Laxfiske i Jemen

Paul Torday - Laxfiske i Jemen

Betyg: 3

dagensbok.com

Svinalängorna

Susanna Alakoski - Svinalängorna

3/5

Förra årets Augustpristagare... FEL LÅT VANN! Som vanligt alltså. Sara Stridsberg FTW. (Men det där ska nog inte tas på alltför stort allvar - man kan inte tävla i smak osv.)

Alltså, inte så att Svinalängorna är en dålig bok på något vis. Det må ha gått lite mode i de här förortsskildringarna de senaste åren, men Alakoskis alkoholistdotter Leena lever i en skrämmande realistisk värld där hennes föräldrar bitvis sjunker från att ta sig ett glas till att supa till att supa bort allt. Hur var det nu - "först dricker mannen flaskan, sen dricker flaskan mannen"? Och beskrivningen ur ett barns perspektiv av hur hennes föräldrar, till synes utan någonstans att ta vägen i ett samhälle där de under nåder tillåts bo i en betonglänga och städa restauranger, tappar först hoppet och sedan förståndet är skakande.

Men samtidigt dras boken också med problem. Det som i början är ett utmärkt stycke diskbänksrealism (om än inte riktigt i klass med exvis "Rödby-Puttgarden") dyker i takt med att föräldrarnas missbruk blir värre ner mer och mer i ett ganska överansträngt rabblande av hur Leena upplever det - och pre-teenage angst doesn't always pay off. Det är sida upp och sida ner med socialporr, ganska statiska berättelser där allting upprepar sig i cykler och som då och då driver över i någon sorts Burroughs light-symbolik. Som om Alakoski, precis som de periodare hon skriver om, bara har två lägen; av eller på.

Det är en stark bok, och för det mesta en ganska bra bok också. Men... inte mer än så.

Nystart XIV

Så, återigen gör vi ett försök att få liv och också hålla liv i den här läs-och-ibland-även-tittjournalen som det här är menat att vara. Många av de gamla recensionerna jag lagt in är på engelska eftersom jag skrivit dem på engelskspråkiga klotterplank. Att ha en svensk blogg borde få fart även på de svenska recensionerna, tycker jag...

Så, med läsgrejer är den uppdaterad nu i alla fall. Och eftersom det finns tags och är ihopabyggt med gmail och alltihop BORDE det vara lätt att hålla igång. VI KÖR!

If Chins Could Kill

Bruce Campbell - If Chins Could Kill.

4/5

There are, basically, two kinds of people in the world: those to whom Bruce Campbell is Jesus, Schwarzenegger and the Three Stooges rolled into one, and then the rest. (Most of the rest, amazingly, have never even heard of him.) As he observes at one point in the book, the difference between a mainstream movie and a cult movie is that the former might be seen by 100,000 people 10 times whereas the latter is seen by 10 people 100,000 times.

His autobiography is one of the most fun - and funny - books on the movie industry I've read in some time, which makes sense considering his career. (There really isn't much to tell by way of drugs, debauchery and swimming-in-champagne when your biggest movie ever gave you a net annual salary of under $50,000.) Instead, this is the movie business as seen from the lower rungs; Campbell goes just as fanboy as everyone else when he finds himself sitting opposite Chuck Heston, and later on he spends an entire chapter on the career of one of his assistants on the set of Brisco County Jr. It's the little guys that keep the business turning, as a b-movie actor from Detroit would know. He got into the business almost by accident – he acted in a movie (Evil Dead, of coursewith a couple of childhood friends and suddenly he was apparently an actor (his account of his first interview with an actor's agency is a hoot). Where his characters on screen are often loud, obnoxious and funny, Campbell himself comes across as a genuinely Nice Guy trying to make a living simply by honest hard work in an industry that doesn't exactly encourage niceness or honesty. But still funny.

He's no great writer, but he can spin a yarn. I'd say reading his anecdotes from movie sets, fan convents and his personal life (man, Sam Raimi comes across as the most lovable utter asshole ever) feels almost like spending an evening just shooting the breeze with Bruce Campbell, but... well, it's such a quick read, it basically IS an evening shooting the breeze with Bruce Campbell. Lots of fun. 4/5.

