Books & Travelling

First of all; happy Halloween! I’m from Norway and here it never really been a huge tradition of Halloween; not Valentine’s Day either for that matter.
Me and a friend of mine went out for a walk today; I think we walked around the streets for about an hour or so. We saw maximum five kids celebrating Halloween… I would imagine that in the US and the UK this is much more of a bigger happening – I mean, honestly? It can’t be smaller than this!

I’ve never read many horror books in my life. Of course, I’ve read those vampire books (Sookie Stackhouse and so on. Is that counted in as horror, by the way?), some Stephen King books and as a child I used to read R.L. Stine’s horror books for children. I remember I loved them! Me and my best friend at that time used to go to the library, get as many R.L. Stine – books as we could possibly carry (which was a lot! My library has shopping – baskets available for us to carry books around in).

However; the last weeks I’ve been travelling much more than I really meant to. A couple of weeks ago I was in Aalborg; which is an awesome place in Denmark – and this weekend I spent on a political conference in Oslo. A lot of fun!
On the airport on my way home from Oslo, me and my travel buddies went into this bookshop called “Book store”. I wasn’t actually going to buy something, but then I found a book I’ve been wanting to get for a while – book number 2 in the “Dark Tower” – series by Stephen King. I’ve read the first book (The Gunslinger) and thought it was amazing, and I’ve spent the last 24 hours reading in book number 2 (The drawing of the Three) which is, so far, also really good!

This was quite the long post, though, but I wanted to kind of explain to you why I have been so busy that I haven’t posted in a while. In a couple of hours I’ll start out NaNoWriMo (wish me good luck, guys!), but as you know – to be a good writer you have to be a good reader, so I’ll read as much as I possibly can.

 

Happy Halloween!

Warrior Cats: Into the wild

One of the books that I’ll be reviewing this month is the first book in the series Warrior Cats, which is written by Erin Hunter. It’s called Into the wild, and I’m actually really excited about this book; even though it’s a children’s book.
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Some facts:

Title: Warrior Cats: Into the wild.
Author: Erin Hunter.
Pages: 304.
Publisher: HarperCollins.

Summary:

For generations, four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest according to the laws laid down by their warrior ancestors. But the ThunderClan cats are in grave danger, and the sinister ShadowClan grows stronger every day. Noble warriors are dying—and some deaths are more mysterious than others.

In the midst of this turmoil appears an ordinary house cat named Rusty . . . who may turn out to be the bravest warrior of them all.

Have you read this book?

I’m back

Okay, I haven’t written as much as I would like it to be on this blog, but I want to change that. My life has been really hectic, you see. First, in May, I became chairman in this political organization, which I – of course – had to learn how to lead. After that, as you all probably heard, there were some terror going on at Utøya in Norway, and even though I wasn’t there life suddenly felt a bit without meaning. I didn’t want to kill myself, but it was like someone just hit the pause-button in my life. Days passed, but nothing happened.

Therefore, I went to the library yesterday, and picked up 4 totally random books, where I’ll review one of them ASAP. The ones I got was:

1. Gossip Girl 0.5 – It had to be you.
2. The Carlyles (spinoff Gossip Girl. Seeing a pattern here, are we?)
3. Warrior Cats.

I won’t be reviewing any of the three Gossip Girl – books, so Warrior Cats it is I will make a post regarding that book later.

July – Favourite of the Month

Hi!

I recently made a new category; called “Favourite of the Month”, where I’m going to talk about my favourite book of the month – out of those which I’ve been reviewing that month.
Usually I will be making a  Favourite of the Month post in the end of a month, like I’m doing now, or in the first couple of days of a new month!

My favourite of the month for July is Stephen King’s Under the dome. If you haven’t read the review yet, or want to refresh your mind; you can read it here.
The main reason of why I chose this book and not one of the others (and mind you; the others were pretty good too!) was because King made great characters, which had their own personality – all of them! Unlike the other books; even the “evil” ones had good sides, and even the “good” ones had darker sides. All of his characters seemed so darn realistic; how they treated each other, their flaws and traits and so on! This is a really good book which I really recommend to everyone. However; as I mentioned in my review, it’s quite a heavy book with it’s 1074 pages, so it’s not exactly a beach read.

Sara Shephard – Pretty Little Liars

Title: Pretty Little Liars.
Author: Sara Shepard.
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 304
Genre: YA (Young Adult).
Language: English.About the book:
Pretty Little Liars is about five friends; Alison DiLaurentis, Aria Montgomery, Emily Fields, Spencer Hastings and Hanna Marin. Alison is incredibly popular, and when she starts talking to the rest of the girls they almost don’t believe it. The five girls are best friends, and always stick together –and they always do as Alison says. For some of the girls, Alison is not only a friend, she’s also a rival because it seems like she’s best in almost everything. Suddenly Alison disappears, and the girls slowly start to rip apart.

Three years later Alison is still disappeared, and Aria comes home from Iceland, where she has spent the last years. Aria falls in love, and almost has sex with her English teacher, Hanna is caught shoplifting, Spencer has an affair with her sister’s boyfriend and Emily falls in love with the new girl next door. After a while the girls start to receive creepy messages from a girl called “A”, the messages is about things from the past, that only Alison knew. One day Alison’s body is being found, and the girls wonder if Alison really is dead. And if she is, who is sending the messages?My opinion:

Pretty Little Liars is that kind of a book that cannot be put down. It’s a real page turner.  This is not a book full of literary quality when it comes to character development and plot, but it makes you put away all of the good, old classics for a while. Not only because of its easy language, but also because of witty comments and a great feeling which only gets better after every page in this delightful book.

It is pretty clear (in my opinion at least) why this book is so popular with teens. It’s typical Gossip Girl and a young version of Desperate Housewives, without the housewives, of course.  Already now I’ve bought the next book in the series, Flawless and can’t wait until I’ve read it.

Rating:

4/5

NB: This review is taken from my old blog, readingwithpassion.

Scott Westerfield – Uglies

Title: Uglies.
Author: Scott Westerfield.
Pages: 425 pages.
Language: English.
Genre: Science-fiction, YA, Adventure.

About the book:

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can’t wait. Not for her license — for turning pretty. In Tally’s world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally’s new friend Shay isn’t sure she wants to be pretty. She’d rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world — and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.

(Info from www.goodreads.com)

My opinion:

One thing that I really loved about this book, and which I loved even before I started reading this book was it’s concept and plot. Sure; it may sound a bit cheesy at first, but as you get into it, it’s actually awesome.
Another thing which I really liked is the new things that Westerfield creates in this novel. Meanwhile most of the people in this world don’t know what things like rollercoasters are, Westerfield developed a lot of cool things like hoverboards (just like snowboards – but they can fly!).

My favourite character is probably Shay, because she seems to be the only real three-dimensional character in this book. She starts out like a really nice girl to Tally, but she develops and shows emotions that none of the other characters in the book shows: hate, jealousy and true love and admiration.

In the end this is not the kind of book you go to if you want to read a real masterpiece, but it’s great for a beach read. However; this book is good written, and I recommend it for young adults. No matter if you like sci-fi or not, this one will probably appeal to most young adults!
Also; this is the first book in a trilogy; the next books are called “Pretties” and “Specials”.

Rating:
4/5

Review coming up!

Hi!

I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been on my summer holiday in Sweden. I brought my computer, but unfortunately there wasn’t any internet connection available, so I obviously wasn’t able to blog.
However; I’m back on track now, and last night (literally last night… about 2 AM) I finished “Uglies” by Scott Westerfield, a book which I really loved the concept of, and the review will be published in a couple of days.