Review of "The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well " by Meik Wiking

 

Hygge (pronounced hoo-gah) - the Danish art of living well - has become quite trendy these days. To find out what it's all about I read 'The Little Book of Hygge' by Meik Wiking (pronounced Mike Viking). Wiking is the CEO of 'The Happiness Research Institute' - a Danish think tank that studies satisfaction, happiness, and the quality of life.



In a nutshell, hygge is a feeling of well-being that can be engendered by pleasant surroundings, tasty food, and good company.....or whatever else makes you feel safe and content. As Wiking describes it, hygge is 'an atmosphere, an experience' - what we feel when we're with people we love in a warm and comfortable place.



Things that promote hygge are called 'hyggelig.' For instance, the following would be hyggelig: a small group of friends sitting around a fireplace in a cabin, wearing big jumpers (sweaters) and wooly socks, drinking malt wine. It would be even more hyggelig if a storm was raging outside. LOL



Danish people strive to have all their life experiences be as hyggelig as possible. They try to have hyggelig homes; go to hyggeling restaurants; entertain hyggelig visitors; play hyggelig games; work at hyggelig jobs; go on hyggelig trips; etc.

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A lot of creating hygge is common sense, but - if you want some pointers - Wiking provides a guide:

- Use lots of candles. The Danes place candles everywhere - in bedrooms living rooms, bathrooms, classrooms, boardrooms, etc.



- Place dim lighting in strategic locations. Wiking recommends light fixtures designed by Poul Henningsen, whose lamps provide soft, diffuse light.



- Create a feeling of togetherness with friends and relatives; togetherness is 'like a hug without touching.'

- Maintain a healthy work-life balance. Spend a lot of time with your family.



- Socialize with friends and colleagues.



- Good food. Danish people like meat and potatoes.....and they love sweets - especially cake. A traditional feature of Danish children's birthday parties is 'Cakeman' - a pastry in the shape of a large gingerbread man, decorated with flags, sweets, and candles.



In the book, Wiking includes recipes for a few of his favorite Danish dishes. One is called Skipperlabskovs (Skipper Stew), which is brisket sitting in potato mash - served wtih pickled beets and rye bread.



- Hot beverages. Danes love coffee. If you watch Danish TV series, the characters are always making coffee, drinking coffee, and offering each other coffee.....(like tea in British TV series....LOL)



- Comfortable clothing. For professional wear, Danish men like a T-shirt or sweater under a blazer, usually in black or gray. Danes don't favor three-piece-suits. 



For casual wear, Danes like a comfortable jumper.....with leggings for girls or skinny jeans for boys. And Danes LOVE scarves. 



- Casual hairdos. Danish hairstyles are 'wake up and go'.....or maybe a loose bun for women.



- Comfortable furnishings. Danes enjoy interior decorating, and their decor often includes wood furniture, vintage items, and an open fireplace and/or a wood-burning stove.



- Blankets and cushions. Necessary for snuggling up and getting cozy.



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After providing this overview of hygge, Wiking goes on to talk about how to be hyggelig outside the home; during every month of the year - from January to December; and during every season of the year. Wiking also describes various hyggelig experiences he's had with his friends, and writes about his happiness research.

Wiking's suggestions for hyggelig pastimes include things like: spend a weekend in a cabin; have a cooking party with your friends; go out on a rowboat and bring a picnic basket; put couches in your office; have a movie night - with popcorn; go to a hyggelig restaurant and order pickled herring and schnapps; buy confections at a bakery; enjoy exhibitions of Christmas lights; have smorrebrod (an open sandwich on rye bread) with beer or schnapps; read a good book; and so on.



You can probably think up hundreds of 'hyggelig' activities yourself. For example, here's one: invite a couple of friends over; watch Netflix; bring in Mexican food; drink sangria....and later on - have chocolate eclairs for dessert. If you have some hygge suggestions, feel free to comment below.



