Book reviews: Patagonian travels, one great, one not

 A few months ago I picked up an old Swedish book given to me by a friend, who I have long forgotten, but it was a book I had wanted to read for a long time: Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia.  I think my copy might be the first edition from 1981 in Swedish.  I dug in and started to read, with high expectations, because this was a 'real travel writer'!.  As you might know, I mostly read right before I fall asleep, maybe half an hour a day, at the most.
  Bruce Chatwin leaves work and travels to Patagonia, seemingly unplanned, a place he has always wanted to visit.  His travel diary is not a diary in the regular sense, more broken pieces and fragments of text from his experiences in Patagonia with inserts of history, commentary, and cultural reflections.

And here is the main problem.  Bruce stands outside the whole travel experience.  He reports like a objective journalist, not a person present in the moment.  And he even fails at being objective, because many times you can clearly feel the aversion he has to the people he meets.  It is not a boring book, and the text is excellently written, beautiful in fact, but it is not a good book.  You don't get a feel for the place, and it is too fragmented.

The detachedness of Bruce Chatwin is disturbing.  I can't remember any of the persons he describes in such detail, no stories, no places, no names or characters. No recollection.  There is no focus at all.   How can that be?  It was like nothing as memorable.  I know that this is considered one of the best travel books ever written, but I will have to disagree, strongly.  So I gave up, 10-20 pages from the end.

A few weeks later I needed a book with me when I had to wait for my daughter at the dentists.  I looked in our bookshelf and found "The Old Patagonian Express" by Paul Theroux!  I remember buying this book for my husband, but none of us had read it yet.  I brought it with me, read a few pages at the dentist, and was hooked.  And last night, I finished it.  What a difference.  What joy.  I envy people that haven't read this book, they have such a good read in front of them.

Paul Theroux's book was published a year (1979) after Bruce Chatwin's book and they were friends.  The books are like night and day in difference.  While Bruce Chatwin talks about Patagonia, he never explains how he got there, and his book has not one structured path in it.  Paul Theroux, on the other hand, has a plan, and he loves travel, which for him means to GET TO another place, not BE IN another place.  And I think he is right.  True travel is the transportation phase, the active movement through places, not being dumped in a place and staying there.

The way Paul Theroux traveled to Patagonia is the focus, the structure, of the whole book.  He gets on the subway and then commuter train in Boston in a snowstorm, and then takes local train after local train down to Mexico, through Central America, along the Andes, through long Argentina, and then eventually ends up on The Old Patagonian Express, the narrowgauge steam train that goes to Esquel.  And then the book is over.

This book is not about Patagonia, this book is about human nature, nature and humans. Culture, politics, some natural history, pestering travel companions, good and bad hotel rooms, dusty old railroad cars, giant steaks in dining cars, delays, landslides, revolts, and rats chewing holes in the ceiling above your bed.  It also has great interactions between Paul Theroux and the people he meets, from street urchins in Colombia to impossible Mr Thornberry in Costa Rica and the Argentinians need to be superior while having the right to complain about anything in their own country (and nobody else should).

It is a fantastic story, a meandering travel path through not only North and Latin American geography, but also classic literature (Paul Theroux discusses the books he reads during the trip), and it feels real and human.  He is not trying to be some übermensch, not someone that stands above or besides his co-travelers or people he meets.  He just is.  Now I have to read his other travel books!  Wow, what a read!  Yes, A+ and five stars of course.

There are a lot of great passages in The Old Patagonian Express, and here is one that I think fits this review pretty well:

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

And now, The Old Patagonian Express is mine, forever.  The physical book is still my husband's book, of course. 

Stamp of the Day: Julbak

Swedish Christmas traditions includes a big baking day - the 'Julbak', where the most common thing to make is 'pepparkakor' (gingerbread cookies).  Here on this Swedish stamp Pippi Longstocking ('Långstrump') is baking on her kitchen floor with the help of her monkey Herr Nilsson. Pippi is my favorite character in Astrid Lindgren's children's books.  We haven't made any cookies at all this year, but plan to make hazelnut bread, a family tradition from my grandmother, and maybe the kids will make some cookies too.  In Sweden ginger bread cookies are called "Pepper cookies", but they have no pepper in them at all.  I wonder how that name came about. 

A bunch of books...

Do books come in bunches?  Or are they in piles?  Groups?  Heaps?  Anyway, here is a couple of short reviews of books I have read in the last couple of months, from the great to the not so great.  So, the best first.

