Recently, I read Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared. I really enjoyed the book and laughed out loud a lot. So when I stumbled on a sequel, I naturally had to read it.
Perhaps it is a given that most sequels are bad. I suppose I felt that this would be just as good or close to that when I picked it up. Sadly, I was disappointed. It truly lacked so much of what the first book had.
The first book had many flashbacks to the main characters past experiences, while this book was set almost exclusively in the present. The first book contained some political things, but this book has a lot more of it.
I probably should give you the the Goodreads synopsis here:
It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harboring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un …
Soon Allan and Julius are at the center of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated …
I listened to the audio book and the narrator was different from the first book. The fact that he voiced the old man in a very “throaty” voice was a bit annoying to me. His vocal interpretations of anyone in the book from the Koreas was very stereotypical sounding, while his Donald Trump was even more over the top than the real Trump.
I had hoped for a bit more adventure based on the synopsis, and to a degree there was some travel, but there was so much politics that I never really felt that I understood it all. As a matter of fact, when the book was over, I still wondered if that was the conclusion or if I was missing something.
All in all – a disappointing sequel that was best left unwritten. 2 out of 5 stars.
You know that I am always up for a good time travel story, and that was what I was hoping for with Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major.
A lot of times, when I see that a book was read by a “book club,” I will make sure to read what is about to see if it peaks my interest. From the cover, I thought it would be some sort of romance book, and in a way it was. However, it was not like those with the muscular guys with their hair blowing in the wind on the cover.
Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
One Day meets Groundhog Day, in this heartwarming and emotionally poignant novel about a stressed woman who must relive the same day over and over, keeping her family and work life from imploding as she attempts to spare her husband from an unfortunate fate.
It is an ordinary Monday and harried London literary agent Emma is flying out of the door as usual. Preoccupied with work and her ever growing to-do list, she fails to notice her lovely husband Dan seems bereft, her son can barely meet her eye, and her daughter won’t go near her. Even the dog seems sad.
She is far too busy, buried deep in her phone; social media alerts pinging; clients messaging with “emergencies”; keeping track of a dozen WhatsApp groups about the kids’ sports, school, playdates, all of it. Her whole day is frantic—what else is new—and as she rushes back through the door for dinner, Dan is still upset. They fight, and he walks out, desolate, dragging their poor dog around the block. Just as she realizes it is their anniversary and she has forgotten, again, she hears the screech of brakes.
Dan is dead.
The next day Emma wakes up… and Dan is alive. And it’s Monday again. And again. And again.
Emma tries desperately to change the course of fate by doing different things each time she wakes up: leaving WhatsApp, telling her boss where to get off, writing to Dan, listening to her kids, reaching out to forgotten friends, getting drunk and buying out Prada. But will Emma have the chance to find herself again, remember what she likes about her job, reconnect with her children, love her husband? Will this be enough to change the fate they seem destined for?
A moving “What if” story of what it is to be a woman in the modern world—never feeling we’re getting it quite right—about learning to slow down and appreciate life that is sure to resonate with women’s fiction fans.
That is not to say that it will only resonate with woman, in my opinion. It could have easily been told from the male point of view as well. That being said, let me give you my thoughts.
This really wasn’t a bad book. However, I found it going on a bit long at some points. It almost seemed like we relived the same day a few times more than was necessary. Eventually, though, Emma begins to see things a bit differently and things move along. When this happens, there are little things that happen with other characters that begin to really add to the story.
No spoilers here, but when you get to the end of the book, it ends in such a way where you stop and think about what is going to happen after that last period in the paragraph. To me, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. Some reviews raved about the ending while others absolutely hated it.
Admittedly, I thought it should have been more. As the book goes on, we get to know more about some of the minor characters in it. The problem I had with it was that I was left with questions about what happened next in their stories. This is where I felt that some of the “replays” of Emma’s Mondays could have been left out, while filling the reader in on what happened to those characters before (or after) Emma’s last scene.
