No, I am not referreing to Hemingway's book about Paris, but my own travelling library. We have been out for a tour with our van, and I did bring a few physical books with me. I used this tote bag from Charlie Byrne's excellent bookshop in Galway Ireland, as my moveable library. So, what did I bring with me on the trip. I choose books from my own library, also on my TBR list. Howard's End by E.M. Forster Faust by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman Min bokvärld by Kerstin Ekman Report from the Interior by Paul Auster Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson Tychonium, experimentet by Jan Johannesson Krysalis by John Trenhaile We did shorten our trip due to bad weather, so I only finished two books; Paul Auster and Trenhaile. Back home again, I will continue with this pile of books. However, there is Paris in July, so I will prioritise that challenge. Second hand books On our way home we stopped by a small village called Limmared. It is famous for having around 15 second hand shops of various qualities. You go from one shop to the next, quite fascinating. We managed to buy a few small things, and I also found a few nonfiction books that I found interesting. Mostly about Sweden historical men and women and their lives. On the trip we also visited the birth house of Verner von Heidenstam in Olshammar. I recently read a biography, Ett hemligt liv (A Secret Life) by Martin Kylhammar about Verner von Heidenstam (a very famous Swedish national icon and author), and Kate Bang a Danish woman who had a relationship with him for 20 years. They were also living together, although discretely at the time. We are talking beginning of 20th century. It is a fascinating story of two intellectuals, falling in love and arranging their life as it suited them. Heidenstam was furthermore 30 years older than Bang. Not always easy, especially, since Heidenstam was a very famous person in Sweden. Kylhammar has made extensive research, and also managed to get never before privat correspondence from Kate Bang's family. Two fascinating lives, lived out in private for good and worse. I had mistaken his birthhouse for the house he built with Kate Bang, which is Övralid, situated on the other side of Lake Vättern. That visit has to be for another time. I was happy though to find one of his most famous books, Folkungaträdet, in one of the second hand shops. A few bookish things on this quiet, but rather warm day, back at home.

Today is the French National Day, congratulations to all the French people. Believe it or not, this is my first post for this challenge. July has been very busy, reading very slow and I had no time to catch up with this my favourite challenge. Thank you so much Emma, at Word and Peace , for hosting the challenge. I do hope to catch up at the latter part of the month. Only yesterday did I finish my first book about Paris and France, The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl. It is the kind of book I needed to read now. A charming novel about Stella, an American girl, somewhat at odds with life. She has grown up with her mother, who never revealed the name of her father. The only clue, if it is a clue, is a painting of a man that her mother held on to. When her mother dies, Stella inherits some money that has to go for a trip to Paris. She knew her mother lived there when she was young, but has no idea why the inheritance is dedicated to a trip for herself. Stella lingers on in Paris until one day she finds a second hand dress that changes her life. Once she wears it, she feels different. It is a design by Christian Dior, is very expensive, but Stella decides to spend her last money on the dress. The owner of the shop gives her some instruction on where to go and what to do. If she does not like the dress, she will give back the money. Stella follows the instructions of the lady and ventures into Paris life. Slowly, she adapts to the French style of doing things. Discovering the flavours of food and drink, Shakespeare & Company, and, to her own surprise, all of a sudden she has friends. Her benefactor Jules, almost adopts her and for the first time in her life she feels she has a family. This is the basic theme of the book, as well as Stella's search for the paintings of a certain Victorine Merurent who modelled for Édouard Manet, among others. Stella finds out that she also did paint and exhibited several of her painting. It seems that her paintings disappeared after her death. Reichl gives us a gourmet and historical tour of Paris and France. You should not be hungry when you read the book. The descriptions of the food is watering your mouth, the wine is so well described you wish you had a glass in your hand. The search for Victorine's story and her paintings is interesting. I had to look her up, and as was often the case, as a woman she had to fight for her craft, and when she was gone it was forgotten. You also get a good doses of books, literature and authors, some real authors, who, as well as other real persons, figure in the book. You follow Stella when she changes into a totally different person, a real person in comparison to her former life. Of course, her story and everything that happens to her is a fairy tale story, and I doubt that all these things could happen in real life. Maybe this is the charm with the book, the mixture of what could be real and could not. It is an easy read, it gives you hints on what to do in Paris, and I did note down a few tips of restaurants and hotels to check up for a future visit. Paris in July - BINGO With this book I managed to cover six spots on the bingo card. I have still to figure out how to put a cross on the document, so in the meantime, here are the spots. First line: Paris in title - Book set in France Second line: French Food - French Fashion Third line: Travels in France Fourth line: French Art A good start I would say.

