My Top 10 Reads in 2011

Last time I wrote a top 10 post I put the books in reverse order from 10 to 1, but this time I simply cannot! I read quite a few good books, but I can't say which one was the best, the second best etc. Maybe it's a good thing. No book stood out, but there were many I really liked. Some I liked because the writing was so beautiful, some because of the story, some just because! :)

I read quite a good number of books in my own language in 2011, 25 out of 85 reads. 22 of the books I read in Finnish were novels and three were graphic novels or comic books. This was an improvement compared to 2010. I read only 1 nonfiction book the whole year (!), Mind Gym -An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence by Gary Mack with David Casstevens, but that was an amazing read! I also read two excellent books of poetry: If Not, Winter -Fragments of Sappho and The Iliad by Homer. However, I chose to limit my best of 2011 list to novels, and in particular to novels that are available in English. And no rereads either, only novels I read for the first time.

So, here come's in alphabetical order:

Annabel by Kathleen Winter
Amazing story about an intersex child growing up in a remote Canadian village in the 1970s & 80s.

Birdbrain (orig. Finnish title Linnunaivot) by Johanna Sinisalo
A young couple is trekking in Australia when strange things start to happen.

Blackout by Connie Willis
Three historians from 2060 Oxford get stuck in WWII England. The story concludes in All Clear.

Huntress by Malinda Lo
Two girls and a prince travel to the court of the Fairy Queen to save the world. Along the way the girls fall in love with each other. This is Lo's second novel. Her first was Ash, the lesbian themed retelling of Cinderella, which I also read in 2011. I liked the world Lo created for Huntress (which is set some 500 years earlier, but in the same universe, as Ash) better, but warmly recommend both novels.

The Long Ships (orig. Swedish titles Röde Orm: Sjöfarare i västerled & Röde Orm: Hemma och i österled) by Frans G. Bengtsson
Orm, the redhaired viking, sails from one adventure to another all over the known world. Humorous, entertaining, a really fabulous historical novel!

A Mercy by Toni Morrison
A novel about the early years of slavery in America and about love, between men and women and between a mother and her children.

The Name of the Rose (orig. Italian title Il nome della rosa) by Umberto Eco
Medieval murder mystery set in a monastery with an extraordinary library.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
In a world where some magic is real a girl and a boy are set to compete against each other by their enchanter guardians. Only the young ones are not supposed to fall in love with each other...

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
A beautifully told story about loss and love and gay rights.

Soulless by Gail Carriger
There are vampires and werewolfs in Britain, they are part of the VIctorian society and some of them work for the Queen! And then there is Miss Tarabotti, a soulless human, whose touch neutralises the supernatural nature of vampires & werewolfs as long as she touches them. This is a first book in a series. A hilarious, delighful read!

What were your top 10 reads this year?

Christmas & Random Books from My Personal Library: M-O

I'm back home after celebrating Christmas with my Dad. The weather this Christmas was rather peculiar. After two Christmases with lots -and I mean LOTS- of snow there were no snow in sight this year. That in itself is not unheard of, statistically every other Christmas in Helsinki is snowless, but this time the whole end of the year has been unusually warm, mostly a few degrees above freezing and it's snowed only twice, I think, and even then it was very little snow which melted almost immediately. And today we had a storm with highest winds in a decade! In some parts of the country the storm damaged powerlines and at the moment over 160 000 households are without electricity. Not fun at all. Luckily here we didn't have any powercuts.

Well, Christmas was fun. As I said I spent it with my Dad here in Helsinki. He only lives on the other side of the city, so I did not have to travel far. :) In the evening of Dec 23 we decorated the Christmas tree. I had bought a Bûche de Noël and then late in the evening of the 23rd I realised that I had forgot the cake home! We had to go and get it in the Christmas Eve morning.

Dec 24, Christmas Eve, is when we celebrate here in Finland. After driving to my place to get the Bûche de Noël we went to the cemetery to bring candles to the graves of our loved ones. Later we had a nice traditional Christmas dinner with some excellent 11 year old French wine I had been saving for some special occation, but then decided that this Christmas was special enough. :) Finnish Christmas dishes are pretty heavy, and after the meal both I and my Dad ended up taking a nap! :) I woke up just in time to walk to the beautiful 15th century St. Laurence Church for a midnight mass. Usually we open presents after dinner, but this year we did it only after I returned from the mass. So, we ended the Christmas Eve opening presents and watching the midnight mass from the Vatican on TV.

I had wished for All Clear by Connie Willis and I guess, I had been good, as I got it. :) I also got two vintage nonfiction books about French history.

