Three Books

Long overdue book review -

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith - the second book in the Sunday Philosophy Club-series. And I just love them! As sweet as a series about a female private detective in Botswana might be, it can be a bit difficult to relate to - even if that's perhaps not the most important thing in a book...Always. But an intellectual sleuth philosophizing in Edinburgh - now that's completely my cup of tea!

I love the way that seemingly nothing much happens, but really there is. In the details, inside the philosophizing head of Isabel Dalhousie, a woman of independent means and editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, there is a lot going on... All written in an easy to get absorbed into, dryly humorous and endearing way.

Can't wait to get absorbed into the third book in the series - The Right Attitude to Rain, the title itself disclosing an interesting topic to be discussed...

Los crímenes de Oxford/Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martínez - a murder mystery that is solved by numbers. Or not. The plot is set in the mathematical academic world of Oxford, where an exchange student from Argentine finds himself in the middle of a series of crimes.

I'm far from being interested in numbers, the mathematical way, but this was kind of semi-interesting. The book slightly reminding me of La Caverna de las Ideas, but since that murder mystery revolves around philosophy and history and is more well written I suppose they can't really be compared, all that much...

I'm not sure what I think about the Oxford Murders and the plot, the solution to the mystery really leaves me with a feeling of anticlimax. One might say that it's the path and not the goal that's important. But that's something I don't think is really appliable to books, the ending should be elegantly stitched together and befit the pieces, not just being scrambled together.

I think the quote, which I can't remember the source of, "It's a good book to kill some time with - if you want your time to be killed" is well fitting of this murder mystery one.

För herr Bachmanns broschyr/For Mister Bachmann's Brochure by Carl-Johan Vallgren - this talented Swedish musician/writer has written one of my favourite books ever, the award winning Den vidunderliga kärlekens historia (The Glorious Love's History, which doesn't sound all that fantastic translated like that...).

Ah, I see here that it's translated into The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and Terrible Hatred - now that's a long title if any...

Which is an amazing piece of literature, so very moving, magical, imaginative not to mention extremely well-written. I'm in awe the whole long book through. Definitely a must-read! Must must must!

This Bachmann-book isn't nearly as long, only 127 pages to be exact. But my oh my, is it 127 pages jam packed with hilariously dyspeptic ramblings - with more than an ounce of truth to them now and then... - about Sweden and the Swedes.

All written by a fictitious (?) Swedish writer in exile, a completely misunderstood genius in his native country, the loathsome Mecka of Mediocrity. Snappishly well written and entertaining albeit with more than a pitiful streak to it. Do read!

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