It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here!

It’s time for the Dewey 24-hrs Read-a-Thon! And I – along with hundreds of people around the world – will do nothing but read and read for a whole day and night!

My read-a-thon plan is basically that I have no plan – I have a pile of selected books that I’d like to read, my trusty Kindle loaded with alternatives, and I am simply going to read as much as I can while eating yummy snacks! And as always, I will try to stay awake for the full 24 hours (I’ve yet to succeceed).

I will be updating this post throughout the day and now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go sit down in my brand-new comfy reading chair and get this show on the road!

14.00: And we’re off!
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
Bruxelles, Belgium
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
I’m not really sure, I’m looking forward to them all, but both “The Watcher in the Shadows” and “Tales of Terror” have been on my TBR-must read for a long time!
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
The carrot cake and the pulled pork that has been wafting out its delicious smell since 6 a.m.!
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
I am 33, I’m originally from Denmark, but currently living in Bruxelles, and I will be reading from my brand-new comfy reading chair and (as previously) joined there today by my extremely cute, stuffed pet dragon, Rognar The Destroyer!
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today?
Not much, I think I have found a nice way of read-a-thon’ing (we should definitely make that a real verb!), but I will try again to stay awake through the whole thing.

16.20: The Poor Hanged Maidens
I’m off to a great start and have just finished my first book – “The Penelopiad” by Margaret Atwood. A re-telling of the story of Odysseus’ wife Penelope – what did she actually do those many, many years waiting for him to come home while being beset by Suitors? And why were her twelve maids hanged by Odysseus when he finally came home?
This was a very different story than I had expected, as it was quite humorous – something I don’t usually connect with Atwood, but she pulls it off and tells a different and convincing story of Penelope.
Now I will put in some headphones for a little audiobook time while I get some things done around the house 🙂

18.15: Dresden and dinner
I’ve spent the last few hours taking a walk in the sun, preparing dinner and doing some housework while being accompanied by none other than wizard Harry Dresden! As must be clear by now, I absolutely adore the Dresden Files and especially when narrated by James Marsters – and it is perfect for still reading while not having to sit down all day 🙂

Now it’s back to the comfy chair with William Faulkner’s classic family tale “As I Lay Dying” (with the strange and kinda scary horse-eye cover… I’m really hoping to get to figure out why on Earth there is a creepy horse-eye on this book!)

21.15: Southern drawls and pulled pork
I’m about 2/3 of the way through “As I Lay Daying”. When I had looked at the book, I hadn’t begun to imagine that it would take me this long to read it, but the constantly changing narrators and thick Southern vernacular means that each sentence must be read carefully. But I don’t mind at all, because it’s such a beautiful story! Of grief and hardship and family, and I am happy for it to last as long as it has to.
So, before I dig in to the last pages, I will go and get my 3.5 kg (7 pounds) pulled pork out of the oven and settle down for some lovely dinner.

00.30: Wuh, huh… I mean.. I think that…
I just finished reading “As I Lay Dying” and I honestly don’t know what to write. I’ve never read a book like it, and I can’t tell you why I’m currently completely out of sort because of it. It just got to me – crawled under my skin and into my head, and I think I might never stop thinking about it… And yet, I’m also sure that it’s not for everyone. It’s got heavy vernacular, not much actual action and some of the strangest and hard-to-follow characters, I’ve ever seen.
Now, the only thing to do is to continue with another book I expect to love by one of my all-time favourite authours: “The Watcher in the Shadows” by Carlos Ruiz Zafòn

02.50: Breaking out the secret weapons!
We’re past the halfway point of the read-a-thon, and I am surprisingly fresh (Jinx!), and halfway through my third book “The Watcher in the Shadows”. I do however attribute most of my freshness to the bringing out of some of my secret read-a-thon weapons: all-time favourite authors (Zafón) and my new Hogwarts comfy pants! I mean, you just know it’s going to be a great night when you’re wearing something that looks like it might be official Hogwarts night clothes, right?! 🙂 Hope you’re all having a marvelous time out there!

05.30 – 08.30: Sensible? What do you mean, I have to be sensible?!
So, after having finished the lovely and quite scary “The Watcher in the Shadows”, I realised that while I was relatively fresh, I do have a pesky high-pressure job to get back to on Monday morning, and unless I wanted to destroy any chance of being functionable, I might need a bit of sleep. So, I capitulated and spent a few hours in Dreamland, before embarking on the final hours with you.

10.30: Golden rays and Chinese girls
I spent my morning sitting in a makeshift “chair” made from sofa cushions next to the open balcony doors, watching the light turning from golden yellow to white. My pensive Moomin cup and a book about a Chinese small town girl trying to make it in the city of Beijing keeping me company. It’s a different, but charming and melancholy book about the hunger for something more, something bigger.
Now I just have to decide what to read for the final 3 hours of the read-a-thon!

