Claire and Sidney Waverly grew up in their ancestral home, watched over by a magic apple tree. Both sisters have been born with very special gifts, but are they ready to embrace those gifts?

Being a Waverly has its ups and its down sides. Because they have special gifts they are feared and sought out. Claire’s talent is cooking with flowers, which she uses to make people feel a certain way or face the truth. She lives for her garden and never lets anybody in. Sidney left home the first chance she got, because she didn’t want to be a Waverly. But after years with an abusive husband she feels she needs to run home again, for safety.

Read by Susan Ericksen, who does a good job. The story is interesting. Ish. But it seems to be all over the place. Is this about coming home? Abusive men? Sisterhood? Family secrets? Magic? A bit of all of the above? I think a bit more focus wouldn’t have gone awry. And I’d love to try one of those apples…..

Juliet, naked

I completely missed the fact that the fabulous Hornby had written another book! I loved About a boy, and especially A long way down. Wow. Who knew suicide was quite that hilarious? Juliet, naked is very Hornby, as in funny, weird and slightly unsettling.

The main character in this book is not Juliet, as you might expect, but Annie. She lives in a dull seaside town with the even duller Duncan.
They have drifted together and stuck together basically because nobody else seemed to want them. Now Annie is hitting forty and she is angry about unborn babies and throwing away her life on a guy who’s obsessed with another guy.
You see, dull Duncan is a hardcore fan of Tucker Crowe, a singer from the eighties.
And so holidays are spent visiting toilets where the great man has gone before and Duncan runs a website devoted to Tucker. Not a lot has happened in the past 20 years, but the eleven or so hard core fans from all over the world manage to spend hours and hours chatting about rumors etc. And then suddenly a new album appears…

I enjoyed it immensely, but I was rather disappointed by the last four chapters. Tucker has chucked his career for some dark secret and I must admit that it took me ten minutes (literally!) to vaguely remember what it was. It’s not that dark at all really.

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Deal Breaker, Myron Bolitar

I am a bit of a Bolitar fan. I’ve read all of sports agent Myron’s adventures over the past few years. However, Harlan Coben’s latest addition to the series, The Last Song, isn’t his finest hour.

Myron isn’t a real detective, but he does solve crimes. He’s a failed NBA basketball player, who got his knee smashed to smithereens during his very first ro game and ever since then he’s been struggling and solving crimes. It started out simple enough, Myron and his friend Win (scary, WASPy, very rich guy) help out his sports clients who always seem to get into serious trouble.
I’m not big on sports myself, but the combination of the unlikely hero (unlucky with women, drinks yoo-hoo and still lives with his adoring parents) and the dry humor got me hooked. So I read Back Spin, and Fade Away and Del Breaker. All of them funny and exciting. The plot is usually so complicated that I lose track, but hey, never mind. Most of it’s about Myron getting his ass kicked until Win comes and kills everyone in sight. Fun, fun, fun.
So do read them, all of them!
Skip The Last Song though. Self serving, unbalanced and way over the top, even in this series, it breaks out terrorism, toruture and it was oddly boring. One minute Myron is ready to move to Arizona to be with the woman he loves, the next he’s in Paris with another love of his life.
She’s called him in after her ex-husband disappears. I’d explain the rest of the story, but it’s way too convoluted. But if you start with Deal Breaker, I can guarantee you a great time.

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One Day David Nicholls

I went on a bit of a pub crawl and somewhere along my third caiperovska I lost the rather tepid book I was reading, Hidden Talents. A lucky thing as it turned out, because when I schlepped my hangover to the English Bookstore the next day I picked up One Day.

As the title of this post suggests, I REALLY liked it. It’s lad lit, or whatever Mike Gayle and Nick Hornby’s stuff is called. A genre I like, as it’s generally about a time I was out drunk, sad and single as well and it’s often recognizable and very, very funny.

One Day uses a trick that could have worn thin very quickly: it describes the same date, more or less, for twenty years and uses this day, St. Swithin’s Day, to describe the lives of a boy and a girl. Bolshy Emma and posh Dexter hook up for a one night stand after graduation and then, miraculously, turn into best friends. Over twenty years they struggle with life and with each other through failed relationships and awkward careers.

In a way, it’s a shame (here be spoilers) that Dex starts working in tv and ends up addicted to drugs and booze and sensitive Emma only has ONE real boyfriend, the very unfunny stand up comedian (which I thought was a hoot and a half). Here’s a very pretty girl and she chalks up one boyfriend and one affair? In about TWENTY years? While Dex gets to have sex and do drugs all the time, but of course he’s not happy. What red-blooded twentysomething boy wouldn’t be unhappy with unlimited sex and drugs and rock&roll?

Also, the actual start of the friendship isn’t that believable. They have a one night stand and then all of a sudden Emma is staying with Dex’s posh parents and calling his dad a fascist and voila, they’re best mates for life? I didn’t get it.

However, the most important thing, I guess, is that I finished this book in two, very long, sittings and I’m still sorry there wasn’t more because it was a memorable ride.

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I’ll fess up to begin with: I don’t particularly like Nicolas Sparks. Books like The Notebook seem too contrived to me, and to lack any real feeling. However, I am living on a Spanish mountain and it’s been raining so badly that most of the roads are cut off, so I’ll pretty much read anything! And to be fair, it wasn’t all bad.

John is a soldier, who falls in love with a devout southern belle. They plan to spend the rest of their lives together while he goes overseas to soldier on, but just as he’s ready to get out of the army 9/11 rolls around and he feels he has to stay in the army to serve his country.

I guess what intrigued me is that the story hinges on 9/11. That reference made me feel like I, too, was part of history, like people who lived through the second world war, also a topic of many a book. Other than that, this is not a very interesting tale. John himself is an oddly sensitive guy, for a hardened soldier, and we get to hear a lot about his motives, so though I didn’t really like him, I did get, sort of, why he did the things he did. Savannah, his love interest, on the other hand is one big cliche: she’s very, very nice. Builds shelters for the homeless, goes to church, loves and honors her parents, wants to teach special needs kids. I felt like slapping her. But that’s just me. All in all, not that bad a way to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the fire.

I just saw that there’s a movie as well. Wonder if they kept the ending? Maybe ditched the brother? Curious!

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Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein

Winner of the booker Prize, rave reviews (among others “a truly great English novel”) all over the place and a historic novel: how could this possibly go wrong?

It starts out well. Thomas Cromwell as a young blacksmith’s son who gets beaten up by his dad on a regular basis. He flees, maybe killing a man, maybe not: it’s all part of the legend he will soon be as he rises far beyond his class and turns into Henry VIII’s closest adviser.

Henry is trying to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and Cromwell is just the man to lend a hand.

To be honest: it’s kinda boring. I’ve been reading Samson’s series on the (post) Cromwell era and it’s just so much more exciting! Mantel’s tale drags on and on and the promise of Wolf Hall, where exciting, stuff is happening, never actually materialises. Of course Wolf Hall symbolises the end of Cromwell: it’s where Jane Seymour lives and most of us remember what happened to Henry VIII’s wives. Brave or boring? Well, I’ll go with brave to end the story as if it were open ended.

However, though I never liked Thomas Moore, I find the goody two shoes-version of Cromwell, who never carries a grudge, is kind to dogs, women and children and works disinterestedly for a better Britain where men can worship in freedom rings false.

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When will there be good news?

Private detective Jackson Brody is back for yet another misadventure. Kate Atkinson is one of the few people in the world who can make dreadful crimes funny, interesting and almost poetic. Jackson doesn’t catch a break this entire book, poor lamb, must be hard work!

On a sunny summer’s day, a little girl called Joanna walks through a wheatfield with her mom, her baby brother and her sister. Out of nowhere a man comes up who kills everyone but Joanna, because she ran. And ran. Thirty years later, that man is about to be set free.

I adore Kate Atkinson. Haven’t read anything quite like it, ever. However, I was slightly disappointed by When will there be good news?. She does knit together an awful lot of coincidences in this book, even more so than usual. And the weirdness seems to spin out of control. And will Jackson and Louise finally get it together? For Pete’s sake?

In short: Not nearly as good as Case Histories, but even a less than excellent story on Jackson Brody is ok by me. Let’s hope there’ll be more!

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Bleachers John Grisham

I know reading John Grisham is about as unfashionable as reading Dan Brown right about now. There´s a scene in Third Rock from the sun where they´re all reading John Grisham and they´ve accidentally switched books and hadn´t even noticed.
“What´s yours about?”
“Mine is about a young Southern lawyer struggling against justice”.
“So is mine!”

John Grisham has written stacks of legal thrillers and I actually quite like ´em. But he has also written books on sports. Football to be exact.

