What I've read this summer (Swedish list here):

Lionel Shriver - The Mandibles
Lionel Shriver - Game control
Harper Lee - Go set a watchman
Charlotte Crosby - Me me me
Roxane Gay - An untamed state

Read:

Lena Dunham - Not that kind of girl: a young woman tell you what she's "learned" (very blah).

Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

Lionel Shriver - Big brother (re-read) 

Read Bad feminist by Roxane Gay.

WHAT I'VE READ IN JANUARY

What I've read in Swedish so far: http://librisvedese.blogspot.se/

Norman Mailer - The executioner's song (don't let the fact that this book is over 1000 pages long scare you off. It is SO, SO GOOD I CAN'T EVEN)
Karen Joy Fowler - We are all completely beside ourselves (very good).

WHAT I READ IN 2015

You can find the Swedish list at http://librisvedese.blogspot.se/.  For the first time in forever I read so much more in Swedish than in English.

The ones in bold are the ones that I loved, loved, loved:

A.M. Homes - This book will save your life
Anne Enright - The forgotten waltz
Hilary Mantel - Wolf hall

Hilary Mantel - Bring up the bodies
Markus Zusak - The book thief

Ian McEwan - Saturday

Lydia Davis - The end of the story
Siri Hustvedt - The summer without men
Louise Doughty - An English murder 
Lorrie Moore - Bark

Margaret Drabble - The sea lady

Carol Topolski - Monster love 
Richard Ford - Canada

Lionel Shriver - A perfectly good family 
Lionel Shriver - Big brother 

Teju Cole - Open city

Margaret Atwood - Surfacing
Paula Hawkins - The girl on the train
Louise Welsh - The girl on the stairs
Michael Cunningham - After nightfall
J.M. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello

Doris Lessing - Walking in the shade: volume two of my autobiography 1949-1962
Helen Gordon - Landfall
Joyce Carol Oates - Black girl/white girl
Kewin Powers - The yellow birds
Ransom Riggs - Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children
S.J. Watson - Second life

SUMMER READING

This is what I've read during the summer, most of which I spent in Berlin (Swedish list here):

Margaret Atwood - Surfacing
Paula Hawkins - The girl on the train
Louise Welsh - The girl on the stairs
Michael Cunningham - After nightfall
J.M. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello
Helen Gordon - Landfall
Joyce Carol Oates - Black girl/white girl
Kewin Powers - The yellow birds
S.J. Watson - Second life

THE KING'S QUICKSILVER DARLING

Long time no see as per usual, book blog. I've been reading a lot in Swedish lately, so please check that out: http://librisvedese.blogspot.se/.

What I've read lately:
Teju Cole - Open city (very good).
Hilary Mantel - Bring up the bodies (ILOVEYOUHILARYMANTEL).

"You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws."
- Bring up the bodies, Hilary Mantel

HE, THOMAS CROMWELL, IS RUNNING EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE WEATHER.

What I've read lately (Swedish blog here):

Carol Topolski - Monster love (Was OK.)
Margaret Drabble - The sea lady (Quite good).
Richard Ford - Canada (Honestly, don't understand why this one got so good reviews. It was kind of blah).
Lionel Shriver - Big brother (So, so good.)
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (THIS BOOK. I DO NOT HAVE WORDS. I WILL LOVE IT FOREVER. ❤).

What I've read lately:

Lydia Davis - The end of the story
Siri Hustvedt - The summer without men
Louise Doughty - An English murder (so bad, don't read it)
Lorrie Moore - Bark

Currently reading The sea lady by Margaret Drabble. If you want to know what I've read in Swedish lately, feel free to check that out here.

