THE BIRDS by Tarjei Vesaas
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- Опубліковано 22 лип 2024
- Buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/leafbyleaf
Paperback, 301 pages
Published 2016 by Archipelago Books (first published 1957)
Original Title: Fuglane
ISBN: 0914671200
archipelagobooks.org/book/the...
#leafbyleaf #bookreview #tarleivesaas #thebirds
I have just finished The Birds. What a poetic and sad novel. Thanks again for recommending this one. Really really moved me.
Years later, and the book it still with me. So glad you took a chance on it!
Ahh Vesaas! His syllable / power ratio is off the charts! Great to hear you talk about him. I reread The Ice Palace after a long while and it was somehow even more powerful
Always a treat to hear from you, Eddie! Vesaas and Fosse are on my radar because of you. Soon I'll get to Fosse's Trilogy.
the bit where Mattis 'speaks' to the bird by making imprints in the mud 😭😭😭
I feel like I read this one with a constant catch in my throat.
thanks for making my already impossibly long reading list even longer!!
Any time! 😜
Quick read, but profound.
@@jerryware1970 saw it on my reading list the other day and raised it higher. Thx for the extra reminder
Finished this today. Mattis’s transformative experience on the lake with the visiting girls, his visions of glory returning to town, and his quest to become a ferryman swept me up into his fervor as if it was happening to me. That and his attempt to communicate with the woodcock will stay with me forever.
Great to see you covering this book, Chris! Lovely review. It had an enormous impact on me, too.
Thanks, man! I can't wait to read more Vesaas.
Just finished it. One of the saddest and most beautiful things I've ever read and something I'll be returning to over and over for the rest of my days.
Indeed, it is still alive within me.
Sounds like my kinda book. I absolutely love the kind of works that you just read a line and have to sit there in awe, taking it all in for a while before turning back to the next paragraph.
Exactly. That moment when you look up from the page, close your eyes, and just savor the splendor of what you’ve just read.
Incredible book - one of my favorites, if not my favorite, that I've read this year. Great review!
Thanks! It is indeed so very good.
Ty Chris for yet another moving review. So looking forward to reading it!
You're welcome. It is a treasure.
I have read the Ice Palace and I have to admit I haven't recovered by the beauty and sadness of the book!
Cannot wait to try this one as well :) Great vid!
Vesaas is on a differently level.
Enjoy!
Your channel has really inspired me both in reading and writing! I'm an Australian physics student in my twenties who has written a number of poems and pieced together many disjointed segments of stories. None of them have seen the light of the published day though. I'd love to know what your advice for a young writer would be before embarking on introducing their writing to a wider audience? I'm not sure if it's the done thing, but here is a poem I wrote. I hope you enjoy it!
Vroom, boom, moon.
Sky, a tune, a woman,
Beautiful, soon.
A swish car, clicks, shmick,
I, you, me, we, a bold clutch,
A catch, she drives.
Snap and that's,
Why I love you!
Polished nails, sails,
The highway, past motorised snails.
Laughter, eyes that smash,
That pash, that cut, good luck.
Leather, and the clouds,
Profound the sound.
The Drive.
Hey, Isaac! That’s a great name for a physicist! I’m thrilled that the channel has inspired you. A few general rules for young writers before submitting work for publication (which is what I presume you mean by “introducing their writing to a wider audience”):
1. Find your voice. What stands out more than anything else and catches editors’ eyes is a strong, unique voice. This comes from a lot of reading and writing. In reading, to whom are you drawn? Finding your voice is usually the fruit of synthesizing the influence of your models. It’s sort of a dialectical emulation process. Once you find a voice in which your feel comfortable, you’re ready for the next step.
2. Read your work out loud. Always, always, always read your work out loud. It’s amazing how different stuff sounds in your head versus out loud. And out loud will be closer to the way others hear your writing. It quickly weeds out superfluous words and awkward constructs.
3. Share your work with and get feedback from objective third parties. Friends and family cannot give you unbiased advice. They know you too well. An objective third party can give you the brutal criticism you need for growth before you start submitting to venues for a wider audience.
That’s the most basic advice I have. I can also, of course, recommend a handful of books that I’ve found to be great resources for writers.
Cheers, mate!
Great review. Thank you
My pleasure. Happy reading!
Fantastic review Chris! Will buy this one soon. I loved Stoner too.
Thanks! I’m thrilled you loved Stoner. I think I’m going to have to reread it soon as its lingering is growing louder.
Thank you for this review! I recently discovered your channel and you have given me so many great book recs.
My pleasure! 🙏
Just finished it. What a profound and tragic story. Loved it.
I’ve only read his Ice palace book, very good too. This one goes up in my TBR list.
🇳🇴
Chris, you have laid waste to my TBR. Every bloody video is another book I’m scrambling to read. 😂👍
Oops... :)
One of my favorite books!
😁😁😁
Liked this video before watching, knowing in advance it would justify itself. Proceeded to immediately order this book upon finishing. Great review, thank you
Very kind of you to say, Phil! You will enjoy this one. 🙏
Great review. I ordered a copy right after the video ended. It will be my next read after I finish 'Hopscotch'. Thank you!!
