Christmas in the Stenberg family.

The other day I talked to Jake about Swedish Christmas. He was surprised at what we do. Specially at three o'clock (every Swede knows what I'm taking about) so I though I would write about a typical Christmas in my family.
Noted, none of my parents where born in Sweden but I would still say we celebrate a pretty Swedish Christmas.

Christmas is on the 24th, Christmas Eve, this is when we celebrate.
I wake up in my childhood home, in a small town close to the Baltic Sea, Trosa, and the whole house smells like food. A traditional Christmas food in Sweden is ham (julskinka, Christmas ham) that is cooked in the oven for almost a whole day on low temperature.
Breakfast is rise pudding (also known as Christmas porridge), with cinnamon and milk. This my dad always has ready for us when we get up. Sometimes there is an almond in the pudding and the one that gets the almond gets a wish or it is said that they get married next year. Some families gives a present for the one that gets the almond, but that's not that common in the Stenberg family. And my little brother Tim always gets the almond anyway.

After breakfast I help my dad with the cooking. Since I'm a vegetarian/vegan I cook all the veggie foods that I want on the Christmas table and dad cooks all the meaty stuff.
There is ham, pickled herring, eggs, homemade bread, salad with anchovy and eggs (my mums favorite), there are porkkanalaatikko a Finnish carrot pudding kind of (my favorite), salmon, eal (my brothers favorite) and so on. We drink julmust, this coke like soda that is always drunk around Christmas. Of course there is also snaps, a little shot of alcohol now and then during the meal.

A traditional Stenberg family Christmas table.

 We eat and eat. Then three o'clock strikes.
This is when everyone (or at least many) in Sweden move from the Christmas table to the TV. Here is what Jake was so surprised about: we watch Donald Duck.
To quote the article Jake was reading about Swedish Christmas, Funny as it may sound, Swedes, young and old, gather in front of the TV to watch Christmas-theme Disney cartoons, the decorated Christmas tree glittering in the background. This program has been an indispensable part of the celebrations ever since the 1960s.
It's something we always do, and I forget that other nations do not do, but I guess it's a bit strange. A tradition is a tradition.

Then it's time to open presents. We don't have a Santa knocking on the door anymore and the presents are under the Christmas tree. My mum hands them out and we open then. After that is done we have some glögg, mulled wine and play with our open presents. For me this usually mean that I start reading or at least turning pages in the books I've gotten.

The six o'clock comes around the it's time to turn on the TV again for another Christmas TV tradition, Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton, which is a short film from the 70s about Karl-Bertil who gives away the rich people presents to the poor, thinking he is Robin Hood. Take from the rich and give to the poor. He works at the post office and on the 24th he takes all the presents sent to directors and other fancy titles, goes to the bad part of town and gives the poor people the presents.
Karl-Bertil's father finds out that Karl-Bertil has done this and makes him go around to everyone that he has taken a present from and apologize. Instead of people being angry for not getting their presents, they praise Karl-Bertil for giving it to the poor. The poor getting gifts like Satre in French, glass vases and other things.
It's about 20 minutes long and if you're curios you can watch it the first eight minutes, in English (I can't find the whole thing in English, I'm afraid), on youtube if you click HERE. (Jake, click and watch!) In English it is apparently called Christopher's Xmas Mission. I guess Karl-Bertil doesn't fit in a English speakers mouth.

After that Christmas Eve in my family is pretty much over. We drink more glögg and might watch a movie or play a game.
Next day on the 25th, we celebrate again with the food that was left over and big brother (Fredrik), big sister (Teresia) and her amazing daughters (Tove & Sofia) come around. They celebrate the 24th with their mother/grandmother. It's pretty much more eating and more present giving.

Little brother Tim and niece Sofia, Christmas 2011.

That it for Christmas. It is common that on the night of the 25th, after overeating, family and all, you go to a bar with your friends and drink beer.
Aren't we Swedes crazy? :)
This year my family, mum, dad and Tim are coming to Berlin to celebrate Christmas. I don't know what we will do yet but I think we will have a nice time. It will not be as traditional but still.

I'm off to work. Happy holidays!

Book recommendations.

Working in a book shop means I get to recommend books to costumers often. And when I'm not working - I read, so I have some recommendations to share.
Maybe a good Christmas tips for a last minute present for someone or for yourself. Or some books to put on your to-read list.
I'm not going to sort by who you should give the book to, because I feel that tagging books to a certain person usually doesn't work. It's all about the person and what they like to read.
I will try to keep it short and not get to excited writing about book I really like.

