Weekend at the cabin

We were at the cabin for the weekend, as I wrote in a comment on a comment (hey, hope everything has worked out on your end; I got negative here). The weather was nice for the most parts - at times it rained like a motherfucker (sorry, too tired to come up with anything subtle here). Kauto and Ottilia sure enjoyed themselves. And so did we. Elina said that she's relaxed more than for a long, long time. When you're deprived of a computer, you'll just have to sit down and listen. Maybe we should ban reading e-mails, blogging, putting up stuff on Huuto.net etc. after five o'clock or something like that...

I read three books during the weekend. Pretty obscure ones: a fake biography, a POD Finnish crime novel and a collection of concrete poetry.

Harri Kumpulainen (whom I've mentioned here couple times before) has written a nice fake biography of a man called Sulo Waldemar Rundgren. I'll switch languages here: Sulo Waldemar Rundgren eli Runkku löydettiin Kärsämäen kansakoulun pihasta vuonna 1939 ja hän katosi vuonna 1969. Sitä ennen hän ehti olla suutarina, keikkamuusikkona (kitaraa ja haitaria enimmäkseen), runoilijana (hämärä monikielinen runo Nuoren voiman liiton vuonna -69 ilmestyneessä vappurunokokoelmassa, joka on ihan oikea juttu; en vain ole ikinä nähnyt kopioina ilmestynyttä vihkoa missään, mukana on myös mm. Kosti Sironen ja Juhani Tikkanen), taidemaalarina (pitämättä jääneitä näyttelyitä, kadonneita, mutta kaupungin kokoelmiin myydyiksi tiedettyjä töitä jne.) ja pikkurikollisena. Erittäin hauska kirja, jota suosittelen lämpimästi. Kirjan ulkoasu vain on kovin amatöörimäinen. Kumpulainen on sujuva kirjoittaja, joka ansaitsisi tulla paremmin tunnetuksi. Kirja on käytännössä itsejulkaistu, mutta eipä se olisi minkään kustantamon pirtaan mahtunutkaan.

Antti Tuomainen is a young copy writer and his first novel, Tappaja, toivoakseni/Killer, I Hope, is a pretty impressive noir novel in a country where noir novels are not very popular (at least by young writers). It's a first novel by many accounts - first of all, it tries too hard to be deep when it doesn't have to be, and there's too much inner monologue when you don't need it, and the love story is a bit rushed and the dialogue between the two lovers is at times forced, but it's also quite touching and troublesome. Here's seriously hoping that Tuomainen has a chance to write more - and to get a more profitable business deal than the POD Myllylahti provides!

And finally Marko J. Niemi. Marko has done pretty amazing visual poetry at his own blog and he also edits the Nokturno site (where I've sent some some of my exercises in experimental poetry). His first collection came out from Ankkuri which also works as a POD house, through Lulu. Some of Marko's pieces are very inventive visually and I got a chuckle out of them. There are also some poems in the shape of pyramids which you can read any way you want to which I also liked. Check out his blog, especially the early posts - I just wonder why the delightful Tuoli/Chair series is not included in the book!