by Ernest Hemingway
A selection by Larry W. Phillips of quotations from Hemmingway's works (mostly from Selected Letters and By-Line: Ernest Hemingway).
The selection is interesting but I would rather have seen Hemingway write a book on writing than this collection by Phillips which is as much about Hemingway and his works as it is about the process of writing.
I mean what bearing does it have on the process of writing that Hemingway considered the spring his best season for writing (1936) or that he prefered writing standing up (1950).
Recommended anyhow.
by Herman Hesse
If you read this book in your teens it will change you forever. If you read it again later you most likely will smile and wonder what all the fuss was about.
A brilliant book on the middle-aged misanthrope Harry Haller who is alienated from the culture that he is a product of.
Recommended.
by Herman Hesse
In the year 2400 the scholars of the kingdom of Castalia play the glass bead game. It is a game of knowledge and values.
The book is written as a biography of Joseph Knecht from his apprenticeship to his death.
Brilliantly written and very interesting.
Highly recommended.
by Joseph Heller
This is a book about ideas for books that never amounted to anything, which in itself is a rather ingenious idea for a book. However, the result is also a somewhat abrupt book forever changing directions which can be a bit annoying whenever the author starts over instead of finishing something you actually wanted him to finish.
... He [Pota] had no doubt the meetings would unfold wonderfully. He was, after all, an optimist. He was, after all, a novellist.
On writing while not knowing what to write.
It is a fine book well worth reading.
by James Hilton
The story of a bording school teacher.
A scholar, anti hero, gentleman, and teacher to generations of English school boys. A moving story of humanism and tolerance but also of sacrifice and a life of service.
Succesfully filmed more than once.
Recommended.
by Nick Hornby
Katie Carr considers herself a good person even though she has just had an affair. However, after meeting a certain DJ GoodNews (a crack induced healer) her angry, cynical, and negative husband, David, is suddenly turning really good - unbearably good.
'I've been so depressed, I say. He understands depression. He's what passes for a black sheep in the Carr family: a chequered employment history, unmarried, pills, therapy.
'So write yourself a prescription. Go talk to someone. I don't see how an affair is going to help. And a divorce certainly won't.'
'You are not going to listen, are you?'
'Course I'll listen. Listening isn't the same as cheering you on, though, is it? You can get one of your girlfriends to do that.'
The Sunday Times wrote:
Hilarious, sophisticated, compulsive.
Recommended even though it starts better that it ends.
by Nick Hornby
The life of Rob record store owner, ex Dj, college drop out, and recently dumped by Laura.
It's not a case of the glass being half-full or half-empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an emty pint pot. I had to see how much was there, though, and now I know.
Mick Brown, the Independent, wrote:
Leaves you believing not only in the redemptive power of music but above all the redemptive power of love. Funny and wise, sweet and true.
Quite brilliant.
Highly recommended.
by Siri Hustvedt
A year in a life of a psychoanalyst. The death of his father sets things in motion - not just the story of his father but the story of his sister and of himself.
"You should know, Mr. Psychoanalyst, that reality isn’t the problem.”
The Guardin wrote:
Beautifully thought through, deeply serious and enormously intelligent.
Nicely written and compelling story, but Hustvedt does not quite manage to keep the story as tightly composed in the end.
Recommended.
by Siri Hustvedt
The story of 25 years of life, love, loss, and betrayal as told by the art historian Leo Hertzberg.
Salman Rushdie wrote:
Siri Hustvedt's most ambitious, most rewarding novel. It mesmerizes, arouses, disturbs.
A great story although slightly pretentious and distinctly Austerian in its surprising twists and turns.
Every correspondence is skewered by invisible perforations, the small holes of the unwritten but not the unthought, and as time went on, I hoped fervently that it wasn’t a man who was missing from hose pages I received every week.
Recommended.
by Siri Hustvedt
Lily Dahl is a young woman living in a small tovn in Minnesota. She is working in a diner but wants to leave town to become an actress so naturally she is drawn to the exotic painter living across the street.
