Chapter 36: Best of 2009

I cannot believe how fast time has flown! It feels like only yesterday I was sitting in my hotelroom balcony in Portoroz, Slovenia, reading Cranford by Elizabet Gaskell, enjoying the sun and every now and then lifting my eyes from the book and admiring the view towards the Mediterranean, and that was in July! Today, quite a few books (though not as many as I would have liked) later, I'm sitting at home, every now and then shifting my eges from the computer screen towards the window to see if it's still snowing as it has been most of the day. (It is, but it's already so dark outside that I had to walk to the window to take a closer look.)

Here is my top 10 reads for 2009:

10. Oscar Wilde: Lady Windermere's Fan. I love Oscar. :) I'm not really into plays, neither in book form nor in the theatre, but I love his witty writing.

9. Gaile Parkin: Baking Cakes in Kigali. I had earlier read Gil Courtemanche's novel about the Rwandan genoside, and let me tell you, it was not a fun read. Parkin's book gave a completely different and much more optimistic view of Rwanda and Kigali, even though it touched on several serious subjects.

8. Sylvia Brownrigg: Pages for You. This is a beautifully written, bittersweet story of a young woman's first love with another woman. I'd highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to read some good GLBT fiction.

7. Tracy Chevalier: Remarkable Creatures. I loved this novel, it was fascinating to learn about the fossile hunters in early 19th century Britain, and it feels almost cruel to rate it only seventh in my top 10 list, but it cannot be helped.

6. Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford. My first ever Gaskell, but surely not the last (I'm actually one story down, three to go with a collection of four of her short stories that I'm reading for the Women Unbound Challenge).

5. Geraldine Brooks: People of the Book. Loved this one, too. I usually like historical novels of this type. Hello, it was about a book!!:) And the modern day setting of Sarajevo after the 1990s war, made me want to read more novels about the Balkans (This book is not only about the Balkans, though.).

4. Sarah Waters: The Little Stranger. It's written by Sarah Waters, of course I liked it! She is one of my favorite authors and I have read all her novels. This is not my favorite, though. Tipping the Velvet is still my no. 1. Waters novel, but The Little Stranger competes for the second position with The Nightwatch.

3. Markus Zusak: The Book Thief. What can I say? I cried twice while reading this book. It is such a touching story.

2. Courtney Angela Brkic: Stillness. Amazing short story collection with stories set in the Balkans in the 1990s and telling stories from all sides of the conflict.

1. Steven Galloway: The Cellist of Sarajevo. This book, in my opinion, is simply amazing. Not only my best read this year, but it went straight into my favorite books ever -list!

Oh, and I did reread both Orlando and The Time Traveller's Wife this year, but I will not include rereads into my top 10 list.

Happy, Happy New Year everyone!

Chapter 35: What's in a Name?

What a nice (and white!!) Christmas I had! It all can be pretty much summed up in two words: eating and reading! :) I had thought to save rereading Orlando by Virginia Woolf until 2010 as it was my plan to read it for the GLBT Challenge. In the end I simply could not wait. Especially not after I finished reading Suzanne Raitt's book Vita & Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf just a few days before Christmas. There is a chapter in the book about Orlando and it helped me read the novel with new eyes. I also read Amir D. Aczel's non-fiction book The Cave and the Cathedral: How a Real Life Indiana Jones and a Renegade Scholar Decoded the Ancient Art of Man. Despite the really stupid name, the book was an interesting read. I also read Clisson and Eugenie by Napoleon Bonaparte. Yes, the Napoleon Bonaparte. It seems he liked to avoid getting bored while in military camp by writing. The story itself is very short, but the book contains also information about Napoleon as a writer and info about the reconstruction of the story from various fragments. On Monday I finished Astrid and Veronica by Linda Olsson. I'm now halfway through my suffragette level aim in the Women Unbound Challenge! Which leads us nicely to today's post. I've decided to join What's in a Name 3 Challenge.

What's in a Name? is a challenge hosted in 2010 for the first time by Beth F. The aim of the challenge is to read in 2010 one book in each of the six categories chosen by Beth. There should be one book with a name that includes 1. FOOD, 2. BODY OF WATER, 3. TITLE, 4. PLANT, 5. PLACE, and 6. MUSIC TERM. It is not necessary to name the books one is going to read beforehand, but I just could not help myself to make a list of possible novels. These are such fun categories. I thought to make a list of 6 X 5 books, but ended up with 6 X 10! I will not include links to these titles, as it would take too much time to link them all. Here goes:

1. FOOD

-Aimee Bender: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

-Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate

-Joanne Harris: Chocolat

-Joanne Harris: Five Quarters of the Orange

-Lauren Liebenberg: The Volumtuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam

-Kate O'Brien: The Land of Spices

-Gaile Parkin: Baking Cakes in Kigali

-Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: The Guernsay Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

