Nadine thinking again

One of my personal goals this year was to write more, no matter what, as long as it was genius and poetic, of course. So far, I have not succeeded. More than two years ago I chose to start writing a blog to share with my friends and anybody interested. A characteristic of a blog is that it is usually about a certain topic. Lets say travel, as my friends Tara and Tyler´s blog www.goingslowly.com. And, usually, it is written on a more regular basis than this one. I saw the movie about the woman writing about cooking Julia Child´s recipes, one per day. I liked that. Not necessaryly daily, though. This is a wonderful blog: http://fashionfabi2.blogspot.com and it is about fashion and Honduras and it does not come out daily. Then there are blogs writing about other blogs... My blog turned out to be about me going to concerts and going out with friends. This is not what I thought it would be, initially. But those were, unfortunately, the only times that sentences started to form in my head. I had the thing written out by the time I got home. Writing is hard work, and that´s about all I know about it. But I always thought I would be writing short stories. Those are my favourite. They are always too short, but, on the other side, every good novel is in the end. You don´t want it to be over. But with a short story you don´t know much once it is over, it´s just a peek you get and then you are being catapulted out again. But no inspiration on that side.

Today was the first time since August 2008 I really had the urge to go into a book store again. The first time since I stopped working at one. I used to be at the one I worked at all the time, even on my days off. And the one next to the university. And I would buy tons of books. In my experience you have to read tons of books to have the pleasure and excitement of finding a truly great one. Which is what happened to me trying to fulfil another goal for this year: read all the unread books on your shelf before buying new ones. And I really got lucky: a battered copy of "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman that suddenly turned up at my parents´ house and nobody knew where it came from. I took it to the unread shelf where it has been sitting for months. I finished it today, reading even the book club discussion questions. I wanted more and I needed a book store. It didn´t have any Neil Gaiman books which is why I will spend a miserable weekend waiting for my Amazon order to arrive on Monday. Hopefully. I had read "Stardust", which was good, because I liked the movie they made out of it. And I was lucky not so long ago because I read "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen. But it has taken me more than two years to find greatness since "The short wondrous life of Oscar Wao". Of course there were good books. Light ones. There was reading pleasure. And there was Roald Dahl´s "Charlie and the Chocolate factory". I am not complaining. I am just even happier when I find one of THE books. Surprisingly, a lot of the books in the English section looked very appealing. Apparently they are doing something to the design that makes you want to eat them. They all look delicous and a lot of them have strange titles something along the line of "Me,Franz Willough, Rhinocerous hunter" or gosh I can neither remember nor make up anything else. Suddenly I felt weighed down by all the books not being the one I wanted which was "Anansi Boys" or "Coraline" and I had to leave. I dream of this bookstore where I can spend comfortable hours finding my TRUE books.

Lately I have been thinking in English a lot which is good for my fellow English readers otherwise this would most probably be in German. "Are you sure you havn´t forgotten anything?" or "OK now, what do we need?". Then I pass a man on the street telling his wife that ther are, indeed, many people talking to themselves these days. That´s not what I am doing, at least not out loud. Talking to myself while shopping, for example, is my post-it.

Have you noticed my commas? I decided to use them more regularly. We were taught: "If in doubt leave it out". And I still recall the title of a book "Eats, shoots and leaves" about English punctuation which I think is hilarious regarding the fact that this title describes a panda´s eating habits. Maybe I should get that book because it turns out I suck at English punctuation. Yesterday my colleague casually filled in my almost non-existing commas in a five page English text I had typed. Wasn´t my main concern when studying interpretation...

...and even a degree can leave you dumbfounded when facing changes in the daily routine. In the metro station they changed the escalators to going up where it was going down before. Believe me, it took me more than a second to stop standing there like an idiot before turning to the other on going up now. But the girl singing at the trains and announcing each one arriving in a booming voice was there. A day like any other, after all.