The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

This week I'm reading a 1968 classic Swedish mystery, The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. I wanted to get a jump on all the 2021 reading challenges I signed up for and this one counts for several:

• The Vintage Mystery Challenge: This one counts for my pick in the Killed in Translation category for my Silver Age challenge. Bev at My Reader's Block, the host of the challenge, defines "Silver Age" mysteries as those published between 1960 and 1989.

• The Mt. TBR Challenge because this has been on my TBR shelf for eight years. 

• The Back to the Classics Challenge: Again, I'm counting this one in the translation category. It shows up on several classic crime lists and is over 50 years old so meets the general definition used by Karen at Books and Chocolate, the host of this challenge.

• The European Reading Challenge: I host this one myself. It used to be difficult for me to find Scandinavian books for the challenge but not so since I started reading "Nordic Noir" mystery books. 

I like giving myself that big jolt of accomplishment of getting a book done for all the challenges. It makes me want to keep reading!

What are you reading this week? Any books for challenges you signed up for?

Please share the opening sentence (or so) of your book you are enjoying this week. Add the link to your blog or social media post in the linky box below. As always, if you post or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so we can find each other. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

From The Laughing Policeman: 

On the evening of the thirteenth of November it was pouring in Stockholm.

Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö wrote ten crime novels featuring Stockholm police detective Martin Beck. The Laughing Policeman is the fourth book in the series.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

Martin Beck should, therefore, know most of what there was to know about him. 

Oddly enough, he didn't know very much.

Enjoy your book and enjoy your weekend! See you next week for another Book Beginning on Friday!

The Women's Prize for Fiction -- BOOK LIST

THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

The Women's Prize for Fiction is awarded each year for the best eligible, full-length novel in English. The prize started in 1996 as the Orange Prize for Fiction (because it was sponsored by the Orange telecommunications company). In 2014, Bailey's became the sponsor and the name changed to the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Since 2018, multiple sponsors support the prize, now called simply the Women's Prize for Fiction.

I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

So far, I've read 17 of the winners. The list is below with notes about whether I read it, it is on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.

Several of my favorite books are on this list and I only read them because they won this prize. See any favorites of your own?

2021 Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

2020 Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet FINISHED

2019 Tayari Jones, An American Marriage ON OVERDRIVE

2018 Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire FINISHED

2017 Naomi Alderman, The Power FINISHED

2016 Lisa McInerne, The Glorious Heresies FINISHED

2015 Ali Smith, How to be Both ON OVERDRIVE

2014 Eimear McBride, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing ON OVERDRIVE

2013 A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven FINISHED

2012 Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles FINISHED

2011 Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife FINISHED

2010 Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna ON OVERDRIVE

2009 Marilynne Robinson, Home FINISHED

2008 Rose Tremain, The Road Home FINISHED

2007 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun FINISHED

2006 Zadie Smith, On Beauty (reviewed here) FINISHED

2005 Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin FINISHED

2004 Andrea Levy, Small Island (reviewed here) FINISHED

2003 Valerie Martin, Property

2002 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001 Kate Grenville, The Idea of Perfection (reviewed here) FINISHED

2000 Linda Grant, When I Lived in Modern Times TBR SHELF

1999 Suzanne Berne, A Crime in the Neighborhood TBR SHELF

1998 Carol Shields, Larry's Party  FINISHED

1997 Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces TBR SHELF

1996 Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter TBR SHELF


NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

OTHERS READING THE WINNERS

If you are reading the winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction and would like your post listed here, please leave comments with links to related posts and I will list them.

Book List: Books Read in 2017

 

Somehow, 2017 was the year in books that almost never was. Every year in January, I make a book list of the book I read the prior year. But I forgot to do that in January 2018. A look at my work calendar tells me I wasn't gearing up for a trial (which is my usual attention-sucker), but my law partner and I were up to our eyeballs in a couple of Boy Scout sex abuse cases in Idaho and Montana. I spent most of January 2018 in regional PNW airports waiting for cancelled flights to get to depositions and court hearings.

I only realized the 2017 list was missing when I went to post the 2020 list. Better late then never. We want to remember all the books of Auld Lang Sine!

BOOKS READ IN 2017

• The Panther by Nelson DeMille 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bech at Bay by John Updike 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• How to Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great by Karen Karbo 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 (Women's Prize winner)

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Jam Today Too: The Revolution Will Not Be Catered by Tod Davies 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Life and Loves of a She Devil by Fay Weldon 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Whole Fromage: Adventures in the Delectable World of French Cheese by Kathe Lison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Biographer's Moustache by Kingsley Amis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• No Way to Treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 🌹🌹🌹

• Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier by Peter Stark 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fifth Business by Robertson Davies 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Manticore by Robertson Davies 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Original Sin by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Heartburn by Nora Ephron 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• World of Wonders by Robertson Davis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• When You Lunch With the Emperor by Ludwig Bemelmans 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Make Me by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Spotted Dick S'il Vous Plait: An English Restaurant in France by Tom Higgins 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Little Nugget by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• But Enough About You by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 (Booker Prize winner)

• Gods and Beasts by Denise Mina 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Architecture Pack : A Unique, Three-Dimensional Tour of Architecture over the Centuries : What Architects Do, How They Do It by Ron Van Der Meer 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books by Michael Dirda 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slay Ride by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Road to Burgundy: The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and a New Life in France by Ray Walker 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Story of a New Name by Elana Ferrante 🌹🌹

