Bogormen

Title: The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 366
Date read: February, 2024

A man awakes in a clearing in what appears to be medieval England with no memory of who he is, where he came from, or why he is there. Chased by a group from his own time, his sole hope for survival lies in regaining his missing memories, making allies among the locals, and perhaps even trusting in their superstitious boasts. His only help from the “real world” should have been a guidebook entitled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, except his copy exploded during transit. The few fragments he managed to save provide clues to his situation, but can he figure them out in time to survive?


Everything about this book just appealed to me. The title, the cover, the book-in-a-book excepts, the back blurb. So even though I was just going to flip through it, I ended up reading the entire thing over the weekend.

And fortunately the story itself lived up to my expectations. I loved the mix of fantasy, mythology and realism, and liked seeing how John slowly remembered more and more of his past, and pieced together his life from clues along the way... even when he turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

This is one of those strange books where I can't say exactly why I loved it as much as I did, but it caught my attention from the very first chapter, and wouldn't leave me alone till I turned the last page.

Title: Sideways Stories From Wayside School
Author: Louis Sachar
Genre: Childrens
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 115
Date read: October, 2013

There was a terrible mistake - Wayside School was built with one classroom on top of another, thirty stories high (The builder said he was sorry.) Maybe that's why all kinds of funny things happened at Wayside-especially on the thirteenth floor.

Weirdest book ever! But not bad-weird, just weird-weird. I wish I had known of it when I was young enough to fully appreciate it. Also I wish it had been translated to Danish so I could introduce my nieblings to it! Reading it now I can't figure out whether I love it or whether it's OTT, but as a kid I would have gobbled it up!

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.