Jasper Fforde and his Thursday Nexts

Image: books.google.com

There was a time when I needed to read a) something simple that would be b) captivating enough even if I were in pain/bored/busy. Obviously, a tome with thirty different characters to keep track of by page five and changing milieus would not do.

I grabbed Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels through a happenstance: I went to work, and my colleague had something on his desk that said "Shades of Gray."

- You're not reading...?
- No. No no no. This is Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.

As I had never heard of the guy, m'colleague filled me in. He provided the hook: "...and he has this series of Thursday Next books, where London is filled with literature detectives that hop into books to solve mysteries, and they have a lot of literary references." Sold!

The Eyre Affair

Thursday Next is a young woman who solves crimes related to works of literature in an alternate universe London. In the first installment of the series, Thursday needs to solve a crime involving Jane Eyre: a real baddie has been able to break into the world of a variety of classics, kidnapping or killing off characters to the horror of fan societies all over the country. It's basically like, "If you don't give me what I ask, Gandalf gets it next!" The horror is not about having the characters killed, but the idea of reading those books again without these characters in them. The stories would change completely!

Time bending, underground librarians, characters escaped into the real world, and... well, I'll get to the style later.

Image: books.google.com

The next one continues where the previous ones left off: Lost in a Good Book has Thursday in media's limelight for being both a hero and a debaser of Jane Eyre for what she did to the story in order to solve the case in The Eyre Affair. Because hey, who doesn't want the ending of that story to be different?

Baddies unfortunately get to her, and via time bending technology they remove a very dear person to her from her life completely--by intervening when he was rescued as a small boy from certain death. Thursday is suddenly living an alternate life and needs to find her way back in time to undo what the baddies did so that her normal life comes back to her. It's just too bad she has a hard time convincing others around her that they are all a part of an alternate reality.


So, what's up with these books?

I've read two and a half of them so far, and they've taken a firm place in my Enjoyable, Inoffensive Fluff" collection, along with Janet Evanovich. Sometimes I actually wondered whether Evanovich is Fforde's nom de plume for writing hard-boiled detective stories across the Atlantic--the writing styles and subject matter are surprisingly similar! Both write a series about a no-nonsense woman protagonist who solves crimes, and spends a good deal of time thinking about a male colleague. She gets into trouble and is rescued by said handsome colleague, or gets herself out of trouble thanks to her wits.

When I say it's enjoyable fluff, I hope it's not offensive to any of the fans of this series: the literary references in the novels are delightful for any literature nerds or lit. majors (when Thursday goes to Kafka's Trial and uses its logic against the judges... hilarious), but the stories themselves are still just fun little mysteries that get solved at the end, with one Big Bad looking in the background throughout the series. You won't be finding too much of social commentary or mind bending revelations here beyond the importance of knowing your novels.

The writing is absolutely silly--I guess you wouldn't expect anything less from a British author on a quest to write a slightly silly novel. There are a lot of puns, and I guarantee you they are all eye-roll worthy. I mean, one of the main characters is called Jack Schitt, and you bet it will be played out to its full potential. That is just juvenile, really.

Sometimes, the stories get even embarrassingly sweet and naive. Although the main protagonist is a grown, independent woman with a good job and she obviously has sex, the most Fforde ever describes is basically a peck on the cheek. And poof, now she is pregnant!

Even Young Adult novels get steamier than this (and this is supposedly not a YA title). He drops hints at Thursday and whatshisname spending nights together, but it's the equivalent of a daytime soap showing a couple staring at each other, then the camera panning away to show a sunset while the sax plays, to then cut back to the couple getting ready to go to work. Why even bother? He's not showing nor telling. I would be completely fine with Thursday being an asexual being in these novels, but the blushing wink-wink-nudge-nudge treatment of Thursday's sex life just seems kind of awkward.

Thursday is a kind of an everywoman--a bit quirky, with plausible problems--which is why I don't find her or the other characters terribly interesting. Still, I continue to read these books because they are funny, punny, the action scenes are written well, and each story is a little pub quiz for lit. nerds. Recognize this quote? Recognize this reference? Recognize, that we just totally created an alternate reality for your favorite book?

These stories are perfect reading for lying in the sun without any other cares in the world than keeping your drink filled to the brim and the whodunnit. Or in front of the fireplace on a disgustingly damp winter day. Nothing to worry anyone's pretty head about. They are perfect also for when you do have other cares in the world, but want to be taken somewhere silly for a moment.

I bought two of these for my Kindle, but the next ones I am going to check out from the library: I don't think I'll ever need to reread them, but I do want to read them all once!

Unfinished: Vieras by Riikka Pulkkinen

With regret I am informing you that I did not finish Riikka Pulkkinen's newest novel, Vieras (Stranger/Unfamiliar). I haven't felt this... uncomfortable, I suppose, about closing a book without reading it through in ages.

I thoroughly enjoyed her first novel, Raja, (available in English as The Limit, translated by Seattle's own Lola Rogers!) but her second novel, Totta, (True in English, also with a translation by Lola Rogers) really hit all the sweet spots: an unreliable narrator, which is a rare treat and difficult to execute well; beautiful language without tripping into purple prose; new ways of describing things. Everything in that story, from the plot to the flashbacks to the narration was just fresh and alive, and the only reason I have been waiting this long to even try rereading it is because I don't own a copy and I want to forget it enough to recreate that first read experience again. Please check it out from your local bookstore. I love it to pieces.

So after that, I was obviously filled with anticipation.

Was she in a rush to produce a third novel? I was sitting there on the bus, reading this novel, baffled. (EDIT: I went and stalked Finnish bloggers who have written about this book and the consensus seems to be that this is Pulkkinen's best, and much better than the earlier ones. Obviously, I'm missing something.)

It is about a young woman pastor from an interracial background in Finland. She snaps within the first pages and steps onto a ferry to Sweden, from where she flies straight to New York. We quickly learn that her mother of unspecified ethnicity who died when she was young was from the US, but they never went there while she was alive. It's time to carpe the diem, I suppose.

Not a bad setting, especially as a bit of mystery is thrown in: she makes references to Yasmina, a girl whose diary she now possesses, and we see flashbacks to Yasmina learning Finnish through using the diary and sitting in the pews, but there is an element of dread. Something bad has happened to Yasmina by the time we become familiar with our main protagonist. Still so far so good.

[An aside. I don't know why suddenly (white) Finnish authors need to be participating in discussions about racism and prejudice, especially when it boils down to cliches and "racism is bad, mmmkay?" The motivation behind writing is perhaps noble, but often the result is just kind of black and white--what else would it be without extensive knowledge of a foreigner's personal experience of living in Finland? I now dread my next Finnish book waiting on the shelf, which is also a book about a Muslim girl in Finland, this time written by a white, cis middle aged man. I've heard it's good. Please let it be good. The previous "Muslims in Finland" book I read was very touching and brilliantly written--by a cis middle aged white woman--but I still felt a bit uncomfortable reading it.]

