Some years ago a friend lend me a copy of the novel The last good kiss by James Crumley. It came out the same year I was born, 1978, and I had never heard of it before. The copy was in Swedish and quite new, published by Modernista, a company known for translating American classics or more niched hits.
I really like The last good kiss. It’s what you could call a hard boiled crime novel, but unordinary and well written. Dark and funny.
I recently found out, hadn’t bother to look it up before, that Crumley wrote a couple of other novels. I’ve gotten hold of one them: Dancing Bear. It was published in 1983 and the paper back copy I bought online from a second hand bookstore called Bokbörsen.
It’s a thriller too. A middle aged man who fought in the Korean War is working as a security guy. He’s bored and poor and is trying to stay out of trouble, but one day he gets an odd offer he can’t refuse. An old lady, who used to date his now dead father, wants to hire him to find out why a man and a woman are having a rendezvous in the park next to her house once a week, the one of them driving different cars every time. She just wants to know what that’s all about. Then all turns hell.
I like it so far. Crumley is fun reading. He’s got style.
Have you read Karl-Ove Knausgård? He is the Norwegian author behind the series My struggle📕 in six parts. I am now on part five and I love every piece of it. He’s writing autobiographical about his own life from young boy to a grown man. It’s honest and utterly personal.
Like a personal blog you may think.
Well, when he does it it’s literature.
I wish I could write like that.
I found this blog post interesting. I recognise my own behaviour in what Ridwan is describing. I want to read more, still I don’t. Maybe there is some truth in the statement that you can push yourself to read more if you start to identify yourself as a reader. On the other hand, I consider myself being a reader, still I’m not reading enough. Nothing is stopping me from laying down the phone and picking up a book.
Am I identifying myself the wrong way? Maybe. Or am I just being to hard on myself. Sometimes I read, sometimes I do other things.
Jag har aldrig tidigare läst Per-Anders Fogelströms Stad-serie, romansviten om Stockholm som startar 1860. Nu när jag börjat på första delen är jag glad att jag väntat. Jag hade inte alls haft samma behållning av den om jag läst den med mindre erfarenhet av att bo i den här staden. Barnängen, Nytorget, Vita bergen är idag mycket välbekanta platser för mig och jag har bättre koll på deras historia nu än jag hade som nyinflyttad. Stockholm blir bara mer intressant ju längre tid jag vistas här. Att läsa Mina drömmars stad förstärker den känslan ytterligare.
#books#södermalm