I will let you decide for yourself. Let me know if you wind up reading this.
Normally, I post what I would call a Book Recommendation, but I didn’t feel that this was one I would actually recommend. I will let you decide for yourself.
As many of you know, I work as a Sleep Technologist. When I saw the title of this book, I wondered if it might be something about sleep or dreams. When I saw that it was a novel, I read the synopsis. Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
What if the whole world fell asleep…and didn’t wake up again?
Dave Torres, a night watchman in a placid coastal town, knows all about sleep troubles. Since childhood, he’s battled terrors and nightmares. Sometimes those battles leak into his waking life, with disastrous consequences for those he loves. Now Dave lives alone and self-medicates to neutralize his dreams. It’s not much of a life, he knows.
The morning after Independence Day, Santa Mira, California, is so quiet Dave can hear the ocean from miles away. Traffic signals blink from red to green over empty intersections. Storefronts remain locked up tight. Every radio station whispers static.
And all over town, there are bodies, lying right where their owners left them. Dead right where they slept.
Dave―along with his ex-girlfriend, Katie, his best friend, Matteo, and Linda, a nurse he’s just met―struggle to unravel the mystery before sleep overtakes them all.
Except the answer to the mystery might lie in the one place that frightens Dave His twisted, unnerving dreams. Now Dave and his friends must straddle the liminal boundary between life and death as they fight to save everyone they’ve ever loved―and to keep their eyes open.
Because if any of them falls asleep now, it will be the last thing they ever do.
Let me start out by saying that this had so much potential. I really had high hopes for this one. I read it based on the synopsis and the hope that it would be more of a rush to solve the mystery. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was left scratching my head wondering what they heck I had just read.
After I finished, I had to know if I was the only one who felt that way. I was not. The reviews were mixed. People either loved it or hated it. I won’t say that I hated it, I was just really disappointed with the way it ended. It didn’t make any sense to me. It almost had one of those “Tales from the Crypt” or “Creepshow” kind of endings.
I was surprised to find that in describing this book, Goodreads labels it: Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller, Fantasy and Mystery. To a degree, I can see where it might fit into each of those categories. It did have a little of each, but it was almost someone was trying to make a bunch of genre readers happy. It misses the mark, though.
I found out as I prepared for this blog that the book was made into a TV series of the same name. On IMDB it states: This a drama in podcast format. It was announced in April 2021 that popular YouTuber Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, is set to star in, and executive produce a TV series of the same name based on the podcast created by Chozen writers Jake Emanuel and Willie Block.
I don’t know want to knock the premise stemming from a podcast, because with the right stuff, it could be very entertaining. I don’t know how the show differs from the book, and I’m not sure I want to watch it to find out. If you would like to see for yourself, from what I can tell, the TV show can be watched on YouTube.
Recently, on one of the Facebook “book” groups I am in, someone posted, “Thank you to whoever recommended The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared! I just finished it and loved it. If you love a good story and a few laughs, check this one out!”
The thing that caught my attention was the title of the book. It literally had me wanting to know just what it was all about. Was he kidnapped? Was he on the run for some crime? What makes an elderly man, climb out a window and run away? My curiosity led me to Goodreads to find out just what this story was all about.
The Goodreads synopsis:
After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he’s still in good health.
A big celebration is in the works for his 100th birthday, but Allan really isn’t interested (and he’d like a bit more control over his alcohol consumption), so he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey.
It would be the adventure of a lifetime for anyone else, but Allan has a larger-than-life backstory: he has not only witnessed some of the most important events of the 20th century, but actually played a key role in them. Quirky and utterly unique, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared has charmed readers across the world.
Another website offered this synopsis, which peaked my interest even more.
The 100-Year-Old Man centers on a man who, on the night of his 100th birthday, escapes from his nursing home and hits the road, with the ensuing inadvertent adventure involving criminals, a bag of cash and an elephant. But his time on the run reveals that the former explosives expert was involved in some of the defining moments of the 20th century and that he crossed paths with figures such as Joseph Stalin, Sir Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Before long, past and present are on a collision course.
