Olen ilokseni löytänyt norjalaisen nettikaupan, jonka kautta voin tilata melkein kirjan kuin kirjan Suomesta erittäin edullisesti! Lähes kaikki tutkimani kirjat saisi suoraan omaan postilaatikkoon tänne Osloon huomattavasti halvemmalla kuin kipaisemalla ne kaupasta seuraavalla Suomen vierailullani. Osaako jokun selittää kuinka tämä on mahdollista? Esimerkiksi uusi suomalainen kirja, joka Suomessa kaupasta ostettuna maksaisi 35 euroa maksaakin norjalaisen nettikaupan kautta vain parikymppiä (jopa postimaksut sisältyvät hintaan). Tähän on varmasti joku looginen selitys, mutta en ymmärrä mikä. En valita, ihmettelen vain iloisena.

Does anyone know why in the earth it is cheaper to buy Finnish books through Norwegian internet-bookstore than buy the same books straight from the bookstore in Finland? Why sending a book all the way to Norwegian makes is cheaper? I'm not complaining, just wondering...

Here you find an add for Eric Carle's new book "The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse". Eric Carle is a man behind "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and so many other classic children's books.  I just love to see that old man telling about his new book and being so excited and happy about it!

"There isn't any wrong colour." Love it!

Check out also his blog and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. I so much would like to go there one day!

Tänään iski tunne, että kesäloma on vihdoin alkanut. Ei se ole, heh heh, töissä pitäisi jaksaa vielä kaksi pitkää viikkoa, mutta jotenkin lomafiilis iski päälle juuri nyt. Haluan tehdä edes jotakin asian suhteen ja niinpä päätin, että blogi aloittaa lomansa juuri tänään. Kesällä minulle on tiedossa matka Suomeen, romanttinen lapseton reissu Bergeniin sekä aika monta laiskaa ja hidasta päivää täällä kotona, pihalla viltin päällä lueskellen. Mansikoita, ehkä vähän punaviiniä, lämpimiä kesäöitä ja muutama paksu klassikko, joita ei muuten koskaan ehdi kahlata läpi. Ehkä pari dekkaria ja joku tuntematon kirjailija. Runoja, runoja, runoja… 

Hyvää kesää kaikille blogini lukijoille! Jotta pää olisi syksyllä varmasti täynnä otan nyt oikein kunnon loman ja palaan blogiini seuraavan kerran vasta 1.8. Siihen asti, voikaa hyvin ja nähdään taas elokuussa! Pus!

Today, all the sudden, I got the feeling that summer holiday is here. It's not true, I still have to work two long weeks, but somehow I'm really ready for the holidays right now. That's why I decided that at least my blog will start it's holiday today and I will be back here next time 1.8. I can't wait those long lazy days when I can just read, read and read…

Have a lovely summer all of you and come back here in august to tell me what have you been reading! 

Go and check this advertisement! It's so fun! A new innovation, a new kind of book that fits into your pocket and is so small and light that you can read it wherever and whenever you want to! So much simpler than Kindle or Ipad! Paper strikes back!

(You can read more from Guardian where I stole my title.)

Thinking back now, I can see we were just  at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves - about who we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside - but hadn't yet understood what any of it meant.

I can't remember where I first heard about Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never let me go", but couple of days ago I happened to walk into a bookstore... I know, I'm not suppose to buy any new book before I have read the old ones and bla bla… but there I was, in the middle of bookstore and I saw this book. For some reason I knew right away that this one I wanted to read. I have already one Ishiguro waiting in my bookshelf, but I haven't had any interest to read that one. Still when I saw "Never let me go" I had to buy it.

My blog was very quiet this week and that's because I used all my free time (and there isn't that much of it right now) to read this book. "Never let me go" is one of those books that you just have to read without pauses. I read while brushing my teeth, while walking on the street and of course late at night when I was suppose to be sleeping. I just had to know what was behind all this. I had to get to the end of the book to find out if there were any hope after all, if there were any kind of comfort or forgiveness coming.

