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Category: Books

  • Review: The Chocolate Heart

    The Chocolate Heart
    The Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Laura Florand is a recent discovery of mine. It’s only last month that I picked up the first book in this series, and then ended up devouring all her backlist like a madwoman. Paris, chocolate and cultural misunderstandings… – what’s not to love?

    The Chocolate Heart is one of those books that, if it was less well written, would be annoying as hell. It is about the heiress Summer Corey and the pastry chef Luc Leroi. Summer’s dad buys her the hotel where Luc works at the 3 star restaurant. From the minute they meet, there is misunderstandings.

    These go on for almost the whole book – and could maybe partly have been solved in half the time if the two of them were less neurotic, and less inclined to misunderstand everything the other one is saying.

    It is only Florand’s excellent writing which carries the story so well to the end. As it is, it is delicious and sweet and wistful…

    It’s actually a book that I am sad to see end. The first book in this series was good, but I feel like the stories and the writing is improving book by book, and it will be a pleasure to read the next one, and re-read them again and again.

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  • Review: Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

    Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris
    Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris by Ann Mah

    I’m currently working my way through the Julia Child memoir of living in Paris. I seem to be on a Paris book-kick at the moment. (Julia Child, David Lebovitz, Laura Florand and Lauren Willig, to name a few.) This memoir seemed to tie nicely into it, and looked like a fun read.

    Ann Mah and her husband moved to Paris for her husband’s diplomatic job. Only when they got there, he was stationed in Iraq for a year. She took to exploring the country and its food history, and trying to manage on her own.

    On the way, there are recipes, and stories of trying to make friends. The best story was inviting total strangers home to cook together, just because you happen to like the same restaurant. I would love to eat those dumplings.

    To be honest, there is a bit too much jumping around in this book for my taste. The chapters lack a certain fluidity between them, and feel like articles stuck together in a book. I actually ended up reading it that way, which I found worked much better for me.

    In the end it all comes together, and I am definitely going to try to make boeuf bourguignon, and maybe some of the other recipes from it.

    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

  • Review: The Rosie Project

    The Rosie Project
    The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    This book is about Don, a professor of genetics, who is socially awkward and limited in his circle of friends. He likes things as they are, but he has decided that it is time to get married. He starts a project, with a questionnaire for the potential candidates. Then Rosie comes onto the scene. She is wondering who her real father is, and wants Don’s help. They start the Father Project together – DNA testing possible candidates. Rosie is as far from the right replies to the questionnaire as possible.

    For the first half of the book, I wasn’t really sure if I liked it. It read like Big Bang theory alternate universe fan fiction – with the names and certain other aspects changed. When I read, I imagined Sheldon Cooper, and for Don’s apartment – the apartment from the show.

    I am also not a huge fan of first person point of view; it takes a bit more time to get into.

    And then it picked up, and came into its own. Where I had to take breaks from it in the beginning – I read the second half in one go. It was definitely worth reading for the ending alone, and I suspect the last part might be a candidate for frequent rereading.

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  • Review: Sibylla : En biografi

    Sibylla : En biografi by Roger Lundgren

    My rating: 1 of 5 stars

    I had huge expectations for this book, as the author is renowned as a royal expert in Sweden, and Princess Sibylla is something I expect that he would have known quite a bit about.

    I’m left with a conundrum, because the parts where he did cover Sibylla were okay enough. It is just a pity that there were so little of it.

    The major problem with the book is that it is touted as a biography about Princess Sibylla of Sweden – and out of the 319 pages, over a third of it is used to describe various members of the Swedish royal family, the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, and almost everyone but Sibylla. In addition, the author jumps back and forth in history to the point where it ends up being annoying.

    There is also a superficial aspect to the book where he focuses on everybody but Sibylla – she ends up being a supporting character in her own biography. He spends more time talking about the weddings of Sibylla’s children than he did with Sibylla’s own wedding, for example, and even then he barely mentions Sibylla in that context.

    It is very clear to me that despite being a royal watcher, I am not the person this book is angled towards. It is written in a very chatty tone, where the author presumes to know what the cast of characters thought during various events, without supporting the thoughts with proper references.

    Not at all a very impressive biography.

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  • Review: Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch

    Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch
    Rose Kennedy: The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch by Barbara A. Perry

    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    I actually rather liked this. My first foray into reading about the Kennedy clan (as an adult) had to be about Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. I’ve had both the Jackie and Teddy biographies lying about for a while, but decided to start with the matriarch.

    I realize that it is very different what we prefer in biographies, but for me, this was a good read. It did go into the details around things, though not to the nitty gritty on everything. Also, it didn’t spend ages looking at what the individual Kennedys were doing; the children and husband were almost only mentioned as they pertained to Rose and her reactions to their antics.

