Friday, November 23, 2012

Books you can't read in public

Noticed the paperback covers on the novels by Markus Heitz (the dwarf stories).

Well.

I'd feel really conspicuous. I mean really.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

A whole great load

Ages ago I read a book called Min pappa är snäll och min mamma är utlänning by Emmy Abrahamson. It's handy to note that down, because I suspect I might want to be able to tip someone off about it sometime. It's a book for teens about a girl whose mother is Polish and how this makes her feel like the world's greatest outsider - pretty funny, not bad at all. Absolutely no point at all in writing this in English, but I don't like mixing in the same post.

I've read Laurie King's short story Beekeeping for Beginners - honestly, wasn't that sold on it, felt a bit unfinished? I have a reserve on Pirate King at the library, so should get my hands on it in about SIX MONTHS. Longest queue ever, like. Not as long as Jonas Gardell's Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar mind, which I gave up on getting my hands on before my book club, so I merrily joined in the discussions sans a clue. But I will read it. (Just didn't want to buy it.) I read the short story collection  An Apple for the Creature, edited by Charlaine Harris, which was trivial but fun. I have no patience with most fantasy after Tolkien, but I seem to have more tolerance for urban fantasy. Odd that. I'm not saying it should win awards, but I can leaf through them on trips. You know. I also found as an ebook a bizarre science fiction tale marked "erotica" by a Randall Garrett - Pagan Passions. It's about the Greek gods returning to Earth. Some decades after their return society is completely different, all centrered around the needs and whims of the Gods. That bit is quite amusing, the descriptions of New York with temples to Athena and an orgy to honour Pan in Central Park. The "hero" of the story gets to be a stand-in for Bacchus and have loads of sex. Awful, but amusing. In an awful way. But I'm not starting an "erotica" tag... Oh and I got Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris at the library, which is the third latest Sookie Stackhouse, and I read it just after reading three Ngaio Marsh novels back to back, Dead Water and Death in Ecstasy and a re-read of Artists in Crime,  and I was struck by a similarity oddly enough, namely the obsession with politeness. LOL to me I said. Oh, in Death in Ecstasy I was tickled to bits by several references to detective stories. I'd quote for you if I could copy and paste but I can't. At the moment I'm reading a disturbing R. Austin Freeman novel, The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta. About some lunatic who believes in "physical anthropology" and goes on a vendetta to kill criminals (examples of degenerate humans) after his wife is murdered. It's all goes remarkably and disgustingly unchallenged, almost as if the author has an axe to grind, but I'm not finished with it yet. Yuck.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

"Det går inte att tänka sig fram till ett människovärde.

Det måste erövras genom handling.Du är och blir - eller inte."

Han kan han, Kristian Lundberg. Läser uppföljaren till Yarden, Och allt skall vara kärlek.

Men ändå. När jag är på sidan 140 av drygt 170 och han återigen lovar mig att han ska berätta: ja snälla, gör det. För all del. Jag väntar.