The Suit Ling Library

Letting Go.

2010-10-04T12:25:00.000+02:00

The shelves are constantly overflowing. I almost never get rid of books, although I probably should more often. When I do, however, I usually leave them behind at Stadsmissionen Hornsgatan - they're quite good at displaying, especially their paperbacks. Seems to be such a sweet place for the small ones to hang out with some like minded before being transferred to their new homes.

There's been one pile lying around, though, that I haven't had the heart to bring with me: hardcover editions of a few of my favourite novels. Took them to the flea market yesterday and after having just two old men even looking their way, I decided to give them away for free while packing up the car. Was pleased to see two teenage girls grab a few (Burroughs? Shakespeare?), and then a lady in her fifties reading the back cover of Jeanette Winterson's Gut Symmetries with a curious expression. I told her to please read it as it's really dear to me, and then pointed to an old Sun Axelsson I once loved and that I imagined she might like. She seemed truly happy and said she never would have chosen those if I hadn't talked so warmly about them.

Open recycling will be my next big thing.

The End.

2010-09-02T21:18:00.000+02:00

The other day Anders Nilsen announced that the last issue of Big Questions will be out this fall. A mere fact that makes me want to cry. But supposedly one can expect a forthcoming collection of all 15 issues from Drawn & Quarterly in the future? After all, the first two BQ's are since long out of print. And I need -

Endings, beginnings; since spring I've mostly been boxing, swimming and reading academic papers. It shows, I know. This fall will, however, be all about Literature, with a focus on gender perspectives.

Sitt ansiktes avtryck, eller stenens begär by Agneta Enckell

2010-07-12T22:41:00.004+02:00

det fanns något jag vägrade, som jag har glömt.

var jag ska gå, den höga tonens brytningspunkt mot tystnad, glas, blickens avtryck.

vi drömmer kanske inte, har just vaknat.

kanske inte tänkta, avslöjade. den maktlösheten

(1998)

Versboken by Britt G. Hallqvist (1969)

2010-06-17T21:38:00.000+02:00

Disaster Supplies: June

2010-06-17T20:35:00.000+02:00

Och tid förgår och tid sträcks ut, och tid

är som ett återfall i en lång sjukdom.

/ Rainer Maria Rilke, Rekviem

Big Questions #14 by Anders Nilsen: Title and Deed

2010-06-14T22:11:00.000+02:00

The Idiot. The tears. The drama.

Next issue will be the last. How will I ever-

Buy/preview.

Anticipation: N.B.

2010-05-03T13:28:00.001+02:00

Disaster Supplies: May

2010-05-03T13:07:00.002+02:00

Vad finns det kvar åt oss som nu behöver

vartenda ord som svarar mot ett gränslöst

i omätbara avstånd utlagt Hades.

Harry Martinson, Aniara (1956)

Robert Crawford on T.S. Eliot's "Marina"

2010-05-02T18:56:00.005+02:00

Just found my favourite lecture at last year's T.S. Eliot International Summer School online: T.S. Eliot's Daughter, held by poet and professor of Scottish literature Robert Crawford. Not only is Marina one of the poems I keep the closest, but Crawford seemed to have a certain (poet's) understanding that really shone through in his lecture, something which I perhaps felt other lectures lacked.

There was a quite special moment afterwards, when Seamus Heaney, to end a rather excited discussion on the meaning of the poem's epigraph Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? (*) in relation to the rest of the poem's recalling the recognition scene in Shakespeare's Pericles (**), suddenly said that it must be understood as a tuning fork for the rest of the poem, and nothing else. Some of us sighed out of gratitude for that on point remark.

TSE reading Marina.

(*) "What place is this, what kingdom, what shores of the world?" Taken from Seneca the Younger's tragedy Hercules Furens, where these words are uttered by Hercules himself as he recovers from the insanity during which he has murdered his wife and children.

(**) Pericles, in mourning for his wife and for Marina, the daughter who is for long thought to be dead, has left his kingdom for the sea. To hopefully rouse him from his despair, a young woman is put before him to sing. As she tells him her life story they both realize that they are in fact father and daughter.

Bakom garden by Åsa Sandell

2010-04-21T15:40:00.000+02:00

Currently Reading: Oates

2010-04-19T17:52:00.001+02:00

The writer contemplates his opposite in the boxer, who is all public display, all risk and, ideally improvisation: he will know his limit in a way that a writer, like all artists, never quite knows his limits - for we who write live in a kaleidoscopic world of ever-shifting assessments and judgments, unable to determine whether it is revelation or supreme self-delusion that fuels our most crucial efforts.

On Boxing (1987)

Disaster Supplies: April

2010-04-12T00:23:00.000+02:00

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.

Ellis Island by Georges Perec

2010-03-12T16:44:00.001+01:00

Imagine Ellis Island. According to Perec, 3.000 people took their own lives on the tiny island between 1892 and 1924.

Disaster Supplies: February

2010-02-12T12:46:00.003+01:00

Var alla avsked i förväg, som vore de redan

bakom dig, liksom den vinter som gått.

Ty bland vintrar finns en där den ändlösa ledan

givit ditt övervintrade hjärta sitt rikliga mått. /... /

Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonetterna till Orfeus II:XIII

English, German.

Du är rötterna som sover vid mina fötter och håller jorden på plats by Eli Levén

2010-02-10T16:19:00.000+01:00

Need to think about this for a while.

Red Book by David Shrigley

2010-01-14T19:31:00.000+01:00

I spent the whole afternoon in that coffee bar reading a few pages at a time, to even out the laughter. Having been a great fan for half a decade or so, I must say Red Book turned out to be one of Shrigley's most brilliant works.

Read this red book. And visit the artist's website.

2009

2010-01-14T15:01:00.000+01:00

36 titles

53% in English, 3% in French, rest Swedish

61% by female authors

36% by Scandinavian authors (mostly female graphic novelists)

14% by authors of Asian descent

25% on feminist issues

10%+ by/on Susan Sontag

Best reading experience: Little Gidding on the way to Little Gidding during T.S. Eliot International Summer School, London University.

Guidelines for 2010: more, harder.

Big Questions #13 by Anders Nilsen: A House That Floats

2010-01-14T13:47:00.001+01:00

Back to the thin paper quality but more life-saving than ever before.

Read two pages here.

Lady in Waiting: A New Nina Bouraoui

2010-01-05T10:39:00.003+01:00

The novel is called Nos Baisers sont des adieux and will be out on Éditions Stock on March 24. I shall be holding my breath until then.

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

2009-12-28T20:39:00.005+01:00

Red on blue hurts the eye, but obviously makes for great covers. In a similar way, this moment happens to be both weird and perfect for finishing a collection like Birthday Letters. In the 88 poems that broke Hughes' (almost) silence 35 years after Sylvia Plath's death, he finally speaks of their life together.

All the prison animals had to be patient

While we married.

