Reading report for August 2007

I finished 13 books in August, and added three new authors to my challenge (I am writing the last review). I managed to finish 4 books I had started some time ago and then stopped reading.

Reviewed:
Laura Childs: Shades of Earl Grey
Deborah Crombie: A Share in Death

Unreviewed:
Leslie Carroll: Miss Match
Lorrain D'Essen: Kangaroos in the Kitchen
Barry Paris: Audrey Hepburn
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Toy Village
Paul Theroux, ed.: The Best American Travel Writing 2001

Reviews coming up:
Ngaio Marsh: A Man lay dead, Enter a murderer, The Nursing Home Murder, Death in Ecstacy
Nancy Martin: How to Murder a Millionnaire (I'm reading the second book in this series and will review them together)

Comments

Anonymous said…

Glad to see the Harry Potter up there, I thought it was marvellous.
I'm interested to see what you make of the Ngiao Marshes, she was a favourite of mine. I used to own all her books but they have been given away somewhere along the moves in my life. Pity, as I don't think they are in print any more, and I'd rather like to read them all again.

September 10, 2007 8:20 pm

Anonymous said…

Fascinating. I too have a real love of mysteries. I have a penchant for the cozy variety, although I sometimes I should be - as a guy - be reading more hardboiled stuff.
I must confess I don't do as much reading as I used to and I give up too many books. I've just given up 'Clouds of Witness' by Dorothy Sayers after 60 pages or so. But I did finish Ian Rankin's latest!
Have you read any of Anthony Eglin's mysteries? They are very much in the English cozy mode, with a gardening theme. He's written three so far, starring retired botany professor Lawrence Kingston. Worth checking out.Best wishes.

September 13, 2007 7:17 am

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 ...

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...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Reading in Reykjavík

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