I listened to the audio version of the book and there were quite a few times that I laughed out loud. One time, in particular, I laughed so much that I had to “rewind” the story because I had missed it while I was laughing.
This book reminded me a bit of the Fredrik Backman books in the way they were written. Jonas Jonasson is a Swedish author, just like Backman. There is a bit of dark humor in the story, and the dialogue really helps to deliver that.
The book starts, naturally, with the old man (Allan) climbing out the window. The adventure then bounces from present to past, filling in some of the many details of his life. Allan has certainly influenced a lot of people and played a role in some historic events. The characters he gets involved with on his present day adventure have their own quirks and when you add them to Allen’s, make for a very fun story.
I will say that if you’re not really into politics/history, there are a few spots where the story may seem slow to you. I love history, so it was neat to hear how they worked Allan into some of those events.
I was made aware that there was a Swedish movie based on the book. I found it on Tubi and watched it. It wasn’t bad, but there was a lot that was edited out to make it fit into a 2 hour film. There were some minor changes to the plot and some characters were deleted (some that were really important in the book), and the movie held its own. The book, however, was better.
On the American movie front, IMDB reports that Will Ferrell is set to star in the US adaptation of the book. There is no word on co-stars and it is apparently still in the works. News of this film version go back to 2017.
The book’s author, Jonas Jonasson is on board with the idea, too. “My character, Allan, knows the art of being funny just by being,” said Jonasson in a statement. “That is something Will Ferrell masters to perfection. Great humor with small measurements. I am happy that Allan is now in his hands.”
The new onscreen adaptation of The 100-Year-Old Man has been described as being akin to the 1994 Tom Hanks classic Forrest Gump, but more darkly comedic. The book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, and the Oscar-nominated local-language feature adaptation became one of the highest-grossing Swedish movies of all time.
While I’d be interested to see the American take on the movie, I don’t think I’d be wrong in assuming that the book is better. They usually are.
“You have to be the friend people need while they are there with you, because it’s the only chance you’ll get.” – (The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip)
Sometimes the title of a book is enough to peak my interest. If you go back through some of the books I’ve read in the past year, you’ll find that a lot of the mysteries I’ve read had interesting titles. When I saw “The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip,” I truly believed this was going to be a murder mystery.
Even the synopsis made the think that there was some “mystery” to this story.
The Goodreads synopsis:
Aidyn Kelley is talented, ambitious, and ready for a more serious assignment than the fluff pieces she’s been getting as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. In her eagerness, she pushes too hard, earning herself the menial task of writing an obituary for an unremarkable woman who’s just entered hospice care. But there’s more to Clara Kip than meets the eye. The spirited septuagenarian may be dying, but she’s not quite ready to cash it in yet. Never one to shy away from an assignment herself, she can see that God brought the young reporter into her life for a reason. And if it’s a story Aidyn Kelley wants, that’s just what Mrs. Kip will give her—but she’s going to have to work for it.
Admittedly, the book was NOT what I expected. I gathered that from the first chapter or two. So how can I begin to tell you what it is about? This book is hard to describe, because I’ve not seen one quite like it before. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised. I felt that different is good in this case.
Before I go any further, I want to say that the book was Christian fiction. I was not aware of this when I began reading it. Not that it made a difference to me, as I am a Christian and was not offended in any way by the occasional quotes from Scripture, a character reading her Bible, or talk about God. It was a breath of fresh air to me.
That being said, I will be completely honest and warn that it may be a difficult read for someone who has recently lost a loved one. My mother passed from cancer in 2006, and there were things that happened in the book that took me back to those moments with her. It was a difficult book for me to read only because of that, but it was such an important part of the story.
While there are some incredibly sad parts in the book, they do not overshadow the wonderfully amazing happy and joyful parts. If I had to describe the book, I would say that it is unique, unusual, and extraordinary.
