GingerbreadMan's 11 in 11 - 2nd thread

Like most everybody else here, I've already been pondering this for several months... I'm going for a straight stepladder challenge, for 66 books, which should be doable. And just for the heck of it, I'll toss a 11 book bonus category in, if I have time left by the end of the year. 77 books would be the most I've read in many years. June 7th ETA: And it doesn't seem likely it's going to happen this year either...

I'm scrapping most of my categories from this year for shiny new ones. And I'm going for a minimalist approach to naming them this year:

1. Bio (A category of books I very rarely touch)
2. Cheloveks (Contemporary Russian novels)
3. Facts (My feeble little non-fiction category)
4. Cliffhangers (I have the good sense to leave some room for sequels this year. We learn.)
5. Stiffs (Crime and mystery, another genre I seldom visit)
6. Treadmill (Work-related reading; plays, theatre and research)
7. Neighbourhoods (Books set in different European countries, ticking some boxes for the Europe Endless challenge)
8. Doggy-bag (Recommendations and leftovers from 2010's challenge)
9. Sprinkles (Short stories)
10. Fringes (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror...or all of the above)
11. Spilikin (Fiction that doesn't fit elsewhere)

Bonus category: Kökkenmödding (Graphic novels, books booted from the category candidate lists for shinier things, more series continuation)

1. Bio:
1.

Candidate:
Silvermasken by Peter Englund

2. Cheloveks: (contemporary russian novels) Category completed!
1. Is (Ice) by Vladimir Sorokin, finished february 3rd, ****, #84
2. Militärmusik by Vladimir Kaminer, finished may 16th, ****, #193

3. Facts: (non-fiction) Category completed!
1. Lasermannen by Gellert Tamas, finished august 7th, ****, #2:110
2. Vodou by Jaques Hinard (ed.), finished august 24th, ***, #2:141
3. Among the thugs by Bill Buford, finished november 30th, ****, #2:284

4. Cliffhangers: (sequels) Category completed!
1. Anna Svärd by Selma Lagerlöf, finished february 21st, ***½, #101
2. Changeless by Gail Carriger, finished may 31st, **, #202
3. Vid hägerns skarpa skri (The harsh cry of the heron) by Lian Hearn, finished november 3rd, ***, #2:234
4. Blameless by Gail Carriger. finished december 16th, ***½, #2:294

5. Stiffs: (crime and mystery)
1. Amberville by Tim Davys, finished jan 4th, ***, #49
2. God natt, min älskade (Good night, my darling) by Inger Frimansson, finished april 10th, ****, #147
3. Katten som inte dog by Inger Frimansson, finished august 28th, ***½, #2:144
4.
5.

Candidates:
Svek (Betrayal) by Karin Alvtegen
The sweetness at the bottom of the pie by Alan Bradley

6. Treadmill: (Work-related: plays, theatre and research) Category completed!
1. Dödsdansen (Dance of death) by August Strindberg, finished march 31st, ***, #115
2. Fucking Sverige by Göran Greider, finished april 30th, ***½, #178
3. Landet utanför by Kristina Mattsson, finished may 20th, ****, #197
4. Hallonbåtsflyktingen by Miika Nousiainen, finished may 23rd, ***,#197
5. Peter Pan och Wendy by J.M Barrie (re-read), finished august 25th, ***½, #2:142
6. Fadren, Fröken Julie, Fordringsägare (The father, Miss Julie, Creditors) by August Strindberg (re-read), finished september 11th, ***½, #2:156

7. Neighbourhoods: (Books set in different European contries)
1. Tuktans ljuva år (Sweet days of discipline) by Fleur Jeaggy, finished january 6th, **½, #55
2. Kallt land by Jáchym Topol, finished january 18th, ****, #72
3. Boken om kyrkogården (Samko Tale's cemetery book) by Daniela Kapitanova, finished june 5th, ****, #211
4. Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness, finished july 2nd, ****, #2:56
5. För Gud och Ulster (Resurrection Man) by Eoinn McNamee, finished october 20th, ***½, #2:227
6. Sju bröder (Seven brothers) by Aleksis Kivi (Finland), finished december 25th, ****½, #2:297
7.

8. Doggy-bag: (Recommendations and leftovers from my 1010 challenge)
1. Shades of grey by Jasper Fforde, finished january 28th, ***½, #80
2. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, finished april 17th, ****, #154
3. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, finished july 26th, ****½, #2:66
4. Big machine by Victor LaValle. finished august 5th, ***½, #2:109
5. Howl's moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones, finished october 8th, ***, #2:214
6.
7.
8.

Candidates:
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe
Living next door to the god of love by Justina Robson
Regnspiran by Sara Lidman

9. Sprinkles: (Short story collections)
1. The lottery: and other stories by Shirley Jackson, finished jan 15th, *****, #63
2. Exhibitionism by Toby Litt, finished february 12th, ***½, #94
3. The drowned life by Jeffrey Ford, finished june 13th, ****½, #2:25
4. S:t Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves by Karen Russell, finished july 31st, ****, #2:76
5. Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson, finished september 5th, ***, #2:145
6. 8% av ingenting (The Nimrod flipout) by Etgar Keret, finished october 1st, ****½, #2:185
7. Fine just the way it is by E. Annie Proulx, finished december 8th, ****, #2:289
8. Nattens lekar (Games of the night) by Stig Dagerman, finished december 30th, ****, #2:307
9.

10. Fringes: (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror...or all of the above)
1. The last wish by Andrzej Sapkowski, finished march 6th, ***½, #103
2. Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay, finished march 22nd, ****, #111
3. Lord of emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay, finished april 6th, ****½, #139
4. Cirkeln by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren, finished april 26th, *****, #170
5. Kall feber by Jerker Virdborg, finished june 18th, ****½, #2:37
6. Kraken by China Miéville, finished august 21st, *****, #2:126
7. The zap gun by Philip K. Dick, finished october 4th, ***, 2#191
8. Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente, finished november 20th, ****½, #2:254
9. Kallocain by Karin Boye, finished november 25th, ****, #2:262
10.

Candidates:

Vellum by Hal Duncan

11. Spilikin: (Everything that doesn't fit elsewhere)
1. Reglerna by Sara Mannheimer, finished march 7th, ****, #104
2. Wide open by Nicola Barker, finished may 14th, **, #188
3. Världens mått (Measuring the world) by Daniel Kehlmann, finished june 17th, ****, #2:34
4. Brev ur rockärmen by Daniil Charms, finished august 22nd, ***, #2:138
5. Yarden by Kristian Lundberg, finished september 7th, *****, #2:148
6. Svindlande höjder (Wuthering heights) by Emily Brontë (re-read), finished september 28th, ****, #2:179
7. Livläkarens besök (The royal physician's visit) by P.O. Enquist, finished october 13th, ****½, #2:220
8. Tiger by Mian Lodalen, finished november 4th, ***½, #2: 236
9. Y, the last man 2: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, finished november 25th, ***, #2:262
10. Misantropen (The Misanthrope) by Moliére, finished december 28th, ***½, #2:306
11.

Candidates:
Den larmande hopens dal by Erik Andersson
Spioner (Spies) by Marcel Beyer
Girl imagined by chance by Lance Olsen
If on a winter's night a traveller by Italo Calvino (re-read)
Den lille vännen (The little friend) by Donna Tartt
Vargen: den jagade jägaren by Henrik Ekman

Bonus category: Kökkenmödding - Category completed!

1. Unga Norrlänningar by Mats Jonsson (Re-read), finished july 1st, **½, #2:56
2. Mera om oss barn i Bullerbyn by Astrid Lindgren (Re-read) finished july 9th, ***½,#2:56
3. Vi håller på med en viktig grej by Sara Hansson, finished july 18th, ****, #2:67
4. Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn by Astrid Lindgren (re-read), finished july 22nd, ***½, #2:67
5. Bara roligt i Bullerbyn by Astrid Lindgren (re-read), finished july 28th, ***½, #2:75
6. Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen by Tove Jansson (re-read), finished july 30th, ***, #2:75
7. Vems lilla mössa flyger by Barbro Lindgren, finished august 19th, ****, #2:124
8. Essex County volume 1: Tales from the farm by Jeff Lemire, finished october 14th, ***½, #2:221
9. The Dark Age 1: Brothers and other strangers by Busiek, Anderson and Ross, finished october 21st, ****, #2:227
10. Brat pack by Rick Veitch, finished october 28th, ***, #2:230
11. Kabuki: Circle of blood by David Mack, finished november 6th, *½, #2:236
12. Y, the last man 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, finished november 22nd, ***½, #2:262

Haha, I like your message #12! The term "force majeure" really doesn't get used enough.

Starred, and looking forward to another dangerous great thread!

I've seen other people do this - why the new thread? Because the other ones get long and unruly, or some other reason?

12/13 ha yes and I think there should always be a space for book wickedness too :)

Good to see you here :)

Eva, for people who have pics on their threads, it seems to be to keep loading time down. Me, I'm just trying to save on scrolling...

Speaking of Force Majeure: Not much reading happening since the flooding of our basement on monday. About 10 cm of drain water stood in it for most of the evening, and we're still trying to clear the mess. Our space needs to be cleared by tomorrow to be dry when the desinfection crew comes. With a pregnant wife, guess who's dragging our stuff up four stairs to the flat?

I'm sad to report to my fellow LT:ers some thirty books were destroyed. But books stored in the basement don't tend to be all that hot anyway. Our lost photo albums, letters, early playwrighting efforts and flea's beloved childhood collection of letter papers were much harder to deal with...

Still, it could have been much much worse.

Getting caught up on threads and have now located you new one Anders. Losing family mementos and items you had stored for keeping must be hard to take. Can any of it be salvaged?

Ugh, that's heartbreaking when family items are ruined beyond saving. This might sound overly dramatic, but I'm sorry for your loss! And, looking on the bright side of things - you got rid of 30 books! That's more than I can say I've gotten rid of lately, though I know your thinning wasn't your choice. Here's hoping that it was really boring stuff like old maths textbooks. And having had water (and sewage - gross) in my basement recently, I feel your pain. At least you've got a disinfection crew coming to do the "dirty work" instead of doing it yourself!

Hope your weekend gets better!

Anders, so sorry to hear about the flooding. Ruined books are terrible, but I agree with the above posters that personal items must be far harder to lose. Hope it all gets cleaned and disinfected soon.

Oh no, that's horrible! Books I love, but thanks to teh interwebs, they could probably all be replaced, but you can't shop for personal memories online. So sorry to hear! I'm in the middle of a scanning project of old photos, letters and such and you reminded me that I really need to get a move on with that. Hugs to you and Flea!

And, yes, I was just at a bookstore, on my phone, trying to find a book someone mentioned on my thread and got really frustrated with scrolling, so I think once June is done, I'll do a new thread for myself as well - halftime! :)

It's never an easy thing to lose some treasured memories and keepsakes. Good luck with the clean-up.

Ah that's awful I would hate to loose my keepsakes.. 21 good idea to scan them in I must start doing that.

So sorry to hear about the basement flood! I lost almost all of my childhood and college papers and many momentos (as well as replaceable items) in a sewage flood in my parents' basement a couple of years after I graduated. Unfortunately, when they've had that kind of bath, there's really no way to save them.

Thank you all for your greetings and support! We have had a few painful incidents of chucking treasures in the dumpster outside, but a lot could be saved. Those pics will never look the same - bubbly and bulgy - but they are still there. Really the worst for me boiled down to all my papers from Drama college, including all the scenes I wrote there, and my collection of Swedish avant garde comics from the eighties. Flea laments those letter papers...

24. The drowned life by Jeffrey Ford
Category 9. Sprinkles, 308 pages.

I read and loved The Well-built City trilogy on my early explorations of New Weird. This collection of short stories is my first meeting with Jeffrey Ford’s writing outside the world of Cley the physiognomist, and I was not disappointed. This book has everything I love about literature: gently (or blatantly) tilted reality, enigmas, eeire ambience, mind-boggling weirdness and endings that kind of makes sense without really answering anything. Many goose-bump incidents here. Most of these stories are very good, a few are excellent. None are bad. Among my favorites are the one about the annual death berry fest, where a few chosen people in a small town get the chance to talk to their dead relatives, the surreal dreamlike kaleidoscope about the astronaut and his alien lover, and the merely page long snap shot of the mother and her severely disabled daughter in the writing class.

Highly recommended if your enjoy the short stories of Kelly Link, Margo Lanagan or China Miéville. But Ford is one of a kind. I put down the book knowing I need to read everything by this author. Eve-ry-thing. 4 ½ stars!

I read The Shadow Year sometime in 2008 and I liked it a lot, so I'm not sure why I never got around to reading more - I think I'll add The Physiognomy to the wishlist.

Haven't read that one yet! But from this collection it seems Ford is as good with warping childhood tales set inm Jersey as he is creating strange worlds like Well-built City.

I think I'll have to add Jeffrey Ford to the authors to check out list.

Sorry to hear of the water damage. My father-in-law once had a flooded basement during a hurricane and lost the comic books from his childhood. He's still bitter about it to this day. Meanwhile, my husband won't store his collection any less than four feet off the ground.

>26 GingerbreadMan: tilted reality, enigmas, eeire ambience, mind-boggling weirdness ...
Have you read any short stories by James Patrick Kelly? My favorites are from Think Like a Dinosaur and Strange but not a Stranger.

Haven't even heard the name before. Thank you for the tip!

I really like Jeffrey Ford's world building and plot but I never really enjoy his characters, I always come away feeling there was something missing. I can't quite pin it down.. but they feel a bit clinical, the complete opposite of his worlds! Mind you I have only read The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque and The Physiognomy

Sorry to hear about the flood, sounds awful

I've been meaning to read more Ford but have too many short story books on the shelves so it may be some tome before I get to that one!

Also sorry to hear about your basement flood - awful to lose precious memories, I must do more scanning. I'm adding Jeffrey Ford to my list of writers I need to discover, I think i'll start with The Drowned Life.

@32 You're right that his main charcters sometimes feel a little outline-y. But I've always seen that a part of the dreamlike ambience. And Cley the physiognomist does go through some interesting development in the two following books in the trilogy. Check them out!

33 Thank you Pete! One good thing about books on the TBR is that hey don't tend to go anywhere :)

@ 34 Starting with a collection of short stories is often a smart policy. They are often good "sample menus", so to speak.

25. Världens mått (Measuring the world) by Daniel Kehlmann
Category 10. Spilikin, 250 pages.

In 1828, the two greatest scientists in Germany meet in Berlin. Humboldt has spent a life travelling the jungles, conducting electrical experiments on himself, getting lowered into volcanoes and sampling curare. Gauss has only ever reluctantly left his home town, did his most groundbreaking mathematical work at age twenty and has since mostly worked in the “rather bland” field of astronomy. Now they are both aged and a more than a little crazy, and the meeting is not exactly a match made in heaven.

Kehlmann’s book has been marketed as being funny and irreverent. And it is. But it’s also gentle and full of bittersweet melancholy. The people around the larger-than-life geniuses are tenderly drawn, and for example the portrait of Bonpland - who spends a lifetime following Humboldt’s crazy exploits without really knowing why, and without ever getting any credit – lingers. As does Gauss’ children, eager to try and please a father who finds them irritatingly stupid. And the account of the aging Humboldt’s final journey to Asia is a heartbreaking image of fading abilities and purpose lost.

There’s lots to giggle about here also, of course. And learn! Kehlmann draws a fascinating, drastic portrait of a time when amazing progress was made in the fields of natural science. And if it only half of these tall tales are even remotely true, the two main characters were some pretty interesting people indeed. 4 stars!

Sorry to hear about the flooded basement. How sad to lose those mementos.

Adding Measuring the World to the wishlist. You're a great source of European fiction. There are so many translated European books that we might never hear about, if not for LT.

26. Kall feber by Jerker Virdborg
Category 10. Fringes, 251 pages.

Karin Ryd is a brilliant hematologist. At just a few years over thirty, she’s already renowned enough to get a coveted position to work with the best in her field in the research city way up in the northern mountains. This is a huge joint venture between government and private research giants, an isolated place but fully equipped for the residents’ professional and personal life. Many spend a lifetime here.

Karin’s enthusiasm wanes quickly though. The hierarchy of the city doesn’t sit well with her, she feels she doesn’t get the prerequisits her research calls for, and pretty soon her professional jealousy and frustration is making her step over boundaries. Which in turn reveals strange and scary things going on behind the walls of the huge complex. There are trashed, messy, abandoned labs below ground. A group of children are hiding out in a closet in the freezer ward, planning a desperate prank. And there’s a strange disease spreading, whose only symptom is it lowers your body temperature. A kind of cold fever, which nobody in authority will admit even exists.

The beginning of this dystopian page turner, set in a near future, has all the qualities that make Virdborg’s books so eerie. A sparse, clinical, very cold style, and a sense of something being just...wrong, even from the start. There’s something chilling about Karin’s walks through the endless, silent corridors, about the small talk by the coffee machine and about the detatched, decadent night life in the night club district.

Karin is an interesting main character for Virdborg though. Not the numb, confused, silent person he usually employs, but a person who is both petty, arrogant, vain and jealous. And when she begins to try and get to the bottom of what’s going on, the style of the book also changes. It becomes frantic, emotional, somewhat irrational, even feverish. This glissando of styles is very nicely pulled off, and it’s great to see Virdborg experimenting a little.

As a composition, Kall feber is almost perfect. Virdborg gives as little information as he possibly can, and still juggles a plot, a character development and several side plots. It’s not the total enigma that some of his other works are, but still leaves the reader with more questions than answers. I wish he would have dared to skip the “baddie sharing information” part of the ending, but apart from that, this is one of Virdborg’s best works yet. If you like scary, dystopian, puzzling read that leave you with a slight unease, then this is for you. (But not in english, I'm afraid...) 4 ½ stars.

(This is my 150th review on LT. Woohoo!)

->37 GingerbreadMan:

Probably too creepy for me. Definitely congrats on making 150, though!! :)

@ 36 Thank you Pamela! Today I lugged all the stuff back down into the basement. But now with sturdy plastic boxes in the bottom. This will not happen again.

On thursday my vacation is starting, and I'm ready to go into brick mode! I'm planning to read 2666, Wuthering heights, Big Machine and Salka Valka for my holidays this year. Starting the latter tonight.

@37 You said that the last time I posted a review for a book by Virdborg too :)

Did I really? That seals the deal, then. No Virdborg for me! :)

ETA: Oh yeah, it was Mannen på Trinisla, right? Thanks, but no thanks! As always, very thankful for people who remove books from my "potential reads" list. :)

Another one where we've got to wait and hope for a translation.