Tracy Chevalier: Remarkable Creatures.  What a great novel!  It is in the early half of the 1800s and a poor girl gets her living from discovering and selling fossils from the beach by her home village along England's southern coast.  An unmarried woman and her sisters move to town, mostly because it is a cheaper place to live than London, and she befriends the girl and learns about and collects fossil.

They discovered the most amazing fossils of the time, fossils that were bought and transported to natural history museums in London, Paris, Oxford, and so on.  These fossils were fodder for a lot of discussion in this pre-Darwin era, and fueled scientific thinking.  Plesiosaurs, ichtyosaurs...  However, the women didn't get proper credit, since they were women and fossil collecting and science were unwomanly activities. A few of the contemporary paleontologists gave them proper respect and credit, but the divide was enourmous, especially for Mary who started out illiterate and extremely poor.  For example, women were not allowed even into the meetings of the British Geological Society.

The young woman's name was Mary Anning, and her older friend was Elizabeth Philpot, who specialized in fish fossils.  This book tells the story from their viewpoint.  The general story is true, but it is a novel so gaps have been filled in with possible scenarios.  It is a great book that not only describes natural history and its discoveries in historical context, but also highlights and make the inequality come to life. And that inequality is not just between genders but also between classes and religious groups. I highly recommend this book. So, 5 stars.

Sandra Newman: The Western Lit Survival Kit.  This book is fantastic! Well, near fantastic, because sometimes she goes overboard. I read the whole thing straight through, laughed, smiled and took note on which classics that I wanted to read and which ones I never need to open. Actually, I don't feel the need to read any of the classics after reading this book, I have too many books already here at home waiting to be opened.  Probably around a 100 unread books... and only a few of them are classics.  Like Marco Polo... I want to read that one, but I digress. 

Her style is out of this world funny and knowledgeable. Ah, we need to let high school students have a look in this book! The book is exactly what the subtitle says "An irreverent guide to the classics, from Homer to Faulkner". Each classic book is graded on Importance, Difficulty, and Fun, and she of course admits that that is a very subjective scale she has graded these on. She is not always trying to be dead serious, which is what I like, but some other bibliophiles that have reviewed this book have a problem with that. 4 stars.

Jill Ker Conway has written three memoirs about her life as a child in Australia, student, emigrant to the US to study history at Harvard, her scholarly work on women in history, her years as a Dean at a Canadian university, and then as the President of the small all-female Smith College in Massachusetts.  I reviewed the two first books here on this blog, and they are fantastic and refreshing. 

The writing is exquisite, intellectually so rewarding, and she makes you think.  There was much more anti-woman stuff going on in academia going on back then, but some things are still the same.  And many things that we struggle with today have not changed at all, and they are not based on gender.  People unwilling to change, people that want too much change, the will to look beyond what you have learned in the class, the willingness to discuss without arguing, and so on.

I read her third book recently, A Woman's Education, which is smaller and less strictly a memoir in a way.  It describes her years at Smith College, and goes in depth into how it was to administer a small independent school.  It wasn't all easy, not at all.  What infuses the book is her caring about students and their education, on a very deep, serious level. 

I admire her, she has been a big inspiration in my recent work.  She tries to change the view of some older professors, make reformations in educational thinking, and is seen as a rebellion, but it is how things have to be done.  The world changes and so do we and so do how we do things.  This book I am keeping! 5 stars.

Last book in the pile.... Daniel Beard's The Field and Forest Handy Book. This is a reprint of a 1912 book about camping, scouting, outdoor recreation, hiking, etc., and includes great illustrations, which I think were made by the author as well. Daniel Beard was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America, and boy, is this a boyish book.  Girls do not exist.  At least not outside any house.  The book is really a time capsule of how things were back then.

There are many useful skills described in here, how to make a raised platform for a place to sleep in a swamp, how to make a logomaran so you can drift down a river (never ever use fresh wood, or you might sink), how to make fire without matches, how to make a play house, what to eat in camp, and that you should bring a flour sack to make into a pillow case.  He even have instructions on how to build a fire engine. Oh, and even how to make a herbarium is in here.

This book is not really about true survival based on old traditional knowledge like the book Wildwood Wisdom (reviewed on this blog), but about fun wild stuff boys can do outside.  Some certainly has survival tones to it, but some is more silly, like How to Play Pirate and How to Make an Aquarium.  Under Novel Food Used in Camp, he writes: "...Wolf meat is said to be sticky and disagreeable.".  Times were different back then.

