BTT: Do-Over

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme about books and reading habits. This week, Sally asks:

“Have you ever bought a book, started reading it and then realised you have already read it? If so, how far did you get? (Can you tell this happened to me for the first time ever this week!?!) And–did you keep reading??”

I know it has happened more than once with books I borrowed from the library; I suppose it may also have happened with some I bought, but I can’t recall a specific example just now.

If it happens with a library book, whether I continue to read or not depends on how I like it and how much I remember.

I quite often reread books on purpose though – and sometimes buy one that I first borrowed. With a few favourites, I bought them both as printed books and as audio books; or both in English and in Swedish translation.

I suppose the biggest risk for me to end up with two copies of the same book by mistake would be with detective novels by very productive writers like Agatha Christie or Ruth Rendell. I bought some and borrowed others; and some in English and some in Swedish translation. I couldn’t say off-hand which titles I borrowed and which I’ll find in my own bookshelf.

V for Vänern and Vänersborg

ABC Wednesday - V

Vänern (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈvɛːnəɳ]) is the largest lake in Sweden, the largest lake in the EU and the third-largest lake in Europe after two in Russia. It is located in the southwest of the country in the provinces of Västergötland (east side), Dalsland (west side), and Värmland (north side).

Geologically, Lake Vänern was formed after the last ice age about 10,000 years ago.

Lake Vänern covers an area of 5,655 km² (2,183 sq mi). It is located at 44 m (144 ft) above sea level and is on average 27 m (89 ft) deep. The maximum depth of the lake is 106 m (348 ft).

There are 22000 islands of various size in the lake, and many different fish species. Along the shores there are also some excellent beaches for bathing in the summer.

The lake’s main tributary is Klarälven, which flows into the lake near the city of Karlstad, on the northern shore. It is drained to the south-west by Göta älv. Thanks to the canal and locks at Trollhättan, quite large freightships are able to pass between Gothenburg (Göteborg) on the west coast, and Lake Vänern. 

At the south-west end of Lake Vänern, at the river mouth of Göta älv, you find the town Vänersborg (see the red pin).  Having blogged about Trollhättan for T (my birth town) and Uddevalla for U, Vänersborg is sort of a given for V. For some purposes, these three towns form an administrative unit, and in that context they are often referred to as Trestad (Three-town).

The name Vänersborg means “fortress at Vänern".  There are no castle ruins to visit in the town, but there used to be an ancient hill fort at a mountain in the area - Halleberg. Nowadays better known as a good place for tourists to go looking for elks (moose).

The plateau mountain Halleberg, Västergötland, Sweden.

Besides being a town of trade because of the position at the lake and river/canal, Vänersborg has long served as an administrative centre in the region.

A Swedish poet in the early 1900s nicknamed the town “Little Paris”.

Personal notes

I don’t have any particular memories from the town of Vänersborg; but in the summers we would sometimes go on an outing to one of the beaches along the shore of Lake Vänern:

Ursand, Vänern

Gardesanna, Vänern

The only photo in this post that is my own is the one at the top of this post, and that’s from the northern shores of Lake Vänern rather than the Vänersborg area.

I also lived ten years in Karlstad on the northern end of the lake, but that town deserves a post of its own (perhaps in the next ABC-round).

The rest of  the photos in this post are from Wikipedia and from badkartan.se

The Future and the Past

Friday (8th June) was Graduation Day in most schools here. 
Florists had a busy day…

I don’t know anyone who is graduating this year but there is a ‘Senior High School’ close to where I live so I went there to snap some photos.

Friends and relatives waiting in the school yard.

It’s common for family and friends to carry placards with the name and often an old baby photo of the graduate. Supposed to make it easier for them to find each other in the crowded school yard…

Finally here they come.

The graduates usually wear white graduation hats (old tradition) – and then people hang flower bouqets and balloons and whatever around their neck.

Afterwards, it’s tradition to go riding around town on lorry platforms. Singing and shouting and whatever, celebrating “freedom”. Usually they have some placards or banners on the side of the truck. The one above had the cleverest messages of those that I saw: “Newly divorced” and “Cutting the umbilical cord”.

Hopefully off towards a bright, independent future!

I got a little bit nostalgic watching them…
Traditions haven’t changed much since “my day”!

New collage of some old photos from my album, digitally colourboosted to compensate for loss of original colour through the years… The green lorry in the upper right hand corner was ours (my class).

