The Book Relay

Page reviewed:  11/11/2026

There are books that have meant a lot in our lives. They may be books we read as children or adults, non-fiction or fiction. In the Book Relay, staff, researchers and students at SLU highlight some of their greatest reading experiences.

An exhibition of the selected books will be opened in conjunction with the presentation of the books by the person holding the baton. The exhibition then alternates between the libraries in Umeå, Alnarp and Uppsala. The person who has held the baton passes the task on to the next person who selects their books.

Anne-Maarit Hekkala is a researcher at the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies. An exhibition of her books will open in the Umeå library on 12 November. In connection with this, we are publishing Vera's own words about her book recommendations on this page. The exhibition will be on display in Alnarp (from 18 January) and Uppsala (from 15 March).

Anne-Maarit Hekkala, researcher

When I got the task of naming ten books, it felt like an easy one. The first books that came to mind were really the ones that had moved me in some way, and it was easy to explain why I had selected them. Then it got harder. There are many more than ten books in my life that I remember, and for some of the ones I listed, it was difficult to say exactly what it was about the book that stayed with me.

In the end, I selected the books partly by thinking about the variety among them. Like in research, you can go deep into one theme or have broader interests. I am broad, adaptable and highly interested in many different kinds of things, and perhaps this is also reflected in my book list. Looking at the ten books now, I realise that they say something not only about what I like to read, but also about what interests me more generally: people and their choices, history, nature, survival, and how individuals respond to the world around them.

The travelling cat chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

The book tells the story of a stray cat, Nana, who, after a severe car accident, finds an owner. After many stable years, Nana and the old man Satoru head off on a trip to find a new owner for Nana. They travel through Japan, visiting Satoru’s old friends in search of a new home for Nana. The book is written from the cat’s perspective, presenting the world through Nana’s eyes, which made it very different from the other books I have read.

The reason I selected the book is its warmth. Maybe I read it between books about the painful world of Fabian Risk, and it cast a ray of light on the world. Or maybe it was those November days, wet, cold and dark, that gained some light from this book. Albeit sad, the book was a warm story about an odd pair: an elderly man and a stray cat who thinks that cats are the centre of the universe. This is a book that made me smile and cry, standing on a crowded train with tears running down my face. Not typical of me, I admit.

Sinuhe the Egyptian by Mika Waltari

I read Sinuhe the Egyptian soon after I met my husband, in my early twenties. He had it in his bookshelf, a screamingly yellow, thick book, and he suggested that I read it. By that time, I had been a huge consumer of books, but Mika Waltari was nowhere near my usual genre, which at the time mainly consisted of course books, romantic stories and thrillers.

Sinuhe the Egyptian started a new era in my book-reading life, opening my eyes to the classics of literature that I had completely neglected earlier, thinking that they were for “adults” and must simply be boring. However, after Sinuhe, I read several other books by Mika Waltari, worked my way through Steinbeck’s works, and explored many other classics, all of them then found in my now-husband’s bookshelf.

It’s been over 25 years since I read the book, but I still remember many parts of it, albeit vaguely. What, then, is the genre of this book? It is a fictional autobiography of Sinuhe, starting from when he is found in a river, floating in a woven basket, and continuing to his old age, in exile after Pharaoh Horemheb sends him away. And that life, between those moments, was an adventure worth telling.

Frankie by Jochen Gutsch and Leo Maxim

There is something about cats. Maybe I am a cat person who owns a dog (but there is actually very much of a cat in my dog…). It is, however, rather incredible that I have two cat books in my list of ten books. 

Similarly to The travelling cat’s chronicles, the cat, Frankie, is the narrator of the book. There is something fascinating about storytelling when the narrator is an animal. Life is simple from a cat’s perspective. You need food, a soft bed – that’s basically it. If there is a human, ready to provide those, then you stick with the human.  Like Nana in The Travelling Cat Chronicles, Frankie finds a person to feed him and care for him, but at the same time, Frankie gives the man a reason to live. What happens to Frankie if he is no longer there?

The light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr

The Light We Cannot See came out as a Netflix series not long ago. I didn’t want to watch it because I felt that the series could not be as good as the book. Well, I did finally watch the series, and it indeed missed the magic of the book. It smoothed out many of the rough edges of the story and softened the harsh realities described in the book.

The book talks about a blind French girl and an orphaned German boy who are tied together by a voice on the radio. The boy’s love of radios leads him to war, where he hunts down illegal broadcasters, while the girl broadcasts the beloved programme and sends secret messages to the Resistance. It is a historical war novel, but above all, I see it as a survival story of two brave young people caught in the turmoil of war.

Victim without a face and the rest of Fabian Risk-series by Stefan Ahnhem

I moved to Sweden in late 2015. Sweden is known for numerous crime story authors, and I felt I had to give this genre a try, it’s a part of Swedish culture, kind of. I had tried a couple of crime stories earlier, but they were predictable, and therefore I always said that I didn’t like crime stories. 

This book caught my eye after the second part, Den nionde graven, was published in 2015. My Swedish was not very good, but I had read a few books in Swedish, so I thought I would give it a try. This time I was sold. Happily, Stefan Ahnhem has been good at regularly publishing a new part in the series, and there are now eight books; the latest came out last year.

It’s not the rather brutal crime story or stories that got me hooked, but the other characters in the books. There are several layers of characters in the books, creating underlying stories of their own. Fabian Risk and his family, the personnel at police department in Helsingborg and a Danish police department with its characters are followed through to books, while different crimes are solved and serial killers are caught. As a member of Nordic Noir-genre, the books are filled with troubled people, breaking marriages, cheating, and power games, nothing that happens in my life making it safe to listen and read such books.  

