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Started out with a little bit of everything.
Read J.K. Rowling's "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Charming but disappointing "novella". It's short but I still feel like it's lacking quality and depth. It has lots of humor and nods to the Harry Potter universe but the lists of beasts are straight up boring and surface-level mussings. If you compare it to things like the Beastiaries/monster books for Dungeons and Dragons it seems incredibly unambitious.
I believe the thing was written for charity so that might explain it I guess but I expected much more from the book.
Began reading Brandon Sanderson's "Steelheart". Maybe it's because it's a Danish translation but I feel like this book lacks heart. The story starts out strangely weak. The "prologue" is cool but I feel like Sanderson is just doing a comic book hero/villain re-tread of the Mistborn-trilogy. I'm going to to force myself to finish the book eventually, I do love the idea about a book about superheroes but it's not really doing anything for me yet.
I'm halfway through a collection of poems by a controversial young Danish poet called Yahya Hassan, whom the collection is also named after. It's a mix of semi-fictional autobiography depicting the guys life in Aarhus ghettos, his upbringing and the muslim/immigrant culture in Denmark. I believe it's been translated to a ton of different languages since 2013. It's a strange experience reading it.
I'm not really much for poetry. The stuff I typically come across strikes me as a loathsome cross between sophistry and navel gazing. It's that kind of pretentious literature as art part of writing that I feel no need to delve into. I typically just read for entertainment.
However, beyond being culturally significant, the book is fascinating. It's written in ALL CAPS and it basically reads like being punched in the face. It's incredibly blunt, raw, brutal and unashamed. Like thug style slam poetry. The writer describes the trials and tribulations of growing up in a dysfunctional, poor, uneducated, radical home in a ghetto, in a country that doesn't understand you and you in turn don't understand. It's written with the innocent observations of a child, commented on by an author who's looking back with the years separating him from the child he was and the man he grew up to be. It's an angry and sorrowful and upsetting read. I can typically only read 5-10 pages before having to put it down.
From his appearances in the media I can't say I like Yahya Hassan much but this book goes a long way towards explaining how he got that way.
Also reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5". I'm only about 20'ish pages into the book but it's not what I expected. I'd read stuff about it being a sci-fi book about WW2 and the firebombing of Dresden. So far though it's just the amusing recollection of a bored and drunk author thinking back on his life and the war. It's fun so far.
I'm also pleasantly surprised by Vonnegut's writing. It's old of course and the language and phrases he uses are of course antiquated or odd in some ways. But in other ways it's refreshingly straight forward. It's not flowery or self indulgent. It's down to earth, workman like writing that gets to the point and takes you along for the ride with little resistance. I can see why he remains a popular author.
This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 24 September 2017 - 06:47 PM