It must be one of the most emotionally complex and extraordinary collections of love letters ever written.

Terror

Was the cloud of you

Birthday Letters was published in 1998, Ted Hughes' last year in life.

Disaster Supplies: December

2009-12-14T00:42:00.002+01:00

/... / En del ögon är alltid släckta
Där sover dåsiga drömska djur
som för alltid gått ur vintern
Drömdjur, skrämseldjur
Kallblodiga med förhårdnade naglar
I evighet utstötta ur rasen /.../

Katarina Frostenson, Huset är kvinnligt / Rena Land (1980)

Reborn (Early Diaries 1947-1964) by Susan Sontag, Ed. by David Rieff

2009-12-12T18:39:00.001+01:00

I simply cannot talk about it at this point.

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag

2009-12-09T23:00:00.005+01:00

It's been so long since I first fell in love with the first sentences of Illness as Metaphor that I almost can't believe that I actually managed to finish this masterpiece today.

I suppose more strange things have happened. After all, my word for 2009 was base (makes a little more sense in SWE). And I did finish some other long lasting projects in the past year (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) so, if I can just hurry up and wrap my head around Duras' Moderato Cantabile, Barnes' Nightwood and Martinson's Aniara before December, 31... Yeah, well - then what?

I'll be better equipped for the next decade? Sort of like wearing David Shrigley's Battle Dress? I don't dare to even start hoping for something that great.

The Old Child by Jenny Erpenbeck

2009-12-07T12:45:00.002+01:00

A girl who appears to be hewn from a single block of wood is found in the middle of the street one day, holding a bucket. Nobody knows who she is or where she's going - neither does she. The Police take her to the city's orphanage where she does all she can not to be noticed, to become the lowest ranked child of all.

Seldomly have I had the opportunity to read a novel that describes the hopelessness of being human so well, philosophically. The only stories I can think of at the moment that appeal to me personally, would be Woolf's Orlando and Kafka's Metamorphosis. The Old Child is, with the dry tone and that wonderful precocious style sort of Kafkaesque, however feminist. That is: not bad at all.

Read the beginning here.

L'Ingratitude by Ying Chen

2009-12-01T12:25:00.001+01:00

The spirit of a young Chinese woman tells the story of her life and death in relation to her strict mother.

Ying Chen's third novel was the first translated into Swedish, only followed by Immobile.

I have a feeling it could have been translated differently. After all, I am a great fan of the "simple" writing style - and having read a rather good portion of Duras' late work in Swedish I know it can translate quite successfully from the French. In this case it lacks flow and precision.

However, there is something beautiful going on between the lines, in the non-specific way Ying describes the characters and their surroundings. I'll go for Immobile next.

Kent - Texter om Sveriges största rockband - Edited by Håkan Steen

2009-11-30T14:16:00.001+01:00

A collection of interviews, album/concert reviews and other articles from 1991-2006, all on the subject of Swedish band Kent.

There was a time when I used to say I was all about hip hop - and Kent. Some thirteen years later, I'm sad to admit I've grown out of keeping up with the rap game. Kent, however, strangely remain as close as before.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that one has to fight so hard to love this country during these snowless winters. Especially in November, which happens to be a typical release month for new Kent albums.

Or maybe it's just that even I have a lonesome middle-aged white male inside of me, a man who sits in a dark room with a bottle, longing for some understanding (and 80's pop)?

It's a good collection.

Hundra procent fett by Liv Strömquist

2009-11-03T18:06:00.001+01:00

Liv Strömquist is a genius.

In fact, I'd say she's the funniest Swedish comic book artist of all time. Or, let me rephrase that, even: Strömquist's the funniest comic book artist of all time period.

And Hundra procent fett is just the beginning.

Letters to the Known

2009-10-30T08:52:00.000+01:00

The other day I gave Jeanette Winterson a letter.

Zelda by Lina Neidestam

2009-10-23T20:42:00.000+02:00

I looooove Zelda.

And am really looking forward to Lina Neidestam's next project, feminist sex comic Maran.

One Big Happy Family, edited by Rebecca Walker

2009-10-16T17:09:00.017+02:00

After sharing my love for Rebecca Walker's work with a few internet friends - and the desperate need to get a hold of the One Big Happy Family anthology, the great Jen Disgrasian quickly came to my rescue. Within a week, this beautiful book (plus a note written on enviable personalized stationery) had reached my mailbox. For that, I am eternally grateful to this fabulous woman.

The anthology contains 18 well-written essays about different family constellations, among them mixed marriages, polyamory, single parenthood, open adoption, househusbandry, sperm donation... Marc and Amy Vachon's story Half the Work, All the Fun on equally shared parenting and Sasha Hom's beautiful account of a home birth in Unassisted especially got to me. As did Neal Pollack's Home Alone Together:

"Why don't you do the fucking dishes?"

"Why don't you do the fucking dishes?"

"Because I don't fucking want to, that's why. So can you tell me why the kitchen floor is such a mess?"

"I don't know. Why don't you fucking clean it?"

It's sometimes hilarious, too.

***

Read Rebecca Walker's foreword here and Unassisted by Sasha Hom here.

Based on a Choreopoem?

2009-10-04T16:58:00.006+02:00

The poetic work of my youth, ntozake shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, will be made into a movie. That's about the craziest thing I've ever heard. I mean, it's a choreopoem. Or, no: it's the choreopoem. And talks of casting Halle Berry, Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey? Please.

The play was filmed in 1982 (released on dvd in 2002), with shange in it. I for one will never need any other adaptation.

Shooting is said to start in November.

Erykah Badu used the characters from for colored girls in her Bag Lady video (which shange didn't approve of).

News via The Root.

Allt är allrajt by Emma Rendel

2009-09-21T14:29:00.004+02:00

I was amazed by Emma Rendel's Motherkiller work in Swedish comics mag Hjälp, wanted to take every page and frame it. Most stories in Allt är allrajt are also genius, the only thing I have a slight problem with is the font used inside and the cover design that seems a little cheap and out of place (for such great content).

Fulheten by Nanna Johansson

2009-09-09T00:08:00.004+02:00

Oh, Nanna Johansson.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

2009-08-31T09:47:00.003+02:00

Not quite as refined as the stories in Unaccustomed Earth, but still a good portion of before-sleep reading.

Shallow Stuff: Choosing Covers

2009-08-30T18:40:00.010+02:00

Passed by the great (yeah well, the best) Stockholm book/mag/music/dvd store Papercut the other day and found that Penguin has published Susan Sontag's On Photography recently. A small paperback, minimalist design, a nice matte cover. However: rather tightly bound/excessively glued (would most probably result in a cracked back shorly after opening it).

