More catch-up

Perhaps I had better stop promising to write more? I don’t seem to have the wherewithall lately…

Dragonflight & Dragonquest – Anne McCaffrey (and then Dragonsinger and Dragonsong again, though I only just read them)

Sorcery and Cecelia: Or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot & The Grand Tour: Or the Purloined Coronation Regalia – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer (a charming discovery, though I found the difference in the voices of the two correspondents to not differ sufficiently – I frequently had to stop and think in order to figure out which one of them was talking – which is a flaw when the narrative is letter (or journal) based).

Encounters with Animals & The Overloaded Ark – Gerald Durrell (the first because I found it at a second-hand sale, the second because one morsel of Durrell at a time is never quite enough).

And I’m trying to think… Were there more? I rather think not. So that will have to do for now.

Edit: I remembered one more:
Dope – Sarah Gran, which is a fairly cleverly spun 50ies style noir novel, but it somehow lacked the big wow-factor.

Holiday reading

Superquick catch-up post. I will try to say something more about some of these eventually, but for now, this is what I’ve been reading this summer…:

Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby
JPod – Douglas Coupland
Sudden Wealth – Robert Llewellyn
Peat Smoke and Fire – Andrew Jefford
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian – Marina Lewycka
A Piano in the Pyrenees – Tony Hawks
One Hit Wonderland – Tony Hawks
Assassin trilogy + Liveship Trader trilogy – Robin Hobb
Her Mother’s Daughter – Marilyn French (Bookcrossing book)
Inkspell – Cornelia Funke (Bookcrossing book)
Love Over Scotland – Alexander McCall Smith

Time flies

Since early May I’ve read a lot of books and been dumb as an oyster about most of them. To give myself a chance to catch up I will therefore throw them all in this catch-up post and start afresh with the current read once I’ve finished that.

Having felt for a long time that I really ought to read some of the Moomin books, I read Pappan och havet, which is perhaps one of the darkest and least «children’s literature» of Tove Jansson’s great series. I then read three books in the Dot-series by Inge Møller that I picked up in a jumble sale – hardly great literature and not even the best of their genre, but not an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon.

I then got through Follestad and Ffforde, before embarking on P. D. James’ latest, The Lighthouse, which, fortunately, was every bit as good as one could have hoped. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was next, a fascinating book, though overhyped, and also not at all what I expected (though I don’t know what I expected, to be honest, I just had no idea what the book was about owing to the fact that all I’ve ever done before is look at the front of the cover).

Next I picked Roald Dahl’s My Uncle Oswald off the shelf – I’d bought it a while back mainly because, well, it’s a Dahl and it also happened to be a first edition in good shape. This was quite entertaining, though I suspect the subject matter would enrage some people, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the conclusion.

I bought The Wicked Winter by Kate Sedley at my doctor’s office (there’s a Lions’ Club book sale shelf there) and was entertained. It was pretty good as these things go – the main character, who is also the narrator, is sympathetic and the mystery had a nice twist at the end which I certainly didn’t foresee. However, not a likely candidate for a reread, it’s too… well, I suppose «simple» will have to do for a descriptive word – It’s too simple for that. Well enough written, though. So I stuck a bookcrossing label in it and left it in Britain somewhere. I hope somebody else will pick it up and enjoy it as much as I did.

I borrowed Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor from my father, who’s a fan, and enjoyed it to a certain extent, but it was not the sort of book I really wanted to read just now – I’ve been on the search for strong main characters and a make-you-turn-the-page-quickly central plot, and whatever Lake Wobegon‘s merits, those are not among them. So I turned to another rearead instead, The Fourth Estate by Jeffrey Archer. Not the best choice, unfortunately, as neither of the two arch rivals really manage to engange my sympathy in sufficient degree to make me care much about «who wins». Still, Archer is always good entertainment.