Wiking sums up his treatise on hygge by noting that a complete hygge experience includes 'taste, sound, smell, and texture.'
- Hyggelig tastes are familiar and sweet.
- Hyggelig sounds might be: the crackling of burning wood; the pitter patter of raindrops; and trees waving in the breeze.
- Hyggelig smells could be aromas that trigger fond memories.
- Hyggeling textures might be wooden surfaces; smooth ceramic cups; and reindeer fur.



I feel like I gained a pretty good understanding of hygge from Wiking's book. However, Wiking's numerous suggestions for 'hyggelig experiences' got very repetitive.....and after awhile, it seemed like a lot of padding to have enough words for an entire book.

Still, if you're curious about hygge, this is a good crash course.

Rating: 3 stars

Review of "Time of Hope: Strangers and Brothers #1" by C.P. Snow

 

I first read C.P. Snow's 'Strangers and Brothers' series some time ago, and it became a favorite. The novels focus on an English barrister/civil servant, Lewis Elliot, who rises from poverty to a position of influence in the early-to-mid 1900s. Elliot is present in the entire eleven-book series, but he's not always the central character.

I think Anglophiles and fans of historical fiction would enjoy the series.

*****

As 'Time of Hope' opens in June 1914, nine-year-old Lewis Eliot - ambling home after an afternoon with friends - is seized with a feeling of dread.



Lewis soon learns his father Bertie's leather merchant business has gone bankrupt. This is especially difficult for Lewis's mother Lena, a proud woman whose hopes had been lofty. "She had a romantic, surging, passionate imagination....as a girl she had expected a husband who would give her love and luxury and state." Deprived of personal success, Lena infuses Lewis with her dreams.



After Bertie's bankruptcy is made public, Lena can hardly show her face in public. Bertie, however, was born with a cheerful disposition, and carries on as a low-paid traveling salesman.



Lena makes budgets and pinches shillings, but the war makes everything more difficult.



Then, when Lewis is eleven, Lena swallows her pride to ask Aunt Milly (Bertie's sister) for the fees she promised for Lewis's secondary school. Aunt Milly agrees, but she's a 'kindly curmudgeon' who tells Lewis, "You've got too good an opinion of yourself....It's your mother's fault for letting you think you're something out of the ordinary."



Lewis observes, "Aunt Milly would consider that her money had been well invested if I contrived to scrape through my years at school without drawing unfavorable attention to myself. And once more I was to listen to her message. My first duty, if ever my education provided me with a livelihood, was to save enough money to pay twenty shillings on the pound on my father's liabilities, and so get him discharged from bankruptcy."

When Lewis finishes secondary school he's almost sixteen, and there's no money for university. Having done well in his studies, Lewis lands a job as a junior clerk in the local Council Education Office, which has possibilities for advancement.



With this in mind, Lewis enrolls in law classes at the local College of Art and Technology (aka the School). There Lewis meets George Passant, a solicitor/managing clerk who teaches a night class in Fundamentals of Criminal Law. George is destined to play an important part in Lewis's life.



Lewis's hopes for a brighter future are bolstered when he inherits 300 pounds from his mother's uncle. Aunt Milly wants Lewis to pay down his father's debts, but his mother, who's terminally ill, insists Lewis is to spend the money to 'get a start.'

After his mother dies, Lewis asserts his independence by taking a room in a boardinghouse. He observes, "I had brought all my possessions in two old suitcases - another suit, two pairs of flannels, some underclothes, a few books and school photographs. I felt despondent in the strange, cheerless room, and yet hopeful with the hope that I saw so often in my mother."



Lewis continues working at the Council Education Office, and starts fraternizing with young people (called 'the group') that George Passant - now in his mid-twenties - is collecting around him. All the group, both men and women, are students at the School. Lewis recalls, "We sat hour after hour at night or on Sunday afternoons in dingy cafés up and down the town, the cafés of cinemas or, late at night, the lorry drivers' caff beside the railway station....soon we developed the practice of all going to spend weekends in a farmhouse ten miles away, where we would cook our own food, pay a shilling a night for a bed, and talk until daybreak."



It's now that Lewis has his next life-altering experience. He observes, "It was in those happy days that, attuned so that my imagination stirred to the sound of a girl's name, I first heard the name of Sheila Knight....attuned because of the amorous climate which lapped around our whole group on those summer evenings....One warm and cloudy midsummer evening, I had met [my friend] Jack out of the newspaper office, and we were walking slowly up the London Road. A car drove by close to the pavement, and I had a moment's sight, blurred and confused, of a young woman's face, a wave. The car passed us, and I turned my head, but could see no more. Jack was smiling. He said 'Sheila Knight'."



For Lewis, it's love at first sight. He and Sheila occasionally go out together, but on Sheila's part it's much more platonic than romantic. Sheila exhibits erratic behavior, suffers from some kind of antisocial personality disorder, and torments Lewis with other men. Still, Lewis is obsessed with Sheila, and their relationship forms a large and important part of this novel (and Lewis's story going forward).



Meanwhile, from age nineteen, Lewis takes steps to further his professional ambitions. George Passant is a solicitor/managing clerk at the firm 'Eden & Martineau', and he urges Lewis to apply for an apprenticeship there. This would cost Lewis a considerable sum, and George insists, "If there's any snag, I should expect you to look on me as your banker. I don't see how you could possibly need more than a hundred pounds on top of your [300 pounds]. Somehow or other, that will have to be found. I insist that you don't let a trivial sum affect your decision."



Lewis meets Mr. Eden and Mr. Martineau and makes a good impression, but ultimately decides to go in another direction. Lewis decides that, instead of becoming a solicitor, he wants to read for the bar (become a barrister). Lewis gets admitted to the Chambers of Herbert Getliffe, where he'll have to pay 208 pounds down, and then pupil's fees - which is more than his entire inheritance. Lewis must borrow money to help with his education and living expenses, and Aunt Milly is cajoled into providing a loan.



Lewis's education/experiences at Herbert Getliffe's Inn occupies a large part of the novel, and provides most of the lighter moments. Getliffe is a memorable character: he's good-natured, but also arrogant; stingy (he never pays for drinks); takes credit for other people's work; is wary about juniors moving up the ladder....and he usually manages to slide out of his promises.



Lewis has to deal with all this during his years at the Inn, and then must 'study study study' to take his bar exams. George Passant, who has extensive knowledge about the law, coaches and encourages Lewis, and is instrumental in Lewis's success.



Towards the end of the novel, Lewis is a London barrister representing a client, and this is the subject of the next book in the series, titled 'George Passant.'

Though the book encompasses the WWI years, there's not much about the conflict aside from the deprivation this causes in Britain. This seems like a hole in the story, since some characters would surely lose loved ones and talk about it. On the upside, the novel has a good bit of British slang, archaic words, and fancy language, which is always fun.

For instance:

➤ George tells Lewis, "You'd become an incomparably better solicitor than most of the bellwethers and sunkets who disfigure what I still consider a decent profession." (In this context, sunket means an idiot.)



➤ When Lewis applies to apprentice in Getliffe's chambers, Getliffe tells him, "It's not easy for me to take you, but I shall. I make it a matter of principle to take people like you, who've started with nothing but their brains....Also, it keeps the others up to it." Lewis observes, "He grinned at me: his mood had changed, his face was transformed, he was guying all serious persons." (Guying means teasing, making fun of.)



➤ Lewis is suffering in his relationship with Sheila, but can't break it off. He observes: "I had seen something of myself, and something of my fate. In detail, I did not burke the certain truths." (Burke originally meant 'to murder by suffocation without leaving marks' but now means suppress the truth/ kid yourself.)



➤ When Lewis is an apprentice barrister and looking for business at police courts, he notes, "I used to attend several....Those courts were only a few miles apart, but in society the distance was vast - from the smart businessmen showing off their cars on the way home from the tennis court, to the baffled, stupid, foreign prostitutes, the ponces and bullies, the street bookmakers, the blowsy ladies of the Pimlico backstreets." (Ponces refers to pimps.)