Can you stop reading exciting sounding books please my wish list is groaning under the pressure!

And congrats too on your 150th review, it's on the horizon for me and I was just thinking what other LT:ers do with their reviews? Me it's just LT and thats it.

Oh and enjoy your holiday and Big Machine!

@43 Well look who's talking! Big Machine is just one blatant example of a book on my shelf you're directly responsible for.

I just post on LT too. But I'm saving all reviews in a big ole word-document too, in case I might like to do something with them sometime.

That's a good idea. I don't really want to stick them on Amazon and whilst I keep toying with the idea of a blog I don't think I would put the effort in!

Great review of Kall Feber, it sounds like a great book. Just went on the wishlist thank you!

Enjoy your holiday reading, Salka Valka and 2666 are both on my 'one day' list and now I'll have to find out about Big Machine.

@46 No english translations of Virdborg's books happening that I know of, but it's well worth keeping a look out. All of them are available in German, if that's at all helpful to you :)

@47 Thank you! Will spend my fist two weeks in our beloved little cottage by a brook in the forest, with about a zillion great little lakes for swimming nearby. Expect to do a fair bit of reading - but not that much internetting. The signal there is pretty weak...

Enjoy your vacation Anders. Looking forward to seeing the reviews of your holiday reading when you are back!

I'm guessing that when you get back we'll be away so look forward to comparing holiday reading later

48: I gathered that when I went to look. Thanks for the confirmation. :)

Got a whopping 17 kBit/s average on my mobile internet here in the middle of the forest. It's like a zen exercise watching a page slooooooowly load. Am reading some, though. Will post reviews and catch up on threads in a week or so. Hope you're all having a good summer!

Go back to your vacation. The internet will still be there when you get back*.

*Unless the zombie apocalypse occurs when predicted.

Having not so bad a winter here, but your summer sounds a lot better.

Having a super-hot 3-day weekend, so, yes, very good! Luckily got an ocean breeze going, otherwise I would have been very envious of your middle-of-the-forest stay, 17 kBit/s or not! :)

Touching home for a few days, doing some laundry and repacking, before heading west to our families for a little over a week. As usual, not holiday reading quite as much as I hoped for. And since I'm currently training my wrists with 2666 (which is very good so far, 1/3 in) it kind of looks less than it is too. Anyway:

Kökkenmödding: Unga Norrlänningar by Mats Jonsson, 93 pages.

My whole collection of Galago Magazine and classic Swedish comic albums from the 80ies and 90ies were destroyed in the basement flood, so when I found Jonsson's debut book (which I haven't owned before but read several times) for two kronor at a library sale, it was pretty given I'd pick it up.

Unfortunately it isn't as good as I remember it. It's fairly clumsy both in drawing and storytelling, and even if I can relate to Jonsson's "nice guy" dilemmas his description of girls are more than a little stale. Jonsson is an important pioneer in the graphic autobiography genre, but I much prefer his later work. 2 ½ stars.

27. Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness
Category 7. Neighborhoods, 427 pages.

Everybody was raving about Laxness over at the European Endless challenge last year, and I was lucky enough to have a book of his on my TBR mound. Not having read Laxness at all, I went into Salka Valka without really knowing what to expect – but with pretty high expectations from all the praise. And I must say Laxness was a pleasant acquaintance to make. I especially enjoyed his style – raw, real, unpolished, but with a streak of true poetry in the way he describes people and settings. It’s not pretty , but it feels true.

The little girl Salka Valka and her mother Sigurlina end up in a small fishing community on the Icelandic east coast, since her their money wasn’t enough to take them all the way to Reykjavik. Here everything is ruled by the merchant Bogesen, a fairly benign despot perhaps, but still one who dictates the people’s lives. It’s a community of very slender means, where enough to eat is by no means a certainty and it’s a tough existence for Salka and her mum trying to find work and shelter here. For Sigurlina, the newly established Salvation Army becomes a haven, but outside of the church she mixes with the entirely wrong people: chiefly the charming rapist Steinthor, who also has a uncanny eye for her young daughter. Young Salka finds her strength in working and earning her own money , and from the school sessions with the strange young orphan Arnald.

The book follows Salka in her growing up, but is also a story about changing times. It tells of the rise of socialism (through Arnald, who returns as an agitator) changing the rules in this small community, challenging Bogesen’s power. It’s great how Laxness is letting the political movements among the working people mirror the twists and turns of the love between Salka and Arnald. People go back and forth here, chicken out, change opinion, switch sides or get bought. It’s a pretty intense ride on a very small scale. In the end though, there are a few too many turns of more or less the same, and by the last hundred pages I had kind of lost interest just a little bit. But I’ll surely check out more by Laxness, and recommend this to lovers of the epic realism for instance Steinbeck and Harper Lee. 4 stars.

Kökkenmödding:Mera om oss barn i Bullerbyn by Astrid Lindgren, 135 pages.

I’m the father of a very early reader, fairly fluent at three and a half years, and for this summer’s trip to the country we decided to try and keep the bulk of picture books down by trying a chapter book for slightly older children to read out loud. He loved it, and we’ve had a great time snuggling up by the fire as dusk sets outside to read a chapter or two of Astrid Lindgen.

The books about Noisy Village were my favorites when I was a child, although it’s hard to understand why – on the surface at least. Not full of gently anarchy like Pippi, or the fantasy of Ronja or the Brothers Lionheart, these books tell mainly of the games and everyday life of a group of children in a very small farming village in the early 1900-eds. At a quick glance it even looks mundane, but re-reading it for the first time as an adult it still works it’s quiet magic on me, with the exciting games the kids come up with – treasure hunts, digging caves in haystacks, sneaking out at night to look for folklore creatures and so on. The only thing that peeves me now is the endless polarization of boys versus girls, but at least the girls are allowed to come out triumphant at times.

We started with this, the middle book of the three, since that was the one we happened to have at home. But we bought the other two books on our visit to the Astrid Lindgren theme park just a few weeks ago, and are now almost through with the first book as well. 3 ½ stars.

Summing up the second quarter, I'm still behind - five books less than last year by june 30th. Doesn't look like the vacation will help me bring my numbers up either, especially since I'm reading bricks. Still, I'm having a good time, and who knows, maybe the new baby will be a sound sleeper, allowing lots and lots of reading time, right? ;-)

I read 14 books for this challenge the second quarter, which is at least a little better than the first. Here's how my categories spread out:

Bio: 0/1
Cheloveks: 1/2 (2/2 total, category completed)
Facts: 0/3
Cliffhangers: 1/4 (2/4 total for the year)
Stiffs: 1/5 (2/5 total for the year)
Treadmill: 3/6 (4/6 total for the year)
Neighbourhoods: 2/7 (4/7 total for the year)
Doggy-bag: 1/8 (2/8 total for the year)
Sprinkles: 1/9 (3/9 total for the year)
Fringes: 3/10 (5/10 total for the year)
Spilikin: 2/11 (3/11 total for the year)

No surprises there. Reding for work and specualtive fiction filling up way faster than non-fiction... I think my short story collection is my favorite this year, though. Very excited about all the books in it. My greatest pleasant surprises are my Cheloveks and Neighborhoods categories.

Best reads of the year so far:
The lottery and other stories by Shirley Jackson, so much my cup of tea it's ridiculous (and I owe it all to by fellow LT:ers). Cirkeln took a rather tired premise and spun greatness from it. The drowned life was delightful weirdness from a writer I need to see much much more of. And Lord of Emperors was another masterpiece from mr Kay.

Worst reads of the year so far:
Changeless was overrated, kind of like listening to your gran telling strained frisky jokes while making them up as she went along. Wide open was over-complicated and constructed. Sweet days of discipline I couldn't tell you a damn thing about half a year after reading it. Honestly.

I still have Changeless on my tbr.. and blameless sigh I have to read them at some point. Enjoy the rest of your hols.

I'm still planning to read Blameless for this years challenge. Hope it's more like the first part, which I found pretty charming.

There's always an orphan in a Laxness book! I've put down World Light for the moment because it's not going to end happily and it's long. The Fish Can Sing was also full of doomed characters, but it was short. My favourite so far is Independent People. Glad you enjoyed Salka Valka enough to want to read more Laxness.

@59 - still would like to read drowned life but still reading far too many short story collections at the meoment - however reading them between books as a palate cleanser is getting through them slowly but surely...

I have Independent People somewhere on Mt. TBR and was hoping to get to it this year, but its category somehow went missing, so hopefully next year - always good to hear "favourite" applied to a book you're looking forward to reading.

@ 58, 59 -- In my opinion, Blameless was better than Changeless and brought back a lot of the silliness to the series. Plus, some MAJOR plot events occur in Blameless, which means I'm eagerly looking forward to starting Heartless!

@60 I'm fairly certain I'll read much more by him. I enojyed his harsh style, and thought he did a great job of mixing politics and fiction without it becoming dreary.

@61 It surely isn't going anywhere :)

62 Am also always happy to get a title favorited by someone who's read a lot by an author!

@63 Thanks, I needed that encouragement!

Salka Valka made it onto my wishlist due to those same comments but it's always good to get confirmation from another source. Enjoy holiday part 2.

53: If the Zombie Apocalypse does occur, the forest will be one of the safer places to be ;)

A couple of more bonus reads (Bonus reads!? you ask. But you're not even halfway on your REAL challenge! I know. But reading a 1050 page Behemoth like the one below, you're bound to accumulate some bonus reads along the way):

Kökkenmödding: Vi håller på med en viktig grej by Sara Hansson, 126 pages.
With perfect pitch Hansson tells about that strange time just before puberty, when your parents aren’t quite the greatest anymore, but not quite the dumbest people on earth yet either. You both need them and push them away. Vi håller på med en viktig grej ("We're doing important stuff") is a graphic novel about becoming best friends, about the strength that can be drawn from idols and about taking the first steps into finding your own identity and independence. All set in a small Swedish town in the mid-nineties. I read most of it one go, and immediately skip back to my favorite parts. Funny, sad and brings back all sorts of memories. Good, important stuff. 4 stars.

Kökkenmödding: Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn by Astrid Lindgren, 94 pages.
The first book about Noisy Village. We read it aloud as bedtime story in the summer cottage, but I read the few chapters I missed (when I was out gathering firewood and such) at my parent’s in law. The books about Noisy village are really pastoral, in a way that could and perhaps should be annoying. But Lindgren has a great sense of adventure on a small scale, and especially a dry wit in the banter between the kids that often cracks me up. I’m sure our boy will demand us to read these books again – and that he himself will read them too later on. 3 ½ stars.

Here comes way too long a review. My apologies in advance to anyone approaching it. My only defence is the book is long as all hell too.

28. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Category 8. Doggy-bag, 1053 pages.

Okay, so this book took me most of July to read. This is, I cannot stress this enough, due to bulk only. (A hardback clocking in at around 1050 pages is a slow read for other reasons than the length itself too – the format makes one hesitant to bring it along for all those occasions where you might find time to read just a few pages) It’s not a difficult read (apart from emotionally at times), nor is it boring. For pure page turning reasons, there is really nothing standing in the way of anyone picking this up. Just saying, since I’ve seen fellow LT:ers hesitating from the impression Bolaño is too hard.

2666 is really five books, forming a pattern around the lost German writer Archimboldi and the (fictive?) Mexican city Santa Teresa, a hub for manufacturing industry and illegal activities close to the US border. It is also the stage for hundreds of brutal unsolved murders of women. The five books are only loosely connected in characters, places and themes, and the book is in no way forming a closed unit. Even in themselves, the books often feel like slices of life rather than storylines, and all of them have numerous sidetracks and disconnected anecdotes.

The first book is about four European literary scholars who share an expertise on the mysterious Archimboldi, which forms the foundation of a complicated friendship. They receive a strange tip that Archimboldi, vanished from the public light for most of his career, has been spotted in Santa Teresa for unknown reasons. Their journey there is a discomforting one, and one that changes their relations forever. This book is written in a laid back, casually intellectual sort of style, and it’s kind of hard to pinpoint what makes it such an engrossing read. But it is.

The second book deals with Amalfitano, a minor character from the first book. He’s a college professor in Santa Teresa, who is extremely worried about the endless murders of young women. His young daughter is beginning to break free, staying out late, getting high and drunk, and the anxiety pushes him over the edge. One day he hears a voice in his head, saying “I’m here now”. This book is not driven by story at all, but is a pretty chilling account of what it might be like to go into psychosis, from the early attempts of trying to ignore it, then to hide it and finally to give in to it. It all ends kind of abruptly though, and we hear nothing more of this character.

The third book’s main character is an American reporter, sent to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match, a sport he knows virtually nothing about. He soon gets to hear about the killings though, and tries to convince his magazine back home that there’s a story here. At the same time, things around him grow stranger and stranger in a subtle sort of way, and more threatening as he hooks up with Rosa Amalfitano. This book is written in sort of noir style, without really being a crime story.

The fourth book is the one people warned me about. It deals with the numerous murders, and the tired, detached police working with the investigations. It’s not easy reading, consisting mostly of endless accounts of who the victims are, where they are found and in what state. It’s stark, but dulls the reader down, and a couple of hundred pages in you have the same sense of hopelessness and overwhelming as the officers in the book. The pattern that forms is that of a masculinity gone mad, with killings inspiring more and more killings, devaluating women further. The law is by no means innocent. This book is in the form of a gruesome calendar, but under way storylines develop: a very young police is trying to improve on the sloppy investigations, political forces very much want all the killings to be the work of a single culprit, a parliament member is on a private crusade, and the man the rampage is hung on is establishing himself in jail and giving a series of strange press conferences. The fourth book is probably about hundred pages too long, but it’s major flaw is that 2666 isn’t really a book about the killings in Santa Teresa – they form a gruesome backdrop, an ambience. Bolaño has no real interest in tying up the knots, and ends the fourth book very abruptly. Which, even having had a feeling it might be that way, feels more than a little disconcerting.

The fifth book is about Archimboldi himself. It’s about his growing up, his time in the Nazi war machine, the horrors of the crumbling eastern front, about his finding a secret diary in a cottage in Ukraine that changes his life. It’s about his love, his work and his disappearance. It’s a sort of post-war epic, feeling very European in its style, and contains a lot of the book’s most gripping scenes. It finally also gives us the explanation on why he went to Mexico, bringing the book to its closure.

There’s so much richness in this book, truly, so many stories. And the pages mostly fly by. In the end though, what stops me from calling it a truly great book (in the grand sense of the word) is that it is just a little bit too open, too disjointed. There is too much left hanging. I’m all for mysteries, gaps and missing pieces, but here the balance between questions and answers isn’t quite right - for me. Nevertheless, it’s not often I read a book as rich and captivating as this, and if you are up for the slight frustration that comes with being abandoned by a writer, I heartily recommend 2666. I’ll probably reread it at some point, and for a book of 1050 pages, that’s saying something. 4 ½ stars!

Oh, and by the way (if anyone should happen to read all the way down here): I have no idea what the title means.
ETA: On the other hand, putting this as an entry at the top of the thread, I realised this is thread 2, message 66. 2:66, that's a neat coincidence!

I've been eyeing 2666. Your review was excellent.

I had no idea that Vi håller på med en viktig grej was a graphic novel. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not, though, since I "googleimaged" the art and it looks really fun. It's definitely on the wishlist in any case.

Congrats on finishing 2666! Its "thud-factor" makes it intimidating, but it sounds quite readable.

I really had no idea what 2666 was all about before reading your review. Okay, so I never bothered to find out before now because the page count scared me away from investigating further. I will admit to that. As I am now getting more comfortable with immersing myself in really big tomes, I will keep this one in mind. Great review!

Good review of 2666. Book four made me feel like I'd been bludgeoned into a small puddle of goo. What made it worse for me was imagining (from some news reports) that Ciudad Juárez (Santa Teresa?) reality might be more brutal than depicted in the novel. The Biblical Exodus from Eygpt appears 2,666 years after creation on some timelines. I have no idea if Bolaño found meaning in that or not. Disappearance seemed a big theme in 2666, even beyond Archimboldi's character and story, to me.

Thanks for the great review of 2666! I've been interested in it since it got so much acclaim from critics a couple of years ago, but have been hesitant because of other comments I've seen. Glad to know that it is readable, and good.

2666 is one of the larger books on my tbr shelves so I'm glad you thought it was a worthy read (no idea when I'll get to it though). +1 for your review.

Thanks everybody for the thumbs! I was even "Hot review" for a couple of days (he said, dazzled by the fame).

72 Thanks for the info on the title! Sounds plausible. And yes, I know Santa Teresa is based on Juarez. I have a friend form that part of Mexico, and it's just horrendous that this wave of death is still going on there.

I'll be finishing S:t Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves in bed right after this, and hope to post a review tomorrow. Until then, a few more books read to the boy. He's come to love chapter books this summer (even though he still loves his pictore books too!)

Kökkenmödding: Bara roligt i Bullerbyn (Happy times in Noisy Village) by Astrid Lindgren, 130 pages.
The concluding part about Noisy Village contains many of the episodes that were my favorites when I was little – when the climb mountains and meet the angry ram on the islet, the crayfishing, the funny chapter about babysitting Kerstin, the black snot after selling cherries by the road. I read this book especially again and again. It’s interesting to ponder why I found it so exciting. Really, everything happening here is on such a small scale. I’m sure Lindgren’s dry sarcastic humor worked on me even then, but there is also a rare balance of adventure, freedom and true security here. Hard to pinpoint, but very palpable. 3 ½ stars.

Kökkenmödding: Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (The Moomins and the great flood) by Tove Jansson, 54 pages.
This is the very first book about the Moomins, and it’s not usually included in the series. It’s kind of embryotic, and tells the tale of how Moomin and Moominmamma set out to find the lost Moominpappa, and find the Valley and the house which acts as centre of the Moomin world. They also meet a very small animal obsessed with valuables – Sniff, of course. The adventure is here, but Jansson hasn’t quite found the melancholy tone and the multifaceted characterization of her following books. This is the only of the Moomin books that isn't genius. But it’s cute, and our boy was mesmerized as we read it all in three evening sittings. 3 stars.

29. S:t Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves by Karen Russell
Category 9. Sprinkles, 247 pages.

It was RidgewayGirl who pointed me in Karen Russell's direction, with her review of Swamplandia! earlier this year. Hedengrens, Stockholm's best bookstore (apart from the genre oriented Science Fiction-bokhandeln of course) didn't have that one in, but they did have Russell's debut in a gorgeous trade paperback.

