Back To Shore

This has been a bit of a so-so month book wise. I was positively surprised by some and on the other hand felt let down by others. I sold some of the latter already, so I can’t share a photo of the ones I’ve read. Here are the stats of the last 28 days.

Here are some thoughts (aka my reviews on Storygraph) on the six books, starting with the ones I enjoyed the most to the ones that left me a bit underwhelmed.

The Sun is also a Star, Nicola Yoon, 2016
I loved this much more than I expected. What a wonderful story of two young people who meet by chance (or fate) in NYC and fall in love on the day, when she (daughter of undocumented immigrants) is supposed to be deported. The story is told in short chapters, alternating from their different points of view and on occasion the side characters are taking over the narrators voice. It worked very well here and it helped to give the whole plot and story more colour. It also highlighted how much in our lives is determined by chance. Or is it fate after all? A great story and I’m happy to have ended the month on this one.

Cassandra in Reverse, Holly Smale, 2023
I might add more elaborate thoughts to this in a while [scatterbrain that I am, probably not though]. I really enjoyed this one. I like the unique way of time-travelling and could relate to Cassie much more than I thought and more than I might like to admit in public. I sometimes feel like my personality includes various neurodivergent aspects, but I shy away from self-diagonsis. But the comforting routines, staying inside my comfort zone, feeling like I’m not sharing my authentic / real person self with the world, if that makes sense. I loved the (hidden) message in this plot and found it inspiring and encouraging: People in general are kind and lovely and not in general hostile or dismissive and it’s worth the “risk” to be more open about stuff. And myself.

Ugh, I segue into self-therapy-talk, back to the book. I figured out the mystery of the letter writer about halfway through, I think the final revelation about Cassandra’s mum felt a bit too much and on the nose so to speak, but all in all I really, really enjoyed the being invited into this section of Cassandra’s life. Let’s end with positivity: The writing was great, the right variety of fun and emotions and I especially love the intro / finale about “what’s the beginning of a story anyway”.

Thees Uhlmann über die Toten Hosen, Thees Uhlmann 2019
[Audiobook] One of my favourite German singer/songwriters reads his book about the most successful German punkband Die Toten Hosen. Very entertaining, very relatable and beautifully written.

The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman, 2023
Another enjoyable and this time also quite sad story from the Thursday Murder Club. The plot and how those seniors and the police act and react is quite unrealistic, I know, but that is sort of the fun of it. (15 July 2024)

The Scent of Death, Simon Beckett 2019
This story kept me hooked for the last few days, even though I realized I’m not as comfortable with grisly thriller plots as I used to be. Thus I’m not sure if I’ll read the next one in this series. I thought the plot was well constructed and I had no idea who the killer was until it was revealed, which is always a good thing for a thriller plot. I also mostly enjoyed the variety of side characters and in some cases felt really bad about what happened to them. The subplot of someone from previous stories who (still) wants to kill Dr. Hunter felt a bit too far-fetched for me.

Standard Deviation, Katherine Heiny, 2017
I sort of enjoyed the actual writing in this book and to be fair it’s the only thing that kept me reading till the end. There wasn’t much of a plot and even though I don’t mind a story which tells only snap-shots in lives of some people, at least make these snapshots interesting. For me this dragged and meandered on and on.

Just imagine the Mamas & Papas sing these words. At least that’s how it goes in my mind. I had / am having a super laid back lazy weekend. The work week was busy and stressful for a self-doubting overthinker as me, so sleep and rest was called for. I still added quite a few things to my to-do-list for this weekend. I only did a few of the few, did some that weren’t on the list and I have to let myself be fine with that for now. I still need to work on my to-do-list / get-things-done routine though. Obviously.

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The Olympics in Paris are part of why I didn’t get that much done. I like watching it. Random sports I usually wouldn’t know or care about. But give me a German participant going for a medal or a personal best or a participant with an interesting / moving story and I’m all in and will cheer for them. I’m easily impressed, I admit it. Taking part in competitive sport on that level is impressive either way. So far I’ve watched field hockey, swimming, basketball, canoe / kayak slalom, judo and probably some more.

