Rainy Day Reads

This was the April pick for The Feminist Orchestra Bookclub (links below). The book is based on a a couple of lectures that Woolf gave in 1928. It basically talks about the lack of women in literature and why that is.   The main point is that any person would need a room of one’s own and 500 pounds a year in order to be able to write without being disrupted and without having to think of making money to live. If these two things had been available to women throughout history there is no reason women should not have written as much “great literature” as men. But unfortunately women have historically been deprived of these things and as a result there are very few women writers.  She also writes a little about how men are afraid of women, and want to keep them down, in order to keep themselves at the top of the literary food chain, so to speak. And I think that was true in her time. Women were just beginning to get the opportunities of men as far as working, voting and generally

I decided to read this because everyone was so in love with it. And I must say I really did enjoy it. I read another of Jojo Moyes’ books first, because it happened to be available at the library, and I liked it well enough, but I didn’t think it was anything special. Just the typical chick-lit fluffy story with a bit of a serious note thrown in for drama. So I started “Me Before You” feeling wary about it.  The story is about a young woman, Louisa, who loses her job and after a few depressing visits to the job centre she finds another job as a helper to a disabled man. She is wholly unqualified, but manages to score the job anyway. Her boss turns out to be Will, a tetraplegic, who is a taciturn sarcastic asshole at first. However, they soon connect, and Will turns out to be a wonderful guy, who’s had a bad hand dealt by fate. Louisa sets out to save him from himself, and in the process both of them gain new insights.  I think most people by this time have a vague idea o

I saw this book making its way around Booktube and there was nothing but rave reviews, and the story line sounded really interesting, so I decided to pick it up.  The story follows a young girl from Lithuania. She and her family are arrested and deported by the Soviets along with a number of other people from all over the country in 1941. We follow their journey to the forced labour camps and their struggle to survive the cruelty of the Soviets.  I must say I have mixed feelings about this book. The first part very much reminded me about every story I’ve ever read about the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps during World War II, and while that story is extremely important to tell, I started to wonder if this book was going to bring anything new to the table. In the end I think it did. The story is so similar to that of the Jewish deportations, that it’s hard to remember that it’s actually something different. If you changed  the NKVD (Soviet police) for Nazi’

I decided to read this because everyone seems to love Murakami, and I vaguely remembered having read something of his years and years ago and not really liked it. So I wanted to give it another go and see what the fuss was about.  I should have stuck to my memories, because the fuss was about nothing! Murakami writes magical realism, and I HATE magical realism! I’m just like “Pick a genre! Is it realism or is it magical??!” I just can’t deal with talking cats and supernatural beings in a supposedly “real world” setting. But anyway, on with the review! “Kafka on the Shore" is about a 15-year-old boy from Tokyo who runs away from home. He lives with his father and apparently doesn’t feel like he can stay there. It is not really explained all that well, I feel. He runs away and meets a young woman, whom he randomly believes to be his long-lost sister, who left the family with his mother when he was a kid. That doesn’t stop him from having sexual fantasies about her, th

This is the first book of a series, and I decided to read this because Sarawithoutanh on Youtube has been recommending this series forever in her videos. I haven't really heard anyone else talking about it, but the story of angels descending on Earth with brimstone and destruction intrigued me.  This is the story of Penryn Young, a young girl who has a sister in a wheel chair and a mentally challenged mother. They try to survive after angels have invaded Earth, but the sister, Paige, gets kidnapped and Penryn sets out to find her. She teams up with an angel who seems to have his own agenda, and they head for the headquarters of the angel army. Before they reach their destination they come across many situations that they must work together in order to survive.  I found the plot of this book really interesting. I do like it when something as archetypical good as angels, turn out to be morally flawed, just like humans. From the beginning of this book I thought I had i

This is not normally the kind of book I would pick up, I think. I mostly connect Graham Greene with thrillers or detective books. To be perfectly honest I have nothing to base this assumption on, it’s just always been there at the back of my mind, and I have never wanted to pick up anything by him because of it.  I picked this one up because it was the latest draw from my TBR Jar. The reason it was in there in the first place is because I got it off one of those “You should read this next” lists. I’ve since abandoned that list, as I haven’t enjoyed too many books on it, but some are still lurking in the jar. And I guess it is nice to pick up something you normally wouldn’t every once in a while.  Anywho, this book is about a retired bachelor by the name of Henry Pulling. He lives a quiet life in England and always has. When his mother dies, he meets his aunt Augusta for the first time, and she involves him in her quite dramatic life. They travel together to Istanbul o

I initially wanted to read this book because I watched the movie adaptation on Netflix one night when I was scrolling through the options, struggling to find something that piqued my interest. Finally I settled on this movie, and to be honest, I didn’t expect much from it. But by the end I was actually crying, something that doesn’t happen that often. So since I enjoyed the movie so much I decided to read the book, since I am of the opinion that the book will (almost) always be better than the movie.  The story is about a young woman from London, Kitty, who marries a bacteriologist, Walter, who lives in HongKong. She does so mostly to spite her mother and save herself from spinsterhood. She soon finds that she does not really love or even like her husband, and she is bored and unsatisfied with her life. She starts up an affair with a charismatic, charming Englishman, but when they are discovered by her husband her world crumbles. The lover leaves her and her husband forces h

In Argentina you absolutely have to experience the life of the gaucho (South American cowboy). Well, it probably won’t resemble the actual life of an actual gaucho that much, but it will smack of it. I went to Argentina in 2014 on a group tour, and during this trip we stayed on an estancia (farm) for 2 nights. During the day we went horseback riding in the mountains and in the evening we had a barbecue dinner. The last night the estancia crew cooked a traditional asado (barbecue buffet) for us, complete with local wine.   Appetizer. The meal was very much meat based... Manning the barbecue The Beast The area we stayed in was pretty hilly. I don’t know if it was actual mountains or it just seemed that way for a flatlander like me! I had expected flat prairie-like surroundings for riding, but it was proper off-road trekking, if you can call it that. I am an absolute beginner when it comes to riding horses, and seeing the terrain, I was a little bit conce

This is the first book in what appears to be a trilogy. You can never really tell these days. I picked it because I had heard good things about it on Booktube, and it was available through my library. I got the entire trilogy, but I don’t think I will be finishing it as once again I was quite disappointed.  The book is about a young woman who is set to be executed for murder, but when she is finally taken from the dungeon, she is given a choice; she can go to the noose or she can become the Commander’s new food taster. She picks becoming the food taster and the story unravels from there.  She seems to have a whole bunch of enemies and people who are out to hurt her and the action is pretty much constant throughout the book with at least one person trying to kill her at all times. Despite all the action and intrigue I found myself completely uninterested in Yelena’s fate. I almost gave up reading the book about 80 pages in, because I just didn’t care about anyone. I decid

This winter I got restless and decided to go somewhere for the Easter holidays. I decided on Amsterdam, because it is a convenient distance from me, there were direct flights, it’s an easy city to navigate on foot and there is lots to see and do. It’s not the cheapest place, but it is definitely possible to enjoy yourself, even on a tight budget.   Trains to and from the airport It is super easy to get from the airport to the city center of Amsterdam. Once you’re off the plane just follow the signs that lead to the train station. You buy a ticket in the yellow and blue ticket machines, that literally have a button that says “I want to go to Amsterdam”. And it is preset to English, so it couldn’t be any easier. Once you buy your ticket you need to check in at one of the poles that are placed by the tracks. You just scan your ticket and you are good to go. Finding the next train to the city is also quite easy, you just look at the screens placed in the hall and find your tra