Rainy Day Reads

I decided to put a Harry Potter book on the bingo chart because I have been wanting to re-read some Harry Potter for a while. But with all the new exciting books you can easily forget to take the time to re-read old favorites. I decided to go for the first one because I feel like that is the one I have read the least. Or at least it has been the longest since I’ve read it. Whenever I do take the time to re-read Harry Potter I usually start with “The Goblet of Fire” of “The Order of the Phoenix”. But this time I decided to start at the beginning. I might even re-read all of them this year.  I absolutely adore Harry Potter and a review as such will be hard, because I don’t really have anything bad to say about it. The first book is quite short and I was worried about all the plot it had to cover along with world building and character depth and so forth. I thought maybe I remembered it as better than it was, but I’m glad to say I didn’t. It was every bit as good as I expected

This was my last pick out of my TBR jar, and while I did enjoy it, it did take me a good while to finish. I originally put this book in the jar/on my TBR list because I enjoy lists of things and I love archaeology and history.   This book is a great resource for the beginner, or for one who is just casually interested in ancient history and the like. I did find that some of the topics were a bit large, considering they had to handled within 2-6 pages. “Houses” and “Cereal Agriculture” for example gave a very cursory introduction to the topic at hand, which is understandable as these are huge issues. The book also covers (or tries to) the entire world, so presenting houses in China, Egypt, The Middle East, Europe and the Americas only leaves a very small space for each area and/or time period.  I do think most of the entries managed quite well to give a short introduction and suggestions for further reading are given at the back of the book for each topic, so if you want

This book was the first pick for the Feminist Orchestra BookClub started by Jean on Bookishthoughts on Youtube. It consists of essays from 25 women under 30 on various aspect s of feminism. Interspersed are quotes from other people on the subject, so you really get a lot of different viewpoints throughout this book.   I enjoyed reading this book. The essays are quite short and between essays there are a few short quotes, so you can get through a lot of pages in a short time. I found most of the essays interesting and relevant, but there were definitely some I connected to more than others. As for the quotes, there were a few, where I didn’t really see the connection to feminism, but mostly they were quite poignant.  The essays tackle a number of different subjects form out-and-out sexism, acid attacks, religion and feminism, rape jokes, why we still need to fight, the underlying sexism in language, how girls are conditioned to care about “beauty” etc. All the essays spri

I’ve been wanting to do a fun little tag for a while, because I think it’s a fun way to go over a few of the books you’ve read. So I found this tag on Tumblr and thought it looked like fun. I found the tag here , but I don’t know who created the original.  The only rule seems to be that you can’t use the same book twice! So here it goes… One quote:  “It’s against the rules of humanity to believe there is nothing we can do”. From "Finnikin of the Rock" by Melina Marchetta Two OTPs:  SPOILER ALERTS!!  Katniss/Peeta from "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins and "Lucas/Jacqueline" from Easy by Tammara Webber Three series:  His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (Obviously!) The Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater (so exited for The Raven King to come out soon!) Four authors:  Jane Austen Erich Maria Remarque Charles Dickens Jean M. Auel (absolutely loved the Earth’s Children series, w

I’ve been seeing videos on Top 5 Wednesday forever on Youtube, and I thought I would finally give it a go. This was created by Gingerreadslainey on Youtube, and there is a Goodreads group where you can keep updated on upcoming topics.  The topic for today is books you DNF’ed, i.e. books you didn’t finish. I’ve only recently started not finishing books, because of various reasons explained here , but I have managed to DNF a few books and here is my top 5. 5 - The Little Friend by Donna Tartt I tried to read this one because of all the good things I heard about Donna Tartt’s writing. And while I did enjoy the writing style, the pace was glacially slow. I read just under half of the book (283 pages to be exact) and nothing had really happened. I had learnt nothing that wasn’t in the blurb, and I lost my patience and gave it up.  4 - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters This was a TBR jar pick and when I first started reading it, I really enjoyed it. The writing wa

This is a YA contemporary about a pair of twins. We hear the story from both perspectives. Noah narrates when they are about 13/14 years old and Jude, the girl, narrates when they are about 16 years old. During the time in-between something has happened to make the two twins avoid each other. Slowly we figure it out as Noah tells the story leading up to the event, and Jude tells the story of the aftermath and looking back on the event.  The chapters alternate viewpoints and while I thought this was basically a good idea, the individual chapters seemed way too long. Just as you were really getting into the story the viewpoint changed, and because not only the viewpoint changes but also the time, it’s like reading two different stories. I figured it was meant to create tension or mystery or whatever, but I just found it frustrating. Just as one person was figuring something out, it changed, and the plot was pretty much completely different.  As for the characters I thought

