Nikolaj moves to a newly constructed house in a suburb in one of the counties surrounding Oslo in the early 1970s. His father is one of the architects who planned the area, and is full of dreams about the social opportunities the new affordable housing will mean for families in the area. As it turns out, most of the families who move in stick to a rigid routine of conformity and normality – their children wear the same thing, cut their hair the same way, […]
I like driving in my car
Ah, Stephen King. He’s been my number one go-to author since I was in my early teens and read It and The Tommyknockers. I pretty much never looked back from that point on and while not every book he publishes is a slam dunk (Dreamcatcher is one of the most jawdroppingly terrible things, and I never even bothered to finish Lisey’s Story I was so bored and annoyed by it), when you’re as prolific as King is, that’s no real surprise. But I’d still much rather read an off target Stephen King […]
Trigger Warning: Life can be tragic
Last month, the New York Times, and subsequently other major news outlets, covered the controversy over trigger warnings in academia, i.e., a growing movement on US college campuses to have professors provide warnings in advance of potentially disturbing topics covered in their syllabi (rape, racism, suicide, etc.). When I saw some of the books listed as requiring trigger warnings (Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart), I was deeply disturbed and I generally agree with those who have spoken out against warnings. And does […]
Take a trip to 1970’s Tehran
Ugh. So far behind, and it’s only June. I’ve started working from home again, and finding myself wishing for more hours in the day to get everything done. I’m keeping up with the reading, but the reviewing is killing me. Gonna do my best. I feel like it was ages ago that I read Persepolis. And when I was reading it, I had a lot of important things I wanted to say. That I needed to say. And now I can’t remember any of them. […]