Rainy Day Reads

I picked this one up for my bingo reading challenge because I have seen a number of the Hogarth Shakespeare retellings floating around Booktube, and this one just happened to catch my eye at the library.   This is a retelling of “The Taming of the Shrew”, and it follows Kate, a college-dropout (or more like kick-out) who is living with her dad and taking care of her younger teenaged sister.  When her dad’s research assistant Pyotr finds himself in need of a green card, Kate’s dad hatches a plan to get Kate to marry him so he can stay and work in the laboratory. Kate of course takes great offense at being treated like property, but almost in spite of herself she finds that she sort of likes Pyotr.  I read this one without having read the play, so I can’t say how faithful it is to the original play. I imagine it is quite faithful, because it felt a little rushed, like we just had a number of markers to hit and we needed to hit them sooner rather than later. I r...

Challenges:   Bingo: Night by Elie Wiesel Diversity Bingo 2017: Jewish Main Character This book is set during World War II and our protagonist is Eliezer, a young boy living in Transylvania with his family. Soon the Nazis make their arrival and Eliezer and his family are first forced to move into a ghetto with other Jews and then they are moved to a camp.  This book is told from the perspective of Eliezer, and we follow his struggle with faith as these harrowing things unfold. He started as a devout Jewish scholar who wanted nothing more than to study the Jewish mysteries, but at the end of the book he is deeply questioning his faith.  This book is quite short but very powerful and while there are many books dealing with the Holocaust I think this one has a bit of something more, as we follow Eliezer’s internal struggles with faith and morals as well as the external struggle to just survive.  I gave this book 5 stars out of 5. 

I forgot I had this book on my bingo chart for the year, and I wasn't planning on writing a review until I remembered, because I don't really have a lot to say about it. The book follows Janie, a young black woman in the American south in the 1920s. She wants more out of life than the marriage her grandmother strives to get for her. When she kisses a boy her grandmother quickly sets her up with an older man and they are married. Janie resents this life and when a happy-go-lucky fellow comes by her garden gate she takes up with him. He gives her a different life from what she had, but she still isn't happy with it. When she finally meets Tea Cake she is content. As I said I wasn't planning on writing a review, because I didn't really enjoy this book, but I didn't hate it either. I just don't think it was for me. Janie seems unsatisfied with her lot in life, and she is portrayed as someone with gumption and drive, but then she sits back and lets the me...

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 picked this book as my “historical fiction book” for the Bingo Board Reading Challenge, because I’ve heard so many good things about it.   It is set in 17th century Delft in the Netherlands and is told from the perspective of a young girl named Griet, who goes to work as a maid in the house of Vermeer, the famous painter.  We learn early on that her father has had an accident at his work and can’t work any longer, so now the two children must support the family. The son is an apprentice tile maker and that is all well and good, but Griet must work as a maid and the parents are so ashamed of what this family has come to, and say things like “We lost you when you became a maid” etc. If it’s SO shameful to be a maid why are you letting her? And if it is so necessary for her to work as a maid to support YOU why are you being so bitchy about it?  Anyway, she goes to the house and gets stuck into work. And here she meets a bunch of people and the book is re...

I did a bingo board reading challenge this year for the first time and rather enjoyed it. I'll have a "review" of how well I did going up soon, so keep an eye on that. For now, I will be presenting my bingo board for next year, as I have decided to keep it up. It is a fun way of challenging yourself and reading a bit out of your comfort zone, or just taking a chance to check off some of the books that have been bumping around on your TBR for way too long. Below is the bingo board I have made for 2017. This year I have been a bit more specific, picking a number of specific authors or even books, as I found last year's rather vague list to be a bit of a hindrance sometimes. If I first had to find out what "modern translated fiction" entailed, I was more likely to just pick up whatever was lying around and read that instead. So I have tried being a bit ahead of the game this year and picking some specific things from the get go. Modern translated fictio...

I had been looking forward to re-reading this classic as I remember enjoying it quite a lot the last time I read it. But once I got started I was actually a little bit disappointed. But first things first. If you don’t know “The Lord of the Rings” it is an epic trilogy about a dangerous quest to destroy a powerful ring coveted by an evil entity out to take over the world. We meet hobbits, elves, dwarves, knights, wizards and living trees just to name some of the creatures that inhabit this world.   As I said I was a little disappointed, but that should by no means stop you from picking up the series. It is a great fantasy series with well-rounded characters, a cohesive world and an ever moving plot. I just seem to have forgotten that Tolkien does tend to wax poetic about the history of this world and its peoples. And I found myself to be a little bored when it came to those passages, I must confess. Like the whole Tom Bombadil bit seemed a bit unnecessary to me, and al...

I have actually read a couple of classics this year in my “Reading the Classics” project, but for some reason I never ticked them off my Bingo Chart. So I figured it was time with this one.   “The Scarlet Letter” is about a woman, Hester Prynne, who is caught cheating on her absent husband, when she falls pregnant. Unluckily for her, she lives in the Puritan colonies of the America’s in the 18th century. She is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter on her dress, so everyone will recognize her and judge her. She refuses to give up her accomplice, and when her husband unexpectedly returns, she refuses to even tell him. He decides to hide who he really is in order to avoid being connected with her and sets about finding out who his wife’s lover is.  I rather quickly figured out who the lover is, and so it seems does the husband. He sets out to take his revenge, but I can’t really figure out how. He pretends to befriend the lover and acts as his doctor, but I can’t tel...