And after reading this book I have dreamt about these characters and I have been thinking about them a lot. I think I have to see the film adaptation too one day. I'm not saying that "Never let me go" is the best book in the history, there were also times when I was very much irritated buy the book, but it is a very powerful and touching book and definitely one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever read.

I can't tell you too much about this book, because I think you should read it, if possible, without expectations. The story reveals itself little by little. "You've been told and not told", like they say in the book. The book starts like everything would be obvious to the reader. The main character Kathy H. is telling her story to you like you would be one of them. Every now and then she says "I don't know how it was there where you grew up, but at Hailsham…" and then she goes on telling about her childhood in this beautiful and cosy boarding school where she and her two best friends Ruth and Tommy grew up. You hear what kind of games they played and what kind of secrets they shared but little by little you start to realize that there is more. There is something that everybody knows but nobody talks about, because everybody has been told and not told.

"Never let me go" is a dystopia. I doesn't tell about the future, but about the parallel reality. In the beginning of the book Ishiguro tells that the story takes place in England, the late 1990s. The world is almost like ours, but in this world people have found a cure for a cancer and many other diseases. But at what price?

"Never let me go" is a heartbreaking and sad book, but it doesn't make you cry. To the main character this is her life, her world. She doesn't ask for anything more, she doesn't cry so why should you? And that's exactly what gives you shivers. The quiet acceptation is worse than shouting and screaming. Actually when one of the main characters in the end of the book starts to shout it feels very good and cathartic. 

The book raises very many interesting philosophical questions, but it's hard to write about them here without telling too much. How can we reveal that we have a soul? What makes us unique? Why does the humankind create art? Why do we keep dreaming and hoping in the most desperate situations? How is it possible to grow up to accept that someone else has decided your future for you? Is it better to give someone a happy childhood than a happy future? If you get a little bit happiness do you naturally start to ask more? And how can we fight back when society seems to become colder and harder?

I would like to say that I'm happy this dystopia is far away from our own world. But the truth is that we are already doing horrible things to each others, only because we want to live our lives as comfortable as possible. Somebody somewhere is already suffering so that we can have things we assume to be our right, for example our coffee and our shoes. We kind of know that those are not made in the perfect circumstances, but it's so easy to forget and think about something else instead. Seeing how we live our lives now it's not impossible to think that this Ishiguro's parallel universe could be true one day.

But at the same time, this book doesn't preach. As much as a dystopia it is a love story, a story about friendship and companionship. A beautiful and important book. Heartbreaking in it's own quiet way. Tragic and haunting. 

I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.

I had kind of decided that I would not buy new books as long as there are over 50 books in my bookshelf that I haven't read yet. I can't really see the point of buying more and more books when there are so many books already waiting. But then I went to this flea market last sunday and… Well, you see they had this supersale: "Take as many books you can fit into one plastic bag and pay only 2,5 euros!" So… You wouldn't walk away from a sale like that, would you? So I fit into my bag Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, John Irving, E. Annie Proulx, John Steinbeck, Jhumpa Lahiri, two Jane Austens and two Agatha Christies. All of them only 20 norwegian krones!

I haven't talk with my bookshelf yet.

Husband didn't mind.

During last few years I have found so many different kind of lists of books from internet. "100 best books in the history" or "100 books you should read before you die" and so on. Those are fun lists. It's interesting to see how many books have you read and how many authors you haven't even heard about.

But for some reason are very many great female writers missing from these lists. And that's why I ended up making my own list. Click here and you can find those 100 female writers that I think everybody should read before they die. I took to my list only those writers who I have read myself and can that way I can guarantee that all of them are definitely worth of reading! 

This new list of mine, on the other hand, is a list of 100 female writers who I have not read before, but who I think I should try. I can't be sure that these are good ones, but I promise to try and see. Maybe you should too!