We have been touring a small part of Sweden with our van. This year we chose to go around the two big lakes, Vänern (the largest lake in the European Union) and Vättern. As we came to a small town at the northeastern corner of the lake, we found a little bit of French art in Sweden. Here is the story of how a huge sculpture, designed by Picasso, ended up in this small corner of Sweden. I think Picasso does not need a further introduction, so I just mention that he was born in Malaga in Spain in 1881. In 1901, he moved from Barcelona to Paris and settled down in Montmartre, but later on moved to Montparnasse. He had a complicated family situation with many women, and it was only when he met Jacqueline Rogue, a potter, that he dedicated his life to her. She became his muse, and he stayed with her until his death in 1973, at the age of 91. The head of the sculpture represents his wife, Jacqueline. How did the sculpture end up in Sweden? We have to thank Swedish artist Bengt Olson for that. Everything began on a dusty road in France in the early 1960s. By coincidence, the artist Bengt Olson from Kristinehamn met the Norwegian painter, sculptor, and photographer Carl Nesjar, who had just started experimenting with a new concrete material. Pablo Picasso, who was fascinated by the artistic possibilities of the new material, had recently started to work with Carl Nesjar. They were making a series of sculptures and paintings called "Les Dames de Mougins" with Pablo Picasso's wife Jacqueline as the main theme. The sculptures were planned to be created on a monumental scale with the new concrete material. Carl Nesjar told Bengt Olson they could be built for 150,000 SEK each. QUICK FACTS • Height: 15 meters. The pillar measures 1.65 meters in diameter. The wings have a span of 6x4 meters. • Weight: 35 tons, of which one of the wings alone weighs about 8 tons. • Material: natural concrete. A mold was filled with small stones and then white cement was in-jected. • The sculpture consists of steel, cement and 90% black granite from Larvik, Norway. The final artistic pattern was created using a technique called sandblasting. The surface is said to to be so hard it will last for 2000 years. But if they wanted one, they had to act quickly! New York was expected to make an offer any day. Bengt Olson, who was then only 35 years of age, realized that this was a unique opportunity and managed to persuade the city council in Kristinehamn to invest in the building of one such sculpture. It was the heads of the local government who took the initiative. In order to persuade Picasso that Kristinehamn was the perfect location for the sculpture, they sent him photographs and music from Kristinehamn and Värmland. The official letter of donation arrived in the form of a photograph of the model in the location where it stands today. Picasso had written "Oui, Picasso 7.7 1964" on the photograph. On December 21st, 1964, the official decision to build the sculpture was taken by the city council. The following year, the sculpture was completed and could be inaugurated on Midsummer's Eve, June 25, 1965. Picasso was kept updated on the building progress through photographs and films, although he never visited the site himself. The sculpture, named "Jacqueline," has become the most visited spot in Kristinehamn, attracting thousands of visitors from around the world annually. It is a magnificent sculpture and is beautifully situated by the water with surrounding green areas. A lot of cafés and restaurants have grown up around the place, and the area is fantastic. A lot of magnificent houses 'litter' this small peninsula, and I can understand that people like to come here in the summer. The sculpture reminds me a little bit of an Indian totem pole in design. It was such a nice visit, although the weather was rather terrible; cold, windy and rainy. But what do we not do for a little bit of French culture on a rainy day. If you can't go to France, let France come to you.

Blipping through channels on my TV, I came upon a documentary of Gisèle Freund (1908-2000, and born Gisela Freund) a German-French photographer and photo journalist. It was a very interesting documentary of an interesting and fascinating woman. Making her way in a mainly male world, she became a successful entrepreneur and artist. It is intriguing to discover people like her, people you have never heard of, and just like that … they pop up one day. I thought this would be a suitable post for Paris in July. Her connections are so close to all the literary characters we associate with Paris at the time. Freund was born in Germany but had to leave the country in the beginning of the 1930s, and she went to Paris. She was even then famous for her realistic photos of people in different situations of life. Later in life she became famous for her portraits of writers and artists. She studied sociology and her best-known book Photographie et société ( 1974) is based on her 1936 dissertation.” (Wikipedia) She was also ahead of her time when it came to using, the then, modern technology. She used a Leica camera which had film rolls with 36 frames. Mainly for her work with documentary reportages and pioneering. For the portraits of writers and artists, she used Kodachrome and Agfa colour positive film. Does this not bring back memories from before the digital world we live in these days? This seems to have made it possible for her to develop a “uniquely candid portraiture style” that made her stand out at the time. She spent many years living abroad to document people in other parts of the world. Politically she was leaning towards the left and she became president of the French Union of Photographers in 1977. The 1981 official portrait of President François Mitterrand was taken by her. In 1982 she was made Officer des Arts et Lettres and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1983. That was not all, for in 1985, she became the first photographer to be honoured with a retrospective at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris. Paris Before Paris Freund had never done portraits. Her opening to these kind of photos was a request from French novelist and art theorist André Malraux. He wanted her to take a photo for an upcoming book, but not a photo in the traditional sense, but in a more candid fashion. This was the beginning of her career as a portrait photographer. At this time she befriended Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier. That led to Freund taking James Joyce’s photo for his upcoming book Finnegan’s Wake. It seems Joyce did not like to be photographed, but nevertheless invited Freund to his flat looking into her earlier work. He was so impressed that during three days Freund had access to the author. He got tired of posing and cried: ”I'm bleeding. Your damned photos will be the death of me", which he said, "forgetting in his pain that he had made it a rule never to swear in the presence of a lady." [ Right after the session the taxi that Freund went with crashed and her photos were damaged. Joyce, it seems, was superstitious and thought that his cursing had cause the crash. Freund was once again invited into his home and could take another set of photos. One of the photos was used by Time magazine for its cover on 8 May 1939. There are so much more to this lady that I can tell of here. If you are interested the documentary was made by Arte France Complices Films, and there are a lot to read about her on the net.

