MrsB

We love to read in this household, but I don’t usually blog about books. Maybe because for kids it’s the classics that everyone knows about – Dr.Seuss, Julia Donaldson, fairy tales, etc. + a lot of Estonian books bought during our summers there.

Earlier this year the boys got a book I had never seen or heard about in a party bag from a friend’s birthday – “The man who wore all his clothes”. We loved it as soon as we opened it – great illustrations, great story, lots of funny details to catch the kids’ attention. It involves a bank robber and a car radio that can never get the news right and the mystery of why is a man wearing all of this clothes at the same time.

Last week I saw a book by the same author in the library, “The children who smelled a rat”. Since we brought it home we have been reading it every night – it’s written in the same humorous style as the other book and the kids are totally in love and have memorised many pages of it :). It has a teacher who behaves very oddly and a bird who hypnotises a cat and a baby who’s in a runaway shopping trolley being chased by his dad.

Both of the books are like the kinds of movies where you have several stories going on at the same time but it all comes together nicely at the end. [...]

In September 1998 I was working in a Border’s bookstore in downtown Washington DC. I remember a huge display being set up right at the entrance of/for a book called Harry Potter. I read it just to see what the fuss was all about and was totally hooked from the get-go. Fast forward 14 years: [...]

A few weeks ago someone suggested I read a book called “What I talk about when I talk about running” by Haruki Murakami.

The title immediately intrigued me and I logged onto my local library’s website and reserved a copy.

Once I picked it up, I read it within a matter of a couple of days – feeling all the way that I had a long lost identical twin (who happens to be a 60-year old Japanese man) who had captured a lot of my thoughts in his memoir of running. [...]

Bedtime stories have been read for another night and the boys are asleep. J isn’t home yet so I’m on the computer as usual…

I wanted to write a bit about books actually anyway so here it goes.

We’ve always read a lot to the kids but despite of this, Oskar still would rather play with his Legos than to read a book on his own. He can read quite well by now but other than reading whatever book has been sent home from school, he doesn’t do much of it on his own yet.

I guess he’s yet to discover the true joy of reading.

I heard today of a book festival coming up not far from where we live, in Dulwich, and quickly booked some tickets to some of the sessions – I’m sure both boys will enjoy them and maybe Oskar will even discover that books can be just as exciting as Lego. [...]

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to resurrect the German part of my brain again after 10 years and I ordered a novel from Amazon called “Nachtzug nach Lissabon“.

I’ve read 206 pages now. In German.

I have 291 to go.

It’s sort of coming along nicely [...]

Alice made me think about books this morning and I ordered the kids a few books from Amazon, “The Kids Book of World Religions” for Oskar and “Hands are not for hitting” and “Teeth are not for biting” for Oliver. I am hoping that Oskar’s book will be for my benefit as well. We have [...]

I’m really bad at book reviews so here’s the summary blurb from Amazon: “Nothing can break the bond between sisters …When Beatrice gets a frantic call in the middle of Sunday lunch to say that her younger sister, Tess, is missing, she boards the first flight home to London. But as she learns about the [...]

In continuation of this post… I finished Purge on Tuesday night. I think I might still need to digest it for a while before I know for sure what I think of it.  It’s a story of two sisters – one who is sent to Siberia when the Soviet Union occupies Estonia and the other [...]

I went to the bookshop at lunchtime to buy Sister. They didn’t have any copies of it left, but I saw that Sofi Oksanen‘s last book Purge has been published in English! I bought it, went outside, found a bench, read 18 pages and I’m totally hooked already. I think it’s going to be a [...]

I’ve been ‘ordered’ to do a list of 7 things I enjoy in everyday life. Family and friends are the obvious ones so they’ve been skipped. Here are the first 7 things that came to mind, in no particular order: 1. Yoga I’ve done yoga on and off for about 7 or 8 years. It’s [...]

Oskar has always loved looking at books, but the pre-bedtime must-read-books routine only started about 6 months ago. Now he goes straight for his bookshelf after we’ve brushed his teeth at night and puts whatever books he wants to read on grandma’s bed. Board books are no longer interesting, the big boy of 2 now [...]

Oskar has always loved looking at books, but the pre-bedtime must-read-books routine only started about 6 months ago. Now he goes straight for his bookshelf after we’ve brushed his teeth at night and puts whatever books he wants to read on grandma’s bed. Board books are no longer interesting, the big boy of 2 now [...]