F, I, M for the book questions thing? :)
F: What’s your regular order at Starbucks?
alas, starbucks has only been in my country for a few years and i’m not a coffee drinker (and not too big on tea either). i ordered hot chocolate there once, it was okay but not phenomenal.
I: Do you have a favorite poet?
i think if i had to pick ONE favourite i’d go with the aforementioned johan herman wessel, whose little comedic doggerels are quite untranslatable.
i’m also very fond of wartime poets, including norway’s arnulf øverland who spent the majority of the war in a nazi concentration camp. i consider his poem DU MÅ IKKE SOVE (”you mustn’t sleep”) the most moving poem in my language.
translated highlights i found online:
You oughn’t abide, sitting calm in your homeSaying: Dismal it is, poor they are, and aloneYou cannot permit it! You dare not, at all.Accepting that outrage on all else may fall!I cry with the final gasps of my breath:You dare not repose, nor stand and forgetPardon them not – they know what they do!They breathe on hate-glows, and evil pursue,They fancy to slay, they revel with cries,Their desire is to gloat, when our world is at fire!In blood they are yearning to drown one and all!Don’t you believe it? You’ve heard the call!
(…)You know the fatality of the lies, that glory and faith and honor abidesYou discern the dauntless dreams of a child, A saber, a banner, he’ll flaunt them so wild,
And then they’ll leave home for a rainfall of steel, Till last they hang ragged on barbed wire will, Decaying for Hitler’s Aryan call, That is what a man’s for - after all… (…)
M: Favorite classic?
in my teens i used to, no joke, read the entirety of victor hugo’s LES MISERABLES every second year, i loved it so much. then in the time i started skipping the chapters about the napoleonic wars, the architectural oddities of paris, essentially every time hugo would go “hey let me tell you about my new hyperfixation”.
these days i’d probably go with charles dickens’ NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. i discovered dickens as a kid and i adored OLIVER TWIST but i honestly think a lot of the ideas he explored in TWIST were better represented in NICKLEBY. the comedic parts of NICKLEBY are funnier, the melodrama sadder, there’s more character growth for the main character, and it also has gay dandies! better book overall imho.