This book series started my era of listening to crime stories. I especially seek out stories with several parts and interesting characters, and listen to them when I clean the house, mow the lawn or weed my garden.

The forest of vanishing stars by Kristin Harmel

This book belongs to the same category as All the light we cannot see. Set in the WW2 era it shows the part a person can play in the cruel war, how one’s decisions may save or destroy countless lives. The story tells about a girl living in a forest with a woman who literally kidnapped her in the early 1920s and raised her to survive outside of civilization. When the war is raging and Jewish people are escaping the Nazis into the woods, without any means to survive, she is there, ready to help the refugees, but at the same time learning from them. She is not a Jew like all the others hiding, so what is she hiding from? 

I have read many stories of the WW2, and my list includes several as well. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to forget how it was. The individual destinies, even though fictional, are such a large part of our real history. The forest of vanishing stars has a happy ending, as do all Kristin Harmel’s stories, something I can trust when I select a next book to read. If one needs a good, touching story with a happy ending, this is it.

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

I always remember the part where a fat fly is crawling on a piece of sandwich and lays its eggs on the ham and the old Estonian grandma Aliide turns the ham to hide the eggs and gives the sandwich to the girl, Zara, that just arrives to her house after escaping from her pimps. The girl is Aliide’s grandniece, a descendant of the sister and the sister’s daughter whom Aliide sent to Siberia to steal her sister’s husband for herself.

There is a word in Finnish “Inhorealistinen”, which I would use to describe Sofi Oksanen’s Purge.  Oksanen repeatedly uses bodily details, dirt, smells, insects and physical degradation to make violence disturbingly real for the reader.  Purge is a book which made me understand what life in Estonia was under the Soviet era after the war. How hiding was everyday way of life, how neighbours could give you up and how families broken apart and sent to Siberia. One did what one could to survive.

Purge is not an easy book to read or understand, and every time you read it, you realize something you missed the previous time. It uses a non-linear narrative, moving back and forth between different time periods, the post-war era in 1940-1950 to 1992, but not in chronologic order. When I read what Finnish President Alexander Stubb said about the book, calling it the best book he has read, his words could have come from my own mouth. No wonder it has won so many prizes.

The song of Dodo: Island Biogeography in the Age of Extinction by David Quammen

I got this book when I did an internship in Canada, from my hosts there. As a young biology student, this was a book to have, and I read it soon after arriving home. Did it affect what I became as a scientist? I don’t know, because there is no me who has not read the book. However, today, 24 years after reading the book, my research themes lie very much within the themes of the book: island biogeography, fragmentation and isolation, habitat loss, conservation, and species under threat of extinction. The dodos, Komodo dragons and Galápagos tortoises described in the book made me wonder how we can still go on destroying habitats and causing species extinctions. My species are small; they don’t sing or have venomous bites, but they still face the same problems.

I didn’t select this book because it is a popular science book, even though that could be one reason, as we researchers must spread our research to the outside world, and what could be better than writing popular science books? The reason is that I remember the book being an easy read, fascinating and memorable. After a quarter of a century, the book must be good if I still can remember it.

The seven sisters by Lucinda Riley

There was some sort of hype years ago about the Lucinda Riley’s The seven sisters. My mother was updating me every Saturday, when I have a video call with her, about which of the books she is reading at the time. The idea, or the names of the books didn’t appeal to me at all and wanted to resist the hype (I am not one of the early adopters), but I finally gave it a try. 

The novels, eight of them, turned out to be a good-will page-turners about seven adopted girls, named after the Pleiades, and their adoptive father, Pa Salt. The story of each of the sisters is described in one of the books. Lucinda Riley’s storytelling is beautiful; that is the word I would use to describe it. Love is real, people are beautiful and their stories are — well, beautiful.  A total opposite to Sofi Oksanen.

I think I listened to the books one after another without breaks, but I switched the languages between the books. I listened to them mostly in English, because the narrator had a beautiful voice and accent, but to not get tired of one style, I listened to some in Swedish and some in Finnish.  

After these eight books, I have listened to most of the Lucinda Riley’s books. There is something in her way of telling stories. It is so sad she passed away.

The midwife by Katja Kettu

From beautiful, happy endings, back to “inhorealistinen” (brutally realistic), and war. This Finnish book has been translated into many languages, which I find interesting, because my first impression was that this book could not be translated. The reason is the language. Katja Kettu, originating from Rovaniemi like me, has written the book in a northern Finnish dialect—not the Rovaniemi dialect, but an older dialect, the deep-rooted dialect of my grandparents. Indeed, she got the ideas for the story and her love for the language from her grandmother. I think even many Finns do not understand all the nuances of the book, which makes me wonder what the book is like in other languages.

The main character of the book is “Wildeye”, a Finnish midwife who falls in love with a German soldier and follows him to the prison camp where the Germans hold Russian soldiers, Jews and other people, starving and suffering. By doing this, working as a midwife and nurse, she becomes part of the nasty machinery of war, and participate in its moral horrors.  The impossible love gets even more difficult when the Finns and Germans start the Lapland War in 1944. In principle, the question of what one is willing to do for love is the underlying theme of the book.  The way Katja Kettu describes numerous scenes in the book is so realistic that you may want to stop reading. But I love the language, still.

Previous participants in the Book Relay

Read the participants' own presentations of their book tips below.

When selecting the books, I was far less systematic than some previous participants in this book relay. Upon reflection, I can identify some themes that may have guided my selection. Firstly, I selected books that have been important to me at different stages of my life, in both my personal and scholarly development. Secondly, closely connected to the first point, I have selected books that I have read for many different purposes. Some books are beach reads, some cover existential themes, some have helped me escape reality, others have brought me closer to it. Thirdly, I have been reading books in German, Italian, English and Swedish throughout my life, something I am a little proud of, but mostly just glad about! Lastly, while preparing my contribution to this book relay, I was once again struck by the close connection between reading and writing.