Rödby-Puttgarden

Helle Helle - Rödby-Puttgarden

4/5

Helle Helle's Rödby-Puttgarden. AFAIK it's not translated into English, but it should be; this is an excellent shortish novel (204 pages) that reads a bit like a Scandinavian version of some Bruce Springsteen lyric from the late 70s - that feel of the ones left behind, the ones who barely even had a dream. It's about two sisters in their early and mid-20s living in the small town of Rödby (known all over Northern Europe for one thing only: it's where the ferries for Germany leave). It's the kind of town where a high school diploma is something impressive to have, since most who get it move away and are never seen again. It's a very hyperrealist tale, told in prose that doesn't try to sing but just holds on in the grey Baltic wind; short, sharp sentences and chapters, little glimpses of life. Yet there's subtext; the ferry goes back and forth with Charon... sorry, cars on, and they're the ones who never get too far from either side of the river. Never quite life, never quite death. Recommended to those who can read it. 4/5.

Mer kommer.

Firmin

Sam Savage - Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

5/5

The "others", in this case, being our narrator's fellow citizens of a run-down neighbourhood in 1960s Boston. Born in the basement of a used bookstore (his crib lined with shredded pages of Finnegan's Wake), neglected by his alcoholic mother, bullied by his siblings, young Firmin has to feed and raise himself - the thirteenth child to a mother with twelve tits.

(Yeah, he's a rat.)

And so Firmin starts eating books. And then reading books. As the others grow strong and leave the basement to mate, scrounge for food and get run over in the street, Firmin stays behind, the smartest and loneliest rat in the world, ravenously reading his way through the entire published world of literature - from the Great Books to religious pamphlets, sci-fi novels to long-debunked medical theories and maps of the world. He teaches himself to read, teaches himself to critique, to discuss, to interpret... only that as a rat, he has no one to discuss it with. Other rats avoid him (as he them), and this being pre-computer age with its feather-touch keyboards, there is no way for him to communicate with humans; he can only squeak, and he's too weak to work a typewriter. As far as anyone can see, he's just a rat to be poisoned or stomped on. For a long time, his entire world is made up of books and the local cinema, which only shows old black-n-white Hollywood movies and cheap porn. And then something happens...

Name-dropping time: Firmin reads a bit like a tragicomic(er) Tales From Underground filtered through Fritz The Cat. I'd say it's what Auster was trying to do with Timbuktu, except it's much too sentimental (in a good way) to be Auster. But above all - and this reference might be a little obscure - I'm reminded of Hrabal's Too Loud A Solitude, which is eerily similar yet completely different. Two rat-infested basements, two outsiders-by-necessity who, pursued by the authorities, build their own world from books, two short novels about the power and lack of comfort offered by literature... Yet Savage has created something pretty unique: a narrator who could have been unbearably cute but instead is one of the most touching anti-heroes I've come across in a long time, a metafictional short sharp shock (148 pages), a very poignant tale of lonely people unable to connect to others (some rats, some humans), and a story that first cracks me up and then gradually turns the screws until we know that this can never end well. Firmin is just a rat, so he fits perfectly in that proverbial handbasket we're all in whether we realize it or not.

(And Hell, as Jean-Paul Sratre pointed out, is other rats.)

I'm sorry. That last piece was exactly the sort of pun that makes this sound like a joke. It's not. It's one of the most rewarding reads I've had all year, and I really hope more people will give it a shot. Firmin deserves that.

Utslag av oro

Mark Haddon - Utslag av oro

3/5

dagensbok.com

Last and First Men

Olaf Stapledon - Last and First Men

3/5

It's certainly impressive - both in concept and in execution: the history of mankind - or rather mankindS, as evolution doesn't stop with us inventing the propeller - from 1930 and over the next 2,000 million years. I can't really say I've read anything like it; I'm reminded of Asimov's Foundation "trilogy", only with a scope much grander, or of... some book I read back in my SF days... something by Aldiss, perhaps? Something about mankind millions of years into the future, living in space stations underground... it's fuzzy. Also of Swedish sf/non-fiction astronomy writer Peter Nilson, whom I absolutely adore, but who is mostly untranslated AFAIK.

Anyway. This might be the first novel I've ever read where the foreword urged me to skip the first few chapters - and it's easy to see why, even if I wouldn't recommend it. Because even if he gets some guesses about the 20th-21st centuries VERY wrong (and bases it almost entirely on national stereotyping which I hope is supposed to be satirical) he actually gets a few things right - if not in detail. The dominance of an increasingly nationalistic and religious America, for instance, or the rise of a China which adopts capitalism but not democracy...