SATURDAY

Just finished reading Saturday by Ian McEwan. While I thought it was OK, this review someone posted on goodreads is so funny and on point:

Shovelmonkey1 

"Hello everybody,

I'm Henry Perowne and welcome to a day in my life... a Saturday to be precise. I'm a good natured sort of chap, if I were famous I'd probably be saddled with the tag of "thinking women's crumpet", but personally I take myself much to seriously to acknowledge that kind of thing. I'm a successful neurosurgeon who enjoys long, descriptive and adjective laden games of squash with my erudite and debonair colleagues. Today, for once in my incredibly lucky and wealthy life, I had a spot of bad luck and pranged my top of the range Merc. This led to an encounter which can, at best, be described as unpleasant. The thugs in the red BMW gave me a bit of a pasting which left me with a cracking haematoma over my sternum. However, my extensive medical knowledge allowed me to diagnose one of my attackers with a genetically inherited degenerative disease on the spot. This allowed me to escape, quick-smart, while they brooded over their own mortality.

Later, after welcoming home my improbably talented and successful 16 year old Blues Musician son and my improbably talented and successful published poet daughter there was another small altercation. This time however the ebb and flow of violent modern day life breached the walls of this englishman's pricey Georgian Castle and things took a turn for the worse.

Needless to say, my calculating surgeons mind and spirited, courageous family pulled together to best the simian-like thugs. Ironically it then fell to me to save said thug with an emergency neurosurgical procedure. Life's funny that way. I wrapped up the whole day the way it began; by making love to my improbably talented and successful wife and then having a little bit of a wistful ponder about my own mortality while considering it in perspective against a backdrop of modern foreign policy."

Saturday reviews on goodreads.com

What I've read lately:

A.M. Homes - This book will save your life
Anne Enright - The forgotten waltz
Lionel Shriver - A perfectly good family
Markus Zusak - The book thief

You can check out the Swedish blog here.

"Here's a trick I found for how to finally get some sleep. I sleep in my husband's bed. That way the empty bed I look at is my own."
- The collected stories, Amy Hempel

2014: READING LIST

What I've read and re-read in 2014 (the ones in bold are the ones that I loved, loved, loved):

Doris Lessing - A proper marriage
Margaret Drabble - The pure gold baby
Ian McEwan - The child in time
Ian McEwan - Atonement
Muriel Spark - The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah
Zoê Heller - Notes on a scandal
Lydia Davis - Can't and won't
Lisa Alther - Kinflicks
Elsa Morante - History
J.D. Salinger - Raise high the roof beam, carpenters
Aravind Adiga - The white tiger
Curtis Sittenfeld - The man of my dreams
Curtis Sittenfeld - American wife
Anne Brontë - The tenant of Wildfell Hall
Sue Miller - While I was gone
Suzanne Rindell - The other typist
Denise Mina - The end of the wasp season
Caitlin Moran - How to be a woman
Maggie O´Farell - After you'd gone
Maggie O'Farell - The hand that first held mine
Jung Chang - Wild swans: three daughters of China
Iris Murdoch - The unicorn
Sophie Hannah - The point of rescue
Sophie Hannah - The carrier
Samantha Hayes - Until you're mine
Louise Doughty - Whatever you love
Alan Hollinghurst - The stranger's child
Siri Hustvedt - The blazing world
Lauren Beukes - The shining girls
Melissa Bank - The wonder spot
Sidney Sheldon - The best laid plans
Sidney Sheldon - Tell me your dreams
A.M. Homes - May we be forgiven
Douglas Kennedy - The moment
Barbara Demick - Nothing to envy: Ordinary lives in North Korea

Long time since I updated this blog. I've mostly been reading books in Swedish these past few months, so please check out them out here (and if they don't look like many, please remember that one of them was over 1000 pages long. I think you can guess which one). Anyway, did read How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran which I found really rather boring. I don't see that this book has anything to do with feminism. Also read The moment by Douglas Kennedy which was very bad, but I already knew it would be - I just wanted to read something that was easy and that was set in Berlin. Mission accomplished.

