Kategoriarkiv: Book reviews

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Trehundratjugonionde åseriet- Arton tusen!

Nu har bloggen haft 18 000 visningar! This blog has now had 18,000 views!

In my blog I share thoughts and experiences from my life and teaching career. Occasionally I also write book reviews or share my experiences from trips. Most of the content is written in Swedish. Some of the posts may be interesting to an English-speaking reader. Please look for ”In English” in the menu to the left. Thanks!

Tack alla ni som läser det jag skriver. I våras publicerade jag en serie inlägg som handlade om musik i SVA-undervisningen. Inläggen hittar du enklast genom att söka här på bloggen med #Musikupplägg att samtala om. Under sommaren har ett antal blogginlägg handlat om upplevelser från en turistresa i USA. För att hitta dem är det enklast att söka här på bloggen med #Turist i USA. Efter sommaren återgår bloggen till att vara en mix av reflektioner om undervisning, boktips och däremellan en del minnen från lärargärningen. Till hösten hoppas jag även hinna med att göra fler filmer med undervisningstips att lägga upp på min YouTube-kanal #åseriklipp. Gul lilja

 

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Trehundratjugonde åseriet- Sjutton tusen! 17000!

Nu har bloggen haft 17 000 visningar och ni som tittat in har hunnit bli 12000! Tack alla ni som läser det jag skriver. I våras publicerade jag en serie inlägg som handlade om musik i SVA-undervisningen. Inläggen hittar du enklast genom att söka här på bloggen med #Musikupplägg att samtala om. I sommar har 23 blogginlägg  handlat om upplevelser från en turistresa i USA. Vill du läsa dem är det enklast att följa länken: http://wp.me/p4uFqc-Ov, eller #Turist i USA.

Efter sommaren återgår bloggen till att vara en mix av reflektioner om undervisning, boktips och däremellan en del minnen från lärargärningen. Till hösten hoppas jag även hinna med att göra fler filmer med undervisningstips att lägga upp på min YouTube-kanal #åseriklipp.

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The blog has so far had 17,000 views by 12,000 visitors! Thanks all of you for reading. During spring, I published a series of posts about music in SVA teaching (Swedish as a Foreign Language). The blogposts are written in Swedish and can easily be found by searching here on the blog with #Musikupplägg att samtala om. This summer, 23 blog posts centered on experiences from a tourist trip in the US. Do you want to read them, it is easiest to follow the link: http://wp.me/p4uFqc-Ov or  #Turist i USA (= #Turist in the United States). These blog posts will later be translated into English for your convenience.

After the summer, the blog will as usual be a mix of reflections on teaching, book recommendations, and in between some memories of my work as a teacher. This fall, I hope to make more films with teaching tips to put up on my YouTube channel # åseriklipp. If you are learning Swedish, they may be of use for you! 🙂

 

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Tvåhundranittionde åseriet- Sexton tusen!

Nu har bloggen haft 16 000 visningar! Tack alla ni som läser det jag skriver. Nyligen publicerade jag en serie inlägg som handlade om musik i SVA-undervisningen. Inläggen hittar du enklast genom att söka här på bloggen med #Musikupplägg att samtala om. I sommar kommer ett antal blogginlägg att handla om upplevelser från en turistresa i USA. Då är det enklast att söka här på bloggen med #Turist i USA. Efter sommaren återgår bloggen till att vara en mix av reflektioner om undervisning, boktips och däremellan en del minnen från lärargärningen. Till hösten hoppas jag även hinna med att göra fler filmer med undervisningstips att lägga upp på min YouTube-kanal #åseriklipp.

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Twohundred and Sixty-Fifth Asic- Fifteen Thousand Views

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Today this blog reached 15,000 views!

Thanks for reading! 

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Tvåhundrafemtiofjärde åseriet- Imre Kertész, en författare som gjort skillnad!