But it's after all that that things get really interesting. One thing that strikes me is how far we've come since 1930; Stapledon is a pessimist when it comes to humanity's (or if that should be humanities') ability to live in peace with each other or others, but when it comes to technology he's already been overrun - his mankinds need millions of years to develop things such as space flight, nuclear power or genetics, but Stapledon's own contemporaries needed less than 20 years. If I had any main problem with the story, it's exactly this; things take TOO long, as if he needed to find some way to stretch it to 2,000 million years - and so we have species-wide civilizations lasting millions of years with no great changes, we have evolution simply "taking a break" from time to time, etc.

But the main story here, of course, is the development of Man. Or Men. And even if I think it suffers from hardly having any characters whatsoever - it does get a bit same-same-but-different after a while when all numbers are counted in millions - and even if Stapledon goes on to apply the same national stereotyping he uses on The First Men to...um... species-related stereotyping later on, it's a fascinating, if rarely thrilling, read. The sheer imagination it takes to pull something like this off; the plausibility he, despite some romantic naivite both when it comes to society and biology, manages to add to his broad strokes of the brush... Plus, he's occasionally VERY funny. I'm not sure if some bits are intended as satire on the First Men or if he's writing it all as straight-faced as he can, but since they are all to some extent human - and we are all too human - it certainly works as such from time to time.

As someone who always prefers character to plot, I was surprised at how much I liked this. It has its faults, and it rarely kept me turning pages breathlessly, but... I've never read anything with the same approach, and I find myself wishing there were more books like it.

Versläsaren och den levande martyren

Mohammed Gerami - Versläsaren och den levande martyren

2/5

Måste komma ihåg att skriva ner mina tankar om den här. Intressant historia, men... fyrkantigt berättad med tumvantar.

Kosmokomik

Italo Calvino - Kosmokomik

5/5

Now that's good Calvino. Funny, detailed, multi-layered, beautifully written and ever so clever without losing track of the story it tells.

On one level, this is a story about a... let's call him a man, because he's definitely male even if he isn't really human, an eternal being named Qfwfq. It's his life, from childhood to maturity. Only his life takes place over the entire age of the universe, from Big Bang to the 1960s on Earth. Each story builds on some scientific factoid, and then creates a very human-although-not-human story from it with Qfwfq as the narrator. Sometimes he's a dinosaur, sometimes he's a bodiless cosmic being watching as the universe creates itself... or if HE creates it?

Because on another level, this is a story about what IS. And HOW it is. How we create the world by seeing it, experiencing it, how others create images of us and how others' images of us help us create ourselves. How telling stories can bring things into being. We all create our own universe, we all evolve, and the universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whiz.

5/5.

De sammanflätade ödenas slott

Italo Calvino - De sammanflätade ödenas slott

3/5

The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino is a WEIRD fucking book. The weirdest - and, sadly, least enjoyable - Calvino book I've read so far, which is saying something.

The whole thing is built around tarot cards. A group of travellers in a deep forest (or, more precisely, two separate groups of travellers in two separate forests, or at least I think so) settle down around a table, and since they're mute, they try to tell their stories by showing the others tarot cards in specific sequences - call it a deckamerone of cards. It's a semiotic novel like Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana to the 3rd degree; every story told, while on some level an obvious play on classic antique and medieval epics, is filtered through a triple blind - the storyteller is limited by what the cards actually show, the narrator of the novel is limited by his interpretation of what the cards mean, and the reader of the novel is limited by his/her knowledge of the myths, cards, and literary nods involved.

As an allegory on storytelling, it's a remarkable feat, the way symbols and archetypes can show up in different ways and have a universal meaning even though they take on completely different roles depending on the context. And Calvino is a brilliant stylist. But in the end, it feels more like he's experimenting and showing off because he can, because he wants to make a point; the stories themselves become repetitive and rarely grab me. I'll want to reread this, in fact I think I want to put it on a shelf in my bathroom and read a story every now and then (most are just 3-4 pages). But for now, it's 3/5.