Krabat by Otfried Preußler

As a child, I read many books by Astrid Lindgren. However, recommending those books in Sweden felt a bit like taking owls to Athens. So, I opted to kick off my list with this excellent book. I was in my early teens when I read it, lying at home with a high fever. My fever-heightened imagination meant that the book’s dark and dense atmosphere really got under my skin – and stayed there.

Set in 18th-century Lusatia in north-eastern Germany, the novel Krabat tells the story of an orphaned boy of the same name. At the age of 14, he is taken in by a mysterious miller to work as his apprentice. It soon becomes clear that the mill is a place of dark magic: the other apprentices are not only millers, but also sorcerers. At first, Krabat enjoys his apprenticeship. He is fascinated and tempted by the power he has gained over other people through magic. However, he quickly learns that the mill is governed by strict rules and an eerie power. Every year on New Year’s Eve, one of the journeymen must die in place of the master, thus granting him another year of life. When it is his friend’s turn, Krabat begins a long struggle against the dark forces.

This coming-of-age novel covers many themes. It explores friendship and love, power and temptation, courage and resistance. These topics are typical of a genre of children’s books that I grew up with in 1990s Germany. These novels deal with and make you reflect on the atrocities committed by and under the Nazi regime in Germany from a children's perspective. The fact that Krabat made it into my top 10 books is partly due to the influence of this genre on my moral and political compass. On a lighter note, Krabat was also the first love story I appreciated. The love described in the book is as tender as it is powerful. Ultimately, it is love that sets Krabat and his fellow apprentices and journeymen free.

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

During my final years at high school, I had become an insufferable book snob. Reading classics was as much about enjoying literature as it was about cultivating a certain self-image and sense of belonging. My best friend at the time was reading similar books, and we felt this set us apart from girls who, in our view, were only interested in boys, makeup, and shopping. I try not to judge myself too harshly for this youthful snobbery. Instead, I quietly laugh when I think that my younger self would have scoffed derisively at the books I read nowadays.

The Magic Mountain tells the story of Hans Castorp, a young engineer from Hamburg, who visits his sick cousin in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. Castorp originally plans to stay only briefly, but he becomes captivated by the mysterious sanatorium and repeatedly postpones his departure as his health deteriorates. Ultimately, he remains there for seven years. During his extended stay, Castorp meets various characters representing a microcosm of pre-war Europe. As the novel concludes, the First World War breaks out and Castorp volunteers for military service. The book ends with the suggestion that he may not survive the battlefield.

I don’t remember much of what happens in the book. However, Mann’s descriptions of the irrational aspects of the human psyche stayed with me. I remember the main character’s inner monologues about trivialities and how others might judge him, and how he knows he shouldn’t care, but still does. Perhaps it was this portrayal of inner insecurities, and the contrast between what one knows one should want and what one actually wants, that spoke to my teenage self. Perhaps I was more interested in boys, makeup, and shopping than I cared to admit, even to myself?

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

It’s not exactly original to include Harry Potter on the list. Many, if not all, of you will be familiar with the fact that the series chronicles the lives of three students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: the young wizard Harry Potter and his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The overarching plot concerns Harry’s conflict with Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who seeks to achieve immortality and enslave all wizards and non-magical people.

The books have made it onto the list not primarily because I liked and devoured them (which I did), nor because I think they’ve been genre-defining (which they arguably are), but because they represent my transnational career to me: how I’ve lived in different European countries for longer or shorter periods of time, and how I’ve attempted to learn languages. I was introduced to the world of Harry Potter while on a year-long Erasmus exchange in Milan, Italy, some 25 years ago. I hadn’t heard of the books before then, but a friend recommended them to me and lent me her copies. There was just one catch: her books were in Italian! Nevertheless, I read them, which improved my Italian considerably. I used the same trick to improve my English and Swedish, and now I’m reading the books once more, this time in German, to help my children with their German. So, okay, Harry Potter might not be the most original choice – but when you’ve got books from the series in four different languages sitting on your shelf, it feels like a crime not to mention them!

Night Waking by Sarah Moss

For good measure, I thought I should throw in a book of a different genre. My brother-in-law recommended Sarah Moss’ book Night Waking to me only a few years ago. We were chatting at a family gathering when I mentioned how tired I was from endless nights of being kept awake by my toddlers. Recalling this feeling of bone-deep tiredness, he recommended the book. Thank you, Neil!

Night Waking tells the story of Dr Anna Bennett, a historian and mother who is struggling to balance the relentless demands of motherhood with her own academic ambitions. Along with her insomniac toddler and seven-year-old obsessed with death, Anna and her husband Giles have come to a remote Scottish island so that Giles can monitor the puffin population and Anna can finish her book on 18th century views on childhood. However, torn away from her life as an Oxford academic, Anna suddenly finds herself a household drudge, battling with Giles for precious time off from childcare. When her son finds a baby’s skeleton buried in the garden, Anna becomes obsessed with uncovering the island’s troubled past. However, ferociously sleep-deprived, her own life begins to unravel: her marriage strains under the weight of secrecy, her children’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, and her sense of self fractures.

Reading about a middle-aged woman, a mother and an academic in a situation so comparable to my own, I immediately identified with the protagonist. Sarah Moss’s novel was my first conscious engagement with feminist literature, and I found it comforting and empowering to realise that my private struggles were indeed political. I was so inspired by the book that I referred to it in a chapter that I contributed to an anthology on women in Scandinavian landscape architecture.

