Suomen historia - Petri Tamminen

'Sotalapset

Me oltiin siskon kanssa niin pieniä vielä, että suomen kieli unohtui meiltä Ruotsissa nopeasti. Kun palasimme sodan jälkeen kotiin Kajaaniin, äiti ei ymmärtänyt meitä eikä me äitiä. Istuttiin siskon kanssa kammarin pöydän alla ja itkettiin. Lopulta äiti keksi, että mennään apteekkiin. Apteekkari osasi ruotsia. Ne ensimmäiset kuukaudet käytiinkin sitten melkein joka päivä apteekissa. Hymyiltiin jo ovelta, kun nähtiin apteekkari, ja apteekkari hymyili, kun se näki meidät.'

'War Childen

We were still so young with my sister,that we forgot the Finnish language quickly in Sweden. When we came back home to Kajaani after the war, mum didn't understand us and we didn't understand mum. We sat with my sister under the chamber table and cried. Finally mum came up with us going to the pharmacy. The apothecary knew Swedish. Those first months we went to the pharmacy almost every day. We would smile already at the door, when we saw the apothecary, and the apothecary too smiled when they saw us.'

Hello!

Suomen historia ('History of Finland') is a nonfiction book with little every day stories in a chronological order from Finnish people throughout the last 100 years. The timing is natural as it came out to commemorate our 100 years of independence. My brother actually got this book for my mum as a Christmas present, so naturally I picked it up to give it a read as well, and it became the last book I read in 2017. (I bet mum still hasn't read it now!)

The stories are quite short, one or two little pages each, like the one I picked to showcase you at the top. Some of them were really cute and heartfelt, some of them were a little less easy to understand. As a whole, on the other hand... Well, I don't really feel like there was a 'whole' to talk about here. The stories were cute and Finnish and about Finland, but there wasn't really a connecting thread going on.

Something nice about the book was also that it went through so many important Finnish events - the wars, The Unknown Soldiers, the presidents, Nokia and all that. There's so many things in this book that I think any Finn can find something relate to.

That being said, if I had compiled this book, I would have definitely found more stories so that the least strong ones could have been left out. It could also maybe have benefitted from talking to younger people as well, because a lot of the stories felt to me like they were a bit... 'Kekkonen-era'. Regardless, it was a nice little book with some really lovely stories that made me really happy and proud. Happy hundred years and many more hundreds to go, Finland!

History is All You Left Me - Adam Silvera

'There's an alternate universe where we're a crew of three, so tight and unbreakable we don't need a fourth to even it out for me. Where a fourth would only be trouble. Jackson drives, you're sitting shotgun, I'm yelling at you both to turn up the volume when our anthem comes on, and we all sing so loudly the radio doesn't stand a chance against our slightly off-key, comfortable chorus. But that's not a universe any of us lives in, unfortunately.'

Hi again!

Here's another book by Adam Silvera, who wrote They Both Die at the End. I was so impressed with that one I picked this up for the Kindle pretty much right away (even after I said I'd wait). And I guess it's safe to say that I was much less impressed with History is All You Left Me. In this one, our OCD-ridden main character has to deal with the death of his ex-boyfriend, best friend and the one he thought he'd be with forever, Theo. He becomes friends with Theo's new boyfriend, Jackson, in an effort to collect all the remaining pieces of Theo's life. And there may even be something Griffin's not even admitting to himself...

I think the main plot of this book, as described above, is solid enough. The execution, however, was a little... sloppy? I found myself skimming through the latter two thirds of this book because I wasn't really invested in Griffin and Theo's relationship, which was mostly told in flashbacks. There's also not all that much happening in this book, plot-wise. I also didn't like most of the characters - the main three came across as somewhat horrible people and also kind of removed from everyone else.

The book is beautifully written, though. I picked up many nice quotes like the one I used at the top. The book also started out very thought-provoking. Towards the end the plot just got really weird, and I found it difficult to remain invested. 

Regardless of how this wasn't really the book for me, I'll be reading Adam Silvera's other works too whenever I come across them.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane - Lisa See

Hello!

