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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Sanctuary by William Faulkner

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This book popped up in Janet Flanner's articles of Paris as a book that was translated into French. It made me curious so I thought: "Hey, I have this on my TBR shelves"! So I grabbed it and finished it in a couple of days. I have never read anything by Faulkner, but seem to know that he is one of the great American writers. I must say I did not understand too much of this book. There were a lot of characters, mostly dialogue so no explanation who these people were. And new persons tended to pop up here and there. Ok, after a while you got a little bit more information on them flashbacks, but still...

Short summary: Someone dates an innocent school girl, gets drunk and brings her to a bootlegger's camp for whom he is working from time to time. There are a few, criminal character's around
and a woman with a child. The men drink, moving around the girl Temple Drake, and at the end of a couple of days one man is dead and she is raped. Popeye (the man who raped her), takes her away an puts her in a whore house that belongs to a friend of his. In the meantime the bootlegger (also the father of the child) is accused of murder. A friend lawyer comes in to defend him. The story then goes between the accused and the lawyer and Popeye and the girl plus a few more people entering the story (not always clear to me why!).


William Faulkner

He wrote it in 1931 and the theme of the book - rape - being a sensitive subject at the time, made it a rather controversial book. I don't know if it is one of his most famous books? I have another one, Light in August on my TBR shelves so I will try this as well. Although it was a little bit 'messy' it was still rather fascinating and I had no problems finishing it.

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