1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2. Päivi Alasalmi

3. Rajaa Alsanea

4. Melissa Bank

5. Djuna Barnes

6. Aphra Behn

7. Karen Blixen

8. Fredrika Bremer

9. Anne Brontë

10. Emily Brontë

11. Anita Brookner

12. Pearl Buck

13. Willa Cather

14. Colette

15. Grazia Deledda

16. Emily Dickinson

17. Marguerite Duras

18. George Eliot

19. Kirsti Ellilä

20. Laura Esquivel

21. Madame de la Fayette

22. Tua Forsström

23. Marianne Fredriksson

24. Marilyn French

25. Elizabeth Gaskell

26. Nadine Gordimer

27. Ursula K. Le Guin

28. Joanne Harris

29. Bessie Head

30. Mary Higgins Clark

31. Laila Hirvisaari

32. Virpi Hämeen-Anttila

33. Helvi Hämäläinen

34. Annika Idström

35. Elfriede Jelinek

36. Eeva Joenpelto

37. Anu Kaipainen

38. Aino Kallas

39. Jamaica Kincaid

40. Sirpa Kähkönen

41. Selma Lagerlöf

42. Jhumpa Lahiri

43. Leena Lander

44. Violette Leduc

45. Harper Lee

46. Leena Lehtolainen

47. Unni Lindell

48. Katherine Mansfield

49. Carson Mccullers

50. Aila Meriluoto

51. Marja-Leena Mikkola

52. Gabriela Mistral

53. Margaret Mitchell

54. Sue Monk Kidd

55. Toni Morrison

56. Alice Munro

57. Shikibu Murasaki

58. Iris Murdoch

59. Enni Mustonen

60. Herta Müller

61. Azar Nafisi

62. Eppu Nuotio

63. Joyce Carol Oates

64. Leena Parkkinen

65. Jayne Anne Philips

66. Sylvia Plath

67. Annie Proulx

68. Tiina Raevaara

69. Irja Rane

70. Mirkka Rekola

71. Jean Rhys

72. Anne Rice

73. Luise Rinser

74. Christiane Rochefort

75. Fredrika Runeberg

76. Nawal El Saadawi

77. Nelly Sachs

78. Vita Sackvill-West

79. George Sand

80. Sapfo

81. Nathalie Sarraute

82. Solveig Von Schoultz

83. Carol Shields

84. Elvi Sinervo

85. Helena Sinervo

86. Amalie Skram

87. Agnes Smedley

88. Gertrude Stein

89. Harriet Beecher Stowe

90. Miina Supinen

91. Eeva Tikka

92. Sigrid Undset

93. Jean M. Untinen-Auel

94. Alice Walker

95. Sarah Waters

96. Edith Wharton

97. Monique Wittig

98. Hella Wuolijoki

99. Marguerite Yourcenar

100. Wislawa Zymborska

(Well, I just read Lahiri, but I hadn't read her yet when I strated to make this list…)

Tuo esiin pomppaava deittimainos oli se viimeinen niitti. Päätin, että poistan kaikki mainokset täältä blogistani. En ole siirtymässä Vuodatuksesta pois, maksoin vain vähän rahaa, että saan pitää blogini mainoksista vapaana. Päätin samalla muuttaa osoitteeni, jotta se on yksinkertaisempi ja helpompi muistaa. Tänne kannattaa siis tästä lähtien saapua osoitteesta:

www.kertomusjatkuu.com

Vanhastakin osoitteesta löytää yhä edelleen perille, mutta vanhassa osoitteessa saattavat nuo mainokset yhä näkyä. Jos siis haluat lukea kirjallisuusblogisi ilman deittimainoksia, niin vaihda kirjanmerkkeihisi tuo uusi osoiteeni.

My blog has a new address:

www.kertomusjatkuu.com

Old address works that too, but there might be stupid advertisements. If you use my new address you can skip all the ads.

You wake up at the cemetery without any ID and you have totally lost your memory. You have no idea who you are and what has just happened to you. When police finally finds your husband it turns out that you are married to Brad Pitt.

