It’s time for my first Wrap-up of the year, because I’ve read all five of my chosen books from my TBR pile. I already started reading these five in 2019, but I finished Evolutie, Fire and Ice and Een koninklijk verraad this year! A good start for my Goodreads reading challenge! I even read a little book that was not on my TBR in between as a snack for my non-fiction hungry brain ;P

I’m already on 4/25! 😀

So, the Wrap-up! A reflection on the five books I’ve read and how they met my expectations! Including links to my reviews. Are you ready? 🙂

Kaizen — Sarah Harvey

I love Japanese philosophy and their methods for increasing efficiency, so when we saw Kaizen on display at the Boekenbeurs in Antwerp, I decided to adopt this compact little book. It was written in an easy to read manner and the Kaizen method is explained in an easy to grasp way. I had expected a little more depth from this book, however. It’s definitely a good base book about the method. I do intend to read more books about Kaizen in the future after reading this. If anyone has any tips, let me know!

You can read my review here. I ended up with a rating of 🌟🌟🌟½

The Wizard of Oz — L. Frank Baum

When I was a kid I was a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz and I always watched the cartoon on Saturday morning kids programming. When Bren gave me this leather bound edition from Barnes & Noble I was beyond happy! Finally I was able to read the story that’s survived for over a hundred years and is still being loved by all! It was one big trip down memory lane for me and that’s why I had to rate it 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟! Check my review here!

Evolutie — Ursula Visser

Dutch Scifi! I was really looking forward to reading this, after Bren gave this such a good review. There’s not much Dutch scifi writers (I wrote my books in English, so I barely count), but I do intend to write in Dutch now. Evolutie by Ursula Visser was a good read and enjoyable until the last page. I was really surprised by this book in a good way! Maybe it wasn’t the most original story, but it was psychologically deep and well written, exactly what you’d expect of a good scifi story! I gave this book a well deserved 🌟🌟🌟🌟 review. Read my review here!

Warrior Cats #2: Fire and Ice — Erin Hunter

The first part of the Warrior Cats series was a really fun read and I was looking forward to continuing reading the series with book 2. This one was really good too, although it took me some time to get used to all the cat names, especially because some are so similar to one another! But the longer I kept reading, the better I was able to distinguish all the names. I rated this book 🌟🌟🌟🌟 My review can be read here.

Een koninklijk verraad — Sebastiaan Koen

Sebastiaan Koen set the stage with Een rijk in verval in which he portrayed a huge fantasy world filled with a great cast of characters in a classic tale of good vs. evil. In this second book the protagonists are still fighting the good fight against the local evil badboy Felkon. This book was good too, with all the ingredients a good fantasy book needs: suspense, magic, violence and intrigue. The only thing it lacked was a big twist, which I kept hoping for, but never came. Still, it’s a pretty damn good read and I rated it 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Read the full review here!

Well, that’s it folks!

That’s it for my wrap-up of the books I’ve read in the past weeks. I have already chosen my next five and I’ll happily share those with you tomorrow, including my thoughts before reading and what I hope to gain from reading them! 🙂

Happy reading!

~Jeffrey