My bookshelf already carries some Sontags in Picador's larger paperback format, and it seems like most of her writings can be found in that series. The print is not great, in fact sometimes quite wobbly and uneven from one line to the other; the paper quality gives the books a feel of being at least 30 years old - they seem floppy and cheap, like a soft pack of cigarettes that's been in your back pocket for a few days (nights). And yes, the paper is yellowed, as if by a persistent nicotine intake in and around these thingies.

So what's more important? Looking cool while reading in the Subway (i.e. challenging one's fellow passengers with that piercing look) vs. sporting an unshapely but neat, NE-like collection of Sontags in the shelves of the near future?

The thought of something like this will, I suppose, always win in the end. In my dreams, all my shelves look like something from a librairie consisting of solely Èditions de Minuit.

Till mina vänner och ovänner by Loka Kanarp

2009-08-26T10:18:00.004+02:00

As Café Edenborg was closing, they had all books on sale (except the Vertigo ones). And between Nanna Johansson's Fulheten that I've been wanting to get for a long while, a Tafdrup that seemed nice, the newly translated version of Kafka's The Trial and some novel about masculinity (!), Loka Kanarp's comic book album from 2006 caught my eye. Why haven't I read it before?

I've been reading her great blog for at least a year, her contribution to the Samtidigt anthology and the comics in Hjälp.

Some of the stories in Till mina vänner och ovänner (To My Friends and Enemies) remind me a lot moodwise of my favourite Adrian Tomine - however told from a feminist standpoint, which of course, is a plus. Broken hearts and friendships, working at Mc Donald's, turning hetero and the stuffed animals at The Swedish Museum of Natural History (that I recently visited, seeing the same things) - it all makes for a great read.

In September Loka's new album Pärlor och patroner (Pearls and Bullets) will be out, a collection of single page comics on the subject of historical women. I'm looking forward to that one a lot.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Loka is a wonder of style. Look here.

Big Questions #12 by Anders Nilsen: A Young Crowe's Guide to Hunting

2009-08-26T09:55:00.004+02:00

Enter the crows.

And I am, as always, in awe of Nilsen's long running series Big Questions. One issue/20-30 pages per year, as it's been the past few, is never enough but still quite - it is with the tiny gestures; the turning of a head, the widening of an eye, that Nilsen's drama becomes what it is. Perfect.

Cover here.

Have a look at his website.

Café Edenborg R.I.P.

2009-08-24T23:32:00.012+02:00

In my late teens, during the years when hip hop was my life and I got to travel to NYC for the first time, I found a poetry collection called Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Café that was to become my close companion for quite some time. It is an extensive collection of 500 pages or so, by more than 100 poets related to the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York - including ntozake shange, Maggie Estep, Lois Griffith, Reg E. Gaines, Dana Bryant and Sapphire among all, poets who were to become my idols for years to come. (*)

In the wonderful introduction by Miguel Algarín, The Scattering of the Ashes: The Burial of a Poet, one finds his personal account of how all their friends walked in procession upon poet Miguel Piñero's death, to scatter his ashes:

thru the Lower East Side

as he had wanted, and as he had written in a poem many years prior to that day.

Earlier today I vividly remembered cherishing that foreword, as the Nuyorican came to symbolize for me a place where everyone and everything was possible, disregarding of (for example) race and gender. The kind of place that I never got to be part of then, but that I actually would find in Café Edenborg some ten years later.

Since 2004, Edenborg has been my second home, the place where I've read, worked, hung out when I had nothing better to do. And I have gotten to know an extraordinary bunch of people, both the ones working and other regulars. People who I've wanted to share my world with, while everyone outside the café seemed biased, racist, homophobic or just plain out of their minds.

This evening at 7, when Mr. Edenborg made everyone leave the café so he could close the door and symbolically lock up for the last time, there were many with me who couldn't stop crying, scattered and shattered out on Stora Nygatan. An inconsolable group who have spent hours and hours together in that room.

This is the end of an era, and I have no clue what to do now, except for thanking everyone for all these years, and for the honourable award of Best Regular. Thank you Shenge, Evis, Siri, Sofia, Danne, Sara, Elias, Amanda, Carl-Michael, Caroline, Viktor, Chia, Aurora, Frida, Jessica, Elli and Hanna. For everything.

I love you more than.

(The award prize)

.
.
.

(*) A book that I happened to find in my beloved friend Patrik's bookshelf many years after, to my great surprise (considering the fact that we were living in Sweden and that it came out in 1994). Sadly, Patrik is no longer with us, but I somehow know that we had a special bond that came out of owning that exact book; like we were from the same block philosophically, or had similarly coloured dreams or something.

Les Librairies of My Life: Les Mots à la bouche

2009-08-22T17:09:00.010+02:00

Les Mots à la bouche is my favourite bookstore in the Whole. Wide. World. It is on my favourite street corner in Paris: rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie and rue Vieille du Temple, in Le Marais, 4:ème arr.

Les Mots is packed with books, LBGT-themed and others, and they always seem to carry the top 5 books I've been looking for lately; classics as well as new stuff; everything neatly organized. They have a great wall of magazines, too. And a basement.

At the moment all I want is for that wonderfully nice staff to start selling tote bags with their logo, in the appropriate blue colour. It would be perfect in my collection, and I would carry it everywhere with me, showing it off.

By the way, on that same extraordinary corner is:

Amorino (the best ice cream in Europe),
Saveurs de pains (a boulangerie that does fantastic baguettes with gruyère & ham and a mean café crème)
L'étoile manquante (a great hangout café/bar with an otherworldly salad of fresh fruits and cheeses with mustard dressing - Salade d'Ètoile).

(All pics old and googled)

I, etcetera by Susan Sontag

2009-08-22T16:00:00.003+02:00

Colonialists collect.

(From Project for a Trip to China)

8 shorts by Sontag, most of them deconstructive in some way. Personally, I enjoyed Project for a Trip to China, a sort of collection of lists, quotes and tables all on the subject of traveling to China / whether or not the protagonist could have been conceived in China; and Debriefing, a restless portrayal of the relationship of two friends, ending with death.

In the future I will try to get hold of this book (on the page quoted, Sontag talks about Debriefing).

Swimming in a Sea of Death by David Rieff

2009-08-10T11:29:00.009+02:00

[...] You don't just die, as Simone de Beauvoir points out in her beautiful memoir, "from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old age. You die from something."

The particular something that David Rieff writes about in this beautiful memoir is Myelodysplastic Syndrome, the illness that in less than a year took his mother Susan Sontag's life in 2004. In her journal, she wrote:

"While I was busy zapping the world with my mind, my body fell down"

Rieff explains the guilt of the survivor, the unanswerable questions one poses to oneself, even long after the loved one is gone. The thought that it would have been easier to die oneself, which of course would be less about making the ultimate sacrifice than it would be about making it easier for oneself.

In Sontag's workbook for the essay Illness as Metaphor that came out in 1978, Rieff later found a notation that read:

"leukemia: the ony clean death from cancer, the only death that can be romanticized"

The truth had been far from it.

.

Listen to NPR's program about the book and read the first chapter or so.

Read an excerpt from Sontag's diaries 1947-1963 here.

.

UPDATE: I found this great talk held by Rieff over at Fora.tv!

The Next Anders Nilsen!

2009-07-24T21:47:00.006+02:00

It's coming! Soon!

And Mr. Nilsen says there are three more issues of Big Questions to go, I thought this would be the last. Fantastic!

Min röst skall nu komma från en annan plats i rummet by Lotta Lotass

2009-07-24T10:38:00.007+02:00

I've been waiting for the right moment to read this novel since probably 2006 when it came out. Even though it's been standing in my book shelf the whole time. Perhaps it's the same thing as with Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, the first page striking a brilliant chord that makes for a quite attentive read that I might not be up to at the time.

Där bakom gestaltlös, utan skapnad, väntar med famlande, väntar med skakande ännu oformade händer det som snart skall komma.
Står med sluttande och oformlig gestalt och framåtböjd och lyssnar.

And on page 2:

Nu i formlöshet som blundar,
vänder sig om på sin andra sida,
samlar sig till något som är likt en skepnad,
andas ut, reser sig upp och i sin fulla längd och tar ett första steg och börjar gå.

I cannot recall a more poetic and vivid description of the birth of evil. And the way Lotass takes the reader inside 5 serial killers' minds is extraordinary. How she can describe the environments in and around Las Vegas; the dams, the fair grounds, without using any names or English words, even, is quite unique.

I'm very glad that Lotass will become a member of the Swedish Academy on December, 20.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

2009-07-20T17:38:00.012+02:00

Eight short stories touching the subject of Bengali families and betweenship. Not caring much about short stories I'm actually quite happily surprised. Especially by the first story, about a woman who feels pressured to invite her seemingly lonely father to live with her and her family; pressured by the customs of their culture. It's realistic and low key, as all of the stories. Most of all, however: it's wonderfully easy to identify with the characters. Particularly as a second generationer.

I definitely need to read more by Lahiri.

The Family Reunion by T.S. Eliot

2009-07-10T10:50:00.002+02:00

In a world of fugitives
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away

/Agatha

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot

2009-07-10T10:42:00.002+02:00

T.S. Eliot International Summer School

2009-06-03T19:24:00.002+02:00

I spent my whole birthday writing the bursary application, and yesterday I found out I'm going!

What I Talk About when I Talk About Running by Murakami Haruki

2009-06-03T08:55:00.006+02:00

Is what I read about when I think about running. And writing.

Currently Reading: Naipaul

2009-05-08T17:43:00.005+02:00

While browsing the library yesterday, looking for Mahasweta Devi (none), a certain Hélène Cixous (French only) and David Rieff's memoir on his mother Susan Sontag's illness (out), I figured I might as well read some more by V.S. Naipaul. In the collection of essays called Literary Occasions he deals with his first attempts at writing, his fears and embarrassments:

I might adapt Dickens to Trinidad; but it seemed impossible that the life I knew in Trinidad could ever be turned into a book. If landscapes do not start to be real until they have been interpreted by an artist, so, until they have been written about, societies appear to be without shape and embarrassing. It was embarrassing to be reminded by a Dickens illustration of the absurdity of my adaptations; it was equally embarrassing to write of what I saw.

Also picked up Murakami Haruki's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, à propos that great essay on running in Joyce Carol Oates' The Faith of a Writer. I'm planning to make myself start running again by intellectualizing the whole thingy. Wish me luck.

Had a great day at Café Edenborg today, by the way, discussing the 'man and the machine' theme of the upcoming Terminator Salvation movie with Professor D. and then talking some favourites by Jeanette Winterson, P.O. Enquist and Nina Bouraoui with Mr J. That place is usually a lousy environment for me to concentrate on reading (especially by the bar), but who cares when peeps are ready to strike a nice literary pose whenever you're up for it.

Reading and Writing: a Personal Account by V.S. Naipaul

2009-05-07T08:37:00.003+02:00

I am fascinated by Naipaul's literary awakening. His father had an interesting way of reading to him a few pages here and there, of many different works. This lead to Naipaul not really recognizing all these seemingly familiar stories when he later read them as a whole. He suddenly thought them strange, told for another world. I'm also intrigued by the way Naipaul describes how he became an author, the genres he has chosen and why. I should probably read more.

Appelez-moi par mon prénom by Nina Bouraoui

2009-05-06T16:33:00.010+02:00

When I am forced to, I sometimes read in French. It's a very exclusive sort of phenomenon, that usually has to do with some ouevre by Marguerite Duras that was never translated to Swedish (as I refuse to read her work in English). Or, as in this case, a new novel by Nina Bouraoui.

I cannot even start to describe what her (mid to later) work means to me. So while I'm not doing that I'll just share the fact that I have a really hard time viewing her stories from the outside. Hers is a voice that resonates within me to a degree I am afraid to really analyze any further.

Appelez-moi par mon prénom, which has a lot to do with M.D's Yann Andrea Steiner, is the story of a female writer and her younger reader. They have met briefly at a reading, but it is in the virtual world they begin their story.

P. existait dans une réalité que je ne partageais pas. Je m'enfermais dans un rêve. J'avais des projets mais je n'arrivais pas à travailler. Je gardais les mains vides, avançant sans mots.

The light of the novel is quite fair, almost summer blonde. There is not much resistance, it is mostly just a collection of thoughts and images. It is sweet.

Un peu plus tard:

I stumbled across this interview. And N.B. herself reading an excerpt of the novel over at Le blog à plumes!

And another interview:

Nina Bouraoui
Uploaded by Mediapart

Ann Jäderlund

2009-05-06T16:31:00.001+02:00

Being a sucker for Swedish poet Katarina Frostenson, I'm wondering why I never got to reading any of her contemporaries. Perhaps because I never really felt the need to. At the moment, I'm going through some of Ann Jäderlund's work. I started off with the first three collections: Vimpelstaden, Som en gång varit äng, Snart går jag i sommaren ut and one of the later, I en cylinder i vattnet av vattengråt.

During my first read I had a hard time connecting to the work. It seemed to lack the friction, the consonants, the ugliness and the choruses I usually like my poetry to contain. It felt like the words were just pouring through the pages and that I failed to get a hold of them. Liking my poetry sort of harsh and German-like, Jäderlund's sentences seemed too French to me; too general, too romantic, too sensual, flowy and sleek. Ingratiating, perhaps.

Except for Snart går jag i sommaren ut, which is a horrific, haunting sort of tale, nothing else really did it for me.

But then I came around for a second read. Some time had passed and suddenly something had happened. A change of heart.

Jag har en stad i fickan, jag
har den här natten
som ska komma, hennes
spensliga hjärta

(from Sång för en man i solen, Vimpelstaden)

I suppose that quickly forming an opinion of poetry is always ungrateful. Plus, it has so much to do with mood. Reading the latest novel by Nina Bouraoui at the same time helped, though ('s what I said, Jäderlund + French = True).