I saw this tag on Readsanddaydreams on Youtube, but it was originally created by Jen Campbell . Basically you go through the alphabet picking an author for every letter and quickly talking about a book of theirs you either have read or want to read. I thought that sounded like fun and a good way to talk about a lot of different books. So let’s do it! A - Jane Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice, but if you want something a little bit shorter, try Persuasion or Northanger Abbey. All these are about love and social maneuvering, but Northanger Abbey has a bit more spark as it is a parody of the Gothic stories that were popular at the time.  B - Kendare Blake. Anna Dressed in Blood. I don’t usually read scary stories like this, but I actually really liked it and the sequel is on my TBR. It’s about a ghost hunter who comes to town looking to vanquish this particular ghost.  C - Suzanne Collins. I love The Hunger Games. The first book in particular. I wonder if she has writt

This is the third book I can cross off my bingo reading chart challenge, and I must say I am quite proud of myself for getting these books read so soon in the new year.  I decided to read a “Brontë book” that wasn’t “Jane Eyre”, because I have already read “Jane Eyre” and I love it. And you always hear about the Brontë sisters, but I have never read anything else by them. I picked “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” because I feel like that is the best known one after “Jane Eyre”.  The book is about a young woman who comes to live in a small neighborhood in the country. She rents Wildfell Hall from a young man and lives secluded here with her young son. The neighborhood being as small as it is, its inhabitants are very curious as to any new addition. Some families go to visit the young lady, Mrs. Graham, and she is practically forced into society. A young man, Mr. Markham, ends up falling in love with her, almost despite himself, but Mrs. Graham, a young widow, is adamant, t

Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, but the parliament and government is actually situated in the third largest city, The Haag. The city of Amsterdam is amongst other things known for The Van Gogh Museum, The Rijksmuseum, Anna Frank’s House, canals, flowers and bicycles.   This post will deal with the canals and tulips, and a general introduction to the city.  History Amsterdam can trace its history back to the 13th century, when it was a small fishing community along the banks of the river Amstel. It slowly grew and in 1275 it was awarded privileges to trade. The traders worked in the Baltic Sea, trading with the cities of the Hanseatic League. The city prospered and in the late 16th century it grew rapidly, almost doubling its population. This was the beginning of the Golden Age of Amsterdam. In the late 18th and early 19th century there was a decline, but in 1815 The Netherlands was established as an independent state and the second golden age of Amsterdam

This is the first book of a dystopian YA trilogy, and I must admit I did not have high hopes for it. What little I had heard of it on Youtube was not great, but my library had it on the shelves, so I decided to give it a go. As you may know, I usually don’t like the majority of the books everyone else seems to love, so I thought I might like this one, even if everyone else doesn’t. But no such luck!  The book is about our main character Cassie, who lives in the near future. Something has happened (I don’t believe it is ever specified) and life is now run by the Society who control people in the smallest ways. The Society decides who you should marry, when you should marry, when you should have kids and how many, what your job is and what you can do for fun. Apparently our present society had too much surplus, so they have decided to cut things down to more manageable numbers. This means there is only 100 poems, 100 songs, 100 paintings and so forth left to the people. I real

This is the second book in the Legend series, and while I really enjoyed the first book, it has taken me a while to get around to reading this one.  I really liked this book. There was action, but perhaps not so much character development, as one could wish. And while I enjoyed it, I sometimes found myself struggling to stay focused on the story. I’m not exactly sure why, although I do think it has something to do with the plot. This book is about the assassination attempt of the leader of the government and that involved a whole lot of planning, which meant that the action was pretty slow until the end of the book.  As for the characters I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of development of Day and June. Tess, and to some degree Anden, were pretty much the only ones we got to know better, and Tess really annoyed me. She was so mean to Day, almost demanding that he kick June to the curb and love her instead, pressuring him by reminding him of all the bad things that had

A teacher once told me that it doesn’t matter if you understand every single word in a text, what matters is that you get the essence of the text.  I think that is a really good thing to keep in mind when reading classics. There are a lot of small details, that I probably miss, but if I don’t feel like they’re essential for my understanding, I don’t stop to look up words or Google it. I just keep reading. Only if something comes back again and again and seems to play an integral part in the plot will I look it up. Mostly it isn’t necessary to look up stuff, so my reading flow is undisturbed.  If you still feel slightly daunted by the old-timey language and terms, there is usually a film or a series adaptation of the book that you can watch. You can watch it before you read the book, but the BBC/Andrew Davies series are usually so true to the text that you can watch it and follow along in the book. By watching the film or series, you will know the story line and know wh