Read this book a long time ago, found a new copy in a thrift store. The title sounded familiar, but it was only after reading a few pages that I remembered having read this one before.


January 25: reserved for shrinking VBB

I’m happy to see that this book was quickly picked from the shrinking VBB. I’ve wrapped it up and will bring it to the post this afternoon. Safe travels, little book!

I always try to post my controlled releases with real stamps. If you are not a collector yourself, you might want to check out this post on the forum about a stamps sweeps that I’m currently organising or this one about Bookcrossers who collect stamps. A lot of Bookcrossers collect stamps for charity, so it’s nice to find them a good home!

Received from the shrinking VBB. Thank you very much! :)

I'll be using this to restart CathrineB's bookray.
https://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/20/552120/9271503

List of participants:
*greenbadger (UK) - International shipping
*Alia_Rus (Latvia) - EU shipping
*Delphi_Reader (Greece) - International shipping
*LysMibo (Ireland) - EU shipping
*Jotka (Germany) - International shipping
*pam99 (UK) - International shipping
*JosefinJ (Sweden) - International shipping
*minesayn (USA) - US shipping
*missprisy (USA) - US shipping

Renee, the caretaker of a fancy Parisian apartment building, likes to keep her life private. Although she loves Russian literature and art, she puts on a front of being a stereotypical caretaker. Meanwhile Paloma, a young girl from a wealthy family living in the flats, is planning to kill herself feeling that life is futile and pointless. When a rich Japanese man comes to live in the block then his attitude of really seeing those around him changes their lives. I found this hard to get into but once I did I really enjoyed it. It's a book which makes you think about what's worthwhile in your life.

Sent to Alia_Rus who is next in the ray.

Book is safe with me in Riga. I will start reading asap.

Book is travelling to Greece.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog arrived today, along with a nice postcard, two tea bags and some chocolate treats (to die for! Obviously didn't last long!) from Riga!
Thank you very much for your amazing parcel Alia_Rus!
And thanks Femke85 for sharing and greenbadger for restarting this ring!

Well... I don't regret at all reading this book and I understand why there is so much hype surrounding it, but I found the plot and characters absolutely unbelievable and at the end too cliché.

The musings, thoughts, meditations of the main characters have their interest up to a point and yes, they can provoke further thoughts and meditation on various subjects, but they often get pretentious, blant, snobbish or simply boring too.
I'm not sure what's the meaning of someone having intellectual interests, thoughts and observations and feeling a sense of superiority for not phrasing these openly? And for how long can a random reader live inside the head of one or two main characters -who keep contemplating about everything- without getting bored? This is supposed to be a novel, not a series of essays, so one would expect some decent plot and some plausible characters after all!

As a side note, reading this book in English was one of those occasions when I feel really bad for allowing my French to deteriorate so much. I think this is a book that might be hard to translate while retaining the feeling of the original text. I would love to be able to read The Elegance of the Hedgehog in its original language, but alas...

Rating this is not an easy task, but for me it's somewhere a bit over 6 out of 10, so I round up in favor of the author : )

I PMed LysMibo yesterday and waiting for a reply to get this moving again.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read it!

The book is on its way to Ireland now.
Enjoy!

The book arrived safely in Ireland! Thank you!

I really enjoyed reading this book!! Easy to read but makes you think a lot about life and stereotypes. Many thanks for sharing it!

I'll send it to Jotka as soon I get the address.

Book arrived safely today. Thank you very much for sending it!

My opinion is quite similar to the opinion of Delphi_Reader. At the beginning I was disappointed. I thought that it is one of these books which make you think that you are worth nothing because you don't read special books or don't visit Louvre every month. Than it was more and more a kind of Cinderella-story. But I've decided to read it and the reason for it was a view which I share with the author that there are moments of perfect beauty in life and everyone can experience them.

On it's way to pam99.

Welcome to Bookcrossing! This is a friendly online community of book-lovers who want to share books and promote literacy around the world. Please leave a comment to say where you found the book and if you read it, what you thought of it. If you choose to join the site, you can follow the book as it travels on and finds more readers!

When you've read the book, it's yours to do with as you please - you can keep it, pass it on to friends or family, or "wild release" it again to find new readers!

Thanks so much Pam99 :)