Books on the Menu

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith. USA

@brittarnhild

I already had A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on my Kindle, and had started to read its frist chapters before I started this project. Then I picked it up again a few days ago, and since then I could not put it down. The book is about the first 17 years of a working class girl, Francie Nolan, and her family who lives in the poor people´s area in Brooklyn. When the book came out in 1947, shortly after WWII, it was an immense success, and with a new translation here on Norway these days, it has become a success once again.

Francia Nolan, the little girl growing into a woman. How I would have loved to know that girl. She is described so real, so vulnerable, so strong. I cried with her, I laughed with her.

When I read books I often read with a pencil. This is kind of harder when you read books on the Kindle, but this time I did some highlights. Like when Francie tells her brother about the first time she saw a tulip:
"Last spring, in McCarren´s Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life." "!How do you know it was a tulip if you´d ever seen one?" "I´d seen pictures. Well, when I looked at it, the way it was growing, and how the leaves were, and how purely red the petals were, with yellow inside, the world turned updide down and everythning went around like the colours in the kaleidoscope .......I was so dizzy I had to sit on a park bench."

My daughters are not readers the way I am. But this is a book I want them to read. I will buy them a copy each and give it as a special mother gift.

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The photo is a tree growing in Kew Gardens in London :-)

 

Volcano and Miracle, Gustaw Herling. Poland

@brittarnhild

Gustaw Herling, as the name on the book says, or Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski was born in Poland in 1919 and died in 2000. In 1940 he was captured by the Russioans and spent two years in a Soviet labor camp. Volcane and Miracle is a collection of more than 100 journal entries from 1970 to 1993. Some of them hard for me to understand, especially when he writes about authors or artists unknown to me. Others, like when he writes about Venice, are like sucking a favorite candy.

A book I would never have read if not for this project.
A book which has broadened my mind.

 

Selected Poems, Federico García Lorca. Spain

@brittarnhild

I want this literary travel through all the countries in the world to be way of broadening my mind. Through reading authors new to me, to exploring countries I´ve hardly heard of, and to read other kinds of literature than when I usually do. Poetry is not on my every day reading list, still, for Spain I chose Lorca and a book with his selected poems. We are in Spain this week, in Tenerife, so two days ago you found me laying on the beach, sun bathing and enjoying Lorca´s poems.

Lorca has a wide range of different types of poets, the one I want to share with you here is a short, funny one:

Folish Song

Mama,
I want to turn into silver.

Son,
you´d freeze.

Mama,
I want to turn into water.

Son,
you´d freeze.

Mama,
sew me into your pillow.

This time yes,
and straightaway!

 

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Federico García Lorca was born in Granada in 1898. The photo shows pomegranates I photographed in Granada in 2009 :-)

The History of Bees, Maja Lunde. Norway

@brittarnhild

For Christmas I got The History of Bees by the Norwegian author Maja Lunde. A thick book, 450 pages, and when we flew south to the Canary Island some days ago, I brought the book with me to read on the plane. A perfect choice. The book tells, as the title indicates, the history of bees, and does so through three different people, William, a depressed biologist, family father and seed merchant in England in 1852. George, a bee keeper in the USA in 2007 and Tao who works with hand pollinating in China in 2098.

Bees are what keeps the stories together, and as the tales unfold you find that they are interwoven in more than one way. The death of bees, a fact that has been a concern for the world for several years now. Lunde makes us belive not only the past and the currant tales, but also the one set in the future, and thouh showing us the dark, depressed side of life as it can be without bees, the end of the book is clear: hope.

AS far as I can see from the Norwegian publisher´s site the rights to the book is sold to many countries already, but not to any English speaking ones. At least not yet.

 

Winter Tales, Karen Blixen. Denmark

@brittarnhild

My fifth book is from one of Norway´s neighbour countries, Denmark. Vintereventyr or Winter Tales by Karen Blixen. I chose the book simply because it was one I already had in my shelves, in Norwegian, and after reading all the pervious ones, and probably most of the coming ones, in English, it felt good to rest a little in my mother tongue.

Karen Blixen, or Isak Dinesen, which is the name she often used when she wrote, is best known for her Out of Africa, and more people have seen the film than read the book I guess. I have the book, but wanted to read something else by this amazing writer, and so I ended up with Vintereventyr.

