Books I RED

Women in South-Korea live on a mental territory the size of a stamp that they dare not lick it. That's my rude conclusion after reading both The Vegetarian by Nobel prize winner Han Kang and Kim Jiyoung born 1982. Why oh why, does things have to get nasty, even grotesque for us to be able to talk about women and their natural born rights as (hu)man. There's really nothing much more to say about that book, I question modern day literature, it's not that great, yet, I myself write.  That is what I've been doing for the past month, write, write, write... and now I translate, translate, translate into English, a language I still find more my own.  In any case... I think I might not make the 53 books in 2024 mark, but I have been pondering about my personal finalists. It's very possible that the prize goes to the Caribbeans but I'm also considering At Night All Blood is Black, by Diop. I found it at the flea market in an English translation for one euro. The Swedish ...

T o spice it up. Denna bok tar vi på svenska, nog med att titeln är orginalet franska och läsupplevelsen var på svenska, jag undrar om jag ändå inte läste en fransk bok på franska, sådan var översättningen och stämmningen i Lily Vallquists översättning. Jag lyssnade på P3 Klassiker poddens avsnitt om  Bonjour Tristesse  för en tid sen och blev inspirerad att läsa den. Handlingen är som boken, kort. Den unga tjejen Cécile är berättaren, hon bor med sin far över sommaren på den franska rivieran.  Hon och hennes pappa lever i någonslags symbios och harmoni tills pappan träffar den 40 åriga Anne som vill gifta sig med honom. Anne in-nästlar sig i familjen och en viss typ av rivalitet, som bara flickor och kvinnor känner till uppstår. Genom alla tider, i alla sagor (och disney filmer) är styvmodern en ond karaktär, men till omvärlden och den stackars mannen är hon älskvärd.  Det finns ett stort korn av sanning i det. När jag som ung flicka, nästan tonåring, introducerades...

  T here are many ways of going, dying is one of them. Kweku Sai, father of four decides to leave his family. The book opens with his death, he dies alone in a house he built in Ghana, in the midst of a bed of flowers that reminded him of his first wife (Folasáde), just like on the cover of the Finnish translation that I read. He dies of a broken heart, or in medical terms, a heart attack. Finally feeling and gripped of the past catching up with him, the realization of having left his love and his children 16 years ago and hence having become estranged from them. Taye Selasi's debut novel was published in 2013, the same year when I chose to settle down with a Ghanian man who later much like Kweku Sai, decided to leave. Until I read this novel, I have to admit, I was unaware and innocent to knowing that an African father leaving his children and spouse is an archetype: in other words a typical example. His four children Olu, Taiwo, Kehinde and Sadie grew up and became successful in ...

S o, my Victober read has turned into something else. It's turned into a pile of possibilities including, T.S. Eliot Wasteland , Bonjour Tristesse, Mice and Men, Ghana Must Go and Purple Hibiscus by my favorite African feminist Chimanda Ngozi Adichie. I also have two Victorian novels North and South by Gaskell and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë also waiting and while I'm trying to muster the enthusiasm to Victorian literature I've had to make a SOS dive into African literature for personal reasons.  I couldn't put away Chimanda's debut novel once I started. It's about Eugene, a hyper Catholic philanthropist who is also a wife beater. The storyteller is the adolescent Kambili who skillfully narrates the horrible story of her family without really understanding how wrong her father is. Eugene subtly calls his wife to their bedroom where he beats her unconscious to the point of blood gushing, the wife loses two unborn children like this. I know of an ol...

I had a cat once, called Cleopatra, she was grey and white, she had a sister, all black, named Bathsheba. Whom you see in this picture above, is an image like an afterthought, of the human Cleopatra, by John William Waterhouse (1888). One could have presumed that my black cat for it's sinister allusions to female malice should have been the one named Cleopatra, whereas the grey one for it's mellow coloring could have been the namesake of King David's wife, or actually the wife he stole from Uriah, the man he first killed so he could get her, because Bathsheba was like a sheep, like wolves prey (2 Samuel chapter 11). C.S. Lewis, in his book The Discarded Image - lectures on the medieval mind was right in saying that Western culture builds on the antiquity and the Bible. The archetypes and female characters echo way back and still exist in our time. In the month of October a multitude of literary fans, book lovers and readers of mainly Western literature, gather in internet ...

I was supposed to read The Great Gatsby, inspired by this pod  P3 Klassikern, The Great Gatsby  but I just couldn't muster the strength for this weekend was hectic and I feel like I might be getting a sore throat. Anyway, I really wanted to gaze on the wonderful untouched land of the American Pilgrims just as the narrator envisions in Gatsby but that will have to be another time. Instead I read a book in swedish  Varför har inte fler bibliotekarier läderbyxor?  Yes, this book deserves a review. It is a collection of chronicles, small texts, written by Christer Hermansson, author and librarian. The book is entertaining, even phenomenal, it manages in its measly 150 pages to capture questions such as: What does it mean to be a man in the profession of librarian in Sweden today, a very female-dominated profession where you generally are not seen or heard. What is the role of men in the library and what is the role of the library today? He was referring to another book w...