December 2010

Het Heelal is the Dutch edition of Hawking's classic A Brief History of Time. I brought this copy from Holland a few weeks ago. It was on my parent's attic in our boxes so I'm sure it's my copy, but I don't remember how I got it.

It's not the first time I read this book, and last winter I read several articles by Hawkings, but it's always a great read. The idea of a time-space continuum is appealing, but difficult to understand, I'll admit.

It was interesting to read the book in Dutch (I usually try to read books in their original English, but hey, I had it on my bookshelves). The translator had Hawkings use Dam Square in Amsterdam as a reference point. Good translations though.

Twee Vrouwen (Twice a Woman) is a book by Dutch author Harry Mulish, who recently passed away. It had been a while since I read a book in Dutch. It's so much easier than reading in French! Harry Mulish is one of my favorite Dutch authors, but there are many books of him that I haven't read.

My grandmother gave us a copy when I visited the Netherlands a few weeks ago. The book is from 1975 but it was republished in 2008 for the promotional Nederland Leest event.

I greatly enjoyed the book; it's a straight forward story but with many different layers and a lot of symbolism.