I was hooked from the very beginning. I listened to the audio version and it was one of those books that I may have to go and buy so I can have a physical copy. There were times that a character would say something and I wished I could highlight it to reread over and over. One reviewer said, “It’s the type of book that moves you to love more deeply and challenges you in your walk with God.” I would tend to agree.
At one point in the book, Mrs. Kip spots a leaf on a tree. She turns to the young reporter and says, “A leaf is a silent proverb. Did you ever consider that? When it buds on the tree, people rejoice. Throughout is prime, they love it for the shade it provides. But only when it reaches the end of its time on the tree does its brilliance come through. Sometimes yellow, sometimes orange, sometimes deep red. Dazzling in its artistry, like a drop of sunset you can see at all house of the day.” Clara (Mrs. Kip) smiled. “A leaf has the most extraordinary death. There is so much beauty to it.”
The above analogy really struck a chord with me. It was so very powerful. It was things like this that I could see myself highlighting and keeping.
I read some reviews of the books done by the blogging community and there were more than a few who said that they almost stopped reading the book for one reason or another. As they stuck with it, they were glad that they did and had high praise for the book. I was struck right from the get-go, even though it was not what I had expected the story to be.
Every once in a while a book on my “to read” list will sit on there a bit. Usually this is because I’ve read a negative review on Goodreads or maybe someone on one of the book related Facebook groups I belong to said they couldn’t finish it. I need to keep in mind that all book reviews (like music and humor) are subjective and that what I like, others may not and vice versa. That being said, I finally sat with The Secret Book of Flora Lea.
The thing that kept bringing me back to wanting to read it was the description listed on Goodreads and Amazon. There was something about the premise, the questions surrounding the mystery involved, and my curiosity about how it would end that kept peaking my interest.
Here is that Goodreads synopsis:
When a woman discovers a rare book that has connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed.
In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.
But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.
Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby’s. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel’s future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars . Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?
As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. An astonishing twist ultimately reveals the truth in this transporting and refreshingly original novel about the bond between sisters, the complications of conflicted love, and the enduring magic of storytelling.
A tagline for the book reads, “A world war and a fairy tail collide…” and in a way, they do. However, the war is merely the setting and the catalyst that sets the story in motion.
I found that I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated I would. I really connected with the characters and found myself feeling for them. Without giving you spoilers, let me give an example. I could not imagine living in a place that was being threatened by enemy attack and having the government telling me that I needed to send my children away to stay with some other family until it was safe. That tore me up!
As the story progresses you pick up pieces along the way from the past and present to help solve the mystery. The make believe land of Whisperwood was a story that was only shared between the two sisters, so you cannot help but wonder how another author wrote about it in great detail. You wonder if the author is really the sister. You wonder if the sister told the author the story. Maybe the sister told somebody who told somebody else, etc… I wanted to know!
Not so much a spoiler here, but I will tell you that one of the things I loved about this book was that shortly before the book is over, the mystery is solved only to bring about a second mystery which brings you to the conclusion of the book.
I really enjoyed this book. I went back and read some of the negative reviews again and I laughed. I had finished the book and these reviews were saying what they didn’t like about the book and I thought, “that couldn’t be farther from the truth” and “that’s being so nitpicky.” Lesson learned – let others opinions stand alone and don’t let them influence you.
Am I saying that you will love the book? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I liked it and I feel that others, including you, might like it as well.
One of the things I love about Goodreads is that I can see what some of my other reader friends are reading. A few of my friends had read this one, and since it was already on my “To read” list, I requested it from the Libby App. I had to wait a bit for it, but I dove right in once it arrived. The book is Listen for the Lie – by Amy Tintera.
I love a good whodunit and this fit the bill. It had me guessing the entire time I listened. Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn’t matter?
Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer.
It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie and its too-good looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it.
The truth is out there, if we just listen.
