Bogormen

Title: Big Summer
Author: Jennifer Weiner
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 368
Date read: June, 2021

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time—she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media—so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.

Drue was always the one who had everything—except the ability to hold onto friends. Meanwhile, Daphne’s no longer the same self-effacing sidekick she was back in high school. She’s built a life that she loves, including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.


I really enjoyed it the start, but found it took a turn for the very unbelievable about half way through. Nothing from the wedding party and after rang true to me. I didn't really notice it as I was reading it (Jennifer Weiner writes very readable books), but it detracted a bit from my enjoyment of the book, when I stopped to think about it afterwards.

Title: Artemis
Author: Andy Weir
Genre: sci-fi
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 384
Date read: November, 2017

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself - and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.


Very, very different from "The Martian" and I might actually have rated it higher if I hadn't kept comparing the two books at every turn. "The Martian" blew me away, "Artemis" was just a rather good book.

The premise of the book had me hooked from the very first page. I loved the thought of setting a book on the moon and not having space travel be the main premise, but rather just taken for granted. People lived on the moon and that was that. Unfortunately the suspense part of the story left me rather cold, and that's what brought it down to three stars. I would have preferred to read more about everyday life on the moon and less about Jazz' shenanigans.

In the end I liked the book, but it didn't become the instant favourite that "The Martian" did.

Title: Afterworlds
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Genre: YA
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 599
Date read: October, 2016

Darcy Patel has put college on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. With a contract in hand, she arrives in New York City with no apartment, no friends, and all the wrong clothes. But lucky for Darcy, she's taken under the wings of other seasoned and fledgling writers who help her navigate the city and the world of writing and publishing. Over the course of a year, Darcy finishes her book, faces critique, and falls in love.

Woven into Darcy's personal story is her novel, Afterworlds, a suspenseful thriller about a teen who slips into the "Afterworld" to survive a terrorist attack. The Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead, and where many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. Like Darcy, Lizzie too falls in love... until a new threat resurfaces, and her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she cares about most.


"Afterworlds" is really two stories mixed together. Every odd chapter tells the story of Darcy Patel, her life in NYC and her experiences as a debutante author, and every even chapter is the book Darcy wrote.

I'm finding it extremely difficult to figure out what I think of this book and how to rate it. I enjoyed the chapters about Darcy - appreciating this look into the book publishing business and the life of an aspiring author, not to mention that I really liked Darcy, despite her tendency to turn into an emo teen. She's 18 - she's allowed to. Those chapters flew by and were a breeze to read. That part of the book probably deserved 4 stars.

However, the chapters about Lizzie were such a slog to get through! I LOVED the first one (and as that was the chapter I read as part of the sample, which made me buy the book, I feel kinda cheated), but once she went back to the flipside after that first time, I was done. That entire storyline just didn't work for me. I don't know if it's just that I'm really not into ghosts, or if I'd have disliked it regardless, but those chapters were a real chore to read. That part of the book would probably have been a dnf if it had stood on its own.

In the end the good outweighed the bad, and I finished the book - but it was a huge disappointment, and I'm disinclined to recommend it to anybody else.

Title: The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 5+/5
# pages: 384, Audiobook ~11hrs
Date read: January 2015, January 2019, August 2020, March 2024

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first man to die there.

It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he's stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive--and even if he could get word out, his food would be gone years before a rescue mission could arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to get him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. But will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?


It doesn't happen often that I find a book that leaves me speechless. But when I do, that book automatically becomes an instant favourite.

"The Martian" had me hooked from the very beginning. I couldn't put it down, and stayed up far too late last night to finish it. I was instantly drawn to Mark's plight and was fascinated to read how he solved the various obstacles and kept himself sane under the circumstances.

I don't know how scientifically accurate it is, but there were no glaring holes big enough for me to see. Besides, it kept true to its own universe, and to me that's more important.

The plot had me at the edge of my seat, and though I could almost guess the outcome from the start, the end still brought a lump to my throat - that's how emotionally attached I got. Very, very few books bring me to tears, and even fewer bring me to happy tears. Amazing writing all around!

Title: The Bar Code Tattoo
Author: Suzanne Weyn
Genre: Dystopian, YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 256
Date read: November, 2012

The bar code tattoo. Everybody's getting it. It will make your life easier, they say. It will hook you in. It will become your identity.

But what if you say no? What if you don't want to become a code? For Kayla, this one choice changes everything. She becomes an outcast in her high school. Dangerous things happen to her family. There's no option but to run for her life.

More blatantly YA than I had expected - or at least a younger YA. Which meant that it didn't go into as much detail as I would have liked. I still liked it though, and read it in just a couple of hours this morning. I don't know if I'll bother with the rest of the series though.

Title: Rose and the Lost Princess
Author: Holly Webb
Genre: Childrens fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 268
Date read: April 2012

Turning the worn pages of her spell book, Rose can't believe how much her life has changed. Once a poor orphan, and now an apprentice to the King's chief magician!