It is time for another spin with the . I actually did finish my last spin which was The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton . I liked it very much. I am happy to have finished the book since it was a long time since I actually managed to read a book for the spin. Here we go for Spin #38, and the number is 17. Your chosen book should be read by 22 September, 2024. Here is my list, not updated since last time. As you can see, no. 17 is The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. That is a classic I wanted to read, so I hope it will be good. Has anyone of you read it? Please let me know what you think.

July has come to an end, without me achieving very much on the reading front. July also saw Paris in July and I had big plans which did not really materialise. I only read four books this month, due to a busy schedule in both June and July. Somewhat late a short wrap-up from July. I will do a separate wrap-up of Paris in July. Books read Krysalis by John Trenhaile - a good, old fashioned spy thriller à la Le Carré. I have had it for a long time, found a receipt from Hatchard from 1990. Excellent and thrilling read. The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl - wonderful book about a girl coming to Paris, reluctantly, but slowly, slowly, coming under the spell of the city. You should not read it while hungry because there are several descriptions of food that you wish you had in front of you. My review under link. La vie secrète des écrivains/Öns hemlighet by Guillaume Musso - another good thriller by Musso, turning out to be the second book in a trilogy. The first one is Reunion which I did read. On Guillaume Musso 's  website he explains the purpose of the trilogy. He uses different perspectives to tell his stories. They are captivating and surprising. Along the way you think you know the riddle of the story, just to be surprised when it changes direction. He is playing between fiction and reality. Review will come. Well-schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George - I have hardly read any of her books, but watched many episodes from the TV-series. It is a treat to read her books as well, and this murderer hid among the suspects until the very end. That was all I managed this month. I am in the process of reading a few other books though. Faust by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig No angel by Penny Vincenzi Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali Antinous: A Poem by Fernando Pessoa Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron The Devil's Elixirs by E. T. A. Hoffmann Marie Antoinette's Head, The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen and the Revolution by Will Basnor Let's see if I can finish a few of them until the end of the month.

Guillaume Musso is one of my favourite thriller authors from France. Two others I would like to mention are Fred Vargas and Michel Bussi. I have read one book by Musso before, The Reunion (La jeune fille et la nuit). La vie secrète des écrivains (Öns hemlighet/The Secret Life of Writers) turns out to be part two in a trilogie, which I did not know. Lucky for me, The Reunion is the first part and this one is the second. That leaves the third, La vie est un roman. Unfortunately, it seems not to be translated to English or Swedish yet. On Guillaume Musso 's website there is a short explanation of this trilogi. "Through these three novels Musso finds different perspectives to tell his captivating stories, and they are captivating. I especially like his story telling which often is surprising. In these three novels he shares his passion for writing and the dizziness that arises from the interplay between fiction and reality. In The Reunion , a writer is overtaken by a crime committed in his youth and by a love never forgotten. In The Secret Life of Writers , a famous novelist who has chosen silence for twenty years is forced to come out of his reserve. In La vie est un roman, the disappearance of a novelist's granddaughter gives rise to a hand-to-hand combat between the real world and the fictional world." I n 1999, after publishing three cult novels, celebrated author Nathan Fawles announces the end of his writing career and withdraws to Beaumont, a wild and beautiful island off the Mediterranean coast. Autumn 2018. As Fawles’ novels continue to captivate readers, Mathilde Monney, a young Swiss journalist, arrives on the island, determined to unlock the writer’s secrets and secure his first interview in twenty years. That same day, a woman’s body is discovered on the beach and the island is cordoned off by the authorities. And so, begins a dangerous face off between Mathilde and Nathan, in which the line between truth and fiction becomes increasingly blurred… (From Goodreads) The story is told from several narrators, and with every narrator you get a different story. They do come together in the end, but before that you have guessed the outcome a number of times ... all of them wrong. After having retreated from the world 20 years earlier, Nathan Fowles is all of a sudden 'hunted' by a few admirers. An aspiring author, a Swiss journalist and a presumtive Guillaume Musso, all of them trying to get close to Fowles and find out his secret. They all have a different reason, and a different drive to try to find him. Before the story reach its end, it has taken us through the early life of Fowles and his reason to retreat from the world. When a murder victim turns up on the island the story takes another turn. Who is the victim? Why did the body turn up on the island? What is behind the murder? Musso takes us through a straight story, into a mysterious one, a doubtful one, and a surprising one. Nothing is what it seems to be in this story of illusion, fiction and reality. And the end is totally surprising. Musso's stories are captivating and it is difficult to put the book down. This was no exception, and even know, a couple of weeks later the story stays with me. I can hardly wait until the last chapter of the trilogie is translated.

