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Title: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Author: Katarina Bivald
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 395
Date read: December, 2017

Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her pen pal, Amy. When she arrives, however, she finds that Amy's funeral has just ended. Luckily, the townspeople are happy to look after their bewildered tourist - even if they don't understand her peculiar need for books. Marooned in a farm town that's almost beyond repair, Sara starts a bookstore in honor of her friend's memory.

All she wants is to share the books she loves with the citizens of Broken Wheel and to convince them that reading is one of the great joys of life. But she makes some unconventional choices that could force a lot of secrets into the open and change things for everyone in town.


Very, very, VERY slow to start. Setting the stage took forever, and while I never actually got bored with the book, it was just much too slow moving, and after about 140 pages, I set down the book and didn't touch it at all for 3 months.

Finally I got stubborn though. I knew that if I gave up on it completely I'd probably never pick it up again, and it came too highly recommended for me to do that. So I picked it back up and told myself I'd give it another 50 pages. If it still hadn't caught my attention by then, it obviously wasn't for me.

Well, the book must have sensed my threat, because it took no more than a few pages for it to charm me in a way that none of the previous 14o pages had. Sara finally got serious about the bookshop, and a few instances of her matching books to their readers and have those readers fall in love with said books (which I all knew and had read myself) was enough for me to get thoroughly hooked, and I finished the rest of the book in just a few days.

It's a very cozy book, and I've always loved books about books, so parts of it had me grinning from ear to ear. But the slow start combined with the abrupt (and somewhat unrealistic) ending means that it can't make its way to my favourites.
goodreads: (Peanut: Book geek)
Title: Prepper
Author: Lise Bidstrup
Genre: Dystopian, YA
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 186
Date read: October, 2013

Daniel har altid vidst at jordens undergang en dag vil komme, og at den er nærmere end de fleste tror. Faktisk er han sikker på at det vil ske i hans levetid, for hans forældre er ivrige deltagere i en gruppe der kalder sig selv "Preppere", som aktivt forbereder sig på den naturkatastrofe der vil udslette livet på orden, og arbejder hårdt for at have muligheden for at overleve den.

Og ganske rigtigt - en sen nat ringer alarmklokken, og Daniel forsvinder sammen med sin familie og 15 andre personer ind i et skjult beskyttelsesrum for at overleve det anarki der utvivlsomt vil følge en naturkatastrofe. De har mad og vand nok til 4 år, og vil først dukke op igen når menneskeden er ved at få styr på sig selv igen.

Bogen skifter hele tiden i tid, hvor hvert andet kapitel er i "nutiden" og hvert andet kapitel fortæller om Daniels opvækst, og hvordan hans liv som "Prepper" har påvirket hele hans barndom.

Jeg elsker dystopisk/apokapyltisk YA og var dybt fascineret af denne beskrivelse af forberedelserne inden og konflikterne under en apokalypse. Beskrivelserne af livet i beskyttelsesrummet - inklusiv alle konflikterne medlemmerne imellem - virkede realistiske, omend de godt måtte have mere detaljerede. Især hvad angår Daniels forhold til de andre personer.

Slutningen var måske en smule forudsigelig, men det er meget typisk for YA, så det i sig selv er ikke grund til at give bogen en lavere rating. Desværre syntes jeg også den var en smule brat, og ville have foretrukket at lidt flere sider var blevet brugt på at udforske reaktionerne... muligvis bare som en epilog: "9 måneder senere..." eller noget i den stil.

Så 3.5 stjerner bliver det til... 4 stjerner hvis den havde været bare en side længere, 4.5 stjerner hvis den have været 10-20 sider længere.

Men udemærket læsning som den var, og den holdt fint min interesse - selv under en 24-hour read-a-thon hvor kravene ellers er noget højere ;)
goodreads: (Peanut: Book geek)
Title: Light a Penny Candle
Author: Maeve Binchy
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 2/5
# pages: 636
Date read: June, 2013

Evacuated from Blitz-battered London, shy and genteel Elizabeth White is sent to stay with the boisterous O'Connors in Kilgarret, Ireland. It is the beginning of an unshakeable bond between Elizabeth and Aisling O'Connor, a friendship that will endure through twenty turbulent years of change and chaos, joy and sorrow, soaring dreams and searing betrayals.

Maeve Binchy's debut novel, and unfortunately it really shows. She hasn't found her own voice at all, and I kept thinking I was reading a Rosamunde Pilcher novel instead. Not that there's anything wrong with RP, I just missed the charm of Maeve Binchy's later books.

The thing I love about Maeve Binchy's books is that they're generally speaking comfort reads. There are exceptions of course, but as a rule people tend to be in a better place at the end of the book than they were at the beginning. That is not the case with this book, and that - more than anything else - made me give it just 2 stars. It's the account of ~20 years of Elizabeth and Aisling's lives, and offers no resolution or has no real end... in fact, I was pretty shocked to see it end where it did. There seemed no rhyme or reason for it. It was as if Maeve Binchy suddenly realized how many pages she'd written already, and couldn't find a proper way to end it, so she just did.

