Bogormen

Title: Wavewalker: Breaking Free
Author: Suzanne Heywood
Genre: Memoir, non-fiction
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~13hrs
Date read: April 2024

‘A seven-year old girl on a seventy-foot yacht, for ten years, over fifty thousand miles of sailing. Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape.

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children. Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water…


Captivating read. I know Suzanne only presents one point of view of what happened, and I'd love to read her parents' take on things, because as presented here (and with a whole lot of armchair diagnosing) her parents come across as having borderline narcissistic tendencies. I am impressed by Suzanne's self-discipline, and her determination to study and get an education despite all the obstacles her parents threw in her way.

Title: Book Lovers
Author: Emily Henry
Genre: Chick-it
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 373
Date read: September, 2022

One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming...

Nora is a cut-throat literary agent at the top of her game. Her whole life is books.

Charlie is an editor with a gift for creating bestsellers. And he's Nora's work nemesis.

Nora has been through enough break-ups to know she's the woman men date before they find their happy-ever-after. That's why Nora's sister has persuaded her to swap her desk in the city for a month's holiday in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. It's a small town straight out of a romance novel, but instead of meeting sexy lumberjacks, handsome doctors or cute bartenders, Nora keeps bumping into...Charlie.

She's no heroine. He's no hero. So can they take a page out of an entirely different book?


I really enjoyed this book, and read most of it in one day. It's not Emily Henry's best (I still think that's "Beach Read"), but it comes very, very close. I don't think I was supposed to cry as hard over this book as I did though. But I don't know - I just got Nora. She made sense to me.

I still wish there had been more communication between the main characters (although for once not the romantic pair - I think they did just fine), but I do understand how it's possible to get into a rut where it doesn't feel possible to breach the silence.

I really want to read all the books that got mentioned though! Some were real, so they may be worth looking into.

Title: People We Meet On Vacation
Author: Emily Henry
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~11 hrs
Date read: February, 2022

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?


This book suffered from many of the same issues as "The Road Trip" by Beth O'Leary. I just don't appreciate reading about people who used to be close (whether as friends, lovers or family) having a falling out and becoming estranged. This was slightly better than "The Road Trip" as they generally handled it more maturely, but still. I hate the trope of having a couple split up before they can get back together again. Surely a book's conflict can be something other than that - even in a chick-lit.

*Ahrem*... alright, getting off my soap-box now.

I liked reading about Poppy and Alex' friendship, and just wish the book hadn't succumbed to the old "two people of opposite sexes can never just be friends" - but I knew that was going to happen going into the book, so it didn't bother me as much as it could have.

Title: A Life in Stitches: Knitting My Way through Love, Loss, and Laughter
Author: Rachael Herron
Genre: Essays
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 144
Date read: June, 2018

In these 20 heartfelt essays, Rachael Herron shows how when life unravels there's always a way to knit it back together again, many times into something even better. Honest, funny, and full of warmth, Herron s tales, each inspired by something she knit or something knit for her, will speak to anyone who has ever picked up a pair of needles. From her very first sweater (a hilarious disaster, to say the least) to the yellow afghan that caused a breakup (and, ultimately, a breakthrough), every piece has a moving story behind it. This beautifully crafted and candid collection is perfect for the knitter who loves to read and the reader who loves to knit.


Unfortunately I was slightly disappointed by this essay collection. I had fully expected to adore it (essays about knitting - what's not to like?), but just wasn't as charmed by it as I had thought I'd be. I can't pinpoint any specific issue I had with the collection, so I think it was just a matter of lack of chemistry.

Not a bad book by any means - I just didn't fall in love with it the way I thought I would, and therefore spent waaaaaay too long reading it.

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.