Fall Reading Book Swap II

Today I received an e-mail from my swap partner Kari in which she told me that she received the package I had sent her. I can't wait to pick mine at the post office today!

I sent her a book by Arto Paasilinna, The Howling Miller. I don't like the front cover of an English version and I noticed that it had been translated from a French version of the book. Slovenian version was translated directly from Finnish by a woman who has a Finnish husband and I have to say that the translation is excellent!

So, here is a story why I like this book so much and why I chose to include it in my swap package:
Many years ago I was living in a nice apartment in the city centre of Ljubljana with a beautiful young man who eventually became my husband. I didn't have to wake up early in the morning as my office was very near my home and therefore I had time to read the morning newspaper. I was always reading it from the last to the front page and somewhere in between there was a feuilleton, which I sometimes read and sometimes not. Depending on the story. One day a new story was beginning to be published, by a Finnish author Arto Paasilinna that I had never heard of before. The story was somehow weird but I was attracted to it. I asked my man if he wanted to hear it too. He said yes. So, each morning I read a new piece of The Howling Miller aloud to both of us. Later we discussed the happening in the story and each day we wondered what would have followed. We both liked it very much! I cut out those feuilletons and I still keep them somewhere in my boxes. Those were ones of the most precious moments in my life!

The book was a great hit in Slovenia when it was published later in that year, as is almost every book written by the same author. He writes strange stories but sometimes, after reading them, you find courage and strength to do the things in life you have never imagined. I hope that Kari will find some inspiration in those plain sentences of a magnificent story.