Sensible people might ask themselves why anyone would get the idea to read books from 26 different countries as a New Year’s Resolution. I have stated one of the reason before, that I had realized that almost all books I read were from either the United States or the United Kingdom. There are however few other reasons this has become my obsession. Here is one of them.

My boyfriend’s parents have a holiday house up on an island called Skogsøya in North of Norway that I have visited few times. They kept telling me that one of the most famous Norwegian author, Herbjørg Wassmo, had grown up that island.

I was a bit fascinated and one day decided that it was about time that I read one of her books. It ended up being a bookclub book that I read while on one of those visits to the island. The House with Blind Glass Window is a sad story about Tora, a young girl that grows up on the island. She is the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian woman after the WW2, something that was looked down on back in the days. She lives with her mother and abusive stepfather and the story is about her hard life. The book is beautifully written with a haunting nightmarish story that is bound to leave a mark on you.

I read the book while sitting in the living room looking over a small bay at a beautiful white mansion-like house called Breistrand. It stands out on the island and you can’t help but admire it and its location. I was later told by one of the locals that the rumor says that Herbjørg Wassmo is using that particular house as a model for the house with the blind glass window in her book. All of a sudden a location from a book stepped out of its pages and became more real. The roots of the book to this island were obvious. Ever since then I have been trying to read books that fit the location I am visiting. Either that they take place there or that the author is born in that place/country.

I visited Skogsøya again this winter and tried to repeat my success by reading Wassmo’s latest book Hundre år. Unfortunately, that book is the mere shadow of her previous work. It tells her own family history and goes into details about her own childhood and childhood abuse. It however never reached the same depth, felt a bit simplistic and at times written in a hurry. Hence it took me this long to write about it. I only give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Rather read her The House with Blind Glass Window which is a 5 star book!

Can’t you just picture me heading out for a desert travel with a pack of servants and my Ikea ”china” carefully packed. Me inviting sheiks I meet for coffee and dinner in my Bergans tent? Me writing extensive letters to everyone at home describing my experience? Wait, this doesn’t sound quite right. I guess charter trips have replaced old fashion exotic travel and simple ”going to the beach” Facebook messages have replaced letters… I at least don’t quite see myself riding on a camel for the next few years or for that matter ever packing my Ikea plates.

The last book we read in bookclub was the biography of Gertrude Bell called Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia and written by Janet Wallach. Unfortunately, I cannot count it towards my reading goal (author is American and Gertrude Bell was British) but wanted to blog about it because it was a very interesting book.

Gertrude Bell was an extraordinary women accomplishing things that weren’t normal for women of her time. She studied at Oxford and then spent many years traveling around in the Middle East getting to know the countries and culture. Fair enough she did bring her own china and waiters with her on her desert trips but she did put in a real effort of getting to know the locals.

She later plays a vital role in Britain’s involvement in the Middle East and was highly influential in the creation of modern Iraq. She had to deal with difficult men that didn’t appreciate that a woman was this capable. The book also discussed her private life and her sadness of never having her own family. It showed that an impressive career and strong personality comes at cost and this painted the biography with a sad undertone.

The biography was extremely well written and in an interesting manner which made reading the 470 pages in fine print a breeze. It seemed extremely well researched and Janet Wallach did an excellent job of making it shine through that this was based on real material such as excessive amount of letters. It really seems that she did little else then writing letters.

I had never heard of Gertrude Bell before which I find quite strange. While a slightly outdated role model she was an impressive woman we should be looking up to and reading about (instead of today’s celebrities and glamor models). A biography well worth of 4 out of 5 stars!

I like stories! I like nice writing! I can be entertained by just the story but I find nice writing alone to be a bit frustrating. It is a bit the same thing as with food. Pretty food can be adorable but if it doesn’t taste good it leaves you unfulfilled. Ugly food can however be deliciously tasty and fulfilling.

I read a short book by Herta Müller a Romanian of German origin called The Passport. She won the Nobel prize in 2009 and I could somewhat understand why she got the award while reading this book but it was lacking a story. It is indeed nicely written with some depth but I really missed the element that usually drag you in, that keep you glued to a book, that keep you wanting to continue reading despite your eyes being about to fall out of their sockets.

The Passport is about… well what is it about? Had to think about it for a little while. The village miller Windisch and his family that are trying to get a passport to leave Romania. The book dishes up fragments about their past and present life and the village they live in. Had these fragments been tied into something more complete I would have liked them as they were quite dark and sad.

As stated earlier Herta Müller is born in Romania but was a part of German minority living there. I am counting this read as Romanian since I have something else German lined up.

I struggle to give it a rating. A pretty looking cupcake that turned out to be sugar-free? A very weak 3 maybe?