Watching some of the judo competition brought back vague memories of having done judo for a bit when I was a child. Not for very long and I have no idea why I even started with it. Looking back I guess friends of mine were trying it out and I just tagged along. Which also could be said for the other two sports I played “competitively” as in being on a proper team in a league when I was younger: badminton in my early teens and volleyball in my later teens. Both were definitely more of a tag along with my friends than my own decision to try it out. I did enjoy it, I think, but I have no idea if I was any good. I don’t think I really was a sportsperson back then and even now I’m very elective of how I want to exercise. But seeing those people compete on TV got me thinking. Remembering. Remembering also made me feel quite old.

I can’t recall I’ve ever watched canoe / kayak sport before. That looks challenging and impressive. At least I’m impressed, even though it didn’t work out for the German participant in the picture this time.

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In other regards I’ve also been reminiscing quite a bit this week. About music and fandoms. Not related, though the fandom was my music fandom (Frank Turner) which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Earlier this week I was listening to the radio in my car and the opening chords of “Uptown Girl” came up. The Westlife version from 2001 not the original Billy Joel version from 1983. This put me on a weird train of thought about cover versions as such and how they sometimes / often get a life of their own, because the generation of music fans who learn of this song through the cover version might not even know that it’s a cover. They might never check out the original version. I know I didn’t for all the late 80/ early 90s hits (cover version) of my generation. It took me quite a while to learn that those songs are cover versions. To me

“Knocking on Heaven’s Door” belongs to Guns’N’Roses (1990) (originally Bob Dylan, 1973)

“I Will Always Love You” belongs to Whitney Houston (1992) (originally Dolly Parton, 1974)

“I Drove All Night” will always be a Cindy Lauper song (1989) even though it was originally written for Roy Orbinson. His version was only released after the Lauper one, so it’s not really a cover version. I’m a bit on the fence about the song anyway, after “Eating before Swimming” (Frank Turners quite weird but interesting side project) made me aware that the “crept in your room, woke you from your sleep to make love to you” lyrics are a bit… strange. At least they manage to give these words a  new vibe with their version.

Back to “Uptown Girl”. Do we think that there are people who actually believe that this song is a Westlife song? How can that be? How long were Westlife around anyway? Or are they still? (Quick check on the internet: they are… again) And how can it be over 20 years that they had their big success?

For over a decade now my memory of when a song was released or when a song was in the charts seems to be quite skewed and often leads to the biggest “OMG you are so old” moments. I always think that it hasn’t been THAT long ago and it always turns out it’s been over two decades or longer. I’m going to be 50 next year, so of course my personal music journey started almost 40 years ago. I stopped keeping up with what’s in the charts about 25 – 30 years ago. I’ve been a travelling Frank Turner fangirl for 11 years now! Old as fuck!

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Which is a nice segue to my last “remember the good old days” moment from this week. Yes, I know this makes me sound like a grandma, who sees the past through rose-tinted glasses. I’m not on Twitter all that much anymore (and try to limit my time on Instagram) As much as I sort of defended Twitter for a long time when others already had realized that ship had sunk, by now even I am just so fed up by the trolls and bots and right-wing nutcases. You all know what it’s like.

But back in the day of my early Frank Turner fandom Twitter was one of the two places for me. Remember: self-doubting overthinker and thus not social and outgoing in real life. “Meeting” people online and staying in touch online was always easier for me than offline at gigs or such so especially in fandoms the internet was quite helpful for me. From time to time I mourn that version of Twitter from the mid-2010s. When I pondered that I started to remember the 2nd place:  the forum on frank-turner.com and mourned that as well.

Because I also met / made some gig-buddies through there. I know times have changed and message boards / forums are a thing of the past. Let’s not dwell on how something from only a decade ago can be a thing of the past. When does “the past” start? And no, Discord servers might be similar to message boards, but they are not the same and also they give me an awful headache! Which – to bring this back full circle . makes me feel so very old. I am! I’ll be 50 next year. It’s safe to assume that half my life has been over. And I’m usually fine with that looking forward, but it sometimes feels weird, because I DO NOT feel like almost 50. Does anyone ever though?