Thanks to host Emma @ Word and Peace we had a fabulous Paris in July this year. Unfortunately, for me, I was rather busy during June and July and could not participate as much as I wanted. Anyway, there were enough participants with various themes on Paris and France. I still have to read some of your posts. I wanted to make a wrap-up of my own participation, and here is what I did achieve in July. There will be a few more reviews from the books I am currently reading. A Moveable Feast - Only the title referring to Hemingway's take on Paris, but I thought it was a good way of showing you my library-on-the-road. The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl - a wonderful tale of a girl living a rather strict and boring life and how it changed once she visited Paris. A Little Bit of France in Sweden - by accident finding a sculpture by Picasso in a small town in Sweden. Gisèle Freund, photographer - By chance find a documentary on TV about this fascinating woman. My French dinner - I did manage to create a French six-course meal to celebrate my husband's 65th birthday. It was celebrated with friends. I was so busy with the menu, so I forgot to take photos. La vie secrète des écrivains by Guillaume Musso - I did manage to read another book. It was not difficult since Musso is one of my favourite thriller authors. Another enigmatic story by him. Stealing the Mona Lisa - podcast - A few days ago I listened to a podcast from History Extra about the stealing of Mona Lisa. This happened in August 1911 when a handyman walked out of the Louvre with the painting under his arm. Can you imagine that? The author of The Theft of the Mona Lisa Dr. Noah Charney is interviewed in the podcast. Fascinating story, and I would really like to read the book as well. Still on the agenda I see I did manage six posts, so not that bad. I just wanted to have had time to read more. However, I am still intend to reading a few books and other cultural things connected to France. Here is (part of) my list before the event, and which I am thinking of pursuing in the near future. Marie Antoinette's Head, The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen and the Revolution by Will Basnor The Billionaire, The Butler, and the Boyfriend is a French docuseries which follows the lift of L'Oreal heiress Lilianne Bettencourt and the scandals around her. How did a conflict between the world's wealthiest woman and her daughter spiral into national scandal? Sounds intriguiging enough. Although it is a series I might go for a French movie as well. Under Paris - In order to save Paris from an international bloodbath, a grieving scientist is forced to face her tragic past when a giant shark appears in the Seine. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I will keep an open mind. Both on Netflix. I am thinking of a biography of Napoleon . French Windows by Antoine Laurain Thank you so much to Emma for the hard work holding it all together. Always nice and interesting to read participants accounts of Paris/France and to find new acquaintances. Future reading What is coming up in the future? I am still thinking of how I could improve and develop my blog, both with content and definitely with design. I don't follow so many challenges anymore, although I love them. They just seem to block my ambition to lower my TBRs. Although Umberto Ecco, who had 50 000 books in his library said: "It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticise those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones. "There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion. "If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice! "Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity." So well put, and I will take it with me next time I worry about my TBR shelves. There are a few favourite challenges coming up in November; Nonfiction November, Novellas in November and German Literary Month. I will have to see if I can follow all of them or just two. Are you following any of these three? That was my Paris in July wrap-up and a little bit of my future reading plans.

