Question of the Month: What was the first book you really fell in love with?

The question of the month for July from Michael G D'Agostino at A Life Examined was as follows:

"What was the first book (or book series) you really fell in love with?"

I don’t’ fall in love with books, and hardly anything else either. Both love and hate are outside my normal range of feelings.  

I’ve been reading a Hell of a lot of books over the years. The first book series that I got really hooked on was The Hardy Boys.

This won’t get me much cred among the literature feinsmeckers, I know. The Hardy Boys is a crappy book series, written by ghost writers.  My excuse is that I was quite young, about 8 years old. I read all the Hardy books, there were about 70 of them at that time.  Then I had to continue with something else; western series, Maclean, Bagley, Forsythe and so on.

Then, when I was in high school, I discovered Dostoyevsky, which was really cool stuff. I read all his books that I could find, and even walked around half of St. Petersburg (Leningrad at that time) to visit Dostoyevsky’s apartment, which is now a museum.

In the recent years, I have found a new favorite author, the French rebel Michel Houellebecq. So that’s about where I am now.

(Picture taken some time ago in the mountains, trout fishing on a late night in June. The weather is good and it's time for vacation. So long.)

Fuck Denmark

Some time ago I happened to visit the Faroe Islands. The rocky basalt islands are covered by green grass, and inhabited by 50.000 people and twice as many sheep. The nature is awesome, with some and some spectacular places.

The Faroe Islands are part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Since 1948 the Faroes have enjoyed the high degree of self governance, but they are still under Danish rule in many respects, such as foreign policy. Today the Danish rule is quite mild, but it hasn't always been like that. Throughout history, the Faroe Islands have been treated pretty much as a Danish colony.

On the top of a small hill in Torshavn, there is a basalt obelisk, erected in the late 1800s, to celebrate the visit of the Danish king. I heard that some people accept the monument, and some people dislike it. I was disappointed to see that the obelisk was so clean and untouched. Send some young punks or students up there to decorate the obelisk with some "Fuck Denmark" graffiti, at least.

BTW, I have nothing against Denmark. Copenhagen is a great city >:)

(Pictures taken at Faroe islands a month ago)