Book Sale!

This is a very dangerous word for me. It means that I really cannot restrain from buying a few books. In Sweden we have a big book sale in the end of February every year. Luckily, or unluckily, I happened to be in Sweden when it opened this year. I ventured out in the cold, sunny morning, took the bus to the shopping center and went a little bit crazy. I bought 17 books! I know, it was crazy, and I was just hoping I would not find anything interesting. Alas! It was a little bit heavy to carry them all back, that is for sure.

I started looking at the fictional books, but only bought two. Mostly because I prefer to read the books in English. However, none of them are book written in English, so Swedish is fine. Most other books were thrillers. I found a book by one of my favourite writers, the Icelandic, Arnaldur Indidrason and his book Den som glömmer (Kamp Knox) (Oblivion and in the US Into Oblivion). He usually have a very tragic and touching story as background to his crimes. The other one was a book by Haruki Harakami, and that is thanks to all of you out there who have made me curious about his writing. This book is called Män utan kvinnor (Men Without Women). Seems to be short stories. Unfortunately, both books have to wait to be read until I am next time in Sweden.

Mostly I bought history books which I really love. I bought seven of them. Here are the titles, they are all Swedish so the translations are my own :

Arkeologiska upptäckter i Sverige (Archeological discoveries in Sweden). I thought it would be interesting to see what discoveries have been found. Most of the time I read about discoveries in other countries, all over the world.

Boktjuvarna, Jakten på de försvunna biblioteken (The Book Thieves, The Hunt for the Lost Libraries).  The author, Anders Rydell, has travelled around the European continent to try to find out what happened to the books and libraries that disappeared during the Second World War.

Huset von Fersens uppgång och fall (The Rise and Fall of the House of von Fersen) by Göran Norrby. The most famous von Fersen outside Sweden must be Axel, who was the lover of Marie Antoinette, and also tried to help the royals escape. Axel and some of the family members later faced and angry mob in Stockholm and died in the riots.

Dick Harrison is one of our most famous historians and he is a very active writer of historical books. These two books are based on a blog he used to have in one of the biggest papers in Sweden. He has collected the articles and they cover two books. There seems to be a variety of historical questions. I love these kind of books since you can read a few questions for breakfast, or during a small rest.

Norstedts Publishing Company has published Sveriges Historia (History of Sweden) covering various periods. I bought one covering the period 1600 - 1721 which is normally called "Storhetstiden" which can be translated as "The days of glory".

Karen Milles has looked a diary from the same time. It was written by a noble lady, Agneta Horn, and is quite a fascinating piece, describing the period in which she lived. Many things happened to her, good and bad, and she was a lady that did not sit around waiting for a man to take care of her. I have read her diary which is very interesting. This book weaves together the diary with the historical period in which she lived

That are nine of the 17 books I bought. The other eight I will talk about in a later post.