 90s and the 00s. ⬇️

#ReadTheWorld2025 #26 #Sweden

Another four months of #ISpy2025 (May-August) with lots of my unread books waiting to be a read and having that ✅ added!

Scroll down for an updated Jan-April grid.
I love the spying!

#ISpy2025 January - April

#WeeklyFavorites

This week‘s choice was good but not memorable as were many of this month‘s books. King of Ashes is my favorites of these, followed closely by Seascraper.

Not her best one but this early work by Claudia Piñeiro is still very entertaining. It is set in a gated community outside Buenos Aires where the very wealthy live so far away from reality that strange things can and do happen.

And with the end of #CampLitsy25 we add Wild Dark Shore to the #HallOfFame! These are our winners since 2022.

If you‘ve been camping with us, you know 💕

If you participated for the first time and are impressed by the excellent taste of the campers🤪, you know now what to read next!

If you haven‘t participated and have been wondering what Camp is all about, this is it! You‘re welcome next year.

A big SO to Meg and Helen for co-hosting 💖

We do have our #CampLitsy25 winner! A majority voted for this fantastic book and I couldn‘t agree more 😉. Woodworking ended on a second place, Tilt ended third.

Helen, Meg and I have enjoyed Camp again so much and want to thank you all for reading and discussing six great books with us. We have loved your thoughts, stories, reviews, insights, puns, etc.

We‘ll be back!

#BookerLonglist #4

Nothing much happens is this meandering novel about a women revisiting the Greek village she went to nine years ago to grieve her mother‘s death. Now she has lost her father. She notices the changes in the village and reacquaints with some of the people she met the first time.
It was nice to spend some time with the narrator yet I am not sure what the books is about or why it is nominated for the Booker Prize. A light pick

#WeeklyForecast 35/25

I am reading One Boat, another Booker nominated book. It‘s short so I‘ll finish it soon. Next will be the tagged book. I have been reading Claudia Piñeiro‘s backlist and it hasn‘t disappointed yet. She‘s a fabulous writer.
The third one was on the ToB longlist once I think. It‘s been sitting in my shelves while I‘ve been wanting to read it for a long time. Now finally its time has come ?

#CampLitsy25 Question 1

Our final discussion. Summer has flown by and so has Camp. We hope you‘ll stick around for choosing this year‘s winner in the coming days before packing your bags and return to autumn and reality!

We‘ll tag everyone once. Please scroll down to find questions 2 and 3!

#CampLitsy25 Question 2

That was quite the plot twist towards the end of the book, or wasn‘t it? Let‘s talk!

#CampLitsy25 Question 3

To conclude, let‘s discuss Roman, the “King of Ashes”. How do you feel about him?

Called The Plot this book is about the mindblowing plot of a book the narrator wrote and which made him a bestselling author. Until someone accuses him of having stolen that same plot.

Unfortunately the plot of The Plot (are you still there 🤣?) isn‘t that mindblowing. Almost from the start I could predict what would happen and I didn‘t even try that hard. So, another underwhelming read. Not my best month, this one.

📷 Sail Amsterdam

This book was recommended to me by ChatGPT. Well, they have a lot to learn. I kind of hated it. But I always dislike books about terrified mothers, protecting their children like lionesses. I don‘t know why but it happened before. And then the plot, it is so weak and predictable. A definite pan.

📸 Rotterdam, Netherlands