What really bugged me about this story was the protagonist's trip to New York: she has never been to the US or South America, but she fluently recognizes ethnicities on the streets (such as stating that a Colombian woman was doing this and that) as she marvels the melting pot. Wow, that's a pretty observant Finn. It would be believable if we were told why the protagonist is so apt at recognizing ethnicities simply by looking at them, but not really. Or is this again an unreliable narrator, and we find out on the very last pages that she just had delusions of grandeur and was faking it for the listeners? That in fact, she has no idea what she is talking about? That may be the only way I can finish reading this book--thinking that this is the reason for her behavior.

To top it off, the first few pages dealing with her arrival in New York are exhausting run-throughs of the city that sound more like name dropping and a tourist guide than anything else: we don't stay to dwell on the protagonist as in quick succession she takes the train from station X, then goes to Madison Square Garden, then to this or that location, sees someone rapping (OMG New York is so urban and ethnic), then is on the train again, sees another famous sight, someone is eating a hot dog there how quaint, then back onto the train, and...

Then she successfully rents a room on Manhattan. Without a credit or background check. With cash apparently? I almost gave up there, but figured... Let's see where this is going.

She goes to Chinatown to eat dumplings. OK... a timid Finnish priest who has barely been outside of the country before is suddenly by herself in Chinatown, ordering food that she says she has never eaten or seen before and has no idea what is in it. Right.

At this point, the novel sounds less of a story and more of a soap box for the author's possible personal experiences in the United States. It sounds like Pulkkinen has a lot of opinions about the United States, but instead of writing a column or an autobiography, she uses this priest. But it does not work: it's weird that while the priest is having a slice of pizza, a small remark about obesity in the US is thrown in and dwelled upon rather than the priest's own experience of eating a gigantic slice of pizza for the first time ever, especially considering her background with anorexia. It just sounds like these are not the priest's thoughts and experiences at all.

I started skipping pages to see if I would find something I can grab onto.

Leafed through probably 10 pages of pretty gimmicky typography and dancing.

Then, while she is spending an evening at her new American roommate's place she engages in a conversation with her in extremely poetic language and difficult vocabulary, and that's where my disbelief was no longer suspended, especially as little Yasmina's broken Finnish seemed to fluctuate from perfectly commanding vowel harmony to making vowel harmony mistakes. Why wasn't Yasmina given a voice in perfect Finnish if for fiction's sake our protagonist was given perfect English? Although her mother was American, it is made clear that her mom only spoke Finnish with the family to learn it well, except for some expletives.

Of course authors always use their protagonists to tell a story the authors want to tell, but this just did not seem genuine: the priest character seems like a voodoo doll that has absolutely no personality but who espouses suddenly political and cultural views out of the blue, or is a world traveler for no apparent reason. It just doesn't gel.

I don't know what happened here. I was not expecting to dislike this story as much as I did.

Those of you who have enjoyed it--why? Maybe I'm missing something crucial, or I had a bad day... I'm willing to give it another try.

Until then, I'm going to leaf through to see what happened with young Yasmina. That part of the mystery is still gripping.

Raw Spirit. In Search of the Perfect Dram by Iain Banks

Feat. a shameless plug for my favorite local bookstore

...This book will, inevitably, be about me, my family and my friends too, especially those friends who have been persuaded - with, you may not be surprised to learn, no great deal of body-part manipulation involved - to take part in this project. [...] This, let's face it, is a book about one of the hardest of hard liquors and for all this Let's be mature, I just drink it for the taste not the effect, honest, Two units a day only stuff... it is, basically, a legal, exclusive, relatively expensive but very pleasant way of getting out of your head.

The introduction to this book is pages long, detailing what it will and won't be about, and it is such a well written introduction that I almost missed getting onto my bus: luckily the bus driver stopped and asked if I wanted in, and smilingly commented about how I must be reading a really good book to be so enthralled with it. "It's a book about whisky!" I chirped, probably looking a bit too happy.

When a publisher contacts an author to write a book about Scottish whisky--research expenses included--I doubt anyone in their right mind would say no.

Neither did Banks, who took off to the task with an unsurprising number of friends offering their help.

The result is a book that by title sounds like a whisky connoisseur's delight, but is more of an autobiography of adulthood antics involving alcohol, book fairs and cons, fellow skiffy writers and editors; it's about Banks's love of cars as he drives down the wee roads toward distilleries, about nieces snickering when he falls off a dock unceremoniously. And puns. All of this is tied up in the love of whisky, or what particular whiskies evoke in the author.

In the end, that's what senses are: subjective. One man's dram is another man's nightmare from college. There cannot be a perfect drink--it is only perfect to you, with perfection built up from all the experiences surrounding the tasting. Although Banks's tastes lie on the more expensive side--which he sheepishly admits--he does warn dear readers not to let their wallet guide their taste buds, and to be on the lookout for a drink they truly like.

Raw Spirit is a down-to-earth narrative of having a good drink and the professionalism that goes into distilling one, peppered with loads of self-deprecating anecdotes and sudden politic outbursts (Banks was commissioned to begin research right at the start of the Iraqi war--he reserves the words "shite" and "fucking" pretty much exclusively for these little paragraphs).

And, as usual with Banks, the whole thing is just marvelously written. The only bits I noticed glazing over were parts where he's in love with his cars, simply because I could not care less.

So I began to subscribe to the New Yorker...

Awwwwyisssss.  I have nothing smarter to say, because that is my exact
reaction whenever I get a new issue.

A perhaps little known fact for Americans: your magazine subscriptions are the envy of Finnish people. I can order one, or even two magazines and not go bankrupt. It's amazing!

After five years of just basking in this knowledge I took the leap and subscribed to the New Yorker because a) I wanted to have a magazine that I could spend time with reading articles and not just leafing through pretty images (which can be nice as well) and b) the articles I had read from it before were supremely well-written and interesting.

I'm nowadays almost exclusively a digital reader: we don't have the space for more books, buying books second-hand--which is what I used to do--will not give the authors any money anyway, and I'm too old to have my disk herniated by a Stephenson tome in my purse. Most of the time I buy digital versions, unless I'm pretty sure I'd like to lend my book to someone else.

Thus, I was disappointed with sampling a copy of the New Yorker on my Kindle.

I realized that my magazine reading habits are too set in stone: first, I want to leaf through the magazine. Then, based on how long articles look and how I'm feeling I'll start reading.