14.00: Unfortunate Events, fairy tales and the End
I’ve spent the last hours of the read-a-thon reading about the fate of the poor Baudelaire children in “A Series of Unfortunate Events 2” and finished the wonderful 24 hours with a short, but sweet tale of clocks, princes and giving your heart away in “Clockworks” by Philip Pullman.

I’ve had another wonderful read-a-thon, and I’m already waiting for the next one! I’ve travelled the literary world with American classics of hardship and family, frightening and lyrical stories by favourite authors, struggled against ennui alongside a Chinese woman, despaired with the Baudelaire children, and wept and laughed at the injustice of the twelve hanged maids.

I’ve read 6 books for a total of 1178 pages, and 3 hours of an audio book, which I am very satisfied with as I loved everyone of them!
Thank you all for your wonderful comments and support, it made all the difference! And see you again in April 😉

What would you do if you could buy loads of great second-hand books, pay an almost ridiculously low price for them and support a children’s charity at the same time? Go nuts! Exactly! So that’s what I did…

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to discover at the last moment that a bi-annual charity pay-by-the-centimeter book sale was being held just outside of the city where I live. I went without any real expectations (although I had heard great things), and was absolutely overwhelmed by the eclectic and huge selection.

Table after table and row after row of books in all genres and conditions! It was genuinely a book lover’s heaven and I spent a blissful 4 hours browsing through the boxes and loading more and more treasures into my greatly insufficient carrier bag. I kept telling myself: It’s for charity! Greatest reason ever to buy anything 😉
And after my hours of browsing, I ended up paying a grand total of €23/£18/$31 for a beautiful stack of 16 new literary treasures – 80 cents per centimeter!

 So, what did I get? Have a look:
“The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood
“The Wasp Factory” by Iain Banks
“The Little Friend” by Donna Tartt
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” by Mark Haddon
“The Hunger Angel” by Hertha Müller
“The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” by David Mitchell
“The Last Letter from your Lover” by Jojo Moyes
“Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer
“Barcelona Plates” by Alexei Sayle
“Silk” by Alessandro Baricco
“Clockwork” by Philip Pullman
“The Ruby in the Smoke” by Philip Pullman
“Thud!” by Terry Pratchett
“Men at Arms” by Terry Pratchett
“Strange Words” by Patrick Chamoiseau

And let me tell you, I could easily have put another 20 in my bag. But I absolutely adore my pile, which is a mix of books I’ve looked for and wanted for a long time (Tartt, Mitchell, Atwood, Banks), some that I needed for my shelves (Pratchett, Pullman, Haddon), some that I’d heard of and thought might be interesting (Moyes, Müller, Foer) and the ones I have no idea about, but just had to have (Barrico, Sayle, Chamoiseau).

What about you? What are your latest 2nd hand treasures? And have you ever been to a “books-by-the-centimeter/inch”-type sale?

Some people use slips of paper. Some use an expired bus ticket. Some fold in a corner to the horror of others. And some use beautiful specially-made bookmarks to keep their place.

I’m one of those people that generally uses whatever is at hand, but most often, I do manage to use a proper bookmark. And I gasp in horror and fear whenever I see someone about to fold down a corner or – even worse – lay a new paperback face down, so the spine cracks!

The Book Depository recently held a competition for their customers to design new bookmarks, and 16 winners have now been chosen. And the winning bookmarks are so gorgeous that this whole post was inspired by them! I want to buy each and every one and never use anything else for my reading.

What about you? What do you use for a bookmark? Or do you use anything at all?

Here are some of my favourites (although it’s almost impossible to choose!) and you can see all 16 winners here:

All images are the property of The Book Depository

“The Virgin Suicides” is a small book that contains so much. One of those books that are not really about what they’re about – but rather use the story to subtly say something about life. And in this case death as well.

The book is about the 5 Lisbon girls and the boys that adore them.The story begins when the youngest Lisbon sister attempts suicide – something inexplicable for her surroundings, yet strangely drawing.
Quite unusually, the story is told from the first person plural point of view of the anonymous neighbourhood boys that observe and watch the teenage Lisbon sisters, who are the center of the story. From this distant, yet very emotional point of view, the reader discovers the strange lives of the beautiful Lisbon sisters, who should be average, happy teenage girls, but somehow are something different and alien.

I find it quite difficult to write this review, as it’s hard to put into words exactly why this book was so good. I guess in the end, it’s the fact that it touched me very much – it’s depressing and sweet and full of the “I don’t really know what’s going on”-feeling that I think everybody has experienced in their lives, especially as teens.

