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dancing_moonAhhh I am slipping behind with my reading blog. I've pretty much given up on writing something about all the manga I read, because I read too damn much manga (also, what to say about wol 14 of umtpysomething of 20th Century Boys - or worse, Chi's Sweet Home? Still good, still buying, next!)
Anyway. To start off with, Jim Butcher's Ghost Story is not properly published and the short article I wrote for work is up on the homepage of the geeky bookstore (in Swedish). I've written a longer one too, which will go up as "Tip of the Month: Urban Fantasy" soon(ish), if I remember I'll link to that one too =)
Talking about urban fantasy, the other day I finally had the time to sit down and finish a book that has been on the "To read"-list for an embarrasingly long time.
It is Udda verklighet (Odd reality) the debut novel by my Malmö-based coworker Nene Ormes.
It's about a woman in Malmö, Udda, who has been plagued by vivid dreams - often nightmares - most of her life. She often dreams that she is other people, things happen to her, she says things, without any control. Wellp, turns out that her dreams/nightmares aren't just spookings of the mind, but visionary dreams of what is going on in the paranormal community of Malmö.
When Udda's friend Daniel unwisely goes to investigate one of her dreams, he stumbles onto this hidden world and is taken. The story is about Udda's attempts to find Daniel, learn to navigate the new society she finds herself an unwilling member of and survive the rather nasty people who are eager to get their hands on the first true-dreamer in many a long year. Due to circumstances, her guide through this world is the shapeshifter Hemming.
It reminded me a bit about Gaiman's Neverwhere though it didn't quite reach those heights (depths?) - which, ok, is a bit of an unfair comparsion because Neverwhere is like one of top favorite novels of all times. (But subways = good for urban fantasy enviroments. Mh-hm.)
I like many details; Hemming's birdish behaviour at times, the disgusting mind vampire (I mean, I didn't like-like him but he was just as icky as he was supposed to be. Surprisingly often, the big bad doesn't touch me much; this is the problem of about every other Dresden Files book, for instance).
And though I don't know that much about Malmö the use of places such as the Turning Torso building and contemporary coffe chains made it feel solid, real, even as the scenes there often took place in the imagined elsewhere society. However, the plot as a whole - or rather, what I expected out of the plot as a whole, namely Udda finding her way in this new world - was left dangling a bit too much for my tastes. Otoh, it is the first part of a series and it hooked me enough that I want to read more about Udda.
It helps that the book is very well presented - good cover and the black edging of the papers makes it look really classy. One of the few paperbacks I consider non-dog-earable...
As I write this, I also had a funny thought about the name of the main character. Udda, you see, is simply the word for Odd in Sweden. Not a common name by far, but it still sounds emininetly feminine (it's the a that makes it, I think) and it _works_ like a name. Like "Konstiga" (strange) or "Märkliga" (Curious) just wouldn't do.
However, directly translated to English, you get a name that sounds masculine to me. It would work for a boy (reminds me of Gaiman's Nobody Owens / Bod, actually) but *insertESLdisclaimerhere* but more than a bit strange for a girl. Which, heh, isn't that bad since it's supposed to be a strange name maybe ;) Or you could go the lastname route, perhaps? Ah well, getting off-tangent here...
The reason I finished Udda Verklighet was btw that I spent about three hours waiting for poor _shown_ at the Central Station. Where did he spend these hours? Stuck on a train - in Gnesta of all places! Someone threatened to jump down onto the tracks that go into Stockholm, so they had to stop all traffic and it was a massive brouhaha. The first hour and a half went buy quickly, as I spent it withlanjelin and Maria at a café, but I was reeeally glad to have a good book when they had to go home :)
And today? Today, I carried books. LOADS AND LOADS OF BOOKS. One bookshelf emptied and moved down into my basement, only 3 left to empty ;_; At least tt's the only bookshelf I have to actually move, since I'm renting out the apartment furnished.
However, in the evening, my mother treated me (Well, actually Sho. I just got to come along too ;) to a fancy dinner, so all's well that ends well.
Anyway. To start off with, Jim Butcher's Ghost Story is not properly published and the short article I wrote for work is up on the homepage of the geeky bookstore (in Swedish). I've written a longer one too, which will go up as "Tip of the Month: Urban Fantasy" soon(ish), if I remember I'll link to that one too =)
Talking about urban fantasy, the other day I finally had the time to sit down and finish a book that has been on the "To read"-list for an embarrasingly long time.
It is Udda verklighet (Odd reality) the debut novel by my Malmö-based coworker Nene Ormes.
It's about a woman in Malmö, Udda, who has been plagued by vivid dreams - often nightmares - most of her life. She often dreams that she is other people, things happen to her, she says things, without any control. Wellp, turns out that her dreams/nightmares aren't just spookings of the mind, but visionary dreams of what is going on in the paranormal community of Malmö.
When Udda's friend Daniel unwisely goes to investigate one of her dreams, he stumbles onto this hidden world and is taken. The story is about Udda's attempts to find Daniel, learn to navigate the new society she finds herself an unwilling member of and survive the rather nasty people who are eager to get their hands on the first true-dreamer in many a long year. Due to circumstances, her guide through this world is the shapeshifter Hemming.
It reminded me a bit about Gaiman's Neverwhere though it didn't quite reach those heights (depths?) - which, ok, is a bit of an unfair comparsion because Neverwhere is like one of top favorite novels of all times. (But subways = good for urban fantasy enviroments. Mh-hm.)
I like many details; Hemming's birdish behaviour at times, the disgusting mind vampire (I mean, I didn't like-like him but he was just as icky as he was supposed to be. Surprisingly often, the big bad doesn't touch me much; this is the problem of about every other Dresden Files book, for instance).
And though I don't know that much about Malmö the use of places such as the Turning Torso building and contemporary coffe chains made it feel solid, real, even as the scenes there often took place in the imagined elsewhere society. However, the plot as a whole - or rather, what I expected out of the plot as a whole, namely Udda finding her way in this new world - was left dangling a bit too much for my tastes. Otoh, it is the first part of a series and it hooked me enough that I want to read more about Udda.
It helps that the book is very well presented - good cover and the black edging of the papers makes it look really classy. One of the few paperbacks I consider non-dog-earable...
As I write this, I also had a funny thought about the name of the main character. Udda, you see, is simply the word for Odd in Sweden. Not a common name by far, but it still sounds emininetly feminine (it's the a that makes it, I think) and it _works_ like a name. Like "Konstiga" (strange) or "Märkliga" (Curious) just wouldn't do.
However, directly translated to English, you get a name that sounds masculine to me. It would work for a boy (reminds me of Gaiman's Nobody Owens / Bod, actually) but *insertESLdisclaimerhere* but more than a bit strange for a girl. Which, heh, isn't that bad since it's supposed to be a strange name maybe ;) Or you could go the lastname route, perhaps? Ah well, getting off-tangent here...
The reason I finished Udda Verklighet was btw that I spent about three hours waiting for poor _shown_ at the Central Station. Where did he spend these hours? Stuck on a train - in Gnesta of all places! Someone threatened to jump down onto the tracks that go into Stockholm, so they had to stop all traffic and it was a massive brouhaha. The first hour and a half went buy quickly, as I spent it with
lanjelin and Maria at a café, but I was reeeally glad to have a good book when they had to go home :)And today? Today, I carried books. LOADS AND LOADS OF BOOKS. One bookshelf emptied and moved down into my basement, only 3 left to empty ;_; At least tt's the only bookshelf I have to actually move, since I'm renting out the apartment furnished.
However, in the evening, my mother treated me (Well, actually Sho. I just got to come along too ;) to a fancy dinner, so all's well that ends well.
