As I’ve mentioned in some of my earlier posts, 2015 will be celebrated in Finland as The Year of Book. This is organised to promote reading and literature by hosting book clubs, author meetings, and other book related events. I’ll try to keep an eye out for the events happening near me, but instead of merely reporting from events that I’ve attended, I’ve decided to try and make 2015 also the year of Finnish literature also here in my blog. And for this purpose, I’ve coined my own little 15 in 2015 challenge.
Now, I must admit that this is not an original idea – I saw it prompted in the Finnish Goodreads group that I follow. The basic idea of the 15 in 2015 challenge is to read and review 15 books written by Finnish authors. My goal with this challenge is both to read more Finnish fiction and to raise awareness about the Finnish fiction that gets translated into other languages. I’ll try to keep an eye out especially for the books translated into English since it’s the language my readers seem most familiar with. I also plan on writing a second part to my Finnish authors post, because upon reflection there are so many Finnish authors that I’ve yet to mention!
This is the official logo for The Year of Book. [A quick lesson on Finnish: KIRJA=BOOK; -N= the genitive case; VUOSI=YEAR] As the year progresses, I’ll be linking all the reviews to this master post, so if you miss any of the reviews, you’ll always find them here. In order to read 15 books in 12 months, I should read 1.25 books every month – which isn’t much, but I doubt that I’ll be as orderly as that 😀 But so much for the technical stuff, let’s look at the books!
Finnish books that I’d really like to read in 2015:
- The Egyptian by Mika Waltari (translated)
- The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (translated)
- The Winter Book by Tove Jansson (translated)
- When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (translation published Feb. 2015)
- The Beggar and the Hare by Tuomas Kyrö (Waterstones book of the month Feb. 2015)
- Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson
- Jokapäiväinen elämämme by Riikka Pelo
- Neljäntienristeys by Tommi Kinnunen
- Punainen viiva by Ilmari Kianto
- Maa on syntinen laulu by Timo K. Mukka
- Complete collection of poetry and aforisms by Edith Södergran
Adding a few comics/graphic novels into the mix:
I’d also love to write reviews for two books of which the English translation is published in 2015 and that I’ve read earlier: White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen (translation published March 1, 2015) & Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna (translation published April 2015).
Let me know if you have any suggestions as to which book I should begin with or any recommendations! I’d love to hear them.
Cheers! x
Dawn of books 
Oh ill be really interested to read your reviews! I am very up for reading Finnish literature!
Thank you! I hope that I’ll find great books to recommend 🙂
this gives me even greater reason to read something by a Finnish author.thanks for letting me know. good luck with the 15…
Thanks! Hopefully you’ll find some titles that sound interesting to you 🙂
That’s my problem I will be finding too many that interest me!
So interesting.
You have so many authors of your ‘own’ to look up to! Lucky you!
Thank you!
I hope to discover some new favourites, but also to get a better understanding of our history and the society around me. Of course I’d love to read books by authors around the globe, but unfortunately those are a bit harder to find.
This sounds really great! I had also been thinking about reading more Finnish authors and this could be a great way to do it! Good luck with it!
Thank you.
Maybe you should give it a try then? Getting started is always the hardest part, but once you start to read Finnish books, you’ll find more to follow. 🙂