Christmas Day was spent, as always, relaxing, reading, eating, watching TV, reading, eating, eating, reading... :) Today was a bit more active as we went to play tennis for two hours and that was just perfect after all that Christmas food!

 
It's been a while since I posted a Random Books post. So, here comes part M-O:

Motherless Daughters -The Legacy of Loss by Hope Edelman
If I were to make a list of the most important books in my life, this one would be on that list. Edelman, who herself lost her mother to cancer when she was seventeen, interviewed hundreads of motherless women and then wrote this book about what it means to grow up without a mother and how being motherless affects a woman's life. My mother died when I was 16 and although I thought I had recovered from the loss well, 10 years after her death my loss hit me very hard. It was devastating to realise that I could never talk to my mother as one adult to another, that she never got to know the grown up me. It was at that time that I read Motherless Daughters and what a revelation it was! I did not agree with everything Edelman wrote, but it was very healing to realise I was not alone in my thoughts, that it was something that was common to many motherless women. I don't know if I will ever reread Motherless Daughters. It's enough that it sits there on my bookshelf. It's enough that it exists. Edelman's book helped me really grow up and put my loss in perspective. It helped me heal.

The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme
I have mentioned before that I have a soft spot for novels about nuns.:) If you were to read only one novel about nuns, this could be it (the other candidate for the spot would be In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden). And if we talk about movies then The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn as Sister Luke is the number one nun movie ever made!
The book tells the story of a strong-willed Belgian girl, Gabrielle, who becomes a nun in a nursing order some time during the first half of the 20th century. The depiction of pre Vatican II convent life makes fascinating reading and Gabrielle's road to become Sister Luke, her quest to become a good religious, her trials and tribulations, her doubts make an unforgettable story. This is a must reread book for me. :)

Orlando by Virginia Woolf
I have already talked about Orlando here and am not going to repeat what I've already written. Suffice to say that Orlando is one of my all time favorite books.

I hope everyone had happy holidays!

My Day in Books

Danielle over at A Work in Progress posted this fun meme invented by Cornflower Books and I simply could not resist to give it a try myself! I admit I love memes like this. :)

My Day in Books

I began the day with Mind Gym.
On my way to work I saw Zahra's Paradise
and walked by The White Garden
to avoid The Tomb of Zeus.
But I made sure to stop at The Night Circus.
In the office, my boss said, "Birdbrain"
and sent me to reseach The Calcutta Chromosome.
At lunch with Annabel
I noticed Ash
under The Tapestry of Love
then went back to my desk, Blameless.
Later, on the journey home I bought Radiance,
because I have The Night Watch.
Then settling down for the evening, I picked up The Oracle of Stamboul
and studied Einstein's Dreams
before saying good night to The House of Sleep.

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

"With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me."

"I dream a dream that dreams back at me."

I have been aware of Toni Morrison's work since she was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. I even have an unread paperback copy of The Bluest Eye stacked away somewhere, but only now have I read my my first Tony Morrison novel, which ended up not being The Bluest Eye, but A Mercy.

A Mercy is a silm novel of just 167 pages, but it is amazing how much Morrison manages to cover in those pages! Set in late 17th century America this is a story about the early days of slave trade and slavery, but not only that. It is also a story about prejudice, religious, class and racial and it is a story about loss and about love, love between a man and a woman and love between a mother and her child.

The plot centers around the farm of an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, one Jacob de Vraak. Jacob is building a great house for himself and his wife and for a while employs a blacksmith, who is a free man of African origins and who also knows something about healing. When Jacob later dies and his wife Rebekka also gets ill, Rebekka sends slave girl Florens, who has fallen in love with the blacksmith, to find him and bring him back to the farm.

The story is told by a set of very interesting characters. There is Jacob de Vraak himself, who feels uncomfortable about slavery, yet accepts a young girl as a payment for a debt. There is Mistress Rebekka, Jacob's wife, who has lost one child after another. There is the Native American Lina, who lost her whole tribe to smallbox, a disease brought to the Americas by the Europeans or Europes as Lina calls them. Sorrow is a girl who had lived her early years aboard a ship and ends up pregnant for the first time when she's hardly in her teens. And then there is Florens. She is the slave girl given to Jacob de Vraak as payment. Florens has "hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady" as she has always insisted on wearing some kind of shoes or other protection in her feet. Florens is also able to read and write. She and her mother were secretly taught by a Catholic priest and when the story is told from Florens' point of view, it is told as written by her with her own grammar and vocabulary.