Grade?  I am not sure.  Maybe 2-3 stars, but it has certainly historic interest and I would have loved this book when I was 12-14 years old. I learned a lot of useful information that I probably won't have much use for in my life, but that is OK. One day it might come in very handy.

OK, that is it for this batch.  If you read all the way to down here, good for you!  Now you know more than before :)

A strange fate for an author?

Poor authors that end up in IKEA's bookshelves in USA, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

I always wonder what the Swedish authors think that see their unsold hardcover books being bought in bulk by IKEA to populate their showcase interiors at IKEA stores worldwide. This photo is from Baltimore, and here they are, Swedish editions and duplicates of Inger Alfven's books, foot after foot of shelf space. Sometimes the books they display are quite good and interesting, and maybe they just put a foreign language out there so nobody will steal them since they are useless to someone that doesn't know Swedish? Does this mean that they have books in Tamil on their bookshelves at IKEA stores in Sweden? I don't know... But, does Inger Alfven know that her books are on hundreds of IKEA bookshelves in USA, and what do you think she thinks about that?

Book review: Högre än alla himlar av Louise Boije af Gennäs

(This review is in Swedish, since the book is in Swedish and not yet translated to English.  The book isn't worth reading in English anyway unless you want to read many, many beautifully crafted words about spoiled upper class Stockholm citizens.  You can read about Louise Boije av Gennäs here. )

Jag har just sträckläst den här boken, och den har lämnat en blandad eftersmak.  Den är värd fem stjärnor och också två, och men det lutar nog åt tre, fast jag vet inte riktigt.  Det är ovanligt att man tycker att en bok är oerhört välskriven och samtidigt saknar kärna, ide, och tyngd, men så är det med denna.

Första kapitlet börjar som en Per Anders Fogelström Stockholmsroman - det är nyårsafton och en vindby flyger runt Stockholm, beskrivet i allegorier, vackra ord, och symbolismer till tusen.  Jag har nog inte läst Fogelström på 25 år, men det var honom jag tänkte på när jag läste:

"En vilsekommen rufsig kråka lyfte från Mosebacke, fångade vinden i vingarna och lät sig hastigt föras bort mot Högalid där tvillingtornerns Alfa och Omega - alltings början och slut, döpta efter Ansgar och Olaus Petri - vakade över Tengboms mäktiga tegelmonument och staden från samma höjd över östersjon som Stadshusets Tre Kronor."

Och så vidare, det går på och på.  Det blir for pretentiöst. Metaforerna står som spön i backen.  Det blir så mycket metaforer och insmugna historie- eller annan bildingsfakta att det blir kinesisk chop-chop salad till slut.  Mish mash, blandsallad med för mycket och för finhackat av allt.  Jag fick känslan att författarinnan har skrivit för att få Nobelpriset i literatur, inte för att skriva en bra historia, inte för att förmedla något, inte för att hon älskar sagor och berättelser. Det är synd, för jag tror att hon älskar sagor egentligen.

Det finns en historia i boken, även om den är svag i handlingen och mest kanske visar vilka folkklasser (= högt upp) och intellektuella kretsar (= välutbildade) författarinan rör sig i.  Ofta får man känslan att hon beskriver något självupplevt, kanske mest för att en del andra beskrivningar inte är lika trovärdiga, ingående, känslosamma, och långvindiga.

Så, vad handlar boken om, undrar du?  Det är egentligen inte så viktigt, faktiskt. Det är sex personer som bor i Stockholm, alla är väldigt eller lagom mycket perfekta, och boken beskriver de första åren på 2000-talet i deras liv.  Första kapitlet introducerar alla sex personerna till läsaren på en gång i en total villervalla på en nyårsfest. Efter det kapitlet var jag redo att ge upp för jag kunde inte komma ihåg vem som var vem, var ihop med vem, förälder eller bror till vem, och gay, författare, rik eller misslyckad skådis... Totalkaos, fast välskrivet!

Men jag stod på mig och läste vidare och i resten av boken så är de olika kapitlen mest från en persons synvinkel i taget, så då är det lättare att hänga med.  Här i USA har det pratats mycket om äkthet (authenticity) i media nyligen, och de här människorna känns inte äkta.  De känns som det vackra folket i en TV serie, eller de man ser innanför fönstren på en restaurang som är så dyr att man själv inte kan äta middag där någonsin.  Konstigt nog är det bara två av de sex personerna i boken som faktiskt är riktigt rika, men det hela genomsyras av kommentarer som visar att de alla står över allmänheten i sina intellektuella förmåga och utbildning, och alla har dessutom finstämd designkänsla (det är Svenskt Tenn hit och dit). Det är inget fel i det, men det finns ingen riktig motvikt. 