    But apart from that, with this method of doing it, it also means that when I read the next Kennedy biography, I won’t have heard everything before.

    At the same time, it was rather neutral, not painting anyone with an overly rosy picture – not even Rose.

    I could have done without the emphasis on all her traveling, though, as at one point it just got to be enough to read about even if she did do all the traveling.

    I feel I got a good read through of the book, and it whet my appetite for reading more about the rest of them.

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  • Review: Behind Closed Doors

    Behind Closed Doors
    Behind Closed Doors by Hugo Vickers
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    I have some major issues with this book. I think the writing itself is quite good – but I fail to grasp the concept of having “the ending” first, and then go on to the early lives of the Duchess and Duke of Windsor.

    If the two had been reversed, I think I would be left with a lot more positive feelings about the book – because Hugo Vickers writes well. But a lot of the minutiae that covers the first half of the book would (in my opinion) have been less tedious if we had read the last part of the book before we went on to read the first part of the book.

    All through my reading of the first chapters I kept wishing that I’d known a bit more about the Duchess of Windsor before starting the read – as all the details of who is who, and footnotes felt excessive.

    Vickers met with several of the staff of the couple throughout the years, and is clearly a bit biased towards the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, explained with a long fascination, but it does not feel like he is overly subjective in his writing. Although considerably more positive than a lot of other biographies covering the subject in their time.

    There were some revelations that I thought were interesting, especially in the view that the Duchess of Windsor has been painted in her time – that she stole the King away. Whereas, it turns out, through his letters when he was the Prince of Wales – long before he met Wallis Simpson – that he really wished he could throw it all away, and was not all that keen on being the PoW or the King.

    Also the fact that Wallis Simpson herself did not necessarily want to be married to him, or that he should give away the throne for her. It was much more interesting for her to have an affair with him, and be in the social circle of the Prince of Wales and later the King than to be married and in exile.

    It’s also rather telling that he wished that he could live in the States or Canada and had hoped for that after they married, but she was an American who would much rather live in France than at home.

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  • Review: Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

    Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch
    Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    The ultimate biography on the Queen will probably not come until after her death. But if we combine the plethora of existing ones, a decent enough picture comes out of it.

    This biography adds to that picture to a certain degree. It’s not perfect, but it is easy to read and does not go too deep into the political side of things. I also appreciated that certain areas where I have read much coverage before, childhood, Margaret’s romantic affairs, etc. was not covered too much in detail.

    At the same time, the book goes into more details on the latter aspects of The Queen’s life up to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

    If you follow the British royal family with any sort of regularity, I think this can easily be skipped as there are few new and interesting things revealed. If you don’t, then it can be a useful and interesting read.

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  • Review: Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide

    Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide
    Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide by Doug Mack
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    This is a fun little read. How does the Europe on 5 dollars a day travel guide from way back translate to traveling in Europe today?

    Some of us (the author of the book included) have become so accustomed to looking things up on Tripadvisor, blogs, Wikipedia, etc. when we travel – but one of my best finds in Rome came through an old guidebook. (Ice cream. Never underestimate the power of ice cream in Rome in July.)

    It is interesting to hear the contrasts between then and now, and how the writer works in the letters from when his mother traveled using the original version of the guide book.

    Some of the tips from back then works, and some are miserable failures.

    And I can definitely recognize myself in the ennui at the end – sometimes the things you *must* see become too much and it is simply more fun to experience everyday life in the place you are than the tourist side. And other times, it is more fun to be the ultimate tourist.

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  • Review: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

    The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
    The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    I just finished reading this book. I did not think I was going to like it, and I’ve had it in my “to be read” queue for almost a year just because I could not muster up the interest in it – long live procrastination…

    But I’ve been feeling a bit down lately, so last night when I looked through my Kindle app for something to read this caught my eye. From the first couple of pages, I could tell this would be a book for me.

    It is all about how you have so many things you want to do that makes you happy, but they sometimes get viewed as insignificant and hidden behind the day-to-day activities instead of being a core part of them.

    The experiment of trying different things throughout the year and being the best person you can be to focus your own happiness (which in turn should make those around you happier) is told in an interesting way and I kept coming back to it to read a few pages. I think I bookmarked the whole January chapter…

    I love that she draws in other literature but relates it to her own life. The later chapters also make the book feel more relevant to me, as she is definitely not a super-human who have found the one right way, but lots of little things that work for her life.

    I will definitely try to apply some of the techniques Rubin mentions – first the January resolutions of going to bed earlier, just cleaning up for a minute and put things in their proper place… and then there is the closet…

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