SaraPepparkaka

I read one book by Victoria Clayton not long ago, and liked it. That one was called "Dance with me". I may yet read about frogs, despite what I found under the spoiler tag.

Hehe, that would be the Gingerbread House. Sounds a bit ominous. I assure you Hansel and Gretel are perfectly safe and not on the menu..

Finished "Turkish Gambit", another Erast Fandorin mystery by Boris Akunin. I will have to rush to the library on Monday to borrow the next one. I'm thinking about how many brilliant books I must have missed over the years. If someone felt like it, they could analyse what makes me choose one book and skip another, I'd be interested in the results but feel a bit too lazy to analyse myself. Instead, I think I'll plan next week's menu in Casa de Pepparkaka. My appetite has returned.

I do it a lot less than I'd like. Funnily enough, it doesn't have the same effect seeing someone eat in a movie as it has when I read about food and eating.

Spaghetti Carbonara- but no egg.

Added a book for Pakistan.

And more books read. Tehmina Durrani writes the story about her marriage to Mustafa Khar, a Pakistani politician. The book is called "My Feudal Lord", and my what a marriage. Stormy and abusive is only the beginning. The book made me think about how girls are raised, to be sweet, silent, obedient and well-behaved, and how that really makes someone vulnerable to narcissistic personalities. In any case, an interesting read and it will represent Pakistan on my challenge.

A romance that was NOT a re-read. "Blue-eyed devil" by Lisa Kleypas. From Publishers Weekly Scenes of domestic abuse and the journey to recovery make Kleypas's modern romance anything but fluff. A Wellesley grad and daughter of a Houston energy baron, Haven Travis is an unlikely romantic heroine until her brief but ardent encounter with a man who turns out to be Hardy Cates, the East Texas roughneck from Sugar Daddy who worked his way up from poverty and then outmaneuvered the Travis clan in a business deal. Haven's engaged to Nick Tanner—a man her dad thinks is unfit for her—and though she and Hardy have a charged interaction, she elopes with Nick, and her father cuts her off. Nick turns out to be a bad guy, and a beaten and bruised Haven returns to Houston, where Hardy's still at odds with her family. Their passion proves as fervent as ever, but demons from Haven's recent past—as well as strife with her family and troubles at work and in bed—stand in the way. Kleypas isn't a literary stylist, but she delivers a page-turning, formula-breaking romance that takes on social issues and escalates passion to new heights. My thoughts: I've only read one book by Lisa Kleypas before, and that was a historical romance. I liked this one better, I'm a bit surprised to say, because it's usually the other way around. Well, Texas today or medieval Scotland, it's not like I have seen either.. The process of making domestic violence seem normal is very well described, and I can believe that's how it happens. Also, the domestic violence part has similarities with the next book I've read, which was a true story about an exceptionally abusive relationship, so maybe that's how it happens. The romance in the book on the other hand is a bit too sugary sweet, and I never really got the "conflict" between Hardy Cates and the Travis family. What I appreciated reading about when it came to the romance was the leap of faith it takes to trust someone when you've had bad experiences in the past.

Seems I only added the book by Slavenka Drakulic in my Challenge log, and not here. Well, it was called "Katt I Warszawa" in Swedish, and it was fables about Eastern Europe communist history. Very interesting read. Then, in between my romance re-reads I finished "Rules of prey" by John Sandford yesterday. The first in the series about Lucas Davenport, and I enjoyed it, but I have one issue with the book. I really, really, REALLY dislike unfaithful people, even in books, and I also really dislike people who put their work before their friends/boyfriends/family (meaning Jennifer Carey in this book). It must have been very well written indeed to keep me reading after finding not one but two of my "issues" in the book, and even enjoying the read after that.

What a lovely day you must have had!

Added a book for Croatia, fables about Eastern European history by Slavenka Drakulic, called "Katt I Warszawa" in Swedish. I believe that at least some of the fables are the same as in "A guided tour through the Museum of Communism: Fables.." Very readable, may even lead to me seeking out other books by the author.

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I remeber you asking what to read in Swedish some time ago. A good author I didn't think of then came back to my mind when I looked at the "1001 books.." list- Marianne Fredriksson. At least "Simon och ekarna" and "Anna, Hanna och Johanna" are well worth a read. Now, this might not be the most important thing on your mind right now, what with you being in Australia... but I'll have forgotten it when you come home.

