Another winner in the Shardlake series.

This time Shardlake gets a case from the queen to look into a case. A young man has committed suicide after saying that something monstrous has happened to his previous pupil. The family lives in the south not far from Ellen‘s hometown, so he decides to look into her story as well.

An intricate mystery, fooling me to the end. I did not see that end coming.

#ShardlakeBR

Just in time for tomorrow‘s draw, here‘s my #BookSpin, #DoubleSpin and #BookSpinBingo list for May

A lot of buddy reads and longlisted books.

(The picture is found online and seemed appropriate since it‘s Norway‘s National Day in May, and as kid there‘s one things that for sure, there will be ice cream)

Ready for my 4th reading of this book

The opening sentence:
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.”

And later in the chapter:
“But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.”

What I like about memoirs is that introduce me to lives completely different from my own. And boy does Neenah Cherry do that, and that even if all the name dropping is excluded.

Her mom was an artist and her dad was a jazz musician so the family traveled a lot when Cherry grew up, mostly between Sweden and NYC. She took a break from school at 14, got married at 17 and had her first child at 18. She just never was a kid the way I was.

#WeeklyForecast

Continue with the yearlong reads on the right

Hopefully finish Our Share of Night and Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit

Read The Illustrious Client #NoPlaceLikeHolmes

Start Lamentations #ShardlakeBR and Autocracy Inc.

I loved how Cooper mixed the personal, statistics/ facts and using famous people to highlight her points. She uses Beyoncé, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. The analysis of one of Beyoncé‘s songs was eye opening and the analysis of Michelle Obama‘s hair on Trump‘s inauguration just the same.

She also looks at how it is to be the only Black in the room, being raised by a single mother and the importance of sisterhood

#SheSaid

Unsurprisingly, this poetry collection is not in the database.

The poet Hamza Hirsi founded his own publishing company to publish his debut collection so he would be able to give it to friends and family, and from there it escalated.

I heard him at the library and there‘s something about the first poem he performed that resonated with me.

In every city there‘s some places that‘s seen as better than others. He grew up in one of the “bad” ones

#BookReport

I finished the poetry collection Betongblomst (Concrete Flower) and Eloquent Rage #SheSaid

I continued with my yearlong reads on the right

I continued By the Fire We Carry, A Thousand Threads and Our Share of Night

I‘ve started the poetry collection Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit

The video for “Formation” pays homage to post-Katarina New Orleans and ends with Bey using the weight of her body to sink a New Orleans police cruiser into the flood‘s waters. Putting middle fingers up to the state that incarcerates the most people per capita anywhere on the globe, and including an image of a Black boy dancing for his life while staring down a line of a police in riot gear, is a bold fuck-you to the forces that seek to snuff out

A group of 40 women is kept in a cage together underground, how they got there is unknown. After years, one day there‘s a sound, the door to cage is left open and they can leave.

I‘m not sure what this book was trying to say, but it does look at loneliness and belonging, and surviving.

#BookReport

Finished:
📚 There‘s a Monster behind the Door
📚 What the Wild Sea can Be
📚 Heartstone #ShardlakeBR

Read:
📚 The Moss Covered Manson #NancyDrewBR
📚 Rommet i jorden (The Room in the Ground)
📚 Spuria
📚 The Peepshow
📚 I Who Have Never Known Men

Current reads:
📚 The yearlong reads on the right
🎧 By the Fire We Carry
📚 Eloquent Rage #SheSaid
📚 A Thousand Threads
📚 Betongblomst (Concrete Flower

In March 1953 the police found 4 dead women at 10 Rillington Place hidden in the walls and floorboards. Reg Christie was soon a suspect and one of the victims was his wife. Just 4 years before, in 1949, another man had been convicted for murdering his own wife and child on the same address.

This isn‘t a story looking into the life of victims and ignoring the suspect. It looks at both, but more importantly it looks at the press and the

Not in the database, but as you can see the book got great reviews when it was published earlier this year which was why I borrowed it from the library

At 87 Kristen is finally a widow and she can start searching for the boy she gave up for adoption at 16 and unmarried.

A book about being forced to give a child away in a society where abortion is illegal, and the most important thing is to avoid shame and talk in the small community.

The 2nd book in the crime series about Kim Ribbing and Julia Malmros

The court case at the end of the 1st book doesn‘t go as Kim want and he sets out on his own revenge journey

At the same time Julia decides to look into Sannsvenskene, a political party more on the far right than Sverigedemokratene, and their link to a criminal MC club a research for a new book.

This was just as good at the first one

I loved this one.

Scales looks at how the modern human is affecting the wild life in the seas, and looking especially at emperor penguins, sharks and orcas. She also looks at kelps and reefs, and makes it obvious how connected everything is and how even small interferences by humans can cause great destruction to the sea

I‘m not sure what I feel about this novel, but maybe a soft pick, guess only time will tell.

A story about a young girl growing up in a dysfunctional family and where her parents mantra is “That‘s the way it is and that‘s that!”

