February booklist

I haven't devoted that much time for reading this month, due to my reborn interest in knitting. Most of my sparetime has gone to knitting, lately. Anyway, here's the list for February:

Jonas Hassen Khemiri: Ett öga rött (One eye red). Khemiri's debut novel, not in English and probably extremely difficult to translate, so I wrote about it in Swedish here. DN about Khemiri here.

Kyung-Sook Shin: Please look after Mom (Ta hand om min mor), which I wrote about in English here.

Jonas Gardell: Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar. Del 1. Kärleken (Never wipe tears without gloves) which I wrote about in Swedish here. Gardell tells about (male) homosexual life in Sweden and Stockholm in the 80s, right when things were about to ease up a little - and HIV/AIDS was discovered. It's a terribly sad story, this only being the first part with two young boys discovering love, with glimpses of what was to come. Unfortunately, it is not terribly well written, with characters being quite crudely set. And I do miss the women in the story, the few who are there are even cruder described than the men. Didn't homosexual men in the 80s have any female friends? Or any kind of life apart from being homosexual? There's not much we get to know about the characters, except about their love and sex life. Still, it is a book to read, bearing witness about that time, not long ago.

J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter och halvblodsprinsen (Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince). We have finished the next to last book about Harry Potter with the 10-year-old. I have read it before, and I note again that the more books about Potter and the more successful the author got, the less influence any editor seems to have had. It is just too much; too long descriptions about almost everything (and I'm usually not one of the kind that complains about stories moving too slowly). But come on, how many pages do you really need to tell what's necessary about, e.g., a match in the made-up sport quidditch? And when you read it aloud it becomes even more obvious. But Rowlings still manages to write a catching story, I just wish it had been about half as long as it is.

Frida Nilsson: Hedvid och Hardemos prinsessa (Hedvig and the Princess of Hardemo). Another book for children about Hedvig from the Swedish countryside (I wrote about the third book about Hedvig here). This time there's a new girl appearing in her school class. Hedvig thinks she's adorable. Only that she turns out not being a girl, but a boy with long curly hair and a face as made of porcelain (according to Hedvig). And for some reason, this is a problem, friends teasing Hedvig about being in love with the new boy Olle, making Hedvig turn from aspiring for friendship to being right out rude. I'm not quite convinced by this outcome, Hedvig being quite fierce in the former books. Why does she suddenly care that much about her class mates teasing them, or about Olle being a boy? But of course, there would probably not have been a book if there was no problem in discovering that the princess from Hardemo was a boy.

Aino Trosell: En gränslös kärlekshistoria, which I wrote about in Swedish here. About life in the Swedish and Norwegian countryside during the last three female generations in the authors family, and about her own childhood and youth. I like it a lot, especially the historical parts.

Six books read makes twelve USD, which is not that much to spend for any kind organisation. Thus, I add them to what comes out of the reading in March.