I know Italians as passionate nice people overflowing of emotions. I know them as being extremely proud of their food and never allowing you to make horrendous mistakes as spreading parmesan cheese on the wrong dish or calling Spaghetti Bolognese Italian. I can understand why they are proud of their food, it is really delicious and all the variants that aren’t really authentic Italian, like American Italian, are delicious too.

The author I read from Italy seems to be in contrast with how I picture Italians. I would imagine them to be verbose. Alessandro Baricco however writes in simple beautiful prose which makes you beg for more details. I read Silk few years ago and I will vouch with a hand on my heart that it is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking book I have ever read.

This time around I read Without Blood which unfortunately wasn’t quite as spectacular as Silk. Nina’s father and brother are brutally murdered at the beginning of the book and the book is about her quest for revenge. The book is written in a clever way in only two scenes and in a compact style leaving many details to your imagination. The story was smart, yet a bit too simplistic to be moving.

It was a good book but as I said it didn’t speak to me enough to give it more than 3 out of 5 stars. If you plan on reading something by Baricco I recommend to pamper your mind with the silky prose and story of his 5 star gemstone Silk. Why is it that there only seems to be one masterpiece per author?

I have always wanted to visit South-America and “climb” the mountains of among other countries Peru. As that isn’t possible for me these days, exploring South-American literature is the second best option. I however wasn’t quite expecting having to put in a mountain climbing effort to get through the book I chose The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa from Peru.

While Mario Vargas Llosa is Peruvian the book takes place in the Dominican Republic and is a semi historical account of Trujillo’s days as a dictator. The story of Trujillo is a fascinating one as dictator stories tend to be. How someone can convince themselves that they are doing the right by controlling everything, killing people that disagree, massacring people etc. I guess it takes someone insane to believe that it is right that they become a dictator in the first place and then you become so obsessed with power that you start excusing more and more extreme behavior. It is a fascinating topic and I would love to find some physiological analysis of some of the dictators this world has had to endure.

The story is written under the disguise of being the story of Urania, daughter of one of the dictators “helpers” that falls into disgrace and she is offered as a sacrifice to Trujillo. She is recounting her story while finally visiting her family many years later. This was the most entertaining part of the story even if it was horrible predictable. In between, the story of Trujillo’s assassins is told and those were the parts that rubbed on my eyes like they were sandpaper. There are also some parts that focus on Trujillo himself and were slightly less painful. While the story of Urania is fictional, the story of the assassins is more accurate which I guess limited the author in spicing up the characters and story. I don’t really understand though why he thought those two disconnected stories made a sensible mix and why he had to make them so dry. His writing seemed to indicated he was capable of more.

I give it 2.5 stars and mostly because I enjoyed learning a little bit more about Trujillo and the history of the Dominican Republic.

It might be the fact that I am now at home on maternity leave that got me thinking of alternative ways of making money or maybe it was just the last book I read. In any case I was inspired to start writing Icelandic 419 letters. You almost fell for it didn’t you? .

For many of us the first thing you think about when someones mentions Nigeria are fraud letters. Some of you that are slightly older might think about Biafra, and unfortunately it is quite common to read about Nigerian prostitutes here in Oslo. Not the most glamorous picture we have of this country.

What I had never really realized was that Nigerian fraud letters actually originate from Nigera. I somehow always assumed they came from all over and that it was just a coincidence that they were called Nigerian. My quick research however reveals that it is a business over there and did indeed originate there in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy declined.

The last book I read happened to be about a young Nigerian man that gets dragged into these scams while trying to provide for his family.

The book I read was I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. A light book but nonetheless one that I enjoyed a lot. It is a bit difficult to put my finger on exactly what I liked. Not a masterpiece by any standards but just a good old fashion story about a man called Kingsley, his families struggles with poverty, and the rich uncle that saves them but in turn drags him into the world of scam and richness. It was easy to read, entertaining, and at times funny.

In an odd way it put a face on those scammers and helped me think a bit about what they might be thinking and how they might be rationalizing their crimes. As always it seems like it is the Robin Hood-thinking that drives them. That it is okay to take from the rich because they have enough and because you are giving the money to the poor. The poor is in most cases you and your closest but the Robin Hood-thinkers usually stop thinking at that point. I could go into a rant now but I think I am gonna continue practicing writing fraud letters instead…

Anyways, the book was a good read and I think it deserves a good solid 3.5 stars out of 5.

Everything is pretty laid back and relaxed in Oslo these days. Most people are out of town and the streets and buses only have few relaxed people casually dressed in light summer clothes lurking around at a calm pace. This fits me quite well being very slow and extremely pregnant these days. I have actually allowed myself to wander inside the bookshop next to the bus stop couple of times and browse the bookshelves. I have been trying to be restrained about my book buying and reading what I already have but since I only have huge, heavy tomes lying around I really needed something lighter and different. So what I have ended up doing is to randomly pick out books that look interesting, not too frightening, and from a country I haven’t read yet.

