YOU WATCH AND YOU DESPAIR. OR YOU DESPAIR AND YOU WATCH.

What I've read and re-read this year (disclaimer: might have forgotten about some. Also: for the Swedish list, go here):

Margaret Atwood - Moral disorder

Margaret Drabble - The waterfall

Miranda July - No one belongs here more than you.

Sylvia Plath - The bell jar

Lorrie Moore - Who will run the frog hospital?

Alice Munro - Too much happiness

Ali Smith - The accidental

Sue Miller - The senator's wife

A.M. Homes - The safety of objects

A.M. Homes - Music for torching

Truman Capote - Summer crossing

Etgar Keret - The nimrod flip-out

Alison Lurie - Foreign affairs

Melissa Bank - The girl's guide to hunting and fishing

Gabriel Josipovici - Contre-Jour

Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes

Jennifer Egan - A visit from the goon squad

Imre Kertész - Detective story

Michael Cunningham - The hours

Shirley Jackson - We have always lived in the castle

John Fowles - The magus

John Fowles - The collector

Anita Brookner - Look at me

Lydia Davis - The collected stories of Lydia Davis

Lewis Carroll - Alice's adventures in Wonderland

Patti Smith - Just kids

Françoise Sagan - Bonjour tristesse

Françoise Sagan - A certain smile

Doris Lessing - The diaries of Jane Somers

Doris Lessing - Ben, in the world

Finished reading The diaries of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing. Then I went to Tenerife, came back to Sweden yesterday.

HOW TO BECOME A WRITER

Three things:

1) Read Bonjour tristesse and A certain smile by Françoise Sagan. In Bonjour tristesse, Cécile realises that "procrastination can rule our lives, yet not provide us with any arguments in its defence". So true. Instead of working on my essay for the course I'm taking (The Holocaust in European History and Historography) I'm doing, well, anything else, really. I've always been extremely interested in the Holocaust, and have read a crazy amount of books on the subject, but honestly, right now I feel like Kate Winslet in Extras when she says: "I don't think we really need another film about the Holocaust, do we, it's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it, it was grim, move on."

2) Currently reading The diary of a good neighbour by Doris Lessing. From The diaries of Jane Somers. It's quite good, and obviously it would be.

3) Just a link to one of my favourite short stories: How to become a writer by Lorrie Moore. I really recommend The collected stories by Lorrie Moore, as they are all so ridiculously good. So happy I could find How to become a writer on the internet.

Also:

http://librisvedese.blogspot.com/

A SINGULAR WOMAN

You should read this great interview with Anita Brookner. Excerpt:

Imagine, I say, that you have been invited to a party. Do you walk to the centre of the room, and command the party to come to you?

'Never! I lurk.'

Around the margins...

'Yes.'

And do you initiate conversations?

'No. I listen a lot. And finally escape.' She pauses. 'With a feeling of deliverance.'

I'm into pictures at the moment.

Feast your eyes on the lovely Margaret Drabble:

THE COLLECTOR

John Fowles, love the you!

Books read:

Anita Brookner - Look at me

Lydia Davis - The collected stories of Lydia Davis

Lewis Carroll - Alice's adventures in Wonderland

DUTY LARGELY CONSISTS OF PRETENDING THAT THE TRIVIAL IS CRITICAL

I re-evaluated myself. I saw that I was from now on, for ever, contemptible. I had been, and remained, intensely depressed, but I had also been, and always would be, intensely false: in existentialist terms, inauthentic. I knew I would never kill myself, I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.

I raised the gun and fired it blindly into the sky. The crash shook me. There was an echo, some falling twigs. Then the heavy well of silence.

You watch and you despair. Or you despair and you watch. In the first case, you commit physical suicide; in the second, moral.

By searching so fanatically I was making a detective story out of the summer's events, and to view life as a detective story, as something that could be decuded, hunted and arrested, was no more realistic (let alone poetic) than to view the detective story as the most important literary genre, instead of what it really was, one of the least.

- The Magus, John Fowles

Simply one of the best books I have ever read.

SILLY MERRICAT

I love her.

