Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

I've had this book on my e-reader for almost a year and I think I found out about it through a recommendation from John Green (I might be REALLY wrong, though). I don't know why I didn't get around to reading it earlier. If you're putting it off just like I was - stop right now and go read it, it's fantastic.

I will try to summarize the plot but beware: it will sound like a quite bad soap opera, haha :) The story takes place at the beginning of the 20th century in Mexico on a farm owned by the De La Garza family, which consists of women only. The main character is Tita. She's the youngest daughter and as such is doomed by tradition to never marry in order to take care of her mother until she dies. This is all very unfortunate, because Tita finds out about this tradition just when her sweetheart, Pedro, comes to ask for her hand. Tita's mother tells him that yes, he can marry her daughter, but a different one. And Pedro agrees! 

Now you might think - what the hell? I hardly believed my eyes when I read that and it was within the very first pages. If it was about the plot itself I would probably have finished there and abandoned the book. But there are quite a few absolutely great things about this book which will make you want to go on reading no matter how absurd the plot gets.

One of those things is the fact that this is magic realism. For me that's one of the best genres out there and I tend to love everything I read from it. What is it all about? It incorporates magic elements into the otherwise normal and realistic environment. Example? When Tita is born, she cries so much that once her tears dry up there's a few pounds of salt left :)

Another great thing is that the book is divided into twelve parts and each part tells the plot through a recipe from the Mexican cuisine. Cooking is an essential part of this book - Tita prepares all the food for her family and the mood she's in while cooking has an influence on how people feel after eating (for example they feel excited, if not aroused, after she thought of Pedro while cooking). I love books that have to do with food so it made the whole thing even better, although I probably won't have enough courage to try any dishes mentioned in this one :)

On the whole - I loved this book. It had a lot of things that I like in books in general and on top of that was quite short and to the point. The only thing I actualy felt was off with it was the fact that it was a translation and not the best one in my opinion. But still - I highly recommend it!

Twitchhiker by Paul Smith

Why did I want to read this book? Because the idea behind it is just crazy yet at the same time simply amazing. I love travelling but I'm a control freak and I need to plan everything when I go anywhere. And for me to think that someone was brave enough to just go with the flow and let strangers decide for him where to go next and rely on those same strangers as far as transport and accommodation goes - it gave me a headache and a fit of overexcitement at the same time :)

Paul Smith came up with an experiment in which he would travel as far as possible away from home without spending his own money on transport or accommodation. He came up with five rules that he would have to follow:
1. He'd only accept offers of transport or accommodation through Twitter.
2. He'd only spend money on food, drink and stuff he'd be able to fit in his bag.
3. He'd only make plans for three days ahead.
4. He'd be able to choose an offer he likes if there were more than one available, but if there were only one - he'd have to accept it within 48 hours.
5. He'd have to go back home if he didn't get any offers to continue his journey within 24 hours.

This is crazy. Utterly crazy but if you think about it - it's the best idea ever :) And sometimes when I was reading the book I thought to myself - this can't be true, this guy either makes this all up ar he really is unbelievably lucky! He managed to travel to the other side of the world using Twitter and relying on people who'd be willing to pay for his experiment or put him up, transport him from one place to another or simply take him for a drink. 

Now, I loved the idea but yet again I was disappointed with the writing style (but this might be because I read a Polish translation of the book and that always makes reading less enjoyable). Also, I had a problem with what the book focused on, which was the author rambling on about whether he'll manage to find a way to get somewhere next and debating why in certain places there were less offers for him on Twitter. I know the whole premise was to get as far as possible in 30 days but I kind of missed more descriptions of places, more dialogues with people who helped him etc. 

On the whole I think I would recommend this book but try and read it in English, maybe the writing style won't be a problem after all. And don't get too excited for great literature - it's just a travel diary of a guy who most of the time is exhausted, sick or hungover or lacks sleep.

Ostrich by Matt Greene

I requested this book from NetGalley and was kindly sent an e-book of it for review.

I think what interested me most in this title was the fact that it got compared to “Wonder” by RJ Palacio (which I haven’t read but people have been raving about it for quite some time) and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon (which I read many years ago back in secondary school and I remember it blew my mind then).

