Saturday, December 31, 2011

Three books of the year

These books have impressed me:

1. Nicholas Carr: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Internet is good for surfing, but print media is necessary for profound thought.

2. Antti Tuuri: Ikitie [The Eternal Road]. The epic tragedy of the 1930s: the right-wing white terror this side of the border; Stalin's Great Terror with its genocidal purges of Finns in Eastern Karelia on the other side. Tuuri has found a sober, original Homeric epic style for almost overwhelming experiences. A modern masterpiece in the classical novel form, worthy of translation.

3. Juri Joensuu, Marko Niemi, Harry Salmenniemi (ed.): Vastakaanon: suomalainen kokeellinen runous 2000-2010 [Anti-Canon: Finnish Experimental Poetry 2000-2010]. A thick, exhilarating tome full of new poetry against the grain, also in new media, exploding boundaries, from a decade when more new Finnish poetry was written than ever.

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