With the Kindle, I would just start reading any old article as browsing in this way was impossible, and what I thought would be a short bus-ride length of a read was actually a 5-page coverage, but there was no turning back. By the time I got to the end of it I felt I had not been mentally prepared well enough to take it in as it should have been. Had I known I was going to be reading a lengthy report I would have set it aside to read when I would have been less of a sleepy commuter.

Also, I'm a cheapskate. The digital subscription for the magazine was more expensive than the paper version, which really sealed the deal in addition to the general feeling of confusion while trying to navigate the digital version.

So, I got my paper version. And I'm glad, because already in the second issue I received I was greeted by perhaps the most glorious article I have yet read, "Operation Easter. The hunt for illegal egg collectors" and its accompanying picture of two guys in full camo in darkest of Britain's forests, looking for elusive "egg obsessives."


It's in the June 22, 2013 issue, and this article alone is worth the 99 cents a single downloaded issue costs via Amazon. Or whatever a trip to the library may cost to get your hands on this 10-page article of James Bondesque real-life intrigue and excitement, revolving around the obsession of the egg collectors.

Why is this article not a British crime series yet? You will laugh, you will cry, and you will rage reading about the thousands of eggs from protected birds, tucked away under floorboards with baby birds crudely blown out of them with a straw! And there is of course an authority figure, a bird fancier society, that condemns these acts but nevertheless keeps drawing unstable men (yes, they are all men) to their ranks. Also, a good British mystery would be nothing without a detective, whose obsession about the egg collectors gets questioned.

After reading that article I was just about ready to cancel my subscription simply because this one article had fulfilled all I was looking for when I subscribed to the magazine: superb writing and an interesting topic I had never come across before.

Since then, each issue has had at least one article that has made paying for it absolutely worth it; for that moment in a day, when I'm not focusing on or being distracted by anything else but this piece of paper in my hands, and being captivated by what the writer wants to make public.

Reading a magazine--not just this particular one--feels like a quick palate cleanser after reading Reddit for posts that are either closely or vaguely related to my daytime job or reading Twitter feeds of the same. It can take me away from a digital screen just for a second to rest my eyeballs on something else, and I get to learn stuff while resting my eyes!

No matter how much I have become a reader of digital goods, I apparently do need this small stack of papers to arrive once a week to touch and look at.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Folwer

The About: Our narrator is Rosemary, the girl who was always talking: first babbling as a kid with her parents asking her to skip to the end and later, choosing artfully topics to talk meaninglessly about to steer clear from anything inconvenient and personal. That would be the two topics she does not want anyone new in her life to know about--her sister Fern who disappeared when Rosemary was young, and his brother who consequently ran away and never came back, leaving Rosemary and her parents to grieve for two. Rose's voice comes back when she starts to piece her childhood back together.

The Thoughts:

It is impossible to write about this lovely book without spoiling something that, according to my Kindle, happens about 40% into the book and then takes over the remaining 60%. Apparently it's revealed by the publisher blurb on the back of the book so... don't read it!

Any generic description on the other hand seems really contrived and I would probably not read a story based on what I just wrote above in the About. This is about a family, where... No. It's about sisters and sibling rival-- Ugh, not that, either. What does it mean to be a human... No no. In a world, where... Heck no.

Look.

In this story, sisters, brothers, and friends are not what they seem. Our narrator--or the narrator in times she talks about--is a confused young woman, whose voice we might not even want to trust.

Have I already said a million times how my favorite narrator is the rare unreliable narrator?

The story is grippingly sad, and what made it personally worse for me was that I had read the nonfiction books about similar cases that this fictional family encounters and which Rose quotes--and I loved those books. Even stranger, my favorite story from Karen Joy Fowler ever is a short story called "Faded Roses," and... if you know that story, and you have read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, you will now go, "Ahaaaaaaaaa, I get the connection." (And no, it's not the word "Rose"). It was just really weird to see Fowler's story unfold when I had read so much of what seemed to amount to source material for this.

When I first got the book, the title seemed silly to me. Something that David Eggers might ironically write. After reading the story, though, it changed its meaning without anybody really pointing out what the intention of the title is. It is a great title, and the best title to describe this story.

The story is great, and I had a hard time putting it down.

Stylistically, everything is in place. You can tell that Fowler is a long-time short story writer: her paragraphs are snappy, and I can just imagine the pain of cutting away fat that would pass as good writing but is not relevant to a Very Well Written Paragraph. There is nothing that is too much or too little. With some of the sentences I had to stop and reread them, just because they were so damned good.

Someone, please read this book and come talk with me about it.

EDIT: Usually I do not quote reviewers here, but these two do a better job than I could. (from http://karenjoyfowler.com/)

“This unforgettable novel is a dark and beautiful journey into the heart of a family, an exploration of the meanings of memory, a study of what it means to be ‘human.’ In the end the book doesn’t just break your heart; it takes your heart and won’t give it back.”

—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply and Stay Awake

“It really is impossible to do justice here in a blurb. This is a funny, stingingly smart, and heartbreaking book. Among other things, it’s about love, family, loss, and secrets; the acquisition and the loss of language. It’s also about two sisters, Rosemary and Fern, who are unlike any other sisters you’ve ever met before.”

—Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen and Pretty Monsters

Reading for the season: summer

Seasonal eating exists, but how about seasonal reading? Look no further than to Finland: people there love their libraries, and one genre is completely over-borrowed during summer months--in this section, shelves are empty.

Detective novels, or dekkari, as they are affectionately called. Other times of the year you might get your hands on Agatha Christies, John Grishams, Tom Clancys and Stieg Larssons, but not when it's hot outside.

The phenomenon is explained by the popularity and availability of summer cabins, where Finns tend to spend if not their weekends away from cities, their evenings away from nearby home. This cabin is usually at a lake, so a lot of time is spent sunbathing, swimming or just lying around on the dock (or if we are talking about my parents' cabin, on a massive, warm rock) keeping an eye on the kids. And what better way to spend time than have a good book by you!

But it can't be any old book. Remember, that you are soaking in the sun and your senses are possibly dulled by just having eaten a nice meal and taken a swim, and you smell like after sun lotion. But you still want to read... Something that won't require too much brain power but is still entertaining and keeps you reading.

Detective or crime novels. Heck yes.

I'm not aware of such trends in the US, maybe simply because I have not paid as much attention. Beyond gardening books in the spring, what genres match with seasons around these parts of the world?

Horsey to king prawn

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

The About: Jernau Gurgeh is a game player. That's his skill: he is incredibly good at games. He's sort of a superstar, actually, which gets him into trouble: forced by an offer he cannot refuse, he travels years away to take part in a game that extends beyond the board; a game of savagery, moral outrage and good old political plotting; a game that will determine the future of an entire civilization.

