Bítlaávarpið (Beatles Manifesto)

t's vacation time - time to read some books instead of just exercises and theses...

In anticipation of the Icelandic refresher course I'll be taking the second half of August I decided to read Einar Már Guðmundsson's Beatle's Manifesto in Swedish. My Icelandic is so rusty, I don't think I can do this in Icelandic, and it's not translated into English or German. Kind of wierd, though, to be reading about Iceland in Swedish. But the translator did a good job, there are many bits that are quite of Icelandic flavor.

Einar Már. One of the "bad boys" about my age who write books or make films or both. Apparently, they all pretty much went to school together, my Icelandic friend Bina was in the same class as Einar Már, she showed me her school yearbook and I had a good laugh at all of the guys she went to school with.

Anyway, it is a typical book of this type, I suppose. Short chapters - 3 to 5 pages - because guys don't have long attention spans. Lots of silly trouble he and his pals got into. Lots of pissing - don't take bottles of "Sinalco" from young guys that don't have their caps on tight, you may be in for a not-so-sweet bottle of liquid. Actually, one of the pissing stories actually made me laugh (normally I just find them gross). A guy was pissing - illegally - against the wall in a drunken state. A cop tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around to face the cop, still pissing, and wet the trouser leg of the cop.

And then there is the love factor, Helga. He actually writes something of sense at the end: no matter how bad boys treat girls, if they are in love with them nothing can shake them. He himself is quite in love with Helga, but manages to make a monkey out of himself innumerable times (most especially in the final episode).

I read the book about 4/5 of the way through, then there were more exciting things to do: clean the house, cut the grass, do the laundry. But I don't like non-finished books, so I finished it off today. Okay, Einar Már, we've had lots of little boy and growing-up boy and teenage boy stories from you. Now that you are middle aged, can you write about anything else? I'll check out the bookshops when I get to Iceland.