Life of Pi

Earlier this year I read the book "Life of Pi", by Yann Martel.

Had no clue what to expect of it, but since someone I know counts it as her favourite book I thought it was worth a try.

OMG, it was SO worth trying!

The story is about a boy.

And a tiger.

And some other animals.

"After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific.

The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.

The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction in recent years."

When I started reading, my rational mind was in the way of enjoying the book.

Too often I heard myself thinking: "this could never happen".

But when I got deeper into the book, the story caught me.

Letting go of all kinds of judgements and just opening up to the story told, is probably the nicest way to read Life of Pi.

So, there I was, sitting on this lifeboat with Pi, the tiger and the other animals. Oh, how cute the orangutan with her big sad eyes was!

And that poor zebra...

But the hyena gave me the creeps.

The tiger is not just a big kitty, it's a fierce and graceful carnivore.

Beautiful but oh so unpredictable and dangerous...

I didn't wanna stop reading, was só curious what would happen next and how things would work out. The story made me want more, more, more!

I won't spoil what happens in the book, but I can tell you there's a twist in it that made my jaw drop and my eyes teary...

After finishing the book, I thought it would be great to read it in its original language, English.
Was planning to buy it when someone on the BookCrossing forum was offering it as a RABCK (Random Act of BookCrossing Kindness, which usually means sending someone a book from your collection). There was a raffle and of course I entered. And I won! Yippeee!

The book arrived here a few weeks ago.

To my surprise, Danielle23 had enclosed a postcard that told me about a world wide readalong, starting in August.

Of course I joined that project immediately and now I'm re-reading Life of Pi, together with hundreds of others.

We're getting tips for even more intense reading, questions that challenge you to think over some of the parts.

You can read all about the project here:

http://www.lifeofpi.co.uk/

Do take a few minutes to watch the clip.

It's gonna be a movie as well!

A last thought about this story before I'm off to read some more:

it raised such a puzzling question for me: if I would be in Pi's position, would I be able to give up vegetarism to survive? Could I kill an animal and eat it? Or rather die?

Hmm, let's stick to the conclusion Anne and I came to: never make a boat trip across an ocean, so you won't be in that position! ;)

BookCrossing Generosity

The Summer Gift Giving project is still on and I'd like to show the sweet surprises I received!
Not all gifts were part of that project; I received 2 RABCK's (Random Acts of BookCrossing Kindness) from Dutch BookCrossers and one from abroad (won it in a raffle and will write more about that book).
I've sent out many surprises myself and secretly giving (and getting response!) is even better. Tried to fulfill some wishes and it's great to be able to send people bookplates in their own language! Two more languages are online now: Chinese and Malaysian, thanks to Starbytes!

But the best thing of this whole project is that I 'met' some BookCrossers I'd never been in touch with. I said it before, but I keep repeating it: BookCrossing is such an amazing community and there's something really special about the people who are part of it. BookCrossing is my prozac!!!

Roof Mole

As some of you might know, our cats have weird names: Puschkin, Munchkin, Sacharov, Pavlov and Molotov. The names Sacharov and Molotov have too many syllables for daily use, so we use nicknames most of the time (well, actually we have nicks for all 5). Sacharov is mostly called Sachie, but we discovered he also looks up when we call him Mimi. Maybe his previous owners called him that way?

Molotov also goes by the names Molly, Molo and Mol. And when we talk about him, we often say "de mol" ("the mole"). No idea why, but we do so.

Sometimes that leads to funny misunderstandings.

We were visiting my sister and told about how "Mol" likes to be on the roof. She was flabbergasted. "A mole? Climbing in a tree onto the roof?! How is that possible?!" Haha, try to visualise an actual mole, leaving its underground home, using those digging claws to climb a tree :)

Our little "mole" has 2 tv shows 'named after' him: Who Is The Mole? and Where Is The Mole?

My sister's cat goes by the name of Elvis and now he's got his own show as well: Where Is Elvis? A question that shouldn't be so hard to answer, because it's obvious why Elvis' previous owners called him "the Yeti" :)

Here are some pics of Mol in action. He's the first of ours cats that figured out how to get on the roof and hopefully the last as well. Besides that it's scary to us, it's also very annoying to the neighbours, especially when it's real early in the morning. Every time he's so excited about the adventure that he can't stop meowing, really loud. And since our house is at the corner of a block, he can walk all the way to the other side of the block, waking up everyone who has their windows open...

I.M.

Can't believe it's 8 years ago already.

Forever in my heart.

Mannaz.

Book On Shirt: Please Vote!

