A Symphony of Echoes - Jodi Taylor

Title: A Symphony of Echoes (The Chronicles of St. Mary's #2)
Author: Jodi Taylor
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 478
Date read: April, 2018

In the second book in the Chronicles of St Mary's series, Max and the team visit Victorian London in search of Jack the Ripper, withess the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, and discover that dodos make a grockling noise when eating cucumber sandwiches.


But they must also confront an enemy intent on destroying St Mary's - an enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself to do it.


Not quite as good as the first one, but still an enjoyable read and I loved all the time travel - even if some of the visits seemed somewhat random (I loved their trip back to Nineveh, but never figured out what purpose it served to the main part of the story!) making it seem more like a collection of connected short stories than an actual novel.

I think I'll take a bit of a break from the series though. The incessant foreshadowing ("little did I know that 24 hours later I'd be ready to kill him", "it was a good plan, really! None of us knew what would happen" etc. etc. etc.) drove me batty, and though not enough to give up on the book itself, it's enough to put me off reading the next one just now.

Var det mig, du mente? - Kurt Dalsgaard

Title: Var det mig, du mente?
Author: Kurt Dalsgaard
Genre: Memoir, christian non-fiction
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 288
Date read: April, 2018

Kurt Dalsgaard's autobiography about his life as a missionary for Home Mission in Randers, Vejle and Brede, as coordinator of Copenhagen Home Mission, employed at Danish Bible Institute, as father and husband, but first and foremost as Christian.

Full disclosure: I've known Kurt Dalsgaard most of my life. He's the father of my childhood best friend and close friends with my own parents to this day. I'm not sure I would have picked up the book otherwise.

And that would have been a shame, because even taking my personal bias out of the equation, I found it a very interesting book. Kurt had a huge part in the shaping of IM (Inner Mission / Home Mission) in Denmark in the 80s and 90s, and as someone who was part of IM during those years (although as a child) it was interesting to see what went on "behind the scenes" so to speak.

But I also really appreciated the chapters on his personal life (even though some of them were heartbreaking) and connecting the Kurt of the book with the father of my best friend.

(Putting my personal bias back in, I was also really chuffed to see my parents mentioned more than once :-D Always fun with a personal connection like that.)