Mannen utan öde_

Imre Kertész har i likhet med andra överlevande av Förintelsen under andra världskriget delat sin historia, antingen i fiktiv form eller genom otaliga föreläsningar och besök i skolor. Deras generation har snart gått ur tiden. Igår gick just Imre Kertész ur tiden. Jag skriver mitt blogginlägg för att vi inte ska glömma honom och hans författarskap. Hans texter har bidragit till vår kunskap om en tid som inte längre är. År 2002 tilldelades Imre Kertész Nobelpriset i litteratur med motiveringen:

”ett författarskap som hävdar den enskildes bräckliga erfarenhet mot historiens barbariska godtycke”

Läs den där motiveringen igen!

Den är kärnan i den enda bok av Imre Kertész som just jag har läst, nämligen Mannen utan öde. Jag läste den inte när Kertész just hade fått Nobelpriset, utan några år därefter, i samband med att jag lånade hem en bok som låg i bokförrådet på den gymnasieskola där jag då arbetade. Av baksidestexten framgick att boken hade delats ut som en gåva till alla gymnasielever i årskurs 3 år 2002. Den typen av information intresserar mig. Varför ska en hel årskull läsa en viss bok? Jag ville helt enkelt veta vad som var så speciellt med just denna skildring. Fakta och fiktion i kombination kompletterar varandra alldeles utmärkt för ökad förståelse, som jag ser det. Därför är en sådan sak som att dela ut en bok till gymnasieelever en god idé om man samtidigt tar sig tid att diskutera och förklara och skapa en bakgrundsbild till ett sådant viktigt område som Förintelsen. Jag har läst många olika skildringar av varierande kvalitet om just Förintelsen och även om andra världskriget i allmänhet. Därför tänkte jag om Imre Kertész bok när jag stod i materialrummet och höll den i handen,  att den var ”en i mängden”. I efterhand är det emellertid så att just den skildringen tydligt skiljer sig från mängden på en viktig punkt, nämligen just det som står i motiveringen till Nobelpriset här ovanför.

”Mannen utan öde” är skriven som om den är självbiografisk, men enligt uppgift i olika artiklar, bland annat av Göran Sommardal (Aftonbladet 160331), är det inte en självbiografi, utan en fiktiv berättelse som i hög grad liknar Kertész eget öde. Boken handlar om en fjortonårig pojke i Budapest, som år 1944 inte får åka med bussen, utan måste gå av, utan vidare förklaring. Redan där har vi egentligen ett exempel på ”historiens barbariska godtycke” som Nobelprismotiveringen antyder… Pojken förstår först inte alls, men sedan inser han åtminstone när bussen försvunnit i fjärran att han inte är ensam om sitt öde. I likhet med andra judar har han tvingats avbryta sin resa och ut från buss efter buss, kommer många andra som likt honom inte heller förstår allvaret. Från den stunden är allt i stort sett obegripligt för pojken, men jag som läser texten kan känna igen det pojken upplever från otaliga faktaskildringar jag läst i olika källor. Den stora skillnaden mellan att läsa torra fakta, jämfört med att läsa fiktion i form av en nära-nog-självupplevd skildring av samma tidsperiod,  är att fiktionen ger en annan bild, betydligt rikare och mer mångfacetterad än de kortfattade komplexa meningar som man återfinner i en historiebok om andra världskriget. Att förstå en tidsperiod från olika perspektiv, med hjälp av de många olika röster som var med på den tiden, möjliggör för mig att identifiera mig med dem som levde då, som var med och såg med sina egna ögon.

Trots att Mannen utan öde likt alla de alla skildringarna utlovar ett inifrånperspektiv från förintelselägren under andra världskriget, så är det inte det som i första hand gör boken läsvärd. I mitt tycke är det snarare den litterära gestaltning som författaren ger den fjortonårige huvudpersonen. Han är verkligen helt ovetande om vad som väntar honom och hans gradvisa uppvaknande är vad som gör boken så speciell. Skildringen innehåller väldigt många motbjudande detaljer och fasansfulla upplevelser, men väldigt lite av pekpinnar och snusförnuftiga kommentarer. Den är inte heller sentimental, utan rak i kommunikationen. Den skildrar hela tiden pojken och hans perspektiv på ett sätt som skapar en insikt på djupet hos läsaren. Därför förstår jag varför man skulle vilja dela ut just den till årskurs tre i gymnasieskolan. Man vill att också de ska drabbas av samma genomgripande insikt.

