Classics club, two years in

Today marks the end of my second year in the Classics club, and although I occasionally regret my decision to sign-up (mostly when I have to write a review and don’t know what to say), overall I must say that I am very happy that I joined! I really appreciate the community around this reading challenge, and the way that it pushes me to finally read those books that I have always thought that I should read…

Highlights so far

• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Moominvalley in November and Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson
• The Brothers Lionheart (reread) by Astrid Lindgren
• Wind, sand and stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• The Poetic Edda

So far I have read 21 out of the 50 books on my list, so finishing in three years time should be realistic.

Complete reading list (hyperlinks marks the ones I have read and reviewed)
1 de Beauvoir, Simone: The Second Sex
2 Bellman, Carl Michael: Fredmans epistlar (Fredman’s epistles)
3 Boye, Karin: Kallocain
4 Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
5 Carter, Angela: Night at the Circus
6 Cather, Willa: My Antonia
7 Alighieri, Dante: Vita nuova
8 Eliot, George: Silas Marner
9 Eliot, George: Middlemarch
10 Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
11 Fogelström, Per Anders: Mina drömmars stad (City of My Dreams)
12 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Faust
13 Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of the Seven Gables
14 Ibsen, Henrik: Peer Gynt
15 Jansson, Tove: Sent i november (Moominvalley in November)
16 Jansson, Tove: Pappan och Havet (Moominpappa at Sea)
17 Kushner, Tony: Angels in America
18 Lagerlöf, Selma: Gösta Berlings saga (Gösta Berling’s Saga)
19 Lagerlöf, Selma: Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils)
20 Lindgren, Astrid: Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lionheart)
21 Linna, Väinö: Okänd soldat (The Unknown Soldier)
22 Lönnrot, Elias: Kalevala
23 Moberg, Vilhelm: Utvandrarna (The Emigrants)
24 Moberg, Vilhelm: Din stund på jorden (A Time on Earth)
25 Morrison, Toni: Beloved
26 Plath, Sylvia: Ariel
27 Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
28 Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
29 Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children
30 de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: The Little Prince
31 de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine: Wind, Sand and Stars
32 Sayers, Dorothy: Gaudy Night
33 Scott, Robert Falcon: Scott’s last expedition
34 Sei Shōnagon: The Pillow Book
35 Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
36 Sturlasson, Snorre: Heimskringla
37 Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
38 Thorvall, Kerstin: Det mest förbjudna
39 Tikkanen, Märta: Arnaía kastad i havet
40 Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
41 Tunström, Göran: Juloratoriet (The Christmas Oratorio )
42 Undset, Sigrid: Kransen (The Wreath, Kristin Lavransdatter triology, part one)
43 Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
44 Den poetiska Eddan (Poetic Edda)

Anthologies etc.
45 Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis and other stories
46 Lie, Jonas: Fortellinger i utvalg (Selected stories)
47 Mansfield, Katherine: Short story collection
48 Pushkin, Alexander: The Queen of spades and other stories
49 Rumi: Selected poems
50 Selected Bible books: Psalms, Revelation

 

Momo – micro review

Michael Ende may be best know for The Neverending Story, but my favourite novel of his has always been Momo. In it the young girl Momo sees her friends turn into hollow shadows of themselves as they one by one gets tricked into saving time by mysterious Grey Men. It is a beautiful exploration of the concept of time and have some really disturbing antagonists, I really recommend it!

As Momo is a childhood favourite of mine I would have liked to give you a proper review, but the truth is that I am too tired. Last week was long and stressful and although all went well it left me drained. In fact it left me pretty much like the victims of the Grey Men so perhaps I should have taken the novel’s warning that to save time is to waste life more seriously…

 

 

 

The pillow book

On the day after a fierce autumn wind*

On the day after a fierce autumn wind I was looking through my bookshelves, trying to decide on my next read, when my eyes fell on The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon. Sei Shōnagon was a lady in waiting at the court of Heian Japan, and The Pillow Book gives an intriguing view into her life. It is structures as a series of short musings about her life, people she like and dislike, lists of  various things, fashion comments, all in all not unlike a modern blog, if it weren’t for the very high quality of the writing and the largely alien world she describes (it was finished in the year 1002).

Boring things

While it is amusing to see that the temptation to make lists was known already in Heian Japan I must admit that I found some of Sei Shōnagon’s lists boring. I suppose they made sense when they were written, and perhaps they still do if read in Japanese or with a deeper understanding of the context, but when I read a list of e.g. bridges, all I see is a list of names. Fortunately only a small portion of the text is comprised by this type of lists.

How delightful everything is!

Sei Shōnagon has a very keen eye for beauty which makes her descriptions delightful to read. The life she describes is also fascinating, perhaps especially the very high status that poetry had in court life. For example I really enjoyed learning that visiting lovers were supposed to send a poem on the morning after a visit.

Things that are unpleasant to hear

Delightful as the book is in many ways, there is no way around the fact that Sei Shōnagon is a snob. This fact is sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, and occasionally, when she writes about someone from the lower classes, it can make the text rather unpleasant.

Embarrassing things

There is no doubt that I miss a lot of the allusions and poetry, both by having to read it in translation, and by my near complete ignorance of Heian Japan. However, the introduction by Robin Duke and the excellent footnotes by the translator Ivan Morris in my copy helped make it enjoyable, even though much of the text still clearly went above my head.

*All the headlines have been borrowed directly from chapter headings in The Pillow Book.

I reread The Pillow Book as part of my classics club reading challenge.