However, in a small town you are not allowed to go against the norm and the odd characters of the small town have their own plans for her.
A compelling story worth reading.
by Aldous Huxley
John Rivers tells the story of the time he was an assistant to a famous physicist, Henry Maartens, married to a young goddess, Katy. His time in their home changes everthing.
The strongest oaths are straw to be fire in the blood," he quoted. "I'd rather entrust my daughters to Cassanova than my secrets to a novelist. Literary fires are hotter than sexual ones. And literary oaths are even strawier than the matrimonial or monastic varieties.
An ok read.
by Peter Høeg
A story of justice and freedom.
Peter Høeg's debut.
I most admit that I do not really like this novel. It is brilliantly written but to mystical and strange for my taste.
I must, however, still recommend it.
by Peter Høeg
Nine short stories on love and the conditions of love based on the nine classical disciplines: mathematics, dance, law, physics, visual arts, medicine, drama, music, and astronomy.
I learned that it may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.
This is Høeg at his best. Brilliantly written and with interesting story lines.
Journey into a Dark Heart is my personal favourite about a train ride into Central Africa inspired of course by Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Highly recommended.
by Peter Høeg
Three children meet at a Copenhagen private school in the 1970s trying to find the masterplan of the of school. A novel of power, control, and education.
A story of the tyranny of conventions.
I cannot really recommend it. It is well written but I disagree too much with Høeg's basic idea that time is oppressive.
by Peter Høeg
Smilla is lonely and lost but she is also man enough to take action when a child mysteriously falls from the roof of her building.
Høeg's attempt at an action thriller. Brilliantly written and full of suspense.
Newsweek wrote:
A thriller like no other.
Rather unsuccesfully filmed by Bille August.
Recommended.
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The story of a middle aged Japanese woman living alone in England. Her memories of the mysterious woman, Sachiko, that she briefly knew a certain sommer in Nagaski shortly after the bomb is sparked by the suicide of her oldest daughter.
An amazing first novel.
Highly recommended.
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The story of the bohemian and now aging artist Masuji Ono who was an imperialist before the war. Having lost his wife and son during the war what is now left for him?
A book of art and politics, ambition and integrity, the past and the present.
An authentic look at post-war Japan.
Winner of the 1986 Whitbread Prize.
Highly recommended.
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Afraid of being typecast as an ethnic writer Ishiguro set out to write a story of Englishness.
The Guardian said it all:
The Remains of the Day is a triumph ... This wholly convincing portrait of a human life unweaving before your eyes is inventive and absorbing, by turns funny, absurd, and ultimately very moving.
Winner of the 1989 Booker Prize.
Highly recommended.
af Carsten Jensen
Endnu en serie essays fra Politiken i perioden september 2001 til og med 2003.
Som sædvanlig er Carsten Jensen skarp og underholdende i sine analyser af samfundets tilstand, mens han deler tæsk ud til højre og venstre. Situationen i Irak har dog en stor overvægt, men det er også de bedste essays i bogen.
... Det er blevet så fristende let at føre krig. Nuldøde-modellen har for tredje gang bevidst sin effektivitet, i Golfen, i Kosovo og nu i Afghanistan. De andres døde ser vi ikke, vore egne døde findes ikke. Der er blevet dræbt flere soldater i Afghanistan end amerikanske soldater, otte journalister og syv soldater, hvoraf kun en faldt for fjendtlig ild. ...
Anbefalet.
af Carsten Jensen
53 essays fra Politiken i perioden 6. august 2000 til 16. september 2001.
Hvis jeg er noget, er jeg nærmest desillusioneret, men som de fleste, der er blevet befriet for deres illusioner, har jeg et nærmest allergisk forhold til løgn og et overbeskyttende forhold til sandheden. Det siges jo, at alle ideologier er døde, men det betyder jo ikke, at løgnene er forsvundet sammen med dem, ...