Thanks! Hopscotch is a great one, too!
Ian McEwan wasn't wrong when he wrote: a masterpiece. Just read it in Swedish and its intensity is almost overwhelming and definitely leaves one in awe.
Vessas' focus on the inner world (we don't actually know what Mattis looks like) and his descriptions of the struggle and loneliness of the Self "you are you" "why is it like it is?" is rather painful
but maybe necessary for a true poetic mind.
If you like Scandinavian literature I recommend Jon Fosse (Trilogin -"The Trilogy"), Kristine Naess "Only Human" or even Knausgårds less known piece "fåglarna under himlen" ( "the birds under the sky"). Don't know if the latter exists in english. Thank you for a great channel! All the best from Gothenburg.
Hej hej! I am very familiar with Gothenburg! Been there countless times since I work for Volvo Group. My favorite place to stay was the Elite Park Ave hotel at the top of the Avenue.
As it happens, I plan to read and make a video of Fosse's TRILOGY this year. That will be my first book of his.
Tak for these recommendations!
@@LeafbyLeaf Of course Elite Park Ave Hotel is your favorite place. It's next to the main public library. Lookning forward to your thoughts on the TRILOGY.
😜😜😜
I flew out to Gothenburg in Feb 2018 courtesy of Volvo through their Overseas Delivery program. Such a beautiful (it could just be their women) city! How great are those Semlor buns? They're practically everywhere you look. I caught my return flight in Oslo; sadly, I didn't get a chance to travel through the city, just their airport.
Anyway, yeah, The Birds is brilliant.
It so happens that I work for Volvo (can’t remember if I said that in the video or not).
Great review, and such a magnificent book. I just finished it, in Norwegian, and I loved the tensity and tenderness of it.
Other gems by classic Norwegian authors are Jenny by Sigrid Undset, Peace by Arne Garborg and Beyond sing the woods by Trygve Gulbranssen. To name a few.
Thanks so much! I actually just finished reading _Sickle_ ( _Sigd_ ) by Ruth Lillegraven for the third time over the past week, and I'll be posting a video about it early next month.
@@LeafbyLeaf I haven’t read that, but I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip! Love your videos. I often times read the book first and watch your review afterwards. It really expands the books you review to me.
great choice, a book I hadn't read but am glad I now have read it, brilliant. I also just finished a marvelous novel, 'Traveler of the Century' by Andres Neuman, an intellectual novel of philosophy, history, love and literature. If you haven't read it this book is right up your alley, a tour-de-force of great literature, a total masterpiece.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll snag a copy of it now.
Oh, what a stellar book! I read it in italian years ago in the hyperborea edition. Lovely, Lovely edition! You should take a look at hyperborea books in italian. Gorgeous covers! And amazing book! My favourite authors are gustafsson, nooteboom, paasilinna of course, sjoberg and dagermann.
I've read Nooteboom! Those are some gorgeous covers!
great underrated book
Agreed!
Greetings from Sweden! Great review as always. Will keep an eye out for this author, and would love to see more Swedish authors on the channel!
Hej! I just submitted a written review of Linda Boström Knausgård’s latest book to Rain Taxi. But I need to get a video of some Swedish literature up here too. Maybe I’ll do some plays of Strindberg (Spöksonaten is a favorite of mine). Any suggestions?
@@LeafbyLeaf Great to hear it! To my mind her best work is The Helios Disaster.
Otherwise Stig Dagerman, Karin Boye and Torgny Lindgren would be right up your alley! Great writers known to most Swedes. A simple way in is to read authors who are or have been members of the Swedish Academy. Their works are well worth reading, more often than not.
I highly recommend my favorite living Swedish poet Lotta Lotass (but I can't speak on the quality of any traslations).
I agree about Helios! The only other Swedes I’ve read are Ingmar Bergman, John Ajvide Lindqvist and Astrid Lindgrin :-)
Absolutely love Vesaas! :.)
(and a pro-tip! "Aa" is the old way that "å" was written in Danish and Norwegian and so it remains in lots of names still. But the letter å/ digraph aa is pronounced close to the English "oh." See also Knausgaard, Kierkegaard, Gaarder, etc.)
Right you are. Normally I pronounce it with the “oh” sound (see other videos with Knausgård mentioned), but I got lazy here and let me anglocentrism win out. :P
Need this now
It definitely fulfills a need, not a want.
I had to click on this video believing it was somehow related to Hitchcock ;D Sounds like a beautiful read :^)
Haha--I thought the same when I first heard of it! The book is truly beautiful. Several people who read it after this video have replied to me directly about what an amazing reading experience it was. it is a special book.
I think you did a lovely job of reviewing this book. I just finished "The Birds" (or "Fåglarna") myself and I just can't stop thinking about it, or Mattis.
Tack så mycket! (I know it's Swedish, but that's the only Scandinavian language for which I have any phrases. :))
@@LeafbyLeaf I am Swedish, so that is perfectly fine. Tack igen. Jag kommer att titta på fler av dina videos. Bra jobbat! :)
Kanon bra!
Just bought it before 3 minutes of watching. Well done my friend.