Björn Granaths inläsning av ”Mannen utan öde” av Imre Kertész

 

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Twohundred and Twentyeighth Asic- Harper Lee from Now and Then

Mockingbird

It’s been more than twenty-five years since my teacher told me to read ”To Kill A Mockingbird” for an Assignment in English. I remember two things from the book: 1) I understood! 2) I didn’t understand! To you that may seem to be a contradiction, right? It’s not. It’s just a matter of meaning… I understood the ENGLISH and that made me very happy and proud, since English is not my first language. But reading in a language that is not one’s first language rise other different questions, such as ”what is this book really about?”…and I didn’t quite catch it… I remember I needed lots of help from my teacher back then. What the teacher helped me with was the cultural setting, the typical South of the USA and what it might have been like to grow up in Alabama at the time for To Kill a Mockingbird.

Last year I read in a newspaper that the author had finally released ”Go Set a Watchman” and I decided to read it for two different reasons: 1) I wanted to understand.  2) I had heard that this book was what Harper Lee wanted to publish in the first place when she first contacted the editor. I had also read that Harper Lee was asked to remove certain parts of her script or to re-write it, because the content was not appropriate according to the editor. I also knew that ”Go Set a Watchman” would be originally written without any such editing and I found that very interesting.

I have not re-read ”To Kill a Mockingbird” yet. I will of course. But that will be later. Instead I’d like to share with you what was the most interesting impression I got from reading Go Set a Watchman. It was REAL. I felt as if I was there, too, with Scout, or Jean Louise as she’s called most of the time in this book. There are two topics in particular that I find real. First it’s this tension between different groups of the society, referred to in the book as colored or white, although you may prefer other ”labels” now. The tension is there in both directions and it is obvious to the reader that people do not trust each other, do not mix with each other if not necessary. We read most of this particular topic from the point of view of Atticus’ sister Alexandra or from Jean Louise herself.

The next topic that draw my attention is when Jean Louise is forced by Alexandra to entertain a group of young women from the area. Alexandra has baked cakes and cookies for the event and her main interest is for Jean Louise to re-establish old connections with friends from her childhood and youth, and maybe find a reason to stay, instead of returning to New York where she now lives. It’s just that Jean Louise it not really interested. The way Harper Lee has written this part of the book is absolutely brilliant. It’s written in short abruptly cut comments, just the way other people’s conversations sound if you’re not a part of them and may not even collect everything that’s said. As if you were eavesdropping… After a while of reading this collection of short comments, I know more about those young ladies than if Harper Lee had attempted to draw a sketch of each and every one of them. And even more interesting, I also catch between the lines what Jean Louise think of all these young women, since she moves from one little group of ladies to the other, not really participating, merely listening. This part of the book made it worth the while to read it.

For one reason or the other Harper Lee was asked to edit in her script, to remove certain parts of the script… The result was ”To Kill a Mockingbird”… I must re-read it, as I said above…but now that I haven’t I prefer to just rest in the thought that I didn’t really like ”To Kill a Mockingbird” when reading it then, twenty-five years ago. I do however LIKE ”Go Set a Watchman”. I like Harper Lee’s sense of humor and I like her way of drawing a sketch of the society as it was then. But most of all, I as a reader, enjoy the fact that nobody has cut and edited this script. It’s supposed to be just as it was from the very beginning, and although the setting in the book is two decades after the events in ”To Kill a Mockingbird” it’s written before that book. To me, Harper Lee was a lot better in original than when that editor of hers had decided to remove ”controversial” parts… To write a book about life, when life seems like a struggle, may be hard enough, but to write it and have it translated and spread all over the world is a wonder. Harper Lee obviously did this twice! Thank you for the reading experience you gave me, Harper Lee! ❤

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Twohundred and eleventh asic- As cold as in ”To Build a Fire”, by Jack London?

Today we had round -20C in my town. The crisp air and the cold did not bother me, since I had planned my walk in the forest thoroughly and was dressed in warm winter clothes.

