eairo's challenge

I) New books and authors. Books published or translated into Finnish in 2007/2008 or books by authors I have not read before
1. A thousand splendid suns by Khalid Hosseini
2. Buzz Aldrin : taviksena olemisen taito by J. Harstad
3. Vedenaliset by Maria Peura
4. Bartleby ja kumppanit by E Vila-Matas (Finnish transl. 2007)
5. Epätavallinen lukija (Uncommon reader) by Anthony Bennett. Finnish transl. 2008.
6. Valon nopeus (The Speed of Light) by Javier Cercas. Finnish translation 2007.
7. Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
8. Mistään kotosin by Marjaneh Bakhtiari

Category Overload (i.e. books read or planned to be read that would go here):
Koko kosmokomiikka by I Calvino - a new Finnish translation 2008

II) Old stuff or classics - ranging from really old to modern classics written before I learned to read.
1. Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot
2. Beowulf - A Finnish translation
3. Popol Vuh - Finnish translation again
Seems this gatecory is getting heavy on old epics.
4. Ulysses by James Joyce
5. Peltirumpu by G Grass
6. Hagakure
7. Bartleby by H Melville
8. For whom the Bells Toll by Hemingway

III) Read aloud. I have an eight nine years old listener.
1. Aada ja pimeyden lapset by Kaija Juurikkala (Finnish only)
2. Harun ja tarinoiden meri (Haroun and the sea of stories) by Salman Rushdie
3. Varjak Paw by SF Said
4. The Outlaw Varjak Paw by SF Said
5. Hirvi by Sari Peltoniemi (Finnish only)
6. Ankea alku or The Bad Beginning - (A Series of Unfortunate Events) by Lemony Snicket
7. Viisikko jälleen yhdessä, (Five are Together Again) by Enid Blyton
8. Peter Pan purppuran lumoissa (Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean

CO: Sfinksi vai robotti by Leena Krohn, Jäniksen vuosi which also was a reread.

IV) Finnish authors
1. Kevyt kantamus ja muita kertomuksia by Tove Jansson
2. Kilttipakko by Juhani Känkänen (Finnish only)
3. 3 sokeaa miestä (ja 1 näkevä) : nähdystä ja näkymättömästä, sanotusta ja sanomattomasta by Leena Krohn (Finnish only)
4. Sinut by Umayya Abu-Hanna
5. Puhdistus by Sofi Oksanen
6. Tosi on! by Ari Turunen
7. Valon reunalla by Maria Peura
8. 14 solmua Greenwichiin by Olli Jalonen

CO: Fine van Brooklyn by Mika Waltari

V) Short story collections.
1. One minute stories by István Örkény
2. Finnhits by Kari Hotakainen
3. Koiran kuolema by Timo K. Mukka
4. Ainakin tuhat laivaa by Sari Peltoniemi
5. Ensimmäiset 49 kertomusta by E. Hemingway
6. Itä, länsi (East, west) by Salman Rushdie
7. Yhdeksän kertomusta by J. D. Salinger
8. Drown by Junot Diaz

VI) SciFi, SpeFi & Fantasy
1. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
2. Do Androids dream of electric sheep by Philip K. Dick
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
4. Little, Big by John Crowley
5. Valkeita lankoja by Anne Leinonen
6. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
7. Logogryph by Thomas Wharton
8. Konekansan satuja ja tarinoita by S Lem

CO: A Culture novel by Iain M. Banks

VII) América Latina
1. Ihmeiden markkinat by Jorge Amado
2. The old man who read love stories by Luis Sepulveda
3. Cuentos de la selva by H. Quiroga
4. Herra presidentti (El señor presidente) by Miguel Angel Asturias
5. Bestiario by Julio Cortázar
6. Salaiset aseet by Julio Cortázar
7. Lähellä villiä sydäntä by Clarice Lispector
8. Houre (Delirium) by Laura Restrepo.

VIII) Rereads. Books worth reading again.
1. Do androids dream of electric sheep (overlap 1)
2. Tainaron by Leena Krohn
3. Kalmasilmä (Deadeye Dick) by Kurt Vonnegut
4. The Loudest Sound and Nothing by Clare Wigfall
5. Datura by Leena Krohn
6. The old man who read love stories (overlap 2)
7. Jäniksen vuosi by Arto Paasilinna
8. Myytti Wu Tao-tzusta by S Lindqvist

Anyone mind giving me some suggestions for the New books, Old stuff or América Latina categories?

Not that I want to fill the new books list up to 8 yet ... to leave space for the books to come available near the end of the year.

I've read most of the books by Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa, so the question is: what else should one read from thereabouts?

Buzz Aldrin, hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet? is not available in English. Not yet. But at least someone thinks it shoud be. A New York Magazine feature says that “Like Jonathan Safran Foer, Harstad combines formal play and linguistic ferocity with a searing emotional directness.” —Dedi Felman, editor, Simon & Schuster (http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/33136/)

It is a story about a young man who does not want to the first, the one to be noticed. He prefers to be the second, to remain invisible. He leads his life accordingly, with a couple of exceptions - he is a very good singer, and sometimes ends up singing in public (after a few drinks) - and finally he is forced to learn that it is not good or even possible to live that way. Unless one is also willing be alone. Which he does not want.

The book is serious but fun, wise (should one say "for one that has been written by such a young writer", I don't know), and well written; better than nice but not perfect. Well worth reading if or when available in language you can read.

One minute stories is a collection of very short stories written between 1958 and 1979.

They are hilarious, witty, ironic, sarcastic and ... short.

The first story is titled "User instructions" and it says that "if you don't understand a story, read it again. If you still don't understand it, it is the story's fault."

I did not get them all, but the not-so-good ones were just a minute's read, so one does not need to feel bad about the time spent on them. On the other hand, a few of them were very good: funny, touching, thought provoking, and in some cases even mind blowing.

>3 eairo:, >4 eairo: eairo, your reviews make me want to read both of these!! I looked for One Minute Stories but can't find it in English. Do you know if it's been translated?

Hmmm... search Amazon with "Istvan Orkeny", and you'll get the book info. It seems that the contents of the collection may differ. The book I have has 200+ pages, while the English edition has 128.

And now I see that I had forgotten "absurd" from the list of adjectives above.

>6 eairo:: eairo
of course! -- I'd copied his name with the accent marks and got only foreign-language results.

Now I'm on a mission to find his one-minute stories. There are no copies in the database of my entire library consortium, so I'm going to enlist the help of a librarian.

Just finished Haroun and the sea of stories (in Finnish). It was fun to read, and the first comment after 'The End' by my listener was: "This was so good a book!"

If you've never read him, I'd recommend Julio Cortázar for your América Latina category. Rayuela is his most famous work, but I'd recommend starting with his short stories, such as Final del Juego, Las armas secretas or Bestiario. I'm also going to be devoting an 888 category to Latin American writers, principally Argentine, this year.

