One of my most recent reads was very much out of character for me. A self help book of all things. I tend to despise these type of books as I think they are full of fluff and that your time is better spent doing something about your problems instead of wasting time reading about how to do it. This book however had a name that I couldn’t resist and I happened to read an article about it on a day I felt particularly down. It also happens to be a written by an author from I country I haven’t read yet and which I also happened to visit on a weekend trip few weeks ago so I decided to include it in my resolution. The book is called Pippi Power and written by the Danish author Gitte Jørgensen. Its main message of advice is to do like Pippi Longstocking (Swedish children character) and just do what you enjoy doing and not let anything stop you.
Pippi Power
The book was like any other self help book full of fluff but due to its originality of using Pippi as an example and few good pointers I do not actually regret reading it. I am however a bit embarrassed admitting here that I read it .
Few advices from the book that I found particularly helpful.
* Find out what kind of scenarios and situations in the past have made you glow/be happy and try to recreate that.
* To get energy to do something you want to do, you must simply start as that will probably give you the energy to continue.
* Instead of focusing on how bad things in your past have made your life difficult, focus on how that experience had made you stronger/better able to cope with things.
And the most interesting thing in the entire book was actually a pointer to Candace Pert, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist that has a theory that we become addicted to our emotions. This also applies to negative emotions. So a person repeatably ending up in difficult situations that make them feel bad might actually be subconsciously seeking out these situations as they are addicted to the negative feelings it gives them. Here is a short article about if you want to know more.
That last part really made sense and made me think of few things both from my life and others around me. I can see some negative patterns that I really need to break. Then there are some things that I want to do that I just need to start doing instead of just thinking about that I am too tired to do them. Tomorrow maybe?
It is a bit difficult to rate a self help book as I think by definition they suck but I think this one deserves at least 3,5 for an original idea and some good advices. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in English but at least in Danish and Norwegian. In case that doesn’t work I recommend an ice cold Danish Carlsberg while you wait for the translation.
I have been very close to ordering a trip to Cuba twice but both times I have had to reconsider at the last moment. So instead I read a book from there since it might be a while until I get the chance again.
Ok, so reading the book didn’t quite make up for not going. It is an exciting destination with that wonderful Caribbean sea, interesting history and politics, and probably has some really nice rum too… To me it is a great example of a country still stuck in the claws of communism. I am very anti communist but it would be interesting to see this in real life. The stories you get in media tend to be very biased based on which political side the journalist belongs. An interesting example was Michael Moore’s Sicko where the health system is portrayed as being excellent and open for all. Other more right-winged sources state that the regular citizen do not get these privileges.
I am convinced that communism does not work in practice even if the theory is nice. We humans are simply too flawed to be able to live by it. The people running the show always end up being corrupt bastards that are unwilling to live by their own rules and I don’t think Castro is any exception.
I read the Ghost Heart by Cecilia Samartin which is a Cuban/American author that fled Cuba at an early age. The story is about Nora who together with her family has to flew Cuba during the revolution when Castro comes to power. Her cousin is left behind and the story is told about her struggles in Cuba, Nora’s life and challenges as an immigrant in the States, and at the end their reunion. The story details much of the misery experienced by the people left behind under the communist government.
Ghost Heart by Cecilia Samartin
I think the story did a great job of describing the atmosphere on Cuba at least before the revolution. I could literally feel the Caribbean breeze on my face while reading it and kept daydreaming back to my days on couple of other Caribbean islands. The political part of it was interesting and felt believable. The story however felt a bit soulless at times but was actually an all right entertainment read. A good 3 out of 5 stars.
Have you ever read a book that you loved but you feel really embarrassed stating out loud that you really liked it? No, I am not talking about trash literature like certain vampire books I will refrain from mentioning but some actual literature. The last read in my bookclub was one of those book. To be fair, I was the only one that actually seemed to like the book but it is was one of the best book I have read in ages so I can’t stop myself from praising it.