Bestemt værd at læse, men det bærer lidt for meget præg af at være skrevet til en avis.
af Carsten Jensen
Personlige dagbogsblade fra 1998 og 1999, hvor Carsten Jensens datter er to og tre år gammel.
En udmærket bog, men jeg kan nu bedst lide den gamle (dvs den mellemste) Carsten Jensen.
by Carsten Jensen
Danish literary critic Carsten Jensen travels east describing the things he sees, the people he meets, and the books he reads or has read.
A brilliant mix of journalism, essayisme, and literary story telling.
Highly recommended.
af Carsten Jensen
Anden del af Carsten Jensen jorddomrejse fra Ny Guinea til Sydamerika.
Så opsumerede han: ”Men det er ikke det vigtigste. Det vigtigste er at gro parykker. Alt andet er blot noget, vi gør for at få tiden til at gå imens.”
Fremragende.
Stor anbefaling.
af Carsten Jensen
Fem essays om alt og intet.
Ofre for et radikalt frihedsbegreb, der kræver, at vi skaber os selv forfra, ender vi kun med at se os som ofre, fordi friheden er blevet så uoverkommelig en fordring, og forhindringerne på vejen til den så uoverstigelige og uendelige.
Fremragende.
Stor anbefaling.
af Carsten Jensen
En personlig beretning om litteratur og dens betydning for livet.
Jeg vil ikke kede mig. Og dog vil jeg heller ikke adspredes. De to tilstande, kedsomhed og adspredelse, er for meget i slægt med hinanden. Der er for meget tomhed i begge, som om sjælens molekyler sad for langt fra hinanden
Fremragende.
Stor anbefaling.
St. Francis of Asissi
by Nikos Kazantzakis
The story of the Saint Francis of Assissi, founder of the Franciscan order. A story of the eternal struggle between he spirit and the flesh or in other word the story of a holy but raving madman who ended up starving himself to death. But that is as it should be since Madness ... is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting. I myself, don’t forget, used to go through the streets crying ‘Hear! Hear the new madness’.
Kazantzakis has tried to match the Saint's life with his myth.
Lowering his head, Francis plunged deep into thought. "Do not sigh, Brother Leo," he murmured after a moment. "Who knows, perhaps God is simply the search for God."
Well written but you will most likely find it a bit long if you do not have an interrest in Francis of Assissi or religion.
af Imre Kertész
En selvbiografisk krønike.
Dagbogsnotater fra perioden 1991-95 samt filosofiske betragtninger. Kertész stiller bl.a. spørgsmålet "Hvem er jeg?" Svaret findes dog ikke i bogen, der aldrig bliver interessant.
Kertesz fik Nobelprisen i literatur i 2002.
En kedelig og uinteressant bog.
af Jan Kjærstad
En ung kvindes historie.
Om kærlighed og skrifttegn, der gør en forskel.
Musikken er Guds stemme på Jorden.
Velskrevet som altid, men lidt for magisk til min smag.
Anbefalet.
by Jan Kjærstad
The story of Jonas Wergeland - producer of successful tv documentaries on great men and women as well as God's gift to women.
What is a life anyway?
Beautifully written, wonderful craftsmanship.
Recommended.
af Jan Kjærstad
Endnu en version af historien om Jonas Wergeland. Denne gang fortalt af en kvinde til den professor, der er bestilt til at skrive den definitive biografi af Wergeland.
Fremragende skrevet, men knap så fængende som Forføreren.
Anbefalet.
by Milan Kundera
See review under Misc books.
by Milan Kundera
A collection of short stories about love, passion, and everything that people do for love. How love turns into play-acting.
The collection was banned after its publication in Prague in 1968.
Originally 10 stories written between 1958 and 1968 but it was reduced to 7 stories from the French edition in 1970.
Recommended.
by Milan Kundera
Chantal and Jean-Marc - a middle-aged Parisian couple - meet at the coast of Normandy where a banal misunderstanding changes everything.