I picked this particular challenge, because I’ve heard so many good things about Guillou and his writing, and especially this series. This was all over the place a few (many!) years ago, there was even a movie, so I figured I should get stuck into it and what better place to start than with this book.  The story is about a young boy, Arn, who is born and raised on an affluent farm/manor in Medieval Sweden. Various circumstances lead his parents to send him to be raised in a convent and here he learns practically everything (and then some) worth knowing in Medieval Sweden. When he is a young man the monks send him back to his father’s house to learn about the “ways of the world” outside the convent. This leads to a number of misunderstandings and other events and end up with Arn getting on the road to Jerusalem.  To be honest I don’t really know what I expected from this book. Probably a little more Knight Templar action, but what it was, was basically Arn co...

I have just written a glowing review of this book as I thoroughly enjoyed it. But as I went to check out the website and possibly make a donation, I found that this book and its subject, Greg Mortenson, has been the subject of controversy involving lies and misappropriation of charity funds.   I read 2 or 3 articles and the main points can be found in this one by Jon Krakauer.  I read this book as part of my bingo reading challenge for the year, i.e. reading a non-fiction book. I have read other non-fiction books this year, but I haven’t really had too much to say about them or otherwise they have been part of other reading lists/challenges.  This book chronicles the work of Greg Mortenson, an American who almost accidentally starts a charity to build schools in Pakistan’s rural parts.  As it turns out the starting point of this tale of bravery and hard work is a complete lie. The book begins with Mortenson, weak and tired, stumbling down th...

This was my pick for the challenge of reading a graphic novel this year. I’ve seen it on Youtube, specifically on Jean Bookishthoughts’ channel and I thought it sounded interesting.  It details the author’s life growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She tells of the demonstrations, the imprisonment of family members and friends and the fear of not only the war with Iraq, but the country’s own government.  The art is pretty cartoonish and all done in black and white. This lends a starkness to the story that for the most part suits it, but it does take a little getting used to. A few times I had trouble discerning between the different people, as the cartoony art style was quite basic and not very detailed.  The story was interesting, but a little confusing at times, simply because very complicated political matters had to be boiled down to a few sentences, and since I don’t know a lot about the history a...

I read this book because it was Emma Watson’s pick for the “Our Shared Shelf” book club for one of the past months (I’m behind, I know) and I thought it would do well for my “read a feminist book” part of my reading challenge this year.   I must confess I didn’t really know too much about Caitlin Moran before I read this book, but I think she is wonderful and I will definitely be checking out more of her work.  This book is a memoir/debate book about Moran’s experiences growing up as a female and working in media. She speaks openly about her experiences with boys, sex, pregnancy, drugs, bad and good relationships, the pressures of being a woman, sexism and getting tangled up in expectations and how she untangled herself again.  I really enjoyed this book. I could relate to a whole lot of her experiences and thoughts, although there were some that I couldn’t really relate directly to. But I think that most of her experiences are almost universal for ...

As part of my reading challenge for this year I decided to read a book of poems, as it is a genre I haven’t really explored all that much. I picked this particular collection because it came highly recommended by Jean Bookishthoughts on Youtube.  For the most part I enjoyed reading this. But I have to say that, as with short stories, I just don’t think poems are my jam. I like small nuggets of wisdom or insights, but as for the longer “story-telling” poems I must say I prefer “regular” fiction.  The collection is divided into four parts; childhood, manhood, womanhood and blind profit. It sort of has a protagonist in Tiresias, but he doesn’t feature in all the poems, as far as I could tell. A lot of them also deal with Tempest’s own experiences growing up and becoming an adult. I thought most of the poems were fine, but there were only a few that I really liked, including “Waking Up With You This Morning” and “Ballad of a Hero”. As for the rest I just wasn’t too...

I read this book as part of my Bingo Chart Reading Challenge. With this I can cross out “Read a collection of short stories”. I picked this because it came highly recommended by Jean BookishThoughts on Youtube.  This is a collection of short stories, seemingly all based on fairy tales. I say seemingly because there is one or two where I can’t recognize the fairy tale, but that is probably just me being dimwitted. Most of the other stories are recognizably based on Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Puss-in-Boots to name some.  I really liked the writing of these stories. They are all beautifully written and Carter can conjure up an eerie feeling with just a few words. But, as I have recently discovered, short stories just aren’t for me. I just can’t seem to get into the story, when it’s that short. And if I can’t get into it and connect with the characters I find myself pretty much uninterested. I will say that I really enjoyed one or two of the lo...

As part of my bingo chart reading challenge for 2016 I decided to pick up a crime novel. It’s not really my genre, as I for some reason just don’t enjoy crime novels that much. But I decided to step out of my comfort zone and give the genre another go. I picked this particular book because Robert Galbraith is a pen name for J.K. Rowling, and if nothing else, then at least the writing would be good.  This book is about a private detective who is having a bit of a hard time lately. His business is not going too well, and neither is his private life. An old acquaintance contacts him in order to have his sister’s suicide investigated, as he believes it wasn’t a suicide at all. The detective, Cormoran Strike, accepts the case and works it with the help of his resourceful and intelligent assistant/secretary Robin.  I liked the story well enough and it was well-written, as I knew it would be. But I found that I wasn’t really all that interested in the mystery of it. Th...

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...

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 expec...

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 a...