William Dietrich: Napoleon's Pyramids

The book sets in the last years of the 18th century and centres around a mysterious medallion that our hero, Ethan Gage wins in cards in Paris. He has to realise rather quickly, though that what he believed was luck can easily be called misfortune as well. The moment he takes the medal in his hands the number of his enemies suddenly rises and doesn't seem to stop growing throughout the whole work. As a consequence of him winning the medal he has to flee France and soon he finds himself  in Egypt as one of the scientists Napolen has taken along to make examinations and, hopefully, discoveries in different areas. Ethan gets the task of solving the mytery of his medal and finding the "door" it presumably opens. This book was quite a heavy read. It is not only packed with adventures after adventures, turns and twists but also contains interesting pieces of information considering politics, military history, disciplines of freemasonry, the Bible and, of course,  ancient Egypt. You have to concentrate to understand everything, which makes it difficult to proceed quickly. I really liked it, my only compaint is that because of all the things going on it is quite difficult to remember everything that has happened in it. I think this is the type of work that you can read more than once and still find things you didn't notice or fully understand for the first time. As it turned out the book is the first one in a series of three. I think I'm going to read those now so, presuming that they are similarly heavy, don't expect frequent book-entries for a while now.

Natalie Scharf: Sophie, Sisi's Little Sister

The first time I saw this book was when my mom and I were shopping for presents before last Christmas. I got curious, since I had read lots of books about Sissy but none about any of her sisters. Plus this particular sister had the same name as I do, and, even if it doesn't make much sense, that made me even more curious.
I got the book for Christmas and finished it within two days, so I guess it goes without saying that I liked it. However, I'm quite sure that it is far from being the true story of her life. It's way too scandalous and it's not really likely that these kind of things happened to a princess in the 19th century.
Despite all of this it was an interesting read. The only thing that annoys me is that the book really made me want to know more about Shopie's real life but I have yet to find a reliable source. I recommend this book but do not expect historical accuracy.