quote

i want this george orwell quote on a t-shirt.

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

so far so good

so, it's september now. (what?!) what better time is there to review the year so far. (stay with me here.)

so far this year i've read 23 books. i keep this information not in my brain but in my reading diary i started using in may of last year, because, obviously, who really remembers what they've read. had i not had the diary i'd never remembered what i read a month ago, let alone 6 months, or a year ago. so, yay for reading diaries! it's not a very elaborate thing, i only record title, author, date and a few key words or notes about it, so no pressure.

so in order of appearance, this is it.

1. our band could be your life by michael azerrad. this lovely little book of 500 pages is subtitled "scenes from the american indie underground 1981-1991" and covers a whole line of important bands and indie labels, starting with the d.c. hardcore scene (and sst) and moving west to olympia with k records and sub pop. some of the bands covered is black flag, minutemen, hüsker dü, sonic youth, dinosaur jr, the replacements, fugazi, beat happening and mudhoney. it's a very nerdy and really interesting book, especially if you, like me, have an insatiable need for all things music-related.
   
   
   
2. the virgin suicides by jeffrey eugencides. actually i started reading this last year when i was in glasgow, but put it down cos i found it boring. i really loved the movie so i was greatly disappointed with the book, i actually had to force myself to finish it, even if it's not very long. my tip is, watch the movie instead.
   
   
   
3. the bell jar by sylvia plath. finally i got what the title actually means! at first a bit confusing but in the end things kind of fall into place.
   
   
4. jenny by jonas gardell. i liked it before i even read it since it has my name on it, but really it didn't need that circumstance to lean on, it stands very well on its own. it's a beautifully written story. jonas is one of my favourite swedish authors in that he writes poetic and doesn't duck heavy and tragic content, such as violence, bullying, rape, abuse and the like.
   
   
5. living my life by emma goldman. what a woman! this is emma's abridged autobiography, and it's still on over 550 pages! she's truly a fascinating woman. there's a lot of late 1800-early 1900 history in here, both on russia and on the u.s. i'm no history expert of any kind but there were things in here that i've never ever heard of and that clearly has been written out of history by the people who "won". it's a personal inside account on what went on in the american workers movement during this time and on the revolution in russia and its aftermaths. it's very dense and took some time to read but it was worth it.
   
   
6. black girl/white girl by joyce carol oates. my first novel by her. has lots of contrast; white - black, rich - poor, religion - atheism, prejudice - open-mindedness, shielding - non-shielding. my strongest memory is that it was haunting.
   
   
7. bitch - in praise of difficult women by elizabeth wurtzel. at times it was a bit ranting, but mostly it's smart and interesting. it's typical wurtzel in style and with lots of pop culture. according to herself in her second memoir (more, now, again, 2001) she was high a lot of the time when writing this, but i can't really say that you can tell, except maybe for it being very long.
   
   
8. america the beautiful by moon unit zappa. i liked it! i had similarities to what francesca lia block writes and not only the setting. lots of art and music.
   
   
9. prime by poppy z brite. sequel to liquor and as everything poppy, really good.
   
   
10. soul kitchen by poppy z brite. sequel to prime and also great. poppy is one of my absolute favorite writers.
    
    
11. the gum thief by douglas coupland. oh, man. as much as i love my favorite canadian's style and books, this one was a bit of a disappointment. it's hard to describe it as strange, cos most of his stories are a bit strange, but this was stranger. it was still good, but it wasn't great, which i always expect and almost always receive from coupland.
    
    
12. special topics in calamity physics by marisha pessl. i became very infatuated with this novel. i still am! its form doesn't fit its contents, but because of that i really does; it's really a coming-of-age kind of story but in an academic form and a kind of dense but also poetic and beautiful language. there's a lot of contrasts here. also there's mystery! i don't know if the countless references to music, literature, poetry, theatre and movies (mostly old ones) are real of phony, but it doesn't really matter cos it's credible enough to work perfectly in the story.
    
    
13. the amethyst child by sarah singleton. an ok book for teenagers with everything it should have; friendship, summer holiday, parents who just don't get it, falling in love, identification.. and a cult!
    
    
14. the devil you know by poppy z brite. a collection of short stories. some good, some better.
    
    
15. this book will save your life by a.m. homes. i believe i wrote about this, yeah? i want donuts!
    
    
16. garnethill by denise mina. i rarely read crime, but i would never hesitate to pick up a novel by denise mina. i wrote about this as well, see the link above.
    
    
17. the mistress's daughter by a.m. homes. a very very honest and raw autobiography mostly revolving around her adoption and when as an adult she came in contact with her biological parents. disturbing and interesting.
    
    
18. all families are psychotic by douglas coupland. a bit crazier than usually but very sweet.
    
    
19. exile by denise mina. book no 2 in the garnethill trilogy. maureen o'donnell's crazy life continues with a new suspicious murder. well written and very thrilling.
    
    
20. resolution by denise mina. book no 3 in the garnethill trilogy. great as before.
    
    
21. moral disorder by margaret atwood. my first book by atwood. i still can't really tell what this story is actually about but i liked reading it. it's a bit fragmented and it seems like it's made up of shorter stories that wasn't really meant to go together from the beginning, maybe. there were odd things about it, like the voice of the narrator changed between first person and second person over the chapters for no apparent reason. but all in all i enjoyed it. i plan to read her more known novels (the handmaid's tale and oryx and crake) in a not so far future.
    
    
22. the brooklyn follies by paul auster. a truly awesome novel! very inspiring and extremely well written. i now have a huge crush on paul auster!
    