Next was Hver sin verden by Marianne Fredriksson, which was almost good. Fredriksson ruined the book for me by making basic mistakes regarding Scandinavian/nordic history (assuming an Icelander with the surname Anarson must be a decedant of earlier Anarsons was the most glaring one) and by formatting the text very strangely. Instead of sticking to the standard paragraph indicator (indented first line) there was also a blank line between paragraph-lengths blocks of text. Mostly this was just a waste of paper and though it seemed unecessary, it could be taken to indicate a «break» in the narrative – replacing the line «Some time later» for example. However, it sometimes happened in the middle of dialogues or otherwise coherent episodes, and felt just as wrong as putting a full stop in the middle of a sentence. I came very close to throwing the book across the room a couple of times, but managed to restrain myself.

De fire og han som gjør galt verre: begynnelsen – Hans Frederik Follestad

De fire og han som gjør galt verre: begynnelsen av Hans Frederik Follestad var en fryktelig irriterende bok. Det som kanskje er mest irriterende er at den var akkurat engasjerende nok til at jeg tror jeg blir nødt til å lese resten av trilogien.

Og hva var det så som gjorde den så irriterende? Jo, for eksempel: Navn som høres ut som de stammer fra en vits jeg husker jeg synes var fryktelig morsom på barneskolen, den med «Hva heter den kinesiske kulturministeren?» «Syng Pen Sang» «Hva heter den kinesiske forsvarsministeren?» «Treng Mer Peng» osv. Våre helter (kremt, kremt) heter nemlig Bambo Fohrtwo, Hutte Meg Tu, Pepper Bihf og Salt Efhan, og han som gjør galt verre heter Jesper Schtadig. Som sagt. Morsomt på barneskolen, ikke fullt så underholdende nå.

Også irriterende, sitat fra bokens egenomtale:

Romanen byr på spenning og masse humor, og den er enestående i sitt slag av to årsaker: For det første er denne fantasy-romanens handling lagt til nåtid, for det andre er bokens helter svært utradisjonelle.

Den kan vel neppe Follestad lastes for, men personen som skrev det har lest fint lite Fantasy. Nåtid? Been there, done that. Helter som er svært motvillige, slett ikke spesiellt heltemodige eller beundringsverdige på det jevne og kastes inn i en verden de ikke har kontroll over og ikke helt forstår? Høres det vagt kjent ut for noen andre enn meg?

Men kanskje mest irriterende var to av romanens hoved-bi-personer, om man kan si det på den måten, den tyske Hellheimer som har latterlig mye penger og den russiske eks-militære major Aleksej. Begge snakker med aksent av verste ‘Allo, ‘allo natur. Tyskeren er en ting, han ble hovedsakelig bare litt slitsom å lese etterhvert – delvis fordi jeg ikke egentlig kan noe særlig tysk og derfor måtte konsentrere meg om å forstå noe særlig av det han sa. Russerens aksent, derimot, består for det meste av at han erstatter gramatiske endinger på norsk med «os» i annehvert ord og slenger på en «os» her og der hvor forfatteren ellers finner det for godt (ja, han sier faktisk «Jaos!» i stedet for ja ved minst ett tilfelle). Her er et lite eksempel på en rimelig typisk ordveksling dem to i mellom:

«Ah, men ich habe en til, Liebling, die grosse Überraschung av dem alle. Ich tror du kommer til å like den spesiellt godt, Line. (…) Men tilbake til zu Alfa 1 og 2, die sind meine private Soldaten, og uten å skryte; viel besser enn majorens menn. Ja, ich vil så langt gehen som å kalle dem eine vore den besten Soldaten in der Welt.»
«Hva?» utbrøt major Aleksej, og snudde seg bak mot Hellheimer med en oppgitt mine. (…) «Mine guttos ekstremt bra soldatos. Brododnja! Kallos minos guttos andre klassos soldatos!»

Og dette fortsetter altså side opp og side ned. Sukk og stønn.

Infantilt? Jepp.

