tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40766705568323067182024-03-14T06:57:48.472+01:00Literature & Languages plus a glass of wineOn languages in general and Swedish, Norwegian, French, Russian, German and Hungarian in particular, often combined with some literature.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-87313871609589060312013-09-28T13:49:00.001+02:002013-09-28T13:49:26.631+02:00A call for translators!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In case you didn't know, there's an awesome language site called <b>Parleremo</b>. It's a language community that features many of the functions other sites have - but it collects them all at one place. Here are some of the things you can do:<br />
<br />
* Write journal posts and have them corrected by other members.<br />
* Discuss any language in the forums.<br />
* Play language related games.<br />
* Keep a language learning log and share your progress with the community.<br />
* Find language exchange partners.<br />
* Read grammar courses and practice vocabulary.<br />
* Find tons and tons of links to media sites, courses, etc.<br />
* Share language related files.<br />
* Watch videos.<br />
* Read reviews of language related books.<br />
* Read texts in various languages in dual-reading mode.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://imgur.com/Lv5mamK"><img height="247" src="http://i.imgur.com/Lv5mamK.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" width="400" /></a>
<br />
<br />
<br />
A lot of this is only possible due to member participating. And here's where the call for translators comes in. I am currently trying to collect literary texts to add to the library at Parleremo, to the "Readings"-section. These are ordinary literary texts - no easy reader or such things, but texts for intermediate to advanced learners. The texts I have access to, by authors Ais and Dani Alexander so far, are in English and need to be translated in to other languages.<br /><br /><b>Here's what I'm looking for:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>* People willing to translate texts (300 words, 700 words, 1800 words - you can choose, and these are just the first texts being added)</b><br />
<b>* People who have written texts they wish to share (all languages are welcome)</b><br />
<b>* New members who'll help us get more activity to the site</b><br />
<br />
So! Sign up if you have any interest in languages! And if you want to translate or contribute with texts, please send me a PM (my nick is tricours), e-mail me, or leave a comment with your e-mail... or anything really! </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-21944402643760960092013-06-12T23:54:00.001+02:002013-06-12T23:54:43.523+02:00A Scandinavian book snuck in.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been meaning to read more Scandinavian books for quite some time (6 months or so?), especially books in Swedish since I always end up reading in English these days. And I did finally. Thesis, degree, exams - finished and all that, I actually read something Scandinavian. A whole magnificent total of two books, <i>Out stealing horses,</i> which I won't write about here because it's so über-famous anyway, and <i>Salome</i>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QtebzeR1M2s/UbjqPokJsiI/AAAAAAAAAfo/UOnwpM3wjnI/s1600/lee-mara-salome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QtebzeR1M2s/UbjqPokJsiI/AAAAAAAAAfo/UOnwpM3wjnI/s320/lee-mara-salome.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even the cover is lovely.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Lo and behold, this is something as exotic as a coming-of-age book NOT about a young man, but about a young <i>woman</i>. Obviously, since it's a bout a woman it cannot be "universal" and a "must-read" for everyone, but would probably be categorized as "minority literature", and therefore it will probably not gain the recognition it deserves.
It has 20 reviews on Goodreads. What is wrong with the world?<br />
<br />
People should really read about young girls. Without that, you never really grasp the full cruelty and pettiness human beings are capable of. I do hope this book gets translated soon (translations of quotes are mine). <br />
<br />
<i>Innan jag går frågar Miriam: "Vill du hjälpa mig att träna de här sista veckorna? Jag måste öva på att dö!" </i><br />
<i>"Jag hjälper dig gärna att dö", säger jag kallt.</i><br />
<br />
<i>(Before I leave Miriam asks: "Will you help me practise these final weeks? I need to work on dying!"</i><br />
<i>"I'd gladly help you die", I say coldly.) </i><br />
<br />
The plot of this book is irrelevant. Not because it is bad (it isn't, it's brilliant in its simplicity) but because the point is not the plot. This book just exists, it's an experience, a part of a life. The plot could have been whatever, it could have been any aspect of Elsa's life and it wouldn't matter, as long as it's about Elsa. You think it's about Elsa and Veronica, then about Johannes, perhaps about Veronica and Johannes, Elsa and the dancing, and then you realize that these are all just aspects, and that none of them is more important than the other.<br />
<br />
<i>Det var alltid i skymningen, alltid violetta och rosa stråk som ikväll. Ibland nyanser av gult likt ett gammalt blåmärke som tillfogats en himmel som inte längre skyddade sina varelser. Veronica var vinterblek hela våren. Vi fortsatte att klä ut oss. Det hände att hon svimmade men kvällarna var alltjämt rosa och violetta, jag struntade i de långa diagonala sprickorna som spred sig vart jag än vände mig. "Det påminner om Spanien", sa jag till Veronica som log allt mattare.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i>(It was always at dusk, always the violet and pink streaks, just like tonight. Sometimes shades of yellow like a faded bruise inflicted upon a sky that no longer protected its creatures. Veronica was wintery pale all spring. We continued to dress up. On occasion she would faint, but the evenings were still pink and violet, and I ignored the long, diagonal cracks that spread wherever I turned. "This reminds me of Spain", I told Veronica, whose smiles grew increasingly weak.)<br />
<br />
<i>Mamma lutar sig framåt och hon är plötsligt för nära, jag känner doften av hennes olidliga parfym, hennes händer farligt nära min mun, åldrar hud och rött nagellack. Ta bort dem, tänker jag.</i></i><br />
<br />
<i><i>(Mom leans in and all of a sudden she is too close, I can feel the scent of her unbearable perfume, her hands are dangerously close to my mouth, aged skin and red nail-polish. Get them away from me, I think.) </i><br />
<br />
</i>Elsa is not a very lovable character. She's a typical teenage girl in many respects: cruel, selfish and proud. But she also lacks the typical reactions to certain things (such as the odd relationship with the hockey playing brute), and that makes her unique. She's not very intelligent, which typical makes me dislike characters, but she is diligent in what she does, and that makes up for any other flaws. That, and the fact that it doesn't matter if you like Elsa or not, it doesn't affect the book in the slightest.<br />
<br />
In addition to everything else, this book is perfectly written. I haven't read a Swedish book with such a perfect grasp of every day vulgarities (in the spoken language) that is at the same time beautifully, even poetically, written. There are lovely descriptions of things, circumstances, feelings, that go into unorthodox abstractions and strange pictures that somehow work - and then the most perfectly described mundane scene where none of that belongs, and doesn't appear either. Mara Lee really, really knows what kind of language to use in different situations, and it's quite obvious that she's not just a hobby author, but a professional (she teaches writing). I will definitely be reading anything Mara Lee writes.<i><br />
<br />
<i>Märkligt, att inuti månaden juni bor en liten vinter som blommar ut vid fyratiden på morgonen, för att sedan trängas bort av solen.</i></i><br />
<br />
<i><i>(It's odd how inside the month of June, there is a small winter that blossoms at four in the morning, to then be pushed away by the sun.) </i></i></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-26309157208119858852012-12-04T22:53:00.002+01:002012-12-04T22:58:36.588+01:00Émigré literature. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Having finished
Orlando Figes's impressive book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97401.Natasha_s_Dance" target="_blank">Natasha's Dance</a> (which sure has taken me some time), I have been intrigued
by three authors that I have not yet read anything of - <b>Bunin</b>, <b>Nabokov </b>and
<b>Tsvetaeva</b>. Unfortunately, I'm not big on poetry, but I will give it a serious
try for the sake of Tsvetaeva, and I actually have no idea what Bunin wrote, but I was intrigued while reading about it so it must have been something interesting. </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_FbrP8Kh-xM/UL5q-FFg1nI/AAAAAAAAAd4/FrR8tLiq3uM/s1600/160px-Vladimir_Nabokov_1919.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_FbrP8Kh-xM/UL5q-FFg1nI/AAAAAAAAAd4/FrR8tLiq3uM/s1600/160px-Vladimir_Nabokov_1919.jpg" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3ywo8jS2cV4/UL5q-zgwZKI/AAAAAAAAAd8/I1yoPQGpRUw/s1600/Tsvetajevapoet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3ywo8jS2cV4/UL5q-zgwZKI/AAAAAAAAAd8/I1yoPQGpRUw/s1600/Tsvetajevapoet.jpg" /></a></div>
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</div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Both Nabokov and
Tsvetaeva intrigue me by being émigré writers. Bunin as well, but as I said, I can't remember what he wrote about all too well. I'll write about him another time. Have you ever thought about how
much more sophisticated "émigré" sounds than... well, what they really were,
refugees or immigrants? No one likes an immigrant, but an émigré member of the Russian intelligentsia? Ah, how chic! </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Being more or less chic, they were writing outside of their - so to speak -
natural habitat, or outside of what they believed was their true home, or the essence of it. I find
the displacement of people intriguing, be it in the context of forced
emigration or voluntarily moving abroad, or the use of another language than one's native as one's primary mode of expression (minority literature in major languages, such as Kafka). What happens to a person's identity? Is identity a stable thing, formed in your childhood, and if so,
do you ever really fit in when you move away? Or is it ever-changing and do people place too much weight on ending up somewhere else than where you were born? How long do you remain a foreigner? When do you
acquire the right to have an opinion of your new country, without getting
"what would you know, it's not your country"? People who move abroad
themselves can often not distance themselves from the petty feeling of
proprietorship towards their countries, even though they, undoubtedly, must
experience estrangement in their host countries. Stravinsky, himself an émigré
who only returned to Russia in the 60's for a visit, said "Yet the right to
criticise Russia is mine, because Russia is mine and because I love it, and I
do not give any foreigner that right." I wonder if he ever felt like criticizing, for example, France?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Nabokov in that way feels like a
perfect Russian émigré gone American (who would not tolerate anyone criticizing America!), having grown up speaking and writing
English before he learned to write in Russian. When his Russian reading audience was diminishing, he simply switched to English. Figes quotes his poem <i>To Russia</i> (1939), which I think suits the situation very well. This is a part of it:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
</div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>He who
freely abandons his country</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>On the
heights t<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">o </span>bewail it is free.</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>But now I am
down in the valley</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>And now do
not come close to me.</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>I'm prepared
to lie hidden forever</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>And to live
without a name. I'm prepared,</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>Lest we only
in dreams come together,</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>All
conceivable dreams to forswear;</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>To be
drained of my blood, to be crippled,</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>To have done
with the books I most love,</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>For the
first available idiom</i></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>To exchange
all I have: my own tongue.</i></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
For Tsvetaeva, who ended up
in Paris, I think it was more difficult:</div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i>"From a world
where my poems were as necessary as bread I came into a world where no one
needs poems, neither my poems nor any poems, where poems are needed like -
dessert: if anyone -needs - dessert..." </i></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Sometimes I really
need dessert. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
No one wanted to read her poems, she wasn't understood by her fellow Russian emigrants, and Tsvetaeva ended up
returning to the Soviet Union with her husband, perhaps not really wanting to,
but imagining that she would be appreciated there and find a reading audience