I've read these: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoJunotDíaz Half of a Yellow SunChimamanda NgoziAdichie White Teeth ZadieSmith The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle HarukiMurakami Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis deBernières A Suitable Boy VikramSeth The Secret History DonnaTartt The English Patient MichaelOndaatje Smilla’s Sense of Snow PeterHøeg Wild Swans JungChang Foucault’s Pendulum UmbertoEco The Satanic Verses SalmanRushdie Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency DouglasAdams Love in the Time of Cholera GabrielGarcía Márquez Simon and the oaksMarianneFredriksson The Handmaid’s Tale MargaretAtwood The Unbearable Lightness of Being MilanKundera The Lover MargueriteDuras The House of the Spirits IsabelAllende July’s People NadineGordimer Midnight’s Children SalmanRushdie Burger’s DaughterNadineGordimer Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy DouglasAdams Delta of Venus AnaïsNin The Shining StephenKing The Bluest Eye ToniMorrison Cancer Ward AleksandrSolzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich AleksandrSolzhenitsyn Catch-22 JosephHeller The Magician of LublinIsaac BashevisSinger The Lord of the Rings J.R.R.Tolkien The Unknown SoldierVainoLinna The Catcher in the Rye J.D.Salinger Brideshead Revisited EvelynWaugh The Bridge on the Drina IvoAndrić Animal Farm GeorgeOrwell Pippi LongstockingAstridLindgren The Little Prince Antoine deSaint-Exupéry For Whom the Bell Tolls ErnestHemingway Rebecca Daphnedu Maurier Of Mice and Men JohnSteinbeck The Hobbit J.R.R.Tolkien Gone With the Wind MargaretMitchell All Quiet on the Western Front Erich MariaRemarque Lady Chatterley’s Lover D.H.Lawrence Mrs. Dalloway VirginiaWoolf Kristin LavransdatterSigridUndset The Age of Innocence EdithWharton The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur ConanDoyle The War of the Worlds H.G.Wells Dracula BramStoker The Time Machine H.G.Wells The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Arthur ConanDoyle Gösta Berling’s Saga SelmaLagerlöf Tess of the D’Urbervilles ThomasHardy The Picture of Dorian Gray OscarWilde The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn MarkTwain Treasure Island Robert LouisStevenson Nana ÉmileZola Around the World in Eighty Days JulesVerne Through the Looking GlassLewisCarroll War and Peace LeoTolstoy Crime and Punishment FyodorDostoevsky Journey to the Centre of the Earth JulesVerne Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland LewisCarroll Madame Bovary GustaveFlaubert Uncle Tom’s Cabin HarrietBeecher Stowe Moby-Dick HermanMelville The Tenant of Wildfell Hall AnneBrontë Wuthering Heights EmilyBrontë Jane Eyre CharlotteBrontë The Count of Monte-Cristo AlexandreDumas The Three Musketeers AlexandreDumas Oliver Twist CharlesDickens The Hunchback of Notre Dame VictorHugo Ivanhoe Sir WalterScott Frankenstein MaryShelley Emma JaneAusten Mansfield Park JaneAusten Pride and Prejudice JaneAusten Sense and Sensibility JaneAusten Dangerous Liaisons PierreChoderlos de Laclos Candide Voltaire Gulliver’s Travels JonathanSwift Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe That makes 85. If I counted correctly. I have a question though: What did J M Coetzee do to deserve to have 6 books on this list? I've read one book by him, and didn't think it was all that special. Not bad either, but.. Granted, it's not on this list, so I take it that means it's not the best book he's written. Still wondering why though.

Well, if you say so then I certainly will! It does sound like a good read.

I read "After dark" by Haruki Murakami last week, and not until today I thought of the empty space in my list for Japan. Well, now the list is updated again.

I voted for Dorian gray, but that's just because I enjoyed reading that book.

I saw "The cross-country quilters" somewhere and was considering it. I'll see if I can find the first in the series and begin with that!

Hello! Welcome!

Hope you'll like it here!

Not much reading today. Still, managed to convince myself to start reading a new book today, "The dark mirror" by Juliet Marillier. I might still go back to re-read favourite parts of favourite romance books.

Read "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami. Excellent, as expected. Other than that, I've been re-reading romances. I will continue with that, right now I feel the need to read Julie Garwood's medieval books.

Hello! Hope you will like it!

Grapes

You may have read this one, but if not- "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë certainly fits the "desperately in love"-criteria. I also second all the ones Chrissy mentioned. Another one I came to think of was "Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson.