Kjaerstad? Beatles? Those were in one of your review threads about this.

Maybe also tag 'knausgaard' and 'my struggle' as a lot of people search in English.

Hey, thank you Antonomasia! I have adopted all your suggestions.

Added a few. "Betty Blue" is only mentioned as the film, but I guess it's ok to add the book.
Jens Bjørneboe gets mentioned, but no specific book. I really would like him on this list though. Hmmm?!

Good catch on "Betty Blue"! For Bjørneboe, I added Bestialitetens historie, which plays a nontrivial role in vol 4.

Jakob, excellent addition with the Hauge Dagbok! I would like to read that...

I forgot this list is about all of Min Kamp :) Thanks for Bestialities.
Is Without a Stitch mentioned by any chance? That would fit to Mykle's books somehow, I guess.

I don't remember Uten en tråd being referenced... if it is, I'm pretty sure it's just in passing.

I added one of Hauge's poems books. In my edition it's only called "Gesammelte Gedichte" / "Selected Poems", but I like the prefix "Don't Give Me The Whole Truth" better :)

Geir Angell's work is also mentioned quite often, especially Den brukne neses estetikk. Wonder where I would be able to find that one...

You are so right about Geir Angell. If you haven't added it, I will.

I will look around to see how to get it... people tell me it's very good.

Added Frederick (the mouse), who made an appearance right after the Caterpillar in Vol 1.

In the children's party at the start of volume 2 Gustav the banker says that Richard Ford is one of his favorite writers.

How about adding "The Sportswriter" as a representative work of Richard Ford? The themes look pretty appropriate (I haven't read it though) - but is this a book worth reading before reading Min kamp so worth adding to the list? Or just an author referenced in Min kamp, so not worth adding?

Or in other words how broad would you like your wonderful list I wonder...?

If we were to add all the books and authors just mentioned in passing, I'm sure this list would be at least four times as long! I've tried to limit it to ones that are actually important to the plot... but if someone wants to set up a comprehensive list of all books mentioned in Min kamp, that would be fun too :)

I'll think about setting up a list of all the books mentioned, although how soon it will be completed will depend on how quickly the series is translated vs. how quickly I can learn to read Norwegian. It may be a long project...

Alternately, if people just add all books here and order them by importance, I assume the key ones will float to the top after a while...

Manny wrote: "Alternately, if people just add all books here and order them by importance, I assume the key ones will float to the top after a while..."

That's what I think too. Just let readers of Min Kamp vote for the books they think are important.
PS I never quite understood how the scoring system in GR lists works :)

Not sure about "Irr! Grønt!". KOK mentions a text by Solstad from 1969, and this is the only one I found on GR from that year.

List scoring: each person's votes are ranked so that vote 1 gives 100 points, vote 2 99 points, and so on down to vote 100 getting 1 point. (In case you didn't know, one account can't vote for more than 100 books on the same list.)

Matt wrote: "Not sure about "Irr! Grønt!". KOK mentions a text by Solstad from 1969, and this is the only one I found on GR from that year."

Ah, another Norwegian author apparently important for the series whom I haven't read a single word of :(

Antonomasia wrote: "List scoring: each person's votes are ranked so that vote 1 gives 100 points, vote 2 99 points, and so on down to vote 100 getting 1 point"

Thank you. That's interesting. I didn't know that. It seems it's not the whole truth though, because right now book #1 and #2 both have two votes, but a slightly different score (199 and 190 resp).

Book 1 was ranked 1 by one voter (giving it 100pts) and 2 by the second voter (99pts). Book 2 was ranked 8th by one voter (93 points) and 4th by the other (97 points).

I think I get it. Right now I added 12 books to this list. If I click on a "vote" button that book automatically becomes my #13 and gets additional 100-12 = 88 points to its score?

Yes. You can see how voters have ranked the book by clicking on "x people voted" on the same line as the 'Vote for this book' button.

The Hölderlin poems (KOK bought the book called Vaterländische Gedichte / Patriotic Poems but that one's not on GR) are interesting because they were favored by the Nazis (albeit for the wrong reason). The selection "1800-1804" contains some patriotic poems, so I picked that one.

A couple of Likes just reminded me that I'd been meaning to post these other Nordic lists somewhere relevant, to get them more attention. And indeed comments about the books from active posters who've read more of them.

If I may...

Best Contemporary Norwegian Fiction, according to Dagbladet in 2006
Winners of the Nordic Council Literature Prize

Thank you Antonomasia! That reminds me that I've been meaning to read Sofies Verden for ages...

I didn't know Jostein Gaarder had written so many books - when I was compiling the Booker International eligible list, found there were nine others on his UK publisher;s site.

Would be interested to hear what you among others think of the Dagbladet choices... they're probably similar in scope - ie obvious - to what we might get from a Guardian or Times list, yet the books inevitably seem different & more interesting here because they're translated.

I MUST read more Norwegian books! Et diktet liv (Agnar Mykle's biography) should be in the post...

I am woefully deficient...

We all are. I suspect that even well-read Norwegians will have problems with many of the things he blithely quotes.

Just added another Norwegian book, Siamesisk by Stig Sæterbakken. I suggest to read the Swedish translation though because that one was made by Knausgård's wife Linda Boström.

Thanks for putting this list together Manny. Going through Vols. 1-3 (so far), I often thought it'd be a good idea to start making such a list--alas! Sloth.

ATJG wrote: "Thanks for putting this list together Manny. Going through Vols. 1-3 (so far), I often thought it'd be a good idea to start making such a list--alas! Sloth."

It is in no way too late. Please add things as you find them! And vote to help people locate the books that actually are important...

At this rate I may never get around to Knausgård's books! I did need a push to finally read some of these that were already on my to-read list though, so this is a helpful list.

Conner wrote: "At this rate I may never get around to Knausgård's books! I did need a push to finally read some of these that were already on my to-read list though, so this is a helpful list."

Oh, I can assure you that no one will have read all of these books before starting. I wonder if Knausgård did. They're just helpful. Probably.

I would recommend reading A Wizard of Earthsea though, if you haven't already done so. He's mentioned it in interviews as the book which has had the greatest effect on him, or something like that.

In an interview (which I can't find right now) he says pretty firmly that Flaubert's Madame Bovary is "probably his favorite novel". While maybe not mentioned in the text, that deserves a mention, I think! Awesome list, by the way. I'm going to tick off everything on it!

I hadn't seen that! And it's true, now you mention it there is something of the Emma B in our hero...

Bovary is mentioned 10 times in volume 6, maybe also in previous volumes.
"With Madame Bovary Flaubert continued this reality oriented and disenchanting side of the novel"
(p.401 in the german edition, my translation)

Love this list by the way, thanks! It's already tongue-in-cheek of course, but i feel like reading many of these books really wouldn't benefit reading Min Kamp much. Even Paul Celan is quite sufficiently quoted by Knausgard. And about Thomas Bernhard he doesn't say much, at least in volumes 2 and 6 i checked, only that Extinction was "one of the most frightening and shocking novels I had read". (vol. 2, p.420, Random House, Kindle Edition)

Ah, these Ebook search functions sure are handy.

There's one passage where K basically lists his biggest influences, something like "my writing is fosse-ized, ..., hamsun-ificated". I think in volume 6. Somehow i can't find the passage even searching for hamsun, and i'm sure Hamsun was in that list.