Reading books on paper is a great way to get away from bite size snippets of the internet age. Information moves so fast on social media and news aggregators that you rarely get enough context to understand the background and get wiser on why something happened. And it’s only getting worse. We are caught in a mesmerising flow of spectacles that drains our brains of the ability to make rational, long term decisions grounded in facts.
Luckily I have the opportunity to unplug from the internet and read books in my daily life. I’m a frequent user of our local public library and I often bring my kids and encourage them to read books.
In this post I present four books that broadened my horizon lately.
On Tyranny
Timothy Snyder published On Tyranny in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency. Sadly, it is still relevant today, if not even more so. In the book, he offers 20 lessons on how to resist tyranny, informed by 20th century writers.
Why didn’t anyone stop Hitler, we would question the world when I grew up in the 1980s and learned about World War II. Why didn’t anyone stop Trump, future generations will ask. Still puzzled over the actual outcome of how all these checks and balances failed to stop Trump, I accept now that everyone hoped that someone else would do it. All just kicked the can down the road and here we are.
The twenty lessons (online here) are actions you can do as an individual to resist the slide into tyranny. In the book, Timothy Snyder presents examples from history. From Churchill’s stubborn insistence on fighting a war with Nazi Germany to the Polish girl who smuggled in supplies to the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, the examples are expertly curated.
Written for an American audience, the book has valuable advice also for Europeans. The examples in the book are from Nazi Germany and the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Lessons we perhaps have learned and kept closer to our heart than our oversea allies. But still immensely costly lessons on human nature that we cannot afford to forget. Few who lived through those times are alive today and can tell us how it was.
One lesson is: Be truthful. Seek out facts. Take responsibility for what you share. Great advice now reaffirmed. Which led me to pick up the next book at my local public library.
Gender Queer
In the graphic novel Gender Queer from 2019, American comic book artist tells an autobiographical story of growing up and coming to terms with a gender identity. The book was the most challenged book in the US in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and hits right into the MAGA vs LGBT conflict.
Someone posted on social media a link to a story with the comment: “Can we stop importing American stupidity?”. The linked article describes how a school in northern Sweden had dealt with complaints from a parent about Gender Queer. The title is “Reduced availability of hbtqi book after complaints”. In the article the school librarian describes the events leading to the book being made available only to students in upper grades (ages 13-16).
Rather than just being outraged and reposting, I commented that as presented in the article, I liked that the issue had been dealt with locally and that this was far from copying “American Stupidity”. There is a difference between banning a book and not making it available in a school library. There are many books we don’t want our kids to pick up and read without context and the option to discuss the book with an adult they trust. An obvious example is the original edition of Pippi in the South Seas where Astrid Lindgren’s account of people from Africa does not live up to modern standards.
After a heated internet exchange, I grabbed the book at my local library and read it.
Initially skeptical about having my kids learn about gender identity from an American comic book, I quickly yielded to the nuance and detail with which the book presents itself. It is a personal account of living up to an outside world’s mysterious expectations to being either a boy or a girl, a man or a woman.
I recall from my own life how puzzling and mysterious this can be. Not that I was born with a different biological gender. I just empathise so much with this feeling of being special and not knowing what everyone else seemingly knows.
I wish I had books like this when I grew up.
I wouldn’t mind my kids picking up and reading the book someday it spurs their interest.
I still think that the school made a wise decision. There are a few explicit drawings where it can be good to have a trusted adult nearby. Gender Queer claims a target audience of 16+ in the US. In Scandinavia 13+ is fine with me. However, I only know the case from the article.
Excellent book. Also for cis gender woke Scandinavians.
The Little Prince
First time I met The Little Prince was in high school. I was learning French and we read the first couple of pages of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella from 1943. Something as complex as human relationships told in a way where both children and adults are drawn into the story.
The Little Prince lives on a small planet and has a very special rose as a friend, The rose is very demanding of him. One day he decides that he cannot be happy with the rose so he leaves.
On his travels he meets a variety of people, each living on their own little planet. Mostly interested only in themselves. The Business Man that constantly counts all the stars in the sky. He owns them he says. They are so important to him that he has not time to talk with the prince. The King with no subjugates. He commands the prince to do this and that, always careful to only command such things that the prince himself wants to do.
When he finally lands on Earth, he meets the author, a pilot stranded in the Sahara desert. And asks him to draw a sheep for him that he can bring home. The prince is not satisfied before the author draws a box and says that there is a sheep inside that is exactly like the prince wants it to be.
I read an abridged version of the story for my kids last summer. So when my daughter saw the book at the local library, she picked it up. We read a couple of chapters each night before sleeping. Together. She reads the lines of the prince. I read the other characters. We still have a couple of chapters left.
It is such a great experience. So simple the words. So deep the insight in humanity.
Have you tamed your rose so that it is very special to you and only you? Or are you too busy counting your bitcoins?
The Human Sacrifices of the Viking Age
I picked up this book at the Historical Museum of Stockholm last week. My interest into Vikings and Scandinavian history date back to my teenage years. I read Saxo Grammaticus, I read Norse Mythology, I read Icelandic sagas. Books on archeology. I visited the Viking ring fortresses of Denmark and the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.
What’s fascinating is that new archeological excavations and new interpretations change what we (think we) know about the past.
Back then the common truth was that we do not really know if vikings practiced human sacrifice. Sure we have bodies in bogs still with a cord around their neck. Sure we have stories where vikings draw lots to decide whom to sacrifice to get fortunate winds. But as written records were made by Christian monks centuries later, we can’t really trust them. And our Viking Age ancestors must clearly have been wiser than their Iron Age ancestors.
In his book The Human Sacrifices of the Viking Age from 2023, Klas Wikström af Edholm makes a compelling case that human sacrifice was widespread in what is today Denmark and Sweden well into the Viking Age. Formalised, systematic, and as a means to project power. Imported slaves were sacrificed in recurring rituals.
It is easy to have a romanticised view of our ancestors, that they were the good guys. To take pride in their conquests and achievements. To overlook flaws and behaviours that don’t match our current moral standards. Nice to have this veil of ignorance removed.
The past was not a nice place.
Let’s make a better future for all on this little planet. Not dream us back to a romantic past that never was. Let’s in our own little way make the world around us a better place. Beginning with the people closest to us.
