A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman

Title: A Man Called Ove
Author: Fredrik Backman
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 358
Date read: April, 2016

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.


Unfortunately not as good as I had expected. I liked it well enough, but I didn't love it the way I had expected to, nor did it blow me away like it apparently has so many others.

It's written in much the same style as The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (which I adored!) but without the same joyfulness that made that book so charming. The writing style was excellent, but for about the first half of the book I wondered, "Yes, but what's the point?".

Fortunately it improved, and the last 100 pages were awesome, so I may still want to read more of Fredrik Backman after all.

Wrong Way Round - Lorna Hendry

Title: Wrong Way Round: One Country, One Camper Trailer, One Family, One Amazing Adventure
Author: Lorna Hendry
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 238
Date read: April, 2016

'Mate, I reckon you're going about this all wrong. For the first month, you're only going to be a day's drive from Melbourne. If it was me, I'd get her across the Nullarbor quick smart so she can't nick off home.' When Lorna Hendry, her husband James and young kids left Melbourne on a one-year trip around Australia in a 4WD with a camper trailer (having only been camping once before they left), they ignored all advice and drove across the Nullarbor and up the west coast of Australia .

They may have been travelling the wrong way around Australia, but it was the best decision they ever made. Lorna returned to Melbourne three years later, having crossed deserts and rivers, taken ill-advised short cuts in the most remote areas of the country, stood on the western edge and the northern tip of the country, stumbled onto its geographic centre, and lived in remote communities in Western Australia.

Wrong Way Round is a story about four people who had to get out of the city to become a family. It's about this beautiful and harsh country. And it's about the adventures that you can have if you step outside of your door and turn left instead of right.


Not the best book ever for a readathon, as it was rather slow reading, but man, I loved it! This is one of the best travelogues I've read in a long time, and I loved living vicariously through the experiences of Lorna and her family. It made me want to go back to Australia and explore more of the country (I've seen depressingly little of it), although I'm not quite sure I could be as loosey-goosey with the planning as they were ;) Still, it made for fascinating reading.

My only complaint was that there weren't enough photos! There were a few pages at the end, but that was it. I would have appreciated seeing more of those - although Lorna did do an excellent job of putting them into words.

I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to come back to 'every day life' after an adventure like that.

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

Title: Attachments
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 357
Date read: April, 2016

It's 1999 and the internet is still a novelty. At a newspaper office, two colleagues, Beth and Jennifer, e-mail back and forth, discussing their lives in hilarious details, from love troubles to family dramas. And Lincoln, a shy IT guy responsible for monitoring e-mails, spends his hours reading every exchange.

At first their e-mails offer a welcome diversion, but the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realises just how head-over-heels he is, it's too late to introduce himself.

After a series of close encounters, Lincoln eventually decides he must follow his heart... and find out if there is such a thing as love before first sight.


Perfect readathon material - I breezed through it in no time at all.

Just as charming and feel-good a novel as I've come to expect from Rainbow Rowell. While it couldn't quite live up to "Fangirl" or "Landline", I still liked it a lot, and really enjoyed the unusual narrative... even if it did take me awhile to figure out that Beth and Jennifer weren't supposed to be the main characters.

I liked Lincoln, and was pleased to see he wasn't quite the helpless person the first few chapters made him out to be; my heart broke with Jennifer and Beth through their trials (their friendship was brilliantly shown without any telling necessary at all); and I mentally cheered when everything worked out in the end.

The only problem is that now I have no more new Rainbow Rowell books to read. I'll have to hope she publishes something else soon :)