What this book has in common with those two above is the main character who is a teenage boy with a serious medical condition. In this case, Alex suffers from cancer and epilepsy. They both influence his appearance and his behavior in a way that makes him not the most popular boy in school to say the least (even though he does have some… well, ‘friends’ would probably be pushing it too far).

He is also extremely bright and does exceptionally well in school, and it also shows in his narrative. It’s first person and what you probably could call stream of consciousness, which in itself surely could hinder the enjoyment of reading for some people, but excessive use of brackets certainly did just that (at least for me). I found the writing style somewhat irritating and I think that was the reason why I didn’t enjoy the book. The choice of this specific narrative style could in my opinion be blamed for underdeveloped characters and unengaging plot. It also required a lot of suspension of disbelief on my part to appreciate Alex as the narrator – even if he really was a child prodigy.

I can’t say I’m a fan of this book, unfortunately. I also think it requires a lot of skill and empathy to write about children suffering from cancer, and it requires a lot more to make them narrators. In this case, at least for me, the whole idea backfired, but maybe the concept was too much to handle in a debut.

Inferno by Dan Brown

I'm a fan of Dan Brown's novels - their structure (a lot of short chapters ending in cliffhangers) and the suspense. I've read four of his novels (including Inferno) and I can say that when you take those two aforementioned factors into consideration, Brown's books will not let you down. I know, this might be viewed as a downside because essentially you get stories told in the same exact way with very similar structure and they might lose the whole surprise. For me, however, it's like Brown's trademark and I reach for his novels to get just that - suspense and familiar structure.

Inferno has a really good plot and a different one from the previous novels I've read, in that it does not revolve around finding an object (I wasn't a fan of the ending of The Lost Symbol, the object at the end of the whole search was just too cliche) but rather is all about something that is going to happen and the main characters have to do something to stop it. 

The plot involves Dante and his Divine Comedy and I have to say those references to culture are my favourite thing about Brown's novels. This time you don't get conspiracy theories about mysterious societies - you get history and facts and I loved that.

The main point of the mystery in the book (no spoilers, don't worry) is something that actually frightened me and made me think: 'What if this really happened one day?' The story is really believable and the ending is one of the best ideas I've read about although I think it's still a little bit science-finction for today's science (at least I hope so).

The one problem I had with the book was the ending AFTER the mystery was solved. You get a few chapters that, although they do take care of some unresolved issues, feel like they might have been omitted. 

On the whole - very enjoyable, fast-paced, believable and full of very interesting facts. I really liked it and would recommend if you're after a suspensful read.

My Planet by Mary Roach

I'd never read anything by Mary Roach before this book but when I heard an opinion that her writing style is similar to that of Bill Bryson - I immediately wanted to try something by her. I was really lucky to spot this on NetGalley and to receive it as an e-book later on. 

My Planet is a really short book, it has only 160 pages, and it consists of a number of Roach's essays that have been published in Reader's Digest. The essays touch upon many seemingly mundane topics but she writes in an amazingly hilarious way! She wirtes about her husband, her new house together with new alarm system that she has problems figuring out how to use, family trips and dates with her husband and many many other situations from her everyday life. What they all have in common is the fact that Roach presents herself as a highly awkward human being :) She shows herself struggling through quite embarrassing situations and does that with lots of great sense of humor.

Roach has a gift for puns, word play and witty finishing lines. Her essays read like a dream. There is only one 'but': after you've read five of them, you can predict when the pun is going to be placed, the whole surprise of a great summary is lost because the essays have the exact same pacing/structure. Which is a shame, because I loved the structure at the beginning and later it just became a little tedious. But if you decide to maybe NOT read the whole book in one go but instead read only a few essays today and then return to the book in a week - it might just work for you.

On the whole I have to say that I really like Roach's writing style and would love to try one of her 'regular' books, mostly because I do love her sense of humour. However, I must admit I don't think I would treat her as an equal of Bill Bryson. 

Let's begin!

Woo! I've decided to start a blog!

It has been quite some time since I started my first blog but also there have been quite a few of them throughout the years. However, none of them have existed for more than a year, and if there is one that has, it is updated with minimal frequency.

Since I've started uploading videos about all things book-related on YouTube, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog to accompany that video format with some written text. Seeing as I hardly ever make any sense in my videos, this might be just the right place to organize my thoughts, haha :)

We shall see how this goes.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope to see more of you here!