La balsa de piedra by José Saramago, 08.01-04.03 (first 32 pages), 04.03-23.03 (remaining 300 pages) by Sunniva

Yes, man. I finished it. I've never spent this amount of time on a book without picking up other books inbetween, because I can often read several books at once, if they have different purposes (breakfast book, mid-day book, late-at-night-book) or I find one challenging to read. Now, I really haven't, apart from reading a few pages of Dracula every time I go swimming (because I am made of logic), and reading Meg Eier Ingen during the film festival, during which I also ignored this book completely.

I struggled for a long time (almost two months), keeping the book by my bed, taking it down to the living room and writing a letter instead, checking Facebook and reading blogs and tidying up the desktop on my computer. I also brought my tiny Spanish dictionary with me, seeing that there were a lot of words I was uncertain about, and plenty I'd never seen before, and oh! the conjugations.

The book starts off talking about different people, doing slightly unorthodox things or having them happen, all while throwing in comments about Greek mythology, dogs and whatnot. I found it very confusing to begin with, although now that I look back, I can see that all the five main characters are introduced in the first chapter, that is, the first nine pages, and it is actually very concise.

At the beginning of March, I just realised that I had to pull myself together, to be able to finish by the end of the month, and so I've been reading between ten and twenty pages each day, and I'm allowing myself to feel proud of that.

Obviously, I've been skipping words or sentences I do not understand – that is, I have read them once and moved on.

If we remove the frustration of understanding that there is a joke, a political comment or a social one, and not understanding why it's funny or whether it's important, I have thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I need to read more of his works, if I can only decide which language to read them in.

My one disappointment was that I thought Saramago would be a feminist, after this comment:

'A toda prisa, los hombres de informacion, algunos de los cuales eran mujeres(...)'

p.24

but then I realised that he was having more fun with the language than making a comment. Later on in the book, there are so many examples of Joana Carda and Maria Guavaira making the food and the beds and making everything comfortable, making a home, cleaning up and so on, that I just couldn't believe it. I can't excuse it either, seeing that it is quite a recent book, unlike The Day of the Triffids.

Even though the women are strong characters, they conform to far too many clichés.

That said. I love the conversations in this book, even though they can be hard to follow, with only a capital letter signifying a different speaker, and commas are used instead of any other punctuation marks. People have brilliant conversations as well.

HERE COME THE SPOILERS

My soul fell apart when I read about the lonesome sailor. I didn't see it coming, even though everything had been laid out in advance. That is another thing about this book, Saramago is very good at preparing the story, all while you're not paying attention. The same thing happened when Pedro Orce met Roque Lozano, or that is, he let Roque Lozano meet the other two men a few hundred pages before, so he could be there in the end.

Talking about Pedro Orce. WHAT. Seriously. I didn't understand what happened the first time I read that Maria Guavaira followed him into the forest. WHY. I understand that he was lonely. But couldn't they have foreseen all the pain and awkwardness that they were creating? And Pedro Orce was left even more lonely than before, with a lessened friendship with the other men. This made no sense to me. Although, Joana Carda's decision to follow up on Maria Guavaira's act, was a good one, I think, because it made them both guilty – as Saramago says at one point, changing it from being an exception into being something regular. Almost. I could really have done without this. I suppose it was partly there to show that not all the decisions these people made were for the best, because throughout the rest of the book, they pretty much make all the right decisions.

Again, I know that I read all books far too literally (ironically enough). I laughed at the comments about the White House and the United States and how and why they were willing to help. I enjoyed the little stabs at Spain that came from this Portuguese author. There were doubtless points I missed, especially that long passage about poets was completely lost on me. What I enjoyed about the book is that it encompassed all of this, but also what the inscription in my copy says: friendship, dreams and solidarity.

'(..)queremos pronunciar la palabra final y nos damos cuenta de que ya habíamos vuelto a principio.'

p.320

Saramago, José. La balsa de piedra. 1987. Editorial Seix Barral, Barcelona.

Sommerboken by Tove Jansson, tried to start both 30. November and 3. December, read in its entirety 7. December (apart from the introduction by Tove Nilsen because it seemed spoilery and I forgot about it until now) (Sunniva)

As "randomly" as we selected these books, we still selected authors we knew, or at least one of us knew, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that all of the books (7 so far, out of 9) have been enjoyable, even if they have all also had their problems.

This book I really like as well. It has no moral problems as far as I can tell (trespassing doesn't really count), and the parts that I don't outright enjoy, I still enjoy for their quirkiness and something which I've chosen to think of as a Northern Scandinavian something. Yes, I am clearly a master of words.

After looking through many book shops and second hand shops for this book, I finally found it in a commercial book shop in Oslo last weekend, when I was there for the Global Dignity evaluation meeting, and also to meet friends – some of the girls I went to Nicaragua with, and my friend Maja whom I both studied and lived with in Falmouth. I had a brilliant but tiring time, since I've been moving house, finishing the layout of our Nicaragua photography book, working almost full time in day care centres, and then this Oslo-trip came in the middle of my post-move-and-no-sleep-week-developed-cold.

I finally realised I would be better off reading the book on my trip to Harstad this weekend, when I was spending six hours return on a boat on Saturday... And I read it in about two hours, even reading slowly.

The way she writes... This might be imagination, but I do think it represents a Scandinavian way of thinking, a Northern way of thinking, which she is aware of, with her comments on the people coming from town, and the different ways of the island dwellers.

Sophia's grandmother must be the one I identify with the most. Partly in the ideas of child rearing – which again I see reflected in the day care centres where I work – and again I (maybe vainly) think of as Nordic – but also in being very independent and in need of time away from the people she has around her, in being stubborn and doing stuff because she has decided that it should be done or she wants to do it, and starting to prepare for leaving the island way before time, preparing for all eventualities... I could go on for a while, it seems.

I wonder what the dad's work is. Writing? Or sculpting? I believe I read that Jansson's parents were artists.

As I finished this review, I quickly read the introduction, to see if I'd missed something. The only thing was that Tove Nilsen wants to see it as a novel, talking only of one summer. I disagree, or if it is, then the chapters are in a jumbled order, because we move from midsummer to late summer (with darkness) and back to the flowers blooming in May. An impression of different years also gave itself to me, for unknown reasons. Maybe Sophia gets older? I can't be sure. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I will have to read this many times, and that I hope to discover new things again and again.

Now, my last comment will be that I wrote all this on my laptop without the letter 'e'. Please give me some kind of prize?

Doktor Proktor og verdens undergang. Kanskje. by Jo Nesbø, 23.-24. October (Sunniva)

(Doctor Proktor and the end of the world. Maybe.)

Seriously, this book. When we first chose this book, I imagined that it was a children’s book for younger children, as in 3-5 year-olds, while I see now it is clearly aimed at 10-12 year-olds.  I imagined it would be a short picture book that I could read in one afternoon. Probably because the first book in this series is called Doktor Proktors prompepulver  i.e. Doctor Proktor’s farting powder.

I did read it in two nights, though. It is the strangest mix of satire and just plain fun and scariness (it’s a story about the end of the world. Maybe). It also took some time to realise where I had seen and read this kind of story before. It is a very grand comparison, but I think it’s the closest comparison I could find. Did you ever read The Witches, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl? There you’ll find some of the same wild ideas and fluctuating story lines, where BOOM HERE THE SPOILERS START the most random-seeming thread still comes back in the end, either as a pun, a plot point or an important story-changing part.

It is brilliant in everything that happens. I did wonder, now and then, seeing that their plans kept being thwarted, but it was only seemingly so, as I said before. It doesn't underestimate the average ten-year-old, which I find amazing. That they understand humour on several levels, irony, and that some things can be true and some not. I was constantly thinking: my ten-year-old cousin needs to read this. But also his four year older sister, and his six year older one. Actually, also my aunt. And mum. Maybe my grandmother. It was just too much fun not to share with a lot of people.

This book is filled with all the Norwegian jokes. When the moon chameleons start to infiltrate the earth, they hypnotise people. The only way you can tell that someone is hypnotised, is when they pronounce some words the wrong way – the way that a lot of Oslo youth have started pronouncing words today. The illustration of the weather report has a man looking like one of the Norwegian now retired weather reporters. There is an odd man from Sør-Trøndelag called Petter who talks a lot about winning, and I am guessing it has something to do with Petter Northug, our best man at skiing, our national sport, who can be very cocky when it comes to talking about himself and winning. I also wondered a while about the band Debitels, that everyone is listening to, until I read the lyrics of their song Slåvsjujejeje out loud, and realised that if you put on a very Norwegian accent, OR you are ten years old and write words the way you hear them, this is how you would say or write The Beatles and She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah). You also have the band BABA with Dænsin Kvin (ABBA with Dancing Queen) and so on. There were so many other small things I’ve forgotten. Of course there are things like the King’s New Year’s Speech. One of the funniest (I feel very odd translating all this into English, but hey) injokes must be that the King in exile gets a Swedish servant named Åke. Now, in Danish and Norwegian, “tjener” means servant or waiter. In Swedish, “tjänare” is a greeting. In this book the servant is constantly called Tjänare Åke, which ends up in the joke where the King is shouting for him: “Tjänare Åke! Said the King. Tjänare Kungen! Said Åke, laughing.” (paraphrasing a bit here). My bad memory won’t tell me where the expression Tjänare Kungen comes from (It's a film from 2005 but that is all I could find), but knowing that I’m sharing this project with a non-Norwegian makes me certain that I will have to get my cousins to read this book so we can have some Norwegian laughs about it. And just so that's said: No offense. I am never going to get any of the references in our Spanish-language book by Saramago.

Anyway. All the laughs. All the serious laughs with surreal fabulousness from Jo Nesbø with a shadow of Roald Dahl. If these are translated into English, please read them. Just forget all I said about injokes. It really is funny anyway, only a little less phunny.

And again, I am sorry that my past two reviews have been a bit thrown together. I'm sat at the Red Cross Youth Autumn Camp at the end of October, trying to get these done before I go on holiday, after having handed in my laptop and getting told it would take 2-4 weeks to repair it, and before handing back this Red Cross laptop. I know I like to complain that I am busy, but the business these days is being happy with the Red Cross Youth, packing for my holiday, seeing my friends and actually going on the holiday. Completely not complaining, just trying to explain my laziness in doing these.

I have to say that sometimes I enjoy writing - i.e. when I have lots of time and the book has been exciting and stirred a lot of thoughts, but at other times I get stressed about it and the reviews become thereafter. I worry that my reviews are not literary enough, even though I prefer less academic reviews myself and am trying to write something that could be interesting to read even if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Well. We'll see how we do by Christmas!

"Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong, 26. August-1. September (Sunniva)

I don't know why I've been stalling this review for so long. It could be partly because these past few weeks have been very busy, and partly because I'm slightly scared of writing about feminism. If I do that, I'll have to define, in some way or other, where I stand. And while I am a feminist, some way or other, I find so many other subjects to engage in, that I've hardly thought it through. This is, I'm afraid, going to be more of a quote-fest and less of an actual review. The quotes do represent some of the most important things I got from the book though, so I hope it's all right.

When I was searching all the second hand book shops for this (and the rest of the books on the list), everyone kept telling me how popular, radical and exciting this book was when it came out in the 70s. First published in 1973, I imagined the issues would be forty years old as well.

"So I learned about women from men. I saw them through the eyes of male writers. Of course, I didn't think of them as male writers. I thought of them as writers, as authorities, as gods who knew and were to be trusted completely." p.145

This is one of the books in which I have folded down most corners. Needless to say, the character I sympathise the most with is Isadora Wing, the main character. I don't sympathise with all her actions. For some reason, although I have never (as far as I know) been cheated on, I've never been able to stand people who have affairs or are unfaithful to their partner in any way. The only good thing about how she leaves her husband is that he is completely aware of it before it happens. Yet there are so many other thoughts and ideas of hers that I recognise as my own.

"I had gone to graduate school because I loved literature, but in graduate school you were not supposed to study literature. You were supposed to study criticism." p.180

"Whenever I was home, I wanted to get away, and whenever I got away I wanted to go home again." p. 214

All the quoted reviews on the back and inside the cover make the book sound like it's all about sex and sexual freedom. I don't think it is. It covers subjects such as being a woman, or an artist, or an American Jew, living in Germany some years after the war, travelling, stereotypes, academia, psychoanalysis... And probably a few more I've forgotten. In addition to discussing sex and sexual freedom.

"All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness." p. 188

"There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes." p. 211

"Even Bennett, with all his supposed psychology and insight, maintained that men tried to pick me up all the time because I conveyed my 'availability' – as he put it. Because I dressed too sexily. Or wore my hair too wantonly. Or something. I deserved to be attacked, in short. It was the same old jargon of the war between the sexes, the same old fifties lingo in disguise: there is no such thing as rape; you ladies ask for it. You laidies." p. 247

That this was a problem in the seventies and still is, is extremely sad. I even find myself thinking something similar sometimes, when I read about attempted rape in the newspapers. How can I think that? Then I shouldn't be able to wear all the short skirts that I do wear.

I really enjoyed this book. Even when I disagree with Jong, she's a good writer, and a funny one, even though she uses the alliteration technique you learn in writing class far too many times. I am tempted to read more of her books, only I am afraid of being disappointed. I need to read more about her, anyway. Off I go.

*This edition: 1975, Granada Publishing Limited