Thoughts: I'll ramble a bit, because Iain Banks is dead and we can't read fresh words from him ever again.

Sci-fi is my favorite out of often sneeringly called "genre literature," mostly because of this slightly depressing reason: it seems that only by imagining humanity in way, way out in the future is it easy for us readers to engage in stories that do not lean on old tropes, especially when it comes to gender. Even fantasy still uses traditional gender roles no matter how fantastical the setting is.

In Banks's Culture, humans are advanced enough not to care about such details: they can change their biological sex at a whim. It's a society where biology does not determine skills or worth--or to be more accurate, where nobody expects a human being to have a certain skill set just because they have a certain set of sexual organs.

But that is not the only reason I have reread this novel after hearing of Banks's untimely death.

He was a good writer. Bear with me.

Not just once would one find me and my husband (if for some reason barging in...?) in the bathroom before bedtime, brushing teeth and quoting passages of amazing writing to each other, and just marveling at how good Banks is.

How to describe it? It's hard, because he is defined perhaps more by what he never does: his stories lack flowery prose and pretentious vocabulary that reeks of the author just browsing through a thesaurus and selecting something, anything, that would sound somehow more special than what actually would be appropriate; he only uses cliched metaphors if it is an intentional wink at the reader. He does not create a shroud of ambiguity for lack of being able to write beautifully with clarity.

I guess that's it. He knows usage--when and what is appropriate. All of his characters have a distinct voice without tropes such as fake accents or stuttering. Not once was I confused about who was talking.

Banks is also just damned funny. To describe a character he may use a single word that is refreshing, absolutely spot on, and that one word is all that is needed for great big belly laughs. He also gets away with naming his characters with the most ridiculous names that seem entirely plausible and not just sci-fi mumbo-jumbo and strained efforts at using, let's say, clicks from an African language to create an uncomfortable exoticism. I mean, Jernau Gurgeh? This is magic!

The only downside to reading Banks--whether it is his sci-fi or his non-sci-fi work--is that anything read immediately after feels like crap. I need to apologize in advance for anything I will write about The Skinner, because I can't move a page without righteous annoyance at word choices in an otherwise fine story. "He grinned a grin"?? Seriously, that's the best you can do? Iaiiiiiiiin!

Vietnam - scarred

Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman

The About: A group of scientist-soldiers find a creature on their exploratory mission on another planet that offers telepathic skills between two people who are touching it at the same time. The mindbridge, as it will be dubbed, is also extremely lethal--it did cause a heart attack for the first person who touched it, which is the least gory way of it dealing with touchy-feely humans--and the scientists on Earth are willing to test its capabilities. In the quest to find more mindbridges to experiment on, humans stumble upon a community of ruthless aliens that kill without hesitation.

Thoughts: That description sounds pretty actiony, and sure enough--there is plenty of suspense and action in this novel. At the same time it's wonderfully literary, with changing modes of narrative (from a screenplay format to a report card to a psychologist's evaluation) that expose different aspects of the characters without needing to do lengthy flashbacks.

While I was reading the story, we were talking about the book at home. K. said, that like some of Haldeman's other novels, this also exudes his weariness of the horrors he saw in Vietnam during the war. And the more I thought of it and progressed in the story, the more evident this became. The mindbridge is an attempt of humans trying to connect with each other, while still trying to destroy other living beings for no other apparent reason than expanding territory. Or maybe it is not about getting connected but the idea of being the only ones to possess the mindbridge.

Haldeman is tired of the usual reasons for war, and it shows. Without being lecturing and hippy-like, the novel takes an unexpected turn at the end toward a radical idea of living in harmony that for individualistic humans is scary.

I kind of want to reread this already.

Reboot, Part 2--the Analog Didgeridoo

It's 2013 and time for a reboot! Wait, where have I heard that before...

A lot has happened, meaning that nothing much has happened except less time spent at the computer or reading full length books, resulting in less blogging. I am sorely in need of writing practice, so I'm back.

It is 2012 and time for a reboot

Life happened, and here I am months later. My reading life has been oddly meta since the last post: my Kindle--yes, the debate is now over--is collecting books on writing and editing. Only after I switched to commuting by bus have I gotten back into the groove of reading fiction and nonfiction (that has nothing to do with writing).

To keep the blog going, I'm getting rid of the counting system that now seems daunting, and instead of going on long tirades, I'll try to keep it short.

So, without further ado:

A Game of Thrones and  A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin


The About: Royal plotting and intrigue in a world where dragons and massive wolves are real. Here, anyone can end up with their face down in the muck and nobody gets ahead in the world by being virtuous.

Thoughts: Who keeps up with these names? Tyrion, Tyrell, Tywin, Targaryen, Arryn, Aeron, Aerys, Arianne, Aero. I'm expecting a character called Ayrygorell to pop up any minute now.

I am reading the series while watching the HBO show, and apparently the stories are different enough for me to not know when I'm reading spoilers and when something has just been skipped over in the TV series for time and continuity. I'd come home exclaiming, "Jon Snow did not behave like that in the book!"

I didn't pick up these books before because the cover art and the titles all shouted Swords and Sorcerers to me; the genre I just can't quite stomach. Silly of me. There are sorcerers, but their magic is believable in the context of the world. There are plenty of swords, but no valiant heroes who rise from rags to riches.

I overheard a critique of the series, "I don't like a story where you are made to love characters and then they are killed off." I find such a plot device refreshing, because it brings in reality to an otherwise fantastic world: you can never trust that your favorite character will remain alive, nor can you trust that they won't be a complete turncoat or an idiot. It creates tension to even the most mundane activities of the characters, as we'll never know what cruel twist of fate may lie in store.

Although the writing occasionally gets a bit too descriptive (do I need to know the names of all soldiers in a band and what their stations are, if they are never mentioned again?), the prose is still enjoyable. The switches between characters work splendidly.

Now I'm just debating whether to I should start the third book before the third season is out. I could take a peek and risk the spoilers.

I've done software testing, so why not test patterns and readability with craft books...

Cool variation on stripey socks

Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Patterns That Go Way Beyond Socks edited by Judith Durant

The About: Third in the series of One-Skein Wonders, this book makes use of stashes of sock yarn that knitters love to hoard. Patterns are divided into mittens and gloves, shrugs and scarves, socks, baby clothes and random accessories. Each pattern is designed to use just one skein of sock yarn specified.

Thoughts: Being one of them hoarders of sock yarn and a very... frugal person, nothing delights me more than the idea of completing a project with one skein only. The problem with many socks I have made is that most, if not all of them, require about 1.2 skeins of yarn, and then I'm left with just not enough for another pair of socks--grr!

