The Content Reader

This post is written also for the Read the Nobels  hosted by Aloi ( Guiltless Reading ) Harry Martinson is a Swedish Nobel Prize Laureate, receiving the prize in 1974 together with another Swedish writer Eyvind Johnson ”for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos”. He also wrote poetry, and is one of the best known ’proletarian’ writers in Sweden. I have finally got around to read one of his most famous and auto-biographical books,  Nässlorna blomma  (Flowering Nettle). It is about the boy Martin (Martinson’s alter ego), 7-11 years old during the story, and whose mantra is ”my father is dead and my mother is in California”. Martinson lost his parents at a young age; his father died and his mother left him to move to Portland, USA. He spent his earlier years in foster care. It has certainly influenced his writing in general and is specifically present in this novel. We follow Martin from when his father dies and his mother leaves the children behind...

Has finished the "K" Sue Grafton alphabetical series about female detective Kinsey Millhone. This one is from 1994, and I remember having read one in the series many years ago. I like it although I can't remember which one. I read this one in Swedish and maybe that is why I did not entirely like the writing, which could be due to the translation. It felt a little bit 'formal' at times and did not fit the overall tough, hard core writing and dialogue. Furthermore, there were some excessive 'milieu' descriptions which was a little bit repetitive and over the top. Having said that, I really like the murder mystery itself. It was rather slow, but you really get a feeling for the way a private detective have to work. Slowly, slowly finding small pieces of information leading forward, or not. When the story starts our detective is hired by the mother of Lorna Kepler to try to find her murderer. Lorna died a year ago, and the police put it down to suicide. He...

Summer is normally the time when routines are broken. You go on holiday, enjoy the sun, relax and have time to read more books. For me, this summer is something out of the extraordinary, and not exactly relaxed, even if it has been enjoyable in another way. View from our flat, over the limestone quarry  First of all my son is home from his studies. Always very nice, but it means that my office is gone! Yes, I have made his bedroom my office and now he has taken it back.  I have moved to the dining room table with my laptop, which means running around for things I normally have around my desk, taking all the more time to do simple things. But, I am not complaining, having him around is a bliss. My new desk (with possibility to change the height electronically), here as a temporary eating table Another thing that has broken my routines is that we have bought two flats in Sweden; one for us and one for our son. That generates a lot of administration and travels bac...

Ever since reading The Da Vinci Code , I have been interested in the Templars and what they were. I am obviously not alone in this interest, since the book generated a frequent stream of ’literary tourism’ to places in the book, and places connected to the Templars. The best thing to do, to find out what they really were is to read a non-fiction book about them. So, being me, I ordered two books; this one and ’ The Rise and the Fall of the Knights Templar ’ by Gordon Napier, still to be read. The beginning The book opens with a chapter called ’The Knights Templar: Knightly Monks or Monkish Knights? A very good question indeed. I think many of us forget the fact that the Templars were monks. We are used to think of monks, staying in their monastery, taking care of their gardens, doing their prayers and all in all live a very quiet, contemplating kind of life. However, the Templars we see as Knights and soldiers firstly (don’t we all have a notion of knights as a nobel class of sold...

This is a very complex book about finding the cause to the First World War. It is not possible to point to one specific cause to the start of the war. Christopher Clark makes a fantastic job in showing us the various events that lead to this terrible war. ”The European continent was at peace on the morning of Sunday 28 June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek arrived at Sarajevo railway station. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that began that summer mobilized 65 million troops, claimed three empires, 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. The horrors of Europe’s twentieth century were born of this catastrophe; it was, as the American historian Fritz Stern put it, ’the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang’. The debate over why it happened began before the first shots were fired and has been running ever since. It has spawned an historical literature of unpara...

Rose City Reader , is hosting Book beginnings on Friday . She says: Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name. Freda’s voice is hosting Friday 56 and the rules are: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. *It's that simple. My book this week is Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler Beginning ”He wakes to the scratching of a pencil against a page: a noise out of the darkness. He lies quite still on his back, reaching out for sound. His ears have become wings, straining, stretching, carrying him away. The world comes to him o...

This interesting challenge is hosted by Book Date  who have created a card à la Bingo, with five criteria in each direction, 25 in all. I will try to cover them all in my quest to lower my TBR shelves. Here is the card. So how have I done so far? Author you wish was known better - Alex Connor Published in 2016 - The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel Book from series you love - Debut novel - Thought Provoking book - The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe Had laugh out loud moments - The Almost Nearly Perfect People - Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia by Michael Booth Book club worthy - Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler Color word in title -  The Woman in White  by Wilkie Collins Authors' surname starts with same letter as yours - The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco You didn't want to put it down - The Other Rembrandt by Alex Connor Way out of comfort zone -  The Circle by Clive Eggers Family relationship word in ti...