Only "your favorite..."-question I actually can answer.

Första Kapitlet - Det enda sorgliga i hela boken, men icke desto mindre absolut nödvändigt.
Andra Kapitlet - Vari det sker någonting mycket besynnerligt, som dock har sin naturliga förklaring.
Tredje Kapitlet - Som handlar om Katten och några stövlar, vilka icke voro hans, samt om familjespöken.
Fjärde Kapitlet - Där läsaren får veta några siffertal och göra bekantskap med en osympatisk figur.
Femte Kapitlet - Vari läsarinnorna hållas skadelösa för det föregående kapitlets saklighet genom att bokens hjältinna framföres i en både ståndsmässig och tilltalande gestalt.

This would be the first five chapter "names" in a book from 1905 called Markisen av Carabas. I own for some reason a 1921 edition where they've instead named it Mästerkatten i Stövlar - En Munter Roman (I have no idea why or how, records of book printings from 1921 has proven hard to find, I found the book on Wikipedia only because some famous swedish actors were in a movie made from it in 1918. Because movies are more important than books -_-) It is written by a danish guy called Palle Rosenkrantz, and I have no idea what it's called in original language (possibly the same thing).

I don't know if this book and/or this author is/was famous. I assume it reached some kind of fame since it was made into a movie. I've probably mentioned this book to some people before at some point, because this is a very late post in the sense that I've known what I'm about to tell you for a couple of years. It just hit me that I should make it grandly official. I also have no. fucking. clue how I got this copy, I can't remember if I found it in a second hand store or stole it from my grandparents... I don't know. All I know is, whenever I go somewhere for a longer chunk of time I have to weigh the risk of damaging or losing it versus the idea of leaving it behind because:

I declare this my favorite book of all times. The 21th century can go fuck itself.

A Simple Joy

One of my interests that rarely comes into play anymore is that of reading; books I mean then, because I read comics all the time, and I think we would need a different word for that. Because it's different from reading, yet on the same value level. Anyway. Books is another of the subjects where I rarely say anything; like with boys, and my writing, and also schoolwork, which often makes the sharing of such things difficult. Communication is rather a necessity of sharing, sadly. I think I choose not to speak because sometimes more information is less good. Sometimes sharing things with words break them. So I bide my time looking for a better way, sometimes it shows up.

I'm just filling out this blogpost to be of reasonable length. What I wanted to write here was:

Lee Child - the Jack Reacher novels.

Simple as that. I could write a 5-page essay about why or how or what, but I think you understand.

Mi mi mi mi miiii... nope, still just rambling.

My studies are going in the grave just as I had decided to invest myself in taking them more seriosly. It seems my life is this way a lot of the time. It goes out of its way to prove me wrong.

My dreams are keeping me entertained, though. I so wish I could take them to one of those psychoanalyzing dreamreaders. I want to know what wanton destruction and insane fun could possibly mean, in a dream way. Probably that I'm inhibited in real life. Hm. I read somewhere that how you read your own dreams tell you more about yourself than what you actually dream.

I read a book called "Swedish Mafia" (although in Swedish), about biker clubs like Hells Angels and Bandidos in Sweden. Kind of serious and kind of scary, although sometimes it feels like it tries to condemn what they do but only manage to boost their reputation. What I do know is this; a police badge should be like the cross to the vampire. In my book, you do not target cops. Bust whatever you want, but lay a hand on a decent cop and you're out. Strike three, red flag. Corrupted cops, however, should be taken out back and shot. And a police force should be (and is, sometimes) the way that hurt one of them and you get half the country gunning for you. I like the idea, and I like the message. You do not mess with.

Also, read Lee Child. I like those books. As entertainment of couse, it's hardly higher level academics, but they follow my moral code, I think. The way I wish the world was. And the way I wish I were.

Suggestion for the Book Circle ^^

I have too many thoughts in my head right now.

I finished "Flyga Drake" today by Khaled Hosseini (I don't know what it's called in English). Horrible book to read, I was on the verge of crying 75% of the time and two times I seriously considered putting it down and never picking it up again because it hurt too much. But it opened my eyes a lot to the complexity of the conflict in Afghanistan and to my own prejudices, besides being a great book about being a human, about loving, losing and letting down. (It's also made into a movie now, but I seriously doubt it could carry through into a movie very well. People say it's good but very, very different from the book.) It's not political, which I appreciate. Only human, and very emotional. I got a headache every time I read in it. But it was probably worth it, though the end wasn't as well written as the beginning and mid-section.

