Hilarity all over the place in January

During the past few weeks I found quite a few things that made me laugh out loud. Since I definitely don't read enough to give you a review every other day, I figured I'd let you in on a few other things in my life as well. Let's see how often I can get this done.

I'm not the person for team sports, but I enjoy watching them every now and then (soccer is big in Germany, but really??). The following video is one I found through Yahoo, while checking the news. Since the boy hasn't been injured during this involuntary stund, I think laughing is quite alright!


My very own favorite throughout 2010:

These Israeli soldiers in Hebron probably needed a little fun for stress relief.

On a German blog I found out that Ricarda started another "blog flower parade". Mine looks like this:

Isn't it absolutely pretty???
If you want to see your own, you just have to get to the HTML Graph. Just enter the url to your website.







Then I found this video after watching today's news on TV:

This was taped in a German town, Erfurt, and apparently they have problems with this particular roundabout...

Then again, Sheila from One Person's Journey through a World of Books made me laugh with this oh so true statement about coffee:


David Bogner from Treppenwitz found this spelling error on TV a short while ago:


And Haddassah of In The Pink has a regular feature, Wednesday's Wacky Signs that make me laugh all the time. The latest one is here:

But I really recommend you check them out every week. It's worth it!

And another video featuring Dan Savage @ Steven Colbert, thanks to GalleyCat because he might just get an advice show at MTV. I would have put it in here, but the feature to embed it doesn't work with blogger. Check it out anyway, because they have some amazing video clips for the It Gets Better campaign at the end!

Those who have been around at my Dreamworld probably know that Jill Shalvis is on my auto-buy list, but I also subscribe to her blog and a little over a week ago she had a great post on why men are happier - and she had some very good points there. Seems like we girls might be on the downside of those things. As hilarious as this blog post ist, always consider this - we were blessed with many good things as well. Ever seen a man give birth and thus give life? Yeah, me neither

That's it for this month. I might just make this a more regular feature...

Book Review: SECRETS OF A SUMMER NIGHT by Lisa Kleypas

I'm playing catch up here, working on some old reviews so that the reviews for the Series Challenge don't seem so out of place.

Author	Lisa Kleypas
Title	Secrets of a Summer Night
Publisher	Avon
Date of Publication	26. Oktober 2004
Page Count	375
ISBN	978-0-06-009129-3
Series	Wallflowers #1

The young English women Annabelle, Evangeline and American sisters Lillian and Daisy spent most of their current season as wallflowers - for different reasons. All four of them are looking for the right man to marry, so one evening they decide to work together and help each other find a husband. The first of the women they want to find a husband for is Annabelle. She is the oldest of the four and needs a wealthy husband in order to save her family from being ruined. The women try to use her beauty and intelligence to win her an aristocrat, but the rich and powerful commoner Simon Hunt is relentlessly pursuing her and doesn't accept a no from Annabelle.

I actually started reading the Wallflower series with the second book, It Happened One Autumn. I liked how the story was set up and thus didn't bother checking for the actual order of the series. However, I went back to read the first book and then the other 3 in the series.

Annabelle has a strong personality, but due to her family's financial situation, she couldn't find a husband during her seasons so far. As she once again sits in a chair at the side of everything, she and three other young women who suffer under the same circumstances in this society start up a conversation and eventually come up with a plan to land each of them a suitable husband. This set-up leads to a very amusing series of historical romances.

The four women couldn't be different, but after the first few chapters I already wanted to spend as much time as possible with them. I wanted to know how they will meet their future husbands, what obstacles they will encounter and who their husbands will be. Basically everything that makes a novel a romance.

With their hilarious conversations, the great characters and minor characters that you will meet again in other books by Kleypas, I felt right at home. I love being able to return to people (characters) to find out what will happen with them in the future.

All in all, I can only gush about Kleypas' novels so far. If you enjoy romance, and returning to characters you've already met, you should try her series. But then, I'm probably the last to have discovered her...

Series Challenge 5 - The reviews

I am so sorry for the delay! Finally, this is the post for you to post your reviews for the Series Challenge Season 5. Just post them in the comments section, I will update the list below semi-regularly.

DanyStormborn
Narcissus in Chains

lkkin-bot
I Shall Wear Midnight

How much disbelief can you suspend?

So, I started reading Nauti Boy by Lora Leigh a couple nights ago and I’m very annoyed. And this is putting it mildly! A young woman has recently been attacked and was almost raped. This left her seriously scared from said attack including straight-out fear of all men, even the guy she was into since she was a teenager. In fact, she basically ran away from this guy, whom she always wanted even though he was simply standing in the house the both grew up in (her Mom and his Dad are married, which makes them step-siblings). And now the author expects me to believe that this woman visits the man only hours after this incident on his boat and starts seducing him. She flat out tells him that she wants his lips and teeth on her nipples. Once she raised her shirt above her bra for him, the guy’s cousin comes in and makes a rather lewd joke about the situation and she’s still all grinning, smiling, and only slightly embarrassed about the situation. Umm, hello? There’s a guy standing in the door? You’re supposedly scared to death of anything with a dick? If you really are, you don’t just stand there with your shirt raised above your bra, grinning at the dude. You cover up as quick as possible, you hide out, you’re maybe so afraid you can’t move. But you certainly won’t stand there grinning and not worry about the situation.

I can only hope this book gets better. Otherwise it will end up flying across the room – unless it’s really hilarious because of all the WTF moments, in that case I might just read the book chapter by chapter, to share those moments with you all.

Pages Read Challenge Season 3

In 2009, I hosted the Pages Read Challenge for the first time. Now it is going into its third season. As I thought the interest might not be there for this challenge, I haven't put up a post for it until now. I figured I'd just do it for myself. But I was asked and here you go!

As always, the rules are easy:

1) Pick a number of pages you'll be attempting to read in 2010. It doesn't matter whether your goal is 10,000 or 100,000. You can always up your number as we go along, so you don't need to go all up high with your page count.

2) Write a blog post about it in which you will keep track of your page count.

3) Comment here with your goal number and a link to your blog post (if you have a blog - otherwise, just leave a comment with your name and the goal number). I'll then add you to the list of participants below.

4) The challenge starts January 1, 2010 and ends December 31, 2010. Only pages read after the new year has begun count in for the challenge, but any and every page you read counts for this challenge. I don't care about re-reads, overlaps with other challenges, audio books (use the publisher's page count) or e-books! Just count the pages you read, no matter what type of book you're reading :-) See, it's a really easy challenge!

5) As usual: Have fun!

The participants:
1) Kathrin (me) - 25,000
2)

Secret Santa!

So, I'm a bit late with this, but I absolutely wanted to add a pic, no matter how crappy it turned out to be I signed up for the Book Blogger Holiday Swap a while ago as it has been fun last time around and I like picking some books for other people to read.

About a week before Christmas I received a package with no significant markings and due to some misunderstandings, I had not even expected anything to arrive. I assume you can imagine how surprised I was when I opened the package and found this:



Isn't this amazing? My Secret Santa figured the best thing to go with a book was another book, and I agree! I had those two books on my wishlist for a while already and now I can get around to read them.

My pretty new books are Midori by Moonlight by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga and an ARC of Austenland by Shannon Hale.

Now, my dear Secret Santa, I'm afraid I am not yet familiar with your blog, and despite intensive search, I have not yet figured out where to find you. I'd be glad if you could let me know who you are I already have your name, but either the massive amount of antibiotics in my system mess with my detecting abilities or my own incapability where web searches are concerned have hindered me.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful time last night celebrating the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011!

I can tell you I definitely counted down the days until the end of 2010. I've been sick or recovering most of the time (5 rounds of antibiotics, as far as I remember, but they messed with my memory, so who knows?) and everything else wasn't much better. My reading sucked - I don't remember the last time I read so few books, and I didn't complete a single challenge. At least I think I didn't complete a single challenge, because I just don't want to deal with all the lists and then discover what I suspected all along. I think out of the 12 months, I could have done without 9.5 of them.

The other 2.5 months, though, I'd definitely want to keep those. First I spent about 10 days in May with my cousin in Maryland and in New York City for BEA (loved this experience!). Then I spent another 3 weeks in September with my cousin, just because I missed them all so much. (Okay, and she held some of the books I got at BEA hostage to make sure I return ) And during the past 6, 7 weeks I got this big fat smile back

For 2011, my only plans are to keep my smile, to read a lot more deliberately, to somehow find a way to deal with my freakishly high Mt. TBR (I'm at 378 unread books right now ) and maybe figure out a way to get my health back. I hate being sick!

Since I only signed up for a few special reading challenges I just like too much. These are The Story Siren's Debut Author Challenge, because I enjoy discovering new authors. As a fan of mysteries and thrillers, Jen's Criminal Plots Reading Challenge is a must do challenge for me. And of course, I can't host the 5th season of the Series Challenge without participating myself! (And two challenges that are hosted in the German book blogging world.)

That being said, I think I should get to bed. I'm still tired from last night, and I didn't even celebrate that much. In fact, I hardly did anything. I must be getting old