I spent the weekend in Sweden, and luckily went back to my old habit of going through the "On Sale"-box at book stores. I don't do that in Norway, because all the books they put on sale are 1) crap and 2) still expensive. Thanks to this ingrained book searching instinct of mine I found this gem of a book in one of those boxes, and I am stunned. Normally, I am not a short story person. I often buy collections of short stories, but I never actually read them.

This book has a clever cover, a clever title, and is cleverly structured. After 2 pages of short story 1, I was both smiling ruefully, hoping no one could see the text as I was reading, and very, very intrigued. And it continues that way. Every short story is mysterious, and they are all equally good, which is quite unusual. There are devils, monsters, werewolves, saami magic, curses - but nothing is spoken out loud. You keep waiting for some revelation to come so that you truly understand wtf is going on. Partly, this makes the book a little bit hard to read. Information is *never* spelled out, you really have to catch the small print that's more or less an echo of something someone says. Speed-reading this? Not a good idea. Also, for non-natives, it could be frustrating. (As long as you know that there is a certain difficulty, I think you'll be fine. It's not you, it's the book.) Some of the stories are interconnected, making it even more interesting. And it's so obviously Sweden. This is no wannabe goth dark underworld whatever, it's ultraordinary, good old Sweden, with lots of dangerous and seriously creepy people that no one has a clue exist.

Furthermore, the writer has a particular style. Had I written that way in school, my text would have been marked for incorrect sentence structure, but when you're an author, other rules apply. The author uses a combination of ordinary, coordinated sentences, and short, abrupt incomplete phrases. He also consciously mixes tenses. The dialogue is actually dialogue, it's sloppy and full of semi-sentences, the way actual colloquial speak is. And the book is full of modern Scandinavian obscenities. Of course, all of this makes me very happy.

I'm actually sad this book is over.

Excellent book for when you're getting around level B2 in Swedish. Handy to read in preparation for TISUS or other Swedish examinations.

This book is especially useful because it's so practical. It's full of examples and actual stuff you want to know for real life instead of the dry stuff you learn just for the tests. Stuff like how to chit chat, templates for letters and e-mails for different situations, examples of questions you may get in all kinds of situations, examples of both formal and informal remarks. There's also a lot of attention for the culture. I can imagine not every choice in expressing oneself is as logical as for the native speaker. It's good to know that some things are considered a bit rude for example, even if they're grammatically correct.

Hopefully I've passed the TISUS today, otherwise I may have to buy this book!

I have to read more of these kind of books! When learning a new language I tend to avoid using sayings, even though I love it when other people use them and it enriches the language. The benefit of at least speaking another germanic language originally, is that plenty of sayings can be directly translated (though NOT the saying to make an elephant out of a mosquito - in Swedish that would instead be translated to making a chicken out of a feather!)

My favorites:
"Ha rent mjöl i påsen"
"Det är ingen ko på isen"
"Glida in på en räkmacka"
"Hälla vatten på en gås"
"Goddag yxkaft"
"Lägga lök på laxen"
"Pang på rödbetan"

Reading this book from the first to the last page is... perhaps not what I would call fun. It is, however, very informative and there are very many exciting chapters in it. Some are outright boring, and in general there is a lot of repetition on these (almost) 400 pages. The book could have been shortened considerably. Since the style of writing is very formal I don't really think this is a book for just anybody, but rather for hobby linguists, really advanced learners of Swedish, writers, journalists, teachers, etc. At least most of these should already be pretty familiar with a lot of the material presented in detail here, like basic grammar and syntax. Therefore it feels like this book is kind of overdoing it vis-à-vis the people who may be interested in it by adopting explanations meant for people who can't be bothered to even learn how to spell. In addition, the Recommendation part often just repeats half of what has been said in the Discussion.

A final thought is that Swedish linguistics seem rather underdeveloped and the system of the Swedish language, as it is understood today, comes across as rather messy...