I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and  would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Can you guess which author wrote this book?

Tips:

• This English author wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces.
• Another one of his works (The Moonstone) is considered by many to be one of the first detective novels ever.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and  would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Can you guess which book is hidden behind this month’s QR-code?

Tips:

• On Wikipedia the author is described as: ‘an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary has gained her historical importance among scholars and critics’.
• About the main character after whom the book is named, the author wrote: ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.’

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and  would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Can you guess which book this is?

Tips:

• He is an Irish author.
• His most famous novel created the most famous vampire ever!

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and I would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Do you know which book I chose this month?

Tips:

• This author received the 1907 Nobel Price for Literature.
• In the film version of this book, especially Balou the Bear has become famous.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and I would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Which author is featured this month?

Tips:

• This is a German-language author of novels and short stories.
• When you get lost in administrative rules this situation is called after him.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and I would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Because it is Christmas I have chosen the book that to me is the ultimate Christmas book, one that I reread practically every year in this period.

Tips:

• The author is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period.
• This work is one of the most influential books ever written, according to Wikipedia.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and I would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.  Because November is the month in which I was born (some years ago), I choose one of my favourite authors.  And this one is very easy to guess with the clues I give you.

Tips:

• The author is considered to be the Queen of Crime.
• This one is the first book she published in 1920.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and I would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.

Tips:

• The Scottish author first published this book in 1886.
• Main theme of the book is a condition that is now called ‘split personality’.

I hope you all enjoy this random tour of books and  would like to thank BookRiot for this idea.

Here is the “Book of the Month”.

Can you guess which book it is?

Tips:

• He used the initials of his first names instead of Clive Staples.
• Alice has a dream.

The Sonnets (1609)

Audio, through Lit2Go via iTunes U.

From Wikipedia: A collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. (although sonnets 138 and 144 had previously been published in the 1599 miscellany The Passionate Pilgrim). The quarto ends with “A Lover’s Complaint”, a narrative poem of 47 seven-line stanzas written in rhyme royal.

One interpretation is that Shakespeare’s sonnets are in part a pastiche or parody of the three-centuries-old tradition of Petrarchan love sonnets; Shakespeare consciously inverts conventional gender roles as delineated in Petrarchan sonnets to create a more complex and potentially troubling depiction of human love.[26] He also violated many sonnet rules, which had been strictly obeyed by his fellow poets: he plays with gender roles (20), he speaks on human evils that do not have to do with love (66), he comments on political events (124), he makes fun of love (128), he speaks openly about sex (129), he parodies beauty (130), and even introduces witty pornography (151).

Here are some of my favourite sonnets:

Sonnet 4: Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tomb’d with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.

Sonnet 20: A Woman’s Face with Nature’s Own Hand

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead 

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

I had always been kind of afraid to read these sonnets, because I thought I wouldn’t like them at all.  But I enjoyed listening to them being read by people who obviously knew what they were doing.  I took them in small chunks and so it took me a few weeks to listen to all of them, but at least I enjoyed them.

More information on all the sonnets you can find on William Shakespeare Sonnets.