TO LOVE MAKES ONE SOLITARY

"She'd like to tell Clarissa something, something important, but can't get it phrased. "I love you" is easy enough (...) Sally finds that she wants to go home and say something more, something that extends not only beyond the sweet and the comforting, but beyond passion itself. What she wants to say has to do with all the people who've died; it has to do with her own feelings of enormous good fortune and imminent, devastating loss. If anything happens to Clarissa she, Sally, will go on living but she will not, exactly, survive. She will not be all right. What she wants to say has to do not only with joy but with the penetrating, constant fear that is joy's other half. She can bear the thought of her own death but cannot bear the thought of Clarissa's. This love of theirs, with its reassuring domesticity and its easy silences, its permanence, has yoked Sally directly to the machinery of mortality itself. Now there is a loss beyond imagining."

- The hours, Michael Cunningham

Spent last week and half of this one in Kraków, so I left Anthropology of an American girl at home, and have since decided not to read it right now. Anyway, in Kraków I read Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro and Detective story by Imre Kertész. Reading The hours by Michael Cunningham now.

CURRENTLY READING:

Books read:

Alison Lurie - Foreign affairs

Melissa Bank - The girls' guide to hunting and fishing

Re-reading Margaret Drabble's The waterfall now.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS BY ALISON LURIE:

CONTRE-JOUR

"I have written down two questions for myself. Did I ever tell you? Questions I thought I ought to answer. What do we want out of life that makes us so dissatisfied with whatever is given?

And: who is to blame for these wants of ours?

I thought if they were down in front of me in black and white it would be easier to answer them. I thought I would simply sit here till they were answered, and then I would know.

I have always been able to solve problems. There is no problem that, once formulated, cannot be solved. That is perhaps the one thing he taught me. Not in so many words, but by example. If there is a problem, there is a solution. If we don't find a solution that means we don't want to, and that means it was not really a problem in the first place.

Well, I have found the answers. What we want out of life is what we obscurely sense has to be our due. And no one is to blame either for the desires themselves or for their frustration.

I have found the answers, but they have not been worth anything at all. Perhaps that is the difference between art and life."

"I say: there are terrible things going on in the world. But it is not my task to deal with those things. It is not even my task to cry over all that is happening, in desert and forest, village and city, in the open plain and behind the hedge. That is not my task. My task is simple, I tell him. I have a responsibility towards one person. I cannot turn aside from that."

"It is lovely to lie in the bath with the windows open and the curtains blowing in the breeze and know he is at work next door. I hear nothing but I just what he is doing, just how he is looking. Sometimes when he is tired he comes into the bathroom and sits on the chair, not saying anything, watching the curtains move and the steam rise up to the ceiling, flatten and come billowing down again. When I step out he reaches for his pad and starts to sketch again. Sometimes I resent this, sometimes I wish he would go away. But when he is not there I miss him. When he is not sketching me I wonder if I am really there."

- Contre-Jour, Gabriel Josipovici

Finished reading A visit from the goon squad by Jennifer Egan yesterday.

AND I TRY, OH MY GOD DO I TRY! I TRY ALL THE TIME IN THIS INSTITUTION

Read through a story I wrote when I was 18 (unfinished story, haven't read it since), and since this is how I'm feeling today, allow me to quote myself:

"I have two lists of things that I am sad about. The first one is a list of the things that I'm really sad about. The second one is a list of things I'm just sad about.

Whenever I feel really sad about something, I try to consult my second list and try to be sad about something I'm just sad about.

You would think I would consult my happy list for that but I haven't done such a list."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jun/17/life-writing-margaret-drabble-interview

LIBRI SVEDESE

Have decided to start a new blog. It will work like this: all the books I read in English will still be commented on and written about on this blog, juliasbookblog. All the books I read in Swedish will be commented on and written about on my Swedish blog, http://librisvedese.blogspot.com/

(Now you think; why the Italian name? Why not Swedish? Here's my logic for that: English might just be my true language, but Swedish is (obviously) next in line. However, the name I wanted was already taken (wanted it to be juliasbokblogg.) So, I thought: what's my third language? What other languages do I know? And I used to speak Italian quite well (sister is fluent, I never was but still). Hence, Italian name.)

Anyway, so: when reading in Swedish, the books will be discussed here. Everything English, will still be discussed on the good old juliasbookblog, i.e. the blog you've been reading religiously since 2008. Right?

