The Content Reader

There is a goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting. Yet there should be, as they are twin sisters, twin powers, and walk on either side of us, disputing for sovereignty over us and who we are, all the way until death. Richard Holmes, A Meander Through Memory and Forgetting This is the introduction to this wonderful book on memory and trying to forget. The book is written on such wonderful prose so it is almost like reading poetry. It tells the story of Yun Ling. She is a chinese malayan and she and her sister are taken prisoners by the Japanese during their occupation of Malaysia 1941-42. Yun Ling is the only survivor of this prisoner's camp. After the occupation she is trying to find out where this camp was situated but she finds out that nobody knows.  The introduction of the books is as follows: 'On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. Not many people would have known of him before the...

You know what it is like when you find such a good book that you never want it to end. When it does, it is like parting with a good friend. This is such a book. As you saw from my last blog I am into history (again) for the time being. Therefore I grabbed this book from my TBR shelves. And it sure was a good choice? I love books set in a historic perspective and especially when following history as well as this one. It's almost like reading a biography about a historic person. To sideline a bit I would just like to mention a couple of my favourite historic biographies:  'Potemkin' by Simon Sebag Montefiore (absolutely excellent). Luckily I have two other of his books on my TBR shelves ('Stalin' and 'Jerusalem') so something to look forward to. Another favourite writer of biographies is Mary S Lovell ('A Scandalous Life' (Lady Jane Digby), 'A Rage to Live' (Sir Richard Burton the explorer, absolutely fantastic) and 'The Mitford Girls...

Summertime is the time I go to Sweden. This year I was very lucky with the weather; sunshine but not too hot. I spent the time in Karlskrona which is situated in the south east corner of Sweden by the sea. It is built on islands so wherever you go you see the water. It is possible to walk around the whole city on the water front. Karlskrona was founded in 1680 by Carl XI who needed an ice free harbour for his war ships. The province of Blekinge where Karlskrona is situated was perfect. This area as well as Skåne and Halland was given back to Sweden from Denmark in the peace of Roskilde in 1658. However, the Danes were still trying to take it back so a harbour in this area seemed perfect. This year I decided to go historic in my reading (as you see from the reading list) and discover more about this city where I lived between 1968 and 1980.  The city has many houses still from the 18th and 19th century. Unfortunately there was a big fire in 1790 which destroyed most of the ho...

Tess, Tess, Tess...! What can I say. What a miserable story this is. I recently read the wonderful 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and earlier I re-read 'Far from the Madding Crowd'. I loved the two books and started with Tess with a very positive mind. What a gruesome story! Misery, misery, misery. Here we have poor Tess who is the daughter of a poor farmer. Their name is Durbeyfield and someone put in the head of the father that they are descendants from the noble family of d'Urberville. Since there is a family with such a name nearby the mother arrange for Tess to go there to work for the widow of the d'Uberville. It turns out that the son  Alec arranged everything and did not tell his mother of the possible relationship. So Tess come to work for the mother and all is well until Alec one evening takes advantage of Tess. She immediately quits her job and goes back to her family. It is soon discovered that she is pregnant and she gives birth to a son who soon dies....

This is a wonderful book set in England in the beginning of the 20th century. It is about a midwife, Violet  Dimond, who lives in a small town. Her husband is dead and her son has emigrated to America. Her twin sister Bea,  with which she has never been of equal terms lives nearby and is running a home for orphans. On one visit Bea shows her a black girl of 2 years that has been found on the street. Violet is connecting to the girl since she reminds her of her dead daughter and decides to adopt her. She names her Grace. The story tells of the difficulty to grow up in a small community being black at the time when people had hardly seen a black person in their lives. But also how difficult it is to be different. Prejudices and narrow mindedness is part of the life. But it is also a story about the changing times coming up towards the first world war. The poverty and the strife to survive the day. The story follows Grace, Violet's and Bea's lives. Things are not always wh...

I recently reviewed the book 'Love Me to Death' by Allison Brennan. I liked it so much so I threw myself over the rest of the books in the series (Kiss Me Kill Me, If I Should Die, Silenced, Stalked, Reckless and Stolen). The books are just soooo good I can't stop reading. The stories are absolutely fantastic, so thrilling with many different layers and I can't remember when I read such suspense novels last. Maybe the books of Henning Mankell can match. There you also have a story and a suspense that makes it difficult to put down the book. This is a series of books and like with the Sookie Stackhouse novels it is a continuing story that covers a shorter period. Where one book ends the next one takes up. That makes you feel like part of the family and you follow the development of the relationship between Lucy and Sean and their relationship with their respective families and jobs. It seems there is a new trend in writing series with characters that belong to a ti...

When finding this title on the Kobo site I got intrigued. This is for someone like me who can hardly do anything before breakfast... even when breakfast comes at 10 a.m.! However, just having gone into early retirement and finding that on the contrary to what I believed, my days have become shorter and I am achieving less then when I was working, I thought this was a good hint. And so it is. It turns out that a lot of the most successful people in the world (at least on the American continent) go up at 5-6 a.m., go for a jogging run, reading the papers, spending time with their family and in this way manage to spend some valuable time by themselves and with their family before heading for a stressful work. It sounds really good and I got a little bit inspired.  I do realise that the reason I don't get anything done is because I start the day too late and I spend around 1,5 hours breakfasting, reading the papers and e-mails etc. By the time I have dressed it is already mid-da...