I antagonized for a while already what I would do as my last picture. Of course I wanted to stay in-theme, but simultaneously, I wanted it to be something that stands out a bit. Only an hour ago it flashed through my mind that I had to do a self-portrait.

This theme proved to be not only challenging for me, but also pretty self-revealing. Perhaps this is because books fill a large part of what my self is. So nothing seemed more natural than a self portrait in the end.

Jack London’s “White Fang”

When I was a girl, I read all those “boys’ books”. I loved Indians, pirates and knights and adventurers, I loved Huck Finn and Oliver Twist, Robin Hood, King Arthur and Robinson Crusoe. Of course, I read Jack London. The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and many others. My favorite Jack London book was and is White Fang, though, the story of a wolf.

Trying to remember the book which I read once or twice during my childhood, the most vivid memory is the snow. It seemed to be always cold in this book, and Jack London made the snow and the cold come alive like rabid beasts.

Today was such a day here. It snowed and snowed. It snowed 30 cm of new snow onto the already existent 15 centimeters. All the roads were blocked. Hubby and I shoveled and shoveled, and when we were done at one end, there were another 5 cm at the other hand. We never managed to shovel away enough so that we could properly drive up to our house. The cars are still stuck halfway. And the end of the day, I was so sick and tired of it that the heat of my pure frustration should have melted the snow!

It all made me think of White Fang. So in the evening, I went outside again. I placed the book on a patch of immaculate white snow, and I placed this little stone wolf in front of it. The stone wolf comes from the North, just like White Fang, it is a little sculpture of a wolf from Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada.

So this is for all the Adventurers braving the merciless cold!

Both the book in the background and the knights belong to Joshua. He has countless books on and about knights. That one is a great book with parts can be swung open and moved around, as the tower and the drawbridge.

After some burnout-days, this was fun again. Thanks so much to everybody for their encouraging comments!

Also, thanks mk for suggesting backlighting. I sort of had forgotten about that and had to try it immediately.

The Lord of the Rings, Book 2: The Two Towers.

What appeals most to me in book 2 are the Riders of Rohan. Rohan makes me think of bows. I shoot a bow myself, a sleek, agile little rider’s bow, and these are three of the arrows that go with it. I made the quiver myself from soft leather.

You were asking about my favourite books. Tolkien’s are surely among them.

Let me introduce you to the German paperback edition, the first ones I read. You can see by the back how many times I read them.

Background book is an Atlas of Middle Earth, depicted are the Mines of Moria.

Oh, and… wait. Hobbit yesterday, Fellowship of the Ring today? Am I…? Yes. You are going to get a series. Next picture on Sunday.

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

My son loves books, too.

Today, for the first time, I could not decide which one I liked better. So you shall have both (Inside the posting).

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

A great children’s book. The one in the front is my own, the one used as background is my son’t version, with wonderful illustrations. I like the warm colours, and the play with perspective.

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin

I am a huge fan of the fantasy author George R. R. Martin. Before there was Worth (yes, there was a time before Worth) I frequented a message board about his series “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Not only did we discuss the books, but we also wrote stories together and talked about pretty much everthing. Some people there became very close friends. Well, the Worthians among you will know what I mean, more or less.

One of us found that GRRM had put three chapters of the third book in the series, A Storm of Swords, into Ebay. Three preliminary chapters, and signed! We (as the board community) decided that we needed to have them. And instead of outbidding each other, we teamed. We chose one of us to win the auction. We opened a thread where everyone said how much he could give and calculated the end account. I think more than 30 people from all over the world participated.

Greg paid a really outrageous amount for these three manuscript chapters, but we were thirty. Of course there was a risk – we did not know each other personally, only over the site. He just PM’d everyone his bank account data (this was before PayPal) and had to trust us. And not one bailed out on him. Everyone paid his money. The funny thing was: Greg had said he would make copies for everyone for free. But each and every one decided to send a bit more money for the copying and his efforts and shipping, so in the end he had not only the amount, but copies, shipping AND some spare. We told him to get a good dinner from it, but he did not want to. So we donated the money for a foundation helping artists who could not pay for medical care.

I received my copy a bit later, with a singature for Greg and all of us from George R. R. Martin upon it.

Some months later, I met with George R. R. Martin on the German book fair. We had a good talk, and he told me he was coming to Cologne the following week, and would we like to go out for dinner? We had dinner with George and his German translator, which was quite an amazing evening. So at the bottom, he signed once more, a personal signature just for me.

These pages, I keep with the book. They really mean a lot for me, for they are not only manuscript pages from a great book, signed by a phantastic author, but also a reminiscence of a crazy stunt we pulled, and a great time we had. It was a team effort of mutual trust that I am proud I was a part of.

So.  Which of the two pictures do you like better (apart from the story, of course)?

Click the picture for full view.

Today, I did not feel like doing anything artsy.

So I decided to do something very different. I lit the room with my lamps and photographed the bookshelves, then glued together a panorama. Please don’t look for perspective flaws, there are 1000 of them. This actually includes a 90° corner (between the two lower cupboards).
I did not want this to be technically perfect, but wanted to share a full view of those shelves with you that provide me with fodder for each of these 31 days.

As you see, there is enough left.

The books was one of my favourites when I was a child. It is called “The planted on which we live”, and it has everything: How the earth came to be, evolution, dinosaurs, deep sea, deserts, jungles, space… everything. I read it at least a 1000 times (or looked at the pictures, rather). I distinctly remember this to be one of my favourite pictures in the book. I loved the gradient showing how the water got deeper, and the fight between whale and kraken impressed me. I stared at it and tried to figure out who’d win.

The little plush kraken was a present from my little meerkitten brother, so this picture combines two awesome things in one.

Therefore, I dedicate this picture to him. Because he made me smile every day this Januarywith his photography (and others, too). And because he likes cephalopoda. And because he is the best brother in the world.