Ah well. I am not done yet.

Du är en annan spegel det går inte bort

(from En stråle blod, originally meant to be contained in Som en gång varit äng)

Martha Washington Goes to War by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons

2009-03-30T16:16:00.003+02:00

Just can't get enough.

Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons

2009-03-30T10:38:00.003+02:00

Oh, Martha.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

2009-03-23T11:19:00.003+01:00

What is left to say about Watchmen these days? That finishing this extraordinary graphic novel and watching Synecdoche, New York on the same day can make just about anyone depressed?

Even though my firm belief still is that Hollywood started filming all our favourite comics far too early (believable 3D still takes years to make), I will definitely go see the movie. And most probably hate it.

When I'm 83

2009-03-16T13:25:00.004+01:00

If I'm still alive by 80+, I wish I'll be and look something like Mahasweta Devi.

"The pattern shifts, flows, stutters, forms again and changes shape from one season to the other. I see one India in the pattern. You see another. Light and shadow play. History and modernity collide. Superstition and myth, Rabindrasangeet and rap, Sufi and Shia and Sunni, caste and computers, text and sub-plot, laughter and tears, governments and oppositions, reservations and quotas, struggles and captivity, success and achievement, hamburgers and Hari Om Hari, Sanskrit and sms, the smell of rain and the sound of the sea. A seamless stitching."

More of this beautiful speech held at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2006 here.

In Between

2009-03-15T21:58:00.004+01:00

My mind is messy. I've been working non-stop and tending to family issues. And I've been a lousy reader. But I quit smoking January 2, holy cow!

At the moment I'm trying to focus on reading Watchmen for the first time (and I'm calling myself a graphic novel geek, what a joke), the second Maggie & Hopey volume, that ol' Allen Carr smoking cessation book, the latest issue of my favourite Swedish feminist magazine Bang and some important psychology stuff. Plus a few novels that I can't choose between, as usual.

Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez

2009-03-10T01:14:00.003+01:00

I love love love love Hopey Glass.

Nabaneeta Dev Sen

2009-01-30T00:29:00.003+01:00

"my time in the jungle is over, mother,
now the jungle lives in me."

Nabaneeta Dev Sen, The Jungle Story. Found via Bookake.

It's something more of a cry or a chorus than a great quote, really.

Jeanette Winterson on T.S. Eliot

2009-01-27T23:07:00.003+01:00

"A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is."

Found a great article on the poetry of T.S. Eliot by the very wonderful Jeanette Winterson today, Shafts of Sunlight (originally from The Guardian).

Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson

2009-01-24T21:08:00.005+01:00

I could hardly put it down.

«Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our’ country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect myself or my country, ‘For’, the outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’»

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1931). Read it in full here.

By the way, it becomes more evident for every day that Orlando is one of my greatest reads ever. Ever.

Currently Reading: Barnes

2009-01-23T21:29:00.006+01:00

«Tom said he had "wasted his life" (May 1954). I said, "So have I." He replied, "Yes, but think what you did when you were not wasting it!"»

Djuna Barnes on T.S. Eliot, 1981.

No More Hjälp

2009-01-23T09:27:00.005+01:00

Am very sad to find out that Hjälp, one of my favourite Swedish comics magazines will be no more.

Rest in Peace.

[A few days later: Suddenly it seems like the decision isn't definite anymore. Kartago might continue, or they might start something new.]

A Propos 2008

2009-01-17T00:21:00.005+01:00

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.

T.S. Eliot. From Little Gidding, Four Quartets.

.

I was dissatisfied reading through last year's list of books. Bored, even. Too little, too all over the place; a lack of fiction. The other day H. said I ought to keep a separate list of all the books I don't finish. With that in mind, I did read a lot that I loved last year, especially poetry. However, this year should be more about challenges.

Lubiewo by Michał Witkowski

2009-01-14T19:12:00.004+01:00

Lubiewo, my love.

The author and his webpage.

Något bara kvinnor kan. Normer, biologi och graviditet by Ulrika Lorentzi (Swedish only)

2009-01-06T15:32:00.004+01:00

Swedish journalist Ulrika Lorentzi has written a great book about pregnancy and, to some extent, parenthood. Great intervews with queer feminist Tiina Rosenberg and feminist Ebba Witt Brattström. Read it. Get it here.

Lorentzi's blog (in Swedish).

Baby Love - Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence by Rebecca Walker

2009-01-05T01:29:00.007+01:00

Baby Love is a memoir in diary form, written mostly during Rebecca Walker's pregnancy with her first child. She writes about the ambivalence she's been dealing with, the worry that she would lose herself and that it would complicate her already complex relationship with her mother (more about that relationship in this book).

"With a few small power plays—a skeptical comment, the withholding of approval or praise—a mother can devastate a daughter. Decades of subtle undermining can stunt a daughter, or so monopolize her energy that she in effect stunts herself. Muted, fearful, riddled with self-doubt, she can remain trapped in daughterhood forever, the one place she feels confident she knows the rules."

Well.

"It seemed that these mothers did not realize that they had to give adulthood to their daughters by stepping down, stepping back, stepping away, and letting the daughter take center stage. These mothers did not seem to know, with all their potions and philosophies, their desires to rehabilitate ancient scripts of gender and identity, that there is a natural order, and that natural order involves passing the scepter to offspring with unconditional love and pride.

Or pay the price."

To protect her unborn child, Walker decides to not have too much to do with her seemingly indifferent mother.

"I can see the importance of making decisions that enable your child to be not just physically safe in an environment, but emotionally and logically safe as well. If the well-being of my own child doesn't inspire me to break through my ambivalence about a person or situation and act more decisively, I have no idea what will."

She also recalls her mother telling her as an adult that she had had to decide to, choose to love her as a child. After Walker's own son is born, she finds that there is absolutely no choice for her loving him. And that bringing him up finally might help her heal her own painful childhood - the divorced parents, the moving all over the US every other year...

It is a quite wonderful book. Read the first chapters here and an interview here. Lastly:

"Human beings create narrative because we glimpse the universal through the specific and feel less alone."

Moomin by Tove Jansson

2009-01-04T16:56:00.004+01:00

What could be better than starting 2009 with Moomin and his friends? Have been looking for these stories in the larger size hardbacks, since that's what they looked like when I was a kid. Luckily Swedish publisher Alfabeta took after Drawn and Quarterly's beautiful hardback editions recently.

Drawn and Quarterly's Moomin page here, with a preview.

Black White and Jewish - Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker

2008-12-16T21:57:00.004+01:00

All ye betweenshippers and shape shifters out there should read this one. It reminded me very much of a childhood spent trying to fit in: in school, at home, with my father and his Chinese friends. Reminded me of a time I had wanted to forget: the early teens.