Til pass for meg når jeg leser bøker beregnet på barn/ungdom, sier du? Tja, jeg trodde forsåvidt selv at De fire og han som gjør galt verre var en ungdomsbok – jeg fant den da også i ungdomsavdelingen på Trondheim folkebibliotek – de hyllene jeg ville frekventert rundt 13-14-årsalderen. Etter et første kapittel hovedsakelig bestående av vold og seksuelle hentydninger mer eller mindre skjult i underteksten begynte jeg derimot å lure – og bak på boka står det faktisk at hvis man liker Ringenes Herre og Harry Potter så kan dette være en bra bok for «voksne og ungdom over 16 år».

Jadda.

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay – John Gimlette

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay was an interesting read, in that it seems to deal pretty thoroughly with the recent history of Paraguay, a country I knew next to nothing about prior to reading this book. I am somewhat puzzled as to the title, as I never caught the reference, but it’s catchy – if not snappy – and so I suppose that’s reason enough to use it. This is not a travel book in the normal sense. True, John Gimlette travels around Paraguay, but nine tenths of the book is history of some sort. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but not quite what I expected. Still, an interesting read.

Inkheart – Cornelia Funke

Another bookcrossing goodie arrived in my mailbox this week, and caused another pause in the book I’m supposed to be reading. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke is pretty much just what a good book ought to be, it draws you in and keeps you interested enough to make putting it down difficult (towards the end, well nigh impossible). And, of course, it’s an adventure involving books and reading. Could it get any better?

(The book’s bookcrossing journal)

Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse

Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse by Brigid Keenan was an impulse buy at a newsagent in town, and a pretty lucky one in one respect – Keenan’s husband «AW» gets posted to The Gambia in the late eighties, and since it’s hardly the country that pops up in books most often, it was a bit like an unexpected meeting with an old acquaintance*. The family arrives in the country just about a year after we left it, and the girls go to the same school my brother and I attended. That section alone made the book worth the price for me, but also the rest of the book is interesting and at times laugh-out-loud-funny, and Keenan manages to mix humour and seriousness in a way that makes the pages fly past.

————
* For those not in the know, my familiy spent a year in The Gambia in 1986/87.

Waltzing Through Flaws

Waltzing Through Flaws by Paula Sharp popped up in a box of books that I found buried in the closet. I thought we’d unpacked all the books, but obviously not. Anyway, I was exstatic to see it, as I thought I had donated it to charity and have been wracking my brains trying to remember the title in order to get hold of a new copy because I suddenly, a few months back, got the urge to reread it. I had gotten waltzing mixed up with skipping (easily done) and so any search I tried, whether on amazon, abe og google obviously returned pretty nonsensical results.

So, not the world’s greatest novel, but a pretty good read, and characters that obviously stay with you longer than you expect them to. It’s an interesting expostion of addiction (alchohol, religion, adrenaline: pick you own drug) and Paula Sharp manages to tell the story from eight-year old Penny’s point of view in a very convincing way, without sounding unrealistically stilted and without succumbing to cuteness or unneccessary naiveté.

100 shades of White

I’ve reread the Chronicles of Narnia since you last heard from me, but I really don’t have much to say about them other than that (as I said in connection with the movie review) I love them unconditionally.

I then started on 100 Shades of White by Preethi Nair, which I just bought in the Tapir spring sale (at 90% off, a pleasant surprise at the till, as I thought it was 70% off and I got 8 books for 100 kroner instead of 300 and something which I was expecting). 100 Shades of White is engaging and manages to touch a few «serious» themes before ending, I’m glad to say, on a feel-good note. I didn’t like the structure – the novel changes between two first person narrators and makes a few jumps in time – but I’d be hard-pressed to put my finger on what it was that irked me, and it certainly wasn’t irking enough to put me off noting down Nair as someone I’d like to hear more of.

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

Our Hearts were Young and Gay by Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner (it’s narrated by Cornelia, but I suppose Emiliy must have helped, as she’s listed as co-author) was a bookcrossing rabck, and a very welcome one. It will be sent on its way, eventually, but just now I think I’ll hold on to it, as I will want to reread it in the not-too-distant future. The two authors set off for a tour of Europe – or at least parts of it – in the 1920s and have the usual hilarious adventures. The book is narrated on a light note, even when the greatest «disasters» strike, and is a delight to read.

(The book’s bookcrossing journal.)