Another one of my December 2017 reads was the audiobook The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (I'll just call it Tea Girl in the future!) by Lisa See. The book is about an Akha minority girl called Li-Yan who has to abandon her baby, which is then adopted to America and raised in Pasadena. It's also about tea, heritage, beliefs, minorities and ancestry.

I'll be the first to admit I had never heard of the Akha people before. I guess it would be naïve to suggest that a country with the sheer size of China wouldn't have ethnic minorities living especially in the rural areas, and the Akha are but one of them. The book does an excellent job describing their ways of living, their beliefs and traditions, and I do feel like I know a lot more now. Li-Yan doesn't even speak the Han majority language (Chinese) at the beginning of the book. Tea Girl also taught me a lot more about, well, tea. Like, a lot. I had never before thought so much about the different qualities of tea, the processes and their value... That was one of the strongest aspects of the book for me. Unfortunately these two of my favourite things I could have just as easily gotten by reading a nonfiction book (insofar as those exist) about these topics. The more fictional aspects of this book I found lacking, to say the least.

Li-Yan was mostly likeable. She was okay. There's not that much to say about her, because she was mostly defined through other people; as a daughter, as a wife, as a mother. Her daughter Haley on the other hand was unbearable. She was given an awful American whiny voice in the audiobook, and she was an ungrateful brat. First she whines about not being able to be in touch with her Chinese heritage, then her parents take her to China(!!!) and she whines about what horrible people they are for doing so(???). Rich people problems, I tell you.

And really, I'm aware Lisa See is American and she's famous for her portrayal of China/America, but I would have enjoyed this book at least 75% more if it wasn't so awfully American. I don't only mean how the story eventually migrates to the US, but also how even before that it feels a lot like rich white people trying to 'go down to the level of less intelligent ethnic minorities', if that makes sense. What I mean is, even the China portion felt somehow talked down to, and as if the characters weren't allowed to be all that smart just because they weren't Western. And of course, we have the white savior trope. 

So, all in all I was divided about this book. Half of it I really enjoyed and half of it I really disliked. I cut it neatly in half and gave it 3/5 for that.

Juurihoito - Miika Nousiainen

'Ilta jatkuu hilpeänä ja seurueemme pitää valtavaa älämölöä. Ympäröivistä pöydistä vilkuillaan paheksuvasti. Nautin tilanteesta. Vihdoinkin minulla on perhe jota hävetä. Kyllä ihminen läheisiltään rakkautta saa, mutta nämä hetket jolloin saa hävetä läheisiään, ovat korvaamattomia.'

'The evening continues to be cheerful and our entourage is making a huge racket. From the surrounding tables they are glancing disapprovingly. I enjoy the situation. Finally I have a family to be ashamed of. Sure a person gets love from their relatives, but these moments when you get to be ashamed of them are irreplaceable.'

Heyo!

I realise I read this book in December... Where have I been? At home and at uni and reading books and just growing my backlog of reviews to do. Hopefully in the next (couple of) week(s) I'll have reviews up for my last four 2017 books and then I'll move on to the seven(!) I've already reviewed this year. Whoops!

My brother borrowed me this book to 'read for my blog' - thank you! I finished it on Independence Day, so it really has been a while. It joins Metsäjätti in the books I've reviewed on this blog by the author, but my favourite is still Vadelmavenepakolainen, to which I'll probably forever be comparing the author's other works.

Juurihoito ('Root Canal Therapy') is a story of two long-lost brothers who meet by chance and find out that their father is a serial family leaver. They set out to find out more about their father, and along the way, meet new siblings across the globe, each with a similar story. The first two siblings are Pekka and Esko, the first works in advertisement and the second a dentist. The first is happy and has a child and an ex-wife, the second is very serious and a little lonely, and the group only grows with every trip to the other side of the globe.

The siblings were definitely one of the better things in this book - they were all so similar, yet different, and their interactions were an absolute delight to follow. I think anyone who's ever had / witnessed siblings will relate to it in some way.

