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The last time I was up to date with reviews was 2022-01-31. Since then, 270/425 books (63.5%) have been reviewed. We'll get there … eventually.

The 27 books I read in 2003 year in books

Cover of Eragon.

Eragon

by Christopher Paolini · published 2002 · read 2003-12-01
★☆☆☆☆
Sometimes it's just down to the order or operations. I read Eragon after the Lord of the Rings, and so I disliked it and thought much of its plot was a cheap knock-off version with more wish fulfillment. That was not entirely fair, but I was ten at the time and being angry about bad books was my thing. It's certainly an impressive book considering the age of the author at the time.

Cover of Sophie's World.

Sophie’s World

by Jostein Gaarder, Anne Born · published 1991 · read 2003-11-01
★★☆☆☆
Meh. Meh, I say. Books that preach at me have to be outstanding to convince me, not tedious and annoying and boring. They have to have characters and good reasons for their preaching, not two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who get a bit of action before it's time to get back to your regularly scheduled sermon. And they have to have content that is fascinating, not just reurgitating old philosophers and assume I care.

Cover of The Carpet People.

The Carpet People

by Terry Pratchett · published 1971 · read 2003-11-01
★★★☆☆
Young Terry's first book, if I recall correctly. It's very different and less polished, of course, but it shows imagination and humour already. I enjoyed reading it and I thought the setting was very clever and fun.

Cover of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

by J.K. Rowling · published 1998 · read 2003-10-01
★★★☆☆
Felt sense for books is a weird thing. The first book has a felt sense of warmth and wonder, while this one has a felt sense of damp and cold and wet and danger. I enjoyed it less than the first or the third one, but I still tore through it.

Cover of Reaper Man.

Reaper Man

by Terry Pratchett · published 1991 · read 2003-10-01
★★★★☆
Death is now a retired senior citizen. He puts his scythe to more traditional use, while the Discworld finds out how bad life is without Death. Hilarious, solidly in the phase where Discworld books are fun without being terribly philosophical.

Cover of The Black Arrow.

The Black Arrow

by Robert Louis Stevenson · published 1883 · read 2003-10-01
★★★☆☆
Unconventionally, this was my first Stevenson book. Since I had no idea what the War of the Roses was beyond its obscure mention in Kalle Blomquist, I was plenty confused and didn't like it too much. This was probably unjust of me, but it's unlikely that I'll go back to correct my judgement.

Cover of Der junge Häuptling.

Der junge Häuptling

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-09-01
★★★☆☆
More goodness: Harka has really come into his own and gotten back from his (well, his father's) banishment. Many well-loved characters from the first book re-occur. Welskopf-Henrich handles the reuniting very well, if memory serves.

Cover of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle · published 1914 · read 2003-09-01
★★★★☆
Reading Sherlock Holmes was a milestone in growing up. I remember starting the first story when I was barely eight. It started “To Sherlock Holmes, she is always THE woman.” I stopped reading and ran to my mother to complain that she hadn't handed me the first part: obviously there had to be another part beforehand! She explained to me that books for adults often worked in a less linear fashion, and that I should stick with it. Which I did.

Cover of Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee.

Der 35. Mai oder Konrad reitet in die Südsee

by Erich Kästner · published 1931 · read 2003-08-01
★★★☆☆
Konrad goes into a magic wardrobe and comes out in a very weird world. Everything in this book is designed to be fun to children and optionally offend adults at the time. For example the rich suburban villa district where deceased generals play with tin soldiers. The roller-skating circus horse made redundant by automation. A school where difficult parents get educated and punished. A futuristic city where a completely automated slaughterhouse suddenly starts working in reverse and begins sucking in finished handbags and spitting out calves.

Cover of Carpe Jugulum.

Carpe Jugulum

by Terry Pratchett · published 1998 · read 2003-08-01
★★★★☆
Snotty vampires. Snotty vampires not at all concerned what the neighbours are thinking, no sir. Contains an excellent quote on the nature of sin. Good like all the witch books – but it was probably for the best that the Witches series ends here and the Tiffany series starts.

Cover of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

by Douglas Adams · published 1980 · read 2003-07-01
★★☆☆☆
Everything is a bit less new and a bit less shiny in this book compared to its predecessor, but it's by no means bad. Still lots of hilarious moment, and lots of absurdity.

Cover of Harka.

Harka

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1962 · read 2003-07-01
★★★★★
This series … weirdly enough, I wouldn't say that it has had a huge influence on me, despite being one of my favourites at the time. And the first part was my favourite among the series (once I got to read it – my introduction was a shortened mashup of volumes 4-6, if I recall correctly). Seeing the young Harka encounter hardship and deal with it with strength and grace was enchanting.

Cover of Sourcery.

Sourcery

by Terry Pratchett · published 1988 · read 2003-07-01
★★★☆☆
Yet another Rincewind book. The only good part is that it sets up a later book rather nicely. The Four Horsemen of the apocalypse are alright. It's not a book that I'd recommend while there are all the other Pratchett books available, though.

Cover of Lotta on Troublemaker Street.

Lotta on Troublemaker Street

by Astrid Lindgren · published 1958 · read 2003-06-01
★★★☆☆
Lotta and her siblings are some of Lindgren's most adorable characters. Her teddy (which looks suspiciously like a pig, but don't tell her!), her siblings, their games, their whole family – it's all lovely without being overly sweet. Lotta is very real, often angry and finds creative (and not always nice) ways to deal with her anger. And the adults are just that: adult about it. It's great.