The latest design my brother made is really awesome. I would love to have this on a shirt! If you like it as well, please click on the picture & check "I'd buy it"...

Perfect Day

Amazing Discoveries!

Someone mentioned Finntroll as a band I should try. Listened to it, but it's not my style. Too grunty ;)
But while browsing Youtube, I came across TÝR, a band from the Faroe islands (an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately half way between Scotland and Iceland). The first thing I saw was this clip:


Nice clip (hands up for longhaired men!), nice music.
I downloaded (don't tell my hubby, he hates when I do that^^) one of their albums and put it on my mp3 player. Played it during the bus ride to Tiel and while the second song was playing, I had already fallen in love. My type of music for sure!
Here's a song from that album:



I'm also listening to 2 other bands which will be playing in a town near us later this year. It's been a long time since Albert and I went to see live bands. We have been to Fré Spigt often, but she mostly plays in theatres, which is quite a different setting.
Albert and I enjoyed going to concerts together and we decided to try if we still like doing that together. Well, Albert will of course, his life contained mostly of concerts when I met him. For me it will be a good experiment to see if I can handle being in a crowd again.
Epica will play here this fall and we're planning to go. Meet Epica:



And one more clip: Delain. Another option to go see later this year.
I like it:

International BC-labels online! :)

You can find them at my photobucket!

A BIG, BIG THANK YOU goes out to the BookCrossers who replied to my request for translations and who have been patient enough to answer all of my questions and proofreading.
I enjoyed working on this project a lot and it was so nice to exchange messages & mail.

As promised, I'm sending out prints to everyone who helped me, as soon as they're ready!

Thank you for translating/offering to translate:

Releanna

Marcenda

blackteiwaz

lukutuoli

Jean-Sol

alassante

asa-swe

Alerion

jneni

starbytes

Thanks to Hippolein and TexasWren as well!

Summer Santa!

Shameless copy from the BookCrossing forum because I couldn't explain this project any better:

A few years ago, Bflybabe began a thread called 'Holiday Wish List' which was a
lot of fun. Everyone posted their personal wish list, not just books, but
anything they wanted, big or small. Others tried to fulfill the wishes, as they
could. USED items that fulfilled a specific wish were just as wonderful as new,
and there were NO OBLIGATIONS- everyone did what they felt like doing.
BookCrossers give constantly. We have projects going to needy folks all the
time. I don't think it's unreasonable to remember that we need care, too. Unless
we take care of ourselves, we can't continue giving to others.
If you're interested in participating, all you have to do is post a list of gifts you'd
like to receive. You can choose books, or world peace, hand-crafted items or new
cars- anything you want or need. YOU MIGHT NOT GET ANYTHING AT ALL, but this is
a generous community. Someone might have the very thing.
I joined this project last year and have had so much fun with it, so I just couldn't resist participating again :)

This is why I've made those "greetings from Ochten" postcards and it's also the reason why I'm translating the bookplates I designed: to send out to other participants!

<-- this was the very first surprise I received. Beautifulhooker sent it to me; she must have recognized a fellow skull-stuff-lover in me :) Both the bookmarks are in my current reads already, I simply adore them because they're so different from any bookmarks I've seen. I've taken a peek at beautifulhooker's deviantArt pages. Lovely! Thanks girl! Yesterday, another mysterious envelope in the mail...whoohoo!
A book?
Yes, a book!
A Puschkin book!!!

This is Puschkin.
I figured he might have read his own books a bit too often, since he fell asleep on top of it :)









The book is in German and the lovely thing about that is that the name Puschkin is spelled exactly the same as the name of our cat.

My collection is growing and it's time to create a special spot in the living room. I've got several Puschkin/Poesjkin books in Dutch, one with amazing illustrations in French (Pouchekine), 2 in Russian and now 2 in German.
I've also found a Pavlov book and I'm hoping to get my hands on one of the books about or written by Sacharov. Munchkin has his own card game, would be great to find that some day and I think there will be a book somewhere that has Molotov in the title...

And this laminated card is a cute contribution to the collection as well!

<-- :)

The surprise came from Germany, from ApoloniaX.
It came with a nice chatty notecard, telling me about a coincidence: while she was registering the Puschkin book she wanted to send me, her mom called her to tell she received my postcard. One of ApoloniaX's wishes was for people to send cards to her mom, who isn't in the best of health.
She also told about her cat, in the same way we often do: "she was my cat, i.e. I was her servant"
LOL, same here! :)


She also granted another wish I made. I was hoping to inspire others to eat vegetarian / skip meat for just one day. Looks like my German friend here has been a veggie girl for a looooong time already :)




Cute sticker!




Thank you, ApoloniaX.
You didn't know it, but I felt horrible yesterday morning and your mail made me smile. So, thanks for that as well!


I have been sending out envelopes as well and a few have arrived already. Wonderful to hear what people think of the stuff you sent. Actually, the most fun is in finding little surprises that are inspired by their wishlists. All small gestures, like bookplates I've made, bookmarks and BookCrossing stuff.

The bookplates/labels I've been working on are at the print service now and I think they'll arrive somewhere this week. Several wonderful BookCrossers translated the text I wanted on the labels and I've used those translations in my design. Now I've got 10 languages available (Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Swedish and German) and 2 more to come (Chinese and Malaysian).
They'll be available for printing/download on my Photobucket account soon!

Ha, I'm finally liking Summer again! :)

Lost Generation?

Take a minute to watch & listen, this is beautiful!
Read along with the text.

Snuffelmarkt

We went to the "Snuffelmarkt", a permanent market in former factory halls in Tiel. Nice to browse a bit and to find presents for friends ;)

If these would have fit in an envelope, we would have sent it to Tyrre!

Blurry picture, the seller wasn't very happy that I was shooting pics...

These would fit so nice in my parents' living room! ;)

Haha, this is the best place for kitsch!

For some reason I don't feel like smoking at all when we're over there. This is one of the very cosy smoking rooms. Plus Albert. Plus Onslow :)

Albert just begged to pose with this windmill!

The red blurs are "Flipje" statues.

And yes, hardcore is still alive.

Yikes.

Bug?

My blog here seems to have a bug or something. When I open it from my computer, I'm getting an error notice.
Is it just my pc or is it the blog website?
Please let me know if you have had errors when opening this blog as well!
I need to figure out if I should be looking for the solution in my own pc or in the contents of this blog...
Post your comment here or send me an email. Thanks for helping out!

Edit: removed one of the widgets and it seems to be solved now!

Another Book To Read

Yippee, time for another book review!


This book will be in the stores in August and since it's not printed as a real book yet, we (the reviewers) get to read it as a proof (in Dutch: drukproef).
It's nice to see a book in such an early stage; I hope the large size isn't gonna bother me while reading.
Ah well, plenty of time for that: the review has to be ready August 15th. That will work!
It's described as a "literaire thriller", a term

that's kinda frowned upon by Dutch literature lovers, some say it's misleading. It's used often nowadays and I can imagine people don't like this tendency. Doesn't really bother me, but I agree there should be a better term for books like these. The difference between "literaire thrillers" and regular thrillers is, in my opinion, there's more focus on the psychology of a story, the way the characters experience everything that's happening around them.

Ah well, as long as it's a good read, I don't care so much for what name they give it!

Another book described as a "literaire thriller" sneaked into my house by mail; turns out I've won it on a website. Great!

Growing Old

We don't know Puschkin's exact age, but it's clear that he's getting really old now. Everything goes a bit slower, he sleeps more than he is awake, he's not really jumping anymore and he's getting skinny. Time for extra attention & care! Now that we're buying him portion packs senior cat food, he's enjoying his meals more and it feels like he's gained some weight back. He can't reach his back anymore, so we brush him often and he likes it.
He never liked to sit on my lap (the cats seem to have decided that the male human is for lap-sitting, while the female human is for playing - clever, a scratch more or less doesn't harm her^^), but being carried around is a whole different thing. And now he even lets me sit down with him in my arms. This is one of those precious moments.
So fond of this grumpy old man! (L)

International!

Ever since I joined BookCrossing, I've been active in designing my own labels to put in the books that I release. Just for the fun of it.
Have had so many wonderful comments on those and translated them already into English so more people could use 'em.


And now a new project is finding its shape: with the help of BookCrossers from other countries, I'm translating the labels into several other languages.






I'm still surprised every time someone says they like my design, it's still making me blush :)

Wet Pussy ;)

Pavlov says it's raining...

If you can't stand the heat...

Usually I'm not too fond of my grandma, but at the moment we're so thankful for the airco she gave us last year (she bought a new one and needed to get rid of the old one). It's very noisy and it has troubles cooling the whole room, but what a difference! Thanks, gran! ;)

Today I was creating a "greetings from Ochten" postcard since they don't sell those anymore and I noticed I didn't have a picture of the old town hall and the fountain monument. Couldn't find those on the internet as well, so I took my cam outside to make those pics.

Whoops, 33 degrees Celsius outside! Hell!

I made it a really short photo trip, but it was worth it: the card is ready to print!