As mentioned previously, I think Miika Nousiainen is at his strongest when he's describing Finland and being Finnish. This book has that too, even though it's set largely abroad. It also talks about some more global issues but while these were really interesting, I felt the visits were too brief to really get into it. Maybe if it was a little more selective (or longer), the book would have been able to really focus on them better.

I think I'd have to put this one under Metsäjätti on the scale of the author's works, not because it was necessarily worse in any way, but because it just didn't give me that many feelings during its course. I kind of think of it fondly now, but I still don't remember much of what happened. It's a solid 3/5 but I probably wouldn't really read it again.

Artemis - Andy Weir

'I live in Conrad Down 15, a grungy area fifteen floors underground in Conrad Bubble. If my neighbourhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as "shitty, with undertones of failure and poor life decisions."'

Hi!

I was absolutely over the Moon about this book even before it came out. Seriously, ever since I read The Martian by Andy Weir two years ago, I've been pretty much waiting for this one. I've been on an orbit around it, seriously. Almost like a lunatic.

I must admit, this and The Martian are almost like from different planets. The Martian was a very contained solitary adventure with a solid plot, filled with fun and jokes and written mostly like a diary. Artemis, on the other hand, was not solitary - Jazz has many interesting companions - and in some ways much more serious. It deals with a lot of topics I wouldn't have thought it would venture to. It was, still, a fun adventure.

The writing of this book wasn't necessarily like a sea of tranquility, but it was entertaining. One of my favourite things about The Martian was how I felt like I was learning new things, and this book certainly had that aspect in it too. It is, however, less science-driven and more character-driven.

Jazz is a career criminal who's grown up in Artemis, the first city on the moon. She's working hard to repay an old debt, so when she gets the chance to earn one million slugs (that's the currency) she jumps at it - turning the book into a heist storJazz is quite a complex character, and in my mind she gets points for (being female, obviously), being Saudi Arabian (representation!!), her sense of humour and her intelligence. That's not to say she wasn't sometimes annoying, but... protagonists. As I mentioned before, the rest of the cast was really cool and interesting too, and quite diverse. Jazz even has an Earth penpal living in Kenya, and their conversations provide the reader with more information on Jazz's background.

The actual plot of this book starts kind of late, and I felt that the beginning dragged a little too. Because of this, it took me almost a month to read. I bought it on day one, too! And just as unfortunately, the ending happened all too suddenly, and the whole main conflict was resolved and padded down in about 30 pages. For these pacing issues and the less scientific aspects of this book, I took it down one star. To be honest, I can imagine The Martian taking three years to write and this one taking half a year, or something of the sort. Regardless, this book was fun and I'd recommend it. I'll definitely read it again too - I'm sure there's a lot to still discover in the details.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 49: A new book of 2017 - I switched Caraval from that to 'recommended by a librarian' since I picked it up from being on show at Lahti Library.

PS. I won't even Apollo-gise for all these puns, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass.

PPS. @ Alex, I hope you're doing well!! Thanks again for introducing Andy Weir to me! 😀

They Both Die at the End - Adam Silvera

'How often do you find yourself on train that's having a blackout with an eighteen-year old kid and his Lego house as he's on his way to the cemetery to visit his mother's headstone? Exactly. That's Instagram-worthy.'

Hello!

This is the latest book I've finished so now I'm actually on track with these! Hooray! I guess you should expect mostly radio silence from me for the next week and a little (read: until my exams are done). This was another high-quality audiobook because I can actually make time for those while walking to uni and back.

The book was a heart-wrenching story, seriously. You'd think that with a title like They Both Die at the End, you'd be prepared for, well, the two main characters both dying. Well, you'd be wrong - I was not prepared for it in the slightest.

Anyway, in They Both Die at the End Mateo and Rufus both get the call from Death-Cast that they are going to die that day. They both find themselves in need of someone to spend their last day with and meet through the Last Friend app. Together, they set off to have a lifetime of friendship and adventures in one day.