Many years ago I read the wonderful short story To Build a Fire by Jack London. If you haven’t read it, then DO! It is one of the best short stories I have ever read. Here’s a link to the full text:

To Build a Fire by Jack London

I learned from reading the story long ago that whatever we think we accomplish, we never win a competition with Nature! Jack London tells his story from the point of view of a man who decides to leave the main trail and seek another way, thinking maybe it will be a shortcut… London lets us know that the protagonist is new in the area. He has never spent a winter in Yukon Territory before. Then the author adds:

”The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.”

That is all information we need, really… We understand that he will not be fully prepared for what he will experience in this unfriendly and cold whiteness. When London describes the extreme cold, we understand the danger, but does the man?

”He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.”

The man does realize that it has to be below fifty, but that doesn’t lead him into the conclusion that he will not manage in this weather for long. Throughout the story several situations point out how unaware the man seems to be of the hidden dangers in the surrounding landscape. The man chews tobacco and his beard is filled with ice and along the telling of the story we notice how the beard is slowly built up like an ice-muzzle. If he will take a pause, he will not be able to eat or drink…

London describes many aspects of the Yukon winter that this man is not familiar with and as he paints the icecold scenario the reader slowly comes to the insight that this will lead to a disaster of some sort. The protagonist is followed by a dog, a native husky that knows enough of this weather as to wait for the man to soon build a fire… but the man does not stop to build a fire… As the dog once breaks through and wets his forelegs when being forced by the man to cross over at a hidden creek, the man first admires the dog’s instinct to quickly get rid of the wet and ice, then he foolishly removes his own gloves to help the dog…unaware of the risk for his own sake. His fingers instantly turn numb and that is in a way the beginning of the end…

When I took a walk today, I was taking one single step aside of the track, because I was searching for a better angle for my photo… Afterwards, my boots were filled with snow that first melted for a while, then re-froze and from being perfectly comfortable with my situation I was now slowly getting more and more cold. I was however lucky to know I was only fifteen minutes from home. I didn’t even need to think of building a fire… Instead I went indoors, thinking I was lucky who lived in the middle of a town and not in Yukon Territory, but also remembering this wonderful short story by Jack London with warmth. What a great piece of literature that is!

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One Hundred and Ninetysecond Asic- Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich- A Book Review

When Svetlana Alexievich gathered the material for her book Voices from Chernobyl  she made interviews with people who shared their experiences from the time of the explosion in the nuclear power plant. Sweden was the first country where high levels of radioactivity were first noted after the event in Chernobyl. Soon enough it was clear that the radioactivity was caused by another nuclear power plant than the Swedish.

I was nineteen 1986 and learned from authorities in our country that I ought to leave the berries from the forest and not fish and hunt if I lived on the east coast of Sweden. For all my life I had picked berries and made jam and enjoyed a lot of time in the forest. Now that was supposed to be dangerous and nobody knew whether activities outdoors would be dangerous, too. I remember being angry with the authorities in the Soviet Union for building a Nuclear Power Plant that was not safe enough. Svetlana Alexievich´s book remind us that the people who died to save the rest of us are our heroes. But did they have to die?

When we read Alexievich´s book we understand that authorities sometimes lied about the danger in order to get things done. They also used the military system as an excuse. When a young soldier refused to go to Chernobyl after knowing that he was supposed to clean the place from radioactive pollution, he was forced to go, or else he would be imprisoned or executed. The book is quite open with this and I now understand why the author has not always been welcomed by authorities in her country. I am however happy that she chose to write this book. When truth is revealed, it’s always easier to deal with the messanger, but this time the messanger got her story to be printed and spread, which is good for all of us.

According to the eye witnesses in Alexievich´s book and according to interviews made in different movies, such as the one I link to below, authorities did not inform the local inhabitants of the acute danger in the nearby area round the power plant and for the first 36 hours they did not even evacuate. The people in Pripyat, the closest town, could see the fire from a distance and they noticed that the smoke was blue and shiny. Locals were soon falling ill and had symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. At first the authorities let people go on with their lives as if this accident in the Nuclear Power Plant was not such a big problem. But as they realized the danger, they arranged for an evacuation, 36 hours after the explosion. They told people to pack for three days, but most of them have never had a chance to return to their homes in Chernobyl. Still many of the things are left behind, since they are contamined with radioactivity and lots and lots of things were actually buried in the ground.