again. That didn't happen. Instead her husband was arrested and shot, her daughter
sent to a gulag, and she killed herself. Her first daughter also died, before
the emigration, and no one (including her son) went to her funeral. How's that
for tragedy?</div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
Immigration
is always a hot topic, and especially so today when more and more European
countries are becoming outright fascist - or at least contain fascist elements
that grow stronger and stronger. The statistics, the surface manifestation
of immigration are interesting in their own right. Who benefits from
immigration? Why do people become so obsessed with their national purity only when they believe it to be threatened? What moral responsibilities do advanced societies have towards the
less fortunate who choose to emigrate? The inner workings of individual
experiences are equally interesting, and largely ignored in the public debate,
which is, might I add, raging in my increasingly more embarrassing native
country. And is there a more pleasant way to explore it than through literature? </div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="sv" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; margin: 0in;">
That being
said, I haven't yet started on my mission to explore émigré litterature. I have
read some, like Andreï Makiné (who is a later example of an émigré author), but not in any conscious kind of way. If anyone
has any recommendation for Nabokov, for example, or other authors, feel free to
leave a comment. </div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-1375075580524335752012-11-22T08:56:00.000+01:002012-11-22T08:56:09.428+01:00The things you discover by accident.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There are many languages that I wish to learn, however certain small doubts are setting in. How on earth will I be able to find the time for it, the opportunities for it, while at the same time 1) reading an absurd amount of books and 2) actually making some money at some point? No idea. The more I travel, spend time abroad, etc., the more I realize that learning a language is not only a matter of self-discipline and sitting at home with your books and the occasional tutor/language class to calm your bad conscience. This became clear when I spent a year in France and at the end thought "I will never learn another language, because I will never manage to leave home in this way again". A language is not only the language itself, there's tons of stuff connected to it, something that I think perhaps 1% of people get, and especially not those who do not study anything themselves.<br />
<br />
I think one of the most important things about spending time abroad is discovering random things that increase your knowledge of the culture the language is connected to. With the right kind of diligence, I guess this <i>can </i>be achieved at home, but that is rarely the case. Recently there has been a series of articles in Swedish press (particularly on dn.se) regarding the dismantling of language education at Swedish institutions of higher education. There's been repeated mention of how Sweden loses a great deal of business due to the denial of the fact that <b>there are other languages than English</b>, while at the same time having a highly multilingual population (due to immigration). Using money on language educations at Universities and actually sending people abroad doesn't really seem to be a focus. If you are going to deal with people from other countries professionally, you shouldn't just have a half-decent knowledge of grammar and a vocabulary, you also have to understand in what way the people you are dealing with differ from you in the way they interact socially, professionally, etc. That's <i>especially </i>important if you're Swedish and about as formal as a continental European 4 year old! Well, it's not like I have a high opinion of Swedes anyway, so nothing has really been lost.<br />
<br />
But really, I intended to write a post about literature. Since getting interested in Ukraine, I have met some... resistance from people. Mostly, it's "isn't that the same thing as Russian?" (never actually coming <i>from </i>Russians). The answer, once and for all, is <i>no</i>. Then there's the "but Ukrainian sounds so funny!" like it's a plaything more than an actual language, which is about as intelligent as the Swedes/Norwegians going "Swedes/Norwegians sounds so stupid/happy!" (both think the same thing about the other, you see, and no one understands why). Finally, there's the "Ukraine is a part of Russia" which is just ridiculous. Ukraine is a separate country, with a separate culture, which has sides that are both Russian (especially to the east, naturally) and western. Being in Ukraine is a whole different thing from being in Russia. And, the literature!<br />
<br />
<b>Why hasn't anyone ever told me about Ukrainian literature?</b> On a side note, I love how in Ukrainian bookstores, Russian literature is put together with "World Literature", further shattering the "but it's the same thing"-idea. Since Russians are so fond of claiming Ukraine as their own, why have I never come across any Ukrainian literature anywhere? One would think I would, considering what my interests are. But no. I had never heard of any of the Big Ones until I went to Kiev. I've had this long-standing problem of never finding any Russian literature that I sincerely like, but no such thing with Ukrainian literature. Ukrainian literature is awesome!<br />
<br />
Well, I should now confess that I've read a total of 4 books so far. But they have all of them been *quite* awesome. Ukraine deserves to be acknowledged for this. Why is it all Tolstoy, Dostojevsky but no Franko, Vynnychenko? I discovered Franko by being given his <i>Перехресні стежки</i> by my tandem partner in Oslo, and Vynnychenko by being given his <i>Записки кирпатого Мефістофеля</i> (in a volume with some short stories as well) by a friend I made in Kiev. They both interest me in a way Russian literature has not quite been able to. I have a whole stack of books waiting for me, after going to the Petrivka book market and saying to an old man there that I was looking for Ukrainian literature. He enthusiastically picked out four or five volumes and sold them to me for almost nothing. I hope they will continue to amaze me. I doubt I would have this knowledge and these insights if I had just stayed at home in Oslo, just like I wouldn't have known that Russian people aren't actually as gloomy and scary as they appear on the street. I wouldn't have learned this from only going to Ukraine either, because Ukrainians on the street are different from Russians on the street!<br />
<br />
For all of those who understand Ukrainian, here's an interesting mini-documentary on Vynnychenko. (Unfortunately the music is sometimes so loud it's hard to hear what they say.) <br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/njhrZyk-NUQ" width="420"></iframe><br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-47623931698241391742012-09-14T13:49:00.002+02:002012-09-14T13:49:26.662+02:00Small photo post.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kiev is still great.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-42446914371325296522012-08-27T09:00:00.001+02:002012-08-27T09:00:11.019+02:00Update from Kiev.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think it's about time for an update on my life in Kiev (yeah, I moved there for three months with a friend). We've already been here for two or three weeks, and I hadn't bought any new books until yesterday. It's weird.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I started reading Taras Bulba. It's proving to be quite difficult.</td></tr>
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I also haven't visited any churches yet, but then that's partially because I've visited them before and we have visitors coming that we have to take to some tourist places. Not that churches are necessarily very touristy, but for people from Protestant countries Orthodox churches are quite spectacular. I did visit the Lavra, the Monastery of the Caves, founded in the 11th Century. When I went there I had a personal guide, a person who works in one of the very many buildings inside the convent area.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cemetery inside the Lavra.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bell tower constructed in various styles.</td></tr>
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I also walked up the Andrijivskij spusk. On weekends it's full of people selling souvenirs, crafts, stuff in general. It goes from St. Andrew's church on the top of the hill down to Podol, the old merchant part of town.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the top of the hill.
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Andrew's church.</td></tr>
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I bought my books from a woman at the bottom of the hill. First, she tried to speak to us in English, and switched to Russian when I protested. The, when I said I was interested in Ukrainian books, she switched to Ukrainian. I am told, over and over again, that I shouldn't have gone to Kiev if I wanted to learn Ukrainian, because no one speaks Ukrainian in Kiev. Only, they really do. I hear Ukrainian all the time, you see it everywhere on the streets, and I really have to practice my Russian as well anyway, so it's a win-win situation. <br /><br />We now have two days of rain coming up. It feels quite nice after a couple of days of 30°C, and I only wish I had a bottle of whiskey to go with my new books. I am contemplating a visit to the huge historical museum today, with an obligatory stop in a café somewhere with dear Taras.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-79813579371999871612012-08-06T14:22:00.003+02:002012-08-06T14:24:25.920+02:00Marta Ketro.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This summer has not lead to very many posts here. Not because we've had a great summer. Actually, we've hardly had <i>any </i>summer at all, and what you see below on the photo is one of those rare days with sun. Don't be fooled though, it was still cold outside. </div>
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Марта Кетро - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7105367" target="_blank">Улыбайся всегда, любовь моя</a> (Always smile, my love)<br />
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I rarely write anything about books here these days since I use Goodreads for my nerdy literary needs, and since all I do now is read, I don't have much else to write about. However, I thought I should jot down a couple of words about the most recent Russian book I've read. It belongs to a genre that I both adore and somehow, secretly, despise - feminine prose. That it says "Самая искренная и нежная из легенда русского интернета" (The most genuine and tender legends of the Russian Internet) on the cover annoys me somewhat because of the use of the word "tender". As soon as they put words like that, or "feminine prose" on the cover of a book, a huge chunk of possible readers are immediately scared off. However, it's quite true, it's very, very genuine, and very tender (bleh). I like the genuine part, it places Marta Ketro in the exclusive club that Annie Ernaux reigns in, but unfortunately, it does become a bit too flowery and horribly unstructured. Whereas Ernaux's books have structure and are so completely devoid of pretense, Ketro has some of the same brilliant insights and writes some absolutely wonderful things, but the red thread in this thing that I have a hard time calling a book, is difficult to grasp. It begins very, very well, with a narrative. Then there's a death, and there's a new story, then it all seems to fall to pieces and there's I don't know how many pages of I don't know what. All of a sudden, something brilliant, and then just... a confusing mass of words. It's a shame, because Ketro obviously has potential. Perhaps some more editing would have been appropriate here? I'm not sure if perhaps the death, the turning point, is the reason for the following chaos, and that there's a symbolism there. What could have turned into a normal life, like a normal narrative, with logical events following one another, turns into loose encounters, random meetings. I may have read the book too slowly, so that my loosing track of what on earth was the story line was actually my fault, and not the author's. <br />
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Quote time!<br />
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<i>Нет ничего прекраснее, чем любить человека на расстоянии, избегая не только физической близости, но и простых встреч. Идеальный союз двух душ, неувядающий и неутолимый. Что может быть лучше?<br />Почти так же прекрасна телесная близость при польном внутреннем отчуждении. Есть особая, освежающая свобода в том, чтобы принадлежать партнеру лишь телом, сохраняя душу одинокой. </i><br />
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<i>С определенного возраста при появлении (и уходе) нового мужчины возникает мысль: а вдруг этот - последний? Вдруг никогда больше не случится нового таинства, новой страсти? <br />Я бы хотела узнать у мужчин, чувствуют ли они так же, да не смею. Каждый раз, когда кто-то говорит: "Ты моя единственная", - мучительно тянет спросить: "Неужели не боишься, что я у тебя последняя?" Жутко ведь - быть приговоренным к одному телу. Как ни одной новой книги прочитать. </i> <br />
