The Content Reader

Since many years there is an annual book sale in Sweden in the end of February. This year I ordered the books online, and they were delivered to me yesterday. 16 new books in the genres fiction and  nonfiction.  Very pleased with the books new books.    Food and Household Care Texmex från grunden (Basic texmex) by Jonas Cramby Portionen under tian (The Portion Under 10 crowns (about 1€) by Hanna Olvenmark Vegan på 5 ingredienser (Vegan on 5 ingredients) by Siri Barje Städa hållbart med ekotipset (Sustainable Cleaning with Ecological tips) by Ellinor Sirén Nonfiction - History and Biography Bellman by Carina Burman (Carl Michael Bellman is one of our most famous songwriter, composer, musician, poet and entertainer. He lived at the end of the 18th century). This biography is by Carina Burman, one of my favourite authors in this genre.  Sveriges Medeltid (Medieval Times in Sweden) by Dick Harrison. One of my favourite historian. Kalmarunionen (The Kalmar Union) by ...

My local library has announced four meetings on the theme "Read the book - Watch the Film". I signed up for all of them, and yesterday was the first meeting discussing the book Perfume - The Story of a Murderer  by Patrick Süskind. The book was first published in 1985. I did read it around that time, but could not remember too much, so re-read it for this event.  "An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he bec...

February is almost at an end. I must admit that I have been in another world this month, or two different worlds might be more correct. The theme for my own February challenges is  Antiquity, Greek Gods and Other Tales.  I find the Greek gods quite a fascinating subject, and I have been totally absorbed by three books; Homer's The Iliad  (still reading), Ariadne by Jennifer Saint and The Song of Achilles  by Madeline Miller. On top of that I got hooked on a TV-series based on the All Soul Trilogy  by Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches. I watched the three seasons, and 25 episodes in about 10 days. There we enter into a world of vampyres, witches, demons and other creatures. A great story. Now I am back to real life, which seems to be only grey clouds, rain and wind. Luckily, we can disappear into other worlds and stories when we need to.  Ariadne Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up greeting the dawn from her beautiful dancing floor and listening...

Maggie O'Farrell is a favourite author of mine. I recently read two of her books; Hamnet and My Lover's Lover .  The latter book is one rather typical for O'Farrell. Her psychological insight into our minds, our actions and our feelings. Her much appraised novel Hamnet has got very good reviews and it has been on my shelves for some months. I read it for a book club and we had a very interesting discussion. " On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.  Neither parent know that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written." The good revie...

Ever since I read All the Lights We Cannot See    Anthony Doerr is a favourite author. Such captivating story. I have also read his  About Grace  which I liked very much. It was with much anticipation I opened his latest story. It is quite different from his other books and a much more ambitious story. Set in three different time frames and through the eyes of five young people, he tells a story of our common history through an ancient codex, and our attitude towards it.  "Bound together by a single ancient text, the unforgettable characters of Cloud Cuckoo Land are dreamers and outsiders figuring out the world around them: thirteen-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress  and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldes stories to guide ...

This is the last week of the Nordic FINDS challenge hosted by AnnaBookBel . I have still to read the Finnish book for last week. It is rather thick and I have to continue reading it for February. My intention was to read a classic Icelandic tale, Salka Valka , by Haldór Laxness. He won the Nobel Literary Prize in 1955. However, I could not find a copy of the book, so I have to look for this later. Instead I headed to the library and found two books by Arnaldur Indridason that I have not yet read. Both of them are from his  Reykjavik Wartime Mystery series (Flovent and Thorson); The Shadow District and Petsamo.  As the title of the series indicates, the crimes are set during World War II, with police investigator Flóvent and the American military investigator Thorson. Both books are covering the troublesome times in Iceland during World War II; the foreign forces being placed there and the difficult relations between the Icelandic people and the military forces. Not everyone li...