Books I've read in 2010 - April

Regnbogane by Olav H Hauge
Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Slaves and Obsession by Anne Perry – AUDIO
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
Jenta som lekte med ilden by Stieg Larsson – AUDIO
Babettes gjestebud by Karen Blixen (Gyldendals lille bibliotek)
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
Reven var alt dengang jeger by Herta Müller
Kong Leopolds arv by Adam Hochschild
Luftslottet som sprengtes by Stieg Larsson – AUDIO
Åpent sinn eller høl i hue? by Dyrendal/Pettersen/Søderlind, eds.
Appelsinpigen by Jostein Gaarder
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Tapte døtre by Xinran
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Monster by Knut Nærum - AUDIO
Släpp inte taget by Harlan Coben – AUDIO

12 printed books, 2,836 pages.
5 audiobooks, 76h 30m.

Favorite fiction:
Meh. I've read several books this month that were good, in fact I haven't read any that were bad. But at the same time none of them really stood out. It's hard to choose one this month, I don't feel like I really have a favorite among these books. Maybe Babette's Feast, because that one I really really liked. :-) I guess I have to say The Monk. It was a good read, but also a pretty difficult one ... the plot goes off in so many directions and the language is so old-fashioned. Understandable, but still. :-)

Favorite nonfiction:
Now in this category I have the opposite problem ... !! :-D I've read so much wonderful nonfiction this month. I can hardly choose just one of them. The Xinran book was fantastic, especially since I'd just heard her speak about it here in Oslo a few days before reading it. But since I do have to pick just one, I think I have to say King Leopold's Ghost. A harrowing read, but just amazing. An absolute must read.

Favorite audio:
The Girl Who Played With Fire ... ? Same as last month, a reread, but it is such a good read and the audiobooks I've read this month that have been new haven't been all that. Except maybe Monster ... ? I guess Stieg Larsson wins again. :-)

Please note that I've read a book of poetry this month. Out of the box, hell yeah!

Kate Summerscale: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

Published by Bloomsbury in 2008.
360 pages (trade paperback edition).

Books I've read in 2010 - February

Death of a Nobody by Georges Simenon (a Penguin 60)
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro - AUDIO
Dette blendende fravær av lys by Tahar ben Jelloun
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Talking with Serial Killers by Christopher Berry-Dee
De profundis by Oscar Wilde
Seierherrene by Roy Jacobsen - AUDIO
Natt til fjerde november by Karin Fossum
De dødes tjern by Bernhard Borge - AUDIO
What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Is In My Store? by Bill Talen
The Way Through the Snow by Lian Hearn

9 printed books, 2,314 pages.
3 audiobooks, 37h 10m.
Favorite fiction: I guess I have to say the Moroccan book - the English title is This Blinding Absence of Light. A heart-wrenching story, but also deeply moving and inspiring.

Favorite nonfiction: American Eve. A fascinating portrait of New York ca 1900.

Favorite audio: I'm tempted to say De dødes tjern, but I'm not sure if that can really count, since it was 'just' a reread. But there's no one title that really stands out this month.

Books I've read in 2010 - January

QuixotiQ by Ali al Saeed
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Kunzelmann & Kunzelmann by Carl-Johan Vallgren – AUDIO
Perfect Happiness by Rachel Billington
Trankebar by Yngvar Ustvedt
Bartleby by Herman Melville (a Penguin 60)
Rør himlen by Susan Madison
Men ikke hvis det gjelder din datter by Jan Guillou – AUDIO
Twitterature by Aciman/Rensin
Den lille prinsen by Antoine de Saint-Exupery – AUDIO
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Dead Ends by Michael Reynolds
Skygge by Karin Alvtegen – AUDIO
Tennyson's Gift by Lynne Truss
Svik by Karin Alvtegen – AUDIO

10 printed books, 2,639 pages.

5 audiobooks, 52h 20m.

Favorite fiction:

Making Money. Hey, it's Pterry, what can I say. He's my hero. :-)

Favorite nonfiction:

Not much to choose from here. I guess Trankebar, even though it was far from as well written as I had expected it to be. But the subject matter - Danish-Norwegian colonial history in India - was very interesting.

Favorite audio:

Hard to choose here. But I guess I have to go with Svik, even though the Vallgren book was fantastic too. Svik had an absolutely fascinating plot, and it was SO well read (by the actress Andrine Sæther - the perfect reader for this book). This really stood out because just before it I had read another audiobook by the same author, but with a different reader, who did a pretty crappy job.