Like I said, this book was terribly heart-wrenching, and I was absolutely totally not crying by the end of it. It was wonderful and real and awful and I really enjoyed it even when I knew how it was all going to end. If I had to mark it down for something, it would be for the suddenness of the ending... then again, what else can you do, when the ending is like that? Thankfully, this book wasn't a cop-out like, say, Everything, Everything by Nikola Yoon and actually followed through on its premise.

Mateo and Rufus were both very strong characters with their own voices, and their friendship was really precious and believable. They also came from different backgrounds both culturally and societally, and through them the book got to deal with varying issues that teenagers have to face. Rufus has lived a life you can look back to with happiness even if he doesn't want to die, while Mateo has played it safe and passed opportunities, only to find himself on the list of the dying anyway.

'We can get a handshake going when we meet, but until then I promise to be the Mario to your Luigi. Except I won't hog the spotlight. Where shall we meet?'

There were also many side plots in this book that expored the other ways in which Death-Cast would influence the world: What if a famous celebrity died? What is it like to work for the company? What if you weren't sure if the call you got was real? What if you thought you were invincible, just because you weren't called? Some of them are not as fleshed out as others, but they served to make the universe as a whole much more interesting. The book is structured so that it names the character from whose point of view each chapter is from and then the time, so that you know how long they have left, tops. That worked quite well, in my opinion.

I took a look at the other works of Adam Silvera, History is All You Left Me and More Happy Than Not, and they both seem... depressing, also. I might need to wait for a while before giving them a read, since I haven't gotten over this one yet. But I will read them too, one day!

Next up, when it comes to audiobooks, you can expect me to review The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, which I started after finishing this one. With my Mandarin Chinese studies and all that, I'm trying to get a feel of the culture, literature and anything else about China. It's been pretty good so far.   

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee

''I am thinking that today we are leaving on our Grand Tour', I reply, 'And I'm not going to waste any of it.''

Hello!

I finished this book recently and it says a lot that I didn't have much feels by the ending, which was clearly meant to make me emotional. Oh well. I stuck with it because I was curious in a morbid how can you tie up something so oddly mismatched -sort of manner. It wasn't a terrible book, just... not that good for me.

Points for the well-read audiobook narrated by Christian Coulson. To me, he was Monty, and everyone else along the way. I'd absolutely read other things by him if I didn't find the idea of Monty reading something else so strange. Seriously, narrating audiobooks is a talent we should give Academy Awards and the such for.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (shall I just call it Guide for short from here on?) is set in the 1700s, where Henry 'Monty' Montague, son to a lord, is going to have a Grand Tour with his best friend and secret love, Percy, before they're separated from one another. Yes, it's a LGBT book and yes, it's on the back cover so I can tell you that. Actually, Monty is bisexual and that's cool because there's generally not enough representation et cetera, et cetera.

Anyway, the Grand Tour starts quite promisingly (even after his sister Felicity and a companion nominated by his father tag along), but then they end up in possession of something they definitely shouldn't have and have to flee through several European countries. And it gets weird. As in, around 40% it sidesteps into a weird side plot that turns out to be the actual plot, and I have to admit it wasn't what I wanted from this book. The story also felt long (I think it's over 500 pages / 10 hours but it felt like much more, which is never good), probably because I was so floored by the new plot that was apparently the main one.

Guide is very clearly something I like to call 'Europe written by Americans'. What does that mean, you ask? It's when you read a book, watch a movie or anything of the sort in which the characters are in awe of their European surroundings, saying Paris in the dreamy tone you would use for filet mignon or something. Written with an admiration I found so foreign it took me ten minutes to decide the author could only be American. And it's a bit annoying, to be honest, because it makes the Europe seem unrealistic, nothing like the continent I've come to know.

The relationship between Monty and Percy was just as cute as it was incredibly predictable. There were very few things I couldn't have seen coming from the very beginning, and I can't decide if that means I actually got what I set out to read or if it was just a good old-fashioned flaw.

On the other hand, there is a sequel coming out next year from Felicity's point of view, with girl pirates and all, and it would be completely unlike me to miss it.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge... eh, you know the drill by now, surely. I need to step up my game to find those couple of missing books at this rate.

Teemestarin kirja - Emmi Itäranta

'Kaikki maailmassa ei ole ihmisten. Tee ja vesi eivät kuulu teemestareille, vaan teemestarit kuuluvat teelle ja vedelle. Olemme veden vartijoita, mutta ennen kaikkea olemme sen palvelijoita.'

'All in the world is not men's. Tea and water don't belong to the tea masters, but tea masters belong to tea and water. We are the guardians of water, but most of all we are its servants.'

I finished this book at my favourite tea place on the
day it closed down ;o;

Hello again!

Yet another dystopia, yes, I am aware. I've been meaning to read this one ever since I picked it up some two years ago, and I finally got around to it as part of my Finland 100 thing. It has a blue and white cover too! Here's also a Finnish book I recommend you read in English, as the Finnish and English versions of the book were written side by side, so you'll get the authentic experience, kind of. Pikkuunen is actually going to host a web reading group on this book on her blog soon, so it was a good time for me to read it.

Teemestarin kirja (lit. The Book of the Tea Master, but the English edition is called Memory of Water.  There's also lots of translations to other languages!) is the story of Noria Kaitio, a tea master in a world where some sort of catastrophe has turned water into a scarce resource. She finds herself guarding a secret that could cost her everything, but her and her best friend are also working on uncovering something long lost...

It was a great read, to me. It was refreshing to read something that felt, at the same time, so Finnish but also so foreign. There's a lot of Chinese tea ceremony -remnant elements in this book, blended with the normal, and it just worked. It's also beautiful writing in general.

Both Noria and her friend Sanja were really cool characters. It's always nice when the female mains are so self-sufficient (there's no romance in this book whatsoever, weird. I made a no romance tag since some people just hate that very deeply, you're welcome!). Noria especially spends most of the book completely on her own, and she grows a lot throughout it.

It was also a very well-written and thoughtful book. It flows both slow and fast, like water, and pauses to wonder and question. It felt depressingly real, with hints of global warming and other such catastophes. I also really enjoyed the 'not everything is humans'' aspect I picked my top quote for. It's a good thing to remember in this time of seemingly endless human greed. I suppose really the only reason I didn't give it five stars but four is because as a whole, the experience wasn't quite as life-changing as it could have been (it's easy to compare it to The Handmaid's Tale since I read these so close to each other).

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I couldn't find a place for this (haha, surprising isn't it?). I mean, I guess it would count for something I only know a little bit (tea ceremony?) but I bet myself I'll find something I know even less about before year end!

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

"There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are given freedom from. Don't underrate it."

Hello!

I've been meaning to read this book for a while because dystopias. On the other hand, I anticipated it being a depressing experience so I've not been in any hurry to do it... And yeah, it was pretty grim.

The Handmaid's Tale is another one of those always upsettingly current dystopian books like Brave New World and 1984 (The Handmaid's Tale was written in 1984, which Margaret Atwood said was 'corny'). It's set in a world in which women have been stripped of their autonomy, prohibited from reading, owning things, and 'freedom to'. Any sort of plot synopsis honestly feels like I'd be butchering this story, because there's so much depth to it that I could analyse it for hours and still be just at the tip of the iceberg. Here we go anyway.

Offred, the main character who never gets an actual name, is placed as a handmaid for a Commander to give him and his wife a child. She is of the unfortunate transfer period as the country that was the United States of America becomes the Republic of Gilead. She had a husband and a child and a life, so she's able to sharply contrast the current world order to the old and is unwilling to accept the change the way she should.

It's purposefully vague and somewhat out of order, and you find out about the world bit by bit. I thought it would annoy me at first, but after I got into it, I was so interested in finding out more, even if it was at a slower pace.

'It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.'

The book has a very heavily metafictional epilogue of sorts which I don't want to further spoil from you, but it's very interesting and intelligent. It was so metafictional that I thought the book had ended and I was listening to the afterword.