Know I updated about something completely different yesterday (and believe me, I'll put up so many quotes from Maken later, you'll cry), but this might just be the funniest book blog entry ever (having said that, Vertigo as a publisher sometimes weirds me out):

http://vertigomannen.blogspot.com/2010/10/annu-ett-bonnierfiasko.html

JAG VET INTE HUR MAN SKA BETE SIG SOM KULTFÖREMÅL

Books read:

Etgar Keret - The nimrod flip-out

Roberto Bolaño - De vilda detektiverna

Hans Koppel - Medicinen

Truman Capote - Summer crossing

Currently reading Maken by Gun-Britt Sundström. The first time I tried to read it I was 15, and for obvious reasons (obviously won't explain them), it just wasn't the right time for it. Always knew I would love it though, and I do. There are so many things I identify with (sad state of affairs that nothing has changed since fucking 1976. Although, a lot of things has. Feelings just hasn't. We are all so boring, so perpetually consistent.) Even though this is the first time I've picked up a book by Sundström, I've always been interested in her. I love her; she's one of those women who just are not wholly likable, but I've never liked women who are wholly likable. It's probably because I'm not wholly likable. I don't think I'm necessarily easy to like, at least if you truly know me. Not exactly hard to like either, but I take a little bit of work, non? Other women I like who just aren't all that friendly; Carina Rydberg, Bodil Malmsten, Maja Lundgren, Linda Skugge (like everyone, I think she's lost it a little bit. Like everyone, I think I need to mention this because somehow, that means I've understood something. It doesn't. It just means I'm not 35 yet.) Anyway, fuck, I love them. Homegirls.

Currently reading De vilda detektiverna. When you are reading something that awesome (not meant in the "oh dude" way), it's really strange to suddenly look up and realise you're not in Mexico City, but lying on the empty floor of your empty flat where the turning of a page echoes through the room.

Note to self, remember to buy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/books/review/D-Erasmo-t.html

Have also ordered Summer crossing by Capote from Adlibris (next year I will, can, must not spend so much time on Adlibris, thinking I will just "have a little look..."). I didn't like Breakfast at Tiffany's but I've wanted to read Summer crossing forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Crossing

"Life - I am of both of your directions
Somehow remaining hanging downward
the most
but strong as a cobweb in the
wind - I exist more with the cold glistening frost.
But my beaded rays have the colors I've
seen in a painting - ah life they
have cheated you"
- Fragments, Marilyn Monroe

ARE WE OUR PARENTS?

Just finished reading Music for torching by A.M. Homes. I thought it read a bit like an updated, modern version of Revolutionary road. Quotes:

"She wonders why everything seems catastrophic, why she's always holding her breath, waiting for something to change her life."

""Am I supposed to ignore things?"
""Not ignore (...) But if you noticed less - if everything didn't mean so terrifically much - things would be better."
"That's all it takes?" Elaine asks.
"It's a start.""

Other books I've read these past two weeks:
Alice Munro - Too much happiness
Sue Miller - The senator's wife
Ola Hansson - Sensitiva amorosa
Ali Smith - The accidental
Caroline Ringskog Ferrada-Noli/Ida Säll - Skunk
A.M. Homes - The safety of objects

SÅ FORT JAG TROR ATT DET ÄR ÖVER ÄR DET BARA HÖGMOD. SOM BEKANT, GÅR FÖRE FALL.

"Till slut blir jag tvungen att avbryta honom så jag säger "du". Sen blir det tyst. Jag är tvungen att göra någonting, pekar på ölen. Öppnar häller upp dricker upp lämnar bordet och sen! säger jag: LÄMNA OSS ALDRIG FÖR OM DU GÖR DET ÄR DET BARA JAG KVAR JAG OCH MITT DÅLIGA SAMVETE, DET SOM BAKBUNDIT MIG MED HJÄLP AV EN MORALISK TÄCKMANTEL OCH STICKER DU DÅ FÖRSVINNER DEN! Och vad finns kvar då? En princip?! En princip väger lika mycket och lite som min traditionella rödvinsspya innan tolv (..)"

"Jag vill bara vara glad säker trygg och kunna visa för dig att jag tycker om dig när vi ses. Jag vill vara ett barns idé om en vuxen. Ganska omoget."

"Jag vet inte vad kärlek är. Oscar Wilde skrev såhär till Alfred Douglas från fängelset: "Om jag dör måste du leva vidare med blommor, tavlor och böcker, och med mycket hårt arbete."

