Books I RED

Ever since Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm I've been longing to go back to the Caribbean islands then there was Jean Rhys with Wide Sargasso Sea , yet another fictive island like Atwood's and now via listening Malou interviewing Karolina Ramqvist on Swedish television I was sure, that I just had to read Ramqvists debut novel More Fire. Despite of the English title book is written in Swedish with a hint of Jamaican Patois here and there. The story is marketed as "a story of violence, sex and love on the verge of the first and third world." It is understood that it's Karolina herself who is the reporter that ventured out to the island of Jamaica, fell in love with a Jamaican man named Ganzie and ended up in an abusive relationship with him. Like in Bodily Harm  the imminent threat of violence from any man close enough overshadows the life of the main character.  I don't believe that Karolina herself is the protagonist even if the style of writing first leads y...

Reading is one way to heal fiction gives perspective and broadens your views. At the same time you get more empathy for others and other perspectives as well as deepened sense for the oneness of humanity, as well as humility before God, realizing how small (wo)man is and how great God is. It's possible to travel trough time on the pages of a book and through them learn about people who become so close you look twice at the reflection in the mirror when you see yourself, in essence you learn about yourself too. Yet reading is a struggle in the face of a screen.  Since Dr. Mukwege (who's work was by the way non-fiction) I've read another few non-fiction books, one on single motherhood or rather alone by choice parenting and about outdoors swimming and about pirates and slaves in the Mediterranean area prior to the colonial era, a book by Dick Harrison, a Swedish historian who makes books for people who don't have patience to read long books. You got it, I've been tryi...

Dr. Denis Mukwege won the Nobel Peace Price in 2018 for his work globally in restoring women and children who've suffered from sexual violence and rape, he is the founder of the Panzi hospital in Congo. This book Kvinnors Styrka   or as the title is in English The Power of Women is a read that I recommend for every man and woman, it's a global issue. In the book he retells the story of his life and career in helping women but he retells the story of his life in the most selfless way, with the activist agenda to live a Christlike life helping women and children.  There is so much to say about this book, it's brilliant and wise like the writer Dr. Denis Mukwege, I have great respect for him and admire him not only for his work now, but for the many points he brings forth in this book, I find it best to list them here: 1. The crisis in Kongo since colonialism has solely been one of a global tug o war and mainly western countries looting for minerals and other natural resourc...

When I was a girl, merely fifteen I used to lie in the cabin below deck in my fathers boat and read Harlequin novels and feel the mysterious tingle as I read. I still remember the descriptions of the red dress and Mattheo, the dark handsome Italian. I remember how the cheap harlequin novels made me feel. It was clear to me that I would marry a man from some exotic place, a dark handsome stranger because I myself was strange, the unpopular wallflower, a dahlia sprung up from frozen Nordic land.  The idea of post-modern love was that love like our meals where fast and soon one should be hungry again and preferably live in perpetual hunger with one man, the right man. In early 2000's the discourse on multiculturalism in marriages was beginning to take form in conversations among women in Finland. Katja Keisala, was among the scientist interested in this theme questioning what is so special in multicultural marriages, what distinguishes them? To her disappointment the quest produced li...

What is Wide Sargasso Sea about? - It's about many things but the one topic that arises is this: A traumatized woman (Antoinette) is brought together with a vain hard hearted man (Mr. Rochester) and the woman will be brought low and the man will triumph through it, by force and power, breaking her down. In M. Atwood's novel Bodily Harm, Atwood begins with this quote:  "A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast a woman's presence...defines what can and cannot be done to her." - John Berger, Ways of seeing. In this sense the anti-hero of this book, Antoinette is a woman who has her guards down.  I'm reminded of Chimanda Ngozi Adichie's little speech  Why we should all be feminists and she brilliantly points out that women are always in all places (since the Empire at least) been ushered to be pleasing onto men, flexible and quiet. A quiet woman is considered acceptable and ladylike. Her voice is expected to be ...

I know that I'm probably writing for no one but I will persist in my seemingly futile pursuit because I'm writing for me, for fun and for the purpose of personal development as a reader.  My reviews are more of the analytic kind, they're not predominantly viewing the plot but the meaning of the book, the tale and it's impact on me. I'm also interested in themes and topic which arise both from the text and from me.  Concerning reading habits, I've noticed that Goodreads does spur on my reading but also puts some pressure on reading books, reading Les Mis was a sacrifice of time in relation to the online reading challenge for this year which counts only numbers of books read and not the length of the novel.  

Frankenstein, the story of creator versus created. Mary Shelley as a young almost teenage female writer explores the agony of being with the deep voice of experience. The narrator is male and for most part Victor Frankenstein, a mentally fragile scientist who succeeds in creating life out of death. A monster becomes alive by his doing and creation, a begin that escapes and is shunned by the world. The creature is endowed with all the emotional and feeling capacities of a human being but is ugly since he is clothed in decayed human flesh as he is fashioned out of materials from the morgue.    What is Mary Shelley trying to say? - Often the story has a tale of it's own and I can't really say that I come to grips of what it is. I didn't really enjoy this novel partly because the language wasn't consistent, at times it was very modern and at times very old and hard to decipher. Also, Mary didn't stay consistent with the plot and narration but those were minor flaws. I d...