I can´t tell a quarterback from a goldfish, so I probably wouldn´t have read this if I hadn´t thought it was one of his legal thrillers. I read two, one about a mean racist on death row and one about an evil company poisening the water, and I really liked them.

The slow pace, the easy plain language. So when I saw Bleachers, I didn´t stop to consider it might be about something else alltogether. Sports. My evil nemesis. Never liked sports. I played basketball in high school, I like walking, I just really don´t like sports on tv. Any sports. Well, maybe ice dancing… Yep, I am one hundred percent girl.

In Bleachers former players of a high school football team sit around in the bleachers as their old coach lays dying. They talk about the old days, those who were supposed to become stars, while they hold a vigil.

Neely Crenshaw, former all star quarterback, now a down on his luck real estate salesman, also returns to his home town to pay his respects to the coach he loved and hated and has to deal with all the mistakes he made, including the girl he let slip away.

Bleachers´ all about mistakes, and regrets and getting on with things. It´s plain and simple, but it struck a cord with me. All those big guys, who used to be stars in high school and are now mostly nobodies. Reminiscing on their glory days. Well worth the read, even if, like me, you don´t like sports.

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Unfortunately, there is a limited number (only 12!) of Miss Marples. So I turn to Poirot sometimes. I quite like him and his little grey cells, but I prefer him when he deals with small matters. A missing cook, an odd game of bridge, a girl found dead in her room.

I never did like the “big” novels on international crime and rereading The Big 4 strengthened me in my thoughts. A visitor comes to Poirot´s flat. He dies on the spot, but mumbles something about the big four. This is a top secret organisation, consisting of four very evil people who stop at nothing to get to their Goal. Though we´ll never find out what exactly they are planning to do and why all this killing, maiming and kidnapping is really necessary.

It seems Poirot and Hastings are constantly being kidnapped and nearly blown up. All this over excitement – Miss Marple never gets kidnapped!- makes it a very uneven and un-Christie like book. Can´t wait to get back to a “normal” Miss Marple, like A murder is announced or Sleeping Murder!

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Summer reread top ten

. The only way to really know a book is to read it and read it again!

My Summer Reread top ten:

Little House in the big woods

1) Little House on the prairie
Laura Ingalls Wilder´s true story about her childhood as a pioneer´s daughter in the endless forests of Wisconsin. It´s such a comforting read! As long as Pa plays the violin, the bears will stay away and all is right with the world.

2)Emma
I´ll take mr. Knightley over Mr. Darcy anyday. Maybe not quite as much of a romantic hero, then again, not moody or conceited! A proper, grown up hunk of a man. Also, personally, I think the story of Emma is better than that of Pride and Prejudice. Knightley loves Emma inspite of her flaws and her annoying father.

I, Claudius

3) I, Claudius
Robert Graves´classic story about poor, stammering Claudius who ends up being emperor because his family has been killing each other and simply forgot about him.

Read it the first time in high school. I got so hooked that when disturbed I would need a moment to stop thinking everybody around me was plotting against me. On second thoughts, maybe I should keep that story to myself!

4) Anne of Green Gables
Ahhh. To fall asleep in Anne´s little room at Green Gables, under crisply starched sheets, eat Marilla´s plum jam, argue with Gilbert Blythe… I guess what I like about Green Gables is the simple life. They bake, they tend the hens, they drink lemonade.

5) Snow Falling on Ceders
Brillant literary whodunnit by my hero, David Guterson. The man has yet to write a book I didn´t love. Ceders is about a small very traditional fishing community where a dead fisherman ends up in some nets. Especially suited for those swelteringly hot days, because a lot of it is about snow and cold. Kept me up many a night!

Brideshead Revisited

6) Brideshead Revisited
Sadness and decay in a British aristocratic family. I have to travel to Venice by sea one day, just because Charles and Sebastian did.

7) Time Traveler´s Wife About to be made into a motion picture, so you really should (re)read the book! It´ll cool you down by the vast amount of tears you´ll pore over the story. I know I sobbed my way through it. Loved it. But my husband asked me not to read it when he was around, because of all the tears.

Little Women
I still secretly hope that Jo will pick Laurie this time around.

9) Lace
Ahhh. The mother of all beach reads! I´ve known for over twenty years who Lily´s mother is and still Shirley Conran ´s storytelling gets me every time!

10) Double play
On the island of Curaçao, four men languidly play their usual game of dominoes. Their lives will never be the same again. Brillantly funny and insightful book by Curaçaoan writer Frank Martinus Arion.