Eugenides writes very well and although he might seem a bit heavy-handed with the descriptions when you first start to read, the flow of his language – its almost poetic quality – is really lovely. The unusual narrative voice of the boys works surprisingly well and manages a balance between the yearning teenage boys and the melancholy middle-aged men. And despite being a 30-something year old woman, I felt like a part of the “us” that watched and was desperately fascinated by the Lisbon girls – while all along having perhaps a much better idea of what “happened” to the girls, as someone who was once a teenage girl myself.

While most teenage girls thankfully never end up in the situation the Lisbon girls do, I think the intangible and desperate feeling they seem to experience and live through in different ways, is something that most teenage girls have experienced. And I personally still have no words for that feeling, but I am humbled by Eugenides’ ability to make this book resonate that feeling in me still…

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides; published in 2011 by Bloomsbury (first published 1993)

When you love books as much as I do, you’re in the lucky position of never running out of new ones to read. If anything, your biggest problem is often deciding which one in the mountain (and yes, it would be the size of an actual mountain!) will be the next one. On Goodreads, I have several lists of books to-read: Some that I really want to read, some that I found interesting (potential reads) and some that I have to read. Meanwhile, several of the rooms in my home are dominated by bookshelves, my Kindle is ready to burst and hundreds of more books await on the computer.

It seems like a luxury problem, right? But when you want to read everything – in fact, you want to have already read all of the books! – it can sometimes lead to the opposite: such overwhelming choice that you instead end up not choosing at all…

Therefore, I made a TBR (to be read) jar – it’s really just an old jam jar that I cleaned, put a pretty ribbon around and filled with bits of paper. Fancy, huh? Wish I could claim that I had thought of that all on my own, but I got the idea from a fellow Danish book blogger Frk. Hyms.
The jar contains exactly 42 bits of paper with book titles on them and I add a new one whenever I draw one, so it will never be empty (if you’re wondering why 42, then my answer is that there is a big gap in your literary education, and I will assume that you will not be reading the rest of this post, as you go find a copy of a brilliant book written by Douglas Adams).

So now, every time I don’t know what to read, I shake the TBR jar and draw the next book from there (or ask my lovely assistant aka The Husband to draw for me). I recently decided to have the jar filled with mostly books that are physically on my shelves… Mostly to justify buying more books!

Is there a book that I absolutely have to read? The best book in all the history of time? Let me know! I might have read it already or plan to, but you might just help me discover my new favourite book and I would be forever in your debt.

I had heard of ”The Day of the Triffids” for some time. It is hailed as one of the best within science fiction classics and I personally liked the idea of creepy plants attacking the world – very “Little Shop of Horrors”. So, that’s what I expected when my TBR-jar revealed that I should be reading “Triffids” next.

I was so wrong. Instead I found myself reading what turned out to be probably the best and most frightening dystopian story I’ve ever read. There are indeed stalking, seemingly evil plants that most likely want to take over the earth, but we never really know – and that is probably the main thing that makes this such a wonderfully terrifying and realistic tale: nobody shows up to tell the reader or our protagonist why the world has suddenly gone hay-wire, and while he has some knowledge that helps him and us get a better idea of what’s going on, there is never any answer. It isn’t spelled out that so and so is just evil or wants to corrupt the world – it just is.

It’s a menacing, constant presence that gives the whole book a feeling of urgency and despondency at the same time. Because if you can’t reason with someone (or some thing) and you can’t explain to yourself why you’re in a situation, it becomes difficult to hold on to your sanity. And that, more than anything, is what “Day of the Triffids” manages to show – the utter failure of human society when events beyond our reasoning occur. When something so meaningless and inexplicable happens, that we are unable to process it and what happens to most people when they find themselves in that position.

My version of the book has a quote on the cover that reads: “One of those books that haunts you for the rest of your life”, and I couldn’t agree more. I expected a science fiction-y, semi-silly (because evil plants, you know) old-fashioned story of how the world was invaded and then something miraculously happens in the last 5 pages and the world is saved (“War of the Worlds” – I’m looking at you!). Instead I got a haunting story of survival, mental struggle and a sobering look at human arrogance.

P.S. I read the original text published in 1951, which is beautifully written in a distinctly English voice. Halfway through, I had left home without my book, but happily realised that I had it on my Kindle – which turned out to be a completely different book! Large parts of the text were missing and instead of the flowing and beautiful language, it was written in U.S. English and seemed more like an action novel! So, be sure to get the original version!

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, published by Penguin Books in 2008 (org. published in 1951)