Rainy Day Reads

In 2010 my friend went to Damascus for a few months to study Arabic. Luckily I had time to come and visit her for about a week, and got a chance to cross a few things off the "must-see" list. Including the Umayyad Mosque. Tourists were welcome in the mosque as long as you wore a snazzy robe, provided by the entrance, to cover up. With the unrest in the area nowadays I don't know if the mosque is still open to casual visitors, so please make sure you have updated information on accessibility before you go. Excavations done in the courtyard of the mosque shows that Damascus can trace its origin as far back as the third millennium BC. The mosque is placed right next to the main marketplace of the city and makes for a nice, relaxing resting place from the bustle. The name of the Umayyad mosque derives from the dynasty of rulers under which it was constructed. The mosque itself is one of the largest and oldest in the world. It was built in 706 AD after the Arabic conque

I had high hopes for this book. I bought the entire series based on the rave reviews I have been seeing everywhere. But unfortunately I was disappointed.  Beware of minor spoilers below! I have read some other books by Melina Marchetta, and I generally like her writing style. The story of this sounded great, too. An epic read in a fantasy universe where good battles evil with a little love thrown in for good measure. What's not to like? Well, the story was weirdly paced for me. I remember having read about 1/3 of the book thinking that it was moving quite slow. The objective of the quest (taking back the homeland) is pretty clear from the start, and I figured they would not have time to do it in this book, since it was moving so slowly. But that was okay, since this is a trilogy. Plenty of time to evolve the story. Wrong! After about 2/3 of the book the pacing picked up and before you knew it they were inside the gates! The battle that took place was not really described in great d

This post is all about the series I have finished and the ones I for some reason have not finished. Now for the unfinished ones, there are definitely a few that I plan to finish, but definitely also a lot that I do not plan to continue. I have given a super short mini-review for each series (like, two words) to show why I did or did nor finish it. For this post I was again inspired by Youtube, specifically this video by Bookables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxByVdD_sh4 She, in turn was inspired by this video by Katytastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wjuodeSWQ I had a good look around my shelves and since I (in my opinion) don't actually own many books, there were not a lot of series on show. So I figured that this would be a short and sweet post that wouldn't take long to put together. Oh, was I wrong! Just be sure I had a look at my Goodreads "Read" shelf and wow...There are a lot of series. And a lot of books I didn't realize were part of

The little town of Quedlinburg is located in northern Germany 3 hours drive southwest of Berlin. The houses in the city are timbered, and gives this small town a quaint medieval feeling. Quedlinburg The town is a UNESCO World Heritage site and it has celebrated its 1000 year anniversary, which is quite an accomplishment, considering it had to survive bombings in the Second World War and the urban renewal plans of the former East German government. The oldest timbered house in the town is from 1310 AD and that also makes it the oldest timbered house in Germany. The hallmark of the timbered houses of Quedlinburg are the facades of the houses that are highlighted in blue, red, yellow and green colors. My two girlfriends and I were struggling to find a holiday destination for the summer of 2013, and when we asked around for a place within driving distance, Quedlinburg came up a few times. So we decided to give it a go and do a road trip to this little town. Quedlinburg is quite

For Christmas I got the book "1000 places to see before you die" by Patricia Schultz and I was inspired. I have travelled a bit during these past years and flatter myself that I have seen a good deal of these places already. And I was inspired to write blogposts about the places I have been, since I would like this blog to also contain a few travel tips and inspiration. Paging through the book I had to go surprisingly far to find a place I had been (not the mighty traveller I thought I was), but the first place I came across was Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, Germany. But here I have been twice, once with a friend and once with my sister and little niece. Brandenburger Tor was planned in 1791 as a remembrance of a Prussian victory, and in 1961 it was incorporated into the Berlin Wall when this was built. The wall was 45 km long, 4 m high and had barbed wire on top. Many parts of this wall remain scattered throughout the city of Berlin today as a historical landmar

I was inspired to do this post by a Youtube tag video. This one from Little Book Owl specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pn8HgqAPFA&index=11&list=LL0IN8rml7j0kqvymfdEWGnQ The tag was created by About to Read and you can see the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SfhSV-L3eo So here are the questions: You have 20,000 books on your TBR. How do you decide which to read next? Luckily I don't have quite that many books on my TBR, but it is growing steadily. When it comes to choosing the next book to read, availability is a big factor. Having a book ready to go means that it is probably the next one to be read. Now that I have started buying more books for myself it is easier to get some of the newer books straight away, rather than have to wait months and months to get them from the library. So I will buy a bunch of books and pretty much just read what suits my fancy at the time. But I will try and read them all before getting new ones!

I just finished this book today and I must say it was with mixed feelings. I had seen it recommended on YouTube, so I had a lot of expectations for it, and I have to admit that these expectations were not met. I am not even sure I want to read the sequel, even though the story was gripping at times. But let's get to the actual review. There will be a few spoilers so beware! The story is about Tatiana and Alexander who meet in Leningrad just as the Second World War breaks out, and it follows their troubled love life as they navigate the dangers of war and the problems of living in extremely close quarters while having to hide their romance.  I thought the story would be quite action packed, being a World War II setting, but instead it was rather bleak and often long winded. It did have brilliant bursts of writing, often during the action sequences, but in between, when we heard about the everyday life either in war torn Leningrad or in peaceful Lazarevo, it would drag on seemingly w