Svetlana Alexievich´s book is quite dysthopic in a way. She writes in her foreword that she thinks that although the book deals with a part of our history, she claims it deals with our future. She starts off with a shared experience with a content I almost wish I hadn’t read. The first eye-witnessed story is from the widow of one of the firemen who died shortly after the explosion. We follow her and her husband as he ends up in a hospital in Moscow where he was taken secretly without his wife’s knowing. The widow does not spare a moment, but shares every horrific detail from his last days in life with all the strange symptoms and horrific wounds and thus my reading is already destined to go on until I have read the entire book.

Many of the stories are interviews or monologs where we notice how officers tell young soldiers to follow orders and when they do, they are forced to go into the evacuated zone to do the most disgusting jobs one can imagine. Afterwards they are changed and there is nothing they can do about it. Their health is ruined and although some of them earned some extra money or were decorated with medals, they paid with their health. Some of them speak as heroes and mean that without them the disaster had been worse, but some of them speak as victims and let us know that they regret their participation in the cleaning of the nuclear power plant area, since that has ruined their lives completely.

Page after page share the same feeling of lost future and dreams that will never come true, but also meet people with a stubborn will to stay in the area despite the danger. Many of the interviews show how the Chernobyl catastrophe actually made people in the area talk. They share their feelings and thoughts in a way they didn’t do before. The people who were evacuated live in a constant connection with their lost homes and the life they used to live in Chernobyl. By reading this book I became even more aware of the danger of nuclear power and also sadly aware of the impact in people’s life such a disaster causes. The book has to be read!

Please watch this documentary in case you need to fill in the gap concerning facts about what happened in Chernobyl in April 1986:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3WvKKSpKI
If you prefer reading, then please just follow this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Announcement_and_evacuation
 …or want to know more:

http://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/In-English/About-the-Swedish-Radiation-Safety-Authority1/

 

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One Hundred and Eightysecond Asic- ”The Last Witnesses:the Book of Unchildlike Stories” written by Svetlana Alexievich (1985)

The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories written by the Belarusian Nobel Prize Winner of 2015, Svetlana Alexievich, tells another story than ”War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face”. This time Alexievich shows her excel by sharing hundreds of children’s memories from Belarus during the Second World War. I thought my reading ”War Does Not Have a Woman’s Face” would have prepared me for every surprising or somewhat appalling detail in The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories but the fact is, I could not anticipate the way Alexievich had made the interviewed adults share so many exclusive moments from the past, filled with pain, horror and fear. Many of the children had been left behind by parents who either went to fight the enemy in the front army or in partisan groups and left their children with relatives. Many children were still in orphanages at the end of the war. Many parents never came back and their children still miss them:

”I’m already fifty-one, I am a mother myself, but I really do want a mother!” says one of the surviving children when interviewed by Alexievich.

What makes this book extraordinary is the way the author let short excerpts of longer interviews carry a few main topics that together form a war narrative we have never ever read before. The main topic is of course ”What happened in Belarus during the war?” however from a child’s point of view we rather see other topics, such as ”What happened to me when I lost my parents in the war?” or ”How could I survive although I didn’t have anything to eat except potato peels and grass?” and ”How could I survive and become an ordinary citizen after what I endured during the war?” What is even more interesting is that the reader is invited to read between the lines and make sense of all the narratives.

The Last Witnesses: the Book of Unchildlike Stories is close to the limit of what is bearable to read. One of the reasons why it gets under your skin might be that Alexievich has told the interviewed narrators to try and remember the way they thought when they were children. Obviously Alexievich succceeded since the narratives all seem to be told by children and not by adults remembering their childhood! From each narrator, Alexievich has found a central quote and the story is in a way interrupted by those quotes, changes topic quite often, but since the quotes are followed by the names of the narrator and their occupation as adults, the structure of the novel makes sense and the reader has a chance to a short glimpse of the adult reflection, too, since many of them end their narrative with a short comment about ”now”.