The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin consists of three novels: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky. I was unable to pick just one; in my opinion, they form a single, inseparable story. The genre is perhaps best described as speculative fiction, the setting is a dystopian climate fantasy set on ‘The Stillness’, a supercontinent plagued by apocalyptic seismic disasters known as ‘seasons’. The story follows three women – Essun, Damaya, and Syenite – who possess the ability to manipulate geological forces, a gift that both sustains and endangers them. As the world teeters on the brink of collapse due to a cataclysmic rift, their journeys reveal deep-seated injustices within their society and the great lengths they must go to in order to survive.

I started reading this book with no clear idea of what I was getting myself into. This openness made me particularly impressionable, as did the fact that I was on prolonged sick leave. To aid my recovery, I would often take long walks while listening to audiobooks. I recall being sucked into the book immediately for several reasons. Chief among them was its opening:

Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

Furthermore, I found the second-person narrative used for Essun’s story fascinating. I had never encountered this rhetorical device before, and I found that it added a layer of immediacy and intimacy. The world-building is exquisite too, and Jemisin masterfully balances character development and action. However, the main reason this book earned a spot on my list is that it can also be read as a story about the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter without reducing the characters to their roles. Indeed, Essun is a middle-aged woman with a past, love interests, worries, friends and responsibilities. This is all very relatable, but it is a story that is seldom told, particularly not in the fantasy books I had read thus far.

The Bible

Well, what can I say? It feels slightly strange to include the Bible on the list, given that we rarely discuss our beliefs in our secular societies, particularly among academics who like to think of themselves as critical and rational beings. However, when I was standing in front of my bookshelf at home, contemplating which books to include in the relay, my eyes fastened on the Bible.

Upon further reflection, however, it is clear that the Bible is the most significant collection of religious texts in Judaism and Christianity. Spanning a literary tradition of two millennia, it is one of the most influential works ever written. It is also said to be the world’s best-selling book, with estimated total sales of over five billion copies. The Bible has therefore had a profound influence, particularly in the Western world, contributing to the development of Western law, art, literature, and education.

So, maybe not so weird after all that the Bible features on my list. Regardless of whether you’re believer or not, it’s hard to escape its influence: Christmas and Easter, The Life of Brian and maybe even The Matrix Trilogy, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and Händel’s Messiah, etc. So, the Bible has definitely shaped the culture in which I grew up. However, it has also shaped my canon of values, which I find goes along very well with being a critical academic. Amen.

Cities Without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt by Thomas Sieverts

This book is on the list because it was the central to the discourse I analysed in my doctoral dissertation. Thomas Sieverts is a German architect and urban designer, a reflected practitioner and professor at a German university. His maybe most influential book is titled Zwischenstadt, which literally translates as in between city, or intermediate city. It describes how the traditional, compact European city is dissolving into the countryside, giving rise to new types of landscapes in which, he claims, the majority of people live, but which are rarely planned or designed.

In my thesis, I analysed cultural and political ideas and ideologies surrounding the different positions and planning approaches towards these in-between landscapes. So, this book is on my list because it is one of the books that I’ve read and revisited most often in my life. I also consider it to be a great example of how well-read, reflective practitioners in architecture and planning can contribute valuable ideas and move debates forward. Funnily enough, it only occurred to me only once I was a couple of years into the project why I was so fascinated by Sieverts ideas, and that my engagement with them had an almost therapeutic effect on me. I grew up in North-Western Germany, in a flat, treeless and rather boring landscape, in the village of Kleinenbroich wedged between nearby cities and other equally dreary villages. I’ve never quite felt at home there. I found it bleak, loveless and ugly. Sieverts ideas helped me to understand why.

Critique of the Power of Judgment by Immanuel Kant

While Sieverts’ book is an easy read, the Critique of Judgement is anything but. Published in 1790, the book presents Kant’s views on aesthetics and teleology. The Critique of Judgement is the third and final of Kant’s three Critiques; the first two being the Critique of Pure Reason, which deals with metaphysics and epistemology, and the Critique of Practical Reason, which deals with ethics.

Like the Bible, this book is on my list because it is almost impossible to be an academic and not be influenced by Kant’s ideas. In recent years, I have become increasingly interested in the role of aesthetics in landscape architecture. Whether you consider yourself a Kantian or oppose his ideas, you cannot escape the influence of Kantian ideas within philosophical aesthetics. However, the book features on my list for another, more personal reason. I was fortunate enough to be socialised into academic life in an almost ideal environment. Even during my early graduate years, I was permitted to participate in reading groups with my professor, PhD students, and lecturers. In one such group, we set ourselves the task of reading Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement. I still recall how much I enjoyed our discussions, reading key passages sentence by sentence and talking for hours. In hindsight I’d say that this experience ruined me for any other occupation than becoming an academic.

The Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault

This book has been crucial for my scholarship as well, and like the two previous two, I’ve read it during my time as a doctoral student. However, while the Critique of the Power of Judgment symbolises the joys of reading difficult books together with others, this book symbolises a scholar’s loneliness to me: countless hours of reading, writing, overcoming the temptation to do other stuff, being in the tight grip of the imposter syndrome… But it also represents how rewarding it feels not to give up. This was also my first experience of the distinct writing style of French intellectuals. While reading Kant felt like doing maths with words, reading Foucault felt more like thinking with your stomach. I experimented with different ways of reading Michel: rather than trying to understand every sentence, I read quickly, letting the ideas wash over me. I read at night, with a glass of French red wine in my hand. Reading Foucault’s prose helped me realise that there are many different effective ways of writing, an idea that fascinates me. I hope it will encourage me to develop my own writing so that one day I will dare to write dangerously, to paraphrase James Joyce.