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I felt that this song by Thåström suited this book. The main line goes "It should have been you" (with "Fan" being the easy-going Swedish equivalent of "Fuck"). <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6r_XtR1FdZo" width="420"></iframe></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-12749704791436255022012-06-18T17:21:00.000+02:002012-06-18T17:22:31.294+02:00Lowbrow literature. It's the new thing.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been pigging out. Not in the food department (well, yesterday's vanilla and blueberry rolls may beg to differ), but when it comes to literature. It all started when a friend of mine said I should probably read <i>50 Shades of Gray</i>. I think she wasn't 100% sure of her recommendation since I can be a pretentious bitch when it comes to literature, but whenever someone recommends a book to me, I do try to read it. I'm not really a fan of reading blurbs or reviews, I just want to know what someone thought about the book, what kind of experience they have while reading it, and decide whether I want to read it based on that. Since a certain someone had sent me a link to an article dealing with <i>50 Shades of Gray</i> a month or so earlier, and I knew how popular it was, I decided I just had to read it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> At least one publisher has understood that <br />the traditional covers of Romance books are <br />not helping the genre.</span></div>
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For the first time since I was fifteen I read until late night. I should perhaps mention that this was during the final exams, and I was bored to death with reviewing Ancient Greek grammar. Still, I was absolutely consumed by how easy it was to read the book. Almost everything I read has some kind of educational purpose (fiction included), so I'm used to forcing myself to read another 20 pages before I go to bed. I'm not used to forcing myself <i>to go to bed</i>. It's not that the books I traditionally read aren't good, but they are definitely the kind you <i>can</i> put down when The Big Bang Theory is on TV.<br />
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Once I had finished the first book, I was a bit disappointed since the author took something that could have been very, very good and ruined it. I still wanted to read things that would keep me glued to my Kindle, since in my dream world, that's where I'm always at (with a drink in my hand), but I usually only find books that entice me to that degree every two or three years. So to hell with prestigious literature. I had my friend dump a dozen or so books on me. As I mentioned, I did use to read lots and lots of fantasy when I was younger (15 or so), but this stopped after a couple of years, and I never read in that way again. I gave science fiction a couple of tries, but it never really captured the. I'm still intent on reading more science fiction, since I don't like to limit myself to a couple of genres. That's also my goal with this new guilty pleasure reading I'm indulging in: to explore all the sub genres of romance novels.<br />
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Now, what is it that separates romance novels from ordinary novels? I've been wanting to write this post for two weeks or so already, but I wanted to explore the genre more thoroughly before I did so. I've probably written this post twice in my head already, and both were most likely better than the final result.<br />
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People seems to look at the romance genre with distaste, like the soap opera equivalent of literature. Is this really true? Is that all it is? Ordinary books usually have some sort of human relationships in them, quite often a bit of sex (just like a great deal of perfectly respectable movies), even though it may not be very explicit, but they are not placed in the romance genre. In Swedish and Norwegian we have nice derogatory terms for these books: husmorsporno (housewife porn) or tantsnusk (old ladies' filth), which are included in the wider concept of kiosklitteratur (newspaper stand literature). There are many Norwegian additions to this genre, the most famous of which may be Margit Sandemo's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_the_Ice_People" target="_blank"><i>Isfolket</i>-series</a>, comprising 40+ books about a family line with some special... skills. It spans several centuries and deals with Scandinavian history at the same time. It was immensely popular when it was written, and almost everyone in Scandinavia knows what it is. It sold more than 25 million copies. There are several of these series in Norway, and they are so easy to read. You pick one book up, and put it down when you finish it. But you kind of keep it to yourself, unless you're 12. The general plot of <i>Isfolket </i>is the following (from Wikipedia): <i>"The Ice People are cursed with a terrible forefather, Tengel the Evil,
whose actions resulted in at least one cursed individual being born in
every generation. The cursed individuals were born with magical and
mystical abilities, but also the potential for bottomless evil. They
have yellow eyes, malformed shoulder blades and Mongol features. Some
cursed individuals fight their tendency for evil, whilst others embrace
it." </i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This here... is a serious dose of nostalgia. <br />You used to be able to subscribe to these books <br />and get one every month. Perhaps you still can.</span></div>
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Back to the question, what is it that makes these books Romance novels? Is it because they only revolve around love? They don't. Just look at the Isfolket-series. The genre has a myriad of sub-genres, and usually, there is quite a lot of plot involved. It is not simply man meets woman, man and woman hooks up. There's always a twist, there's always a bigger picture. The bigger picture is not always carried out artfully, and the writing may not be the best there is, but it sure does suck you in. If you start browsing lists on Goodreads, you soon realize the extreme amount of books out there that are all subsumed under the label romance. I do think that the only concrete thing they have in common is explicit sex. Very explicit sex. <br />
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I've set out to check all of these sub-genres, and I am having such a good time. I think my favourite so far this m-m romance. Quite frankly, reading about two men is much more interesting than reading about a man and a woman. I am quite certain that the m-m sub-genre also has its annoying stereotypes, but since I haven't read more than two books yet they have not started to annoy me. The female stereotypes in general romance books does. Easily breakable, scatterbrained and helpless virgins, anyone? No thank you. Other sub-genres I am dwelving into are para-natural (parts of which I would personally deem science fiction), steampunk, vampire/werewolf, suspense. Some of these have much more interesting female characters, so *hint*, stay away from the too mainstream ones. <br />
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One thing that is quite easily identifiable in these books is that, in general, what you expect to happen, or rather, what you want to happen, will happen. A counter example would be Ayn Rand's books where you think that "this or that just has to be sorted out" and it never happens and there is misery for 10 years, and you kind of feel like that's against some sort of law of literature. It's the kind of thing you would never see in a Hollywood movie. When you read a romance novel, you get what you want, quite often including a happy ending, but not always. Getting what you want may get boring in the long run, and many of the endings do get on my nerves. One Goodreads member distastefully called the 50 Shades epilogue in book three a "carebear epilogue" and I think that fits very, very many epilogues and endings in general. The problem may be that the authors, some of them actually very good, know that they are writing to a certain audience, and that they will be marketed towards this particular audience (hence the god-awful covers that scare anyone with an ounce of self-respect away). So they start out their books very well, often with great stories, but somewhere in the middle, they seem to think "ah well, now I have to conform to what people expect" and it all goes according to a not that very interesting pattern. Problems are intricately built up throughout the book and then solved in two pages, there's a happy couple and talk of babies, and the book is over. And I often want to throw up. Instead, I pick up the next book, so obviously, they are doing something right. I just wish that some of them could be a little bit more bold, and I will keep reading until I find some that are. <br />
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Anyone who got curious about this little hobby of mine can check out my dedicated <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6476980-rebecka?format=html&shelf=romance-erotica" target="_blank">shelf </a>on Goodreads (of which all are not new, since this includes classic erotica as well).<br />
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-88333819392786455192012-05-04T17:35:00.002+02:002012-05-04T17:41:54.061+02:00The Legend of Princess Olga.For the longest time I've had the intention of seeing the movies I have that deal with the early Rus'. I've read some of the texts from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_chronicle">Primary Chronicle</a>, but it's difficult to keep track of who is who, and movies or works of literature usually do help with this problem. Finally, I watched one of these movies (and I intend to watch more of them before my exam).
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This movie deals with the life of Olga, who ruled in Kiev after her husband Igor (son of Rjurik, the first of the Rjurik Dynasty) had been killed by the Drevlyans. Her son Svjatoslav was only a couple of years old at the time, so she was "queen" for some time. The main character of the movie is the son of Svjatoslav, Volodimir, who is the person who christened Rus' in 988. Olga, who died in 969, had already adopted Christianity. The tale of the choice of religion is another legend altogether (and a quite amusing one, where the famous quote that Russians cannot live without drinking is uttered by Volodmir, explaining why he did not choose Islam). At the end of that text, there is an interesting quote: Всякъ бо члвкъ ащє оукусит сладка послѣди горєсти не приимаєть, тако и мы не имамъ сде быти. Отвѣщавшє жє болярє рєкшє "аще бы лихъ законъ грєчьскии, то нє бы баба твоя прияла Ольга, яжє бѣ мдрѣиши всѣх члвкъ", <i>For every man who tastes sweetness will not take bitterness afterwards, and as such we can not be here. The Bulgarians replied, saying "If the Greek law had been evil, then your grandmother Olga, who was the wisest of all men, would not have taken it"</i>.<br><br>
In the movie, Volodimir is dyeing, and as he is raving in fever on his deathbed, he goes back into his memories, relives his childhood and in his childhood he is taken even further back through the stories of his mother and of a Greek monk, who both tell the tale of Olga, his grandmother. <br><br>
The Legend of Olga, or the tale of Olga in the manuscript, deals with what happened after the death of Igor (her husband). Igor went to collect tribute from the Drevlyans, a Slavic tribe living in forest areas. After having received his tribute, he got too greedy, and went back to collect even more - and was killed for it. The Drevlyans send emissaries to Olga, asking her to marry their king, Mal. She pretends to agree (оужє мнѣ мужа своєго нє крѣсити, I will not be able to bring back my husband to life) in order to avenge herself on them, something she does in four steps. First she buries the emissaries alive in their boat (Viking style), and sends a message to the Drevlyans asking them to send a more glorious expedition than the previous in her honour. When they arrive, she burns them alive in the banja (sauna). Then she goes to the Derevljans herself, with the supposed goal of having the trizna (funeral feast) in honour of Igor on the place where he was killed. When they are all drunk, she has her druzhina cut them down (5000 of them, supposedly). Finally, she goes back to Kiev and sends an army (or something of the kind) to their descendants. There's also talk of her burning their city, something that is brought up in the movie.<br><br>
I'm somewhat disappointed with my problems understanding all of what was said in Легенда о княгине Ольге. It was especially difficult when the "dreamy" voice of the mother of Volodimir was retelling the past. I do hope she was deliberately using old-fashioned speech and that that is why it was difficult. If I hadn't read the tale of Olga in the original Old Slavic, I probably wouldn't have understood the part recited by the Greek monk in the first part of the movie either, which is the actual text in the Primary Chronicle. In the movie, there is some controversy about where Olga was born (she is believed to be from the Pskov area, but who knows), what she really did, and to add some spice to the story there's a tale about a lover she had previous to Igor and how she volunteers (eh, I think she volunteers) to be sacrificed to the Pagan Gods when she believes him to be dead... This is not present in the monk's tale of Olga, he only tells of her revenge. Svjatopolk does not believe what the monk has written about his mother's bloodthirsty nature, because that is not what he remembers. He asks the monk if the text will always be like this, or if it will change, and since it will not change he burns the book. It seems like Volodimir actually had the monk hanged, but I'm not sure I understood why exactly. Frustrating. He didn't understand it either when he sees the ghost of the monk prior to dyeing, if that helps. I got that much.
