Books I RED

 It's been a year, and now it's another. Let's see how far I can go, literally speaking. Helsinki library has released its yearly reading challenge, and I will partake. Besides being home with Baby, I will read and enjoy the luxury of the Nordic welfare state and my rights as a 21th century woman and mother, since parental leave can be up to one year. How perfect then, that I won't be returning to work anytime soon, so I can do what I love: 1. Mothering 2. Read.  Dear imaginary reader, my life is not perfect. Don't be jealous, my friend. I know you won't.  Because I now own over two thousand books, most of which are Western classics, orthodox literature, such as the Filokalia series and Synaksarion, together with a plethora of wonderful second-hand finds in both fact and fiction, my need to visit the local library has significantly decreased, year by year. It's not that I don't enjoy the library, quite the contrary, I love it. It's one of my favorite...

Well, dear reader, it's been forever since I last made known my adventures in the land of literature. I've given some thought to the significance of literature in general. Isn't it almost as a reflection of our real world, the personhood of a book, almost a soul, just like we see things personally, so every book speaks as a person of its own, except its body is made of thin leaves with a glued spine. To me, the physical book and storytelling are the most compelling elements of literature and that's why I read fiction.  Now, since the beginning of this year I've not been an active reader because I fell in love, got married, and expanded my territory, venturing forward with a bigger clan and with my beloved by my side. Life is great. I thank God.  In April, I took up Camus novel The Plague,  but two-thirds into the book, I had to DNF it, as my book-people say, did not finish. Then I took on Steinbeck's magnum opus, East of Eden,  and finished just in time for my s...

Goodreads says that I'm ten books behind the schedule. I was supposed to read 53 books and I read 43 this year, but I'm satisfied. Let's call it a wrap people! And what did I do with my time the past months. I wrote, and wrote, and edited (with the help of my best friend) and wrote again.  Yes, I wrote a book.  So, I think the past three months have been well spent. Since Hang Kang, I've managed just to read a collection of poems by Morgan Parker, titled There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce and I liked it a great deal. For example, from the poem  Hottentot  Venus and All they want is my money my pussy and my blood was brilliant. I like her style.  I'm quite convinced that I won't be able to finish a novel before the year ends but who knows, in any case I want to nominate the book of the year for all my imaginary blog readers. The winner for 2024 will be: Karolina Ramqvist, with More Fire  I re-listened to a clip where she talks about The White City ...

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...

  A beautiful clip about Persuasion "You were single" Captain Wentworth said to Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, a modern novel published in year 1818.  Persuasion  is written by a middle aged Austen, prior to her death, published posthumously with one of her first works  Northanger Abbey. The story is about two lovers who are divided by the torrents of life. Anne is persuaded to give up her lover Wentworth, he sets out to sea and they are apart for seven years. The big question that persists through the novel is: Who is being persuaded and how?  At first evidently Anne is persuaded to terminate the engagement but her heart is ever engaged to Wentworth. The story begins with a woman who has loved and lost evolving then into a novel about adult love. They've both been hurt and withdrawn in their own ways, Wentworth into his hurt and pride, and Anne into the oblivion of acting a wallflower in her sister's home at Uppercross and the events that take pla...

  "I love you, most ardently" says Sir Fitzwilliam Darcy upon his first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, the modern woman no older than one and twenty. Rosamund Pike who plays her sister Jane in the 2005 movie Pride & Prejudice narrated the book on Audible. I listened at 1,2 speed reading along, at a 20% faster pace than normally, enjoying every minute of this entirely splendid work, this all time classic of Western Literature, the core, it's beating heart, the greatest love story of all time unlocked for me the mystery of all others to Jane Austen's work. I set out to read this book to see if truly it is the great love story everyone says it is, and secondly to understand the frenzy nay, cult, that has been hence inspired. Women all over the world, on YouTube, Facebook and internet forums, having the hots for a fictional man, why is Mr. Darcy so great?  Until now I've struggled with Jane Austen's books, it took me months to finish Mansfield Park and a long ...

Dickens and Balzac have been clumped together for more than just humoristic purposes. Well versed literary critics agree that Honoré is for the French what Charles was for the English. They both describe an interesting shift in time, Balzac the decline of monarchy in France and Dickens the Victorian England and London in particular, the buzzing city life versus the life in the country. What thrilled me to read this book in particular was the foreword that described Honorés life as a struggling writer, always poor, always invested totally in his work. To value art above the struggles of survival is an art in itself.   Balzac's story Eugénie Grandet is about a young girl who lives in the village of Saumur with her mother and father. The father is a shrewd money loving uncivilized farmer who tactically expands his wealth sacrificing his relationship to his daughter and wife as he does so. One day, when the beautiful Eugénie is already come of age, they receive a visitor,  ol...

 Once upon a time, a young woman named Lada chose to read The Handmaidstale. She bought the book from the Bookdepositry, it was a Penguin VINTAGE paperback. As she read she made miniscule notes and underlined parts of M. Atwood's well known story. I bought the book at an online antiquarian shop just for the marginalia, because of course I already have a hardback copy, also a vintage edition with read gilded edges.  Red, the color of sisterhood. Red, because we all bleed. Red because life and birth. Red, the color of love. In Margaret Atwood's dystopia the very segregated society of Gilead is, a sort of hyper republican, militant version of a fundamentalist Abrahamitic dictatorship. I believe the novels popularity has persisted since the 1980's when it first came out. The Vintage edition that I held in my hand was printed in 2010. The series by HBO came out in 2017. I first watched the series back in 2018 or 2019, I'm not sure precisely but I didn't come to know the ...

I ordered the Legami Book Lovers calendar 2024 in the beginning of the year. I hadn't read any of the monthly books but I kept my eye on Agatha Christies A Caribbean Mystery at my local library. I didn't think of reserving it as it was always just there, waiting to be read. August came around and Miss Marple was on the list, ACarribean Mystery was on the list. When I went to borrow the book it was borrowed so I made a reservation. Yesterday i finished the book. It was an easy yet complex read, it was my first Agatha Christie.  I'm going to share some quotes from it and discuss it now: "The place looked like an earthly paradise. With its sunshine, its sea, its coral reef, its music, its dancing, it seemed a Garden of Eden. But even in the Garden of Eden, there had been a shadow of the Serpent- Bad things - how hateful to hear those words." (p.76) That's essentially the thrill of the Caribbeans I think, the lure of the exotic palm trees and tropical heat. A plac...

My obsession with the Caribbeans continues. I've been both in a reading and writing slump, confessing to you, hidden and unknown reader, how in my stressed and melancholy state I result to the buying of more books and frequenting the public library instead of resting in the abundance of my own.  There in the city library, by the statue of a young maiden, I found both Jean Rhys biography and that of Safiya Sinclair, how strange! This white creole woman and and a young black one, with clearly white ancestors (a great grandmother i suppose) and I a lazy reader hanging like a broken jungle bridge between them.  After Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy I was yearning to know more about the women from the Caribbeans hence it felt like destiny when Safiya's biography gravitated into my hand as if of some magical force. As you might remember from my last post I had some ideas about white western women and black Caribbean women being different because of privileges. Since my last update I'v...