About two books

[oakfarm]

I read the novel Rosa candida by Icelandic writer Audur Ava Olafsdottir. And of course I was proud of myself for knowing that “candida” is latin for white, and that I learned that from the fungi Candida albicans. The non drivel thing to write is that  the novel  was described as a feel good book for thinking people. And yeah, it’s a feel good book. Then the main character has a daughter that’s the same age as my youngest niece, 8-10 month old. So I thought about her reading it.

Then I try to read Parable of the sower Octavia Butler. It is difficult to read, perhaps I could force  myself to finish it, I have already read around half of the novel. It’s not a feel good book to read, if anyone thought that: violence, barbarism, rape, so much rape.

Comments

[tarasacon]

It looks like I have two Icelandic authors in my to-read pile currently: Lilja Sigurðardóttir, and Hallgrímur Helgason. Another author I thought was Icelandic is actually from Greenland (Niviaq Korneliussen). Being an ignorant American I tend to lump the two countries as “really cold islands in the North Atlantic” and not differentiate much so I got confused.

But that’s not fair because Greenland had an indigenous population before the Danes colonized it, where Iceland was mainly settled by Norwegians fleeing the mainland, plus there’s a significant difference in their relative sizes.