Postasy 2

New postcards have arrived and I want to show them to you:

I received postcards from Belarus, the Netherlands, Russia and my first ones from Italy and Indonesia. So what do they show:

• Minsk/Belarus (Top left): The card shows the "Cathedral of the Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary". At least the card says so... :-D

• Rome/Italy (Top right): This card is so beautiful!!! It shows the Piazza Navona in Rome. I just love the colours of the sky, the lights on the streets and the buildings. This card makes you want to be at this place at that moment *dreaming*

• Mount Merapi/Indonesia (Middle left): That's a volcano on the postcard, the most active volcano on the world's most active volcanic island. I still don't know if that's a good thing... I like this card, too. Volcanoes have always fascinated me. In 13th grade at school our class went on a trip to the region around Neapel/Napoli in Italy and we made a trip to Pompeji and the Vesuv. We were even on top of the Vesuv and were able to look in the crater of it. Like I said: a really fascinating experience!

• Netherlands (Middle right): Flowers from the Netherlands, but no tulips... ;-) Nice colours though...

• Pskov/Russia (Bottom left): A drawing of a fortress (I guess)... The card itself is captured in Russian, so I can only guess, because I can't read it.

• Belarus (Bottom right): The card shows a painting from the 19th century that's part of the collection of the National Art Museum  of the Republic of Belarus called "Fruit and candle". 

So, that's it for now. Till the next cards arrive...

Postasy

Hello again,

I want to post my received postcards regularly, so I decided to give this category of posts a name: Postasy! (The end of the is intended to derive from fantasy... Just for notice ;-))

So, here we go with 10 new postcards:

Postcards from the Netherlands and Finland

The postcards at the top are from the Netherlands. The first one showing a famous shoe from the Netherlands (Here they are called Clogs...). The second shows some pictures of Rotterdam.
The ones at the bottom are both from Finland. I especially like the one on the left. The pictures of the nature in Finland (with the motto: Four seasons) are so beautiful. The seasons are from the top to the bottom: spring, summer, autumn and winter. The second shows a woman with the ability for multi-tasking. The text on the back in Finnish is suppossed to say: "Have to answer..."

Postcards from Russia, Belarus, Taiwan, France and Spain

On the second picture the postcards at the top are from Russia. The left one shows a painted picture with a bridge in winter. Also a really beautiful postcard. The right one shows the city of Ekaterinenburg. I like postcards with city views. :-)
The left postcard in the middle is another painted picture, this one showing the capital of Belarus: Minsk. Again very beautiful! The right one is a postcard from Taiwan. It shows an old Fort and was designed by a friend of the sender.
The card at left side of the bottom is from France. It was a tough one, because it was written in French. I had 4 1/2 years French in school, but well... I didn't practice much vocabulary... But I (think that I) was able to understand most of it. The card itself shows a beautiful view of the L'île Saint-Cado (Isle of Saint-Cado). The last one is from Barcelona, Spain. It's a typical street view of a spanish street. I've been in a town near to Barcelona about 10 years ago. It was a beautiful and relaxing holiday... *dreaming* Especially the weather was fine. :-)

So that's it for today. Happy postcrossing everyone!
 

Some new books

Hello hello,

this post will be about the books that I got in the last two weeks. Amazon.de had an offer "3 books for 15 Euro" and I couldn't resist. I also read some good reviews on other blogs about some of these books and they all didn't cost much (I bought 5 on Amazon.de and 1 on bookdepository.com). There's one cozy mystery and some more chick-lit-ish books (I'm curious if I like these).

I'm not in the mood to write what each book is about and don't want to copy&paste the synopsis, so I linked each of the books to their page on goodreads.com. If you want to read what the books are about, take a look at their synopsis on this site (or whatever site you prefer). ;-)

• Sophia Kinsella: Twenties Girl
  I liked the cover and the synopsis sounded like fun, so I bought this one. I haven't read any books from the author.