Made me laugh. Made me really sad. A tad too long, but well written and quite engaging. Spending my X-mas in another town, far from my copy of the novel, I gotta remember to write down a few more of my fave passages later on.

Once again, read an excerpt here.

Not Finishing #3 - Winter Plans

2008-12-10T23:22:00.003+01:00

I am not going to be too specific with my reading list this time. Think of it more like some titles I randomly throw out from my bookshelves to why not-maybe read this winter:

Ulrika Lorentzi - Något bara kvinnor kan?
Tobias Hübinette & Carina Tigervall - Adoption med förhinder
Tove Jansson - Mumin: Tove Janssons Samlade Serier del 1
Christian Catomeris - Det ohyggliga arvet
Liv Strömquist - Einsteins fru
Rebecca Walker - Baby Love
Fanny Ambjörnsson - Vad är queer
Elisabeth Hjorth - Kärnfamiljen
Michał Witkowski - Lubiewo
Chandra Prasad (editor) - Mixed

Mostly Swedish this time. Probably because our smaller (greater) publishers had a really great X-mas market sale the other day. And the day before some of my fave Swe comicbook artists signed my copies of their books.

Currently (Still) Reading: Walker

2008-12-10T22:40:00.003+01:00

Sometimes I have to leave it be for a while, Black White & Jewish. Reading it is like revisiting my own childhood, something I can only do for brief moments at a time.

Rebecca Walker writes about her early life moving back and forth over the US, between her african american mother and her white jewish father and his new wife.

"[Mother's] presence at the table would grant me the great luxury of being able to love my family unreservedly, to take them irrevocably as my own. As it is, the specter of my mother, of race, really, and the inability of my relatives to deal with it, leaves me somewhere on the periphery of my own experience, unable to commit to fully being there. Haunted by her absence, I pull back cautiously and feel, even as I laugh and play with my cousins, as if some part of me is alien to the others, as if I am in the family through some kind of affirmative-action plan and don't entirely belong."

Det är bara lite AIDS by Sara Granér

2008-12-08T17:18:00.002+01:00

You can't handle the truth.

Questionnaire on Reading

2008-11-23T20:18:00.005+01:00

Found this at Bokhora:

1. Your worst reading experience?
I seldom finish the ones I don't like. But I've only returned one book to the store, that was Claire Castillon's Insecte. The theme seemed quite interesting but the writing really turned me off.

2. Which book has affected you the most?
a) ntozake shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf .
b) Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz.
c) Nina Bouraoui's Poupée Bella.

3. Have you read something that made you really scared?
When I was twelve, I was reading Fantastic Four comics for two days in a row until I started seeing fire and devils coming out of the pages. I was sh*t scared, but it didn't put me off reading comics. I also had an incident with a Dean R. Koontz book about insomnia that seemed to enter my brain, driving me into madness while in bed late one night. I quit reading my beloved Kings and Koontz after that.

4. What do you use for bookmarks?
Flyers, invitations, little drawings or other pieces of paper that I find around that go well with the book in question.

5. When do you read?
When on buses, trains and planes. In bed at night. In certain cafés during the day.

6. Which was the first book you ever read?
A Pixi book or my stepfather's first text book? I was 4.

7. Hardback or paperback?
Always paperback.

8. What are you reading at the moment?
a) Mixed - an Anthology of Short Stories Fiction on the Multiracial Experience. Edited by Chandra Prasad.
b) Black White and Jewish by Rebecca Walker.
c) Det är bara lite AIDS by Sara Granér.

9. What page are you on?
I won't bother to look.

10. Do you leave 'marks' in your books?
'Dogears' in fiction and poetry, but never in comics or books with photos inside.

11. Does the cover affect your buying/not buying a certain book?
Very much. And the font used. I also really like the Japanese way, the beautiful brown paper cover they give you with your purchase. Every store has its own.

12. Number of pages?
I prefer short. After all I am a poet.

13. Do you browse through to see the end?
No.

14. Is there any book you've read more than once?
All the ones I really like I re-read.

15. Were you ever in an accident caused by a book?
No.

16. Do you keep all your books, even the ones you don't like?
Lately I've tried to get rid of the really really bad ones.

17. Do you bring books to the bathroom?
No.

18. Do you read in the bathroom?
Magazines only.

19. Do you keep any systems for your books? Reading/buying lists? Do you keep a reading diary?
I keep a purchase list at Adlibris, it's really really long. A shorter list for the library visits. And I have this reading blog.

Dotterbolaget Antologin

2008-11-23T10:55:00.003+01:00

Dotterbolaget - the anthology: all the hilarious girls and a few more!

Except for my usual laugh out loud favourites Liv Strömquist, Sara Granér and Lina Neidestam, others worth mentioning are:

Berit Viklund
Erika Eklund
Nanna Johansson
Sara Hansson (invitation is needed)

Time to visit your local comics dealer.

Krokodilstaden by Knut Larsson

2008-11-20T14:43:00.002+01:00

Something like five years in the making, Knut Larsson's latest is finally out. Wordless and wonderful as ever.

Go get it.

Currently Reading: Walker

2008-11-19T14:07:00.003+01:00

Had to start with Black White and Jewish even before finishing the Mixed anthology. I am intrigued.

"I wonder what it is like to harbor a primal loyalty to your family: grandmothers, aunts, uncles, brothers. To put them, those others connected to you by birth, by name, before those you choose to claim as your own. To consider the ones you were born with your first layer of protection, your inner sanctum, the blood in which you live that cannot be diluted by the water you drink. I am fascinated by this emotion, this human device that creates purpose and meaning, self and other. Is it something we are born with, or is this subtle belonging cultivated, a by-product of the endless repetition of rituals: setting the table, driving to school, walking the dog?"

Read an excerpt over at Multiracial.com.

Big Questions #11 by Anders Nilsen

2008-11-14T08:56:00.004+01:00

Yesterday was a good day.

Got up at 4 to get to the shooting location, had friend J.S. for assistant, had the pleasure to see a very frustrated man get even by running like mad into the shot during a take, wrapped at 2.30, did all the returns, picked up two CdG garments from H&M, had ice cream. And yes, passed by Comics Heaven to get my ordered issue of Big Questions #11 that I've been thinking of since summer.

It is as perfect as ever. I wonder how he does to make a little bird's emotions visible by just a head shake or a tiny line for an eye.

Listen to a newly made interview with Anders Nilsen over at Inkstuds.

Currently Reading: Mixed

2008-11-12T20:41:00.005+01:00

I came across Rebecca Walker's memoir Black White and Jewish in the Women's Studies section at Borders, Kuala Lumpur. And then I couldn't help reading her introduction to the very promising anthology Mixed - an Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience. Now I am wondering how it's possible to write a mere 5-paged forword that can make people cry.

