Bogormen

Title: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane (Underland Chronicles #2)
Author: Suzanne Collins
Genre: Childrens, fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~8hrs
Date read: February 2013, October 2019

In the months since Gregor first encountered the strange Underland beneath New York City, he's sworn he won't ever go back. But when another prophecy, this time about an ominous white rat known as the Bane, calls for Gregor's help, the Underlanders know the only way they can get his attention is through his little sister, Boots. Now Gregor's quest reunites him with his bat, Ares, the rebellious princess Luxa, and new allies and sends them through the dangerous and deadly Waterway in search of the Bane. Then Gregor must face the possibility of his greatest loss yet, and make life and death choices that will determine the future of the Underland.

I'm "reading" these as audiobooks, which I think is a good thing. The plot itself is nothing special, but the writing works nicely as a story read aloud, and I find myself utterly charmed by the tale. Especially Boots who's just plain adorable :)

Title: The Phantom Tollbooth
Author: Norton Juster
Genre: Childrens
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 256
Date read: February 2013

For Milo, everything's a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he's got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason.

A mix of several different books like "The Little Prince", "The Wizard of Oz" and "Alice in Wonderland". I can't quite figure out what I think of it. Parts were rather slow-moving and "weird just for the sake of being weird" (much my problem with Terry Pratchett as well. I love good-weird like Douglas Adams, but some people just try too hard), but other parts I really liked!

In the end, I'm glad I stuck with it, because it's quite a fun and quirky book in parts, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more - even loved it - if I'd first come across it as a child rather than in my thirties.

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.

Title: Border Wedding
Author: Amanda Scott
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 1/5
# pages: 387
Date read: February, 2013

Captured in 1388 in the act of stealing back his own cattle, young Sir William Scott faces hanging, then gets one other choice--to marry immediately his captor's eldest daughter, the lady Margaret Murray, known by all as Muckle-Mouth Meggie. With the line between England and Scotland shifting daily, the Earl of Douglas wants to win back every inch of Scotland that the English have claimed; whereas the equally powerful English Percies (under Hotspur) want to win back the land between Northumberland and Edinburgh; and the Murray family is caught in the middle, shifting its alliances to try to survive. Uncertain whether she is English or Scottish and abruptly married to Sir William who is staunchly loyal to the cause of Scottish independence but who also has promised he'll never take up arms against her family, Meg Murray learns two things: first, Will's word is his bond; second, her favorite brother is spying on Douglas for Hotspur. As Sir Will faces the dilemma of honoring his word to the unscrupulous Murray without betraying Douglas, Meg must choose between betraying the husband with whom she is rapidly falling in love, or betraying her own family and best-loved brother.

Wow.... that was a decidedly terrible book.

The first proof that something was wrong came when I discovered that the main character's name was different on the dust jacket than in the book itself (copied in full above - his name is actuall Wat/Walter. I'm not going to blame the author for that one though, as it's probably more likely to be the fault of her editor/publisher than of herself.

I started this book almost 3 months ago. It's not a long book - just under 400 pages in fact - but just utterly uninteresting. I liked it well enough while reading it, but never disappeared completely into it, and it was far too easy to put it down and pick up something else instead. It was as if it couldn't figure out what kind of book it wanted to be. Was it a period romance? Erotica? Period suspense? A spy novel? Or something else entirely?

I could have forgiven it for all of that though, and fully intended to give it 2 stars for being "OK" until the big reveal 50 pages before the end.

Cutting the rest for spoilers...
( Read more... )

I seldom give out 1-star ratings to books, but unfortunately this one really deserved it. And it's the first in a trilogy? Spare me.

Title: Uglies Author: Scott Westerfeld Genre: YA, dystopian Rating: 3.5/5 # pages: 425 Date read: February 2008, February 2013, June 2020

Tally can't wait to turn sixteen and become Pretty. Sixteen is the magic number that brings a transformation from a repellant Ugly into a stunningly attractive Pretty, and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be Pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the Pretty world - and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.


For most of this book I was absolutely captivated. It is well written, funny, poignant and thought-provoking. I would have rated it 10 out of 10 in a heart-beat if it hadn't been for one thing... the ending. Cliff-hangers are bad enough in movies and tv-series, but they annoy the crap out of me in books. A good book to me is a book that it's possible to read on its own. It may of course be part of a series, but it should mostly be self-contained. Uglies wasn't.

That said I loved the universe Scott Westerfeld created and am dying to learn more about it. I've ordered the two remaining books in the trilogy from interlibrary loan and can't wait to read them. If they live up to the promise of the first one, it'll be an amazing series.

Reread 2020: Wasn't quite as taken with the book this time around. It was still good, but I have no desire to read the rest of the series - despite the cliffhanger.