This book has cute but easy patterns from straight-forward knitting to lacy creations. In contrast to some other knitting books, the instructions here are easy and leave no room for ambiguity.

I ended up making two pairs of socks using one of the sock patterns that was easy to memorize and looked great, and as I followed each step by the word, I managed to make a pair of socks without any problems or needing to stop to scratch my head.

The only downside to my eagerness in knitting these was that I did not check what size this one skein was supposed to be, and so my first pair ended up using again about 1.2 skeins of yarn--which is why the first pair has non-matching toes...

There are patterns in this book where I'm thinking, "OK, so you can make a skein as big as you want--can you still call it just one skein pattern?" Most of the sock yarn skeins I have are less than 300 yards each, whereas most of the patterns in this book require skeins in sizes somewhere between 300-500 yards. I wish the introduction already had stated that most of the yarns here are high-quality, indie-made hand-spun sock yarns and not the kind that you can buy off Jo-Ann shelves.

Despite that, this is an extremely useful book for learning quick projects to be made out of a fairly small amount of sock yarn. Because instructions are written extremely clearly and are accompanied by illustrations you can't go wrong buying this book. Next I'll try out some of the scarves...

Painful images

36. In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

The About: This collection is a set of one-page comics that deal with Art Spiegelman trying to come to terms with the destruction of the Twin Towers in his city, all the while growing angrier at how the then-administration took advantage of the raw feelings people felt after the attacks. His art goes from obsessive reproductions of the burning skeleton of the second tower to scathing political commentary, none of which leave the reader cold.

Thoughts: I was not in the country on 9/11. Yet I remember being incredibly shocked watching the live footage on TV. I cannot quite grasp the extent to which 9/11 affected people here personally, although intellectually I can understand it. Art Spiegelman's collection is a concise look into how people in New York, specifically Manhattan, felt during and after the Twin Tower attacks. The images burned into his brain are not the ones from newspaper front pages known all over the world; instead, he remembers kids high-fiving inappropriately, or someone painting the burning towers on a canvas on the street. And then there is the image that repeats and repeats: the glowing foundation structure of the tower, ready to collapse, which looms over everything Spiegelman is attempting to create.

This is Spiegelman's personal hurt and anger collected into one volume. Strangely enough, I can imagine this very personal account to ring true for many of his countrymen and women.

When the personal is public

35. Warriors Don't Cry. The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High by Melba Pattillo Beals

The About: Beals was one of the nine black children to first attempt integration at a white high chool after the integration ruling in 1958. In her memoir, Beals goes back in time to the shoes of her teenager self to reflect on how stupendously close she got to losing her life, almost daily, simply due to ignorance and hatred.

Thoughts: Some autobiographies written by non-writers can be absolutely terrible because they cannot let go of a single detail, but Warriors Don't Cry has a fresh outlook on an extremely historical event. Each sentence stresses that Melba is like any other teenager who worries about boys, doesn't quite understand why she can't go to the community center in the evening to hang out with her friends (because an angry white mob would kill her, that's why) or who accidentally has a big mouth and tells the reporters something she maybe shouldn't have.

Because of how incredibly normal she is, it is especially hard to grasp that grown white women would break through barriers and run after her, genuinely wanting to kill her just for attending the same school as their kids, or how a boy would throw acid in her eyes in the middle of the school halls, and the head master wouldn't do a thing because the only adult witnessing the situation was a soldier who was hired as Melba's bodyguard. Perhaps the most sickening part of the story is--if the constant physical abuse during each school day isn't enough for the reader--the conversation Melba overhears in the teachers' lounge when the protesting crowd outside is ready to break in to the school: they actually contemplate for a moment about sacrificing one of the black kids to the crowd (to be hanged!) in order to get the others out alive.

I don't even understand how she stayed mentally sane. Imagine going to school every day, where other kids would kick you, hit you and try to burn you alive--and the school staff thinks that you actually deserve this treatment. A year of that? Incredible.

This was 1958. Not that long ago. That's perhaps the scariest thought while reading this book.

Back to school, back to school...

...to prove my clients that I ain't no fool...

Apologies for the lack of updates: in addition to my usual and unusual work, I started my certificate program a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly my reading material has become fairly limited in scope...

34. The Subversive Copyeditor by Carol Fisher Saller

The About: Inspired by questions sent to her about editing at Chicago Manual of Style, Saller wrote a book that addresses the most burning questions she receives from the point of view on how to do a good job as an editor. Sections include how to cover your tail but also how to own up to mistakes, how to build a good relationship with an author and how to recognize your skills and short comings.

Thoughts: Let me start by saying that this was not required reading for the class. I just happened upon it in the book store, and it looked interesting so I grabbed it. I'm glad I did, because for such a tiny book it's extremely valuable.

This Ms Manners for editors is about good business practices. Saller employs humor in her writing--and tells us why it's important in client-editor relationships. She also gives editors a talking-to when it's needed: stop making excuses for not replying to an email, stop trying to lay the blame somewhere else, grit your teeth and smile although you want to burn the manuscript.

The underlying and painfully true theme is that editing a manuscript is not about the editor; it's about the author and ultimately about the reader. The editor is there just to work as a conduit in making the reader's experience as rewarding as possible. This sometimes means throwing grammar books out the window and going with gut feeling, or giving in to the author's odd spelling preferences. Editors are not in it for the glory, but Saller does remind authors that it wouldn't hurt them to thank also their editors publicly once in a while...

Even if you're not planning on being an editor, I'd still recommend this book because it gives great (and fun!) insight to the world of publishing.

Just... bizarre

33. Enon opetukset by Petri Tamminen ("My uncle's teachings")

The About: Jussi is a 12-year-old who has a good relationship with his uncle, who is a mere 10 years older than the boy. What is it about this uncle that makes him such a champion in life? He always has the answers. As Jussi goes from being in his twenties to a divorcee in the late 30s, he's still searching for the answer as he still cautiously looks up to his uncle.

Thoughts: What a strange book. On the one hand, it's trying to be very, very deep with uncle's drunken philosophies and Jussi struggling with his own depression, but then on the other I felt like I only had a chance to skim the surface of these life-altering events and thoughts while bouncing from one drunken event to another. Jussi thinks he is a loser when actually he's just a depressed, middle-class man who is moderately successful. He looks up to his uncle who seems to have a better grasp of life than Jussi does, although he's a complete drunkard, a flake and a womanizer who always gets burned. At first, it seems like the story is idolizing a certain aloofness in life style and not caring about what others think--because that's what the uncle espouses. But maybe it's just an illusion, and as a reader I'm only seeing through Jussi's eyes, which are veiled by depression and feelings of failure. Jussi actually has a better handle on life than his uncle, but his uncle is just much better at bullshitting than Jussi is, and that's why he has become the guru of the family. The older Jussi gets, the more he begins to see flaws in his uncle.