But when the country's beloved Princess vanishes, everything changes. As rumours of dark magic fly through the city, the King asks Rose for help. She must find the missing Princess - before all is lost.

Just as charming as the first book in the series. It's childrens literature of the best kind in that it can just as easily be enjoyed as an adult. I missed some of the character building from the first book, as this was much more about the action. But I loved Gus and Princess Charlotte.

A perfect book to wrap up a read-a-thon.

Title: Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse
Author: Helen Wells
Genre: YA
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 217
Date read: July, 2011

In Senior Nurse, Cherry realizes that "a senior really must be a little more sober and responsible" - perhaps she should have warned the head nurse right away about the rabbit that had been smuggled into the pediatric ward.? But the children had enjoyed it so!? As "lofty" seniors, Cherry and her friends each "adopt" a probationer (first-year student) to mentor.? Why did her probie have to be dull and sullen Mildred Burnham?? Dr. Joe Fortune has discovered a new way to synthesize penicillin - which could make a life or death difference on the battle front.? But how did word of it become common knowledge around Spencer?? Cherry discovers that Mildred has more to her than she thought as together they face the dangerous thieves who have stolen Dr. Joe's formula.

Unfortunately only okay. It wasn't very engagingly written, so took me ages to read, despite the fact that it's really very short. I had originally planned to read more of the series, but now I'm not so sure... Hopefully it'll improve as she becomes an army nurse.

Title: Cherry Ames, Student Nurse
Author: Helen Wells
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 211
Date read: June, 2011

In Student Nurse, Cherry starts nursing school at Spencer with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation - would she have what it takes to be a nurse? She leaves her quiet town of Hilton, Illinois for the bustle of hospital life, to meet challenges she wouldn't have imagined. The U.S. is at war. Many nurses have gone to the front, and there is a shortage of RNs at Spencer-which Cherry and her classmates help to fill, as they learn the skills they need to graduate. And who is the mysterious patient in the secret room that no one seems to know anything about? Should Cherry risk expulsion to save his life?

How this book managed not to get sued for plagiarism of "Sue Barton - Student Nurse" I will never understand. It is a complete rip-off, right down to even many of the smaller details.

That said, "Sue Barton" is one of my favourite books, so I didn't mind terribly much finding a new 'version' of it, and I still enjoy reading about the life of a student nurse and was sad to have 'run out' of Sue Barton books, so I'll probably find myself reading more of Cherry Ames as it's not bad reading - even if it does seem like cheating ;)

Title: Bones of the Dragon
Author: Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 536
Date read: November, 2009

Skylan Ivorson is a sea-raider of the Vindras and eventually becomes the Chief of Chiefs of all Vindras clans, an honor he truly feels he deserves as one who has been blessed by Skoval, the god of war.

But sometimes a blessing is a curse in disguise.

Skoval and the other ancient gods are under siege from a new generation of gods who are challenging them for the powers of creation… and the only way to stop these brash interlopers lies within the mysterious and hidden Five Bones of the Vektan Dragons.

It will be up to the Vindras people, as the dragon-goddess' champions, to undertake the quest to recover all Five. The fate of the Old Gods and the Vindras rests on their recovery--for this is not only a quest to save the world. It is also a quest for redemption.

Despite my enjoyment of fantasy, I've never read a single Dragonlance book, and probably wouldn't have picked this up either, if I hadn't been asked to review it.

It's a fairly interesting start to a new series, but either not terribly well-written, or I'm just way above the target age, because I did find it rather simplistic at times, and during the first half of the book, the main character came across as a gigantic arrogant git. Had it ended there, I would only have given it two stars.

It improved in the second half though. Through tragic events Skylan was forced to make difficult decisions and mostly rose to the occasion. Following his growth made the book worth reading, even if nothing else had. Also, I grew to like several of the other characters and found myself interested in their futures - despite my initial reservations.

Title: Dear Enemy
Author: Jean Webster
Genre: Classics
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook, 181 pages (abridged?)
Date read: November 2008, October 2022

Judy and Jervis Pendleton appoint lively, red-headed Sallie McBride as Superintendent of the John Grier Orphan Asylum. Her clashes with Dr. Sandy MacRae (her "dear enemy") are both hilarious and appealing as she promptly embarks on a program of much needed reform.


"Dear Enemy" is the sequel to "Daddy Long-Legs" and in my opinion just as good. I love hearing about Sally's experiences leading the orphanage and find the writing style very charming. It's one of those comfort books that I keep returning to when I'm the need for some wholesome entertainment.

Reread 2022: I wasn't as enamoured by the book this time around, but I'm not going to adjust my rating as I'm very inclined to think the Danish translation I got my hands on has been abridged. I'm too lazy to actually go contrast and compare though :-P