Jag vet inte vad kärlek är. Bell Hooks skriver i sin bok om kärlek: "I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness."

Jag vet inte vad kärlek är. Den heteronorma cp-svulsten Dr Nathaniel Branden skriver i sin bok: "Romantisk kärlek är en passionerad andlig-emotionell-sexuell attraktion mellan en man och en kvinna som återspeglar den stora aktning de hyser för varandras värde."

Jag vet inte vad kärlek är. I Roxettelåten "It must have been love" beskriver Per Gessle det såhär: "Lay a whisper on my pillow Leave the winter on the ground I wake up lonely, is there a silence In the bedroom and all around Touch me now, I close my eyes And dream away""

"Moraliska principer om att livet är det heligaste och viktigaste som finns. Det spelar ingen roll vad man inte kan eller vad man inte längre vill. Jag fortsätter hålla vid liv. Aldrig släppa taget. En liten sked kräm till. En näringsdryck bara. Ingen blir bättre, ingenting förändras. Det bara fortsätter.

När det ordnat sig allting, då kommer vi gå längst fram. Vara helt säkra och slippa äta upp det senare. Nöja oss. Trivas. Bygga ett helt folkhem i huvudet. Inte bryta ihop när dammsugarpåsen är full och man står lutad över stolen där alla kläderna ligger och känna: herregud, det finns ingenting som hjälper."

"Kära alla. Hur vet man vad man ska minnas och vad man ska glömma. Hur redigerar man skräpfiltret i kroppens arkiv. Jo. Gå in på arkiv>inställningar>historik. Det finns ingenting man inte med ren betingad vilja kan göra. Det är inte min avsikt att låta kbt.

I am far from where we lived and I have not learned to forgive. But I will wait."

- From Skunk, de bästa texterna från skunk.nu

NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN HERE ALL SUBSTANDARD SUMMER

Honestly, to paraphrase Astrid Smart a little bit: this substandard life. this substandard bed I'm lying on. this substandard job I'm working. these substandard thoughts I'm having. this substandard illness, head, boredom, money, weather, ego, substandard substandard substandard living.

DETTA ABNORMA MEN KONSTANTA SJÄLSTILLSTÅND

"Om du letar i ditt eget och dina vänners liv, skall du finna många skiftande varieteter av den; och vore jag som du, skulle jag plocka några sådana och sälja dem på torget --"

"Vad tjänar det till att söka bygga upp ett liv, då vi behärskas av makter som vi icke känna och då vi icke veta mera om vårt lönnliga känsloliv än de grodd och knoppar, som nu svälla och spira här runt omkring oss veta huru deras celler danas?"

"Då han som bäst satt i ett glatt lag eller i ett sällskap, mitt under ett samtal vari han uppgick med hela sitt intresse, kunde ångesten plötsligt göra sig gällande, och då var det honom som om det någonstädes långt borta funnes ett eller annat som kallade på honom, något som bådade olycka, något som han borde tänka på och se efter vad det var. Den spred sig genom hela hans själsliv likt en kräfta, och den kom hans känslomekanism att stanna eller funktionera abnormt, så att han fruktade glädjen vilket hettade hans hjärna till yrsel och lade hans nerver nakna och snart vände upp en en frånsida som var ångesten och alltid avsatte en känsla av vånda, medan han tryckte sorgen och motgångarna intill sig i smärtsam ömhet liksom djurhonan sina sjuka ungar. Den dröp sitt etter in i det vardagliga livets små bagateller såväl som i de stora vändpunkterna i hans öde, den åt sig in i hans kärlek liksom i allting annat (...)
- Sensitiva amorosa, Ola Hansson

While it's always difficult to have an opinion on a book someone you know like ( like"this is the book I would save from a fire" kind of like), I do really enjoy these certain paragraphs. It's so obvious why I identify with the last one. To me anyway. As I said, hard to have an opinion. In a way, I'm reading about myself. But in another way, and one that interests me a whole lot more, I'm reading about someone else.

Reading Too much happiness by Alice Munro now.