Still. A strange book.

More of the Southern vampire saga

32. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

The About:
In the fourth installment of the Sookie Stackhouse "Southern Vampire" novels, Bon Temps has unwittingly welcomed a couple of witches slightly more powerful than the local waitresses who dabble with Wicca practices during their free time and dye their hair black. When Eric the Vampire, sheriff of the area, appears in the middle of the night to Sookie not knowing who or what he exactly is, everyone is creeped out: necromancers are in town, and could with their powers kill all vampires by just sending them walking into the sunlight.

Thoughts:
I have enjoyed reading these books while watching the series, because the series creator Alan Ball takes a lot of liberties with the TV show and thus, the storylines are not exactly the same. Although this book deals with the current 4th season of the TV show, it is also very different. Which actually is a shame: I feel like the show jumped the shark this season with having so many characters and story lines that my head is spinning: there's Sam the Shifter and his brother, the Weres and the Vampires, and another story for Tara, leaving Sookie--the main character!--just to prance around, smiling cutely and having sex with vamps. Oh, and then there is the story line of the witches, and another story line with Lafayette and his boyfriend who both can become possessed by demons. And I forgot: we also have to stop by occasionally to see how Andy Bellefleur is doing with his V addiction. Can't forget Sookie's brother, Jason, either and how he was mangled by the were-panthers. That's quite a lot to follow in one series, and hardly any of that is in the book!

The fourth book simply focuses on the witch story line and Sookie trying to figure herself out while trying to solve yet another mystery with the help of both living and the undead of all shapes. There is no Sam's asshole brother who has absolutely no redeeming qualities (why did they make him up for the TV show as such a big deal?), no V addiction issues, no being possessed by demons. And that's perhaps why the story in the book is so much smoother and easier to follow than the TV series at this point.

What's more, the books consistently have the same sense of humor and style, which have so far made the stories gel together really well. Unlike the books, the more the TV show creates its own characters and story lines, the more it makes Sookie a vapid, blonde side character. I really liked her in the first season, where she and the story were closest to the books: she was the sassy, stereotype-breaking Southern waitress who was quite quick on her feet. A lot of laughs. Now she's just... bleh. During first season, I also liked the differences: I liked that the show kept Lafayette around, and I thought the civil rights point of view brought to the vampire story was a smart move. But the further the seasons go, the more spread out the stories get with a dozen of story lines to follow and gratuitous nakedness thrown into the mix to distract the viewers from there not being anything else exciting going on.

So I'm happy to be reading the books, because although they do spoil the main events in the TV series for me, at least I get to have a glimpse of what the "real" Sookie would be doing in the TV series if the creators gave her the chance.

30. The Glamour of Grammar. A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English by Roy Peter Clark

The About:
Clark's guide is aimed at anyone looking to improve their written language skills in English. It's divided into four parts: Words for tips on how to build vocabulary, including inventing words and reading dictionaries for fun; Points for how to deal with punctuation; Standards for reminders on good writing standards, such as how to avoid sexism in writing easily and how to steer clear from "hypergrammar" (I personally would have called this "how to avoid using Strunk and White as your Bible..."); and finally, Meaning that focuses on meanings behind grammatical structures and what they convey to the reader.

Thoughts:
Although it's all about grammar, this book is a quick read. Clark really is at home with words, and most of his phrases and headings are a delight to read. Yet, his style never resorts to the jokey and snarky style of many modern grammar books. I have enjoyed them as well, but Clark's book follows his own rules of writing in a manner that is based on good grammar effortlessly with a very friendly tone.



31. Isänpäivä by Pirjo Hassinen ("Father's Day")

The About:
Olli Penger is a successful detective novel writer who loves to dwell on the gory details of his victims' murders but who is unable to write a believable kissing scene. To him, all of the victims in his novels still bear the face of his ex-wife Marja and instead of reacting in real life to their separation, he kills her again and again in his novels. But when a family member commits a horrifying crime, Penger decides to take responsibility by killing the detective genre and his detective character--whom Penger has always tried to become in his personal life.

Thoughts:
This novel that seems on the surface extremely simple due to its easy readability and subject matter (gory crime!) is actually quite complex, so please keep on reading after the very first pages that are nothing but a brutal rape and murder scene (a few pages out of Penger's novel).

Because Penger has created the detective character Tähtö partly in his own image, partly as a man Penger desires to be, the journey into completely revamping the detective is unseltting because of Penger's pain and urgency to deal with the actual gory details in his personal life. It is heartbreaking to watch this character work on dealing with his pain in the only way he can--by resurrecting his dead characters and in effect apologizing to them instead of dealing with what is going on around him in living rooms and on the streets.

His act is a counter-reaction to a culture that wants to read about disgusting murders as long as we the readers know more about the people solving the crimes than the victims. And through this, author Hassinen jabs at novelists who are caught in the trap of mass-producing the ever-popular Scandinavian crime novel: they use violence as a backdrop for their often silent and stoic main characters that we look up to, but actually we would never read about those characters if they were not dealing with violence

The final question posed to Penger by media is, How much he and his novels are responsible for violence in his family, or in society in general. And there is nothing Penger can say in reply. Another question underlying in the final pages is what are we justified to sell in the name of entertainment, because people will devour violent stories whether they were published as fictional detective stories or as unconfirmed rumors on tabloid pages. Can we draw a line somewhere? Is there even a line to be drawn?

The book gave me a lot to think about, but at the same time there was so much subtle criticism crammed into the book that it was difficult to sometimes focus on each issue to recognize its real-life partner. I'll happily read this book again to be able to pay better attention to the subtleties.

Unfinished book of the month: 
Conundrum. An Extraordinary Personal Narrative of Transsexualism by Jan Morris

This was one of the two books recommended by Nancy Pearl that discuss the experience of going through a sex change from a personal point of view. Jan Morris wrote this book in 1974, making her one of the first ones to give a loud, resounding voice to transsexualism. So it was not the topic that made my interest go away: it was just the way the book was written. The time when Jan was still James is all about stories of upper middle class British school and choir experiences, and... you know me. You know my reaction to any British school house stuff, and I'm sorry to say that Ms. Morris became a victim of my violent dislike to reading about rich kids at a boarding school (and then the army!). So, when the notification from the library came to return the book, I did not renew it.

I'll be getting the other recommended book soon, though!

