Dutch Lit Month 2012: Introduction

Hello and welcome to Dutch Literature Month!

I am sorry for being absent the past two weeks, and not responding to some of your questions more promptly, but I had some sudden real life stuff that meant I had no time at all to be online (nothing bad, btw ). This also means that some of the planned posts featuring titles available around a certain theme fell by the wayside. So this is me promising a resource list on female authors and ‘the colonial experience’ next year.

Luckily, I had some scheduled post and so starting tomorrow this blog will be dedicated to Dutch literature for the whole of June.*

What is there to look forward to? I will be posting reviews of books I absolutely loved (including what I am sure will turn out to be an all time favourite), books I did not like all that much, books I picked up at random, and books I have been meaning to read for a long time. Hopefully a few of you will join in by reading a Dutch lit book and sharing the experience in the comments or on your own blog.

Meanwhile there will be a few general posts on Dutch literature, hopefully I will get a database of Dutch Lit reviews up and running in which every participant can post their reviews, and I will be offering a number of giveaways. Of course, there is also still time to participate in the Read Along of The Tea Lords, for which the first discussion post will go up in two weeks (15 June).

Want to join in on the conversation on twitter? Be sure to check the hashtag #Dutchlitmonth.

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy this week as much as I liked organising it!

I will be posting a wrap up post each week, featuring all of the blogposts on Dutch literature published that week. Want to be included? Please leave me your links! The same post will also feature information on the posts featured on Iris on Books in the upcoming week.

From June 2nd to June 8th, I will be posting on: 

Tomorrow will feature a review of Eep! by Joke van Leeuwen, a quirky children’s book that I adored.

Sunday I will post my thoughts on Cees Nooteboom’s most recently translated short story collection The Foxes Come at Night.

On Monday, I will explain what I enjoyed about The Laws by Connie Palmen. A book Caroline has previously recommended.

Tuesday I hope to get a Dutch Review Database up and running. If that fails (I am no computer genius), I may have to switch some posts around that I had planned to post in the upcoming weeks. So please bear with me if it does not appear straight away.

On Wednesday I will post a review of another children’s book: Letters to Anyone and Everyone by Toon Tellegen.

Thursday I introduce Julia by Otto de Kat to you. Another book I very much liked.

Finally, on Friday there will be a giveaway.

Happy Reading! And I hope you will enjoy any Dutch book you decide to pick up this month.

* Please feel free to interpreted Dutch literature in your own way, this means you are for example free to number literature written in Flemish among Dutch lit. Anything written in a Dutch language, really. Of course, there are reasonable boundaries: literature written in French or English is no Dutch literature. My posts will be contained to Dutch literature from the Netherlands that is available, or was recently available, in English translation, but I do not wish to set the rules for others on what is or is not Dutch literature. My own personal choice simply comes from pragmatism, and wanting to catch up with books from my own country once a year. It does not mean anything in terms of wanting to claim other country’s literature as Dutch, or that I disrespect Flemish literature, or etcetera. Nor do I want to limit your choices to books that have been translated to English. I simply want to offer the readers at Iris on Books something in terms of books that they might be able to read themselves because they are available in English. Moreover, literature in my mind includes non-fiction, poetry, children’s books, etcetera. Again, the choice is up to you.