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that gets easily embarrassed or doesn’t like stories about dysfunctional people. Big parts of the book were about one of the main characters jerking off and this would probably be enough to turn most people (at least women) away. It did however feel like it had an important purpose in the book and it didn’t feel like smut at all so I kept reading.
The book I am talking about is Atomised by Michel Houellebecq from the island of Réunion (an oversea region of France). The story is about two half brothers that have little in common other than the same dysfunctional mother. Michel Djerzinski is a successful scientist that seems void of the ability to successfully socially interact with other people. The story told is of his upbringing and his midlife crisis.
Atomised - Michel Houellebecq
His half brother, Bruno Clément is anything but successful and seems to be suffering from an all-life crisis. His sex drive is enormous and big parts of the books describe his somewhat dysfunctional sex escapades and his inability to do anything valuable with his life.
The author did a fantastic job of recounting their stories. The meaningless and bleakness of their life is described in such a vivid way that you cannot help but feeling a bit worn out after reading it. Nothing beast a book that has such an effect on you!
The book wasn’t without flaws. The ending was a bit weird and felt irrelevant but the story itself was enough to make me give it the highest score this year. 4,5 out of 5 stars!!
I couldn’t go too long without reading an overhyped bestseller from *drum rolls* the United States. I picked up Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Antigo, Wisconsin) as my easy-getting-into-to-braindead-vacation-mood read. I don’t really feel like picking on the Americans now, they get picked on enough. I lived in the States for 3 and half year while going to school and I do miss it quite often. There is really a reason why so many people love the States and now with the new health legislation it is bound to get even better for the people living there.
Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Lovely Bones is a story of a Susie Salmon a girl that is murdered. The rest of the story switches between her family’s struggle to move along with their life while trying to find the murderer and Susie who is watching them from heaven. Lovely Bones was an all right book but I can’t really claim it as my favorite. It felt a bit of a let down that you knew right from the start who the murderer was and the story often felt very stretched. It also felt very uneven. At times very nice but also at other times plain boring. I did actually end up taking a break in the middle of the book but when I picked it up again I felt better about it. I would classify it as light entertainment despite its sad element.
I later watched the movie and I actually felt that it did a nicer job of telling the story, maybe because it was more compact. The only gripe I have about the movie is that they overdid the heaven part a bit. Take a look at the trailer below.
I give the book a weak 3 out of 5 stars but the movie gets an additional half star.
One of the book I recently read was recommended by a friend of my from Australia. It is called Lovesong by Nikki Gemmell. I don’t intend to write much about Australia as such. I will leave it at some basic stereotyping and typical misconceptions. I tend to picture Australia as a snake, poisonous spider, and shark infested country with an occasional jumping kangaroo in between. And that it is a country constantly battling drought. The last fact I gathered from the Australian TV shows they kept airing when I was a kid. They were all about farmers that ran out of water… And how do I stereotype the Australians? Oh just that they have a slightly higher volume than the average. Thankfully, this doesn’t apply to my friend but I am convinced she gotta be the exception .
I have read a few Australian books before but the only one that sticks out is The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough . If you are in desperate need of getting rid of an excessive pile of napkins this is the book to read!
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Lovesong. I had been warned that the start was a bit difficult which is something that proved to be true. It was extremely dense and difficult to get through. I am very glad I kept at it because after that it really became a pleasant book to read. The story is about a girl that had been locked inside her home most of her youth and her difficult introduction to the real world when she is sent to live with her grandfather in England. The author did a very good job of describing here feelings and desires and this was what I liked most about the book. There was also a certain dry, desert like atmosphere which fit with the mental image I have of Australia.
The story could have been a real flop in the hands of a lesser author. When the storyline came together it bordered on being too unbelievable but
the author really managed to pull it together and keep it at a believable level. Impressive job by the author! To sum it up, a very nice read that I give 4 out of 5 stars.