WEIGHTLESS AND UNBELONGING

New books;
Alice Munro - Too much happiness
Joyce Carol Oates - Little bird of heaven
Margaret Atwood - Life before man
Sylvia Plath - Johnny Panic and the bible of dreams
Lorrie Moore - Who will run the frog hospital?
Siri Hustvedt - The summer without men
Miranda July - No one belongs here more than you
Doris Lessing - Ben, in the world

Books I've read lately;
Sylvia Plath - The bell jar
Miranda July - No one belongs here more than you
Lorrie Moore - Who will run the frog hospital?
Margaret Atwood - Moral disorder

Currently reading Ben, in the world. Finally found the sequel to The fifth child in London a couple of weeks ago. Waterstone's, I miss you sometimes. London, I miss you sometimes.

Haha, just when I was slagging Babel off, they obviously go hang out with Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Joyce Carol Oates and talk about Perec. I was going to fan-girl about Günter Wallraff too, but I don't understand German. Anyway, fuck, I'm easy to win back;

YOU DROPPED A HUNDRED AND FIFTY GRAND ON A FUCKING EDUACTION YOU COULDA' GOT FOR A DOLLAR 50 IN LATE CHARGES AT THE LIBRARY

(Sidebar to one particular reader: this post is ill-timed, but don't read too much into it).

I just realised, I hate talking about literature (or "just realised..."). I don't like listening to people talk about literature. I don't enjoy watching shows where people talk about literature (Babel, I've taken you on and failed so many times). I think it's because I love literature, books, words, but I hate people who read. And that is something I did just realise.

Maybe it's because it's so sacred to me. Maybe it's because it's so my own, and if I talk about it, I'll destroy it. Or they will. Maybe that's why I dropped out of Westminster. Maybe that's why I can't see myself ever going to university. God, the fucking panic I feel every time I think about uni. Being a student. All I want is to feel free. Uni, it feels like the smallest cage of them all.

It's not that I think you can go through life not being influenced by anyone. But I want to choose everything, absolutely everything, on my own. What books to read, what people to talk to, what movie to see. No curriculum. I don't want anything forced upon me. Also, I want everything. You can't have everything if you spend years doing one thing.

Having said that; I want to marry Jessika Gedin, which means I do enjoy listening to people talk about literature. But only if they agree with me, or vice versa. Which one could apply to every conversation one has had or ever will have in life.

AN EMPTINESS WITH A NAME: YOU.

"I am screaming, All these years you came first! You, never me! Who cleaned, did the homework for hours, slogged through the shopping? Did you? Goddamned master of the universe! Phallic Übermensch off to a conference! The neural correlates of consciousness! It makes me puke!

Why are you always so angry? What happened to your sense of humor? Why are you rewriting our life?"

- The summer without men, Siri Hustvedt

NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU.

"In the reocurring dream, everything has already fallen down, and I'm underneath. I'm crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl, I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn't the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling, and then suddenly, I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else."

"Some people are uncomfortable with silences. Not me. I've never cared much for call and response. Sometimes I will think of something to say and then I will ask myself: is it worth it? And it just isn't."

"I hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn't. I had thought that I was fragile, but I wasn't."

- No one belongs here more than you., Miranda July

LIFE COMES AT THEM FROM ALL SIDES

"For a long time I wandered aimlessly. It felt like a long time. It didn't feel aimless, however, or not in any carefree way. I was being driven by nessecity, by fate, like the characters in the more melodramatic novels I'd read in high school who would rush out into thunderstorms and lurk around moors. Like them I had to keep moving. I couldn't help it."

"I couldn't keep up my transient existence forever. I would have to end up with someone, sometime, someplace. Wouldn't I? But what if I missed a turn somewhere - missed my own future? That would be frighteningly easy to do. I'd make one hesitation or one departure too many and then I'd have run out of choices; I'd be standing all alone (...)"

"Why should being alone - in and of itself - be such a matter of derision? But it was. The alone - the loners - were not to be trusted. They were strange and twisted (...) They didn't love anyone, and nobody loved them. In my more rebellious moments I asked myself why I should care about being shut out of Noah's Ark of coupledom - in effect a glorified zoo, with locks on the bars and fodder dished out at set intervals."

"But I wasn't without social resources. I didn't take off my clothes and sing in public: I acted in acceptable ways. I smiled, nodded, made conversation, and so forth. I could do a good imitation of a competent young woman."

"She said nothing. She was spoiling things; she didn't want to. She'd been put in a false situation, and she hated that. But she had no other word to suggest - no word for herself that would be both truthful and acceptable."