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I hadn’t planned to bring up another “old” theme now, but it sort of fit. Originally I didn’t want to go out today, even though I knew I probably would enjoy it and activity is a good thing. Being old and all. Until noon today my desire to be a sloth won but then I decided to go for a walk after all. Combine it with checking out an outdoor concert venue I’ll be at in August and get an idea where to best park the car the day before to be able to get back home quickly at night after the gig. The venue is located in an innercity park about 20 minutes drive away (probably 1 hour with public transport / walking during daytime hours). I had a stroll around the park, which was much bigger than I thought. And quite overgrown in some areas, which gave it a bit of a derelict vibe.

The outdoor venue as such seemed much smaller than I thought, but that will be fine. I also got a good idea of where to best leave my car and even went for another walk closer to my home, because I still had some podcast left to catch up with. So a successful outing all in all.

Back home I kept ignoring my to-do-list some more and was watching more Olympics instead. Which might be what I do for the next few weeks. We’ll see….

The title is a bad attempt to get some kind of routine to this possibly routine of Sunday posts. Throughout the week I’ve jotted down up to ten potential topics I thought I might elaborate on here when I find the time (aka today). Knowing me this post will include two of those topics at the most and a lot of random rambling.

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On Friday evening I took Twitter and Instagram off my phone – just for the day yesterday, both apps back on again – but I felt like I needed a tiny digital detox. And because I lack impulse control a digital detox was easiest achieved by not having the apps available. I was still on my phone more than I had planned. A bit on the Frank Turner Army Facebook group and a lot of WhatsApp, but the latter was at least with people I know.

When the weather forecast earlier in the week predicted a heatwave (or a super hot day anyway) for Saturday I knew I had or rather wanted to get away from it. This year so far I also didn’t spent as much time by the sea this year as I had liked. So I made plans and preparations and yesterday morning got in my car rather early and drove about 3 hours to the coast in the Netherlands.

All in all everything went fine, even though I’ll be glad that my next trip to the sea in early September will be to a then hopefully less busy place.

For the sea to properly work it’s calming soothing magic on me, the beach needs to have less people on it or at least give me enough space to be on my own with my own thoughts. Or no thoughts at all. But I’m still glad that I went and enjoyed the sun and the view and sound of the sea for a few hours.

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On the drive there and back I listened to a variety of podcasts episodes on among other things the war in Gaza/Israel, a few on mindfulness / mental health topics, an interview with Grace Petrie and two more podcasts interviewing Frank Turner. I think I might be all “frank-ed out” for a while, because it’s been similar / same questions over and over and of course he answers those with the same answers and anecdotes. I feel by now I could do that part of the job for him 🙂

In regards to podcasts I’m still looking for more podcasts to catch my interest and which I might listen to on a regular basis. Women’s voices please, because men have been given the podium without question for thousands of years already and I’m honestly not all that interested in what they have to say anymore. Yes, #notallmen, but in podcasting still too many for my taste.

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My list of the ten topics include the current debate on cancel culture in Germany. My changed perspective on the peace movement and arms manufacturers. Getting caught in the rain / drizzle way too many time this week. I can’t really be bothered to elaborate on either now to be honest.

Let’s end this with talking about books. I gave up on reading “Huckleberry Finn” about one third in after all. I just couldn’t take more of the meandering narrator’s voice and language. I know, it’s considered a masterpiece of literature for the use of the latter alone, but it’s been getting on my nerves. For a while I thought I’d try to live through the discomfort of it, because reading isn’t always supposed to be comfortable and easy and all. But I had to called it quits. I still will read “James” though I think, but possibly not any time soon. I also aborted another novel which I had high hopes for – “The Hundred Loves of Juliet” – but I didn’t like the writing and the plot was not what I had expected and again: I tried it for a while, but in the end decided against it. The novel I picked up instead seems to live up to my high expectations, though the plot also is a bit different than I had expected, but in a good way. I’ve read about one third of the book so far: “Cassandra in Reverse”.

I’ve sold another batch of my “never to read (again)” books and what did I do with the meagre proceeds? I used the 20% bonus on the sum to buy new (used) books again, of course. I did mention my lack of impulse control at the start of this post, right? It’s not just the lack of impulse control, I guess, but also the dopamine rush I get from ordering new books and the anticipation of the wonderful stories and/or insight I will get from reading them. There are worse “bad” habits to have, right?