Sunday, April 30, 2006

Pages Read Challenge 2006

I take part in the 2006 Pages Read Challenge at Bookcrossing.com!

Pages I have read in 2006:
5,114/15,000 (approx. 34.093%)



as of April 25, 2006

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Friday, April 21, 2006

Stephen King - Carrie

Carrie by Stephen King
253 pages
book # 16
where from: Bookcrossing.com

I finished the book today on my way from work back to university - and I really loved it :-) I assume most people heard about the book or at least about the movie, so I will keep my summary short.

Carrie White grew up with a very religious mother (her father died when she was still a little girl) who thought everything the teens of Carrie's age loved was the work of the devil and pure evil. Carrie's upbringing made her the perfect outcast at school and she didn't have any friends. After the students played a mean trick on Carrie, Sue Snell, a class mate of Carries, feels bad and asks her boyfriend Tommy to ask Carrie out for the prom. Due to the trick played on Carrie and another misbehaviour, the leader is not allowed on her prom and decides to work on a revenge. At the prom, there will be another evil trick played on Carrie - one, which ends in horror!

I really enjoyed this book a lot and I'm glad I didn't read it when I wasn't in the mood. I don't think I would have enjoyed it that much and finished it within only 3 days. Stephen King's first horror novel is a great one and I am not quite sure how he can keep up with it in his later novels (I read the one with the window, movie with Johnny Depp, I think? Or at least, I tried to...), but it sure is hard work! With this novel I shuddered, even though I knew what was going to happen.

I would really recommend you read this book if you haven't read it already!

Monday, April 10, 2006

books aquired

For some reason I felt like I deserved some books as a treat after finishing up those two papers in March... Well, they should have arrived at my parents' by now :-) Can't wait to get to see them *jumpingupanddown*
Two already arrived last week on Monday just a few minutes after I got to my parents', so I already brought them here with me...

The two books I already have here are:

Janet Evanovich - High Five
This is the fifth installment in her Stephanie Plum series which I really, really love! It always helps me to get out of a slump, but I think I'm going to read this one as soon as possible. I have to get on with the series a little *g*

Sue Grafton - B Is For Burglar
The second installment in her alphabet series starring Kinsey Millhone... I'm currently reading this one and I really enjoy it! So far I read a little over a third of it and I can't wait to finish it - I sooo want to know where Elaine Boldt is!!!

Then there are three other books (all first in series!) that should have arrived at my parents:

Victoria Laurie - Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye
Abby Cooper - obviously the lead character - is a psychic solving crimes... That's as much as I know. Anyway, it sounds interesting, so I decided I want to read it :-)

Emilie Richards - Blessed Is The Busybody
This is a cozy mystery set in Great Britain in a rather small town. The main character is the wife of a minister who decided to help troubled souls in need of justice. It is a group read over at cozy first mysteries. The books sounds like quite some fun, so I intend to read it.

India Ink - Scent To Her Grave
Persia Rose Vanderbilt, who is the lead character of this cozy mystery, is working in a bath and beauty shop where one day beauty queen Lydia Wang is found murdered. This is another group read for cozy first mysteries and I can't wait to read it. Hopefully, it will live up to what I expect...

Which Famous Modern American Poet Are You?

Every now and then I really enjoy quizzes, so there's the result I got from a new one:







Which Famous Modern American Poet Are You?




You are Marianne Moore. You are one weird poet who is totally obsessive-compulsive. Thankfully, people think you are harmless and somewhat like you and your work.
Take this quiz!








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I found this one at Projectile Reviews - thanks, Andi!

Saturday, April 8, 2006

on a more personal note - the last three months...

During the last three months I wrote 2 papers for university (all in all about 55 pages) - well, actually, this took me only about 5 weeks. That's all the time I had after writing an exam in mid-February (the papers where due March 30th).

I really hope I passed the exam and the two papers - four point, come on, I should be able to get lousy four aout of eighteen points, right?!? Even though the exam was not all too good, I think. I have a bad feeling about the exam and about the second paper, but maybe I'm lucky and got the four points I need to pass. I only have to pass so that I won't have to do it again, I have to be done with four exams and one paper by September. So far I have one exam and one paper *shameonme*

On the other hand, if I didn't pass, maybe I can give it another try and be really good? Heck, I just don't know what I want. The grades don't count a bit, but wouldn't it be nice to do better than just the four points necessary to pass? Argh!!!

Well, I think I better don't think about it too much, it'll be another two to three months until I know for sure, after all! So I will just concentrate on the many, many books I have not yet read and on the courses I intend to attend this semester (the new one began April 1st - how's that for an April joke? ;-) ).

read till March 31

Paul Joanides - Wild Things; 608 pages; non-fiction; B-
Funny book with hardly anything I didn't already know before reading it... At least the writing was entertaining :-)
borrowed

Jim Holdaway & Peter O'Donnell - Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up; 112 pages; graphic novel (# 1 Modesty Blaise collection); A-
Modesty Blaise is a young woman with a criminal past who retired and settled down in London, GB. Soon she comes to the conclusion that retirement is not exactly for her and so she doesn't really have to think long when a high agent of the British intelligence asks for her help. With her right hand, Willie Garvin, she sets out to hunt down other criminals. This copy contains 4 Modesty Blaise comic strips that were originally published in newspapers all over the world from 1963 till 2001. I really enjoyed reading those four 'first' strips (the first three indeed were the first three ever to be published, the fourth was a shorter strip originally created for those newspapers who didn't publish Modesty right from the start - it explains how Modesty became who she is today)!
borrowed

Hans Brox - Allgemeiner Teil des BGB; 399 pages; non-fiction (civil law); A-
This book I had to read for university - for civil law to be exact. It is a book on contracts and in which situations they are valid and in what situations they aren't. It is actually pretty interesting and though it actually was a re-read I still found some new aspects I didn't know before. This book 'only' talks about the basics which you need to know in order to get on with studies. Anyway, Brox managed to explain everything in a language that is matter-of-fact and interesting at the same time.
own it!