Det är himla svårt att sätta fingret på vad som är fel, men det är en känsla i maggropen att det hela är vackert, tragiskt, stressigt, underbart, men faktiskt utan innehåll.  Nästan som kejsarens nya kläder - det här är en bok om ingenting, fast med massor av ord.  Konstigt nog har boken fått massor med bra recensioner i pressen.  Kulturskribenterna verkar älska den, men läsarna är inte lika överväldigade och ger blandade kommentarer (från en till fem stjärnor på AdLibris).

Nyligen har jag läst flera böcker av etablerade författare, och alla böcker var för långa; böckerna skulle har varit minst 30% kortare.  Det är nästan som att när en författare har lyckats så glömmer han/hon bort att sovra och redigera sin text.  Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna är praktexemplet på detta; jag har fortfarande hälften kvar att läsa av den boken, och det var ett år sedan jag började läsa den. Hon skulle ha avslutat den efter 200 sidor. 

Den här svenska boken är också 500 sidor!  Alldeles for lång, och långsam... men språket är vackert!  Men det blir för mycket av det goda.  Det blir för mycket Falsterbo semestrar, det blir för mycket om att vänta och föda barn, och det blir för lite av det som gör en bok levande. (Jag vet, mitt resonemanget går inte ihop.) Men vissa delar är magnifika, det är bara att de delarna dränks i ett sammelsurium.  Någon skulle nog kunna kalla det hela 'ett intellektuellt och begåvat ordbajseri', men så långt vill jag inte gå. 

Nu när jag har skrivit så här långt, sa tror jag att den där irritationskänslan över den här boken kanske faktiskt har formulerats sig till ett svar varför jag inte tyckte om en så välskriven bok:  Den berörde mig inte och den är för pretentiös. Den är totala motsatsen till True Grit (se den filmen!). 

Det är som en del konst man ser.  "Visst, den målningen är ju bra, väldigt välgjord och tekniskt avancerad, men den förmedlar inget alls. Bara. Tomrum. "  Det är så synd, för jag tyckte verkligen om hennes tidigare bok Stjärnor utan Svindel.  Vad hände? Och nu har jag skuldkänslor för att jag skrev en så kritisk recension, men det här är vad jag tycker, ärligt talat. Och helt uppenbart fick boken mig att tänka till och skriva en väldigt lång recension, haha! Så, tänker ni läsa boken nu, eller?

November

It is something special with the autumn.


November med skiftningar av ädelt pälsverk
[November with Nuances of Noble Fur]
skrivet av nobelpristagaren i litteratur 2011 Tomas Tranströmer
[written by Nobel Prize winner in Literature 2011, Tomas Tranströmer]

Just det att himlen är så grå
får marken själv att börja lysa:
ängarna med sitt skygga gröna,
den paltbrödsmörka åkerjorden

Det finns en ladas röda vägg.
Och det finns marker under vatten
som blanka risfält i Asien-
där stannar måsarna och minns

Disiga tomrum mitt i skogen
som klingar sakt mot varann.
Inspiration som lever skymd
och flyr i skogen som Nils Dacke.
 ____________________
Update and translation by LS

Tranströmer - oh yes.

Another great Swedish poet is getting the Nobel prize: Tomas Tranströmer.  The other one was Harry Martinson, one of my absolute favorites.  I haven 't read much of Transtromer, but what I have seen so far id fantastic. it is very different from Martinson's poetry, indeed. Congratulations!

Some reactions from American press:
The New Yorker
The New York Times
Poets.org
NPR


and a poem, with translation by me:

MINUSGRADER by Tomas Tranströmer (ur SANNINGSBARRIÄREN 1978)

Vi är på en fest som inte älskar oss. Till sist låter festen sin mask falla och visar sig som den verkligen är: en växlingsbangård. Kalla kolosser står på skenor i dimman. En krita har klottrat på vagnsdörrarna.

Det får inte nämnas, men här finns mycket undertryckt våld. Därför är detaljerna så tunga. Och så svårt att se det andra som också finns: en solkatt som flyttar sig på husväggen och glider genom den ovetande skogen av flimrande ansikten, ett bibelord som aldrig skrevs: 'Kom till mig, ty jag är motsägelsefull som du själv.'