"He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck, but she could tell that he was annoyed nonetheless. She was making difficulties where none existed. She was overstepping a line. But where was the line? She couldn't see it."

"My mother is in the middle. The names are written underneath: Jessie, Helene, "Me", Katie, Dorothy (...) In those early years of her photo-pasting, she always refers to herself as "Me", with quotation marks around the word, as if she's citing some written opinion to the effect that she is who she is."

"That was all quite long ago. I see it in retrospect, indulgently, from the point I've reached now. But how else could I see it? We can't really travel to the past, no matter how we try. If we do, it's as tourists."
- Moral disorder, Margaret Atwood

JAG ÄR EN LEDSEN MÄNNISKA MEN JAG ÄR GLAD ATT JAG LEVER

"Jag är min egen grupp och det är good enough for me."
"Jag bränner encyklopedin utan att slå upp ordet universitet."

Bought tickets to "Enligt Bodil Malmsten" today. I'm beyond excited, but since I don't wanna fangirl too much, I'll just put up Eldkvarn's "Blues för Bodil Malmsten" and the last episode of Skavlan which she's in;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWULFwbW_Lg
http://svtplay.se/t/102974/skavlan

And the blog, obviously. One cannot forget about the blog; http://www.finistere.se/blogg/

WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, I CUT CLASSES. IN ADULTHOOD, I CUT CORNERS

"I live on drama. I'm so used to being unhappy; I'd rather stay there than try to make things better. What things? I don't know. Sadness is a feeling I know. It has no strings attached. Happiness, it always comes with risks."
- The creativity of the mess we make, Julia Melin

"You left school at 14 and never went to university. Do you think this unusual path has been a help to your creativity?"

"Yes, it has been vey good for me on the whole (...) I know many writers who have been circumscribed by academia. When you're always being taught to compare, it does stop your creativity (...) I would never have survived a creative writing course! They savaged each other, and what they were creating were critics, not writers. I'm prepared to bet on that."

- Doris Lessing

I LIKE SONGS ABOUT DRIFTERS, BOOKS ABOUT THE SAME. THEY BOTH SEEM TO MAKE ME FEEL A LITTLE LESS INSANE

God, I haven't updated this blog in forever. Anyway, books bought;

Steve Sem-Sandberg - De fattiga i Lodz

Per Hagman - När oskulder kysser

Sara Stridsberg - Drömfakulteten

Céline Curiol - Utrop

Claire Castillon - Insekt

Doris Lessing - The good terrorist

Toni Morrison - The bluest eye

Scarlett Thomas - Our tragic universe

Books read;

Steve Sem-Sandberg - De fattiga i Lodz

Claire Castillon - Insekt

Carina Rydberg - Den som vässar vargars tänder

Johan Kling - Människor helt utan betydelse

Lukas Moodysson - Vitt blod

See, I'm finally back to reading in Swedish! After a two-year hiatus. Anyway, right now I'm inbetween books; in the meantime, feel free to read this great discussion about what really happened in Marisha Pessl's Special topics in calamity physics; http://mojomom.blogspot.com/2006/08/mojo-mom-book-club-special-topics-in.html

Oh, and also: I live in Stockholm now.

Seriously, could someone just buy me tickets to this? I'd give nothing in return, but I'd be forever grateful. http://www.sodrateatern.com/sv/Program-och-biljetter/Evenemang/Enligt-Bodil-Malmsten/

HAPPY NEW YEAR, MAY WE ALL HAVE A VISION NOW AND THEN OF A WORLD WHERE EVERY NEIGHBOUR IS A FRIEND

"Det var tre små barn som lekte på innergården till ett hyreshus, en flicka och två pojkar. Egentligen var det två som lekte och en som tittade på och så kom det ett till barn, ett jättelitet, kanske bara tre år. Så nu var det fyra barn och de två pojkarna började jaga den äldre flickan och hon ställde sig bakom en piskställning för att få skydd. Pojkarna började slå henne och en av dem sa "gör det ont? jag kan slå hårdare om du vill" och den lilla treåringen började härma pojken med sin bebiröst "gör det ont? jag kan slå hårdare om du vill" och hon slog flickan som var äldre med en liten liten pinne."
- Saker under huden, Linda Skugge