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Recent reading
Sep. 8th, 2014 10:13 pmThe Love of Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontay (originally in Russian, read in Swedish)
Written in the early Soviet Union (it was published in 1923). This book is basically one big "patriarchy sucks" (and also "the Russian revolution goes sour"). The main character is in a relationship, and what she wants is a comrade. What she gets is a guy who is gradually corrupted by his position of power in the bureaucracy and wants her to be his stay-at-home dressed-up wife, and also he cheats on her. I kept going "dump him already, Vasja!". The style is plain and sometimes a bit clunky, but heartfelt and engaging.
The Bridge On the Drina by Ivo Andric (originally in Serbian, read in Swedish)
Read for my book club at work. I appreciated this book, though I didn't love it--rather, it was interesting and I learned stuff from it. Basically, the bridge is the main character and we get to follow it and the city around it for hundreds of years, with the Christians and the Muslims, the Ottoman empire and the Austrian-Hungarian empire, etc, up until WWI. There's both the broad strokes of history and vignettes of everyday life, and I found the description of the process of modernization to be interesting. The language is enjoyable, at least in the translation I read. The book also sparked some interesting discussions (about religion, about East and West, etc) since besides Swedes we also have a Kurd, an Iranian, a German and a Czech in the reading group.
Written in the early Soviet Union (it was published in 1923). This book is basically one big "patriarchy sucks" (and also "the Russian revolution goes sour"). The main character is in a relationship, and what she wants is a comrade. What she gets is a guy who is gradually corrupted by his position of power in the bureaucracy and wants her to be his stay-at-home dressed-up wife, and also he cheats on her. I kept going "dump him already, Vasja!". The style is plain and sometimes a bit clunky, but heartfelt and engaging.
The Bridge On the Drina by Ivo Andric (originally in Serbian, read in Swedish)
Read for my book club at work. I appreciated this book, though I didn't love it--rather, it was interesting and I learned stuff from it. Basically, the bridge is the main character and we get to follow it and the city around it for hundreds of years, with the Christians and the Muslims, the Ottoman empire and the Austrian-Hungarian empire, etc, up until WWI. There's both the broad strokes of history and vignettes of everyday life, and I found the description of the process of modernization to be interesting. The language is enjoyable, at least in the translation I read. The book also sparked some interesting discussions (about religion, about East and West, etc) since besides Swedes we also have a Kurd, an Iranian, a German and a Czech in the reading group.