I morgon arbetar jag i en annan stad. Jag susar dit genom morgontimman som är en stor svartblå cylinder. Orion hänger ovanför tjälen. Barn står i en tyst klunga och väntar på skolbussen, barn som ingen ber för. Ljuset växer sakta som vårt hår.

BELOW ZERO by Tomas Tranströmer, translation by LS

We are at a party that doesn't love us.  Finally the party lets its mask fall off and shows what it really is: a railroad switchyard.  Cold giants stand on rails in the fog. A chalk has scribbled on the rail car doors.

It can't be mentioned, but here is much suppressed violence.  Therefore the details are so heavy.  And so hard to see the other things that also exist: a reflection from the sun that moves along the building wall and glides through the unknown forest of unaware faces, a bibel quote that never was written: "Come to me, because I am as contradictory as yourself."

Tomorrow I work in another town. I whirl there through the morning hour that is a large blackblue cylinder. Orion is hanging over the frozen ground. Children are standing in a quiet group and waiting for the school bus, children that nobody is praying for.  The light is growing as slow as our hair.

Book review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

After a long stretch of semi-interesting to really bad books (see this, for example), I opened up this book and just loved it.  I don't want to write a long review, because the book has to be experienced, be loved, and be enjoyed on its own terms, because this is what it deserves.  The Help by Kathryn Stockett is about the black maids in southern US in the 1960s, their lives, loves, and despair, and about the white women that hire them, use them, depend on them, and sometimes, respect them.  I insisted on reading it before I watched the newly made movie based on it, so now I am ready.  If you have read the book, the movie is never better than the book, I think. But this book gets a 9 out of a 10, so I am not worried about the movie being really bad. I heard some had complained that a white woman shouldn't write a book about black women, but come on, that is the stupidiest thing I have heard.  If that is so, then women can't write about men, Swedes can't write about Norwegians, and black men can't write about white men.  We are foremost people, humans, and not our color, citizenship, or gender.  Compassion and understanding is deeper than skin color or culture, at least it ought to be.  So, if you want a great read, a good story, and deep thought mixed with fun stories, this is the book.  It is just like life is. Just read it. A++

Life and love in words

This wonderful poem showed up in my e-mail inbox today:

American Life in Poetry: Column 321
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one, by Joe Mills of North Carolina, does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.

 How You Know 
How do you know if it’s love? she asks,
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help. I want to say
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare
or social security, but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,
“when you still want to be with them
the next morning,” would involve too
many follow-up questions. The difficulty
with love, I want to say, is sometimes
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived
or left. Love is the elephant and we
are the blind mice unable to understand
the whole. I want to say love is this
desire to help even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years, all
those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Joe Mills, whose most recent book of poetry is Love and Other Collisions, Press 53, 2010. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 16, no. 1, Summer 2010, by permission of Joe Mills and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation.

How to hear your own voice

Who creates the new leaders and visionaries for our world?

Well, not today's schools, media, and institutions, argues William Deresiewicz in a great article named Solitude and Leadership recently published in the UTNE reader.  I read it this morning, in the sofa with a cup of tea next to me, and there are so many things in it I agree with and would like to quote it.  But I am afraid this post would be too long then, so it is better you just click on the link.

Take the time to read this article. Don't get distracted, just read it, it is important. I promise.

The center pieces of his thoughts are that:

• We have no longer time for peace and quiet in our minds due to overabundance of distractions from TV, internet, cell phones, and text and so on.
• We are not training kids and ourselves to think and envision, only to achieve and become people that can follow rules but not be great leaders.
• We need more nonconformists, more concentration, and more introspection in ourselves to deal with the current problems in the world. 

The article is about America, but I think Europe and other regions have similar issues. We live in a society were everybody has a lack of time (unless you are retired I guess), but maybe we have more a lack of concentration and focus than a lack of time.  The world around us chop up our time into useless little pieces where we no longer have the opportunity to think about a thing long enough to make a solid decision or thought.  Nobody but us can fight this back, individually.  Turn off the phone, e-mail, TV, the cacaphony of social and global noise, and do one thing, such as read a book, cook a meal, go for a walk, plant a seed, or write a paragraph.  I have been thinking about only this for 10 min now, and it feels good to let the mind focus...

Some of the best quotes (read the article for more, and then become a nonconformist so you can help change the world):

"America now has the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen. What we son't have are people who can think for themselves; people who can formulate a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things; people with vision."

"We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. "

"Thinking isn’t about learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information. It requires concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea of your own.  You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube. "

“Your own reality—for yourself, not for others.” Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality. Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else. 

Read the whole article by William Deresiewicz here. 