My short story category is really shaping up to be my favorite this year, bringing me the strangest and most original reading experiences. Young Karen Russell’s debut collection is weird, dark and pretty wonderful. She has a real knack for setting, and lets these stories take place in an abandoned alligator park, on a floating home for the elderly, on a camp for children with creepy sleeping disorders and other unusual places. Just the titles are to die for; if you don’t get interested by the title story or “The Star-Gazer’s log of Summer-Time crime” there’s probably something wrong with your curiosity bone.

But it isn’t all weirdness. At the heart of these stories are teenage main characters wrestling with very relatable issues like trying to navigate a dangerous friendship with the school bully, being ashamed of a parent (who in this case happens to be a Minotaur, but still) or just never having been kissed. All in all, this mix of the bizarre, the eerie, the disturbing and the humanly tender reminds me a lot of George Saunders, but without the political aspect. I’ve yet to read Katherine Dunn, but her name comes up a lot in the blurbs too.

The title story, about a pack of sisters trying to adapt to human ways, is probably my favorite, but I also loved the bleak picture of dreams lost in “Children’s reminiscences of the westward migration” and the flaking and sad swingers extra light event in “Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snow”. A few of these stories don’t end quite to my satisfaction, but there isn’t a bad one in the bunch. 4 stars, and highly recommended if you’re into sisters dating ghosts, schemes to steal baby turtles, crazy sheep killers and children forced to relive some of humanity’s great disasters night after night.

And as I said: this is the most gorgeous looking book I've read this year, with a cover that’s both funny and just a little creepy. The kind you’re proud to whip out and read in public. Which is also nice.

->76 GingerbreadMan:

I'm not a huge reader of short stories, but this one sounds absolutely fascinating! LOL@ the cover comment!! Thumbing!

Great review of 2666 although I'd say the 4th book was about 300 pages too long ;-)

still interested in reading the savage detectives probably next year

the Russel book sounds interesting, one to look out for

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is beginning to plan just a little bit for my 12-12. I'm leaning towards six books per category for next year, and just had an idea for a category that's so much fun I have to launch it right away.

I thought I'd do a Blindfold category, where you guys help me pick books without knowing what they are!
I have categorized all books we have here at home into 33 shelves (or stacks, in a few cases). Each shelf holds a different number of books of course, but I'd say they have about 40-50 books each on average, if you include the books stacked on top of other books, some double rows et cetera.

I now humbly ask six of my LT friends to name a shelf between 1 and 33, and a book between 1 and 50 (if there are less books on that particular shelf, I'll keep counting onto next shelf). And that's a book I'll read next year! Hold on, any book!?. Well, yeah. I plan/hope to read all of my books at some point, and this could be an interesting way to bring a few unlikelies up the TBR.

So, ANY book?.
Hm, well, no. I'll make the following exceptions:
If the book is in a series and I haven't read the book previous to it - in which case I'll swap it for the first book in that series I haven't read.
If I've already read the book, and don't want to re-read it now. Or ever, for that matter. In which case I'll ask for a new bid from you guys.
If it's one of the books I already have listed for my 11 in 11. In which case I'll hopefully have read it before 2012, and ask for a new bid.

So, six of my challege books for next year are up for selection! Who'll help me pick them out?

Ooooohhh - I LOVE your Blindfold category - what a brilliant idea! If I may, I would like to choose

Shelf 14
Book 21

..... as for my 12 in 12, I am still planning that one and will depend on if I manage to extend my 11 in 11 or not. ;-)

Hey Lori, thanks for playing! Shelf 14 is plays (of which I have a lot, as I work as playwright and dramaturg). Book 21 is an anthology of plays from Elverkets resident writer program called 8 pjäser. Which I unfortunately read just some three years ago. Give me a new one, please!

I want to play!

Shelf 7
Book 4

This is a great idea :-)

Alright paruline, shelf 7 is theatre and lierature theory. Looks like it's time for a re-read of Jan Jönsson's Stunder av verklighet about his work with staging Beckett's Waiting for Godot with prisoners as actors at San Quentin and Kumla in Sweden. Must've been fifteen years since I read it. Not a choice I'd make myself, but one that feels interesting. Thanks!

What a great idea

I'm intrigued as to what shelf 1 book 1 is....

Hi Pete, thanks for playing! Shelf one is paperback fiction, and stacked on top is a summer present book from work: Blood meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Which I was definitely planning to read in 2012. So why not in this category? Thanks!

Well.... if Shelf 14 is plays I am going to go out on a limb and say:

Shelf 4
Book 36

This is Fun!

Hey again Lori. Shelf 4 is the little cabinet by the bed, stuffed with paperbacks. Book 36 is Höstens skuggor by Agnes von Krusenstjärna. Which is book three of a series I haven't started, so I'll backtrack to Den blå rullgardinen, the first book instead. I actually had a vague notion at an early point to read the whole of this series - a modern classic in Sweden, written in the 30ies - as a category for my 1010, but dropped it for shinier things. So a great choice, I've been meaning to read these forever, but have never got around to it. Thanks!

Yah! This was a lot of fun.... almost like a literary version of Battleship, only better. Now I am curious to see what else is chosen for you!

So, three chosen, three to go (se msg 79 if you're wondering what's going on here)!

My turn!

Shelf 29
Book 43

Which book is that? And exactly offended would you be if someone were to steal your brilliant idea?

I would also like to play! Shelf 23, book 9, please!

I'm surprised nobody suggested Shelf 12 book 12 so I'll go with that.

Shelf 29 is in one of the four main roof-to-floor bookshelves in the living room, hardback ficktion. Book 43 is a new Swedish novel Flea got for Christmas last year, and liked: Bergets döttrar by Anna Jörgensdotter. Could easily have slipped under my radar for years and years. Thank you kindly! As for offended, the answer is obviously "Not even a little bit". Good ideas are for sharing!

Shelf 23 is also hardback fiction. Book 9, stacked on top, is Catcher in the rye, probably moved from the row on the shelf to make room for the next part of some series. A good book, no doubt, but not due for a re-read in 2012. Can I have another, please?

Shelf 12 is hardback fiction too, but book 12 is a trade paperback. I'm not surprised you picking this, Wolfy, but I read The New Weird anthology by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer in 2008 and it's not time for a re-read yet. Can I have another, please?

What a great idea, I can imagine it will be addictive! I will let the others take another shot :)

I admit I have already worked out my categories as I was thinking about then in March.. :)

Great reviews as usual and St Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves goes on the TBR. I must admit I might try The Savage Detectives first before jumping into 2666

Love your review of 2666, I enjoyed The Savage Detectives and could probably tackle 2666 next year. You have me thinking about it. I must try St Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves too.
I love your Blindfold category for next year, my books aren't organised enough for me to try something like that.

@ 93 -- Okay, here's my second bite at the apple: shelf 16, book 37.

Shelf 16 is non-fiction and does include a number of heavy books - philosophy and such. I won't find out what book 37 is until I get home from work. But I'm a little scared :)

Whew! Turned out to be not nearly as intimidating as I feared. Less than 37 books on shelf 16, so I counted on to shelf 17 and ended on Heat (no touchstone), Bill Buford's book about working undercover in restaurant kitchens. I haven't read anything by Buford yet, but have his Among the thugs as a candidate for this year's challenge. So I hope for a good read. Thanks!

Now I need just one more! Wolfy? Or anyone else?

Oh, I think you'll like Heat quite a bit. It's just a lot of fun mixed in with some interesting things about restaurants and cooking. He buys a hog, brings it home (on a motocycle or moped if memory serves) and butchers it in a tiny NY apartment.

I guess I'll try a double-up and say shelf 24 book 24.

@ 98 -- Glad my second try ended well! :)

Thank you Wolfy. Shelf 24 is also in one of the big hardback fiction bookcases, and book 24 is a classic that's been lingering unread for probably fifteen years. I read a fair bit of Marquez in my early twenties, but never got round to Love in the time of the cholera. It will very likely one of my heavier reads next year - but why not? Thank you, that wraps up a category that promises to be interesting!

99 That's great to hear! Looking forward to it a little bit more just from those few words :)

Maybe we can make Love in the Time of Cholera a group read next year. It's one of those books that I bet a lot of us own but haven't yet read.

What chance does to six books:
4 male writers, 2 female writers.
3 Swedish authors, 1 Brit, 1 American, 1 Colombian
2 modern classics, 2 contemporary novels, 2 non-fiction books

What a great idea! I intend on stealing it and using it for next year, with due credit to you, of course! Sounds like a fun way to read some more books off of your shelf, and I really like the being "forced" to read a book that you might otherwise pass by.

I'm using it, too.

@103 That's a good idea!

@105-106 Looking forward to seeing what gets chosen for you :)

Your blindfold category is so fun!! Will have to number my shelves by January :P

I went to Tampere in Finland for work over the weekend, and got stuck with long gaps between connections and some dead hours at the hotel. Which gave me some much coveted reading time :) It's only us eager readers who kind of look forward to being stuck in an airport for three and a half hours, I think.

30. Big Machine by Victor LaValle
Category 8. Doggy-bag, 370 pages.

Ricky Rice is just over forty and has a room of his own and a steady job as a bus toilet janitor. It’s not much of a life, but as an ex-heroinist and ex-con with a crappy leg it’s perhaps all he can hope for. Until he receives a letter, containing a bus ticket to Vermont and a note saying: “You made a promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002. Time to honor it”. And after just a little hesitation, Ricky drops everything and goes. And steps into the world of the Washburn library, a huge hidden estate in the forest, where a group of dropouts, drunks and ex-junkies are trying to reconnect with an almost 200 years old prophecy. A work which is now being threatened from within.

Any book that comes with a strong recommendation from Claire and/or Pete (that's clfisha and psutto) raises my interest, as I tend to like their taste for the slightly odd, distorted and peculiar. And there is really a lot to like in this engrossing and original book. If you like Gaiman’s urban fantasy, but can stand a little bit more strangeness, this could well be for you. Me, I loved the image of a secret society with big, but clearly limited resources – how you travel to your important mission on a Greyhound bus with a second hand, ancient laptop and a handful of phone cards in your bag. And the chapters about Ricky’s upbringing in the Washerwomen cult, formed by three sisters who’ve escaped murder charges in the south and rewritten the Bible to be set in the US, are the best in the whole book, creating a nailbiting tension. LaValle also handles a storytelling device that’s often annoying to me as a reader – a main character who withholds information from the reader, and gives it out on a need-to-know basis – pretty well.

But I find myself strangely unable to relate to Ricky and Adele, the leading characters. It’s like I get to know both too much and too little about them at once, and neither of them really comes alive to me. The same goes for the world. I actually like the puzzling and unexplained, but once you have been starting explaining and creating logic, like LaValle does here, any gaps become that more evident for it. Which means that the book in a way is too clear to pull off being mysterious, in a way. Threads left hanging or just being half-assedly explained don’t come across as enigmatic, but instead as weaknessess. To this particular reader, at this particular time, there are a few too many of them.

So, I end up liking this book, even though I wanted to, and suspect I could have, loved it. But it’s really an original, quick and fresh read, and I’m happy to look out for more books by LaValle. 3 ½ stars.

Here comes another long review. But I have a lot of things on my mind when it comes to this one - especially in the light of current events.

31. Lasermannen by Gellert Tamas
Category 3. Facts, 408 pages.

I chose Lasermannen as one of my reads for this year’s challenge because I missed it in 2002-2003 when everybody else was reading it and talking about it. But after the horrible terrorist attacks in Norway just a few weeks ago, reading this seemed urgent. In the light of that Lasermannen is probably my most important read of this year. It deals with a series of racist shootings that shook Sweden in 1991-1992, which can be seen as the point where Sweden as a nation became aware of it’s aggressive domestic racism. Another piece in our loss of innocence, perhaps, that began with the murder of prime minister Palme a few years earlier.
It deserves to be repeated in this time of islamophobia, that in Europe at least, racist/nationalist terror acts are much more common than Islamic terrorism. As horrible as Al Qaida are, they are not the only threat. They are not even the biggest. And yet media and officials are usually very quick to label a person committing systematic violence against immigrants or homosexuals “a crazy loner” rather than terrorist. Right after the horrible recent events on Utöya and in Oslo, experts in TV studios were going on and on how this was almost certainly a well-organized Al Qaida attack. Until it stood clear that the shooter was Norwegian (which was talked about as “confusing information” in the beginning) – after which he was quickly labeled a crazy person acting alone. Only several days later the media seemed to come to the conclusion it should be called an act of terrorism – “non-islamic terrorism” (sic!) in some instances.

Reports on recent acts of terror in Sweden follow the same pattern. The guy who –acting alone - blew up a car and himself in central Stockholm because of our involvement in the war in Afghanistan was rightfully called a terrorist. The guy shooting dark skinned people in Malmö last year was “a crazy loner” – despite the deeds happening at the same time a political party rooted in the Swedish Nazi movement were on the bandwagon to get into parliament, climbing in the polls week by week.

Tamas’ book takes us back to a similar time. Xenophobic and populist Ny Demokrati were storming forward in the polls before the 1991 election, violent Nazism was showing it’s ugly face as VAM (White Aryan Resistance) were beating up immigrants and gays, robbing banks and creating bomb threats. And everyday racism were brewing more or less everywhere – not least in the press. It’s easy to see how John Ausonius thought he was just doing what everybody else was thinking when he mounted a laser sight on his rifle and started shooting random people with foreign looks. What followed was over a year of fear and hard policework, when Ausonius shot 11 people in ten different attacks, killing one and maiming several for life.

Tamas has really done his reaserch, including many many hours of interviews with Ausoius himself and the police who were hunting him, and the book is very effective in it’s going back and forth between a biography of Ausoinus and the events around the shootings, the police investigation (painfully without leads at first) and it’s corrolation to the Swedish zeitgeist of the time. It really reads like a thriller, and I devoured it in big chunks. Tamas can’t write good dialogue, making the imagined conversations feel a bit clumsy, but this is the book’s only real flaw.

Lasermannen is an important time document, but also very relevant as a mirror of today. Ausonius was a “crazy loner”, but he was not alone. A lot of trends in society were pointing out the way for him. (I remember “Lasermannen – a bright spot in the darkness” t-shirts sold at the spring fair in my home town around the time of the shootings). And in the same way Breivik, the shooter in Norway, was not alone. He was an active member of numerous web communities who agreed with his hateful analysis. Any article about the deed has numerous comments saying he was a hero for killing over 75 people - most of which were teenagers. Both these terrorists killed alone, but right up to the point of stepping over the final boundary, were both backed by a public choir of hatred. 4 stars.

->110 GingerbreadMan:

Very good review. Too bad that there was an opportunity to parallel it with current events. So terrible, both. I was living abroad when Lasermannen was active, but I still remember trying to get news about it that whole autumn (no internet at that time...).

Do you think the "crazy loner" idea is partially an "easy way out," since it may be an easier concept to deal with than having to accept a much larger, darker truth about ourselves? Or that we're too scared to throw our weight around with the extreme right? (If that's true, that's scarier than anything!)

Another two great reviews. I do feel slightly guilty for hyping Big Machine but I am glad you didn't hate it :-) It's a huge sticking point to enjoyment if you cant empathise or get into a characters head.

@ 111 Very good question. I think it's deeply human to grasp for individual psychology when it comes to understand atrocities, but it seems it becomes even more necessary when the threat comes from "within" our own culture. "The other" is much more easy to just percieve as evil by default, whereas the guy referring to your own holy books and with an upbringing similar to your own needs to be isolated - in order not to end up with the scary conclusion there just might be something wrong with your own system. As I said, this reaction is very understandable I think, which is why books like this one, showing patterns are important. I do not think it's out of cowardice towards the extreme right, but rather that it is a genuine blind spot that we need to be aware of. My first thought was "islamists" too - even though all statistics really should have pointed me in a different direction.

@ 112 You have absolutely nothing to be guilty of! 3 ½ is a grading for "a book that is interesting above average, but with flaws" for me, and I was going back and forth between a 3½ and a 4 even when I started writing the review. I'm very glad I read the book, and yours remains my most dangerous thread to visit. What other books have you read by LaValle?

Most annoying that LaValle has only written 1 other novel The Ecstatic (and 1 short story collection).. impatiently drums fingers. The novel is good, a chaotic mess of plot that although not without flaws is a fun read and I reckon worth seeking out. Its also mind bogglingly hard to review ;) There's an excerpt over at Amazon.

I do hope you're right about it being a psychological knee-jerk rather than fear of the right - we've already "been there, done that" with some truly atrocious results. We do pride ourselves on being so open and liberal, but I'm sure that has changed more than anyone would like to admit and it gets more pronounced, obviously, when eceonomic times are bad. I thought the same as you when I saw the headlines and had to scold myself for leaping to conclusions.

Reading very slowly, despite enjoying Kraken immensly. I work on a translation in the evenings on top of my dayjob, and when I finally go to bed I barely make half a page before my brains starts making up it's own incoherent stories. Thank heavens for the daily commute!

On another note: I'm planning for a graphic novel category in 2012, and happily accept suggestions. Some books I've read and enjoyed: Alan Moore, Gaiman's Sandman series and some of it's spinoffs, Astro City, Jeph Loeb's Batman books, Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine, The invisibles, Transmetropolitan...

I will read Shaun Tan (because Claire said so), am curious about Locke and Key. But more! What else?

Hi Anders - I will be looking forward to your review of Kraken. I am thinking my next Miéville read will be The City and the City as something I will enjoy, but I am still intrigued with Miéville's works in general.

No suggestions for graphic novels but, as always, curious to see what everyone else recommends!

I'm also looking forward to your review of Kraken. I really need to read more Mieville ....

As for graphic novels, I'm not sure if this would appeal to you, but the Essex County trilogy was a finalist for Canada Reads this past year, and I liked it very much.

Sounds like you're burning the candle at both ends, Anders. Hope you can take it easy and get more than a page read at a time! Take care of yourself!

Oh, and enjoy Shaun Tan, I know I always do!

Hi Anders. First off, I agree with mathgirl40 about Essex County. That book is why I am going with a graphic novel category next year, it is fantastic.

Also by Jeff Lemire is a quirky series of which the first one is called Sweet Tooth: Out of the Woods which I enjoyed.

The following have been recommended to me by fellow Lter's: Blankets by Craig Thompson, The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar, and Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi.

I second Persepolis also think you'd enjoy wormwood by Ben Templesmith, the preacher by Garth Ennis, unwritten by Mike Carey and Locke and key and for a bit of zombie action (much better than the TV show it spawned) is walking dead Claire may be able to think of more?

Have you read the Lucifer series?