>9 CarlosMcRey:: Thank you very much. Cortázar sounds very interesting, and his work also easily available in our city libraries.

Posted a review of City of saints and madmen here

Cuentos de la selva by Horacio Quiroga. This little book has been in my shelf for more than ten years, forgotten, and I found it when I started my LT catalogue.

I picked it up just to read something in Spanish, and my Spanish is rusty - anything more complex would have been too complex.

No expectations, no disappointment. But I did not like the stories: simple, no magic (even though the cover texts promised), humanized animals, always improbable happy endings, lessons learned...

According to Wikipedia "Quiroga is now seen as one of the greatest of all Uruguayan writers", which is hard to believe for me now, even though it was not the writing nor the use of language (not that I am really qualified to say very much about that) that I disliked but the worldview of the stories. Maybe it is just that these old stories have not aged well.

eairo, it sounds like Cuentos de la Selva might have been something of a kid's book. I'm familiar with Quiroga from Cuentos de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte which is good but definitely dark. (I think there was one happy ending in the whole collection.) I don't think there's much in the way of overt magic, though there are a few stories that border on the fantastic. In a way, he's reminiscent of Guy de Maupassant in creating an atmosphere of foreboding whose supernatural character is ambiguous.

#13: Yes, Cuentos ... is collection of stories for kids. That is not a problem for me, I often read children's stories. It just wan't a very good one.

The other book of Cuentos you mention is available via Project Gutenberg, and I already printed the first story. Second chance for Mr. Quiroga.

Ten books done. The tenth was the first from my reread category, Tainaron by Leena Krohn, a long time favourite and something I keep coming back to again and again. I am not being objective when writing what follows.

Tainaron is made of 30 thirty letters from an anonymous narrator to a friend or a lover left behind, and who never responds. The writer has crossed the Ocean and moved to a city inhabited by insects, Tainaron. The letters are mostly short accounts of things seen in the alien city and about the strange (and still so familiar) ways of its inhabitants, but some of them are writer's memories, personal or shared with the receiver of the letters.

A plot? Not much. Story? Yes, there are many. A few of the letters are short stories with a beginning, middle and end (others are not). And then there is the narrator's story: about the changes (s)he goes through and the understanding (s)he gains. There are many themes: loneliness, longing for home, life, death, loss and joy. It is about reality (realities?), perception and humanity... and probably a few other things.

This book is bigger than it seems, there is more to it than its 120...130 pages make you expect. I have read it a few times and every time I find something new in it; it changes, it moves, it recreates itself like the insects in it, like the city of Tainaron does.

"I looked. There, where a straight boulevard had run a moment ago, narrow paths now wandered. Their network branched over a larger and larger area before my very eyes.

'And this goes on all the time, incessantly,' he said. 'Tainaron is not a place, as you perhaps think. It is an event which no one measures. It is no use anyone trying to make maps. It would be a waste of time and effort. Do you understand now?'" (From Dayma - the twentysecond letter)

I love it, and I know there are others; I've read reviews with plenty of superlatives in them. But I know it is not for everyone (but what is?); I have seen comments that say "ok, it is nice, but what is it about?" I don't think Tainaron is a book that one either loves or hates. It is more like one you either love -- or one that leaves you cold.

Tainaron was first published in 1985, and a new edition with two "lost letters" and illustrations added in 2006. It has been translated into English. It seems that the English version is out of print now (Feb 2008), but it seems to be available here: http://www.kaapeli.fi/krohn/tainaron/english/3/leena_krohn/tainaron.leena_krohn....

I also finished Varjak Paw tonight. Once again, let the listener's words be heard: "We must get the second book tomorrow." I agreed. This was a good read, so good, in fact, that her (the one I read to) bedtime was delayed a couple of times as I didn't want to stop reading.

Hi, I wanted to say I located an English translation of One Minute Stories and finished it today. I especially liked "Optical Illusion," "In Our Time," "The Redeemer," and "Mathematics."

Glad I found it through your challenge!

re 17: Well, I'm glad to hear that!

Done with The Outlaw Varjak Paw. This was one more read-aloud book, and the audience was happy once again.

I have mixed feelings. The book was the second in Varjak Paw series which is about a cat that finds a warrior in himself and learns, in his dreams, the Way (feline martial art including skills of Slow-Time and Moving Circles among others) of his famous ancestor Jalal.

In the first book Varjak was taught the seven skills of The Way and his mission was to save his own family from danger. This time his education continues and he is to free the city where he lives and its cat population from the oppression of Sally Bones and her gang.

While this book is still good in many ways and I think it is about good things (friendship, self-knowledge, freedom), I got the feeling that this one was written in a hurry. There were little errors and inconcistensies as well as annoying repetition of certain expressions.

The story is, however, again exciting, engaging and well enough written (minus the things mentioned above) to be read in four or five sittings.

I read it to my eight years old daughter. She liked it and did not think it was too scary even though there were some quite strong episodes and descriptions of catly violence and cruelty ... but then again, we've always had cats around and she knows that even the loveliest of them are wild beasts and lead dangerous lives.

The illustrations by Dave McKean are excellent in both books.

Pedro Archanjo was "an elderly, middle-aged and a young man, just a boy, a tramp, a dancer, story teller, boozer, agitator and a striker, troublemaker, a player of guitar and cavaquinho, the loved one and a gentle lover, a stud, an author, a scientist and a witch." And the main protagonist in the Tent of Miracles by Jorge Amado.

The book tells stories of Archanjo's life and the many faces he had. Other central "characters" in it are Candomblé and Bahia, where the story/ies take(s) place; it is -- as much as it is about Archanjo -- a homage to Bahia and its people.

There are lots of themes covered and plenty of details and little things conveyed, to the extent that it fragments the book at times. The narrative jumps back and forth in time -- Archanjo lived 75 years and the story is told 25 years after his death --, and the point of view also changes often: different people met different Archanjos (see the list above) and they tell about the Archanjo they knew. There are lots of characters and names, and a lot of candomble-related words not translated among the text (in this translation at least) (There was a vocabulary in the end).

All this makes the book a not-very-easy-read, which may or may not disturb the reader. It did, for me, at first. I was a bit lost at times in the beginning, but the more I read the less that mattered. It is, though not easy, a very rewarding read. It is fun, it is serious and it is interesting and important. It made me think and it gave me some new ideas and information.

The themes of racism, social injustice and conflicts of different religious views are still acute, and some of the views given in the book are still, almost forty years after its publication, quite fresh. Brazil and the early 20th century may seem distant things, in place and in time, but this book shows that some things are universal and that the human nature changes slowly.

I had read one book by Amado befor this, and that was years ago, and though it was ok, it did not make me pick up something else by him back then. However, I am glad that I read this one and I surely will check his other work now. Recommendations?

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows was a decent finale to the series. I am not a big fan but I enjoyed (most of the time) reading this one, like the earlier books, not thinking too much, not being too critical.