I am presently travelling in Austria and, if you are interested, you can read about my trips on The Content Reader newsletter . My next newsletter will be about Bad Ischl in Austria, the town where Franz Joseph and Elisabeth (Sisi) met and got engaged. I refer to a couple of books about them and am therefore republishing this post that originally was posted on my old website. The Habsburgs by Andrew Wheatcroft A book about the Habsburgs is certainly going to be a thick one. A family with a long history and part of the European history for over 1000 years. In spite of this, Wheatcroft has been able to give an account of the family in just under 300 pages (not including footnotes and timelines). Considering the number of Habsburgs that have passed by during this time span, it is a thorough historical account of their lives and deeds. Some gets a little bit more space and some less, and rightly so. It starts with the first Dukes of Austria, originating from, what is today, south of Switzerland, in 1020 and continues to the last emperor, Karl I who was dethroned in 1919. I will not even try to make a summary of this interesting family and its input on the history of Europe. As with most ruling dynasties, it is a matter of wars, conquering of land, survival through intrigues, influence as well as personal lives through marriage, children and the fight for survival of the dynasty. As regards the latter part there were both good and bad sides of the motto of Austria: Felix Austria Nube. " The impact of this Spanish fixation with blood and race on the Habsburgs remains conjectural. But their marriage patterns in the century and a half of the 'Madrid-Vienna axis' are unique in the history of Western Europe. 'Happy Austria marries': and it is a matter of record that the Habsburgs had gained their patchwork of lands by marriage alliances underestimates the intense military activity undertaken, especially in Italy to sustain and consolidate their holdings. It also, wrongly, suggests that other families did not use marriage in the same way to cement of consolidate political alliances. But what distinguished the Habsburgs' marriage strategy especially after the death of Charles V, was its inventiveness and capacity to adapt to new circumstances. No other royal house had developed so coherent a notion of 'the power of the blood'. " Royal marriages have always been a political game, and did most of the time, but not always, lead to unhappy marriages. However, many of the Habsburgs seemed to have loved their spouse and their children, in a way which was not common at the time. " Many Habsburg marriages seemed despite their political origins to have turned into genuine love-matches, and the anguish that Habsburg parents felt at the death of their children, even as tine infants, also seems unfeigned, even if expressed in terms of a dutiful resignation to the divine will. " One of the most famous of the emperors, and the man who consolidated and extended the then rather small empire of the Habsburgs, Maximilian I, was very much in love with his first wife, He married Mary of Burgundy, a request by his father, Frederick III. The union turned out to be a union of love from both sides. They were married in 1477 and Maximilian was devastated when she died in a riding accident in 1482. Fate does not always turn out that good. In 1493 he married Bianca Maria Sforza who brought a rich dowry and rights as imperial overlord of Milan. It was an unhappy marriage and they had no children. It generated a huge number of bastards though, and he seemed to have been very fond of them and provided for them. Maximilian died on 12 January, 1519, and is buried under the altar steps of the church of St George at Wiener Neustadt. "Where he was buried, he said, he would feel the priest stand on his chest when he raised the host during the mass. But his chest was an empty cavity, for his last command had been that his heart be embalmed, carried to Bruges, and reunited with the body of his first wife, Mary of Burgundy." I find this terribly romantic, and not typical for the time. The other face, and not such a nice one, of the Habsburg's marriage policy was the inbreeding. " Ferdinand III dutifully produced a total of eleven children, but only two sons who survived infancy. The death of his elder son, Ferdinand, from the universal scourge of smallpox in 1654 brought the younger brother Leopold to the fore, as the senior surviving male in the Austrian branch of the house of Habsburg. After 1665, he was the only surviving male member of his immediate lineage. Thus despite all this prodigious begetting, the twin Habsburg thrones (in the male line) depended on two sickly cousins, Leopold and Carlos. Although much has been made of the dire genetic effects of inbreeding, much more dangerous for the Habsburgs was the devastating rate of infant mortality, and the prevalence of epidemic disease in the close confines of the courts, in Madrid and in Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck. Numerically, the Habsburgs seemed to produce a great many more daughters than sons, and these daughters tended to survive longer than their seemingly more vulnerable brothers. Of course, the life expectancy of Habsburg women was drastically reduced by early marriage, repeated pregnancies, and death in childbirth or from puerperal fevers. " The inbreeding (in the Spanish line) came to and end with Charles II of Spain. He suffered from ill health all his life, but did survive until the age of 39. His disabilities were more physical with the famous Habsburg jaw, where the lower jaw outgrows the upper one. The English ambassador, Stanhope, reported in 1697: " His constitution is so very weak and broken much beyond his age that it is generally feared what may be the success of such another attack. They cut his hair off in his sickness, which the decay of nature had almost done before, all his crown being bald. He has a ravenous stomach, and swallow all he eats whole, for his nether jaw stands so much out, that his two rows of teeth cannot meet; to compensate which, he has a prodigious wide throat, so that a gizzard or liver of a hen passes down whole, and his weak stomach not being able to digest it, he voids in the same manner. " The last in the Spanish line of the Habsburgs, he died in 1700 without an heir, and chose Louis XIV's grandson Philip of Anjou as successor. France was no friend of the Habsburgs, during most of their history, and it did not go down well in Vienna. It led to the War of the Spanish Succession. I have chosen to mention a few notes dealing with the more personal side of the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs is so much more. It is a well researched and easy accessible biography over a family that fought for political control of their dominions for more or less a thousand years. Through the book we get to know the great and not so great achievements, their struggle for power and glory, for family and legacies. It is a tour through European history. Andrew Wheatcroft writes with knowledge and compassion and presents a fascinating story of a family's rise and decline.