Sturm

Ernst Jünger - Sturm

3/5

Ernst Jünger's Sturm is a peculiar little novel (82 pages). A semi-autobiographical story of a cultured, well-read German officer in 1916, spending his time either coolly killing his enemies or discussing the finer points of literature (mostly French and Russian - supposedly the enemy, natch) with his friends and writing on a "Decamerone of the trenches", little character sketches of other young men who DON'T go to war, trying to come to terms with the brutality of an ending era (the 19th century, some would say, ended with the big offensives of 1916, machine guns and bombs once and for all taking over as the defining aspect of technology... It's certainly not an optimistic book, and not a very nice book either. Plus, its short length actually makes it a bit difficult to get into - it's so stripped down, it's hard to get into the flow of it. But Jünger was a good writer (and a fascinating character - fought in both world wars, was part of von Stauffenberg's assassination attempt on Hitler, took LSD in his 70s, lived to 103...). 3/5.

Exorcist

William Peter Blatty - Exorcist

3/5

Exorcist is a great story, don't get me wrong. It's very much a period piece, written around the time of Woodstock and the supposedly biggest generational rift thus far in human history, in which a parent's child suddenly starts speaking in an unknown language and acting in a way the parent can only explain by supernatural means... hmmm. Well, horror is always metaphor at heart.

Profanities, obscenities and very graphic scenes aside, it's a pretty conservative story, too. It can easily be read as "the punishment for being a working divorced atheist mom is to have your daughter possessed, and you can only save her by believing". But hey, as a story, it works. I particularly like the prist, whose role (as far as I recall) is more central here than in the movie; a man who struggles with faith and all-too-human demons of his own. It's the parallel between him and the (largely absent) possessed girl that makes this a worthwile story.

The problem is in the writing. It's well-paced (for the most part), it works on more than one level, it's chock-full (perhaps too much so) of religious symbolism - as if it's not just poor little Regan but all of society that's given itself up to the Hornéd One - but it's also clear that Blatty is a screenwriter used to having a team of cameramen, directors and cutters on hand to give his stories life, NOT a novelist. This reads almost like a screenplay; the prose is a mixture of phrases that are supposed to sound poetic but mostly come out bizarre, and wooden, exposition-filled dialogue where no one seems to actually talk TO each other, just AT each other. There are more "she sobbed tearfully"s, "he explained patiently"s and "she screamed hair-out-pullingly"s here than you can shake a cross at, plus my personal pet peeve: the Foreign character who has a name which is all wrong for his supposed nationality, speaks in some sort of Foreigner English which sounds nothing like the accent someone of his suppposed nationality should have, and can't even speak his own language correctly when he tries. Granted, not a huge fault, but I just *really* wish authors would stop doing that; if you have no clue about a certain country and language, don't try to write characters from it. 'Kay? Kay.

It's a classic, and deservedly so, as it's suspenseful, fairly scary and actually manages to say something (though not necessarily something I'd agree with) about its time. But... yeah. It needs a director and a cameraman. And Max von Sydow.

Night Watch

Sarah Waters - Night Watch

4/5

Rather liked it, occasional longeurs aside; it's incredibly detailed, with some very well-written characters (I was initially a bit wary as she started off by describing then hair colour of the various protagonists, but then I quickly forgot about that and built my own images instead - and boy, does she make it easy to do that). One might argue that the characters are ALL the novel's got going for it, but... well, there's a bit more to it than that.

The reverse-timeline thing bugged me a bit at times - by the time I reach the "beginning" of the book I'm not sure of all the details of how it ended. But for the most part, I thought it worked very well - we see enough of who they ARE to want to find out how they got that way and be willing to do the detective work, even if I would like to know how it "ended" for real (which I suppose is a good sign - I care what happens to them). OK, granted, Helen wasn't my favourite; her defining characteristics are basically insecurity and jealousy, and I found it a bit hard to sympathize with her at times...

2, possibly 3, of the four main characters are gay and the word "queer" (in its proper meaning) seems a bit overused, popping up in every other sentence, but... it does serve a point in that the word "gay" doesn't get used one single time, IIRC. These were queer times, and it's almost so that the "queer" theme of the characters become a metaphor for the whole living-in-war experience - constantly hiding, constantly afraid to let yourself live, to poke your head out because you might get it blown off. As such, it works very well, and I'm sorry to say I must (just as I did with Brokeback Mountain) disagree with the standard complaint that "If the characters had been straight, the same story wouldn't have interested anyone" - because if they had been straight, it wouldn't BE the same story, would it?

