Changing Gears - Nancy Sathre-Vogel

Title: Changing Gears: A Family Odyssey to the End of the World
Author: Nancy Sathre-Vogel
Genre: Memoir, Non-fiction
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 305
Date read: February 2013, January 2014, April 2018

I first 'found' the Vogel-family two years go when they were on the last legs of their journey from Alaska to Argentina. A friend pointed me towards their blog, and I was instantly hooked. Ever since then I've been sitting on teatherhooks waiting for the book chronoling their adventures to be first written and then published.

At long last it is here :)

Changing Gears is the amazing story of a family's 2.5 year adventure. Nancy, John and their twin boys (age 10 at the start of the trip) packed up their lives and moved to the roads to bike all the way from Alaska to Argentina. They took each day as it came, experienced hardships and successes, met Road Angels and friendly people everywhere and generally had the experience of a life time.

I was totally mesmerized from the very start. Even though I was already familiar with their experiences through the blog, it was great to get to read it all in this condensed form (after all, it's not often you have the time to reread blog entries from 700+ days!), and I was equally fascinated to read about the planning and preparation that went ahead, as the actual adventures along the way. Somehow especially the trip through Alaska and Canada appealed to me... probably because those are two places I've always wanted to go myself!

Changing Gears will make you want to go travelling - big time! It is the story of living your dream. I could never do what the Vogel-family did, and I'm grateful to Nancy for letting me live vicariously through their experiences.

Beauty Queens - Libba Bray

Title: Beauty Queens
Author: Libba Bray
Genre: YA
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~17hrs, 400 pages
Date read: February 2013, April 2015, October 2020

The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?

I was in the mood for some light reading, and this fit the bill perfectly. The plot seems to be a mix between "Miss Congeniality" and "Lost", and, though absurd at times, actually works. I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion.

The audiobook I found was narrated by Libba Bray herself, and she did an amazing job. No doubt a lot of my enjoyment of the book was due to her narrating. I especially loved Tiara's "voice".

The book is neither deep nor thought-provoking, but it's fun and entertaining. Sometimes that's all I ask for.