Search Results for: my struggle

“But what is the truth of our social existence?”

Why would anyone invest a large percentage of their reading time in Knausgaard’s 3600-page novel? Is it worth it? I started reading it because I was curious about this Norwegian writer’s experiment with a new form of writing, which emphasizes … Continue reading

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Best Books of 2018: Five Favorites

The books I have recommended most often to my friends this year are: Pioneers! Strong families! Resourcefulness! I’ve always been drawn to the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I’ve often recommended her books to those who are learning to … Continue reading

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“To live the complete human catastrophe is terrible indeed, but to write about it?”

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who conducted a public experiment.  He wanted to see what would happen if he wrote honestly about his life, aiming to “penetrate that whole series of conceptions and ideas and images that hang … Continue reading

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“What was consciousness other than the surface of the soul’s ocean?”

In a Paris Review interview, Jesse Barron observes that Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work is “so aesthetically forceful as to be revolutionary.” What makes it revolutionary is Knausgaard’s goal to write “as close to life as possible” even if it means … Continue reading

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Best of 2015 Books

2015 has been a wonderful year for publishers and readers. My “Best of 2015” list consists of the books that I am most likely to read again. In the memoir category, Norway’s Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fourth volume of My Struggle … Continue reading

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“. . . autumn was wrapping its hand around the world, and I loved it. The darkness, the rain, the sudden cracks in the past that opened up…”

It defies the imagine: Karl Ove Knausgaard, a writer from Norway, has caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal. An article in the WSJ’s magazine named him the “2015 Literary Innovator,” declaring that he was “quite probably in line … Continue reading

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“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination, as your imagination limits the world.”

This is the third of six volumes of memoir about the world and the imagination of Karl Ove Knausgaard.  It’s a new kind of writing that defies categorization and is driven be the desire to explore the truth. For Knausgaard, … Continue reading

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“…I lived in a series of all-decisive moments, and the intensity was so great that sometimes life felt almost unlivable….”

This is not a book for readers who hate getting lost when a scene on page 105 doesn’t get resolved until page 340. It is for readers who would like to see how a literary genius describes the challenges and boredom … Continue reading

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“Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows.”

The passage continues: “That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself.”  This book, the autobiography of Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, reminds me of Proust.  He describes … Continue reading

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“I want to show you the world, as it is all around us, all the time.”

How does Karl Ove Knausgaard’s collection of letters for his unborn daughter compare to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me? All three are beautiful explorations of ideas; all are meant to guide, … Continue reading

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Best Books of 2014

No blog about books would be complete without a year-end “best of” list. For me, the best are “books that I am most likely to read again.”  For fiction, I predict that I will turn to Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch many times in the years to … Continue reading

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“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deep thing.”

Are poems tools? The 90 contributors to this book think so. They describe how specific poems have helped them. For example, our line this week, from the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, was submitted by a teacher who has those words … Continue reading

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