Reading tips: 6 books for your holiday

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Before we left Sweden, I downloaded six e-books to my tablet. Now I have finished all of them, so here are some reviews and book tips. Please tell me what I should download to my tablet now! I prefer to read reality-based books or novels set in other cultures, but if you have tips on books with suspense, I'll pass them on to Peter.

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Expedition: My love story by Bea Uusma

In 1897, three men travelled to the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon. The André expedition was supposed to bring the men fame, but instead all three died. The question is how? Bea Uusma is obsessed with finding out what really happened and spends much of her life investigating.

The book describes both the expedition and Bea's search. Sometimes the text is a bit dry and you don't get to know much about Bea as a person. Nevertheless, you get sucked in and become almost as obsessed with the André expedition as the author. Fascinating reading!

Why did you come here? by Julia Svanberg

Ellen is a Swedish backpacker who is travelling around Colombia, but only gets as far as a hostel called Parrot. Here she makes friends with the Colombian girl Lila. On the surface they are very similar and they soon call themselves sisters, but the book makes it clear that the difference is huge.

The world is unfair and people with different backgrounds and skin colours do not have the same opportunities. Ellen's and Lila's adventures at the Parrot end very differently. Julia Svanberg, who lives in Colombia and runs the blog Mammas Machete, knows her Colombia, which makes the book particularly interesting.

Life after you by Jojo Moyes

Louisa is a young inexperienced working class girl with no ambition. Will is a handsome successful businessman who has travelled all over the world and is used to moving around at upper class dinners and exclusive skiing holidays. So far, the book is almost similar to 50 Shades of Grey, but there is one major difference - Will is totally paralysed after a motorcycle accident and Louisa gets the job as his assistant.

This is a love story where there is no good ending. In the beginning I thought the book was a bit childishly written, but it grew and by the end it was impossible not to cry rivers.

The Midwife of the East End 2 by Jennifer Worth

I liked the first book, about the midwives of the nunnery Nonnatus House and the poor people of the Docklands in London in the 1950s. The sequel continues in the same warm spirit and follows one poignant story after another.

Among other things, you realise the horror of ending up in a poorhouse, even though poorhouses were perhaps a first step for society to take care of those who are unable to do so themselves. A reminder of how good we have it today!

Sky Beach by John Ajvide Lindqvist

In the evening, the people in the four caravans fall asleep on a normal, pleasant Swedish campsite. When they wake up the next day, everything is gone. All the houses, cars and roads are gone, even the sun is gone, and all that is left is a large field. One by one you get to know the characters in the caravans and one by one they face their demons during the scary reading. 

I love Ajvide Lindqvist's mystical books, such as Little starperhaps partly because he does what he wants and doesn't care about any rules about how a book should be written. shall be. This time, however, he is a little too reminiscent of a pop musician who wants to stop satisfying the audience and instead explore his own anxiety and his own limits. It's fascinating reading, but it's quite hard to understand...

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Ifemelu and Obinze meet as young people in Nigeria. Obinze constantly dreams of America, but it is Ifemelu who manages to get there and make a life for herself, before returning to Nigeria much later and meeting Obinze again.

This is not a romance novel, but a book about culture clashes, about race and about how white people look at black people. Sometimes I think the book is unnecessarily long, but many times it works as a real eye-opener. Interesting reading that I don't regret!

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