Spring has finally come! The grass is green, the leaves on the trees are coming and spring flowers are blooming. Today was a warm summery kind of day and we had a long walk in the sunshine. These coming images are actually from last weeks evening walk, today’s walk had more tulips but not many photographed.
I am currently listening to Cursed Claws, book number three in the series Nine Lives Magic by Danielle Garrett. It is a cozy listen and a bit different to the Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery series. I like the cat, she is my favourite character.
I do a lot of other crafts at the moment and my reading is therefore a bit slow. I mostly do crocheting and puzzling at the moment. Those are great things to do while listening to audiobooks but sometimes I just enjoy the silence, or keep a tv series in the background.
I am a couple of books behind in my Goodreads goal. Since it is still early in the year, I feel like I have time to catch up, I do have a couple of books that I know will be quick reads coming up. I did for example finish a Nancy Drew today, not a favourite but a bit entertaining amd a quick read. A good in-between book.
A blog called Lost in a Story started with the Down the TBR Hole posts. I have written more about this in my first post in Swedish. Shortly it’s about cleansing your to be read (TBR) shelf on Goodreads.
It’s been a while since I last did one of these posts. I felt like it was time to do give them a go again! The first two books were in the last post as well (I was thinking of trying to explain as to why they happen to be here but lets just roll with it) but as they happen to be here today, let’s take a look and see if we still want to keep them.
Perfected – Kate Jarvik Birch I did have it home from the library after the last post but did not get around to actually reading it. I am still interested in reading it though so I will keep it for now. Verdict: Stays.
Outlander – Diana Gabaldon Last time I added this one to my audiobook service and it ss still there waiting for me. I think I still want to read it at some point so lets keep it. Verdict: Stays.
The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah It feels like someone might have recommended this one to me. I am torn as to whether I think I would enjoy this one or not but I am a bit intrigued. I will keep it a little while longer Verdict: Stays.
Witchstruck – Victoria Lamb This book is not available at my audiobook service or the library. I am a bit hesitant towards buying it but I am intrigued. Staying? Verdict: Stays.
Cherry Ames (book 19, 20, 22, 13, 21, 18, 24) – Helen Wells x7 I am still making my way through this series. They are very cosy books and I understand why they were so big during their time. I am missing the next book in my collection to be able to continue so I need to track the next one down. Verdict: Stays.
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death – James Runcie I have seen a couple of episodes of BBC’s tv series based on these books. I think that this series is something that I could really enjoy, question is when I will come to it Verdict: Stays.
How did it go this time? Books in the TBR shelf at start: 240 Number of staying books: 12 Number of leaving books: – Total amount of leaving books: 46 Number of reserved books at the library: 0 Number of books put in to-borrow-shelf: 0 Number of books added to audiobook-account: 0 Current amount of books in my TBR shelf: 260
Maybe a bit boring results from this round, no leaving books. It has been a while since I made one of these posts and I have added a bunch of new books to my shelves during this time. My to-read-shelf has now more books in it than when I started making these posts. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, I enjoy finding new things to read and I have actually been reading stuff from my TBR shelf as well! But, I could be better at actively picking up books from this list.
I enjoyed the Pick a random number challenge that I did a while back, I could try to do more of those to to prioritize some of these books.
Have you read any of these books? Are there any that I should try to prioritize?
Baka bullar – Fredrik Nylén Typ av bok: Inbunden Förlag: Semic
Beskrivning från förlagets hemsida: Välkommen till Fredriks härliga bakvärld!
Finns det något bättre än nybakade bullar? Att få till en smidig deg, grädda bullarna och fylla huset med doften av hembakat är magiskt.
Här hittar du de bästa tipsen på hur du lyckas med ditt bullbak! Pröva över 30 recept med allt från klassiker som kanelsnurror och solskensbullar till helt nya skapelser som citronknyten, bananbullar och bulltårta. Dessutom härliga fyllningar och recept på en riktigt god glutenfri bulldeg som passar bra till många av recepten.
När jag fyllde år för flera år sedan fick jag en bok full av bullrecept. En mycket passande present eftersom jag tycker mycket om att baka. Nu har ett par månader (och några år, för jag publicerade aldrig recensionen när jag skrev den) fått och jag har hunnit provbaka en del ur boken. Jag har bakat kanelbullar, chokladsnurror, bananbullar, solskensbullar, hastbullar, de glutenfria bullarna och lussebullar.