It had its moments, but as a whole, I wasn't terribly impressed by it.
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Title: Pectus' sten (The Stone of Pectus)
Author: Lise Bidstrup
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 250
Date read: October, 2011

What if the world isn't at all like most people think?
What if demons are real, and very, very close?
And what if it all falls upon a boy and a girl to prevent the world to descend into chaos?

Isabell can hardly believe it, when she is approached by a member of the secret "Higher Order". The gentleman tells her a fantastic story about a world that consists of so much more than what people can see, and that this world will only be able to continue, if she agrees to a quest: finding the stone of Pectus.

Laus definitely can't believe it, when he receives a letter saying that he has been chosen to participate in a super-secret TV-show called "The Stone of Pectus". Still, he ends up in a plane heading towards Orvieto, Italy where things turn out to be very different from what he had expected.

I was contacted by the author herself, asking me if I'd be willing to review this book. The premise sounded good, so of course I agreed. Fortunately I did not live to regret that decision ;-) The book arrived late one afternoon, and by the following evening I had finished it. It's a fun story, easy to read, and captures the attention of the reader, even when she - as in this case - is quite a bit older than the target audience.

Thankfully, in a well-written book that really doesn't matter. I enjoyed the plot, loved seeing the friendship grow between Isabell and Laus, and had my own private snigger at the names Lise Bidstrup had chosen for both the good and the bad supernatural creatures (the demons were called "Pravus" and "Ingratus" - once I saw that I was pretty sure it wasn't a coincidence that one of the good guys was called "Auxilius", and stopped to look up the rest :) ). I'm always relieved when I like a book I'm asked to review - it makes everything so much more comfortable :)
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Title: Daughter of the Blood
Author: Anne Bishop
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3/5
# pages: Audiobook ~17hrs
Date read: March 2011

The Dark Kingdom is preparing itself for the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy--the arrival of a new Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But this new ruler is young, and very susceptible to influence and corruption; whoever controls her controls the Darkness. And now, three sworn enemies begin a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, and the destiny of an entire world is at stake.

After all the raving reviews I'd read, I think my expectations were perhaps a tad too high, and I ended up disappointed. It's not a bad book by any stretch, but it came across to me as very obviously the first book in a series as great effort was spent on building the universe and the characters and very little plot actually happened. I 'read' it as an audiobook and very often found my attention drifting as I really wasn't all that interested in many of the characters and their sub-plots.

That said, because so much time was spent on introducing the characters, I ended up being very fond of especially Jaenelle and Daemon, but also of Saetan and Wilhelmina. I liked their relationship and enjoyed reading about the love they had for each other.

I'm not sure that's enough for me to want to read the rest of the series though. Guess it depends on how attached I feel I've become to the characters as it certainly won't be for the plot.
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Title: Libri di Luca
Author: Mikkel Birkegaard
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 447
Date read: June, 2009

Imagine that some people can influence your feelings and thoughts while you read, or if they read aloud to you. That they can seduce you with the most amazing stories, but that they can also manipulate you to think exactly as they want you to.

When Luca Campelli dies a sudden and violent death, his son, the lawyer Jon, inherits the second-hand bookshop Libri di Luca in Copenhagen. Jon hasn't seen his father for 20 years, after the mysterious suicide of Jon's mother.

After Luca's funeral, Jon is let in on the secret of the basement under the shop: before his death, Luca was chairman for the Bibliophilia society and the so-called Lettorer - people with special abilities to influence others through reading.

Luca's death combined with attempted arson at Libri di Luca makes it obvious, that somebody wants to gain power over the Bibliophilia Society. Jon and the dyslexic Katherina have to solve this mystery. But who is the traitor among the Lettors? The mysterious Kortmann? Jon's client, the businessman Remer? Or somebody else entirely?

It's always frustrating to read a really good book in Danish, because I know the chances of it getting translated into English are very slim, and I want to recommend it to others and discuss it with them!

And the first half of this book was "really good". The set-up was interesting, the writing captivating, I got really fond of both Jon and Katherina, and I was completely fascinated by the concept of influencing/manipulating others through reading.

Unfortunately, about half way through the book, a blatant plot-device was used to move the story along. I'd seen it coming a mile off, so it annoyed me that Jon and Katherina hadn't too, and that they were trusting and unsuspecting enough not to see it. The same effect could easily have been achieved in a different way.

The last 100 pages seemed rushed, and not as well thought-out as the rest of the book, leaving me not quite as blown away as I'd expected to be, and with a number of questions left unanswered.

Edit: I stand corrected - it actually has been translated and was published as "The Library on Shadows" on June 9th, 2009
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Title: Whitethorn Woods
Author: Maeve Binchy
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 7/10
# pages: 309
Date read: June, 2008


Summary: When a new highway threatens to bypass the town of Rossmore and cut through Whitethorn Woods, everyone has a passionate opinion about whether the town will benefit or suffer. But young Father Flynn is most concerned with the fate of St. Ann's Well, which is set at the edge of the woods and slated for destruction. People have been coming to St. Ann's for generations to share their dreams and fears, and speak their prayers. Some believe it to be a place of true spiritual power, demanding protection; others think it's a mere magnet for superstitions, easily sacrificed. Not knowing which faction to favor, Father Flynn listens to all those caught up in the conflict.

