I see from this photo of one of my book cases that I really need to get a grip and rid myself of a lot of books before we move next year. But it'll be like getting rid of my babies! However - I've already managed to steel myself a little bit by doing a a trial run, throwing out a number of children's books and paperbacks that I know we'll never reread. I tugged along two or three sackfuls to the nearby school flea market some weeks ago, and I must admit I haven't regretted it.
I have had a good reading year so far, and nothing pleases me more. For as long as I can remember I've had a book next to me, and I was only five years old when I cracked the spelling code. In my time we started school at seven here in Norway, and I was totally bored in class during the first couple of years. I'd already ploughed my way through a number of books, and my class mates were still learning the alphabet!
For me reading is an exhilarating experience - well, it should be anyway - and I become genuinely disappointed (and almost physically sick sometimes) when I read something that is badly written. Pompous sentence constructions, awful grammar, trite images, over-explanations, clichés, shallowness. I simply die a little bit. But I've finally taught myself to stop reading a book that doesn't draw me in - I've realised I don't need to expose myself to this kind of masochism.
I remember being excited and a bit proud that a neighbour of mine was having his first book published - a contemporary finance/crime/police-novel, and I really looked forward to reading it. I pictured myself stopping him and saying wow! So cool! Congratulations! I really enjoyed your book! Wow, all right.... Wow, so terrible! I struggled my way through it, practically throwing up all the way - sorry, neighbour! I smiled elusively at him and muttered hi, but basically I shut up. When my daughter Julie gave me the novel "Perfume" to read afterwards - crazy, far-out, gruesome novel, but oh so well written - it was an enormous relief.
Okay. Before I indulge in writing about some of my "good reads" I'll do a quick summary of a couple of the baddies. And most readers out there will disagree - I know - because these are bestsellers. I'm always curious about bestsellers - and more often than not they disappoint me. Who can explain the mystery that some books sell millions upon millions of copies while at the same time they are really not well written AND get negative reviews? Is it the storyline? The plot? The characters? Timing? The originality or maybe the lack of originality of all these? Sympathy for the author for receiving bad reviews?
The above mentioned neighbour has become a bestselling thriller writer. And so has Ken Follett, for instance. I thought he only wrote crime novels. But no. He obviously discovered he's got a good hand at research (or a staff of researchers), so he decided to write about cathedral building. In an extremely boring way. And human relations in a boring way too. YAWN. Then he wrote a follow-up or two! This is how far I made it through the first one (having skipped large cathedral descriptions).
All-time-hyped writer Paolo Coelho - "The Alchemist." Okay - I was warned by a friend: Don't read it! It's awful! Well. Read it and make up your own mind. All thinkable clichés moulded into a short novel. All I did was shout: "Enough now! Finish with the mystics! End this embroidering silly language!" No more Paolo C for me.
For a while everyone talked about "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts, the escaped convict who lived in India and went through a lifetime of crazy experiences in just a few years. Well, I don't know. Good when it's good, terrible when it's bad. Some editor or other has not done his job properly - huge passages could have been removed and it would have been a much more tight and exciting novel. I think I spent five months on it and finished it eventually on a plane trip. I chucked it on the floor, and the stewardess reminded me I'd left it there. "Throw it away, please" I said, "or keep it. I never want to see it again."
I was a student of literature - a literature graduate in fact. It gives me some advantage because I've learnt to analyse texts, which I don't do continually when I read of course, but it does make me a critical reader. Still - I very much respect people's choices in reading - always - and I've often said: "Read. Whatever you read - just read!" So read Paolo Coelho, read Ken Follett, read bestselling Norwegian author Jo Nesbø (oooh, bad), read cartoons for that matter.... READ!
Whatever my own tastes in literature - I will always FORCE them on you! No, of course I won't - I'll just try to INFLUENCE you. That's my prerogative in a blog. And my next blog post will be about the goodies.
I'm ending today's blog post with a photo I took on my Sunday walk in the park. It was shared on Instagram, and I think it's the photo I've published there with the most likes received! Even from Oslo tourist organisations! (Yes, yes. I know I'm being childish. Social-media-childish).
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