As I mentioned, I listened to the audio version of this book. They did a really good job of making the “clips” of the podcast sound like a podcast. I really enjoyed how with each bit of the podcast, you learn a little bit more about each of these characters. As a bonus, along the way it seems like with each piece of the podcast, you get these little firecrackers (not quite bombshells) that shed more and more light on what happened.
There was a bit more profanity and sexual content in this one that in some of the past books I read, but it really didn’t take away from the story. Right up to the end, my mind kept changing as to whether or not Lucy did it or if another character did. If you love a good mystery – check this one out.
I have been fascinated by the story of Titanic since I was little. I can still remember how amazed I was when the wreckage was discovered.
I would say that 99% of the books and movies are all told from the Titanic’s point of view. I was truly engrossed in this story of what happened on the Carpathia! In the book you get to see another viewpoint of the events. From the moment they get Titanic’s distress signal, the rescue of life boats and passengers, and beyond, this book was fantastic.
The story of heroism and heartache is a must read.
Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
Based on the remarkable true story of the Carpathia—the one ship and her legendary captain who answered the distress call of the sinking Titanic.
Shortly after midnight on April 15, 1912, the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Rostron, wakes to a distress signal from the Titanic, which has struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Though information is scarce, Rostron leaps into action, determined to answer the call for help. But the Carpathia is more than four hours away, and there are more questions than answers: Will his ship hold together if pushed to never-before-tested speeds? What if he also strikes an iceberg? And with the freezing temperatures, will there be any survivors by the time the Carpathia arrives?
Kate Connolly is a third-class passenger on Titanic, and she is among the last to receive instruction and help after it hits an iceberg. Despite the chaos of abandoning ship, Kate is able to board a lifeboat, though after seeing the Titanic sink into the abyss and hearing the cries from hundreds of people still in the water, she wonders if any rescue is even possible.
Told in alternating chapters from both Captain Rostron and Kate Connolly.
Books are a lot like music. “If you like _____, then you might also like _____.” Thanks to some book blogger friends and the Goodreads app, there are always suggestions for books to read. I have read my share of time travel books, and this one was certainly different.
This is the first book I have read by this author. If I am being honest, I almost stopped after the first chapter. I had to remind myself that sometimes the things in that first chapter often are necessary to be the springboard for the rest of the book. That was the case here. It was all a little too – sappy teen love storyish for me. But I pressed on.
Before I explain, here the Goodreads synopsis:
A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order…
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.
That first chapter sets the stage for everything else that comes at you. From the moment Oona wakes up as a fifty-one year old, the chaos begins. Panic, fear, and the unknown face Oona as she navigates through the year, never really knowing if what she is experiencing is real. But when she leaps again at midnight on New Year’s Eve, she knows it is either real or a really bad nightmare.
What was interesting about this story was thinking about what it would be like if you had to live your life out of order. One year you would know people, while in other years they are strangers. In one year you have one set of friends, while in another a totally different set. In one year, you might witness a tragedy and in another it hasn’t happened yet. What could you do with the knowledge you have (or lack of it) as you lived from day to day knowing that you’d be off to another unknown year next? How would you live your life differently?
In the book, every so often a character will tell Oona, “No Spoilers,” and so I will not offer any here. There are many surprises and times I found myself yelling at the characters! LOL At the same time, I certainly took a few nuggets of wisdom away from this story.
3.5 out of 5 stars (only because I had some lingering questions at the end)
I am finding that there is no shortage of books set in World War II. What is really fascinating is that despite the number of them, they all seem to have a unique story line to them. That was the case with the book today.
This was a book I kept seeing come up on Goodreads as well as on a page of Historical Fiction recommendations. There were many rave reviews and positive reactions to it, so when it became available, I grabbed it.
Here is the Goodreads synopsis:
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
I really enjoyed this one. It was a good story that had things I figured out and a few surprises. As the story wrapped, I was left wanting to know more. Perhaps a sequel? I dunno.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 