Finishing a book

Do you also get the blues whenever you have finished a good book? It feels like you have left a dear friend behind and you want to go back and fetch them. I guess I could always re-read them, but there are so many new books I want to read that I don’t have time to go back to the old.
I have trick to make this transition easier and that is always reading at least two or three books at the same time. Right now though I might have stretched myself a bit too far, considering I have six books on my nightstand. Anyway, it does the trick!
Josefine

My recommendations: White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Boktipset.se

I’m glad to see that Shelfari now got a Swedish friend in Boktipset.se owned by one of the largest publishers in Sweden and a TV network, this is a page very similar to Shelfari that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
Josefine

My recommendations: Potensgivarna by Karin Brunk Holmqvist

Biographies

I enjoy reading a good biography, may it be someone else’s words or the person himself writing, it is the story that is the most important. I don’t care for the glossy books of famous people but the more obscure biographies of “real” peoples destiny. About the struggles of Zainab Salbi in the Shadow of Saddam or the Anonymous woman writing in Berlin after World War II.
A biography I started years ago but still have trouble finishing is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s the Gulag Archipelago. I read a chapter then I need to stop because the cruelty of one person to another is to great for me to continue.
I think it is the struggle of the ordinary people who overcome unbelievable things that intrigues me the most and make me choose their books. They have overcome so much and then still have the courage to sit down and write about it. It is remarkable.
Josefine

My recommendations: Landing on my feet – a diary of dreams by Kerri Strug

The Dark Side

Lately I have read many books about the dark side of the universe, not non-fiction books about evil people and war stories (even though I read quite a few of them as well). Fiction books about death and the devil and what happens when you decide to pass over to their side. The two latest one is Swedish writer Maria Ernestam’s Caphirinia with Death (my translation) and the modern classic The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
It is fascinating just because in these books we get a glimpse of what would happen if we took a step in the wrong direction, when we choose to accompany Death or the Devil.
Josefine

My recommendations: Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Shelfari

You might have seen my newest addition to the blogg, the Shelfari bookshelf on the left. It is an ingenious website for every booklover. You can track the books you have read, the one you are reading right now and the one you want to read. You can hook up with other people, who have the same interest in book as you or form a new group for the book you just read. Invite your friends and spread the knowledge you have of books, rate them and write a short blurb of what you thought abut it.
I mostly use it to track the books I have read so far, as I search through the thousand and thousands of books on the website, I am reminded of books I read a long time ago and I can add them to my list. Admittedly, it has become quite an addiction for me. But if you have the time, you can look through the books I have read, right here next to the text and maybe even set up your own account. Don’t forget to add me as your friend so I can see what you’ve read!
Josefine

My recommendations: Please Mr. Einstein by Jean Claude Carrière

Sherlock Holmes

Living in the heart of the city of Sherlock Holmes, a few tube stops away from the famous, though fictional, Baker Street 221B (No. 239 houses a Sherlock Holmes museum), I had an urge to re-read my Sherlock Holmes collection. The stories still interest me, and considering it was probably fifteen years since I last read them, it was like returning to an old friend as I turned the pages. But there were also things I saw in a new light. I remembered the ingeniousness of Mr. Holmes himself but now I also discovered his somewhat brusque attitude towards Dr. Watson.
It is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s well-constructed stories and easy reading that brings me back to these stories. My favourite among them is probably Baskerville’s hound, it has enough suspense for cold chills to go down my spine.
Josefine

My recommendations: Last shift by Karin Whalberg

Lemons in Andalusia Part II

The other day, I picked up Chris Stewarts book, The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society from the library. Little did I know that this was his third book in the same series. I had totally missed A Parrot in the Pepper Tree. They both are a continuation on his first book Driving over Lemons, about his life in the Spanish countryside. I hope this book is as funny and well written as the first one and then I will have to go on a hunt for the second book as well.
Josefine

My recommendations: Zohra’s ladder – and other Moroccan tales by Pamela Windo