Cover of Die Höhle in den schwarzen Bergen.

Die Höhle in den schwarzen Bergen

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1963 · read 2003-06-01
★★★☆☆
I didn't relate to this book all that much, and I disliked the whole gold story arc. The story might have been better off without it. It's definitely good setup for the second half of the series though, so I won't grump too much.

Cover of The Count of Monte Cristo.

The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas · published 1844 · read 2003-05-01
★★★★★
Revenge – exciting revenge from nearly beyond the grave! I loved this book to pieces when I discovered it, despite being confused by it a lot. I was nine at the time, and many concepts in there confused me. How did cheques work? What on earth was a rentier? (They were spelt the same in German, and the word has fallen completely out of use, because Rentier also means reindeer. You can understand my confusion.) And I didn't get the whole Bonaparte arc until I re-read it years later.

Cover of Heimkehr zu den Dakota.

Heimkehr zu den Dakota

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-05-01
★★★☆☆
Pain and emotional turmoil. Conflict and strife and family warmth – this book is high drama, and is both payoff for reading the first three books, and also sets up the second half of the series extremely well.

Cover of The Three Musketeers.

The Three Musketeers

by Alexandre Dumas · published 1844 · read 2003-04-01
★★★☆☆
People underestimate how honestly useful Dumas is. Well, if you get the abridged versions, of course, nobody wants to read that optimized-for-line-count nonsense. Read up on it, his tricks to stretch dialogue into more lines are hilarious, to the point of his writing style changing (and characters with long names suddenly dying) when his publishers changed the rules.

Cover of The Diary of a Young Girl.

The Diary of a Young Girl

by Anne Frank · published 1947 · read 2003-04-01
★★★★☆
Anne's diary was mandatory reading in school. Our edition included photos of Anne and her family. Contrasting Anne's story with the fact that there are six million of these stories – an unthinkable number to me, even now – made me despair of humanity when I was eight. I still find it hard to deal with it.

Cover of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain · published 1884 · read 2003-04-01
★★★☆☆
Huckleberry Finn is a less likely protagonist than Tom Sawyer, and I liked the book much less as a consequence. Bleaker, more contrived (the plot, at least), and just more depressing. It's probably the better book from a literary perspective, what with the first person vernacular and all that, but that didn't endear it to me either (which may be a translation issue, come to think of it).

Cover of Mit dem Rücken zur Wand.

Mit dem Rücken zur Wand

by Klaus Kordon · published 1990 · read 2003-03-01
★★★★☆
The second book in this series takes place fifteen years after the revolution, during the fall of the Weimar Republic. It's haunting and gives a face to dissidents, to jews, to communists, and of course to nazis and collaborators. I was already emotionally invested in the series, so I didn't see the big turncoat coming (which my mother spotted from a mile away). The book didn't teach me many new things, if I recall correctly, but it cemented a sense of oppression and violence and the general social situation at the time.

Cover of Über den Missouri.

Über den Missouri

by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich · published 1951 · read 2003-03-01
★★★☆☆
Concluding the series – I really should re-read to see what I think now. Back in the day I liked the early books more, but then, that's where the protagonist was closer to my own age. I wonder if my reading tastes just shuffle along with the protagonist's age …

Cover of Coraline.

Coraline

by Neil Gaiman · published 2002 · read 2003-02-01
★★★★★
Coraline is a wonderful book. Terrifying, too. Coraline and her parents move to a new place, where there's nothing apart from the other (strange!) people living in the house. Her parents are busy all day, and she's just left to her own devices. So she wanders around and eventually finds a mirror world, where everything is duplicated, only uncanny and weird – and where she finds parents who love her and have time for her. Now if only they were human.

Cover of Ensel und Krete. Ein Märchen aus Zamonien.

Ensel und Krete. Ein Märchen aus Zamonien

by Walter Moers · published 2000 · read 2003-02-01
★★★☆☆
Bluebear was a great book. This is an okay book – more experimental in ways, and definitely less astounding. Where Bluebear means that you get an even balance of action and snark, and the City of Dreaming Book works even when you don't get literary snark, this book is just literary snark. I enjoyed it, but it's hard to recommend to anybody.

Cover of Essential Tales and Poems.

Essential Tales and Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe · published 1843 · read 2003-01-01
★★★☆☆
Long time since I've read Poe – but the clever (if old-school) language and the fine sense for vibes and rhythm have stuck with me, far beyond the famous raven.

Cover of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

by J.K. Rowling · published 2003 · read 2003-01-01
★★☆☆☆
My low point of the series. I remember getting this book, at a midnight release party, and then reading it within the next day. I wasn't immediately disappointed, but I hated the whole "teenager yells at cloud" thing, and while Umbridge was delightfully evil, I just wasn't on board with the weird plot shape and the growing pains.

Cover of Die feuerrote Friederike.

Die feuerrote Friederike

by Christine Nöstlinger · published 1970 · read 2003-01-01
★★★☆☆
The young Friederike has red hair (really, really red) and gets bullied for it. Her teacher tries to help and gives up. One of the only helpful adults is the postman, who is colour blind. Then it turns out that she has special powers due to her hair, and has to find ways to get her apathetic aunt and sarcastic cat on board.