Republished from my old website. The Lonely Empress is a biography about Elizabeth of Austria. Known as Sisi she has mesmerised a whole world and it was with great anticipation I started to read. I think a lot of people, including myself, have a somewhat romantic image of her, but you realise rather quickly that you are wrong. She is far from a romantic princess, rather the contrary. But let's start from the beginning. She was one of a big family of siblings in the Wittelsbach family. Growing up rather freely, close to nature and away from binding court protocol, her future life came as a shock to her. Emperor Franz Joseph's mother Sophia and Sisi's mother Ludovica were sisters and planned to marry off the young emperor to the oldest Wittelsbach daughter, Helen. As it happened, Sisi was accompanying her sister to the first meeting with the crown prince, and, as they say, the rest is history. He fell madly in love with Sisi and persuaded his mother to change her mind about who should become his wife. " Neither Ludovica nor Sophia seems to have given a thought to the fact that Francis Joseph and Elizabeth were not only first cousins, but that Elizabeth was a child of second cousins, both of them Wittelsbachs - a dangerous inheritance for the heirs to the Austrian throne. " After their first meeting in the spa resort of Bad Ischl Sisi had to go back home. " In the most romantic of all Austrian towns they said good-bye, and it seemed as if the Emperor would never tire of kissing Elizabeth's tearstained face. But it was two strangers who said good-bye, two people who as yet knew nothing of one another, and who would only gradually discover the incompatibility of their characters, the divergencies of their tastes. But whereas Francis Joseph's love would be strong enough to survive all the vicissitudes of their married life, Elizabeth's love, fragile and ephemeral as a dream, would fade in the first hour of disillusion. " The last sentence above more, or less, sums up the character of Elizabeth. She lived in an imaginary dream, suffered from melancholia, was very shy and had physiological problems of various kinds. A little bit of paranoia added to it makes a troubled life. Although she did love her husband for some years, it slowly disintegrated. " The tragedy for Elizabeth was that she was married to a man with no imagination. " Two souls that never really met. Elizabeth had very little empathy and could not even give love to her own children, the exception being her last child Marie Valerie. She was a worried soul which made her travel around Europe for most of her life. Elizabeth and Franz Joseph were married for forty-four years, but it seems they only spend around four years together. Elizabeth went from one place to the next, without finding any peace. She got easily bored and ventured on another trip. Part of the problem was the Habsburg court which kept the most rigid etiquette in Europe. Strict rules on how to spend the days, both with the family and the court itself. It came as a shock to Elizabeth who had grown up in a rather unruly household. She never took to Vienna and only reluctantly stayed there when she had to for political reasons. She loved Hungary and even learned Hungarian. She took their political course into her heart and this was the only time she engaged in the politics of the Habsburgs and Austria. Elizabeth was considered the most beautiful woman of her time. She could be very charming when she wanted to and people fell for her spirit. In a way, it turned out to be her curse. She came to worship her own beauty which took peculiar turns. She spend hours every day to do her hair, she let the maids make face cream out of strawberries and she slept with raw meat on her cheeks, just to keep her beauty. She was a fanatic for exercise and walked hours every day. Her main love seems to have been for horses and she was considered an excellent rider and hunter. She could easily compete with any man on a hunt. Her restless energy made it difficult for most people to keep up with her pace. Afraid of becoming fat she dieted most of her life and sometimes only ate an orange or two during the day. I think today she would have been diagnosed with anorexia. All these factors did not improve her health. Elizabeth often talked about how she wanted to die: " I would like to die alone, far from my loved ones, and for death to take me unawares. " In this sense, her wish was fulfilled. She was stabbed by an anarchist on the Montblanc quay in Geneva and died soon afterwards. The Habsburg family suffered many losses of loved ones and various accidents during their lives. When Emperor Franz Joseph received the news that the Empress had passed away he said: "' Is nothing to be spared me on this earth?' Count Paar was the only one to hear the harsh and bitter sobs of a broken-hearted man questioning his God. Then raising his head, Francis Joseph looked across at the portrait of the woman he had worshipped but never understood. And speaking to himself, rather than to Count Paar, he said, ' No one will ever know how much I loved her .'" The biography covers not only Elizabeth but also part of the life of Franz Joseph and the family. The Mayerling drama is here, as well as political events during the latter part of the 19th century. " The tragedy of Francis Joseph was that he was never prepared to make sacrifices until it was too late. " The political upheaval in Europe during the latter part of the 19th century might have needed an Emperor who was more flexible and not so bound to traditions. The biography makes for fascinating reading, both on a personal account of the Habsburg family and their, somewhat, doomed heritage. When looking back on the personal lives of Franz Joseph and Sisi, I think Franz Joseph turns out to be the nicer person of the two. His love lasted a life-time and must have caused him a lot of sadness, considering how Sisi spent her life. Sisi on her side, should not have been an Empress. She would probably have been happier in an ordinary marriage, living a simpler life, close to nature. Having said that, she definitely enjoyed the lifestyle of the rich. That is, she was free to choose the lifestyle she wanted. Joan Haslip has managed to capture the life of a lost soul and a tragic life. The biography is very well researched and documented and gives an in-depth view of the life of the royals at the time. The difficult balancing between private and official lives, having to adapt to external circumstances. Joan Haslip treats the story with great respect, documenting their lives and showing sympathy to the people she is writing about. An excellent biography. (PS I have used the Austrian (and Swedish) spelling of the names of Habsburg and Franz Joseph (except for quotes from the book). It seems in English you can use both b and p for Habsburg and the biography uses p. Franz Joseph is Francis Joseph in English.)

