Ellinor's Litventures

Zu Beginn hat mich das Buch sehr an Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher von Walter Moers erinnert - eines meiner absoluten Lieblingsbücher. Und ich muss zugeben, dass dies auch der Hauptgrund war, Die Seiten der Welt zu lesen.
Es beginnt als im Landsitz der Familie Faerfax. Im Keller des Hauses gibt es ein riesiges Bücherlabyrinth, dessen wirkliches Ausmaß niemand kennt. In diesem Labyrinth wohnen magische Bücherwesen - eine eindeutige Parallele zu oben genanntem Werk. Außerdem gibt es mit Libropolis eine Bücherstadt, die Buchhaim sehr zu ähneln scheint. Nach kurzer Zeit wird aber deutlich, dass diese Gemeinsamkeiten nur sehr gering sind. Eigentlich fand ich dies gut, denn so sehr ich auch auf das Erscheinen des Finales der Buchhaimreihe warte, wollte ich doch keinen Abklatsch davon lesen.
Andererseits gefällt mir die Moersche Version einfach wesentlich besser. Alles dort hat einen wahnsinnigen Charme und ich möchte am liebsten sofort nach Buchhaim ziehen. Libropolis dagegen wirkt auf mich überhaupt nicht anziehend. Dort steht mir das negative einfach zu sehr im Vordergrund. Buchhaim ist auch gefährlich und dort gibt es viele Verrückte, aber trotzdem bleibt davon ein positiver Eindruck zurück.
In die Seiten der Welt fand ich auch vieles einfach unschlüssig. Die Rolle der Akademie wird nicht ganz klar. Das gleiche gilt für die Bibliomanten. Sind sie so etwas wie allmächtige Magier? Wenn die leeren Bücher so gefährlich sind, wieso hat dann die Akademie kein Interesse daran, sie zu vernichten? Wenn Furias Familie auf der Flucht vor der Akademie ist, wieso erklärt ihr Vater ihr nicht mehr über Bibliomantik und die Geschichte? Furia muss sich dieses Wissen erst heimlich bei ihrem Hauslehrer holen. Und wo ist dieser überhaupt? Ich könnte diese Liste noch lange fortsetzen.
Insgesamt war das Buch noch einigermaßen unterhaltsam und auch schnell zu lesen. Es stellt jedoch leider keine Alternative zu Stadt der träumenden Bücher dar und kann als Überbrückung bis zum Erscheinen des letzten Bandes gerade so herhalten.

Flavia is starting her first year at Miss Bodycote's Academy. She's homesick a lot - and so was I. I liked how the school and its inhabitants were described. But it was not Buckshaw. Dogger, Flavia's father and sisters, Mr and Mrs Mullet still are present in Flavia's thoughts but it's just not the same.
I also found the crime rather confusing. There are so many new characters that I sometimes lost track of who was who. In the end comes to a logic conclusion but the twist and turns before that were a bit too much for me.
The biggest surprise for me was that Flavia is being sent back to Buckshaw in the end. I like this but I'm now wondering what the sense of this volume was. Alan Bradley could as well have left Flavia at home if he is sending her back again.
3.5 stars for As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust. This is the lowest rating I have given to this series so far. I hope that I will enjoy the next volume a lot more.

(I received a free digital copy via Netgalley/the publisher. Thanks for the opportunity!)

This book was OK, but I really didn't find it any special. The style was much too simple for my liking (which may partially be due to the translation which was quite bad). I liked the characters in Whistle Stop but couldn't really warm up with Evelyn Couch.

All in all this was a decent story. It was a quick read and I also enjoyed reading it.
I just had this major problem that the story is so very unrealistic. If it was just about a girl from a white trash family who is quite unremarkable but is made a little fun of by her classmates but who despite of her background is an intelligent person, I would have said OK. But why does Eleanor have to be everything, absolutely everything, all her fellow students be despise? And then a guy who is half-asian (as if that was that bad) but actually is one of the cool kids suddenly falls madly in love with her! And it's always Park who is the one with all the feelings and stuff. This is so incredibly unlikely. If someone can give me a true example of something like this really happening I might reconsider my judgement. But we're talking about highschool here. If Park was the coolest kid on the entire school he might be strong enough to defend Eleanor and see behind her facade. But even then the love story seems so unlikely. I wish it was true but from what I know from my own experiences I can just tell you, it couldn't be.

