Bogormen

Title: Malory Towers Collection 2 (Malory Towers #4-6)
Author: Enid Blyton
Genre: Childrens, classic
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~15hrs
Date read: August 2003, October 2022

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers
The girls are in a higher form now. This year there is the tension of exams for the first time, but there is all the fun of the summer term as well - and the high spirits of a lively and imaginative form of girls.

In the Fifth at Malory Towers
Games, lessons, quarrels and tricks all form part of a lively term, but the biggest event of all is the Fifth Form pantomime, written, acted and produced entirely by the girls. It generates a lot of fun, but also a surprising amount of trouble.

Last Term at Malory Towers
Darrell becomes head girl. Unfortunately not all the girls are as responsible as she is and in her last term Darrell sees many changes in her old school friends.


I did have a number of issues with all three books in this collection - all of them symptoms of the time and genre these books were written in. The quasi-bullying I mentioned in the first collection is apparent here as well, as was the snobbery and arrogance of some of the kids.

But putting that aside, I still really enjoyed the books. I love reading about boarding schools, and Enid Blyton does know how to write ridiculously charming books that are fun to read for children and grown-ups both.

Title: First Term at Malory Towers (Malory Towers #1-#3)
Author: Enid Blyton
Genre: Childrens, classic
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~15hrs
Date read: May, 2022

First Term at Malory Towers
Darrell Rivers is thrilled to start her first term at boarding school. She soon makes friends - and mischief! Another new girl, Gwendoline, is beginning to get on everyone's nerves. Will Darrell be able to keep her fiery temper under control?

Second Form at Malory Towers
Darrell Rivers is excited to be going into her second year at Malory Towers - but is she ready for the drama it will bring? Jealousy flares when a new head of the form is chosen and the girls become suspicious when their belongings go missing. And why on earth has timid Mary-Lou ventured out during a terrible storm?

Third Year at Malory Towers
This term, the girls get a surprise when Darrell Rivers returns to Malory Towers with a glamorous new girl in tow. Zerelda soon catches everyone's eye for all the wrong reasons! Meanwhile, Bill is causing a stir with her horse-mad ways - and there's a big shock in store for Darrell....


A reread - I first read these back in 2003, before I started keeping a book blog. Enid Blyton was one of my favourite authors as a child, but I'd somehow never stumbled across this series before. I love boarding school books, so immediately got them out of the library and gobbled them up. Haven't read them since though, so I was very pleased to find them on audible and am currently making my way through them once again. It is somewhat dated, and I did have some issues with the border-line bullying that seemed to be going on in the beginning, but that does seem to be rather par for the course for books of this time period. And fortunately it got less pronounced as the book went along.

Just like last readthrough I'm slightly confused at how the terms and forms relate to each other and to the school year. It doesn't seem to be completely consistent. But that's a minor nitpick.

It's a nice comfort read, and I really enjoyed it.

Title: Bimbi er frihedskæmper (Bimbi as Freedom Fighter)
Author: Estrid Ott
Genre: Childrens
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 142
Date read: October, 2014

Bimbi is finally back with his beloved Babsi. But war has come to Denmark, and though he is just a toy elephant, Bambi and Babsi find ways for him to join the resistance movement and join the fight against the Germans.

The "Bimbi" books used to be among my favourites as a child, so I was keen on rereading them for the read-a-thon. Unfortunately I discovered that they are just slightly too 'twee' for my tastes now, but I have a feeling that they probably work much better when read aloud than when read to myself.

Plus, nostalgia always helps as well ;)

Title: Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself
Author: Maud Hart Lovelace
Genre: Classic, YA
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 704 (337 + 367)
Date read: April, 2013

Heaven to Betsy
Betsy Ray is loving every minute of freshman year at Deep Valley High-with new and old friends all around her...not to mention boys! But most intriguing of all is the one she and her best friend, Tacy, dub "the Tall Dark Stranger."

Took me forever to read this. It wasn't bad, but just never completely caught my attention so I'd only read a chapter here and a chapter there. Finally this morning I got stubborn and sat down to finish it. The irony is that it's really a fast read - I read the last 50 pages in 25 minutes.

I've heard about the Betsy-Tacy series forever and have been looking for them at least since 1996. I finally just took the plunge and bought this two-for-one book, knowing that they weren't the two first books in the series, but having been told by a friend that if I was to start reading them at my age, these would probably be the ones I'd like the most.

Unfortunately I only sort-of liked it. I know it's a classic, and if I'd read it as a tween/teen I would probably have loved it, but as it was I didn't think it quite stood the test of time without the rosy-coloured glasses of nostalgia. Having finally finished Heaven to Betsy, I think I shall leave it at that... at least for now.

Betsy in Spite of Herself
Not yet read.

Title: Cranford
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Genre: Classic
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~8hrs
Date read: January, 2013

Cranford describes the small adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances.

I was on the lookout for new (to me) classics, and singersdd recommended I gave Elizabeth Gaskell a try. This was her favourite, so I figured it was as good a place as any to start.

It's a very pleasant comfort book. There's not a whole lot of a plot, but just a general description of life in the village of Cranford. I did think it stopped rather suddenly though.

Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Classic
Rating: 5/5
# pages: Audiobook ~20hours
Date read: June, 2012

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited, while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

I can't remember how many times I've read this book, and I've seen the BBC mini-series even more times. It never fails to draw me in.

Some things struck me...
* Mrs. Bennet really is insufferable! I thought it very telling that Mr. Bennet tells Lizzie that he couldn't bear it if "she also found herself in a position where she couldn't respect her spouse". How awful.
* Mr. Bennet ends up calling Wickham his favourite son-in-law? In self-irony I hope.
* Lizzie and especially Jane really did fall in love remarkably quick.
* Austen doesn't seem very capable of writing happy married couples, does she? At least, I can't think of any.
* I need to rewatch the mini-series now!

Title: Middlemarch
Author: George Eliot
Genre: Classic
Rating: 3/5
# pages: Audiobook ~33hrs
Date read: November, 2010

Dorothea Brooke can find no acceptable outlet for her talents or energy and few who share her ideals. As an upper middle-class woman in Victorian England she can't learn Greek or Latin simply for herself; she certainly can't become an architect or have a career; and thus, Dorothea finds herself "Saint Theresa of nothing." Believing she will be happy and fulfilled as "the lampholder" for his great scholarly work, she marries the self-centered intellectual Casaubon, twenty-seven years her senior.

Dorothea is not the only character caught by the expectations of British society in this huge, sprawling book. Middlemarch stands above its large and varied fictional community, picking up and examining characters like a jeweler observing stones. There is Lydgate, a struggling young doctor in love with the beautiful but unsuitable Rosamond Vincy; Rosamond's gambling brother Fred and his love, the plain-speaking Mary Garth; Will Ladislaw, Casaubon's attractive cousin, and the ever-curious Mrs. Cadwallader. The characters mingle and interact, bowing and turning in an intricate dance of social expectations and desires. Through them George Eliot creates a full, textured picture of life in provincial nineteenth-century England.

Took me forever to finish this! I read it as an audiobook, which I think was probably doing it a disservice, as it's very long and slow-moving, which makes it very easy for me to get distracted and let my thoughts wander. Also, since it was downloaded from Librivox, not all readers were equally inspiring to listen to, which didn't help keeping my attention captured.

I stuck with it though, and started really caring about some of the characters, wanting to see what happened to them, and feel very accomplished that I managed to finish! I do think it could easily have been quite a bit shorter though. My favourite storyline was definitely Dorothea's, whom I also thought was the most sympathetic character. I liked Rosamond well enough at first, but was really appalled by how she treated Lydgate when he came into hardship. I think Fred and Mary were the only people whose storyline I actually didn't care about at all.

I do wonder how different my opinion would have been if I had read it rather than listened to it though.

Title: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Genre: Classic
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~8hrs
Date read: June, 2010

In the novel, Marguerite Blakeney, a French actress, is married to a Sir Percy Blakeney, a seemingly vain and simple man. The French Ambassador to England, Citizen Chauvelin, blackmails Marguerite into giving him information that leads to his discovery of the Scarlet Pimpernel's true identity. Marguerite only realizes once her husband has once again left for France that the man she betrayed, the Scarlet Pimpernel, is in fact none other but Sir Percy.

I'd seen a movie version of this ages ago, but remembered nothing of it other than the "They seek him here, they seek him there" rhyme and that I rather enjoyed it, so when I discovered that one of my favourite Librivox readers had recorded it, I decided to try it out.

And it's quite good. Nothing that blew me away, but definitely an enjoyable read. Quite predictable - I either guessed or subconsciously remembered all the twists - but as it wasn't exactly a whodunnit, that didn't bother me.

Title: Frenchman's Creek
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Genre: Classic
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 221
Date read: September, 2009

The Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe for any folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. But there is another, secret Dona who longs for a life of honest love -- and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. It is this Dona who flees the stews of London for remote Navron, looking for peace of mind in its solitary woods and hidden creeks. She finds there the passion her spirit craves -- in the love of a daring pirate hunted by all Cornwall, a Frenchman who, like Dona, would gamble his life for a moment's joy.

A difficult book to review, because while I wasn't terribly impressed by the plot, I was taken in by the character development. Especially in Dona obviously, but actually also in Harry. It's my wish for them, that they may come to understand each other, and be more happy together.

I always have problems with books where one half of the romantic couple is already married, because while I know I'm supposed to root for the main characters, I have a hard time making myself do so, as infidelity isn't something to be taken lightly. I think Daphne du Maurier handled it well in Frenchman's Creek though, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the ending.

Title: The House of Mirth
Author: Edith Wharton
Genre: classic
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 329
Date read: July, 2009

The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City - people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation, and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twnty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her craving for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. Her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.

I don't do well with books with sad endings. That's a personal quirk and I'm well aware it has no influence on the literary quality of the book.

"The House of Mirth" falls into the same genre as "Ditte Menneskebarn" and several other Danish books of that era - books that are well-written, but where the author for one reason or another decide to let the main characters fail in all his/her endeavours rather than succeed. This inevitably leads up to a depressing book, so that no matter how much I enjoyed other aspects of it I can't enjoy the book as a whole.

However, I did appreciate that Edith Wharton didn't let Lily lose her integrity along with everything else.