I have a soft spot for beautiful writing, for beautiful sentences. (See the quotes at the beginning of this post. So beautifully said! Both quotes are from p. 137.) That is why I love the works of Virginia Woolf and Jeanette Winterson, two of my favorite writers. I fell in love with the writing in A Mercy from the start. It's too early to say whether Morrison might end up up there with Woolf and Winterson in my list of literary favorites, but I have a very good feeling that she might. However, I need to read a few more of her novels first to know for sure.

Here is an a wonderful broadcast "An Evening with Toni Morrison" from the George Washington University, Washington DC. Starting at about 00:30 she reads the first chapter of A Mercy.

Virtual Advent Tour: Declaration of Christmas Peace

The most important day of Christmas here in Finland is the Christmas Eve. That is when we have our Christmas dinner. That is when Santa pays his visit and brings presents. That is when we visit the graves of the loved ones' who have passed on. And that is when, at 12 o'clock noon, the city of Turku, declares the Christmas peace.

The declaration of Christmas peace is an ancient tradition dating back to the 13th century. In the old times Christmas peace was a 20 day period starting from Christmas Eve when punishment for any crime committed during that time was more severe than during "ordinary time".

There was a horrible fire in Turku in 1827 when most of the town was burned down. Also the document where the declaration of Christmas peace was written on was lost to flames. After the fire a clerk working in the city administrative court wrote the declaration down from memory.

Since 1889 the declaration has been read by a city official from the balcony of Brinkkala Mansion. The square in front ot the house is always backed with hundreds of people and all over Finland people turn on their TVs to watch the declaration of Christmas peace live. The event has been broadcasted on radio since the 1930s, televised since 1983 and it has been possible to watch it live on the net since 2006. Since 1889 the declaration of Christmas peace hasn't had any juridical meaning, but as a lovely tradition it is still going strong.
 The declaration goes like this (from the city of Turku's website):


"Tomorrow, God willing,
is the graceful celebration of the birth of our Lord and Saviour;
and thus is declared a peaceful Christmas time to all, by advising devotion and to behave otherwise quietly and peacefully,
because he who breaks this peace and violates the peace of Christmas by any illegal or improper behaviour shall under aggravating circumstances be guilty and punished according to what the law and statutes prescribe for each and every offence separately.
Finally, a joyous Christmas feast is wished to all inhabitants of the city."


Below you can watch the 2009 declaration of Christmas peace. The ceremony always starts with a hymn, lyrics of which are originally by Martin Luther. Then the declaration is read both in Finnish and Swedish, our two national languages. Afterwards the national anthem is sung and the ceremony ends with the honorary march of the Finnish Defence Forces. Actually, taken that it is all about living in peace some of the music sung and played is not very peaceful... That aside, this is a very special tradition.

Don't forget to visit today's other Virtual Advent Tour stops, too!

2012 Challenges

I did extremely poorly with the challenges I joined this year. I read only one book for the TBR Pile Challenge and two for the One, Two, Theme Challenge. I completely forgot I had signed up for the Year of Feminist Classics!! How could I forget something like that!?! I did rather well with both the GLBT and Historical Fiction Challenges and also with the Steampunk Challenge when it comes to reading, but I failed miserably with reviewing and linking my reviews to the challenge sites. Well, it can only be onwards an upwards from here!

I do love challenges and I want to join some also in 2012. And, really,  it can only be onwards an upwards from 2011! Here are some challenges I'm joining for 2012:

The TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Roof Beam Reader

Yes, I did not manage to read more than one little book from the list I made for this year's TBP Pile Challenge, but I love the idea of this challnege and I have more than enough books at home waiting for their turn and waiting and waiting...
The goal of this challenge is to read 12 books within 12 months from one's TBR pile. The books should have been waiting for their turn for at least a year. For more details click the link or the button above.
 
Hopefully I'll do better with this pile than I did with my choices in 2011: 
 
1. Karen Blixen: Seven Gothic Tales (read 9.1.2012)
2. A.S.Byatt: The Children's Book
3. Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone (read 19.1.2012)
4. Lewis Crofts: The Pornographer of Vienna
5. Emma Donoghue: Still Life
6. Sarah Dunant: Secret Hearts
7. Madeleine Gagnon: My Name is Bosnia (read 14.4.2012)
8. Adolus Huxley: Brave New World
9. Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall (read 29.4.2012)
10. Kate Pulliger: Mistress of Nothing
11. H.G.Wells: Ann Veronica (read 28.1.2012)
12. Simon Scott: Pretty Birds
Alternates:
+Virginia Woolf: Jacob's Room
+Stefan Zweig: Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman & The Royal Game

Back to the Classics 2012 Challenge hosted by Sara Reads Too Much



I've been craving for classics for some time now, so, this challenge is just the perfect excuse to read more classics! Like one would need an excuse...