I'm always looking for good historical fiction and especially historical crime - something which is unfortunately very rare. The Thief Taker immediately caught my eye: it seemed to be intelligent historical fiction and there seemed to be no love story involved (or at least wasn't the main focus). The novel is set in London during the great plague. People are dying by the dozens, hundreds, thousands. But with all these deaths there is one which is different: a young girl is dreadfully murdered - by a plague doctor. At the crime scene a dark spell seems to have been performed but parts of the spell seem to be missing. Charlie Tuesday, a young thief taker, is asked to investigate the murder by the dead girl's sister. What starts as the hunt for a madman soon turns into the investigation of a plot against the king...
I really enjoyed reading The Thief Taker. I liked how pitiless C.S. Quinn described the plague and its horrors. I knew how many people had died but I never imagined how dreadful it really was. I also liked the characters. Charlie is clever, even though he only had a simple education. Maria at times seems arrogant but really has a good heart.
I have some issues with the crime, though. I was a bit surprised but who the murderer was. But I found that the solution of the murders ended a bit abruptly. I also have some problems with insane people committing crimes. Crimes committed by sane people just seem so moch more real.
The book had an open ending. I usually prefer books and especially crime novels to have a closed ending. But in this case I didn't mind. In fact, I'm really looking forward to reading the next volume and finding out more about the plot and Charlie's past.

Still so true today: the subtitle "A story of the Sixties" could also be of the 70es, 80es etc.

Nana, the dog in Peter Pan, and Carl are very similar: they both are nannies for little children. I just love them!

Both of these books are set in Russia and it's often very cold in them so that you definitely need a fire when reading them.

The blurb of the book sounded very interesting: Reve Dyer moves to an old abandoned house (or rather a village) to protect herself and her children from the creature which just killed her husband. Reve and her husband used to be magicians with their own theater in Las Vegas. But Reve also has real magical abilities: she can dissolve herself into thin air.

All of this made me very curious about the book. But the fact was that The Hawley Book of the Dead really didn’t hold my interest for long periods of time. I often wanted to stop reading it altogether.

First I had problems with the language which was a little too simple for my liking. Then it seemed like nothing was happening. And what bothered me most was that everyone in the village seemed to know what was going on but didn’t give Reeve (who was born and raised in that village) any clues. There were always hints that things were repeating themselves. But Reve was so slow in realizing what is happening, it was just frustrating.

(I received a free digital copy via Netgalley/the publisher. Thanks for the opportunity!)

This one is difficult as September wasn't the best book month for me. I started several big books but haven't really finished any of them. Next week I'm having a week of vacation and I'm hoping to change that but that doesn't do any good for September.

The only book I have finished enough and that was good enough to name it here is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I've completed the first two volumes and they were brilliant. I'm now about a 100 pages into book 3 and I'm so curious how this is going to end. I hope I won't be dispappointed!

I have to leave this one blank. I thought about which book to pick for a very long time but I just couldn't come up with anything. I saw in one blog I'm following the option Fifty Shades of Grey, so I thought of choosing one of the series I just don't know why they are that successful like Twilight or the City of Bones books which are just crap. But somehow this didn't seem right.

I also thought of picking 1984 or some other brilliant dystopian book. But I had heard so much about all of them before I read them that they just weren't that surprising anymore and made me question everything.

I'm still thinking about this task and will update once I come up with anything or maybe read something which makes me question everything!

Just a heads up for those who are enjoying the #bookadayuk thing. 

Michel (or Emil as he's called in the original) definitely is my favourite troublemaker, especially because he doesn't actually mean to cause any trouble. He always wants to do something good or funny but things always turn out differently.

Another difficult one, there are so many countries I love to visit again and again. In the end I chose England. I especially love the countryside and the small villages. And I also love books set there.

This one was pretty hard for me as I don't read that many poems. But in the end I came up with one collection I really loved: Reim und Zeit bei Robert Gernhardt. I think you could call him a German Roald Dahl. His poems are very funny but with a biting kind of humour.

Here's my favourite from this collection:

Gebet

Lieber Gott, nimm es hin,

dass ich was Besondres bin

und gib ruhig auch einmal zu,

dass ich klüger bin als du.

Preise künftig meinen Namen,

denn sonst setzt es etwas. Amen.

This is my mum's favourite book and one of my favourites too.