Last year, around this time, I started reading Maria Agrell's blog Barcelona - Stockholm. She writes about her life as a Swedish expat in Barcelona. At that time I was also living in Barcelona and I enjoyed reading about "my" city from someone else's perspective. March, this year, Agrell turned her blog into, what Vulkan call a blok - a blog in book format - and the following month Vulkan's jury selected Agrell's Totalt ointegrerad as "Blok of the year".As it is a personal blog, any criticism of the book tends to become more of a judgment of Agrell herself than an evaluation of her writing style. She's provocative, but sometimes, it’s hard to know whether it’s a conscious choice or not. She's entertaining, and that, I think she's fully aware of.
Just like the title suggests, Agrell isn't completely integrated into the Catalan society. At the start, she doesn't give too much value to learning neither Spanish, nor Catalan. While time passes by, she does however start taking Spanish classes, and I'm fairly convinced that today she's fluent in Spanish. Still, Agrell's attitude of "why bother when it works anyways" can be seen as lack of respect for the people of her host country and their culture, but what it all comes down to is that, as travellers, we have benefits that refugees can't even dream of. Somehow, we manage to get respect and good treatment without knowing the language of our host country, and it's our loss if we fail to make use of all the possibilities offered to us, while it's essential to learn the new language and try to fit in for refugee immigrants. Then again, I think Agrell would be the first one to admit that she's privileged.
Agrell's text consist of witty, short sentences spiced up with subtle self-irony. She's not only entertaining, but also inspiring, and judging from the comments she receives on her blog, I'd say that she provokes jealousy along with admiration in her readers. She lives the life that most people only dream of!
Considering that Agrell seems to be full of energy and always keeps many things going at the same time, I'm hoping that one of her upcoming projects might be getting her book translated into English, Spanish or Catalan!
Vulkan is a brilliant idea! Anyone can publish anything they'd like there. No need for some publisher to approve it, no need for recommended changes, so what's published is actually your work, the way you want it to be. The only problem is that the idea has its limitations when it comes to accessing the public. The trend might change, but for the moment the majority of people would most likely rather spend their money at a well established publishing house than at Vulkan's online shop.
Vulkan is a brilliant idea! Anyone can publish anything they'd like there. No need for some publisher to approve it, no need for recommended changes, so what's published is actually your work, the way you want it to be. The only problem is that the idea has its limitations when it comes to accessing the public. The trend might change, but for the moment the majority of people would most likely rather spend their money at a well established publishing house than at Vulkan's online shop.
11 comments:
Thank you for the feedback. I'll working on trying to shape up my ignorant self.
You are right, actually I am unaware of me being provocative. But I do try to be funny :)
Hahaha - isn't that what all of us should be busy with?
Along with the funny bits, your provocations are what makes your blog interesting and entertaining, so if you're just naturally provocative I'd just go with the flow ;-)
jag har inte läst hennes blogg, men det ska jag definitivt göra nu! gillar när folk inte är helt politiskt korrekta! =)
Det tycker jag helt klart att du ska göra! :-) ...och jag håller helt med - jag gillar också när folk inte är helt politiskt korrekta!
Wow. Du har bytt bild på inlägget. Och jag ser min egen bok hemma hos dig!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Så förbaskat ofantligt coolt. Är det sant? Är du en av mina 16 köpare? En person jag inte ens känner. Jag blir jätteglad jätteglad.
Självklart har jag läst boken och haft den på mitt nattduksbord!Numera står den i min bokhylla...
Du trodde väl ändå inte att jag fuskrecenserade ;-) Hehehe
Din blogg var den första som jag faktiskt följde och eftersom jag är en bokmal var jag bara tvungen till att ha boken. Jag sträckläste den! ;-)
Såg att Linda Skugge länkar hit...
For god's sake, why don't you write in your native Swedish, too?
Unfortunately, your English sometimes is a pain to read. For instance, it's not "at a start" but "FOR a start".
As you know, writing in a foreign language requires constant effort and the discipline of systematic self-criticism. This applies to everybody. Only very few people succeed in putting out something that can match native speaker standards.
The internet's already awash with poor English. I can't honestly see the point in churning out yet more bad English when you could be writing wonderful Swedish.
Esther, there's a very simple answer to your question. I don't write in my native language because it would limit the amount of possible readers. Swedish is spoken by approximately 10 million people, while, there are about 300-400 millions of people that have English as their mother tongue. That’s a big difference! In addition, English is used extensively as a second language. So the point of me “churning out” poor English, instead of writing “wonderful” Swedish is that it allows me to have non-Swedish readers.
When it comes to your correction, I can only say that my English is so poor that you haven’t even been able to understand what I was trying to say. My “at a start” was an attempt to say “in the beginning” and not “for a start”. So not only is my English “a pain to read”, but it doesn’t even make sense. To me, that only means that there is another reason for me to write in English and not in Swedish – I get the opportunity to improve my written English.
Now, if I choose to write in Swedish instead of English I’d probably avoid comments like yours, which I don’t actually think is well meaning, but I’d lose the opportunity to have a Costa Rican teenager reading one of my posts. At the end of the day, I think the costs are more than offset by the benefits.
Hear, hear! Bra rutet, as we say in swedish:)My suggestion for improving your, already excellent, english, would be to get rid of some "that"s. It´s often superfluos to use them in the same way as with the swedish "att" in a sentence. Example: "To me that only means that there is...etc. To me that only means there is - sounds so much better.
Keep up the good work!
Yennooo, thanks for your comment ;-) You’re so right. Every time I read through one of my texts my Swedish brain tells me to add some “thats”, and almost every time I end up adding a “that”. I’ll try to cut down on the “thats” ;-)
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