Linking this post to Straight Out of the Camera Sunday
(please ignore the nostalgic photo collage! LOL)

BTT: Favourite Secondary Characters

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question comes from Mervih, who wants to know our…

Favorite secondary characters?

Hmm… I’m not 100% sure about the definition of a secondary character...  How far “off centre” should a character be to be called secondary??

Doing a little inventory in my mind, my first conclusion was that for me to remember a secondary character, he/she/it should either be in a book I read several times; or appear in more than one book in a series.

But then I started wondering if perhaps it’s the other way round… that it is a memorable set of secondary characters that makes me want to reread a book, and/ or read the rest of the series!

At least I guess that’s one reason why I reread the Harry Potter books so many times. There are so many characters besides Harry himself whom the author bothered to give their own personal history. Lots of stories going on within the story.

So I could pick a whole bunch of favourite secondary characters from that series alone; but to go with just one, I’ll choose Luna Lovegood. She does not come into it until the fifth book. Eccentric and somewhat unnerving, she tends to see beyond the obvious and it’s not always easy to tell if she’s right or not. But she turns out a very loyal friend. Famous quote: “Don’t worry. You’re just as sane as I am.” (And for those of you who have not read the books: Luna is nicknamed “Loony” by some…)

Another story with lots of characters to choose from is Lord of the Rings. One of my favourites is Treebeard, the Ent.  Famous quote:  “…my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.”

Trying to think of a different category of books than fantasy… Two secondary characters that come to mind are  Simon and Deborah St. James, old friends of Inspector Thomas Lynley in the mysteries by Elizabeth George. I was disappointed that the TV series left them out after the first initial episode/s. Actually I stopped following the TV series after a while. And now I find that Simon and Deborah haven’t even got their own Wikipedia article/s – outrageous! (LOL) In the novels, Thomas Lynley and Simon St James are old friends; Deborah used to be Tommy’s girlfriend before she married Simon; and Lady Helen with whom Tommy is in love (later she becomes his wife), is Simon’s assistant, and used to be in love with him... Quite an intricate relationship setup that hovers in the background of all or most of the books. (Actually there is also one novel in which Simon and Deborah are in the foreground with Lynley only briefly in the background and Barbara Havers out of the picture.)

U for Uddevalla

ABC Wednesday - U

Uddevalla is a town of around 31 000 inhabitants situated on the West Coast of Sweden, in the province of Bohuslän. Bohuslän is known for its rocky shores, and the beaches of Uddevalla are filled with seashells.

Uddevalla has one of the largest shellbanks in the world, a remain from the last glacial period.  Subfossils from more than 103 species have been found. Due to the lime-rich soil there is a unique flora and fauna in the area and it’s a habitat of many different butterflies.

  

▲ Shellbanks Museum

Uddevalla got its city rights in 1498 but was probably a place of trade long before that. Historically, the town was often besieged and changed nationality several times between Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

In the 18th and 19th century, Uddevalla's main importance lay in its herring fishing.

Sometime around 1870-1880, Uddevalla began to attract industries. Uddevalla has a small port and once hosted a large shipyard. This was closed in 1985 in connection with general recession in Swedish shipyard industry.

▲ The health spa resort Gustafsberg is said to have been the first of its kind in Sweden. The old bath-houses still remain and have been turned into a hostel.

From the town, you can take a tourist boat to the old spa resort, or to islands off the coast.

Children fishing for crabs

In Uddevalla, you will also find Bohuslän’s Museum, which has about 300 000 visitors per year and is renowned for its generous opening hours and free entrance.

Personal notes

Most of the photos in this post are my own, from a holiday visit to Uddevalla in the summer of 2004.

Only the two pictures from the Shellbank Museum were copied off a tourist website, because I didn’t go there.

I stayed three or four nights at a small bed & breakfast hotel, looking idyllic on the outside, but rather reminding me of Fawlty Towers. (I blacked out the real name here, since it’s been eight years, and much may have changed since then.)

I remember that when I arrived in the town (by train) the rain was pouring down. Only one of my three days was sunny (and even then not very warm). That’s when I took a boat trip to Gustafsberg, the old spa resort, and snapped the few sunny photos.

The other days, I spent a lot of time inside the museum! - very thankful for the free entrance policy, which allowed me to come and go as I pleased… 

This was before I got a digital camera so the photos were taken with my Olympus XA2.

And those were the days when from a three-day-trip one came back with only a dozen or so photos, rather than at least three hundred ;)