Recepten i boken är lätta att följa och bullarna blir saftiga och goda. Jag äger (ännu) ingen bra maskin som kan hjälpa till att blanda bullsmet men det är inga problem, det resulterar bara i en lite tröttare armar efter lite längre vevande.
Det här är en mycket bra bullrecept-bok! Känner jag för att baka lite bullar är det här definitivt en av böckerna jag bläddrar i. Bara att skriva om boken gör mig sugen att bläddra och se vad jag skulle kunna testa på härnäst.
Bluebeard and the Outlaw – Tara Grayce Series: A Villain’s Ever After #3 Type of book: audiobook Narrator: Liz Brand Length: 5 h 2 min
Synopsis from Goodreads: Marriage: the ultimate heist. Robin of the Wood spends her days robbing from the rich to feed the poor. But she and her merry band of brothers never seem to get anywhere. The more she steals, the more the evil Lord Guy “Bluebeard” taxes the villagers. When Robin discovers that Lord Guy plans to marry yet again, she conceives a plan for a final, big score. As Guy’s wife, she will have access to his wealth. The lord is notorious for killing his wives shortly after he marries them, but Robin has no plans to be dead wife number four. The only problem is that Lord Guy is devastatingly handsome, brooding, and nothing at all what she expected. If she isn’t careful, she might just find that he steals her heart before she can rob his riches.
I felt like this story had quite the potential but not did not really live up to what it could have been. Where do I start?
It was fun that Hood’s band was her brothers but that did not help the story. It felt a bit forced that all of them were siblings and that they just followed everything Robin says blindly. It felt like Robin could not do anything wrong, she did not have any faults. Even when she did play a noblewoman quite poorly, no-one questioned whether she was the person she was pretending to be or not.
I would have expected that someone who had spent a lot of time chasing a person would have suspected something? And they could have done more with the sheriff, there was a potential for him to take a bigger character role in the beginning of the book? Now it did not really make sense as to why he was spending so much time at that house?
As an archer I always find it fascinating to read descriptions of shooting arrows and bows in books. This one was perhaps not spot on but it was not any major errors that poked me in the eye while reading anyway.
I think that I am giving this book a weak 3 stars out of 5. I did enjoy listening to this book, it was a fun variant of the Robin Hood story, but it could have been so much more.
I am still reading Blood Heir, but am nearing the end. I like it, a lot of things are happening all the time but it does not call on me to pick it up, to keep reading.
I am currently listening to Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston. It has a bit of humour in it and is a bit absurd. A lot of things that are not explained and I am not sure that we will get the answer to it. It is a fun listen anyway and I might continue the series also after I have finished this one. I find the idea of badger shifters quite fun. So far we have not seen very few full shifts, though, I was kind of expecting more. I am not too fond of the audiobook cover, I would rather have had a badger or something on it. Or the three sisters. I know that this cover is common on certain books but I do not think that this represents the content of the book.
I have finished my shawl crocheting project! I have really enjoyed this colour shifting yarn and I am now trying to decide on my next project with a similar yarn. This pattern was very easy so I think that I would like to try something a little more advanced next. I do also have other projects started that I will spend some time on while I think.
A friend of mine told me about this challenge where you pick random number between 1 and the amount of books you have in your “to-read” shelf on Goodreads. The number that gets picked, that book you have to read (if you can get ahold of the book).
I decided to try it out straight away and and got number 192. Number 192 was #TheReadCinderella by Yesenia Vargas. I love to dive in to a retelling of Cinderella and started as soon as I’d said goodbye to my friend.
#TheRealCinderella – Yesenia Vargas Narrator: Kyla Garcia Series: #BestFriendsForever #1
Synopsis from Goodreads: Geeky Ella Reyes is at the bottom of the totem pole at Westwood High. Her ultra-popular stepsisters refuse to be seen with her at school, and every day she comes home to a mountain of chores.
Ella’s only friend (and maybe crush) lives on the other side of her phone’s screen. She and Baller929 know everything about each other, except their real names.
