January book list

I realise that it is already February and time for a summary of the January reading. During last month, I have presented most of the titles I have read in the I dig reading challenge separately, but here is the complete list. (The first two or three actually from the end of December):

Göran Rosenberg: Ett kort uppehåll på vägen från Auschwitz (forthcoming in English and other languages, see http://www.rosenberg.se/index2.html)

Badge by Katharine Owens at The Insect Collector

Justine Lévy: En ovärdig dotter (French original title: Mauvaise fille). I didn't like it that much, and didn't post anything for it due to lack of time. I might get back to it later, though, since I have read another book by Lévy before and I'd like to think a little about the similarities and differences between them. If time allows...

Bengt Ohlsson: Margot. A biography about the Swedish social democratic politician, EU commissioner and UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Margot Wallström. The author gives a personal view of the private person Margot and her job in New York (meetings, receptions, etc), but doesn't touch on what actually drives the politician and career woman Wallström. Furthermore, it doesn't really give a picture of the demanding field that Wallström is responsible for in the UN. I don't know if the book will appear in English, and so I wrote a longer text about it in Swedish (here).

Frida Nilsson: Hedvig och sommaren med Steken. (Hedvig's summer with Chubby) A children's book about Hedvig who lives in the Swedish countryside. We have read it aloud for our six-year-old. This is the third book about Hedvig, now 9 years old, as she spends her summer vacation between her second and third year in school with Chubby who's 10 years old and who stays in a run-down cottage close to Hedvig's home during part of the summer. It's nice and well written and includes the process when Hedvig's paternal grandma, who suffers from a stroke, dies. This sad process is well described, with Hedvig's frustration about her grandma not being as she used to be - and in the end Hedvig hopes that her grandma instead of dying has gone off to Italy. (A longer text in Swedish here since there doesn't seem to exist any translations into other languages than Norwegian and Danish - and for the first book about Hedvig also into German and Serbian.)

Johannes Anyuru: En storm kom från paradiset (A storm blew in from paradise), which I wrote about here.

Åsa Lind: Sandvargen, which I wrote about here (in Swedish). The publisher presents it, extremely shortly, in English here.

Abdulrazak Gurnah: Desertion, review here

Sindiwe Magona: Mother to Mother, review here

So, in the I dig reading challenge, which I entered here, I have for January a sum of eight (books) times two (USD), i.e. 16 USD to donate, which I have sent to the Swedish branch of Médécins sans frontières, Läkare utan gränser, because I think they are doing a great and necessary job around the world, some of which you can read about in their blogs.