-Rosie Wilde: Life Is Too Short to Frost a Cupcake

-Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

2. BODY OF WATER

-Alessandro Baricco: The Ocean

-George Mackay Brown: Beside the Ocean of Time

-Paulo Coelho: By the River Piedra, I sat Down and Wept

-Carol Goodman: The Lake of Dead Languages

-Kate Grenville: The Secret River

-Ha Jin: In the Pond

-Kang Kyong-ae: From Wonso Pond: a Korean Novel

-Joyce Carol Oates: The Falls

-Vita Sackville-West: No Signposts in the Sea

-Virginia Woolf: The Waves

3. TITLE

-Boris Akunin: The Winter Queen

-Bernardine Evaristo: The Emperor's Babe

-Claire Massud: The Emperor's Children

-Issui Ogawa: The Lord of the Sands of Time 

-Elizabeth Peters: The Laughter of Dead Kings

-Kate Pullinger: The Mistress of Nothing

-Anne Rice: Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

-Antal Szerb: The Queen's Necklace

-Sue Townsend: The Queen and I

-Oscar Wilde: The Duchess of Padua

4. PLANT

-Alexande Dumas: The Black Tulip

-Anne Dunlop: The Pineapple Tart

-Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose

-Amitav Ghosh: Sea of Poppies

-Jaroszlaw Iwanszkiewicz: The Birch Grove and Other Stories

-Katharine McMahon: Rose of Sebastopol

-Deborah Moggach: The Tulip Fever

-L. M. Montgomery: Anne of Windy Willows

-Haruki Murakami: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

-Fan Wu: February Flowers

5. PLACE

-Monica Ali: Brick Lane

-Lewis Crofts: The Pornographer of Vienna

-Steven Galloway: The Cellist of Sarajevo

-Anne Holt: Death in Oslo

-Thomas Mann: Death in Venice

-Yann Martel: The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamations and Other Stories

-Domnica Radulescu: Train to Trieste

-Steven Saylor: Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome

-Mahbod Seraji: Rooftops of Tehran

-Angel Wagenstein: Farewell Shanghai

6. MUSIC TERM

-Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery

-Petina Gappah: An Elegy for Easterly

-Rosamond Lehmann: Invitation to the Waltz

-Rosamond Lehmann: A Note in Music

-Rumer Godden: A Fugue in Time

-Linda Olsson: Sonata for Miriam

-Alyson Richman: Swedish Tango

-Joseph Roth: Radetzky March

-Dumitru Tsepeneag: Vain Art of the Fugue

-M. G: Vassanji: The Assassin's Song

That's it. Some of the above I have already read, but maybe some of you will find my suggestions useful.

Yesterday I watched the first two movies of the Millennium-trilogy in a row. I have not read the books yet and had been saving the films for after I had read the books, but then just could not wait with them either. Now I'm reading the last book of the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, as I want to know how the story ends. The name of the third book (as well as the first one) is actually something completety different both in original Swedish and in Finnish translation (I'm reading it in Finnish) than in English.

Chapter 34: Merry Christmas!

Chapter 33: A Review and a Challenge

I just cannot believe this! I spent good amount of this afternoon writing reviews of some of the books I have read lately, went to sing some Christmas carols (leading to Christmas there are these "most beautiful Christmas carols" sing-alongs in many churches), came home and thought to finish this post in a few minutes -and all the reviews had disappeared!! :( I really don't know what happened. I'm quite sure I saved the draft. But gone they are, and now I don't have time to rewrite them all. I'll just write one review now and post the two others in another post.


I started reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery weeks and weeks ago. And I loved it. I loved the precocious words of 12-year-old Paloma Josse, a girl who has decided to kill herself on her 13th birthday as she believes that people are "programmed to believe in something that doesn't exist, because we are living creatures; we don't want to suffer. So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that that is why life has meaning." Paloma is afraid that she is going to start believing that, too. 


I also enjoyed reading about Renée, the concierge of the Parisian apartment building where Paloma lives. Renée is working very hard to be an ordinary concierge while in fact she is nothing but, or rather she does not match the conventional idea of what a concierge should be like. Renée is very widely read and loves culture and the arts.


The book is full of wonderful sentences and passages.It is really beautifully written. My copy is now full of little, purple post-it slips to mark some of my favorite passages. Somehow the writing style is also very French. I would love to be able to read the book in original French, but, alas, I'm not.


This far, all good. Right after I finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog I gave it five stars in Goodreads, but when I think of it now, I must say that today I would probably give one star less. I loved the writing, I loved the characters, also the other characters in addition to Renée and Paloma, but I simply hated the ending! It was odd. I felt like somebody had said to the writer that ok, the book is long enough, now finish it up. The ending came from nowhere and left me feeling cheated. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for surprising endings, this time it just simply did not work for me, not at all.


Some of the best parts of the book were Paloma's "profund thoughts". I'll finish this short review with one of those. Food for thought for us all:

"But if you dread tomorrow, it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don't you see?" [p. 124]

Last but not least something totally different: Inspired by Amanda from the Zen Leaf I have desided to take up a personal reading challenge for 2010. Lately I have read so much in English that I've kind of fallen behind when it comes to reading Finnish writers. Thus I promise myself to read more Finnish authors in 2010. My aim is to read 20 books, both new releases and older novels I have not yet read. I'm pretty excited about this personal challenge! I even made a simple banner just for myself! :)

Chapter 32: Teaser Tuesday 1.12.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their to-be-read -lists if they like your teasers!

