Confessions, part one of many. (Let's talk about crime, baby!)

The following is a blogpost I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years without really knowing how to articulate it properly. But what the frakk, let’s give it a try, I owe this blog some content, no matter how badly written or ill thought out it is. Not because I believe that we each have a quota to fill or some stupid thing like that. No, I think I owe this triad content because I someday want to break the wall, take the step or other big wordings with the simple meaning; I want to reach 200: posts. A goal I’ve had before and seen fly away so close I could almost touch it If I just tried harder, had better ideas, posted reviews as soon as I’ve read something or nurture my ideas into full blogposts and not leave them to die in the abandoned pile. I don’t even want to think about how many sins I have there.

Maybe I should start calling it the inspiration-pile so it would not seem so daunting. Maybe I should revive them in chronological order? I could finally write that big post about the comic-book writer Greg Rucka and how amazing it is that he calls himself a feminist. Or I could us the popular tactic first in, first out. That would mean a celebratory piece about Sara Stridsberg finally joining the Nobel Prize committee. Sure, her chair has been pretty boring and only had like, eight people on it, but then she can make something of is. It is my firm belief that Sara Stridsberg will her voice heard and make chair 13 matter again. Not that I have any idea how the committee works, votes or such, but writing a blogpost about It would mean I had to find out. Maybe make a chair by chair presentation of the committee through the ages. Trying to answer the question why some chairs has been littered with, for us, famous people, while some chairs has been the home of less well known butts.

If I really felt like doing some good I could even edit this post to reflect my original intent, a essay on why I have such a hard time reading or even respecting crime-fiction. A problem I really need to work on before hitting the job-market and becoming a librarian. In public libraries The most sought out books are about crime. The public wants to read about tired police officers in cold, Nordic climates. And they should be able to without me judging them for it, it is me who should feel ashamed for thinking that crime-novels are less worth than let’s say Toni Morrison’s latest contribution to the world’s literary canon. I should feel ashamed for thinking that crime-stories are one dimensional and not worth thinking about after the last word has been read. Not everybody wants to read Rebeca Solnit, Roxane Gay or even Clara Henry. And that is fine, people have different interests, find knowledge in different places, reads for different reasons with different circumstances.

So why do I dislike crime-fiction to such extent that I purged all my shelves from that genre? Like most things in our lives I think that my dislike, or rather my shame, steams from my childhood. Not in a traumatic way, but you know how I feel about the person I used to be. I’m starting to think it’s some kind of defence mechanism against myself.

Truth to be told, I grew up on crime-novels and I loved them I’ve always been a fast and big reader with at least two books in progress at the same time. The first stories I wrote was concerned crime and tired cops. because except for youth novels, manga and way to complicated authors like Theodor Kalifatides, Niklas Rådström & Jonas Gardell I read little else. My foray into stories about murders and mysteries started when I was 12 years old.

My parents love crime-fiction my dad in particular. We have always had a lot of books, and most of them has been Nordic crime. The analytical part of me knows that not only did I actually like crime, it was a way for the family to communicate. For a couple of reasons, I’ve always been closer to my mother, especially when I was growing up. My dad and I, even though he is a wonderful person, are vastly different persons (or maybe we are too alike). We often talk past each other, not to each other and there can be many miscommunications even though we basically mean the same thing. But reading crime fiction helped with that. Not only did we have something to talk about, a neutral subject without much value. Reading the same books, or the same genre of books gave us a common language. A way to communicate that both of us understood. And that is something I will always cherish.   

But let’s get back to that twelve-year-old girl who was on a two-week long vacation in The Dominican Republic. Perhaps I’m wrong and I actually read crime novels before then, but for me the journey start’s there. Realizing that I the nightmare had come true, even though I had six books with me, I had nothing to read. Being without something to read, a thought as scary today as it was then. So I started reading my parent’s books, the first one being Svarta Börsen, by Olov Svedelid. And when that was finished I read Firewall by Henning Mankell. Eighteen years later and I still remember those two books better than books I read last year.

My love affair with the genre lasted until I was eighteen years old when it for some reason frizzed out and died. Leaving not hate, but disinterest and a feeling of superiority over people who still found joy in reading about gristly murders and neglect. Something changed and no matter how many crime novels I read my love for the genre are lost. Maybe it is natural progression? A part of growing up, a way to becoming who we are?