#WeeklyFavorites

Ending the month with the tagged as this week‘s choice. Remote Sympathy is my favorite book this month.

Adding five countries to #ReadTheWorld2025 for September and October: #Ukraine #Albania #Austria #Croatia and #Portugal, coincidentally all European.

I now have read 31 countries!

A well written and interesting book about the Barbizon Hotel, a refuge for ambitious women coming to New York. Many interesting and promising women found a safe place here between the 1920s and 2005. They arrived young and ambitious and had a chance to become self aware and successful career women. I knew nothing about this hotel and enjoyed learning about it.

#10BeforeTheEnd #2

I read this book because Lidija Hilje recommended it and I loved her book Slanting Towards the Sea. The Paper Palace is a love story, just like Slanting, but not as good.
Elle is staying with her husband and kids at Cape Cod. As always Jonas is there too, with his own family. They used to love each other but never really were together. This year everything changes and Elle has a tough choice to make.
An enjoyable read and a light pick.

#WeeklyForecast 44/52

My reading has been slow lately, I‘ve had way too little time! I am reading and enjoying the tagged book though and have just started The Barbizon.
The Beauvoir memoir is one I‘ve been interested in for a long time and I hope to finally read it now!

The book isn‘t even in the database yet but I have just finished part V while enjoying #FidayHappyReadingHour.

Part IV ended with a big cliffhanger so I was eager to read this one but it didn‘t at all go as I expected or hoped. I can‘t say much without spoilers. It was good (not as good as IV though) and now I have to wait for months for the next installment to be translated.

#10BeforeTheEnd #1

Five survivors of a cult (all other members mysteriously) are trying to live their lives as if all of that didn‘t happen. When one of them commits suicide however, they know they have to face their past. Should they return to Red Peak for answers?
A pageturner! Thanks for the recommendation @Reggie

#fictionaltraveler #trees

After 9/11 the narrator of this book moves from NYC to Lisbon to wait for the end of the world. He‘s waiting for his partner Cecilia in his new apartment, that very much resembles the NY one.
Described as a psychological thriller the book is much more a stream of conscience novel and I have to say I got very confused at the end. Just like the narrator. Not sure what to think.

📸 Lille, France

#ReadTheWorld2025 #31 #Portugal

#WeeklyForecast 43/25

I am reading off my shelves, finishing reading challenges and eagerly waiting for the ToB longlist to be announced.
For now I am almost finished reading Your Steps on the Stairs, a very weird read. Next will be The Children of Red Peak, that I meant to read last week but forgot somehow. The Barbizon I hope to start too.

Imagine an America where no one is more intelligent than anyone else. So everyone can be a doctor, go to university, build a plane. Actually, being smart is a disadvantage. This is the premise of Shriver‘s novel and it‘s a super interesting concept. Her books are often hit or miss for me but this is a hit. The idea is so ridiculous and yet it seems somehow possible in this crazy world.

📸 Lille, France

To me this book is a bit of a mess. We follow Taiwanese Joan from her life as a girl moving to the US, marrying, and raising two kids. Her dream is to one day open a restaurant for people who want someone to talk to, to being listened to. She‘d call it The Satisfaction Cafe.
Joan is an interesting character and so are most of the others. I‘d have liked to lean more about them but Kathy Wang wants to tell so much she forgets to do exactly that.

#10BeforeTheEnd

Just 10 weeks until the end of the year!
I selected 10 books for @ChaoticMissAdventures ‘s challenge.

Six I‘ve had on my shelves for too long (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Forbidden Notebook, The Invisible Guardian, Death in Tokyo, Fault Lines, and The Barbizon).

Three are recently published (The River is Waiting, How to Sleep at Night, and Immaculate Conception)

One is super new: On the Calculation of Volume 5!

He sent a text to his three best friends (who were in a car together), and because the driver replied, they crashed. And people blame him for it. That‘s what this book is about. Really. No thank you!

A satisfying second installment in the DCI Banks series. I love the setting in England and the descriptions of scenery and main characters. I will continue to part 3!

#WeeklyForecast 42/25

I am reading both Satisfaction Cafe and A Dedicated Man. Enjoying both. Next will be one recommended by @Reggie : The Children of Red Peak.

Mina‘s Matchbox is a tender, heartwarming Japanese story that follows 12-year-old Tomoko, who spends a year with her family in Ashiya in 1972. Alongside her cousin Mina and a pygmy hippo, she experiences quiet, everyday moments that somehow feel magical. Even though nothing much happens the book‘s gentle tone, nostalgia, and simplicity made me slow down and cherish what I read.

📸 Mussels, local specialty in Zeeland

Reading detective series is a perfect way to spend the time on a day off. This is the fifth in the DCI Matilda Darke series and it didn‘t disappoint. I will gladly continue to the next installment.

📸 Zeeland, Netherlands

This is a very dark and sad story about German people, living close to Buchenwald during WWII.
SS officials, their wives and kids, other people living in nearby Weimar. It is shocking and disgusting how all could ignore or even justify everything that happened right before their eyes.

The parallels with current times are clear and upsetting.

#WeeklyForecast 41/25

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

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.