New Swedish money

Sweden is changing its kronor (kr) bills in a few years and no, it won't be to euros, but to newly designed bills. To find out what the Swedes wanted, the National Bank of Sweden arranged a way for the public to vote on their favorite Swedes. Today they announced the winners of who will be on the new bills.  No more kings on our bills! These are the winners (final designs to be developed soon):

20 kr: författarinnan Astrid Lindgren och naturmotiv från Småland. (The author Astrid Lindgren [Emil, Ronia, Pippi Longstocking, etc.] with nature scenes from Småland where she was from and wrote about. She got the most votes from the public, we love her!)

50 kr: sångaren Evert Taube och naturmotiv från Bohuslän (The singer, poet, author and songwriter Evert Taube and nature from the west coast province of Bohuslän, a place depicted in many of this songs.)

100 kr: skådespelerskan Greta Garbo och naturmotiv från Stockholm. (The moviestar Greta Garbo and scenes from Stockholm.)

200 kr: regissören Ingmar Bergman och naturmotiv från Gotland. (The movie director Ingmar Bergman and nature from Gotland, the big island in the Baltic Sea where he lived the last part of his life.)

500 kr: sångerskan Birgit Nilsson och naturmotiv från Skåne. (The opera singer Birgit Nilsson and nature scenes from Skåne, the southernmost province.)

1 000 kr: diplomaten Dag Hammarskjöld och naturmotiv från Lappland. (The WWII diplomat and UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld and scenes from Lapland, the northernmost province.)

I think this is amazing and wonderful.  First, there are 3 women and 3 men, none are royalty or nobelmen (well, Hammarskjöld was by ancestry...), all are part of the current Swedish heritage and culture, and they will include nature elements from all parts of Sweden, showing the strong connection Swedes have with nature, landscape and wild places. And, how is this for wonderful logic - Astrid Lindgren will be on the smallest bill because that one is the one kids will see the most!  I love it.

The National Bank said that they 'didn't include any currently living people because nobody should be able to pay with themselves'. Ha! True, and funny.  The coins will change too, except for the 10 kr coin. If you can read Swedish, the whole report from the National Bank is here, 5 pages, in easy to read Swedish with clear nice formatting, just like government reports should be but rarely are, except in Sweden.

I wish more governments in the world did more reasonable and democratic things like this.

Book review: Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann av Jonas Jonasson

One more book review of a Swedish book in Swedish on this blog, but this one it on its way to be translated into English and a multitude of other languages.  It was a long time ago I read such a hilarious book.  It helps that the long beginning takes place in a small village not far from where I grew up, and that the author successfully makes fun of Swedish society, world history, politicians and incompetent bureaucrats, and puts together an obviously too-incredible story, but it is fun!  Just like crazy movies like Young Frankenstein is fun.  It is not because the story is believable, but because the book (or movie) creates laugh-out-loud moments in your life. 

In Swedish this book by Jonas Jonasson is called 'Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann', which means The 100-year old who stepped out the window and disappeared. It will be made into a Swedish movie in 2012.  Jonas Jonasson is a former Swedish journalist who had the first draft of this book in his drawer for over 20 years or so.  The story seems simple, but it is not.  An old man turns 100 (named Allan) and decides to escape before his birthday party at the old-people home, and steps out the window.  And then the story starts, which includes murders, elephants, police, journalists, mafia, drug dealers, akvavit, swedish summer, swedish women, and much more... all written in a hilarious Swedish based on 1940-1950s intricate and sometimes stilted grammar with words of today thrown in. Throughout the book the 100-year old reminisces about his colorful life, where he has traveled the world, and in fact, helped (or not) world history personalities such as Franco, Roosevelt, Mao, Einstein's brother, Stalin, and he visits and deals with the associated gulag camps, atom bomb makings, secret submarines, and Iranian revolutions.  The book gives a great work-through of 20th century history, but of course it is all wrong because Allan is inserted in it.  But hilarious! I won't tell you the ending of the story, but it is good to the end.

I loved this book.  Apparently many (snobbish?) book critics in Sweden didn't like it at all, and thought it was silly, overwrought, or just plain dumb.  Well, dumb, that is Danielle Steele.  Overwrought, sure, but that is the point!  Just like a Mel Brooks movie, get it!?  Remember Springtime for Hitler - just the same thing, but this is nearly better, I think.  Silly - come on, good culture can be FUN. One critic complained that the book wasn't believable (hello, it wasn't meant to be!). This is pure entertainment, not serious literature... I am keeping this book so I can read it again next time I get the flu and have to lay in bed for a day or two. It will make me laugh many times again.  (And thanks to BOS for sending it to me!)

