About Me

Welcome to Sonderbooks, a website about good books.

I'm Sondra Eklund, a voracious reader who, until last summer, worked at Sembach Library, on an American air base in Germany. On my job, fantastic new books went through my hands. I started Sonderbooks to tell my friends about the great books I'm reading. Sonder is a German prefix meaning "special."

I publish an e-zine approximately every month with reviews of the latest books I've read. You'll find over 1,000 books reviewed at this site, with links to order copies, give your own rating of the books, and discuss them with others who have read them. You can Subscribe to be notified every time I post a new issue. All back issues and back reviews are kept on the site, and you can access them via the different lists on the navigation bar.

I include a wide variety of books for all ages, but only review books I've actually read. Because of our excellent rental book program at Sembach Library, most of the books are recently published. Come to Sonderbooks when you're looking for a good book to read, for yourself or for your children.

Why do I write Sonderbooks?

I’ve always loved it when people share great books with me and felt that they were giving me a wonderful gift. So Sonderbooks is my way of giving a gift to you, my readers, telling you about some wonderful books.

I always wanted to be a writer. My plan was to write children’s books, and I’m still working on that. However, I find I’m getting huge fulfillment out of writing these book reviews. They’re simply book reviews on a small website, but I have the feeling of finding my calling. I’m a little obsessed, and am thoroughly enjoying writing these reviews. As a result, I’m making friends who love books, and even connecting with other writers.

Now I'm back in America and have begun a program to get a second Master's, this time in Library Science. (The first one was in Math--they aren't as different as you'd think!) After one quarter completed, I'm loving my classes and am sure I found the right calling to pursue. The only thing I don't like is that it's cutting down the time I can spend on my website.

In general, I rate books according to how much I enjoy them, not pretending to be an unbiased judge of how well the book was written. Even books intended for children, I rate by how much I enjoyed them, believing along with C. S. Lewis that the best books for children can also be enjoyed by adults.

There are two ways you can support my website. One is to follow my links to Amazon.com. If you buy a book I recommend, I get a small percentage, but I also get a small percentage if you buy anything else after going to Amazon by way of my site.

The second way is to make a donation via Paypal on my Donation page. Although I haven't made a profit yet, this is not a nonprofit corporation, so donations are not tax deductible. If I should receive donations beyond the cost of hosting the website, I would use them to buy more books to review. Writing Sonderbooks has become awfully time-consuming for something that's only a hobby, so any donations will help me keep the website going.

I now have a blog (weblog) at www.sondy.blogspot.com. I'm posting stories and pictures from our family's travels in Europe. Feel free to take a look.

Thank you for your support! Do let me know what you think of the books I review! Thanks for visiting Sonderbooks!

I hope that my reviews and these books will give you some pleasure and some food for thought.

Happy reading!

Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

About Me