Brick stones:
In Swedish we say brick stones about tick, long books. I know this doesn't translate to English, but it should. Winter is the perfect time to pick up a +800 pages book.

A Game of Thrones - George R R Martin
Not a fantasy fan? Neither am I but I couldn't stop reading this book. Winterfell is one of the Seven Kingdoms in this medieval land a guarded by a wall. What exists on the other side is of the wall is unsure, but sometime dark and that you don't want to let in. You get to follow several characters, from children to women and lords in all parts of the Seven Kingdoms. There are battles, death, sex, family problems and so much more.
I recommend this book to everyone. It's a great read and when you start is hard to stop. This is a first book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series so while Winter is coming you might as well be reading.

The Passage - Justin Cornin
I'm currently reading this book and it's amazing. Cornin starts writing about Amy and her mother that live very poor and because of that the mother gives Amy away to a nun. Amy is a very special child. She doesn't speak that much. Everyone feels something when they're around her, something they never felt before.
When Amy goes to the zoo panic among the animals break out when and Amy get's kidnapped by the police and get to a medical testing center. There 12 other are kept and watched 24 hours a day. The 12 don't eat or do anything, except get to you head. So much that they, some sort of un-dead vampires, get loose and start spreading this disease all cross America. The story starts in 2014 and then describes the post apocalyptic US 94 years later.  Great read (so far, I'm 700 pages in). This apocalyptic world that the US turns in to, everyone scared of these virals, trying to get though nightly attacks and somehow get by is so exciting to read about.

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakow
This is my all time favorite classic. It's about 100 years old, Urkranian, but still works good today.
A spring afternoon two men meet the devil in Moscow. They of course doesn't know he is the devil until he stars to talk about being part of Jesus crucifixion and other stories that he shares. After this Moscow is filled with black magic. Crazy things starts happening all around and the only ones that can make this stop is the nameless Master and Margarita that get involved in the devils games.
I know, it sounds weird but trust me, it's so good. So far I haven't meet anyone that didn't like this book. From all ages, 15 - 90. Highly recommend to everyone.

Funny books:
Christmas and winter can be hard at time, at least in northern Europe. Sometimes you need books to make you laugh.

The Second Coming - John Niven
God takes a holiday from creating life. He goes fishing. But since time goes way slower in Heaven then it does on Earth, when God leaves somewhere in the Renaissance (when everything still is going good) and is away for a short time in Heaven time; time on Earth flies by and when God is back it's 2011. And he's pissed of all that has happened. 
God decides to send Jesus back to Earth to spread the message Be nice and try to make everything better Down there. Jesus, or JC as he is called, has no idea what to do but likes to play the guitar and sing. Somehow this makes him a part of American Idol.
A witty, well written book which I laughed a lot to. Apparently not a hit among believers of God, but to everyone else a crazy and funny read.

How to Talk to a Widower - Jonathan Tropper
Dough lost his wife in a plane crash. He is 29 and a widower. He feels sad and angry. He can't really make himself leave the house. This after a year of his wife's, Hailey, death. He drinks whiskey and is in a pool of self-pity. He writes a column for a magazine how his widowed life is and has book contracts at his door step that he doesn't feel like talking, because he doesn't feel like doing anything.
Dough's twin sister Clare is determent to get Dough out of the house and start meeting women again and starts sending him on dates and tells Doug that he has to trust her.
At the same time Russ, Heiley's son from a previous marriage, want Doug to take care of him instead of his stupid dad.
All this makes Dough's life to look totally different from what he wants.
Dick-lit at it's best. It's sad but Tropper has also given to story a lot of humor. The sibling relationship is one of the best I've ever read. 

Naïve.Super - Erlend Loe 
Erlend Loe is one of my favorite writers. He's Norwegian and write in a simple but yet in a funny and interesting way.
In Naïve.Super the 25 year old nameless main character loses to his brother in croquet and has a life crisis. He takes a break from his studies and watches his brother's apartment while he is gone. He sends fax(old school!) to a friend. He reads about time. He writes lists about things he likes, have seen, wants to do and so on. He also gets a ball and children's hammer bench that he plays with.
The story ends in New York and I have read this book many times and still think it's great. I might not sound as it, but you laugh a lot while reading it. With most books by Loe you do.
First sentences: I have two friends. A good one and a bad one. And there's my brother. He might not be as friendly as I am, but he is OK.
Read it, please!  


Short and good:
A short book can also be good.

All my friends are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman
All of Toms friends are superheroes. Tom's not. He has fallen in love and married The Perfectionist but at a party her ex-boyfriend Hypno hypnotizes her so she can't see Tom anymore. Tom tries to make her see him again and The Perfectionist waits for Tom to come home.
There are also great superhero descriptions about the other superheroes, like Falling Girl and The Couchsurfer among others. Read parts of it here.
If you all ready read this book I can also recommend one of Kaufman's other books, The Tiny Wife. In the same style, funny and quick read too.

The Housekeeper + The Professor - Yoko Ogawa 
A housekeeper starts working for a (ex) mathematics Professor that had a bad accident years back. The Professor can only remember things for 90 minutes at the time. He remembers he's math but new things, like having a new housekeeper he forgets. Every day he puts on a jacket that has notes of all the he should remember pined to it. You have a new housekeeper is one. The Professor has a hard time talking about feelings and instead he talks about math. This books is about 200 pages long with math problems in. I don't know much math but I really enjoyed this book. It's beautifully written and the story is sad at the same time as it is heartwarming.

Dystopia: 
Dystopias is something that I really like to read so here are some favorites.

Kollocain - Karin Boye
A Swedish classic. This book was written in the 1940s and is a great, dark dystopia.
This book has been compared to Huxley's Brave New World because they are both drug dystopias. Kollocain is a drug that is used is a truth drug to see if people have rebellios thought about the totalitarian states it's set in.
The book is Leo Dall's, a loyal citizen and inventor of the drug Kollocain, diary that we follow. A society of brainwashed and controlled people that can be reported to the police if they show any unusual behavior.
Recommended to everyone who likes classic dysopias like Huxley or Orwell. This is a must read.

I am legend - Richard Mathson
I didn't really know where to put this. Maybe you can call it a classic, at least I would say that it is in the sci-fi genre. Many might know of the film that came out a couple of years back. I never saw it but all I heard is that the book is better. Of course it is.
This book blew my mind. I couldn't stop reading it after the first couple of pages. 
I'm not going to write what this book is about at all. Open it and read. That's how you will experiences this book the best. For everyone. Young as old.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbary
A book burns at the temperature 451F and Guy Montag works at a fire man, which means he burns up books. People don't need them any way.
Montag can't remember having any feeling really. He can't remember how he meet his wife even. A wife, Mildred that taking popping sleeping pills like candy and watches her "parlor wall" entertainment all the time. Montag can't even answer the question if he is happy. After some talks with the 17-year old Clarisse Montag starts feeling different. He saves a couple of books from the fire and says to Mildred that they should read them and see if they have any value, if not, they will burn them and never talk about again.
The other fire men found out that Montag has books and comes to burn his house down. Montag flees trying to get away from the concecenes that will happened to him if he gets caught..
Noted that the temperature isn't the right one this short book is one of my favorite dystopian books.
Exciting, greatly written and genius social critic. 

Crime/Thrillers:
How about some crime and thrillers in the winter darkness? Yes I say.

Before I go to Sleep - S J Watson
Christine wakes every morning with no memories from the last 20 years. There is a man lying next to her in the bed that she has never seen before. He tells her he's her husband  and that they have been married for many years. Christine doesn't believe him.
Christine had a bad accident which lead to this memory loss that she has.
Every morning starts like this. Then she gets a call from her doctor that tells her to read her diary and tells her where she put it yesterday. She starts to read it and write what she experiences every day. Slowly she finds out what has really happened to her.
So exciting! A page turner and super hard to put down. You just want to know how it ends. 

The Chemistry of Death - Simon Beckett
I read this book the other day and it's also a real page turner. In a small town England, Dr. Hunter works and lives. Mysterious murdered female bodies are found and the police asks Hunter to help solve the case of the the women that have been murdered in a brutal way.
It has a crime novel needs; blood, death, love and mystery.

Black Coffee - Agata Christie
A classic Christie with Hercule Poirot.
I think this book a book of Christie that not so many read. She wrote is a play and it works wonderfully as a classic mystery story.
Hercule Poirot and a friend are asked to visit a famous physicist, Sir Claud Amory, but Sir Claud has been murdered upon their arrival. The plot revolves around a stolen formula, with Poirot deducing which of Sir Claud's house guests/family members is the killer.


Young Adult:
I don't really know what to call this section or these books. They are called young adult, but I think they are for everyone.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
This book is one of my favorite books I read this year. And The Fault in Our Stars, but I get to that one later.
This book is written in letter form to the reader that teenage "Charlie" writes. He writes about school, about friends and about the books he reads. He has a pretty special mind and starts out like this shy and unpopular guy. Chbosky's way of describing the characters and Charlie's messy head is genius  Is a book that is hard to put down and really makes you care.

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Hazel & Gus meet at Cancer Kid Support Group, both terminally ill. They start to read each others favorite books and since Hazel's favorite book isn't really finished they decide to go on a trip to Amsterdam to find the author and ask him how it really ended.
The language! The characters!  The story! I laughed, I cried but most of all I really cared for both Hazel and Gus. I like their families and in this cancer darkness they can still find laughter. How Hazel and Gus speak to each other is perfect teen and I just want to have them as my friends this second.

Have a great Christmas and New Years!
Hopefully you will have time to read a lot. 

Eat, work, read, sleep and repeat.

I think the headline says it all, because this is all I feel like I'm doing right now.
I wake up, eat, read on the way to work, work, eat, read on the way from work, eat, read in my reading arm chair in my room, sleep. Next day is the same. Repeat for five days a week. Two days sleep-ins and more reading with more coffee then usually and you have my week.

With that written, I can't say that so much interesting is happening in my life at the moment. Most of the things I spend my time with are book related. I still see friends, go to social events, write in my diary and try to sort out the mess, that feels like it getting bigger for everyday, in my head.
I'm having bad days most of time it feel like and I'm kind of struggling with a lot of things in my every day life. I don't feel bad, but I can't say that I feel that good either.
I go from feeling overworked and overwhelmed to feeling I'm not doing enough and underwhelmed. I'm tried. I'm homesick. I'm confused about most things. I'm emotionally unstable changing mood all the time.

I feel that's enough of the the workings of my inner brain. More you don't need to know at the moment. I'm not going to break or anything.
I do feel good about reading and I enjoy talking about books all day trying to find a great book for a costumer. I enjoy that I read and that I'm taking time to write more then before. Even though it might just be a couple of words a day. Some days are pages long.
I'm back in book club after a couple off month of and love it. Right now we're reading the first female Nobel prize winner in literature, Semla Lagerlöf. She won the Nobel prize in 1909 and was the first woman selected to be in the Swedish Academy, the ones that choose the winner for the prize among other things.  This years before women could even vote in Sweden. Many might know about Nils Holgersson underbara resa genom Sverige or as it's called in English The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Anyhow, in Sweden you kind of grow up talking about her and since I haven't read anything of her, except a child version of Nils, I suggested her for book club under the theme Nobel Prize winner. In our very democratic book club everyone gets to suggest book but my suggestion won. So we're reading The Treasure(1903) and I really like this book. It's a ghost story in winter Sweden; what's not to like? And it's also really short.
It also has giving me a short break from reading just books we have at work. In Swedish! And getting to talk about it for hours!

I guess I'm kind of boring at the moment.
I like spending time at home. I like spending Friday evening at 20-21 streaming Swedens hardest quiz show, På Spåret, and answering the questions I know the answer to to loud for myself while following the twitter feed about the show. I drink heaps of coffee most of the time. I always look forward to Super Sunday with brunch and friends. I like talking Finnish with my friend and mentor in Finnish, Vinski. I like drinking beer on a Thursday with Nanna when we both have frustrating days and so on.
I feel very calm most of the time and this makes me feel like I'm not doing anything which isn't really true. I don't think I do anything really that feels write-able.
I'm unsure if this is even something that is write-able or readable/interesting for you.

Since I just ate, I will now read. I'm reading about vampires at the moment (no, not Twilight) and it's getting super good 300 pages in but it might make my dreams go crazy bad so I might just read about God going fishing and coming back, seeing that earth is going to hell. After reading comes sleep. Do it you too. :)
Read well and good night. Puss. 

Ps. Anyone who can get which books I wrote about above gets so many plus points. Specially if you know both the author and the title.