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

A 2017 Challenge - The Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge

-
Time for another challenge that popped up in my Feedly. It is the 2017 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge hosted by Escape With Dollycas, which I have not done before. The idea is to read one book for each of the letters in the Alphabet. Go to link to see the rules. As always I try first hand to grab a book from my TBR shelves. Here is my initial list. Curious to see if I can fill up the whole list from these shelves? Since I am Swedish and we have three more letters than the English alphabet, I added them. Just for the fun of it. Hope it is ok.

A - Aldermans arvinge by Gabriella Håkansson
B - Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
C - Colombus, The Four Voyages by Laurence Berggren
D - Darwin's Sacred Cause, Race, Slavery and the quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore
E - Eleanor, The Secret Queen by John Ashdown-Hill
F - Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
G - Gabriele d'Annunzio by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
H - Historien om Lissabons belägring by Jose Saramago
I -  If you Could See Me Now by Cecilia Ahern
J - Jorden runt på 80 dagar by Jules Verne
K - Krysalis by John Trenhaile
L - Lisbeth by Ragnhild Hallén
M - Moderspassion by Majgull Axelsson
N - Notorious by Janet Dailey
O - Ofredsår by Peter Englund
P - Påven Johanna by Donna Woolfolk Cross
Q
R - Russka by Edward Rutherford
S - Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
T - The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
U - Unsolved Mysteries of Amsterdam by Martijn J. Adelmund
V - Viskar ditt namn by Kristin Hannah
W - Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Y
Z
Å - Återvändaren by Butler & Öhrlund
Ä
Ö

Well, five letters missing, so have to look for them elsewhere. Otherwise, I am quite pleased that I could come up with almost all the books from my own shelves. Looking forward exchanging views with all the participants.

Comments

  1. Debbie Rodgers1 December 2016 at 14:23

    I didn't know that Swedish had a longer alphabet than English.

    I read Buddenbrooks a few years ago for book club - quite enjoyed it. Looks like you're going to have some great reads this year!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisbeth 2 December 2016 at 11:59

      I had 'Buddenbrooks' on one of my challenge lists this year. But it is so thick and I never really got around to read it. Next year is the time! It seems it is liked by most people who have read it. Furthermore, I am really into family sagas Aren't they great?

      Delete

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

How To Read Novels Like A Professor by Thomas C. Foster

-
Image
I am not a professor in literature, but I would like to be. Unfortunately, this will never happen, so, I have to go along trying to read novels and literature like a professor. Thomas C. Foster's book is therefor a very useful tool. He has also written How To Read Literature Like A Professor , which sounds like another useful read. It is not only a book for readers. I would say it is also useful for aspring writers. How do you make a novel interesting? What does it have to contain? Who should be the narrator and what should he/she do? The content gives a hint on what makes up a good book.  Pickup Lines and Open(ing) Seductions, or Why Novels Have First Pages - are we not fascinated by how certain writers manage to hook you on the first sentence? This seems to be one of the most important sentences in a book and Foster mentions a few excellent openings. I love good openings and cannot help but quote them here, although I am sure you are already familiar with them (I only knew 2,4 a...
Read more