“He’d discovered that he liked houses. Maybe mostly because they were understandable. They could be calculated and drawn on paper. They did not leak if they were made watertight; they did not collapse if they were properly supported. Houses were fair, they gave you what you deserved. Which, unfortunately, was more than one could say about people.” – A Man Called Ove
While picking up a stack of books for work at the library, I happened to browse the fiction section on my way out. Okay, I made a hard right away from the exit because I’m a book addict who can’t not browse books if there are books to browse.
My eyes wandered over the books available to check out, scanning for familiar authors, genres, and titles on my TBR list before landing on one title in particular, A Man Called Ove.
I have been anxious to read Fredrik Backman for some time. Titles like A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry have been popping up in my Instagram feed for a while now, piquing my curiosity. I’ve heard Ove described by some as being among their favorite books and in their top-rated books, which only made me more curious.
Did I have a bag filled with books to be read for work? Yes. Did I have another stack of review copies to read at home? Yes. Did I hesitate to grab Ove off the shelf and bring it home? Nope!
Continue reading “Book Review: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman”
I am so glad that I was able to fit in my book bucket list pick for June. I have wanted to read The Diary of a Young Girl for years. I didn’t get the chance to read it in high school like so many others did. I’m not sure why we didn’t read it other than maybe because Schindler’s List had released and become a huge success. We watched that film, an excellent film by the way, instead of reading Anne Frank’s diary. I don’t think one story is better than the other. They are both true and both equally moving. I do think that The Diary of a Young Girl should continue to be taught in schools because it is told in such a pure voice and really puts the reader right in the middle of the war. We can study World War II all we want, but we’ll never hear a more authentic voice than that of a young Jewish girl in hiding. Anne’s story is something that touched my soul profoundly and something I will never forget. No review I write will ever be able to do this book justice, but I will try my best to summarize why it was such a moving read for me.
I vaguely recall watching a movie version of Gulliver’s Travels as a child that, I believe, starred Ted Danson as Lemuel Gulliver. What I remember from the film was a man journeying to different lands and encountering different kinds of creatures, including a land of miniature people followed by a land of giants. I always wanted to read the book the movie was based on, so I made it my book bucket list pick for April. I have always been drawn to fantasy stories, like The Chronicles of Narnia, and Gulliver seemed right up my alley.
I love picture books. I loved them as a child, and I still love them as an adult. When I went back to school, one of the first classes I took was a Children’s Literature course. One of the things I learned in that course is that picture books are designed so that the pictures are for the kids and the words are for the adults. I can see how that’s true with several picture books. There are jokes in certain books that go over kiddos’ heads but manage to give the adults a chuckle.
I recently took to social media to ask my fellow book lovers which of Stephen King’s many novels they would recommend for my very first Stephen King read. I got a lot of responses and many of them were similar. Many people suggested I go with his earlier works, and titles like The Shining, Carrie, and Christine came up multiple times. Some suggested I just close my eyes and grab one off the shelf because I couldn’t go wrong that way.
Kaitlin Scirri