A book on love, the fear of loosing it, and the paradoxes of identity. How is your identity affected by others looking at you? By your lover looking at you?
Highly recommended
by Milan Kundera
The story of two Czech emigrants, Irena and Josef, meeting in the airport on the way to Prague. She recognizes the love of her life while he just sees an attractive woman.
About alienation as the fundamental character of being.
Highly recommended.
by Milan Kundera
Reflections on past, present, and the demands of modern society that makes man loose the pleasure of slowness. A disillusioned view of fin de siécle postmodernity.
The first novel that Kundera wrote in French. Where as Kundera's earlier and much longer novels are often symphonic in nature this shorter novel is inspired according to himself inspired by the fuga.
Highly recommended.
by Milan Kundera
A novel of being in excile, of nostalgia, and of alienation as a result of not being able to be with things loved.
The characters are torn between the antagonistic principles of existence: order and chaos, stability and change, meaning and absurdity. Drawn to both without being able to choose because the consequences are unbearable and troubling whatever they choose.
Recommended.
by Milan Kundera
The story of two rival sisters, of Goethe, Beethoven, Robert Musil, Rimbaud, Rubens, and many more.
About immortality in a world without God. Man in a world without God is free but alone. Only through love can man find meaning.
Kundera is without a doubt one of the greatest living writers. And Immortality is in my opinion his best novel.
Highly recommended.
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and death. Tomas is the Nietzschean adventurer living through his conquests. Tereza is the Platonic being who loves fully and only once.
Forget the movie. Read the book.
Recommended.
by Hanif Kureishi
Set during the long night before Jay will leave his partner and their two sons. He remembers the ups and downs of the relationship.
I extract my weekend bag from the cupboard and open it. I stare into the bottom and then put it on my head. What do you take when you're never coming back? …
A mature and very different Kureishi.
Highly recommended.
by Hanif Kureishi
A collection of short stories capturing the confused sense of identity and longing.
… She hardly knew anyone with a job; London was full of drugged, useless people who didn’t listen to one another but merely thought all the time of how to distract themselves and never spoke of anything serious. She was tired of it; she was even tired of being in love; it had become another narcotic. Now she wanted interesting difficulty, not pleasure or even ease.
Recommended.
by Hanif Kureishi
A play exposing the emotionally and sexually chaotic lives of a group of friends.
Julie … I’ve always wanted a family … to disappear into .
Sophie That’s the mistake, though – thinking you can find everything there … Families, if you don’t mind me saying so, are mental hospitals.
Sleep with me premiered at the Royal National Theatre in April 1999.
An ok read.
by Hanif Kureishi
Shahid is a young man coming to London after the death of his father finding himself embroiled in the battle between liberalism and fundamentalism.
Set in 1989 - the year of the Rushdie fatwah and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A book on raves, ecstasy, religious ferment, and sexual passion.
Recommended.
by Hanif Kureishi
A collection of short stories on the irrational impulses of desire and relationships.
Ian said, ‘Consciousness is proving a little tenacious at the moment. Where are my tranquillisers?’
Read Intimacy before Midnight All Day.
Recommended.
by Hanif Kureishi
The story of Karim Amir who is 'an Englishman born and bred - almost' living with his English mother and Indian father in the London Suburbs.
A book on growing up, race relations, drugs, homosexuality, and the thrilling life in the city.
Salman Rushdie wrote:
... utterly irreverent and wildly improper, but also genuinely touching and truthful. And very funny indeed.
Highly recommended.
af Pär Lagerkvist
De døde taler om deres tidligere liv, og efterhånden som tiden går, opstår behovet for at stille Gud til regnskab for verdens ondskab.
Anbefalet.
af Pär Lagerkvist
En roman om det ondes som en del af menneskets natur.
En dværgs beretning om livet ved en italiensk middelalderfyrstes hof.
Tom Kristensen skrev:
Et mesterværk.
Fremragende.
En stor anbefaling.
af Pär Lagerkvist
Lagerkvists roman om det ondes konstante natur - fra middelalderen til den nazistiske magtovertagelse.
Solen går ned bag kvælende tåge, lyset i disen er levret og ondt. Frygtet og afskyet skrider jeg hen over jorden og bjerger min høst. Ugerningens mærke står indebrændt på min pande, jeg er selv misdæder, fordømt til evig tid. For jeres skyld.
Anbefalet.
af Pär Lagerkvist
En roman om søgen efter troen.
Folket valgte at korsfæste Jesus i stedet for røveren Barabbas, der efterfølgende ikke kan gå tilbage til sit gamle liv, men som heller ikke kan tro.
Lagerkvist fik Nobelprisen i 1951 efter udgivelsen af Barabbas.
Anbefalet
Scener fra mit liv
af Jørgen Leth
Jørgens Leths selvbiografi eller måske snarere delviseiscenesættelse af sig selv.
Mange var imod, at jeg talte med psykiatere. Det var almindeligt at være imod medicin. Den fordom havde jeg intet til overs for. Jeg troede kun på medicin. Jeg grinte af dem og jeg, at jeg kun gad tale med fagfolk, nogle der havde forstand på syge menneskers behandling.
Bogen fik en noget ublid og helt uretfærdig medfart i pressen, hvor der lægges vægt på mindre elementer af bogen fx forholdet til kokkens datter.
Den er af noget svingende kvalitet, da jeg i hvert fald ikke finder alt lige interessant, men den er dog velskrevet.
Anbefalet.
Det uperfekte menneske 2
af Jørgen Leth
Flere scener fra Jørgen Leths liv. Minder meget om Det uperfekte menneske, og den er ligeledes noget svingende i kvalitet.
Særlig interessant er Leths version af mediestormen omkring Det uperfekte menneske.
Anbefalet
by Primo Levi
Primo Levi's horrible story of human degradation and survival at Auschwitz.
You think you have an idea of the horrors of concentration camps. You do not! And when you think you do it gets worse. Everyone should be required to read books like this at regular intervals.
A nescessary and recommended read.
by Primo Levi
After a year in Auschwitz the war finally ends. Levi is one in three of 500 to survive.
The book is the story of his 9 month journey through a chaotic and bombed Europe. It is also a story about human deprevation and the things you have to do to survive.
An ok read.
by Niccolo Machiavelli
The infamous book on power by a Florentine governmental official who wrote what he had observed as an envey to the courts.
A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought...but war, its institutions, and its discipline.
Recommended.
by Thomas Mann
A medieval oedipal story. Gregory is born in sin by two siblings and put out to sea to let God decide his fate. He grows up as an orphan in the service of the church until he learns the truth and sets out to be a knight.
A novel of sin, atonement, and forgiveness although not as demanding as some of Mann's other novel.
An excellent introduction to Mann.
Recommended.
by Thomas Mann
The story of the Klaus Heinrich of the royal family Grimmbart from birth to mariage.
A story of decadence and of not being able to be like everybody else.
An ok read but you should not let it be the first novel by Mann that you read. I would suggest The Magic Mountain or Buddenbrooks.
The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend
by Thomas Mann
The tragic story of the composer Adrian Leverkühn. A story of Germany, the falacies of German culture, music, philosphy, and literature inspired by Nietzsche, Göethe, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare.
Simply a masterpiece. A must read - again and again.
The last great novel by Mann.
Highly recommended.
by Thomas Mann
The famous author Gustav von Aschenbach spends his time in Venice obcessing over the 14 year old Tadzio - the hansom son of a Polish nobleman - while a deadly epidemic sweebs the city.
He played, fantasized and was far too superior to harbour fear of a feeling.
Recommended.
by Thomas Mann
Hans Castorp is visiting his cousin at a tuberculosis sanatorium in tha mountains and ends up spending 7 years there. The entire world is mirrored on the mountain and it takes the first world war to make him leave.
A fantastic novel. A most read.
Thomas Mann received the Nobel Price for literature in 1929.