Aesthetic Creation by Nick Zangwill

Over the years, I’ve developed my own system of annotations for academic books. I underline interesting passages, draw square brackets around crucial ones, and use exclamation marks for particularly insightful parts. I use a small, coloured square to mark a phrase or sentence where I like the language, word choice or formulation. An energetically drawn lightning bolt marks an error, or what I identify as one, a wrong or questionable argument, whereas a smiley signals that a thought or a phrase made me smile, or even laugh out loud, which does indeed happen occasionally, even when reading academic texts.

Zangwill’s book is swarming with underlined passages, square brackets, exclamation marks, and smileys. Fancy a little taste from the preface?

This book falls comfortably in what was the mainstream trend of aesthetics in Western philosophy since Plato. This tradition is now widely thought to be passé. Some readers will think that an aesthetic approach to art is ‘conservative’; but I do not care much about that. One generation’s conservative is the next generation’s radical, and vice versa.

Oh, to be such a confident writer! However, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever have the confidence of a white, middle-aged professor of philosophy. I’m not sure that I want to either. What I do want to do, though, is keep reading and continue filling the margins of this and other books with my little symbols.

 

The two previous holders of the baton have already mentioned how difficult it has been to choose ten books, so I will simply agree with them. In any case, I have set two criteria that have helped me to compile a meaningful list.

Firstly, the book must be worthy of attention today and have some kind of relevance for an audience. I may have been an avid reader of En ding ding värld in the 1990s, but telling the audience about it would not really give them much.

Secondly, the book must have had an impact. In other words, the book must have played a role in how I view the world, and I would in some sense have been a different person without it. Without this criterion, one might as well have asked Chat GPT for a list.

Incidentally, my preparation of the list coincided with the presentation of Sweden's cultural canon, which prompted reflection on what makes a list interesting and meaningful.

By the way – how difficult it has been to choose! 

The emperor of Portugallia by Selma Lagerlöf (1914)

There is only one work with classic status on this list – the unfortunate story of Jan in Skrolycka. When his daughter moves to the big city, he goes mad and believes himself to be an emperor. The formerly meek homebound man is now seen in the village wearing a leather cap, carrying a silver-knobbed cane and wearing cardboard stars on his chest. He sings: The Empress's Father / He is so happy at heart, and at first, those around him play along with his grandiose but disturbing fantasy.

A multitude of analyses can be drawn from this story: about generational conflicts, about power and hierarchies, about family relationships, about mental illness. For me, the story is about how difficult circumstances in life can force the creation of fantasy worlds, and even more about how painful it is when the comfort of fantasy is finally taken away from you. I think that we all have an emperor inside us in some way.

Vålnadernas historia: spöken, skeptiker och drömmen om den odödliga själen by Magnus Västerbro (2019)

I don't believe in ghosts one bit, but I am extremely interested in them. I could say that the subject is a gateway to larger questions and discussions about human mortality and our relationship to grief and death, but fundamentally, my interest is probably more about seeing a kind of entertaining charm in the darkness of the spirit world. 

For us captivated sceptics who are drawn to the spirit world, The History of Ghosts is tailor-made reading. The author describes how Western beliefs about life after death have changed over different eras. But a story about the history of belief in ghosts is just as much a story about the history of sceptics. Apparently, throughout most of history, there have been individuals who have stubbornly refused to believe in the spirit world. Even in the most religious and ecclesiastically powerful contexts, there have been people who have said: When you die, that's it, period. In 15th-century England, for example, there was a cloth maker named Thomas who, contrary to all norms, defiantly believed that the body and soul end together, like when a light is extinguished. For this, he was sentenced to public humiliation and threatened with burning at the stake. Did he change his mind? I don't think so.

Om undran inför samhället by Johan Asplund (1970)

Of all the literature I read as a doctoral student, Johan Asplund's concise little book is the one I hope has most effectively vaccinated me against becoming a rigid researcher. Every time I think about Om undran inför samhället I feel an urge to... well, wonder. 

What has stayed with me most is Asplund's idea of aspect seeing – seeing something as something else. Aspect seeing is necessary for the phenomena in our world that can appear in different guises and forms of meaning, and therefore cannot be reduced to absolute truths. Social phenomena, such as everyday behaviours, are such phenomena. A typical Asplund question: What does it mean to say hello to someone? Although the book is limited to the field of sociology, it has made an impression on my relationship to science in general.

Aliide, Aliide by Mare Kandre (1991)

Competing with Stig Dagerman, Mare Kandre takes her place as representative of that phase some of us go through (and perhaps never fully leave) involving melancholy, depression and weltschmerz. On the surface, Aliide, Aliide is a coming-of-age story about an eight-year-old girl in a Swedish high-rise neighbourhood, possibly in the 1970s. What it is really about, perhaps, is that creeping feeling of alienation from a world that is fundamentally absurd. Kandre's style can be described as lyrical with a stubborn dirtiness:

But the children here didn't make much noise otherwise. They were of a relatively frightened, quiet sort, and in the winters they all wore funny little knitted hats that smelled of cigarette smoke and spinach.

I know that for many readers, this book is too much – too many impressions, too many exclamation marks and capital letters, too much style and angst alternately. Yes, it is emotionally heavy and expressive, and the gestures are grand, but for some of us, there has been a time in our lives that has been perfect for this type of story.

Architecture Depends by Jeremy Till (2009)

Now, several years later, I can see some flaws in this book. Among other things, I think the author exaggerates the architectural profession. Nevertheless, Architecture Depends was a sensation when I first read it as an architecture student. I wanted to be able to think about architecture beyond questions of "beautiful" and "ugly", but I didn't really have the language or perspective.