"But not one of us has ever been a cracked plate. We have only held the fractured projections of others, innocently imbibing harmful judgments that were not our own. This mindless absorption of the negative mythologies of others is a source of great misery in our lives. I fear this self-sabotage much more than garden-variety racism, for it has the power to destroy from within that which outwardly, physically cannot be denied. Namely, that multiracial people exist, that we call all categories into question, and that, if we can survive this internal battle, we embody a different tomorrow. But if we remain mesmerized by the idea of ourselves as eternally broken, we all but guarantee the loss of our lives as fully functional, whole human beings."

More info on the anthology here.

Towelhead by Alicia Erian

2008-11-04T10:59:00.007+01:00

The world is not safe outside Café Edenborg.

This morning I decided to pass by Sosta, which is sort of Stockholm's best Italian espresso bar. On my way up to order, I bumped into a young Asian Swedish woman on her way out. The moment she left, the barista and some fancy dressed-all-in-plaid (hurt the eye!) bloke with slick hair started going on about Asian women, very bluntly trying to tell different nationalities apart by their looks. Sexist and racist; need I tell you that the word "gook" was used? Instead of telling them like was, which I probably would have if I'd been more awake, I downed my coffee and got the F out of there. Feeling like shit.

One of the worst things about being of mixed race is getting to hear all sides of people's trash talking. Cause we "sort of" pass. But the worst by far, of course, is the fact that a lot of times we get it from our own families. With divorced parents (well, separated), I've had my fair share.

Alicia Erian's Towelhead is a coming-of-age novel set in the 90's about 13 year old Jasira. She's being sent to live alone with her Lebanese dad, Rifat, for the first time in her life, after her mother's jealous outbreak over the fact that her boyfriend takes an abnormal liking in her. Rifat, on his part, is rather strict and sometimes overly violent.

"Once, a little kid got confused and drifted under the lane divider [of a swimming pool, blogger's note], and Daddy had to stop in mid-stroke. I thought he would probably yell at the kid, but he just smiled and waited for him to get out of the way. I saw then that everything would be fine between me and Daddy if only we were strangers."

Jasira has a hard time figuring her parents out, oftentimes caught in-between because of the selfish ways in which they handle their arguments. She deals with typical teenage issues: daughterhood, a sexual awakening, guilt. And a betweenship due to her being Arab American, ashamed by her father's weird ways and always thought to be latina at school. Or getting called towelhead by her neighbours. However, the story turns extreme after she starts babysitting her neighbours' brat of a son, starting when she finds his father's Playboy mags, and ending in a very serious, unspeakable place.

Despite the awful things Jasira goes through, the novel is laugh out loud funny at times, a page-turner dealing with teenage girl issues in a way I have never before encountered. I'm amazed.

Read the first chapter here.

Hear Alicia Erian read an excerpt over at NY Times (you might need to sign up, but NY Times is always worth it).

Towelhead has been made into a movie by the great Alan Ball, with the genious Peter Macdissi as Rifat. I can't wait to see it. Watch the movie trailer here.

Town Boy by LAT

2008-11-03T18:48:00.004+01:00

During my last trip to Malaysia, I finally got my hands on the sequel to Kampung Boy, LAT's wonderful story about his childhood in rural Malaysia. Town Boy is about his teenage years during the 60's in Ipoh, Malaysia - where my dad was born and raised. Actually, it seems like Dad's just two years older than LAT and it's great to read this graphic novel after recently seeing my dad's old photos of school friends with rock'n'roll posters plastered all over their walls.

Ipoh is (still) very recognizable in LAT's drawings, and he manages so well to capture the multicultural Malaysian people and their busy street life. He's a genius. Which, of course, is no news to Malaysians.

Head over to First Second Books where there's a nice excerpt.

Just Arrived

2008-10-28T20:13:00.002+01:00

I can't wait, I don't know where to start, I want to know everything. I am truly overwhelmed this kinda literature is available in our time. Vive the betweenship!

While I'm reading, have a look at Rebecca Walker's site.

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

2008-10-04T05:41:00.002+02:00

I do like all the others: I read M.J.'s short stories, I love them. They have been great company on a lonely trip.

More here.

Currently Reading: July

2008-10-01T07:35:00.002+02:00

Trying to stay awake on the way to K.L.

"This is the best costume for today."

Avant les hommes by Nina Bouraoui (Swe)

2008-09-29T12:45:00.004+02:00

Yes, I did read it in French when it just came out. But I'm currently in Phuket International Airport waiting for my Air Asia flight to take me to K.L, and I'm bored.

I did also prefer reading this novel in French. Not that it's badly translated - but there is something about the flow that doesn't really translate too well into Swedish. Although I do remember reading it in French thinking someone will have to tell the translator not to translate the word "shit" into something stupid. Which she certainly did. "Brass" in Swedish is a word only used by peeps older than 40 (definitely not by teenagers now), it reeks of the 70's, in a bad way. Every time I read it I shiver.

Otherwise, this novel is a bit like Mes mauvaises pensées, as if written in one long sentence. Sometimes you have to catch your breath, the same way I had to do when I was a kid, reading The Fantastic Four comic books until I almost saw fire and devils coming out of the pages.

Att älska män är min allra största tystnad, och det största krig som jag måste föra. Jag vill vinna, jag vill vara bland dem som liknar mig.

Svart som Silver by Bruno K. Öijer

2008-09-23T08:59:00.003+02:00

I am amazed over the fact that a whole pice of work can seem so distant, right up to the very end, where it just suddenly grabs a tight hold.

ingen kan råna dej på din sorg

Bruno K. Öijer was my first favourite Swedish poet when I was younger. I saw him at Orionteatern a few years back, think it was in 2002, a year after Dimman av allt, the work that ended the magnificent trilogy after Medan giftet verkar (1990) and Det förlorade ordet (1995). In Dimman av allt, Öijer wrote about a dead mother; his mother, all mothers:

vad du än fick med dej
hoppas jag att du kan ta fram det ibland
och utan att bli ledsen
utan att längta tillbaka hit

This latest work seems to lack the dirt I always felt came with Öijer's poetry. It's cleaner, he seems older, more together; as if he was a voice in an awful world he has finally started coming to terms with. Not always a bad thing, but not that interesting either. Except for the ending.

Or is it that I am older?

A re-read or two might clear things up. After all, it's Öijer.

Samtidigt by Kolik Förlag

2008-09-17T10:35:00.003+02:00

Swedish publisher of graphic novels Kolik Förlag just released Samtidigt, a little compilation of short stories by Swedish up and coming artists. It is packed with interesting stuff, especially Clara Johansson's Betjänt Hök. I'm in love with that ol' butler birdie.

Thanks to Danny. It is not every day I get comics for present to go with my morning coffee. And by the way, your comics manifest is still as brilliant.

More Kolik can be found here.

