Books

17 February 2025

Romantasy is not for me

I jumped on the Fourth Wing and Romantasy bandwagon in 2023, when I was researching cool books to read. Back then bookstores were plastered with these novels, so I honestly wanted to find out what the hype was about?! Fantasy is one of my most favorite genres and I always enjoy a good fantasy book. Romance? Well, I can’t say I’ve ever read any proper romance novels, aside maybe from some fanfiction 🤔 But why not? Well, my first Romantasy novel was the ubiquitous Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I jumped on the hype train with this book, mainly because […]

12 September 2024

Unwind

The Unwind Dystology was by far one of the weirdest things I’ve ever read. It’s a captivating, easy to read series aimed at young adults, but despite that, it’s nowhere near light reading. In this world, abortion is outlawed, but instead parents can ‘unwind’ their children between the ages of 13-18. This means that they ‘continue living’ in a ‘divided state’, as the euphemisms in this book say, but in reality they become glorified organ donors. It sounds horrible and you wonder how a society could ever have sanctioned this way of life. But the books expertly convince you that […]

30 June 2024

Mistborn

Everybody loves Brandon Sanderson, don’t they? Well, as my enthusiasm for reading had been rejuvenated in the past year, I have been spending a lot of time on literature websites and other channels to find the right books for me to read. After some letdowns of overhyped books, I established a firm list of “must reads” and / or “classics” that I felt would be my thing. Reading what you want is so important, and probably why jumping on the hype train is always a disappointment. Anyway, everybody seems to love Brandon Sanderson, and while Stormlight Archive is praised to […]

3 May 2024

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi and Jonathan Strange

Did you ever finish reading a book and then went straight back to the first page to read it again? This happened to me when I read Piranesi, a rather short novel by Susanna Clarke. Piranesi is a magical, mythical and mind-boggling mystery. Probably one of the most unique books I have ever read. I don’t really know what else to say about this book without spoiling it, except that it’s absolutely worth reading. It’s a short (~250 pages) and very captivating read with very brief chapters. It’s an introvert’s dream place. And will stick with you for a while. […]

2 April 2024

Lord of the Rings: 20 Years Wiser

Lord of the Rings is such a vast and epic topic, where to even begin? And what can I write about it that hasn’t been written about it yet? I’d just like to share my own personal experience with this work of art, as I do so often here in this blog. I first became fully aware of the Lord of the Rings around 2000 or 2001, as the marketing for the first movie was starting to gain momentum. I was but a naïve teenager back then and I had very little contact with these books aside from having seen […]

23 February 2024

Propaganda and polyamory: Revisiting the Hunger Games

Prompted by having read the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I recently decided to re-read the Hunger Games novels. First of all, I was curious about the prequel – how can a prequel about the villain of the series tie in? The prequel tells the (love) story of a teenage Coriolanus Snow, who later becomes president (dictator would be the more appropriate term) of Panem. What an odd book to read, because how can you make a novel about an entitled narcissist, who treats people like possessions, possibly compelling? While his rise to patriotism is sometimes interesting, […]

21 January 2024

History repeats itself, as seen in “Berlin: City of Light”

Last week on a whim, I bought the third book in the series of graphic novels Berlin by Jason Lutes. I read the first one in university 10 years ago, and bought the second one a couple of years later. I always had at the back of my mind that one day maybe I should read the third one, which back then wasn’t released. Acquiring the third book prompted me to re-read all of them, and I’m glad I did (but also a bit sad). This story as a whole gives us a glimpse into Berlin in the years 1928 […]

17 December 2023

Arc of a Scythe

In the city where I live, there are quite a few public bookshelves. Whenever I leave my apartment or just happen to pass by one of them, I check them. Some time in the winter of 2023, I did my usual round past the public bookshelf while going to the grocery store. Usually the books in there are literal trash, and it’s so rare to find a good book in good condition, let alone in English. Scythe by Neal Shusterman was such a find, the cover art was striking, and after reading the description, my interest was piqued. Dystopian is […]

18 November 2023

A novel development

It’s been a very long time since I read novels out of my own free will. Having been forced to read some pretty annoying stuff during my time studying literature made me lose interest in this medium. Even though some of the books I read for uni were undoubtedly good, I can’t say that they were really my style or my type of book. Margaret Atwood comes to mind. The Handmaid’s Tale is a brilliant dystopian novel, just my kind of stuff, but some of the other things I read from her – nice, but not really my thing. So […]