Review: The Dwarves by Markus Heitz ★★★★☆
I bought this book directly after the - unofficial - start of my summer vacation. I’d been eying it for a while and I decided to treat myself. Well, I can tell you this: a treat is exactly what it has been. A 730 page long one, to be precise! Don’t you love that? When you’ve found a book you really like and it’s actually long enough to keep you going for a while?
The Dwarves strongly reminds me of Eragon by Christopher Paolini (of whose work I’m a real fan). I’m sure fans of the Inheritance cycle will enjoy this book as much as I have!
Review: The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah ★★★★★
Today I’m going to tell you about The House of the Mosque. I’m very glad that this book (originally called Het Huis van de Moskee) has been translated into English, because this means that I can write a post on one of the best Dutch books I’ve read in a very long time.
The House of the Mosque tells the story of Aga Djan and his family, who live in the house belonging to the most important mosque of the city. There they live as the family has done for centuries, maintaining old traditions and participating in the city’s social life as they have for ages. Aga Djan is a respected and powerful man, but then the Iranian Revolution comes along.
Midnight reading
Do you know the feeling? You’ve taken a lovely hot shower and put on your favourite pair of pyjamas afterwards. You’ve just managed to sneak in a bit of homework on which you were behind* and now it’s getting a bit later than you’d planned. Not too late, more of a ‘if I want to really get enough sleep for a change, I should go to bed now, but I’m not too tired yet’ kind of time. All in all you’re feeling quite well.
And then you think of that sequel of the book you just read a week ago and you find out that in the meantime it’s become available to download. And there you go. At least, that’s what happening right now to me. Gone is the calm, sleepy and very ‘zen’ feeling I had a minute ago, right now I’m just waiting for the download to be finished so I can start reading. I know that whatever I might say or think now, I’m not going to do that last extra bit of studying Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (book two, the part where Mucius a.k.a. Scaevola gets his nickname, in case anyone’s interested). I’m going to read. And I’m going to read for quite some time. So no, I’m not going to get that amount of sleep I wanted and I’m not going to be happy tomorrow morning, but what the heck, I can’t help it!
Review: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson - ★★★★☆
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson isn’t the type of book I’d normally read. I read a lot of different things, but over the years, I’ve found that two types of books just aren’t for me. The first: those where negativity plays too much of a role. The second: the scary ones. Guess which category Robopocalypse belongs to?
Just to let me recover my image ever so slightly: I’m not that much of a wuss. If you’ll let me choose between Saw and Bride Wars, I’ll choose the first. (In fact, I once did watch those two movies right after each other. I was trying to convince someone that romantic comedies were more fun than thrillers, he thought the opposite was true. Of course I lost big-time, Bride Wars was boring as hell.) My point is: I’m not the bravest person you’ll ever meet, but I’m not that easily scared either.
Hanging on to Harry Potter
Pottermore 
has been open to the public for half a month now and a few days ago I decided to take a look. The opinions I heard or read of those who got into the limited beta version in July last year weren’t always that positive. A friend of mine told me that she thought that it was fun, but not nearly as special or exciting as all of the marketing had made her expect it to be. Somewhere else I read the opinion that the new content was great, but that moving through all of the chapters and having to search for hidden items before that content got unlocked really wasn’t that interesting.
I myself have been a Harry Potter fan since I started reading the first book. So though I was sceptical with these comments in mind, I wasn’t planning on letting this opportunity of experiencing this story in a new way and getting to know more about this world go by.
Death in our books
Death. In our highly controlled and safe world, it’s still very much on our minds. Though we live in a time that’s banned more and more deadly diseases, that’s reduced the danger of life itself to a bare minimum and in which most of us will live to a ripe and old age, we continue to be fascinated by the concept that at one point we will cease to exist.
And this isn’t only kept concealed in our minds. This fascination is expressed by thousands of artists all over the world and in all kinds of cultures. Whether it’s through the luridly beautiful sculpture For the Love of God by Damien Hirst or by incorporating the theme of death time and time again in successful novels. Or is it the other way round and do these novels become successful because of this theme?
Review: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - ★★☆☆☆
As Bring up the Bodies will soon be in store, I thought it would be interesting to revisit its predecessor: Wolf Hall. I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews and people who were either wildly enthusiastic or utterly disappointed. For me though, that wasn’t the case. My opinion of the book is most easily described with one word: meh.
When I first picked the book up in the bookstore, it wasn’t because I had heard great things about it or because I was that interested in yet another book about Henry VIII. (He has been rather popular lately.) It was because of the cover art, especially because of the Tudor rose on it. I thought the book might be about the Wars of the Roses and as I didn’t know a thing about those, I thought it might be interesting. Here in Holland schools don’t teach us a lot about the civil wars of other countries. So when I picked up the book, I found out that wasn’t the case, but I still ended up buying it. And that is where it gets interesting.
Christopher Paolini’s advice
So, here we go. Welcome to The Burning Bookshelf. With this post, I become a bookblogger. Don’t worry! This blog isn’t about burning books. I wouldn’t dare… No, this is a blog with a burning passion for books. And with a cool name. (Because ‘The Burning Bookshelf’ just sounds a little bit more exciting than my other option, ‘The Bulging Bookshelf’, don’t you think?) Also, the other names I thought of were in use already. So there you go.