Time for a spin

It is time for another Classics Club spin! In it I trust random chance to decide which book I need to read before October 31th 2019. The rules are simple, I have to make a numbered list of twenty books from my Classics Club reading list and on the 23th of September the Classics Club will draw a number and thus tell me which of my books I should read.

The books I selected are:

1. de Beauvoir, Simone: The Second Sex
2. Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Margarita
3. Fogelström, Per Anders: Mina drömmars stad (City of My Dreams)
4. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Faust
5. Ibsen, Henrik: Peer Gynt (winner)
   
6. Kushner, Tony: Angels in America
7. Lie, Jonas: Fortellinger i utvalg (Selected stories)
8. Linna, Väinö: Okänd soldat (The Unknown Soldier)
9. Mansfield, Katherine: Short story collection
10. Morrison, Toni: Beloved
11. Plath, Sylvia: Ariel
12. Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
13. Scott, Robert Falcon: Scott’s last expedition
14. Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
15. Sturlasson, Snorre: Heimskringla
16. Thorvall, Kerstin: Det mest förbjudna
17. Tikkanen, Märta: Arnaía kastad i havet
18. Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
19. Undset, Sigrid: Kransen (The Wreath, Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, part one)
20. Walker, Alice: The Color Purple

I’m hoping for 3, 5, 8 or 14 and fear 15 and 18.

Wish me luck!

Edit: And the winner is Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, one of the books I wished for!

 

My Antonia

Once more I made the mistake of waiting too long before reviewing and now I find myself with little to say. However, My Antonia is on my Classics Club reading list and thus must be reviewed. Perhaps I can use the classical homework trick of trying to distract you from my shallow writing by showing pictures of cute animals? Just look at those adorable sheep! I’m almost certain that there were some sheep in the novel somewhere…

It is unfortunate that I will have to do such a poor job reviewing this novel as it was one of my favourite reads this summer. The descriptions were beautiful, but without bogging down the text, and the characters felt alive and well worth knowing. I also really liked how the novel focused on the immigrant experience. As Sweden had a very high US emigration per capita I have heard much about the emigration from a Swedish perspective and really enjoyed seeing it from the US side. After having read O Pioneers! last summer and My Antonia this summer, Willa Cather is quickly becoming one of my favourite classical US authors.

 

 

Progress report

Map showing the author’s country of birth for all books I have read so far in 2019. (Instructions for how I make these maps can be found here.)

August is at its end which I guess is a perfect time for me to look back at what I have read in 2019. So far I have read 81 books, by 35 women and 36 men (and ten by multiple authors). I have read books from 16 decades and by authors from 14 countries and I have read them in four different languages (which sounds really impressive unless I accidentally tell you that three of those languages are Scandinavian).

Some reading highligts

• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson
• Kolarhistorier (Charcoal burner’s tales) by Dan Andersson
• Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
• Rereadings by Anne Fadiman (ed)
• The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Reading challenges in 2019

Reading classics

For the Classics club my ambition was to read and review 12 books from my list. So far I have only reviewed four, so I am falling a bit behind on this challenge but I have a few more in the pipe-line so I shouldn’t do too badly.

Read and reviewed in 2019

• Kallocain by Karin Boye
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson

Read but not reviewed

• My Antonia by Willa Cather

Currently reading

• The Pillow Book
• Fredmans epistlar
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Keep reading books by African, Asian and South American authors

I am not doing too well on this ambition. Africa and South America are once again blank spots on my reading map and although I am doing slightly better with Asia and the Middle East, most of my reading comes from UK, US or one of the Nordic countries. With only a few exceptions I am afraid that I have stayed quite firmly within my reading comfort zone this year. Hopefully the autumn will be calmer and leave me with more energy to be brave in my reading.

Best read in this category: Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag.

Book buying

My book buying ambition this year was to spend less on books than I did last year. I am doing well so far, I have only spend 72% of what I did the first eight months of 2018, so I am optimistic.

How is your 2019 reading going? Any recommendations on South American or African books? Recommendations on short, easy, but good, fiction from these continents are particularly welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Micro reviews of some of my summer reading

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Well, that was one of the longest 250 pages novels I have ever read. And yet it all started so promising. An interesting premise, an atmospheric setting and then, just when I thought that the stage was set and the story would begin in earnest, Hawthorne instead choose to continue setting the scenes. Everything was described for pages upon pages, every plot twist foreshadowed to the point where I was bored by it before it even happened. Perhaps it would have been more rewarding to a closer reading but as I am not a very close reader at the best of times and even less so when I’m deeply bored (of fiction that is, I’m happy to dissect non-fiction when needed). I would have given it up halfway if I had not included it on my Classics club reading list.

Silas Marner by George Eliot

I read Middlemarch by George Eliot last summer and was deeply impressed, so naturally I had high expectations on Silas Marner. Especially as it features one of my favourite tropes, that of the grumpy old man, in this case the miserly weaver Silas Marner,  who opens up when he comes to care for a child (Goodnight Mr Tom is my favourite version of that trope). Perhaps my expectations were too high, at least I couldn’t help being slightly disappointed. Not that it wasn’t good, it was, but while the plot in Middlemarch seemed to flow naturally with only the slightest nudges from the author needed to put everyone were they should be, the plot in Silas Marner felt heavier and more contrived. As if the characters actions were done to ensure their just end, rather than stemming naturally from their characters. Of course it was still good,  with excellent writing, but I expected more.

Both Silas Marner and The House of the Seven Gables are on my Classics club reading list. Both are available for free from Project Gutenberg.