Bogormen

Title: Inconceivable
Author: Ben Elton
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 368
Date read: April 2011

Whenever Sam thinks about babies, he envisages rivers of vomit and sleepless nights. But wife Lucy can't walk past Mothercare without crying. What's more, she can't seem to conceive--not by traditional methods, anyway. Hippy confidante Drusilla suggests an array of New Age remedies, including the intimate use of nutmeg oil and al fresco lovemaking. As Lucy faces a possible verdict of infertility, her love for Sam enters tailspin, accelerated by the advent of arrogant actor Carl Phipps. Meanwhile Sam, desperate to escape his tedious BBC job, conceives the inconceivable--turning the intimacies of their battle for babies into an acclaimed movie script.

A 2.5 star review.

A bit of a disappointment, unfortunately. So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed every book I've read by Ben Elton, and I just don't think this lived up to his usual standards. It was readable enough, but not as engaging or captivating as his other books. I did appreciate the poignancy of it though, and especially enjoyed the ending.

Title: The Titan's Curse
Author: Rick Riordan
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 304
Date read: April, 2011

When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped.And now it's up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess? They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans. Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared -- a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever.

These books keep being compared to Harry Potter, and I can definitely see why... However, on one point I think they're significantly inferior - there are no descriptions of what life is like when there isn't a crisis in the making. The books are wonderfully action-filled, but I actually miss descriptions of everyday life at the camp. Such descriptions build the universe more thoroughly than handling the monster of the week.

Title: Six Months to Live
Author: Lurlene McDaniel
Genre: YA
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 136
Date read: April, 2011

When 13-year-old Dawn Rochelle is diagnosed with leukemia, she's scared. While in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy, Dawn meets Sandy, who also has cancer. Dawn and Sandy battle the disease together, and remain best friends even after they both go into remission and return home. But when Sandy gets sick again, Dawn wonders what the future holds both for Sandy and herself.

If I'd read this 15-20 years ago, I would have absolutely LOVED it! It fits perfectly the type of book I used to read back then, and is sad enough to make me cry without being too sad. I did get certain flashbacks to my own time spent in a hospital, although I'm grateful it was never this serious.

Title: Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre: Memoir, non-fiction
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~8.5hrs
Date read: April, 2011

At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who had been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but they also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the U.S. government, which - after detaining Felipe at an American border crossing - gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again.

Having been effectively "sentenced to wed," Gilbert decided to tackle her fears of matrimony by becoming a student of the institution. Over the next ten months, as she and Felipe wandered haphazardly across Southeast Asia, waiting foe the U.S. government to permit them to return to America and get married, the only thing she talked about, read about, or thought about was the perplexing subject of marriage.

Ever since reading "Eat, Pray, Love" I've been interested in reading this second memoir as well. However, it turned out to be very different from what I had expected, in that it was more of a dissertation about marriage through the years/cultures than a stereotypical memoir.

After my initial disappointment, I ended up not minding too much though. There was enough memoir stuff in it to satisfy my desire to 'learn more about Liz and Felipe', and I ended up being quite intrigued by how marriage has changed over time and how differently it is viewed from country to country.

This audio-version was read by Elizabeth Gilbert herself, which added a pleasant touch to the book.

Title: Anna and the French Kiss
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Genre: Chick-lit, YA
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 372
Date read: April, 2011

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris—until she meets Étienne St. Claire: perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home.

As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near-misses end with the French kiss Anna has long awaited?

All of a sudden I started reading about this book everywhere, and everybody who'd read it absolutely raved about it. Well, obviously I had to see what the fuss was all about, so I ordered it online, and sat down to read it over the weekend...

... and I have to admit, I immediately joined the adoring crowd. The storyline was nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before in other YA books, but the execution was so incredibly charming that I just had to surrender. Stephanie Perkins writes young love extremely well, so it was very easy to live vicariously through Anna, and I really enjoyed that so much page-time was spent on establishing Anna and St. Claire's friendship.

I really wish I didn't believe there existed as cruel husbands/fathers as Mr. St. Claire though.

So 4.5 stars. The final half-star was removed for the number of times where I wanted to shake either Anna or St. Claire or both for being so stupid and just not communicating! It was a believable stupid though - very age appropriate, and I doubt I'd have been any different myself ;)

Title: Arrow
Author: R.J. Anderson
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 356
Date read: April, 2011

Rhosmari has lived her whole life on a sheltered chain of faery islands. But with the Empress's power growing, and her desire to enslave the entire faery race becoming a reality, Rhosmari knows she must fight back.

A bit slow to start - come to think of it, I think the others might have been too, but I just noticed it more here, because I was so eager for the action to get back to the Oak and all my old friends there. A fast and entertaining read though, with plenty of twists and turns, where I really ought to have guessed some of them, and was completely thrown for a loop by others.

Title: Den sidste gode mand (The Last Good Man)
Author: A.J. Kazinski
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 492
Date read: April, 2011

As a policeman in Copenhagen, Niels Bentzon is accustomed to chasing criminals. Therefore he can hardly take it seriously when he is given the task of finding a good person. The man who could become the next victim of a murderer who has chased good people across the globe. And the arrow now points towards Copenhagen.

But who deserves the term 'a good man'? And can it really be true that the murders are connected to an ancient religious myth of the 36 righteous people who are put on earth to protect us all?

The manic-depressive Niels Bentzon has no idea how to approach this. The task seems impossible. But when he, in his quest to find the good man before it's too late, meets the astrophysicist Hannah Lund things take off. Hannah Lund believes that she can see a system in the murders - a system of a quasi-divine nature.


Finally a book where I was pleasantly surprised, and that actually exceeded my expectations. I found it very difficult to put it down, and ended up reading it in two days flat. It was interesting to read a book that took place in settings and under circumstances I am familiar with, and I loved all the references to actual events.

Mostly I was intrigued by the plot and fascinated as the questions were slowly answered. I did think the biggest one was still missing an answer though - the main why. No explanation was ever given there... a fact I didn't think about at the time, but which slightly bothers me now.