#3bookreview

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3 BOOKS REVIEWS: Pretty covers

We have all heard it and we all claim not to do it: Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. It might look awful on the outside, but that doesn’t disqualify the context of the book. And it might look marvelous on the outside, but - and trust me on this one - doesn’t mean the story is worth sticking around for. 

But no matter how often we claim not to be swayed be a pretty cover, we all do it, do we not? I’m not afraid to say that I have picked my fair share of books because of the cover to end up utterly disappointed. 

So, if you are just like me, here are three books with covers that matches the words written on their pages - 

The People’s Favourite Poems: Out and about with Kipling, Larking and the rest by Gary Dexter

Sometimes all you need is a good poem. This collection is full of them. The only thing missing is the poems being performed instead of read. That is how this collection came to be. Dexter could not stand looking at a computer screen - it made his eyes hurt, and no one could tell him why. For some reason he decided to memorise hundreds of poems, walk the streets, and perform people’s favourite poems for money. 

And that is it - this collection is the thirty most asked for poems. Plain as that. (And then we have the one paragraph introduction to the poet, the personal anecdote following the poem, and a short story of one time he performed the specific piece. And while you read these poems what you really starts to realise is, that no matter if you like poetry or not people never seems to understand what poems mean not the notion of poetry itself. 

With that said, all left to do is read and enjoy. And if you can find a willing partner: read these poems aloud to one another. 

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

The cover of this book caught my attention the moment I laid eyes upon it for the first time. I think, I saw it floating around the internet long before I saw it as a physical copy. I fell in love none the less and decided to read it. And so i picked up the book…

It is 1893. Cora Seaborne has just lost her husband, and although she has no intention of playing the weeping widow, she leaves London to get a change of air. With her she brings her son, her maid, Martha, and a never ending supply of curiosity. She wants to understand the world, and maybe find a fossil of her own. 

Back in London, Dr. Luke Garrett tries to figure out how best to convey to Cora what he feels for her. At the same time, his mind is always ready to take up the next medical challenge. Even if his good friend, Spencer, doesn’t approve. 

A roomer reaches Cora’s ear: The Essex Serpent has returned. It is stealing sheep, and creating havoc in the small town of Aldwinter. A mutual friend introduces her to the priest in Aldwinter, and so she sets out to find out what all the havoc is about.

When Cora, her son, and Martha arrive in Aldwinter both Cora and the priest are pleasantly surprised: They had expected something entirely different when they heard about each other. Cora soon becomes a frequent guest in the home of the priest’s family, and both he, his wife, and his children welcomes Cora’s trio into their lives. 

Searching for the Essex Serpent, Cora stumbles to figure out how to be in a world where her husband no longer dictates her every step.

Silk Roads. A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

The book, Silk Roads, takes us on an amazing journey through time. Frankopan focuses on the shifts in power that has made the world change every so often. 

He starts out by telling us about the Middle Eastern World that used to be the centrum of the trading world. We meet Mongolia as it rises and falls. We hear about the tremendous amount of trade that was done in the Asian countries, and how China was one of the safest places to do trade at the time. 

We hear how the East European countries and the countries in the Middeltereanian used to control the trade roads. How adventurers took of over the seas just to arrive at the American coastline. How great civilizations fell because their power lay in their trading skills, and the power of the new arrivals lay in a small bag of black powder. 

We hear about how Europe was a power built on war and conflict. How the two world wars have played a role in history. How the Cold War changed everything. And how the centrum of power keeps changing up until today.  

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3 BOOK REVIEW: Neil Gaiman

I’ve read quite a lot from the pen of Neil Gaiman. Most people have heard of him (if nothing else then because of his involvement in the Good Omens and American Gods shows). The reason I like Gaiman’s writing so much, is his ability to make even the strangest of universes to seem familiar.

I first met Gaiman through Coraline (which we read in school). An just as Coraline, a lot of Gaiman’s writings walk the line between fantasy and reality. Some of his works might even court to the notion of magical realism.

Fragile Things

An enjoyable mix of short stories and poetry. Ghost stories with titles such as Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slave of the Secret House of the Night of Dread and Desire mingles with poems with title as simple as Instructions. Hear the twelve months tell what happened for Susan after Narnia, and the life of a sock monkey.

Surrealistic, caught in the fading light of twilight, and filled with a lot of dark humor and scary turns. An exciting reading experience.