Jeremy Till argues that randomness is a strong factor in both the design and use of architecture. On the surface, it's an easy statement – but the 200 pages the author spends turning it around and around were, for me, like having eye surgery to see more and better. The book is still part of my view of design, whether we're talking about buildings and outdoor environments or entire cities.

The Wind on the Ground by Harry Martinsson (1964)

This spot was originally meant for Tomas Tranströmer, but he's been so hyped up and showered with awards that highlighting him would be like kicking in an open door. As an employee at an agricultural university, I wanted to showcase something that I felt was particularly powerful in terms of forests and land in literature. This is achieved with Harry Martinson's short collection of unique and elegant observations. This is how he describes a fox in winter sticking its tongue into a snow-covered anthill and being tormented by the dazed, angry insects: 

This is repeated until the tongue is sore and painful and the fox is reasonably full, or at least satisfied. He licks his sore tongue gently around his mouth. Life is hard for an animal. The bitter food of the forest is harsh.

After reading The Wind on the Ground once, I found myself in a Harry-like state, viewing nature through his peculiar eyes. It is with his words that I experience the smell of earth in April every year and think of it as ”raw” and ”objective”.

Mjölk och människor by Matilda Josephson (2024)

People fainted when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I won't care much until a comic book artist wins the prize. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen in my lifetime. In any case, I could have filled this entire list with highlights from the educational journey whose final destination is called comic book nerd. It begins with traditional summer cottage comics such as Åsa-Nisse and Fantomen, continues with the irreverent Pyton, and leads across the threshold to Galago and the comic art that is now considered worthy of the culture pages. 

My choice of a contemporary album represents a broader admiration for comic book creators who have come and gone – including Joakim Pirinen, Nina Hemmingsson, Lena Ackebo, Max Andersson and David Nessle. The fact that Mjölk och människor strikes a chord with me is not only because of the comic book format, but also because, like the main character herself, I worked at the checkout at Ica in my teens. In an apt and captivating way, Josephson presents the grocery store as a public stage on which a gallery of people and their destinies pass by and meet. The store becomes a small cosmos of interpersonal behaviours that are sometimes tragic, sometimes comical, and most often tragicomic. It's just as I remember it.

Skuggan på världens botten och andra berättelser by Thomas Ligotti (2012)

Here we have the narrowest book on the list, which should interest very few in the audience. Horror is something of a love-it-or-hate-it genre, and if you think horror is ridiculous or too terrible, you should forget the name Thomas Ligotti. Personally, I am a convert.

Ligotti is often associated with alternative literary movements such as the new weird and speculative fiction. He takes H.P. Lovecraft's so-called ”cosmic horror” further, which is basically based on the horror of realising that you, as a human being, are fundamentally insignificant. Another genre designation for Ligotti could be ”worldview horror”. 

Ligotti is difficult to read and even more difficult to describe. For example, one story consists solely of a long description of a disused factory and its disturbing production, like ”an exquisitely neat music box which, when opened, emitted a short gurgling or sucking sound that mimicked the death rattle of a dying individual.”

Compared to an effective dramatist like Stephen King, Ligotti's work can instead be likened to suggestive poetry. Think of gloomy pencil sketches of outlying towns, in the borderland between autumn and winter. Think of mood rather than shock. Imagine horror stories built on the chilling thought that your life may be completely meaningless.

Det omätbaras renässans: en uppgörelse med pedanternas världsherravälde by Jonna Bornemark (2018)

Unfortunately, I missed Jonna Bornemark's recent visit to SLU's Studium Generale. Perhaps I can console myself by repeating this criticism of our measurable society and our modern-day obsession with numbers, statistics, columns, evaluations, quality indices, grading scales, pedometers and so on. We certainly need to measure things, but the question is whether we are not at the same time risking becoming blind to the immeasurable. 

One aspect of the book that has stayed with me is the many original and borrowed expressions used in the work – pre-papering, life draining, conceptual imperialism, and modernity's disenchantment of the world. Encountering these was to feel: This is exactly how I have thought – I just didn't know it until now.

Lyckad nedfrysning av herr Moro by Andersson, Boman & Borbás (red.) (1992)

If you work at a university, it is not unlikely that you were a precocious child, and you never miss an opportunity to point out how, as a child, you naturally read books above your age level. Even though I was only slightly younger than the intended target audience, this book became my claim to intellectual precociousness. Because that's how it felt to leaf through it – as if I had stolen an access card and stepped into a place where children were not allowed. 

The question is whether Lyckad nedfrysning av herr Moro crosses a line in terms of what young people should be exposed to. When I open the book after a 30-year hiatus, I am struck by its unfiltered darkness. Schoolchildren would thus be exposed to black-and-white photographs of the death penalty, lynchings, war crimes and book burnings. The horrors are interspersed with texts by names such as Nietzsche, de Beauvoir and Freud, with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, human rights and the photo of Einstein sticking out his tongue. 

But despite – or because of – the book's shock value, I still perceive it as a powerful initiative for education and humanism. I read a columnist who argued that in the pre-internet era, Lyckad nedfrysning av herr Moro became ”a rumour and a legend” among young people in parts of the country who had not been given the book. It is not only in terms of technology that the era feels distant – would such a bold humanistic initiative even be politically possible today?

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s remember school days filled with campaigns, theme days and various initiatives such as Stoppa sabbet (Stop the Bullying), Om detta må ni berätta ... (Tell Them About This…) and the now forgotten Släng kniven (Throw Away the Knife) initiative. Of all the campaigns from that era, there is no doubt which one made the strongest impression on me.

