One of my all-time favorite books has been voted the "best Dutch book of all times". It's The Discovery Of Heaven by Harry Mulisch, a novel about the mystical journey of a man to return the Ten Commandments to Heaven.
The vote is based on an internet poll, and I am always skeptical of those because it's so easy to manipulate. However, this first place for what is De Ontdekking Van De Hemel in Dutch is completely deserved. The second place was for Het Huis Van De Moskee by Kader Abdolah, a book completely unknown to me. I looked it up and it was published in 2005.
Strange that this new book ended up above such classics as Max Havelaar or De Avonden, which I suppose proves my point above the unreliability of internet polls (or the odd literary taste of the people that voted). Simon Vestdijk's books didn't even make it into the top 10, neither did Erik, of het klein insectenboek by Godfried Bomans.
The Discovery Of Heaven was published in 1992, the 2nd year I was in high school. Although at that time reading Dutch literature wasn't high on my list with favorite things, I enjoyed reading Mulisch a lot (and so did many of my classmates). In 2001 a movie made of the book came out, which was okay but not as brilliant as the book.
Good news for Dutch Starbucks fans: the company will open its first branch at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam this summer.


The 12 finalists for American Idol were chosen last week. Antonella Barbara was rightly sent home, surprisingly Sabrina Sloan had to leave as well.
Saturday afternoon we went for a walk in the Soho district in New York.
The plane landed in Newark on schedule this morning. At the airport we went to National, a car rental place to pick up our car. We got a Toyota Corolla... so small! I could hardly fit in the driver's seat. Later I adjusted the wheel so at least it wasn't on my knees anymore but it was still pretty tight. Last summer when we were buying our car we were also considering a Corolla; I'm glad we went with its bigger brother, the Camry.
It's 6.20 am on Saturday and we're getting ready to leave to the airport. 
Today I added air to our car's tires for the first time. 