Hei igjen, det er meg – han fyren som med ugjevne mellomrom skriver noen ord på denne bloggen. Også denne gang blir temaet bøker, men nå bare raskt oppsummert. Det må være gøy å skrive hvis man skal gjøre det i lange baner på fritiden, og i det siste har det vært alt for mye annet å gjøre. Mulig denne skrivingen er en sesongsport som ikke egner seg så bra når det er utevær.
Mitt navn er Karmosin av Orhan Pamuk. Jeg begynte på denne etter å ha blitt inspirert av Portrait of a Turkish Family, men selv om den har vunnet det meste av priser så var det ikke noe for meg. Ga opp etter ca en tredjedel. Det var en kjerne av en god historie, men for mye lignelser og annet sos innimellom. Jeg hadde hele tiden troen på at den snart skulle ta seg opp, men det gikk så smått med lesingen at jeg til slutt måtte returnere den til biblioteket.
Engelens spill av Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Denne var bra, for all del, men litt for lik forgjengeren Vindens skygge, kanskje? Jeg hadde i alle fall større forhåpninger. Oppfølgeren er ikke fullt så morsomt skrevet og har ikke fullt så bra slutt, eller er det bare jeg som hadde større forventninger? Pluss for gode stemningsbeskrivelser og atmosfære.
The Name of the Wind av Patrick Rothfuss. Dette skal vistnok være moderne fantasys redning og jeg hadde dermed igjen store forhåpninger. Det er en bra, men veldig tradisjonell, historie – noe som var litt uventet når alle har snakket så varmt om den. Helt grei underholdning, ingenting å irritere seg over, men heller ikke noe å skrike høyt om.
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Denne posten er skrevet i små biter over lang tid, men nå fikk jeg en unnskyldning til å skrive den ferdig and also switch to English due to some friendly nagging by Lily.
How to be Good by Nick Hornby. Hmm, OK, I understand that the reader is supposed to be frustrated by the personalities and actions of the main characters, but when I am dragged through that I expect some kind of payback at the end. There isn't really one here. Maybe I need to stop reading Hornby? But, his first books were so good!
Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup. This is perhaps not as feelgoody as the film, but neither is it as hard hitting as I think it should have been. The main story is the same, but most details are different. I have problems deciding if I like the book or the film better, but one thing I do know and that is that they would both have been much better if the main character was killed at the end. If I had directed the movie, the two lovers would have been shot at the end of the kissing scene before the credits instead of dancing around. That is the only thing I feel strongly about the story. Otherwise it was only just so-so.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I bought this book before going to military service, but never finished it as sleeping was always a better option at the end of the often long days. Any not-so-light form of entertainment was hard to appreciate in that setting for some reason. The book is autobiographical and gives a nice little peak through to the mountains of Italy during World War I. Hemingway doesn't try to cover everything so you have to read a bit between the lines, especially concerning his relationship to Catherine. The quite sudden transformation of their relationship was my favourite part of the book along with the descriptions of the Italian landscape.
Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. This book is actually quite good! As a stand alone fantasy novel it does it's thing nicely and has just the depth of characters and breadth of story to work as it should. Admittedly, it does have some bad points like the lack of emotions in the young girl protagonist who is suddenly sent off by her father to marry the evil neighbouring god king. This is somewhat balanced by the better than expected descriptions of her sisters feelings and motivations in the latter parts of the book. That was more than I expected from Sanderson. There's even a good plot twist that is well foreshadowed so it feels unforced and still unexpected. All in all the highest recommended book among what I have read by him.
I am sorry that this ended up being a list of what I (didn't) like about a series of books, and not they were about. I would have liked to write small teasers as I have before, at least for some of the books, but I felt that if I did not get these published I would never start another review. Right now I am trying to do a reread of The Wheel of Time before the next book comes out and also try to finally read Baudolino by Umberto Eco which I have been putting off for the last eight years or so. The begining is quite nice, but there is always something else to do...
Buldring på Hellerud.