The old man who read love stories by Luis Sepulveda

Antonio José Bolivar Proaño came to Amazonia as a young man with his wife. They were poor people from the mountains of Ecuador, lured to move by the government's empty promises of better life. They became settlers, knowing nothing about life in the jungle. She died soon and he barely survived, not on his own account but because he got help from the native people of Shuari. He was open enough to accept that help and that saved him.

He lived with the Shuari for years, he did learn the jungle and its ways. Finally the Shuari said that he was like them, even though he was not one of them. Then he made one mistake and once again he had to leave. He came back to the settlers -- for he knew he could not survive in the jungle on his own -- to find out that what once was barely more than camp is now a small town. But nothing much has changed. People still don't want to learn to live in the jungle as it is, but to fight it and to beat it. The outcome is destructive.

He stays in the town, but remains an outsider who is tolerated because the community occasionally needs his abilities and knowledge of the jungle.

He finds out he can read and more specifically he finds out what he wants to read are stories of love greater than anything, love that makes people suffer before it makes them happy in the end. Reading helps him forget the cruelty of people for a while.

This is not a big book but it deals with big things: humanity, nature, and the wrongdoings of the former against the latter. And reading.

In a way it goes deep, but in few words, a lot is left unsaid. The narrative is anecdotal, and on the whole I am not sure I found the connection of the two themes: the ecological message and the old man's reading. There were a few very beautiful sections on each, but...

Unless it is just that reading may help us tolerate all the crap that goes on around us, and even if it does not really help -- reading does not solve a single real problem -- it isn't as destructive as most of the other things we do.

Hirvi (Elk) by Sari Peltoniemi is a story of a princess who becomes a witch -- not so much a witch of the magic kind but in an old folk-story way: a healer -- after his father, a king who has ruined his country and burdened his people with endless wars, abandons her and sends her away to live alone in a hidden cottage in a far-away forest.

This forest is not an ordinary forest -- it is not just a place with lots of trees -- but a forest where ancient forest people live. It is them who help the princess through the first winter and they also teach her the healer's profession.

She also gives birth to a son (her pregnancy was the reason why she was sent away), a boy who later takes the name of Elk, and becomes an elk-herder and a link between the humans and the forest people, because he is not just one or the other but both.

The father king loses his wars and loses his power. He in turn becomes a vagabond and a beaten and bitter old man who after many years comes to find his daughter and his grandson. He seeks rest, he wants reconciliation.

None of these changes are easy. All the main characters go through hardship and hard times with themselves. They try to deny what they are. The princess does not want to become a witch in the first place, and later on it is not easy for her to forgive her father what he did. The old king cannot admit that his wars were mere vanity, and that he was not a good king. Elk would like be just an elk-herder and forget about his human side that he somewhat despises.

Peltoniemi writes well, but it is not just the quality of the writing that makes this such a good book. What impressed me more was the way she sees things, life, humanity and the reality: this world and this life is not perfect, ugly things happen, but there are good things also, there is beauty in the world and strength in people to overcome the hard times. And that the nature is greater than even the mightiest of men.

Yes, all this -- and even more, in fact: I have said nothing about Bat, who becomes Elk's wife and actually tells the story -- in a children's book. That's what it is. A great children's novel. Maybe not suitable for the youngest but my eight years old was once again a happy listener.

It is sad that most of you cannot read this book as it is only available in Finnish. As far as I know only one of the author's (kid's) novels has been translated into German and for English-readers the only possibility to get a taste of Peltoniemi's writing is a single short story in The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy.

Finished A thousand splendid suns this morning, and while I mostly liked it, there were also some things that made it a less than exceptional reading experience for me. But the story was strong and it was important and absolutely worth telling. And worth reading too.

I was impressed by Hirvi and therefore picked up another by the same author: Ainakin tuhat laivaa, At least a thousand ships. This was a collection of eight short stories. The book has two sections titled From there and From here, the former being more fantasy and the latter more like real world with just a touch of fantasy, or more exactly they are about seeing things a little bit differently.

All stories were good, and the From here ones were excellent. They were basically about most ordinary lives of not so ordinary young people written with such warmth and wisdom that they made me just happy. Sari Peltoniemi really Sees.

And sorry: Finnish only again.

I read a Finnish translation of Beowulf during Easter.

This was a verse translation, and the translators stated in the foreword they had tried to reach a balance between readibility and the feel of the original poetry.

I have no means to evaluate their success by comparison, but reading it felt fine. I often found myself reading aloud, tasting the words, enjoying the language and its rhythm, so I guess they have done a good job.

Beowulf was a good read by its own merits, but it was also great to see how it has inspired others, to recognize some elements and storylines seen in much later works, Tolkien being the most obvious but not the only one.

Hagakure - The Book of Samurai is a collection of moral teachings, anecdotes, comments and stories on, surprise surprise, the Way of Samurai. It is not, however, a practical text book or a coherent philosophical work, nor is it about swordsplay (apart from the many examples of using a sword to comming seppuku as way to end one's life honourably).

But it is an interesting read on the moral code and values of an ideal samura according to the author Yamamoto Tsunemoto. The Way - in this book - is found in uncompromising and strict loyalty, modesty and readines to die. It is about honour and courage. It is all quite extreme.

The Finnish edition I read had very informative foreword by the author of the English edition included as well as an (Finnish) essay on the history and the position of the Samurai class in Japan at the time of writing of the book. They both made the reading and understanding the old text easier and they helped me, a modern reader, to filter the good and valuable ideas from the text that would probably otherwise had just historical value.

The was written in the early 18th century, in a time when the Samurai were no longer just warriors but also civil servants, after a period of peace that had lasted almost a hundred years; the way and the values of the Samurai had been and were changing. I believe it was at least partially written to preserve the old values, and even to encourage the then new kind of Samurai to keep them alive.

The author (who actually was a talking the book to a young scribe) himself was an ex-samurai who had been forbidden to do oibara, to follow his master in death, and who had become an buddhist monk instead. He, even when he actually was a samurai, had served his master in the time of peace, never being fully the warrior he admired. This also gives a new, interesting perspective to the text.

This book has been banned in Japan at times, when its values were seen inapproriate, but then again, it was said in the essay, it became popular reading matter of the kamikaze fighters during the WWII, and of Mishima Yukio who also wrote about it: Hagakure: Samurai Ethic And Modern Japan. And we all know how his life ended.

There is a lot of talk about the honourable death, but there is also a few ideas about good and bad that still resonate with me; how it is important to be able to work together with others and to put one's own good aside to achieve goodness.

Addition: The edition I read was a Finnish translation based on an English edition of the book. Neither is the full Hagakure. Only about a fourth of it has ever been translated to western languages.

Popol vuh is the national epic and the old sacred book of the Mayas. Sort of. The original old manuscript was destroyed in the early 16th century by the Spanish, and what we have now is a rewrite based on oral tradition and stone carvings.