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<br>Doesn't the actress playing Olga look very much like <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=eva+green&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=vvGjT7SaE6iM4gSyy4XACQ&biw=1980&bih=1033&sei=x_GjT4TNJO7O4QSHluGvCQ">Eva Green</a>?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-8799563785046203052012-04-09T13:28:00.007+02:002012-04-09T16:31:07.703+02:00Tallinn.First - the few photos I took when it wasn't snowing.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sGprAk2cv3Q/T4LNodIoPZI/AAAAAAAAAZA/z_v-bdtLYHQ/s1600/Tallinn%2B015.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sGprAk2cv3Q/T4LNodIoPZI/AAAAAAAAAZA/z_v-bdtLYHQ/s320/Tallinn%2B015.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729367770867973522" border="0" /></a>I love everything that looks like this.<br /><br /></div><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AlRS0UzNyPE/T4LNnnjn6hI/AAAAAAAAAY0/A8ofeRebJDI/s1600/Tallinn%2B018.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AlRS0UzNyPE/T4LNnnjn6hI/AAAAAAAAAY0/A8ofeRebJDI/s320/Tallinn%2B018.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729367756485683730" border="0" /></a>Tallinn does have that Russian feel, and you do find Russian cafés with all your typical tarts and cakes. You also find these kinds of café's, which to me feel extremely "hip-Scandinavian". Everything is 10 times as expensive in these kinds of cafés. Of course.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JzG0fyx2xX4/T4LNnMvqHNI/AAAAAAAAAYo/S3j_dyWdaAs/s1600/Tallinn%2B021.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JzG0fyx2xX4/T4LNnMvqHNI/AAAAAAAAAYo/S3j_dyWdaAs/s320/Tallinn%2B021.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729367749288402130" border="0" /></a>English-inspired pub. I love the straightforward wine menu, and the clock to the left. I had at least two raspberry beers and one cherry beer here. Stuff you don't find in Norway! Here we also met some people who took us to local bars, the kind that doesn't close (and that doesn't have any signs signalling they are actually there), until five in the morning।<br /><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hb8bZQBB-8Y/T4LNo-j0JdI/AAAAAAAAAZM/jEn192Ciwuk/s1600/Tallinn%2B016.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hb8bZQBB-8Y/T4LNo-j0JdI/AAAAAAAAAZM/jEn192Ciwuk/s320/Tallinn%2B016.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729367779840370130" border="0" /></a>View over Tallinn.<br /><br /></div>Every time I go on a holiday, I always end up with feet that hurt. You aren't that very sure about the public transport system, so you end up walking a lot more than you usually do, and you usually do this for several days in a row. You can however visit Tallinn without any excessive strain on your feet, because the city is tiny! Well, I'm sure it isn't actually <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> small, but when it's constantly snowing or raining, you don't necessarily go that far outside of the city center.<br /><br />I like Tallinn. In the old city you get that medieval feeling, very similar to the Old Town in Stockholm, just bigger and better, and outside of it, you get that same feeling as in Russia. Perfect. There's even a Russian market, Russian book stores and lots of Russian food! If there's something to say about Tallinn, it's that in this city they can brew coffee and cook absolutely delicious food! I don't think I've ever visited any place where the coffee has been as good (the worst place for coffee EVER is Paris, Oslo is half decent, St. Petersburg is expensive and not very good and Kiev is just fine, just to mention a couple of cities).<br /><br />Things that you have to visit if you go to Tallinn: the Nevsky Cathedral, the Russian market, Boheem café, Town Hall medieval pub (very good food and beer!) and Kompressor (best pancakes ever).<br /><br />Funny thing about my trip to Tallinn is that it has rekindled my interest for Hungarian. In a Russian bookstore (or rather, the Russian part of a big Estonian bookstore) I found a series of <a href="http://english.franklang.ru/">Ilya Frank reading method</a> books, and not in the typical, boring languages, but in Arabic, Turkish and Hungarian! Even though they were somewhat costly, I had to get the Hungarian one, and I can't wait to start reading it! The method more or less consists in a text, where you first have a sentence in Hungarian, then in Russian within brackets, with some small comments when necessary, and then the same passage again entirely in Hungarian. It helps you read things without the use of a dictionary, and you can just read the all Hungarian text and check if you got it right by then consulting the interlaced text. Quite handy.<br /><br />I also managed to read some books during my trip, and I thought I'd give them short reviews here.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nIvuyOUGDYo/T4LOb2A5-zI/AAAAAAAAAZY/NwsUZBhZP7A/s1600/51LNl4WdD7L.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 208px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nIvuyOUGDYo/T4LOb2A5-zI/AAAAAAAAAZY/NwsUZBhZP7A/s320/51LNl4WdD7L.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729368653719796530" border="0" /></a><br /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/783505.Embers">Embers</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>by Sándor Márai.<br /><br />This book starts off a bit weak, but then it gains something with every page. It's like a mini mystery, where you know that something has happened, that someone is perhaps dead and that this has had an immense impact on the main character, but you have no idea what actually happened, and the story unfolds mainly through a monologue. This book should be read rather quickly I think, so that you more or less stay in real time with the dialogue/monologue that unfolds the mystery.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zsl12Xp3_3Q/T4LObyn0w2I/AAAAAAAAAZg/LuZ80aqOG5I/s1600/dzhaz-band-na-karlovom-mostu.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 303px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zsl12Xp3_3Q/T4LObyn0w2I/AAAAAAAAAZg/LuZ80aqOG5I/s320/dzhaz-band-na-karlovom-mostu.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729368652809290594" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Джаз-банд на Карловом мосту</span> by Дина Рубина.<br /><br />I kind of liked <span style="font-style:italic;">На солнечной стороне улицы</span>, even though it had its faults. This book mostly has faults. There is one brief passage in the beginning, dealing with Kafka and letters written to and from Kafka (i.e. not written by the author) which are interesting. Anything she has written herself is just crap. This book is supposed to be a recollection of journeys to different countries, something about the atmosphere or soul of each place. I think that was supposed to be the point. Instead, it's the arrogant bragging of a mediocre Russian author (who has published 40 books! Who is invited to hold lectures! Who understands people in any language without actually knowing the language, just through her superior ability to communicate! Who loves to bring up the martyrdom of the Jews every chance she gets and who has absolutely no idea how to use punctuation!). I hate this book so much that I actually didn't read the last 15 pages and left it on the bed in the hostel in Tallinn.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wSkTKlvXKFQ/T4LyUAKbJMI/AAAAAAAAAZw/QEi2qtBhpWI/s1600/1096477.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wSkTKlvXKFQ/T4LyUAKbJMI/AAAAAAAAAZw/QEi2qtBhpWI/s320/1096477.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729408101423719618" border="0" /></a><br /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1096477.Monsieur_Venus">Monsieur Vénus</a> by Rachilde.<br /><br />This could have been quite good. I had never heard of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachilde%20">Rachilde </a>before, and I kind of suspected that was because she wasn't actually a good writer. Kind of like Marquis de Sade; she can't write, but she writes about scandalous things, so she gets famous anyway. This book (from 1884) about a woman, who is perhaps more like a man, who meets a man, who is perhaps more like a woman, does have some interesting things in it, and it wasn't boring to read, but sometimes it just embarrassingly melodramatic and weird.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-62102473512078640292012-03-29T12:37:00.003+02:002012-03-29T13:07:58.901+02:00Closely related languages. Ups and downs.People often ask me if studying Ukrainian is confusing considering I study Russian as well (but no one ever asks this question regarding Norwegian and Swedish, and I don't really know why). Actually, it is a bit confusing. Many seem to think that since Ukrainian is so similar to Russian, it should be extremely easy to learn. I'm not sure those people have ever tried learning a closely related language, but if they haven't, they should give it a try. Some parts of it are obviously easier, such as shared vocabulary and grammatical structures, but the spelling can really get to you. It's the same thing for both Russian/Ukrainian and Swedish/Norwegian: almost every word that is of common origin is spelled somewhat differently. You will always understand the word, and for Ukrainian you can almost all of the time also understand what case it is in (even though there are confusing cases, like prepositional -ому, genitive -у and probably some other things that I have forgotten), so you don't actually have to learn these forms to be able to understand them both written and in speech. But in order to use them yourself... you know what word to use, you just don't know where the damned ь і ї will go this time!<br /><br />Pronunciation is also a source of confusion, since Ukrainian е is pronounced like Russian э, and Ukrainian є is pronounced like Russian е, and Ukrainian и like Russian ы, etc. All of a sudden I find myself reading "развытые" instead of "развитие" out loud... And keeping track of all those non-palatalized consonant+е combinations in Ukrainian can be really tricky!<br /><br />Today, however, I think I experienced problems writing in Russian for the first time. I caught myself adding third person singular/plural -ть endings instead of -т (формы изменяються, употребляються) all over the place, and of course while using a pen you can't erase. What is having the greatest impact on my Russian writing is the Greek alphabet though. I find myself unable to write small Russian Д and Ф. I have to start Р from the bottom all the time (compulsively) since that is how I do it in Greek, and that makes me confused and makes me go "wait... how did I use to write Р?" (answer: I have no idea!!). Especially trying to copy out a text in Russian explaining Ukrainian grammar with a Greek ghost hanging over me has had catastrophic results.<br /><br />I've had a frustrating day (year, life?). <br /><br />On the whole, I would say that I'm quite discouraged by how slowly I am learning Ukrainian. I know I should take into consideration that I have very little time for it. I usually don't manage to prepare anything for my language tandem meetings, so we only end up chatting, something I'm not convinced is very efficient for learning. I will continue struggling though, today with the use of the site http://tyzhden.ua/History/ and http://www.lnu.edu.ua/lknp/mova/in/ser/main1.html. <br /><br />This is an interesting video in Russian/Ukrainian on Ukrainians living in Norway (thanks to Vera who showed it to me!): <br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-wgDt0so4x0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-23697729456669461852012-03-25T16:42:00.009+02:002012-03-25T17:25:06.668+02:00Just what I needed!I love it when you go to a flea market, find 11 books in like 10 minutes and your friend does not go "should you really buy that many books?" but instead says "should I help you carry that?", and the guy selling them agrees to give them all to you for some eight euros. Heaven.<br /><br />As we left, I saw a huge room with more boxes of books through the window. Walking away was hard, but necessary.<br /><br />And I forgot to look for the things I went there for.<br /><br />Anyway!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FdzumFNxIv4/T283tWrOpEI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/hiPIQchIXKw/s1600/fleamarketbooks.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FdzumFNxIv4/T283tWrOpEI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/hiPIQchIXKw/s320/fleamarketbooks.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5723854903731725378" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">And I have no idea why Blogger turns the picture around. It has never done it before. Any ideas?</span><br /></div><br /><br />Donna Tartt - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29044.The_Secret_History">The Secret History</a>. I have read and <span style="font-weight:bold;">loved </span>it twice, but never owned it. Now I have a tattered Norwegian copy.<br /><br />Karen Armstrong - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3873.A_History_of_God">A History of God</a>: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Looked really interesting.<br /><br />Anne B. Ragde - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2884957-berlinerpoplene">Berlinerpoplene </a>& <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2375224.Eremittkrepsene">Eremittkrepsene</a>. Very famous Norwegian books that I haven't read.