Of grownups and children

29. Karkkipäivä by Markus Nummi ("Candy Day")

(Candy day is a very Finnish concept: kids have one day in the week when they can eat candy, and thus candy is only a special treat--not an everyday indulgence. Attitudes toward this practice vary from support in teaching children that they should not have access to unhealthy food constantly, whereas the opposing view is that candy day practice makes candy a prohibited item, and might create later adults who console themselves with candy--or any prohibited items from their youth.)

The About:

Tomi is a small child with vivid imagination. His alter ego, a superhero-like character, wants to save the princess in the window across from his home. Sometimes the princess appears, sometimes the room remains dark. All Tomi knows is that princess Mirabella is bound by an evil witch and only he can save her now that he is all alone.

Paula is a store layout planner, which is a perfect job for her as her entire life is completely controlled and planned: she needs everything to be filmed for evidence, so she keeps a personal video blog while her daughter is grounded for shoplifting. Or maybe it was Paula who shoplifted? Small details! 

Author and screenwriter Ari lives in the same block. He tries to pull a story together for TV executives but his characters remain flat. While his wife and children are on holiday, Ari is followed home by a small, dirty boy. Ari has reasons to suspect that this boy is a victim of abuse, but when he calls the social workers he manages to make himself sound like the prime suspect with his story about a boy with a superhero name and a captive princess. 

Social worker Katri is working on her presentation on the past and future of social services for children, even when she is not at the computer. Ari's phone call makes her go back in time to a case that was especially painful for her. Should her presentation include notes on personal regrets and recurring nightmares? 

Thoughts:

In the first chapter, Ari asks his wife to read his new book, which is about the events of that fateful day when Tomi followed him home. Leena agrees that the story is great, and so we begin to read the novel. It's meta-fiction time!

It is obvious that Nummi has, as he points out in the notes, researched child welfare services for his novel--some cases mentioned in the novel have even been borrowed from actual reports. Still, the story's criticism is not, as one would expect, aimed at child social services and its inadequate handling of cases, but more to the responsibility of individuals in a given community. Some are too eager to report anything they consider even slightly suspicious, thus diverting social worker energies from genuine cases, whereas others shut their eyes and ears from even the most horrifying events. How to find the perfect balance between these two extremes in order to help children on time?

In the novel, wheels begin to roll because of one child, who himself has been abused. Adults around seem clueless but well-intentioned, yet they are not doing much until warning signs are flashing bright red. 

And then there is the princess. As the story progressed and I begun to understand the depth of horror behind her fairy tale it was impossible to stop reading. I needed to find out how the only character who makes no appearance except when others mention her will turn out. 

This story seems to have a happy ending, but just as I let out a sigh of relief I remembered the first chapter where Ari and his wife talk about his novel. I had to leaf back to confirm my suspicions and thus, the book become even more horrifying than it seemed at first glance. A wonderfully crafted story that does not let the reader go, even after the book covers have been closed shut. 

Dystopia and... Dystopia?

26. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


The About: 
Kathy H., a carer, reminisces her life in a secluded boarding school called Hailsham, somewhere not too far from Norfolk, where she met perhaps the only important people in her life, Tommy and Ruth. They wouldn't really know their location or about anyone else, really, as their knowledge of the outside world comes only from their guardians, who bit by bit tell the children about their futures as donors. Through her memories Kathy tries to piece together the reality of what Hailsham meant for the children--a school for special children who needed to produce art and stay extremely healthy--and the reality when it dawns on her, and on all of the students eventually as they grow older, that their main purpose in life is to provide organs for other people. Although they learn about this at an early age, coming to terms with it is an entirely different process altogether.

Thoughts:
It's almost impossible to write about this book without revealing some twists and turns. Early on, the reader will realize that when Kathy is a carer for donors and some of the donors are from her old school, we are really talking about people who are prepped to be donors. Then slowly, just as for the children growing in Hailsham, the truth about their lives is revealed. The reading experience is surprisingly similar to the children's growing experience: we know what is going to happen, but we still don't know enough. But maybe just enough to think we have been informed all along. Maybe that is why the ending does not come at all as a surprise, but is more like a depressing, expected end to the story although it is still slightly eyebrow-raising.

I have never before read anything by Ishiguro (for shame!), and I enjoyed his writing style very much. It's very straight-forward and lacking in flowery prose, yet it manages to create a dream-like haze around the story so it felt like I was reading the novel inside a cloud. And although I usually would roll my eyes at some of the stylistic choices*, somehow they did not bother me enough to stop reading this time.

Never Let Me Go is actually a very odd book: I can't tell whether I really liked it and that it deserves all the praise it's been getting, or whether it's a really mediocre book that does not have a single original thought in it. It's not like novels very much like this in style and topic haven't been written before (Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake comes to mind, and people better versed in sci-fi than I could name probably dozens of examples), so what made this one so special? It's even a boarding school story, which I usually can't stand with all the concentration on clicks and mindless teaching sessions. The book is an easy read, and a bit of a puzzler--which is why some have called it a sci-fi thriller--so it's basically like reading a whodunnit with less blood, gore and guns. But the suspense is still there.

The characters may be the carrying force in the novel: they all seem very real. Ruth is absolutely terrible in her two-facedness, and probably all of us have met someone like her; someone who kisses up to people she likes and makes up lies to cover her ignorance. Kathy, the narrator, is almost a tabula rasa: she attempts to understand everyone's motivations for bad or good behavior, and is ready to forgive everything. We readers just have to remember that this is how she tells how she is, but often in the story her behavior is everything but angelic: she also can be catty and a terrible friend--and we're just supposed to feel bad for her because she herself feels bad for her behavior. And then there is poor Tommy, whose temper tantrums, occasional idiocy and lack in artistic talent leave him on the lower rungs in Hailsham's hierarchy and possibly on the express lane to become a donor. Just like often in real life, I don't understand why these three even hang out with each other if they have so much trouble getting along.

Then there is the issue of what is this story about. Well. It could be about the horrors of science gone too far. The more I read it, I felt like there also was an analogy to animal rights' movement hiding somewhere under there. Free-ranged is better than cage-raised, right? And although I would be tempted to say that the book is about friendship, the more I think about it the less it seems so. It's more about settling for friends because you don't know anybody else due to circumstances. Quite depressing. So... just enjoy it and take the book as you wish: a cautionary tale or a sappy romantic story akin to The Love Story.