There are good parts and not so in the book. The beginning, the first half or so, is interesting. The stories about the creation of the world and the mankind, and the parts that actually are stories, are fascinating. There is something familiar, common things with many such stories, with a different angle or point of view though, that make the book interesting.

But then towards the end of the book there are many lists of the ancient kings and their family trees, and cities they founded or conquered etc. I understand all this has been important to the people whose book this was, but reading it was struggle for me.

Have to say that had the book been longer than it is, I probably would have not finished it.

I read The bad beginning to my daughter, and we both liked it. It is refreshingly different from most of the kids books I/we've come across. There isn't too much dark comedy for children, I guess.

It is interesting to see, however, what happens later, and is that what I now find refreshing still that after twelve more book (if we ever get that far).

One thing I hope will change: The explanations of 'difficult' words were funny first, but I think the trick was overused in this book. No more "which here means that"s, please.

I stopped reading Lemony Snicket after the second book because I got tired of the tone. My daughter loved all of them though, and has read them multiple times. He continues to explain his vocabulary throughout. I liked that part, actually. My daughter pointed out a great explanation to Shakespearean tragedy in book nine (I think it was). I wouldn't mind trying them again, but there are just so many books in this world that these ones don't get to the top of the TBR pile.

Thanks, Nickelini. I guess I wasn't really expecting he would quit the explanations ... they are, however, quite integral part of the narrative, and the overall tone too, of the book(s).

I'll read some more and see how much I can take in before getting tired. And after that she will have to read them by herself.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Or do they dream like humans...

This was the second time I read this book and I liked it better this time. I guess the first time, more than fifteen years ago, happened too soon after I had been impressed by Blade Runner the movie. Back then I think I was not ready to appreciate its meditative quality. Waiting for the action to begin, I was not able to stop to think about the questions and speculations below the surface of the basically simple story. Or maybe I was just too young then.

What is life? What is empathy and its value? What is human? And what should it be? Big stuff in a small package. Big questions, no aswers. Food for thought. The techno stuff, emigration to Mars etc. may easily lead one to think that this book is about future, but I don't think so. At least that is not the main thing here. The questions are relevant now, as they have been for the last forty years.

I read this book in Finnish, and I guess I'll have to read it once more but in English next time. The translation was lousy. I checked what others have said about the book here in LT, and quite a few have said it is well written. I could not sense that; must have been lost in translation. I had to stop reading a few times, wondering about the phrasings and the use of language, thinking: this is not Finnish at all. I could recognize the original English idioms due to word by word translations but I did not get the meaning before making a new translation in my head. Such a pity.

The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas tells the story of a young man's development from a want-to-be a novelist into a successful one. He becomes an acclaimed author who gets it all ... and destroys his family and nearly his own life on the way.

It is also a story about friendhip, loss, past and survival.

In the beginning the writer - first person narrator who does not present his name - befriends with Rodney, a Vietnam veteran, who is smart, well read and wise man whose ghosts give him no peace. The writer learns bits and pieces of Rodneys story from Rodney himself, from his father and from letters that the father gives him. He, the writer is compelled to write Rodney's story, and he tries to, but he cannot. Something is missing. Until in the end. He gets it, he writes the book, and this novel is the result. He survives.

The book is well written, meaning that it is easy to read, the text flows nicely, even though the themes and subjects are heavy most of the time. Other than that, I did not get much out of it. I did not find really new ideas, thoughts on or new angles to the themes (tragedy of success/tragedy of not succeeding). I didn't really like the writer character. Rodney was more interesting and likeable, and the others mentioned were not given too much attention, they remained more like caricatures, types, whatever.

Rodney admired the short stories by Hemingway and in some conversation with the Writer he talks so convincingly about them, that he made me want to read them ... maybe that is the best outcome of this novel for me.

Not bad, not great.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman is his children's book (though not for the youngest, I think), and a very nice one too.

Coraline is a girl who, soon after moving to a new home, where the neighbours are strange but likeable, on a rainy and boooring day finds a passage to another world that looks a lot like this one, but is still somehow different.

At first everything looks better on the other side, more interesting and exciting, but she soon finds out that all is not well. Her other mother promises she can have anything if she stays with her (other mother) and lets her love Coraline forever... but what about the little ghosts in the closet, who say that the other mother is not what she says she is and the black cat who says the same. And what has happened to Coraline's first parents, who are still the real ones, even though they are always busy... Coraline will have to find out, she'll have to save them. And she will.

This is quite a simple story compared to Gaiman's other books like American gods and Anansi boys, and this is a positive evaluation. I think this is, along with Neverwhere, one of his best books. Not that the more complex ones are bad either.

After Coraline I got stuck between books ... nothing to do with Coraline, but anyway, I felt I didn't know what to read next. I started four books, advancing very slowly with each. I guess this is something that just happens sometimes; it may even be good to have break once in a while.

However, during last few days I've finished two of the four books I tried: Sinut by Umayya Abu-Hanna and Finnhits by Kari Hotakainen, and now I feel I am ready for more again.

These two included my count for the challenge so far is 28 -- 2/3 of the year still ahead it seems I can really do this, maybe even without using the overlap option.

Been slow lately. I guess it is this thing they call life - this something that happens when your nose is not stuck in a book - that has gotten in the way.

But today I finished Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon.

The book is subtitled "a tale of adventure". That sounds - and the book with its black and white illustrations actually looks like something that was old thirty years ago when I started reading "tales of adventure". Well, this is a new one, however, published last year. I guess it was written, and is best to be read and enjoyed as a tribute to the old adventure books ... to be taken lightly and just for fun.

The characters are not very deep, but interesting enough : a princess disguised as a prince, fighting for her life and the empire of her murdered father, the heroes are soldiers of misfortune, they have lost everything, they are haunted by their pasts, they have only their solitudes to share ... they are gentlemen of the road, destined to be hung some day, and a great "pair of swindlers, hustling a kingdom" (as put in the book itself). What more could one ask? (And if you do ask for more, maybe you should just read something else.)

The tale is light but the language is heavy. I am not a native English speaker/reader, but I can sense this is a very well written tale. The vocabulary of this book is rich, so rich that it goes somewhere near the border of exceptionally enjoyable and frustrating; I needed a dictionary quite a few times.

Finnhits is an interesting experiment. Like The City of Saints and Madmen it could be described as a 'concept album' and like One minute stories it is a collection of very short stories.

Finnhits are 74 stories of exactly 74 words. They are about lives of people and they are about details, details so well chosen that they tell you everything you need to know to get the big picture. Not that the pictures are that big, actually. The characters are known only by their first name, they are the kind of people you don't usually hear much about, those who you don't notice when they pass you in the street, nobodies, anyones. Like most of us.

The story goes that the author started writing notes behind a beer bottle label that fell off the bottle and found out, after a few tries, that 74 words fit nicely in that space.

