ritas kleine welt

stolen from charmingquark's blog.

listed below are the top 100 books of some 250.000 watchers of ZDF (channel 2 in germany). bolded are the ones i read. (in brackets are, as usual, my redundant comments.)

one year ago, by complete coincidence, stephen weissman left a comment on one of my entries. that's how we came into contact. since then we have been mailing each other sporadically and i had offered my help to translate some of the german reviews for him.

some three weeks ago, the german translation of steve's chaplin: a life was released for the german readership. (in german: Chaplin: Eine Biographie). ilja richter wrote a somewhat unusual review for Die Berliner Morgenpost as he was very much taken in by the book. 

a good book, coffee and a nice looking man who can read two sentences aloud without tripping over his own tongue. YEAH! we like that!

three dreamboats reading tales from the HMS Unsinkable Jane A. (note: mr. willoughby is emma thompson's [aka elinor dashwood] second husband for whom she left mr hamlet. to say it in the immortal words of the great alanis, 'isn't it ironic?')

and call me classist, but these three are the perfect illustration, why i want a cultivated brit for a man. ::flail::

yesterday a rather heavy envelope lay on the shoeshelf by the door when i came home. i picked it up -- and nearly dropped it again. inside was the book by maurice bessy i had ordered from amazon a few days ago. it's not only a HUGE book, it's also freaking heavy. since i don't have a kitchen scale, i can only guess that it might weigh somewhere between 3 and 4kg. honestly! i swear!!! anywho... now it's mine, mine, MINE!!!

about two weeks back, i had placed a bid on three chaplin books that were on auction on ebay. and lucky me won. actually, i still can't quite grasp it -- because two of the three books were first issues from the late 1920s. i had expected to see a stiff competition and fierce bidding for at least one of them, but nothing happened. except that insead of paying the initial price of € 1.- for book #1, it cost a bit more because there appeared this one odd raise of price (miracle, oh, miracle!) a few hours just before the auction was about to end. (insert sneaking suspicion of the auctioneer telling a friend to raise the bid by a few euros so as not to land entirely in the dumps)

but still. considering the total amount of money i paid, considering the status of first issues and considering the actual rarity of two of the three books, it was more than a decent deal. to be honest, i don't think the auctioneer had any idea what treasures he was throwing out!

it was the book fair of 2004 when i started hunting down authors so that they would scribble something in the books i had purchased over the years. at the time of the Leipziger Buchmesse that year, a very lucky streek was started and ever since then, i have been collecting signatures. but i have never been that successful numberwise as i was in that year.

after a two-year abstinece from the annual spring book fair in leipzig, mysterious s. and i decided to throw ourselves into the masses and see what's in store. and maybe collect the odd signature for our books. let me just say that one was brave (nearly being squished to death) and successful (twice!).

things i overheard while talking to myself. phew. what a title. what a man! the informed reader may have already heard about last june's wonderous encounter with alan and his wife, arlene, on an abandoned evening road in the city centre of leipzig. well, this story has a prequel.

long time, no read. somehow i have forgotten to write an entry in this category for january. just shows you where my mind is these days. so this time around, i will present another signature i gathered during the leipzig book fair in 2004. on that one day, i had stuffed my backpack with about five books and a list on which i ticked off the different authors, i had already successfully bothered into signing one of the copies i shoved under their noses. they were all very friendly, except for erich loest. who seemed a trifle grumpy. but apart from that, one remained victorious and returned home with a signed copy of es geht seinen gang!

last year, in 2007, was a good year for collecting signatures. come to think of it, half of the signatures i have collected so far are from that year. granted, i don't have that many to begin with, 6 isn't so much of a staggering number. but in comparison to the years before and this year, it was one big success where bugging authors is concerned.

Since dear Rita tagged me and my poor journal is 'friends only' here we go!