I thought it would be easy to choose ten books and write a few lines about them. Once again, I am humbled. The list below is a patchwork of last-minute changes and obvious candidates. Something that hadn't occurred to me before is how incredibly personal it would be to choose books that have had an impact in my life. I am far from the only one who has read the books on my list, no book seems particularly unknown. Yet I weigh up each title. What will people think? How good is this book really? How do I come across through my choices?

Eventually, I decide that these are the books that have both stuck with me growing up and the ones that have stood out from the rest now that I'm reading as an adult. I can't change that. All of them are somehow etched in my mind and it doesn't take long between thinking about them.

Well, enjoy, dear readers, because I'm giving myself away. You can think what you want!

The books I remember from my childhood, which I believe have shaped my upbringing and have stayed with me long afterwards.

Loranga, Masarin and Dartanjang and Loranga Loranga by Barbro Lindgren

Books from my childhood that are close to my heart. I remember my mother reading aloud to me when I was little until we both burst out laughing. Barbro Lindgren invents the most absurd worlds that does not perceive anything as particularly remarkable. Fill the garage with water to make a swimming pool? Of course you do. A grandfather who is so old that he became a bird? Nothing weird about that. How about 1,000 tigers suddenly appearing out of the forest and disappearing just as inexplicably? Sounds like just another day. The closeness to the imagination and the craziness is something that has stayed with me long after my mother's reading sessions.

The hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

One of my failings as a reader is that I have read very little Tolkien. However, I have read this book several times. Perhaps this book has been a little extra important to me as I can draw some parallels to myself as a teenager? Going from being very home-loving to throwing myself out there traveling to many new places with the scouts, first to camps and then to federal meetings. Bilbo's story may be great but the essence is to dare to leave the comfort and familiarity, which is something I think we should all expose ourselves to at some point in our lives.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

I have read the Harry Potter books more times than I can remember. This is the main symbol of the book worm-era of my childhood. I remember borrowing the books from neighbours and friends to fill in the gaps at the local library. The fifth book; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with its 993 pages became the protagonist of a competition between me and my friend Tage to see who could read it the fastest. My record is six days and I can also say that Tage reads faster than me.

The adventures of Tintin by Hergé

Can you add cartoons to this list? I will. Growing up, comic books have been ever-present. From Bamse to The Phantom. My father's collector's albums of Hälge, Calvin & Hobbes and Lucky Luke are well read, but it is Hergé's Tintin that is most important to me. It is the mystery and adventure combined with the jokes and the little pieces of art in every section that make Tintin rise above the rest I think. At home, my wall is adorned with the album cover of The Black Island and that would probably be enough to qualify for this list. Joining Tintin, Captain Haddock and Snowy is always a cozy moment and reading them now as an adult increases my appreciation for them. I fail in my attempts to pick a favourite.

Depictions of our world, however horrible it may be. Two books describing being under complete control, one of which has a happy ending.

In order to live by Yeonmi Park

Yeonmi Park's portrayal of her childhood in North Korea, and her subsequent escape, is a book of almost constant suffering. I am impressed by her enormous strength as she repeatedly faces terrible challenges in her life. Yeonmi overcomes everything and manages to save not only herself but also her family at only 13 years old. It is she, her family, and the citizens of North Korea who pay the price of Kim Jong Un's regime. Eye-opening, terrifying and disturbing.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Putting the world's most famous dystopia on this list might seem a bit uneducated, but it's still the one story that has left the biggest impression on me. For me, the reasons behind the book are actually more interesting than the work itself. George Orwell is a public debater more than anything else in my opinion. Despite the book being written in 1948 Orwell manages to remain relevant to this day with sometimes frightening accuracy, where his fantasy and symbolic caricature today has become reality. However, the focus should be on Orwell's description of the information society, and it is precisely this that makes the book eternally relevant.

The stories that have touched me and stuck with me. When you get drawn in and can't help but turn the page, for whatever reason.

Stoner by John Williams

I don't think I've ever been so moved by a book as this one. Stoner made me evaluate what books to spend my time on; where has this kind of literature been all my life and why am I only discovering it now? Stoner made me reflect on my relationships, personal and professional, and at times I couldn't read any further because it was simply too hard. It is the best book I have ever read.

Osebol by Marit Kapla

Marit Kapla has written a unique book in which she interviews all the inhabitants of the small village of Osebol in Värmland. That this book will offer the kind of stories it actually does is hard to imagine before reading it. Osebol's 42 inhabitants provide an equal number of life stories and these are all united in the small community. I have never read a book like this, deeply fascinating and actually very surprising. When traveling through our vast country, the small communities seem to just pass by, but in all these small cottages live people with their own unique stories. Osebol is a celebration of how different our lives are.

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

Fantasy has probably always been my favourite genre. It started in elementary school when my friends and I would play in the woods at recess and be knights, orcs and wizards. In recent years, I've become hooked on Andrzej Sapkowski's book series about Geralt and the Witcher universe (which has now become a TV series that is obviously not as good as the books). In my opinion, Sapkowski takes a slightly different approach to the genre and gives it a more modern twist. Themes such as racism and exclusion take up a lot of space and the characters are often faced with dilemmas that rarely have a good outcome. All this takes place in a complicated world with its own politics, magic and of course - monsters; whatever that means.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

I think I have a soft spot for Alexandre Dumas' stories. Both The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo are among my favourite stories. If I were to analyse why I like them, I would say that Dumas' works are both about self-realization: D'Artagnan, for instance, rides into Paris on an ugly yellow horse to the ridicule of the public but makes a name for himself through his own power and determination. In reality, I think it's much simpler than that for me; royal intrigues, fencing duels and chases on horseback are all very cool. Does it have to be much more complicated than that?

