Unga kvinnor

Or Little Women to you.

I have just decided to get rid of my copy of Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel. Was that the right thing to do?

When I began packing the contents of my bookshelves, I was hoping I’d find quite a few books – especially on the back row – that I no longer need. Prune hard, and my new life as a minimalistic witch will get off to a good start. But it turned out to be a disappointingly small number of books I could face parting with.

Unga kvinnor was one of them. I read and loved it when I was quite young. I’m guessing that must have been around its 100th birthday, and I was prejudiced enough not to want to read such an old book with such a stupid title. For whereas Unga kvinnor means exactly the same as Little Women (well, almost, since ung is young and not little), it seemed very antiquated at the time. Kvinna was a word used about old women (or so I believed), and I certainly had no need for a book about them.

But someone gave me a copy (probably the Retired Children’s Librarian again) and I read the book. It wasn’t the only stupidly titled book I had to eat my first opinion over.

And ever since, the book has moved with me. It’s a classic. I liked it. You hang on to stuff like that. But as I tackled my shelves a couple of days ago, I looked at its mottled spine and – OK – its nice purple cover, and thought ‘we are done.’

It’s not that I believe I will never read it again. I definitely will, if I live long enough for my ‘house arrest’ reading. But not in translation. I have a copy of a recent Penguin Classics edition. And I’m snob enough that I see no reason for reading anything but the English language version from now on.

Does that make getting rid of a childhood friend all right?

The deposit

I found my thoughts straying to Seacrow Island the other day. About how handy it would be to be able to put down a 10p deposit on a house, because you’re a nice person and the house owner is another nice person. And you can afford it because you didn’t have that third ice cream, leaving you with 10p for those unexpected needs.

Hands up, if you know what I am talking about! Do you know your Seacrow Island? Any Swede my age, and quite possibly every generation since, knows Saltkråkan very, very well. That’s the book by Astrid Lindgren which started life as a television series, and that’s how we all know it. And because it’s a symbol of everything that is Swedish. And because it’s repeated on television every year, or so it seems.

At the end of a wonderful summer on an island in the Stockholm archipelago, Pelle – a boy of seven or eight – finds himself at a loose end on the mainland, while his father Melker and his two older brothers are running around town trying to find an estate agent. The house they have rented and fallen in love with, is to be sold to some rich man who wants to flatten it and build a new, grand ‘bungalow.’ A last minute windfall means that Melker is ‘in the running’ to buy the house as well. If he can get there first.

Pelle and his friend Tjorven spend some of their money on ice cream. Then they have a second ice cream each. When Tjorven – hopefully – raises the question of a third ice cream, Pelle says it’s good to save some money for a rainy day. And then they set out to find the owner of the house. After climbing onto the balcony where the old lady is dozing, they tell her everything.

When the estate agent and the rich man, with Melker close on their heels, arrive at Mrs Sjöblom’s, it turns out they are too late. The house has already been sold. The rich man is furious and Melker cries. At least until it is explained to him that it is Pelle who has put his last krona as down payment for their holiday paradise.

What’s more, it was Tjorven who earned that money from the rich man for tying up his boat so expertly. He should learn not to tip the natives…

Cuidado con el perro

That’s when I pushed the Resident IT Consultant forward. If there was going to be any biting by dogs, I didn’t want to be first through the door. Luckily my Spanish was there to warn me. Although, as it turned out, the doggy had been banished to the car. We stopped on our way out and Daughter teased it, a little. I suppose she felt safe enough with a bit of car in between.

So, day two of house speed-dating, or whatever you should call it. I can assure you that by the end of the day the Resident IT Consultant’s head was reeling, and he needed gentle guidance on where which toilet was, and that if the bedroom dimensions seemed small, that’s because it was a bathroom.

Eaves. I still don’t get why a steeper sloping roof has bigger eaves. It ought to be the other way round.

As you may have gathered, Daughter joined us for the day. She wasn’t in the slightest impressed by the estate agent who jokingly placed her in the boxroom, next to those eaves. But she did open all under stairs cupboards and make Harry Potter jokes. And, she felt the doggy property was straight out of Privet Drive.

I began the day by putting my boots on (well, I obviously had breakfast and things first first) and as I did so, the thought that I’d prefer not to have to take them off during the day, on account of them being difficult to put on, crossed my mind. That was before I discovered I had a 50p piece in my left boot so it had to come off again. But you will not be surprised to find that two house owners were of the take-your-shoes-off persuasion. Not that we did, but still. It was one of those witchy thoughts I get. Obviously, if I’d found more money in my boots, I would ‘happily’ have removed them. (This is Scotland. How much money can a witch expect to encounter inside her footwear?)