Jim Holdaway & Peter O'Donnell - Modesty Blaise: Mister Sun; 112 pages; graphic novel (# 2 Modesty Blaise collection); B+
This is the second installment in the series of books that gather together all the comic strips starring Modesty Blaise. This one contains the three strips 'Mister Sun', 'The Mind Of Mrs. Drake' and 'Uncle Happy'. Modesty this time has to save her protegé's life, find out who killed the daughter of a highly decorated war veteran and find out why one of Willie Garvin's former acquaintances died after falling over board when she could swim like a fish. This collection was just as good as the first - with one exception: The Mind Of Mrs. Drake was a little bit too alternative (mind reading???).
borrowed

Lee Harris - The Christening Day Murder; 224 pages; cozy mystery (#3 Chris Bennett); B+
When Chris gets an invitation from an old friend to attend a christening she only expects to meet her friend again and have a nice weekend away from home. With one exception: The christening is supposed to take place a church that stood in a town called Studsburg, which was flooded a good thirty years ago, but which now resurfaced after a long drought. Not long after Chris arrives, she finds a body in the church's building. This body lay there ever since the town was flooded and no one seems to know who this woman was - let alone who she could be... After she realizes that the local police and coroner won't do much to solve the case, she decides to investigate herself - which is not exactly the safest thing to do as she discovers. I already loved the first two in series - and this one was even better! I can't wait to read the next in series - and I already have it waiting for me at my parents'!
own it!

Dan Brown - The DaVinci Code; 489 pages; thriller (#2 Robert Langdon)
I really enjoyed reading this one the second time around. Maybe you remember I had tried this one a while back and ended up not finishing it after about a third. I think the mistake was that I hadn't checked on the order of the books and read DVC before Angels & Demons. Anyway, for some reason I really enjoyed it this time and I hope Dan Brown will write another book with him as a main character. I do realize Brown came up with a lot of fictionary symolism in the book, but I didn't mind that. Just imagining those wonderful paintings was amazing! This time Robert Langdon is being called to the Louvre where the curator, Jacques Saunière, is dead - but not only that, he lies on the floor nacked arms and legs spread wide away from his body. At first, Robert has no clue what all this is supposed to mean, but then he discovers the French police think he's the murderer. So, with the help of Saunière's granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, he disappears and tries to solve the murder himself.
own it!

Lee Harris - The St. Patrick's Day Murder; 212 pages; cozy mystery (#4 Christine Bennett)
Well, I read this one over St. Patrick's Day, which made it an even better read ;-) I have enjoyed all the Chris Bennett books I read so far and I don't think I could ever do without them. They make me forget everything around me, and I hope this will work out just as well in the future! I love Chris and how she solves the cases - there's no one out there just like her... Chris and Jack, a detective with the NYPD, meet with some of their friends, Jack's colleagues and their wife/girlfriend, for the St. Patrick's Day parade. That evening, one of the men is being shot and not much later a second is accused of murdering him. Of course, Chris wants to find out what really happened and why someone wanted to kill the police officer.
Bookcrossing

Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Match Me If You Can; 450 pages; romance
This is another romance set in the closer surroundings of the members of a certain football team from Chicago and the people they deal with on a regular basis. I have loved Phillips' books ever since I read the first one and they always make me cry with laughter... For some reason she always manages to make me see the characters in front of my inner eye :-) Matchmaker Annabelle Granger has no clue why rich and good-looking Heath Champion would need her service, but she doesn't worry about it as she can use the publicity she will get as soon as she finds the right woman for her client. Only recently, she took over her Grandmother's matchmaking business and it isn't working all too well. It can't possibly be this difficult, to find the right woman for someone like Heath, can it? But the sparks seem to fly between matchmaker and client - but can this be?
own it!

Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra; 264 pages; YA fiction (#2 Missing a.k.a. 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU)
In the beginning I thought I'd never get another book of that series. It just didn't make me want to read more, unlike Meg Cabot's other books. But then a friend said she had most of them (in English!) and that the next ones were better than the first. So I decided to give it a try after she said I could borrow her copies. I'm actually glad I did read that one cause it really is better. It's still no series I'd buy another book of, but reading? Why not? This time Jessica Mastriani, the main character with psychic abilities (she her a pic of a missing person and she'll know where the person is after sleeping), is pretending to have lost her powers after the whole incident with the FBI in the first book. But being a camp counselor for gifted students (musicians only!) brings trouble with it, she would never have thought of. First, a father asks her to find his daughter which sets her right back into the middle of the focus of the FBI - and then one of the kids she's supposed to take care of disappears.
borrowed

total pages read: 2870

Welcome!

Well, for those who don't know me a few lines about who I actually am:
I'm a 21 year old law student living in Germany. My favorite genre in books are mysteries (cozy and gory ones alike!), thrillers, fun reads, sometimes bizarre books and whatever else I can find that draws my attention (I have a short attention span! ;-)) Anyhow, I love to read and write about what I read, so blogging sounds fun, don't you think?

Anyway, I'm gonna blog whateer comes to my mind. There will be posts about books, university, my life, pretty much anything! Maybe some of you will comment, but let me tell you one thing: Due to some bad experience in the past I will work something out with th comments - I don't want to have to delete spam comments every other days...

So now, I think I should leave it at that and instead take care of a short post on what I did and read during the first three months of this year!