Republished from my old website This is a very complex book about finding the cause to the First World War. It is not possible to point to one specific cause to the start of the war. Christopher Clark makes a fantastic job in showing us the various events that lead to this terrible war. ” The European continent was at peace on the morning of Sunday 28 June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek arrived at Sarajevo railway station. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that began that summer mobilized 65 million troops, claimed three empires, 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. The horrors of Europe’s twentieth century were born of this catastrophe; it was, as the American historian Fritz Stern put it, ’the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang’. The debate over why it happened began before the first shots were fired and has been running ever since. It has spawned an historical literature of unparalleled size, sophistication and moral intensity. For international relations theorists the events of 1914 remain the political crisis par excellence, intricate enough to accommodate any number of hypotheses .” This is the opening paragraph of the Introduction to Christopher Clark’s eminent book on how Europe went to war in 1914, The Sleepwalkers . Tremendous praise has been given to the book, and it has been called a master piece. You can’t call it anything less. It is magnificent. Clark gives such detailed accounts on events, you wonder how he has been able to research it all. Christopher Clark is an Australian historian, working at the University of Cambridge. In 2015 he was knighted for his services to Anglo-German relations. His earlier works include The History of Prussia, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 and Kaiser Wilhelm II . ” This book thus strives to understand the July Crisis of 1914 as a modern event, the most complex of modern times, perhaps of any time so far. It is concerned less with why the war happened than with how it came about. Questions of why and how are logically inseparable, but they lead us in different directions. The question of how invites us to look closely at the sequences of interactions that produced certain outcomes. By contrast, the question of why invites us to go in search of remote and categorical cuases: imperialism, nationalism, armaments, alliances, high finance, ideas of national honour, the mechanics of mobilization. They why approach brings a certain analytical clarity, but it also has a distorting effect, because it creates the illusion of a steadily building causal pressure; the factors pile up on top of each other pushing down on the events; political actors become mer executors of forces long established and beyond their control. " The British historian A.J.P Taylor and the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that ’ the war was a result of rigid planning, train schedules and treaty commitments. That is, it was the final stop in a chain of events that could not stop the train, once it started ’. It is a very good description and after having read Clark’s book you can see how all decisions from the persons and countries involved, although aimed at not starting a war, on the contrary, lead directly to war. In 1903, Alexander I of Serbia was killed by a secret network called 'The Black Hand'. The same network that eleven years later organised the murder of the archduke of Austria-Hungary. Christopher Clark considers this to be the very start of the actions that finally led to the outbreak of the First World War. Germany was accused of escalating the conflict, but Clark means they were not alone in their paranoid imperialism. None of the great powers wanted war, but due to how events happened, they walked like sleepwalkers into the war, without anyone being able to explain how it happened. Europe at the time was at a cross road and political changes were in the air. The imperialistic powers of Europe, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Osman empire, Russia, Great Britain, France and Italy were all conspiring to secure their power base. New times were waiting and people were opposing their governments. Clark considers that this totally, illogical conflict is based on how Europe looked before 1914. It was an unstable, hereditary monarchy, hit by ethnical conflicts and nationalistic fractions. The elite suffered from a lack of virility and needed somehow to show their masculinity. Could it be that the war started because the elite and generals felt threatened by the earlier marginalised proletariat? There is not one separate government or individ which could be accused of having started the war. Clark notes in his conclusion that: ” The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character. Viewed in this light, the outbreak of war was a tragedy, not a crime. Acknowledging this does not mean that we should minimize the belligerence and imperialist paranoia of the Austrian and German policy-makers that rightly absorbed the attention of Fritz Fischer and his historiographical allies. But the Germans were not the only imperialists and not the only ones to succumb to paranoia. The crisis that brought war in 1914 was the fruit of a shared political culture. But it was also multipolar and genuinely interactive - that is what makes it the most complex event of modern times and that is why the debate over the origins of the First World War continues, one century after Gavrilo Princip fired those two fatal shots on Franz Joseph Street. ” So much have been written about the First World War. Last time someone counted, in 1991, there were more than 25 000 books an articles written about this disaster. If you are interested in the causes and want to have an overview of events, I can highly recommend this book. The book is almost 600 pages, written in rather small text (at least my pocket version), but it never gets dull. Wonderful prose, easy to read and told in a way that makes it hard to put the book down, once you get into it. It just confirms that the history of real life is much more exciting than any fictional story. What amazed me, was how supposedly, responsible emperors, kings and politicians acted. Many times due to small reasons of self interest, making a decision without a proper back ground, without thinking of the greater picture, a lack of knowing what the others were doing, interpreting what they were doing, rightly or wrongly. It was like these people were sitting with the map of Europe and made their next move with a chess piece. Rather scaring.