The first one I found was a little cute Chinese book by Xiaolu Guo called 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth. I say cute because it was tiny and had a picture of equally tiny and cute Chinese girl on the cover.

It turned out to be a nice pick. Not only was it the easy read I was looking for, it was also my type of book. Melancholic story about a country side Chinese girl that moves to the city and ends up working as an extra in the film industry. These fragments show a glimpse at her struggles with boyfriends and her quest of making something more out of her life in a giant city which seems hostile towards people that aren’t quite A4. Felt quite realistic with the little knowledge I have of China and its strict censorship and control. It also reminded me of how you quickly get stuck in a certain pattern of living and struggle breaking out of it. That is however a story for another day…

A little, nice read worth 3,5 out of 5 stars.

After the first chicklit disaster I decided that I wanted to continue on that path but with something less likely to go wrong. A girl gotta get her proper chicklit fix once in a while! This time it was Irish chicklit by Marian Keyes. I read about one of her book every year and while they aren’t great literature they always serve their purpose well. To relax with something light and entertaining.

This time it was This Charming Man, a story of four women all involved in some way with a charming politician. The book switches between telling their stories and while some were a bit lame others were actually quite interesting. Topics such as depression and alcoholism were a big part of the book. Marian Keyes has been open that she herself has struggled with both alcoholism and depression so it actually felt like you were reading something that might be true to the topics.

Not by any means a masterpiece but I breezed through almost 700 pages in no time so I think it deserves a good 3 out of 5 stars. Maybe chicklit should have their own stars as I am tempted to give it more…

If you however are looking for something less girly from Ireland I do recommend Angela’s Ashes which is a memoir by Frank McCourt. It is a very gray book that matches my (probably wrong) stereotyped image of Ireland. It is an interesting recount by Frank about his difficult childhood growing up with an alcoholic father and in poverty.

I want to start off by apologizing to the United Kingdom for the book I ended up picking from there. I have a certain decease these days called the baby madness and I will blame that for this unfortunate choice. I am becoming a mommy in August and have hit a point where all my thoughts evolve around one thing and one thing only, babies. Very frustrating and brain damaging to put it mildly.

Being particularly tired and not feeling well lately I felt it was about time I picked up something easy to read and while scouring the giveaway bookshelf at work I found a chicklit book with a title I couldn’t resist “The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill which as far as I can tell is a British author. Oh man, am I glad I didn’t actually pay for that shit. I will admit it, it was the mommy title that dragged me in but I wasn’t expecting it to be on the same low level as my brain these days.

It is a story about a dysfunctional stay-at-home mom with three kids struggling to keep her day together. I guess the author was trying to be witty by creating characters that people would relate to. Clumsy mom that screws up everything, anal father, and single friends in screwed up relationship. It was just so unbelievable that it was annoying. Who looses their credit cards and keys every other week? Who is not at least once in a while able to do some laundry? All the desperate attempts to make it real life just made it too silly. She spends her day taking her kids to school, screwing everything up, fantasizing about one of the dads at school, and being on the phone with her friends talking about their relationship issue. Flat, unbelievable, and silly sums this book up.

It gets this year’s lowest scrore 1.5 out of 5 stars but only because it actually kept me reading long enough to finish it.

The latest bookclub read was House of Day, House of Night” by Olga Tokarczuk from Poland. The book got recommended to me by a reader called Mike and selected as a bookclub read right after the Polish tragedy when the president and many government official died in a tragic airplane crash.

I can’t remember reading any Polish fiction before despite having visited Poland. The company I work for has an office in Wroclaw and what a beautiful city that is. The people I know there are extremely nice and I gotta say that they really know how to party. Be warned though vodka parties can be quite disastrous to your next day’s health… Another odd connection I have with Poland is that one of the most common childhood candy bar I ate in Iceland was from Poland, Prins Polo.

I am a bit split in my view of the book. The biggest problems with the story was that it wasn’t much of a story but rather a collection of intermixed short stories. Some of them quite interesting and others less so. I particularly enjoyed one of the story about a monk that wanted to be a woman which made you think how hard that situation must be. There were also some other random ones about a couple going through difficulties and a woman that sought out a unknown man she had dreamt about to have sex with that were interesting. The book was at times nicely weird and it was very well written. I however couldn’t help missing a underlying story keeping it all together. I also think I might have enjoyed it more at another point in time. It is not the right book trying to get through before bookclub when you are feeling particularly exhausted.

I will give it a 3 out of 5 stars with a note that I don’t think I was in the right state of mind to enjoy it all.