This is pretty much the beginning for Jodi Picoult's "Picture perfect" and I was really fascinated by it. The beginning, that is. Unfortunately, the rest of the book, I hated. This kind of things are so extremely irritating. I really liked the way the book started. I didn't know anything about the author and nothing about the book either. I had just found this book and because it was a bookcrossing-book I wanted to read it. I have always liked to read books without knowing anything about them and quite often I'm happily surprised by the book. But of course every now and then I have to suffer and cry. And unfortunately that happened to be the case with this one. I do admit it, I didn't even read the whole book. I read first about half of the book and then I checked how the story ended. No comfort there either. This book was just sooooo bad and there's nothing to it.

I still think that the book has a very exciting start. Who is this woman? What has happened to her? How can it be that she is married to Brad Pitt? (Well, in the book it's not Brad Pitt, of course, but Alex Rivers, a very famous and rich actor, who reminds me very much someone like Brad Pitt or George Clooney.) How can it be that she doesn't remember her husband? And what happens when she starts to remember? Well, I can give you the answer to the last question. What happens is that the book changes and becomes really boring and stupid.

The book tells about a husband who beats his wife and a wife who stays and doesn't leave her husband. It tells a love story that is just not believable at all and that is quite a big false because that love story is pretty much all there is in this book. My biggest question is this: Why does the author writes so much about that love instead of showing it? I mean, all the time these people are thinking how much they love each others or talking about how much they love each others, but not once did I got the feeling that they actually did love. This was just bad writing and it doesn't get better even if the subject of the book was important.

So disappointed. That's me. Seriously wast of my time. That's the book.

My husband has got enough of me and my sad books. He says he's done with me crying after every book I read. Nowadays he has no sympathy for my grieving. When I go to him and tell that I just read something so sad that I need to be comforted he just laugh at me. If I keep reading sad books it's my own fault if I end up crying (he says).

He kind of has a point. Since May I have read books about suicide, end of the world, ageing and dying, parents who kill their children, families who are unable to talk together, lots and lots of murders and (the happiest subject of all) child prostitutes.

Because of all this my husband has now started a campaign called "Let's find funny books to Reeta!" And because we have so nice friends one of them has already taken part in this campaign and bought me a book that is supposed to be very funny. Well, we'll see about that. Somehow everything I read seems to transform into something very very sad.

I have not finished the funny book yet, so you just have to wait a little longer. I will keep you informed and let you know if I end up crying this time too.

…she loves Tove Jansson in general! 

This interview is from her webpage:

-I understand you’ve also recorded a track for the upcoming Moomin feature film? 

Yes. That was very joyous. They contacted me and asked me to write music for the film. After seeing a screening copy, I agreed to write the title track, and I asked Sjón to write the lyrics. The film looks great, and I feel it is much truer to the Moomin spirit than some of these Moomin things I’ve seen, which often stray from the original stories, have all these pastel colours and depict the Moomins as being all cute. This is a full length movie, about the comet, and it isn’t at all cute. It’s real, like the Moomins.

I felt that writing the track was a great opportunity to support [Moomin author] Tove Jansson. I’ve read many of her books—she wrote a lot beyond the Moomin series—and is now finally receiving due credit as a writer, not just of children’s novels. She has this great philosophy, and the way she lived her life on a small island is also inspiring. All her characters are different, everyone gets to be as they are and they all live in harmony. I agree with a lot of her messages, and really empathise with Tove.

Oh, Tove and Björk, loves of my life!

And by the way, here you can see the trailer for the new Moomin -film.

Here we go again! My blog is finally back from summer holiday and I have so many books I want to write about! Let's start with this one...

I wasn't sure what to expect from Aurdey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveler's Wife". The idea of the book sounded interesting and there was so much fuss aroud this book that I thought it might be either very good or very irritating. For some reason I was a little bit suspicious and it took quite a long time before I gave up and admited that I really really liked this book! It starts as a some kind of science-fiction-love-story but towards the end story grows and gets deeper and sadder. Now, when it's already couple of weeks since I read the book, story starts to change in my mind. Now I feel that actually the book wasn't so much science fiction after all and even when love story was a crucial part of the book it still wasn't the most important thing in this story.

