Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

-
Image
A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
5 comments

Book Talk # 2

-
I read in the paper this morning that the Pulitzer prize for 2014 has been announced. Congratulations to Washington Post and The Guardian for the Public Service prize. In the Literature category The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt won the prize for Fiction. I loved her book The Secret History but haven't read anything else by her. Although this is on my reading list. Have you read it? What do you think?


Other winners are
Drama The Flick by Annie Baker
History The Internal Enemy. Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
Biography or Autobiography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
Poetry 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri
General Nonfiction Toms River: A story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin 

Can't say I have heard about any of them, but I am sure they are all good. Anybody who knows?

I am not always 100% for books that win prizes. For the Man Booker Prize as you know who follow me here, I am not too fond of the winners. I guess that there are so many books out there so it has to be something that stands out from others to win the prizes. Like Hilary Mantel for example. Her Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were great. I have big hope on The Luminaries  which we will read in my book club in May. Big hopes also for Donna Tartt. Let's see if they will live up to my expectations.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Magical Room, Saloons in 1920s Paris by Ingrid Svensson

-
Image
Better late than never as they say. This post was supposed to go up last year. At a museum in Sweden I found a book about 1920s saloons in Paris. Very interesting and it generated the post:  Paris in July - French Saloons.    As promised then, here is the first of two posts about four of the main hostesses.  Still picking from the "Magical Rom" and events from Paris in the 1920s. There were four main characters who put their mark on the literary scene of the time; Gertrude Stein, Natalie Clifford Barney, Adrienne Monnier, and Sylvia Beach. For most of you, they are already well known. These ladies had one thing in common, as well as many of the women holding salons, in that they were all lesbians. This was maybe one reason why they ended up in Paris, being more liberal (although you had to be discreet) than many other countries, and the US specifically. They were very creative and talented and did a lot for the cultural scene in Paris, introducing new talents and hel...
Read more

The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson

-
Image
This is one of those popular help yourself books that seems to overflow these days. However, it defies all the good advices we have been given during the last years, that is; stay positive. Manson says: "Let's be honest; sometimes things are fucked up and we have to live with it."  Right! That is life after all. "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." Sigmund Freud  With this quote in mind Manson argues that values such as "pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive", are poor guidelines for a persons life. After all, some of the greatest moments in our lives are " not  pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive". Which leads him to the belief, and I am bound to agree with him, that it is the individual who is responsible for everything in his/her life. We just have to act due to external circumstances. We are not always in control of all aspects of our...
Read more

Die Manns (The Mann Family) by Tilmann Lahme

-
Image
One of my favourite books is Buddenbrooks  by Thomas Mann. It was Thomas Mann's first novel and it was published in 1901. It gave him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Tilmann Lahme's biography of the Mann family is an interesting account of a family where the author rose above everyone else. Thomas Mann was born in 1875, but the biography starts in 1922 when he was already an established writer with part of his production behind him. It covers the years in Germany, the exile years during World War II (France, Switzerland, and the USA), the peace years, and the final years in Switzerland.  The Manns was a troubled family. The mother Katia, took care of the family and the business that was Thomas Mann. They had six children; Klaus, Erika, Golo, Monika, Elisabeth och Michael. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reviewed the book and this extract says it all. " Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, says Tolstoy. One should read this book to  understand the ...
Read more