Hej, allihoppa!

Hello, hello all! Look who's back, just like she promised...!

I feel like I have done a lot of language related things in the past week, and it is almost entirely due to these things that you see me here now.

This, right here, will be a multilingual lit post!*

I have started five new books in the past seven days, some of which I absolutely adore. I'll start with the German book, as my German is no way near good enough to write in.

The book is Splitterherz by Bettina Bellitz. To be honest, I am little more than a page in, and this is not due to my almost non-existent grasp of the language. No, the reason my reading of this book lags is because I already don't think that I like it. The Prologue was actually doing a good job of holding my respect until I got to the bit about the weeping moon. Which is... somewhat melodramatic. In hindsight, with my 'objectivity' glasses on, it is a good prologue, and I wish I could have taken it more seriously. Intrigued by the prologue of weeping moons and innocent yet wild souls** - or rather horrified by my choice - I went back to the blurb to find out which book it was I was actually reading. It turned out to be the one with the arrogant yet fascinating boy who has a deep secret that turns out to be tied to the protagonists own family history...
Yeah, so, not my thing. Recently, I have been finding myself being turned off by the mention of arrogant yet fascinating boys. Their fascination seems always to lie in the fact that are cryptic and act in an awful way but because of Reasons. Well, for my own Reasons, I don't like the romanticisation of this type, but I am still willing to continue on with the book as it is the only one of the German books that I earmarked that is available as a kindle sample.

And now for something completely different...

J’ai commencé trois livres français cette semaine. Le premier était Je suis un dragon de Martin Page. C’est un livre dont le concept m’intéressé depuis sa parution au début de l’année. J’ai à peine lu deux ou trois pages (je ne suis pas sûre, je l’ai lu sur mon iPhone), mais je l’aime déjà. Le personnage principal est une fille doué des pouvoirs surhumains. Je ne sais pas trop quels pouvoirs, mais elle semble être impossible à tuer – ce qui aurait me déranger, je peux vous dire. Cette puissance semble de la dérange elle aussi, parce qu’au début du roman elle est soumis à une expérience tellement violent pour démonter ses pouvoirs, une expérience qui finit par une perte de vie…

Fin, je ne veux pas trop dire et en tout cas je ne peux pas trop dire mais ça y est. Je suis impatiente de lire la suite, et je vais l’acheter dès que possible.

I started three French books this week. The first is I am a dragon by Martin Page. The concept of this book has interested me since its publication at the start of the year. I've hardly read two or three page (I'm not sure, because I was reading on my iPhone), but I like it already. The main character is a girl gifted with superhuman powers. I don't really know what powers, but she seems to be impossible to kill - which would bug me, I can tell you. This power seems to bug her, too, because at the start of the book we see her as the subject of an extremely violent experiment to demonstrate her powers, an experiment which finishes with the loss of a life...

Okay, so I don't really want to say too much, and I can really say that much, but there it is. I'm impatient to carry on reading, and I'm going to buy a paper copy of the book as soon as possible.

Le deuxième roman que j'ai commencé à lire cette semaine ne m’était pas aussi impressionnante. En fait, mes sentiments face au ce livre sont à peu près le même que ceux j’ai exprimé sur Splitterherz. Le roman est intitulé Les Cendres d’oubli par Carina Rozenfeld et la description m’a vraiment intéressé. Mais, dès le prologue, qui était encore une fois pleine de mélodrame, je n'ai plus beaucoup d'espoir pour ce livre.. En ce cas, c’était un mélodrame amoureux qui m’a exaspéré beaucoup plus que tous ces beaux mots des lunes pleurantes et âmes armées aux griffes… Oui, parce que ça, ça se trouve aussi ! Cependant, le concept de ce livre reste captivant. L’histoire est celle du Phoenix ou plutôt des Phoenix parce que, effectivement, il y’en a toujours deux qui doivent existe au monde en même temps. Donc, évidemment, il y aura de l’amour, de drame amoureux, des malentendus et moments précaires. Mais ce n’est pas impossible que je l’aimerai, malgré tout ça !

The second [French] novel I started this week wasn't quite as impressive. In fact, I feel about the same way about it as I felt about Splitterherz. It is called The Ashes of the forgotten*** by Carina Rozenfeld, and the description was really interesting. But from the prologue, which was once again full of melodrama, I don't have much hope for this book. In this case, the melodrama was of the romantic type, and it exasperated me a lot more than all that talk of weeping moons and souls armed with hooks... because, yes, those came up, too! However, the concept of the book is still interesting. It is the story of the phoenix, or rather, of the Phoenixes, because actually there are always two who have to be alive at the same time. So, of course, there is going to be love, romangst, misunderstandings and moments where everything looks to go tits-up. But I might just like it, even with all of that!