I've been alterating between 4-5 books lately. First I started with the Amnesty International short story collection Freedom. I really like the idea that each story is based on a different article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Also, the list of authors participating is pretty impressive: Ali Smith, Pettina Gappah, Nadine Gordimer, Henning Mankell, Rohinton Mistry, Paulo Coelho, Banana Yoshimoto, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie etc. etc. etc. But, these are hard stories to read, because of the subject matter. After five stories I needed a break. I turned to something much lighter and finished first The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig and then Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen. After those two fun reads I was ready for something more serious again, but did not want to go back to the short stories just yet. I got The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood from the library and started reading that. And then I also got Bluestockings by Jane Robinson, a nonfiction book about women's fight for university education in Britian that will be one of the books I'll read for the Women Unbound Challenge. I started reading Bluestockings in the metro on my way home from work and found it so interesting that I did not want to save it for until I had finished some of the other books I'm reading. And in addition to that I had been half way through The Elegance of the Hedhodge for some weeks already!

Well, I did finish The Elegance of the Hedgehog on Sunday evening. It's a lovely book, but I 'll talk more about it in a review later. After finishing it I was down to three books I was reading. That is a pretty usual number. As my library loot last week included so many wonderful choices I just had to throw one more novel into the mix: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Soon, however, Remarkable Creatures proved so captivating that I'm now 1/3 through and will consentrate on it alone for now.

My teaser is from page 97:

"I looked for a long time in silence, circling the table to inspect the skull from every angle. It was still entrapped in stone, and would need much attention from Mary's blades, needles and brushes - and a good bit of hammering too."

I will count Remarkable Creatures as one of my Women Unbound reads. Happy reading, everyone!

Chapter 31: Women Unbound Challenge

As I told earlier, I thought I would join two reading challenges now, and then, maybe some time later, add some, maybe smaller, challenges to that. I already posted about joining the GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf, and here comes the post about the Women Unbound Challenge, but I think I'm already slipping from the decision to join only two challenges. The World Religion Challenge sounds simply too tempting, plus I have already decided to participate in the Woolf in Winter read-along. Well, how could I not! This blog was named after a non-fiction book by V. W., my heroine! :)

But back to the Women Unbound Challenge. This is a challenge co-hosted by Aarti, Care, and Eva. The aim is to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, related to the broad idea of women's studies. There are three levels of participation, and I will be aiming for the Suffragette level and read 8 books, out of which at least 3 should be non-fiction, because had I been born 100 years earlier I would have been a suffragette, too! :)

I read history at university and specialized in late 19th-early 20th century women's history. I wrote my master's thesis about the international connections of Maikki Friberg, one of the most important Finnish women's rights activist during that time period. So, I guess, I kind of have to join the Women Unbound Challenge! :) I also read a lot of fiction that would fit this challenge anyway. I'm actually thinking of trying to read more non-fiction for this challenge. I'll read mostly fiction for the GLBT challenge, so it will be a nice balance. Below are two lists. Both, of course, include the books I might read for the challenge, but also books I have read earlier, but thought some of you might find interesting. The books I have read are marked with a *. If any of you would like to know more about any of those books, just leave a comment or send me an e- mail at abookblogofonesown [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk.

Fiction for the Women Unbound Challenge:

*Alsanea, Rajaa: Girls of Riyadh
*Atwood, Margaret: The Edible Woman
*Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale (This is a must read, if you have not yet read this!)
Atwood, Margaret: Penelopiad
Barron, Stephanie: The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf
Chevalier, Tracy: Remarkable Creatures
Gaskell, Elizabeth: Four Short Stories
Hall, Sarah: The Carhullan Army
James, Henry: The Bostonians
*Kathy, Page: The Story of My Face
Khadra, Yasmina: The Swallows of Kabul
al-Sa'davi, Nawal: The Fall of the Imam
Sellers, Susan: Vanessa and Virginia
Shakib, Siba: Samira and Samir
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Vartio, Marja-Liisa: The Parson's Widow
*Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway (for the umpteenth time, but I love this book! :))
*Woolf, Virginia: Orlando (overlapping with the GLBT challenge)

Well, I'll keep the fiction list short. The non-fiction list below is a tiny bit longer:

Allen, Ann Taylor: Women in the Twentieth-Century Europe
*Anderson, Bonnie S.: Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860
*Anderson, Harriet: Utopian Feminism: Women's Movements in Fin-de-siècle Vienna
Aung San, Suu Kyi: Letters from Burma
Brooks, Geraldine: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Buckley, Veronica: Christina: Queen of Sweden
*Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, compiled by Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Bynum, Caroline Walker: Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
Campbell, Elizabeth Delinger: Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era
Cavallaro, Dani: French Feminist Theory: An Introduction
Dinnage, Rosemary: Alone! Alona!: Lives of Some Outsider Women
DuBois, Ellen: Feminism & Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America 1848-1869
Firestone, Shulamith: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
Forster, Margaret: Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839-1939
Gardner, Catherine Villanueva: Rediscovering Women Philosophers
*Gilbert, Elizabeth: Eat, Pray, Love
Irigaray, Luce: Luce Irigaray: Key Writings
Kristeva, Julia: Hannah Arendt
*Kuhns, Elizabeth: The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns
Lee,Hermione: Virginia Woolf
Mann, William J.: Kate: The Womaan Who Was Katherine Hepburn
*McFadden, Margaret H.: Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism
McRobbie, Angela: The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change
Moi, Toril: Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman
Moore, Lucy Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France
Nagel, Susan: Marie-Thérèse: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter
Nightingale, Florence: Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850
Oldfield, Sybil: Spinsters of the Parish: The Life and Times of F. M. Mayorand and Mary Sheepshanks
Perreault, Jeanne: Writing Shelves: Contemporary Feminist Autography
Pink, Sarah: Women and Bullfighting: Gender, Sex and the Consumption of Tradition
Politics of Gender: A Century of Women's Suffrage in Finland, ed. by Anna Moring
Raitt, Suzanne: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Rich, Adrienne: Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
Robinson, Jane: Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education
*Rupp, Leila J.: Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement
Skaine, Rosemarie: The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban
Spender, Dale: Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: From Alphra Behn to Adrienne Rich
*Suffrage & Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Caroline Daly & Melanie Nolan
*Tillyard, Stella: Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1778-1832
Tolan, Fiona: Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction
Tomalin, Claire: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
Vicinus, Martha: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928
Wosk, Julie: Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age
Åhmansson, Gabriella: A Life and Its Mirrors. Volume I: A Feminist Reading of L. M. Montgomery's Fiction
*800 Years of Women's Letters, ed. by Olga Kenyon

