Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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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...
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27 May in literature

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This day Dashiell Hammett was born in Maryland in 1894. Don't we all love Dashiell Hammett? If we don't read the books we certainly saw the films with Humphrey Bogart among others. The Maltese Falcon for example. I also loved the series movies with William Power and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles in his book The Thin Man. Elegant and full of humour.

Hammett left school at 13 and took a lot of different jobs until he got one with the Pinkerton's detective agency. He worked as a detective for eight years and turned his experience into books. He set the tone for later writers like Raymond Chandler. His fictions became known as the "hard-boiled" style. Who better to characterise this than someone like Humphrey Bogart as his detective Sam Spade.

Hammett became involved with playwright Lillian Hellman who served as a model for Nora Charles in The Thin Man. The characters of Nick and Nora Charles was made into several films. Hammett and Hellman was romantically involved until Hammett's death in 1961.



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