@116 oh I am getting nervous again, I hope Shaun Tan lives up to the high praise (I am sure it will though)

Single books that I would also recommend are:
-For A bit of bleak but well written and tragic noir there is Britten and Brulightly
-For a wonderfully serious talking chicken book (looking at "human" rights) there
is Elmer Although you might end up avoiding chicken for a while :)
-For the grounded political, human story feel there is The Photographer: Into war-torn Afghanistan with Doctors without borders, it can be a tad graphic though but it's a great story.
-Oh and lastly (if you can get hold of it!) Thomas Wogan is Dead with its wonderful dead pan humour. Hmm I am tempted to just grab a cop and post it to you :) Ahem.

Of course second everything Pete suggested but for an extra push I second the The Unwritten although it's an unfinished series it's great so far, not only beautiful it's fantasy meta fiction at its best. Plus I want everyone in the world to read to it ;-)

I should shut up now right :)

Oh wait there is also Fables which is hugely popular and might be worth a look although I gave up on it after a few volumes.

I'll second Claire's recommendation of Britten and Brülightly - very nicely done noir and with one of the most surprising (and funny) characters ever, Brülightly. I would recommend Fables, but with the caveat that they're light reading - fairy-tales that you read when you're tucked up in bed with a cold. For political fare, I'd recommend Waltz with Bashir and Palestine if you're interested in the whole Israel versus its neighbors-mess. And, of course, Maus, but you've probably read that one.

Thank all of you for great suggestions for graphic novels. I have already read and very much enojyed Persepolis. Also like Joe Sacco's work a lot, but I've only read Safe Area Gorazde yet. I'll make note of all titles, and see what's available here. Sadly , the best comic stores in Stockholm have been forced to close down. On the other hand there's a great library for comics!

Still not done with Kraken, but savoring it. If it holds up til the end it's going to be one of the best this year for me. I have finished another book read aloud to my son though!

Kökkenmödding: Vems lilla mössa flyger by Barbro Lindgren, 166 pages.

Barbro is the other Lindgren in Swedish literature for children. Less known abroad, she’s very much a household name here. Everybody has read or seen an adaptation of her books about Loranga, Masarin and Dartanjang – a wild anarchistic romp that makes Pippi Longstocking seem stuck up. For Barbro Lindgren is a wilder, more chaotic, playful writer, and her books have a unpredictable danger about them. You’re never quite sure about her characters, you never quite trust them. But you’re likely to love hanging with them.

The three books about the Land of Barnhans, inhabited by decaying stuffed animals and other toys, some pinecones, a cork and an annoying marble, are I think Barbro’s last books for children. They were written in the mid-eighties, well after I was the target group. So this is my first encounter with this existential world of mayhem.

It’s really all episodes. It deals with Röden and Farbrornallens creating a club to discuss the meaning of life, of Mack the rubber monkeys rivalling speed devil club, about a day when everybody got lost, about the urge to bury things and/or friends, about an epic fail in staging the play Nök-Hamlet and about the one-line poetry of an über-sentimental Russian rat. And at the same time, it’s a irreverent but gentle meditation on death and existence. Think Winne the Pooh meets Krazy Kat and you might get an idea. Good stuff! 4 stars!

I've fallen way behind on your thead, but will try to stay current from now on. I love your idea for the blindfold category. I'm also starting to think up categories for 2012 and might adapt that concept to encourage me to read books I might put off indefinitely otherwise.

@ 125 Hope chance goes your way with it! I had great nailbiting fun getting my titles chosen.

Here comes a declaration of love:

32. Kraken by China Miéville
Category 10. Fringes, 481 pages.

Billy Harrow works at the Darwin Centre in London, where he has just recently has preserved a really rare specimen – a complete, undamaged giant squid. A Kraken. It’s unique, and a given centerpiece of the guided tours of the museum. Until one day it’s impossibly just gone, giant tank and all. Even more impossible: in the room where the squid is no more, a man is found drowned in formaldehyde, in a bottle with an opening much too small to put him into. And there’s something very strange about the police turning up to ask Billy questions. What Billy is about to find out – which comes to no surprise to anyone familiar with the urban fantasy genre – is there is another London. It’s a place full of home-spun magic, of secret churches and hidden places, where finding the right metaphors means power. And now, after the theft of the Kraken, all the Londonmancers, who ask the city itself about the future, are suddenly seeing the exact same thing. The end of the world is coming fast, and Billy has already been given a role to play.

Do you remember when Gaiman’s Neverwhere came out and urban fantasy just seemed so mind-bogglingly fresh? I haven’t had that feeling for this genre since, until now. Here’s a plot so fast-paced, complicated and smart I’m not even going to try and go into it. And a discussion on faith, theology and identity. And basically just cramming as many things I find utterly marvelous and weird into 480 pages as possible. That’s actually one of the things I really love about Miéville. He never holds back on ideas. There are so many things just hinted at here or mentioned is casual passing, which could warrant short stories or even novels of their own. His worlds always seem so much bigger than what’s in focus for the storyline at hand. They always leave me wanting more.

Here, we get warring cults with rival versions of the Apocalypse, a crime-lord tattooed on the back of an unwilling host, a striking worker’s union for familiars, an embassy for the Sea and trademark Miéville horrors Goss and Subby. There are a host of believable and flawed characters, some of them even tainted heroes. My favorites are probably the sloppy chav police witch Collingswood; and Marge, who plunges into the secret side of London looking for answers, protected only by a hungry iPod with a crappy taste in music. Oh dearest China, what you do to me. This is one of his best, in my opinion, and easily one of the best reads of this year for me. 5 stars, and I kind of envy anyone who still hasn't read it yet.

I will have to find a copy for my SO. It sounds like something he would love and it's been a few years since I got him Ananthem, which he loved.

Not a book bullet this time as all of Mieville's work that I haven't yet picked up is on the wishlist. Just more eagerness added for their acquisition. Good review, as always.

Excellent review! That's my favorite thing too - the barrage of really cool ideas that seem to flow endlessly from that mind! :)

Love the review of Kraken and happy to report that I also have that one already on my TBR pile!

I'm not sure what system I'll devise to enable others to choose for me, but the good news is I still have time to think about it.

I really enjoyed your review of Kraken and your enthusiasm for it is infectious. I'm reading so many wonderful reviews about China Miéville, an author I've yet to discover for myself. In fact, I'm pretty new to the fantasy genre and was finally turned on to Gaiman this year. Am a huge fan now, and since I only just read Neverwhere a few months back, the concept of urban fantasy is still very fresh to me!

eta: I've been wanting to start with Perdido Street Station, but now I wonder if there is any one (or several) books of his that you might recommend as a first foray into his work?

I'm fairly new to Miéville having read only two of his books but can't wait to dive into another, possibly will have to make it Kraken.
Just saw your request for graphic novel recommendations, I'll suggest, in no particular order, Epileptic a memoir by David B. from France, Daytripper from Brazil, Hicksville from New Zealand and second the Joann Sfar recommendation. Also take a look at Bryan Talbot's fab Alice in Sunderland.

another great review and pretty much sums up why I like kraken too :-) as Claire has already posted on her thread we are eagerly awaiting Mieville's next book....

Great review (thumbs up), makes me want to reread it already. I really just wish now someone would stick a giant squid in a jar and put it in the Hunterian museum. Oh and then I can steal it :)

Thanks for the excellent review of Kraken. It's just moved up higher on my TBR list.

Congrats on Hot Review for Kraken! Well deserved!

Thanks everybody! Smiler: I think Perdido Street Station is an excellent place to start. It remains my favorite Miéville, even if the fact that it was my first enocounter with his baroque, weird prose probably influences my judgement.

Reaching the halfway point in my challenge - almost two months late...

33. Brev ur rockärmen by Daniil Charms
Category 11. Spilikin, 94 pages.

Charms is an important writer in my personal history. The first book recommendation I ever gave Flea was his “Konsten är ett skåp”, and the first cup of coffee we ever had together was to talk about our mutual flabbergasted enjoyment of this strange Russian absurdist. Now we’ve been together for fifteen years and are expecting our second child. Charms has some small part in this. So when Flea gave me this collection of his letters, recently published in Swedish for the first time, it was a pretty romantic gift.

The publisher calls this “a treasure of cultural history”, but I think that’s pushing it a bit. Charms was pretty much a nobody during his life (not Stalin’s type of writer), and little of his correspondence has been saved for the afterworld. It all feels very random. But there are some very funny letters in here – and it’s also pretty obvious how Charms just couldn’t refrain from being absurd and witty, even when he seems to have been trying not to, for instance when writing a shy love letter or begging for help from a publisher. 3 stars.

Do you have any writers that hold a significance beyond their writing for you?

Better late than never, Anders!

110,126: Great reviews both!!!

>139 VictoriaPL: Picking up speed now too! One book finished today, and I count on another being done tomorrow!

>140 Bcteagirl: Thank you kindly!

34. Vodou by Jaques Hainard (editor
Category 3. Facts, 174 pages.

Marianne Lehmann’s collection of salvaged vodou objects (alternative spelling of the creole word is deliberately chosen, since one of the main points of the exhibit is to look beyond the Hollywood cliché of voodoo) has been on display at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, and I was very taken by it. I liked the respectful tone of the exhibition, addressing the fact that this is a living religion practiced by millions and a state religion in Haiti. I was very taken by the notion that vodou is so closely connected to struggle and living under oppression, that so much of it is about empowerment and community. And obviously, the objects themselves are often extremely strong in their expression. Walking through the hall of life size Bizango (a secret vodou society) figures, eerie watchmen made of cloth, bone, wood and shards of mirror it was impossible not to get affected.

The catalog is not quite as good. What was eclectic in the exhibit passes into “kind of all over the place” in the book. The texts are snippets of bigger works, and even though they make me eager to learn more, they come across as insufficient in giving a real sense of what vodou really is. I would have wanted more of an overview, a more "boring" book perhaps. The photos are amazing though, of course. 3 stars.

35. Peter Pan och Wendy by J.M Barrie
Category 6. Treadmill, 216 pages.

I need to point out that I read this book (re-read actually) under strange circumstances. I am currently working on a translation and adaptation of the play Peter Pan. Barrie based this novel on his play, but changed some things. I’m therefor reading a bit like a vacuum cleaner, huntin mainly for differences, shifts in perspective and situations to use. I’m also very sensitive of translation, since much of the text is the same in the play and the book. So: overly meticulous, pen in hand and semi-bored with the material going in. Perhaps not the fairest of set-ups.

I’m not going into the story, as I’m sure all of you know it, sort of. But in the middle of the adventure, the whimsy and the drastic turns, this tale of growing up or not, of roleplays and relationships between parents and children is pretty damn complex. And I guess that might be my main objection with Barrie’s work in its many incarnations – there are so many things I wished he would have explored further. There’s a definite quality to the wild, almost random episode stacking and restless joking, but I can’t help missing a stronger structure at times, to explore the more profound sides of this story rather than just mentioning them in passing on the way to the next swordfight. Well, that and the annoying notion that the highest wish of every little girl is to find someone to take care of and nurture, like a law of nature. Still, a more than fun material to work with, where new things emerge constantly. 3 ½ stars.

The sublime Dorothy Parker had a hilarious review of another J.M. Barrie if you need a giggle at Barrie's expense.

> 143 I might well need that when this work is through!

36. Katten som inte dog by Inger Frimansson
Category 5. Stiffs, 363 pages.

Beth and Ulf are in the summer house. Things aren’t great between them and haven’t been since the baby twins died. The silence and the frustration is palpable. They drink too much. News come on the radio of two escaped convicts from a nearby prison, considered armed and dangerous. And that’s when they realize someone is sneaking round by the old barn. To her own surprise all the suppressed anger in Beth comes out and she furiously attacks the intruder, striking him with an axe. In the aftermath of the shock, after a scared and fragile night with a corpse in the barn, they decide to go to the police. After all, it was self-defense. Wasn’t it? It’s on the drive there they get the news that both the escaped convicts have been captured without drama.

The opening of this nail-biting, nightmarish novel is as good as Inger Frimansson ever was. She varies her theme of murder and aftermath from the perp’s point of view with a steady hand. Don’t go into a book of hers expecting crime, mystery or procedural (as I think a lot of people do). Frimansson is all about investigating the effects of the crime. This time she focuses on the couple, and what a shared secret like this might do to two people. It really is the most claustrophobic experience, with a keen eye for how small things in the everyday take on a new meaning. Like when a child innocently asks Beth the question if she’s ever seen a dead person. If she could have held that suspense all the way, this could have been her best book.

But then sadly, she kind of spoils it with some rather silly turns of events, and a strained ending that comes all too suddenly. I wish she would have stuck with the small-scale suffocating psychological horror she does best. As it is, the ending drags the beginning down to juuuust above average. 3 ½ stars.

37. Skin folk by Nalo Hopkinson
Category 9. Sprinkles, 255 pages.

There are things I really like about Nalo Hopkinson. Her language is one thing, it’s a delight to read her narrators talking thick Caribbean dialects. Her perspective is another. Hopkinson has a keen post-colonial eye, and her writing is obviously as much about reclaiming as it is about breaking new ground. She’s no tourist. Hopkinson knows her mythology, her culture and her narrative structures. True, she sometimes overrates how interesting it is to read long accounts about how to make hot chocolate the right way, but her blend of urban fantasy feels original and grounded. I want to love this book.

But unfortunately, for me the stories themselves aren’t really up to par with their frames. Most of them follow the same pattern: Stressed out city-dweller, out of touch with his/her Caribbean roots, suddenly gets a glimpse of the supernatural and changes his/her life. More often than not, I finish a story feeling just a little baffled that there wasn’t more to it. In a few of the stories, she moves us into the future, but apart from single sci-fi elements (the possibility to buy a new body and second skin sex suits, respectively) there’s really no world building going on. There are a few really good short stories in here – my favorite being “Fisherman” the only one without any fantasy elements to it – but all in all the presentation is better than the content. 3 stars. (Don’t take my word for it though! This book has a whopping 4.2 average.)

I realise the chances I'll complete the challenge this year are very slim, so I'm now going to start the process of migrating a few candidates over to my 12 in 12 challenge. Especially in those categories where there are more candidates than slots left...

Nice review. Skin Folk has been languishing on my wishlist for a while but it doesn't sound like my cup of tea at all.

I realised I almost filled up my 1212 with books on my wishlist, let alone the failures of this year.. too many books as usual :)

38. Yarden by Kristian Lundberg
Category 11. Spilikin, 144 pages.

Kristian Lundberg, a fairly successful writer, is caught up in debt and finds himself drawn back into the world he once came from – uneducated manual labor. Working by the hour doing dirty, heavy work down in Yarden – the Malmö docks – and barley making ends meet is in a way like coming home. Soon those years of writing for a living seem like a parenthesis, and the memories of growing up poor with a schizophrenic mother come bubbling up to the surface. Stealing twenty minutes of writing every morning, Lundberg writes a slim book that is a meditation on poverty, on climbing and sliding in the class structure, on mental illness, on anger and on the harsh reality of an economic climate that is gearing more and more towards a temporary workforce. The collective punishment. The extremely monotonous work. How you can get tossed out on a whim.

This is really an extraordinary novel. Written in a harshly poetic language, it’s dense and full wrath, sadness and insight. There’s nothing vain or coquette about Lundberg’s descent into the lowest levels of society or his memories of a really tough childhood. It just is. There’s a sense of naked honesty here that really moves me. The book has been a big success among the critics, and I can only hope it serves to buy Lundberg more writing time. But I think this is a book he’ll find it hard to ever match. 5 stars, one of my top reads for the year.

Lovely review. I don't think there is a translation in English out yet?

Theres an audio version on amazon.co.uk - says the language is English...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yarden-Unabridged/dp/B004LO092U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&q...

>150 psutto: No, sorry, says "Note:this audiobook is in Swedish" on the bottom of the page. Keep your fingers crossed for a translation.

so it does - I should have scrolled down! means their product description is wrong!

Another great review Anders..... Thumb! I will keep my fingers crossed for an English translation.

I remember making a note of it when it won some prize(?), but somehow forgot to follow up. Looks like my "local" Swedish library has a copy. :)

Yes, Eva, it won Ivar Lo-Johansson-priset in 2010.

That's it! I should know by now that making random notes on little post-its isn't going to do me much good if I don't tie them into a context...! :)

39. The Father, Miss Julie, Creditors (Fadren, Fröken Julie, Fordringsägare) by August Strindberg
Category 6. Treadmill, 352 pages. Category completed!

The theatre where I work used Creditors as text for a workshop last week. And we are planning a production in sign language of Miss Julie for the 100 year anniversary of Strindberg’s death next year, and I need to read up on it to see what adaptation id necessary for a visual production. The Father is a play I’ve seen performed several times but never actually read, so it made a lot of sense to me to get down to that while I still had this volume at home.

It’s impossible to start a review any place but to state that put together these three plays show Strindberg the woman hater at his most hateful. The women in these plays are petty, stupid, sly, plotting and victims of their urges . You need to try very very hard indeed to be able to overlook this fact. Then again, what makes Strindberg so playable even today is, I guess, that his own petty vindictiveness shines through. It’ s quite possible to read his male characters as equally pathetic and destructive as the women – even when Strindberg himself didn’t intend it.

That aside, (if that is possible) this volume includes three of the best examples of Strindberg’s dramatic writing. Miss Julie is of course a very effective piece of naturalism, even if I’ve read it so many times over the years that very little magic remains. It's interesting though that even on a umpieth reread, I still don’t quite believe the ending. The Father, if the premises of the mother conspiring on very loose grounds are accepted, is a very engaging play, almost a manual on how to drive someone crazy. It also has a number of very memorable smaller characters, my favorite probably being the cowardly priest. And Creditors is a well-constructed triangle (although with a few major logic gaps), full of quick dialogue and something as rare in Strindberg as pretty equal combatants.

Ibsen will always win hands down in my book when it comes to the battle of the Scandinavian Naturalists. He’s not only a more likeable guy, but a better playwright. What Strindberg has though is a kind of frenzy, a tempo on the verge of derailing. It’s very apparent in these plays. 3 ½ stars.

Nice review and congrats on completing another category!

I read Miss Julie last year, and second your review! It was my first Stringberg. My copy had a long introduction written by him, basically telling the critics to go to h*ll if they didn't understand how cutting edge he is. Quite hilarious actually.

For those of you who might be wondering: no baby yet :) I'm just havbing a couple of insanely busy weeks, topped with me trying to write as much as possible in the evenings before the baby comes. Plus breathing exexcises, packing and planning and all that jazz....

I've managed a grand total of 135 pages in Wuthering Heights this last week, and hereby officially declare I'll fail to complete my 11 in 11. Will of course keep going until the very lasty minute, of course, and try and fit most of the scraps into my 12 in 12 somehow.

You know once I accepted I wasn't ever going to complete my 2010 challenge I felt a lot better :) Glad to hear you will still be posting on top of everything else!

Thanks for the update Anders, I was wondering why you had gone so quiet. Hope things settle down a little before the big arrival...

Breathe in....breathe out...

Glad to hear that you're doing well, though busy busy busy before baby. Hope you have a little rest soon!

Hope it all goes well

Yes, priorities should definitely be family first, then work has to come before personal reading time, I guess... :)
When's the bebe due? I hope Flea is doing well!!

Hello everybody! This week of silence was for the exact reason some of you might have guessed. On monday, just under two weeks early, our baby girl Minna arrived after a pretty quick delivery. A strong and healthy little lady, who is now busy eating, eating, eating, sleeping, fidgeting, soiling diapers bawling her lounges out and vomiting in the most precious way thinkable. Elis, our four year old is proud in a hesistant way, and keeps a safe distance. Everything he comes close she does something gross :)

Yesterday I finished Wuthering heights while she slept on my chest. Will write a review when I find time...

Oh, congratulations to you and your family, I love the name, Minna. Happy to hear that all is well chezgingerbread.

Congratulations!

Congrats.

Everything he comes close she does something gross

Maybe she's allergic to her older brother. Wouldn't that be fun ;)

Congratulations!

Congratulations to you and your family and for Minna, welcome to the world!

Congratulations!!! Your children have wonderful names. I hope that Flea is feeling well, and that Elis get used to the fact that babies tend to do gross things. :)

Congratulations - aren't new babies great! I love her name.

Thanks for your well-wishes! Let's hope you're wrong about allergies, Wolfy. That would be very inconvinient in a two bed flat... Oh, and you can see I'm tired when you quote me. It should obviously be: Every TIME he comes close...

Regarding the name: Thank you! I don't think I've hardly heard the name Minna in an English context. Have you? In Sweden it's not common, but it's one of those "old-fashioned" names that are coming back now. same with Elis. Here, names tend to skip three generations before coming back :)

But also, since I'm part of a generaton where everybody had the same names (I think there were never fewer than three Anders in any of my classes, growing up), I think we are all striving for a bit of originality now that we get kids of our own. And of top of that we have a lot more people of other ethnicities now than in the 70ies, so there are a lot more names around.

Just wanted to add my congratulations!

Grattis!!!! Hälsa Flea också!! Min bästa kompis födde sin tredje för några veckor sedan - HEMMA! - och beskrev alla "mysiga" detaljer. Flea är modig!!! :)

Nej, inga egna barn för mig, tack!

Hooray! I'm glad everything went well. Congratulate Elis on becoming a big brother. You are spoiling him now, aren't you?

And don't underestimate the amount of reading you can get done while allowing a baby to sleep on you!

>176 christina_reads: Thanks!
>177 -Eva-: Yep, Flea (Loppan for us Swedes!) is badass. It was amazing going through birth with her again.
>178 RidgewayGirl: We are doing everything we can not to lose focus on Elis, and I think he's doing well. He's a tad more fragile than usual, which isn't surprising. Has to be one of the most life-changing things in a child's life, getting a sibling. What a dethroning! He also goes to his pre-school every day, and I think he likes that his life goes on as usual too.

40. Svindlande Höjder (Wuthering Heights) by Emily Brontë (re-read)
Category 11. Spilikin, 450 pages.

I admit it. This was a very step-motherly way to treat one of the great classics, and I’m kind of happy this was a re-read. Trying to read it while working insane hours to create some peace around the arrival of our second child, writing long into the night and crawling into bed, more often than not falling asleep before finishing even a single page of Brontë. It doesn’t help that the novel is actually kind of complicated in it’s structure, despite having a small cast. The criss-crossing and moving between the two houses, the similar names…well, it didn’t help me keeping the narrative straight.

But then what happens is that the power of this dirty, grim and rough novel cuts through all my bad prerequisites, and I get caught up in it once again. There’s really almost nothing pleasant going on in it at all. It’s just full of loneliness, rudeness and silent desperation. Brontë really doesn’t make it easy for the reader with this cast of hypocrites, drunkards and dog stranglers – a very odd setup for a love story. Even the positions themselves stay strangely static, in a way that feels very modern. There’s no real arc here, just a kind of meditation on this peculiar, destructive sort of love. And yet I find myself caring. All set against a background that is both grand – the moor! – and claustrophobic – two isolated houses and a small path between them.

It really is a special novel this, and it’s easy to see the hordes of other works inspired by it. I’m happy I revisited Brontë’s windswept highland, and I guess I’ll go there again some day. 4 stars.

And speaking of Brontës: In the odd chance that someone has missed this classic, do check it out: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202

Congratulations on the latest addition to your family! My wish for you is that your relationship with your daughter is every bit as special as mine was with my father. And how blessed she is to have a big brother, too!

Anne why are you writing books about how alcoholic losers ruin people's lives? Don't you see that romanticizing douchey behavior is the proper literary convention in this family! Honestly.

That is my favorite Hark! A Vagrant cartoon.

@ 180 -- LOVE that Kate Beaton comic. One of her best!

Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. Glad to hear all are doing well. Hope Mummy and Daddy are getting some sleep these nights.

>181 cbl_tn: & 184 Thank you so much! Carrie: We're off to a good start, I think. DeltaQueen: We are getting some sleep, thanks! Not as much as we'd like of course, but that comes with the territory...

A quick a pretty damn lovely read:

41. Åtta procent av ingenting (The nimrod flipout)
Category 9. Sprinkles, 195 pages.

There’s been a sort of quiet Keret hype brewing here on LT in the last few years, and after finally checking for myself I can totally see why (My sincere thanks to Eva -bookoholic13- who is the one who sparked my interest in this deliciously exact Israeli writer!) This is a collection of very short short stories, often just glimpses and mostly under ten pages long, and always with a subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) twist of strangeness. If I understand the label Slipstream correctly, I guess it could apply to many of these stories. With such a short format, Keret can write many stories that basically are just about one idea or concept. Like the one about how the people on the moon destroyed themselves by making their thoughts manifest, or the one about a young man who realizes that his girlfriend turns into a big fat hairy male football fan every night, or the one exploring the parallel concepts of the main character dying and opening the first laundromat in Israel.

Those are very good, but I still think I prefer the stories that are more like snapshots, or slices of life. The ones that just brushes on lives, describing them ever so briefly in the oddest of circumstances. A pathologist discovers that the victim of a terror attack was terminally ill in undiagnosed cancer, and wrestles with if he should tell the family or not. A woman is embarrassed by her father arranging a visit in the cockpit after a hellish first travel abroad. Three friends are juggling the lingering madness of a dead friends between them, in turns. It’s very original stuff, and I can’t wait to read more Keret.

One word of caution: These stories are really like potato chips. It’s impossible to have just one, but there’s also the risk of devouring too many at once, leaving a sense of oversaturation. 4 ½ stars!

Another great review Anders. Glad to hear everything is good and that you and Flea are getting some sleep.

Third Quarter Summary
I've already admitted defeat for this year's challenge. There's just no way I can read the 25 books I need in three months. I suppose I could strip my Kökkenmödding bonus category for parts, but that would have to mean I miss out on several of the books I really want to read before the year ends. So I'll just keep reading and see how far off I end up. Right now my main concern is where to put the books I don't finish for this year into next year's already pretty full challenge.

Third quarter saw me reading 14 books again. Which is okay considering one of them was 2666. I also read seven bonus books, almost all of them chapter books read for my son.

Bio: 0/1
Cheloveks: Finished second quarter
Facts: 2/3 (2/3 total for the year)
Cliffhangers: 0/4 (2/4 total for the year)
Stiffs: 1/5 (3/5 total for the year)
Treadmill: 2/6 (6/6 total, category completed)
Neighborhoods: 1/7 (4/7 total for the year)
Doggy-bag: 2/8 (4/8 total for the year)
Sprinkles: 2/9 (5/9 total for the year)
Fringes: 1/10 (6/10 total for the year)
Spilikin: 3/11 (6/11 total for the year)

I tick the boxes more or less where I thought I would. Still spreading it out fairly nicely - which also mean I'm not finishing categories. My short story category remains my favorite for the year, and I've also liked more or less everything in my Fantasy/Sci-Fi category. I guess the poor bio runs the risk of not getting read this year either...

Best reads of the year so far:
As fun as I have with my short stories, nothing can yet quite touch The lottery and other stories for eerieness and elegance. Kraken was China Miéville doing what he does best, basically cramming as many of my favorite things into a novel as possible, resparking my enthusiasm in the urban fantasy genre in the process. Cirkeln was proof that you can do great things with a premise that might look just a little tired at first glance. Yarden was something so rare as a modern novel about manual labour, and in all it's simplicity not like anything I've read. And, despite it's flaws, there's really no denying the impact of 2666, keeping me fully interested for over 1000 pages.

Worst reads of the year so far:
Pretty much the same as last quarter. Changeless, a strained thin re-heating of the things that were good about the first book. Wide open, a chore to get through for all it's half-hints and unnecessary secrecy. Unga Norrlänningar was one of those re-reads you wish you'd never done: sexist and ugly in all the wrong ways. And Sweet days of discipline, of which I couldn't tell you a damn thing.

Just want to add my (belated) congrats to you & Flea great news :).

Two great reviews as usual & even though I am drowning in short stories The Nimrod Flipout goes on my wish list! I was forced to read Wuthering Heights at school when I was 17 and it was a bit too much of a shock as I found everyone in it was pretty horrid and so I hated it. Maybe it's time for a reread!

Oh, I am pleased you took to Keret!!! And, yes, flash fiction is best in small doses.

Belated congratulations from me as well! :)

>188 clfisha: It's really worth it - and quite possible to read in snippets. The fact that everybody is a bastard in Wuthering heights is really part of it's appeal, I think!

>189 -Eva-: Thank you so much for the tip! Which book of his shold I read next?

>190 Bcteagirl: Thanks!

42. The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick
Category 10. Fringes, 252 pages.

When it comes to ideas, there’s almost nobody as bold as Philip K. Dick. How about this for a setup? In 2004, the world is divided into two major power blocks: the capitalist Wes-bloc (where even policing is private) and the communist Peep-East. Between these a secret agreement is made. The arms race, necessary to keep the citizens feeling calm on both sides, is to be just a charade. Thus Lars Powderdry’s , the weapons design medium for Wes-bloc (dreaming up his designs in a trance-like state), job is now to think up designs for weapons that seem massively lethal, but which are built from components that can all be used for peaceful, “plowshared” products for the consumer market. Like an ornamental owl/cigar case for instance. He has a counterpart in Peep-East, a young woman named Lilo Topchev, who he is fascinated by without ever having met, and who has the same odd double duty. The fragile balance works.

Until the day the insectoid Slavers arrive from Sirius and start emptying cities, that is. Now the two designer-mediums are brought together to try and create a real weapon, to save the world. A task made all the more difficult by the fact that Powderdry falls in love, while Topchev turns out to be a depressed teenager who just wants the world to end anyway.

It’s mind-boggling what Dick tosses together. But these are one of those instances (not entirely rare with this writer) where his execution isn’t as good as the set-up. As a reader I’m forced to accept many things, on an emotional level especially, that isn’t really grounded. It’s Dick telling me people are in love – I never really see it myself. Which makes the rather radical choices the characters make hard to relate to. Also, the plot is somewhat clunky and un-balanced, with a pretty bizarre deus ex machina element to it. Any Philip K.Dick novel is worth reading for the tidal wave of ideas alone, but this is far from his finest work. 3 stars.

I often find myself flailing about on (what I'm told are) the more approachable PKD works, so I'm sure I would not do well with this one. Thanks for warning me off. I do like his ideas though. I mainly stick to his short stories.

And I'm enjoying your comments on Wuthering Heights. As a fan of the book myself, sometimes I fail to articulate why I like it so. You are so much better at that than I am.

Oh, Victoria, you know you like the bad boys with hidden angst in their hearts.

Incidentally, I just picked up a copy of Hark! a Vagrant and the opening cartoon is the Bronte girls checking out the guys.

RidgewayGirl, True.
You'll have to bring that cartoon so I can see it!

Congratulations on the baby daughter, Anders!

I think there's (so far) only one more of Keret's in Swedish: Goda intentioner, which is the "equivalent" of Missing Kissinger.

191, I still need to venture into the more outlandish area's of PKD's books but doubt it will be that for now. Thanks for the review.

Victoria: I've not yet read any of Dick's short stories. But I can imagine that's a format that serves him well. Arc and structure were never his strong points. I link to the Brontê cartoon in msg 180!

Alison: I've been eyeing that one myself...

Ivy: Thank you so much.

Eva: Tips in english are welcome too. I DO read english as well, you know ;-)

Wolfy: "Outlandish" is a good word for it.

Here's a question I find myself pondering: How soon do you have an idea of how you'll rate a book? I have definitely had books both climbing and falling in rating in the second half of them or even the very ending (The zap gun, reviewed above, had a very seductive detail right at the end which made me ponder ahigher rating for a sec, before stepping back and looking at the whole of the book). But as a rule, I'd say I usually have a pretty good idea of how much I like a book by, say, page 50 or 75. The rating I estimate by then sticks in probably 80% of the cases.

Is it like this for you too?

->198 GingerbreadMan:

Of course, I just figured since they're translated anyway, but then I realized that they're translated into Swedish from English, rather than directly from Hebrew (apparently there are no translators in the world who work in both Swedish and Hebrew!).

So, I'd go with The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories and The Girl on the Fridge. The Bus Driver contains the novella "Kneller's Happy Campers," which was made into a movie Wristcutters (not sure if it ever made it to Sweden) and Girl on the fridge contains my two favorite Keret stories, "Crazy Glue" and "Asthma Attack," the latter of which is only 11 lines long!

->199 GingerbreadMan:
I'm sometimes not sure what I thought of a book before I actually write the review, so I think I add the rating after that, even. In some cases, especially the ones that will end up rating very high or very low, I know fairly soon after starting reading. But, like you said, a good (or bad) enough twist at the end could change everything!

>199 GingerbreadMan: - Interesting question! While I usually know within the first 10% of the book if I will continue reading or abandon it, I tend to waffle over the rating as I continue reading my way through the book. It's my "Well, I don't know..... maybe the author will redeem themselves/scuttle the story" - both have happened, with more frequency than I would expect! - so I tend to reserve edits to my rating as I work my way through the book.

Once I do set the rating - usually immediately after finishing the book - I very seldom waver from that rating.

I'm a little late, but just wanted to say congratulations on the birth of your daughter!

I haven't commented in awhile but I've still be reading your thread with interest. Interesting question about ratings....I think in most cases, I have a general idea of how it's going, and this might change only slightly based on the ending. Though there have been a rare few that I have to actually write out a review to be able to rate, I would guess that your rating estimate bears itself out in my reading as well.

I tend to have a rough idea by about 1/3 through the book so long as there are no surprises coming :P

I never even think about a rating until after finishing reading a book. Especially mysteries as so much depends on the reveal and how things are wrapped up. So far as actually how much I like a book goes I think a good indicator for me is when I first put it down and how soon I want to get back to it.

I've changed my rating of a book months after finishing. If it sticks in my mind or I've utterly forgotten it a few months later, that might cause me to bump it up or down a bit.

A review can easily cement a rating as it brings flaws or highlights into sharp focus, so that's usually my final rating. However they do tend to change over time and I do sometimes go back and change them... So say a good but not brilliant book that manage to stay and for me that deserve a higher rating,Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol is one example, flawed but still vivid.

>200 -Eva-: Thanks! I've been curious about Kneller's happy campers. I think it was a review of that one here on LT (yours?) that first sparked my interest in Keret.

>206 RidgewayGirl:+207 Interesting. Changing a rating after setting it has been a nono for me so far - even though there are books even this year I already feel I rated too high. I want my rating to reflect how I felt about the book when I just read it. A re-read will obviously open for a new rating though!

Today is a fun day. Today is the day all of Sweden talks about world literature. At one o'clock millions of people will take a short break in their workday to see Peter Englund open the door to the Old Stockmarket and announce this year's Nobel laureate. Me, I'll be watching at home, gently rocking Minna :)

I had a few good years around the millennium when I had the winner on my short list of potentials, but I've been way off for the last years. But just for the fun of it: My money is on Adonis, Alice Munro or Chinua Achebe. Do you have any guesses?

I cant leave my rating alone, if I see something way off it just bugs me :)

oh and I think for Chinua Achebe is a good bet..

Swedish poet Thomas Tranströmmer got the prize for 2011, after many years of speculation! First Swede to get the prize since 1974 I think --- and already on my list for the 1212 challenge :)

very belated congrats from me too! haven't had the time to visit LT for a while :-(

some more great reviews - no surprise that The Nimrod Flipout goes on my wishlist too...

I tend to rate things as I review them using the review to distil my feelings and thoughts on a book - however I do try to review books as soon as I finish them (although don't always succeed!) so its a fairly immediate reaction which occasionally I disagree with after some time with further contemplation although I don't change the rating...

I had an idea to do the "last 12 nobel prize winners" as a 12/12 category but dropped it in favour of other "more interesting" categories (I hope) but will probably revisit the idea at some point...

Perhaps it should be another challenge? read every nobel prize winning author?

I tend to rate as I finish the book. Although I recently went back and pulled up my collection and added the rating column just to see and compare. I was surprised at some of the ratings I gave books when I first joined LT compared to how I might rate them now and compared to other books on the list. Still I haven't changed any. I think 1-5 is still a rather narrow range to fit in all the nuances of book rating.

I too was going to try and read all the nobel prize winning books, but decided to go with an awards (in general) category to fit some other books I've wanted to read.

It must have been someone else with equally good taste - I don't think I've reviewed Kneller's separate here at LT.

Look at that - Tranströmer! Not that I've read anything by him, but at least I've heard his name before - that's not entirely common. :)

ETA: Unless of course he's in Svensk Dikt, which litt.vet. makes you read cover to cover. I don't remember any poems anyways, so it clearly doesn't "count." :)

>211 psutto:-212 I have some friends doing that in their book club. The mistake they did in the beginning was trying to do it in chronological order, soon getting bogged down in a fair bit of obsolete literature. (Sweden has recieved 7 Nobel prizes so far, and most of them were given to people in the Academy itself in the earlier years. It's sort of hard to try and argue for why Heidenstam or Karlfeldt are worthy laureats.)

>213 -Eva-: I've read a bit for my literature class. Good stuff. It's no coincidence he went on my list of candidates as I set up my poetry category for next year.

Might rain on some peoples's parade again now. Sorry.

43. Howl's moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Category 8. Doggy-bag, 329 pages.

Everybody knows, in a fairytale land the oldest of three sisters will never amount to anything special. Certainly Sophie Hatter does, so when her father dies she’s humbly content with managing the hat shop as her younger sisters set out into the world. But then she starts to suspect her stepmother (this being a fairytale land, and all) might not be as gentle as she seems. And then, to make matters worse, she accidently pisses off the Witch of the Waste - who turns her into an old croon. Not much to do then but to set out into the world anyway. And soon she finds herself in the mysterious moving castle of the brooding, sulky wizard Howl, whose trapped fire demon Calcifer promises to help her out of her curse. If she can help him out of his contract with the wizard, that is, the specifics of which he is unfortunately magically unable to even hint at…

I read this book without having seen Miyazaki’s film (even though I love his work), and I can totally see how he and Wynne Jones have matching temperaments. Like the filmmaker, Jones uses fairy tale elements in unpredictable ways, with very little regard for classic fairy tale structure. The result is a kind of sober, matter of fact surrealism. It reminds me a little bit of Michael Ende, but is somehow more baroque. Which is great for starting things; the first half of this book is a treasure chest of unflinching ideas and images. But perhaps – in this instance at least – a little great for bringing things home. In the end it’s like she doesn’t quite know what to do with all loose ends, and has to resort to long explanations that feel pretty constructed. The last forty or so pages are a real let-down, and the ending strained. Too bad, as there’s no denying the freshness of this voice. I’ll give her another chance sometime, but don’t feel in any immediate hurry. 3 stars.

So you finished Howl! Will you still see the film? I definitely recommend it.

Of course I will! Elis, our boy, is a huge fan of Totoro and Kiki. But I think he might be a little young for Howl yet.

I liked Howl quite a lot, but I did have the movie in mind, having seen it first, so it must have influenced my reading. I have more Wynne Jones on Mt. TBR (not made into movies that I know of), though, so I hope her other works are good!

Congratulations on your new addition! Sorry I'm a bit late in offering them, but I'm just catching up on all the threads in this group.

I'm very late to the party Anders, though still want to congratulate you on your new arrival. Minna is such a lovely name. Simple, memorable, pleasant to the ear and easy to pronounce in most languages I assume.

As for ratings, I don't have a set system. Sometimes I know within the first 30 pages that it'll at least be a four-star read , unless the middle or ending don't appeal. Sometimes I rate right after finishing the book, but that seems to happen less frequently whereas I often end up re-evaluating the initial rating after completing my review because I as I write it, things come to the surface that I might not have initially paid all that much attention to. Occasionally (rarely) I'll look back on a review and rating and realize they aren't in sync and change it. Usually I will rate downwards on revision because sometimes I try to be too nice initially, as don't like to rate poorly for books that I find just so-so.

>219 Smiler69: Thank you so much, Ilana!

I've been having luck with my Swedish titles this year. Here's another good one:

44. Livläkarens besök (The royal physician's visit) by P.O Enqvist
Category 11. Spilikin, 388 pages.

Reading historical novels like this one, I find myself wondering why I don’t delve into this genre more often. Enqvist’s book is well-researched, opens up a part of my regional history I had no idea of - and reads like a thriller.

In Denmark in the middle of the 18th century, the nobility is holding the power. A string of weak kings, more interested in drinking and sleeping around than ruling, have in practice left the reins to the people around them. Strong powers of course wish things remain this way. Therefor focus on the upbringing of the young prince Christian is on breaking him down. It’s quite horrid the brutal and contradictory treatment he goes through, and by the time he as a teenager inherits the throne he is psychotic and paranoid, broken and scared.

A Royal Physician is hired, with the specific task of looking after the king. The German Struensee is reluctant at first, but soon realizes the potential in this spot. Struensee is very involved in the Enlightenment movement, and after winning the king’s trust and channeling it through him, he quietly and methodically starts a Danish Revolution from his desk. He is changing things radically – cutting down funds for the army, giving legal rights to bastard children, reducing taxes, introducing freedom of speech. And he strikes up a strange friendship with the troubled young king, who is all too thankful to have someone else doing the ruling.

The other two major players in this novel are the young queen Caroline Mathilde, youngest sister to the mad king George of England, who is thrown into this retarded little backwater country and given a husband who is insane – but who realizes she is both capable and eager to exercise power. She becomes Struensee’s strongest ally, and his lover. And finally Guldberg, an upstart at the court, from common background like Struensee, but one who is working his influence on the other side of things: The reaction that is bound to come towards the ungodly conduct of the dirty English harlot and her German lover. The future, when everything is to be set right again.

Enqvist has a tone telling this mind-boggling story of philosophy, madness, idealism and power that invokes absolute confidence. There's no doubt this book is very well researched. But even when he must be guessing, he is utterly believable in his low-key matter of fact style, which still lends itself to a kind of poetry. The characters are wonderfully drawn in frailty and complexity. And the plot itself is often nail-biting and chilling suspense, even if the inevitable, tragic outcome is clear from the get-go.

A warning that there are some disturbing elements here –including cruelty to children. But if that doesn’t deter you, this is a read I’ll heartily recommend to anyone interested in historical fiction. 4 ½ stars!

Kökkenmödding: Essex County volume 1: Tales from the farm by Jeff Lemire

I had some time to kill in Stockholm City yesterday, and found myself in the excellent comics library Serieteket in the Culture House for the first time in a long while. What a great place that is, with it’s brilliant selection and competent staff – we’re so lucky to have it!

I picked up this, the first volume in the Essex County series, after hearing much raving about it here on LT. It’s easy to see why. This novella of a young boy on the Canadian countryside who’s just lost his mother and escapes into Superhero fantasies is perhaps not that original, but Lehane tells it in an exact, sparse style, making great use of the medium. It’s a little gem of graphic realism, if not sensational, and I’ll surely read the following parts as well. 3 ½ stars.

I haven't read Livläkarens besök, but have much enjoyed my other Enquist reads, so on the sagging wishlist it goes! Thanks, I think... :)

Must visit Serieteket on my next trip!!

I am so glad you enjoyed Essex County volume 1. The other stories are connected, yet separate and all blend together for a great read. Hope you are able to track down the rest.

Really good review of The Royal Physician's Visit, thumbed and on my wish list, you have wetted my appetite.

>222 -Eva-: I've read many books by Enqvist, and I think it's really one of his best.
>223 DeltaQueen50: Thanks for the tip! A very enjoyable and solid read.
>224 clfisha: I hope you like it. It won the August Prize - which is the biggest prize for a Swedish novel - when it came and was very widely read. I think it's a book for almost anybody!

Anders, great review of The Royal Physician's Visit, which I've thumbed and am glad to see is available at my library as it's now on my WL too.

I read Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth Vol. 1: Out of the Woods a few months ago and really dug it, but as they don't yet have the following volumes at the library, I'll explore Essex County: Tales from the Farm next.

Minna is a little chaos troll in the evenings. So, while I've been reading, I haven't really had the time or the energy to post. But now, in the minutes before stumbling into bed, I give you my additions from last week:

45. För Gud och Ulster (Resurrection Man) by Eoin McNamee
Category 7. Neighborhoods, 401 pages.

Belfast in the early seventies. What a scary place! Violence is everywhere, bombings, secteristic murders and punishment of traitors (like the guy with a catholic fishing buddy) happens daily. And the city McNamee paints in a vivid grey is a place where the violence is even so normal it has pushed everything else out of people’s minds. It’s routine. In the pubs the discussions are all about ballistics and calibers. About who’s in jail and for how long. Or if there’s any truth to the statement that there’s still a higher risk of dying in traffic than from terrorism. Local knowledge is everything. A person who doesn’t know to which side each single street belongs is in grave danger. Palestine Street. Chlorine Park. Tomb Street.

And in this city walks Victor and his small gang of butchers. Where everybody else uses bombs or clinical gunshots, they torture their victims with hundreds of slow stab wounds. Victor is a cold-blooded psychopath, a serial killer among terrorists. He’s not only scaring the Catholics he hates, but the people on his own side too – the loyalist terrorists. Slowly, he is becoming a liability to the cause.

McNamee paints a bleak and scary portrait of a man and a time and place. We get to sense what might be Victor’s true subconscious motives between the lines, but mostly this is told as a straight and simple story. Perhaps just a little too straight. This is not a sophisticated book, and it unfolds more or less like you expect it to, but the ambience of it is masterfully created. It’s almost hard to believe it tells of a European reality from not that long ago. 3 ½ stars.

Kökkenmödding: The Dark Age 1: Brothers and other strangers by Busiek, Anderson and Ross, 256 pages.

I had this one lined up for my 12 in 12, but couldn't help myself. Everybody who’s been following me the last few years know I love Astro City. It’s quite frankly the most clever take on Superheroes since Watchmen. Perhaps it’s even better, for Busiek and his team manage to find new perspectives constantly – more often than not focusing on the everyday people who only sometimes see the heroes fly by up in the air. Here the action is set in the 70ies, a time of racial tension, political unrest and a growing suspicion of vigilantes in masks. That the Silver Agent is charged with murder of a foregin head of state isn’t helping either…

This is really work on an epic scale. Our main characters are two brothers taking very different paths in life after a tragedy in their childhood, and we follow them for a number of years. A lot of things only hinted at in earlier Astro City albums are beginning to come together now, and if there was ever any doubt Busiek knows exactly what he’s doing, it’s time to let all doubts go. This universe is solid, nothing is put in by chance.

I’m very very eager to read the second part. For now, my feeling is that this is absolutely up to the ridiculously high standard Busiek sets, but perhaps not the pinnacle a lot of people paint it out to be. For me, so far, the overflow of brand new perspectives on a small scale he tossed out in “Local heroes” still holds the fort. I’m prepared to be convinced otherwise though, and can’t wait to see how this big storyline unfolds.4 stars!

Great review of Resurrection Man, which sounds very interesting, if a bit too gruesome - thumbing!

ETA: Looks like McNamee also writes fantasy YA - interesting!

The only book that I've read about the troubles in Northern Ireland is Harry's Game and I enjoyed that quite a bit. Resurrection Man sounds like another good one. I also still need to pick up the Astro City books. Looks like there is a new edition of Life in the Big City due out at the end of the year so might wait for that.

Hi people, sorry for my absence. I'm wrestling with the common parental disease Nowhere nearly enough sleep and am currently a little bit like Gregor Samsa - lay me on my back and I'm am helpless. I'm also nearing deadline with some side projects. This combination reflects badly on my reading - my progress in The harsh cry of the heron is painfully slow. Thank god for graphic novels.

228+229 Just don't expect to much from Resurrection man plot-wise. It's really the ambience and the setting that does it.

229 The Astro City books are usually stand alones - short story collections, even - but I still recommend reading them in order. That gives a better understanding for the environment and the hordes of super heroes. So Life in the big city is a great place to start.

Kökkenmödding: Brat Pack by Rick Veitch, 174 pages.

It doesn’t require a lot of thinking to come to the conclusion there’s something weird about the superhero sidekick. The fact that brooding crimefighters prefer to hang out with boys and girls in their early teens, gladly putting them in mortal danger, is rather unpleasant when you think about it. Also, the sidekick is more expendable than the hero, and is often killed off to inject new life into storylines, or just to prove that danger and suspense is real. Batman is ticking off Robins, and in a famous example from the early nineties, a poll was held among readers whether Jason Todd, the second Robin should be killed or not. The reading audience wanted blood – Jason died in the next issue.

The potential abusiveness of the hero / sidekick relationship has been explored several times in post-modern superhero comics like Top Ten or Astro City, but Rich Veitch goes all the way with it in this album, creating a grotesque, distorted superhero world. A generation of sidekicks, the so called “Brat Pack” have just been killed off, and merchandise calls for a quick replacement. A quartet of starry eyed teens are recruited through a church and the process of being “broken in” starts. Veitch’s story is pretty crude and aims for deconstruction and low blows. One of the heroes is a pedophile, one a white power sadist, one is teaching sex as a woman’s best weapon and one is a drug addict.

There are interesting things in here, but the story doesn’t quite work, and it pretty quickly becomes evident that some of the storylines are much more developed than others – a problem because most of the spreads are divided into four parts, one for each sidekick. All in all, the setup is way better than the execution. 3 stars.

Hi Anders, always nice to see you posting - and with such interesting reviews! - especially with the family, work, etc you are juggling! Besides, isn't sleep overrated? ;-P

Great review. I think one of the brilliant bits in Kick-Ass (the film haven't read the comics yet) is at the end when the bad guy is beating a 9 year old girl. Very uncomfortable viewing, but loved the play on conventions.

I always thought The Boys had great potential to really push the downside of supes but sadly didn't really pull it off.

interesting concept - looks like someone else should do more with it!

I do remember a Tick story where the superheroes were all in some sort of meeting and all the sidekicks have to bide their time elsewhere and the story concentrates on the sidekicks - although the tick is pretty tongue in cheek

231 - I -seriously!- have some issues with sleep. I have come to realize I tend to look at sleep as a waste of time. Which is of course, stupid and potentially dangerous. These days I have to make do with what I get, though.

232 - I really enjoyed Kick-ass the film. They also managed very nicely to present the potentially scary in a nine-year old vigilante. Nothing cutesy about Hit-girl! I've been eyeing "The boys", but so far the whole concept of six blokes and a token lass has seemed old to me. Smurfette syndrom.

233 - Haven't read The Tick. But another interesting take on the concept is when Anti-sidekick protection laws are passed in Alan Moore's Top Ten.

46. Vid hägerns skarpa skri (The harsh cry of the heron) by Lian Hearn
Category 4. Cliffhangers, 641 pages.

There are several ways of presenting a book in a series to help the reader getting into things again. Lian Hearn’s tactic is to throw the pretty massive cast of this epic like a tidal wave on the cowering reader in the first fifty pages, with only the briefest of explanations. Add to that the well-known “names from a very different place” syndrome and the whole start becomes a rather tricky affair. I’m forced to resign to the fact that the year since I visited the Three Kingdoms is too long – a lot of the subtleties regarding how loyalties have shifted in the horde of secondary characters in the decade that has passed since the last book is lost on me. One or two of the characters I’m not quite sure of who the heck they are even after finishing this brick. In summary – I’m reading this book (almost) as a stand-alone.

Takeo’s and Kaede’s reign has been peaceful and prosperous for over a decade. Takeo is still thinking about the prophecy, but hasn’t found a way of telling his wife about the left out bit – that he is supposed to be killed by his own son. This is unfortunate, because jealousy, plotting and sibling rivalry is drawing the Kingdoms into conflict again – and secrets make lethal weapons. Add to that visitors from overseas with powerful fire weapons, and the prosperity of the the Otori Kingdoms attracting attention from the faraway emperor, and it’s pretty obvious the days of harvesting rice and raising horses are over.

Lian Hearn is writing epics in the true sense of the word, full of flawed characters facing terrible dilemmas, making both good and bad choices. She writes excellent female characters, complex and interesting without ever resorting to an over-compensating heroine stereotype. Kaede herself is a favorite of course, but her sinister twin daughters are pretty damn interesting too, or the aging assassin Shizuka. I also admire Hearn’s no-nonsense approach to characters when the plot calls for it. You can never be certain who comes out of a book alive, which creates a real suspense.

But this book still feels rather bloated and front-heavy. And, as often is the case with books that feel a couple of hundred pages too long, the ending by comparison is steep and abrupt. It’s almost like Hearn is eager to wrap this saga up – even though it in itself is both moving and true to the storyline. I’ll pick up the fifth book sometime, but probably not for another year or so. I can only hope, it being a prequel, I’ll have less trouble with he who is who that time around. 3 stars.

Well The Boys plays on the horrid misogyny of some super hero comics, but as it can be pretty gratuitous I think it falls
sometimes and your right that could of so easily been fixed by having more the one female character in the gang. It's all about balance sometimes. To be honest, whilst I quite liked the early volumes I gave up I think about volume 4.

Hmm I still haven't finished the Otori series I think I could be in worse trouble then you!

>235 clfisha: My edition thankfully had character lists - which helped at least a little bit. On the other hand, it had for some reason skipped the map for this part of the series, so keeping track of places was something of a chore for me too... Flipping through the last few chapters of The brilliance of the moon boefore delving into this might be a good idea, actually.

47. Tiger by Mian Lodalen (won't even bother with a touchstone...)
Category 10 Spilikin, 352 pages.

I saw a beautiful theatre piece based on the two young actresses’ own diaries from the teenage years. It was about their friendship back then, the symbiotic kind, bordering on love, and also about that shameful thing that they left out of the diaries – that they shared early sexual experiences together. It was such a tender and sad performance I wanted more, and picked up this book . Mian Lodalen was famous as a gay rights activists in the nineties, and this book is documentary fiction about her teenage years, growing up in religious Jönköping in the seventies.

Connie is living in a foster home, with realatives that don’t really care much. Her dad is a crazy, and her mother is dead. Connie is at the bottom of her class in every subject, flat and boyish like a board, poor and dressed in hopeless clothes, and has no real friends. But, changing to a new school, she teams up with another group of working class outcasts and finds herself belonging to a group for the first time. They call themselves Sisters in Crime, and steal, drink, smoke and cause mayhem in school, knowing they have no future and choosing not giving a damn. But when well-adjusted Anna in 8th grade smiles at Connie and ask her to dance at a party, something wakes within her. Something shameful and secret, something even her rebel friends couldn’t possibly understand.

The book is nowhere near as good as that theatre performance, and I can't imagine it'll be translated. But it’s daring and no-nonsense, funny and sad. Lodalen isn’t quite secure as a stylist, and there are some annoying anachronisms in here. But also a lot of insight and solidarity with the teenage outlook on life and love. And if nothing else, this is a reminder of just how shunned homosexuality was in this country thirty years ago – a “disease” Connie is convinced she’s the only one in Sweden to carry. It’s also a real pageturner – I speeded through 350 pages in just a day, on top of work and taking care of two children. 3 ½

And now: a stinker!

Kökkenmödding Kabuki: Circle of blood by David Mack, 272 pages.

I guess this is an attempt at creating a more introspective version of superhero (or, vigilante, really) comics. But instead of being lyrical and full of ambience, to me it just comes across as pretentious and conceited. Instead of being dense and focused, it comes across as repetitive and picturing a Kyoto populated by about eleven people. Utterly without humor and with gaps in the plot big enough to wield a katana in, Kabuki seems mostly to be about over-clever graphical solutions and any excuse to show off perfect female bodies in skimpy battle-wear in elaborate poses. This was puffing-air-out-of-the-nose-annoying, and my worst read of the year so far. Not terribly eager to continue this series, no - in case anyone was still wondering. 1 ½ stars.

Pretty much sums up what I thought of Kabuki too

Now I tend to agree but I seem to have given 3 stars.. Can't for the life of remember why! Was the artwork really good? All I do remember was the skimpy costume girl being dressed up as equality wound me up a bit.

LOL! My best friend also had another baby recently and she's turning into a bit of a zombie from the sleep deprivation. :)

That play you saw sounds fascinating - it's so uncomfortable in a good way (is there a word for that?) when you see a performance based on something so personal. Was is a play that's been published or a one-off performance, do you remember?

You're doing really well in the challenge, even with new baby - I had expected you to go semi-missing and only surface for the 12-in-12! :)

>237 psutto:. Thanks! Damn, that was one annoying book.
>238 clfisha:. Not really stellar artwork, I don't think. As I said - some very very clever graphical solutions indeed. But more tiresome than genious, at least in my book.
>239 -Eva-: I don't think the play will be published. Swedish is such a small language you know, and few people read plays. It's really only the biggest names (typically novelists who also write plays) who get their plays published in book form usually - PO Enqvist, Jonas Gardell and so on. Oh, and Ulf Lundell published a brick full of plays - despite nobody wanting to stage a single one of them! A few micropublishers have done series of plays in paperback, as well as Teatertidningen and Riksteatern.

Oh, the joy of reading a fascinating book! I'm savouring Palimpsest, making slow progress but enjoying myself immensly so far. Just what I needed after a string of mostly mediocricy lately.

The reviews for Palimpsest seem to go from "best ever" to "worst ever" - quite a spread. LT says I'll like it, but I'll wait for your word if it work all the way to the end before putting on the wishlist. I'm holding my thumbs! (That expression doesn't quite work in English...!) :)

I am waiting patiently to see what you think of Palimpsest!

I really enjoyed palimpsest see my review here

http://www.librarything.com/topic/74962

I think it all depends on if you can get along with the thick as treacle dream-like language

It's really a tad more flowery than I usually like it, but so far the imagery is so striking and interesting it works for me. I'm only 60 pages in, should be added.

And I know you liked it! Yours and Calire's reviews were the reason I picked it up in the first place :)

->243 psutto:

Thick-as-treacle is absolutely OK, it's the dream language bit that worries me. :)

OAN, I just bought Nerd Do Well for a friend (your review is just above Palimpsest on that page) - sounds like a good read. I do wonder about the woven-in sci fi novel. Is that a big part?

245 it's not a huge part no, it's quite silly though

"Quite silly" is just fine! :)

Still reading Palimpsest, which is not Palimpsest's fault. Baby Minna has a cold and bawls well into the night, and I went to Finland for three packed days of work. The kind of snippet reading I'm forced to resort to these days is not good for a book like this one. But I'm still really enjoying it.

Will now officially begin the process of scrapping my 11 in 11 for parts, moving candidates over to the 12 in 12. I expect to read seven more books (after Palimpsest) this year, tops. And a couple of graphic novels, maybe.

You've done well, considering. Isn't it amazing how little sleep one can get by on? Impossible to read, however.

Thanks for the encouragement, Allison!

Sorry to learn Minna has a cold and that you have been busy and sleep deprived. I agree with you, Palimpsest isn't something that can be properly enjoyed by reading only snippets of it over time.

I guess sleep deprivation can only get better/less as they get older so hang in there!

Minna's cold is really no big thing, all things considering. And sleep deprivation is a more or less normal state in my life :P I hope to finish Palimpsest tomorrow!

48. Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
Category 10. Fringes, 371 pages.

From the very first page, describing Casimira’s vermin factory which produces flies, bees and rats for the city Palimpsest, I knew this was my kind of book. And from there, I went right into a two week maltreatment of it – reading snippets, falling asleep, not finding time for it for several days, and so forth. Which is not the best way to approach this rich, strange soup of ornamented, flowery language and bizarre imagery. But still the originality and emotional bite of this weird book cut through, and despite my best efforts to destroy it for myself, I’m left with one of this year’s most memorable reads.

Palimpsest is a city in another world, and a sexually transmitted disease in ours. Having sex with someone infected is a ticket to passage, and symptoms include map-like birthmarks, displaying the part of the city you grant access to. Does that sound strange? Well, it’s really nothing compared to the city itself, where the dead are buried inside stalks of bamboo, where beggar surgeons pester people on the beach, where feral trains mate freely in abandoned stations and war veterans wear animal body parts. Many of the infected will do their best to shake off the city as dreams, doing all they can to stay away. But for some, people who have lost their way in life, Palimpsest becomes a possibility to find meaning. And for those, the pain lies in the fact that it seems impossible to stay more than a night at the time.

Part surreal New Weird, part urban fantasy and topped with just a pinch of erotica, this is a truly original reading experience. Heady and clever, but also with an emotional rawness and a fair bit of blood and sweat which corresponded with the melancholy streak in me. It isn’t all perfection. The four main storylines are given an exactly equal share of the book, without being equally interesting. And the 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 organization of the book gets a little static. At times Valente seems to whip up strange images for their own sake. And the language is really a little too incense-reeking for my usual taste. For me it works like all hell, but – a little bit like with the city in the book - I guess I can also see how you can hate this. Me? I’m going to read everything by this author, and will keep my eyes open for strange maps on the skin of strangers. 4 ½ stars!

(Having a truly great time with this category - two 5 star reads, three 4,5!)

But still the originality and emotional bite of this weird book cut through, and despite my best efforts to destroy it for myself, I’m left with one of this year’s most memorable reads.

I am glad to learn that you enjoyed this one, and thank you for the chuckle. ;-) Thumb!

great review of palimpsest

We have a couple more of hers on the shelf which I've planned for my 12/12

Glad you enjoyed it! Her 1st book Labyrinth is even richer in language (much lower on plot) and must be written in snippets so if you spy it, grab it. The only other one I have read In the Night Garden is great but the plot richer than the language.

I can't believe I've never considered this book until now. Good review and onto the wishlist it goes.

I think Palimpsest goes on the maybe-eventually list for me, but a thumbing is definitely in order.

ETA: And congrats on the Hot Review as well! :)

Thank you kindly for all the thumbs! Claire - it seems likely In the night garden might be next for me then :)

Thanks for making me aware of yet another book I should read, Palimpsest looks too interestingly weird to not pick up.

Finally finding some time to write reviews!

Kökkenmödding: Y, The last man 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, 128 pages.

What’s good about this: This is a neat version of post-apocalypse, really. A strange plague wipes out all male mammals on the planet in a jiffy, leaving a global civilization that is half collapsed. Or, well, all male mammals except Yorrick the bigmouthed escape artist and his pet monkey. Also, the action starts right at the time all the men spew blood and just die, so you get into the action at a pretty unusual stage of things. No warlords in desert forts with homemade armour made out of traffic signs, but rather the dilemma of who is going to be president now, what do we do about congress when most of them are dead, and how do we get rid of all those cars full of dead guys blocking the highways? It’s a world on a slope, but not even close to rock bottom yet. Interesting.

It’s also a fast-paced and pretty well-told short cuts type of story, quickly cutting between people in different parts of the world. And the artwork, while not spectacular, is crisp and effective.

What’s not so good about this: An annoying main character, who can’t ever keep his mouth shut or refrain from challenging people doing Bad Things in a loud and juvenile way. A secret agent who says stuff like “My name is classified. You can call me 355.” A certain amount of America-centrism and even a tad bit of flag waving going on. And most of all, it steps into a lot of clichés about what an all-female world might be like. Does it come as a surprise to anyone that the bad guys are extremist feminists who’ve read Solanas SCUM manifesto literally, call themselves Amazones and are on a holy mission (from Mother Earth of course) to hunt down and kill the last specimen of the slavers? While some other women prefer to sit and ponder dead rock stars. I just feel a lot more complexity could easily have been achieved here.

So, a mixed bag of sweets this one. But in the end, I guess the pace of the story and the basic premise is good enough to make this a read above average, despite its flaws. 3 ½ stars.

This concludes my bonus category. And since there's no way in hell I'll finish this challenge, rather than overflowing the overflow category I guess I'll just stick this next one in my "catch-all" category - one of the ones I know I won't fill up:

49. Y , the last man 2: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra
Category 11. Spilikin, 128 pages.

Hm. There are problems with choosing a global disaster and then shrinking the perspective to a pretty limited cast, but still trying to keep the perspective broad. One of them is that, in order for said cast to be in the same story, they need to have relationships with each other. Also, they need to meet – especially in a context where there are no more phones. Which is a problem because it creates a feeling that the whole eastern US is big as, say, the 11000 inhabitant town where I grew up. But populated with about a quarter as many people. In this book, staying out of sight from a band of about a dozen blood thirsty Amazones is virtually impossible in the state of Ohio. And one of the killers will inevitably turn out to be your sister. Who is a blood thirsty amazon because she has daddy issues.

This is still a story well told, and an interesting set-up. But I think the peeves of this series will overshadow the good things for me. I’ll at least take a break before continuing with the next part. 3 stars.

50. Kallocain by Karin Boye
Category 10. Fringes, 156 pages.

Karin Boye’s dystopian novel from 1940 is a modern classic in Sweden, and considering my taste for the genre it’s really quite strange I haven’t read it before. Boye’s vision of a nightmarish police state, where regulations, paranoia and propaganda rule people’s life, is pretty reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. In Boye’s version of totalitarianism, children are taken from their parents and put in training camps at the age of seven, whole cities are devoted to producing specific items (our hero Leo Kall lives in Chemistry City 4), and every word you speak, both in public and in private is being judged.

Leo Kall is a chemist and a loyal servant of the World State, and with his invention Kallocain – a dead-sure truth serum, leaving no permanent damage in the subject – he provides the government with a powerful instrument of control. For the first time it’s possible not only to focus on acts, but on intentions and innermost thoughts in the citizens. It’s possible to find out who is really loyal to the core. And who is a doubter, a dreamer, a poser, a traitor. Kallocain is a huge success, and a law that criminalizes thoughts is passed. But Leo is beginning to doubt, especially in the light of the confessions he hears from people under the influence of the drug. Is there such a thing as a mind pure enough to pass the test?

Some of the best parts of this book are the confessions made under the influence of Kallocain that Leo hears while administering the syringe. They feel personal and fresh and offer a clever way of telling more about this society from a human perspective. Like the woman who is married to a state traitor but in her confession is focusing on the amazing thing that he loved and trusted her enough to tell her. Or the members of a strange little cult who show just how small an act of rebellion can be and still bring hope.

Kallocain is clearly written as a warning against Stalinism, and comes across a little dated. But Boye’s dry, Kafkaesque style is still very readable. And a lot of the situations put forth in this slender book are fresh takes on the old “free thinker in an oppressive society” theme that at least I have never read before. I recommend it to any fan of dystopian literature. 4 stars!

I've never heard of Kallocain before, but it sounds very interesting! I'll have to check it out.

hmm well I think you have finally put any idea of reading Y The Last Man, I have heard mixed reviews for years but it seems to have some faults that would just annoy me!

and adding Kallocain to my wishlist, damn you! ;)

Great reviews kallocain sounds right up my street

It's a shame that the Y, the Last Man books didn't quite hit the mark for you. The series has been on my to check out list for a while but haven't found the time to get to it yet.

Thanks guys! It's worth mentioning that Boye's book actually came nine years before Orwell's.

It seems like it's definitely time for a reread of Kallocain. So many books read at litt.vet. that are almost (not really, though) wasted because you just mow through so much literature in such a short time. One of my professors called our studies "riding a motorcycle through the a museum."

I've tried Brian K. Vaughn before and wasn't impressed, but I too have heard various things about Y: The Last Man that's been intriguing, but its definitely off the list now - thank you! :)

I know exactly what you mean about litt.vet. So many "kind of read" books during that year and a half. I remember the pace I went through poetry (Oh, great, only 80 pages modernist poetry for tomorrow - look how few lines there are on each page!) and the fact that I slugged down Crime and Punishment in under three days seems pretty stepmotherly.

Interesting question, by the way: What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right? The time you went through Ulysses while having a high fever? Trying to read Shakespeare's sonnets while taking care of three children? Or the time you read the last Harry Potter book and discovered that fifty pages in the middle were ripped out, but just couldn't be bothered to find a new copy?

I think Crime and punishment in three days - because I had to, not because I wanted to - is probably topping my list.

"look how few lines there are on each page"

LOL!! Was drinking my morning tea when I read that and it wasn't a full snort, but the potential was there!

Funny, we read Crime and Punishment over 3 days as well - it was assigned in the Friday class for Monday discussion. That one worried me until I realized it was basically a mystery-novel. :) With Ulysses, I was lucky because we had a professor who had determined that we should love it, so we went through it thoroughly and read Ulysses Annotated at the same time, so I actually finished with a firm grasp of what it was about. :)

I think (along with those modern poets) mainly the playwrights didn't get a fair cop from me - I don't think plays aren't meant to be read anyways - and reading a bunch of them in a row (again, "look how few lines there are on each page") is not a good idea.

ETA: Thought of one specific novel: Peter Carey's Bliss, which I read while recouping from a failed relationship. I seriously dislike it and have absolutely no idea what it is about!! Actually, I should try it again - thanks for the reminder. Hardly Carey's fault I picked a stupid boyfriend who wasn't quite right for me. :)

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

For this challenge it would have to be Looking for Jake: Stories where I foolishly decided to read ALL of the short stories back to back instead of savouring them over time. End result for those that don't remember reading this on my thread: I completely skim read the last two to three stories in the collection and couldn't even tell you the premise of those stories if I tried.

In 2009 I abandoned The Children's Book after reading 94 pages and returned it to the library in disgust. My conscious must have decided that I was a little to hasty to abandon/pass judgement on the book because I have since then purchased a gently pre-owned copy which is now sitting on my shelves waiting for a second chance!

->271 lkernagh:

And I owe a big "thank you" to you for doing that and thus warning me off doing the same! Now, I have been reading one story before I start a new book, so I now only have two stories left. It's a fantastic collection of stories! :)

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening by L.J. Smith because there was too much eye-rolling going on to have read enough of the text.

The most recent one would be the audiobook I'm listening to right this very second : These Three Remain. It's the final book in a trilogy (maybe I should include the entire trilogy?) re-telling Pride & Prejudice from Darcy's POV. Yes, I confess that I've never read the original, but lord knows I've seen enough movies and read enough Austen-esque stuff to know the story well - how can that 1 book be made in to 3? Anyways, 5 hours in to this particular book Darcy had just proposed to Elizabeth ... FOR THE FIRST TIME! What in the world was IN those other 2 books? And this book is nearly 19 hours long - I could not tell you what has been happening, exactly, for the 13 hours that I've heard in-between then and now, but this is one that I can't wait to see the back end of, and I don't see a re-visit at any point in the near future.

Sorry to ramble, just realizing how ridiculous the reading of this trilogy has been. :)

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

At the beginning of this year with The Master and Margarita. I know it's a good book and an important one, but I was forcing myself to read it until I gave up. Someday I'll revisit it and be able to appreciate what Bulgakov is doing.

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

For this year I'd have to say Common Murder by Val McDermid. I read it straight after Garnethill and it didn't compare favourably.

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

The Count of Monte Cristo, because I couldn't have been older than 12 when I read it. I really need to give it another chance now that I'm old enough actually to understand what's going on!

>277 christina_reads: - Christina, do give the Count of Monte Cristo another try! Dumas is one of my favorite "classical" authors and it is all thanks to a graphic novel I came across and devoured while visiting family friends in Southern England during a family vacation back in my pre-teen days. Love his stories and recommend you give this one another go at some point.

What's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

Sadly quite a lot of set texts at school. I still have terrible flash backs when someone mentions Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally. I hated it and I raced through them with utter boredom. There is nothing worse imo being forced to read a book when your not quite ready and sadly I am still put off trying them. I mean I lapped up Chaucer, for some unknown reason fell in love with D H Lawrence but people like Jane Austin made my toes curl. As maybe you can guess I wasn't cut out for a life of literary academic :-)

Being forced to read books in school meant that I have a deep dislike for Oliver twist and by association all Dickens (and I watched the film versions and only skim read the book for my O level exam!) and also a loathing for tess of the d'urbevilles which ironically has now, after all these years finally come in handy since I'm reading Kim Newman's rather marvellous mash up Professor Moriarty

what's the read where you most felt you weren't treating the book right?

Sadly many books I've rushed through if they're an average book always in the rush to get to something more interesting, maybe also for me the master and margherita as that failed to grip me and I spent the whole book concentrating on it's flaws!

@ 278 -- Don't worry, Lori, I definitely plan to try The Count of Monte Cristo again! I have space for it in the 12 in 12, in fact...

There's two that come to mind, both from college -

Beowulf, the Seamus Heaney translation: I suddenly realized I was due to discuss it in class the next day, so I read it pretty much in one sitting...until 2 AM when I could barely keep my eyes open and just wanted the book to be done.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: which I really don't want to read again, but I read it in 2-3 days, again so that I was done in time for the class discussion on it. Despite being about one day, it doesn't seem the sort of book to rush through.

Thanks all of you for sharing! Seems to boil down to three main groups: I read the book too quickly to get it/appreciate it or I was forced to read it at the wrong time in life or I know this is supposed to be a classic, but daaaamn.

For this challenge, I have to say it was probably Palimpsest. Came ut with a great reading experience despite that, though. Which I guess says something about the book :)

51. Among the thugs by Bill Buford
Category 3. Facts, 318 pages. Category completed!

In the late 80-ies, Buford, an American living in England happens to find himself on a Liverpool supporter train somewhere in Wales. The experience is smelly, loud, violent, scary and disgusting. It’s the heyday of British football violence, and things are happening at virtually every game, both home and abroad. And Buford finds himself asking the question what it is that makes young men run amok every Saturday all over the country – and why the fact that they do is more or less looked upon as some sort of natural disaster. The interest quickly becomes an obsession, and Buford spends years watching games in packed cages, and running with the firms and hooligans. And after being in the middle of the horrorshow when Man U:s Red Devils trash Turin, sending over sixty people to hospital, he is even accepted as someone who can be let in on the truth: It is about the violence, not the game, of course it is. At times Buford tries to quit, but even though he’s never a part of the violence himself, he finds it very difficult to leave. He’s become addicted to the sweat, the piss, the blood.

You might need some utterly basic knowledge about football to fully appreciate this book, know just a little bit about European teams and their connotations. But mostly this is a fascinating read about how groups work. How a group makes collective decisions and how it channels it’s energy. On top of this, Buford is a very good stylist, with a nail-biting ability to describe frozen moments like the very second a crowd becomes a violent mob. One should be warned that the violence described is extremely graphic and detailed. This is at times a very disturbing book. At times, I feel an intense relief that the book is dated. We have come a long way in these twenty years. Still, in Sweden , the firms are on the rise again, and I know many who hesitate to bring their kids to the high risk games and derbys.