And finally, although I don't normally do this, I have to mention my least favorite read too - QuixotiQ, by a total idiot with no talent. DO NOT READ.

Carl-Johan Vallgren: Kunzelmann & Kunzelmann

Utgitt av Lydbokforlaget i 2009.
Lydbok, 17t 57m.
Lest av Kai Remlov.
Boka kom opprinnelig ut på svensk i 2009.



The review is in English.

Books I've read in 2009 - December

Nattefokk by Johan Theorin – AUDIO
Och fjättra Lilith i kedjor by Åsa Schwarz
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov – AUDIO
Kennedys hjerne by Henning Mankell – AUDIO
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Singing Line by Alice Thomson
Box 21 by Roslund & Hellström
Minnet av en mördare by Willy Josefsson
'She Must Have Known' by Brian Masters
House of the Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata
Dollar by Lee Childs – AUDIO
Kuren by Mo Hayder – AUDIO
Pappersväggar by John Aijvide Lindqvist
Isbjörnarna/Cheek to Cheek/Människor i solen by Jonas Gardell
no tears for queers by Johan Hilton
Øye for øye by Stein Morten Lier - AUDIO
The Va Dinci Cod by ARRR Roberts

12 printed books, 3,589 pages.
6 audiobooks, 73h 32m.

Favorite fiction:
Pappersväggar. I love this author and in this short story collection there are some amazing stories. Everyone should read all of his books :-) and this one is no exception.

Favorite nonfiction:
no tears for queers - a wonderful read that really opened my eyes. I'll be doing a video on this book I think, it really made me think a lot of new thoughts.

Favorite audio:
Probably ... Nattefokk. My second book by this author, and I loved this one too. It's available in English under the title The Darkest Room. I recommend it strongly.

Books with no links will be reviewed ... at some point ... :-)

Johan Theorin: Skumringstimen

Utgitt av Lydbokforlaget i 2008.
Lydbok, 12t 59m.
Lest av Birgitte Victoria Svendsen.
Boka kom opprinnelig ut på svensk i 2007.



The review is in English. :-)

Books I've read in 2009 - November

Visjonens bok by Muniam Alfaker
Gomorra by Roberto Saviano – AUDIO
Det tredje tegnet by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir
Midtvinterblod by Mons Kallentoft
Skumringstimen by Johan Theorin – AUDIO
Svenska skurkar by Stig Linnell
Me and Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter
Sirkelens ende by Tom Egeland – AUDIO
Leoparden by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Night by Elie Wiesel – AUDIO
The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi
Daughters of the House by Michele Roberts
Fjellet by Arnaldur Indridason – AUDIO
Afrikanen by Jean Marie Gustave le Clezio – AUDIO
Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris
Stolthet og fordom by Jane Austen – AUDIO
The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber
Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell
Helt konge by Øystein Sørensen

12 printed books, 3,128 pages.
7 audiobooks, 66h 38m.

Favorite fiction:
Det tredje tegnet. I'll be doing a video review of this book shortly. It's a great read - an entertaining Icelandic thriller with great characters, a fascinating plot, and also surprisingly well translated in the Norwegian edition that I read. I'm really looking forward to reading more books by this author, who was entirely new to me when I picked up the book at a BookCrossing meetup. Thanks to Tine1971 for recommending it so warmly. :-)

Favorite nonfiction:
I have to say ... The Great Derangement. Perhaps slightly outdated in some sections, but more than makes up for that by being very well written, entertaining, insightful and intelligent.

Favorite audio:
Oh, how to choose?? This has been a great month for audiobooks. :-) If I have to pick one, I think I have to say Skumringstimen. I really enjoyed that book tremendously. I'm already reading the author's second novel. :-)

Books with no links will be reviewed here before too long. :-)

Jack Kerouac: På kjøret

Utgitt av Lydbokforlaget i 2006.
Opprinnelig utgitt på engelsk i 1957.
Lydbok, 11t 53m.
Oversatt av Olav Angell, lest av Mads Ousdal.

Books I've read in 2009 - October

A Chocolate A Day Keeps the Doctor Away by Ashton/Ashton
På kjøret av Jack Kerouac – AUDIO
The Floating Brothel by Siân Rees
Frp-koden by Magnus E Marsdal
I den skogen by Harlan Coben – AUDIO
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
The Broken Crown by Michelle West
Sula by Toni Morrison
Maria Q by Cecilie Løveid
Sky på flukt by Muniam Alfaker
Pol Pots leende by Peter Fröberg Idling
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst – AUDIO
Skryt og skrøner by unknown [Baron von Münchausen] – AUDIO
Kjærligheten skjærer dype sår by Helena von Zweigbergk
Hannah's Garden by Midori Snyder
The Timewaster Letters by Robin Cooper
Den ulende mølleren by Arto Paasilinna

13 printed books, 3,507 pages.
4 audiobooks, 42h 38m.

Favorite fiction:
The von Zweigbergk, I guess. I could hardly put it down ... just like the last book by her that I read. It's interesting, because the main character isn't that ... likeable, or however I should phrase it, but still the whole setting is so gripping, and I can't really put my finger on why. I really recommend these books to anyone who's interested in unusual crime fiction.

Favorite nonfiction:
Frp-koden, definitely ... even though there were other strong contenders too this month. It was so interesting, it really made me think things over and gave me new insight. Also quite well written. Don't know what more one could ask for in a book, really. :-)

Favorite audio:
The Line of Beauty. An interesting 80s retrospective ... convincing and moving. Very well read too IMO.

All the books that don't currently have links will be reviewed here on this blog shortly.

Books I've read in 2009 - September

High Society by Ben Elton – AUDIO
Summer of Love by Lisa Mason
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Juleoratoriet by Göran Tunström – AUDIO
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
Drottningens juvelsmycke by CJL Almqvist
Fitter by Juan Manuel de Prada
The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
Katedralen vid havet by Ildefonso Falcones – AUDIO
Det ska bli ett sant nöje att döda dig by Magdalena Graaf
De gales hus by Karin Fossum
Paradiset by Liza Marklund
Muhajababes by Allegra Stratton
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood – AUDIO
Michael K by JM Coetzee
Sekten by Peter Pohl
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

13 printed books, 4,038 pages
(+ one graphic novel which I have not counted in the page total).
4 audiobooks, 59h 50m.

Favorite fiction:
Summer of Love ... because it's taken me literally years to get around to reading it, and it turned out to be really great. :-)

Favorite nonfiction:
Ooh ... Sekten was really good, and I loved reading something by Pohl again, haven't done that in ages. He used to be one of my absolutely favorite writers when I was a teenager. But no, I think I have to say the Dawkins book. It was so well written and it explained things so beautifully. Everyone ought to read that book. :-)

Favorite audio:
I guess I have to say Katedralen vid havet ... I spent such an eternity reading it. :-D No, but it was just incredibly long ... more than 23 hours, I just felt like I was never getting to the end of it. But it was a really good book, very gripping, with great characters and a very vibrant setting. I'd recommend it, but you need some patience. ;-)

Arnaldur Indridason: Vinterbyen

Utgitt av Cappelen Damm i 2008.
Lydbok, 9t 27m, lest av Ivar Nørve.

Arnaldur Indridason: Røsten

Utgitt av Cappelen Damm i 2008.
Lydbok, 9t 12m, lest av Ivar Nørve.

Muriel Barbery: Pinnsvinets eleganse

Utgitt av Lydbokforlaget i 2008.
Lydbok, 8t 55m, lest av Janne Kokkin og Silje Lundblad.

Göran Tunström: Juleoratoriet

Utgitt av Lydbokforlaget i 2004.
Lydbok, 11t, lest av Kim Haugen.

Ben Elton: High Society

Published by Isis Audiobooks in 2003.
Audiobook, obviously; 12h 45m, read by Greg Wagland.

Book quote

Was Fergus Urvill anywhere, still? Apart from the body - whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure - was there anything else? Was his personality intact somehow, somewhere?

I found that I couldn't believe that it was. Neither was dad's, neither was Rory's, nor Aunt Fiona's, nor Darren Watt's. There was no such continuation; it just didn't work that way, and there should even be a sort of relief in the comprehension that it didn't. We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constipatory, too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.

The belief that we somehow moved on to something else - whether still recognisably ourselves, or quite thoroughly changed - might be a tribute to our evolutionary tenacity and our animal thirst for life, but not to our wisdom. That saw a value beyond itself; in intelligence, knowledge and wit as concepts - wherever and by whoever expressed - not just in its own personal manifestation of those qualities, and so could contemplate its own annihilation with equanimity, and suffer it with grace; it was only a sort of sad selfishness that demanded the continuation of the individual spirit in the vanity and frivolity of a heaven.