(*He does this magazine-serial thing constantly, where he'll refer to an incident that has not yet been talked about in the most cliffhangerish way possible. You know what I'm talking about (I made up the following examples): "We all were great friends that summer but looking back, I should have known on the day we found the small rat that it would all fall apart..." *que chapter about the small rat incident* "Now the small rat buried, and us standing there with awkward smiles, there was something odd in the air. But we would remain great friends until the day our teacher saw what she shouldn't have." *que the scene with the teacher*. "That event definitely put a wedge into our friendship, and I suppose I had suspected that the teacher was going to be behaving oddly already earlier that summer, but I just didn't put the pieces together back then.*que scene about what happened earlier that summer* And so on. You can almost hear the Dun-dun-DUUUUN! play in the background each time. )

27. Ruuhkavuosi by Pauliina Susi ("The Entire Year Booked", perhaps)


The About: Minna is a 30-something woman attempting to manage her life: within the upcoming year, she only needs to finish translating about 5 formulaic romance novels, pop out a baby and help build a house from scratch with his boyfriend, who is reluctant to marry, all the while finishing her master's thesis (for which she doesn't even have a topic yet...). Her calendar triumphantly already announces all the finished products in the future, but the further the pregnancy and the house building project go awry, the further Minna seems to slip into depression and get lost in her lack of control. Although the story on the surface is absolutely depressing, Susi manages to squeeze out multiple laugh-out-loud moments from both Minna's irrational thought processes and her sharp tongue without ever ending up belittling the protagonist.

Thoughts: Written slightly tongue in cheek, this story manages to take a realistic look into the head of a control freak who ends up suffering from post-partum depression big time while still keeping an upbeat mode. In the beginning Minna simply seems like a drama queen, and I had a good laugh at some of the word choices and thought-processes she had because they were so recognizable to me. When the mood of the book takes a turn to the darker and we find out that Minna's drama queen behavior has all along been a seed for depression, we can still laugh with her as she's attempting to understand why the other mothers in the adults-and-children group are such homicidal husband-haters while she herself is slowly coming to terms with her own personality. It's all in the style of writing, really, and I thought the story balances a difficult topic and humor together very well.

How to screw a family over, Norwegian style

25. The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad


The About:
Norwegian journalist Seierstad was accepted into an Afghan family to observe everyday life. The family knew that she was going to write a book about them, so she has protected the family with made-up names. The family's life centers around the father, Sultan, who is a bookseller in Kabul and a fervent defender of right to free speech. At the same time, his teenage bride, elder wife, and the rest of the family, really, lives under fear of him: are they able to go to school depends on what Sultan thinks; whether they are allowed to communicate with people with whom Sultan has broken ties with depends on him; and ultimately, who is allowed to continue living under his roof depends on him and his quickly shifting moods as well.

This nonfictional account written in a novel form depicts the life of all family members from the 3rd point of view. As Seierstad explains, all descriptions are based on what people told her about their encounters with other family members and their feelings toward politics and the law and thus she was able to tell their stories even when she was not present. Seierstad has completely removed herself from the story, and any reactions the family may have had of her.

Thoughts:
First of all: Seierstad got sued by Rais, "Sultan", because it would have been obvious who he was even under anonymity. He was, after all, a famous bookseller in Kabul! And he got pissed off by Seierstad's portrail of him and his family members, who in the book seem to all more or less hate him. She was found guilty of defamation and had to pay damages to "Sultan's" wife.

I don't know. I wish Seierstad had either gone all the way nonfiction and included herself in the story and called it "The Bookseller of Kabul and I" or then just used her information to create a completely fictional account. I think that's why she got into trouble: in the introduction she says that she portrays everyone fair and square, just as they had presented themselves to her, but... It feels weird that she'd think that she'd be able to give a just account of this family's experiences just because people told her how they felt. She didn't think that they'd filter and exaggerate their opinions because she was a white woman who was not following cultural rules (she was the only woman in the household allowed to dine with men, or walk alone on the streets!) and she'd told them she would write a book about them? That that wouldn't affect how people would communicate with her? Seriously? Occasionally, the passages where Sultan--the patriarch--rants and raves to his friends about politics in a very candid manner I thought... Is this what Sultan told Seierstad happened when he talked about politics with his friend, or is this what really happened? Because he seems like a heck of a brave person to be so opinionated. (And of course his friend had stupid opinions. Isn't that how we tell stories that involve ourselves: we are in the right and others behave silly?)

The women of the family are different, because it sounds like they did not talk to Seierstad as much as Sultan did--most likely because they didn't speak English like the men of the family did, and this Seierstad tells us in the introduction to the story. In the sections about what the women think of their lives it really feels as if she's merely projecting her feelings onto them and she crafts this narrative of what these people must think when they live in such oppressive situations.

Combine these questionable passages with just random stylistic changes: Seierstad goes from very floral and metaphorical writing jarringly quickly into reporter mode, where she begins to list pure facts from the history of Afghanistan devoid of any emotion, before embarking again on reflecting on how disappointed Sultan's son is because he cannot leave the bookstore to do what he wants. This can happen within easily within a few paragraphs. It's just... bizarre. I really feel like the book would have been much better had she been in the journalist mode all throughout it, without trying her hand in creative writing. The two styles are just too different.

In addition, either her writing style is not that great or the translation was not that great. Occasionally I had to stop and think, "What on Earth does this sentence mean?" Or then you get things such as, "...there are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one's wrath on." Is the family member suddenly mimicking a sarcastic tone a la the British royal family, or what is this stuff? My guess: a passive sentence gone wrong in translation.

I don't know Norwegian, but it sounds like the sentence structure is often like in Finnish: you first say where something happens/is and then the subject of the sentence--the existential sentence. But in English, this sounds often odd, especially when it's repeatedly used. I mean things like (and now I'm making this up), "On the windowsill there was a bar of soap" and "under the chair there was a cat sitting."  From the book, from a randomly picked page: "On a concrete block of flats in Mikrorayon no. 4, big signs have been hung with the word 'Courses'." By the time the reader comes to the end of the sentence, the place where the word Courses appears has already been forgotten. What's wrong with writing something like "Big signs saying 'Courses' are hung on a concrete block of flats in Mikrorayon no. 4"? I probably would not have thought of this structure much had it not been used incredibly often.

With all that said, I still enjoyed reading through the story when I kept on reminding myself that this is a real Afghanistan family Seierstad is writing about, so I tried to take it as interesting nonfiction. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not read that Hosseini book which was amazingly written. I could not help but compare this to it, because the subject matter ended up being fairly similar. The difference in execution was just like night and day.

"Sultan" has written his own book, called There once was a bookseller in Kabul where he tells his side of the story, but it has yet to be translated into English. This should be done asap! The story is pretty interesting, as "Sultan" is now seeking asylum in Scandinavia because his and his family's safety is threatened by Seierstad's book--something that definitely breaks all sorts of journalistic ethics.