Probably everybody already know what this book is about, but if there still happens to be someone who haven't hear about "The Time Traveler's Wife", it tells a story about Henry and Clare who are married. Clare met Henry first time when she was 6 years old and Henry was 36. Henry on the other hand met Clare first time when he was 28 years and Clare was 20. This is possible because Henry is a time traveler, he has a sickness, a little bit like epilepsy, that forces him to travel in time and space and he can't control it. If he watch TV, gets too stressed or drinks too much he gets this attack that makes him to time travel. So when he is 36 years old he is able to travel to his wife's childhood and get to know her and still when he is 28 and meets his wife for the first time he finds out that wife has already known him her whole life.

I don't want to tell you too much about the plot. I think I enjoyed the book more because I didn't know what was going to happen. So you just have to read it yourself.

But what I feel was the most interesting thing about the book was it's ability to talk about our mortality. Time travelers or not, we all have to get older, give up the things we love, get sick and weak and meet disappointments in this life. Eventually we are all going to die. As a time traveler you just can see it all clearer when you can visit your younger and more hopeful self who really doesn't know that much about life. The book wasn't hopeless but it did make me sad. And I think it put me into some kind of age-crisis again. I kind of hoped that I was done with those for a while, but no, here I am again, struggling with the fact that I'm getting older and need to even die one day. 

Tick tock, time is running...

Some time ago I asked readers to give me hints about funny books, books that wouldn't make me cry. I have read so many sad books lately, that I felt that I really needed something happier, something funnier. This book was exactly the right choice right now. No, it's not the highest literature you can get, but it did make me laugh (out loud) and that's just what I needed.

In her book "Eat, pray, love" Elizabeth Gilbert tells about a year in her life. After a difficult divorce she decides to spend a year travelling in Italy, India and Indonesia. She tries to find a balance between pleasure (=spending four months in Italy eating pizza and pasta) and discipline (=spending next four months in India practicing yoga)

 I think I fell for this book after reading this:

Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to - I just don't care.

For years I felt exactly like this myself. I love traveling and I have travelled a lot in my life. But since I moved to Norway have things changed. I have lived here almost three years now, I have worked here, gave birth here and found new norwegian friends, but still I don't feel quite like home. Somehow I feel that I'm still "traveling" here and that's why I don't feel that I should travel anywhere else (except maybe back to Finland). Even when I don't feel it anymore, that urge to travel, I still remember how it felt. I remember how it felt to stand alone in the middle of Buenos Aires knowing that I don't need to go back home for six whole months. I remember how it felt to know that the whole big city was all mine and even when I was living in the shittiest and smallest rathole in the city, I loved it because it was my rathole, it was my journey, my adventure. 

Of course it is a lovely thought to travel for a year, but right now I was especially tempted by the idea to meditate four months in India. As I told earlier I have started to meditate every morning (ok, not every morning) and right now I feel that I wouldn't mind to spend some time alone just meditating and trying to find some kind of peace of mind. Well, I know I would start to miss my family after first three days, but that is exactly why it was so nice to read that at least someone else has done it. I am also aware that it is the biggest cliche in the world to travel to India to meditate, but, well, hmm... sometimes cliches like that just attract me. (What can you do? I'm not going to lie here in my blog that there is not a happy little hippy girl full of cliches living inside of me. Because there is, so that you know.)

The truth is, I don't think I'm good at meditation. I know I'm out of practice with it, but honestly I was never good at it. I can't seem to get my mind to hold still. I mentioned this once to an Indian monk, and he said, "It's a pity you're the only person in the history of the world who ever had this problem."

But meditation was not the only interesting thought in this book. I liked especially this idea: 

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment.

This one really made me to think. It's quite often that I let myself to be entertained thinking that "I deserve this joy in my life" but at the same time I don't give myself those things that would really make me happy. It's easy for me to give myself amusement, I feel that I really deserve it. But sadly enough it's hard to give myself feel the real pleasure, let alone the whole, true happiness, because I don't feel that I'm worth it. It's a really interesting thought. Quite scary too. Something that I have to think more...

Anyway, this book was very cute and funny. Not something that everybody should read, but for me right now, it was the right one. A piece of entertainment or pleasure or whatever I needed this week.

Kirsimaria wrote here about Ibsen. After reading that I remembered how much I love the guy and that I really should read his biography soon. And when I started to google some more Ibsen-stuff, guess what I just found from the net! Explore Ibsen is soooooooo cool page where you can walk around Oslo with Ibsen and meet his characters around the city. I'm hooked. There norwegians really like their Ibsen and celebrate him all over all the time. (They have for example wrote quotes from Ibsen to the streets around Oslo, there's Ibsel-festival in Nationaltheatre every other year and you can buy Ibsen-diarys and patches almost everywhere...) I can't think any Finnish author that would have got the same kind of status and position in Finland that Ibsen has here. He's spirit is just all over the city. Go and check that webpage yourself!

I can easily see myself buying something like this one day. Or these. And then of course. 

As I have told I really like the idea of Bookcrossing. And the practise too! One of the best Bookcrossing-experiences I have had was with Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman, A Game of You"-graphic novel. Somebody had left it to a cafe here in Oslo and I took it with me. When I had registered to Bookcrossing-page that I had found the book I one day got email from India(!) from a young woman who was also a bookcrosser. Her boyfriend was going to be 25 years old and because of this she wanted to give him 25 books for present. So this nice girl from India asked if I wound like to send my Sandman-book to her when I had read it. And well, that's exactly the idea of Bookcrossing, so of course I wanted to do it! So I read this book (and liked it a lot!) and after that I sent it to India to this woman who gave it to her boyfriend who obviously had a very nice birthday (who wouldn't with 25 new books?) and he also liked this graphic novel and so everybody lived happily ever after.

Don't you just have to love Bookcrossing?

Before my brains stopped to take any more new information I read Vendela Vida's "Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name". I admit it, only reason why I started to read this book was because it happens in Finland. It's not very often that American writer wants to tell a story that is placed in Finland and that's why I'm quite surprised that no one has translated this book into Finnish yet. In Finland we are always so proud if someone even knows we exist. (Right now I can think only John Irving, at least "Until I Find You" happens partly in Finland.)

So I didn't expect that much from the book, but actually it wasn't a bad story either. Not excellent, but definitely worth of reading. Unfortunately the beginning of the book is not the best part of it. In the beginning the main character is actually quite irritating woman. She is supposed to be around 30 years, but throught the whole book she acts more like someone who's sixteen. Anyway, the more you learn about this woman and her background, the more you start to like her. It's truely a very sad story and the book gets a lot better along the way.

"Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name" tells about Clarissa who's mother left her family when she was 14 years old. Fifteen years later Clarissa's father dies and she founds out that her father wasn't her father after all. So she travels to Finland trying to find her real father. Along the way she also tries to find out what happened to her mother and why did she left her. This is a journey of a woman who's very lonely and I suppose all the snow and coldness in the book is trying to symbolise that.

Here can you find an interview where auther herself tells more about the book.

Today happened something strange. I have just started at my new work and my brains are so full of all the new things and all that norwegian talking that tonight on my way home, sitting in a bus and trying to read a book I realised that I didn't really want to read at all. I just wanted to sit and think nothing.

So I came home and tried to find a better book from my bookshelf but I didn't want to open any of them. They all seemed to be too difficult, even the easy and entertaining ones. Right now my brains just can't take anything more. This is weird, but it seems that I have to take a small break from the books. I hope this won't last very long. 

Tonight, instead of reading I will watch some films from Marx-brothers.

I know these books are quite full of fingerprints, but I still don't agree with her that they should be washed in dishwasher.

 Herta Müller. Never heard. One more to go!