Kari Hotakainen is an established author who has written nine novels, poetry, plays and children's books. His works have won several prizes, and at least seven of his books have been translated into several languages, but not into English (as far as I know).

eairo, you've interested me in another! It sounds similar in premise to Severance by Robert Olen Butler. Warning: it's a little gory. Science theorizes that the mind is active for 1.5 minutes after decapitation -- at a usual rate of speech, that's time enough to utter 240 words. So each of Butler's stories is a 240-word stream-of-consciousness by a well-known beheaded person -- historical and modern. Great premise and well-executed.

Thanks for the hint, Severance sounds worth checking - not that I am into gory stuff, but these self-implied rules, restrictive premisses or methods always make me curious.

There are so many writers who say that they don't know where the story takes them, they just let it come; and even more writers who don't comment. So, the opposite is just interesting ... There is Calvino and his Invisible Cities , Cosmicomics & the rest of the oulipo group, Life : user's manual is intriguing (but I have not read it yet), a Finnish poet Panu Tuomi has written a number trilogy whose each part's structure is build around different numbers... and I guess there must be much more of these.

Yes! Thanks again Detail_Muse.

Butler frequently uses "devices" to prompt stories -- a group of postcards led to the stories in Had a Good Time, supermarket-tabloid headlines for Tabloid Dreams. Although Severance has a gory premise, I don't recall the stories being so; rather, I remember them as lovely prose-poems.

Regarding inspiration, his non-fiction From Where You Dream explores the source of creativity in writing fiction. And you can watch him write and revise a postcard-inspired short story here.

Thank you again. This evolution of a story website is very interesting. I'll surely spend some time going through the different written versions if not all the videos.

I've never heard of Butler before, by the way, I guess he's not very big over here. I only found two books by him in the library: one novel and a collection of stories. I think I'll try the short story collection from library befory bying Severance (or anything).

East, West by Salman Rushdie. This is a collection of nine short stories on, surprise surprise, the supposed differences and the actual similarities of (the people of) East and West. There are three sections: East, three stories located in India with Indian characters; West is three more stories from the western world, and finally there is East, West which is about eastern people in the west.

This is not Rushdie at his best. I like short stories, I appreciate writers who can make great things in short from. But reading these stories I got the feeling that Rushdie does big stories a lot better.

The stories of East were nice, there was something exotic, something Rushdie-like, they were more or less what I expected. Nothing more, though.

The West-part was the weakest of the three. The storeis were not bad, but...

The last section was better again. Actually the seemingly autobiographical story finishing the collection was very touching, one of the best of the collection.

The structure of the book, the ordering of the stories in the three sections underlines the point. East is east, and west is something else, but when it all comes together one can see that it is just about human beings.

Finished The first forty-nine stories by Hemingway a few days ago. It was a slow read, not because I didn't like the stories, but I did not feel like rushing from one to another right away; lots of stories, lots of breaks in between. In fact the stories were actually easy to read and enjoyable, and they have aged well - despite being 65 to 80 years old the stories or the writing did not feel old.

Finishing Mistään kotosin or "Kalla det vad fan du vill" by Marjaneh Bahktiari (Call it whatever you like) I reached my halfway point in this challenge.

The book is (mostly) about Iranian immigrants in Sweden, plus a couple characters are of Jamaican or Chilean origin. It was a refreshing read, funny, serious and mostly at once.

Most of the old folks in the book look back most of the time. To their old homeland, thinking of going back, denying the fact that the country has changed. That what they remember is no more, ther is no way to go back. And even when they try to settle, to adapt, it is hard or impossible. Because of themselves, or because of the (mostly) good willing but still prejudiced natives.

Younger generation has different problems. Or if they don't have problems, they are still thought to have, so it does not make a difference...

This book is about identity, heritage, and labels; they mean so different things to different people that they become meaningless, and it convinced me once more that even if they - especially labels - mean something, they are still quite pointless.

The book has a point. This point could have been made with less words on a fewer pages, but it was still a nice debut of a young author.

Puhdistus by Sofi Oksanen and Kevyt kantamus by Tove Jansson were both excellent books, in different ways, though.

Puhdistus or Cleansing tells the story(/ies) of two women, Aliide and Zara, and through their lives much of the history of Estonia from the 1940's to the 90's including early independence, Soviet invasion and the second independence. Oksanen writes very well and beautifully which makes reading easy, even though the themes - institutional as well as individual evil, betrayal, guilt, shame - and the events are heavy.

Aliide is an old Estonian woman who lives in a dying village in the Estonian countryside. In the beginning Zara, a young seemingly Russian woman who speaks the Estonian language in a very peculiar and old fashioned way, appears in Aliide's garden. She looks like a badly abused and hurt prostitute on the run (which she is).

Aliide was a young adult before the Soviet years. She has survived through the times of oppression, paranoia and totalitarian terror in a state where anyone could be or become a spy and almost everyone was double crossing everybody else. She had been abused and she did whatever was necessary to stay alive, and those things were not always very nice. She betrayed and she was betrayed.

Against this background Aliide's suspicion and prejudice seem understandable, and she can hardly overcome them, but still she decides to help the girl.

Later on both Aliide and the reader will learn it wasn't an accident that Zara came to Aliide's place. They are connected, they both have been victims to atrocities committed by different men and systems of power. They both have also done extreme things to stay alive. And they are related.

Even though the book is located in Estonia and even though the main characters are women, this book is not just about Estonia or oppression of women. I believe it is about what both men and women do to each other all over the world when things go wrong.

Sofi Oksanen is young, smart and able to write exceptionally mature fiction, and the same could be said about Tove Jansson, except that she was older when she wrote the stories of Kevyt kantamus (Travelling Light).

(By the way: these two books have nothing more to do with each other that I happened to be reading the at same time.)

While Puhdistus happens in a setting of extremities, the people in the stories of Kevyt kantamus have only taken one step out of the ordinary: they are travelling, they meet new people or they meet people the have not met for a long time. These stories tell about their convictions and conventions, expectations and hopes unfulfilled, what they have done and left undone. There is uncertainty, regret and guilt. All this told and written with warmth and understanding. Jansson was a good writer and more than that these stories convince me that she was a wise lady.

This was the first adult's book by Tove Jansson that I've ever read, but it will not be the only one. She is better known as the author of the Moomin stories.

Some of the stories in Kevyt kantamus are available to English readers in Winter book.

Logogryph - A bibliography of imaginary books and "a sort of a riddle" as defined on one of the first pages of the book. I could end my review here, and state that enough is said already. Maybe adding that the book was lovely, enjoyable and thoughtful, even though I'd understand if someone said it is merely annoying.

Logogryph consists of stories or passages of text that mostly seem to be unrelated - they mostly are about stories or books, though - even though there always is a feeling of the presence of the big plan, that there is something that puts the writings together.

In the beginning a boy gets lost, and ends up in a big garden of a big house where he befriends with the family who lives there, an English lady and her two children who are slightly older than the boy, an mostly absent father. He returns there time after time - until something happens in the family and things start to change.

On one his last visits to the family he is presented a big old suitcase full of old books, English classics & some historical texts.

This storyline is dropped for a while, and other kind of stories follow: the story of the inventor of paper, one about a travelling fransiscan who collects stories of the Mexican indigenous people soon after the conquest, an essay on Atlantean literary fashions, story of two avid readers who wage a verbal war in the margins of second-hand books, there are lists, stories about stories (in a very Borgesian way), stories about more books, and once in a while a short passage about the later life of the boy, who has become a writer, a father, an ex-husband, a dreamer... and then you get it: there is a big picture.

Moved Delirium from new books to América Latina to make room for The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennet.

This book is a "what if" kind of a book. What if the Queen of England would start reading, what if she would turn out to be a really enthusiastic reader.

In addition to all the funny little things (or not so little, I think I may have missed something not being English myself and not really knowing the subtleties of social distinctions and manners of the country) that might follow such a conversion there are a few good notions about anoone's reading and love for books.

The book is brief, just 100+ pages, which is just about right in this case.

Hi, when you're looking for another short-story collection -- I thought of you when someone mentioned 253 by Geoff Ryman, described in message 136 on this thread.

oops, had wrong msg#

Thanks again, detailmuse. I will check this out. It is available at the local library. The subtitle of the book according to the the library made me doubly curious: "The print remix of the acclaimed Internet novel". Google pointed me to http://www.ryman-novel.com/

(I didn't read the message you referred to to the end first, so I failed to notice that the web format was mentioned there also.)

Finished Little, Big a couple of days ago. It took some time but I did it. I can't say I really liked this book. But neither can I say I didn't like it. It is beautifully written, there are very good sections in it one after another, there is a feel that something great is coming ... and then it ends.

Tosi on! is a book on the history of 'lies, corruption & deceit'. Mostly--and more or less oddly--this history has a lot of common with the general human history. A refreshing read, kind of fun & only at the very end a little bit preachy.

Deadeye Dick by Vonnegut is probably not one of his very best, but it was still a very enjoyable (re)read.

It is always amazing how lightly Mr. Vonnegut could write about the heaviest of things. This is (once again) about the absurdity of human race, its tendency to race to its own death as individuals as well as a species: a story--not a very coherent one by the way--which could be called family history told by a pharmacist named Rudy or Dead-Eye Dick because he once accidentally committed a double killing. Weapons of different kinds are included, as are several types of prescribed drugs, arts and artists and a couple of conspiracy theories (JFK & one imaginary). Not to forget Haiti & Vodou. And some recipies.

Plenty of ingredients mixed well. Enjoy.

Finished Herra Presidentti a couple of days ago and Peter Pan in Scarlet tonight... will hopefully find some time to write down some thoughts on them some day before I'll forget what I thought about them.

Now on with Peltirumpu.

I am still working on Peltirumpu, advancing slowly, but I have finished three other books while not this: Bartleby ja kumppanit, Jäniksen vuosi and Bestiario, all of which I liked one way or the other.

Bartleby & co was smart and fun; it is a sort of novel, a story told by and about an author of single book suffering from serious writer's block; though it is more a collection of anecdotes and musings on (great) writers who stopped writing.

Jäniksen vuosi was a reread from about 25 years ago. I read it aloud this time to my daughter, and she liked it a lot -- not a kid's book but quite ok for a nine years old. Vatanen is a middle aged, frustrated journalist who once, at the end of the day of work on the way back home hits something with a car.

This something turns out to be a young injured hare. Vatanen decides to take care of it, and not to go back. The story of Vatanen and his hare is episodic. They move around the country (Finland), meet people and something comes up and they move on. They become arrested and freed, survive a forest fire, find old war-time metalware and sell it, do some forest work up north, travel back into big city where Vatanen ends up in trouble & finds fiance etc etc. The story turns fairytailish by the end, in a funny way.

I finished Bestiario just today. Need more time to clear my thougths on this. This was my first encounter with Julio Cortázar but not last, that much I know already.

Finished Peltirumpu sooner than I expected when writing the previous message. I am not sure if it was me that became quicker toward the end or the book.

The best synopsis of the book I've seen so far can be found in the book itself near the end:

"I was born under electric lights, I temporarily stopped growing when I was three years old, I received a drum, I sang glass into pieces, I smelled vanilla, I coughed in churches, fed Luzie, observed ants, decided to begin to grow again, buried my drum, I travelled to west, lost the east, I learned to be a stone carver and I stood as a model, I returned to drum and I saw the concrete, made money and preserved a finger, I gave away the finger and escaped laughing, rode up and I was arrested, the verdict was given on me and I was put away into an institution to be set free again soon after, and today I celebrate my thirtieth birthday and I still am afraid of the Bogey Man - amen." (My quick translation from Finnish; your English edition will probably differ ;)

That was Oskar speaking, Oskar from Danzig & Düssedorf, a very special person. The WWII happened somewhere behind the scenes during the events mentioned, cities vere ruined and borders drawn and redrawn, and a new Europe was being build, and Oskar saw it all.

Reading this book was an effort, an enjoyable effort. I can see why it is thought to be a very important book, and I appreciate it. And I liked reading it, I also liked the book in general. But while the end was easier and quicker to read the beginning is still, in all its heaviness, also more enjoyable, more meaty, better.

Finished two books by Maria Peura: Valon reunalla, which has been translated into English, and Vedenaliset, her latest (and therefore Finnish only).

Valon reunalla is a coming of age story, one the most extreme of the kind I've read, though. Not so much in the contents; these teens do what the wilder kind of teens do, but extreme in the way it is written, in its expression. It is hard to describe, but my wife (who did not finish the book) said reading it was like cutting oneself. She didn't want to... It made me remember things even though my youth was not that wild, not that crazy. Not even close to that.

Vedenaliset was, I don't know, maybe it was more ambitious, and therefore more demanding. I did not get as much out of it as from the previous one. It is not a bad book, I will read it again. The author still has all the talent to write very special kind of prose whose language is very powerful.

This is a story of a woman who comes from an island and whose goal is to become and island. Her parents have turned their backs to so called civilization and become fishermen, neo-savages of some kind. Their daughter is, as children are to a certain extent, a product of their way of life, but she still wants to leave. And so she does. She moves to a city. She is an outsider but finds her place among other outsiders: arab immigrants. She makes them her new tribe. She survives. And becomes the island she wanted to be. By wearing a burkha. Yes, I see must read this again.

Bartleby is small in number of pages but huge in every other way.

I would prefer not to say anything more about this book.

But read it. It will only take an hour or of your time.

>57 eairo: oh, you know how to make things intriguing ... I'll pick this up on my next library stop.

edited to add: are you considering next year's 999 Challenge? I love to read your summaries and comments.

Oh, thank you!

And while you're at it, try to find the Vila Matas book Bartleby & Co as well. It is quite nice too. In addition to what I wrote in #54, this book defines itself as "footnotes to a book that is not". Interesting, isn't it?

(And furthermore, I have to say that the essay "Bartleby, or the Formula" by Gilles Deleuze, or at least parts of it, helped me to see Bartleby's greatnes. The essay was included in the edition of Bartleby I got.)

On 999 Challenge: sounds like too big numbers for me. I am quite slow reader. And I don't like counting (books).

I am planning a literary world tour instead. So I'll probably be more active on the Reading Globally forum after finishing 888.

I read Drown by Junot Diaz while waiting for Oscar Wao from the local library.

Drown is a collection of short stories about Dominicans in Dominic Republic planning to move to the States, waiting for someone over there, or actually there.

A few of the stories have same pair of brothers as the main characters, first as young boys in the Republic, their father gone, later on with bothe their parents in the NY & finally as grown-ups.

The stories are harsh, poetic and realistic, I guess. They made me feel, which is good. Good but not great.

>59 eairo: I found both the short story and Bartleby & Co at my library ... but suppose they have to wait until next year. I agree with you: this is more reading than I can really do; I've put off other hobbies this year. But I do love organizing and counting, so the 999 appeals. I'll follow your reading next year; you find some gems and your comments really open them up :)

61: I've also found out that I like organizing and even planning my reading. This part of the challenge was/is great for me too. Other than that, I don't think I need a challenge to get me to read. I think I read enough (without counting) anyway -- and someone near me may think I read too much...

That's why I think I'll enjoy the world tour even more. I'll have some rules, need to plan some, but nothing too strict and no time limits. If my tour will take two years or three, that'll be fine.

I read Nine Stories by JD Salinger last weekend. Some of them were better than others but they all were well worth reading.

Nothing much happens in most of the stories, the writing style is very unsensational, kind of low-key ... I can't remember just the right word I'd want to use here ... but all that in a positive way, and there is still a sense that remarkable and/or strange things are happening to the characters of the story.

I especially liked "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" and "The Laughing Man" and "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" for its strangeness.

Here are some books I've read lately without commenting them:

The Secret Weapons (Las armas secretas) was another short story collection by Julio Cortázar ... I've not said much about Bestiario either.

According to Wikipedia and other sources Cortázar influeced many other Latin American writers (he wrote in Spanish even though he lived in France most of his writing life), he was some some sort of proto-magic-realist. There are similarities, but he's not just one of them.

Bestiario, the title, refers to the medieval category of book of beasts, often illustrated collections of texts on more or preferably less real animals. Cortázar's Bestiario is a collections of eight stories of curiosities. In most cases everything seems ordinary and everydayish at the first sight. But often at the very end a twist comes that turns everything upside-down, strange, weird or grotesque, sometimes beautifully so and sometimes not. Cefalea, named after a strange condition or combination of various curious symptoms caused by mancuspiais or possibly just their presence, is an exception: weird from the beginning to the end, and funny too, and the mancuspias...

The Secret weapons is a later collection consisting of four short stories and one longer, novella-length piece. The combination of ordinary and strange is still there, but in different proportion. These stories rely less on the final hook that revealed the out-of-the-ordinary in Bestiario. Here the strangeness is there most of time or in some cases creeps in quite subtly.

In the title story a couple of lover's nightmares and pasts get mixed up, and in another one an elderly woman who does odd house keeping jobs ends up doing strange services in upper class homes.

One of the stories is an homage to Charlie Parker, and it shows that Cortázar was a passionate music lover, and the story convinced at least me. Antonioni's Blow Up (movie) was based on one other story, the Droolings of the devil, which shows an interesting viewpoint on photography (another dear subject to me).

Near to the wild heart by Clarice Lispector was her debut, and she was only 23 years old when it was published. I guess it can be said that the writer's age shows both in the good and in the bad. The book is fresh, very intense, even feverish reading experience. The presence or the feeling of getting into the protagonist's skin is strong. And the writing reaches her thinking really well -- and at the beginning her thoughts are interesting. The book tells the story of a woman from childhood to young adult. Or more presicely it tells about her feelings and internal experiences in the events of her life. But the good things do not last. The second half of the book isn't even nearly as strong as the beginning, the first half that is about childhood and youth. It may be too simplistic to say that the writer who was young was more convincing when writing of the ages she'd been past already, but that's what I felt.

I've read elsewhere that this is an important book and a feminist classic, and that loads of analyses and interpretetations have been written about it -- so if you want to find out more, seek, and you'll surely find.

Delirium by Laura Restrepo, which was the last book of the América Latina category, which in turn was the fifth category finished. Need to think about this book some time before saying whether it was ok or even better than that.

Konekansan satuja ja tarinoita is a Finnish collection of S Lem's stories. If I've got it right Mortal engines is its closest equivalent in content in English. It was nice, especially the vocabulary, the names of the guys and things made me laugh. And being a collection of tales, stories and myths (of machines) it was a great prolog to Kaleva which I am reading now.

Edited to make some corrections

I dropped one book that hung around from January without getting started. But I also finally filled all the blanks so I now have 8 titles in all categories. Just need to read them all.

Datura or a delusion that everyone sees. By Leena Krohn. It was a joy to read again.

The book begins: "I can only blame myself for my current state. And a flower. Or two flowers actually."

The story is told by a woman of undefined age, asthmatic, in a new job in a journal called The New Anomalist.

Datura, by the way, is also known as "jimson weed, ditch weed, Good weed, loco weed, Korean morning glory, Jamestown weed, thorn apple, angel's trumpet, devil's trumpet, devil's snare, devil's seed, mad hatter, crazy tea, malpitte, and, along with Datura metel, zombie cucumber"(from wikipedia) -- make your pick. You may already guess what this is about. Or maybe not.

She hears that this plant may help asthma, and she gives it a try. That alone would probably make her life strange.

Furthermore she meets quite a few people of the strangest kind at her job. Things get mixed-up and weird, but she cannot or does not want to admit that it has something to do with the plant that actually eases her asthma. It does not help her confusion, though, when she hears that one of her strangest experiences had actually been 'real'...

This is not a books about drugs or addictions, but about reality. What is reality, and what could it be, maybe even about what it should be. As always, Krohn writes with compassion and understanding (there is humour also, but it is very quiet). She wonders and makes questions -- and makes the reader ask more questions. The answers, I don't know where they are.

That sounds like a pretty interesting book. Sadly, it looks like my library doesn't carry anything of hers, except for one short story in an anthology which (perhaps, ironically) I've already read. It appears only a few of her works have been translated into English.

The only novel by Krohn I know is easily (=free, on the net) available in English is Tainaron, see message #15 above for a link.

Jeff VanderMeer once wrote a very nice review on Tainaron here

Valkeita lankoja is collection of short stories by Anne Leinonen. I think it is her first. A few of the stories have been published in magazine(s), though. Leinonen is a good writer but it's her imagination that's even better. The stories range from scifi to fantasy, with minor horror elements here and there.