So, English-speaking readers, keep your eyes open and get it when it comes out in your country in the translated form.

Book review: On the narrow road - journey into a lost Japan by Lesley Downer

On the narrow road - journey into a lost Japan, by Lesley Downer

This was not a fast book to read, but a book that takes its time.  Lesley Downer, a Japan scholar from Britain, sets out to trace the steps of the famous 17th century Japanese poet Basho and his companion of their trip to the North of Japan, through mountains and distant valleys. Basho, famous for his haiku's, wrote in detail about his trip and also wrote many haikus at the places they stayed during their 5-month long walking trip. Lesley quotes some of these in her book when she visits (or tries to, some are gone) the same places as they did.  Away from the coastal cities concrete, neon, and traffic, she is looking for a lost Japan, a country that might have some similarity to how Japan was in the 1600s, rural, peaceful, and undisturbed by the stressful, modern world..  She does find it, but it is endangered and not much left of it.

Her detailed writing gives you a fantastic introduction to Japanese medieval history, literature and haiku, and also the current and past traditions of 'regular' people.  She doesn't avoid talking about fear of foreigners, her own tiredness and embarrassments, and highlights the great people she meets by coincidence during her trip, which isn't as long as Basho's in time, and not all by foot.  She uses trains, buses, and hitchhikes, and walks where is is possible, mostly in the mountains.  I know very little about Japan, and I think this book taught be at least five times more than I knew.  Densely written at time, it is a lovely book, a book for contemplation and reading 2-3 pages at the time. Highly recommended to anybody that loves biographical stories, foreign countries, history, and literature.

Some thoughts on books (for those that say they are dead)

"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one" -Augustine Birrell

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read" -Groucho Marx

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." -Mark Twain

"The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television" -Andrew Ross

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me" -Anatole France

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting" -Mary Wortley Montague

Ponderings on originality and authenticity

Interesting thoughts on originality, copying, authenticity, sharing, borrowing and creativity in these two linked articles: To live outside the law, you must be honest (Mobylives) and The Work of Art in the Age of Maniacal Appropriation (UTNE). I took the freedom to borrow the image by Jim Jarmusch that goes with them (see below), and hope that is considered creativity and not stealing, as suggested in the articles. I don't condone any plagiarism, but look below - we do share and borrow ideas and images and thoughts and inspiration from books, sunsets, old and new art, knitting patterns, photos, views and landscapes, and just snippets of information anywhere.  These are not easy questions, and to talk about them is to talk ethics, not an easy thing, and maybe something we talk too little about.  Sometimes we want it all for free, sometimes we want to own our own creations, and sometimes we just want to connect it all and take what we want and reuse it in new ways.  Reality is never so black and white as in movies or made-up school examples. The Mobylives article is really worth reading about this topic.

(Link to Jarmusch quote)

OK snapshot: Stockholm sunset

Denna över Marieberg. Kan väl symbolisera kulturskymningen i svensk dagspress...
(This one over Marieberg. It can symbolize the cultural dawn that is sinking down over daily Swedish newspapers. [Marieberg is the little mountain on Kungsholmen where Dagens Nyheter and Expressen have their offices - those tall buildings in the distance.])

LS comments:
Swedish newspapers are struggling just as American ones, and what sells the most (crime, drama, entertainment, and other mayhem) is not really what can be considered high culture...(which some think is just snobbish intellectualism... but I don't agree 100%). Fewer and fewer pages are printed in the morning papers, and the giant online dragon is Aftonbladet (also in print), who mostly has sold out to the mayhem-addicted. I read Aftonbladet all the time online, but half the time it makes me sick. But it still has lots of currently updated news from around the world, mixed in with the latest in plastic surgery, weather chaos, grisly murders, and recent school bullyings.

Currently the top headline in the online edition of Aftonbladet is "Obama furious at North Korea" (something serious to look like a serious paper), but this is followed below by "Hand was stitched on the foot -9-year old girl had miraculous operation" (gross me out and make me in awe thing), "Several trucks blowed off road" (the usual weather chaos thing), "Your child will become obese due to bad sleep" (scare me in the everyday life thing).

Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet are the two old morning papers in Stockholm, fierce competitors, and both try to be very serious until they too dip their feet into the reality TV shows and Zlatans latest outburst. Then there is Expressen, Aftonbladets competitor, an evening newspaper also online and in print - but not at all as big as 'aftonslasken' ('the evening garbage'). These are all in Stockholm, and on the West Coast there are a few more papers.

