Library visit

I'm back baby. For the first time in I don't know how long I went to the library today. Figured I should stock up for the two nights I'm working next week. Sadly I forgot to bring a list of "books I meant to read", so I ended up browsing rather randomly. And I couldn't even find the science-fiction, which is where Ursula K. LeGuin normally is to be found (I think there is a special shelf anyway. Am now beset with horrible suspicion that perhaps they were integrated with normal fiction), which I wanted because I re-read The Left Hand of Darkness and enjoyed it even more than the first time. Such a wonderful creation of a brand new world! It's only marred by the underlying theme of gender, which is too rooted in the time it was written and thus holds no credibility as being ideas of the future. It's to preachingly done, and should have been dropped. I got a random seletion of other books though, several of which I think I've read. But one (by Mil Millington) is definitely unread, so I'm just going to have to double-check the others and return them if they seem to familiar.

In an embarrassing echo of my previous LeGuin post I wasn't allowed to borrow the books at the self-service desk, because I owed 136 crowns and had been blocked. Remind me not to lend my husband my library card again.

Skuld by Karin Alvtegen

My mother-in-law gave me this crime story when we were visiting for Christmas. She had a pile of books she didn’t want, and I didn’t want most of them either but I did think this one might be okay. Karin Alvtegen is one of Sweden’s more well-known crime fiction writers, but I’d never read anything by her. Skuld is her debut, printed in 1998. As you may or may not have noticed I tend to favour crime fiction from the English-speaking world. Part of the reason is that reading in English is one way to keep the language going, part of it is more irrational – I had had a longish phase of reading certain Swedish writers (Mankell and Guillou) in one go so to speak, and since their books got progressively worse as the series lengthened my enthusiasm faded and rubbed off on all Swedish crime fiction. Also I was sorely disappointed by Liza Marklund's first novel Sprängaren – awful book I thought. And my attempt at diving into the olden goldies and reading some Maria Lang wasn’t terrible successful either – the woman was so productive that quality was varied, to say the least, and I only wanted to read the good ones.

The downside of this then is that I haven’t at all kept up with contemporary Swedish crime fiction, which is a booming business. The upside is that I haven’t at all kept up with contemporary Swedish crime fiction, and I have it all before me. Around Christmas I read in the newspaper that ALT’s latest issue was dedicated to crime fiction, expressed an interest to my husband, whereupon he promptly went out and got it for me. (ALT, Atlas Litterära Tillägg, is a Swedish periodical about literature, published by Atlas publishing house.) There were a whole bunch of good articles in it, but I was especially taken with a conversation between two writers about writing, the genre, fame and so on. I’ve made a mental note now to pick these two up at the library and give them a go.

So back to Karin Alvtegen! First, let's clarify that I'm writing in English because Alvtegen has been translated (although apparently Skuld has not). The cover promises this to be a thriller, and it was. Peter Brolin, a lonely, broken, bankrupt man is sitting in a café when a woman, endlessly yapping, sits down at his table and asks him if he, as part of his job as a private detective, will deliver a package to her husband. Brolin is no detective, and the whole encounter has a night-marish quality to him in his depressed state, but he does it. The “husband”, Lundgren, turns out to be an extremely wealthy businessman – unmarried. And the package contains a cut-off toe. The desperate Lundgren hires Brolin to help him catch the stalker before the situation escalates. There is a twist to the story which I didn’t see coming at all, so for that alone I applaud Alvtegen. Another thing she manages very well is muscling out Brolin’s character. She describes his reclusive and depressed nature and thoughts excellently and movingly. Perhaps I was more susceptible though, since I’m going through a bad patch and just feel like I can relate – but I really felt for poor Brolin. Sadly, Lundgren isn’t at all as full-blooded, and I was never really satisfied with how quickly he befriended Brolin. Despite a perfectly adequate explanation it just doesn’t seem a hundred per cent. Could have done with more time, more padding, to seem believable. Also, it’s a little too easy the way the identity of the stalker can remain undiscovered for so long. I feel we’re expected to skim over that bit too readily, because the author knows it’s a weakness in the plot. I’d recommend this though, and I’ll be reading more of Alvtegen. She shows a genuine interest in the inner workings of a human being that is very appealing. Her writing bears the marking of one who has known genuine pain, and she manages to convey this to the reader. Recommended.

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

Another present from my husband. He was thinking of getting me this for Christmas but didn’t get around to it. He asked me if I’d like it, and I answered, confidently and cheerfully, that “I like anything by Bill Bryson my dear”. This is Bryson’s biography of Shakespeare, and he makes a point of telling us in the introduction that it’s a slim volume because he’s stuck to the facts, and there just aren’t that many of those. It’s an interesting and mildly humorous summary of what we really can claim to know about Shakespeare’s life, and towards the end a mildly sardonic debunking of the people who claim that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare, someone else did. Bryson’s stance, incidentally, is that there is not a shred of evidence to support that idea. I think that this book is an excellent introduction to the subject. It’s short and easy to read, and discards a lot of myths surrounding the bard. However I’m always a little wary when someone who is not a professional scholar writes a book like this one. Can I be sure that his or her research is sound? Oh the anguish the anguish. Apart from that huge, fundamental query I have a few minor quibbles: one is that Bryson early in the book mentions the first printed collection of Shakespeare’s plays, the First Folio, yet it’s not until somewhere towards the end, when we’ve reached that point in time when the collection is assembled, that there’s a footnote explaining what a folio is. In my opinion that could have been stuck in a little sooner. Also I found it a little hard to read about an author who is all but invisible in history except for his works without actually having more of the works in the text, if you see what I mean. Possibly this biography then is best read to supplement a study of Shakespeare’s works. Anyway, I’m glad to have it. It may well come in handy in a few years if my daughters read Shakespeare at school.

I've worked two nights now but it's hard to read actually if you have to hold conversations with your colleague. This must be resolved somehow.