Thanks! 🙏
You won’t be disappointed.
@@LeafbyLeaf Just finished this. You are spot on in your review. I have never read anything like this and I will go to the grave singing its praises. Thanks for the great find!
Ahhhh, what great news! Thanks for coming back to let me know. It’s a very special book!
The videos you make introducing a book previously unknown to me light such fires under my To-Read list!
I must ask, do you plan to ever undertake the massive project that would be covering Joyce's Wake? I assume you've been asked this before, and I assume you would have to approach it after completing your already mammoth Western Canon series.
Great vid as per usual!
Yep, you got it: The Wake is definitely on my horizon, but I will finish off the Western Core series first. That's going to be a fun project!
I actually already have this one but I haven't read it yet which is a nice change as usually a Leaf by Leaf upload is shortly followed by a slight hit to the bank account. Your recommendations from Archipelago often end up as favorites so I'm eager to give this one a try.
Phew. Glad I could keep you on budget this week. I don’t plan to post anything for the next couple weeks too. I love Archipelago Books!
@@LeafbyLeaf Oh I don't mind buying the new books at all. I will look forward to the new videos once you return.
👊🙏
I'm just about to read this. I've been trying to cover a lot more Norwegian lit after reading a couple Jon Fosse novels. If you haven't already I'd strongly recommend his Septology, people compare him to Ibsen or Beckett a lot, but I think he's forged his own style that's beautiful and strange.
Foss is high on my list! I'm going to start with Trilogy.
@@LeafbyLeaf on second thoughts that's actually a better move to first check out his back catalog so to speak, the Septology is reading more as a victory lap of his life's work.
Melancholy, boathouse, trilogy are all fantastic anyway. Enjoy!
P.S. Scandinavian candy (godis) is my all-time favorite food.
I remember Godis on my trips to candy shops there. Plopp was another good one.
Thats amazing your mentioning Stoner because its my fav book!
I just finished The Birds and it's number 2 for me. any more recommendations? Id love to read more
Check out Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping) and Jon Fosse (Trilogy).
@@LeafbyLeaf Thanks! much love
Thank you for introducing all this amazing books!
I have a few questions for you, first of all, what is your reading "strategy"? I see in every book that you finished that you have notes popping out.
When I finish to read a book, I go to Google sheets, add it to my list and write a small review. but by that time, the book content is blurred in my memory.
And I wonder, have you read Any israel authors? Or jewish authors? Have you heard of Shmuel Yosef Agnon?
I've read more non-fiction by and about Israelis than fiction, though I've read Amos Oz. There's Yuval Noah Harari and his "history" books. And I read Yossi Klein Halevi's Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Some books on the IDF. Coincidentally, I have been to Israel twice and am booked for a third trip in March 2022!
As far as reading strategy, I am a rereader which helps the work stay in the memory. That first reading is always about taking in the big picture. Then you're ready to reread and take in the details. I also constantly annotate in the margins. It's my way of having a conversation with the book. For more, check out my video about analyzing Amy Hempel's short story, and the one "On Reading Big Books." I talk about more reading tips in there.
Hope that helps!
And please feel free to recommend authors/books to me.
Do you think the lake holds a feminine energy or masculine energy in nature? Out of curiosity.
I would say feminine, given that water/the sea has long been a literary trope for "mother" (sea = "mare" in Latin).
Is anne karenina hard to read ? Sir Via
Not at all. It is a very conventional, but extraordinary, realism novel.
have you read to the white sea
No, I haven’t. Who’s the author?
I got my book for free which is from a lucky find on the street
My 11 DAYS!!!!! I'm in the future now!!!!!
?
@@LeafbyLeaf Euler & Logan $/0=undefined , 1/0=undefined
@@LeafbyLeaf each letter is a unit of measurement.
Wait, do you actually like THE GIVING TREE?
It is brutal but has a serious message. One of those books one revisits through one’s life-like Petit Prince.
I can see that read, but that the book is given to people as an inspirational touching story of a meaningful relationship seems not good. It's such a predatory one-sided relationship that no one should ever emulate. The Tree should have fallen on The Boy. I much-prefer THE MISSING PIECE MEETS THE BIG O.
I didn’t know it was billed as such. I have always taken it as a serious warning against egocentrically abusing a relationship. As in: don’t do what this man did.
Hi im from argentina can you please make the subs of your videos? I wish that you do it because i understand what you mean but its difficult for me follow your timing and your words u.u pls
I'll see what I can do. I suppose the "built in" closed captioning probably does not do a very good job. If you ever want me to clarify something, just post the timestamp and I'll be happy to help.
@@LeafbyLeaf
oh thank you very much for your reply. I hope you are well! Greetings.
Years ago I had a library copy of The Birds, the same edition. I accidentally dropped it into the bathtub and thus began what I call "The Library Walk of Shame." You ever-so discreetly tip-toe to the library return box, slide the damaged book in, and perform the walk of shame out. I found myself doing it again with a book I annotated.
😂😂😂 We’ve all performed this walk at one time or another. I used to accidentally write my name on the inside boards of the books I got from the library. My mother would get after me but we never confessed.