The Pie

2008-09-02T18:28:00.002+02:00

2008 so far. I've been a lousy reader this summer. Wha'happened to my list? Out of all of those, I read one. That's horriba.

Make your own pies over at Mycrocosm.

Constantly Reading: T.S. Eliot

2008-07-31T12:04:00.005+02:00

What images return
O my daughter.

[.]

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.

[.]

Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.

[.]

Living to live in a world of time beyond me, let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

From Marina

.
.
.

Sveda by Cecilia Persson

2008-07-31T11:41:00.002+02:00

Recently read an interesting interview with Cecilia Persson in the latest issue of the great Swedish periodical called Slut (as in the Swedish word for end, nothing else), about her novel Sveda - on growing up with a mentally ill mother and, to some extent, about Sylvia Plath. The book contains a little bit of everything: clippings, poetry, prose, letters. It didn't really leave me with much, but made for a fairly good read, especially as the subject does interest me a lot.

Get it here.

Currently Reading: Sontag

2008-07-30T12:58:00.007+02:00

Susan Sontag by Annie Leibovitz.

Reading Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, as I've been meaning to do since I read the first sentences a few years back:

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds a dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Summer Restlessness

2008-07-19T19:00:00.004+02:00

Maggie Mui from Read or Die the TV

I am currently sitting in my window, waiting for Anders Nilsen's eleventh issue of Big Questions that's going to be out this coming autumn. In the meantime I'm commenting away at Bokhora, trying to finish my third Jenny Diski in a row, wondering why I've been such a bad fiction reader so far this year - 17% is quite bad, although 50% comics is kinda good.

Female authors 60%, Male authors 40%
Fiction 17%, Non-Fiction 25%, Comics 50%, Poetry 8%
In Swedish 42%, In English 58%
Swedish authors 20%, Others 80%

After a good cleaning my bedroom no longer looks like Yomiko Readman's:

Which I suppose is a good thing.

Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski

2008-07-15T10:03:00.002+02:00

I am on a Diski roll.

Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski

2008-07-05T09:03:00.003+02:00

The last thing I heard before boarding the first flight towards Antarctica in February, was H. telling me to read this. I already knew about it, but had been hesitant to read it; before this trip Antarctica was a dream that I didn't want to spoil with other people's recollections of it. And when I suddenly found myself going there, I didn't want to be disturbed by other experiences of it, wanted to find my own words to describe it. Naturally, I found the book in the M.S. National Geographic Endeavour library, opened it every now and then, decided not to read it, came back to make sure it was still there and not in the hands of any of my fellow American passengers... This went on during the whole trip.

If there is something I am good at, it's knowing the right time to read a certain novel. Sometimes I start reading a book that opens so fantastically that I have to leave it be for a while (which is why I still haven't been able to read Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphor, Lotta Lotass' Min röst skall nu komma från en annan plats i rummet, or Harry Martinson's Aniara). Now almost four months have passed since I returned, and the other day I just couldn't resist this Skating any longer, as I felt a sudden pang of loss walking about a bookstore, missing the ice so much.

"I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life."

Jenny Diski is almost too on point. The way she describes her trip and the other (mostly American) passengers:

"Photography is a modern, miniature form of colonization."

And also her recollection of a quite disturbing childhood and the teenage years spent moving between mental institutions and foster care; her mother leaving her when she was 16 never to return, never even calling, writing.

There is so much about this memoir that I can relate to, there's no wonder it took me such a long time and all this lingering about to read it.

Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban

2008-07-02T09:45:00.003+02:00

The dearest re-read.

Someone told me to just see Harold and Maude without knowing anything about it. I hereby tell you to read this novel without looking it up any further.

Go for Abe Books or Bokbörsen.

Thanks to H.

Arboga

2008-06-22T18:17:00.002+02:00

Always bad news from the Ouija board

Wiki

The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott

2008-06-16T10:44:00.002+02:00

Finally the new Thomas Ott (remember the last). I was going to save it for the perfect reading moment, but literally halfway out of bed this morning I figured I could at least have a little look at the first page - and before I knew it half an hour had past and 100 or so pages had ben scanned. Couldn't help it. I blame the genius. Oh, and it seems like it's his first full-length graphic novel, too.

Over at Fantagraphics there's a downloadable chapter for registered users, they also put up this on their Flickr.

By the way, fans of Ott might want to have a look at the wonderful cover for Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle:

That whole Penguin series with favourite artists' jackets I would like to have just to hold. Anders Nilsen, Daniel Clowes, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, it's too much!

Not Finishing #2 - Summer Plans

2008-06-09T18:18:00.003+02:00

I know I've been writing about not finishing before, out of those I've actually only finished number 2 and 3 on the list. This here is more like some projects I'll try to take on this summer:

Diaries:
Lars Norén - En Dramatikers dagbok
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1915-1919)

Coming of Age:
Angelica Garnett - Deceived with Kindness
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Jenny Erpenbeck - Wörterbuch
Nina Bouraoui - La Vie Heureuse
Mare Kandre - Aliide, Aliide
Maria Gripe - Skuggan över Stenbänken
Katarina Frostenson - Berättelser från Dom

Poetry:
Ted Hughes - Birthday Letters

Short Stories:
Franz Kafka - En Svältkonstnär (the short stories published during K's lifetime)

Non-Fiction:
Susan Sontag - Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
Nancy Huston - Journal de la Création
Katarina Wennstam - En Riktig Våldtäktsman
Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own

Fiction:
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood
Ying Chen - Immobile
Lotta Lotass - Min Röst Skall Nu Komma från En Annan Plats i Rummet
Jeanette Winterson - Gut Symmetries
Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary (re-read)

Yeah well. Let's see.

The Horror #1

2008-06-07T22:56:00.003+02:00

My grandmother was persistent when I was a kid:

1. She always did my eggs runny although I hated it (I still shiver at the mere thought)
2. She kept on reading Struwwelpeter (Pelle Snusk) to me although it scared the s**t out of me (and still kind of does)

Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894) was written as a children's book and I bet the parents of the mid-1840's thought it was really practical and nice to teach their kids some good ol' morals. What good it was to me I'm much less sure of, I was scared to death by Slovenly Peter and even more by the tailor in The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb:

"The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissorman.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.

Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out - Oh! Oh! Oh!
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast;
That both his thumbs are off at last."

It did not make me quit sucking my thumbs, neither to stop biting my nails.

Read it all here.

Read a new take on the stories here.

No Tears for Queers by Johan Hilton

2008-06-01T21:57:00.003+02:00

Swedish journalist Johan Hilton's report on gay men and hate crimes really got to me. Well-written and on point, oftentimes haunting, quite a page turner.

Read an excerpt (in Swedish).

Dog by Juliet Clutton-Brock

2008-05-29T13:57:00.002+02:00

Yeah, well, I like dogs a lot. The writing (or the Swedish translation), especially the captions, are quite funny at times, almost like a kid did the work.

Note the mistake on the cover.