Chapter 30: Teaser Tuesday 24.11.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!
  

My teaser this week is from a book I mentionded yesterday in my Mailbox Monday post: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen. This is a humorous mystery set in Britain in 1932 and featuring Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch, 34th in line for the British throne.

The teaser is from the very first page, where Lady Georgiana, as she is called, tells us what the two disadvantages of being a minor royal are. This is the disadvantage number two:

"Apparently the only acceptable destiny for a young female member of the house of Windsor is to marry into another of the royal houses that still seem to litter Europe, even though there are precious few reigning monarchs these days. It seems that even a very minor Windsor like myself is a desirable commodity for those wishing a tenuous alliance with Britain at this unsettled time."

Chapter 29: Mailbox Monday 23.11.2009

Mailbox Monday is a weekly event hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page.

I've been trying to cut down on buying books lately, as I really should do more reading of books instead of buying them! I simply have too many books I still haven't read in my bookshelves. To be honest I have too many books. Period. Or could one ever really own too many books? My books fall roughly into two categories: those I read once and will give away and those that are for keeps. But still, the shelves (we will not mentions the cupboards filled with books here, no we will not...) are starting to be pretty much filled to the capacity.

So, I have a confession to make: I should not, but I did: four books entered my collection lately. Yes, I know, maybe I should have started this post with "Hello, my name is Tiina, and I am a bookaholic."

The new additions are:

1. This very cute copy of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë I found in a library's book swap trolley. Many of our libraries have these trolleys, boxes, or shelves, where you can bring any of your books you want to give away and/or take any books you like from it.

2. Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen is a first in a mystery series featuring Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch, 34th in line for the British throne. The book is set in 1932 and seems to be just such a humorous, historical mystery that I enjoy reading every once in a while.

3. I love Art Noveau, or Jugend, as we call it here. I love the design, the fashion, the architecture. It would be a dream come to true to be able to afford an apartment in a Jugend style building in downtown Helsinki. (Well, a girl can dream, can't she? :)) Anyway, I own a small collection of books about Art Noveau/Jugend and the latest addition is this one by Camilla de la Bedyore. A small book, but a good collection of pictures.

4. I have lately had an urge to visit some antiquarian bookshops. I guess, in a weird way it goes with my decision to buy less books. My brain intepreted the decision somewhat warpedly as "buy second hand, you'll get more books with the same amount of money!" ;) Well, I did visit the best antiquarian book store in town yesterday, but it was almost closing time so (luckily) I did not have much time to browse. I did end up buing this old book form 1967, though. It is a study about how the Finnish women used their right to vote and stand for parliament during the first decade of universal suffrage in Finland. Only later did I realize that the copy I bought is actually signed by the author!


What was your mailbox like this past week?

Chapter 28: Review: Farewell, Shanghai

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have not yes posted a review of a book I read for the War Through the Generations Challenge. The book in question is Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein. I read it already in the beginning of October, but had no time to post about it back then.

Angel Wagenstein is a Bulgarian novelist. Farewell, Shanghai is his third novel. It won the Jean Monnet Prize of European Literature in 2004. In addition of Farewell, Shanghai, also Wagenstein's first novel, Isaac's Torah, is available in English.

Farewell, Shanghai tells the stories of various individuals, among others the famous violinist Theodore Weissberg and his non-Jewish wife Elizabeth, Hilde a young actress, who hides her Jewish ancestry, and Vladek, an Eastern European adventurer wanted by the police. The story moves from Nazi Germany, through soon-to-be-occupied Paris to Shanghai, a pocket of safety (or so they think) in a world gone grazy.

What I especially liked in Farewell, Shanghai was that among all the books I have read about World War II, it brought something new to the story. The setting (Shanghai) was different and that enabled Wagenstein's stories to feel more unique than has the main part of the story been set in some European location. The characters felt real and multidimentional and as a reader I cared about all of them. If you want to read a little bit different novel about the WW II, then I highly recommend Farewell, Shanghai.

Chapter 27: Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

It seems to be a rule rather than an exception that reserved books arrive in groups! :) Thus I've had an especially good library week! Here is my loot:

• Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
• Freedom: Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published in association with Amnesty International

• An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah
• Challenge by Vita Sackville-West

• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
• One Day by David Nicholls

• The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery
• Four Short Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

Gaskell's stories and maybe also Chevalier I will read for The Women Unbound Challenge. Sackville-West's novel is a possible addition to my GLBT reading list. The Gourmet is The Elegance of the Hedgehog writer Muriel Barbery's first novel. Petina Gappah will be the first Zimbabwean writer whose work I've ever read.

I hope you had a good library loot, too!

Chapter 26: GLBT Challenge 2010

I have not been very good with the challenges I joined this, my first, year as a book blogger. I've read 3/5 of the books I planned to read for the War Through the Generations challenge and reviewed two of those three. I'm planning on getting the third review up in the not too distant future, but I know already that I will not be reading any more books about WW II this year. The other challenge I joined this year is the 9 Books for 2009 challenge, which has been really useful for finally reading some of those books I own that have been waiting for their turn for, in some cases, quite a while. I have read 4/9 of the books I chose for the challenge. I might read maybe one more, but I'm not sure. I simply have too many other, interesting books waiting for their turn! And now new challenges for 2010 have started popping up all over the blogosphere!

I have thought of joining two challenges now and then we'll see, I might join one or two more a bit later. But to start with I have chosen these two: GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf and the Women Unbound Challenge hosted by Aarti from Booklust, Care from Care's Online Book Club and Eva from A Striped Armchair.


Let's start with the GLBT Challenge for 2010:


The idea of this challenge is to read books written by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender authors and/or books about GLBT topics.


I have been thinking of joining on the Rainbow level and reading 12 books. I have not yet decided on which 12 books to read, but here is a list of possible "candidates":

Baker, Dorothy: Cassandra at the Wedding (lesbian theme)

Cunningham, Michael: Specimen Days (gay author)
Duffy, Carol Ann: Rapture (poems, lesbian author) (re-read)
Ebershoff, David : The Danish Girl (transgender theme)
Hollinghurst, Alan : The Line of Beauty (gay author & theme)
Jansson, Tove : Fair Play (lesbian author)
Le Guin, Ursula: The Birthday of the World (scifi, different sexualities)
Kapur, Manju : A Married Woman (lesbian theme)
Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice and Other Stories (gay theme)
Peters, Julie Ann: Luna (transgender theme)
Shaw, Fiona : Tell It to the Bees (lesbian theme)
Sinisalo, Johanna: Troll -A Love Story/Not Before Sundown (gay theme) (re-read)
Smith, Ali: The First Person and Other Stories (lesbian author)Strachey, Dorothy : Olivia (lesbian theme)
Warner, Sylvia Townsend: The Corner That Held Them (lesbian author)
Wilde, Oscar : The Picture of Dorian Gray (gay author)
Winterson, Jeanette : The PowerBook (lesbian author)Woolf, Virginia : Orlando (lesbian/bisexual author, also theme goes well with this challenge) (re-read)

I would like to add 1-2 novels with a bisexual theme, but have not found any yet. Any suggestions?

I think I will be concentrating on fiction, but being a librarian and loving book lists I compiled also a short list of non-fiction titles, if someone else wants to read some GLBT non-fiction:

Baird, Vanessa: Sex, Love & Homophobia : Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Lives.
Lee, Hermione: Virginia Woolf.
Raitt, Suzanne: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. (On second thought, this will very probably be among the books I'll read)
Seidman, Steven: Beyond the Closet : The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life.
Spencer, Colin: Homosexuality: A History.
Vicinus, Martha: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928.

Well, it was my intention to write about both challenges in one post, but I'm running out of time (I still have to do some house cleaning before heading for the tennis courts tonight :)) I'll post about the Women Unbound Challenge soon.

Chapter 25: Teaser Tuesday 17.11.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!

At the moment I'm half way through The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. I read about this book in somebody's blog some time ago and it seemed like a fun read. And that is exactly what it is! It is a funny historical adventure set in Napoleonic times with a good amount of romance and witty conversation to keep one entertained during these dark autumn evenings. Who would not like to read about dashing, masked heroes trying to save their country!










Here's a little appetizer from page 83:

" Under cover of darkness, he shifted his weight to face Amy and asked softly, 'What brings you to France?'
Amy snapped her head up, instantly on the defensive. Richard put out a hand as though in his own defence. 'Retract your claws! I'm scarred enough from this afternoon. Can we cry a truce, at least for the night?'
Amy eyed him askance.
'Consider it our own personal Peace of Amiens. I'll be France and you can be England.'