If we were proper people who kept up with all manner of normal stuff, we’d most likely have recognised one house vendor. As he opened a cupboard, which happened to be full of books (weird place to keep your books; as though they are an embarrassment) I noticed a pile of ten or so, new, pristine books, spine out, bearing his name. I refrained from asking if he was an author (which was very lucky), and went on admiring the house.

The silver shoe in the kitchen should have been a clue. We just thought it was an unusual taste in trinkets, but it seems it’s a trophy of the kind a successful football player might get. Because that’s what he was. Anyone normal would probably have said ‘don’t I recognise you?’

We gate-crashed one house viewing and sneaked around in the garden of another. We are fairly sure what we would like. We just can’t act on it yet. And when we can, it’s bound to be too late.

But at least we now have a spreadsheet listing the number of bathrooms and the distance to Lidl…

It’s not all the same to me

Why are we not the same? How come a book published in the English language in Ireland (which is practically British, anyway… 😉) needs to be published again in the UK? It seems so wasteful of resources, not to mention slow.

It must be something to do with money. Do more people make more money with a book published in English in ten different countries? I just get impatient with the waiting. And unlike television shows (although the less said about file sharing, the better) you can generally get hold of the physical book from ‘the other’ place.

Sometimes they are let loose on the same day, all over the world. But mostly not, even if it’s just a week’s difference. Harry Potter was released on the dot of whatever midnight was in every nook and cranny of the world. Because they knew if they didn’t, shops would not be able to sell many later copies, as the fans would have got their ‘cousin in London’ to buy and post the book.

Fine. If you need to have a publisher in each country, why not publish all over the world, in one fell swoop? Surely it would even out in the end? Big selling British novel makes money for publisher in London. In return an American publisher hits the jackpot with some other title they have published.

To return to the television angle for a moment. I love NCIS. First it appears gradually over the American continent on the first night’s screening. At a later point they sell the season to a UK channel I don’t have. This channel expects to make money from the commercials shown. Once they are done, one of the ordinary channels acquires the rights. They, too, want money from advertising.

Later on, I can buy the DVD box set. First comes the R1 version. Much later the R2. There will be a reason I can’t just tune in to CBS on the first night. I know. Advertisers in the US don’t reckon I’ll be buying much of what they want me to spend money on. But here’s the thing; I don’t buy much, if anything, brought to me by the UK advertisers, either. (There’s only so many sofas you can buy in one sale.)

So how does this work with books?

I recently reviewed Simmone Howell’s Girl Defective. Simmone sent it to me, because she reckoned it’ll be a while before it’s available in Britain. I could have bought it from that online bookshop we all love to hate. At least, I think I could have. The .com version no longer forces me back to .co.uk, but merely suggests I might prefer it.

As for working out which publisher to approach, that is also very tricky. The names are often the same in different countries, but that doesn’t mean they publish the same books. A couple of years ago I had to do some detective work in order to find the correct Indian publisher of a book.

The author has written the book. It has been edited and given a cover. The printers have printed. So why not just spread this one book? OK, that would be as un-green as Kenyan green beans. We don’t want to transport books across the globe. So why not print the same thing, but in each country?

Covers. Yes. We don’t fall for the same style. But we could learn. We like Indian food. Why not like Indian book covers? It might make us more open minded. Just like there is a market for new retro covers for crime novels, we could covet cultural covers.

In short, I know very little. But I don’t want to wait. At the moment I’m wanting Al Capone Does My Homework by Gennifer Choldenko. It exists. But it will be a long time coming my way, or so the publisher said, once I’d found out who it was (not the same as for the previous two Al Capones).

It’s one thing to wait for an author to write. We have to put up with this. But after that I will just vent my impatience, and snap.

Icy – or maybe not

Apparently it wasn’t ‘cold enough.’ Iceland, I mean. I think it’s a trick they play on outsiders, who believe the name of the country means it’s a mini-Greenland. (It’s more the reverse; Iceland is green and Greenland is icy.)

But still, children – I mean, young people – will be children (young people). Walking barefoot in the snow. I ask you.

