ByMarlida

★★★★★
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.

MIN MORMOR HALSAR OCH SAGER FORLÅT (MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY) 
BY FREDRIK BACKMAN
PUBLISHED: 2013
AVERAGE RATING: 4.04
372 PAGES
★★★★★
Fredrik Backman. How is it that everytime i read a book of his, i feel that the world makes more sense than ever? How is it that he’s always able to take a really dislikeable characrer and make him or her a person i’ll love forever? Everyone Backman writers about turns to heroes. No kidding.

Backman is the writer of my all-time favorite book "A man called Ove". He also wrote Britt-Marie, another wonderfully beautiful book that I just love. And he's the writer of "My Grandmother Asked me to tell you that she's Sorry", wich was published september the 4th 2013 in sweidsh and in english the 15th of june 2015.

Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: Knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.

This book is a little different than the two previously mentioned. As it is easy to compare the two main characters Ove and Britt-Marie from the other books, seven year old Elsa is not comparable to anyone at all.

Elsa is a seven year old girl who feels lonely in the world and acts different than others. Her parents are divorced; Her dad has found a new family, and Elsa feel like she does’nt belong, and her mom is pregnant with “Halfie” (half-brother or half-sister), wich makes Elsa feel a little threatened. At school she is bullied. When Elsa’s best friend in the whole world, the half-crazy, but loveable Grandmother, dies, Elsa have to pick up the pieces of her grandmothers unfinished business in form of a bunch of letters of apology. This turn out to be a journey that will change Elsa’s life forever.

“Only different people change the world”, granny used to say. “No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.”

As I mentioned: What makes Backman's books so special is his ability of describing a person in a way that make you feel like you truly know them. There are a lot of good books out there that does this, but I've never read books that does it as good as Backman does it.

In this book, this exact ability works in a mysterious way. I don't know if it's a good sign at all (it's probably not...), but somehow, it was easier to relate to Ove and Britt-Marie than it was for me to relate to eight year old Elsa. I experienced the book through an eight year olds eyes, and it felt magical and weird at the same time. It felt kind of like I myself was eight years old again when I read it. You're just sitting there thinking "yep, that's probably what 8 year old me would have thought too".

It was saturday and granny and Elsa were going to an exhibit about dinosaurs. That was the morning Mum put the Gryffingdor scarf in the was without asking and made Elsa take another scarf - a vomit green one. She really lacks empathy sometimes, that woman.

But not in every situation, because Elsa is "adult for her age", usually spell-corrects when adults say something wrong, loves to look up things on Wikipedia and keep a “word jar” at her dad with words she's curious about.

“Then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn't be Spider-Man because 'only boys can be Spider-Man!' And then Elsa told him he could be Spider-Man's girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book. Elsa still thinks he should thank her for it, because that's probably the nearest that boy ever got to a book.”

The book is a wonderful journey through adventures both in the real world and in Elsa's world and every chapter made me wanna order the first plane ticket to go and visit my own grandmother. It's a book that tells a sad story in a wonderful, heartwarming, funny way, and you'll never forget Elsa and her journey throught both the real world and Miamas, Elsa and granny’s fantasy world. As always, backman's book is beautifully written and it's one of the books I'm proud to put at the front of my bookshelf, almost hoping that people who visits will ask about it so I can give them such a wonderful reading experience.

ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
BY JESSE ANDREWS
PUBLISHED: 2012
AVERAGE RATING: 3.59
295 PAGES
READ: SEPTEMBER 27TH - SEPTEMBER 30TH 2015
★★★★☆

(Review published September 30, 2015)

I'd decided it would be nice to have a e-book available since I use plenty of my day just sitting on the bus, existing. Why not spend the time enjoying a good book? So I borrowed this one on the e-library, looking forward to spend the next couple of weeks on the bus reading.

Then I finished it in three days, and most of it over one night because I just couldn't put it away.
(which on a completely different note and for those of you who read my weekly update, is proof of why I can't read anything else but short story collections during stressful weeks..I almost overslept the next morning because I seriously couldn't come to my senses and put the book away)

"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" was written by Jesse Andrews and was published March 1st 2012. It is "the best debut novel he has ever written", according to himself (on goodreads). The book holds the genres young adult (YA), fiction, contemporary and humor. The book has been adapted to a movie with the same name, which was released 12th of June 2015 in USA, and 25th of September 2015 here in Norway.

“I'm not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you're supposed to think are deep because they're in italics. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about sentences like this:

The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.

Barf. Forget it.

Greg Gaines is on his last year of high school. He has one friend, or rather a co-worker,named Earl who he makes movies with. He has successfully managed to blend in with every group at the school That way, he has no friends, but also no enemies. Which is exactly the point. Life is good. 

Then Greg's mother forces him to start hanging out with Rachel again, and soon his life is changed forever. 

Rachel is a childhood friend who has been diagnosed with Leukemia, and as Greg and Earl try to do what they can to cheer her up, the idea of making her a movie comes to mind. When the movie then turn out to be "The Worst Film Ever Made", it becomes a turning point for both of them. 


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a really easy read that makes you laugh a lot. A lot. It's almost awkward how much I relate to the main character Greg and his constant goofiness. It's impossible not to fall completely in love with both him and the other characters in this book. It is written in diary-style, and through "Greg's own words", you really get to know him and how he thinks in all the situations. Which is hilarious, most of the time.

“I think I might have a disorder where your emotions frequently malfunction and a lot of the time you're sitting there feeling something inappropriate. It should be called Emotional Moron Disorder”

Somehow, between all the goofiness and the awkward situations, it's a lesson of life and how it plays you, and how you should play it back. This book made me laugh, cry and believe in myself and the choices that I've made so far in my life.

I really can't wait to see the movie! If they've caught the spirit that this book has, it's bound to be amazing.

EN MANN SOM HETER OVE (A MAN CALLED OVE)
BY FREDRIK BACKMAN
PUBLISHED: 2012
AVERAGE RATING: 4.29
337 PAGES
★★★★★

Ove is 59 years old, and lives in a housing cooperative. He used to be the chairman, but even though he’s not anymore (because of what Ove refers to as “the countercoup”) he still makes sure everything in the neighborhood is in order during his inspection-rounds every morning. Ove has strict routines of everything, he is determined and everything around him has to be in order. Then one day, a new family moves in and accidentally destroys drives a trailer in Ove’s mailbox and destroys it. This is the start of a series of events that will spin both Ove and the rest of the neighborhood’s world upside down.

A man Called Ove caught my attention while working in a bookstore, and seeing it throne the first place at our top 10-shelf for weeks. It did not take long before I fell in love with this book. Ove is one of the most real fictional character I’ve ever read about. The book is kind of split in half, with one chapter about Ove “now”, and then one about his past and so on. Both the parts about Ove in the present and the parts about Ove’s past is strong and touching. Especially the parts about Ove “now” is also incredibly funny.

 At the start I did not really like Ove at all, actually. He is that grumpy old man you sigh at when you see him entering the store you work in, because you know there will be arguing. He is that always pissed-off neighbor you used to have when you were a child, the one that always yelled at you for kicking the football in his garden or yelling to loud.

 But the more pages I read, the more I loved him. I ended up feeling like he was a dear friend. During the book I seriously cried tears of both joy and sadness several times. Just the character-development in itself is enough to make this book one of my favorites. This goes for the other characters in the book as well. The author has done an amazing job painting the pictures of these people, and you end up loving everybody. I even fell in love with the cat. This is absolutely a book I will read again.