3/5 stars. Well, this was not as bad as I had expected.. Not an auspicious beginning for a book review, I know. But the book does start out rather weirdly, perhaps particularly if you’re familiar with the Dexter from the Showtime TV series. I loved the TV series (at least the first few seasons, but…
Book review: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
5/5 stars. Audible version, narrated by Dominic West. I picked this up on a whim because I saw it had good reviews and was hailed as a modern classic, though I had honestly never heard of the book or the writer. The fact that Dominic West was reading it may also have swayed me –…
Book review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
4/5 stars. Audible version, narrated by: Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey and India Fisher. Rachel Watson takes the same train at the same times every day, passing by the same houses. She looks out the window and starts to imagine the lives of the people in these houses, as I’m sure many of us with a…
Book review: So, Anyway… by John Cleese
3/5 stars Audible version, narrated by John Cleese. This is the first part (out of I don’t know how many) of John Cleese’s autobiography. I was not aware that it was part 1 of x when I purchased it, and I’m not entirely convinced it warrants multiple parts to be honest. He could have cut…
Book review: Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer
4/5 stars. Martin Banks is your average geeky guy with an uneventful, average life, until one day he discovers a mysterious file. A file, it turns out, that is the source code of our world. Martin carefully starts to experiment with the file, and finds he can teleport by changing the coordinates listed for his…
Book review: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
4/5 stars. This book is basically one big trigger warning (which I believe she even mentions herself at some point), but an important one for me: dead cats. Rest assured, there’s nothing about killing them or that sort of thing, and Jenny definitely seems to be an animal lover, but at the same time she…
Book review: The Break by Marian Keyes
4/5 stars. Audible version, narrated by Aoife McMahon. It’s already been months since I finished this read – or rather, listen – I’m so behind on my reviewing! I’m going to try and keep some of them a little shorter so I don’t feel completely daunted by the mere idea of reviewing the backlog. So…
Fish, chips & Guinness
Good evening, good evening, good evening aaaand happy St Paddy’s! Though Saint Patrick is not really a big deal in the Netherlands (unless you count tourists in Amsterdam turning it into an excuse to get wasted – and I guess you can replace Amsterdam with a lot of major European cities and this would still…
Book review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
3/5 stars. Audible version, narrated by – a whole bunch of people. This is a difficult one to review, and it’s impossible to give my reasons for the rating without spoiling the ending, so I’ll add a warning before I get to that point. What I can say without spoiling anything: This is the story…
In defense of the Twilight saga (a confession)
When I first read the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, somewhere in my late 20s, I loved them. And I have been ashamed of it ever since. It seems that the books are unanimously hated by anyone with any taste and/or brains above the age of 15. The only thing worse than liking Twilight would…
The cookie experiment
Naturally, when you are at home for days on end but not physically incapacitated, it is necessary to bake a lot of cookies. So I looked for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, as I’ve been craving those for a while. And these ones from Thomas Keller seem to be one of the most highly…
Wanting more (the burnout pt 2)
As I am considering my life from this weird limbo status of being on burnout sick leave, it occurs to me that the main thing I want is more, out of life, out of myself. The longer I am away from my work, the more impossible it seems to go back.* But how do I…