Iain Banks, The Crow Road
(Scribners, 1992)

Books I've read in 2009 - August

En såkalt drittjobb by Lotta Elstad
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Hemma hos Martina by Martina Haag
Linda - som i Lindamordet by Leif GW Persson AUDIO
Tatt av kvinnen by Erlend Loe
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë AUDIO
Meningen med livet by Bradley Trevor Greive
The Island by Peter Benchley
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Darcys and the Bingleys by Marsha Altman
Dette visste vi ikke noe om! by Peter Longerich
Pemberley Shades by D.A. Bonavia-Hunt
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
Don’t Smell the Balloons by Stewart Clark
Madonna-gåten by Nærum/Botterli/Udnæs
En plutselig frigjørende tanke by Kjell Askildsen AUDIO

15 printed books, 3,829 pages.
3 audiobooks, 32h 26m.

Best fiction:
Pemberley Shades ... because it's always such a relief to come across a Pride & Prejudice sequel that is actually genuinely good. This one was also a very interesting read because it's so old ... it was first published in 1913. o_O Well worth reading, and not just for Austen fans.

Best nonfiction:
Dette visste vi ikke noe om! - the result of an examination of a great many sources from the 1930s and early 1940s, which shows that the German people of the Third Reich were not all burning anti-Semites, but on the contrary felt not a little compassion for the suffering of the Jews; that they were surprisingly well-informed about the scope and intention of the Nazi persecutions; and, not least, gives tremendous insight into exactly why the regime was able to carry out these persecutions in the face of what ought to have been public opposition. I learned so much from this book.

Best audio:
Jane Eyre. A total classic of course, but actually the first time I'd read the entire thing. Since I already knew the plot so well it's pretty impressive that I was still very moved by the story of the unfortunate but plucky young orphan. Well read too by some woman whose name I don't remember.

Books I've read in 2009 - July

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie AUDIO
Doppler by Erlend Loe
An Earthly Crown by Kate Elliott
Det som er mitt by Anne Holt AUDIO
Pinnsvinets eleganse by Muriel Barbery AUDIO
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Kurt quo vadis? by Erlend Loe AUDIO
Den rettferdige by Helene Uri
Kurt koker hodet by Erlend Loe AUDIO
Kurtby by Erlend Loe AUDIO
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Folkemordenes svarte bok by Bernt Hagtvet, ed.
Røsten by Arnaldur Indridason AUDIO
The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie
Vinterbyen by Arnaldur Indridason AUDIO
Penelopiaden by Margaret Atwood
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Skjeggete damer og siamesiske tvillinger by Herman Berthelsen

12 printed books, 3,694 pages.
8 audiobooks, 62h 52m.

Best fiction:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. No question. High class entertainment, people!! ;-)

Best nonfiction:
Very little to choose from. I have to say that Skjeggete damer og siamesiske tvillinger, a book about freaks and freakshows that I borrowed from AudiX78, was certainly the most entertaining one. :-)

Best audio:
Much harder to choose here (as opposed to the fiction category). Maybe Pinnsvinets eleganse ... I don't think I would have come across it on my own and it was a wonderful read, and wonderfully read, too. :-)

Can you tell that I've had a lot of free time lately ... ?? :-)

Some favorite books

Recently on the Scandinavian forum on BookCrossing, one of the Swedish members posted to ask if there was any interest in trying to create a BC Scandinavia List of Bests (of books, obviously ;-). If you're not familiar with the Lists of Bests site, take a look at it here. She wants to try to make up a list like that ... but we're going to start small, with everyone just suggesting ten books. These were the criteria that she set up for us to use:

The books were supposed to be
1: books that we think everyone ought to read before they die
2: books that have given us fantastic reading experiences (even though the rest of the world may be shaking its collective head)
3: books that represent several different genres

I had to think about it for a while, but I managed to come up with a list of only ten books. This is it. Obviously all books that I recommend very strongly. :-)

The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
Illusion by Paula Volsky
The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred
by Carl-Johan Vallgren

No particular order ... although The Count of Monte Christo is in fact my #1 favorite book of all time. :-)

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Cross-posted from my main blog, here.