Nonfiction November - second week

We are now starting week 2 for Nonfiction November. This week is hosted by Katie at Doing Dewey and the theme is Book Pairing.  

Week 2: (November 8-12)  This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story. 

I don't exactly know if this will be called pairing, but I hope it can do. I choose a biography I read this year. Jag vill sätta världen i rörelse (I want to put the world in motion (my translation) by Anna-Karin Palm. It is about Selma Lagerlöf, one of our most famous authors. She was the first female member of the Swedish Academy and the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

The biography is very well written and researched. A detailed account of Lagerlöf's life, as well as her work. She is a person most people know of, but how much do we really know? Not much, as I realised when reading the biography. Hers was an amazing life mostly dedicated to her work. Growing up in the province of Värmland (mid Sweden), in a family where the old fairy tales and folklore were vividly debated, her writing has a magic realism. As expected she was criticised by male colleagues at the time, but she always had the heart of the people. She was the best selling author at a time when not everyone could afford to buy books, or did indeed read books. 

Her private life she kept private. She blocked her personal correspondence from being read for 50 years after her death (she died in 1942). She had a couple of close relationships with women. Maybe she had such foresight that she understood that 50 years in the future it would not be a big deal. The letters is not only about her private life, most of the are connected to her extensive work, her ideas on her books and ideas on the world in general. 

When she became famous and started to earn money, she bought back her beloved children's home. The father and brothers lost it due to economical failures. It was a big disappointment for her at the time to leave the house. Today it is a museum, a manor house of a kind with a big park and land to it. We were visiting it this summer being in the neighbourhood. 

I must admit I have not read that much from her rather big production. Only two books; The Story of Gösta Berling and The General's Ring. Many of her books have been adapted for film and television. 

I would like to recommend the following books to read when pairing them to the biography. I will myself reread The Story of Gösta Berling (it was firstly filmed already in 1922 with a young, unknown Greta Garbo as Elizabeth Dohna). I certainly think I will read it differently today. Other interesting books should be her family saga Jerusalem, about families emigrating from Sweden to Jerusalem and how they cope with their new surroundings. Herr Arne's Hoard, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, The Soul Shall Bear Witness (filmed as The Phantom Carriage) are other books I would like to read.

Selma Lagerlöf was approached by the National Teachers Association in 1902 and asked to write a geography reader for the public schools. "She devoted three years to Nature study and to familiarising herself with animal and bird life. She has sought out hitherto unpublished folklore and legends of the different provinces. These she has ingeniously woven into her story." (From translator Velma Swanston Howard's introduction.)  She came up with The Wonderful Adventures of Nils? Nils flies on a goose around Sweden and wherever he stops he learns something about the place. I am just wondering whether the school authorities would accept something like this today? I doubt it. When it was first published in 1906/07 it was the first book to adapt new spelling rules. Selma Lagerlöf was an advocate of the reform, and I think she was one of the first authors to use it.    

Do you have any connection to, or knowledge of, Selma Lagerlöf and her novels?