Reading report for March 2007

Another month has gone by and this time I finished reading 13 books, gave up on one and read parts of several more, some of which I expect to finish in April.
I always hate it when I have to give up on a book I had good expectations of, but sometimes even a favoured author can disappoint. This was the case with Eric Newby in his collection of short travel accounts, Departures & Arrivals. Much as I loved A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, I was disappointed by this book. While I found some enjoyable writing in a couple of pieces, most of them were just boring and finally I decided to stop torturing myself and stop reading the book. I may come back to it later when I am in a mood to finish it, but for now it's going in the unfinished file.

As for the rest, I apologise for the scarcity of reviews lately, but with this and that I have not had much time for writing reviews, what with the bookbinding (lots of homework) and travel planning (it's still many weeks until I leave, but it's fun to speculate and make plans and read guidebooks). I have also started keeping a written journal, which takes time away from my e-journaling.

As always, if there is a book in the list you would like to see reviewed, leave me a comment and I will post a short review.

Reviewed:
Naomi Novik: Temeraire (historical fantasy)
Dodie Smith: I capture the castle (coming of age novel)

Unreviewed: (some I may review later)
Luigi Barzani: The Italians (description of the nation)
Jennifer Crusie: Strange Bedpersons (romance)
Elizabeth David: I'll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon (culinary tidbits)
David Day & Lidia Postma (myndir): The Hobbit Companion (literary commentary)
John Douglas & Mark Olshaker: The Anatomy of Motive (popular criminology)
Jane Greenfield: The Care of Fine Books (book conservation)
Ruth Reichl: Garlic and Sapphires (foodie memoir)
Ruth Rendell: Shake hands forever (police procedural)
Ruth Rendell: Some lie and some die (police procedural)
Freya Stark: The Southern Gates of Arabia (travel)
No author given: Bókasafn barnanna (The Children's Library. (A collection of chapbooks of fairy tales that I loved as a child. I bound them together into a book and then could not resist reading them for the memories they evoked)

Some of the books I am reading now and expect to finish in April:
Holly Hughes, ed.: Best food Writing 2001
Lederer & Burkick: The Ugly American
Joe McGinniss: Going to Extremes
Robert B. Parker: The Judas Goat
Paul Theroux: Riding the Iron Rooster: By train through China
Leonard G. Winans: The Book: From manuscript to market

Additionally, there are about 20 books I started reading at some point but have not touched for months. They lie around with their bookmarks pointing at me like accusing fingers, telling me to "finish this book!"

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

Reading in Reykjavík

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