For some reason I seem to have less time on vacation for blogging then otherwise. Maybe because I feel I need to use my vacation to the fullest for things that are difficult to do in colder/darker climates. So I spent my vacation hiking, bathing, jogging, sightseeing, enjoying good food, and reading instead of blogging.
I spent two weeks in La Palma which is one of the Canary Island. I even read a Spanish book to match the destination so I thought I would talk a bit about Spain and the book. Unfortunately, I didn’t find an author from La Palma so it became a mainland author Manuel Rivas (born in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) and his book The Carpenter’s Pencil.
Let me start off by praising La Palma. It was a stunning little island with beautiful nature, not too many tourists, and an impressive infrastructure. The capital Santa Cruz was an adorable town with clean, old style streets, and charming atmosphere. It is a bit difficult to claim that I got to feel the authenticity of the place as I really was nothing more than a tourist but I imagined I felt it when I went to town early one day and could watch the old men sitting out on benches having the
morning chat with their friends or walking around alone listening to their handheld radios. I kept wondering why it was only men outside on the streets. Were they all avoiding their wife? Mysterious. I also got to see the Easter parade which really just freaked me out. I cannot get used to the fact that they wear costumes that look like they belong to the Ku Klux Klan. Sure the Catholic church had those weird costumes first but that is not your first thought when you see them. Then there was unfortunately what I have started referring to as the “smell of Spain” in every corner (smell of pee) but I am convinced the tourists can be blamed for that.
I also went for a great hike that I would like to recommend to anyone visiting La Palma, the Route of the Volcanoes. A very scenic route (approx 17-18 km) on the top of the island past some old and thankfully sleeping volcanoes.
Unfortunately, the book I read didn’t quite match the charm of La Palma. The story is about Doctor Daniel de Barca, an Republican and a revolutionary during the Spanish Civil War. It is told from the perspective of another man who is in love with the same woman as the Doctor. The story teller tells the story of his semi-stalking the doctor as his prison guard. There is some other stuff weaved into the story like a dead painter that he himself killed that is whispering into his ear.
The story wasn’t very interesting, the characters didn’t appeal to me, the writing felt simplistic, and the setup seemed to be trying too hard to be artistic making it all feel out of place. The book has gotten good reviews from others so maybe it was just the fact that I never got at attached to the story that ruined it for me. I however couldn’t manage to find much that appealed to me so I only feel like giving it 2,5 stars out of 5.
Despite this book not being worth recommending I now have a backlog of four books to write about. Two of them were great so stay tuned for some interesting recommendations.
I finished The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred (originally Den vidunderliga kärlekens historia in Swedish) by Carl-Johan Vallgren a while ago but due to disappointment and lack of time I haven’t been inspired enough to write about it until now. What started out as a fascinating book turned out to be a bit of a drab in the end. It took off in a masterfully written style which reminded me a lot about one of my favorite book The Perfume by Patrick Suskind. It wrote about grotesque details in a flowery language (to be noted that I read the Norwegian translation) and started a very interesting story about Hercules, a child born with a severe deformity, deaf, but with a powerful gift to not only read minds but also to talk to people through their own. The story centered about him, his childhood friend and love of his life and their struggles.
I got reminded with this book that a great way to make a book boring is to introduce monks and letters. Monks because no matter how you seem to write about them they always seem extremely boring. And letters because they always contain a lot of uninteresting greetings and details and break the flow of the story. I literally hate letters in books! This one had monks writing pages and pages of letters and that made me fall a sleep and go into skimming mode which ultimately ruined the book. The story also seemed to lose its spark towards the end and trailed off into silliness.
While the writing and beginning were excellent, the extremely poor second half of the book forces me to drag it down to 2 and half stars.
I am a bit behind schedule on updating this blog. I have actually read two other books/countries that I need to blog about. An Australian one and Norwegian one. I am hoping my upcoming vacation will give me a chance to whip up entries about the those… if I find Internet somewhere.