Aftonbladet was in deep dodo about 20 years ago but managed to turn a bad situation around by focusing more on the 'soft issues', i.e., home, women, food, health, parenting... and becoming less macho (=sports, economy). There is a great documentary radio program in Swedish about the macho culture on Aftonbladet back then, when a few women who wrote a report about it which became rather infamous (and important) and how their newspaper office is today. Yrsa Stenius has also written about the culture at newspapers in Sweden in her great book Makten och kvinnligheten (The Power and The Feminitity), which I will review here at some point.

But the point here is that there used to be a lot of culture, analysis, deep thought, and funky stuff in these newspapers (like New York Times still has), but it is largely gone or at least minimized. There is still reviews and important articles about art, theater, books, philosophy, movies of course, but it has become much more shallow, especially in Aftonbladet, I think. So, the sun is setting over the cultural departments at the
Swedish newspapers.... I am sure there is lots of interesting things to read in other media forms, such as magazines and blogs... but an old tradition is fading. The times they are a'changin'.

More clear messages

..we suddenly have an avid reader of Kurt Vonnegut in the house, after AREA got him as her school project author this year.  She is mesmerized and reads, and reads... 

For your thoughts and enjoyment, here are some of Kurt Vonnegut's most famous quotes:

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."

Höstfärger (Fall colors)

Höstens klara luft i svagt soldis genom tunna moln. Lövträdens kronor som färgexplosioner i den jämngröna barrskogen. Löven säger farväl i ett fyrverkeri av färger. Om en dag, en vecka eller två är träden kala och öde igen. Först i vår, i solens varma strålar kommer ny lövgrönska. Allt går till vila nu, tänk om jag också fick gå i ide!

LS translation of EH's text:  
The fall's clear air in soft sunsmoke through thin clouds.  The crowns of the deciduous trees as color explosions in the evenly green conifer forest. The leaves say farewell with fireworks of colors.  Within a day, a week or two, the trees will be bare and naked again.  Not until spring, with the suns warm rays, will there be new leafy greenness. Everything is now taking a rest, and I wish I could hibernate as well.

When food gets scarce...

old Swedish heritage cow breed: Ringemålako, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

... reach upwards.

This is an old heritage breed cow from southern Sweden from an isolated farm who kept the same group of cows (and their calves) over nearly 50 years, thereby preserving their genetics and not replacing them with the high-yielding superbred cow breeds that are common today. So kind of a living fossil. This is the kind of cow that was common in the early 1900s and is shown in the books by Astrid Lindgren. And now this cow is in a living farm museum in Södertälje, Sweden.

Book review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Once in a while you read a book that is wonderful in a very unusual way. A book that is challenging in its way of dealing with life's big stories as well as the little things of everyday life, a book that makes you think philosophical thoughts that would otherwise not have crossed your mind, a book that keeps on living in your head after you close the last page after hours of smiles, sadness, fun, and internal laughter. This is a book like that.

If I ever have to restrict my fiction library to only 10 books, this will be one of them. I think I can read this book many times over and over and love it every time, and it would also be different every time. It is like layers you peel of the onion, you see more and more of what is inside and get a deeper meaning.

The story is both simple and complex. A young girl lives in an apartment building with many rich families in Paris and she is highly intellectual but has decided that life is not worth living, since what most people focus on is superficiality and banal things (especially her older sister is like this).

On the first floor of the building is the concierge, an older widowed woman that towards the rest of the world just tries to act like the normal boring, uneducated housekeeper people expect, but in secret she reads philosophy at the library, listens to classic music, and loves Japanese movies. But the keeps up the appearances not to disturb the set ways in the building.

Then one day a Japanese man moves in, and things are suddenly different. He changes the lives of both the suicidal girl and the concierge, and I won't tell you how, for that you will have to read the book. But I can tell you that is is extremely critical of the people that 'have it all', and gives justice to the people in the world that really think and care about life regardless of class, income, and age.

Excerpts:
"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant. " [about the concierge]

As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering. [says the 12-year old Paloma]

Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? [about drinking tea, among other things]

The language in the book is so beautiful that you want to underline sentences here and there and make comments in the margin all the time. It is not just a story about people, the book is about how we live life, how we look at life, how we look at objects, art, music, ourselves, our inefficiencies, our fears, and our loves. I loved this book. And still, I think I only really understood about half of what was in it, so I am looking forward to read it again.