Chapter 24: I'm Back :)

My apologies for disappearing into thin air and not even posting about, well, the fact that I would not be posting for a while. I had a very good and happy reason, though, as you'll see in the end of this post, so I hope you'll forgive me. :)

But first a bit of book news: The annual Helsinki Book Fair took place in the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre 22.-25.10. It is the biggest book fair in Finland and this year almost 77000 people visited the fair. That is more visitors than ever before! Every year there is special focus on one country. This year the country featured was Sweden, next year it will be France. A few years ago it was Britain and one of the writers visiting the fair then was Sarah Waters, who is one of my favorite authors. I was lucky enough to have her sign my copy of Fingersmith for me! This year the visiting writers included, in addition to several Swedish authors, American Karin Slaughter and Scottish Hal Duncan, whose book Vellum has just been translated into Finnish. I heard Duncan speak about his book. Here's a picture I took of him:

Our library is situated just across the street from the Exhibition and Convention Centre. So it is always very convenient to visit the book fair. I left work a bit earlier on Friday and spent the next almost 4 hours at the book fair. There are always also many second hand booksellers present and I especially love to browse their stands. This year I ended up buying a 1948 edition of Mika Waltari's Mikael Karvajalka (Michael the Finn/The Adventurer). I also managed to get some nice additions to my bookmark collection:
And now to the reason I have not been blogging lately. I don't remember whether I have written anything about my dancing on A Book Blog of One's Own before. I have been dancing more or less my whole life, first ballet, and then since my teens standard and latin american dances. I work in the library, but dancing is definitely a bit more that just a hobby for me. Two years ago I and my dance partner won the Finnish Senior 10 Dance Championships for the first time. Last year we won again. These past few weeks I was not only very busy with work, but also preparing for this year's championships. The 2009 Finnish 10-Dance Championships took place here in Helsinki last Saturday and I am so very, very happy to be able to tell you that we managed to win the senior class for the third time in a row!:) Below is a picture of us after the competition.

Chapter 23: Teaser Tuesday 6.10.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.




The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!

At the moment I'm reading a book that I have read many praising reviews about. In the story there is literature, and there is Paris. What more could one ask for? The book is, of course, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and I'm loving every sentence of the story! :)

Here is my teaser:

"As it is not terribly common to come across a concierge waxing ecstatic over Death in Venice or to hear strains of Mahler wafting from her lodge, I delved into my hard-earned conjugal savings and bought a second television set that I could operate in my hideaway. Thus, the television in the front room, guardian of my cladestine activities, could bleat away and I was no longer forced to listen to inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam - I was in the back room, perfectly euphoric, my eyes filling with tears, in the miraculous presence of Art." [p. 17]

Chapter 22: Mailbox Monday 21.9.2009

Mailbox Monday is a weekly event hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page.

Last week six books were added to my ever expanding collection. :)

1. The Last Ember by Daniel Levin. This book was kindly sent to me by Marcia of The Printed Page. Thank you so much, Marcia! The Last Ember is Levin's debut novel, a thriller set in the worlds of archeology, religion and terrorism. The story moves from Rome to Jerusalem in search of a hidden two millennia old artefact. I cannot wait to read it!

2. & 3. Angels Beneath the Surface: A Selection of Contemporary Slovene Fiction ed. by Mitja Cankar and Tom Priestly & Marsipaania translated & ed. by Kari Klemelä and Jouni Inkala. My interest in Slovenia is nurtured by two collections I bought at my favorite bookstore. The first one is the first collection of Slovene short stories published in English outside of Slovenia since 1994, and the second one is the first collection of contemporary Slovenian poetry translated into Finnish.

4. Oscar's Books: A Journey around the Library of Oscar Wilde by Thomas Wright. It is a story of Wilde's life through his reading. How could have I resisted buying something like that!! :)

5. s'Hertogenbosch within the Walls: A Historical Exploration by Frans van Gaal and Peter Verhagen. We had a group of people from s'Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands visiting us at work. I gave them a tour of our building and told them about our services. They kindly gave me this interesting book about the old town of s'Hertogenbosch. It seems to be a very beautiful place. Browsing the book makes me want to visit s'Hertogenbosch some day.

5. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I've read this in Finnish many, many years ago. Since reading Matt of A Guy's Moleskin Notebook praising the book I got the urge to re-read it in English. My favorite bookstore had a Wordsworth Editions paperback at only 3,90 €. That is so cheap it is practically nothing! Simply could not resist. :)

Oh, the dilemma! So many books, so many books! I'm still reading both Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein and enjoying them a lot. Only I would like to get started with so many other novels, too! Could we not have at least 36 hours in a day, please!! :)

Chapter 21: Finnish Classics, Part 1

All countries have their own literary classics. I thought that some of you might be interested in getting a list of some Finnish literary classics. I mean, especially those classics that have been translated into English. ;) So, here goes:

1. Kalevala
For us Finns this is the classic of all classics. Kalevala is the Finnish national epic. The Greek have their Iliad and Odyssey, the French have their Song of Roland, us Finns have our Kalevala. It is an epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot. He, a doctor and a scolar, made, starting in the 1820s, several trips to Eastern parts of Finland and to Karelia to collect folk poetry which he then compiled into a book. The first version of Kalevala was published in the 1830s. In 1849 a wider collection of 50 poems was published. The 1849 version is the one that is the standard Kalevala today. Wikipedia article about Kalevala has a nice synopsis of the plot & also information about the main characters. Also, the Project Gutenberg site has both the oldest (1888) and the second oldest (1907) (part 1/2 only) full text English translations available on-line for free.

2. Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi
This is the first important Finnish language novel. It was first published in 1870. Seven Brothers has been translated into English several times. The first English translation was published in 1929, the latest, by Richard A. Impola, was publsihed in New York in 1991. Aleksis Kivi is considered our national writer. He wrote the novel at a time when literary Finnish was still being developed. Seven Brothers tells the story of, well, seven, rather stubborn, brothers, who come into conflict with their local village community.