<br /><br />Emmanuel Carrère - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6338400-d-autres-vies-que-la-mienne">D'autres vies que la mienne</a>. I've read Carrère before, before being fluent in French. I thought I should try another one now that I will understand 100%.<br /><br />Morris Bishop - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1391133.The_Penguin_Book_Of_The_Middle_Ages">The Penguin Book of the Middle Ages</a>. This just looked interesting.<br /><br />Sándor Márai - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/783505.Embers">Embers</a>. I've been wanting to read something Hungarian for a long time.<br /><br />Herta Müller - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230861.The_Land_of_Green_Plums">The Land of Green Plums</a> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter</span>. Ever since she won the Nobel Prize and I heard of her I've been interested in reading some of her books.<br /><br />Kazuo Ishiguro - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6334.Never_Let_Me_Go">Never Let Me Go</a>. A friend of mine read this book recently and really liked it, and I haven't read anything by Ishiguro at all.<br /><br />Monique Truong - <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2719.The_Book_of_Salt">The Book of Salt</a>. I get the impression I see this book everywhere and I took that as a sign.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-47683937510103370562012-02-04T17:05:00.005+01:002012-02-13T14:57:43.510+01:00Barbarians.My Greek glass is made up of a variety of people. Some students are on the Antiquity bachelor and need either Latin or Ancient Greek, others are aspiring archaeologists, and some are just nerds. Half the group has already disappeared, and I think quite a lot of people thought they had signed up for a class in modern Greek, something that doesn't exist at Oslo University. The other day in Greek class I overheard a conversation between some girls. They were talking about loud neighbors.<br /><br />GIRL 1: ..and the funny thing is that when they speak English, they speak like normal people, but as soon as they speak their made up language, they are extremely loud!<br />GIRL 2: Made-up language...?<br />GIRL 1: All languages you don't understand are like made-up languages. *duh*<br /><br />The word she used for made-up language was "tullespråk", something that is a bit difficult to translate. Roughly it's "joke language", because to "tulle" is to make jokes. Examples of tullespråk are when Scandinavians add -ur to all their words and pretend they're speaking Icelandic, or add ge- to any verb and place it at the end of the sentence, pretending it's German. Or just completely made-up language, like the "Russian" in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWo6Dbwq4Ms">Tingeling</a>.<br /><br />At first when I heard this conversation, I got a bit annoyed, because it sounded slightly disrespectful. Then I realized how extremely appropriate it was to have such a conversation in Greek class, since the Greeks called their enemies barbarians. "Barbar-" sounded to them like incomprehensible babbling, and that was what the Persians etc. produced when speaking. In a similar vein, the Slavs called Western Europeans "mute" since they couldn't understand what they said. (Немцы has not always been used to refer to Germans, but to papal emissaries, Swedes, etc.) Oh, the joys of ethnocentrism!<br /><br />Studying Ancient Greek is highly satisfactory, since all of a sudden you know where a huge amount of common Western words come from (and this idea of "pure" languages and "pure" nationalities seems even more ridiculous than it previously did), and you are able to progress very quickly since you don't have to worry that much about actually speaking the language or composing your own texts. When I study Ukrainian, I don't worry that much about learning paradigms. I usually understand the form of a word anyway; I just encounter problems when I have to produce them myself. I hope that this will eventually sort itself out with increased exposure. I have lots of paradigms to learn for ancient Greek though, so I bought an overly girlish book today to fill this purpose!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jyiG2dN65Wg/Ty1XyA5b6ZI/AAAAAAAAAXM/h5L19KIAWGI/s1600/057.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jyiG2dN65Wg/Ty1XyA5b6ZI/AAAAAAAAAXM/h5L19KIAWGI/s320/057.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5705312819694266770" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Third week texts. Awesome.</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hi7l6wX7Mt4/Ty1XyTXaOlI/AAAAAAAAAXY/D7n9mt91swc/s1600/054.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hi7l6wX7Mt4/Ty1XyTXaOlI/AAAAAAAAAXY/D7n9mt91swc/s320/054.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5705312824651823698" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">My new best friend, and my more serious notebook. </span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-85094923348145413902012-01-13T21:43:00.003+01:002012-01-13T21:49:40.795+01:00A.S. Byatt - PossessionI finished a book that could have been quite spectacular. It deals with classic literature, a mystery and a pair of academics. They're all obsessed with a great English Victorian writer and/or his wife and a less known female poet. How can that go wrong? I'm not saying it went wrong, I just didn't fall in love with the book. I found it while browsing a list of long books worth the effort on <a href="http://www.goodreads.com">Goodreads</a>. First I wanted to read <i>The Historian</i>, but after reading some reviews where people went on about how historically incorrect it was, I decided not to read it. So I settled for <span style="font-style:italic;">Possession</span>.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nbqg0delTrw/TxCXloncSxI/AAAAAAAAAW8/z5OBKJTVnZE/s1600/possession.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 202px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nbqg0delTrw/TxCXloncSxI/AAAAAAAAAW8/z5OBKJTVnZE/s320/possession.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5697220201437481746" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I like the book, it was interesting and the story is good, but it's full of boring poetry that I was completely unable to read and that went on for pages and pages and pages... The other parts I enjoyed. It's a dual story, so if you don't like the characters in the 20th century, you may at least like the ones in the 19th.<br /><br />Since I've been listening to music from the movie <i>Drive</i> (absolutely beautiful movie, but not suitable for people who can't stand blood) recently I couldn't help but team up this song with this book:<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v3LUBKRY4rQ" allowfullscreen="" width="420" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Desiree's <i>Under Your Spell</i></span><br /></div><br />Some people can't read with music. I guess that must be the kind of people who actively listen to lyrics. I don't, so I prefer to listen to music when I study and read literature. Sometimes I end up matching songs with books. For some reason, Aqua's <i>Good Morning Sunshine</i> goes along with <i>The Valley of Horses</i> (Auel) that I read and loved when I was 11. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tears Never Dry</span> (Stephen Simmonds) matches up with <i>Mother Earth Father Sky</i> by Sue Harrison. I know there must be many more, but I've forgotten them. These songs end up being like a soundtrack.<br /><br />Anyway, I actually started watching the movie <i>Possession</i> from 2002, but only saw 30 minutes or so. If a movie bores me I have no problem at all shutting it off. Watching movies is not an accomplishment, reading books is, so generally I finish books even if they bore me. I think I shut off something like a third of the movies I watch though. Therefore I can't really say all that much about this movie, other than that it seemed silly in a way the book wasn't.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-12471790360644968422012-01-11T21:12:00.004+01:002012-01-11T21:24:44.608+01:00I'm really not good at updating.As usual, I spent most of Christmas worrying about the things I had to do for the next term. Difficult books to read and all that, whereas all I wanted to read was fiction. And I did read some books, <i>The Thornbirds</i> and <i>Wild Seed</i>, both of which I recommend. For those of you who don't already know what the first one is about, suffice it to know that it's an old-fashioned epic drama of the kind that can't go wrong. The second is a somewhat more curious book, about immortality and what it does to morality. I have read some other books as well, but nothing worth commenting on just yet. If I don't get overwhelmed with university in the next couple of days I will try to write a bit about some other books as well.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ouS7eLlncNU/Tw3tt9WDgWI/AAAAAAAAAWU/q-s8xpGCaDU/s1600/200px-Thorn_Bords_bookcover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 189px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ouS7eLlncNU/Tw3tt9WDgWI/AAAAAAAAAWU/q-s8xpGCaDU/s320/200px-Thorn_Bords_bookcover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696470477510508898" border="0" /></a></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ouS7eLlncNU/Tw3tt9WDgWI/AAAAAAAAAWU/q-s8xpGCaDU/s1600/200px-Thorn_Bords_bookcover.jpg"></a><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JowtU5sPp0k/Tw3v-evOKpI/AAAAAAAAAWw/PG33TKb0ur8/s1600/51mk43jz71l.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 205px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JowtU5sPp0k/Tw3v-evOKpI/AAAAAAAAAWw/PG33TKb0ur8/s320/51mk43jz71l.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696472960375597714" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Good stuff.<br /></span></div><br />My classes haven't actually started, but since I have a very good supervisor for my master's thesis, I'm actually starting to work on it now and not in the fall, when I'm supposed to start. I'm planning to go spend the fall in the Ukraine with a friend of mine, so naturally it would be a good idea to get the work started already at this early stage. This means I'm reading far heavier books than those previously mentioned, like Christopher Lyon's <i>Definiteness</i> and Michael Flier's <i>Aspects of Nominal Determination in Old Church Slavic</i>. Naturally, it's quite frightening. I haven't written anything beyond 25 pages so far during my time as a student, and now I am going to write my master's thesis on long form and short form adjectives and participles in Old Church Slavonic. I'm also annotating a new saint vitae from Codex Suprasliensis for the corpus that I get my data from, <i>Житие и страдание святого мученика Конона Исаврийского</i>.<br /><br />That's in addition to my classes, which are Variants of Russian, Russian written culture - origins and history up until the 18th century, and a double class on ancient Greek! I hope all of this won't be too overwhelming. I have a goal of reading 35 books this year and on keeping up learning Ukrainian very slowly. Writing this out I feel the need for a second glass of wine, and perhaps a whiskey (cheap, of course, I am but a student).<br /><br />Today I got myself a second desk! I'm <i>very</i> thrilled about it, because ever since I got my first desk (and I was very happy about having a desk at last after having lived in tiny apartments in Oslo), the entire surface has always been covered by my huge keyboard, my ergonomic mouse, my laptop and my extra monitor. So I end up studying on the sofa. And falling asleep. In our new apartment, my office is so big I can have two desks, a cupboard, a bookshelf and still fit in a guest bed when someone comes to visit (something that never happens, but it may). Fabulous, isn't it? The best part is that I can avoid the awful assigned seats at University for master students, that you have to apply for and go to four times a week if you don't want to lose them. You find them in small rooms with bad ventilation and you sit at half a meter's distance from the next person. And you can't eat, drink, play music and all that. How can people study in that kind of environment?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FcwGzUxyJy4/Tw3ttviMPmI/AAAAAAAAAWM/VgMuWJPetvA/s1600/IMAG0002.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FcwGzUxyJy4/Tw3ttviMPmI/AAAAAAAAAWM/VgMuWJPetvA/s320/IMAG0002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696470473803316834" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Much better.</span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-34572310566208982712011-10-29T12:46:00.003+02:002011-10-29T12:54:53.353+02:00Mixing it up.Thanks to the wonder that is Goodreads, I got interested in reading the classic <span style="font-style:italic;">The Island of Doctor Moreau</span> by H.G. Wells. It was found among the recommendations for me based on previous Science Fiction and Classics that I have rated. At the same time, I have too many "ordinary" books to read so this one would have to wait... unless I read it in another language! <br /><br />So I thought Ukrainian. But, if I read it in Ukrainian, it will take me a year. So why not French? A bit too easy perhaps. Russian? Yes, that would do it. Although Hungarian, which would take me five years, would be cool as well. <br /><br />So I decided to mix it. A couple of pages in each language here and there, and I will print the whole thing piece by piece and mix it together in all my languages (which is why I need it as a text document). I wonder what this will do to my overall feeling of the book, how I perceive it once read, and in what language I will remember it. It will be a nice experiment.