➤ Mrs. Eden admires Sheila, and Lewis observes, "She was quite unembarrassed by her admiration; it was easy to think of her as a girl, concentrated and intent, unrestrained in a schwärmerei, bringing some mistress flowers and gifts. (In this context, schwärmerei means a crush.)



This debut novel in the series establishes Lewis Eliot's background; conflicted feelings about his mother; confidence in himself; ability to read people; willingness to suffer for Sheila; and deep loyalty to his friends.

This book is set in a time when climate change; pollution; oil reserves; nuclear bombs; etc. weren't issues. People had different worries then, but many concerns - like family; education; professional success; relationships; corruption; poverty; and so on - remain significant.

I like the book and recommend it. 

Rating: 4 stars 

Review of "No Way Home: A Novel" by T.C. Boyle

  

Terence Tully (Terry), a third-year medical resident in Los Angeles, is capable and empathetic with patients. In a typical day, Terry must get through the usual crush, such as transients found down on the pavement; third-degree burns; a teenage girl who'd been bitten by her boyfriend's pet fer-de-lance; toddlers poisoned by d-Con; teens crushed in their cars; drug addicts overdosed on pills; a psychiatric patient whose skin lesions are exacerbated by the feces he smears on himself; a homeless woman who's leaking cerebrospinal fluid from her nose; and so on.



Terry is at the hospital when he learns his mother died suddenly, and he takes an emergency leave to drive to Boulder City, Nevada, where his mother lived.



Terry must make decisions about the funeral, and his mother's house, and her dog Daisy, and it's overwhelming.



Needing a break, Terry goes to a popular nightspot for dinner and happens to meet a beautiful young woman named Bethany, who works as a receptionist in a Boulder City hospital.



Bethany quickly inveigles herself into Terry's bed, and when Terry goes back to Los Angeles for work, Bethany moves into his mother's house. When Terry returns to Boulder City, he's shocked to find Bethany there, and most of him wants her out. Nonetheless, Terry is mesmerized by Bethany's sensuality and sexuality, and he accepts her excuse: Just before she met Terry, Bethany broke up with her boyfriend Jesse - who stole her savings and paycheck - and she's currently homeless and penniless.



Unfortunately, Bethany's former boyfriend Jesse still considers Bethany his property, and he's not about to let it go. Jesse is something of a dichotomy: he teaches English Language Arts to eighth-graders; he minored in creative writing; and he plans to write a novel.



Jesse also rides a Honda 450RL motorcycle, and revels in the tough guy image.



After Terry and Bethany accidentally encounter Jesse in a restaurant, Jesse tells Terry, "You want some advice? She's poison. You don't know that yet, but you're going to find out soon enough." Jesse still wants Bethany though, and he starts a war against Terry by flattening all four tires on Terry's car in the middle of the night.



Nevertheless, Terry's observation about Bethany's 'toxicity' seems prognostic. When Terry drives from Los Angeles to Boulder City for a surprise visit, his mother's house is a mess. There are smeared dishes on the coffee table, pizza crusts, the remains of a salad, beer cans, a diminished fifth of Jack Daniels, a cluster of used glasses...and a strange girl on the couch wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. It turns out Bethany invited her friend Lutie to stay in the house.



Moreover, it's Lutie's birthday, and Jesse and his best friend Thomas show up for the festivities.



Terry thinks he's been made a fool of, Bethany is a liar, yada yada yada, and he insists Bethany get out of his mother's house. Soon enough, though, Bethany has talked and seduced her way back into the domicile, part of her argument being that she's taking care of the dog Daisy (who's been evicted from Terry's Los Angeles apartment).



It's hard to know if Bethany is deliberately using Terry, or if she's just a free spirit who doesn't understand boundaries. With Bethany giving mixed signals, the antagonism between Jesse and Terry escalates, partly by happenstance, and partly on purpose.



To say any more would be a spoiler.

The story maintained my attention, but it's not among my favorite books by T.C. Boyle. A toxic love triangle is less interesting to me than themes like climate change and mental illness that the author addresses in other books.

Still, this is a page-turner that many readers would enjoy.

Thanks to Netgalley, T.C. Boyle, and Liveright for an ARC of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars