Bogormen

Title: The Babysitter's Coven
Author: Kate Williams
Genre: Paranormal
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 320
Date read: July, 2020

Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it's kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she's good at it.

And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let's just say she owes some people a new tree.

Enter Cassandra Heaven. She's Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme's babysitters club?

The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra's mother left her: "Find the babysitters. Love, Mom."

Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they're about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.


Babysitter's Club meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer... I had no idea what to expect when starting this book, but strangely enough this mix actually worked! It's not high literature, but kept me nicely entertained, and I'll probably end up picking up the next book as well, once it's out.

I liked Esme and Janis, but Cassandra got on my nerves after awhile. I hope she'll calm down a bit now, and stop abusing her powers, because that's going to get old fast! I also hope that future books will keep the mix to a pretty even 50/50 BSC and BtVS - but have a feeling the Buffy part will take over rather quickly. Time will show.

Title: The Hitman's Guide to Making Friends and Finding Love
Author: Alice Winters
Genre: LGBTQ+
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: ~11hrs
Date read: June 2020

What happens when a snarky hitman and a by-the-book PI cross paths?

Leland
Being a hitman has its perks, but I never thought getting an accidental mooning by an attractive PI while he’s caught on a fence would be one of them. While it’s not exactly love at first sight, he’s captured my interest and won’t let go.

Suddenly, I find myself caught in a game of cat and mouse, determined to attract the attention of Jackson, the PI who should be my enemy. He pretends like he’s not flattered by my flowers and the mentions of my totally-not-fictitious blow-up doll Randy (or was it Dandy?), but I know better. Why else would he be teaming up with me to bring down Hardek, one of the city’s most ruthless criminals?

Jackson
Even though the cops are telling me that the hitman is a notorious contract killer, I can’t help but admit that I’m drawn to him. He’s funny, charismatic, and attractive. There’s no way this ridiculous man can be the person the cops are after.

But when Leland ends up at my doorstep injured, I’m faced with a tough choice. It’s my duty to hand him over to law enforcement, but my heart has other plans. I want to keep him. To protect him. To be with him.

Though one question remains: why in the world does the man have so many d*mn guns?



A 4.5 star review. Rounded down on goodreads, because it was a tiny bit too OTT at times, but oh, how I loved it!

I think Audible recommended this book to me as one of those "If you enjoyed TJ Klune you will also like...", which makes perfect sense, because the books are VERY similar in both writing style, humour and weird characters. I laughed out loud more times than I can count, and pretty much listened to it at any chance I got.

I will add the same disclaimer as most of Klune's books deserve - this book is NOT for everybody. I absolutely loved it, but it is definitely over the top in places, and Leland could very easily get on some people's nerves. His and Jackson's relationship is a bit rushed in places, but ultimately works, and they complement each other nicely. The plot is not entirely realistic, but generally true to its own universe, so it worked.

While the first in a series, it's nicely selfcontained, and could easily be read by itself - however, I will DEFINITELY be getting my hands on the next one sooner rather than later! :-D

Title: The Lady Doctor
Author: Ian Williams
Genre: Graphic novel
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 264
Date read: April, 2019

Dr Lois Pritchard is a salaried partner at Llangandida Health Centre with Drs Iwan James (subject of The Bad Doctor) and Robert Smith. She also works two days a week in the local Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinic. She is 40, currently single, despite the attentions of her many admirers, and is, by her own admission, ‘not very good with relationships’. When her estranged mother makes a dramatic appearance on the scene, demanding a liver transplant, Lois has to confront her loyalties and make some hard decisions.


Officially a sequel or follow-up, but I think it stood just fine on its own. I'm not entirely sure whether it's fictional or not though! It was placed under memoirs at the bookshop, but the back blurb definitely came across as fiction.

Never mind. Either way it was a really interesting read about all the ups and downs of the life of a doctor. I liked that it wasn't romanticized - it was clear it was hard, messy, frustrating work, and that the Lady Doctor definitely wasn't anywhere near a saint, but a human being with all her own failings.

Title: Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5/5
# pages: 400 pages
Date read: June, 2015

Pioneer Girl follows the Ingalls family's journey through Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, back to Minnesota, and on to Dakota Territory sixteen years of travels, unforgettable experiences, and the everyday people who became immortal through Wilder's fiction. Using additional manuscripts, letters, photographs, newspapers, and other sources, award-winning Wilder biographer Pamela Smith Hill adds valuable context and leads readers through Wilder's growth as a writer. Do you think you know Laura? Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography will re-introduce you to the woman who defined the pioneer experience for millions.


The fact that it took me almost a month to read this is in no way an indication of what I thought of it, but simply due to its size and how RICH on details it is.

An absolute must for an fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is chock full of facts about the people, places and events that Laura write about in her autobiography, and provide an extremely interesting insight into her life. As a life-long lover of LIW's books, it was fascinating to see where the books correspond with real life, and where she added details or changed things around to make a better story. There's no doubt that the life of the real LIW was a lot harder than that of her fictional counterpart.

I'm not sure the book ever answered the question of why it was published now -- where has the manuscript been hiding all these years? But I may just have missed it, as I did only skim the prologue/foreword. No matter what, I'm glad it was published. It gave me a new appreciation of some of my all-time favourite comfort books.

Title: When God Was a Rabbit
Author: Sarah Winman
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 338
Date read: February, 2013

This is a book about a brother and a sister. It's a book about secrets and starting over, friendship and family, triumph and tragedy, and everything in between. More than anything, it's a book about love in all its forms.

In a remarkably honest and confident voice, Sarah Winman has written the story of a memorable young heroine, Elly, and her loss of innocence-a magical portrait of growing up and the pull and power of family ties. From Essex and Cornwall to the streets of New York, from 1968 to the events of 9/11, "When God Was a Rabbit" follows the evolving bond of love and secrets between Elly and her brother Joe, and her increasing concern for an unusual best friend, Jenny Penny, who has secrets of her own.

Very unusual book both in plot and in writing style. I really liked it, but it's certainly not for everybody. The rabbit/god played a surprisingly small part though.

A sweet childhood/growing-up story where people were just generally nice for a change. Not unrealistically so, but kind people who made mistakes not out of maliciousness, but because they were human. I grew to care about all the characters and were happy to see them evolve.

Title: West From Home
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 174
Date read: August 2012

In 1915, Laura Ingalls Wilder traveled by train from her home in Missouri to San Francisco. Laura's westward journey to visit her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, coincided with a spectacular event taking place in that city-the Panama Pacific International Exposition.

Her husband, Almanzo, was unable to leave their Missouri farm, and it was Laura's letters that gave him the chance to see what she saw during her visit to California.

Great era-snapshop and description of the fair in San Fransisco, but honestly, I don't think I'd have been all that interested, if it hadn't been seen through the eyes of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I've always wanted to know "what happened next", and this gives a nice look into her curiosity, desire to learn and her relationship with Rose and Almanzo.

I was very interested in reading that she and Almanzo had considered moving to New Zealand at one point though. I wish they had - I would have LOVED to read her description of that!

Title: The First Four Years
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder
Genre: Classics
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 160
Date read: August, 2012

Laura Ingalls Wilder is beginning life with her new husband, Almanzo, in their own little house. Laura is a young pioneer wife now, and must work hard with Almanzo, farming the land around their home on the South Dakota prairie. Soon their baby daughter, Rose, is born, and the young family must face the hardships and triumphs encountered by so many American pioneers.

By far the weakest of all Laura books, and a book that leads credence to the theory that Rose Wilder edited all of Laura's other books, because the writing style is so vastly different from the rest of the series.

I enjoyed learning what happened after Laura and Almanzo got married, but was sad to see that they started out their marriage with such hardship! Every year just seemed to be worse than the one preceding it. Whereas the rest of the series are lovely comfort books, this one definitely isn't.

Title: A Homemade Life
Author: Molly Wizenberg
Genre: Essays
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 336
Date read: October, 2011

When Molly Wizenberg's father died of cancer, everyone told her to go easy on herself, to hold off on making any major decisions for a while. But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.

Part essay-collection, part cookbook, I was greatly charmed by this book by Molly Wizenberg. Her essays were short and sweet, and fully explained to the reader, Molly's love of cooking and anything cooking-related. The recipes were unusual, and most of them sounded absolutely delicious. I've bookmarked pretty much half of them, to try out myself sometime.

Molly Wizenberg comes across as a charming and sociable person. I think I would like her :-)

Title: My Name is Will Author: Jess Winfield Genre: Historical fiction Rating: 8/10 # pages: 285 Date read: May, 2008

Review: Meet Willie Shakespeare Greenberg – a struggling thesis-writer, small scale drug-user and future scholar. Meet also William Shakespeare – a womanising youth, closeted Catholic and future bard. Two men, 300 years apart in time, but joined by name and history.

My Name Is Will is the story of two Wills who have more in common than one would think at a first glance, because really – isn't it almost sacrilege to suggest that a 1986's pot-head and wanna-be thesis-writer should have anything at all in common with the greatest bard in English history? At the surface, one would think so, but then, how much do we know about Shakespeare's life before he became... well, Shakespeare? Isn't it very logical to assume that his life couldn't have been all smooth sailing for him to be able to write of such passionate love and dysfunctional families as we see in his plays and sonnets? Jess Winfield clearly thinks so, and manages to weave a fascinating tale where every second chapter follows William Shakespeare in the weeks up to his marriage to Anne Hathaway, and every second chapter follows Willie Shakespeare in his quest for knowledge about himself, and his famous namesake.

In the beginning one has to get used to the jumping back and forth in time every time a chapter ends, but like in Peg Kerr's "The Wild Swans" the transitions work and the two-stories-in-one mesh together very well as I constantly found hints in one of what would happen (or had happened) in the other.

My Name Is Will is subtitled "A Novel of Sex, Drugs and Shakepeare" for a good reason. It is not very reverent, and Shakespeare-lovers who are easily offended should probably stay clear of the book. However, I appreciated seeing even a fictionalized human side of the legendary bard. It is perhaps not a very scholarly read, but definitely a very enjoyable one.

Oh and yes, we are given at least a hint of an answer to the old and burning question: why did Shakespeare leave Anne his second-best bed in his will.

Book List

Title: Free the Beagle, Beagles of Destinae and Beagles Visit the Seven Sisters Author: Roy H. Williams Genre: Fiction Rating: 8/10 # pages: Audiobook Date read: April, 2006

Summary: Destinae chronicles the transformational journey of a lawyer named Intellect and a Beagle named Intuition as they travel the pathway of life. On the surface, it's an enchanting children's fable but ponder the comments youíll find between chapters and the book explodes with colorful new meanings

Review: zaklog recommended this trilogy to me around Easter, so I downloaded it, and finally got to listen to it this weekend. It reminds me a bit of "Pigrim's Progress"... only better (but then, I only read the first half of PP, so I may be biased). It's a sweet little story and I reall enjoyed it.

The two sequels (Beagles of Destinae and Beagles Visit the Seven Sisters are somewhat repetitive, but still enjoyable.

Book List