Distraction and non-focusedness

Since my last posting I have been and still am distracted by many things (Comics, a book of crossword puzzles, magazines), too much to really read a book. I began the second volume of Schama's History of Britain, but couldn't stay focused and put it away again.

At the moment I am still at the crossword puzzles, a collection from those of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) -- not bad, although I actually prefer the crosswords of Die Zeit. When I recently went through heaps of old paper, from previous jobs over university back to even school stuff, and could trash most of it, I also found a pack of Die Zeit crosswords my parents once had collected for me. Joy!

Some other favorites

A few other of my favorite books.

Bill Bryson: Made in America. While he introduces it as a book about words, in my eyes it is more a cultural history of the USA, using the words as starting points. Interesting and funny. Also his Troublesome Words, a style manual (which pretends to contain no humor, but the humor is there, only very dry), and A Short History of Nearly Everything. And, to a lesser degree, his other books I have read so far.

Umberto Eco: Il nome della rosa ("The Name of the Rose", only I read it in German). I have rarely had so much fun reading a book. When I first had read it, I even began to research the ecclesiastical history of the time (with helpful support of my father and his colleague's library), and I learned that the 1320s in northern Italy were at least as tumultuous as Eco depicts them.

W. Somerset Maugham's short stories. His style alone makes it worth reading them, but they are interesting and pleasurable to read, too. I also liked The Razor's Edge and Of Human Bondage, but not as much as the stories.

Elke Heidenreich: Kolonien der Liebe ("Colonies of Love"). Stories of love and the lack thereof, with a lot of melancholy and, in parts, joy.

Jacques Berndorf has written a series of mysteries, of which I have read some. They are a nice, light reading, and while sometimes he drops into the cliche -- so is his first-person narrator, a nosy journalist, beaten up by the bad guys at least once per book --, other qualities, for instance the likeable characters, make up for that.