The aim of Back to the Classics Challenge is to read one book from nine different categories i.e. all together 9 classics. Click the link or the button above for more details.

My list:

• Any 19th Century Classic: Emile Zola: Women's Paradise
• Any 20th Century Classic: Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
• Reread a classic of your choice: Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
• A Classic Play: Aristofanes: Lysistrata or The Parliament of Women or Ibsen: A Doll's House
• Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction: Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone (read 19.1.2012)
• Classic Romance: Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey
• Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language -if your native language is NOT English, you may read any classic originally written in English that has been translated into your native language: Homeros: Odyssey
• Classic Award Winner: F. E. Sillanpää: Hurskas kurjuus (Meek Heritage) (Sillanpää won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939) or Ursula Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (Nebula Award 1969)
•  Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime: Anthony Hope: Prisoner of Zenda (Set in the fictional country of Ruritania)

Greek Classics Challenge hosted by Howling Frog

As I've already decided on reading Odysseus by Homeros in 2012 there's really no reason not to join this challenge! I'm joining on Sophocles -level (=1-4 books). I might also read Aristophanes and some other playwrites and maybe also some poetry. (Too bad I've read If Not, Winter by Sappho twice already...)

In addition to these challenges I will participate in the LGBT Challenge also next year and will aim to read 10-12 books for the challenge.

Teaser Tuesday 6.12.2011

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers

Share the title and author too so that other Teaser Tuesday participients can add the book on their TBR lists, if they like your teasers!

I'm reading A Mercy by Toni Morrison. This beautifully written novel with multiple voices is set in the 1680s America. My teaser is from p. 46. Lina, a Native American servant in an Anglo-Dutch household, is puzzled when a blacksmith, a free man of African descent, arrives to the farm and looks her mistress straight in the eyes.

"An unfanthomable puzzle. Europes could calmly cut mothers down, blast old men in the face with muskets louder than moose calls, but were enraged if a not-Europe looked Europe in the eye. On the one hand they would torch your homes; on the other they would feed, nurse and bless you."

Today is Finland's Indenpendence Day. It's 94 years since Finland's Declaration of Independence. Happy birthday to my lovely country! :)

Blackout by Connie Willis

Three Oxford historians Merope Ward, Michael Davies and Polly Churchill are eager to get on with their research. All three work on WWII related projects. Merope is going to study the blight of children evacuated from London, Michael wants to study war heroes and Polly the Oxford Street shopgirls during the Blitz. But this is 2060. Time travel is a reality and if you do research on WWII it means you will go there -literally. Only this time, it seems, the three time travellers just might get more than they bargained for. For a reason unknown to them their drops, or places where they should be able to step back to Oxford in 2060, stop functioning and they are stranded in three different places in 1940. Will they be able to locate each other? Will they find a way back -or rather forward- home? And what is going on as time travelling historians should not be able to change history only now there are indicators that something such might be happening... What if something the stranded historians did changed the course of the war?

Blackout is the third novel by Connie Willis I have read. My first was Doomsday Book, which I read in Finnish some time around 1999-2000. Last year I read To Say Nothing of the Dog. All three belong to Willis's time travelling novels and I have enjoyed every one of the three immensely. I like how ordinary travelling through time is made in her books and the idea of being able to do historical research back there and then is very tempting for me. I wish it were a reality! :)

Only a small part of the novel takes place in 2060. Most of it tells about the war years in England (mostly 1939-1940, but we also get a glimpse of 1944). If you don't like scifi but love historical fiction and have read this far of my post :), I must say don't let the time travelling part of this novel scare you away! Blackout is one of the most interesting historical novels set in WWII England I have ever read. Nightwatch by Sarah Waters is still my favorite, but Blackout comes second. My only complain (which is not a real complain at all as I'd love to continue reading about Merope/Eileen, Michael/Mike and Polly) is that Willis did not manage to put the whole story in one book, but ended writing a duology. What starts in Blackout ends in All Clear.

After I finished reading Blackout I would have liked to continue immediately with All Clear. My Blackout was a library book, but unfortunately my library did not have All Clear, at least not yet. I almost bought a copy, but this being the Christmas Season decided to be patient and wrote to Santa instead. :) So, now I hope that Santa will fulfill my wish -and that I will be reading my very own copy of All Clear this Christmas!

By the way, I'm participating in the 2011 Virtual Advent Tour. This is my second participation. Last year I shared with you a very special Christmas memory. We'll see what I my Advent Tour post will be about this year. My assigned date is Dec. 11.