• Hazel Osmond: Who's Afraid of Mr. Wolfe?
  I read that some blogs received an ARC from author from her next novel and that's the first time I heard about her. The bloggers really liked her first novel, so I read what the book is about and it intrigued me, so I bought it for a fair price on bookdepository.com. I love the cover of the book. It's so beautiful and it sparkles! :-)

• Jojo Moyes: Me Before You:
  This book was a suggestion by amazon.de based on the books I bought. I liked the synopsis and the reviews sounded good, so I just wanted to have it.

• Lauren Conrad: L.A. Candy Sweet Little Lies
  This is the second book in a series. I'm still considering if I buy the first book before I read this one... In general I like to start with the first book in series and go book by book.

• Josie Belle: 50% Off Murder
  I read a review on a blog about it and I already read other cozy mysteries from the author published under a different name. She also writes the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries as Jenn McKinlay and also the Library Lover's Mysteries (haven't read those).

• Candace Bushnell: Sex and the City
  It's a sequel to the Carrie Diaries when Carrie was young and experienced her first years in New York City. I have the "Sex and the City" series on DVD and I watched those in the last year. 

So, that's it for now. Have a nice day/night. :-)

Reasons you buy a book

It doesn't matter if you buy your books online or in a real bookstore. There's always the problem (a good problem ;-)) that there are so many books they offer... We don't have the money to buy or the space to store all this books or even the time to read them all, so we have to choose. And don't forget that we don't want to read all of these books... ;-)

So I thought about the reasons for me to decide if I want to buy a book or not. And here are some of the aspects I consider for my decision...

Things that are important for me to consider buying a book:

• Cover:
  It's the first thing you see of a book. It doesn't matter if you look at it in a local bookstore or online. The first impression counts. A nice cover animates me to pick a book or click on a link to the book and read the synopsis. A cover that looks cheap or ugly in my eyes is a reason for me to not look at the book twice.
• Synopsis:
  I want to know in short what the book is about. I saw so many books that have a bad written synopsis. After reading those you sometimes still don't know what the book is about or even which genre this book is in and that's definitely a reason to not buy a book. Some books try to be intendly secret about the content, but that's a turn-off for me.
  What I also don't like or what I don't look at are quotes from other authors (and newspapers) who recommend a book on the book itself. I wouldn't say that those people aren't thruthful about what they say, but of course authors want to sell their books so they will write those positive comments on the book, but they give absolutely zero information to me as a reader, because they will certainly not write bad things on it. 
• Formats:
  I absolutely don't like hardcover bindings. They are expensive (especially in Germany, because the sellers are not allowed to sell it cheaper), they are heavy and they often don't fit on my shelf.
  I prefer in general paperback versions or because I have a kindle the e-book version. I mostly prefer waiting for the release of the paperback versions to buying the hardcover version. 

So, those are the main factors for my decision. What are your reasons to buy a book? Recommendations? Cover?...

My Interests in Books

Before I start writing about books I want to do a blog post about the kind of books, authors and genres I like.
I mostly read cozy mysteries. I usually don't like books with violence (one of the reasons why I like to read cozy mysteries). I read several cozy mystery series: The Donut Shop Mysteries by Jessica Beck (my first contact with the genre of cozy mysteries, I loved the cover of the books), The Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle (coooofffffeeeeee...), The Cupcake Bakery Mysteries by Jenn McKinlay (yummy) and many many more (I'm always open for new series, but there are so many that I can't read them all).... You can see some of those on the picture below.

Some of my cozy mysteries (sorry for the bad picture)

I also have a collection of Agatha Christie books (She wrote absolutely great books), the number of her books that I own is around 80 (from the German Hachette collection). I don't wanna count how much money I spent for these (each book 7.95 Euro). There's only one book from the collection I haven't bought, because I already had another copy of it. I regret it a little bit... You can see all my books on the picture below, also the one that's different ;-)

My collection of Agatha Christie books

So I like crime books in general, also thrillers (depends on my mood and the book).
Besides Agatha Christie one of my favourite authors is Bill Bryson who writes travel books (beside others of course). His books are so great, they always make me laugh. :-)

I recently discovered my interest in erotic romances which I read a lot in the last weeks. I bought myself a kindle in April and most of the books I read on it are these kind of books. But I prefer reading real books in general.