MAY WE BE FORGIVEN

What I've read lately:

Alan Hollinghurst - The stranger's child (Very, very English which obviously I loved).
A.M. Homes - May we be forgiven (So, so good. She is so darkly funny, truly unique.)
Barbara Demick - Nothing to envy: Ordinary lives in North Korea (Very interesting and written in the same style as Anna Funder's Stasiland which can only be a good thing.)

Currently reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary in Lydia Davis' translation. Figured, why not read a translation by somebody I love and have great respect for? Seems like a good one so far.

Here's a picture of the lovely A.M. Homes:

Photograph by Juergen Frank

...AND HISTORY CONTINUES...

Stopped reading Shantaram and read some books in Swedish instead. Feel free to check out which ones here.

After that, I read Elsa Morante's History. On every other page, it broke my heart. I honestly don't know how to describe this novel. These things that we do to each other, the fact that we are actual people doing this to each other, these small stories that are our lives interwoven with the much bigger ones happening all around us, and also the power and powerlessness of history itself...She writes about it. You should read it.

I spent this weekend with Sidney Sheldon; when I was around twelve I loved, loved, loved his books and in a thrift shop in my hometown I came across one that I used to obsess over called Tell me your dreams. Was so much fun to read it as a 25-year-old woman as opposed to a twelve-year-old girl this time around. While I've changed my mind about a few things (honestly, did Sheldon even like women?) I have to say that he knew how to tell a good story. I also read The best laid plans by Sheldon as well. Hadn't read that one before, and it really wasn't very good. However, that does not contradict what I wrote earlier. It just wasn't my type of story. The best one has to be If tomorrow comes though. That book is fucking brilliant, I have to read it again.

Now I'm reading The stranger's child by Alan Hollinghurst.

Let's end this weirdly structured blog post with a random picture that my best friend took of me. Here I am, happy and drunk while waiting for my fiancé to get back from a trip:

ELSA MORANTE

From the Elsa Morante Estate

THE BLAZING WORLD

What I've read lately:

Lisa Alther - Kinflicks
Lydia Davis - Can't and won't
Aravind Adiga - The white tiger
Denise Mina - The end of the wasp season
Sophie Hannah - The point of rescue
Siri Hustvedt - The blazing world

Currently reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, though I'm taking breaks in order to read this Swedish crime triology I've gotten pathetically addicted to.

"No one rejoices more in revenge than women, wrote Juvenal. Women do most delight in revenge, wrote Sir Thomas Browne. Sweet is revenge, especially to women, wrote Lord Byron. And I say, I wonder why, boys. I wonder why."
- The blazing world, Siri Hustvedt

IF THIS WAS ADULTHOOD, THE ONLY IMPROVEMENT SHE COULD DETECT IN HER SITUATION WAS THAT NOW SHE COULD EAT DESSERT WITHOUT EATING HER VEGETABLES.

God, long time no see book blog. These are my literature-related news:

1. In May, me and my boyfriend went to Kulturhuset in Stockholm and listened to/watched an interview between Jan Gradvall and Donna Tartt. So surreal to see her in real life, and everything she talked about was just so interesting. She seemed like such a friendly, open person.

2. What I've read lately:
Iris Murdoch - The unicorn
It was OK, really good sometimes, kind of boring at other times.

Jung Chang - Wild swans: three daughters of China
This book is one of the best ones I have ever read. I could not put it down, I dreamt about it, I talked about it, I thought about it. It was just so great and heartbreaking and scary and sad and just everything inbetween.

Ian McEwan - The child in time
I felt like there was something missing from this novel: I maybe wanted him to concentrate even more on the protagonist's feelings about his lost daughter, but it was OK.

I really feel like I am forgetting a book, which is annoying. I'm sure of it. However, what I do know is that I read some short stories from Open secrets by Alice Munro, and then stopped. Now I'm reading Kinflicks by Lisa Alther.

A FILM ADAPTION I'M PRETTY EXCITED ABOUT: