Non-Fiction Five Challenge - my final list

So now, it is April 30 and tomorrow Joy's Non-Ficton 5 Challenge will officially start. I guess it's about time I made up my mind about the 5 non-fiction books I'll be reading...










My Non-Fiction 5 choices:

• 1. Tony Buzan - Use Your Head (in German)


• 2. John de Graaf & David Wann & Thomas Naylor - Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic


• 3. Nancy Peske & Beverly West - Cinematherapy For Lovers


• 4. Geneen Roth - Breaking Free From Compulsive Eating (in German)


• 5. Hayim Halevi Klein - To Be A Jew

My one alternate:
Bill Bryson - In A Sunburned Country (in German)

I can't wait to start reading, despite all the books I have to read for university :-)

My visual DNA

I found this thanks to an acquaintance and really enjoyed doing it. :-)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

History Meme

I just found this history meme at Literary Feline's blog and I really liked it. I was curious to learn more about my birth date, so I decided to do it even though I wasn't tagged ;-)

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthdate, no year.
April 10

2. List 3 important events.
1606 - The Charter of the Virginia Company of London was established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
1925 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York, New York by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1959 - Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, weds Michiko (née Michiko Shoda), a commoner.

3. List 2 births.
1847 - Joseph Pulitzer, American journalist and publisher (d. 1911)
2007 - Princess Ariane of the Netherlands

4. List 1 Death.
1954 - Auguste Lumière, French film pioneer (b. 1862)

5. List 1 Holiday or Observance.
Feast for Three Days - Third Day (Thelema) (don't ask me! LOL)

Apparantly...

... I've been gone for the last few days. Classes started again and I haven't even managed to write the review for Lee Harris' The Passover Murder. :-(

But then, at least my classes made sure I won't get out of reading material ;-) My upcoming reads for classes are:

For a class on honor (in literature):
Lope de Vega - Fuente Ovejuna (I'm actually already reading this one, I hope to read at least half of it until Monday.)
William Shakespeare - Macbeth
William Shakespeare - Othello
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - Emilia Galotti (I already read this one for school, so I hope it will only be a fast re-read.)
Heinrich von Kleist - Die Familie Schroffenstein (I think the English title is "The feud of the Schroffensteins".)

For a class on jealousy:
James Joyce - The Dead (This one's part of Dubliners, I have to read it until Thursday!)
Marcel Proust - A Love Of Swann
Marcel Proust - The Prisoner (Additional because we have a week without that class due to a holiday.)
Marcel Proust - The Fugitive (Additional, same reason as "The Prisoner".)
Heinrich von Kleist - Letters
René Girard - Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure
Stendhal - Red and Black (A friend used to tell me about this book, it was her favorite and now I'll get to read it, yay! - Though, it is rather huge...)
Sigmund Freud - ??? (I don't know the title right now, it's on jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality?.)
Stendhal - On Love
Honoré de Balzac - The Girl With The Golden Eyes
Shoshana Felman - Rereading Feminity

Quite a bit to read, huh? And this is only the list for classes, not my personal want to read's. At least, I have about 3 months for this ;-)

And for those three months I also have a few buddy reads:
Carolyn Haines - Buried Bones
Laura Childs - Shades Of Earl Grey
Mary Daheim - Fowl Prey
Carolyn Haines - Splintered Bones
Laura Childs - English Breakfast Murder
Stephanie Barron - Jane And The Man Of Cloth

Plus 7 challenge books! I might be busy, I assume ;-)

What is a classic?

For the classics challenge, I've been asked what by my definition is a classic.

I did some research about this and decided to use part of Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve's answer to what a classic is:

A true classic is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at least have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted whatever prevented the restoration of the balance of order and beauty.

I found this at about.com

I have found a few incomplete lists and did not find them satisfying enough as I think there were quite some important authors missing, so I am not going to post a link or links to those lists.

Meg Cabot - Missing You

Lines to remember:
"What about me?" He put his arms around my waist. "Are you always going to know where to find me?"
"Oh yes," I said, grinning back at him.

Jess Mastriani comes back from working for the US government a few years after the last book, but not everything is as it used to be. She's single, she no longer has her psychic abilities, and she doesn't even know who she is.
So she goes to New York City with her best friend Ruth, where Jess attends Juillard, but one day in summer, her ex, Rob Wilkins, turns up on her door and asks for her help in finding his long-lost sister. But how should Jess be able to find anyone with her abilities gone? After thinking about it, she decides to help Rob and again gets into a new adventure.

I can't believe this was the final installment! While I at first didn't enjoy the 1-800-MISSING books too much - at least not as much as I love the Princess Diaries books - I borrowed #2-4 from a friend and came to really love them. I got this book only because I got hooked while reading the first 3-6 pages at the book shop. I had to leave, so I had to make a quick decision - and ended up buying it despite being on a strict book-buying-budget this year. I can't seem to get enough of Jess and her friends, so I guess I'll have to re-read the books again - and then there is still the TV series, which, though it isn't exactly like the books, is still fun to watch.

If you like some paranormal YA every now and then, I can sure recommend this series!

Meg Cabot - Missing: Missing You

Missing You
Cabot's 46th book
5th book featuring Jessica Mastriani, girl with psychic abilities caused by her being hit by lightning
268 pages
Simon & Schuster

Lightning girl all grown-up - the final exciting installment!

All Jessica Mastriani ever wanted was to be normal. But a walk home in a particularly stormy night changed all that. Struck by lightning, Jess suddenly developed psychic powers - and the ability to find anyone, anywhere, dead or alive.

Her newfound talent made her invaluable for the US government, but her work for them took another terrible toll. Now back home, aged nineteen, and with her powers gone, Jess is Lightning Girl no more. Starting again in a new town, intent onfinding a new life, she is less than happy when her ex, Rob Wilkins, shows up at her door,begging for her help in finding his long-lost sister. But how can Jess find anyone - let alone the sister of the man she once loved - when she can't even find herself?

I was on no-book-buying! I mean it! But when I spend some spare time at the book shop and read the first few pages I was hooked and had to get this final installment!

First sentence:
"My name is Jessica Mastriani."