When they have a chance to meet at her school’s Halloween ball, Ella must figure out a way to get there without her stepmom or stepsisters finding out.
Is revealing her identity to Baller929 worth risking the one good thing left in her life? Or is he too good to be true?
I’m not crying, you’re crying! No but for reals, I got a little teary eyed at the end with the apologizing from the step sisters.
This is a tricky book to rate. On one hand, I got very invested and love the Cinderella type of story. But there are also things that do not really fit nicely in the story. For example, the dress. They had no real indication that the dress was actually for her, they just assumed and took it?
I usually do not complain so much on character development and similar but here it feels like I need to a little bit. She was too nice all the way throughout the story. She was the only one apologizing. Now, it has been a while since I finished this book but in my notes from this book, it seems like the step sisters apologizes to Ella but that she also apologizes (but perhaps can be interpreted as a “I am sorry you felt that way” kind of sorry). The guy though, he did not apologize and that made me a bit mad.
Ella also had a lot of thoughts about her appearance, that she did not look as good as all the other girls in the school and that her glasses was a part of this (she did become a lot pretties without them?). I would have loved to see a much clearer insight that this did not matter, that she would have realized that this does not matter. She does realize that she can save herself but the appearance leaves us hanging. Why do they need to chase the pretty-ness? Also, glasses are not something that makes people less pretty and it is weird that this still is something that authors choose to write.
Initial thought was to give this book a 4, but because of the apologizing and the character development, I think I will leave it at a 2.5 out of 5 stars.
I do not think I am the only one planning to do so many things and then not being able to do them all. It does not really bother me that I cannot do everything but some things are always the thing that gets the prioritization later. I always read, sometimes more and sometimes less, but writing about what I read often get the prioritization later. And then I often have this okay, now is the day I am going to start writing for real. Today is one of those days. I like writing so lets see if I can prioritize it a bit for a little while.
What am I currently reading? A couple of things. I currently have a bunch of books in a stack that I have started but mostly I am reading Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao. There is magic and conmen and I hope this is a successful combo, so far so good.
I am currently listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. I regularly listen to Harry Potter, mostly in English with Stephen Fry (great narrator!) but seldom to the last two books in the series. I have currently about two hours left and I am not sure what to listen to next.
I recently found that my audiobook service is now allowing me to listen to books in more language than Swedish, English, Finnish and Arabic. I learned German for several years in school and have always had the ambition to continue to learn German and now I am trying to find the right book to listen to. Since my German is not the best it has ever been, I want to find something familiar with a not too advanced language. I was sad to find that they did not have the Harry Potter books in German because that would have been the obvious pick. I have read the first book in German with my eyes and have started the second but I would find it nice to listen to it at the same time as reading it with my eyes to enhance the learning a bit.
I am a bit behind in my Goodreads goal so far this year. It is one of the few book goals I set each year. But there is a lot left of this year so we will see how it goes. I have plans to read a bunch of my thinner books on my shelves and a few thicker ones and then there are those German ones.
What have I been doing otherwise? I crochet, put up new wallpaper in the house we are renting, puzzle, think about repotting my plants, bake, cook and attend a lot of different activities.
We have started reading The Hollow Man (my copy: Den ihålige mannen) by John Dickson Carr together at work. There are a lot of names and sometimes it’s a bit confusing who is speaking and doing something. I started an excel sheet so that we can both keep track of the characters and so that we can enter guesses for who the murderer is. We have read a couple of cosy crime books before, I like reading those for our style of book circle, and we have never saved the guesses like this before. It will be interesting to see how many have guesses correctly (or not) in the end.
Since last week, I’ve finished reading Howl’s Moving Castle (liked it) and Heat Wave (did not like it). I’m curious to see the movie Of Howl’s Moving Castle now to compare, it was a long time ago I saw it so I don’t remember much.
I was reading Heat Wave as part of a challenge, reading books by the same name. I have a couple of more books to read in that challenge before I share all my thoughts. The books are quite varied so it’s going to be interesting to see where we end up.
On the creative part there has not been much activity this week. My eyes have been a bit tired so when I have ended my working day I haven’t really been in the mood for looking at things at close distance. They are better now so I think there will be more things happening soon.
