Rainy Day Reads

This was the most recent pick from my TBR Jar and I actually quite enjoyed reading this book.   It is the story of a young man, Tom, in his early 20s I believe, trying to get his life back together after having let it fall apart following the death of his uncle Joe. We hear bout how his family used to be close-knit, but after the death of Joe, everyone seems to be flailing. His father is drinking, his mother left with his sister, he pushed his friends away and screwed up big time with the girl he liked.  After taking a spill from a table cutting his head open and landing himself in hospital he slowly starts to pick up the pieces. I enjoyed seeing his life come back together. I got the feeling of how it used to be, both his family and his group of friends sticking by each other, and how everyone now seemed to be drifting apart. We see how he slowly changes from an angry, hurt, disillusioned young man into someone who takes responsibility for his actions and tries to make

Spoiler: I may have gone overboard…. I went to the library a few days ago and decided to really browse the shelves and pick up a good selection. And I feel like I succeeded… I picked up both fiction and non-fiction to give myself a wide selection to choose from.  Let’s start with non-fiction.  I picked up a couple of books on ways to go more green. “1001 Ways You Can Save the Planet” by Joanna Yarrow and “Green Makeover” by Maria Cuculiza. I have actually read “Green Makeover” before a number of years ago, but I just remember thinking it all seemed a bit of a hassle and I was too lazy to really implement any of the ideas given in this book. But as I have aged I have become more invested in living a less wasteful life and more dedicated to the environment and sustainability. I am still lazy, but I hope to find a few ways to clean up my act in these two books.  Then I picked up “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I’ve heard a lot abo

I have been meaning to get my hands on this book for a while, and having set myself a goal of reading 12 non-fiction books this year AND placing this specific book on my 2017 Bingo Board I figured it was time to buckle down and do it! I think we all know who Malala is. As the title says she was the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taleban. I had never heard of her before she was shot and it was all over the news. I thought she was more or less randomly targeted by the Taleban and only took up her fight for education for girls after the fact. But it turns out that she did a great deal of campaigning and activism before she was shot, and this was the reason she was targeted.  In this book we learn about her life mostly before the shots and we see how her home in Pakistan slowly but securely came under the thumb of the Taleban. Meanwhile Malala and her father, himself an avid activist for education, fight to keep Pakistan from turning into the Taleban con

I recently read “Room” by Emma Donoghue and really liked it (review here). So when I saw this at my library I figured I would check it out.   It is a story about an English nurse, Lib, in the late 19th century, who is sent to Ireland to be part of an investigation into a girl who claims to subsist on nothing. The girl, Anna, has apparently been living on air for four months, but in order for her doctor to establish it as a fact, a committee decides to send for two nurses to watch over the child for two weeks to see if she smuggles food somehow.  Lib is certain she will quickly unravel this so-called mystery and reveal the girl as a sham, but she gets tangled up in the case in a way she never thought she would.  I quite liked this book, but it wasn’t as compelling as “Room”. But I do think that one is hard to follow. We see things from Lib’s point of view and follow her personal ups and downs as the case proceeds. I think she was an interesting character to follow, as

I picked this one up randomly at my library because I liked the cover and the promise of a carnival setting.   It details the story of Julia Pastrana, a young woman in the 19th century freak show scene. Julia was born in Mexico an abandoned by her mother due to her excessive hair growth. She was taken in by the local governor, but when propositioned by a showman to be his main attraction she leaves Mexico and starts a touring life that continued until her death.  The book is based on the true story of Julia Pastrana, a so-called “bearded woman”. In reality she was probably suffering from what we now know as hypertrichosis, a condition that left her entire body and face covered with hair.  In the book we follow her as she tours the world becoming a major attraction wherever she goes. But in reality she longs for a quiet family life and hopes to achieve this one day. The dream seems about to come true when her manager decides to propose marriage to her and she ends u

This is a piece of historical fiction set against the background of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff,   a ship carrying over 10,000 refugees, wounded soldiers and crew. The ship set out from Gotenhafen, now known as Gdynia, in present-day Poland at the end of January 1945. At the time the city was under German control and it was used as a naval base. At the end of the war it became a corralling point for refugees trying to escape the advancing Russian army and gain passage on a ship to safety.   In this story we follow four young people, each with their own motives and secrets. We have Alfred, the young German soldier, who believes in Hitler’s cause insofar as it doesn’t interrupt his plans for himself, Florian the Prussian who is enacting a scheme of revenge, Joana, a young Lithuanian woman who feels guilty for the people lost to the war and Emilia, a Polish girl who has gotten lost in the mire of war.  The four of them meet up on the road to Gotenhafen and while t

As you can tell from the title I DNF’ed this book. The story was about a young girl in what I believe was 16th century England. The summary said the book would detail how she was left alone and penniless on the streets of London and how she rose above that and came to be the king’s mistress. It had all the makings of a trashy period romance and I imagine it would have been almost like a “Gone With the Wind” in a different setting. And when I decided to pick up this book I felt like I was in the mood for just that. But moods change and once I had started this book I just wasn’t feeling it. At all. So I decided to put it down after just a few chapters.   What I did read was well written, but the main character of Amber really annoyed me. She reminded me of Lydia from “Pride and Prejudice”, petulant and selfish and feeling herself too good for her circumstances. She throws away everything to follow some random man who straight out tells her he won’t marry her, but she is just interes

I had 20 challenges on my bingo board for 2016 and I managed to do 15 of them. I am quite proud of that! You can see all of my reviews of the books I read here .   At the beginning of the year I was killing it, crossing off books left, right and center, but towards the summer  I just seemed to peter out. I still read books, just not books from the bingo board. I think the reason for that was just that once I finished a book I would want to move on to the next one fairly quickly, but most of the books on the board I would have to get from the library and it would usually take a week or more for them to get them in. So I would just read something else, and once I finished that one, it would be the same palaver.  Still, I managed to read quite a lot of the books/themes on my board and I am pretty happy with my results. I did also try to read one more theme, a vampire book, but I started a total of three (!) books and just didn’t care enough to finish them. So I almost feel

Absolutely everyone has been raving about this book ever since it first came out. And for once I will join that chorus. I really enjoyed this book. As with “The Dumbhouse” by John Burnside it wasn't a pleasant or cozy book to read, but it was well written and dealing with an interesting topic.   If you haven’t heard about this book it deals with kidnapping and sexual abuse so do be aware of triggers if/when reading it. The story is told from the point-of-view of a five-year-old boy named Jack. He lives in Room with his Ma, and they have lived there his whole life. We soon learn that Jack’s mother is the victim of a kidnapper who is keeping her locked up in the garden shed and sexually abuses her on a regular basis. She has chosen to tell Jack that Room is all there is in the world, everything they see in TV is pretend. But one day she learns something from the captor that makes her question whether or not their lives can continue as they are. She fears her captor will wa