About

(The fine print)

Why bookventurers?
We LOVE adventures, just not the hassle of travelling to them and the hazards they involve. Instead, we like to enjoy them vicariously: To open a book means to embark on an adventure that can lead to hidden treasures as well as to wastelands (and no, not only the T.S. Eliot kinds). Thus our adventures with books can be labelled bookventures, which makes us bookventurers rather than adventurers. In our reading adventures, we encountered many treasures and wastelands and since we talk a lot about our reads anyway, we want to share them with you.
This blog will not deal with adventure books exclusively (though you might still find some), but rather with the adventure of reading books and writing about it. We aspire to review all the books we read, whether they kept us up all night or put us asleep within minutes. But please be aware that these are our personal opinions and that we do not intend to hurt the author or other readers. At the same time, you can expect us to be honest and fair in our reviews.

Kinds of adventures and methods
The main category featured in this blog will be Young Adult Literature (including its many sub-genres), but we might occasionally venture into other fictional realms. 
We are multilingual and therefore read books in different languages (preferably their original publication language). However, the language of this blog will mainly be English. If the publication we review is not in English, we try to include a short summary and opinion in the respective language. The main review will always be in English though. Besides English, we read German, Spanish, and Catalan.
We acknowledge that readers appreciate rating scales as a quality marker; however, for us those rating systems did not work out so well. Our main problems were (and still are) comparability issues. Is one 3-star book the same quality as another 3-star book? And will this decision still hold true in two years time? Thus we implement our own sort of rating system that values each book for its entertainment value rather than compares it to others. And of course, it had to be adventure-related.

Treasure Trove: Books that kept us up all night, gripping our seats, glued to the pages, and forgetting to eat (it's a good thing breathing can be done while reading). 
Rough Diamond: Overall an enjoyable read, which only lacks the proverbial icing on the cake.
Semi-Precious: Taken as a whole the idea was good, but the execution didn't really convince us.  
Waste Land: Literally; only for the aficionado. 


Your intrepid readers
Diana recently graduated in English and Spanish Philology as well as Art History (Magister Artium). She loves art, photography, the sea, chocolate and ... books. Naturally, books. Her dearest wish is having a living room with a cuddly armchair, just for reading, and lots of bookshelves (so her books do not have to be stored in boxes anymore). There might even be free shelf-space ... for a few weeks.
Diana is currently working part-time at a library and enjoys handling and working with books there. Although in the future, she sees herself on the producing and editing side of the publishing process.
Her reading material mostly belongs to YA Fiction (especially Paranormal), but can also include Historical Fiction, Thriller as well as Romance Novels and Travel Literature. Also, she's particularly proud of her small collection of Spanish and Catalan books.

Julika cannot remember a time when she did not love books. In fact, she can trace most events in her life by the books she read at the time. As a former student of Anglophone literature, languages, and culture, she has learnt to appreciate early writings from Anglo-Norman Romances, continuing to the Bard, up to contemporary books. Given the choice, she will try almost anything, but she mostly enjoys novels with historical backgrounds (from Egyptian to Greek, to Roman, to Medieval ... you get the idea) and anything the Young Adult category has to offer. Julika has a sort of fancy degree in Publishing (as she not only loves reading but anything books-related really), where she claims that most of her being covered in various books was research for her dissertation.

At some point, we are planning to invite guests to write about their bookventures. We will introduce them to you when the time comes for them to step forward.

Letter in a bottle
You can contact us by e-mail at dusted.dreams (at) gmail (dot) com. Alternatively, you can also shoot us a quick message on Twitter. We try to get back to you as quickly as possible, but please bear in mind that this blog is run in our free time and we have to work to pay the bills somehow.

Disclaimer
This is a private blog that is run for fun and is not designed to earn any money. Although we constantly strive to provide accurate and current information we cannot guarantee the correctness of the information presented. In no way are we going to assume liabilities for damages resulting from the use or disuse of this blog.

We check every link that we put up, but despite this, we expressly disassociate ourselves from all contents of foreign pages linked to from this blog since we have no influence on them. Should you notice any form of statutory violation on a page that we linked to, please do not hesitate to contact us at the e-mail address indicated above so that we can remove the link in question.

All of the books reviewed have been bought, paid for, and read by ourselves, unless provided for review purposes, which will not affect our review in any way at all. If a book has been provided as a review copy, this will always be disclosed. Equally, if any content is sponsored by a company, this will also always be clearly indicated.

All pictures used on this blog are the property of ourselves or their respective owners. Should you object to the publication of any image or content on this blog, please contact us via the e-mail address mentioned above.

All written content of this blog, unless stated otherwise, is produced by ourselves and protected as our intellectual property. Any unauthorised copying, reproduction, republishing, posting or duplicating of any of the material on our blog is prohibited without express written permission from ourselves. You are not allowed to reproduce, sell, and modify any part of this blog. You are welcome to link to this blog and to discuss its contents in a respectful manner. If you do quote or link to this blog, please include the blog’s name in your link. If you are interested in obtaining permission to copy portions of the blog, please submit your request to the e-mail address indicated above.

Both Diana and Julika are not professional reviewers. We operate this blog in our free time and for the love of reading. All opinions given are our own. Please bear in mind what might work well for us might not work well for others. We do not aim to influence people in any way; we are merely stating our own personal opinion about individual books and wish to provide readers with the chance to make their own informed decisions.

Our privacy policy notice is linked to at the bottom of each page and also here.

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