Sweden is Norway’s neighbor country and sometimes referred to as their bigger brother. Norwegians go to Sweden to shop cheap meat, liquor, tobacco, and buckets of candy. When at home they bitch about having to go to Ikea. In between trips and bitching about Ikea trips they are in constant competition with Sweden though for most parts the Swedes don’t really seem to care. With one exception, the winter Olympics.
There the competition goes both ways and especially in cross country skiing. The Swedes get all proud when they win over Norway and for the Norwegians a silver metal in cross country seems to become worth nothing if it was a Swede that won the gold… Grown-up huh?
Some other random things that pop to my mind when I think of Sweden:
* The embarrassingly stupid Carola that finds it appropriate to go out in media and state that the Haiti earthquake was God’s will and then thinks a well suited gift to her probably starving sponsor child there is a bottle of perfume.
* And if that wasn’t bad enough, they have Anna Anka too… but to tell the truth, I think she is hilarious!
* Swedes always seem to wear white in Eurovision and sing an Abba copycat.
* If you see a guy wearing white pans and white sneakers downtown in Oslo, he is probably a Swede.
But this is about books isn’t it? The author I picked this is actually from a town I have been to. The company I work for has an office in Linköping. I have some nice friends in Linköping, the office there is very nice, but to be completely honest I am not a big fan of the town in general. It has committed two of the deadliest sins. Made me go to bed hungry and deprived me of Internet access in the hotel I was staying. Ever after that experience I have been an avid fan of using video conference for all my meetings. I could try to claim it has something to do with being environmentally friendly but to be honest I become hostile if someone/something deprives me of food and Internet…
I finished reading Hong Gildong by Seo Hajin quite quickly. It was a short little book with two short stories in it. First one was about a man going through mid life crisis and an affair with a younger woman. The second one was about a pregnant woman going through depression because she feels trapped in her life and marriage. Doesn’t sound very uplifting but there was something about the tone of the story that made them nicely melancholic and it was well written.
Hong Gildong by Seo Hajin
The first story is supposed to be drawn from an early Korean literary source Tale of Hong Gildong but I think I missed that part entirely. Would have loved to have someone explain that one to me.
While I really enjoyed reading the book it didn’t really stick with me. Just few days later it is fading away in my mind. I however always enjoy a short love affair with some literary sadness so I will give it a well deserved 3,5 stars out of 5.
One of my all time favorite books is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is such a poignant story of a father and son relationship in a post apocalyptic world terrorized by people struggling to stay alive. I read it couple of years ago and I actually snug in a re-read last weekend when I was stuck in bed a big part of the weekend due to an old neck injury acting up. Reading it again was just as good as reading it the first time. I wont count it towards my reading goal (unless I get really desperate at the end of the year) but I wanted to mention it anyways in case someone is looking for that one great book to read. It is a little 5 star gemstone. Be warned though, it is very dark and depressing and is not the right match if you are looking for a happy story.
I am fortunate enough to have some friends at work that are Road fans as me and ever since we heard that it was gonna be made into a movie we have been discussing and worrying how they would manage to destroy it. Yesterday, a small group of us went to see it in the cinema as it is finally the premier weekend here in Norway. I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised and I think we all agreed that they did a good job staying true to the story and the atmosphere. They did manage to capture the tone and color of the book quite well. I say color because I pictured the story in gray tones. The story was of course slightly Hollywood-ized though within acceptable boundaries. More emphasis on the romance between the wife and the father and the cannibalism scenes that were more visual than in the book. Then they of course made it American-friendly by cutting out a certain cannibalism scene and making sure the kid was dressed while they went swimming despite the dad being naked. Small details like that can be overlooked.
The Road - Dimension Films
All in all I recommend both the book and the movie! I am almost sad now that I can no longer look forward to seeing the movie.
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