I can't choose just ten books. Different books have meant different things to me and I have had a long life with lots of reading of different kinds of texts. But what they all have in common is that these books have meant a lot to me. From an early age I had such a hunger for reading that I accidentally cracked the reading code myself in kindergarten. I got permission from the school library to borrow more than five books because I read them so fast. All this leading up to the first time at university with the tough experience of encountering a text where I did not understand at all what was written when I first read it.

From books that helped my brain take a week's vacation in a deck chair, to books where I felt the content changed the way I looked at the world. And all the quick reads of reports which collectively gave a bird's eye view of what's going on. And all the bedtime stories from Little Anna, Findus and Nasse to Harry Potter that were directly translated by me when my children couldn't wait for the Swedish edition.  Anyway, I will try to prioritize. 

Books that meant something growing up, and that have taken on new meaning when revisited in middle age:

Maria och blå prinsen - Marie Louise Rudolfsson

Maria, the girl with the same name as me, who lived in the city of Gothenburg and loved horses like me, but had a second life in the country with grandma and grandpa, with wooden floors, rag rugs and stables. I got a glimpse of a different way of life, I dreamed myself away and was inspired. I had some of the books in the series and knew them almost by heart. Many years later, when I was on sick leave for exhaustion and unable to read, I opened them again and gently reawakened the twists and turns of my brain. My memory was shorter than the length of a sentence, but I knew the story almost by heart and the text was easy to read. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 

I was on a plane to the US on my way to a conference and laughed so hard that people looked at me strangely. The crazy story and the unreasonable claims, written in a sober tone. The improbability machine, mice and Vogon poetry. A lucid description of the sometimes worst sides of us humans, or just an entertaining text written by someone with creativity without control. I don't know, but if I say 42 as a comment on something, I sometimes find a kindred spirit in the strangest of contexts.   

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

Entering Tolkien's world, with its magnificent surroundings and beautiful language, is like a long journey. You stay in that world while you read the books. Even if I leave the book on the table at home, the beautiful words linger on for a while. I read the books when I was young and returned to them when I read them for my children. Somehow he tells me about his characters so that I understand my fellow human beings a little better. It’a a real fairy tale and the world he creates is so well connected that the movies were actually worth watching. With many quotes to return to - what about second breakfast? 

One of many reading experiences with my children: 

 The Book about Moomin, Mymble and the Little My - Tove Jansson

Our family moments every night with reading aloud at the bedside were a shared joy. Even today, when something didn't turn out as we had planned, we say, with a Finnish accent, “-and the Moominmamma said with force, we drink lemonade from now on”. At the library we browsed for the week's upcoming reading, but we had Tove Jansson's The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My on the bookshelf and often returned to it. Watching the children study all the details in the illustrations, knowing what is on the next page but still finding it exciting to turn the page. A special and long period in my life with bedtime stories. From that period, I could add ten more books to my list of special reading experiences. 

Reading books where I've been captured by something - where the insights into what it is about come gradually:

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

Fantasy. Magical, painfull beautiful text. Large marble halls and you become one with the creature that inhabits them, feel the water pouring in. And then the story unfolds more and more.  I was on vacation and wished the book would never end. I wish I could write about it as beautifully as she does. The book has stayed with me for years with its many layers. Now I have to read her book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norris - but what if it's not as good?  

The shadow of the wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I opened what I thought was a simple paperback, a moment's diversion, but soon found myself in a damp and foggy Barcelona. It was written in a different style and pulled me right into the story. An experience, not just a reading experience, and I couldn't put the book down and read it cover to cover. When the sequel came, I thought the same thing would happen again but I was wrong. This book is special, odd, and I don't think I want to analyse it to find out why. Just remember the feeling that it moved me to another place and time.   

Visiting other cultures and gaining new perspectives: 

 The joys of motherhood - Buchi Emecheta

It was the first time I read something by an African author and a whole new world opened up. It is about the situation of a woman in Nigeria in the twentieth century. Old traditions merge and collide with the new. Imagine if we had been taught this in school. Instead of reading about other countries and cultures, we would have been exposed to other countries' own literature.  The book opened the door to the possibility to gain new perspectives through stories. There have been many over the years and most recently I was far from Africa with..

Stolen - Ann-Helén Laestadius

...where I got the child's perspective on, among other things, the challenges of including Sami reindeer husbandry in today's society. All school children should read it.

Influx of new thoughts that I have integrated into my values for leading a university:

Organising Innovative Research: The Inner Life of University Departments - Li Bennich-Björkman

How hard can it be to get excellent research? Li tells us about this in her interesting study of environments that are on the rise and environments that are fading according to their peers. I am left with a picture, based on her book, of the successful environment where each doctoral thesis or paper may not be made of gold, but together, with bricks, gold bricks and mortar, the department or research group builds a castle that they (almost) completely agree on how it should look as a whole. They have high ceilings and disagree, but they have coffee together and write papers together. KASAM - sense of coherence. And what about the fading ones? They often still produce gold, but they don't build anything together anymore and the results lie like a pile of gold bricks on the floor.

Academic values lead the way - Göran Bexell and In defence of education -Sverker Sörlin

I describe these two books together. Bexell's I got at SUHF's vice-chancellor course HELP many years ago and it made a huge impression on me. Sörlin's I saw the title of and thought it would be interesting. Both books have been enormously supportive of how I can view the fundamental tasks of the university. To think about autonomy, academic freedom, academic responsibility and standing up for education while concepts such as matching and microcredentials cloud the view of what is a university education. Books to be read in small chunks to give plenty of room for reflection. Like broccoli for the brain: both incredibly tasty and nutrient-dense. I have returned to them for speech writing, presentations and quotes. I will return to them many more times in the future.

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