The book consists of eleven different short stories, all of them, though very different, tell the tales of humans and their fate. I have read the book in a couple of days only, but will not advice you to do the same if you decide to read it. Every one of the eleven tales need at least one day of its own, to get deeper into the lives we meet, to try to understand the fates and the choices Blixen present for us. 11 tales presented in a mixture of realism and fables, every tale focusing on the different shades which colours humans. Karen Blixen´s art of storytelling is based on the old oral masters, as we know them from 1001 Nights all the way up to H.C.Andersen.

A masterpiece.

The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak. Turkey

@brittarnhild

Christmas has been a slow reading period for me, but now, as the everydays are back, I am also back to a more full reading routine, and on the bus home from work this afternoon, I finished Elif Shafak´s The Bastard of Istanbul and can check the fourth country on my world travel reading list.

I visited Istanbul in August 2013. It was a work trip and the days had a busy program, but one afternoon I was able to find time to meet a friend I´ve got to know though internet. She took me around, showed me places I would not have found by myself, told my fortune in my empty coffee cup and told me about Turkish writers. Again and again she mentioned Elif Shafak, and when I found a bookstore the next day with Turkish books in English, I knew what to look for. Shafak of course, but also a few others. When I started this world travel project, I sent my friend an email, asking her what she would recommend from her country, and again she pointed out Shafak. So it ended up being an easy choice for me to find out what to read from Turkey.

I am not going to write a review of the book, it is so easy to google it and find one if you want. But I can´t help sharing that, though the book gave me a slow start, I felt there were too many loose threads, as soon as I knew how to knit them together, I was mezmerised by the tale. And was it not for the fact that I must now continue to a new country, I would have made a stop now to read more Elif Shafak.

The photos are from my visit in 2013.

 

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I got an email today from my friend in Istanbul. Here is what she writes about Elif Shafak:

when i read her first book 'the fleapalace appartment' i thought i have discovered a marvellous writer.. and will be reading all her books.. i even desired to read her sociology doctorate thesis which was about the estheatic prototype of the urbane turkish woman..
her name was.. şafak as it is written in turkish.. must be in 96.. or 97..

it was the first effect..
then she continued to write.. and she changed..
the bastard is the last novel i have read and liked..
the one following was about the depression after giving birth.. which i did not get interested. it was right after she had given birth.. the black milk..
then she has written about a homosexual young boy.. and she wore man clothes and her photo was on the cover of the book..
iskender..
in the meantime her books started to be translated to other languages..
and her name changed as well.. she now was shafak... even on the books in turkish language..

then she wrote 'love'.. which i couldn't support to read because it was about mevlana c. rûmi.. the book's cover was a pink heart on pink background.. male readers said that they were not comfortable about carrying the book around ..
bam.. there comes a grey cover for male readers..

young people loved to share quotes from her novels.. bam comes an aphorisms book..

and comes an advertorial of credit card where she acts as though she is the v. woolf of 21 century..

she has a small book in which short articles about feelings and thoughs are printed.. i liked it.. i felt as though i have found my writer again.. the one i fell in love..
but then comes another one again .. at which she still uses mevlana's profit..
now with the new politicians who want to play the ottomans.. comes a novel of ottoman era..
the last novel has been criticesed because she has changed too many well known important historical facts and architecture.. to suit the novel's intrigues.. and as she said that she had studied a lot about the era.. even the architects wrote articals against her.. saying if she has studied enough she would know.. such or such facts..
she anwered i am not a historian or architect but a writer so i change whatever suits me..

as a sumary..
i can say..
she is a gifted writer..
she is a great observer..
but she is also a pr project..
she is beautiful.. she sells her image..
she writes about things that the people will be interested.. she sells her books..
she twits.. i follow her.. she is always milkywater.. never any sharp observation or criticism.. she is soo attentive so that no one can resents her..

this is not the literature i like.. this is popular culture.. you want wise words here you are.. you want genocide.. here you are.. you want motherhood.. there you are.. you want what?.. i will write about it.. as she is a sociology graduate career woman.. she reads what will sell and does it..

but i must say that i accept she is an intelligent business woman whose main article is herself...

Photo: my friend reading my future :-)