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