The scifi stuff happens on planets far far away, but it's not about space ships and hyper space. Different nations and cultures meet or try to meet others; like the one where humans find a planet where the natives always give in, and they (we) just cannot handle that, or one where a habitation of an unstable planet tries religiously to repair their ancient teleportation system -- sending works but those who go never end up where they're supposed to.

The fantasy stories are quite strongly rooted in Finnish folklore, the old tales and myths (there are other sources too, but no so much), and very nicely so.

The title story plays with the terms of quantum physics and wave theories: what if there were persons (and cats) who could act as elementary particles according to the theories do; what if their position or "being there" were undefinable? Very nice.

The best stories are really good and the rest are ok. I'll gladly read more by this author.

The Loudest Sound and Nothing is a debut collection of short stories by Clare Wigfall. I read these about a year ago for the first time, and I was quite impressed then. So it was exciting to come back to them; are they as good as I remember; would I be impressed again or would I be disappointed?

Yes! These stories range from good to great to excellent as far as short stories go.

See yourself, two of the stories are available online:
http://www.noinnocentbystanders.com/story/2005/1/20/9311/03026
http://www.theshortstory.org.uk/stories/index.php4?storyid=30

The Loudest Sound and Nothing really deserves more than just the brief mention above.

More than just being a collection of good or better than good short stories, this is an astonishing compilation of short stories. You rarely see a short story collection with such a great variety of characters and stories. With this book you'll travel in place and in time, from islands of Scotland to 19th century Paris to L.A. to small town England and you'll also have a chance to take a ride with Bonnie and Clyde ... to the end. They all are different in tone, they all have their own voice and way of speech. Wigfall is a great writer and more than that she's exceptional creator of characters.

There are stories of things that happen to people, there are some about things that have happened or might have happened or are about to happen, and some about things that someone thinks are happening but are not.

It was a great reread, and I am happy that I read it slowly this time, one or two stories a day (only once did three). Slow pace gave me time to let the stories sink in one at a time, and I also found some gems I'd missed during the first read.

For whom the Bells Toll was a good book if not great. Or the story was great, touching without being too sentimental and very interesting. Realistic in the best sense of the word, authentic if not documentary.

I just didn't feel like "this is really good" like I did several times while reading Hemingway's short stories earlier this year. Or I didn't feel like that on the whole -- there were some great part or passages where everything was right.

Have to say, however, that part of this not feeling so great may be due to the translation, which was not bad but felt aged. The book is old, and that should be ok, and that usually is, I don't mind it, but this time it mattered. Maybe I should have read the book in English. Maybe one is (or I am) more sensitive to this in one's own language, I don't know.

Finished 14 solmua Greenwichiin which was a good and interesting story about a (fictional) round-the-world race honouring the memory of Edmond Halley, one of the four or so guys who once defined the Greenwich meridian. The participants are supposed to travel along the meridian, using only transportation available at the times of Halley, and within one year.

Reader travels with one of the twelve teams, the only one who is foolish enough to actually follow the rules, or so it seems. Until it begins to seem something else. A truly Amazing Race, might one say.

This is a story about a modern exploration, about group dynamics, people's need to belong and be part of something, stubbornes and collapse of someone's ideals.

Interesting, well written, and good in many ways, but sadly not really great.

Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, or a collection of great stories, or the Real Thing or at least the closest one can get to the Real Thing in Finnish. The Real Thing here being something really old, the root stuff, the ancient.

Mr Lönnrot put the book together around the 1830s but he only wrote few % or the lines himself. I don't really know how living the oral tradition was by the time he was collecting the poems, but I know that through these verses on can see really far back.

From the creation of the world (from an egg) to his departure from the lands of Kaleva Väinämöinen and his side-kick Ilmarinen, the blacksmith, guide and care their people. There are war-waging, dark times (when the neighboring people manage to hide sun and moon into a mountain) and other hardship -- but a song or a strong spell can do miracles.

Väinämöinen has been around ever since. He makes things happen by his word -- it is a matter of honor to him not to do things if they can be sung: boats, wind to the boat's sail, to open the gates etc. He is ready to go to the Land of the dead or to wake up a giant to find the missing words for a spell rather than to actually do something with his hands.

And when he's finally out of words, he asks Ilmarinen for help -- he can make most things (though his self-made metal wife was kind of cold :)

The greatest thing Ilmarinen ever did was Sampo, a mill of all good, which however became the the source of most of the trouble for the Kaleva people. He first created Sampo for the neighbors at North to get himself a wife, which he got.

The wedding of Ilmarinen was a great fiesta -- there are hundreds of verses about making beer for the party, and a few more about drinking it -- and it first looked like it would unite the two rivaling nations.

But Ilmarinen loses his wife, not long after the wedding. After that, as Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen hear about how wealthy Sampo is making the North-people, they start to think that maybe it was a mistake to give Sampo away in the first place.

They try to steal it, the Northern people don't like that, they do something else to get even, and so forth... So human.

It was fun to read something this old for a change. To read something in one's own language and encounter so many unknown words and so many strange ways of saying things.

See also finlit.fi; there is all the background you'll need.

And here are some paintings inspired by the book.

Finished my second to the last book of the challenge, Myytti Wu Tao-tzusta (The Myth of Wu Tao-Tzu) by Sven Lindqvist, which was an interesting mix of quite personal musings on the author's collapse of world view (the primary cause being exposure to the lack of justice in the world -- this was written in the sixties, the exposure having happened during the previous 10 or so years.) and speculations on the significance of art and its possibilities, and one's possibility to step into (a work of) art leaving everything else behind; this mainly due to author's exposure to Herrman Hesse. (Robert Musil and Marcel Proust were also mentioned but not so often.) The former (the collapse) was related to the latter (Hesse): the author became attracted to and finally traveled to China and India due to Mr Hesse. Those places, especially India, were too much to a sensitive Swedish poet.

This book's age makes it quite interesting: it is sort of old, but not too old, it is of this same world we still live in, though it has changed a lot. And in a way, at the same time, it proves (once again) that the world hasn't changed that much. There are so many things mentioned in the book that are still hot topics (when talking about global economy and development and such things, I mean). Lindqvist was a seer; though he saw some things wrongly, there are more good forecasts of world developments than bad.

Wu Tao-tzu was, by the way, an ancient Chinese painter who, according to the Myth, left this world through a door he had painted into his last work.

And now I am ready to try to tacle the Last Book of this Challenge: Ulysses by J Joyce. I don't think I'll finish it in a week. I'd rather say that if I am not reading it after a week, I'll must have dropped it.

So much has been written and said about Ulysses that I can't add much to that.

The book is readable, even enjoyable though at times hard to follow. In many places I knew I didn't get it, that there was something going on somewhere deeper, not just the story. I know there are plenty of books explaining the thing available, but I had decided that I'd just read it this time, and study later.

But, well, I am happy I did it; finished this book and the 61 other books for the challenge.