language

Minor Acoustic Singing

I really like vocal music. I don’t know how varied/developed my taste actually is, since I don’t know many people with this in common to share new things with. I like a cappella, madrigals, sea chanties and folk music. According to Pandora, these are some elements I like: (more…)

Four Quartets

I love T.S. Eliot’s writings. I have trouble sitting down and reading entire poems at once, and I have only read a few of his poems, and add to that that my copy of some of his poems is covered in some book club’s handwriting, and I feel like a bad, uneducated fan. Nonetheless, when I sit down with his Four Quartets or (more…)

German TV

Lately I’ve been watching some German TV shows to keep up my language skills. My favorite so far is “Heute-Show” from the ZDF channel, which has the same premise as the Daily Show – political news review. Sadly, Heute-Show is only once a week, but the great commentary on the country’s politicians (more…)

Robin Hobb

I recently finished the Liveship Traders series by Robin Hobb. I read the two trilogies about FitzChivalry before I went to Germany and found them really great. The writing style is rich, with big words I haven’t seen before (and I have a good vocabulary), descriptive without being flowery. The plot moves along at a good, epic story (more…)

Electronic Reading

With my librarian cousin’s recent visit, I’ve been reminded of the disappointing status of reading in my generation. She reads so much that we made a stop at the bookstore before her flight home – which as far as I can tell, is very unusual for Americans my age. The modern computer and especially the internet, have essentially (more…)