My blogging goes a little up and down, I sit down and blog a little when I feel like it. I have the app on my phone which makes it possible to blog from my phone but it’s much more comfortable to do from the computer. I haven’t been spending so much time in front of the computer lately and therefore there haven’t been so much activity here either. I could promise to post more now but I think we all know that such promise could turn out to be tricky to keep.
Projects
What have I been up to lately? I have started to cross stitch. I haven’t done it for many years but I passed a cross stitch magasine while out Christmas shopping that held a very cute cross stitch pattern on the cover and felt like trying it out again. I’ve started on said pattern and have also cross stitched a cat on a sweater to cover up a hole that I patched. It’s fun! I think there will be a few more of those projects.
A birthday card in progressA cross stitched cat on sweater
Reading
I’m currently re-reading River Marked by Patricia Briggs. It’s the sixth book in the Mercy Thompson series. I have a couple of unread books in the series and felt like re-rearing a couple books to freshen up my memory of the series before continuing. And, I really like the series so it’s just a delight to be back in the world.
I did finish listen to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone the other day. I think that Stephen Fry is a marvelous narrator so when I didn’t know what to listen to this is what I picked. Even though I’ve read and listened to those books many times there are always small details that I’ve forgotten or things I realise while reading. It’s a good series.
I’m currently listening to a non-fiction book about user experience called Sweet Spot UX: Communicating User Experience to Stakeholders, Decision Makers and Other Humans by Mike Newman. It felt like the book had a very long intro, explaining why this book was written, but finally I think we’re starting to come somewhere. It’s maybe not what I expected when going into the book but I think it could be interesting anyway.
I’m also listening to Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones. My sister has been recommending this one to me and I really like it so far!
Stats and such
I’ve been thinking about keeping some sort of excel sheet for my read books during the year to be able to do some nice stats and charts of my reading. I’ve just never gotten around to it and I haven’t known what to put in there. But now, now I’ve done it. I googled on existing speadsheets yesterday and found one I like. I’m going to try it out for a bit and see if I want to create my own based on it once I know what I like and dislike with it. For now, I just like to fill it with the books I’ve read this year (which doesn’t happen to be so many because the year just started) and the books I’m currently reading to see how it’s affecting the stats. How fun!
Nattkorpen– Johan Runberg Series: Månvind & Hoff #1 Type of book: Hardcover Length: 183 pages
Synopsis från förlagets hemsida: Vintern håller Stockholm i ett järngrepp, tullarna är igensnöade och det går varken att ta sig in eller ut ur staden. Mika har bott på Barnhuset på Drottninggatan i hela sitt liv. För att kunna överleva i 1800-talets Stockholm har hon utvecklat ett skarpt sinne för detaljer och hotfulla situationer. En natt lämnas en nyfödd flicka till barnhuset av en skräckslagen ung man. Det blir början på en kedja av händelser som ska försätta Mika i större fara än hon någonsin kunnat föreställa sig.
När det var min tur att föreslå böcker att rösta om var Nattkorpen en av alternativen, den vann omröstningen med hästlängder. Vi har ännu inte hunnit ha vårt bokprat där vi diskuterade boken, vädret satte käppar i hjulet för det planerade diskussionstillfället så vi sköt fram det en vecka, så det ska bli spännande vad de andra tycker om boken.
Jag förstår att den här boken har fått pris. Det är en bok som både gammal och ung kan uppskatta. Det är en spännande bok som är väldigt lätt att fortsätta läsa. Jag tycker om dynamiken mellan Mika och Hoff. Vi vet inte genast om polisen som drar med henne ut till fängelset är en bra eller dålig man, vi får känna tveksamheten tills han bevisat vad han går för.
Det är något speciellt med historier som har en karaktär med sinne för detaljer, lite i Sherlock-anda, och det här är en sådan. Det är väldigt tillfredsställande när Mika kan göra en slutsats eller knäppa någon på näsan med sina färdigheter.
Nattkorpen är den första boken i en serie och det finns fortfarande lösa trådar som behöver knytas ihop som gör att jag längtar efter att få plocka upp nästa del. Först måste jag bara diskutera boken med mina medläsare innan jag får fortsätta på nästa del…
Jag gav boken 4 av 5 stjärnor – jag tyckte väldigt mycket om den.
Have You Read This One? 