The actual afterword by Atwood on this book was also very enlightening. She says that she was inspired by her travels behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and she was determined not to add any concepts, ideas or technology that did not already exist. It's set in the US because it's her way of retaliating against the 'it couldn't happen here' mentality of the people she told about her experiences. She also calls it an anti-prediction: if a story like this can be told in such a detail, then maybe we can make sure it won't become reality. I'm definitely on board with that.

All in all, The Handmaid's Tale is a very harrowing read, with kind of an open ending. It plays on human emotion and humans themselves, and I find I keep thinking about it almost every day, even now that I finished it some two weeks ago. When is it acceptable to start reading again a book you just finished?

I gave this a 5/5 without thinking about it much, because I'm not sure if a book has ever affected me quite so much. It's probably my favourite dystopia, and I read quite a lot of those. I'd recommend it without qualms to anyone and everyone, though I'm not sure how the reading experience would change if you were not a woman and inherently, Offred.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 12: A book about politics and politicians. Because at least in part, that's what this book is, among so many other things. Politics.

Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

'I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumpted over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.'

Heyo!

This is the first book John Green has written since The Fault in Our Stars came out five years ago, and obviously I wanted to check it out! I'm curious and a hipster like that. Gotta read it before the movie comes out. So I went to buy it from Waterstones the day it came out. I read it within a week or so, but... yeah, I've been quite busy with uni and when I have free time, I've been reading, not reviewing. Whoops. Apparently I've not reviewed any John Green books on this blog, but I've read The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns and most of Looking For Alaska. Obviously, this book has the highest expectations of perhaps anything ever, coming after TFIOS, and while I don't think it was quite as 'good' (more on this later), it was still good.

Previously, I've said that John Green's books are these great epics and stories bigger than life, and that's why they appeal to teenagers who don't normally get to go on these grand adventures. Turtles All the Way Down is... not that. It's big and ambitious in the way life is while not being very grand at all.

Anyway, the basic idea is that sixteen-year old Aza accidentally stumbles upon the case of her childhood friend Davis's missing millionaire father. Aza and Davis reconnect more or less, but they're also both very caught up in their own lives. Aza's best friend Daisy really wants to pursue the missing millionaire part, and Aza finds a kindred soul in the son of the millionaire, whose little brother just wants dad to come back home. Aza herself is suffering from OCD, which is a tightening loop of intrusive thoughts (turtles all the way down) and makes even the smallest things all too difficult.

The biggest downfall of the book is that it just attempts at being way too much, It wants to be a realistic portrayal of OCD, love, friendship, class differences, grief, family and all these other things, but of course it makes the different parts all kind of flat. It's also full of John Green's signature super philosophical no teenager talks like that conversations that sound extremely awkward if you think about it too much. This is really how you'll decide if you'll love or hate John Green's works: do you get put off by teenagers texting about the difficulty of defining self at night?

'Our hearts were broken in the same places. That's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.'

This book is a tricky thing to actually review, because I know all of my friends either really like or really don't like The Fault in Our Stars. And while I don't think John Green is the best author in existence or anything, I have to admit he simply must have done something right to get to where he is.

And I thought Turtles All the Way Down was quite good, really. Not quite Looking for Alaska good, but better than Paper Towns and somehow less annoying than TFIOS. The latter is very 'good' plot-wise but has these super unrealistic and annoying bits that really hindered my experience, while Turtles is almost the opposite.

Turtles is philosophical and wants to be vey mature and all those things, but it also has some moments of genuine wisdom and feelings. Also lots of points for the portrayal of OCD as something that's not nice and desirable. This book leaves a lot to be desired (and I think in some ways that's the point), but somehow I enjoyed it quite a lot, and after I put it down, I wanted to pick it up again immediately.

I ended up giving this a 4/5 on the former grounds, but I acknowledge that this book is defnitely not for everyone, so I didn't put it in my recommendations label. If you think you'd like it, you probably will, but it's weirdly different from John Green's previous works.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I couldn't shoehorn this in (again). By the way, I just found out what 'shoehorn' means (it's a kenkälusikka :D)