    
23. låt den rätte komma in by john ajvide lindqvist. an impressive vampire/horror story set in a working-class suburb to stockholm in 1981. i'm so impressed by this that i scarcely know what to say about it. it's well written, totally believable, thrilling and sweet! (available as english translation)

this is normally about what i read in a year so that must mean i get 4 months extra this year. i have a pile of book to read next (more paul auster and john ajvide lindqvist to start with) but if you should have read something really great lately, please tell me! and as for you; now you have lots to pick from. if you don't know what to read next, don't blame it on me.

what matters?

one of my all-time favorite novels is high fidelity by nick hornby. the movie is also awesome. i love the novel for several reasons.

first of all i really like the language, and the tone of it. the flow of it is fantastic. you're really there, you can see the racks of records you want to go through so badly, and the awkwardness gets under your skin.

second of all, i really dig the characters. they are really real, like it says on the back of the penguin edition "oh god, i know people just like that!", we really do. rob becomes your best buddy, or worst, and you fall in love with him, or with dick. barry is.. well, he's jack black, essentially, which is one reason the movie version works so well.

third, it really appeals to the geek in me; top ten lists, obscure musical facts, pop-cultural references, anal filing systems, obsessive behavior, the focus on mixed tapes.

at one place in the book (p.91) rob ponders on something he's been talking to the others about in relation to his underlying women problem, namely what really matters, what you like or what you are like, and says that

"..the truth was that these things matter, and it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."

those of you who's read the book or watched the movie knows what it eventually resolves to, but whatever that is i still think this is an interesting dilemma, cos even though it's superficial and even mis-guiding to judge people on what they like, it does, after all, matter. at least to me. certainly not as much as it does to barry with his questionnaire, but still.

however, there are morons with impeccable taste, just like there are awesome persons without taste (i call them radio listeners). i think it matters what people are like, but generally i do prefer them to have good taste.

that's what i think. what do you think? i put the poll to the right up just to find out, so please click it. thanks.

oh, and for the love of god, if you haven't read the book, make sure you do that first, but fast, you only have a week before my poll closes.

calamity physics

i take it you've all heard the expression that goes something like "if you're gonna read one book this year, let it be this one". (my memory is a bit fuzzy here i admit.)

well. that book should be special topics in calamity physics (2006) by marisha pessl.

i just finished reading it and i can honestly say i've never read anything like it. it may not be the best book i've ever read, but it's certainly one of the most special books i've ever read. it had me at the first couple of pages and i just had to have more, right till the end. the characters and the plot - but also the language, her fantastic use of it - has been in my head 24-7 for the week it took to get through the 515 pages and i have no doubts as to them staying there a bit longer. i'm not quite ready to write a review yet, i'm still in a phase where i just want to throw adjectives at it. like fascinating. interesting. thrilling. heart-breaking. devouring. beautiful.

you get the idea. i'll try to gather my thoughts soon enough. here's some kind of official site i haven't quite figured out yet, and here's what some others thought of it.

on blogging

if i had a faq (which i obviously don't) the first question on it would ultimately be why i blog; to which i have no real answer. but! to question number two, i do! i thought i would share that with you. so;

2.
q: why do you blog in english, when you're a native swedish speaking person?

a: there are really two reasons to why i blog in english. the first is that since i have friends outside of sweden who doesn't speak swedish it's easier to just do it in english, cos everybody speaks english.

the second reason goes a few years back. when i started studying english at the university (as part of my teaching education) i almost at once felt i had to practice my writing in english and figured blogging would be a good way to do that. so i started my old blog - which is now shut down for several reasons, one being the content of it was a whole lot more personal than this one and i really wouldn't want any of my pupils finding it - and maintained it for about two and a half years, about a year longer than i studied. in retrospect i think it was a good thing i did it cos it did help me with my writing. just writing essays and reviews and stuff we did in the different courses is hard when you're not used to using a language that way. granted, i've studied english all through school since i was 10 (like everybody else) and have been reading mainly english and american literature since i was about 18, but writing is different. or, at least to me it was.

during that time i guess i just got used to writing in english, cos once i'd shut the old blog down i felt i needed to create a new one. i've also found it convenient keeping a blog to entertain my language skills, cos being out of college and nearly only speaking english to 9th graders has a damaging effect on them.

readability

this was way fun. click and try.

the blog readability test answers the question "what level of education is required to understand your blog?"

old times

i was digging through old links and found these two pages, fantastic in different ways, and both funny as hell.

the music nerd test, mostly for contemporary/modern music fans though (sorry dave, but give it a shot!), at which i scored "54.34783% - Super Music Nerd". part of me wants to score higher, but parts of me realizes that i'm still not socially inept so scoring somewhat high but not, you know, HIGH is actually a good thing. the girl who's created the test, and the site, has the good taste to really like douglas coupland (url is couplandesque.net) and it's from her i learned that the word couplandesque is actually used! i love coupland's books, but that's for another entry.

a person paper on purity of language is a great satirical text dealing with inconsistencies, prejudice and bias in the english language. to make a point about how excluding expressions and grammatical rules are for women he exchanges women for blacks and men for whites and the effect is obvious. one thing that's really great is that he uses the same argument as the defenders of the generic he does (i've read a lot of texts about that..) which only makes me think less of it (not the text that is). i found it while studying english linguistics a few years ago and doing a thesis on language and gender. it's a great read; eyeopening and funny, and not just for language geeks such as myself.