3. The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna
Linna's first major novel (first published in Finnish in 1954) is a story set in the 1940s. It is a story about the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union told from the viewpoint of a group of ordinary soldiers. As far as I've heard the English translation is unfortunately not very faithful to the original Finnish text.

4. Under the North Star by Väinö Linna
This is a trilogy that follows the life of a family and while doing so tells us about the big picture, the important historical events of the time. The story begins during the Russian rule in Finland, moves through the Finnish Civil War to the years of World War II and beyond. The opening words of the first part of the trilogy (In English"In the beginning there were the marsh, the hoe - and Jussi") is a line that even those Finns that have never read the book recognise. Again, if you want to learn more about the plot and characters, here is an article you might find interesting. Under the North Star was translated by Richard Impola in the beginning of the 2000s.

5. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
Mika Waltari was perhaps the greatest writer of historical fiction we have ever had in Finland, though he also wrote many contemporary novels. Many of his books have been translated into English. His most celebrated book is The Egyptian (first published in Finnish in 1945). Set in Ancient Egypt, mostly in the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten, The Egyptian tells the story of the royal physician Sinuhe. This is one of my all time favorite novels. In the picture above the book on the left is my own copy of the 1951 Finnish 7th edition (=Sinuhe egyptiläinen) that I got from my grandmother when I was maybe 14 or 15.

It is well past my bedtime now & I still want to read at least a few pages of Summer Will Show before sleep, so I better continue later. Stay tuned for part 2.

Chapter 20: Teaser Tuesday 15.9.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.



The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!

I'm reading two novels at the moment, and alterating between the two every 40-50 pages or so. One of the novels is Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner and the other is Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein. I'm most probably going to review both novels later, but let's start with a little teaser from Farewell, Shanghai:

"While the Haydn symphony was pouring out its light and tender "farewell," the last of the naive also saying farewell to their comfortable illusions about good old Germany -this winter's tale that, in just a few weeks or so, would kick out like dirty kittens the Nazi bums who had just by chance grabbed hold of power.
For it was on exactly this night -the evening of November 10, 1938, Wednesday going on Thursday- that history would bestow the name Krystallnacht -"The Night of Broken Glass"- and this referred not to the chrystal chandeliers of the Dresden Konzerthaus, but to the crystal tinkling of broken Jewish shop windows."

Chapter 19: Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

This week Mr. Linky is up at Eva's site.

I haven't done a library loot post for a while, not because I had not borrowed any books (Hello!? I work in a library. It is a work related disease ;) to borrow lots of books.), but because most weeks I have been rather busy with other things towards the end of the week. Actually, I have not had enough time to read as much as I've wanted to, but I'm planning on doing some catching up on that respect tomorrow. I have been reading The Incredible Human Journey which is really interesting. And I finally decided on which novel to read next: The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing. I've been wanting to read Lessing for ages now, but somehow have never got around to it. One of my reading groups chose The Grass Is Singing as their next read, so now it's kind of "compulsory reading" for me. I've read the four first chapters now and really enjoy her writing.

















But, let's go to the loot now! In addition to Lessing, my pile contains:

• The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. I read The Housekeeper and The Professor earlier this year and really enjoyed it. So, I'm hoping this collection of three novellas will also be a good read.
• Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells. This is a story about a young woman, who wants to be "a Person" in turn-of-the-century London. On her quest to be her own woman she encounters Fabians, suffragettes, free love. I'm more familiar with Wells' science fiction books, but it will be intersting to read one of his other novels.
• The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Inspired by the RIP IV-challenge, I borrowed this collection eventhough I'm not participating in the challenge. To be honest, ghost stories and horror are not really my thing, but I like Edith Wharton, and I have read at least one or two of her ghost stories before, so I thought to read at least a few more. Maybe I could be a kind of supporting member of the challenge. ;)
• Women on Their Own. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Being Single. Edited by Rudolph M. Bell & Virginia Yans. This is a collection of essays, mostly about single women in the 19th-century.
• Marsipaania. Slovenialaista nykyrunoutta. Translated & edited by Kari Klemelä & Jouni Inkala.This is a brand new collection of contemporary Slovenian poetry translated into Finnish. I already read this and loved some of the poems very much.
• Säkeitä Pietarista by Johanna Hulkko. This is a new Finnish writer. The title of the book could be translated as Verses from St. Petersburg and the story seems very interesting, and I really, really should read more Finnish authors!
• The Novel in the Victorian Age by Robin Gilmour. I want to read what he says about Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontë sisters, and Wilkie Collins.
• Lodgers by Nenad Velickovic. Found another novel about the Balkan wars. This one was actually originally published during the siege of Sarajevo.
• Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I read about this novel in, hmm, The New York Review of Books it was, if I remember correctly, and it sounded interesting. It is a story set in Paris in 1848, where Sophia, joining her enstranged husband after the death of her children, falls in love with her husband's mistress. Summer Will Show was first published in 1936.

That concludes my library loot this week. Happy reading, everyone!

Chapter 18: Teaser Tuesday 8.9.2009

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!

My to read list at Goodreads is in three digits at the moment, and at home I have piles of books I would like to read, and it is really hard to choose which one to read next! Well, I admit, that is a happy problem! :)

However, I thought maybe it would be fun to read some non-fiction while I am pondering which novel to read next. I could not choose just one non-fiction book, either, so I'm now reading both Queen Christabel by David Mitchell (my used book for the 9 books for 2009 challenge) and The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts. So, here comes two teasers from two interesting books covering two very different subjects.

Queen Christabel is a biography of the English suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst. The history of women and especially the history of women's suffrage is something very dear to my heart. I wrote my master's thesis on the international connections of Maikki Friberg, one of the leading Finnish women's rights activist in the late 19th-early 20th century, and, hopefully, I will write a PhD on women's history some day. I bought a used copy of Queen Christabel at Foyles in London over a decade ago. Even before that I had read parts of the book for my studies, but now I want to read it from cover to cover. I know Mitchell's book has been said to be quite hostile to Christabel Pankhurst, so I'm looking forward to an interesting read. Here comes the teaser right from the beginning of the introduction:

"Seldom has a political tactician achieved such instant notoriety as when in October 1905 Christabel Pankhurst was sent to prison for the 'crime' of asking Sir Edward Gray, at a political rally in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester: "Will the Liberal Party give Votes for Women?" Overnight the diminutive Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) began to command journalistic attention, and within a few months women's suffrage became an issue which could no longer be ignored or escaped."[p. 1]

The incredible Human Journey: The Story of How We Colonised the Planet I borrowed from work. It caught my eye in the new arrivals shelf and looked so interesting I just had to borrow it. I've read about 50 pages so far and it looks very promising. It is described in the dust jacket as "part detective story, part travelogue" that retraces the migration of early humans out of Africa.

"We are certainly apes; our anatomy is incredibly similar to that of our nearest relations, chimpanzees. I could put a chimpanzee arm bone, or humerus, in an exam for medical students and they wouldn't even notice that it wasn't human." [p. 1]

Interesting isn't it? Happy reading everyone!

Chapter 17: Some Novels about the Balkans

I have always loved languages and I have loved to travel. My "first love" in this respect was England. I visited London for the first time when I was seven and since then wanted to return -again and again. With my interest in the country grew interest in the English language. I still remember the first book I ever read in English. It was The Turning Point by Arthur Laurents, and I was perhaps 13 or 14 years old. My English skills weren't very good at the time, but it was a novel about the world of ballet (I took ballet lessons at the time and dreamed about being a ballerina) and I absolutely wanted to know how the story ended. Somehow I struggled through the whole book, but I did understand enough to know what happened in the story. Let's just say that that experience was very encouraging and little by little I began to read more and more novels in English.

Next came Norway. Finland is a bilingual country with two national languages. Whereas most of us are Finnish speakers there is also a Swedish speaking minority and everybody learns at least some Swedish (or in the case of Swedish speakers some Finnish) at school. Swedish and Norwegian are rather close to each other and I had always been used to hearing Swedish spoken, but when I first heard Norwegian I really liked the sound of it. I was also very much into the Viking period in Norvegian history. I ended up spending a semester as an excange student in Norway studying the language and history at the University of Oslo.

But my enthusiasm with countries and languages did not end there. Italy followed. For five consecutive years I just had to get to Rome! And for three of those years I took evening classes in Italian. Then I got interested in the French language and for the past few years I have grown to love Paris and have tried to learn some French by myself. And now, my latest favorite country outside my own is Slovenia. Since my first trip to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, last November, I have tried to learn more about this tiny nation. I find the Slovene language fascinating. It is a South Slavic language and totally different from any language I know. At the moment I know only a few words, but I would love to learn more Slovene in the future. We'll see how that goes... But lately I have also grown more and more interested in the history of the Balkan region as a whole, especially the disintegration of Yugoslavia and I have found some really interesting novels about the Balkans in the 1990s.

I started by reading The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic. I read this in Finnish for one of my two reading groups. It is a story of a group of young Yugoslav exiles trying to cope in a foreign country. Just recently I found the book in sale in a book store. They had it both in Finnish and in English translations, but the English one was cheaper, so I ended up buying that.

This summer I coutinued this one person reading challenge of my own with Stillness, an absolutely "must read" collection of short stories by Courtney Angela Brkic about how war affects people's lives and minds. It is a wonderful book that I know I will be returning to time and again in the future.

I now have two more novels about the Balkans on my to read list: Pretty Birds by Scott Simon and Sarabande by Marcus Fedder. I'll talk more about those later, but this time I want to write a few words about The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway. I started reading the book last weekend and since then I spent more or less every spare minute I had in my at the moment rather full schedule reading it. It is a story about three persons during the siege of Sarajevo. Arrow is a young woman enlisted as a sniper to defend the city, Kenan a familyman facing the difficult and dangerous task of having to go and get water for his family, and Dragan is an older man whose wife and son got out of Sarajevo at the last moment and now live in Italy. Through these individuals Galloway tells a powerful, amazing, heartbreaking, and very important story about the absurdity of war. The Cellist of Sarajevo is a brilliant book, absolutely brilliant. It's been many hours since I finished it, but the emotions I felt while reading are haunting me still. The Cellist of Sarajevo is no doubt the best book I have read this year and will probably be among my all time favorites! A highly recommended read!