The image that will remain with me, though, is Kay sitting in front of her smashed house, grieving a loss she hasn't experienced yet. Very powerful writing, though a bit dragging at times. But... let's give it 4.

Keith Richards: Biografin

Victor Bockris - Keith Richards

3/5

Varför får Bockris fortsätta skriva de här böckerna?

dagensbok.com

Resor i skriptoriet

Paul Auster - Resor i skriptoriet

3/5

dagensbok.com

Das Urteil

Franz Kafka - Das Urteil

3/5

Jodå - jag läser Kafka på tyska och recenserar honom på engelska! Varför? FÖR ATT JAG KAN!

I'm making my way through a collection of Kafka stories in a leisurely pace - almost by default, since I decided to read him in German (seeing as how people always complain that he loses a lot in translation).

And it's an experience. I've read these stories before, but it was years ago, and one thing that didn't really strike me was Kafka's language; dry, descriptive, but always correct and rarely emotional. I definitely think you can draw parallels between Kafka and Lovecraft in theme (they were contemporaries, they both wrote about a world where the very fabric of reality seems unreliable at best and evil at worst, both seemed highly sceptic of the modern world and its advances, both were quite pessimistic about their abilities to get out of this world alive, so to speak) but where Lovecraft's monsters cause his anti-heroes to go insane and babble in long sentences containing a multitude of adjectives (most of which are about how they are unable to describe their horror, just trust us, it's HORRIFIC) Kafka is bone-dry. It's prose worthy of an insurance clerk; he tells us exactly what's happening, often in words with slight double meanings, but completely objective: Gregor Samsa turns into a vermin, accept it. No one is really surprised - horrified, yes, inconvenienced, yes, but not surprised. No one tries to solve the problem. They are characters adrift in a Wrong world, and Kafka never gives us any hints on how we're supposed to read it. Hell, even Gregor's death comes in the middle of a block of text, blink-and-you'll-miss-it.

He, like, creeps me out, dude.


EDIT:
OK, so I finished my copy last night.

Spontaneous thoughts, in addition to the ones above:

It really was nice to revisit Kafka after a few years of more advanced reading than I had the first time I tried him. Kafka's style is so enigmatic - dry yet bizarre enough to demand some sort of interpretation - that the reader almost needs to bring something of his own to the table to get something out rather than "wow, that's a creepy bug that guy turns into" or "Sucks to be Josef K".

Kafka can read both like deadly serious - the classic outsider description in The Hunger Artist ("I starve because I could never find anything that satisfies me" paraphrased), the existentialist leanings, the feeling of being trapped in something beyond your control. (Hell, if The Metamorphosis came out today, it would probably be interpreted as being about someone who is suffering from clinical depression.) It's almost impossible not to bring whatever you know about Kafka himself into it, too; Kafka had to work a job he hated to support his family - hello Gregor Samsa. Or hell, bring his religious background into In The Penal Colony or Before The Law.

At the same time, he can be really funny. Suddenly I remember why I didn't feel like I was laughing out loud at Kafka last year when I read two short story collections he was obviously a major inspiration for - Lethem&Scholtz's Kafka Americana and Shalom Auslander's Beware Of God (both highly recommended); that element of very bleak humour is there in the original too.

However, it doesn't always pay off. While I'm immensely grateful to Max Brod for saving The Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony and (if not quite as enthusiastically, they're good but not masterpieces) A Report to an Academy and A Hunger Artist, some of the short stories here probably wouldn't have made it into a collection compiled by Kafka himself. Some (Eleven Sons, for instance) seem hardly more than writing exercises, and the attempt to write gothic horror in A Country Doctor is almost laughable.

But still, it whetted my appetite and I'm going to pick up some more of his stuff. Preferably in the original German; lovely turns of phrase which are deceptively simple.

Move Under Ground

Nick Mamatas - Move Under Ground

3/5

The year is nineteen-sixty-something, and after endless millennia of watery sleep, the stars are finally right. Old R'lyeh rises out of the Pacific, ready to cast its damned shadow over the primitive human world. The first to see its peaks: an alcoholic, paranoid, and frightened Jack Kerouac, who had been drinking off a nervous breakdown up in Big Sur. Now Jack must get back on the road to find Neal Cassady, the holy fool whose rambling letters hint of a world brought to its knees in worship of the Elder God Cthulhu. Together with pistol-packin' junkie William S. Burroughs, Jack and Neal make their way across the continent to face down the murderous Lovecraftian cult that has spread its darkness to the heart of the American Dream. But is Neal along for the ride to help save the world, or does he want to destroy it just so that he'll have an ending for his book?

