Rainy Day Reads

I think I first became aware of this book because of the movie coming out. I decided to read the book first, but after reading it I decided to also watch the movie (at some point), because I liked the book so much. The book details the author’s journey along the Pacific Crest Trail in the 1990s. Books like these are quite hit or miss for me. Sometimes the author has a tendency to just give you their itinerary, pretty much just detailing what happened when and how they got to this place etc. But Strayed manages to interweave her personal backstory with the main story of her travel along the trail, and to intersperse the telling of it with personal insights and ponderings.  I usually found the story really interesting and it kept me reading even though perhaps not a lot of action takes place as such. As mentioned, the story is her travels along the trail, and obviously we know she survives it, otherwise she couldn’t be writing it. So the few touchy situations always have an unde

In 2009 on my big Asia trip we also went to Halong Bay in Vietnam. It is situated in the north of Vietnam 160 km east of Hanoi. We went on a day trip from Hanoi. It should be easy to find an agency to book you a trip. As always watch out for tourist traps. It is of course hard to know until you are stuck in said trap whether or not a specific agency has conned you. But ask other travelers for recommendations and check reputable guide books/websites for reviews.   Halong Bay was according to legend created by a dragon coming from the mountains. It moved towards the ocean and along the way it carved out valleys and gouges with its tail and as it plunged into the sea, the area behind it filled up with water leaving only the tips of the gouged out landscape visible. These tips are what you see rising from the water today.  The bay was named a World Heritage Site in 1994, and the limestone islands, called karsts, dotted with grottoes fully deserve this designation. It is a

This book is the first in a trilogy. I feel like a lot of my reviews lately are of first books in a series. There seems to be a trend in the publishing world. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, although I sometimes crave some stand-alones…but anyway! I had heard a lot about this series on Youtube. Everyone seems to love it, so I decided to give it a try, as it sounded interesting enough.  I thought it was okay. The plot was interesting, even though I would have liked a little more world-building. The writing style didn’t really do it for me. We follow Juliette’s perspective, and lack of human contact has made her a bit weird. That comes through in the language, and while it adds something different to the narrative, I just didn’t really like it that much.  As for characters we of course get to know people mostly through Juliette and her feelings about them. Having read the book, I feel like I don’t really know any of the characters that well. Perhaps I feel like I kn

I loved this book so prepare for a gushing review! I feel like 2016 is going to be a good reading year, since I have already read a few good books, and I finally feel like I am coming out of the last of my reading slump of 2015.  Anyway this book is about a boy and a girl who meet in the school bell tower, each standing on the ledge looking down. The boy, Theodore Finch, is contemplating what this type of suicide would be like, when he sees the girl, Violet Markey, posed on the ledge. He talks her down, but because of their high school status, and because Finch is a nice guy, the story ends up being she talked him down. She is branded a hero, he a weirdo. He doesn’t seem to mind too much, as he is already an outcast in school and he lets people think what they want. He takes an interest in Violet, however, determined that she should know that life is worth living. The story goes on from there and I really loved the structure of it. It sort of ends up taking the form of a roa

I wrote a post not too long ago about how I just can’t seem to not finish a book, but how I was going to change that, because my life is too short to be reading books I don’t enjoy! And lately I have been DNF’ing books left, right and center. So I am quite proud of myself, even though I still feel kind of bad for the books I DNF.   This book is one of the many I have decided to stop reading. I made it about halfway through, so I feel like I gave it a good try, and it just wasn’t for me!  The book is about a young girl in late 19th century England. She lives an unassuming life in a small coastal town where she goes to the music hall for fun. At this music hall she one night sees a young woman performing and she falls in love. Soon this young woman whisks her away to London, and she thinks she has it all made. But then something happens that sends her reeling, and she only slowly manages to pick herself up again. I assume. I left the book just as she was beginning to get her li

I have heard talk about this book for ages, since it is something of a modern classic. For some reason I never understood the plot of the book, and thought it was a Jane Eyre type thing. Don’t ask me why…But perhaps for this reason I never got around to reading it. Having read and loved Jane Eyre I figured that was enough of that. But recently I saw a video on Youtube where it was discussed and the plot briefly summarized. And then I found out that the plot was completely different from what I thought it was. So i ordered it from my library and read it. And liked it! The book is about a dystopian society where women are reduced to one of a few categories. There are the demure Wives, the servant Marthas and the Handmaids. These so-called handmaids are “issued” to the elite families of the society and here they are meant to be impregnated by the husband, so they can give birth to a child for the wife.  We meet our particular handmaid as she starts a new “posting” in the house of