Another book of the #InternationalBooker Longlist

A young man is trying to make some sense of his mother‘s senseless death many years ago. In order to make sense of it, he‘s thinking of writing a book about martyrs. When he learns of an art exhibition where a woman is making her last days into art, he thinks that will be a good point for his book.

This book was completely different from what I expected, but ended up loving it

I don‘t think this book was for me, I didn‘t love it as much as everyone else.

Couple is living the dream life in Berlin having gotten in before the rent increases. Actually this couple annoyed me, not realizing how lucky they are and not working more than they need.

I also felt that this book only told what happened, and there were no dialogue. Which apparently I didn‘t enjoy here.

A book about abuse, both emotional & sexual, that reads as a thriller

Ciara packs up her & her children‘s stuff & leave her abusive husband with nowhere to go. From then on, I just expected her husband to show up

The book looks at the hopeless housing situation in Dublin & how little society is prepared to help women leaving their abusers

I had to stop reading at times because it got too intense & to think that this is the life of so many women

#WeeklyForecast

I‘m officially on Easter break and is not returning to work until Tuesday 22nd and my main goal is to read

I want to continue with the yearlong reads

I want to continue with the buddy reads: Eloquent Rage #SheSaid and Heartstone #ShardlakeBR

I want to finish There‘s a Monster behind the Door, What to Wild See Can Be and Betongblomst

I want to read the tagged, and start The Peepshow and Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit

#BookReport

Finished Nesting

Continued with the yearlong reads on the right

Continued the buddy reads; Eloquent Rage #SheSaid and Heartstone #ShardlakeBR

I continued reading Betongblomst (Concrete Flower) and What the Wild Sea Can Be

I continued listening to the tagged

I started There‘s a Monster Behind the Door

I had no idea

#SheSaid

Intersectionality, or the idea that we are all integrally formed and multiply impacted by the different ways that systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy affects our lives, was a mostly foreign notion to these young scientists. Intersectional education happens primarily in the kinds of college classrooms that cause conservative politicians to lose their shit on the regular. Intersectionality is considered fluffy, liberal, radical,

It has been nearly thirty-eight years since a grown man, drunk on his own sense of entitlement, attempted to murder my mother. According to several years of reports by the Violence Police Center, in this, the second decade of the twenty-first century, eight Black women per week, more than one per day, are murdered, usually with guns, and usually by a Black male they know. More than one thousand women of all races are murdered each year, in similar

Still important today

The matriarch remains the head of the family into her old age, at eighty, ninety, even a hundred years old and way past her menopause; orcas are one of only five animal species in which females are known to outlive their fertility. * Grandmother orcas are the wise elders, keepers of expert knowledge of where to hunt, and they call other members of the pod to them with a splash of their tail.

*The others are short-finned pilot whales, belugas,

Something to think about

The International Booker Prize Shortlist has been announced today

I loved On the Calculation of Volume so very happy to see that on the list.

I‘ve read Perfection, liked but didn‘t love as everyone else

Just bought A Leopard-Skin Hat so hope I like that

I‘ve seen some great reviews for Small Boat so might want to give that a chance too

What do you think of the shortlist?

When sharks and rays are finally ready to begin reproducing, things still happen at a slow pace. Female sharks are typically pregnant for a year of more; short fin makos give birth after a year and a half, basking sharks after two and a half. Female greeneye spurdogs, […], are pregnant for between thirty-one and thirty-four months, one of the longest recorded gestations of any animal.
[…]
Except now, of course: Humans are changing the rules, and

#BookReport

Continue yearlong reads on the right

Continue Heartstone #ShardlakeBR and Eloquent Rage #SheSaid

Continue What the Wild Sea Can Be and Betongblomst (Concrete Flower)

Continue listening to the tagged

Finish Nesting and then I‘ll see what I‘m in the mood for next

Each female produces a single egg, […] She quickly transfers it to her partner, and he balances it on his feet to keep it off the ice […] During storms, the males huddle together to preserve body heat, and their feathers are so good at keeping them warm that now and then they break apart and steam, as if they‘d just stepped out of a sauna. While the fasting males wait out the winter with nothing to eat on the empty ice, they run down their fat

Wintertime temperatures in Antarctica plunge to - sixty degrees Celsius. The lowest temperature ever recorded on the earth‘s surface -89,2 degrees Celsius, was made in the heart of winter in July 1983 at a research base toughly halfway between Antarctica‘s coast and the South Pole.
[…]
Most living organisms simply could not exist in Antartica‘s winter, especially out of the sea and on the exposed ice. But this is where one species comes each

“It just seems like Black women are trying to force white women to accept and include them. I‘m still not over how those suffragists treated Ida B. Wells at that march in 1913.” She was right. A group of white suffragists had tried to force Wells to march in back during a 1913 suffrage march. Wells patently refused, though, and found a way to march with her state delegation

#SheSaid

Beyoncé gets that lesson about feminism better than most. And she has been one of the biggest victims of this failure to love women among Black feminists. Until the release of her magnum opus, Lemonade, an album so self- consciously about the interior lives, struggles, and emotions of Black women that even most of Bey‘s haters had to bow down
…
Beyoncé is my feminist muse

I love Sally Rooney and from the first sentences it felt like I was coming home and knew I was safe in the story telling.

