Books I RED

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 They've both been hurt and withdrawn in their own ways, Wentworth into his hurt and pride, and Anne into the oblivion of acting a wallflower in her sister's home at Uppercross and the events that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...