This book sounded really intriguing to me. It is about an old woman, whose memory is beginning to fade. She becomes convinced that her friend Elizabeth is missing, but she keeps forgetting things, so she is not sure how she is going to figure out where Elizabeth went. Alongside this story she thinks back to the 1940s, when she was a young girl and her sister Sukey went missing. These two   mysteries unfold together, until we finally learn the truth about them both. I thought it was an interesting point of view to take. We experience the world through the eyes of a woman who is suffering from probably Alzheimer’s. I have to say though, it got a bit tiring in the end, because she goes over the same things again and again and sometimes she would start over on the same thing, as soon as she had resolved it, because she would have already forgotten it. It was interesting as far as seeing how the mind works in a person with that sort of illness, but it made for very slow plot developmen

So I saw this video on Youtube by Jean over on Jean Bookishthoughts, and I thought it was a fun idea to challenge your reading style in the new year. I don't normally set myself goals as such, when it comes to my reading. I use the Goodreads challenge, but other than that I pretty much just pick up whatever I want during the year. But I thought it would be fun to challenge myself as to the actual books I will be reading, and not just the number of books I read during the year. So I made this bingo chart. I've put some "easy" ones in there, that I was probably going to do anyway, like re-reading Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Read a collection of short stories Read a graphic novel Read a book by Haruki Murakami Read a Man Booker 2015 shortlisted book Read a non-fiction book Read a book by Shirley Jackson Read some modern translated fiction Read a book by Jan Guillou Read a vampire book Read a Bronte book that is

This book was my latest TBR Jar pick. Luckily it was just sitting on my shelf, waiting to be picked up and I started reading it almost immediately.   The book is a story about a girl whose best friend disappears. Not in a “crime-novel” kind of way. Her family just picks up and leaves and she doesn’t tell anyone about it. Emily, the one who gets left, is of course worried, but doesn’t feel like there is anything she can do aside from keep trying to call Sloane, the one that left.  One day Emily receives a list in the mail from Sloane. On this list is a bunch of weird things for Emily to do. Emily is a bit timid and shy, and was seemingly riding the coat tails of Sloane’s popularity in their friendship. But she decides to step out of her comfort zone and complete all the tasks on the list, hoping that by the end she would figure out where Sloane went.  I can’t say anymore without spoiling it, so I shall keep the summary to that. Below are a few spoilerey bits, not too much,

This post in based on this video on Youtube, where BOOKadoodles has changed the categories for the Oscars to fit books. Which I think is an amazing idea! I think I changed a few of the categories just slightly, but hey-ho! Best Female Lead:  Queenie from Code Name Verity. SPOILER: She is just so brave and strong and amazing. Read the book and tell me you don’t feel the same! I dare you! Best Male Lead:  Henry Smart from A Star Named Henry. Okay, he does some pretty shady things, but I feel like he is one of those bad guys, who could have been good, if circumstances had not been against him. And he really believes in the cause and tries to stick to the heart of it, when it starts being about power for the others. And he loves and admires his wife, which is always a good quality in a man.  Best supporting role:  Iko from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. She is a lovely mix between human and android personality and brings a light note to dark situations. 

It’s the first bright day of a brand new year!  And that means it’s time to take inventory of last year’s resolutions. I made a post here detailing my resolutions, but in short they were: Do more DIY Take up yoga or pilates Do a 365 challenge/one picture a day for a year challenge Read 60 books I think it went okay. I managed to upload one DIY on the blog…I mean, I could have done better, but one is more than zero, right? I have been doing yoga and pilates. Not super regularly, because I do it at home using Youtube videos and the Yoga studio app, but I’m doing it. I managed to complete the 365 challenge. There were a few days I missed out, because I was out of wifi range and my app kept crashing when I tried to upload, but I am going to count it as a win anyway! I read 64 books for my Goodreads challenge of 60 books, so that is a definite win!  I really feel like I won the 2015 resolutions, if you can call it that. The DIY thing is questionable, but still, I

I think everyone is familiar with D-Day, the military operation in which the Allies crossed the English Channel, landing on the beaches of Normandy and taking the Nazis by surprise. This all started on June 6th 1944. More than 5,000 ships and landing vessels, 50,000 vehicles and 11,000 airplanes crossed the channel headed for French beaches with codenames such as Omaha, Utah and Sword. On the first day alone 4,900 allied soldiers died and more followed since.   9,386 American soldiers are buried on the American churchyard at Colleville-sur-Mer, while almost 5,000 British, Canadian, Australian and South African men are buried on the British graveyard at Bayeux.   The site of Omaha beach includes the Monument du Débarquement (a monument to the Normandy landings) and the Musée-Mémorial d’Omaha Beach which contains tanks, dioramas and photograpghs. Nearby the American cemetery lies on a hilltop overlooking the site of the landing on Omaha Beach. (For practical information see this