The brothers; Peter (32) and Ivan (22) have just buried their father and grieving the loss of a parent. Peter a lawyer taking on work related cases and Ivan is a promising chess player.

So a book about grief, but also felt about double standards and different experiences towards men and women. Peter is dating a 23 yr old

#BookReport

I finished Intermezzo and read Perfection

I continued the yearlong reads on the right

I pick up Heartstone again #ShardlakeBR

I‘ve started What the Wild Sea Can Be, Betongblomst (Concrete Flower) and Nesting

The title is pretty self explanatory in what its about.

I feel that I finally had some arguments if I ever where to get into a discussion with a pro-lifer. And that actually feels great.

For me gaslighting was a term that suddenly turned about and was everywhere. Now I feel that I finally understand what it is and how it‘s used

I‘m so glad #SheSaid made me aware of this book so I read it

The #BookSpinBingo card for April is ready

#BookSpin is a horror/ thriller book that seemed appropriate for Easter

#DoubleSpin is the next book in the Nancy Drew series

The Women‘s Prize for Fiction Shortlist was just announced, and to be honest I‘m a little disappointed without any real reason to be

I‘ve read two books from the Longlist and my favorite, The Safekeep, made it to the shortlist

I‘ve just started Nesting, but have seen so many great things for it, that I was really rooting for it.

I‘m still on the wait list for two of the books that made it to the shortlist, Tell Me Everything and The Fours

My #BookSpin, #DoubleSpin and #BookSpinBingo list for April is ready. How is the first quarter of the year already over?

A list influenced by buddy reads, crime/ scary reads for Easter, spring reading and longlisted books.

For A Year Unfolding, I might “just” read the early spring and spring chapters

(The picture is by Lisa Aisato)

#WeeklyForecast

Continue with the yearlong reads on the right

Pick up Heartstone again #ShardlakeBR

Finish Intermezzo

I just started What the Wild Sea Can Be and what to read some more in that

Read Perfection

Start the poetry collection Betongblomst (Concrete Flower)

Winter 1847, Star of the Sea is leaving Ireland for a 26 day trip to New York. Some is rich, some is poor, but they all hope for a better life in NYC, and a lot can happen on a trip. We get the backstories for everyone and the ending surprised me.

I still don‘t see the point of the pictures and excerpts throughout, and the way to tell the story felt a little odd at times, but other than that I quite enjoyed this

The plan was to read two chapters a day, but then I came to the point where I know Lady Catherine de Bourgh will arrive and then there‘s my favourite scene, so I just had to read on

This Austen novel will always have a special place in my heart since it‘s the first one I read after watching the BBC series

I think this is the 1st time I‘ve been thinking that Charlotte didn‘t make so a bad choice after all. Because she could have married a Wickham

#BookReport

It‘s towards the end of the month, so I finished the monthlong buddy reads; Pride and Prejudice #PemberLittens #JaneAustenThenAndNow, Entitled #SheSaid and Star of the Sea #BookedInTime

I continued with my yearlong reads on the right

I continued listening to the tagged

I put the Tiller book on pause for now

I‘ve started Intermezzo

This book came out last autumn to great acclaim and I was on waiting list at the library until now. But now is not the right time for me to read this. I find my thoughts wandering and that I want to read something else.

I might come back to in the future when the second book comes out. I enjoy it well enough when I read it, I‘m just not inclined to pick it up

The Women‘s Prize for Nonfiction was just announced.

I‘m actually quite happy about this list

I loved Raising Hare, I enjoyed Private Revolutions

I have What the Wild Sea Can Be out from the library

And I‘m on the wait list for A Thousand Threads

What do you make of this list?

This book annoyed my and that might just be a me thing. I never really understood when this book was taking place, if it was a dream or if it happened in an alternative universe. The son and the mum keep spending francs to pay for stuff. The mom went to finishing school in the early 60s and was 80 now, and as far as I know France hasn‘t spend francs in 25 yrs. This annoyed me so much so that the other stuff fell into the background. There‘s a lot

#BookReport #WeeklyForecast

I finished The Mystery of the Bass-Bound Trunk

I read Anything is Possible, the Sherlock Holmes story The Bruce-Parlington Plans and Eurotrash

I‘m still doing my yearlong reads on the right

I read this month‘s reading of Heartstone #ShardlakeBR and will continue with the others; Pride and Prejudice #PemberLittens #JaneAustenThenAndNow, Entitled #SheSaid and Star of the Sea #BookedInTime

Continue By the Fire We

Linked stories about the people in the rural area of Amgash. Most of the people grew up poor, and we see how this impacts them in adulthood. There‘s several stories covering child abuse.

This is a book in the Lucy Barton series and she‘s mentioned a couple of times and shows up in one

What a book. 13 linked stories where a main character in one story, can show up as a minor character in another story.

The stories in this collection is told in a one-side conversational way, and I loved that

About abortion, violence against women and femicide, the cartels, and grief

#InternationalBooker