I have also been to a small introduction to the education I'm applying for this fall. It really sounds like the perfect "me". They said I needed: math (check), english (check), computer familiarity (check), 3D thinking (check), creativity (check), and interest in technology and machinery (check, though no schooling). I'll be alternatively sitting and standing, very good for my leg. I'll learn business planning and presentations, sorely needed. Teaching takes place about three days a week in a classroom and the rest homework or over the internet. Male-dominated workplace. The teacher we met seemed like the perfect kind of man; confident, straight-forward, kind.
It's too good. I'm scared out of my freaking mind. Especially of getting my hopes up. Maybe also of settling in too well here. Do I want to live the rest of my life around here? I used to not understand people who would. But I'm growing into it. This is my home. No matter what I think of it, it's difficult for me to leave it.

Yeah. Too many thoughts. Reading the book made all these old thoughts wake up. I used to want to become a psychiatrist. Don't think I could manage it, neither the long time of school or the mental pressure. But that has always been the thing closest to my mind in the subject of "making the world a better place". Taking care of orphans or abused homeless animals.

I didn't want to have children because I was afraid I wouldn't like the kid. But maybe that's part of it. How could I ever know whether I would like him/her or whether I would make a good parent? How does anyone know? Maybe I want a child after all. In any case, passing on my genes might make the world a slightly better place. Yes, I am that full of myself.

Vlei

I just finished the book I had to read for school: Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing. It's a fascinating book, partly because of what it portrays and what it says. It's the story of a human fate in Southafrica, I can't set a clear date since I have no sense of years and dates, but it's written 1950 and they talk about a war. The main character Mary is a rather naive girl, a prisoner of her childhood, carefree as long as the environment is carefree. Once it is no longer, it becomes a book that digs deep into her life and mind. It also shows a clear and bitter view of the relationship between black and white in the country, between what was right and wrong to the people of then and there. It looks into silent rules of society, subconscious mindsets that spreads or excludes without people ever really thinking about it. Simply the way white farmers must think to treat the black natives the way they did; and to protect the world they have built, they must continue to think so, without any alternatives. And in that kind of world, when one of the "superior" community finally falls so far down that the line between black and white comes down strictly to color, bad things happen, even if no one takes action simply because of it; it follows the rules of group behavior.

Speaking of the book rather than the content, I like the way Lessing has left a lot to the reader. There are times when she explains down to tiniest detail why someone would do as they do, but even in these exquisite explanations, she delivers some extra information in the form of interpretation. We are left to fill in the blanks ourselves, most of the time subconsciously. It gives a deeper understanding of psychology, as close to practice as theory could get. All in all, it is a good, interesting, and entertaining book, though oddly not as captivating as the other adjectives would suggest, perhaps because it covers the concept of "why" rather than try to keep the suspense, since the book, litterally, begins with the end. Either way, it is worth its time.

On a completely different subject: The Gray, my cat, is currently wearing headphones.

Heart of Darkness

I finished Heart of Darkness today. It was a good book, quite a bit of work, more than just a story, a novel. It felt like an attempt to make a book without words, on some level. I'm going to write about it a little now, it's a highly uneducated and personal analysis, but I'll try to keep it short and objective.

The first thing I'm hit by is the way the story begins with the people who tell the story. What do we know about them, why are they here, what function has the "I" in that perspective? Why did the author not choose to have Marlow speak directly to the reader, instead of giving us a person to stand in for us, one we hardly know anything about? It could be the signal, right there in the beginning of the book, to read this not as ourselves but as the person there with Marlow, to look beyond our immediate surroundings and lives, even ourselves.

The story is then told that way, like a story around a forest campfire, all in one bout, never once slipping from this clear personal perspective. We're not given a grand amount of pure fact, despite the enormous flow of words; we're given sights, thoughts, emotions. What has Mr.Kurtz really done? We understand what, though most of it is never fully stated. And that is what the book heavily relies on, that we understand though we're not always led like the blind; we must use our own eyes and ears and that is why we need the guidance of looking away from ourselves in the beginning or we might interpret things from the wrong perspective.

So what is it that he wants us to interpret, to see in this darkness? The Heart of Darkness deals very little in good and evil, right and wrong, it states its story proudly and attempts something much more respectable: to dive in behind such concepts into mind and soul, but from a grounded starting point, not soaring up into academy philosophy or righteous religion, creeping at its target looking from below, from outside. It is an exploration of a broken mind without intention of mending or understanding, but also of how the breaking itself may affect everything around the person, even more than the person himself.

And of all this, I understand only a little. I would need to read the book at least twice again, improve my vocabulary of the old form of English, and then write a full essay to gather my thoughts to catch the full vision. Especially the ending seems odd and as if carrying a great weight I cannot track. I did like the book, not with grim happiness as in The Perfume, painful satisfaction as in Of Mice and Men or mind-numbing love like The Tollbridge, but with calm amazement, somehow like I imagine Marlow himself feeling, watching this event unfold before ones eyes, knowing you understand only little, but your soul understand so much more.

Well, that's what I had to say. It's said that some books you cannot understand unless you have read other books before, just like you learn about life as you live it. Someday, I imagine, I will read it again, and maybe then I will have read the right books and lived the right life and understand more.