<br /><br />The problem? I only have the book in Ukrainian and French. A friend has been looking for it in Hungarian for me, but haven't been able to find it. Even though the original is out of copyright, the translation may not be, etc. If anyone with awesome Hungarian searching powers is out there and can find it in the depths of the Internet, please (please) do. I figure finding it in Russian will be easy. Oh! German! I will include German! Any German e-book sites out there?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-68283712561675352302011-10-17T22:09:00.006+02:002011-10-17T22:23:46.255+02:00Popping by to say hello.This is a poor excuse for a post, but I'm incredibly busy these days and never find the time to write about anything. There are some things that must be said though.<br /><br />1) Ukrainian is a very sweet language, and I really enjoy writing semi-retarded texts in it.<br />2) Linguistics has the potential of being interesting.<br /><br />Furthermore, I have discovered the site <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.goodreads.com">Goodreads</a> thanks to Thom. I find it very practical and it further motivates me to try to squeeze in some reading every now and then. If you sign up, feel free to add <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6476980-rebecka">me</a>. I am especially hoping to discover some new french literature soon. Hopefully that means discovering that some book I already own is awesome.<br /><br />I'm quite happy to announce that there is a new very impressive Swedish author out there, and her name is Åsa Linderborg. If you get the chance to read her debut novel, <span style="font-style:italic;">do it</span>. There's actually a Russia-Soviet link in it that I had no idea about when I bought the book.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ef-dPjA_MjE/TpyORb50SgI/AAAAAAAAAVY/rnCkwmLkOow/s1600/scanpixasalinderborg.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ef-dPjA_MjE/TpyORb50SgI/AAAAAAAAAVY/rnCkwmLkOow/s320/scanpixasalinderborg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5664558861524421122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;font-size:85%;" >Åsa Linderborg. Foto: Scanpix</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></div><br />With regards to reading, I read this article today, <a href="http://newnarratives.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/zoran-zivkovic-and-the-plight-of-non-english-authors/">"Zoran Živkovic and the plight of non-English authors"</a>, which was very interesting. The title says it all. Luckily, I'm quite sure I don't conform to the norm ;)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-14340799083618499322011-09-15T17:03:00.005+02:002011-09-15T17:44:21.116+02:00Oh Kiev...This blog is turning very hard-core Slavic... It's quite natural since I nowadays don't have much time for anything else. I visited Kiev during the last week together with a friend. Since going to Russia is such a hassle, and since a friend from Russia wanted to meet up in Kiev, we decided to go there for a couple of days. I fell quite in love with the city, which has an absolutely fantastic monastery area and a huge book market! I was hoping to find an OCS dictionary (preferably Старославянский Словарь by Цейтлин) but... no, it's <span style="font-style:italic;">Russian</span> apparently and even though they had tons of other books related to OCS, the place wasn't exactly drowning in dictionaries. I did find one single (full) dictionary, but it was outside of my price range. I got myself several grammar books though, both in Russian and Ukrainian, several decorative items for my study (I may end up looking like I'm highly religious!) and an old book in old church Slavonic (that one wasn't expensive!). I'll leave you to the pictures.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gjOvxH-3xgQ/TnIYZlfVliI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/0Nsef3nbMbI/s1600/Kiev%2B104.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gjOvxH-3xgQ/TnIYZlfVliI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/0Nsef3nbMbI/s320/Kiev%2B104.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652607310142740002" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This and the two following are photos from inside the Lavra, the monastery area in Kiev. This area was built by Yaroslav the Wise's sons in the 11th century and includes caves where monks lie "buried". The old man's tomb, however, is found in the Saint Sophia Cathedral (where, unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take photos).<br /></span></div><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oKvcwyH-Q6s/TnIXWPguW0I/AAAAAAAAAU4/-yfbJhaS_vc/s1600/Kiev%2B112.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oKvcwyH-Q6s/TnIXWPguW0I/AAAAAAAAAU4/-yfbJhaS_vc/s320/Kiev%2B112.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606153191742274" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cMOSs2UoPak/TnIX8QjqvkI/AAAAAAAAAVI/J324wX-dQY0/s1600/Kiev%2B119.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cMOSs2UoPak/TnIX8QjqvkI/AAAAAAAAAVI/J324wX-dQY0/s320/Kiev%2B119.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606806307552834" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WGERMwBeM4U/TnIX8H55TSI/AAAAAAAAAVA/QAwOXbWchIo/s1600/Kiev%2B075.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WGERMwBeM4U/TnIX8H55TSI/AAAAAAAAAVA/QAwOXbWchIo/s320/Kiev%2B075.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606803984862498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Books bought at the book market at Petrovka metro station. My pile is the one to the left.</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wPckwjAUvsw/TnIXVa3vS_I/AAAAAAAAAUo/bS0Tbyym9Fo/s1600/Kirkeslaviskt%2B006.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wPckwjAUvsw/TnIXVa3vS_I/AAAAAAAAAUo/bS0Tbyym9Fo/s320/Kirkeslaviskt%2B006.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606139061193714" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">This one I bought in a store with... random old stuff! I don't really know how old it is, if it is really very old or not, but it wasn't expensive and it's fun to have something that <span style="font-style:italic;">feels </span>authentic.<br /></span></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NIEYwcg9IM/TnIXV9dyxPI/AAAAAAAAAUw/QEhBDz8WyeY/s1600/Kirkeslaviskt%2B009.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NIEYwcg9IM/TnIXV9dyxPI/AAAAAAAAAUw/QEhBDz8WyeY/s320/Kirkeslaviskt%2B009.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606148347610354" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wPckwjAUvsw/TnIXVa3vS_I/AAAAAAAAAUo/bS0Tbyym9Fo/s1600/Kirkeslaviskt%2B006.JPG"><br /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YuRRIzrJ0P4/TnIXVKJ3FyI/AAAAAAAAAUg/2WKHsaSXZ1Y/s1600/Kirkeslaviskt%2B008.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YuRRIzrJ0P4/TnIXVKJ3FyI/AAAAAAAAAUg/2WKHsaSXZ1Y/s320/Kirkeslaviskt%2B008.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606134573799202" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AwlYNifRWnM/TnIXUyBu-9I/AAAAAAAAAUY/Q7DThOCzYaY/s1600/Kirkeslaviskt%2B002.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AwlYNifRWnM/TnIXUyBu-9I/AAAAAAAAAUY/Q7DThOCzYaY/s320/Kirkeslaviskt%2B002.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652606128097262546" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Part of my new interior decoration ;)<br /></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-67902733793754497592011-07-27T21:42:00.006+02:002011-07-29T09:15:57.390+02:00Potpurri.This is a post about many things. First of all, I don't really feel I can write anything without saying something about the massacre that took place here recently. Everyone knows everything about it already, so I thought I would just mention the spontaneous march of roses that took place the day before yesterday. I think it is what most people would prefer to remember from this week, and it was truly impressive. Some guy started a Facebook event, encouraging people to join in a march in honor of the victims. When I signed up, the same day the event was started, we were 37,000. The next day at six, 150,000+ people showed up. Oslo has 500,000 inhabitants. Shops, even grocery stores, closed so that the staff could participate. Of course, there could be no march, because the entire city was jammed with people, so there was no space to actually march on. I don't know how long it took us to even get from the City Hall to the Cathedral (usually a five-minute walk or so), where a great collection of flowers had been started day before. When we got there, we had to spend perhaps 10 minutes trying to get to the front row in order to put our roses down (that someone had given to us at the City Hall since we did not have any of our own). People also had sunflowers, orchids, lilies - there were no more roses to be found in the city. Flowers were put everywhere around the city, on police cars, on statues, along the roadblocks put up around the bombed area, etc. You should really have a look at the pictures presented <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/07/26/nyheter/terror/oslo/roser/17461830/">here</a> ("A City of Love"), it's quite impressive. I wonder who's going to clean it up. Especially the sea of flowers at the cathedral makes me wonder (Check out no 25). I will just add one pictured here.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LFZpKjnUQ-4/TjBqqQiPVKI/AAAAAAAAATs/OnF0tClMgFY/s1600/pxygxh.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 201px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LFZpKjnUQ-4/TjBqqQiPVKI/AAAAAAAAATs/OnF0tClMgFY/s320/pxygxh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634120408066118818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UPDATE</span>: <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/07/28/nyheter/oslo/blomster/domkirken/17476317/">This </a>is the link you really want to go to! 360 degrees panorama of the sea of roses in front of the Cathedral of Oslo (there's actually a trafficated road there!). <br /><br />Now - other things.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mjqwUGUl46Y/TjBsFoeZQZI/AAAAAAAAAUE/7Ffn0f1Jz-Y/s1600/p_f.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 184px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mjqwUGUl46Y/TjBsFoeZQZI/AAAAAAAAAUE/7Ffn0f1Jz-Y/s320/p_f.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634121977860538770" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Rita and Zhenja, the second generation of the series. </span><br /></div><br />I finally finished <i>И всё-таки я люблю</i>. In the beginning, I thought this was going to be a cheerful, cute kind of series. How wrong one can be. If something sums this series up, it's "shit happens, life goes on and then you die". Somewhere around episode seven everything started going to hell, and continued to do so until episode 25, with some brief periods of hope in between. I always thought things would just fix themselves, but quite obviously Russia is not Hollywood, and things do not necessarily end happily. Still, I'm quite impressed with this series. The actors got better and better, the setting is extremely well done, and you really get drawn in, more so than by many other series I've seen and enjoyed. The story is very complex and so are the characters. A lot of them are frighteningly unsympathetic, and then all of sudden show some sort of humanity - and you start liking them. The main characters (on whose side you are) also have moments of... "weakness". In the first part, which deals with Vera, I actually started thinking about <i>Justine</i> (which I still haven't finished!). Again and again she is fooled into something, deceived by people she trusts, driving her deeper and deeper into misery. I'm really happy I'm finished with this series now, cause it was a bitch to watch and kept me up too late some evenings, but I'm also very glad I got to see it. I regained some respect for Russian TV and I got lots of listening practice. And I fell completely in love with Zhenja.<br /><br />So how about Tadoku and old church Slavonic? Well, I haven't been reading a lot the last couple of days, and since finishing my last Russian book, I have somewhat lost motivation for the competition. After trying a couple of different books I am now finally reading <i>Раковый Корпус</i> (Solzhenitsyn). Most of all I want to read something in Norwegian or English, but I guess that has to wait a couple days. After seeing the new version of Jane Eyre yesterday (I really liked it!) I want to read some more Brontë, because there are actually a couple of books I haven't read yet. Staying Russian/German is veeeery difficult right now.<br /><br />The reason I haven't been posting a lot is that I'm constantly busy working (I never seem to have time off, and when I do, I have to go somewhere or do something). More and more Russians have been coming to Oslo, meaning I get to speak more Russian at work, and when I get home I have to try to analyze some sentences for the university project. I'm really hoping I will benefit from it when I start my old church Slavonic class, because I don't really feel like I have any time to actually study the language now.