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Nov. 8th, 2024 03:06 pm
Books and countries
I don't know how much of a long shot the following is, but if I'm lucky I got to work on a thesis that includes the words "wild type populus". It also means that I contacted a central European doctor researcher. I was worried if I should call him doctor in an e-mail? We Scandinavians don't tend to be so formal with titles.
Until then I have a very literary period. I have read a lot, books as a primitive escapist. I'm starting to get the impression that it's not worth mentioning local authors here, because I have heard English is a difficult language to get translate into. The authors I might have met, who even might say “Hi” to me if I met them in town, can be translated to Polish or Dutch but are not found on the English market. The English speakers don’t care about us. Haha. Since I have two books on my bookshelf, that are partly written in Scots we can for fun ask if Scots is a less difficult language to be translated into than English? The two books mentioned are Trainspotting by Irving Wells and Moven Caller by Alan Warner.
Here’s one story about how I chose books to read. One of my dad's hobbies is selling books online, he’s selling off all his books. That means the books that are left in my parents book shelfs more or less are books that don't sell. Sometimes I borrow from those unsellable books. Two books I read recently are from that source. Both are by dead, white, men awarded the Nobel Prize: Halldór Laxness and Ernst Hemingway.
The novel I liked most was Laxness’s The atom station. A young woman, in a newly independent Iceland, comes from the rural areas of the country, to Reykjavik, a town with governmental ministers, communists, poets, and American soldiers. The atom station in the title is Keflavik air base (I don’t know if the US ever had nukes on that base).
The Hemingway novel I read was To have and have not. The most Marxist of his books, but the book also includes the n-word and so. Weird since social media is full of people with american accent who dismiss “woke” as being “Marxism” and I don’t think that word is “woke”. Seriously, the thing is that when I grew up politics, or specifically the ideology Marxism, were about things like class, dialectic materialism, who should own the means of production ... things that the chronically online culture warriors of today never talk about.
The third book I want to mention is Engine empire (2013) by Cathy Park Hong, born 1976, Los Angeles. It’s experimental, futuristic poetry. I’m reading her on Google books, and listening to her reading on youtube - futurism and California. Don’t know when it’s time to give a Nobel prize to a poet next time, but I don’t think Hong will get it next year - they can’t give it to an ethical Korean woman two years in a row? Ok, I mentioned politics.
You know what, I could of course write something about American politics besides posing as a know-it-all. The sad thing for us is if the US abandons Ukraine. Then we have to step in and take over, and Make Europe Great Again. We will fail, but we should try. If I can do science, I’ll do my part.
Until then I have a very literary period. I have read a lot, books as a primitive escapist. I'm starting to get the impression that it's not worth mentioning local authors here, because I have heard English is a difficult language to get translate into. The authors I might have met, who even might say “Hi” to me if I met them in town, can be translated to Polish or Dutch but are not found on the English market. The English speakers don’t care about us. Haha. Since I have two books on my bookshelf, that are partly written in Scots we can for fun ask if Scots is a less difficult language to be translated into than English? The two books mentioned are Trainspotting by Irving Wells and Moven Caller by Alan Warner.
Here’s one story about how I chose books to read. One of my dad's hobbies is selling books online, he’s selling off all his books. That means the books that are left in my parents book shelfs more or less are books that don't sell. Sometimes I borrow from those unsellable books. Two books I read recently are from that source. Both are by dead, white, men awarded the Nobel Prize: Halldór Laxness and Ernst Hemingway.
The novel I liked most was Laxness’s The atom station. A young woman, in a newly independent Iceland, comes from the rural areas of the country, to Reykjavik, a town with governmental ministers, communists, poets, and American soldiers. The atom station in the title is Keflavik air base (I don’t know if the US ever had nukes on that base).
The Hemingway novel I read was To have and have not. The most Marxist of his books, but the book also includes the n-word and so. Weird since social media is full of people with american accent who dismiss “woke” as being “Marxism” and I don’t think that word is “woke”. Seriously, the thing is that when I grew up politics, or specifically the ideology Marxism, were about things like class, dialectic materialism, who should own the means of production ... things that the chronically online culture warriors of today never talk about.
The third book I want to mention is Engine empire (2013) by Cathy Park Hong, born 1976, Los Angeles. It’s experimental, futuristic poetry. I’m reading her on Google books, and listening to her reading on youtube - futurism and California. Don’t know when it’s time to give a Nobel prize to a poet next time, but I don’t think Hong will get it next year - they can’t give it to an ethical Korean woman two years in a row? Ok, I mentioned politics.
You know what, I could of course write something about American politics besides posing as a know-it-all. The sad thing for us is if the US abandons Ukraine. Then we have to step in and take over, and Make Europe Great Again. We will fail, but we should try. If I can do science, I’ll do my part.