The Graveyard Book

Jack breaks into a house killing the family who lives there. No one was supposed to survive, but the toddler escaped his crib, bumped down the stairs, and out the house. Crawling through the night the toddler found sanctuary at the graveyard long before Jack could get his hands on him.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens. Of how it is to grow up at a graveyard. Of friendships, and school, and facing the world. With as much enthusiasm as always Gaiman spins a story of a world that right as well could have been our own.

The Ocean at the End of The Lane

Sitting by the lake that’s actually an Ocean, he remembers. He remembers his childhood and the dead man in the car. He remembers Ursula Monkton and the desarstors that followed. He remembers the women of the Hempstoke family - capable of wondrous things such as stitching time together. And he remembers Lettie Hempstock: a girl almost as old as time itself.

The Ocean at the End of The Lane is told from the view of a man remembering how it is to be seven years old and even though I have known no Ursula Monkton and none such as Lettie, even though I have not been stuck in a pocket of reality filled with magic and monsters, I recognised myself at once. It was a nice read for a week’s vacation with the family, highly recommendable.

52 Weeks of Reading - A book to read at your vacation

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3 BOOK REVIEW: WW2

Lately, I’ve read a couple of books that takes place during the 2. World War. One of them was recommended to me by a friend, and one of them I got from a friend of my father earlier this year. The last one I read quite some time ago, but I thought that it couldn’t hurt to place it here.

All these books are centred around children and teenagers and takes place in three different countries. I hope one or more of these catches your interest, enjoy!

City of Thieves by David Benioff

Leningrad is surrounded by the enemy. The German army has marched right into Russia. Women, children, and those too old to fight have fled the city of Leningrad. Seventeen years old Lev Beniov isn’t one of them. He has stayed behind in his family’s old flat.

One night a German soldier falls from the sky, and when Lev and his friends loots him for everything worth anything, a group of Russian soldiers catches Lev and sends him of to prison.

Thinking he will be killed of to satuated an example, Lev doesn’t yet know that the well read soldier, Koyla, sitting in the cell with him will be his companion on a goosechase to find eggs in a city cut of from all supplies.

The story of Lev and Koyla was a good read. It was probably written to a younger audience than me, but that didn’t make the story any less worth reading. The friendship that slowly blooms between Lev and Koyla is one of the best, I have read in a while.

The impossible task of finding a dusin eggs in a city where people eat the glue holding books together was such an absurdity, and yet I didn’t stop to question it once.

I followed along as Lev went from being a boy wishing to be a hero, to become a man who found his place fighting for his country and the people he loves and cares for.

The Escape by Robert Muchamore

Paris. 1940. Summer.

The German army are closing in on Paris, and some very important knowledge soon rests in the hands of two siblings, a French orphan, and a British spy.

March Kilgour is a twelve year old orphan who runs away from the orphanage. Not knowing exactly where he is headed, he sets of towards Paris with nothing but a bit of change in his pockets. Stumbling upon an abandoned house, he decides to make it his home. Soon, he is twirled into a world he knew nothing about.

In the meantime, Paul and Rosie Clark are pulled out of school. Their father hurries them of to the last ferry between France and England, but somewhere down the line everything goes wrong. Now, the siblings find themselves all alone in the world with nothing but a suitcase filled with information that has to get England before the Germans can get a hold of them.

Robert Muchamore has written a fast paced, well put together story. It felt kind of like reading a spy novel for children, and at no point in this book did I feel like it spoke down to me as a reader.

This is book mostly meant for an audience way younger than me, but if you want a thrilling read, you can safely read this book.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Gravedigger’s Handbook is the first book, she gets her hands on. Being placed with a family in the not yet wartorn Germany, Liesel soon finds herself immerse in a universe made mostly by words strewn across pages.

Not that there is many books in her new life, but with the help of her foster father, she soon learns how to decipher the secrets of the letters. Stealing books from the library of the mayor’s wife and the Nazi’s bookburnings, she doesn’t make life any less dangerous than it already is.

Hiding a jew in the family’s basement, Liesel and her family are playing with fire.

I loved this book when I read it the first time, and I have read it a couple of times since then. The friendships Liesel makes along the way with a boy, living in her street, and a jew, living in her basement, this books caught my heart.

The love of books doesn’t dampen my fondness for this book, and the untraditional choice of narrator makes this book one of the most ennamouring reads I’ve had, and it meant a lot for me when it came out.

52 Weeks of Reading - A book you’ve read several times: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak