#frederik backman

[cabesswtaer]

just finished the winners by frederik backman how the fuck am i supposed to cope

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Nicky Hemick- All for the Game by Nora Sakavic

Genevieve Lefoux- The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger

Jack Wolcott- Wayward Children Series by Seanan McGuire

Benji Ovich- Beartown by Frederik Backman

[sun1seeker]

i want to put benji ovich in my pocket and carry him around so he never gets hurt and ask him how his day is going and beat up anyone who even looks at him the wrong way and give him my jacket when he’s cold and tuck him into bed at night and and and

[poetlcs]

books I’ve read in 2024 - no. 14

Beartown by Frederik Backman

[lossisyours]

When he left her she wept so hard that she couldn’t breathe. Her body was never really the same after that, she curled up and never quite unfurled again.

— Fredrik Backman, Anxious People (tr. Neil Smith)

[rhetoricandlogic]

MY GRANDMOTHER ASKED ME TO TELL YOU SHE'S SORRY by Fredrik Backman

RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

A touching, sometimes-funny, often wise portrait of grief.

A contemporary fairy tale from the whimsical author of A Man Called Ove (2014).

Elsa is almost 8, and her granny is her best—and only—friend. Elsa’s precociousness and her granny’s disregard for societal rules mark them as trouble to most people they encounter and make Elsa a pariah at school. But every night she can journey with her granny to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, made of six kingdoms, each with its own strength, purpose, and interlocking mythologies that Elsa knows by heart. In the Land-of-Almost-Awake, Elsa doesn’t have to worry about how she fits in at school, in the apartment building full of misfits where she lives, or in her family, where both her parents are divorced and remarried and her mother is pregnant. When granny passes away with very little notice, Elsa is bereft. And angry. So angry that it’s almost no consolation that Elsa’s granny has left her a treasure hunt. But the hunt reveals that each misfit in her apartment building has a connection to her granny, and they all have a story reflected in the Land-of-Almost-Awake. Neither world is short on adventure, tragedy, or danger. This is a more complex tale than Backman’s debut, and it is intricately, if not impeccably, woven. The third-person narrative voice, when aligned with Elsa’s perspective, reveals heartfelt, innocent observations, but when moving toward omniscience, it can read as too clever by half. Given a choice, Backman seems more likely to choose poignancy over logic; luckily, the choice is not often necessary. As in A Man Called Ove, there are clear themes here, nominally: the importance of stories; the honesty of children; and the obtuseness of most adults, putting him firmly in league with the likes of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman.

A touching, sometimes-funny, often wise portrait of grief.

[in-dire-read]

Winners (Book Review)

Written by: Frederik Backman

"All the best players have a darkness inside them, that's why they end up the best, they think the darkness will disappear if they can just win enough times..."

4.5 / 5 Stars

Summary

As Beartown struggles to move forward, the destruction of Hed's ice rink re-ignites a dormant rivalry, which only quickly escalates. How far will the residents go to protect their hockey club?

Thoughts

The third book is extremely character-driven and explores multiple points of view. Each character's story is linked to another to explain a community's pride and ambition for their hockey club. Frederik Backman's writing style invokes strong emotional reactions, for he uses allegories and metaphors to emphasize his points. For example, Theo & Tails were excellent antagonists because they presented the greed of consumerism.

"We try to be men and never really know how. The tales about us who live here are the same sort of tales that are told about everyone, everywhere, we think we're in charge of the way they unfold but of course that happens unbearably seldom. They carry us wherever they want to go. Some of them will have happy endings, and some of them will end exactly the way we were always afraid they would."

"If you can't understand if the girl you're having sex with wants it or not, then you've never had fucking sex with a girl who wants it."

[cpt-in-el]

I couldn't stop thinking about A Man Called Ove after finishing it. So yesterday I read And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, cried, and immediately started Anxious People.

I just really like how Frederik Backman writes people and his narrative style.

[strangerfae]

I pretty much cried the whole time reading Frederik Blackman's "and every morning the way home gets longer and longer"

[labyrinthderbuchstaben]

"For me, culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit."

David asked what he meant by that, and Sune replied: "That most people don't do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with."

[bookswithdora]

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”

Frederik Backman, A Man Called Ove

[bookandcover]

This was the first book I read on my summer break. Set in snow-smothered Swedish Beartown, a community whose heart and soul are their Junior and A-Team hockey clubs, this was an excellent read to readjust my brain from the bustle of the school year to the deep immersion of reading. I fell fully into this book, joyous in the feeling of reading at my pace, living inside a story for a period of time. 

This novel succeeds through its incessant layering of nuance and complexity. A complex and tough situation becomes more complex, as information about it becomes public, as “sides” are taken, as self-interested and deeply empathetic loyalties are chosen, and so the moral/ethical knot gets more knotted. 

I read A Man Called Ove and I had mixed feelings about it. I picked up Beartown because it’s about hockey and about hockey towns (places with salt-of-the-earth hometown pride paired with bitterness that the world seems to move on without them). The psychology of that combination fascinates me, both foreign and familiar having grown up in a small, yet liberally-minded town in rural Maine). Part of the distance I felt from A Man Called Ove was due to the writing style, and I still haven’t been able to put my finger on whether this distance is Backman’s at times clinical, at times sentimental prose or whether the matter-of-fact tone, is due to the translation. While I don’t love the prose, I love the concept of this book and the multi-dimensional characterizations that succeed through their accumulation. No one scene or character description is devastating (in fact, some feel either simple or over-done), but the complete book is devastating—collectively these character portraits succeed in creating a depiction of a town so varied, and so familiar, it’s heart-wrenching to watch it tear itself apart from within. It’s also heart-wrenching to see Beartown healing again—changed, distorted, scarred, fracture, different, in some ways better and stronger for this transformation, and in other ways completely unchanged, sheltering and sustaining the misogyny and racism that permeated the town at the beginning of the story. 

[multyfangirl]

Went to see A man called Otto last night at the movies last night. Ngl,I was a bit nervous and really debated whether to try it. The swedish movie was good, tbh, I don't remember how well it followed the book but it was nice. I really, really enjoyed the movie last night, Tom Hanks was amazing plus all the others did a fantastic job.I think they covered the main parts.I cried at Sonya and Otto's story for the third time🥹It was worth it 🤍

[whatsheread]

The Year of the Audiobook - Part 1

The Year of the Audiobook – Part 1

2022 appears to be the year I listened to audiobooks. Hours upon hours of them. They make up almost 45 percent of everything I’ve read so far this year. Because I am SO far behind in reviews, and I have less than three weeks in the year to finish those reviews, I’m feeling a little pressure. One way to alleviate that pressure is writing down-and-dirty, quick, and short reviews. As none of the…

[lossisyours]

Falling in love is magical, after all, romantic, breathtaking… but falling in love and love are different. Aren’t they? Don’t they have to be?

— Fredrik Backman, Anxious People (tr. Neil Smith)

[kingreader]

i just read beartown and quite literally cried about 37 times. everyone needs to read this book immediately.