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Recent reading
Moll by Elisabeth Rynell (only in Swedish)
Yay, new book by one of my favorite Swedish authors! The title is the main character's name, but it also means "minor key" in Swedish. This book turned out to be very relevant to the last book I read, about the city-countryside divide in Sweden. It's SF about a future where most of the countryside has been abandoned and the infrastructure isn't maintained. Most people live in the cities. It's not clear where they get their food, but I suppose agriculture might be concentrated to the most fertile regions. Anyway, we don't get a comprehensive view of of how society works--we follow an older woman who, along with other "useless" people, is going to be deported from Stockholm to a smaller town. But she escapes from the bus and walks out into the wilderness in what must be southern Norrland. Then she finds people living under the radar in the countryside and joins them. For a dystopia, it's a very cosy one, once she gets out there. But did it have to unnecessarily end in tragedy?? Couldn't she have just continued farming potatoes and making goat-cheese with her new friends, instead of falling victim to random male violence? Augh. : ( I did like how realistic it is about what would actually happen when countryside infrastructure is abandoned. People would return in the fall for the moose-hunt, and the forest would be even more mercilessly exploited now that no one is there to protest about it.
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann
I continue exploring the population issue. In this book I learned a lot more about contraceptives and their history than I knew before, and also how power and money and contempt for poor people can distort family planning into something coercive. Well worth reading; makes a lot of good points about how social and economic equality (along with access to good healthcare of all kinds) is the real answer to slowing population growth. Still not convinced overpopulation is not a potential problem, though--this book doesn't even mention possible consequences of climate change and other environmental problems on food supply.
Yay, new book by one of my favorite Swedish authors! The title is the main character's name, but it also means "minor key" in Swedish. This book turned out to be very relevant to the last book I read, about the city-countryside divide in Sweden. It's SF about a future where most of the countryside has been abandoned and the infrastructure isn't maintained. Most people live in the cities. It's not clear where they get their food, but I suppose agriculture might be concentrated to the most fertile regions. Anyway, we don't get a comprehensive view of of how society works--we follow an older woman who, along with other "useless" people, is going to be deported from Stockholm to a smaller town. But she escapes from the bus and walks out into the wilderness in what must be southern Norrland. Then she finds people living under the radar in the countryside and joins them. For a dystopia, it's a very cosy one, once she gets out there. But did it have to unnecessarily end in tragedy?? Couldn't she have just continued farming potatoes and making goat-cheese with her new friends, instead of falling victim to random male violence? Augh. : ( I did like how realistic it is about what would actually happen when countryside infrastructure is abandoned. People would return in the fall for the moose-hunt, and the forest would be even more mercilessly exploited now that no one is there to protest about it.
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs by Betsy Hartmann
I continue exploring the population issue. In this book I learned a lot more about contraceptives and their history than I knew before, and also how power and money and contempt for poor people can distort family planning into something coercive. Well worth reading; makes a lot of good points about how social and economic equality (along with access to good healthcare of all kinds) is the real answer to slowing population growth. Still not convinced overpopulation is not a potential problem, though--this book doesn't even mention possible consequences of climate change and other environmental problems on food supply.