When reading the book, I think a lot of the many cups of tea that Alexievich must have had in the homes of the war veterans…and I also marvel about the way she has found something special in each narrative to tell us, however never repeating herself. Actually each narrator tells a completely unique story. They all share memories from the war from the point of view of a child, however the focus differ and thus a kind of quilt of stories takes form in my imagination. I read about personal loss, of fear, hunger, famine, children joining the army. I read about children who cannot go to school because they have to work in a factory or about children who don’t recognise their parents when they (if lucky enough!) meet them again after the war. But underneath the sad and depressing surface I also read about patriotism and pride, about never giving up and never revealing secrets to the enemy. The post war Belarus was completely destroyed and needed to be built up again and some of the narratives shared experiences from the postwar building up period when every survivor was needed, even the children.

But why would this book be necessary to read? The children suffered in so many different ways, but without the adult mind it was impossible for them to fully comprehend why there had to be a war. They needed to grow up in order to do so. We owe it to them to pass it on to next generation what a great loss they experienced when losing their parents, their childhood, their health and their innocence. Again, like when I wrote my previous book review: #This is a book that has to be read and spread!

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One Hundred and Eightyfirst Asic-”War’s Unwomanly Face” written by Svetlana Alexievich (1985), A Book Review

”War’s Unwomanly Face” written by Svetlana Alexievich (1985),  is based on recorded witness testimonies and detailed analyses of an enormous material of interviews with female war veterans from Belarus. Each one of the women served the Soviet Union during the Second World War and find personal ways to share their stories. The stories are also very different from each other since the women all had different occupations, such as soldiers, farm workers, doctors, nurses, pilots, chefs etc. Very little from the eye witness testimonies is possible to connect to figures and places only, as usually when we read other historical data. Instead the shared memories all dig deeper into the unspoken question, what is human and what is not? We also meet emotional effects of war and mental problems, longterm health issues that the women suffer from in the aftermath of war. Was it worth it to serve the country during the war? If so, according to whom?

”War’s Unwomanly Face” reveal war reality as simply ugly, sad and extremely destructive. But it also share a completely new perspective since the usually male dominated genre of war stories, now consists of old women´s  stories and their sometimes shattered memories of the past.  The author has met with and listened to hundreds of women, at first unwillingly sharing memories from the past, knowing they may not be able to share without hurting themselves and the listener.  In their opinion so many of their memories are too difficult to tell….In their memories from the past we meet girls who lied about their age in order to serve the army, young girls, devoted to camrate Stalin, who never hesistated to give their lives for the future of their country. Young women who do not fully understand that the war may lead to death or to losing their friends and relatives. They welcome the sodliers marching by and they eagerly wait to serve the army themselves, not at all fully aware of the long term consequences.

Old women now, but young girls then, tell us how they never gave a second thought to their ambition to fight the enemy no matter what. They carried heavy weapons, dressed in uniforms way too big, since every equipment in the army was designed for men, not women. They experienced hardship in so many ways, but also shared the strength of comradeship, friendship and team work in impossible conditions. The women left their families, to join the army and more or less all of them recall how they during the war suffered from personal losses of friends and relatives who died or were wounded. They also experienced famine, fatigue and outbreaks of diseases. Many of their friends never returned from the war and the women who have shared their stories with Svetlana Alexievich all carry the heavy load of memories that are like a constant nightmare.

The Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich never really hesitated whether this would be a necessary story to share or not. Others however, did… According to the author herself, people around her who read parts of the material, tried to convince her to erase some of the disgusting details and others even tried to talk her out of the whole project. They said; What could possibly be interesting with women participating in war?

”War’s Unwomanly Face” has made an everlasting impact on me! The many shared memories from female participants in the Second World War were so pure and realistic and told in such openhearted and individually different ways that one has to read on and on to learn more. Each one of the stories share a new angle of the war from a day to day basis and when you thought you had read the absolutely most disgusting part, there is another one, even worse. My imagination would never had reached as far as these true stories do.

#This book has to be read and spread!