Et puis enfin le troisième roman [français] de la semaine ! Ceci est Nagasaki d’Éric Faye, et c’est un livre duquel je ne veux pas trop dire. La raison pour cette réticence peu typique est qu’un critique irréfléchi a spoilé le livre pour moi. Mais ça a l'air d'être quelque chose qui aurai pu été écrit par Julio Cortazar lui-même, si Julio Cortazar a écrit les livres en Francais, fondés sur les évènements réelles, qui déroulent au Japon... Le petit extrait m’a révélé un coup de cœur. Je l’ai vraiment adoré. En fait, je ne peux pas me restreindre, je crois que je l’achèterai aujourd'hui!

And finally the third [French] novel of the week! This one is Nagasaki by Éric Faye, and I don't want to say too much about it. The reason for such uncharacteristic reticence is because an unfortunate review spoiled the book a bit for me. But it seems to be something that could have issued forth from the pen of Julio Cortazar himself, if Julio Cortazar wrote books in French, based on true stories, set in Japan... I think that, from the extract I read, I'm going to love it. In fact, I don't think I can restrain myself, I'm probably going to buy it today!

Och jag ska sluta med den svenska boken. Jag ber om er ursäkt innan jag börjar, för jag är lite osäker på att tala och skriva i svenska. Kaninhjärta av Christin Ljungqvist verkar vara en blandning av en spökhistoria, en psykologisk thriller och en deckare. Hittills har jag läst utomkring tre sidor av boken, kanske flera. Och det är mycket intressant. Författarens stil är något nytt för mig och meningarna rinna om som en flod. Historian handlar om två flickor, tvillingssystrar Anne och Mary. Den ena, Anne, kan se spökar som tar kontroll av hennes systers kropp. De beskrevs som en person med ett tänker, då är de ett medium. Jag ska inte tala mer om boken tills att jag har läst ännu vidare, men jag tycker om den och jag har redan köpt e-boken.

And I will finish with the Swedish book. I ask for your forgiveness in advance (oh, mighty Swedish speakers!) because I'm kind of unsure about speaking and writing Swedish. Rabbit Heart by Christin Ljungqvist seems to be a mixture of a horror story, a psychological thriller and a murder mystery. So far I've read about three pages, maybe more. And it's very interesting. The authors style is something new (at least, for my Swedish self), and the sentences flow  along and carry me with them. The story is about two girls, twin sisters Anne and Mary. One, Anne, can see the spirits which posses her sisters body. They are described as one person with one mind, so it follows that they make up one medium. I won't say any more about the book until I have read even more, but I like it and I have already bought the e-book.

So, this post has been a long one, and it took me a while to write. I'm actually pretty proud of myself, to tell the truth. I wasn't expecting to be able to write so much at all, especially not for Swedish. As far as I can tell, only Nagasaki has been translated into English, published by Gallic books. If you speak any of the other languages, though, or if, like me, you are willing to stumble blindly through, I really reccommend Kaninhjärta and Je suis un dragon.

Happy reading :)

And happier blogging,

Little Newman

*Not a lit corner, I feel compelled to add, because I haven't actually finished any of these books yet. So, we stick with post.
**Okay, I thought that bit was silly, too.
***Extremely liberal translation there from me...!

Resolution

So, why is a resolution called a resolution? Or, perhaps more reasonably, why are resolutions not the same as resolution? This is an important question, and one which I will not attempt to answer, or even think about further. Okay, so that's a lie. I probably will. But we can be almost sure that I will have forgotten about it by the end of this post as I will make no attempt to answer, or even clarify, the question for you, my dear, potential readers*.

The following will be a post in which I will state to you some things which I intend to do, and I hope very much that I actually do them.

THING THE FIRST.

- I will update my blogs more. I have spoken more about this on the Kaffee und Kuchen blog which I keep over on wordpress.com (sorry, blogger). So I'm already doing well with this one!
To be specific, I will try to update this blog every week. Kaffee und Kuchen will undoubtedly be updated less often and less regularly, as it is a writing blog and I do not do much writing anymore. Updates here will not follow any pattern. I guess they never have, so no need for surprise on that count. I will blog about the things I usually blog about: my travels, my studies, the things I've read and the things I've seen. It's called Lily on Life for a reason. The only things I will NOT talk about here are the things I've eaten. There is a dedicated blog about this floating around in the interspace, and while it is as sorely neglected and as sorely in need of updating as any blog of mine you care to mention, I will respect its existence by not even thinking of talking food critique anywhere else.

THING THE SECOND

(I should probably mention here that these THINGS are in no particular order. Now that that is done...)
- I will read more. Reading is a good and laudable activity, and one of my favourite things to do. So, in view of that, I will try to actually do it. A book a week would be the ideal, but I know myself, so I'll make no promises here. Of course, reading more means blogging more because lit corners are my favourite types of blogpost. I have recently picked back up Darkmans, a behemoth of a book which is very post everything. This brings me swiftly to a subthing of Thing Two: I will read the books loved by the people I love. This is not an idea I had all on my own. I would have never thought of such a thing had Johannes Punkt, reviewer of fake books; creator of strange fictions; merchant of words and a general Person de Qualité in a way that the good Abbé Prevost probably never even considered, not come up with it first. Of course, I have read books that my friends have loved before. And I know that they have read books that I have loved, too. But this is because our tastes naturally overlap. Yes, Anna loved American Gods and recommended it to me, but ultimately I read it because I was sure I would enjoy it, too. I read it because I liked it, which is noble and perfectly correct.  But I did not read it because Anna loved it. I read it for myself.

Reading a book that someone else loves, purely for the fact that they love it, is something else entirely. It allows you to become closer to that person in a very small, very strange way. I started reading Darkmans because it was given to me as a present - again, by Anna. It was this that managed to get me almost of a quarter of the way through a book which numbers more than eight hundred pages in total. I picked it back up, because Anna loves this book. I am no longer reading it simply to find the things in it that I can love for myself, although if I find these things, I won't suppress or ignore them. Rather, I am reading to find what Anna might have loved when she first read it. I am reading simply to know that I have done something that she has done, and to enjoy that feeling just as you might enjoy being in a room that someone you loved has spent a lot of time in. I no longer feel a weight on me to enjoy the book as much as or in the same way as Anna has done, which is how I might perhaps feel if this were a simple recommendation. I feel instead that I am putting on a jumper which she has leant to me, despite it being her favourite one. I am feeling honoured that I get to share this book with her.

For the same reason, I intend to pick back up The Magician by Raymond Feist. For the same reason**, I have bought a copy of Sabriel by Garth Nix.

And for the same reason, I hope to finish these books soon.

Moving swiftly on from the depths of my sentiment, which threaten to drown me at any moment, is:

THING THE THIRD

- I will use my languages here, on line, on my blog. I may, every now and again, post something in another language. I may or may not provide translations. Please, do not feel alienated by this. I love languages, but I am not very confident when it comes to producing them. Having my texts out there in all of their gory, grammatically incorrect glory, will hopefully help change this. If you are really offended by posts in different languages, this probably isn't the blog for you, anyway. In addition to posting in the languages I learn, I will also, possibly, post about learning them. The situation is not the same for each language. One I have learnt formally, the rest have been self studied. Some I find easier, some I find much harder. Some I am happier to read in, others to speak in. Some I like more than others... wait. No, I don't... one should not have favourites. Ahem.

THING THE FOURTH before I embarrass myself further and alienate any of my languages

Er, what was the Fourth Thing again? Perhaps there was no Fourth Thing.
In which case:
- I will endeavour to be the best me that I can be, to do all of these things with gusto, because I am sure that I will enjoy them. However, I will also be sure and assured that it is okay for me to make mistakes, that I can skip a week of posting, or that I can post about absolutely nothing if I so wish. I will be sure and assured that this blog is recreational only, and I will not hesitate to run at the first sign of it becoming a chore or a drag. There are times in life when persevering through things you do not enjoy is the right thing to do, things that, really, we ought to continue. This blog is not one of those things. Since my very first post, it has been the place where I come to blather about whatever I like, and I intend to keep it that way. If that means I give it up whenever it becomes too onerous, than so be it. Yes, I may have neglected it for long periods in the past, but I always come back. Because I enjoy writing this blog, and I owe it to myself, as well as to any readers I acquire, to continue writing it as long as I enjoy it.

So, these are the things that I have quietly said to myself I will do, and now I am saying them a little bit louder.

I'll be signing off now, hopefully to see you soon, but before I go I guess I should mention the fact that I GRADUATED.

It has felt long at times, although looking back it feels short, and I haven't always given as much as I should or could have, which I regret. However, I do not regret anything at all from these last two years of study, and I am glad that I have made it this far.

So,
Happy Blogging, y'all!
The ever faithful, in a strange, periodic way,
Little Newman

*You are dear to me, even though you currently exist only in potentia. You will remain dear to me if you shift into real time, but I am afraid to say you will be slightly less shimmery. I am sorry.
** Okay, and because I kind of want to read it anyway, a little bit I guess. And because I saw it for 75p in a charity shop. So sue me.