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EJEi-44GWKQ/TjBqqinXJrI/AAAAAAAAAT0/kCIMnHSJs2c/s1600/reki.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 245px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EJEi-44GWKQ/TjBqqinXJrI/AAAAAAAAAT0/kCIMnHSJs2c/s320/reki.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634120412919441074" border="0" /></a><br />The second Russian book I read for the competition was <i>Реки</i> by Гришковец. It's more like novella, and it didn't take very long to read. I can't really say it has touched me greatly, even though it has some stylistic things I like. I was sometimes annoyed by the narrator's narrowmindedness, his failure to relate to things as long as they touched upon another reality than his. He did have some interesting remarks on identification and group mentality.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Z7NaQ7UEPU/TjBqqtv2wII/AAAAAAAAAT8/U-VM3dVqQEM/s1600/1190390039_anna-german.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 316px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Z7NaQ7UEPU/TjBqqtv2wII/AAAAAAAAAT8/U-VM3dVqQEM/s320/1190390039_anna-german.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5634120415907856514" border="0" /></a><br />I've also been listening to some Russian music lately. I find Anna German very soothing and somehow uplifting.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/x9MIj-hL-P8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-83186592781772156462011-07-12T09:43:00.002+02:002011-07-12T09:47:31.547+02:00Another attempt at modern Russian literature.I finally feel like I have actually read a novel in Russian. Not that I haven't read many books in Russian before, but either they have been classics or I haven't liked them. This book I actually like. I don't like it as much as I like the books of Magda Szabo, who also writes these kinds of books (dealing with life in all its variations), because I feel like Rubina sometimes just goes a little bit too far. It is still within what is plausible (most of the time) - you don't necessarily start thinking about how improbable the story is or something like that, but you aren't too far from doing it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1Z-OQH5eUq0/Thv7_ta3DnI/AAAAAAAAATk/cjZiWoAavuw/s1600/1930.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1Z-OQH5eUq0/Thv7_ta3DnI/AAAAAAAAATk/cjZiWoAavuw/s320/1930.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628369231272152690" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Even though I like it, I have some comments to make. Firstly, the author is a bit too fond of using metaphors, something that may turn out to be a bit tiresome. Describing something does not always have to imply comparing it with something in order to get your message across.<br /><br />Another thing, which is much more serious, is that I have some trouble keeping up with the different parts of the book. Some are in the first-person, some in the third, and for a great part of the book I was sometimes confused, believing I had misunderstood who I was reading about. It does become clear in the end, but somehow this still felt unsatisfying. At one instance, I thought I was reading about the character in the female first-person narrative that had previously appeared (a woman connected to the United States) when all of a sudden I realized that past tense verbs were all in the masculine... I'm still not really sure who it was or about. It doesn't help that the author tries to interweave these stories, the destinies of different people, by the means of introducing characters that appear in the separate parts. Common friends, people randomly met on the street, etc. Perhaps it's because I'm not Russian, but I can't remember the random names mentioned here and there with intervals of perhaps 50 pages. Often I know I'm supposed to recognize the name, but among the perhaps five female names that have popped up somewhere along the way, I just can't remember which one it is.<br /><br />Somewhere in the middle of the book, something weird happened. I think I lost focus for a while, and this may have been somewhat detrimental to my continued understanding of the book. All of a sudden, one of the characters starts telling the stories of different people that she or he has somehow been connected to. I found this both a bit boring and confusing.<br /><br />I'm guessing the main problem I have with this book is that it tries to be a bit too complex. It could have dropped a lot of the "let's make this an epic drama"-attempts and been none the worse off for it. This is what I feel is the difference between this book and Magda Szabo's books - Szabo doesn't try so hard. She keeps it rather simple. All the people in this book have fantastic destinies, accomplish great things and go through huge changes in their lives. As such, they kind of come across as not really... real people.<br /><br />Still, this was a very nice read. It wasn't necessarily very easy, and sometimes, when the author strayed away from the ordinary narrative - even though I was understanding what it was reading - I could read three pages without getting anything substantial out of it because of the metaphysical (or whatever) character and endless metaphors. So what do I like? I absolutely love that it's about Tashkent, so that I get some insight into other parts of the Soviet world. I also like how different people perceive Taskhent differently, and how there seems to be so much hospitality and so few connections to ordinary subjects often touched upon in books set in the Soviet Union (and there is a hint that that towards the end of the book). There is no lack of interesting characters, and it's interesting how, in changing from one generation to the next, the first becomes through and through evil, whereas you previously did have sympathy with it. There is, as a matter of fact, no lack of unsympathetic characters.<br /><br />Now, the ending... I think I'm just going to forget about that one. It was not at all what I expected, and not in a good way, more of a "oh please, don't go there, don't ruin it now". So I'll just forget about it. It didn't add anything to the story and was completely irrelevant.<br /><br />Of course, there's a movie. And I must see it, even though it doesn't look very good (poor acting). The actor playing Vera is a very good match. The one playing Lenja, on the other hand...<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oi9J7cFw3Uc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="560"></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-27267882728463674432011-06-30T21:04:00.002+02:002011-06-30T21:07:10.614+02:00Read More or Die.Since I haven't been extremely active on language forums and blogs lately, or let's say during the whole spring, I have kind of missed out on things. For once I did actually manage to catch something on time though and signed up for the <a href="http://readmod.wordpress.com/">Read More or Die</a> July challenge. Of course, I hereby encourage everyone else to also sign up. It starts tomorrow.<br /><br />It's a rather simple thing. You read as much as you can in the languages you have signed up for and you post your results regularly on Twitter, and the challenge-bot calculates the scores.<br /><br />My languages will be Russian and German. For Russian I'm reading <span style="font-style:italic;">На солнечной стороне улицы</span> by Дина Рубина and for German <span style="font-style:italic;">Märchenprinz </span>by Marian Keyes. <br /><br />Keeping away from part three of Abercrombie's trilogy may prove extremely difficult. Which is why I'm going to read as much as I can of it now.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-21693892458344672142011-06-27T20:23:00.003+02:002011-06-27T20:30:58.700+02:00Ridiculous.I had the feeling that I was supposed to remember that French book I read some time ago when I wrote my last post. Today, a couple of friends came over and we made an apple pie. One girl told us about how her grandmother had been somewhat ahead of her time when she was young, being already engaged to another man when she met her husband and all, and therefore naturally considered a somewhat loose woman. My friend exclaimed "I wish someone would think of me as a hussy" (makes complete sense in our little group, and in this country), and I all of a sudden remembered what book it was. In the book, the main character is afraid of being perceived as a slut if she has more than one boyfriend. The story probably takes place around the same time as when my friend's <span style="font-style:italic;">mother</span> was young, not as far back as her grandmother.<br /><br />I really can't believe I actually forgot I read this book, since the author is one of my favorites.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-le0KdUqbjuE/TgjKuvtSodI/AAAAAAAAATM/xsHF0MY35Bc/s1600/gelee.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 188px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-le0KdUqbjuE/TgjKuvtSodI/AAAAAAAAATM/xsHF0MY35Bc/s320/gelee.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5622967039201288658" /></a><br /><br />Embarrassing.<br /><br />Anyway, this book is just as good as all the other Ernaux books I have read. I could have underlined half of it to use as quotes. It's really a quite sad story. The narrator tells the story of her life, of how she started out as an ambitious little girl who did very well in school and who had great hopes for the future. She came from an unusual family where the mother worked in a café and the father did all the cooking at home, so she never learned how to be a good wife. Then as she grows older, her prospects grow poorer and poorer, and all of a sudden she has a husband, who at first supports her a great deal and seems to be very much in favor of the liberation of women. But then he becomes more and more important, and she has to step down. She is but a woman, after all. All of a sudden there's a baby, and the narrator has no life anymore. All she sees of the town she lives in is the sidewalks where she pushes the baby's trolley. She lives, briefly, when the child is asleep. And when <span style="font-style:italic;">he</span> comes home, he is tired from work, and needs other distractions outside of the home (perhaps just once a week, at first, then more and more often). He cannot be expected to take care of the baby then, so she is stuck with it. More or less, this is the story of how joy and thirst for life are slowly quenched by traditional family life, and how the narrator ends up being one of many frozen women.<br /><br />I love quotes, so naturally, I'm going to fill this post with a couple of them. How many cannot recognize this one, for example? <span style="font-style:italic;">Puis l'enthousiasme s'effiloche, je n'ai pas de vocation, découverte consternante. </span> You know how everything seemed so simple when you were a kid, how you were so certain that when you grew up you would just magically end up having a job that you liked? How you would just magically know what to do with your life? Mmm. Right.<br /><br />A lot of the book is about how she feels unjustly treated by society. How she can't feel that there is something different between herself and the boys that would somehow make them superior. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Ne pas vexer les garçons, tu ne sais donc pas ? Ce que je ne sais pas, c'est cacher à un garçon qu'il me plaît. Les hommes aiment choisir, ma vieille. Que m'importe, moi aussi j'aime choisir, je ne comprends toujours pas la différence. La bourde, l'inversion des rôles, tout de suite taxée des fille facile, dans la poche. Il n'existe pas de garçon facile.</span><br /><br />And this I absolutely love. <span style="font-style:italic;">Même silence en histoire, aucune voix mâle, de celles qui braillent dans le couloir, n'interrompt le soliloque triomphant de Froinu, ça ne les gêne pas plus que les filles d'être traités en demeurés par le prof. A moins qu'ils n'aient peur de se faire remarquer, examen first. Pour le conformisme et la passivité, l'égalité des sexes était parfaite à la fac. Mais je découvrais qu'il existe des études pour femmes et des études pour hommes, « la littérature, les langues, rien que des nanas », j'entends ce mot pour la première fois aussi. « pour un homme il vaut mieux faire des sciences », c'est une fille qui me l'assure. Je ne voyais pas pourquoi, toujours le même mal fou à admettre les différences que je ne sentais pas. J'en entendais des phrases étonnantes, « la création littéraire ressemble à une éjaculation », prof de lettres, cours sur Péguy, « tous les critiques sont des impuissants », assistant de philo, l'écriture cent fois ramenée à l'activité du pénis, mais je n'y attachais pas d'importance, je traduisais, ou plutôt ça m'arrivait tout traduit, la création littéraire était orgasme sans distinction mâle ou femelle et quand je lisais Éluard, « moi je vais vers la vie, j'ai l'apparence d'homme » c'est à moi que je pensais.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-40964195546265643972011-06-24T22:34:00.007+02:002011-06-24T23:04:23.274+02:00Berlin, Norway, Books and Work.I finally consider summer to truly be here. Not because of the weather, but because the last exam results are in and the spring semester can finally be called a closed chapter. I've already had the time to squeeze in two vacations, even though one was more of a work thing and quite exhausting. Pictures from both will naturally be presented in this post!