I was brought out of my lie-in yesterday morning by the doorbell around 8:45. The postman had to deliver a package which wouldn’t fit into my mailbox. I knew it would be delivered on that day, but I had forgotten that it came by regular mail via the postman in the morning and not via the parcel service, which serves our route in the afternoon usually. Anyway reason enough to get up.
I’m on a bit of a crazy book buying binge these days. I would try to explain why, but I honestly couldn’t. My lack of impulse control when it comes to books clearly has something to do with it. Also the fact that I’ll get a bit of extra credit when I don’t cash-in the money I get for selling read/used books to the recommerce service I use for that. For instance instead of getting 10€ back into my bank account, I get a voucher for 12€ to buy more (used) books from them. I don’t sell my books to earn money, it’s mainly to make space on my shelves. Which I then fill with new and more books. Yes, this might constitute a problem in the long run, because I usually buy more books than I sell. I need to get rid off, e.g. throw away some of the stuff on my shelves. I do have books (non-fiction, travel guides etc.) which don’t have any commercial value anymore and as much as it pains me, I need to bin them. All the public bookcases in my area are already filled to the brim and I don’t want to add to the “throw away” books which I assume are quite a few of the ones in there.
The actual books I’m reading this week are the non-fiction “Unwell Women” by Elinor Cleghorn (still, as I haven’t made much progress there) and Maggie O’Farrell’s “This Must Be The Place” (on Kindle). I’m about 1/3 in and enjoy reading it, because I like the prose and I think the way the narrative is structured is interesting. This book actually was one I’ve owned and still haven’t read for the longest time. In a weird / wild (?) attempt to tackle the long list of unread books – which gets longer and longer with each book buying binge, I KNOW – I thought I should intersperse the newer and current books on to-read-next-list with the ones unread for the longest time. O’Farrell was the one that looked the most interesting and I honestly wonder why I never picked it before.
Back to how I also spend my weekend: besides reading fiction / non-fiction books, I also try to catch up with all the news articles I bookmarked during the week. I think, I mentioned that last week as well. I also try to listen to more news / politics / society podcasts. Mostly in the car, but maybe I should do that more at home as well instead of mindlessly watching vintage shows on Netflix. I don’t listen to most of them on a weekly basis, but pick an episode if the topic interests me. I listened to an informative German one on the International Humanitarian Law aspects of the war in Gaza. And I’m halfway through another German one on how the right-wing populist party AfD might change the education system if they manage to govern in a federal state in Germany. Another interesting new one in English is “A Muslim & a A Jew Go There”, hosted by politician Sayeeda Warsi and comedian David Baddiel.
Back to how I spend my spare time: I finally was motivated to finish building the LEGO duck. I run out of good shelf space to put all my LEGO though. It’s a first world problems, I know.