Among the thugs is part freakshow, part horror story and part journalism, and should be of interest to anyone in groups and psychology. Football interest is optional. 4 stars!

Although it doesn't sound like a book for me, a great review none the less!

I already have a book about football hooliganism on my tbr list with Awaydays. I think I'll read that before adding another on the same subject. Does sound like a good read though.

I read that a while ago and thought it fascinating, although my football-interest is about a 2.5 on a 10-scale. I also have his Heat: an Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker.... on deck for next year and am looking forward to reading his writing again.

Got Heat picked for me for my blindfold category, so I'll be reading that next year too!

52. Fine just the way it is by Annie Proulx
Category 9. Sprinkles, 221 pages.

I’ve heard much raving about Annie Proulx over the years, but I must admit my main reason for picking up this collection of short stories was to finally make some progress on my Fifty States Challenge. I’m glad I did. Proulx feels like a solid acquaintance, creating wonderfully dense short stories, often epic in scope despite their limited format. Wyoming’s open and sparsely populated landscape, poverty and harsh history forms a backdrop to most of these, and creates an ambience that’s consistent whether the topic is Native Americans driving buffalo off a cliff thousands of years ago or an angry woman having a scary accident while hiking on an abandoned trail in the present. Proulx is at her best when writing about the days when Wyoming was still a territory, I think, in a sort of brutal historical fiction bordering on Western.

Really, all of these stories are on the bleak side, and there are a few moments, especially in the concluding Tits-up in a ditch, where I feel she’s coming close to being heartless in her kicking around the poor main character. But she manages to keep on the right side, I think, and the emotional impact of most of these stories is hard to deny.

Two lame-ass stories starring the devil and delivering the blunt satire that usually follows with the tired concept “The Hoofed one decides to modernize Hell” are totally expendable and drags this collection down at least half a notch. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed my first literary trip to the vast plains of Wyoming, and will look for more Proulx in the future.4 stars!

Proulx writes such beautiful sentences! That sounds a bit odd but I've noticed that her writing goes from great to brilliant when you listen to an audio version, so if you get a chance to do that, I'd recommend it!

Nice review Anders. I also have yet to venture into Proulx's works, but your review is nudging me in that direction.

I still can't stand her writing, but I liked your writing about her writing.

Thank you all for the comments. I really miss having more time on LT than the occasional fifteen minutes. I'm behind on all of my favorite threads (and I fear even going to the 12 in 12 group, where I've hardly even started reading anybody's), as well as my own. It's for the best of reasons of course (baby Minna and her fabolous big brother and a couple of commissioned plays), but still.

53. Blameless by Gail Carriger
Category 4. Cliffhangers, 374 pages. Category completed!

I was so disappointed with Changeless, the previous part of this series, that I was a bit hesitant to pick this up. Fortunately, this the third Alexia Tarabotti book is a step back in the right direction. Soulless’ strength was in light cheeky fun and world building. Blameless doesn’t quite live up to that, but makes up for it with action and adventure. Alexia rummaging through Europe works pretty well, creating a fast paced and fun read. (It needs to be said though, that Carriger is taking her national stereotyping a little too far for my taste. ) And, without going into spoilers, after the endless neck-nibbling in Changeless, it’s kind of a relief to have her go without her husband.

Interesting stuff is going on at home also, mostly starring Lyall, the Woolsey Beta. However, Carriger has always been better at wit and situation than plot, and this weakness shows mostly in this story line. When it comes to Lord Akeldama’s lost “property” and how it is reclaimed, the story stumbles on in clogs three sizes too big, as graceful as a shitfaced troll. I was for a while utterly convinced a chapter was missing in my copy.

Nevertheless, I’m prepared to overlook both that and the fact that most secondary characters are made out of cardboard (even though this book finally presents us with some depth in Ivy – barely enough for a worm to burrow in, but still) for the fun of this book. It’s not as good as the first one. But I’ll read on, with less fear next time. 3 ½ stars.

I'm now reading Seven Brothers a portal work when it comes to finnish literature, written in 1870. It's good, funny and surprisingly dirty, but not a quick read. And this week the family will begin to drop in for christmas. I've come to the possible conclusion I might only be finishing two more books this year. Which means it's now I need to decide what to migrate to my 12 in 12 (which means bumping other candidates of course) and what will have to wait until 2013 - at the earliest.

You know, sometimes I think of the innocent days before LT, when I could naively convince myself all of my TBR books would get read "somtime next year"...

I have yet to start Carriger's Parasol Protectorte series so good to see that book two is possibly just a downward blimp in an otherwise good series. I hope to get to it.... well.... someday ;-)

I know what you mean about wondering when to migrate over to the 12 in 12. I have been doing some behind the scenes fine-tuning of my 'official' thread for the challenge and keep holding it back, mainly because I am still recording my December reading over here. Decisions, decisions.....

Tonight we're wrapping presents, writing the little verses to go with each gift, cleaning and preparing for tomorrow's huge grocery trip. Tomorrow the family will start dropping in. Mum's already here. Ten adults, two children, two dogs - a pretty big christmas for us. Still, it feels so good to be at home, rather than visiting, never spending more than one night in the same place.

Baby Minna has a cold and kept us up til three in the morning, bawling her lunges out. Possibly the toughest we've had, with either of the kids. She's showing signs to go for it again tonight. We're both pretty tired, and I have a mild torticollis.

In Sweden, Christmas Eve is the big one. That's when the twenty or so traditional dishes are eaten, when Santa comes and the presents are opened. I'm already kind of longing for the peace of Christmas Day. Perhaps some reading time, even?

Happy holidays, all of you!

Don't you just love when a book is so much better than you expect it to be?

54. Sju bröder (Seven brothers) by Aleksis Kivi
Category 7. Neighbourhoods, 342 pages.

Seven brothers on the Finnish countryside, all in their late teens and early twenties and more than a little rough around the edges, find themselves orphaned as their father dies during an unfortunate bear hunt. Not entirely up to the responsibility, the eldest brother Juhani, implusive, sentimental and quick to anger, steps up to run the farm as family head. But the brothers aren’t ready for this kind of quiet life. After discovering six of them love the same woman (the exception being the silent Lauri, who’d prefer to take to the woods) they go to her to propose, and to their shame Vesla rejects them one and all. As if this wasn’t enough they get into a nasty fight with the boys from the next village, and the priest gets his hands on them to force them to learn to read and write. Unable to stand this chore, they break a window and escape to the woods – following the plan of Lauri.

The novel then deals with the ten years the brothers spend in the forest, making a life for themselves. In the beginning the focus is on hunting, comical episodes involving alcohol and fire and long quarrels, often ending in violence. But as time and the book progresses, it becomes more about their work building a homestead: clearing land, sowing crops, starving when the harvest fails and generally maturing. In the end, they return to their father’s farm as grown men, ready for marriage, learning and a humble life.

Really, this is a coming of age story in it's own peculiar way, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Published in 1870, it’s one of the first novels written in the Finnish language (Finland was still a part of Sweden then, and Swedish was the preferred language for people of stature), and considered a true classic in Finland. At first, it struck me as feeling very modern, with long gritty, dirty and rude dialogues between the brothers making up most of the text, and I thought I was perhaps in for more of a fun than a good read. But then there are the beautiful passages describing the Finnish countryside in an almost lyrical tone, creating a tender contrast. And not least, the very satisfactory development in the characters, where they are much better people in the end – but in no means free from their flaws. The last few pages move me deeply. It should also be stressed that, despite the title, this is a book with very modern female characters for its time. The women here are sturdy, sharp-tongued, tough and have a keen wit. Like those seven quarreling brothers, they are all a joy to meet.

This certainly falls under the pretty slim category “truly enjoyable classics” for me. I recommend anyone to give it a go. It’s bound to be dependent on a really good translation though, I think, so bear that in mind. 4 ½ stars!

Editing to fix typos.

Sounds like an excellent book! Strangely, my library has a copy in their foreign language section, but I don't know what language it's in. It just says "translated of Seitseman weljesta, originally published in Finnish". Will have to keep my eyes peeled for an English translation. Thanks for the great review, Anders!

Thanks Laura! It's really worth checking out. A very original and funny book.

Finally caught up on your thread. May you enjoy your expanded family and have a great reading year in 2012. Hopefully, that Mayan prediction thing was based on bad info.

Sju bröder (Seven brothers) by Aleksis Kivi

Sounds like an interesting story to read. Sadly, an English translation will involve a hunt, possibly a fruitless one, but still another great review!

Ok you got with that great review, I am sure I can pick it up secondhand somewhere

Have seen it in English in Finnish bookstores so will pick up a copy next time I'm in Helsinki or Tampere

Belated seasons wishes from me lets hope we can all read lots next year despite the end of the world!

>297 GingerbreadMan: Convinced me, too.

Right. Still reading The games of night, good but pretty bleak indeed. Also need to read Moliére's The Misanthrope for work today, and expect both of them to be finished before Saturday. Hope to do a summary tomorrow evening. So there're still a few twitches left in this thread, before I migrate to the 12 in 12!

Man, things are quiet here at the office today. I even found time to write the review before going home!

55. Misantropen (The Misanthrope) by Moliére
Category 11. Spilikin, 111 pages.

Almost alone at the office between christmas and New Year's, I find the time to read this classic. This is one of the few major Moliére plays I've never seen a performance of, and it's been ages since I read it too. Moliére is never as fun to read as to - sometimes - see staged. The comedy is rarely in the lines themselves, but rather in the situations, the potential of the text. Therefore, I find his plays are usually best read fairly slowly.

Which I, this time, didn't do.

Still, I enjoyed revisiting the story of Alceste, choking on the gossip and fakeness of high society and demanding full honesty from everybody, and his reluctant love for the sharp-tongued gossip Céliméne. It's seldom ha ha funny. But there are some great situations derived from the premise, the funniest one probably being when he's asked to comment on a horrible piece of poetry. Moliére is also good at looking at things from two sides - Alceste is honest and upstanding, but because of this also more than a little annoying. The middle road of his friends Philinte and Éliante - trying to be honest but not being rude or stupid about it - is presented as a more sensible approach.

The strangely open ending is not quite satisfactory. But on the other hand it has a rather true ring to it. Not everything can end in a happy landing - sometimes people are just too far apart. 3 ½ stars.

And here it is, people: my final read of 2011!

56. Nattens lekar (The games of night) by Stig Dagerman
Category 9. Sprinkles, 240 pages.

I’ve read embarrassingly little by Dagerman, one of the great Swedish modernists - especially since his work seems so much like exactly what I loved about literature in my early twenties. Indeed, I think the fact that Dagerman is the kind of writer to appeal to young people – angsty, existential and mystic – has sometimes given him a sturm und drang label that is a bit unfair. Much like that thin, dark jewish clerk from Prague by the way, who obviously influenced him a lot.

The Games of might is a collection of short stories, starting out in psychological realism but moving into a more and more strange landscape as the book progresses: expressionistic and sometimes surreal. Most of the stories are very good, and I have favorites of very different kinds. “Var är min Islandströja?” is probably the most well known in this collection, and this inner monologue by a young man getting drunk the night before his father’s funeral, even though he promised not to, is really a masterpiece. I also loved the enigmatic puzzle that was “Mannen from Milesia”, a strange tale about falling to the bottom of society that reminded me of a David Lynch film. The story about a man suddenly losing all his friends due to his son taking up smoking a meerschaum pipe was deliciously odd too, and the story about the child punishing a friend for eating a sandwich he didn’t even want is heart-wrenching. A few stories are slippery and over-stylized though, and I never find my way into them.

All in all, I’m very glad I finally got around to reading this. But I suppose I would have loved it even more if I’d read it twelve years ago – when I bought this book…4 stars!

Right, so I failed this challenge. Not surprising, considering we have a new addition to the family and that it's been a quite ridiculous year work-wise. I suppose I could rearrange my bonus reads, re-name a few categories and find a way to call the challenge complete, but that would feel like cheating. I look up the steep but exciting slope of the 12 in 12 instead.

I'll wrap up here in the next few days. But I thought I'd do a summary first. Hope there are a few of you still lingering in this group to read it :)

Books read: 68 (56 plus 12 book bonus cateogry. Actually more than last year, but last year I read a few books after the challenge was finished and landed on 70 in the end)
Pages read: 18018, or 300,3 pages per book (Not counting graphic novels. My page count is almost exactly like last years - I read a whooping 11 pages more than I did in 2010 :))
Male/Female/Both ratio: 38/26/4. I have more blokes on the TBR, and so I've decided to allow unbalance for a few years. But it's slightly annoying.
Author nationalities: 19. Respectable!
Average rating: 3,74. A good year, despite me being more hesitant with the fivers.

Ten best reads of 2011 - in no particular order:
The lottery and other stories by Shirley Jackson - A true LT find for me, and everything I love in literature: funny, creepy, strange.
Yarden by Kristian Lundberg - A little pearl of a meditation on manual labour, sparse and melancholy.
Kraken by China Miéville - So crammed full of cool ideas it left me giggling like a drunk.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño - Powerful, disturbing, strange brick leaving intirguing gaps for the reader.
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente - Dreamlike, deeply original New Weird that lingers like spiderwebs in my mind.
The Nimrod flipout by Etgar Keret - Smart, absurd tales from contemporary Israel, never taking you where you thought you'd go.
The royal physician's visit by P.O Enquist - All a great historical novel should be: enlightening and exciting, with an authentic feel.
Cirkeln by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren - Taking such a tired premise as the teenage witch and creating page-turning greatness.
Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi - Rawdy, rude and gritty classic, leading up to a great coming of age story and some true mercy.
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay - Perhaps the masterpiece from the master of epic fantasy?

Five worst reads of 2011:
Kabuki: Circle of blood by David Mack - over-constructed, strained revenge story acting as an excuse to show off women posing in skimpy battle wear.
Changeless by Gail Carriger - extremely lame, thin and full of repetition. Thank god it picked up again in the third part.
Wide open by Nicola Barker - I have a hard time with literature trying that hard to be obscure.
Unga norrlänningar by Mats Jonsson - clumsy, sexist and self-righteous
Sweet days of discipline by Fleur Jeaggy - because the only thing in it even remotely interesting happened in the last page and was seen from a mile away.

More awards to come!

Test post to see if I can do this picture posting thingie...

Yay! I love the end of the year summaries. I share your love of the mammoth book--it's so fun to live in a book for a week or two. The big ones made your "best reads" list.

Here's the rest of the summary for 2011:

Best category: I loved Sprinkles, my short story category. It had such a great mix, I was very pleased with it.

Worst category: Apart from Kristina Mattsson's Landet utanför, there was really very little truly exciting going on in my Treadmill category. I don't read enough fun books for work!

Biggest laugh: Probably Mack the rubber monkey in Vems lilla mössa flyger?. With Measuring the world and the ipod in Kraken as close seconds. Not too many exceptionally funny books this year!

Best gasp moment: The--ahem, ruthless handling of main characters in Cirkeln.

Best ending: Seven brothers - it's hard to beat a happy ending that still feels honest, isn't it?

Best opening line: A tie between It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. (Shades of Grey) and Don't look for dignity in public bathrooms (Big machine)

Biggest challenge mistake: Um, how about starting to fill the bonus category in july?

Biggest discovery: Probably Karen Russell. Really looking forward to reading more from her strange pen!

Biggest disappointments: I had high hopes for Diana Wynne Jones, but Howl's moving castle didn't quite do it for me. And Wide open was a giant letdown after Darkmans, turning me off Nicola Barker for a long time.

Even if you threatened to kill my family, I couldn't tell you more than the crudest basics of (Or: "A book not too memorable"): Sweet days of discipline - I have NO idea what goes on in the first 120 pages.

Most beautiful cover:


Cool, funny and relevant. The kind I proudly flaunt in public!

Cover only a mother could love:


The Alexia Tarabotti books are butt ugly, but this takes my prize. What were they thinking?? I mean, the syringe is okay, but the fonts? The liver-colored label in the tope right corner?? Oh, and did I mention the fonts???

Most dangerous thread to visit: Too many to mention as usual. But I think Andrea (blythe) might win this one this year.

That's it, my 2011 in a nutshell! I'll stick around for a few more days before skipping over to 12 in 12 permanently.

>310 RidgewayGirl: True! But also a few very slender ones. Both Yarden and The nimrod flipout are well under 200 pages.

Great wrapup - enjoy your New Year celebrations.

Great wrap up Anders and I agree, Andrea's threads should come with a book bullet warning label, along with a few others that shall remain nameless! ;-P

You aren't exactly innocent yourself, lori! Happy new year!

Love those stats.. (goes to calculate own..) & looking forward to my group of 2666 this year even more now since I saw it's in your top reads.

I admit Victor Lavelle nearly made my bests 1st words with "They drove a green rented car into central New York State to find me living wild in my apartment."

Happy New Year!

Great wrap up, must get round to doing mine! Happy new year!!

An excellent year-end review, Anders! I can hardly wait to see what comes up on your thread next year!

>315 GingerbreadMan: - Who.... little ol' me deliver Book bullets? ;-P

Happy New Year Anders!

Great wrap-up of your challenge. Perhaps I'll do one tonight while I'm stuck in work.

Love the wrap-up, Anders. Two of your favorites -- 2666 and Seven Brothers -- are on my list for next year, based on your reviews of them.

Hope you and the family had a nice Xmas! My mum said it was clear and sunny and about 7ºC in Kungälv, so I hope it was something similar where you were. :)

I definitely want to check out Sju bröder! I've heard of it, but never actually known what it was about and I'm not well-read in Finnish writers. Dagerman is a complete blank on my reading history and I should do something about that too.

You did extremely well in this challenge considering the circumstances, I think. I would not be reading that much with a new baby in the house. I babysat for a few hours at Xmas and was completely paralyzed - and she slept most of the time. :) OK, so I'm not the best with babies, but still.

Hope you have a great new year, reading- and otherwise!

I missed a lot here Anders, but hope I can keep abreast of your 12/12 thread. Meanwhile...



Happy New Year! See you in 2012!

Thanks all of you!

Ivy - hope you enjoy them! When it comes to Seven brothers, I just hope the translation is good. I suspect that's important with this one.

Eva- Thank goodness for that daily commute of mine. That's 50 pages a day, right there!

>324 GingerbreadMan: The most available English edition of Seven Brothers is marketed as a textbook, so I'm hoping it will be at least decent. I'll probably see about getting ahold of it in the next month or so.