Weekly diary

Scents worn this week were Doe In The Snow, Aromatics Elixir, Botrytis, Meet Me On The Corner, Ambre de Merveilles, Chanel No19 and Memoire d’une Odeur. Funnily my sense of smell felt slightly enhanced this week, although I had a thankfully not Covid viral laryngitis.

On my plate I had red cabbage plus brats, pasta with tomato sauce and another one with truffeld pesto plus linguine with mussels. The boyfriend made roast Goose legs with spaetzle and red cabbage and sunday we had chicken noodle soup made from leftover carcasses, that we usually collect in the freezer until we have enough for soup.

I finished reading City of Girls, that I enjoyed a lot, although I had some problems to believe that a young woman in the 40ies could get from virginity to a threesome in just one year. What I liked was the description of the wartime NYC and the showbiz. It was a highly amusing read and I I can recommend it. Now I started Pachinko, but cannot say too much about it.

2020 Reading list

I managed to read or listen to audiobooks more than i thought. I listened to my audiobooks mostly on my commute, and with biking a lot this summer and autumn i got at least a bit more than 2 hours of it on my bike commute.

I read a lot of series that year, beginning with the “Blossom Street” series of Debbie Macomber, which is a very light reading, but it is also very relaxing. I also like Stephen King, so i listened to the Mr. Mercedes series on audible, read by my favorite reader David Nathan (sorry, its in German).

I started the Harley Merlin series, but gave up after the fourth book, i could not find myself in this alternate universe, although i am a diehard Harry Potter fan. I thought the series lacked a bit of charm, and there was too much fighting for my personal taste.

I also heard the complete “Into the Wilderness” series by Sara Donati, that was not too bad and then dived into the Sumpflochsaga (Amuylett series in the english translation). Usually i am not a big fan of Fantasy, but this self published series was quite good and i read it to the end. Note, that the sequels get longer and longer, so the later ones were more than 1000pages long.

I read “The Fifth Season”, but did not enjoy it much, which astounded me, because i usually like SF. I also really disliked “Rosewater”. The best SF i read was “Children of Time” by Tchaikovsky, because of its really special perspective, written from the view of a strange arachnid people.

I listened to Richard Russo´s “Empire Falls”, that is a great book, although a bit depressing and “Behold the Dreamers” from Mbue, that made a great impression on me. I also finally listened to “The Help”, that i gave up on some years ago. This time i managed to get into the dialects better, but sometimes it was a hard listening for a german native.

I am still listening to “100 Years of Solitude” by Garcia Marques and in the beginning of “City of Girls” by Elisabeth Gilbert, which is a really great fun read.

Alltogether i read and listend to 42 whole books (i did not mention all of them..) and have to finish two more. I hope i will keep up my reading list that long for this year too.