• Black and Blue by Ian Rankin 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton Friedman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Handmaid's Tail by Margaret Atwood 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Wait for Me!: Memoirs by Deborah Mitford 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Death by Water by Kenzaburo Oe 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Nix by Nathan Hill 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town By Susan Herrmann Loomis 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Blue Angel by Francine Prose 🌹🌹🌹🌹 (my Campus Novels list)

• Bandits by Elmore Leonard 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• About a Boy by Nick Hornby 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Any Human Heart by William Boyd 🌹🌹🌹

• Temperance Creek: A Memoir by Pamela Royes 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Blue Heaven by C. J. Box 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 (Edgar Award winner)

• The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan 🌹🌹🌹1/2 (Booker Prize winner)

• Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Any Woman's Blues by Erica Jong 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Heirs by Susan Rieger 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Question of Max by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Rocks by Peter Nichols 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do by Sarah Knight 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plaintiff's Revolution by David Ball 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Group by Mary McCarthy 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson 🌹🌹🌹🌹 (Pulitzer Prize winner)

• Psmith, Journalist by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Glorious Heresies by  Lisa McInerney 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2 (Women's Prize winner)

• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks 🌹🌹🌹 (BBC Big Read)

• I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays by Eleanor Lipman 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Ancient Minstrel by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Vipers' Tangle by Mauriac Francois 🌹🌹 (Nobel Laureates)

• The Journalist and the Murder by Janet Malcolm 🌹🌹🌹

• The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Eriksson 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• A Certain Justice by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

I have a loosy goosy and always changing rating system. I used to use stars, but since my four or five stars didn't mean what four or five stars might mean on amazon or goodreads, I switched to roses, keeping with my Rose City Reader theme. I rate a book based on how much I like it, if I would recommend it to others, and what type of reader I would recommend it to.  

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Books I love, recommend to most readers, or I think of as classics or must reads. 

🌹🌹🌹🌹 Books I really enjoy and/or recommend to readers of that type of book. Lots of Mysteries or food memoirs, for example, might get four roses from me instead of five because I really like them, but would only recommend them to people who read mysteries or food books.

🌹🌹🌹 Books I'm lukewarm about, liked so-so, or maybe was glad I read but wouldn't recommend to other people. 

🌹🌹 Books I didn't like, but understand that other readers do like.

🌹 Books I really don't like and am surprised to find other readers who do. I don't have many one-rose books.

I use half roses for books that fall between categories.

In years past, I used a slightly different star system. Here is a link to it. 

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

What are you reading this week? It's time to share the opening sentence (or so) here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

Share the link to your blog or social media post in the linky box below. If you post or share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag so we can find each other. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

My Book Beginning this week is from The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis's classic allegory about Heaven and Hell. It is a short book and I just started it today. I plan to read several C. S. Lewis books this year and The Great Divorce is the first of them. 

I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street.

I'm already halfway through -- like I said, it's a short book -- and it is very good. It s as accessible as his Narnia books, but written for adults as a way to explain ideas of sin, grace, and judgment. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please link to your Bok Beginnings post and not your main blog page or social media profile page. 

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

THE FRIDAY 56 

Another weekly teaser event is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice, where you can find details and add a link to your post. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book you are featuring. You can also find a teaser from 56% of the way through your ebook or audiobook.

MY FRIDAY 56

"I have seen that kind converted," said he, "when those ye would think less deeply damned have gone back. Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already."

That's from 56% of the way through the audiobook. The audiobook is particularly good because the reader does all the voices differently. 

2021 European Reading Challenge: WRAP UP POST PAGE

 

The 2021 European Reading Challenge

WRAP UP POST PAGE

January 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022

THIS IS THE PAGE FOR WRAP UP POSTS

TO LIST YOUR REVIEWS, GO TO THIS PAGE

TO SIGN UP, GO TO THE MAIN CHALLENGE PAGE, HERE,

OR CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVE

LINK YOUR POST

When you complete the 2021 European Reading Challenge at whatever level you signed up for, please do a wrap up post and enter a link to your post here. Please link to your wrap up post, NOT the main page of your blog or social media profile.

A wrap up post can be very simple. If you participate in the challenge on your blog and just update your original post without doing a separate wrap up post, that's OK. Just post a link to your updated post here. If you participate on social media, please do some kind of wrap up post listing the books you read and link it here.

OR LEAVE A COMMENT

If you want, you can also simply leave a comment below listing the books you read. Please include your name, the name of the books, the authors of the books, and the countries of the books.   

WANT THE PRIZE? WRAP IT UP!

Without some kind of wrap up post, I don't have any way to know if you finished the challenge. I like to know so I can visit everyone. But it is more important if you are competing for the Jet Setter Prize. If you want to compete for the prize, you have to leave a wrap up post or I will have no way to know if you visited more countries than the other people competing with you.

When I announce the prize winner, Honorable Mention will go to the participants who visited the most countries, with links to their wrap up posts. If you don't link a wrap up post, I won't be able to find you.

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

NOTE ABOUT DATES

There is overlap in January 2021 between the last month of the 2020 European Reading Challenge and the first month of the 2021 challenge. If you participated both years, only count books read in January in one of the years, not both.