In fact, from the photos I’ve seen, it appears the Iceland travellers kept jumping into tubs of water everywhere. Frolicking next to ice and snow, and green bits.

It was beautiful, or so I’ve been told. It looks very nice (as long as I’m not the one on those icy paths), and there was less need for all the warm clothing brought. Better that, though, than the opposite.

They walked among icy wildernesses, and they shopped and dined in relative civilisation.

And they ran around the ‘garden’ in swimming trunks in the snow. Below is my volunteer poster boy GG looking at what is most likely falling snow. Not stars. Astronomers know these things.

Put off

The Hardened Librarian (she’s really Den luttrade bibliotekarien) was blogging about what put her off reading when she was at school. It’s a relief to hear that others – even librarians – feel like that. I know I was certainly put off some books, and authors, by well-meaning teachers.

To some extent ‘all’ Swedish literature got to me. But as with so many things when you are growing up, you don’t know that what you’re experiencing isn’t normal. I must have assumed that in becoming an almost adult I simply had to read adult and ‘proper’ literature, and by definition it would be, if not boring, then not as riveting as it ought to.

Why should it be natural to move from exciting books at twelve, to adult boredom at 14? We’ve already established that in my day we had none of the YA. Hence the sudden move to adult classics. I wonder if (Swedish) schools today serve up more teen oriented reading material? Or do teachers pick adult books because they have forgotten already? Or because it’s the only ‘right’ thing to do?

I believe THL and I must be about the same age. We both read, and liked, Nevil Shute and John Steinbeck. Note that these two authors lack in Swedish-ness. I have never read many adult Swedish books. But I have friends who did, and do. I even have friends in the UK, leading English-speaking lives, but who wouldn’t dream of reading in English. Me, I always felt I was destined to come here, and to read books in my other language.

A few years ago when I interviewed Tim Bowler, he mentioned his favourite Swedish writers, and I didn’t dare admit that I didn’t agree with him. (Sorry!) Maybe I should get Tim and THL in the same room and they could discuss Pär Lagerkvist. Could be interesting.

The stupid thing is that I was so taken by the idea that I had grown up that I continued reading all this adult, but oh-so-boring stuff. I wonder why? Just think what fun I could have had in better company.

What puts English speaking teenagers off? At least many of the classics – albeit long – are reasonably interesting and readable. Though I’m grateful I saved Austen & Co until my twenties. I suspect I was more receptive to lengthy romances by then.

In the UK it seems to be customary to know which football team people, including your teachers, support. I think I can do a literary sort of line through my various teachers, showing the favourite author for each of them. When Heinrich Böll was awarded the Nobel, I read his most recent book. My German teacher adored Böll. I read several of his books. I am fairly sure I didn’t like any of them. Why did I do it?

I suppose it’s a good idea to try new writers, and not be too prejudiced. But to continue the punishment once you’ve established you don’t like someone’s writing, strikes me as madness.

Moving tales #5

‘You’ve really got a problem’ said Daughter. It was the fact that I now spend more time on Rightmove than I do on facebook. I understand it’s something called addiction. I’ve got it.

I was always somewhat weird about houses. But never more than now, obviously. The House Book, that first gift from the Resident IT Consultant, eons ago, didn’t improve me at all.

But what might have set me off more than anything else, was my year with the G family. Back – you know – in the dark ages. The good old days. Mr G was an architect and he’d designed their house, which at the time I was a little underwhelmed by, ungrateful witch that I was.

Now, I see what a 1960s design gem it was. Is. Then, I arrived expecting some old house to lodge in. If not Victorian – because at the time I didn’t know about such terms – then Edwardian or nicely in-between the wars. And I found myself in a house like many Swedish (i.e. modern) ones, except it was English.

With my recent Rightmove addiction I had a little look to see if the G’s house was on there. It was, because it was sold a few years ago. I almost wept with happiness to see how totally unchanged it was. Same furniture and all those 1960s features intact. I got impatient with the Resident IT Consultant for not remembering.

The Gs talked about houses. They talked about periods and all things interior and exterior. Just as with the book collecting, this was new to me. I loved it. I remember thinking how clever Mrs G was for knowing what defines a Victorian house!

Harking back, I realise that their house was a mere 15 years old when I lived there. Now it is 50, and I’m hoping its new owners are being kind to it. Keeping it as intact as it’s possible.

And I no longer feel I need to live in a pre-WWII house for it to be real. I could quite see myself in a 1960s gem.

But the most important, and lasting, benefit of my year with the Gs was learning so much. A proficiency in English was a mere side effect.

Iceland, here they come

We’ll be up early to send the Resident IT Consultant and Daughter out to look for the Northern Lights. I’ve worried for months about whether or not there will be any. Is it the wrong time of the month? (Yes, I understand it is.) Will the weather co-operate? Who knows?

But it seems this is the last good winter for years, and lots of people have had successful trips. And Iceland appears to be ‘in.’ (So it’s not as if they are being terribly original.)

It’s a supposedly educational trip, as well as fun, organised by the University of St Andrews Astronomical Society.

Just in case Daughter needs something to read, I had to find a successor to The Hobbit. It’s actually quite hard to pick a book that will suit. Not too long, but not too short, either. Not too heavy or large. It has to be good; exciting, but not – too – scary, with engaging characters. In other words, it has to be just right. Sort of in the Goldilocks zone of YA fiction. In the end I chose Siege by Sarah Mussi.

And for the group as a whole, you can’t beat a good quiz, so the Christmas quiz book has found itself sharing rather close quarters with a pair of heavy boots.

Should they need more entertainment, they also have Jar City on DVD. Nordic crime is in, and Arnaldur Indridason will hopefully be less well known than some other writers, and I hope no one has seen the film already. I was awfully tempted to send Virus au paradis, but that might have been taking things Icelandic too far. Besides, not everyone will be fluent in French/Swedish subtitles.

I will sign off with Eyjafjallajökull, which is even harder to say than it looks.

Aunt Motta and the Chancellors

Another birthday. More old style politics. Aunt Motta would have been 100 today. Like her older sister she was a fervent Social Democrat, and also worked hard in the ranks for a better life for all. (It wasn’t just that she sewed all my wonderful early clothes, or stuck polythene bags on my feet when the grass was wet.)

The family always used to refer to when Motta and Uncle E had lunch with German Chancellor Willy Brandt, as though it was a bit of a joke. He obviously wasn’t Chancellor then. He was a refugee in Sweden during WWII. And I imagine the lunch was for more than the three of them. Much of the same age, it will have been the natural thing for political activists to meet.

I suppose it was because Willy Brandt had a more prominent profile than his Austrian colleague Bruno Kreisky, that we didn’t talk about him as much. But they, too, met, as the future chancellor of Austria also took refuge in Sweden during the war. (Think of our reactions to refugee seekers today…)

Neither Uncle E nor Aunt Motta spoke any foreign languages. But luckily the two Chancellors-to-be did. I always think of Willy Brandt as a Norwegian speaker, which is what he was when interviewed on (Swedish) television.

This leaves me wondering if we have young people, who are quite as interested in changing the world for the better, today? To me, Motta and E were always old, and so were Brandt and Kreisky. I can’t help wondering what it was like back then. But it’s too late to ask.

Girl Defective

They’re refreshingly different in Australia. Simmone Howell’s third teen novel Girl Defective is quite possibly her best. So far. (Although that’s got nothing to do with its Aussie-ness.) At times I almost had to restrain myself from wanting a glossary, but not understanding some words adds a certain sense of exoticism.

So does permitting stuff that we rarely – if ever – get in British YA novels. They are freer with sex and booze, and that’s pretty refreshing.

Girl Defective is actually a Christmas book, too, as long as you can get your head round hot summers and Christmas holidays. It is also a rather wonderful aspie novel, with 10-year-old Gully who wears a pig-snout at all times and who goes round acting as if he is a detective. His sister Sky and their father Bill, who is a bit of a dinosaur running a struggling shop selling second hand vinyl records and drinking too much beer, both work hard at keeping Gully calm and away from trouble.

Sky isn’t your average – almost – 16-year-old, either. She has only one friend, the older and rather promiscuous Nancy. Stuff is happening in St Kilda, where they live. A girl has been found dead, and there is a spate of minor crime which affects them, and that Gully tries to solve.

This is a book about finding yourself, about finding love and making friends. Real friends. People you can trust.

There is something about the way Simmone writes. You feel that you’re in good hands. You’re safe, while she is doing ‘a Nancy,’ introducing you to new and worrying concepts in order to find out who you really are.

It’s a fantastic book, and I would like to see it published in more places. Now. I wish every English language novel could just go anywhere once it’s out. After all, I think I worked out what an op shop is, and I don’t absolutely have to understand all the Aussie-isms. They add local colour.