September is gone and we have been travelling this month, and still are. We did Sardinia with our camper van and am now in Corsica. Fantastic islands and I managed to read a few books connecting with Sardinia so far. Corsica reading will come and will of course be a biography of Napoleon, having visited his birth place yesterday. But, now it is time to look at what I read in September. I managed eight books. Agatha Christie x 2 After a very slow reading in August, due to lack of time, and thick books that never seemed to end, I was ready for a couple of light reads in the beginning of the month. I went to my Nextory app and dowloaded Murder at the Vicarage and The Body in the Library. Both easy reads, and entertaining. Kala by Colin Walsh I think this will be the best book I read this year. A fascinating story of Kala and her teenage friends. Starting with a prolog from past times and then jumping to present day. The story is told by three friends of Kala and jumps from past to present, making it a very thrilling read. This is Colin Walsh (Irish) debut novel and I can't wait to see what he will be up to in the future. There will be a review soon, I hope. I just wanted to tease you with the following paragraph, or long sentence reminding me of Henry James, from the prolog. "Kala's front wheel noses its way over the edge and her bike tips into the fall and time dilates into something unstable once the rest of us pedal after her, turning the world beneath us, our bikes peeling off the top of the hill into the nothing, where immediately there's no need to pedal any more, gravity's taking care of everything now, coiling us through itself and tearing the path apart beneath our tyres as we go faster and faster, the cars growing louder, the gap getting larger, the lads yelping and shrieking, the bike chains beneath us screaming, when we see that Kala has begun to pedal furiously, all of us shouting and her leaning deeper and pulling out ahead of us, gathering herself into a surge, hair streking back at us like dark lightning as the path suddenly runs into road, and the sounds become noise, and in the roar of the moment it feels like we're foam becoming ocean." It is a beautifully crafted novel. The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Eriksson I found this book at the harbour in Livorno, Italy, as we were camping overnight to catch the ferry to Sardinia the next morning. It is an English version of a Swedish thriller. I have not heard of either the author or the book, but the story sounded good. And it was. It was a little bit strange in the beginning to read it in English, because I could only think of the Swedish words, but IThe Prin got over that. It is a different story from the usual one, I really enjoyed it and it kept me guessing until the very end. . From Goodreads. This spellbinding new thriller opens when a young father fails to show up for supper on a snowy night just before Christmas. His is not the only sinister disappearance, and before the final breathtaking climax, a secret killer terrorizes an entire frightened town. Despite being on maternity leave, Inspector Ann Lindell is determined to find John's murderer. The cruel cat-and-mouse game that follows leads Ann to a deadly confrontation with a treacherous killer. Ann must decide whether to take a huge risk that could result in many more dead bodies in the snow, including hers and that of her unborn child. Boktjuvarna, Jakten på de försvunna biblioteken by Anders Rydell (The Book Thieves, The Hunt for the Lost Libraries). An interesting nonfiction book on the lost libraries after World War II. Well researched and rather scaring in the determination that the Nazis had in either destroying books or stealing them for their own purposes. Rydell has travelled all over Europe to find out what happened. Unfortunately, so many libraries are still lost. The Queen of Darkness and other stories by Grazia Deledda Grazia Deledda is a Sardinian author from Nouro, of whome I never heard of. To my big surprise she is a Nobel Prize Laureate and got the price in 1926 "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island (i.e. Sardinia) and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general." I found one of her short story books on my Nextory app and downloaded it. It was a pleasant aquaintaince to read her book. She writes about ordinary people who ends up in extraordinary circumstances, and how they deal with their problems, with grace and and an inner strengh that help them through life. The short stories, although written almost a hundred years ago, still felt that they belong to today's world. Howards End by E.M. Forster This book probably does not need any further introduction. It is, I would think, a typical Forster novel, slowly taking us through the lives of two sisters and a brother who happen to be aquainted with the Wilcoxes, the owners of Howards End. Enters a poor, young man who wants to educate himself, but have a lot of problems pursuing his studies. It is about relationships, intellectual versus entrepreneurial, different classes as the world is changing. Forster slowly goes forward with his sharp eye for society, life and a changing world. Only in the end, the story seems to speed up and become quite exciting. Margareth is the only one of the characters that I really liked, the rest of them seemed to be 'floating' around without any goal, or aim, in life. Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Finally, finished Goethe's Faust that I have been reading for a few months. It is a book that has to be read slowly, and I would even say, that I have to re-read part of it anyway to really grasp everything. It was a much easier read that I had anticipated and I appreciated the poetry of the text. I somehow thought it was written in prose. It is satirical, and sometimes hilarious and I really enjoyed it. When you read the introduction and comments you can see the bigger picture of what Goethe wanted with this story. That was my eight books of September. I have already read a book about Garibaldi, in connection with the Sardinian trip. He had a house there, now a museum, and it was beautiful to walk around there. But more about this man and biography in October.