Review: Maeve Binchy is one of those rare authors where even their weakest books are still well worth reading, which is fortunate for Whitethorn Woods. Similar to some of her other books, Whitethorn Woods is basically a bunch of short stories, tied together by a common thread. I've never been too fond of short stories, so had a harder time becoming interested in this book than in most of her other novels. But although it never turned into a page-turner, I still enjoyed reading it.

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Title: Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma
Author: Diana Birchall
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 7/10
# pages: 212
Date read: March, 2008


Review: In this sequel to "Pride and Prejudice" we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Darcy 25 years later. They now have three children of their own: the youngest, Jane, takes after her namesake and aunt, Henry is the image of his father, but unfortunately Fitzwilliam, the elder son and Darcy's heir, is a bit too much like his aunt Lydia for his parents' liking. This becomes all too apparent when Mrs. Darcy invites Lydia's daughters to come for a visit, and Fitzwilliam looses his heart to the elder, thus embarking on a scandal that will upset the entire family.

While amusing, the plot unfortunately offers little new to the reader, who'll be able to guess the ending at a very early stage. Instead the strength of the novel lies in Diana Birchall's writing style. She has studied Jane Austen's writing closely, and her fidelity to this style - in both words and plot - enables her to cross the line between "fanfiction", and a novel worthy of being a sequel to one of the great classics. The characters are exactly as I remember them - which is almost a shame in the case of Lydia, as she is precisely as intolerable as always, making me occasionally want to put away the book in disgust over her behaviour. Elizabeth is as kind as ever, and while ardent admirers of Mr. Darcy will regret that he makes such a small appearance, when he does show up on the pages, he is exactly the loving husband loyal readers expect him to be.

I seldom read sequels written by a different author, as I fear nobody will be able to do the original author justice. This is especially the case with my favourite authors, and I was therefore somewhat reluctant to start this book, but had not turned many pages before I saw that Diana Birchall had managed to do what I deem most important in any sequel - she had managed to capture the spirit of Jane Austen. For that alone I could easily forgive her the predictability of the novel, and enjoy it for what it was - a loving homage to one of England's greatest writers.

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Title: Tara Road
Author: Maeve Binchy
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 386
Date read: October, 2007


Summary: Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.

Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on. Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy. Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly. At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face. Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends.

Review: I recently watched the movie "Tara Road", and realized that while I seemed to remember enough to say that it was pretty true to the book, I couldn't remember many details from the book at all, and felt it was time to read it. "Tara Road" is a weird mixture of a very depressing book (esp. the first half) and a perfect comfort book. But come to think of it, most of Maeve Binchy's books are that way. It's not my favourite MB, but probably in the top 5.

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goodreads: (Peanut: Book geek)
Title: Quentins
Author: Maeve Binchy
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 403
Date read: August 2007, April 2014


Ella Brady is a documentary filmmaker who wants to bring the tale of the eponymous Dublin restaurant to the screen. Quentins has had its fair share of ups and downs over the years and has become the meeting point for a lot of characters, including some familiar faces from previous Binchy novels. As Ella makes more and more headway with her documentary, the secrets, betrayals, and stories of love that emerge make her question whether or not she wants to bring the tale of Quentins to the screen after all; especially as she is also forced to confront a devastating dilemma from her own past.

One of my favourite Maeve Binchy books, although I'm glad I had read "Scarlet Feather", "Evening Class" and "Tara Road" first, as it references all of those books.

I enjoyed all the stories featuring Quentins, but was happy that Maeve Binchy had decided to tie it all together using Ella's story, rather than just leaving it at those small vignettes. I'm not that good with short stories, and prefer to have some common factor tie them all together.
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Title: Nights of Rain and Stars
Author: Maeve Binchy
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 238
Date read: August, 2007


Summary: Four strangers cross paths in a tiny Greek seaside village. When tragedy strikes the smalltown of Aghia Anna in the form of a devastating fire on a tourist pleasure boat - 24 people are killed - elderly barkeeper Andreas and craft-shop owner Vonni find themselves host to a random assortment of travelers who watch the conflagration from Andreas's taverna. There is Elsa, the German beauty who is trying to flee from love; David, the quiet young Englishman whose demanding father wants him to go into the family business; Thomas, the American professor who struggles to share his son with his ex-wife's new husband; and Fiona, the Irish nurse who follows her abusive boyfriend despite the warnings of her friends and family. As these strangers become friends, the mysterious Vonni, an Irish woman whose Greek is fluent and whose respected position in town is unquestioned, explores her own memories of heartache, as does Andreas. Unwilling to see their new friends repeat their mistakes, Andreas and Vonni set out to influence the hearts of this motley bunch of foreigners before they leave the village.

Review: One of Maeve Binchy's strengths is characterizations, and this one is no exception. There's no plot to speak of, but you really get to know the main characters for better or worse. It's a good comfort read and in general a charming book.

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