God søndag og velkommen til nye smakebiter!

Denne uken har jeg fått lest en hel del. Jeg har lest ferdig Det mørke tårn av Stephen King og alle tegneseriene jeg har som hører til seren: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. (Det er 16 stykker, men jeg mangler den siste). Jeg lager statistikk på alt jeg leser, og jeg har lest 167 bøker på norsk og 222 på engelsk dette året. Så kanskje jeg egentlig burde lese litt mer norsk. Problemet er at mine favorittsjangre er fantasy og science fiction, og det blir oversatt så veldig lite til norsk innen de sjangrene.

Etter Stephen King begynte jeg på The Other Valley av Scott Alexander Howard, og er ca halveis. Jeg syntes den hørtes så spennende ut at jeg kjøpte den inn til fantasy-avdelingen på jobb. På Goodreads har den fått sjangerne: «Science Fiction, Fantasy, Time Travel og Magical Realism». (Jeg elsker tidsreiser). Dette er baksideteksten:

A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future.
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town–except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.

Den er enda bedre enn jeg trodde, så jeg gleder meg til å lese den ferdig i dag. Smakebitene er fra samme bok:

What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.

Ambition might be like a living organism, reliant on nurture to grow. With some encouragement, mine had protruded from the dirt, a tiny shoot crawling toward the light.

The bleakness felt welcome. At last I sat up and entered the ache of the day.