Highly recommended.
by Thomas Mann
A tale of a 19th century merchant family in decay from the young Antonie of 1835 to the young Hanno of the early 1870's.
As in all of Mann's books the decaying theme is dominant. The Buddenbrooks are a pillar of society which in time rests more on tradition than anything else as the merchant family is reduced by more enterprising families.
Mann's first novel and more readable than his later books.
Highly recommeded.
by Ian McEwan
One evening in 1962 newlywed Edward and Florence are eating dinner in anticipation of the wedding night - a wedding night than turns out to be a disaster.
A well written novel about the problems of not talking to each other.
Recommended.
by Ian McEwan
13-year-old Briony Tallis sees something she does not understand one afternoon in prewar England. Later that night people's lives have changed forever, and Briony has committed a crime that she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone. Wheels have been set in motion and they cannot be stopped.
That he worked late she did not doubt, but she knew he did not sleep at his club, and he knew that she knew this. But there was nothing to say. Or rather, there was too much. They resembled each other in their dread of conflict, and the regularity of his evening calls, however much she disbelieved them, was a comfort to them both. If this sham was conventional hypocrisy, she had to concede that it had its uses. She had sources of contentment in her life – the house, the park, above all, the children – and she intended to preserve them by not challenging Jack. And she did not miss his presence so much as his voice on the phone. Even being lied to constantly, though hardly like love, was sustained attention; he must care about her to fabricate so elaborately and over such a long stretch of time. His deceit was a form of tribute to the importance of their marriage.
The Times wrote:
The narrative, as always with McEwan, smoulders with slow-burning menace. You know that, even as you savour the voluptous sentences, somthing terible will happen, and sure enough it does.
Highly recommended.
by Herman Melville
Melville classic epic on whaling.
"Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!" he [Jonah] groans, "straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!"
Melville has a wonderful command of the English language and the novel touches on so much more than just the hunt for Moby Dick which in fact only lasts a few chapters. I most say, though, that a slight editing would be in order for instance the chapters concerning whales in which Melville argues that a whale is a fish.
In 1851 The Literary Gazette wrote:
This is an o book, professing to be a novel; wantonly eccentric; outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive.
Recommended
af Ib Michael
Dagsbogsnotater fra Ib Michaels rejser (ud og hjemme). Et år i hans liv.
Hjemme blandede jeg det hele sammen, iførte mig underbukser, stillede to stole op så jeg kunne lænke mig til stoleryggene med kæder af hønseringe. Så stod jeg dér og led et par minutter ad gangen med et heroisk udtryk i ansigtet og halvt lukkede øjne – indtil jeg sled mig løs med Tarzans berømte hyl og min mor kom farende ind i stuen. Enten var stolene væltet, eller også var et par af hønseringene knækket. ”Hvad laver du?” spurgte min mor lidt spist ved synet af mig i underbukser. ”Jeg leger Jesus,” svarede jeg, ”han har lige revet sig løs fra korset.”
Anbefalet.
by Yukio Mishima
An autobiography on the meaning of words and body.
I have yet to hear hero worship mocked by a man endowed with what might justly be called heroic physical attributes. Facile cynicism, invariably is related to feeble muscles or obesity, while the cult of the hero and mighty nihilism are always related to a mighty body and well-tempered muscles. For the cult of the hero is, ultimately, the basic principle of the body., and in the long run is ultimately involved with the contrast between the robustness of the body and the destruction that is death.
Mishoma committed seppuku in 1970.
I think you need to know more of Mishima's work before you will find this literary testament particularly interesting.
By Haruki Murakami
A strange book set in Tokyo in 1969. Tuto Watanabe is 19 and is writing about the strange girls with even stranger problems that he meets and sleeps with while studying at the university.
The story of the compelling title turned out to be a disappointment, though: It is the title of a Beetles song that one of the girls like. No matter, even though the title is no longer compelling the book certainly is:
... At last Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: "Where are you now?"
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.
Highly recommended.