I already said that I don't like violence in books, but there's always an exception to the rule, so my exception are paranormal romances... Those are in some way acceptable... I love the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward. Vampires tend to drink blood and fights between demons are bloody, so I can live with those books.

Postcards

At the beginning of the year I joined the website
postcrossing.com. It's a website for exchanging
postcards with people all over the world. You get an address from a random person whom you send a
postcard to. When the person registers your postcard, another person anywhere gets your address and sends you a postcard. This way you can get postcards from all over the world. I always loved getting postcards, so I joined the site to get postcards. Right now I sent about 50 postcards myself and received around 45. I decided that I want to post pictures of the postcards I receive in this blog, so here we go.

The postcard on the left at the top is from Poland and it shows potatoes. I got pretty hungry when I looked at the card. Next to this postcard is a picture of a castle in Belarus. The card says that it is an UNESCO object. It's really pretty. :-)
The postcard on the left at the bottom is a picture of a mailbox and it's from Ukraine. I love the style of it. The last one is a postcard from Finland and shows a special kind of chess figures (I think it's chess ;-)) I'm not sure, but I think those figures are part of a TV series for children (I think the German title was "Die Mumins" or so...). The text on the back is in Finnish and partly covered by a poststicker (not a stamp), so I can't read what's on the card.
So, that's my first postcard post and I hope many more will follow ;-) 

Hello World!

>>Hello World!<<
Well, what a first sentence! ;-) Not a really creative start, but because I studied computer science, I'm allowed to say this. It's the first thing you learn when you try to learn a new programming language. Blogging is something new to me, so it's pretty legitimate to use it here.

I thought a little bit about how to start a blog. I guess an introduction is the best way: To tell a little bit about me, why I decided that I want to have a blog, what I want to do with it, why I named it like it is and so on..

I'm 27 years old and like I already said I studied computer science. I live in Germany, in the Ruhr area. I like watching sports (football, basketball and other sports depending on my mood), but I also do sports (aerobics and I started running this year). Other things I do in my free time are reading (books and blogs ;-)), postcards, shopping and other things.

So what's this blog about? I have absolutely no idea. I guess it's wait and see what it will be like. I played with the thought of my own blog for a long time and now I just gave it a try. I thought of writing about a couple of different things that I mentioned before. The postcards I get from all over the world, the books that I buy and read, new things that I try or just things that cross my way.

I read a lot of bookblogs and I love seeing what books people buy (I love buying books myself) and that inspired me. I'm not a fast reader myself, so I don't know how often I will blog about books. I prefer to read my books in English, because many things get lost in the translation process and there's no fixed price for books like the German books have. It's also easier to get paperbacks in English. I absolutely hate hardcover books. They are big and heavy and expensive... and the first edition of many books in Germany are only available in hardcover...

I will write this blog in English although German is my mother tongue (sorry for any faults in my grammar). I hope that I can improve with English this way. Back at university I did a couple of English courses to improve and to practice English. In one course about writing in English we had to write our own story and I discovered that I had fun doing it and that encouraged me also to start a blog in English. Maybe I will publish this story later in a seperate post.

Let's talk about the name of my blog. I tried to come up with a unique name that represents me and the way I am, but I'm not a creative person so it took a little bit of time. And well, I like the word "bubble" so it became part of it. I have always been a shy person and I'm still one. Back in school my teachers and the other pupils always said that I can't talk, because I was so shy and never said a word. Some teachers didn't even knew that I was in their class. ;-) My years at the university helped me a lot to fight my shyness, but it's still a part of me and I guess always will be.

So, I guess that's enough for my first blog post.