At first, that sounds what in fanfic circles is apparently known as "crack": an idea, a pairing, a crossover so absolutely ludicrous it's too weird and too much fun NOT to read. Like Winnie the Pooh fighting vampires in Sunnydale, or Mohammad on The Cosby Show.

But actually, it makes sense, in a somewhat twisted sort of way. The story is narrated by Jack Kerouac in something that... well, it's been a while since I read On The Road (in Swedish), so I really can't say whether Mamatas apes Kerouac or parodies him, but the prose flows in a jazzy, half-crazy manner that's often a delight to read. And somehow Mamatas manages to marry the beatnik counter-culture thing via Burroughs' bugmen and mugwumps to the huge, impersonal monsters of Lovecraft - or rather, not the monsters themselves but the underlying theme of an ancient, evil world looming just below the surface, the futility of mankind in a world where evil gods can snuff us out without hardly noticing us.

Had I seen the Beast in the sky - the tentacles, snaky scales, the deep burning eyes? Oh yes, under the full moon and everything, "All the hipsters can see him," he said. "Squares can't, and that's the trouble. That's why we have to move under ground now."

Once you're exposed to Lovecraft's monsters, you go mad; somehow this ties in nicely with Kerouac's buddhist leanings and a general anti-consumerist non-conformist spin.

Everyone dies. The soul is immortal. This isn't even real; it's an illusion. The world, it's a mad dream of a blind god.

Mamatas acknowledges two of the 20th centuries greatest myth-makers - both Lovecraft and Kerouac created (or were credited with creating) genres, worlds of their own, and as such he lets them create yet a new (or possibly) old world here. He does let his fanboy tendencies get the better of him once or twice, and at times he seems more interested in just putting a somewhat more Burroughsian spin on On The Road than telling a story of his own. But in the end, he does manage to weld it all together - if not seamlessly - and creates a really fun read. I'd say 3/5, possibly 4/5 if you're a big fan of K or L. Because let's face it, at its heart, it is fanfic, even if it is fairly original.

Against the Day

Thomas Pynchon - Against the Day

4/5

dagensbok.com

(1085 sidor. Puuuuuuh.)

Läst 2006

Japp - megaposten: alla böcker jag läste under 2006!

DECEMBER:
82. Happy Sally - Stridsberg, Sara 3/5
81. Danslektioner för äldre och försigkomna - Hrabal, Bohumil 3/5
80. Kom närmare - Gran, Sara 2/5
79. Tyngd - Winterson, Jeanette 3/5
78. Against The Day - Pynchon, Thomas (påbörjad, slutförd 2007)
77. The Disappointment Artist - Lethem, Jonathan 5/5
76. Inte hela världen - Atkinson, Kate 3/5

NOVEMBER:
75. Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close - Safran Foer, Jonathan 5/5
74. Kring torget i Skoghall - Åsbacka, Robert 3/5
73. Den svarta boken - Pamuk, Orhan 4/5
72: Ännu talar träden - Beyala, Calixthe 3/5

OCTOBER:
71. Flyktingen - Hergel, Olav 1/5
70. Shalimar The Clown - Rushdie, Salman 4/5
69. Vad hände på vägen till Damaskus? - Einhorn, Lena 4/5
68. Brick Lane - Ali, Monica 3/5
67. Leklust - Zeh, Juli 4/5
66. Strändernas svall - Johnson, Eyvind 5/5

SEPTEMBER:
65. Myternas historia - Armstrong, Karen 4/5
64. Episkt dubbelspel - Jansson, Bo G 3/5
63. Lördag - McEwan, Ian 3/5
62. Everyman - Roth, Philip 4/5

AUGUST:
61. Utvandringens tid - Salih, Tayeb 3/5
60. 80 från varmvattnet - Alfredsson, Karin 3/5
59. Sverige och tystnaden - Popova, Susanna 2/5
58. Out - Kirino, Natsuo 3/5
57. Blues People - Jones, LeRoi 4/5
56. Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead - Stoppard, Tom 4/5
55. Overtaken - Sayle, Alexei 2/5
54. Den amerikanska flickan - Fagerholm, Monika 4/5

JULY:
53. Comrade Rockstar - Nadelson, Reggie 3/5
52. Bakakaj - Gombrowicz, Witold 3/5
51. Things Fall Apart - Achebe, Chinua 4/5
50. Bärsärkarna - Näsström, Britt-Marie 3/5
49. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me - Fariña, Richard (4/5)
48. American Purgatorio - Haskell, John 3/5
47. Gangsters - Östergren, Klas 2/5
46. Motherless Brooklyn - Lethem, Jonathan 5/5
45. Anansi Boys - Gaiman, Neil 3/5

JUNE:
44. Beware Of God - Auslander, Shalom 4/5
43. Skugga-Baldur - Sjón 4/5
42. Buddenbrooks - Mann, Thomas 3/5
41. Pappersväggar - Ajvide Lindqvist, John 4/5
40. En alltför högljudd ensamhet - Hrabal, Bohumil 5/5
39. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Carroll, Lewis 3/5
38. Lolita - Nabokov, Vladimir 5/5
37. Lit Riffs- Miele, Matthew 3/5

MAY:
36. Intelligent Thought - Brockman, John 3/5
35. Owen Noone And The Marauder - Cowie, Douglas 2/5
34. Klitty och da Vinci-kådisen - Wahl, Anastasia 3/5*
33. In The Miso Soup - Murakami, Ryu 4/5
32. Foucaults pendel - Eco, Umberto 5/5
31. Kafka Americana - Scholz, Carter, Lethem, Jonathan 3/5
30. Fotbolls-VM genom tiderna - Gahrton et al 3/5

APRIL:
29. On Beauty - Smith, Zadie 3/5
28. Steppvargen - Hesse, Hermann 4/5
27. The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Wilde, Oscar 4/5
26. Big Fish - Wallace, Daniel 3/5
25. Nattvakten - Lukyanenko, Sergei 4/5
24. Hjälp jag heter Zbigniew - Kuklarz, Zbigniew 4/5
23. Hummelhonung - Lindgren, Torgny 5/5

MARCH-JANUARY
22. Dorés bibel - Lindgren, Torgny 5/5
21. Pol Pots leende - Fröberg Idling, Peter 3/5
20. Dead Until Dark - Harris, Charlaine 3/5
19. Resa till nattens ände - Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 3/5
18. Den där Lukas - Cortázar, Julio 4/5
17. Hurramabad - Volos, Andrei 4/5
16. Kappan - Gogol, Nikolai 4/5
15. Dinosauriejägarna - Cadbury, Deborah 3/5
14. Magnum Berglin - Berglin, Jan 5/5
13. Cell - King, Stephen 2/5
12. Drömfakulteten - Stridsberg, Sara 4/5
11. It Aint No Sin To Be Glad Youre Alive - Alterman, Eric 4/5
10. Tristano Dies - Tabucchi, Antonio 4/5
9. Pölsan - Lindgren, Torgny 5/5
8. Tusen små bitar - Frey, James 4/5
7. Den sista människan - Shelley, Mary 4/5
6. Vernon God Little - Pierre, DBC 3/5
5. Lighthousekeeping - Winterson, Jeanette 5/5
4. Patti Smith - Bockris, Victor 2/5
3. The Plot Against America - Roth, Philip 5/5
2. Underground - Murakami, Haruki 4/5
1. The Historian - Kostova, Elizabeth 4/5

Happy Sally

Sara Stridsberg - Happy Sally

3/5

Om tre kvinnor, varav två försöker simma över kanalen och en lyckas - den tredje blir kvar i land.

Återigen: tappat bort recensionen. Morr åt sidokrascher. Men jag gillade Happy Sally, om än inte lika mycket som Drömfakulteten. Hennes lek med perspektiv, tidshopp, genusfrågor och det där poetiska språket som BORDE vara överdrivet men inte riktigt är det... klart läsvärd.

Danslektioner för äldre och försigkomna

Bohumil Hrabal - Danslektioner för äldre och försigkomna

3/5

En memoar skriven i en enda lång mening (med lite god vilja; Hrabal eller översättaren bryter lite mot interpunktionsreglerna för att få dit det). Intressant historia i botten - som en mer långlivad, mer experimentell Svejk - men känns också lite som experiment för experimentets skull. Inte alls den knock som En alltför högljudd ensamhet var, men nog för att jag ska fortsätta gräva mig ner i högen med lånade Hrabalverk.

Kom närmare

Sara Gran - Kom närmare

2/5

Högeligen meningslös bok. Återigen har jag lyckats slarva bort recensionen jag skrev, men jag kan i princip hålla med det Ella skrev på dbc.

Det är ju egentligen ett bra upplägg, men alldeles på tok för bokstavligt och alldeles för övertydligt. Rekommenderas ej.

Tyngd

Jeanette Winterson - Tyngd

3/5

dagensbok.com

The Disappointment Artist

Jonathan Lethem - The Disappointment Artist

5/5

Skrev en ganska utförlig recension av denna som tyvärr gick förlorad. Så just nu får jag nöja mig med att säga att den här till populärkulturell essäsamling utklädda självbiografin är helt fantastisk - något av det bästa jag läst på ämnet att vi blir det vi läser, lyssnar på och tittar på och naturligtvis de människor vi möter. Oumbärlig läsning om man någonsin ens kastat ett getöga på Lethems romaner.

Inte hela världen

Kate Atkinson - Inte hela världen

3/5

dagensbok.com

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

5/5

Såhär några månader efteråt minns jag mest att jag tyckte väldigt mycket om den här boken. Eller jo, jag minns mycket mer, och jag borde egentligen försöka skriva ner det också, men inte just nu. Fantastisk bok hur som helst.

Kring torget i Skoghall

Robert Åsbacka - Kring torget i Skoghall

3/5

dagensbok.com

Den svarta boken

Orhan Pamuk - Den svarta boken

4/5

Now this was one bewildering read. It took me a while to get through, not because I disliked it but simply because it's hard work; it's impossible to browse through this book, you really have to focus. On one level, it's a detective story of a man searching for his wife and her half-brother who have mysteriously disappeared but are sure to be hiding somewhere in Istanbul. Much like in Eco's mysteries, the story isn't centered so much around finding clues as HOW we find and interpret clues - in fact, much of this novel seems to be about reading reality like a book, or alternatively how reality doesn't exist until we turn it into stories. Schrodinger's cat, I guess: nothing is fact until it is observed as fact. Or fiction, as it may be.

Then there are themes. History, identity etc. If I have any major complaint with the book, it would be that the identity theme is way too obviously done, each single character (if in fact - or fiction - there is more than one character narrating the book) going off on lengthy diatribes about how one becomes oneself or someone else (which may be the same thing). It pays off at the end, but after a while you do get a little bit tired of reading the phrase "to become someone else".

Though that's a large part of the narrative as well. Characters change names and roles like in a Lynch movie, and the plot, if indeed there is a plot, is hidden under - or perhaps simply made up of - lots of anecdotes, side plots, the lives of historical figures etc, all of which do tend to contribute, but it doesn't exactly make it easier to follow. Then again, storytelling itself is a large part of novel; the nature of storytelling, the purpose of it, the dangers of it, the benefits. It's a work of literature about literature. And as such, perhaps a tad too meta at times, though I can't say I don't like it.

There's one passage towards the end which really pinpoints what I believe Pamuk is going for in his constant examination of literature/storytelling both as a way of describing reality and creating it. Two painters are hired to paint two opposing walls in a whorehouse. A drape is put up between them so they can't se what the other is doing. After six months, the drape is removed and it turns out one has created a beautifully realistic painting of bustling downtown Istanbul; the other has simply covered his wall with a mirror, creating a perfect copy of the opposing wall. But as people look in the mirror and see themselves in front of the painting of Istanbul, they see the dogs in it bark, the water start to actually flow, the street vendors actually move. The copy has, by observation and tricks of the light, become something more. Not sure I'm phrasing this right, but it works, damnit, it works.

Pamuk is a very descriptive writer, which is part of the reason the book doesn't really suffer even though it's 512 pages of very little actually happening. If you like Eco and Calvino, you'll probably like this. If you want murders, sordid love affairs, car chases and, you know, PLOT (though there are murders, love affairs, car chases etc in the book) you might tend to get lost somewhere in it. If you hate postmodernism, you'll end up throwing it at the wall. But I found it a mind-boggling, boundary-deleting novel and I really liked it, even if it gave me a headache or two.