<br /><br />Sadly, my reading was slowed down significantly towards the end of the semester. I'm slowly getting back to it though, in particular by the help of some fantasy. I haven't read fantasy in years, but a friend recommended some books to me on the basis of our mutual appreciation of George R.R. Martin's <i>A Game of Thrones</i> (2nd season please come quickly). The series in question is Joe Abercrombie's <i>The First Law</i> trilogy, and I have so far read the first book and a third of the second. It's both interesting and amusing. Abercrombie is not hiding the fact that he is borrowing things from all over the place. Some things are actually taken directly out of of Martin's books, some from traditional fantasy, and others from our world. A group of mismatched people setting out on a mission, a center land threatened both by forces from the South and from the North; racism, colonialism, cultural differences, south/North oppositions - you have it all but it does not feel old. I'm reading these books on my Kindle, which suits me fine since they are something like 600 pages each and I prefer not dragging books that size around in my bag.<br /><br />I really have the impression I read something in French recently. But what was it?<br /><br />But yes, we went on an unplanned vacation to Berlin. I fell in love with the city and got very much inspired to learn German. Of course, I bought at least one book and a magazine. I thought I'd keep it quite simple and got myself a Marian Keyes book. I'm really looking forward to reading it- whenever I find the time. My two summer jobs - Old Church Slavonic text analysis at the University and Oslo Tourist Information - are proving quite time-consuming. But in July, everyone I know leaves Oslo (including myself - going to Sweden for a couple of days), so then I will have somewhat less to do.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wRs18odSgew/TgT5TCNRRsI/AAAAAAAAAS8/IA6-Wcmmu7I/s1600/Berlin%2B240.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wRs18odSgew/TgT5TCNRRsI/AAAAAAAAAS8/IA6-Wcmmu7I/s320/Berlin%2B240.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621892340270581442" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--JD1ko4hxEM/TgT5Sh4Ft-I/AAAAAAAAAS0/xzloPDPqdB0/s1600/Berlin%2B114.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--JD1ko4hxEM/TgT5Sh4Ft-I/AAAAAAAAAS0/xzloPDPqdB0/s320/Berlin%2B114.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621892331591808994" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yd9qboctlEw/TgT5SUk9fkI/AAAAAAAAASs/xAxk7ztO7BI/s1600/Berlin%2B242.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yd9qboctlEw/TgT5SUk9fkI/AAAAAAAAASs/xAxk7ztO7BI/s320/Berlin%2B242.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621892328021917250" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1qUYK9BLpw/TgT5TUIgMII/AAAAAAAAATE/W08MB3P8lBw/s1600/Berlin%2B175.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e1qUYK9BLpw/TgT5TUIgMII/AAAAAAAAATE/W08MB3P8lBw/s320/Berlin%2B175.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621892345082425474" /></a><br />Not only have I finally visited Germany for real, I have also seen the postcard version of Norway. It is somehat odd to have lived in this country for four years without having seen the fjords, but getting to said fjords is a rather expensive affair. It is not when work pays for it. So with a group of 10 people from the tourist information I went on a tour called Norway in a Nutshell. The schedule was very tight, but as you can see from the photos you get to see some quite spectacular scenery (the funniest part of which is that you actually find houses in some of them!). Of all the things we did (various boats, trains and buses non-stop for 2 days) and I would say that that bus trip out of Bergen among the mountains through countless tunnels (which is, as a matter of fact, how you travel across Norway) early in the morning was the most impressive by far. Quite appropriately, most of the members of the group fell asleep :-)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zNoKbnlHz1s/TgT4OZKLLtI/AAAAAAAAASc/8lXlut6Y4P8/s1600/NIN%2B032.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zNoKbnlHz1s/TgT4OZKLLtI/AAAAAAAAASc/8lXlut6Y4P8/s320/NIN%2B032.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621891161020640978" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qzhv7OgT768/TgT4OIf0s5I/AAAAAAAAASU/cWjZMYaJwgs/s1600/NIN%2B040.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qzhv7OgT768/TgT4OIf0s5I/AAAAAAAAASU/cWjZMYaJwgs/s320/NIN%2B040.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621891156548039570" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u9ZK-bxfH5g/TgT4Ov2J7EI/AAAAAAAAASk/cD7qenf4Eaw/s1600/NIN%2B024.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u9ZK-bxfH5g/TgT4Ov2J7EI/AAAAAAAAASk/cD7qenf4Eaw/s320/NIN%2B024.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621891167110687810" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fKBD-DSMtqY/TgT2iSx4Q7I/AAAAAAAAASE/geqcZgsMOLM/s1600/NIN%2B075.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fKBD-DSMtqY/TgT2iSx4Q7I/AAAAAAAAASE/geqcZgsMOLM/s320/NIN%2B075.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621889303882253234" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v7-7KGaIUz0/TgT2iJjtl2I/AAAAAAAAAR8/gfF0bkovd8g/s1600/NIN%2B090.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v7-7KGaIUz0/TgT2iJjtl2I/AAAAAAAAAR8/gfF0bkovd8g/s320/NIN%2B090.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621889301406914402" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIAPje-ylKA/TgT2h-YeH_I/AAAAAAAAAR0/fkSuHrsfhoo/s1600/NIN%2B092.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIAPje-ylKA/TgT2h-YeH_I/AAAAAAAAAR0/fkSuHrsfhoo/s320/NIN%2B092.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621889298406973426" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rAgdrKG7hcI/TgT2ij8Yg4I/AAAAAAAAASM/Xo5oPs-DEro/s1600/NIN%2B048.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rAgdrKG7hcI/TgT2ij8Yg4I/AAAAAAAAASM/Xo5oPs-DEro/s320/NIN%2B048.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621889308489712514" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-66216589195261519232011-05-29T23:35:00.002+02:002011-05-29T23:39:53.251+02:00Just one more exam to go.I haven't finished a book in ages. But let forget about that, it's only making me depressed. I'm in the middle of four now. Perhaps more. Gngh.<br /><br />I always kind of envy people who study Japanese, because they have a ton of anime they can get addicted to and thereby get lots of free exposure. I'm never able to find anything interesting in Russian (just like I can't find any fabulous novels in Russian). Buuut, luckily, other people occasionally find things for me. <a href="http://surkova.net/">Vera </a>recommended the series И всё-таки я люблю, and finally I have something to watch. I once tried my luck with a modern version of Dr. Zhivago, but I found the horrible overacting insupportable. This series is much better, and even though I have only seen two episodes so far, I think I'm already a bit hooked. Which was exactly what I was looking for.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k3kKrKkaEy0/TeK8Zh4PEdI/AAAAAAAAARo/ROi10XJZ3qc/s1600/ivsetaki.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 229px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k3kKrKkaEy0/TeK8Zh4PEdI/AAAAAAAAARo/ROi10XJZ3qc/s320/ivsetaki.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5612255232434049490" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Try it for yourselves.</span><br /></div><br />Of course, other suggestions for Russian series are very welcome.<br /><br />Other than that, I can mention that I got my first "Russian" working at the tourist information the other day. Of course, I have never spoken Russian so badly before, but that's life. My job is proving very useful for my French, because I get French tourists almost every day, and I realize that my spoken French is perhaps not what it used to be. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Children, never forget the importance of maintenance!</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4076670556832306718.post-17080199745896485542011-05-08T21:32:00.004+02:002011-05-08T22:35:57.028+02:00More cat.Norwegian has one word that is very cute: <i>ymse</i>. In Swedish, I would use a far less exciting word, notably <i>diverse</i>. This word suits this post very well, because it's just a little bit of everything.<br /><br />I have almost caught up with my book reading. With almost I mean that I've been cheating a bit. In order to be able to say that I have read anything at all, I decided to throw in the tiny volume <i>Mordre au travers</i> by Virginie Despentes, and since I finished reading <i>Three Sisters</i> in Russian, I will count that as well.<br /><br />So what do I have to say about <i>Mordre au travers</i>? This is a collection of short stories written in the 90s; most of them in classical prose, two in a semi-poetry format. First of all, I must say that Despentes is not the kind of author that is suited for collections of short stories. Her short stories are always sensational, and they are best enjoyed one by one in some obscure literary journal. When you read them in a collection like this, you get used to the format and you know that whatever the topic is, it's going to end very, very badly. And it does. This collection of short stories contains the most provocative material I have seen from Despentes so far. Sometimes, it's too provocative and it loses parts of its literary value because of it. But some of these short stories contain very good stuff. Despentes is very skilled at creating frantic inner monologues. And she can paint a picture that will stay put in your mind for quite some time. These short stories talk about sex, prostitution, poverty, murder, <i>weird stuff</i> and self-hatred. <i>Sale grosse truie</i> is among the saddest things I've ever read. <i>A terme</i> is definitely one of the most disturbing things I've ever read - but it may be going go a bit over the top (people with children should probably not read it). A little bit less sensational, and it would have been better. I very much like the touch of... fantastique, that she quite unexpectedly threw into two of the stories. I see myself rereading these stories sometime in the future, and that's a really good sign. As I was reading them, I did however feel that something was missing in them, that they could have been better than this. Or other, that they <i>should</i> have been.<br /><br />And today I happened to visit a flea market.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mdmQUE7Yhfg/TcbxoKbDvUI/AAAAAAAAARg/htmfY1QKnyU/s1600/Tur%2Bi%2BParken%2Bmm%2B087.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mdmQUE7Yhfg/TcbxoKbDvUI/AAAAAAAAARg/htmfY1QKnyU/s320/Tur%2Bi%2BParken%2Bmm%2B087.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604432458604068162" border="0" /></a><br />A friend of mine didn't know who August Strindberg was during our bi-monthly Quiz at University, so for her birthday - as a joke - I gave her one of his books in Norwegian. Since I have been wanting to re-read <i>Röda Rummet</i> (the only novel of his that I have read), I was quite pleased to find it today in <b>Swedish</b> (together with three other works by him). I'm not reading Swedish classical literature in Norwegian. Anyway, I find it quite strange that Norwegians should not know who Strindberg is, when they are so obsessed with Sweden. Now, I'm not sure if regular Swedes know who Hamsun and Ibsen are, but I "always" have. As a funny side note, when the Russian author Aleksej Slapovskij visited Oslo during the Russian days at the House of Literature, he spoke of how Russians are interested in the culture of other countries. He said that they are familiar with Norwegian authors, and listed Hamsun and Strindberg ;) The audience began laughing (it happened to be an educated one, with people who know who Strindberg is and where he comes from) and then he corrected himself with "of course I meant Ibsen". Alexander Kielland is a classic Norwegian realist author, and I have already mentioned Bjørneboe a thousand times. I haven't actually read anything by Rainer Maria Rilke, but I've understood that I <i>should</i>, and I have <i>Lettres à un jeune poète</i> in French.<br /><br />I got a request for more photos books, and since a cat happened to climb into this particular bookshelf, I couldn't resist taking a photo of it. A second cat came to join it. <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8D3cA4YcWuc/TcbwCaSuJhI/AAAAAAAAARY/UUgv6bz7VOk/s1600/bild%25282%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8D3cA4YcWuc/TcbwCaSuJhI/AAAAAAAAARY/UUgv6bz7VOk/s320/bild%25282%2529.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604430710517409298" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Even though I should be preparing for exams and writing essays, I have been flirting with... Lithuanian. It's a very cute looking language, and it is a very interesting one because of its archaic character. I haven't been doing anything serious with it though, I've just done a couple of lessons over at <a href="http://ikindalikelanguages.com">http://ikindalikelanguages.com</a> - a great site for easy going introductions to languages. The site happens to be owned by a Lithuanian, so the Lithuanian course is quite extensive, and very much fun!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15088979612083062297noreply@blogger.com3