Back To Shore

Lyrics: “St. Christopher Is Coming Home” – Frank Turner, 2008

Oh look, it’s Sunday again.

I had a lovely weekend with friends I don’t see all that often anymore.

We went out to eat: breakfast, late lunch, cocktails, dinner… you name it. Not everything each day, but quite a few times.

The cakes in one of the places we met for breakfast looked to delicious to not share (with four people) at least one piece after an already yummy breakfast.

We went out to see stuff. A “Planet Ocean” photo exhibition and a digital and immersive art installation with works from Dali and Gaudi.

We talked. We laughed. We reminisced. We fangirled.

It all went by too fast. Let’s not wait so long to do that again.

There are a lot of things going on at the moment in my country, in other European countries, in the world. I have many thoughts on a lot of those things, but none in any eloquent shape or form I’d feel comfortable to share yet. Unlike the gazillions of people spewing their biased and unfounded ‘thoughts” on social media.

Here are some nice photos from this weekend instead:

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.

Here are a few thoughts on the books I read in form of the often short and possibly not very substantial reviews on Storygraph. Even if I don’t rate book as such anymore, I’ll here share them in order of how much I enjoyed reading them. Favourite first, obviously.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin, 2014
If I still rated books, this would have gotten 5 stars. Such a lovely story about real people and their lives, misfortunes and mistakes but also their joys and achievements. It’s also about books and why we love and need them. Sooooo good. This has been the 3rd book I read from Zevin and I enjoyed all of them. They’ve all been unique in their plot, which I also liked a lot because it shows how good a writer she is. I’ll definitely try to read more of her.

No Time Like The Past (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #05), Jodi Taylor, 2015
Another entertaining story from St. Mary’s. There is always so much going and again they are a whirl-wind through history, that I sometimes wish they’d slow down a bit. I mean they do in the plot, but it’s not noticeable in the storytelling as such. I just sometimes feel like I’m loosing track of who’s where/when and what’s happening to whom and all. But maybe that’s just me.

The Edge of Lost, Kristina McMorris, 2015
The summary mentioned “skillfully weaving these two stories” and I found that misleading, because it wasn’t really two stories, was it? I don’t know. I kind of enjoyed the story, but it was such a slow burn and sadly enough I didn’t manage to care about neither the main nor some of the side characters all that much. The end comes with a few surprises at least, but by that time I had already almost lost interest.

The Lighthouse Library, Rachael Lucas, 2024
I enjoyed most of the previous Applemore books, but didn’t know this would be a standalone in the series. It was nice enough, but to me it tried to hard to be educational about environment and poverty and all that stuff. It would have needed more substance for me to have any impact, to me this felt a bit performative.

The Wake-Up Call, Beth O’Leary, 2023
I enjoyed previous works from Beth O’Leary, but this just didn’t quite land with me. The writing was fine and the plot idea as such okay for me. I liked the competition angle and miscommunication as a trope often enough works for me, but at least halfway through the story I wanted to knock some sense into the female lead and force her to address what upset her last Christmas. Ugh! The actual reason for the not / wrongly delivered reason was so lame IMHO. All in all… just no cup of tea sadly.

The Guncle Abroad, Steven Rowley, 2024
I guess after how much I enjoyed “The Guncle” a sequel had a lot to live up to. For me this story sadly didn’t deliver as much as I had hoped. Parts of it felt too much like a travel advert for Europe, parts were just a bit silly. I didn’t understand either why Greg and Livia had to marry right now and neither why Patrick had ended things with Emory. I tore through it on a weekend, but if I’m honest a lot of that had to do with me wanting to get it over with.

American Panda, Gloria Chao, 2018
For some reason this book wasn’t for me. I found the writing a bit boring, didn’t find it in me to care all that much about the main character and all in all neither the plot.